உன் வழி உனக்கு. என் வழி எனக்கு. சரியான வழி, நேரான வழி, ஒரே வழின்னு எந்த புண்ணாக்கும் கிடையாது.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Friday, 10 December 2010
Dutch Panel Found 2,000 Church Abuse Claims
2000 in a country of 4 million translates to 550,000 cases at least in country like India or China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10dutch.html?bl
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Friday, 19 November 2010
We should probably follow this for our Intellectual discussions - "Chatham house rule"
"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed".
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Ye Atheists, do not be HYPOCRITES!
It is very important to be reminded that every Atheist infact is an Hindu. The ideology of Hindutva (the root word that is used to define today's Fundamentalism) was defined by an ardent Brahmin Atheist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his 1923 article Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?
I like to remind all those who are atheists, to not be hypocrites. The root essence of being an Hindu does not essentially tie you up with any particular faith. You better call yourselves, Hindu-Atheist rather than just Atheist, because inevitably you are hindu. From this perspective, any person, who holds certain moral etiquettes, yet an Atheist should definitely say he/she is an Hindu irrespective of his race or creed.
Friday, 6 August 2010
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Startups in 13 Sentences
Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator.
Watch how this essay was written on Etherpad. February 2009
One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
When I made the list there turned out to be 13:
1. Pick good cofounders.
Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.
2. Launch fast.
The reason to launch fast is not so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched. Launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that you're wasting your time. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users.
3. Let your idea evolve.
This is the second half of launching fast. Launch fast and iterate. It's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea. As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing.
4. Understand your users.
You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives. [2] The second dimension is the one you have most control over. And indeed, the growth in the first will be driven by how well you do in the second. As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise. And perhaps more importantly, it's harder to lie to yourself. If you think you're 85% of the way to a great product, how do you know it's not 70%? Or 10%? Whereas it's easy to know how many users you have.
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.
Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.
7. You make what you measure.
I learned this one from Joe Kraus. [3] Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.
8. Spend little.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is for a startup to be cheap. Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money. So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly. [4] But it's more than that. A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young.
9. Get ramen profitable.
"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. It's not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It's also great for morale.
10. Avoid distractions.
Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may have more long-term potential, but you'll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too.
11. Don't get demoralized.
Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus. Either the company is run by stupid people (which can't be fixed with advice) or the people are smart but got demoralized. Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it, just as you'd be careful to bend at the knees when picking up a heavy box.
12. Don't give up.
Even if you get demoralized, don't give up. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields. There are a lot of people who couldn't become good mathematicians no matter how long they persisted. But startups aren't like that. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.
13. Deals fall through.
One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to.
Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could only keep one.
Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
Understanding your users is part of half the principles in this list. That's the reason to launch early, to understand your users. Evolving your idea is the embodiment of understanding your users. Understanding your users well will tend to push you toward making something that makes a few people deeply happy. The most important reason for having surprisingly good customer service is that it helps you understand your users. And understanding your users will even ensure your morale, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going.
Notes
[1] Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time machine.
[2] In practice it's more like a ragged comb.
[3] Joe thinks one of the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but he doesn't remember which.
[4] They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still. Since they don't, working twice as fast is better than having twice as much time.
via paulgraham.com
Saturday, 20 February 2010
A poem by ஔவையார்
This is ஔவையார் அருளிச்செய்த விநாயகர் அகவல்.
The meaning of this runs very very deep and it is simply NOT a chant. My grandfather used to advocate this as a chant to many people who blindly did reiterate this during their every day worship, but did not even put the least of effort to understand this. My mother was one such person and she did not start to understand the meaning till the last few days, until when I started to explain her some old concepts of India and its rational perspective. The problems of people disappear not because of mystical powers of God when he is pleased by his worshiper iterating this during his / her everyday worship, but by understanding the meaning and use it as a method to destroy the obstacles that arise in their life. It was she who helped me give a partial explanation to this poem, which she started understand only lately.
It must be given its due analysis being written by a very famous தமிழ் scholar ஔவையார். Though she was a great patron of விநாயகர், it is important for us to understand the depths of the meaning conveyed in the poem. It is also important to understand that the Indian Gods were nothing but personification of some concept, who needn't have any mystical powers (anything more than people can imagine) but each was and embodiment on particular concept. In such a sense and Lord விநாயகர் was none but the personification of "Remover of Obstacles", because he was an embodiment of knowledge and with knowledge one can reason out and destroy the obstacles in their path. Though at instances it is very spiritual or esotoric, it might not be when the real meaning of it is understood. I having understood only half due to my poor knowledge of தமிழ் and with a little help from my mother, I am sure many who read this try to start the process of understanding the meaning and certain processes associated with what is explained in the below poem.
சீதக்களப செந்தாமரைப் பூம்
பாதச் சிலம்பும் பலயிசைப் பாட
பொன்னரை ஞானும் பூந்துகில் ஆடையும்
வண்ண மருங்கில் வளர்ந்தழ கெரிப்ப
பேழை வயிறும் பெரும்பாரக் கோடும்
வேழ முகமும் விளங்கு சிந்தூரமும்
அஞ்சு கரமும் அங்குச பாசமும்
நெஞ்சில் குடிகொண்ட நீல மேனியும்
நான்ற வாயும் நாலிரு புயமும்
மூன்று கண்ணும் மும்மதச் சுவடும்
இரண்டு செவியும் இலங்கு பொன்முடியும்
திரண்ட முப்புரிநூல் திகழொளி மார்பும்
சொற்பதம் கடந்த துரிய மெய்ஞ்ஞான
அற்புதம் நிறைந்த கற்பகக் களிறே
முப்பழம் நுகரும் மூஷிக வாகன
இப்பொழுதென்னை ஆட்கொள வேண்டி
தாயாய் எனக்குத் தானெழுந் தருளி
மாயாப் பிறவி மயக்கம் அறுத்தே
திருந்திய முதல் ஐந்தெழுத்தும் தெளிவாய்
பொருந்தவே வந்தென் உளந்தனில் புகுந்து
குருவடிவாகி குவலயம் தன்னில்
திருவடி வைத்து திறம் இது பொருளெனெ
வாடா வகைதான் மகிழ்ந்தெனக் கருளி
கோடாயுதத்தால் கொடுவினைக் களைந்தே
உவட்டா உபதேசம் புகட்டி என் செவியில்
தெவிட்டாத ஞானத் தெளிவையும் காட்டி
ஐம்புலன் தன்னை அடக்கும் உபாயம்
இன்புறுக் கருணையில் இனிதெனக் கருளி
கருவிகள் ஒடுங்கும் கருத்தினை அறிவித்து
இருவினை தன்னை அறுத்திருள் கடிந்து
தலம் ஒரு நான்கும் தந்தெனக் கருளி
மலம் ஒரு மூன்றின் மயக்கம் அறுத்தே
ஒன்பது வாயில் ஒரு மந்திரத்தால்
ஐம்புலக்கதவை அடைப்பதும் காட்டி
ஆறாதாரத் தங்குச நிலையும்
பேரா நிறுத்திப் பேச்சுரை யறுத்தே
இடைபிங்கலையின் எழுத்தறிவித்து
கடையிற் சுழுமுனை கபாலமும் காட்டி
மூன்று மண்டலத்தின் முட்டிய தூணின்
நான்றெழு பாம்பின் நாவிலுணர்த்தி
குண்டலி யதனிற் கூடிய அசபையின்
விண்டெழு மந்திரம் வெளிப்பட உரைத்து
மூலாதாரத்து மூண்டெழு கனலைக்
காலால் எழுப்பும் கருத்தறிவித்தே
அமுத நிலையும் ஆதித்தன் இயக்கமும்
குமுத சகாயன் குணத்தையும் கூறி
இடைச்சக்கரத்தின் ஈரெட்டு நிலையும்
உடற்ச்சக்கரத்தின் உறுப்பையும் காட்டி
சண்முகத் தூலமும் சதுர்முகச் சூட்சமும்
எண்முக மாகி இனிதெனக்கருளி
புரியட்ட காயம் புலப்பட எனக்குத்
தெரிஎட்டு நிலையும் தெரிசனப்படுத்தி
கருத்தினில் கபால வாயில் காட்டி
இருத்தி முத்தி இனிதெனக் கருளி
என்னையறிவித்து எனக்கருள் செய்து
முன்னை வினையின் முதலைக் களைந்தே
வாக்கும் மனமும் இல்லா மனோலயம்
தேக்கியே என்றன் சிந்தை தெளிவித்து
இருள்வெளி இரண்டின் ஒன்றிடம் என்ன
அருள் தரும் ஆனந்தத்தை அழுத்தி என் செவியில்
எல்லை இல்லா ஆனந்தம் அளித்து
அல்லல் களைந்தே அருள் வழிக் காட்டி
சத்தத்தின் உள்ளே சதாசிவம் காட்டி
சித்தத்தின் உள்ளே சிவலிங்கம் காட்டி
அணுவினுக் கணுவாய் அப்பாலுக் கப்பாலாய்
கணுமுற்றி நின்ற கரும்புள்ளே காட்டி
வேடமும் நீரும் விளங்க நிறுத்திக்
சூடும் மெய்த் தொண்டர் குழாத்துடன் கூட்டி
அஞ்சக்கரத்தின் அரும்பொருள் தன்னை
நெஞ்சக்கருத்தின் நிலை அறிவித்துத்
தத்துவ நிலையைத் தந்தெனை யாண்ட
வித்தக விநாயகா விரைகழல் சரணே !
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