How does a breeze become a wave?

Is Thomas Friedman writing editorials for Deccan Chronicle now?

The question of majority thus satisfactorily resolved, the stage was set for the birth of the first BJP government in South India: the saffron breeze that swept the north has begun to blow in the south. However, no one will take a bet on whether the breeze will convert itself into a wave in the coming years and bestow on the BJP the status of a major political player in the South as well.

How to Retire Early

The latest issue of Outlook Money has a story on how to retire early (no, it doesn't advise a glass of hot milk at 8 PM). It features the stories of five people who managed to do this successfully. Being the skeptic I am, I didn't have much confidence in their advice, but I wanted to see what these five people had done.

To cut a long story short, if you want to retire early in life, do one (or all) of these things:

• Get a golden parachute, and let your wife continue to work (retiring early doesn't apply to your spouse, apparently)

• Spend a lot of time overseas, leverage the exchange rate, quit your high-paying job and become a consultant

• Make your fortune as a partner in a PE firm (that's private equity; yeah, three months back I too would have gone 'huh?')

• Buy two houses (live in one; use the rent from the other for living costs)

• Sell your stock options

In other words, if you want to become rich, you should make a lot of money. Gee, thanks a lot, I only wish I had known this when I was starting out on my career.

Staying on the IPL

... I think the way the commentators mention the name of the sponsors every chance they get ("DLF Maximum Sixers", "Citi Moment of Success" and so on) is simply disgusting.

Kapil on the IPL

Today's Hindu has an interview with Kapil Dev. As expected, it's about his take on the IPL. There is a hint of sour grapes ("What stops film stars from playing a T20 match in the IPL"), some doomsday predictions ("...club culture will command a bigger loyalty than State or even country") and a dash of wishful thinking ("The BCCI is finished as an organisation"), but we should give credit where it' due: no one can deny Kapil's efforts in lighting a fire under the BCCI's ass with his ICL initiative. To rub salt into his wound, some BCCI official even had the gall to say that he had been dreaming about the IPL for years. Considering Kapil's contributions to Indian cricket -- his 1983 World Cup triumph is about 1,743,449 times worthier that the Twenty20 World Cup victory, notwithstanding all the hype surrounding the latter -- the least the BCCI should have done is to have roped him into the IPL in some administrative capacity.

Amen to that

I've always felt that the talkers were winning (or have already won) the battle against the doers, and this quote from Sam Smith (via Xymphora) nailed it for me:

We have created an economy based not on actually doing anything, but on facilitating, supervising, planning, managing, analyzing, tax advising, marketing, consulting or defending in court what might be done if we had time to do it.

India is not there yet, but give it just another decade or so.

WSIF Provider for Spring

Rather than have folks leave a comment or email me about my WSIF Spring Provider implementation, I have uploaded the files (sources and sample WSDL) to my web site.

KDE 4.0

Reasons I don't like KDE 4.0:

1. No way to customize the panel - can't change the size, transparency, auto-hide, etc.
2. No way to change the menu to, say, the classic view.
3. Speaking of the classic view, changing the icons does not change anything.
4. Limited options to configure the clock. It's now on a par with the %$^# Gnome clock (one of the reasons I switched from Ubuntu)
   
5. Cannot manipulate the contents of the system tray.
6. Cannot move the icons around in the panel.
7. Where do I specify shortcuts for the menu items?
8. The options for keyboard shortcuts is a subset of what I used to see in 3.5.
9. Where is the option to hibernate?
   
10. On the whole, it's just a Vista wannabe - widgets and all.

While I'm on the subject, I might as well bitch about Firefox 3 as well - the GrayModern2 theme is yet to be ported to v3; I am left with a poor substitute: Phoenity Modern.