This discussion on Facebook got me thinking - are the riots in UK a result of simply unemployment or immigration of unskilled labour? I think the answer is not so simple. Let's look at the facts: It isn't the immigrant labour force which is engaged in rioting. A lot of rioters are 15-18 year old natives of the UK - born and brought up in the UK. Born to parents who themselves were NOT immigrants but locals. A lot of those who claim they are unemployed and can't make ends meet are also those who often "refuse" to work.  I think what we are seeing in the UK is a combined result of bad educational set up and uncontrolled immigration of skilled as well as unskilled labour. The educational set up in UK has lost its synchronization with the demands that its local economy makes of it. Universities churn number of students who are qualified in subjects which have no practical use in the real world. This isn't very dissimilar with the set up in India in the 1970s...

Reader Alert : Controversial and based on non-verifiable facts As a part of my day job, I often interact with vendors - IT service providers, equipment manufacturers, software / middleware providers, and even consultants like me. Ever since the market for Cloud based services has opened up (sometime since 2009) - vendors across the board have come up with their variation of Cloud services. As I explore more and more Cloud products on the ground - I find that vendors are mostly rehashing old products and technologies under the Cloud label. Well, this isn't surprising because the Cloud is not something completely new. As I have previously written , the Cloud is just an evolution over Web2.0. However, what concerns me is that vendors are brazen enough to go to market without even making the minimum necessary changes to these products before they can be labelled as 'Cloud'. Simply rehashing the packaging and some time not even that. Let me elaborate - true that if you a...

In the last few days, I am getting a lot of spam from YahooGroups. Spamsters have found a simple way of spamming: create a group, add people's email addresses to the group suo-motto! The spamsters are so brazen to create group names which look Spam in the first look. This is not so much trouble than being an irritant, because as soon as I see the invite, I quickly go to the group and "leave" it. But thanks to the cumbersome process flow of Yahoogroups, to do this, I have to spend at least 4 clicks to do this. Go to YahooGroups Home → Click Manage Groups → Browse to the concerned Spam Group  → Click 'Set Profile'  → Click Edit Membership  → Click Leave Group. And this is assuming you are a seasoned YGroups user who knows his/her way around (folks like me)! Though the simplest way is to unsubscribe by replying to the 'add' mail; but the on-screen process can be simplified by providing a "Leave Group" button on the Manage Groups page itself. ...