Idle ramblings of a wandering mind...

While my site gets predominantly North American traffic, I have some visitors from India as well. Notably - nobody from China - perhaps because of the language issue. This is a dynamic link - so the chart will be updated to the time of the viewing.

Labels: Blog

   

India's male-female ratio imbalance is well known. The 2001 census revealed that India has only 933 women for every 1000 men. This is pretty damning evidence for gender discrimination in India. However, look closely at some recent data and evidence of some kind of progress emerges. All data here are from CIA World Factbook and CensusIndia.net.

• There can be no doubt that there is gender discrimination in India. The 933/1000 female male ratio is all too stark. However, look at population growth rates for women and men for the decade 1991-2001 (time between last two census) and it seems that female population is growing faster (21.79%) than men (20.93%). So the female-male gap is being filled, even if slowly. In fact, this has resulted in the female male ratio improving 6 points from 927/1000 in 1991.
  
• It is well accepted that women have a longer lifespan than men. Gender discrimination in India had long suppressed this natural phenomenon and India used to have higher male life expectancy compared to female life expectancy. However, since mid-90's, women have edged men and have now taken a clear lead. In year 2005, estimated life expectancy for women is 65.16 years compared to 63.57 for men. We can infer that discrimination against women is coming down, for this measure to show such marked relative improvement.
• Further support for the assertion that gender discrimination in India is on the decline. Look at the sex ratio (male/female) by age groups:

at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.07 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 1.02 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female

• The overall figure (1.06) masks the improvement over time. The lower age groups (which corresponds to recent occurrences) have an improved ratio compared to higher age groups. Ratio at birth (1.05) is better than for under 15 (1.06), which in turn is better than 15-64 (1.07). This is not to say that a 1.05 represents an acceptable situation - its still deplorable - but at least we are seeing an improvement trend. We should ignore the 65+ age group as by that time the natural higher lifespan for women kicks in and screws the numbers.
• Now the best part - which I think is most indicative of the improvement on the ground. Look at the infant mortality rates in India for 2005:

Total: 56.29 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 56.86 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 55.69 deaths/1,000 live births

• Female infant mortality is now in fact lower than male infant mortality. The situation used to be reverse and the reason was that males babies used to get better care and nutrition compared to female babies. The above figure indicates that its no longer the case. Female babies are now getting comparable care and nutrition than male babies. Hence the inference that gender discrimination in India is going down.
• Interesting aside is that at birth female ratio is still adverse (1.05) - so we do have some sort of selective abortion/infanticide going on. However, infant mortality rates are favorable - so while there are some people who are *not* having female babies (or killing female babies), people who *are* having female babies are taking good care of them. Interesting.

So that's all that data tell us. It is interesting to see how social/political/economic profile of India is changing, changing fast and changing dramatically.

Labels: Economics, India

   

Here are two faces of India in today's news headlines. They represent the two opposing forces pulling India in two different directions. India's future will get decided to a good extent by the outcome of this tussle.

1. Economic Forces: The good, the better and the very best

Here is an example of the very best (original link):

The Indian government is to spend half a billion dollars in part finance for the construction of a 1,300 kilometre trans-Africa rail network, the Niger government announced.

India has pledged to give 500 million dollars for the 1.5 billion dollar network connecting Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso and Niger, allowing the latter two landlocked countries access to the sea.

$500 million is not a small sum - and the fact that India can not only deal at that scale, but do that in under-developed regions, is a sign of India's emerging economic clout. As the article explains later, the above sum will given in the form of equipment (train engines), repair and maintenence facilities, training etc. This represents India's industrial capabilities - we can design, develop and build the equipments and services needed for projects of this side. This is the good side of India - growing, improving, gathering capabilities and maturity... makes me happy!

2. Social and Political forces: It keeps getting uglier!

Now comes the ugly part. Look here for the full story.

Hardline Hindu and Muslim groups burned Valentine’s Day greeting cards on Tuesday and held protests across India against celebrating the festival of love, saying it was a Western import that spread immorality.

Now - without passing a judgement on the value of Valentine's Day - I can see for sure that there are enough people there who have nothing better to do than make trouble. If you don't like it - don't celebrate it. Its even okay (marginally) if you ask your family to not celebrate it. But what anybody else does in their personal life should be of no concern to anybody else - but there you have it - a bunch of "morally-superior" people who would rather break shop's windows and destroy property rather than put in a hard day's work. Sure these are a small proportion of population - but they affect the direction of national focus and discourse. I don't see them protesting against lack of good roads, power, water, investment policies, corruption...

If you still have any doubt - look at the hate in people's faces in the picture from the same article, reproduced below:


I do hope, going forward, Economic forces dominate the Social and Political ones - but seeing the above - its going to be a long journey.

Labels: Economics, India

   

What happens on my site is in no way representative of the population (well - in a research setting I will call it Sampling Bias), but it is in some way indicative of what is going on. I am very interested in browser and OS market share figures - as they indicate the growing penetration of FLOSS in the market. So here are the figures for my site.

1. Browser Shares


The news is exceptionally good - 44% for Firefox/Mozilla variants and 45% for IE. Strong showing by the Mac crowd too with 9% from Safari. This is heartening news indeed. The last time I posted about this (can be found here), Firefox had a 25% share against 65% for IE. So at least for my site - the browser shares have changed significantly.

2. Operating System Market Shares

News here is better too - 80% for MS-Windows and a strong 6% for Linux. Obviously - there is a lot of ground to be covered in this market - but I am encouraged by the momentum. Mac is showing a strong resurgence with 10%. Its good for everybody that Mac and Linux are coming up as serious competition for MS - and not to mention that Google is trying to catch up with MS from another route. All is well in the tech world!

Labels: FLOSS

   

The Indian Economy blog has posted that Indian government need to spend less on higher education and more on primary education. My first thought is - of course! There is no reason that the government should get involved in higher education, especially now when higher education can be viable based on private sector participation and support. I believe it would be great to completely corporatize institutes of higher education like IITs, IIMs and IISc. Form them as corporate entities, responsible for their future themselves. They will then not only try harder to be competitive, but they would also get the freedom to expand their horizons and grow.

The parallel with US higher education system is stark. Most well known Universities in US are private and depend on tuition fees, research and consultancy fees and public donations for their financial needs. Governement involves itself in higher education through funding institution like NSF and NIH that give research grants for projects important for public welfare and advancement of science and technology.

Having seen both the IITs and IIMs from the inside, I hold the opinion that apart from the gruelling selection process, they add little value to students. In fact, the standard of teaching in many IIT/IIM classes and the quality of faculty is quite low. This is to be expected when faculty salaries are tied to government salary regulations. Imagine a top class business faculty with significant research impact, can earn perhaps Rs 50 lacs (Rs 5 million) a year with a senior management position in a consulting firm, while the IIM salary (including all perks) would be unlikely to be higher than Rs 20 lacs (Rs 2 million). Why would the person teach full time at an IIM? My impression is that private business schools like ISB Hyderabad are offering a much more competitive compensation package to their faculty and hence are likely to gain advantage over IIMs in time.

I am sure there was a time when higher education in India needed direct government support and intervention, but now that Indian private sector has acquired the required scale, it would be prudent to let market forces control market facing higher education. The recent controversy about IIM-Bangalore's expansion plans only illustrate the perils of over-involvement by the Government in higher education.

India's literacy levels now stand at around 65% - and that should be the focus of the Indian government. Have a decent primary education - ensure that there is at least a school with a standing building, actually working teacher and basic supplies within walking distance for every child in the country. IITs and IIMs can take care of themselves.

PS> I have always wondered - why should IIT-Delhi be smack in the middle of New Delhi's priciest real-estate area. Wouldn't it be much prudent to shift the campus to outside New Delhi (say a huge area in Gurgaon, which is very well connected to New Delhi) and use the current place to generate revenue. This will give more expansion space to IIT Delhi (currently it has the smallest campus of all IITs) and will assure its financial well-being for a long long time.

Labels: India

   

While I am not a market timer per se - I do wait out for my stock picks to become cheap (at least enter a correction) before I buy them. There are these two stocks from India - that are in my "must buy soon" list and I am just waiting for them to give me an opportunity to buy them. I have known these two companies personally and I am confident of their growth prospects. Here goes my pick and my rationale:

1. Tata Motors (TTM): India's largest automobile manufacturer. $4.7 billion sales and $318 million net profit. P/E of 16 and PEG of 0.83, 46% profit growth rate in last quarter (all data from Yahoo! Finance). TTM is the first (and only) auto company in India to have complete design-develop-produce capability. It designed the small car Indica (for a fraction of what it would cost in US) and then its various variants and they have been very successful. TTM dominates that Commercial Vehicle market and is the third largest player in the Personal Vehicle market. I expect its superior design and development skills to continue providing growth opportunities. I am bullish on the stock in the long run as it has a great long term growth story. I worked at Tata Motors during the Indica design phase - and I am confident of its capabilities.

2. ICICI Bank (IBN): India's largest private bank and the faster growing. P/E 19, PEG 1.03. It has a top class management team (many from my school IIM-Ahmedabad) and its growing furiously in all parts of India's financial sector. It is top 3 in retail banking, foreign remittances, insurance, mortgages, mutual fund... almost everywhere. They are also the most aggressive of Indian banks and I expect them to continue growing. Right now its overvalued for a bank, but I am very very bullish on the long run.

3. What am I waiting for?: Both these stocks are primarily listed in India and availabe in US (NYSE) as GDRs. Right now Indian stock market is at an all time high with BSE Sensex at 10,000+. Even though I am positive about India's long term potential - I am sceptical of the current valuations. I anticipate a correction in Indian markets soon - and would enter the market then - and then hold on to these stocks for long term. I would say an 8000 Sensex within next 6 months is a possibility - and that would be a good time to place long term bets on Indian stocks.

PS> Now that Sensex and DJIA numbers are comparable (around 10,000+), it is interesting to see their comparative volatility. Sensex is far more volatile than DJIA - its a reflection of both - the deep depth of the market US market compared to Indian market and also concentration of financial muscle into fewer hands in Indian market compared to US market. I think its an unhealthy thing for Indian markets - and I will be watching it going forward as one of the measures of the improving health of Indian stock markets.

Labels: India, Investing

   

I love the Google Desktop Search - and completely rely on it to find old e-mails and files. However, one trouble with Google Desktop Search is that it does not search LaTeX (.tex and .bib) files by default - and since much of my typing is in .tex and .bib files - I needed a way out.

Solution: Larry's Any Text File Indexer plug-in for Google Desktop. The installable is available here. You just install this plug-in, and then add the following line at the end of the configuration file it will show while installing:

AddNewExtension "tex"
AddNewExtension "bib"

That's it - Google starts indexing your .tex and .bib files straightaway and they will appear in your next desktop search. This is so amazingly useful for me.

Labels: LaTeX

   

Today its snowing out - and I guess this stuff is pretty. The novelty wears off in a couple of days though... right now I am liking it because I am seeing it from inside the heated home - plus the thoughts of the gorgeous Ann Arbor summer/spring thats just two-three months away.

Blogging with Picasa is so easy - its addictive! I need to stop pushing worthless pics on my blog!!

Labels: Ann Arbor

   

LaTeX is a delight once you get to know it. It can be troubling to start with, consume boatloads of time and need significant programming expertise. However, once you can leverage LaTeX - its quick, efficient, amazingly versatile and produces super-good-looking documents. If you are just starting with LaTeX - you would need some help.

1. First thing - you need a good LaTeX template (mostly the preamble). I have been developing one that makes my documents look like I want them to. My template is here. This template is made for the following features

• Produce Author-Year citations - like ones needed for management journals. However, for that to work - you will need the right .bst file. I have created one for business management journals. Download it from here. You will need to keep this in the same directory as your tex file.
• You can control the spacing using the setspacing package. Currently the template is set to single spaceing (check the command "\singlespacing"). If you want one-half spacing - then change this to \onehalfspacing (how intuitive!!). Similarly \doublespacing will produce double spaced document.

2. If you want to use the usual latex command for compiling your .tex files that created .dvi output - then you would have to make sure that all attached pictures are in .eps format. I have found that .eps generated from Photoshop does not work in LaTeX. So here is a small program to convert jpeg files to .eps files that will work. The command format is: "j2s file1.jpg -> file1.eps". This will convert file1.jpg to file1.eps.

3. Now, if you like pdf files better than dvi files (I do) - then you can use the usual "dvipdfm" command to convert dvi files to pdf files. However - this procedure is awful in converting pictures - they tend to become smudgy. I have found it better to use "pdfflatex" or "pdftex" straight. But - if you use this then you will have to comment out the "\usepackage[dvips]{graphics}" line in the template - otherwise you will get errors. Also - when you make pdf straight - then you don't have to use .eps files for pictures - jpegs will work great without any problem. This is one more reason why I prefer this route.

4. You need a good text editor to write your .tex files in. I prefer, and absolutely love Emacs. Emacs is like LaTeX - if you are not familar with it - it will give you hell. Once you get to know it - you will love it for the power and flexibility it provides. You need a good .emacs file for customizing emacs - mine is attached here. (change the file name to .emacs. I have file uploaded as "dotemacs" as MS-Windows is dumb enough to create problems with file extensions otherwise).

• In that file - look for configurations for AuxTeX (utilities for LaTeX), and ispell/aspell (spell checker for Emacs). You can look at this previous post for details of these.

5. There are some good class files (.cls files) available for pre-loading all kinds of formatting schemes. For example: Univ. of Michigan provides a class file for generating the right format for dissertations in the Michigan format. You can get that here. If the organization you are making your document for, provides a class file then your life is easy...

I guess thats enough gyan for now. Write a comment if you want to ask something - or add something. I will be happy to respond.

Labels: Emacs, LaTeX

   

Thought it would be nice... here it is:

Labels: Misc

   

Blogger does not provide a way of categorizing entries in a blog - and for any decent sized blog - this is a big problem. There are many hacks available in the blogosphere to take care of this problem. The one I have used on this blog leveraged Blogger's Blog Search function. This solution was provided by Taher and is available here.

However, the small problem with that code is that it presents the category elements sorted by relevance and not sorted by date, as you would want in a blog. So, I have modified the code to make it sort category elements by date. The modified code is explained below:

Step 1: Insert the template code

Insert the following code in your blog template after the <html> tag:

<script language="javascript">
var blogUrl = "BLOG ADDRESS";
function showCategory(category){
var encodedCategory = escape("\"" + category + "\"");
var url = "http://search.blogger.com/?ui=blg&as_q=";
url = url + "&bl_url=" + blogUrl + "&bl_pt=" + encodedCategory  + ":";
window.location.href = url;
}
</script>

Replace the "BLOG ADDRESS" with your blog's address, without the www part. For example: for my blog the address is "imdeng.blogspot.com". Do not remove the quotation marks around the blog address.

Step 2: Categorize your posts

For including your post in say the category "Foo", you need to make sure that the post title has the word "Foo:" in it. If you want the post to belong to both "Foo" and "Moo" category then you need to start the post title as "Foo, Moo:". You can look over all the posts in this blog to get an idea of how you need to post for them to appear under their respectice catgories.

Step 3: Create Category links in the sidebar

You need to add the following code to the appropriate place in the sidebar for the category link to appear:

<a href="javascript:showCategory('CategoryName');">CategoryName</a>

Replace the "CategoryName" above with the name of the category. Repeat the above code for as many categories as you want to have in your blog.

Thats it - you are all set. The above code is implemented in this blog - and works fine. If you would want the original hack - then check out this link. My version is a small incremental improvement over the original and the credit for this hack remains with Tahir.    

This picture represents the crux of the argument in one of my research papers. The underlying question is - do firms save money by using FLOSS. Critics say that while you will save money on initial price, higher maintenance costs over the life of the product will make the final cost (or TCO: Total Cost of Ownership) higher for open source products. On the other hand, the FLOSS supporters argue that higher maintenance cost (if any) do not swamp the initial savings so FLOSS is more economical.

My research (unfortunately) does show that IT labor cost does (and consequently the total IT cost, as labor is the main chunk) increase for firms with higher FLOSS adoption. I am currently in the process of extending this analysis to multi-year data , finetuning the analysis to specific FLOSS categories and including insights from developing countries. Hopefully I will see encouraging results (like - IT spending goes down with higher FLOSS usage) once I take the larger dataset into account.

Labels: FLOSS, Research

   

This post has one simple purpose: promote Mozilla Calendar (and its twin Mozilla Sunbird). More information about both is available here.

I have been looking for viable replacements for MS-Outlook for a long time. Finally I settled on Mozilla Thunderbird. It is a great e-mail client and though it does all the basic stuff quite well (along with a really good spam blocker), it still does not have the advanced calendar capabilities of Outlook. Now enters Mozilla Sunbird (or Calendar - when used as extension of Firefox or Thunderbird). It is still in development stage - but I have been using it for a few months now (as Thunderbird extension) - and its quite useful. It has full scheduling features, even calendar, task list etc. The only big downside is that it does not talk to the MS Exchange server - so no checking other people's calendar, automatic scheduling and making one's calendar open for viewing by others.

So - leave Outlook, use Thunderbird+Calendar and be proud to say:

Labels: FLOSS, Research

   

Its the middle of winter here in Ann Arbor, MI - so it helps to sometime look back at the amazing fall we had just a few months back. It was gorgeous - with all kinds of colors around - red, yellow, orange,, brown... and all we have now is white - snow white...

Labels: Ann Arbor

   

I am no photographer - this just happened. This is of course the Big Red in Holland, Michigan with rising moon!

Big Red is an old lighthouse and despite its name - not that big. Holland is a delightful little town though. Nice beaches... amazing downtown... 

Labels: Michigan

   

How are these for paintings by an amateur artist in in just one year or so... each of the images below are individual watercolor/pastel/chatcoal/pen-n-ink or acrylic. I think the artist concerned (no - not me - I can't hold a brush straight!) has a bright bright future and I would be watching her progress closely.

Labels: Misc

   

The Multi-Fiber-Agreemenet (MFA) ended end of 2004 and there was widespread fear that with no protection for smaller underdeveloped countries, they will get swamped by China. I just came across US textile import data (link) for 2005 and a cursory look presents an interesting picture:

• China indeed saw a sharp growth in textile growth to US: 53%, against overall US textile import growth of 7.5%.
• However, most second string exportere (developing countries) also saw significant jump in their exports. India: 25.5%, Indonasia: 17.3%, Pakistan: 13.2%, , Bangladesh: 18.7%
• Major declines in textile exports were confined to relatively prosperous countries: UK, France, HongKong, Singapore, South Korea, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey...
• So - developing countries are not on the losing side. They are in fact benefitting from developed countries becoming less competitive in post-MFA world.
  

So - ending of MFA has not spelled the death of textile exports in poor countries. They are in fact experiencing a textile export growth rate higher than the overall growth rate of US textile import. The developed and near-developed countries are losing market share in US textile imports - and thats something entirely desirable.

Textile export is one of the strongest anti-poverty trade measure in many developing world. It has done wonders to people's standard of living in large areas of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - and its good to know that they will survive - even after MFA. Its heartening to see that developing world is being able to withstand competition from China.

Latest US textile import data can be found here.

Labels: Economics, India, US

   

I came across this post in the bytes_for_all group about distributing CD versions of Wikipedia in India for approx a dollar each (link). This is just one fascinating idea - net access is poor in India, especially in rural areas. An offline, searchable version of Wikipedia would be perfect for schools, students, teachers... everybody!

In fact, there are many in India trying to improve IT literacy in schools/colleges by leveraging FLOSS. Prices of PCs have come down in India in recent years (to less than 10K Rs last I heard), and if there are useful FLOSS applications riding on these cheap PCs, that can quicken the growth of IT literacy in India. Growth of IT literacy ties in with India's emergence as a BPO powerhouse as well. India needs IT literate workforce, and FLOSS is the way to go to ensure cost effective and quick ramp-up of IT literacy.

Labels: FLOSS, India

   

Thanks to the creater of the Blogger Calendar, I know have a built in calendar for navigating my blog entries in the archive pages. You can check this out by going to any of the monthly archive pages - the calendar will load in the sidebar. You can get the code for the calendar here.

I have made small modifications to the original code:

• Changed the background color to better suit my blog
• Made the calendar right aligned as my sidebar is right aligned.

This is cool! My sincere thanks to the creater of the script!!

Labels: Blog

   

As a researcher, I send my papers to different research conferences. Main conferences in the Information Systems research field are ICIS, AMCIS, WISE, WITS and HICSS and unfortunately, most of them now ask for MS Word .doc files. This is quite unfortunate considering that this is not only unfair to LaTeX and other word processing software users, but also damaging as new researchers get pushed towards MS Word - which is definitely not as good as LaTeX for authoring research papers and dissertations. Not to mention MS Word is proprietary! At least give the option to submit OpenOffice formats!!

What might be the reasons for this? Is there pressure from Microsoft - well possible and perhaps likely considering Microsoft might be part of sponsoring group in some of these conferences. Other reason may be that MS Word is a lot easier to edit. I suppose its time for a easy to use pdf editor (or even WYSIWYG LaTeX Editor). Third reason - organizers just don't know better. So - if you are a LaTeX/OpenOffice user - then next time to come across a conference accepting only MS Word submissons - ask them why don't they accept LaTeX/OpenOffice submissions. This will build pressure on them to keep the option open next time.

BTW: its ironic that the submission systems do convert the files to pdf after submission. Why not accept them as pdf to start with.

Labels: LaTeX, Research

   

I came across this little problem while writing research papers for submission to academic conferences. Most conferences have a set word limit for submissions. While it is exceedingly easy to do a word count in WYSIWYG editors like MS-Word, its not that simple in LaTeX. You need to take care that you are not including all the LaTeX commands and header declaration. After searching for a while, I came across this nice Perl script for counting words in .tex files.

The perl script is available here. My sincere thanks to the creaters of the script. Please download the script from the given link to be sure that you have the latest version. The site also has detailed instructions. In case you can not access the site for any reason, you can download the script from here as well.

Happy LaTeX'ing...

Labels: LaTeX

   

Its a simple question that many get wrong: Whats more difficult - a stock rising from $5 t0 $5.50 or a stock rising from $100 to $110 (assuming of course that underlying fundamental drivers are comparable). The answer is that both are same because its a 10% jump in both cases. Many people get this wrong because we are primed to think in "interval-scale" - what is the difference between prices? Once stock is rising 0.50 cents while other is rising $10! However, markets work on percentages - the ratio-scale. Every change must be seen in reference to the base value.

Nowhere is this thinking gap more obvious than in the charts. Almost all major chart providers (example: Yahoo! Finance) default their charts to a linear y-axis that corresponds to the interval thinking. They do provide an option to change the y-axis to a log scale which would effectively represent a ratio thinking - but I wonder how many people take the trouble of changing their settings.

So next time you are seeing a chart or evaluating a price - make sure thar you are looking at a log chart, and you are calculating percentages and not differences.

BTW: two stocks I am monitoring: Blockbuster (BBI) - I think with their new online rental program they will be able to compete effectively with Netflix. Their physical infrastructure provides them with additional competitive weapons - and considering the current prive of 3.9-something - its a good buy. However - this might need to be held for a couple of quarters before the effect is seen in financial statement and then affects the prices. Further - since the price is below $5, it has higher margin requirements - so thats cramping my liquidity situation right now.

Second stock is TurkCell (TKC) - available at PE of 8.4. This is Turkey's largest mobile provider with amazing topline and bottomline growth. I think this has great potential. I will be looking to take a position in both these stocks today.

Labels: Investing

   

Emacs never ceases to amaze me. Doing LaTeX in Emacs was fun, doing R in Emacs is even better. Just to clear the waters - R (link) is a statistics programming environment, extremely useful for doing advanced statistical analysis. R is open source and is becoming better by the day.

R can be executed through Emacs via ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics). Look at this page for how to get and load ESS. After that you just need to shift to the R mode in Emacs for getting all the functionality of R inside the wonderful Emacs environment. I normally divide my Emacs window in two panes, do statistics with R in one and documentation with LaTeX in another.


BTW: Searching for any information on R through Google is so stupidly difficult. R is not a good keyword and so all kinds of weired search results come. I have found is handy to search for S-Plus instead. S-Plus is the proprietary software cousin of R and normally information for S-Plus and R are interchangeable.

Labels: Emacs, Statistics

   

What happens when your home computer - which you have been using as your web server - crashes!! Not just crashes - just drops dead!! Well... thats why you should not build your computer using Pentiums bought at eBay. I did - and I am paying the price... the chip heated up and fried the motherboard... now I gotta buy a new chip and a new mobo and till I do that - this blog is going to be hosted on blogspot.

What did I do while I was gone:

• Made some money in the market. Especially some short-term trades in RRA. I am seriously looking at BUD for medium term investing - have placed a limit buy order and am waiting.
• Presented my paper "Cost Impact of Open Source Software Adoption" at Workshon on Information Systems and Economics (WISE) 2005, UC Irvice. My paper (old version) is available at here.
• Started research projects in Open Source, Social Networking, Business Process Outsourcing and Analytical Modeling
• Finalized my disseration plans... (more on that later)

Hope to me more regular with my posts now...

Labels: Blog