If you are planning to own a Vodafone connection because you think they provide a good service as well as customer support, let me clarify that you are grossly mistaken!!

The utter confusion between the customer care executive and vodafone store ppl made me go mad. They believe more in the Blame Game I suppose!! I talked to many customer care ppl regarding my situation and I must say most of them had no idea what they were talking about. They seemed to be more interested in transferring the call (and the headache) to someone else rather than looking at the issue.

Making ads with “Happy to Help” slogan doesn’t make the service better. They should feel the way they project themselves. Spamming through unsolicited sms and calls even after using DND (Do Not Disturb) service is their speciality .

If I talk about the Vodafone website, seems like they want everyone to use IE for using their services. [Linux users don't have a chance here]. What irritated me the most is, at the same vodafone store 2 persons had different information about the same query (the interesting thing here is that neither of them solved my problem).

I’ve been using Hutch for last 4 years and was quite happy about it. But this recent incident of “not so happy to help” really makes me think!!

p.s. If you happen to be a vodafone guy and still reading the post, we definately need to talk.

I’ve been using college Internet for the last couple of months and I realised how it helps us understand and exploit the net better!!
Lets take it one at a time…

Banning YouTube: It took me a lot of troubles to find out how to still have access to it. [Its one of the sites that changed the way we look at Internet. why ban it?! ]

FaceBook Banned: Who doesn’t know how to access it through proxy!!

Access restriction to orkut: You gotta be kidding me.. after some googling, one can open it easily!!

now coming to the title of the post, I’m grateful to our college authorities for banning all those sites; it provided me with ample opportunities to discover Internet better so as to exploit it to the fullest!!

NOTE: If you happen to be one of those guys who restrict the sites for access, try googling other ways to access the same and ban that too.

My Stand on this: Access restriction is not the solution. The use of a specific site should be left to the users’ discretion.

The Idea: Try banning Google. It leads to every other thing!!

]]> http://rockinrav.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/banning-sites-in-colleges-do-good-to-students-in-various-other-ways/feed/ rav internet pic http://rockinrav.wordpress.com/2008/04/19/ipl-splitting-india-into-groups/ http://rockinrav.wordpress.com/2008/04/19/ipl-splitting-india-into-groups/#comments Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:31:57 +0000 rav http://rockinrav.wordpress.com/?p=349

A larger-than-life and vivid inaugural ceremony signalled the start of the lucrative DLF Indian Premier League… When the match actually started, it was a one-of-its-kind experience to see all those great players belonging to a different country playing as a team!!

It was a gripping moment when the Kolkata Knight Riders were all set for the duel with Banglaore Royal Challengers. The fun part is all good, but does IPL divide India into groups?!! I couldn’t really decide whether I should support Kolkata or Bangalore. They all belong to our country.

When there is the match between India and Australia, everyone unanimously supports India; but isn’t IPl splitting India into various groups who support different teams. the video below shows how..

Wouldn’t it have been better if the team name would have been like “Knight Riders” instead of “Kolkata Knight Riders” or “Royal challengers” in place of “Bangalore Royal challengers“. That would give the opportunity to support a team based on their performance or the players rather than places!!

God save India from this over hyped stuff.

How many of us were not bugged by the question when we were kids?!! One thing that particularly interests me is the answers: Doctor, Engineer, Actor, Singer, Writer etc. etc…

Isn’t that too early to decide.. How can you want to be an Engineer at the age when you don’t really understand what is it all about… and no, being a Doctor doesn’t really mean prescribing medicines to sick people.

Even if we know what all it takes to be what we want to, shouldn’t we consider our Interests and Acumen while making a career decision?! Just because most of our classmates are opting for a course can we do the same… and if one thinks that a particular profession is more rewarding than another, it doesn’t hold true. But how do we get to know what are we good at? well, thats a tricky question!!

Why don’t we just let the kids grow up without thinking about what they want to become after a decade!! Why don’t we let them discover things themselves, use their imagination… They’ll come up with some creative answers for sure..

I like what Leo has to say about it. [see the video below]

You gotta see it to beliv it!!

I still like Gmail for its features and convenience but when it comes to security and privacy issues, there are major concerns…

It reads all your mails!!! In order to generate ad-based revenues, they scan the text of all incoming messages and place targeted ads, which can be seen at the right sidebar of the mail screen!!

In response to the criticism of privacy advocates, they respond by saying “we’re nice, trust us” or point to the company’s mission statement of “do no evil.” Is this the price we should pay for using some free web service?? are we ready to put our privacy at stake for 6 GB free space!!

If this doesn’t scare you, consider the company’s confused retention policy: “Google has not set specific, finite limits on how long it will retain user account, email, and transactional data. And Google has not set clear written policies about its data sharing between business units.”

Google’s cookie is an index for all your searches, and sits alongside an Orkut cookie that tells Google exactly who you are. The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the services. How about this, “Google has all our data even after we delete it from our mailbox or even after we terminate our account!!” They might create large repositories of personal data that could possibly be shared inappropriately.

Here is how Google puts it

Google processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America and in other countries. In some cases, we process personal information on a server outside your own country. We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.

HERE is the letter sent by privacy groups to Google’s cofounders which says,

1. First, Google must suspend its implementation of scanning the full text of emails for determining ad placement.

2. Second, Google must clarify its information retention and data correlation policy amongst its business units, partners, and affiliates. This means that Google must set clear data retention and deletion dates and establish detailed written policies about data sharing and correlation amongst its business units and partners.

So, the next time when you the services of Google, Think before you act!!

Happy Holi Everyone!!

Yeah.. The word that touches our lives everyday!! Much of what I know today is the contribution of Google. Apart from the search engine; Gmail has lots and lots of features… Some of them which I use and like the most is:

• If you’ve got Gmail, You’ll never need to open any of your other mails: It will fetch all other mails to the Gmail account!! Just go to Settings–>Accounts–>Get mail from other accounts

• I REPEAT (If you’ve got Gmail, You’ll never need to open any of your other mails): You can use gmail to send mails using any of your email ids (yahoo, msn etc..)

• Invisible in Gtalk: Everyone (whoever uses it) is aware of the invisible feature (recently introduced) in Gtalk.

and Finally, Never worry if someone’s got the (dot) at the wrong place in the mail id.. i.e. if you send mail to larry.page@gmail.com or larrypage@gmail.com (or any other combination), it gets delivered to the intended recipient. Gmail doesn’t care about the little . dot