I am excited to be here. Just now completed my registration for Mix '07 in Venetian Convention Center, here in Las Vegas. Collected my free copies of Vista Ultimate and Expression Studio. The atmosphere here seems to be more fun and informative than last year. If you at home you can watch the keynotes live from Visitmix.com. I will keep you posted on things I found interesting. Stay tuned. And if you are attending Mix, remember to say "hello" to me.

Sometime back I had posted about President ABJ Abdul Kalam's recommending to give Bandwidth free just like how Governments today provide basic Road Infrastructure free. I didn't expect Government and Politicians to take note of this. Surprise!

The suggestion seems to be noticed and government of india is planning to give broadband free by 2009. This is certainly a very welcome move and when it happens will certainly give a big boost to economy.

On my flight from London to Seattle, I watched the recent James Bond 007 movie - Casino Royale. Daniel Craig has acted well and is looking good as the new bond. But the movie was unlike any previous Bond movie I have seen - pretty boring for a Bond movie. No new gadgets, car chases - it was more physical fights and chases like an Indian Movie.     

Today I started from Chennai to USA, enroute London (that's where I am doing this post after paying GBP 10 for 24 Hrs T-Mobile Wi-Fi) by British Airways. Like I have said in my past posts, almost all my Non-Tamil Movie watching happens while in long distance flights like these. Today I got a Upgrade to Business Class and could enjoy to a private selection of movies in the BA flight. While the first 7 hours of flight I slept, the last two hours I caught up with some movie watching.

The movie was about the Late Uganda Military Ruler Idi Amin and the friendship with a young Scotland doctor who comes to Uganda to help in a NGO. The doctor initially reluctant to take the President's Physician job, then get lured by the benefits and status it provides and soon becomes Amin's trusted advisor - little did he know that closeness to power centre's are always a double-edged sword. The movie depicts the doctor's emotional dilemma between his Western Principals and friendship with the President. It doesn't attempt to be an historic record of all events of Idi Amin's rule. Nice to watch.

While in the terminal I came to an Italian Coffee Shop "Costa" for a cup of tea. But look below at their monstorous cup given for GBP 1.5. The cup was much bigger than a regular soup bowl, so I had to definitely take a snap of it!

(I have kept my Nokia 9500 next to the cup for size comparison)

Internet has fundamantely changed the way people get free (as in freedom) access information and news. Before Internet, governments around the world could stop control access to their individual benefits. But with Internet it all changed, even in countries with protective regimes you can access Internet freely to a large extend. Many governments around the world tried to block sites and failed to a large extend. I personally believe other than Terrorist and Illegal sites, there should be no ban on any other sites. In the long run it is good for people in power too, to allow free flow of information.  

I wanted to do this post on seeing a news article today in MSN India that "Indian IT ministry refuses to ban websites". Sensible move. What ever is the reasoning behind this, I think this validates the power of Indian Democracy and freedom of speech here.

Microsoft today announced through Soma's blog - the official name of the technology that they have been previewing as "WPF/E". It is now going to be called Microsoft Silverlight. "Silverlight" is probably the most fanciest name that has come from the company (MS) that is known to keep its product names long and uninspiring like "Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office System".

What I found interesting in WPF/E betas was its ability to use XAML and JavaScript for interesting solutions. Now with the official announcement that Silverlight will be cross browser, cross-platform and will work as a rich media serving platform, it sounds more convincing to succeed. I am dying to see this closer in person at Mix '07 in next few weeks at Las Vegas.

If you have been using Vista, Outlook 2007 combination and using POP3 (Non Exchange Server) for downloading emails - you may be experiencing slow email download. This might be due to the auto tuning of TCP/IP in Vista. Here is a Microsoft Support KB that helps to resolve this.

Update (20 April 2007): Similarly if you feel that search is slow with Outlook 2007 (I liked Lookout, unfortunately it doesn't work with Outlook 2007) then download this fix from Microsoft.

I feel myself very divided on this subject. As an Indian Citizen, I feel I shouldn't be criticizing or commenting on other countries immigration policies - more so on American Immigration Policies.

I generally subscribe to the idea that you like what they offer go for it, you don't like it then don't go. This is for many reasons one of them being - Nearly a decade back when I applied for the first time a US B1 visa I felt bad about standing in line from pre-dawn till evening in front of American Consulate in Chennai. Then in one of my trips to UK, I met a second generation Indian - a UK Citizen who is doing extremely well and working for a leading MNC bank there in their investment division. He says that whenever his work takes him to India, he has to go through the ordeal of getting an Indian visa and how the officials in Indian Embassy there are not helpful at all. I am sure people don't queue in front of Indian Embassies, but neverthless it showed that my own country's immigration policies and procedures may not be all that great too. Each country has its own problems, compulsions and reasonings.

On the other hand, I feel America should be more welcoming in their immigration policy (At Vishwak we have our own subsidiary in USA we have an interest on the H1 and immigration rules). Last year the overall H1 limit of 65,000 applications got exhaused around May 3rd week. This year on the opening day of April 2nd itself over 150,000 applications have been received. It is surprising that the country which was formed on the basis of freedom and welcoming people to immigrate now has a limit on the number of most-skilled and intelligent people from around the world who can come in to their country. In this regard I found the recent "Economist" article titled "America's useless immigration system" to be well-written on this subject. Reading that is when I decided to write this post.