Apple and India...

Well, this is sad, particularly for someone in India, who avoids getting cracked iPhones...

Only yesterday Apple and Airtel announced availability of iPhone 3GS in India and today I get to read this, that Apple is releasing a new/better hardware for iPhone coming summer.

So, basically, India as an iPhone market is going to lag behind the rest of world by at least one model this time around as well.

Sometimes, I dont understand Apple's marketing strategy, specially in Indian context. As an Economy, India is probably the largest in the emerging market economies closely behind China. That statement should alone prove to be a "lucrative market" for any company which aims for growth.

This is specially interesting when we look at the number of iPhones already used in India with cracked OS's.

This doenst help a company's revenues if the product is consumed in a market where the company doesn't officially sell the product.

Also, the number of iPhones used in India, should give Apple an indication about the marketability of their product in this market. Personally, I think as a product from Apple's stable, iPhone has a lot of glamour linked to it.
And therefore, huge possibilities in India for Apple.

The new iPhone's rumoured specs look stunning, 5 MP camera, better display resolution, more processing power, possible multi tasking, video calling camera and few other things. After reading that, my plans to order an iPhone 3GS have taken a back seat. I want to see this product coming to market, further to see, when does it come to India.

Apple seems to listening to customers.. the kind of improvements rumoured is possibly the exact list of things someone might say are downsides of iPhone...

Good luck Apple, and India, hoping for a better collaboration this time around...

in reference to: More on next-gen iPhone and Verizon iPhone dreams (view on Google Sidewiki)

Explain plan of Infobright

We all knw that Infobright is based on MySql. However, when I started with Infobright, I was equally unaware of both.

Today I got to know about Infobright's explain plan collection technique, and realized how different it is from Oracle's.

A typical explain plan from oracle talks about the path it follows to retrieve the data, and somehow makes common sense to read a plan.

On the other hand, an explain plan from Infobright looks nothing like the Oracle's plan. Its a set of cryptic rows put together. An example of such a plan -

2010-03-18 01:31:01 [4] T:-1 = TABLE_ALIAS(T:0,"myTableName")
T:-2 = TMP_TABLE(T:-1)
VC:-2.0 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-1,A:20))
A:-1 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.0,AVG,"avg(col1)","ALL")
A:-2 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.0,MAX,"max(col1)","ALL")
A:-3 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.0,MIN,"min(col1)","ALL")
A:-4 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(,COUNT,"count(1)","ALL")
VC:-2.1 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-1,A:2))
A:-5 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.1,GROUP_BY,"col2","ALL")
VC:-2.2 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-1,A:5))
A:-6 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.2,GROUP_BY,"col3","ALL")
VC:-2.3 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-1,A:7))
A:-7 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.3,GROUP_BY,"col4","ALL")
VC:-2.4 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-1,A:11))
A:-8 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.4,GROUP_BY,"col5","ALL")
VC:-2.5 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-1,A:12))
A:-9 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.5,GROUP_BY,"col6","ALL")
VC:-2.6 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-1,A:13))
A:-10 = T:-2.ADD_COLUMN(VC:-2.6,GROUP_BY,"col7","ALL")
VC:-2.7 = CREATE_VC(T:-2,PHYS_COL(T:-2,A:-1))
T:-2.ADD_ORDER(VC:-2.7,DESC)
RESULT(T:-2)

And, guess what, to generate a plan, you have to change a setting in the initialization parameters file, and then bounce the db. I wonder if there have been any instances when someone had to look into production database's performance and therefore needed to look at some plan.

Being as new a system as it is, I cant really complain, since such things of maturity will slowly creep in. The focus right now is probably elsewhere, building the functionality, and probably performance.

in reference to: Infobright.org Forums | Enable MySQL Logging (view on Google Sidewiki)

Taxation of mutual fund returns

Its always tricky to understand exactly how you'd be taxed on various investment returns, especially mutual funds, primarily because not all of us go into detail regarding their portfolio structures. There are different categories of funds and their taxation rules change for each -

a. Equity Funds
b. Debt Funds
c. Hybrid Funds
d. Income Funds

I personally like value research magazine (www.valueresearchonline.com) for their knowledge dissemination around mutual funds. They have a decent article around the taxation of fund returns. This answers quite a lot of questions, if not all..

Further, this article goes into another interesting topic... discussing whether dividend reinvestment is better off, or is it the growth option that is better. As per their analysis, dividend reinvestment option comes off as the winner..read on..

http://new.valueresearchonline.com/story/h2_storyView.asp?str=11614

Cricketing Euphoria

I did not had the chance to watch matches from the first two editions of IPL live.

For the first one, I was not in India, and Europe doesnt like Cricket as much as they like Soccer.
For the second, I was working out of a day night schedule. Not enough time to catch up on the favourite sport..

However, luckily this time around, I am here, and probably have life going on a bit easy to be able to watch some matches.

It genuinely is like euphoric atmosphere. People going mad about it. Everyone you speak to, generally this topic shows up. My team.. your team.. that player.. this player.. that shot... that over... ohh.. so much of it..

On the other hand, some people are saying that there is just too much cricket going on. Sometimes their point looks good too.. Now, in the IPL season, there is a match every day.. sometimes two a day. And it goes on like this for quite a while.. I guess 7 weeks or so..

People at home (femalefolk to be precise) are already getting nervous... Everyday the same thing... at least its like that at my place...no big fans of cricket except me.. Other things take backseat, household assignments reserved for me never completed on time, sometimes forgotten too...

And then, its not me only. Almost everyone around the place is getting the same feelings/treatments...

Sometimes I love this, other times not so much...

Pune - Amazingly cool...

I happened to stop over in Pune during my trip back to Bangalore. As short as the stay is, I got a chance to go around the city, to some not so famous places and therefore getting the feel of the genuine pune, instead of the famous pune.

Things are cheap, the autowalla will happily go with you on the meter reading instead of haggling on a fixed price. Even then, the price that comes out to be, is lot lower than the comparable fare in the autos in Delhi or Bangalore.

Weather is great, sometimes its a bit humid, but otherwise great.

The list of cultural events is huge, seriously huge. Whatever it is that you like, you'd find it happening in pune.

love the place so far, will write further...

Indian Hocky and the comparison...

Hocky is our national game, something to be proud of, typically. And something at which we are supposed to be good, genuinely good that is.

However, the state of the game in our great country is not hidden from anybody. Hardly spoken of, the game seems to have become a toy in the hands of officials who hardly have any knowledge of the game. The players suffer and the game as well in perspective.

Recently, there was an episode about players' salaries. The poor guys had to go on "strike" to get their share of the money. Whereas the govt allocates crores and crores of rupees to the game, I wonder where does the money go if not on players' salaries or modernisation of the stadia. Or perhaps the officials are pocketing it away in the name of "empowering" the game and "spreading awareness". Well, this can very well happen in India and is no doubt one of the heads on which the money is being spent.

Then there is the general visibility of the game, though I know that its our national game, I am not sure how many others still remember Hocky as India's national sport. The thing is, with presistent poor performances, the game of hocky is almost forgotten, and with more and more media attention, Cricket has taken all the limelight.

Recently, just before the hocky world cup (hosted in india), there were a series of adverts on television wherein famous sportsmen (of other games) e.g. Rajyawardhan Singh Rathore, Virender Sahwag etc were advocating watching hocky matches and cheering for India. Doesnt it show the state of awareness the hocky federation wants to boost up. Pathetic, isnt it, that a sport that has the label of national sport, needs to be reminded to the public. And that too, without featuring any sportsman from that game itself. I wonder how many Indians would know of a few players' names from the team representing India in the world cup.

Then there is the real state of hocky, played by our team. I happen to miss the Pakistan game, which India won 4-1 and I happen to watch glimpses of the Spain match, which we had to win at all costs so that we are still in contention for the semi final spot.

The quality of Indian game was so bad, really bad, that you might confuse them for some school/college team. They couldnt handle passes, their marking of the opposition players was so bad that at times there was no one but the goal keeper to defend the goal (remember the goal by Spain's captain !!!).

At one point in the tv telecast, I caught the Indian coach helplessly shouting "pass...pass", and then bowing his head down in desparation, obviously no one listened to his words. Well, if the coach of the national team has to tell his players something as basic as this (to pass the ball), what can you expect...

The news report on the game by one of the newspapers next day was quite amusing. Apparantly the coach was caught on record saying that the mistakes were "childish". I have a feeling that the "authorities" would not be pleased with this remark from him and he would have to pay the price for this.

Good luck Indian Hocky...