There's the email hack where you can insert an image and check the server logs later to see if (and how many times) it was viewed. Its a hack, and not a feature, for a reason. :\
On a similar note, can anyone suggest tools like rescuetime for firefox? The few apps that the Firefox Addons website suggests are all outdated (not compatible with ff4+).
Wouldn't a time tracker app with built-in pomodoro timer and website blocker be the ultimate tool? :) Maybe we could toss in functionality to take screenshots every few seconds and show it back to us at the end of the day.
I'm surprised at how so many people are taking the list itself literally. If you're lucky enough, you might have found something REALLY interesting to do, which kept you motivated enough to keep learning new things as required until you become a Master. But that doesn't mean the rest of Us don't deserve to be good.
What I'm trying to say is, if I wanted to be an awesome programmer just for the sake of it, it still counts. I don't have to have a Grand Idea I hope to achieve by becoming good at it. Once you start getting good at any non-trivial task through hard work, you begin to appreciate the acquired skill and feel good about it. This feedback is enough to keep you going.
I think you get better at getting better as you keep getting better. So as you gain experience, you can figure out what will interest you better and change your direction, rather than having a set path right from the start.
I guess you pretty much nailed it. :\ But by not-so-smart people, I just meant otherwise smart people who just don't WANT to understand how/why circles are different. Its like they're too tied to FB that they don't even want to hear good things about G+ and they dismiss it right away(by shouting abuses about how it sucks and copied fb).
Its FULL of Aha! moments. Everything you read, you already know, but your brain hadn't quite wrapped around it. So its all obvious, but still profound. I'm still 'Aha!'ing from reading the exponentiation. :)
Like pointed out earlier, bad economic policies are making the rich richer and poor poorer. Most of us IT folks are pretty much at the top in terms of income. So yeah, while bad on a national level, I meant it's a pretty good place for IT professionals.
Why do you think 'Bangalore' became a verb?
In most non-managerial posts, even if you paid me half the equivalent of what you get in the US, i'd still be living a comparable life here. That's what I meant by cheap economy.
If I got $1000 from RA/TA(etc) a month in a US grad school, I'd be making more (face value) money than professionals with 4-5 years of experience here. But I can do way more with that money here. I'm spewing out gibberish, but I hope you get my idea. :\
not sure about mac, but other laptops are costlier in India. But Dell is definitely cheaper in the US. :( Conversion rate is about 1USD=50Rs. About 5-10% cheaper in the US.
US: http://www.dell.com/us/p/laptops#facets=51795~0~11401827,135...
India: http://www.dell.com/in/p/laptops.aspx?c=in&l=en&s=dh...
We do have our fair share of Chinese duplicate electronics. :)
The rates are higher because most of the original stuff is also made in china. Import duty is pretty bad here.
[50% import taxes on alcohol.]
The animosity is kind of blurring now, at least in South India. We have Bangalore and Hyderabad which are excellent examples of a super-heterogeneous population, running as one big machine. Chennai's trying, but hasn't gotten there yet. ;)
Thought this might be relevant. There was a recent discussion on freelance job rates and the OP was worried that bids for US$10 per hour by people from India (etc) will make it hard for him to make higher bids.
Consider this. Working at $13 an hour, it equates to ~Rs.650.
650 * 25(days of working in a month) * 12 = Rs1,95,000 per annum, for working an hour a day. If I managed 3 hours of work at that 'cheap' rate, I'd be one of the highest earning person among my friends [who have all graduated in CS and work in various IT companies.] Pretty awesome to have a cheap economy, right? :)