One rule for Kalmadi another for Srinivasan

The politicians are back to doing what they are good at - hatchet job.  And the politicians have a reason to wield the chopper with glee, because the target is *not* one of their own - for once.

Let us see the list of politicians - both from the ruling alliance and the national opposition ganging up on the issue:

• Sharad Pawar, Union Agriculture Minister and former BCCI Chief, (actually the party he heads) called for N. Srinivasan to quit.
• Jyotiraditya Scindia, the Union Minister for Power and the Chief of MP Cricket Association) popped up in support of the original call by Sharad Pawar.
• Arun Jaitley, Leader of Opposition, Rajya Sabha and the Vice-President of BCCI (along with being member of IPL governing council and the BCCI Disciplinary Committee), has called for N. Srinivasan’s head.
• Rajeev Shukla, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Chairman of the IPL has backed Arun Jaitley’s call.
• The latest was the Sports Ministry expressing the view in a Press Released that N. Srinivasan should step down as there is a ‘conflict of interest’.

To be fair to politicians, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD and Farooq Abdullah of NC expressed support for N. Srinivasan, though their show of support would be more of a hindrance than a help.
;-)

The most cynical, and hypocritical opinion was that of the Subrata Rai of the Sahara India Parivar - an alleged Ponzi scheme - who asked for Sharad Pawar to replace N. Srinivasan.  Mind you, Subrata Rai has threatened to stop sponsoring the Indian Cricket Team, if N. Srinivasan doesn’t quit - as though we should feel privileged and proud to advertise for an alleged ponzi scam through our national team. 

To paraphrase, I have never heard of a Ponzi calling a Bookie black.

To get back to point, it is actually heart-warming to hear our politicians, usually expected to be thick skinned and shameless about nepotism and corrupt practices, ganging up and speaking out against N. Srinivasan, who is not a politician, for conflict of interest in a corruption investigation.

I wonder where these guys were hiding when Suresh Kalmadi continued to rule roost in the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) as recently as Jan 2012.  The same Suresh Kalmadi who has been actually accused and arrested on charges of corruption in the conduct of Commonwealth Games, Delhi.

I don’t remember hearing a peep out of these honest men about ‘conflict of interest’ when Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule were revealed to own over 16% of a firm which was a failed bidder for an IPL cricket team.

Neither were these gentlemen in the front of TV cameras when the now reinstated State Minister for HRD, Shashi Tharoor was involved in a sweat equity scandal in the same IPL setup.



(image courtesy SANDEEP ADHWARYU/ outlookindia.com)

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Indian Air Force to be disbanded for S.P. Tyagi corruption?

Can anyone imagine reading a headline “Indian Air Force has been disbanded because its former Chief S.P. Tyagi has been involved in fixing VVIP Chopper deal with Finmeccanica?”

Or another “Indian Railways stops all trains plying to-from Punjab because its former Minister P.K. Bansal is accused of corruption in selecting Railway Board members?”

How absurd do these sound.  Just because the former Air Chief fixed the VVIP chopper deal in favour of AugustaWestland-Finmeccanica, no one calls for disbanding the Indian Air Force or accuse it of corruption.  Certainly there is no Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India asking for a ban, a disbar or making the Army in charge of the Air Force.

In the same vein there is no PIL or even an outcry that the Indian Railways should be broken up or trains to and from Punjab - the home state of the tainted Minister P.K. Bansal - to be stopped from plying.  There isn’t even the sensible suggestion for the Indian Railways to be incorporated into a regular company, instead of being a Government run department.  For sure, the Supreme Court will throw out any PIL asking for a ban or stoppage of trains from-to Punjab.

So why is there such a huge outcry for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) to be barred from playing in the Finals of the IPL 6?  Just because its ‘honorary’ team chief or mentor or CEO or whatever position Gurunath Meiyappan held in CSK, the team cannot be held accountable for his actions.  And Gurunath Meiyappan certainly has acted in a stupid manner, to believe the reports.

Whether Gurunath Meiyappan did actually fix matches in the IPL 6 or not is immaterial.  The mere fact (once proven) that he indulged in betting, when such an act is illegal in India, is enough to put him behind bars.

People in such positions, should not merely be honest and morally upright, but also seen (believed) to be so - like Caesar's Wife.  It is so sad that a scion of two famous, and respected business families, nay business houses - the AVM group and the India Cements group - displayed such poor judgement.

It is a tragedy that the incident might well cut short the stint of his father-in-law, N. Srinivasan as BCCI Chief and nip in the bud his (rumoured) ambitions of making it to the top seat at ICC.  For the crimes of his son-in-law, N. Srinivasan might well pay a hefty price.  The tragedy is that N. Srinivasan’s love for the game of cricket is well known.  One could say that Cricket is a passion with him.

Of course the team management / owners of CSK could have handled the Gurunath Meiyappan disassociation in a more upright and smarter manner than the ham handed attempts to ‘wipe’ the records.

Wouldn’t it have been better if they had admitted that Gurunath Meiyappan had been acting as ‘honorary’ Team Chief of CSK, and he is being terminated from that capacity due to accusations of betting (and match fixing)?  What I mean is make the betting/fixing accusation an act of an individual, instead of the franchise’s.

To me that sounds more forthcoming, honest and standing up like a Champion, instead of what they did - trying to sweep everything under the carpet.
:-(

Whatever, I will surely stand up and support CSK during tomorrow’s finals at Eden Gardens.  Will you?



(image courtesy DNA India)

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What’s good in Steganos Online Shield 365 -part 3

In part 3 of the Steganos Online Shield 365 we are going to explore if there are any quirks which we have to watch out for.  Oh yes, there are a few. BTW let us be very clear here - even though I’ve been offered an year’s free subscription of Steganos Online Shield 365 worth $79.95, my policy is to test out the (any) software in and out, and list out problems, if there are any.

The reasons are two.  One, a wishy-washy review does not do the readers any justice.  Two, it doesn’t do justice to the software too - if there are quirks, it better be sorted out sooner than later.
So here are the quirks I found with Steganos Online Shield 365.

The number 1 problem is in signing in to cloud based services.  Every cloud based service tags log in attempts from ‘alien’ IPs as suspicious.  Thus both Google and Facebook tagged my attempt to login as suspicious and put me through hoops to sign in.  In Facebook, it was sort of interesting, but irritating to identify 5 friends from their photos.  And Google, well what to say about them!



The next major problem is trying to use my Android phone with the Steganos Online Shield 365 VPN service.  Since there is no login / user-password feature with Steganos (they use a ID based handshake for connections), and I can’t figure out a way to use my Android phone with VPN.

The 3rd bit of inconvenience is while we can select the shield located by country (one of the 5 mentioned), there isn’t a feature to select specific city within that country.  Perhaps it is asking too much!

There is also one quirk, if at all, when Steganos refuses to start the shield and throws up an error.  It did for me today saying ‘VPN Starter Service’ cannot be reached and to start it.



The only problem is that ‘services.msc’ doesn’t list any ‘VPN starter service’ or ‘Steganos starter service’, named as such.  The service in question is actually named ‘Online Shield Starter Service’.

On my Windows 7 PC, though it is shown as an Automatic Start service, it sometimes fails to start and causes this problem.  Starting it manually makes the shield up and running.
:-D



My recommendation?  It is time for everyone to start using one VPN or another.  And as of now, Steganos seems to be the best bet (for users in India at least).

Disclosure:  As above (one year free subscription).

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What’s good in Steganos Online Shield 365 -part 2

The second part of tryout with Steganos Online Shield 365 takes a look at how good is the software in practical terms.  The first part of the review is here.

Connection Speed:
Anyone who has used a VPN or TOR from India would know the frustration of slow speeds, drop/cut-off connections and timeout errors while using them.  With Steganos Online Shield, though there is a slight drop in speed , it is barely noticeable.  My 4 Mbps download line behaves better than a 2 Mbps connection of a neighbour.  Which is quite great.  But the proof of pudding is in eating and so I set out to test it.

Doing a speed test with a VPN is a little tricky.  The normal speed test sites will automatically switch you to the nearest ping server, which isn’t of use.  With shield off, I would be plugged to Colombo server, and with shield on, into a server at Missouri, USA.

The workaround was to manually select a speed test server in USA - and I chose the American Broadband Nebraska site.  Here is the speed test result with shield off which shows a download speed of 3.45 Mbps.



With the Steganos Online Shield 365 protecting my internet connection, the speed test shows a respectable 2.06 Mbps, which is quite good.



Free Download (limited):
The second best feature of Steganos Online Shield is their offer of free 500 MB downloads every month.  Without paying a single Rupee, users can enjoy the benefits of the Steganos VPN for browsing, downloads and the like for up to 500 MB - totally free, every month.  If I wasn’t so obsessed with connection speed, the ‘use-up-to-500-MB-for-free’ feature would have taken the first best feature spot.

Cheap Subscription:
Above 500 MB, you can buy subscriptions based on data usage or an unlimited annual license for about $80.  At ~Rs. 4400/- an year it might seem a little steep, but at less than 1/3rd to half of what people pay for a good internet connection, Steganos might well be worth it.

I have a feeling that if Steganos finds a good partner in India, they would tie-up the VPN-for-personal-use segment very nicely in a few months.

With such great feature set, and ease of use, users would flock to Steganos.  In the next part we will see if  there are any downsides to Steganos Online Shield 365?

Related posts:
A look at Steganos Online Shield - part 1

Disclosure:  As written in part 1 (one year free subscription).

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What’s good in Steganos Online Shield 365 -part 1

As I wrote a couple of days back, everyone will and should start to use a good VPN service soon.  But as luck would have it, there are no good, free (cheap) Virtual Private Network (VPN) services available in India.

In this situation, when I was offered a chance to review Steganos Online Shield 365 (with a complimentary one year subscription free), I jumped at the offer - only some family health issues hindered putting out the review.  So here is how Steganos Online Shield 365 stacks up for us.  Steganos is a Germany based company founded in 1996 and their software shows both the maturity of years and straight no-nonsense German approach.

Steganos Online Shield 365 is pretty easy to download and install at ~13.5 MB.  The installation is a breeze.  With the latest version - 1.0.4 - all it needs is one click on the install button.

Switching the VPN on/off is again a simple click on the button in the pop-up flash screen.  Here is the unprotected, unencrypted connection shouting my ISP provided dynamic IP to the world.



And here is the encrypted, pry-proof connection spoofing out the IP address of the Steganos server in USA.



The VPN service can also be switched on/off by right clicking the Steganos icon on the taskbar and clicking on the Shield on/off options.  The same popup also provides a quick, easy way to switch between the Steganos servers (exit nodes) in 5 different countries -Switzerland, France, UK, USA and Germany itself.



BTW I can’t understand why the countries appear is that specific order - they are certainly not in alphabetic order, even in German language:  no way Schweiz comes before Deutschland.

Disclosure:  As above (one year free subscription).
Related posts:

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Why everyone should use a VPN

The internet is an evolving environment and the most obvious proof is to look at the new tools, techniques (and ‘apps’) we use today when compared to a few years back.  Another way to understand the evolving nature is to overview the protective security measures we’ve to adopt.

Ten (or even 8) years back, a simple anti-virus was considered enough to secure our life online.  Today, anyone venturing online (or even staying off the net) without a decent Security Suite would be considered careless - to be polite.

Within a couple of years, I expect that anyone not using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) would be considered the equivalent of the village idiot.
:-(

To be frank the tech savvy among us are already on the bandwagon - the smartest already connect to the internet through one VPN or another.  BTW, I am not as smart as I put out to be - still don’t login through a VPN on regular basis.
:-D

One of the reasons I do not use a VPN (or TOR) on a regular basis is the connectivity problem.  The connection speed slows down so drastically it feels like one is back in the old days with a dial-up connection.  Such a drastic slow connection speed is not because of the VPN technology alone - it is compounded by the fact that most VPN servers or endpoints are located elsewhere - not in India.

Then there are the login problems - again for an Indian user.  While using any of the Google services, trying to log in with an IP from Germany or USA flags the attempt as suspicious and generates an alert.  It is an irritating but a nice security measure - if there is an actual hacking attempt, we get to know of it in real time.  But if we repeatedly log in with different IPs from different countries (using a VPN), this security feature in effect is neutralized.  Mind you, VPNs assign a random IP from their available pool, just like the regular ISP.

On the other hand, VPN provides the best security against man-in-the-middle attacks by encrypting the connection.  There is no (easy) way anyone in the middle can hack an encrypted connection (in real time).

Also to be kept in mind is a VPN does not provide anonymity, but privacy.  The difference between privacy and anonymity may seem subtle, but is quite significant.  And this article is about VPN and safeguarding privacy, the anonymity issues will be dealt later, if at all.

So for privacy, there is nothing to beat a VPN.  But as I have written above, the trick is to find a VPN who/which affords us (in India) good speeds with expected protection.



(image courtesy rustedreality.com)

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Why TC 01B ‘MAHASEN’ skipped Chennai

It is a scary and sad thought that the developing Tropical Cyclone 01B, named ‘MAHASEN’, is forecast not to approach Chennai.  The models suggest that TC 01B MAHASEN would veer off North-Northwest after making a CPA of about 650 km from Chennai, thus avoiding the TN and Indian coast altogether.

But this skipping of Tamil Nadu by the TC 01B MAHASEN should gladden the hearts of some people in the state.  You know, the so called Tamil activists (actually chauvinists) who have adopted the short sighted policy of hating and banning anyone and anything connected with Sri Lanka. 

Even the intelligent and smartest Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu ever, Jayalalithaa fell for the cheap propaganda by those misguided souls and stormed into (no pun intended) banning Sri Lankan players from IPL.

TC 01B has been christened MAHASEN by Sri Lanka whose turn it is to suggest a name for the cyclone in the North Indian Ocean.  Presumably these so called Tamil chauvinists may not like TC 01B MAHASEN to touch the sacred Tamil shores, as it has been contaminated by the adoption of name suggested by Sri Lanka.
:-P

Jokes apart, it is really a pity.  Apart from the absurdity of the thought, TC 01B ‘MAHASEN’ would have brought much needed rains to the parched Northern Tamil Nadu and Chennai.

Again to be fair to the Tamil chauvinists, every TC named by Sri Lanka (since the naming convention was adopted in 2004) has run away from the Indian coast, just like TC 01B ‘MAHASEN’ is doing now.  First it was TC ‘MALA’ in 2006 followed by TC ‘RASHMI’ in 2008, and the TC ‘BANDU’ in the Arabian Sea in 2010.



(image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Tags: cyclone,mahasen,tc_01b

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TC 01B ‘MAHASEN’ will skip Chennai

Almost 6 months to the day, there is another Deep Depression in the Bay of Bengal (BoB), which has actually intensified and been officially christened ‘MAHASEN’.  In November of 2012 there was a Deep Depression 03B which acted as though it was interested in lashing Chennai.  Sadly, it thrilled only to deceive and dissipated without intensifying into a Tropical Cyclone.

After 6 months, the only other Deep Depression to intensify into a Tropical Cyclone named MAHASEN, sadly seem to be in a similar mood to skip Chennai.
:-(

The city is parched, to put it mildly.  The well in my apartment complex, which has never failed to sustain us for the last 12 years, even when Chennai faced a drought during the last Jayalalithaa administration (2003), is drying out.  Quite disconcerting.

As per the latest forecast, Tropical Cyclone 01B ‘MAHASEN’ is expected to intensify into a very severe cyclonic storm in the early hours of 13th and make its closest approach to Chennai around noon on the same day (13th, 0700 UTC).  The only problem is the Closest Point of Approach (CPA) is at a distance of some 360 NM (~660 km).

Here is the TC warning (#05) graphic from the JTWC.



At 660 km distance, there is little chance of a deluge at Chennai from TC 01B MAHASEN.  What we might well experience is an occasional cloudburst which will be the proverbial drop in the desert.

I am even more worried about the aftermath.  TC 01B MAHASEN might well suck all the moisture along with it to dump it on Chittagong coast and leave the southern Indian coast, especially Chennai absolutely dry till the monsoon.  Scary thought!

Tags: TC_01B,mahasen,cyclone,chennai

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