IPC !

IPC = Indian Penal Code.
I have a friend whom I havent met personally yet, but I did hold good conversations with.
So once I ventured into discussion about IPC.

1. Seems like there are 511 sections in it. The moment I saw 511, the only thing I could remember is it is the largest number you can represent with 9-bits. Few DSPs have maximum loopcount of 511 because they could only afford 9-bits for its representation. Anyway, this should say that I am a true electrical engineer.
2. IPR laws are still in nascent in India and there seems to be a growing interest in it.
3. Section 302 is what we hear the most in movies. yes, you guessed it, the capital punishment. For some reason I thought it was removed, or amended. Seems like they do sentence people to death. Side line question: what authority does the judge or the system possess to kill someone? oh btw, here is an interesting trivia: each time a judge sentences someone to death, they break the nib of the pen with which they write the sentence. you know why? it is supposed to symbolize that they shouldnt get anymore of such cases where they need to sentence death penalty. I wonder what they would do if they start writing with ballpoint pens. I believe they would just throw the pen away :)
4. Two kind of laws: civil and criminal, broadly.

Questions for the week!

1. What is the difference between economics and finances?
2. How does economics influence the social behaviour?

"Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to
work—whereas economics represents how it actually does work." interesting. i wd say economics actually explain how things work as they do.

3. what has falling prices of coffins got to do anything with economics?
4. what is an incentive?
An incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a
bad thing.
There are three basic flavors of incentive: economic, social, and moral.

For every clever person who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is
an army of people, clever and otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying
to beat it.

Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million
American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly.
It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule.
Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a
Social Security number for each child. Suddenly, seven million children—children who
had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms—vanished,
representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.
(Really? I need to explore more on this. Can such thing happen?)

5. Why is Vonage not picking up? Why is Time-Warner pushing for digital-telephony?

APR vs APY

Ever wondered what the difference between APR and APY is? And why credit cards always quote APR and banks always quote APY? What difference does it make if we quote APR or APY? From a lenders point of view we always like to get a bigger number, thats why we get APY quoted from a savings/checking account. From a borrowers point of view, we like to get lower numbers. Thats why you get APR quoted.

Here is something from a website: studentplatinum

Basically, APR = Period Rate x Periods per Year
APY = (1 + Period Rate) ^Periods Per Year - 1

so when a credit card quotes a 12% APR, you actually end up paying 12.68% by the end of APY.
And when bank says it has a CD with APY 12.68% all you are getting at the end of one month is 1% of what you put in.

here is another good article from investopedia

So next time you got two different options, make sure you compare apples to apples and get the numbers to correct units. (isn't it a basic engineering principle ??)

qns to be answered!

1. what is the main purpose behind this research? more important to me, who funded it? ;)

To me it seems like they are conducting some experiments on humpback whales. but can anyone write in the comments more about it if you know anything..

2. What does cognition mean?
While reading the above article I came across this word called cognition. Though I have a hunch about what cognition is, I wanted to find out what exactly the defintion of cognition is. here is what i found:

American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary :
The mental faculty of knowing, which includes perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, judging, reasoning, and imagining.

American Heritage Dictionary
The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

As always of course, there is a hell lot of information on wikipedia. The root of the word seems to be Latin: cognoscere, "to know". The same root gives rise to words like recognition. now, this recognition is re-knowing. This essentially means that we must have encountered that entity whichever we are "recognizing" earlier. I wonder then what that process of storing a new entity called. Can anyone tell what that word is? I believe registering is one thing. But there ought to be a better word.

3. When do we start recognizing the things around us?
I didnt do much research on this topic. But this is just a random question, when do we start recognizing things around us. Moreover, when do we start cognition process? another philosophical question is, when do we recognize ourselves? for eg., if a kid looks himself into the mirror, does he realize it is himself, or does he think it is someone else? when does he start recognizing that it is himself?

4. what is the rationale behind airline code shares?
huh! this topic came up when Aditya (San Diego) and I were discussing about miles and connecting flights. What are code shares, how does airlines benefit from code shares? As is my belief, for every such reasons, there got to be a economy related reason. So i ventured out to find out why this is so. guess what, wiki has an article on it. From airlines perspective it does make sense to have code sharing. Earlier only small airliners used to do that since major airlines must have thought that it is not necessary. this might be because they were already flying to many places. Even though code sharing is good for airlines and most of the times for a traveller, it might not be the best all the times for traveller. Here is an article on why it might be so.

Most Common birthday!

Ever wondered what could be the most common birthday in the world? Well, honestly I didnt wonder about it, but did come across an article about the same.

Just posting the link to it.

http://ask.yahoo.com/20061114.html

Well this study was conducted in America. Honestly, I would expect most birthdays to be in November (9 months from most of the spring breaks ;) ), but October seems to be month with most birthdays.
If the same was in India, you can pretty much guess that when the most number of birthdays would be. Just around 10-11 months from the most wedding season. I guess thats why we see lot of people born in July and August in India.
Hmm.. I dont know what the trend right now is, but I would think that the birthday's are little more spread out with people defering their parental rights a little ;)
If anyone comes across a study of birthday's in India, do leave a comment.

test blog!

hi! r u reading this? if so? why? what makes someone read someone else's blog? is it the thought that they might write something that you dont know? well to me, i just browse through the blogs to see if I find anything interesting. It is always a great way to find what other people might think about the same issue.
I start off writing this blog as a way to get an idea of what people think about few issues/things that happen in this world. And why those happen. I might just quote/post some article that I find interesting. Overall, I intend to use this blog as a place where I can just post whatever I feel like about whatever it is, in whatever way I wish.
Enjoy reading! Criticism, comments, views, suggestions, anything most welcome.