The following is a post from Les T., the owner of Humor-Erotica @Google Groups

ITS A TRUE STORY…

THIS IS INDIA
IT’S WHERE YOU (non-Indians) CALL WHEN YOU
WHEN YOU HAVE A TECHNICAL PROBLEM
WITH YOUR COMPUTER

I’m now using Windows 7!!

You may recall the problems I had at the beginning of February when I was in contact with the manufacturer of my computer ….  Hewlett-Packard (hp) and spoke to a tech reps from India for about 20 hours trying to upgrade from Vista 64….

They (support at hp in India) managed to complicate things so badly that I finally was forced to reinstall Vista 64…

I spoke to at least 5 different people during this time….

They managed to install Windows 7 but all data and programs were gone! I had a back up drive that they used to try to reinstall everything but lost about 50000 pictures and all my video files (2000) and 10000 songs!!

Well… after much hesitation…. a long letter to the president of hp  (no response)…. and making an up to date backup on an exterior drive… copying my programs to a cd …. etc etc. etc. I decided to call them again last Friday!

This time I got hp support in Nova Scotia (just the luck of the draw)…talked to a tech rep there and explained the situation to him…

Much to my surprise…he told me that an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 is easily done and the computer should have all data and most of my programs installed and ready to use after the upgrade!!!

He took over my computer, started the process, and told me to be patient for a few hours when someone from his office would call back to check up on the progress.

They called back after a couple of hours and again after another 3-4 hours. By then, all was finished and ALL my data was back and ALL my programs were operational!! (I never needed my backup).

They told me to try it out as some settings are sometimes wrong. The next morning at 10AM…another call from them…I had a short list of settings to change and that took less than 10 minutes!!

All that was left for me to do was download Windows Live email…. and it was automatic… my email addies with Sympatico were all back!!

The agent in Nova Scotia gave me the email addy to the president’s office and he will be hearing from me very soon….

I’m just waiting to be reimbursed for the money I paid to hp…. THEN, I’ll be writing a long long letter asking for compensation!

Tech support? Be very very careful who you speak with… My first clue was the first guy in India who took 2 hours just to take over my computer….I should have hung up after 10 minutes!!

On 18 February 1911, 23-year-old Frenchman Henri Pequet flew a 50 horsepower Sommer biplane from Allahabad to Naini carrying around 6,500
letters (The letters were marked “First Aerial Post, U.P. Exhibition Allahabad 1911“). The 13-minute journey was India’s first airmail flight and only the second in the world—a day earlier, American adventurer Fred Wiseman had taken off from Petaluma, California, and claimed first place.

One hundred years later, India Post will release a set of four commemorative stamps to mark the centenary, coinciding with a re-enactment of Pequet’s Allahabad flight and the launch of the Indipex World Philatelic Exhibition, starting on Saturday at Pragati Maidan in Delhi. Philatelists, stamp dealers, brokers and enthusiasts from more than 70 countries are due to attend the six-day event, which was last held in the Capital in 1997.

India has a rich history of philately. India Post is the largest postal system in the world and issues around 70-80 commemorative stamps a year as well as its regular (“definitive”) postage stamps—significantly more than the UK’s Royal Mail, which produces around 12-15, according to Devika Kumar of India Post. Since 1852, when the first postage stamp (known as the Scinde Dawk) was introduced in India, until the present day, India Post has faced the mammoth task of administering to the country’s 35 states and Union territories.

Though philately as a hobby was introduced by the British, it captured the Indian imagination with a tenacity that has outlasted the influence of its instigators and continues to be popular today. It remains the only hobby recognized as an Olympic sport. “It used to be the hobby of kings because it was expensive,” said Kumar. “But that idea is not so prevalent anymore.”

As deputy director general of philately at India Post, Kumar is one of the people who oversees the creation of Indian postage stamps from start to finish. It’s not an easy job.

In theory, anyone in India can apply to have a stamp made, although in practice only those personalities who have national or international renown are approved. Each stamp takes about 18 months to produce, from concept approval to printing. The approval of a theme for a commemorative stamp (the kind most commonly collected by philatelists) is ultimately made by the incumbent minister for communications, according to Kumar, but an advisory body exists to submit its recommendations on each proposal. The reasoning behind these choices can be political.

“Our job is a bit like that of a bamboo dancer—it’s a delicate balance,” said Kumar. “We have to make philately popular, but we shouldn’t indulge in mere gimmickry.” Unlike the UK or the US, where royal weddings or politicians are frequently the subject of commemorative stamps, India Post steers away from approving living figures.

This year, British dealer Stanley Gibbons says it expects to post higher-than- anticipated profits as a result of the sales of commemorative stamps celebrating the marriage of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton—an unexpected boon for the company.

Kumar is wary of being populist, however. “We do get proposals for Sachin Tendulkar and so on, but we have decided not to do it,” she said. On the other hand, she admits that reaching out to children would be much easier if India Post were to take a more populist stance.

Indipex 2011 will be an opportunity for India Post to publicize its work, and a renovated museum of memorabilia is due to open at its headquarters at Patel Chowk in the Capital soon. Appealing to a younger audience is becoming more and more important. “From our point of view, what we are looking forward to is better networking of philatelists in India and abroad,” Kumar said. “We’d like to attract those groups who can increase the influence of philately as a hobby— it’s not centre stage any more.”

Dealer and collector Premchand Jaiswal’s collection of fiscal stamps from India’s princely states is one of the most important in the world. Jaiswal, whose two sons are also stamp dealers, is emphatic about the need to get young children excited about philately. But he also notes that the notion of buying stamps as an investment is becoming more popular all the time. “The prices are going up like nobody’s business,” he said. “Appreciation is normal in a good economy, but (stamps) are very good as an investment right now.

In 2008, after the financial crisis, the GB30 Rarities Index—a collection of classic British stamps that Stanley Gibbons recommends for investment—beat the Sensex. Though not as stable as gold prices, stamps began to look like a safe option in volatile markets, and their prices continue to rise steadily. “I don’t know if they will stay stable,” said Jaiswal. “A lot of people have started hoarding certain items, and this has been a problem recently. But I don’t see the prices coming down for the next five years.”

Canada is the most web-addicted nation on the planet.

Canadians spend more time on the web and its offshoots - Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – than people anywhere else in the world.

They are neck and neck with Indians for the number of Facebook accounts, says a report.

According to comScore, the leading online measurement service, Canadian online users log in more than 2,500 minutes a month, followed by Israelis with about 2,300 minutes. Users in a few other countries cross the 2,000-minute mark.

Giving figures for the month of April 2010, comScore said nearly 68 percent of the Canadian population was online, compared to 62 percent in France and the United Kingdom, 60 percent in Germany, 59 percent in the U.S., 57 percent in Japan, and 36 percent in Italy.

In this country which leads the world in internet access, Canadians also lead the world in various offshoots of the web – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, according to the report.

“In Canada, YouTube per capita consumption of video is No. 1 in the world. It’s just absolutely crazy in terms of how passionate Canadians are about YouTube,” the Canadian Press quotes Chris O’Neill, Canada’s Country Director for Google, as saying.

According to him, more than 21 million Canadians out of its population of 34 million visit YouTube each month, compared to 147 million Americans in a population of over 310 million. But considering the U.S. has 10 times Canada’s population, Canadians are way ahead on a per capita basis, says the report. Canadians also watch more videos each month, with an average of 147 as compared to 100 per U.S. viewer.

With more than 17 million Facebook users, Canada has more than half of its population hooked to this socializing web site.

India and Canada are neck and neck for the 9th and 10th positions on the list of countries with the most Facebook accounts, according to the report.

Though no figures are available for Twitter accounts in Canada, their number has jumped 75 percent since the beginning of the year, according to Twitter. In fact, Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber, who is just 16, has more than 6.4 million followers on Twitter.

Khajjiar - The 'Mini Switzerland' of India

Khajjiar sits on a small plateau with a small stream-fed lake in the middle that has been covered over with weeds. The hill station is surrounded by green meadows and dense forests. It is about 6500 ft. (1981m) above sea level in the foothills of the Dhauladhar ranges of the western Himalayas and snowy peaks can be seen in the distance.

Khajjiar is often called the Mini Switzerland of India and was officially baptized thus by the Swiss Ambassador on July 7, 1992. It has a rare combination of three ecosystems: lake, pasture and forest, all in one place.

It is a best place to visit in India.

The next time you want to open a new bank account, forget the heavy load of documents that one has to take along. An ‘Aadhaar’ number is all that you will need…

A recent notification issued by the Finance Ministry has recognised Aadhaar number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) as an “officially valid document” to satisfy the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms for opening bank accounts, a statement released by the Authority said.

This notification is expected to promote the financial inclusion of the poor and the hitherto excluded by making it possible for them to easily establish their identity and open bank accounts, it said.

The UIDAI is facilitating opening of bank accounts for the residents at the time of enrollment for Aadhaar through partner banks and acceptance of Aadhaar as a valid KYC will make the process seamless.

Official sources said the move by the government will give a big boost to the popularity of the ‘Aadhaar’ project and will also enable those outside the banking arena to have an account of their own. The process has already been implemented in some of the banks. The new forms for opening an account will have a column for writing in the unique number.

A 12-digit exclusive number ‘Aadhaar’ is being issued by the government to act as an unique identification for citizens which is linked to the resident’s demographic and biometric information.

They can utilise the number for identification purpose anywhere in India and access a host of benefits and services.

Customers will now be able to transfer money from their accounts to any other account in the country using their cellphones, through the National Payment Corporation of India‘s Inter-bank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS).

The facility allows transactions without the need for a computer or an Internet-enabled phone.

Experts say the service introduces a new form of customer-friendliness that a developing ICT nation like India requires. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India records more than 670 million registered mobile subscribers; with the penetration of Internet technologies through mobile phones being higher than the spread of the Internet through broadband connections, the service, they reckon, is expected to boost banking transactions better than Internet banking.

“Though the Internet banking services are user-friendly, they are actually restricted to a limited number of tech-savvy, English-speaking Internet users in the country. With the IMPS, the mobile phone, which is ubiquitous, becomes a handier device for the average user,” says Nishant Shah, director (research), Centre for Internet and Security.

The service provides an inter-operable infrastructure for banks to offer a real-time money transfer facility to customers through mobile phones in seven seconds, says A.P. Hota, CEO and Managing Director of the NPCI. The mobile fund transfers offered by banks and technology providers take 24 hours, and are allowed only if the sender and the receiver hold accounts in the same bank, a hiccup the IMPS seeks to overcome.

With mobile phone-based applications popular and more inclusive in their reach, Mr. Shah says, it might be not only more far-reaching to have banking services available through encrypted SMS systems, because it is a medium that people are familiar with, but also the application-based systems are going to benefit a lot of people, especially who live in areas with inadequate access to banking systems.

Citing South Africa and the Philippines where the IMPS has been successfully launched, experts say the banking and telecom sectors are equipped with the latest security measures for launching the service. With most banks now using a Java-based robust system which works on some kinds of phones and is supported by a various operating systems, the system is said to have tried-and-tested security features with double layers of encryption. Hence, the responsibility of caution is more on the side of the user than on technology, experts say, citing cases of sharing of passwords, leaving phones unlocked and sharing of sensitive information with strangers as causes for financial crimes online.

Seven banks have already been offering the IMPS. Seven more are linking up through this network. Gradually, all 50 banks licensed by the RBI are expected to offer the service, which will be free of cost till March 31, 2011.

An Indian case study of how open standards can make an impact on the domestic technology industry and promote innovation, by offering a level-playing field for technology companies — both big and small — is the Smart Card Operating System for Transport Applications (SCOSTA).

SCOSTA was a standard developed for smart card-based driving licences and transport-related documentation by different State governments. It was developed by the National Informatics Centre in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Despite attempts by proprietary lobbies to make the body opt for a proprietary standard, the NIC and academics went ahead and developed an open standards, one that comprised technological specifications that were entirely royalty-free, and put up the specifications on their website. By doing so, they made a huge impact on the entire market.

The number of vendors providing cards and card readers shot up. Instead of four foreign companies that were involved in making smart cards earlier, more than a dozen Indian companies entered the market and bid competitively for projects in this sector. Obviously, intellectual property right rents dropped dramatically (since the standard opted for royalty-free specifications) and the market price of a card fell from Rs. 300 to Rs. 30. This case study was published in a United Nations Development Programme report on e-government interoperability.

This example is extremely relevant today. For, on November 12, in a very progressive and sound move, the Union Ministry of Communication and Information Technology notified the National Policy on Open Standards in e-governance. This policy mandates the formulation of a single and royalty-free standard in each technological domain involving government e-processes. Given that funds worth crores have been earmarked for several massive e-governance projects (27 mission projects under the National e-governance Plan), including the government’s ambitious Aadhaar project that seeks to create a database of its citizens, the stakes are high. A policy of this nature at this juncture is extremely critical, both for the government and for the domestic technology industry.

The implications of this policy, if implemented, are two-fold. Firstly, it will protect government data by providing for interoperability between various e-governance applications, avoiding any form of vendor lock-in and allowing development of cost-effective applications without getting caught in the tangled web of intellectual property right regimes. Secondly, it will foster an ecosystem of technological innovation by offering a level playing field. Smaller and home-grown technology firms, that hitherto could not afford to participate in several government technological processes as they cannot compete with larger firms that can afford to pay royalties for various proprietary standards (or specifications), can now enter the market. This will make the market for this more competitive and also help drive down costs significantly for the government. Besides the SCOSTA, another example of how open standards can drive innovation and include more participation in the growth of a technological domain is, of course, the Internet which was built on several open standards.

The policy is remarkably clear in its reading of what an open technological standard is. It states that a single standards must be chosen in each technological domain. The policy specifies that the specifications of the standards must be accessible unconditionally and should be available on royalty-free licensing terms (associated patents and extensions included) in perpetuity. Further, the policy states that the open standards must be one that is evolved by a non-profit body. The policy is clear on how to deal with legacy applications — applications that are already existing and in use in government processes.

The owner of the application will have to ensure that bridges are built, that is the existing applications are interoperable with newer ones. The onus will be on the vendor to ensure that all future versions of the same process comply with specified open standards. This will also protect government data by unlocking it from the influence or control of any particular vendor.

With this policy, India becomes the second country in the developing world – the first being Brazil – to have a formal policy mandating open standards in e-governance. South Africa and a few other countries emphasise on the use of open standards; however, their commitments have not been at a formal policy level. A few developed countries in the European Union, and even the U.K., have set open standards for e-governance. With this policy, Free and Open Source Software advocates believe, India shows the way for the developing world. In developing countries, where e-governance is still in its nascent stages, governments stands to gain from adopting such a policy for an obvious reason: saving costs by not having to cough up huge royalties to proprietary firms, usually large multi-national companies, in terms of royalties. As explained before, the SCOSTA is an ideal example of how huge savings can be made on public money.

The policy states that to implement this policy a ‘designated body’ will be appointed by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. This body will comprise academics, technology experts and various stakeholders from the government and non-government sector, a senior official in the Department of Information Technology told The Hindu. The body will consider and recommend the selection of an additional standard, give recommendations if multiple open standards are already available in an area (to choose the best one for the particular domain), review interim standards (the policy provides for interim standards if no open standards are available at the time of implementation of the project) and initiate action for formulation of interim standards if needed. Besides the designated body, an enforcement and compliance body is also on the anvil, the official said. Technological specifications for standards will be made public (on the existing website: egovstandards.gov.in).

While the notification of the policy is a huge victory for the Free Software community in India and huge credit goes to the community – comprising individuals, academics, several non-governmental organisations and advocacy groups – that lobbied against every move to dilute the “openness” of these standards, this is only the first step.Says Y. Kiran Chandra, general secretary of the Free Software Movement of India, an umbrella organisation of several Free Software groups and individuals, “The focus must now shift to sensitising various government departments about compliance with this policy. We should extend support to local government bodies to help them identify non-compliant solutions and deploy solutions that comply with this new policy.” He believes a policy like this, if implemented properly, can foster an environment where the country’s technology graduates can be employed for engineering free alternatives in the light of the great demand for solutions brought about by this change.

India has made remarkable progress in combating HIV/AIDS over the last ten years by reducing the overall exposure to this killer disease by 50 per cent, says a global report issued by a U.N. agency on the epidemic.

Besides, the Indian drug companies played a vital role in supplying the first-line drugs for HIV/AIDS patients in poorest African countries at phenomenally cheap prices, the UNAIDS said in its report.

“India reduced HIV/AIDS by 50 per cent while its pharmaceutical companies played a major role in care and treatment by supplying 86 per cent of the first line drugs to the poorest countries,” said Mr Michel Sidibe, UNAIDS’ executive director.

Around 2.4 million estimated people are living with HIV last year in India as against 2.5 million in 2001.The UNAIDS’ latest report suggested that around 33.3 million people were estimated to be living with HIV.

“We are breaking the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic with bold actions and smart choices,” said Mr. Sidibe, cautioning that the disease will stage a comeback if adequate funding is not made possible by both international donors and domestic spending by the developing countries.

Over the last eight years, the rate of new HIV infections stabilised or decreased by more than 25 per cent in at least 56 countries around the world, especially in the poorest African countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region most affected by the epidemic with 69 per cent of all new HIV infections. While there have been significant improvements in treatment which increased by seven and half times over the last five years with 5.2 million people accessing live-saving drugs in 2009, around 10 million people are still with without treatment.

In India, over 600,000 HIV patients are without treatment.

He praised the Vatican for giving the green signal for the use of condoms which was treated as a religious taboo until recently. “The Pope’s latest announcement on condoms will have significant impact on HIV-prevention,” he argued.

The Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including Russia, have become the epicentres for the spread of HIV/AIDS in the recent years. In Asia, including India, the spread of HIV/AIDS is concentrated in some mega cities because of large scale migration of poor people in search of employment and their exposure to sex workers.

Besides, man-to-man sex (MSM) and increased use of syringes by drug addicts in North-East have also witnessed sharp increase over the last ten years in India.

Global funding for AIDS dipped last two years because of the economic crisis in the Western countries.Rich countries in Europe have dropped their funding for AIDS by over USD 600 million, leaving small countries to fetch funds from their domestic sources.

In India, the total expenditure for HIV/AIDS from both international and domestic is to the tune of USD 1.4 billion last year as against USD 1.5 billion in 2008. The government which relies on Global Fund and other international donors must cater more resources from its domestic budgetary sources, said the UNAIDS chief.

Mansukhbhai Jagani, Madanlal Kumawat, Mansukhbhai Patel, Chintakindi Mallesham and Mansukhbhai Prajapati are among Forbes’s list of seven most powerful rural Indian entrepreneurs, whose “inventions are changing lives” of the people across the country.

IIM-Ahmedabad Professor and Founder of India’s Honeybee Network, Anil Gupta, has selected the seven most powerful rural Indian entrepreneurs for a compilation in Forbes magazine.”

India’s villages have become a hot bed of innovation, as its rural poor develop inventions out of necessity. Several of the people on this list have no more than an elementary school education,” Gupta says.

Mansukhbhai Jagani developed a motorcycle-based tractor for India’s poor farmers, which is both cost effective – costing roughly $318, and fuel efficient (it can plow an acre of land in 30 minutes with two liters of fuel).

After 4-5 years of experiments, Mansukhbhai developed an attachment for a motorbike — a multi-purpose tool bar – in 1994. This could be attached to any 325cc motorcycle by replacing the rear wheel with an assembly unit.

The ’super plough’ called Bullet Santi (a cultivator that pulverizes or smoothens the soil is locally called as santi), can carry out various farming activities like furrow opening, sowing, inter-culturing and spraying operations.

A farmer, Mansukhbhai Patel invented a cotton stripping machine that has significantly cut the cost of cotton farming and revolutionized India’s cotton industry.

Patel who studied up to Class X, invented a cotton-stripping machine in 1991. Patel’s machine helps in removing cotton from semi opened and unopened shells of various cotton varieties. The machine has won a U.S. patent.

Mansukhbhai Prajapati, a potter, invented a clay non-stick pan that costs only Rs. 100 and a clay refrigerator that runs without electricity for those who cannot afford a fridge or their electricity and maintenance costs, Gupta said.

During the 2001 earthquake, all earthen pots were broken. “Some people told me the poor people’s refrigerators are broken. They referred to the ’matkas’(pots) as refrigerators. It struck me then that I must try to make a fridge for those who cannot afford to buy a fridge,” says Prajapati.

The patent winning Mitticool has been the most challenging product for him. It needed a lot of experimenting. He started work on it in 2001, the product was finally ready by 2004.

In 2005, he started the non-stick tava (pan) business. “My wife could not buy a non-stick tava as it was costly. So I thought many people would be facing the same problem. That’s when I designed the non-stick tavas, priced between 50-100,” he says.

Also on Gupta’s list is Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade, who invented the HMT rice, a highly successful rice variety which yielded 80 percent more rice than the conventional variety. HMT is now grown all over India, on 100,000 acres in five states.

Madanlal Kumawat, a grassroots innovator with no more than a fourth-grade education, developed a fuel-efficient, multi-crop thresher that yields cleaner grains, which can be bagged directly and eliminates the cost of cleaning.

The modified thresher reduces setup time to less than 15 minutes to switch over from one crop to another. Its latest variant can also handle groundnuts apart from threshing other cereals and pulses.

Anil Gupta said Chintakindi Mallesham, inventor of the Laxmi Asu Machine, “ignited a revolution in India’s weaving community.” Mallesham’s machine can make six saris worth of material in one day, and “no human effort is required beyond placing thread on the machine and removing the material after the process is complete.”

Weavers making the traditional ‘Tie & Dye’ Poochampalli silk sarees used to undergo a painstaking process, moving their hands thousands of times in a day while weaving sarees. But not any more.

What’s common among 26/11, the Jaipur blasts and a threatening e-mail sent to Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa some months ago?

In all three cases, mail was generated from cybercafes.

In many such instances, the police might have ended up tracing the cafes rather than the criminals what with the cloak of anonymity they operate under.

In a bid to prevent such anonymity, a Mumbai-based firm has developed software and is offering it free of cost to cybercafe owners and the police.

Cybercafes, defined as intermediaries in the amended Information Technology Act, 2008, are being misused for terror crimes, fraudulent withdrawal of money and sending obscene mail, among others. This was mainly because the cafe owners failed to maintain proper user data, according to M. Krishnaswami, retail sales manager of the company.

Following the mail to the Karnataka Chief Minister, the police traced the internet protocol address and the café, but could not find out further details because the cafe owner did not maintain data, Mr. Krishnaswami said.

Similarly, an e-mail sent to a Hindi television channel before the Mumbai terror attack was traced to a cafe in Rajkot.

In a bid to help curb increasing cybercrime and supplement police efforts, Ideacts Innovations, a solutions provider, launched ‘CLINCK Cyber Cafe Manager‘, which enables internet cafes to capture the relevant visitor data in a digital form.

Once the software gets installed, the visitors would be required to register digitally, providing details of name, gender, age, address, photo, photo identification and contact number for accessing a terminal. All data then gets encrypted and stored in the company’s CLINCK servers in Mumbai, and only law enforcement authorities would have access to it.

According to Mr. Krishnaswami, 15,000 cybercafes in different parts of the country have installed the application, including 1,400 in Hyderabad, 1,000 in Bangalore, 900 in Mumbai and 850 each in Chennai and Delhi. The software was also installed in cybercafes in Vijayawada (190), Visakhapatnam (150), Nellore (85), Prodattur (70) and Kadapa (65).

The company installed modules in the central crime station here and the zonal DCP’s offices of the central and west zones to enable the police to quickly trace an IP address and the identity of the user in the event of a cybercrime.

Praveen Kumar, Joint Commissioner City Police (Special Branch), said cafe owners could install the software voluntarily.