Anantha

FIRST EDITION

INFINITY IS JUST THE BEGINNING

IIT-Guwahati is premier institute of national importance producing highest quality of graduates, post-graduates and research scholar. Mathematics department is one of the oldest and most reputed department of IIT-G. Maths department, guided by the highly experienced and renowned faculty has produced PHDs of quality unparallel to any other Indian students.

Encouraged by the success and goals achieved since starting of PhD programme in 1996, the department commenced a 2-year M.Sc. programme in Mathematics and Computing in 2000 with a vision to encourage and create new line of researchers who can use fundamental mathematics to develop and innovate the computing field

ABOUT MATHS DEPARTMENT, ITS STUDENTS, ACTIVITIES AND MATRIX From the academic year 2006-2007, owing to the market demand for professional financial engineers who could chalk out the strategies and solve hardcore mathematical and computational financial problems, the department started a unique 4-year B.Tech. Programme in Mathematics and Computing, the first of its kind in the country. The 1st batch passed out this year with students getting placed in various financial and computing firms with the highest average package

ABOUT MATRIX MATRIX is student group started previous year to coordinate the student activities, and work for the welfare of the student of Mathematics Department.

From the past year, MATRIX coordinated in many activities including student seminar, lecture series on topics of web designing and its prospects, index calculation, image processing in MATLAB, credit risk modelling etc. MATRIX also took many social initiatives to create a good student-faculty and student-student interaction by organising picnic, fresher’s, friendly cricket match etc. MATRIX also has vision to make the best out of best, as a result of which many visiting faculties (e.g. professor Rao of Manchester university excelling in ‘time series’ etc) have graced the students and have shared with them their knowledge and experience.

MATRIX recognises the importance of a healthy discussion in the development of students and therefore has its own discussion forum where students and faculties can share knowledge and also discuss important issues related to current happenings across the globe MATRIX, as a student association, will try its best to promote the interaction between academia and industry so that it can help the students in near future. It will also try its best to link with other mathematics and computing organizations in various parts of the world and explore these contacts in getting internships or other graduate programmes.

MESSAGE I am happy to learn that the first issue of magazine from MATRIX (the student body of the Department of Mathematics, IIT Guwahati) is being published. I must congratulate the team for their commitment and effort in bringing out this inaugural issue. I am sure that the 1st issue would be quiet informative and challenging for the readers. I hope this would provide a platform to update the readers on the recent developments and events in the areas of Mathematics, Computational Science, Financial Mathematics and related fields of research and industry.

The first batch of B.Tech students in Mathematics and Computing is graduating this year. I wish them as well as our other graduating M.Sc and Ph.D students all success in their future endeavors. I invite our alumni to continue their association with the department through participation and sharing their experience through this annual magazine.

I hope this inaugural issue will be the beginning of a regular magazine disseminating information about the departmental activities and alumni achievements amongst other things.

Professor Rajen Kumar Sinha Head, Department of Mathematics

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RAUNAK SINGHI

ZE EDIZOR

With this opening sentence I present to you the first edition of annual departmental magazine of maths and computing department ANANTHA. This magazine has various articles of different colours and flavours such as informative one like how search engines work, analysis of students of various market trends like Microsoft vs. apple, in-depth study of recession viz the crazy derivative game that shook the world etc.

Vedic maths the cover article of this magazine is currently used by various student groups of maths department as tools for path breaking research in computer science and new innovation.

Last but not least, I would like to use this opportunity to thank all the students of maths department with special reference to the team member of MATRIX and HOD Sinha sir for their valuable support, without whom this magazine was impossible

Atcpxitrtene ez atex ng 50 sctdxsmc gniazfio, 50 sctdxsmc qtnbngne, moeb 50 sctdxsmc mabomstrasuf* * Can you break the cipher on your own?

If so,lets see how quick you are...

HINT: The key to this cipher is ‘matrix’ and the type is ‘playfair cipher’ answer given in the appendix

INDEX THE CRAZY DERIVATIVE GAME THAT SHOOK THE WORLD PONZI SCHEME THE DIRAC DELTA FUNCTION IN MATHEMATICS GIANT LEAP OF INDIA VEDAS PLACEMENT INFORMATION SATYAM SCANDAL AZ ZE MATHEMATICIANS ZEE IT SOME PARADOXES AND INTERESTING LOGIC’S HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS: APPLE VS. MICROSOFT

WARNING : SIDE EFFECTS OF READING THIS MAGAZINE MAY INCLUDE BRAIN GROWTH,HEIGHTENED INTEREST IN STUDIES OR HEATING OF THE READERS BRAIN

Year 2008,year 2009 the years of a devastating phenomenon: recession leaving millions of people jobless and caused thousands to die. Hundreds of banks perished, thousands of companies closed.

Even now no country has been able to recover from the economic crisis completely.

Derivatives as name suggest are financial instruments that are derived from some other asset, index, value or event (known as an underlying asset). These are some of the most traded securities in the financial markets. A report by the Goldman Sachs (One of the most reputed I Banks in the world) suggest that by end of fiscal year 2008, there was a total of above 690 Trillion Dollars worth credit derivatives outstanding to be settled.

It’s huge, considering the World’s GDP to be just around 60 Trillion Dollars. (10^16)

After 9/11, the central banks of developed nations (especially US and Europe) brought down interest rate significantly (from 5% to 1% (in US)) in an effort to maintain liquidity and to avoid the system into going to complete chaos. The lower than expected interest rate would encourage borrowing and discourage savings.(Who would save money in bonds that give less than 1% rate of return). Borrowed money could go in two places : a). Get invested in Business, Capital markets, spending etc. b). Goes into speculation

THE

CRAZY DERIVATIVE GAME THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

Well, unfortunately for all, it went into speculating into the housing sectors. People would borrow credit at 1% and use it to buy house (that they could not afford to buy) thinking that house price would appreciate more than 1% yearly and they would actually get a positive return. Might look like a crazy assumption, but actually for first 2-3 years the housing prices did appreciate at a good rate which fueled more people to gamble. The crazy part was that people with no money as down payment and with no good credit worthiness were also gambling along with the big guns.

So why would any bank lend out money to these people..?

BY YAGYESH KESARWANIA

Derivatives are mainly used to hedge risk, but they also have significant exposure to risk if not worked out properly. The year 2008 was a significant year for some of the major Banks which were crazily leveraged on some of these derivatives. The bankruptcy of Lehmann Brothers, AIG, Morgan Stanley etc…got the world’s attention to some of these financial assets that played a significant role in their defaults.

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Well there are 2 reasons for this. a). Even the banks were expecting that property price would keep appreciating at a handsome rate and hence they would encourage more people to buy these houses which would fuel demand for them resulting in higher property prices. So they were a part of this speculation process. b). Banks did not have to keep the entire risk with them; instead they passed on these risk in the form of these derivatives like CDOs and CDS which we will talk about now, into other I Banks, individual investors and wall street traders. This later would prove to be deadly because this meant a default in any of these banks would mean default in all those banks that shared some part of this risk

Banks never cared for the credit worthiness of people taking mortgages, because in case of default they would seize their houses which would have given them more money than initial value of the mortgage. This logic worked well if the defaults were low in number. But what about the case if there are significant defaults (Almost 8 out of 10 defaulted on their mortgages).

In such a case banks would seize houses of all those defaulters and would try to sell them in an open market. This would significantly increase the supply of such homes in the market. This huge incoming supply shock could not be met with any reasonable demand and the housing prices collapsed. (B/se of the Supply Demand curve, if the supply of any goods exceeds its demands, its price would decrease and vice versa.)

THE

CRAZY DERIVATIVE GAME THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO): Till now the situation was that people would apply for a mortgage loan (Loan secured against the property) at low interest rates, and then Banks would bundle thousands of such mortgages into one security known as Mortgage Backed security (MBS). Thus now they have a new financial instrument which could be traded in the open market and whose return would be the return on loans on these mortgages. So it was simple, if the property prices continue to rise, these securities would give good returns, and if they went down, there would be no return and people holding these securities would incur a loss. The banks then bundled thousands of such MBS called them CDO. These CDO were then sub divided into three tranches( layers) as (i) (ii) (iii)

Safe Moderately Risky Highly Risky

Of course the highly Risky CDO tranche would have a higher rate of return than the moderately risky which in turn had a higher return than safe tranche. Since the market at that time was bullish for housing prices, most of these CDOs were sold at highly overvalued prices. So as long as the housing sector appreciated, people invested in these assets made money, but what about the downside‌??

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As the housing prices declined, more and more people defaulted on their loans, which resulted in more loss in the value of the people holding those CDO instruments. Banks holding these MBS and CDOs saw their investments decline substantially.

This made banks very cautious and stopped lending activity. Thus now people could not get loans easily on mortgages and hence the demand for houses shrinks further. This made a chain reaction of negative events. Lesser Demand-> Lesser Housing prices->More Defaulters->Value of MBS and CDOs decline-> Banks stop lending-> Even lesser demand and so on.

People witnessed a chain reaction of defaults: People Default-> Banks Defaults-> I Banks defaults-> Hedge Funds defaults-> Private Institutional Investors default-> Wall Street Traders default ….etc.. And a whole chain of defaults swept through the entire financial community. There was a widespread chaos, with people having run on various banks, believing they would go under. Various big banks lost more than 80% of their share price in just few trading sessions. Many people lost their entire fortune in this bet. There arose huge wave of negative sentiments that carried with it almost every Bank that played in these derivative markets. Government had to intervene to stop this chaos and they did this by saving these Banks (not necessarily the right step) through bailout packages by borrowing more money or printing it thereby devaluing their own currency.

THE

CRAZY DERIVATIVE GAME THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

But considering the size of this crazy derivative market (around 600 Trillion dollars) even government can’t protect these Banks as they too have a limit on Borrowing and printing. There are many countries that are on verge of default due to excessive investing on these derivative markets (we have already seen default of Iceland). Thus stretching the same logic, there would be even more defaults in the coming years and a bigger widespread collapse.

Moral of the Story: Derivatives are instruments that are used to hedge/Manage/ Transfer risk, but if it is used without giving proper analysis to the Risk Metrics, it could prove fatal. (Good servant but bad master)

“I don’t need nuclear bombs,only derivatives to bring down the world”

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A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.

The scheme is named after Charles Ponzi, who became notorious for using the technique in early 1920 and collected around $9.8 million from about 10,500 residents of Boston and shelled out $7.8 million in 8 months offering profits of 50% every 45 days This shorter period between payouts and high rate of return is required to create the impetus for the frenzy that is to follow as word leaks out, and is soon verified, by numerous sources.

Usually, the scheme is interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses because a Ponzi scheme is suspected or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities.

As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases. While the system eventually will collapse under its own weight, the example of Bernard Madoff demonstrates the ability of a Ponzi scheme to delude both individual and institutional investors as well as securities authorities for long periods: Madoff's variant of the Ponzi Scheme stands as the largest financial investor fraud in history committed by a single person. Prosecutors estimate losses at Madoff's hand totalling $64.8 billion.

Many ponzi schemes share common characteristics. Some warning signs are: •High investment returns with little or no risk: Every investment carries some degree of risk, and investments yielding higher returns typically involve more risk. Be highly suspicious of any “guaranteed” investment opportunity.

PONZI SCHEME The truly experienced con will balance these two factors ( payout period and promised rate of return ) against the expected duration of the operation so as to maximize his take while still maintaining some semblance of credibility.

•Overly consistent returns: Investments tend to go up and down over time, especially those seeking high returns. Be suspect of an investment that continues to generate regular, positive returns regardless of overall market conditions.

A few people invest in the scheme, then as news of the offer spreads, more investors are drawn in. As long as the con can convince investors that it is a safe, secure investment which even moderately beats what you are presently getting, you can be convinced to invest. Even if you guarantee a person a 20% return every 90 days on a Rs. 10,000 investment, you can pay that person a Rs. 2,000 "dividend" cheque out of their own money once every three months for up to 15 months before their money is gone. That person's eventual shortfall can easily be covered by new deposits, thereby extending the scheme. This, in effect, could actually make money for those early investors that do not reinvest their gains, which is rare. As word spreads of the unique opportunity, money begins to pour in faster than it is going out. Hearing about it, you get hooked by the desire to do what you think you see other people doing around you, making money. Once that rate slows or stops, the con usually closes up shop and disappears.

Because a ponzi scheme is technically insolvent, in the sense that its liabilities exceed its assets from the first day it does business, it can only continue until the pool of gullible new investors dries up. At that point, the scheme collapses or the operator folds it up. The collapse may be accelerated by the promoter's overuse of the money on impressive looking trappings for substantiation, or on personal extravagances, to create the appearance of prosperity.

•Unregistered investments: Ponzi schemes typically involve investments that have not been registered with the SEC or with state regulators. Registration is important because it provides investors with access to key information about the company’s management, products, services, and finances.

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•Secretive and/or complex strategies: Avoiding investments you don’t understand or for which you can’t get complete information is a good rule of thumb.

•Issues with paperwork: Ignore excuses regarding why you can’t review information about an investment in writing, and always read an investment’s prospectus or disclosure statement carefully before you invest. Also, account statement errors may be a sign that funds are not being invested as promised.

•Difficulty receiving payments: Be suspicious if you don’t receive a payment or have difficulty cashing out your investment. Keep in mind that Ponzi scheme promoters sometimes encourage participants to “roll over” promised payments by offering even higher investment returns

BY SARADA PRASANNA MISHRA

•Unlicensed sellers: Federal and state securities laws require investment professionals and their firms to be licensed or registered. Most Ponzi schemes involve unlicensed individuals or unregistered firms.

What is Dirac delta? Is that a function or anything else?In elementary texts and lectures, the delta function is sometimes treated as an ordinary function, taking a value ‘infinity’ at x = 0. The pulse is assumed to have ‘infinite height’ and ‘width zero’, but ‘total area = 1’.This means that we are led to a number system with an ‘∞’ so that ∞.0 = 1. This logically leads to difficulties.

For example, if we assume that ∞.0 = 1, then there must exist a number ‘2.∞’ so that (2.∞).0 = 2.(∞.0) = 2.1 = 2. Then, it will violate the laws of Algebra: as (∞.2).0 = ∞.(2.0) = ∞.0 = 0 and (2.∞).0 = (∞.2).0.

THE

So, there is necessary to introduce functions like Dirac Delta which is not a function in the standard sense, which has a power that the classical theory of functions lacks. There are many continuous functions which have no derivative in the classical sense.

This defect in the classical approach is eliminated by the introduction of these types of functions, which are called as ‘Generalized functions’ or ‘Distributions’. The operation of taking a derivative applies without restrictions to distributions.

DIRAC DELTA

FUNCTION IN MATHEMATICS

According to one standard definition the number π is an equivalence class of Cauchy sequence of rationals. No one thinks of it that way. We think of π as simply ‘a number’. Similarly, we should think of the delta function δ as a function of x, even though strictly speaking it isn’t.

Now, the question arises: “Why create a whole theory to deal with an idea as the Dirac Delta function and why do we study them?” The idea may not be quite so simple as it looks. There are situations presented to us by physical experience which are not adequately covered by the traditional y = f(x) notion of a function.

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BY MURALI REDDY

The Dirac ‘function’ corresponds to a unit impulse imparted to a system over what we may idealize as an infinitely short interval of time. Think, for example, of an object being struck by a hammer.

While in reality there is some compression of the hammer and of the object, and a small but finite time span during which the interaction occurs, that is not the way we normally watch it. To the unaided eye, the whole thing takes place: Bang! – in an instant. This idealization not only corresponds to human intuition, but is very useful in physical applications.

GIANT LEAP OF INDIA

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It is developed by TCS, Infosys, Wipro and ISRO along with the partnership of Mahindra-Satyam and Cognizant Solutions. All leading Indian computer technology companies have participated in this venture with TCS as the main partner. This version is expected to be launched on early 2011 and be operational by the end of 2009 or early 2010. Nearly 90% of moon surface is captured by Chandrayaan with best quality of imaging. HCL Technologies and BPL are the media partners for it.

The latest version of Bhuvan will be able to take more closer pictures of the Indian Subcontinent as compared to the Google Earth. The new ISRO Bhuvan will also feature multi-layer information mapping while the present Google Earth features a single layer information mapping system. Apart from that, Bhuvan will also update map information every year contrary to the Google Earth which updates its map information every 4 years.

Google Earth Vs ISRO Bhuvan Google Earth * Zoom levels up to 200 mt * Single layer information * Images upgraded every 4 years * No alternate viewing options * Uses international satellites ISRO Bhuvan * Zoom levels up to 10 mt * Multi-layer information * Images upgraded every year * Options of viewing on different dates

BY RITESH & RAJKAMAL

ON 12TH Aug 2009 on the 90th anniversary of Dr Vikram Sarabhai, father of India’s space program ,Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) leaped into big boots by launching India’s first ever satellite mapping geo portal :- BHUVAN(in Sanskrit meaning earth).. With this India has put itself into technological front of the world .

What is ISRO Bhuvan?

ISRO’s Bhuvan (which means Earth) is a satellite mapping tool similar to Google Earth and Wikimapia offering a resolution up to 10 metres and is considered as a rival to Google Earth and Wikimapia(may be far better) A prototype (beta) of this application was launched on 12th August 2009.

This freeware software will provide better resolution compared to existing mapping solutions.

Bhuvan will feature a zoom level of up to 10 meters while the Google Earth features a zoom level of up to 200 meters. ISRO has also decided to make a tracking and mapping antenna (30×15)m the largest in India in Chennai for advanced 3D mapping and resources.

The next version of Bhuvan is expected to be called Bhuvan Chandra Bhumi, which will feature both earth and moon in resolution up to 347 m maximum in near side and 432 m far side which is taken by Chandrayaan. The actual zoom level of the moon was set to 150 m but due to lack of system power and steering problems caused it to be reduced.

Unlike google earth which updates image every 4year BHUVAN’’S image is updated every year. A review of ISRO Bhuvan Features and Performance Here is a frank review of the features and performance of ISRO Bhuvan (the much anticipated satellite-based 3D mapping application from ISRO) BETA Release and comparing it to supposed arch rival Google Earth. Bhuvan from the begining is claiming that it is not competing with Google Earth in any way, but there was much hype and propaganda in the media saying that ISRO Bhuvan will be a Google Earth killer atleast in India. But it looks like that can not be the case anytime soon. Here is why..

•Bhuvan packs a lot of data on weather, waterbodies and population details of various administrative units. We were unable to access weather data. Clicking on icons of administrative units show basic information such as the population.

For specialist users, Bhuvan might hold some attraction. For instance, there is a drought map which can be used to compare drought situation across years and there is a flood map that shows Bihar during the Kosi flood and after. With ISRO backing, Bhuvan would be able to provide such relevant data from time to time, but the application needs major improvements in terms of usability before it will be of interest to the ordinary user.

•While Google Earth works on a downloadable client, Bhuvan works within the browser (only supports Windows and IE 6 and above).

GIANT LEAP OF INDIA •The ISRO Bhuvan currently has serious performance issues. The site currently very unstable. It gives up or hangs the browser every once in a while. When a layer (state, district, taluk, etc.) is turned on, it renders unevenly and sometimes fails to render at all. The navigation panel failed to load routinely and it felt like a rare sighting when we could actually use the panel.

•The promise of high resolution images has not been kept. While the service promises zoom up to 10 metres from the ground level as against 200 metres for Google Earth, we didn’t encounter a single image with nearly as much detailing. In fact, comparative results for a marquee location such as New Delhi’s Connaught Place or Red Fort make its clear as to the inferior performance of ISRO Earth as of now.

•The navigation tools are similar to Google Earth (GE).

•The search doesn’t work if a query returns multiple results. A pop up window is supposed to give the multiple results from which the user is supposed to be able to choose. During two days of sporadic testing, we found the result only once.

The rest of the time, the window would pop up, but nothing would be displayed. When the search is accurate, the software ‘flies in’ to the exact location, the same way as GE. •Users need to create an account and download a plug-in.

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•Users can also not edit any data or tag locations.

•We hope Bhuvan is able to fix the bugs soon. But even then, to be a credible alternative to existing mapping services, and even to get new users to try it, it much provide much higher resolution images. User interest will be piqued only when they can see their house or school or local street in high resolution. With ISRO data, this is easily doable.

Having said all this, ISRO Bhuvan is still a very good step forward for ISRO in the right direction we feel. We wish all the best for ISRO and hopefully Bhuvan will mature very fast to become a good service and can really compete with Google Earth.

Time is money. This is the underlying principal of modern life, the ultimate goal of which is to become faster and faster and faster. Today in this world of virtuality where everything is fast becoming virtual, be it some chatting or be it some money transaction etc. Therefore the processor speed has become the most important and determining factor in various processes such as money transaction etc. where millions can be made or lost in a nanosecond. Here what we need is a faster algorithm which takes less computational time. It’s time to return to the old ways.

We are through this magazine are starting a series beginning from some basics of vedic maths and then would be continuing upto calculus

VEDAS Multiplication This sutra is a type of pseudo cross multiplication. It’s a one liner for multiplication of large numbers. The steps are as follows:-

1. Example: 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

125*456 (ABC)*(DEF) Multiply 5*6=30 with 3 as carry over Cross multiply and add i.e. 2*6+5*5+3=40 Cross multiply again i.e.

1*6+5*4+2*5+4=40 Repeat 3rd step i.e.

1*5+2*4+4=17 Repeat 2nd step i.e.

1*4+1=5

30 400 4000 17000 57000 (ans.)

(C*F) (B*F +E*C+K) (A*F+C*D+B*E+K) (A*E+B*D+K) (A*D+K)

This method is quiet time saving, fast and easy Division

1.

2.

3.

4.

5. pro) 6.

7.

8.

9.

Example:

89997 ) 12/94567 (no. of digits in divisor:5, therefore / at 5th position) 10003 1/0003 (10003=nearest power of 10-89997)(10003*1) /30009 (10003*(1+2)=10003*3=30009) ________________ (adding both sides right and left to /) 13 1/24606 (since after adding 1 comes left to /repeat same /10003 _________________ 14 /34609

(1000*1) (adding both sides right and left to /) (L.H.S:Q R.H.S:R)

Therefore quotient:14 remainder:34609 This method may look complex at beginning but it reduces the processor time for division reduces drastically as the complexity increases

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BY RAUNAK SINGHI

This sutra also known as nikhilam sutra does quiet complex division in a quiet simple and easy way. Its steps are:-

PLACEMENTS futures first yahoo directl oracle cisco infosys tcs nilesen ibm gbs ibm isl canara hsbc credit suisse akash project manager wipro birla unicorn jobs offered total students

1 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 22 18

8.04 7.67 10.5 8.5 7.52 6 3.25 5 3.25 5.5 6.5 9 10.5 7 5.5 3.5

Data includes both on campus and off campus placements

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7thjanuary2009, the date when already recession struck IT industry woke up to Satyam catastrophe.

The scandal not only raised questions about the accounting systems in the minds of the foreign investors but also about the credibility of Indian companies

If the Company needed growth in revenues and profits, they got it, the desired profit was just few book entries away. They most likely made these entries during the last week of the reporting period so that the invented profits filled the blanks perfectly for analyst purposes.

It is all well if they were a small company, audited by another small firm of auditors.Satyam was but a big and strong company. It is required to strictly adhere to the stricter IFRS (International Financial Report Standards) and GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) norms before the accounts were certified Satyam have therefore indulged in accounts fudging without getting detected by the auditors..

SATYAM SCANDAL 1.Bombay main benchmark index fell 7.3% with a fall in Indian rupee value 2.Satyam’s share value fell from Rs179 to Rs40 causing loss of Rs9376 crores to investors 3.New York Stock exchange halted trading in Satyam 4.Terminated Merrill Lynch’s engagement with Satyam 5.The auditors of Satyam, Price water house Coopers also came under the lens for some involvement 6.Dismissal of the board of directors of Satyam by the government to limit the fallout of India’s fourth largest software company 7.Government of India stepped in to prevent the collapse of Satyam saving about 50,000 jobs 8.Company didn’t have enough liquidity to carry out their operations for a small amount of time and needed govt. to pump around Rs 20billion to keep it afloat 9.Big players like TCS, IGATE , L&T etc entered the scenario for acquiring stakes in satyam The auditors of the company did not detect this fraud earlier even though the auditors of Satyam are not a small name, they are a reputed name The fraud was committed not once. The confession only reveals about the peak level of the fraud. It was being perpetrated on a continuous basis over many quarters or several years.

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Before getting into the exact, probable, modus operandi of Mr. Raju, let us see how a company can fraudulently inflate its profits and how that gets detected by the auditors. a) Book sales belonging to the subsequent year in the current year by pre-dating the invoice. This is like catching the tiger by the tail. Unless the sales improve, the Company will have to follow the same thing in the subsequent years as well to ensure that the profit trend is maintained. (The auditors can detect this by matching the dates of invoices, shipment advises, gate passes, delivery receipts. physical stock verification reports, debtor’s confirmation etc.) b) Book bogus sales to inflate profits in one year and show return sales in the subsequent year. This is again like catching the tiger by the tail as the quantum will have to be increased each year to compensate for the additional charge coming in the subsequent year due to return sales. (The auditors can detect this by checking the invoices, subsequent year sales returns, debtor confirmations, stock tally etc.) c) Book bogus other income. This is done to inflate the profits and mostly to as a money laundering exercise: Unaccounted money is laundered into the books by showing income for no actual service rendered. (Auditors can detect this by seeing the actual documents supporting the other income and by comparing with the expertise available in the company to provide such services)

BY RAUNAK SINGHI

IMPACTS ON INDIAN ECONOMY

Showing such receivables becomes difficult in the case of a big company like Satyam as they will have a relatively smaller number of customers contributing to significant portion of total revenues of the company.

Any bluff will be quickly caught as high profile customers will be quick to respond to balance confirmation requests.

How can one get actual collections from fictitious companies? No, he didn’t make any actual collections. He just got some more book entries made to clear the debtors and transferred the debits to bank balances.

d) By not booking purchases or overheads. Companies try to inflate profits by not booking purchase of material or overheads: This again has to be covered up in the subsequent year when the creditors are to be paid. (Some of the ways in which the Auditor can find these include, comparison of the purchases with physical stock, quantitative tally of stocks and consumption, trend analysis of overheads between two periods, obtaining creditor’s confirmation, bank reconciliation statements to check for amounts paid but not accounted in books which will be hanging as a difference between bank balance as per books and as per the bank statements for a given cut-off date)

If something remains in debtors, it will raise questions from many quarters, starting from the auditors to the Board of Directors to the analysts to institutional investors to (at least) some of the intelligent retail investors.

SATYAM SCANDAL If the debtor balance is converted into Bank balances? No one is going to doubt. In fact, people will become happier to see the swell of cash. The Company will be valued higher it is sitting on a huge pile of cash.

In all the cases of inflation of sales in the books, the company will credit the sales account to increase the sales and pass the debit to a debtor account to show receivables. The problem here is that the receivables has to be squared off either by reversing the sale or by writing off as most fraudulent companies do not introduce cash to square of the receivables for bogus sales.

Mr. Raju, had to however, overcome one more problem. Normally, auditors will ask for confirmation balances for the bank balances shown by the company. How did he get away for so many years without having actual bank balances? Or how did he produce the needed confirmation to the auditors for these balances?

But it was almost impossible. Auditors simply can’t do such a blunder. They will qualify such things in their audit report and also will draw the attention of lack of confirmations to the Board of Directors and Audit Committee.

However, Mr. Ramalinga Raju has introduced a new gambit in this (Satyam Gambit).

It shows the clever manner in which the fraud was crafted by Mr. Raju.

Profit gets inflated by bogus booking of sales which in turn will also inflate the debtors. These debtors will remain sticky/ irrecoverable as no real sales support them. Companies will get rid of such debtors following one of the following three methods, a) Write off the debtor b) Reverse the bogus sale (and book a new one so that a new debtor is created) c) Resort to money laundering to square off the bogus debtors Such bogus sales, if the quantum is high, will not escape the auditors eyes as they will scrutinize the receivables, seek for confirmation of the balance, will analyze the debtors to see if they are one off customers or frequent buyers etc.

So how Mr. Raju could convince the auditors. Mr. Raju, most likely did one more clever thing.

He raised some personal money. He didn’t sell the Satyam shares for this purpose (he has told in his confessions that he has not sold any shares in the market). Instead he pledged the shares with the banks and raised cash. That cash, either he sent using illegal route abroad to get back as software sale realizations or simply made book entries for recoveries and went to banks to create deposits in the name of Satyam Computers.

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This exercise started on a small scale in the beginning. With a favorable bull market, he could have also easily raised the money needed by pledging the shares. (This is how the unaccounted liability of Rs.1,000 odd crore (Rs.10 billion) started to accumulate – personal cash used for making deposits for company will create assets for the company but no liability is created).

But, as the expenses in Satyam ballooned and as the requirement to meet the investor expectations in terms of revenues and profits increased, Mr. Raju might have resorted to this fudging route more often that the inflated bank balances reached the confessed high of Rs.5,040 crore (US $ 1 billion) over a period of several years.

At this manipulation high and falling Satyam stock price, it should have become difficult for Mr. Raju to prove to the auditors the existence of the bank balances. So, what how did he overcome this problem?

With inflated acquisition price, this would not have hurt him at all.

But, why the confession now.

Two reasons 1. Maytas deal failed, the Satyam share price had further fallen, making it difficult for Mr. Raju to further raise cash to fill the Rs.50 billion gap in the Balance Sheet.

2. He has already introduced Rs.10 billion of own money into the Company. With increased shareholder activism, it had almost become certain that he will get out of the Company sooner than later.

In case he had to go out, how to get back the Rs.10 billion of personal money left with the Company?

Make a confession and repeat multiple times in the open letter that there is an unaccounted liability of Rs.10 billion so that that amount is secured for him, irrespective any legal tangles he gets into by the confession.

SATYAM SCANDAL Most probably, he would have used the limited cash at his disposal (Rs.1,000 crore (Rs.10 billion) is limited cash if you look to plug the gap of Rs.5,000 crore (Rs.50 billion)), to create bank balances for Satyam Computers close to the quarterly reporting dates by creating and closing multiple deposits while keeping the proof of making the deposits to convince the auditors.

This again, is a master stroke from Mr. Raju,.

Because, he is fully aware of the speed of legal process in India and so while the legal battles are fought with intelligent lawyers for 10 or 15 years, he can continue to enjoy the money and comforts.

The auditors, could have possibly, accepted such proofs and partial confirmations and most likely would have documented accepting such evidence with their reasoning.

Another great benefit of such deposits for Mr. Raju was that he could show accrued interest on such deposits and boost the profits. (This explains the bogus accrued interest of Rs.3.7 billion confession – how nice to have a bogus deposit and also have the added benefit of interest from such deposits).

Question1. Knowing that Mr. Raju perpetrated fraud of such a magnitude, how can he be such philanthropic to give Rs. 1 billion of his own money to the Company?

Question2. How he would have planned to take it out from the Company?

Maytas deal is one answer. By going ahead with that acquisition, he would have converted a major portion of the non-existent bank balances as “inflated” investments and also taken away the Rs.10 billion real cash available (funded by him).

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A stats professor plans to travel to a conference by plane. When he passes the security check, they discover a bomb in his carry-on-baggage. Of course, he is hauled off immediately for interrogation.

"I don't understand it!" the interrogating officer exclaims.

"You're an accomplished professional, a caring family man, a pillar of your parish - and now you want to destroy that all by blowing up an airplane!"

"Sorry", the professor interrupts him. "I had never intended to blow up the plane."

"So, for what reason else did you try to bring a bomb on board?!"

Az ze Mathematicians zee it "And what does this have to do with you bringing a bomb on board of a plane?"

"You see, since the probability of one bomb being on my plane is 1/1000, the chance that there are two bombs is 1/1000000. If I already bring one, the chance of another bomb being around is actually 1/1000000, and I am much safer..."

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are staying in a hotel. The engineer wakes up and smells smoke. He goes out into the hallway and sees a fire, so he fills a trash can from his room with water and douses the fire.

He goes back to bed. Later, the physicist wakes up and smells smoke. He opens his door and sees a fire in the hallway. He walks down the hall to a fire hose and after calculating the flame velocity, distance, water pressure, trajectory, etc. extinguishes the fire with the minimum amount of water and energy needed. Later, the mathematician wakes up and smells smoke. He goes to the hall, sees the fire and then the fire hose. He thinks for a moment and then exclaims, "Ah, a solution exists!" and then goes back to bed.

BY RAUNAK SINGHI

"Let me explain. Statistics shows that the probability of a bomb being on an airplane is 1/1000.

That's quite high if you think about it - so high that I wouldn't have any peace of mind on a flight."

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Paradox is a situation or statement which seems impossible or is difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics. Logic is a particular way of thinking, especially one which is reasonable and based on good judgment.

In this article I will deal with some of the interesting logical statements as well as examples. Before going to the logics; here I am illustrating some paradoxes which are commonly well known and interesting.

Hope, you will feel and enjoy.

If the barber does not shave himself, according to the rule he must shave himself.

If he does shave himself, according to the rule he will not shave himself.

Paradox of Hilbert’s Hotel Hotel is full, some guests arrive Hilbert’s Hotel is a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and infinite number of guests. Every room is occupied. A new visitor arrives. Can he be accommodated?

Yes, arithmetic with infinite quantities allows to do it.

At first it seems that he cannot, but then the hotel clerk moves the guest in Room 1 to Room 2, and the guest in Room 2 to Room 3, and so on. Every guest is moved to the next room along. This leaves Room 1 vacant for the new visitor. Although the hotel is full, the new guest can always be accommodated in Room 1.

If another visitor arrives, the hotel clerk moves the guests again, and the new guest can be accommodated in Room 1.

Russell's paradox Russell's paradox: The set M is the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as members. Does M contain itself?

If it does, it is not a member of M according to the definition.

If it does not, then it has to be a member of M, again according to the definition of M. Therefore, the statements "M is a member of M" and "M is not a member of M" both lead to contradictions.

There are some versions of Russell's paradox, for example: "A is an element of M if and only if A is not an element of A". This paradox was discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901.

Illustrations of the Russell's paradox List of all lists that do not contain themselves.

If the "List of all lists that do not contain themselves" contains itself, then it does not belong to itself and should be removed. However, if it does not list itself, then it should be added to itself.

Another example of Russell’s paradox is Barber paradox.

Barber paradox The paradox considers a town with a male barber who shaves all and only those men who do not shave themselves.

The natural question is: Who shaves the barber?

When one thinks about whether the barber should shave himself or not, the paradox begins to emerge.

Hotel is full, infinite number of guests arrive There are other interesting paradoxes like paradoxes of Wizard and Mermaid, Zeno’s paradox on Achille’s and tortoise, Ross-Littlewood paradox, Paradoxes of Even/Odd Natural numbers, Galileo’s paradoxes. If the readers are interested, they can read this .

Let’s start with some Logic.

Consider the following question This world is a stage. Most of us have seen this comparison between world and the stage in Shakespeare’s one poem. But the natural logical question is “If all the world is a stage where is the audience sitting?”. Here, since we are also performers, so answer is, audiences are sitting on the stage.

Like this way we can raise plenty of questions which seem to be logical and can be answered perfectly.

Here are some interesting examples whose answers are given at the last of this article. It will be advisable to have a think on this questions rather than looking on the answers directly. It will make you enjoyable.

Logic 1: * Why is it called building when it is already built? * If pro is the opposite of con, is progress the opposite of congress? * Is it possible to be totally partial? * If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success? * If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes? * Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

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BY PRATIBHAMOY DAS

SOME PARADOXES & INTERESTING LOGIC’S

* When cheese gets its picture taken what does it say? * If lawyers are debarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that Electricians can be delighted, denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, dry cleaners depressed? * Why is it if someone tells you there are 1 billion stars in the universe, you will believe them but if they tell you a wall has wet paint you will have to touch it to be sure? * Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks? * If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?

Q. What often falls but never gets hurt ?

Q. What looks like half apple ?

Q. What 3 letters change a girl into a woman ?

There are some questions which cannot be answered logically as expected, like the following.

Logic 4: * If horrific means to make horrible, does terrific mean to make terrible?

Here are some of my own made and nice collections..

-1. I'm a nobody, nobody is perfect, therefore I'm perfect.

-2. I've got to sit down and work out where I stand.

-3. If I save time, when do I get it back?

-4. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

-5. I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.

-6. Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.

-7. The statement below is true.

--The statement above is false.

SOME PARADOXES & INTERESTING LOGIC’S Logic 2: (With options) 1: Approximately how many birthdays does the average man have?

1 66 72 2: Some months have 31 days; how many have 28?

12 1 6 3: Divide 30 by 1/2 and add 10. What is the answer?

25 70 35 4: If there are 3 apples and you take away 2, how many do you have?

1 2 3 5: A doctor gives you three pills telling you to take one every half hour. How many minutes would the pills last?

60 90 120 6: A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 die. How many are left?

17 8 9 7: How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark?

1000 499 0 8: How many two cent stamps are there in a dozen?

6 9 12 Logic 3: Q. How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?

Q. How can a man go eight days without sleep?

Q. What is that no man ever saw which never was but always will be ?

-8. As I said before, I never repeat myself.

-9. Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence.

-10. I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.

-- There's a knob called brightness, but it doesn't work.

-11. A conscience does not prevent sin. It only prevents you from enjoying it.

-12. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

-13. War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who's left.

-14. Best way to prevent hangover is to stay drunk.

-15. Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected become the expected?

Before finishing this article I will share some classic definitions with you (Just for fun………. nothing to do with Logic)..

•Atom Bomb: An invention to end all inventions.

•Philosopher: A fool who torments himself during life, to be spoken of when dead.

•Opportunist: A person who ! starts taking bath if he accidentally falls into a river.

•Optimist: A person who while falling from Eiffel Tower says in midway "See I am not injured yet."

•Pessimist : A person who says that O is the last letter in ZERO, Instead of the first letter in word OPPORTUNITY.

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•Doctor : A person who kills your ills by pills, and kills you with his bills.

•Etc. : A sign to make others believe that you know more than you actually do.

•Committee: Individuals who can do nothing individually and sit to decide that nothing can be done together.

•Experience : The name men give to their mistakes.

•Cigarette : A pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end & a fool at the other.

•Love affairs : Something like cricket where oneday internationals are more popular than a five day test.

•Marriage : It's an agreement in which a man loses his bachelor degree and a woman gains her master.

Answers of Logic 2: Ans. 1 - Just one!

Ans. 12, all of them!

Ans. 70, (30 divided by 1/2 equals 60! Takes some thinking.....

Ans. 2, you took them, remember?

Ans. 60 Start with the 1st pill, 30 minutes later take the 2nd, then 30 minutes for the 3rd.

Ans. 9 Ans. 0. Moses didn't have an ark, Noah did!

Ans. 12. There are twelve 2 cent stamps in a dozen!

Answers of Logic 3: Exercise!!

Answers of Logic 4:-------Cause the guy who named wasn't bright enough to see the logic behind that!

SOME PARADOXES & INTERESTING LOGIC’S •Divorce : Future tense of marriage •Lecture : An art of transferring information from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the students without passing through "the minds of either".

•Conference : The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.

•Compromise : The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece.

• Tears : The hydraulic force by which masculine will-power is defeated by feminine waterpower ..

It’s always better not to apply logical thinking’s very often. Suppose in a Church over the portal it is written “This is the house of God – This is the gate of Heaven.” Unfortunately when you tried to open its doors; You found the door is locked. Does it mean “In other words Go To Hell ”.

Logic 1: Ans. because it is a noun and the "built" u are referring to is a verb.

Ans. NO. can’t be. They are different words.

Ans. YES!!! Believe me it’s possible. I've faced it.

Ans. No.its obviously a failure.

Ans. because the official name of Holland is The Netherland.

Ans. YES!!!! May be even more!!!

Ans. I'm Cheese!!!

Ans. ERROR in question!!! Lawyers are disbarred, not debarred!!

Ans. because the wall is touchable, and the billion stars in the universe are not countable!!

Ans. yes!!!. That way Lipton would not have to provide free tea to its employers.

Ans. baby olives!!!!

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A search engine is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system such as the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network or a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of references that match those criteria. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently. Without further qualification, search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web. Other kinds of search engine are enterprise search engines, which search on intranets, personal search engines, which search individual personal computers, and mobile search engines. However, while different selection and relevance criteria may apply in different environments, the user will probably perceive little difference between operations in these.

(Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from various Gopher servers.

The first Web search engine was "Wandex", a nowdefunct index collected by the World Wide Web Wanderer, a web crawler developed by Matthew Gray at MIT in 1993. Another very early search engine, Aliweb, also appeared in 1993, and still runs today. The first "full text" crawler-based search engine was WebCrawler, which came out in 1994. Unlike its predecessors, it let users search for any word in any web page, which became the standard for all major search engines since. It was also the first one to be widely known by the public. Also in 1994 Lycos (which started at Carnegie Mellon University) came out, and became a major commercial endeavor.

HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK Most web sites which call themselves search engines are actually front ends to search engines owned by other companies.

The very first tool used for searching on the Internet was called "Archie". (The name stands for "archive" without the "v", not the character from the 'Archie' comic book series). It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creating a searchable database of filenames.

While Archie indexed computer files, "Gopher" indexed plain text documents. Gopher was created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota. (The program was named after the school's mascot). Because these were text files, most of the Gopher sites became Web sites after the creation of the World Wide Web. Two other programs, "Veronica" and "Jughead" searched the files stored in Gopher index systems.

Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead

Soon after, many search engines appeared and vied for popularity. These included Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista. In some ways, they competed with popular directories such as Yahoo!. Later, the directories integrated or added on search engine technology for greater functionality.

Search engines were also known as some of the brightest stars in the Internet investing frenzy that occurred in the late 1990s. Several companies entered the market spectacularly, recording record gains during their initial public offerings. Some have taken down their public search engine, and are marketing enterprise-only editions, such as Northern Light.

Before the advent of the Web, there were search engines for other protocols or uses, such as the Archie search engine for anonymous FTP sites and the Veronica search engine for the Gopher protocol. More recently search engines are also coming online which utilize XML or RSS. This allows the search engine to efficiently index data about websites without requiring a complicated crawler. The websites simply provide an xml feed which the search engine indexes. XML feeds are increasingly provided automatically by weblogs or blogs. Examples of this type of search engine are feedster, with niche examples such as LjFind Search providing search services for Live journal blogs.

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BY SATYAM SHEKAR

Some search engines also mine data available in newsgroups, large databases, or open directories like DMOZ.org. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically.

Challenges faced by Search Engines The web is growing much faster than any present-technology search engine can possibly index (see distributed web crawling). In 2006, some users found major search-engines became slower to index new WebPages.

Many web pages are updated frequently, which forces the search engine to revisit them periodically.

The queries one can make are currently limited to searching for key words, which may result in many false positives, especially using the default page-wide search. Better results might be achieved by using a proximity-search option with a search-bracket to limit matches within a paragraph or phrase, rather than matching random words scattered across large pages.

Web search engines work by storing information about a large number of web pages, which they retrieve from the WWW itself. These pages are retrieved by a web crawler (sometimes also known as a spider) — an automated web browser which follows every link it sees, exclusions can be made by the use of robots.txt. The contents of each page are then analyzed to determine how it should be indexed (for example, words are extracted from the titles, headings, or special fields called Meta tags). Data about web pages is stored in an index database for use in later queries. Some search engines, such as Google, store all or part of the source page (referred to as a cache) as well as information about the web pages, whereas some store every word of every page it finds, such as AltaVista. This cached page always holds the actual search text since it is the one that was actually indexed, so it can be very useful when the content of the current page has been updated and the search terms are no longer in it.

HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK Dynamically generated sites may be slow or difficult to index, or may result in excessive results, perhaps generating 500 times more web pages than average. Example: for a dynamic webpage which changes content based on entries inserted from a database, a search-engine might be requested to index 50,000 static web pages for 50,000 different parameter values passed to that dynamic webpage.

Many dynamically generated websites are not index-able by search engines; this phenomenon is known as the invisible web.

Some search-engines do not rank results by relevance, but by the amount of money the matching websites pay.

In 2006, hundreds of generated websites used tricks to manipulate a search-engine to display them in the higher results for numerous keywords. This can lead to some search results being polluted with link spam or bait-andswitch pages which contain little or no information about the matching phrases. The more relevant web pages are pushed further down in the results list, perhaps by 500 entries or more.

How Search Engines Work A search engine operates, in the following order • Web crawling • Indexing • Searching

This problem might be considered to be a mild form of link rot, and Google's handling of it increases usability by satisfying user expectations that the search terms will be on the returned web page. This satisfies the principle of least astonishment since the user normally expects the search terms to be on the returned pages. Increased search relevance makes these cached pages very useful, even beyond the fact that they may contain data that may no longer be available elsewhere.

When a user comes to the search engine and makes a query, typically by giving key words, the engine looks up the index and provides a listing of bestmatching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text. Most search engines support the use of the Boolean terms AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query. An advanced feature is proximity search, which allows you to define the distance between keywords.

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there may be millions of Web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve.

18

Most web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and, as a result, some employ the controversial practice of allowing advertisers to pay money to have their listings ranked higher in search results.

The vast majority of search engines are run by private companies using proprietary algorithms and closed databases, the most popular currently being Google, MSN Search, and Yahoo! Search. However, Open source search engine technology does exist, such as ht: //Dig, Nutch, Senas, Egothor, OpenFTS, DataparkSearch and many others.

HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

19

Being a computer user, you must have been caught, at least once, in a battle of opinions between two different sides: Apple fans vs. Microsoft fans. The fact that the latter’s user base is much larger than the former’s means that it has a huge army of potential fans to fight for it in this battle.

But what Apple users lack in numbers, they definitely make up in determination, and the “fan boy” stamp almost always associated with them seems to suggest that they are doing a very good job in fighting the Apple vs. Microsoft battle.

Someone said, “Being smart means you are going to have a successful carrier, but good looks are a sign that you will also get to the top a lot faster.”

Could this also hold true for companies?

THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS:

APPLE Vs. MICROSOFT

The last thing I consider to be of utmost importance when people decided that Apple was a “good” company is the dedicated hardware it sells together with its OS. Pairing the hardware with the OS seems to have brought Apple’s product one of the qualities other OSes lack: a user experience to talk about to your friends.

Although many have tried to see why OS X users are some of the highest satisfied customers on Earth, no one has come up with a formula, yet. One thing is certain though, Apple’s catchphrase describes it best, “It just works.”

On the other hand, Microsoft has been “blessed” with an enormous number of hardware combinations to think of when developing even the tiniest and least important piece of its OS. If you think about it, the hardware combination possibilities are almost endless and Microsoft is the one that has to make sure that its OS runs on each of them.

Countless bugs and problems emerge from this huge diversity of machines that Windows runs on. And this is one thing that makes Windows users cringe and look to their OS X-using friends where everything is so easy going. Bad user experience has and will always be a thing Microsoft has to consider.

And why Microsoft is seen in such a bad light is, according to the company itself, the fact that many Windows users do not have original copies of the OS. Regarding these pirated copies, the Redmond-based giant says that bug incidents are in greater numbers when compared with official copies.

In spite of the fact that Microsoft is also involved in the hardware market, the fact that its OS has the biggest chunk of the respective market automatically makes people think of it as a software-only company.

Why is this bad for Microsoft and why has it ruined its reputation in the eyes of so many people? Because, whilst Apple profits from the status of “hardwareonly company” and gets the love from all iPod users all around the world, the former will, most of the time, be criticized for the problems its users encounter while using its OS.

20

BY SAHIL AGARWAL

Whatever anyone tells you, Apple is a hardware company, and it is quite good at what it does (and some of you may argue that it is actually the best).

As Bill Gates said in an interview, the thing that he mostly missed during the process of building a successful company was Steve Jobs’ good taste. And that, as you might have figured out, means a lot coming from someone that not long ago was the man behind Apple’s direct competitor on the OS market.

Another point scored by Apple is its quality as a hardware company. Even more, because its OSes do not have a very big chunk of the market and it is building and selling iPods for a very long time, many people tend to forget that it also deals with software (the iPods would have never been what they are now without the software that runs on them).

When an Apple user finds a bug, he/she lets Apple know about it and waits for a fix to come via the Software Update system. After all, its OS is “kind of” free and worked like a charm from day one and the company will issue a fix in no time considering the limited hardware configurations Apple has to think about when dealing with a bug in the OS. The Microsoft user, on the other hand, will feel cheated on and not working with an OS worthy of its money - an operating system in which bugs show their ugly heads from where he/she least expects it, driver incompatibilities and other small annoyances that make things even worse.

I for one think that Microsoft should be admired for what it has built throughout the years, using a business theory its direct competitor on the OS market also employs: make a product as good as possible and sell it to get money. Unfortunately for the Redmond-based company and its reputation, it did not think all the angles before going in: it forgot about the hardware part.

I think Microsoft fans should try using a Mac before bashing Apple. The latter’s fans, should wait until OS X has enough market share to face serious security risks and/or Apple decides to license its operating system and make it portable to a lot more hardware platforms (and also leave the door open to bugs and incompatibilities). After taking that step, you may see the entire picture.

Think about this: Microsoft brought to the table diversity and Apple good looks, ease of use and stability. They both cover areas that suit their customers’ interests and I believe people should just acknowledge the fact that using their products at their full capacity should be the end goal.

Having a dual boot machine is not such a bad thing if you consider the fact that it incorporates the best of what both companies have. And, if Apple decided to make its OS compatible with other non-Apple branded machines, you might also be able to choose the best of what the hardware market has to offer.

THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS:

APPLE Vs. MICROSOFT

21

THE The decrypted messages are: {from the “Raunak Singhi” page} Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.

Andrew Wiles Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination

Theres more,re-read the headings of each page,see something?

Try harder . . . . . .

Seriously? It’s ok cuz we know them.

Contact us to know all the various answers and “hidden treasures” within this magazine. and of course you can contact us for your “special feedback” and how we can make this magazine better.

P.S:The feedback better be good. :P Raunak Singhi r.singhi@iitg.ac.in raunak.singhi1991@gmail.com +91 9707337145

Designed By R.Bharadwaj

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