Posts from — September 2003

Whoa!! Blogger bucks premium-services trend by eliminating its paid version!!

The creation of Blogger Pro, which cost subscribers a yearly fee of $35, came about as a result of financial necessity, Blogger co-founder Evan Williams wrote in an e-mail to subscribers. Now that Google owns the service, that need has passed.

“Pro subscribers helped keep us going as a struggling start-up, when servers and bandwidth were at an extreme premium,” Williams wrote. “We wanted to keep basic Blogger free, but we needed to start charging in order to keep the lights on…Today, as you may know, Blogger’s situation is much different. For one thing, we’re part of Google. Google has lots of computers and bandwidth. And Google believes blogs are important and good for the Web.”

Google said it would give Blogger Pro subscribers either a $24 Blogger sweatshirt or a prorated cash refund.

Just to make sure, I checked on Blogger website too. And yes!!… it IS true!!! :-)

In his column, ‘The Parting Shot’ in Mid-Day, Anil Thakraney writes about Media’s ‘Black Monday’. In it, he wonders about the media apathy as the terrible tragedy in Daman was largely ignored by a media dazzled by the high-profile terrorist bombings in Mumbai and the much-publicized elimination of Ghazi Baba, two events that occured on either side of the Daman tragedy.

This sort of a contradiction hugely benefits two parties: One, the terrorists, who ADORE the media for giving their ‘hard work’ so much attention. And two, the public servants responsible for the poor maintenance of the Daman bridge. They, too, must LOVE the media. For exactly the opposite reason.

Touché!

Time, surely, for some introspection by the media!!

If you want an example of putting one’s foot in the mouth, look no further! It seems that the “freedom fighters” like the taste of their feet…

On saturday, after he was gunned down after a 11-hour long battle, the Jaish-e-Mohammad spokesman gave a statement that “Ghazi Baba is not dead“, and that the Indian BSF’s claim was “a bundle of lies“.

But then on Sunday, some arrested JeM terrorists were shown his body and they identified the slain militant as Ghazi Baba.

And then finally, on Monday, BSF intercepted a radio broadcast by JeM which announced, in Pakistan, that “The beat of our hearts, the crown of our heads, our beloved commander Ghazi Baba and his deputy have left… May god accept their sacrifice.“

Putting the foot in the mouth… JeM style!

Former Special Secretary of RAW (India’s external intelligence agency), V Balachandran, asserts that ‘Police intelligence in Mumbai is very poor’. He also goes on to say very damning things about the intelligence setup in the country and especially in Mumbai…

Those days, the Special Branch had a special wing called ‘the watchers branch.’ The watchers used to mingle with local people, shop owners, roadside vendors and taxi drivers. They were the eyes and ears of the police. They briefed senior intelligence officers about what was happening in the city. That was a credible intelligence-gathering network.

But sadly, the watchers branch was disbanded. Now all the useless officers and constables are appointed in the Special Branch. Now the posting in the intelligence wing is regarded as punishment.

This is pretty much what I was trying to say in my post, a few days back. Moreover, Balachandran also talks about why the brightest and the best in the police department no longer want to work in the intelligence department…

No police officer wants to work in the Special Branch now because there is no corruption there. You cannot make money out of the intelligence department. The temptations for working in an average police station are such that everybody wants to take up those posts, which would fetch them money.

I think we have systematically killed police intelligence in Mumbai and in other parts of the country. Unless we reorient and give emphasis to credible police intelligence system, similar bomb blasts would continue to hit Mumbai.

While it’s true that policing a city like Mumbai is not an easy job and the gathering and analyzing intelligence in such a crowded and vast city is next to impossible, it still does not exonerate the politicians and police officials from the charge of breaking down one of the best internal intelligence setups in the world.

A welcome fallout of the Cola controversy is that the Govt. has issued draft norms, for beverages, in the form of a draft notification to amend the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules, 1955.

Under the proposed amendments, the ministry of health and family welfare has suggested more stringent limits for the presence of pesticides, insecticides and heavy metals in all kinds of beverages.

While this tightening of limits is a welcome step, it still is hardly enough to check the presence of impurities in these beverages. One reason for that is the fact that it’s just a set of rules that the Govt. is proposing to amend. These are merely suggestions for the industry to adhere to. They are not enforced in any way by the authorities. It is upto the beverage manufacturers to implement these rules of their own accord. The Govt. has merely raised the bar. It has not made it mandatory for the industry to clear the bar… leaving space for anybody to sneak beneath the bar.