The fate of cases

Have you ever wondered the fate of high profile, media covered cases in India -
1. There was a case of one guy from pune who was supposed to have made tons of black money in horse racing.

2. There is this famous BMW Case where some lawyers were accused of trying to bribe et al.

3. Marlon samuels and the famous match fixing case.



And many such cases which hog the limelight for a few days and then u lose track of it. This is what media hype can do I think or is someone paying the media to stop coverage of these cases after sometime.

iPhone

The iPhone launches today. Priced at 499(4 GB)/599(8 GB) and a service plan ranging from 59.99 dollars to 99.99 dollars it will be launched by AT&T in the US. Some papers claim that the grey market guys can unlock the phone in India. While it appears expensive, its cheaper than most smart phones. the N Series costs over 25k (600$)in most cases. Guy Kawasaki says AT&T is a bad service provider which most people seem to agree with! But why tie ur self down with one service provider. That way India rocks! I am hoping next year we will get a better and cheaper version in India when I want to change my phone after the 2 year cycle! Check out what it can do for you here -

buffett on dow jones

Another brilliant video - A more recent one where he talks abt the dow jones. Its hilarious as well - here is a snippet

Charlie Rose: Do you for a moment - think about bidding for the Dow Jones?

Warren Buffett: Charlie, If you see a girl walk down the road, dont you think about her for a moment?

CR: I think about her for more than a moment!

WB: I knew you were going to say that!

What a game!

Just finished seeing an awesome tennis match! 13-11 in the fifth set of a first round game! Both henman and moya played really well. Brilliant stuff. Safin won as well. On track to meet fedex in the third round.

Wimbledon, Cricket, et al

Federer is aiming for a 5th consecutive wimbledon ala the Championship. He looked amazing yday in his win over an unseeded but could meet Marat Safin (he lost to safin in the 2005 aussie open semi-final) in the third round. I hope he wins but he comes in after a bad end to the french open and has had lot more losses this year than any so far.

Indian cricketers are down with flu - diagonised with cold/cough/throat ache. Same here! Hoping they perform well against SA and England. Winning would be too much now, so lets hope dravid and co do well atleast from an individual perspective.

Google goes solar

Google will meet 30% of its peak electricity demand from solar power

Its time the infys and wipros of the world also start doing stuff to save the earth and save their cost also.

Warren Buffett MBA Talk

One of my favorite videos of all time! I think this guy just rocks. Tap dancing to work he calls it:)

Nice video

Bill and Melinda Gates along with Warren Buffett chat about Warrens donation to the Bill&Melinda Foundation. Some what like the sivaji foundation:)

Sivaji!! The Boss!

You can find raving reviews of the Boss in a variety of places (check out randomriff.blogspot.com/sandeepkannan.blogspot.com) so I am not going to repeat that here. From my perspective the movie was good and a great experience to go through as well. Vivek also rocked which was nice to see. The last time he did so well was is in Anniyan another of Shankars movies.

But Sivaji made out a very good economic point as well especially from the tax point of view. A lot of my friends are tax consultants and I personally liked tax a lot in my CA articleship days but later decided that I dont want to make a career out of it and I kinda know how the system works. From an economic perspective, lets say the true rate of tax any person should pay is x% and for some reason they are paying tax rates above that - tax consultants work hard with their clients and arguing with the govt to ensure that corporates end up paying as close to x%. But on the other hand they are lots of people who pay well below the true rate of tax and while the government tries to ensure that these people come and pay true rate of tax - its very difficult for the govt to ensure they pay because they cannot get intermediairies like tax consultants to help them ensure everyone pays a true rate of tax. Sivaji proposes one more solution for this kind of problem:) The key is to incentivise people to report tax frauds et al and somehow ensure that everyone pays a fair/true amount of tax. This will also ensure the true rate of tax is lower for people like us as well.

Federer lost again!

Just realised that the last time I posted a proper blog was about Federer losing to Nadal in the French Open. Now it repeats again this year! Sigh:( the wait goes on for another year! Lets hope he wins Wimbledon again! But he still is classy!

Bachelor of Social Service

Bill Gates Graduation speech

A few days ago - one of my friends posted a graduation speech of Standford by Steve Jobs . I read this speech of Bill Gates in Harvard a few days back. Was pretty inspiring. He has a little joke about why he was not invited for the orientation and only for graduation. But overall good one and I like his focus on the future and how to save millions of peoples lives.

I think the point he makes is pretty good. I think most of us have been lucky - been at the right place at the right time but after a while dont worry about the underprivileged. Yup, we think of them on and off. And then probably wonder what can we do about it - its a larger problem and start transferring the blame to people around us. Probably technology can change some of that and let us channel our efforts in some small way to the under privileged.