An enumeration of the fraud

• Degree not valid in India

• Degree not valid in Europe

• 'Alliances' quoted on website false

• Founder lies about antecedents to Election Commission of India

• Founder lies about antecedents to pretty much everyone

• Institute generally lies about everything in its ads (or would they prefer the term 'misrepresenting'?

Office blues

It's 1600 hrs on a Saturday. And I'm sitting in office. Not that I had any great plans for the weekend, but it's always nice to have an entire day to yourself after a week of weird work timings. The worst thing about me sitting in office today is that I'm not actually doing any work. [I can feel wisecracks coming on about when I do any work. Stop it.] I just have to w...a..i..t. So what do I do? Go restricted surfing, of course!

Some interesting things have turned up..Press Talk led me to this link about fake Indian universities i.e ones that have been blacklisted by the UGC All the indignation aside, that list has some really funny names, which in itself should alert any person with any reasonable amount of intelligence about their dubious nature.

• Commercial University Ltd., Daryaganj, Delhi

I mean, come ON people! They're practically flaunting their intentions!

• National University of Electro Complex Homeopathy, Kanpur

Right. As opposed to other instis only indulging in the pedagogy of Magneto Simple Homeopathy?

• United Nations University, Delhi

Like I said - come ON people! I really cannot believe anybody would fall for that one. But then again, if all of Ekta Kapoor's teleserials rack up the TRPs, despite being exactly the same, anything's possible in our country...

• Vocational University, Delhi

Fakest name. Ever. Even faker than the word 'fakest'.

• Raja Arabic University, Nagpur

Nothing unusual about that one. Just included to show off the secular nature of my blog..

• Handwriting University India, No 16 Church Road, Basavaugudi,Bangalor-4

Wow, an entire university for penmanship alone? That sounds like a univ I could use...

• Indian Institute of Planning and Management

Oh wait, that's not on the list. Silly me, I wonder how I could've made that mistake..

There's also a reference to the 'Mal Practices Alert regarding American University of Hawaii'. Sounds neat :)

Come to think of it, when I said 'any person with any reasonable amount of intelligence', I probably wasn't thinking. These kinds of shady places don't really target those kind of people. They're more likely after the gullible types who want a degree appended to their names at any cost. Kautiliya has written at length about 'trapping suckers'.

Coming back to my opening paragraph, one of the few good things about slaving one's [admittedly large] posterior off in software development is that you get to see that even Vinod or Goach can't get out of this one!

IIPM quickie

Even though the article is fairly dated, this is apparently the only way IIPM grads are getting jobs...heh

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

This is supposedly a leaked IIPM press statement. Please read the title of this post again for my reaction to it.

...
Therefore, in the general interest of our existing students, as a policy decision we have decided that we will take legal action against any form of media trying to spread baseless lies and rumours about us with malicious intent.
...

This really means they're going to sue themselves. I mean, who's been spreading baseless lies and rumours about them more than themselves?

Oh yes, and speaking of blatant lies - Swati's done some interesting work. Makes you wonder - are the Tehelka-style shenanigans the only methods of investigative methods known to the MSM? And are they only interested in politics and sex?

And now that IIPM's declared war openly on Gaurav Sabnis, now that they're stooping to leaving insulting comments openly on blogs, now...what? All I can say is - now that I'm in a position to take active part in such goings-on, I will stand by the blogosphere's right to freedom of speech all the way.

That major newspapers STILL don't have any proper coverage of this story is an outrage. I'm hoping at least The Hindu lives up to its principles and does something, anything about it.

[As an aside, I bought an LG 17" monitor recently, Man does it rock!]

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's my 3-day week-end flying up, up and away into the yonder! Ah the trials and tribulations of one in the I.T industry...

Anyways, since I'm at my office now, this is just a quick post to prod my blog into believing I'm not dead, and also to state that I'm not unaware of the IIPM vs. bloggers fracas. I also find it mildly surprising that IIPM hasn't come out openly on the issue. I would've thought that anybody being 'defamed' would issue stringent denials of all charges first, *THEN* take to legal recourse.

All this only re-inforces my belief that anybody who advertises that much should be given a bullet or two. Not because they might be misleading/lying thru their ass/being 'obscene', but because they're hogging the space where interesting news would otherwise have appeared.

And yes, I totally support JAM (which rocks, by the way), Rashmi, Gaurav, and Varna. I would put a few reactions on the apathy of the MSM (which stands for Mainstream Media, as I recently found out - we can thank IIPM for that..heh), but I don't have cable :-( so my only access to the MSM is The Hindu (which also rocks, by the way, so much more than that tired, washed-out, downright vile excuse for a newsrag)

More power to bloggers!

A sad day for my blog

I have had to turn on the Word verification thing, even though very few comments I get. Comment spam sux. All spammers should suffer the same fate as this Russkie here.

Excuse me?

Recently, (well, about as recent as you can get w.r.t my blog :-) ), Pothy's unveiled their "World's longest silk saree", which "depicts India's history". And I was like, wtf?? Okay, fine, I appreciate the effort put into it, and all the intricacies and other assorted whatnots associated with weaving a humongous silk saree. But really, when RmKV did it, it was innovative. Just about a year later, if someone else does it, really sorry, it's got "COPYCAT" stamped all over it.

Okay, that was issue #1. Issue #2 would be Pothy's bragging about the way it is a "tribute to Mother India". Hello? When I saw it on the news, it looked like a really really long wall hanging, not a silk saree..Once again, not dissing the effort that's gone into it, just thinking that it's all a bit pointless...And really the Guinness Committee should have some more stringent requirements of what constitutes a saree. Otherwise, I'm just going out and buying TRUCKLOADS of dhotis/veshtis and stitching them all together and call it the world's longest cotton saree.

Sheesh.

Oh, and RmKV announced a 50,000 colour saree. Assuming this kind of madness will never end, this is kinda funky :-D

And no, I'm not just saying this 'cause my cousin sister's former classmate was the grand-daughter of Rm. K. Vishwanathan...no really...

I'm all kinds of things

Well, I tried the Food-Eating Battlemonkey meme, but the results are too embarassing to post...I was beaten on every count by Putu :-( The only thing going for me here was that Putu is a phenomenon, so losing to him is no disgrace

Buuut....but but but but but...kintu-parantu-lekin-but..The other two are pretty okay :-)

shr1k is a Giant Mecha-Robot that spits Ice, breathes Fire, emits Clouds of Inky Smoke, can turn Invisible, and CANNOT BE STOPPED. Strength: 12 Agility: 7 Intelligence: 13 To see if your Giant Battle Monster can defeat shr1k, enter your name and choose an attack: fights shr1k using Strength Agility Intelligence

shrikant is a Robot that is fitted with a Giant Axe and an Oil-Slick Nozzle, has Four Metal Wheels, runs on Petrol, is Semi-Organic, and can divide into Several Smaller Robots. Force: 5 Handling: 8 Weaponry: 2 To see if your Battle Robot can defeat shrikant, enter your name and choose an attack: fights shrikant using Force Handling Weaponry

So what are you waiting for??

Trying to post from office..

And not the Microsoft types! Or the Open types! Posting from my desk at Verizon [DS] India [PL]!

All this possible through fundoo software thingy called Citrix. Restrictive, but it gets the job done..

Oooooo aaaaaaa eeeeeeeeeeee memememememe

In case you didn't get it, that's how an opera sounds to me. And no, even if some hot babe took me to Troilus And Cressida, and tearfully explained it to me, it would still sound the same..

Anyways, point being that I finally got around to downloading Opera. The browser, i.e. Wasn't using it till now because of multiple reasons..

-> Firefox + extensions totally ROCKS.
-> It's not free, and comes with ads. Yes I know I could use a keygen or crack or whatever, but it's a brilliant product by brilliant people. Don't want to needlessly rob them of their due :)
-> I'm just soooo spoilt rotten by Adblock on Firefox...

Now that I'm using, I wouldn't say it rocks just yet, but it's amazingly fast. Quite possibly the fastest browser I've ever used, in terms of startup and page rendering. Cool interface, totally browser-migration-hassle-free.

Pages render a little funny, but I gotta say this blog looks positively STUNNING on Opera..Dunno why...