Wikileaks, Rahul G and Diggy Raja

The times that we are living are indeed interesting, as any time ever when anyone has lived in, would have been. Only the manner of surprise changes, but shocks and surprises have always kept times interesting. We become shock proof or fail to be surprised at events that no longer remain a rarity. Bomb blasts were a HUGE thing in the late 80's for Mumbaiites. Now multiple blasts, make people to go through the motions - check for your kith and kins' whereabouts and once you are sure they are safe, display robotic emotions and get on with your work.

Should it be a surprise that in the age of internet and digital information, top secrets should become public information in the manner which Wikileaks is taking out TOP SECRET data on the net? Every thing transmitted over the net becomes a public property. It might be protected now, but over time it will be dug out with advanced tools and utilities. Rest assured of that! Wikileaks was waiting to happen and this wont be the last time secret info passed over internet is made public. Although, in this case, it does make the lives of informers and diplomats difficult and risky.

Wikileaks is making US diplomats scurry for cover and to cover whatever leaks come out. The situation US diplomats are in is like that of a family, whose 'good-for-nothing' nephew is giving out innermost circle secrets to other relatives and friends. The question that comes is what would a family do in such a case? Will it not try to preempt to tell other friends the information that would be given out later by the 'traitor'.

This idea makes the connection between statements given out by Congress spokesperson Digvijaya Singh few days ago, about he having spoken with ATS chief Ajit Karkare on 26/11, when the ATS chief confided in Diggy that Hindu fundamentalists have threatened his life. Now for any honest police constable too, threats to life are a common occurence in India. Diggy failed miserably to explain how Karkare confided with him such a matter and why. But not getting into that debate, the question that arises is, Is US administration making its own version of leaks to preempt loss of face for its allies, friends and 'elusive contact of the past, who are now clearly interested in reaching out to the US admin- Read Rahul Gandhi (Praise Be Upon Him)'?

A week after Digvijaya Singh's 'revelations', Wikileaks put up the damning conversation Rahul G had with US Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer that India had a bigger threat from Hindu fundamentalists than Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Considering how every statement, is calibrated to suit the approaching uncomfortable event and how every new move is an attempt, to deflect attention from a previously uncontrollable circumstance, it should not be any surprise either, that UPA2 knew exactly what is coming out of Wikileaks.

So try to 'preempt' what will be the news in TV in the evening, based on what headlines you read in your newspaper on that morning.

Ayodhya - Ram Janmabhoomi Case

The verdict is out in the Ram Janmabhoomi Case, Allahabad High Court Bench has decided Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas, Sunni Wakf Board and Nimrohi Akhara as party in the ownership of land and divided it amongst them. The verdict has been a victory for the liberal democracy propounded by our Constitution. Debates and verdicts like this - and the NYC mosque - can come up only in liberal democracies like India and US. In nations like Saudi Arabia there will never even be a debate about such issues. For that and for the verdict having passed out peacefully in the entire nation, we all Indians deserve credit.

Now the next step will certainly be the building of a grand temple at the site, if the Sunni Wakf board doesnt appeal in the Supreme Court against the HC decision.

What should be taken into consideration that a Grand and functioning Mosque will also come up at the site on the land awarded to the Sunni Wakf Board where the non-functioning mosque was demolished. After having dealt a sensitive issue with patience, we should be careful not to make the place an epitome of oneupmanship.

Hope there would not be a contest amongst the temple and mosque designs to make one 'more Grand', 'more magnificent' than the other.

Hope there would not be a contest to make the minar and shikhars taller than each other.

Hope there would not be a contest on the decibel levels emanating from prayers from each shrine.

Hope the approach road to the site is made a little more logically accessible.

Hope devotees visiting the shrines are careful enough to have better civic sense.

Hope after another 60 years, history records the site as a once disputed but no longer contentious piece of land.

Rupee gets new Symbol

New Rupee Symbol

Today heard that Rupee has got a new symbol as shown above.

A five-member jury chose IITian D Udaya Kumar’s design and forwarded it for Cabinet approval.

Kumar’s symbol represents the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and the Roman capital ‘R’ as visualized by the FM. “We intend to formalise a symbol for the Indian rupee which reflects and captures Indian ethos and culture,” Mukherjee said in his Budget speech this year.

As is the wont in India, with no other important and relevant issues to fight for, imagine a ruckus for not having a Dravidian 'Ra' representation. There are other languages, but most language chauvinists would not mind a Devanagari representation considering it closer to Sanskrit, the root of all Indian languages. The most opposition, if any at all ever comes, could come only from the Dravidian region.

Keeping in line with the demand, also cross-checking again the no. of MP's that UPA depends from Dravid land, a new symbol might be proposed as follows:

New symbol acceptable in Dravid Land

This covers 'Ra' in Roman, Dravidian and Devanagari. It takes a lot to make everyone happy and the symbol is open for further distortions(errr... improvements) from offended parties who have sizable no. of MP's in the parliament

Truth about Paul, the Oracle Octopus!

Truth behind Paul, the psychic Oracle Octopus' accuracy in correctly predicting the results of 8 games out of 8 in the recently concluded FIFA Football World Cup 2010.

And you thought this is a psychic Octopus?

CRAZY!!!

Are you consulting the neighbourhood Popatlal for your stock trading?

What Vegetable Are You?

Spinach You are well accomplished in your field and are sufficiently secure and proud of your individuality. You think about alleviating the pain and sufferings of mankind. You wish that people who waste their time talking about Joel Stein raised their voices and acted against the banes of our society such as, illiteracy, hunger, poverty, war, torture, which are prevalent even after so much advancement in science and technology

Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by

India's loss at Twenty20 World Cup

There have been different reactions all around after the drubbing of Indian team in Twenty 20 World Cup. Many blame it directly to the IPL. I found a hilarious image describing how monetized performance in IPL dilutes players commitment to the national teams cause.

Caste-based Census, Disaster in the making

Parliament is all set to adopt the column of Caste in the next census which has already began for 2011.

There could not have been a more regressive step at this stage when India is trying to usher in its struggling populace into the global stage and is spreading its wings on its flight towards prosperity.

History will definitely judge, this as being in no small terms any different than Pakistan's Shariah Law by Nawaz Sharif. This negates all the efforts by nationalists to bring in social equality. Right from the time of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, Raja Rammohan Roy to Veer Savarkar and Mahatma Gandhi, all visionaries have strove politically to eliminate this menace. Post-independence too India has had many heroes for this cause. Similarly, there have been no dearth of religious saints who have advocated social equality. But caste lurks back. Like a hydra headed monster, now we have different spectacles of castes. We have Dalit Sikhs, Dalit Christians, Christian Brahmins, etc;

There is a good piece by Swapan Dasgupta in ToI 'Face it, India is all about caste'. He refers how India had always taught its children that the British had used divide and rule and how vilified they were. Ironically, the same tactics are being used by the politicians of present day.

He mentions about Valentine Chirol who attributed Hinduisms failure to conjure up a nation to the fact that 'the vital structure of Hinduism negates everything that can constitute a nation, namely caste system.'

Caste system is so deep rooted and prioritized, that a person is first loyal to his caste, then his nation. This pulled down any nation building and invited foreigners to make merry.

Chirol stands vindicated, when after 60 years of nurturing, a supposed modern, democratic, educated society falls back on a concept whose annihilation was once predominantly the goal of a modern India.

Here we are, trying to be the next super power and then we are bringing back the divisive element to the forefront. In the race to the bottom as opposed to the Sanskritization of earlier decades, may be each caste will win and squeeze more than its deserved share, but India will lose.

The Khap panchayats demanding that honour killing cases be pardoned and Inter-Gotra marriage be disallowed by Hindu Marriage Act is just the beginning of the avalanche that this approach will bring.

Politicans being truthful to their tribe, Navin Jindal - yes the futuristic, American educated Congress MP, who fought for the common man's right to hoist the national flag on behalf of all Indians - has met the Home Minister to lobby for the Khap Panchayats. Om Prakash Chautala of 'Indian National Lok Dal' has pushed further, for a ban on Inter-Caste marriages as well!

Not surprisingly, Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt have advocated the caste-based census. They had to justify it, its the Congress which is bringing this law!!

Rajdeep Sardesai says, it is hypocritical for the people to oppose caste-based census when we have pages and pages of Caste-based matrimonial adverts. Great Rajdeep, so go ahead now justify the Khap Panchayats demand. Someone whom you were showing as the villains of 21st century until last week. You find yourself standing together with them now. Support them or call yourself a HYPOCRITE!

This is all only to include the OBC - Other Backward Class category, in the census, to know their actual numbers, so that in future we can have more and more debates, push and pulls for reservations.

Apparently, an OBC person earning less than 4 Lakh Rupees per annum is considered poor, while all General Category people are considered rich by our nation. Disaster in the making. By all means caste-based reservations for which this whole exercise is being taken up only looks to replace the elite from one supposed caste to another set of people from a different caste.

What we needed was a count on the no. of poor people, not the no. of people belonging to a particular caste.

As Swapan has concluded "Chirol was right and we may as well acknowledge it."

When we dole out incentives to the winners of the 'Race to the bottom', we are treating, a seeming to be in pitiable state as a virtue, rather than treating someone who is actually pitiable.

We might try hard to forget our caste, but the politics and reservation policy will not let us forget it.

Ajmal Kasab - Held Guilty!

Finally, Kasab has been found guilty of the crime which we all saw in horror. I had blogged about Kasab and how we are making a mockery of not making a good example out of him, in 'Of Kasab, civility and the criminal justice system'

Kasab, we need to get rid of this guy, not cause it will help us to stop other terrorists, but for the fear of Kandahar - II, at least that. We dont want to see him languishing in jail for long, munching on tax-payers money and then some fine day being exchanged for a few patriots.

When we send him to his old, fat and ugly virgins, we need to make it look foolish for him, to have had joined these organisations. So that he isnt made a martyr amongst his people, the people who use a sewage canal as a swimming pool ,as is reported to have been the case from his village, where he was used to enjoy the fun and frolic of pushing others into the canal. Any chance of him being considered as a martyr and the whole exercise of going through judiciary and the agonizing wait and patience endured by the people of India will be lost.

We had a good chance to make an example out of him. Hope we make a good example. If we make his death heroic, then may be next terrorists would be praying, 'Jannat bulane se pehle, EK baar Mumbai police se pakadwa de'

When there were reports that an entire ward was being cleared off for security reasons in the J J Hospital, Mumbai where he was supposed to visit for his hernia operation, it seemed as if he had gained more after getting caught than even joining the morbid ideology. It should be made clear that he is paying a price for his deeds and is not enjoying the hospitality of a wannabe civil society. If the wrongdoer is not getting his dose of punishment and the message doesnt go across that 'you mess with us at your own risk' then all talk of being an advanced civil society smacks of futility.

Beyond that, we comfortably forget that his handlers are 'safe and sound' plotting the next attack. We cannot consider to have moved much if they are let free. Why Hafeez's or Lakhvi's, we couldnt even nail the other duo caught in this case. The judge ridiculed at the evidence saying, Google could give better maps than those found with the two guys. They are acquitted and signs are that their cases wont be appealed against in higher courts.

If this is the condition of our legal retribution to people caught attacking us, then we could be fooling none but ourselves in rejoicing about this being as a victory over terror and a triumph of our judiciary.

Imagine if Hawaldar Ombale had cared for his life a bit more and had killed Kasab when Kasab attacked him. No Lakhvi's or Hafeez's name would have ever been out.

Saying that I guess we achieved only that much, getting the names out of the plotters of the attack, nothing more.

Kasab's death was a surety once he pulled that trigger at CST. How he dies is of not much consequence in the larger context of fight against terror.

Maya's Malajaal

So Mayawati is again in the news and being derided by the national media for her Garland of Rs. 1000 notes. Such brazen display of wealth is shameful and dangerous for the country, especially to the impoverished economically and socially backward classes that she claims to be representing. She could very well be named Malawati after she accepted the second garland of Rs. 18 lakhs the next day.

The only poor or backward class in her Mega-garlanded Mega Rally, to mark 25 years of the Bahujan Samaj Party and 76th year of Kanshi Ram its founder's birth anniversary, were the audience who might have come from all parts of country for the free food, lodging and money paid to them. But something is wrong in this whole saga.

It is clear, that, the Congress is highlighting its competitors in bad light through immoral means by pursuing its agenda through a section of media.

I dont mean to support Maya or her janjaal or any politicians for that matter. Although cannot overlook the fact that, Congress backed by a section of media is desperate to get hold of UP, since it throws the maximum seats in LS, which means more power to them. First it was the SP now the BSP. Hence, the lapses by these parties were being highlighted diligently.

Congress' General Secretary and man in charge of Uttar Pradesh Digvijay Singh, who visited the houses of terrorists caught in the Batla House Encounter to offer condolences, put the figure of the amount on garland to Rs. 22 crores odd lakhs.

But think of it, IF it has to have 22 crores then it needs 220000 notes of Rs. 1000. This means even if we consider each note to weigh 1 gram - the threads tying them not being accounted - then the garland was weighing 220Kgs easily, held up by 4-5 arms.

This is Impossible! Congress is misleading the country.

I can dislike Maya for her blatant display of corruption, but it does not seem moral to charge her for propaganda spread in a biased form.

My video

JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure | Video on TED.com

JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure | Video on TED.com

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

There is an expiry date to blame your parents for your failures and for steering you on the wrong course!!!

Subroto Bagchi's speech to IIM-Bangalore Graduates 2006

Go Kiss the World - Subroto Bagchi
This talk was delivered to the Class of 2006 at the IIM, Bangalore on defining success by Subroto Bagchi, CEO - MindTree.

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was, and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep – so the family moved from place to place and without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal , she was a matriculate when she married my Father.
My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system, which makes me what I am today and largely, defines what success means to me today.
As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government- he reiterated to us that it was not ”his jeep” but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days.. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep – we could sit in it only when it was stationary.
That was our early childhood lesson in governance – a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.
The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father’s office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raj u was appointed – I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raj u, ‘ Raj u Uncle’ – very different from many of their friends who refer to their family driver, as ‘my driver’. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.
To me, the lesson was significant – you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.
Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha – an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was neither gas, nor electrical stoves.The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition – delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson.
He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”. That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.
Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios – we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios – alluding to his five sons.
We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply,” We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.
Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.
Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”.
That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.
My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan . My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper – end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University’s water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.
Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.
Over the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”.. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.
To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.
Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life’s calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places – I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world.
In 1992, while I was posted in the US , I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi . I flew back to attend to him – he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you not gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.
There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.
My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion.
Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts – the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant’s world.
My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj . He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca , my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.
In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.
Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.
Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar . I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said,
“Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity was telling me to go and kiss the world!
Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.
Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and God’s speed. Go! kiss the world.

Larry Ellison speech at Yale University Graduation Ceremony 2000

This is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's speech to the Graduates of Yale University 2000 Batch. He got dragged out of the stage before he could end it. Makes excellent and thought-provoking reading!

Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want you to do something for me. Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 thirty years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude.

"In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers.

"You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Lawrence 'Larry' Ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not.

"Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet -- for now, anyway -- is a college dropout, and you are not.

"Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not.

"And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not.

"Hmm... you're very upset. That's understandable. So let me stroke your egos for a moment by pointing out, quite sincerely, that your diplomas were not attained in vain. Most of you, I imagine, have spent four to five years here, and in many ways what you've learned and endured will serve you well in the years ahead. You've established good work habits. You've established a network of people that will help you down the road. And you've established what will be lifelong relationships with the word 'therapy.' All that of is good. For in truth, you will need that network. You will need those strong work habits. You will need that therapy.

"You will need them because you didn't drop out, and so you will never be among the richest people in the world. Oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to No. 10 or No. 11, like Steve Ballmer. But then, I don't have to tell you who he really works for, do I? And for the record, he dropped out of grad school. Bit of a late bloomer.

"Finally, I realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you, are wondering, 'Is there anything I can do? Is there any hope for me at all?' Actually, no. It's too late. You've absorbed too much, think you know too much. You're not 19 anymore. You have a built-in cap, and I'm not referring to the mortar boards on your heads.

"Hmm... you're really very upset. That's understandable. So perhaps this would be a good time to bring up the silver lining. Not for you, Class of '00. You are a write-off, so I'll let you slink off to your pathetic $200,000-a-year jobs, where your checks will be signed by former classmates who dropped out two years ago.

"Instead, I want to give hope to any underclassmen here today. I say to you, and I can't stress this enough: leave. Pack your things and your ideas and don't come back. Drop out. Start up.

"For I can tell you that a cap and gown will keep you down just as suredly as these security guards dragging me off this stage are keeping me dow..."


Although this makes for a good satirical reading, it is just that, a satire from 'Satire Wire'. Here is an analysis of what actually happened. Yes, Larry Ellison was never present at the '00 Graduation Ceremony.

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

This is one of the Best Stuffs on the Web!