Plagiarism: Up Close and Personal
While in college, I used to dream of writing for the largest selling technology publication in India of that time. Therefore, when I got an offer from them, I was overjoyed at getting this honor. From the moment I got off at Mumbai’s Borivali station, I was eager to get started, determined to make a mark for myself, and show to colleagues what this 22-year old was capable of! I was sure of finishing my assignments well within the deadlines. However, during the first few days at CHIP, something happened; something that could have ended my dream of a career in technical writing, and something that I rate as the most embarrassing moment of my life.
Nokia E71: The iPhone Killer
To be honest, I had every mood to buy the Apple iPhone 3G when it launched in India, but the price of Rs.31,000 for the 8GB and Rs.36,000 for the 16GB version was a definite put off. Especially when you compare it to the price of Rs.8,500 ($199) if purchased in the US. But I needed more reasons to heal my now bruised ambition of not being able to buy an iPhone. Googled it and came up with aplenty ; on an iPhone, transferring contacts from the phone to the SIM card and selecting multiple contacts isn’t possible, neither is can one forward or copy-paste text are also non-existent in the iPhone.
No longer was I nursing a bruised ambition. On the contrary, I was rather proud of myself for not having spent hard earned money on the iPhone.
But as luck would have it, the money didn’t stay with me for too long, at least not all of it. On Friday, I bartered my two-year old Nokia N70 and Rs.17,000 for the Nokia E71. While going in for the deal I had no clue what the Nokia E71 was capable off, or did it match up to the iPhone. I just took it for the its excellent looks. Once home I went online to check out its features and was pleasan6tly surprised to read that it was regarded <a href=”http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/review-nokia-e7.html”>Nokia E71 Is a Legit iPhone Killer</a> by Wired magazine. My pleasure of having made the deal of my life grew manifold when I read that the Nokia E71 was also being labeled as a competitor to the BlackBerry Bold and the HP IPAQ 900.
I’m not going to reinvent the wheel by listing out the features of Nokia E71, you might as well check them out here. My only grouse with the E71 is that it should have had a 5 megapixel camera rather than the 3.2 it currently has. But hey, if I had indeed bought the iPhone, I would have got a 2 megapixel camera, so the Nokia E71’s 3.2 megapixel camera way better than that of the iPhone or any of the Blackberry models available in India.
So here’s my advice to all prospective iPhone buyers in India. Do yourself a favor and do not buy the iPhone, get the Nokia E71 and put the balance cash into tax saving investments! Not only will you pay less tax, your wife won’t shout at you for spending Rs.31000 on a phone that has an average camera.
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CNN-IBN Gets It Wrong
Do you have any clue why an American citizen Keith Heywod would use “alarbi_gujarat@yahoo.com” as his e-mail address? Neither do I! But our friends at CNN-IBN led by Rajdeep Sardesai seem to agree that alarbi_gujarat@yahoo.com is indeed Heywod’s e-mail address which was hacked into and used to send e-mails giving advance warning of the Ahmedabad serial blasts.
Only if CNN-IBN had bothered to check the facts before blurting out this ugly concoction, they would have known that in fact, it was Heywod’s IP address that was spoofed and not his e-mail address. Watch the video from IBNLive.com and see for yourself:
Update Aug 26, 2008: The video has either been removed from the website, or the permalink has been changed. Guess you’ll have to trust me on this one!
Though the ultimate premise of this story was to warn viewers to safeguard themselves while on the Internet, the reasons for doing so was totally incorrect. This story makes us believe that the terrorists hacked Heywod’s e-mail address and sent e-mails illegally. In reality, the American presently staying in Navi Mumbai told the police that either his computer was hacked into or someone used his wireless connection to illegally send an e-mail via his network. The IP address is what helped the police raid the American’s house within hours of the serial blasts.
Yes, an e-mail address can be hacked, people have their identities stolen all the time, but in this case this isn’t what really happened. Here’s hoping that CNN-IBN will check and recheck their facts before airing such news reports.