MBA/Executive MBA Rankings

Thought I’d post some of the more relevant rankings here since there is just so much interest in these rankings.

2007 Wall Street Journal National (U.S.) Rankings

2007 Wall Street Journal International Rankings

2007 Worldwide Financial Times EMBA Rankings

2008 Worldwide Financial Times MBA Rankings

2008 Businessweek National MBA Rankings

2008 Businessweek National EMBA Rankings

2009 US News EMBA National Rankings

2009 US News MBA National Rankings

Forbes 2007 MBA Rankings

Just taking a look at these rankings would tell everyone about how different they are. Most forums abuzz about which school is “better than the other”. However, this blogger feels that the top few (Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Kellogg, Wharton, Columbia, London Business School) are pretty much the same give and take. And the unfortunate reality is, whatever one achieves (or does not) after attending any of these schools is pretty much up to him/her.

Sprint Customer Service and a Network Outage

A weird thing happened this morning. Normally, I get full coverage at home for voice and data from Sprint (thanks to a Bordentown area upgrade that Sprint did two months ago). Consequently, I disconnected my home phone a while ago – since I am rarely at home and the broadband card on EVDO Rev A does just fine.

So anyways, I wake up in the morning, get on a couple of calls, download my Monday morning emails and get to work. At around 10.30 am, I realize that my broadband card has entirely stopped working and none of my two Sprint phones (my corporate and my personal) are connecting. I cannot make calls ( and consequently cannot join any of my myriad conference calls). Also, I cannot call customer service to see if there has been a network outage in my area. So, I go out to a Starbucks, make a couple of important calls I need to make and then call Sprint Customer Service.

Take 1: I get connected to Sprint Business and the lady directs me to a “technician” who wants to do a firmware upgrade on my phone. Knowing a little bit about these things, I thank her and hang up – she obviously had no clue what she was doing – my phone’s firmware cannot be blamed for all connectivity losses on all my devices

Take 2: I call again. This time I get a young man who decides to file a complaint since he apparently sees some issues in the network in that area. I wait on the phone for about 10 minutes – he files a complaint – and gives me a ticket number.

I complete downloading my really important emails at Starbucks and drive home about 45 minutes later. And bingo, the network is up to full strength again. (Actually, posting this will constitute a test – since I do all my browsing on my broadband card)

So, pleasant surprise about Sprint’s weakest link – its customer service and responsiveness.

Bomb Blasts in India

Yesterday, it was Bangalore. Today it is Ahmedabad. A series of bomb blasts with no ostensible strategic objective more than to ensure that innocent people going about their lives died for absolutely no reason. And the perpetrators? As much as one would not want to attribute blame – seems like a group called Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility. Strange, even their name has the word Indian. Implying allegiance to a nation that has till date, not had any institutionalized pogrom against any religion. And where all the major religions of the world have co-existed since the inception of those religions.

This blogger does not want to comment on the politics of the blast – they are too well known and are too well documented.

He does want to comment the Indian nation state which (to its credit) has never responded to such provocations in a knee-jerk way that we are accostomed to seeing in Pax Americana. And he hopes that is the way it always will be.

But at the same time, its important for the Indian government to take very strong non-ambiguous steps (without trampling over and harming poor innocent muslims) to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Thankfully, we can have very active human intelligence in the “minority community”. We can weed this out. And we should.

Only if our political players were not so involved in ensuring they got their pound of political mileage out of this – and ensured they did what they were elected to – serve their Indian public.

Thoughts to all those who died today.

Pontification and Fact

So according to Wired Magazine, the State of California alone consumes more gas than any other country of the world!

That includes India, China or any of the fast growing economies you hear about being the cause of the high gas prices for SUV driving Americans.

So next time on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News (which I never try to watch), I hear some informed pontification on the root causes of the 70% increase of the price of oil being the ravenous gas guzzling habits of Indians and the Chinese – I will kick my TV in!

And who’s teaching who? I wonder if the White Man’s burden ever ended with the golden age of Imperialism.

Subsidizing Computers?

As rumors intensify on the macbook touch, a device with an iphone like interface and solid state memory all rolled into one – a device that would be significantly expensive to produce – I am just wondering if the next generation of Telco subsidized devices (much like the cellphone is today), would be high-tech gizmos like touchscreen based, solid state devices.

Its not mere conjecture. Its based on the telecom landscape reality in North America – voice based revenues and growth is flattening out – all growth of any carrier is predominantly based on churn of a competitior (read Sprint-Nextel). So ultimately, a point has to be reached where all subscribers who wanted to churn have already churned. What next?

Would it not make sense for the telcos to subsidize something like a Macbook Touch with an inbuilt broadband card – and sign on the subscriber for a 3-4 year contract?

Think about it. A solid state computer for the forceable future will be prohibitively expensive. Lets, for the sake of argument, state that the Macbook Touch would cost approximately $1500 more than an comparatively equipped hard drive based laptop. It would absolutely make sense to subsidize about $500 off a highly mobile “must-have” cultural icon and then redeem the costs at 60 bucks a month (which translates to $720 a year) for a multi-year period. You leverage your capital investments in EVDO/HSDPA based network.

And it can be extended to regular and “less desirable” regular mobile computing devices as well (read a computer similar to my HP Pavilion where I am typing this)

This blogger’s prediction is that this model will take hold over the next year or so as Telcos realize the need to capitalize on their multi-billion dollar high speed data network investments and as more and more high quality mobile devices and ultra mobile laptops hit the market.

Indian Politics, Nuclear Deal and other thoughts

I watched the special Lok Sabha session yesterday with as much dismay and incredulity as anyone else. The morbid state of Indian democracy and the quality of its denizens have always been apparent to the followers of chaotic Indian politics. But yesterday, they took a new abysmal low – with the smuggling in of cash, the bedlam in the house, the opposition’s disrespect for the Prime Minister’s position by not letting him speak, the lack of protocol, the MPs who were let to come in and vote from prison was just eminently depressing.

And in between all of that, there were bright moments – speeches from Omar Abdullah, Rahul Gandhi and yes, Lalu Yadav ( “you wear made in USA watches, your children wear Made in USA clothes and yet you have America phobia”). And like with everything in India, after all the utter disorder and chaos, the shouting and the slogan chanting, the moronic speeches and the hideously intellectually bankrupt arguments in some cases – the vote did take place. And the UPA did win. And from what it seems like, the Nuclear Deal will be pushed through.

The intent of this post is not to opine about what happened yesterday. Anyone with half an interest in politics would have heard enough about that on Indian TV over the last 24 hours or so. I wanted to follow up on my post earlier on some of the less commented about aspects of yesterday’s happenings.

One about the Left – its back to where it belongs – on the fringes of politics. Their next move is to align with BSP (with Mayawati at its helm) – they are now saying that the new found allies will now fight the next general election together with Mayawati as a Prime Ministerial candidate. As I have repeatedly stated, the Left does not really have a constructive agenda – all their agenda is obstructionist – obstruct the Nuclear Deal, obstruct the economic reforms, obstruct the pension bill revamp. And now with the government in power, their next move was predictable – join with the BSP to “campaign against the Nuclear Deal”. The moral bankrupcy of the Left was made apparent when they expelled Somnath Chatterjee because he didn’t resign from the post of Speaker of Lok Sabha. It took them one day after the vote to expel a man who was a member of the CPI-M for 40 years. But this blogger is extremely satisfied to see the Left out of any policy influencing position. Now we can finally get some of those reform bills passed and move on. And get the Nuclear Deal through before Bushie goes out of power.

Second, there was a little commented about incident – where the White House issued a statement commending Manmohan Singh for “soldiering on”. I don’t get it. Sometimes its so infuriatingly difficult to understand American foreign policy. Are American just plain stupid or is it a mixture of hubris and ignorance. Or just naivete. Americans are so good at hurting their own foreign policy with their own actions. I just found it funny that the White House thought it appropriate to condescendingly “commend” a head of the state of a country of the size and importance as India. These asinine steps are precisely what anti-American forces feed off of. At a time when America is not the most popular nation in the world – and India probably one of its closest allies – it doesn’t help its own cause by passing pats on the back of the largest democracy in the world. Its frankly a little distasteful and for the lack of any more appropriate word – stupid.

And finally, I wanted to talk about what I think is the positive impact of this huge year long hullaboo on the 123 Nuclear Deal. Given the attention, the controversies, the near-fall of a democratically elected government, the vote of trust and all the debates – now that finally the path of the deal is clear in India – I think the United States will now go that much further to ensure that NSG approves India’s waivers without conditions. It makes sense for the United States – if this deal stalls at the NSG or the US Congress, this will have huge negative strategic impacts on any large agreements that the US and India can have. Already there are voices emanating from the US confirming the same. And I think, in retrospect, this is the most positive outcome of the Left’s ignorant tomfoolery.

On Why Am i a Palm Fan (still…)

If you are netizen like me, you’ll notice a plethora of websites where Palm is dissed endlessly – and often for good reason. No innovation on their devices, no multitasking OS ( aka Garnet), a rehash of what worked for them etc…

And some of it is very legitimate. One cannot imagine why Palm has simply been unable to release their next gen OS for so long. And why in the iPhone era, we have to put up with the relative antiquated abominations that Palm insists on selling.

However, most websites and their avid readers (like the author here) focus on simply how Palm has not evolved to a multi-threaded OS like Windows ( and utopically, like the OS on the iPhone). And that was my point of contention, that I’d like to clarify today.

I have owned a Treo 700p, Treo 750 and very recently a Treo 800w. And in addition, I also have a Centro. What I am writing is based on my experiences as a very real user – as I am sure most of my readers also are. And unfortunately, when technical reviewers review any product, they tend to focus on the technical details and how they stack up against other available products – not necessarily on the day to day usability of the products.

Which brings me to my central point – Why am I still a Palm Fan? The answer can be captured in one word – usability. Yes, Palm OS is antiquated. And its single threaded. But you know what, it is not a resource hog (like Windows Mobile), is utterly responsive, allows for single handed intuitive controls, does not hog memory everytime an application is fired up (for those of you who have not used Windows Mobile – you’ll have to go to Task Manager every few hours if you have multiple apps open – because it just clogs your entire memory)

I travel a lot. And I entirely rely on my two cell phones to manage my life. One is a Palm. The other a high-end Windows mobile machine.

On my Palm, I can open and close apps as I want without killing the memory. On my Palm, I have Blazer which, even though its antiquated, is better than any browser in the market apart from Safari Mobile. (and it runs on EVDO). On the Palm, everything is one touch. And does not involve digging through menus. (Sadly on the Windows, I have to go to the menu when on a call to activate the Speakephone)

Yes, the Palm front-end has not changed in a long time. Yes, its not the most sophisticated OS around. But, as a user, its much easier to get things done on a Palm than any Windows handheld I have used.

And that’s why I am still a Palm fan. Because, it runs on the Treo – which frankly any business user will tell you – is a great platform to get work done. And its simple. It makes doing things easy.

So while I would love the jazz of the iPhone on the Treo, the plug-n-play of Windows Mobile, in my mind, the Palm OS remains a worthy competitior because its a stable dependable workhorse – something that I continue to want my phone to be.

Thoughts on Indian Politics

Manmohan and Bushie cosying up at the G8 summit.

The standard of Indian politics, while never stellar, is astounding about the levels that it has fallen to in the wake of the nuclear deal.

The political machinations of a government trying to ensure that it stays in power, the opportunistic twists and turns of its new allies – the Samajwadi Party – that has as many votes as it has criminal elements who are Members of Parliament, its heads’ volte-face, the Left with its archaic strategic worldview and almost messianic behaviour of its head honcho Karat – just leaves the mind bewildered. Not to speak about the BJP who inititated discussions with the US under Jaswant Singh, now opposed to everthing UPA does – the hell with the country and its larger interests.

Its amazing to think how we got to this and more importantly, even more to realize that the country has been growing and thriving (till very recently) under the leadership of such spectatularly incompetent and intellectually starved leaders.

My personal take is that but for the Civil Services (IAS, IPS and IFS), our nation would have self-imploded under the morass of such unbelievably incompetent leadership. That we had the Civil Services and the beaurocrats who had the knowledge and the savvy to negotiate a deal of this nature for India is probably not that surprising given the general smarts and competency of the beaurocracy – but the fact that the government didn’t just take kickbacks and sign a totally nefarious deal like is wont with the Indian political establishment (e.g. Bofors, the submarine deal, Enron etc) is eminently surprising.

But surprises aside, the Indian political establishment is back to what it is best at – Horse trading, under the table shady deals, looting the exchequer and ensuring that every 2 penny criminal turned politician gets paid (reportedly 25 crores) for ensuring their support for a deal that can deal with a part of India’s impending energy crisis.

I laughed out loud when someone sent me an SMS – and it sadly accurately described the state of Indian politics – “The UPA government is so inept that it can neither stay nor fall”.

Great Phone, Network Sucks. Validation from Time

I have long opined on the fact that while ATT offers the really cool phones (including the venerable iPhone), its network is absolutely terrible. Apart from really bad voice coverage(and spectrum planning – because calls even with multiple bars drop all the time), it has a very pokey 3G network. Actually, the network shouldn’t even be called 3G because its speeds are one-fifth that of Sprint’s EVDO Rev A data network – the fastest in the nation. And its not really widespread. Sprint, followed by Verizon have the fastest and the biggest broadband data networks in the country.

I have received many comments based on the observations I have made about ATT, Sprint and Verizon. So I decided to post a link to this article from the Time for the sake of mainstream validation.

The main line of argument is – if you want a cool device (which the iPhone undoubtedly is), go for it. But remember the caveat – that a cell phone and a web-connected device is only as good as the network that supports it – and ATT is pretty bad in both those areas.

Update on my Sprint broadband experience: Sprint recently published a network update document and I was happy to see that they had upgraded my town to EVDO Rev A. Now, I can use my broadband card at home to not only browse at very decent speeds but view YouTube and other online videos without any stutter at all.

123 Nuclear Deal: The inevitable finally happens

There is a saying that you can only delay the inevitable. The Left front has formally withdrawn support from the UPA government effective today. In keeping with the stellar standards that the Left maintains in its machinations – they chose to withdraw its formal support at a time when the PM is at the G8 summit in Japan – in direct contravention of Karat’s profession of “honoring the dignity of the Prime Ministerial office”. The stock market reacted predictably – with the Left out of power now – the stock market shot up 600 points.

If the UPA wins the vote of confidence, it is good – atleast the deal can now go forward. As I write this, I am watching Mr. Karat is talking to the nation with his finger in the air – same old accusations – about India selling out to George W Bush, of India looking up to the United States etc. Same old intellectually bankrupt arguments that the Left has been making for the last 40 years and the consequent policies that have had such negative impact for many parts of the country. Just visit Kolkata. You will know what I am talking about.

Readers of this forum know my opinions about the Left in general and their specific stand on the Nuclear Deal. Rajinder Puri in Outlook has a wonderful article on the tactical and strategic vaccilation of the Left big boss Prakash Karat on the Nuclear Deal. A few salient points that should speak for itself:

When the UPA government decided to execute the NDA government’s initiative for an Indo-US N-deal, Karat opposed it. He said national security and India’s independent foreign policy were compromised. The Left would withdraw support. Karat said that the Hyde Act deprived India of its independence and jeopardised its national security because the Hyde Act forbade US assistance to any country that conducts nuclear tests.

However, Karat was opposed to India having the bomb. He was opposed to India conducting Nuclear tests. He was opposed to India becoming a nuclear power. However, he also supports Iran getting a nuclear weapon and opposes any sanctions against Iran because they are developing nuclear weapons.

The Left front, for way too long, has has its policy positions driven not by constructionist positions but by continuous social dissidence. To me, our Left is composed of leaders who aren’t as much Bolshevik- Leninists but Trotsky-ists.

Either way, they have done the nation immeasurable harm wherever they have been in power. This blogger is happy they have withdrawn their support. Now, the government ( and their new and rather questionable allies) can hopefully bulldoze the Nuclear Deal through.