Idle Thoughts

The ongoing IP infringement battle between Apple and Samsung in the multiple courts across the world has generated a lot of discussion on Patents and their relevance to innovation. The most prevalent view being that Apple is using patent laws to curb competition and there by innovation. For E.g. see the ZDNET article: Apple’s worldwide war on Samsung and Android . The article states that it is a delusion to see any connection between ‘real’ Intellectual Property (IP) and Patent wars. The patent wars are seen as attempts to exhort cash from people who create real products. The result, the article concludes, is that innovation in any technology will come to an end. There is an apparent irony here that the patent laws were intended to help innovation by protecting those who innovated against those who just copy. It comes from not differentiating innovation from consumer choice. Consumer choice is also created by companies who create look alikes at a lower cost. Consumer choice is d

Frustrated Sachin approached Chappell These days I am not sure if I can fully rely on the reports that I see on news sites. Right now I am asking myself if I should blindly believe the piece on Tendulkar and Chappell on timeofindia online site or if I should take it as a joke and laugh at it. The report that I am talking about is on the new book called "Fierce Focus" by Greg Chappell. According to the report, Chappell found Tendulkar surprisingly fragile. "At one point early in my time with the (Indian) team ... he came and talked to me for about two hours," writes Chappell. If that itself is not a definite proof of mental fragility, Chappell offers  more. "He was frustrated with his form and racked with self-doubt. Since he'd come back in Malaysia   (in a one-day tournament in 2006), Sachin's mental state had been surprisingly fragile and he came to me for help. ” Most cricketers go through lean patches and it is not surprising if they get f

Why is Google buying Motorola Mobility? Interesting question! A more relevant question – what will Google do with Motorola once they buy it? Given below are some of Google’s options. The assumption is that Google is most interested in Motorola’s patents and least interested in their Cable business. This assumption eliminated some of the combinations from the options. Option 1: Keep the patents, keep the operations – phone as well as cable. This option offers multiple advantages for Google: it will help Google get the protection of the patents, Google can attempt to achieve the same advantage that Apple has achieved through tight integration of the phone hardware and software. This option might help Google in their TV battle through Motorola’s existing installed base and partnerships. But there are many questions here. Is Google interested in the tightly integrated model? In fact, Google’s press statement says that it will keep the Moto phone division at an arm’s length f

I had intended to write this in just two parts. But after I uploaded part 2, I went through some of my notes on the book. I realized that there are some more points (disagreements with the book, rather) that I would like to cover. Hence the unplanned part 3. When we started off in part 1, we started with asking some questions. Let us start part 3 with some more questions. What is the relationship between Democracy, Secularism and Tolerance? We might not be surprised to find a religious state being intolerant. But can a secular democracy be intolerant? What is more important – being democratic, secular or tolerant? In the book Gautam seems to prefer secularism above democracy and tolerance. He discusses the cases where secularism prevails over democracy and tolerance with tacit approval. The first is the case of France banning the display of religious symbols such as the hijabs in schools. He philosophizes that since the French state is secular, acceptance of republican virtues me

Now coming back to the book itself, in what I write here, I might appear to be arguing with the book and the author and agreeing with them. But that is to be expected – we are dealing with a widely debated topic and it would be foolish to expect that the book would convince and convert me to its line of thinking. The book did successfully engage me in a debate with it and with myself. This being a book on democracy and healthy debates, I am sure that the author would be very pleased with the result that it has produced. The author starts out explaining why he named his book as The Intolerant Indian. More than those reasons, I thought it goes well with the more celebrated predecessors like The Argumentative Indian and The Scientific Indian. However, the content of the book is only so much about Intolerance of the Indian – the book talks more about the State than the people, and that too more about not being secular than being intolerant. So a title like ‘the non-secular India’, th

I picked up the book Intolerant Indian by Gautam Adhikari from Bangalore airport some months back, and finished reading the book in a couple of weeks. From then, I was considering noting down my thoughts on this book. The book covered a topic that is very interesting to me, which is why I picked it up from the bookshop in the first place. It raised a lot more questions than providing answers, which was not really a bad thing. But the book did not leave me better equipped to analyze these questions, which according to me, was a bad thing. So I decided to do that preparation myself. Here I am sharing most of my thoughts with you, as I went through it. It might be that my brain is too simplistic that I needed further assistance. Those of you who have a better IQ than me (which means most of the world) might find these points too trivial. Before we discuss the intolerance of Indians, it is important to answer some fundamental questions. Why it is important to be tolerant for democrac