Kindle's impacts on a country's economy

I recently bought my first book on kindle, and I must say that it was a profound experience with implications way beyond just the simplicity of buying books. 


Kindle has the potential to kill the following industries:

1. Seeds, fertilizers and pesticide industry
2. Plantations and agriculture
3. Lumbering
4. Transportation
5. Paper industry
6. Ink industry
7. Printing machine manufacturing
8. Printing industry
9. Book publishing industry
10. Book retailers &logistics
11. Paper recycling industry

In all the above industries, jobs would be lost as more and more people buy ebooks than those who buy paper books. 

There is another impact - flight of capital. I buy the book from amazon, a US based company, in USD and the book gets downloaded to my device bypassing customs. Indian Govt looses on customs duty + local taxes. Further, while earlier for an Indian edition of a foreign book only royalty and profits would have got repatriated, with kindle the entire revenue gets repatriated. 

While one could argue that the negative economic losses is a small price to pay for the ensuing environmental gains, the fact is that kindle would have a more profound impact on economy of a country than I would have imagined.

Good design is like kaali daal

Over heard:

Good design is like kaali daal. You can get palatable stuff in no time, but really good stuff comes out only after you simmer daal for hours over slow heat.


On the money. The more you iterate, the better you get. And its worth it.

Some friends of mine book exclusively on www.cleartrip.com even though there may be a better deal elsewhere. Just like I cant resist a trip to Frontier Hotel in Karolbagh or Dal Bhukhara at ITC restaurants :)

Forgot Password

I just got an idea and I thought of blogging it. Its relates to the ubiquitous Forgot password page on almost all the web services.

Currently sites ask you for your login id/email id and then either email you the password in clear text or send you a link from where you can reset your password. Most of the times you have to prove that you are human through a captcha.

The above interaction involves a lot of steps and frustrates me to no end as I keep on forgetting passwords all the time.

My idea is simple. In case the user's registered email id is any of the email services like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, (i.e. a service which supports OAuth/OpenID), the webservice can simply ask the user to authenticate herself and immediately open up a form to reset the password. Wow.

Feedback please :)

Dilemma

If you witness a robbery, would you report it to the police?

Would you feel compassion for the robber because he would spend a few years in jail coz of you or would you feel outraged at the crime being committed against a fellow citizen?

What if you are not sure if it is actually a robbery?

What if the robber threatens your life?

What if the robber agrees to share a part of the loot with you?

Would the above answers change if the robber was robbing your own house?

In today's world, things are not always black and white. They are a varying shade of grey. A chief minister legally buys land in an area before a highway is announced through it, is perhaps not committing a crime but is definitely taking advantage of the trust bestowed upon him by the people. A minister buying stock options in a company before changing policies to favor that company, is, while following the law to the letter is breaking its spirit. An employee sharing work issues with spouse would not even know when he is committing breach of confidentiality.

In class VII (or was it X), a complained against a classmate for cheating in the exam. I warned him to not do it as I was getting disturbed, but he continued. I have never forgotten the bashing he received from the invigilator as he denied it. And when he finally admitted to the guilt he was debarred from the exam. Not much harm done in the long run, he is a successful doctor as of today and we are still friends. But on that day, I felt bad. Really bad because I did not want him to loose out a year because he cheated in the exam.

I am in a similar dilemma today. A fraud has been committed. I need to choose between the ethically right vs the stretched version of truth. Now I fully appreciate why integrity breach is considered so difficult to deal with. But you gotta do what you gotta do.