aarghh

The "toy" aspect may also be related to finding an under-served market - it may be a "toy" to someone is because he or she may be unaware of a huge need for the product.

This bears repeating - is working for the man getting you down? Then be the man - and be a better man.

I could not get to the original study, but the article seems to be cherry-picking data. What was the time-line of the study? Is this a short term or long term effect? Perhaps homework isn't the only thing that counts? Also, what was the availability to broadband/internet access?

This is a fascinating statement, and I have found it to be very true in the sample space I have seen. My hypothesis is that a large number of entrepreneurs tend to be highly analytical, and therefore focus on value and utility. Most people though tend to spend money due to an emotional response, and therefore are happy to make the purchase.

That is incorrect. For most of Ibsen's lifetime, Sweden and Norway were one country (Norway separated in 1905). So Strindberg was his countryman.

Based on this sample set, plain weirdness correlates with productivity. Mozart seems to be the only one who followed a "normal routine".

I disagree with the assertion that this is due to the abstraction associated with instrumental music as opposed to vocal music. Most people relate to instrumental music quite well - it needs to have the right rhythm, the right hook. Lots of rock is instrumental, with fairly vapid lyrics - its still pretty popular. Blues - put someone in a room playing John Lee Hooker, and I'd be surprised if they don't start tapping their feet. "Boom, Boom" isn't too much of a lyric, but what a hook!

The problem is the accessibility of "modern" jazz - much of it tends to be divorced from its origin as dance/march music, and that is where the abstraction plays a role. I love Bill Frisell's work, for instance, because of the structural aspects of his music - but its not necessarily very appealing to most of my friends.

First thing I thought of, too.

So I wonder where Linux/BSD or open source would fit? Hinduism? Buddhism?

Voice over LTE is supposed to work using IMS - but will require a fairly expensive upgrade to the network. Operators are keenly aware of the pitfalls of over-the-top voice losing them revenue, but this is an experiment to see if they can do away with IMS altogether. That, and the fact that someone else may try it first...

This response is almost as over the top as the article it derides; but it does have a point - the original article uses a bunch of superlatives without much justification. I am willing to accept that feature x is 'brilliant', but only if you offer me some evidence to that effect.

There is more here than meets the eye. A blog post here http://horadecubitus.blogspot.com/2009/11/csir-bitten-by-one... sheds some more light on it. In general, I have little sympathy for either side - one comes across as an imperious bureaucrat who does not know what accountability is and the other someone who assumes that India should be willing to roll over merely because he's returned from the US to fix it. Governments are hard to deal with across the globe.

All is far from wine and roses in India, but I'm not sure I'd use this incident as a litmus test.

This made me cringe. The article may be revealing a simple truth, but it makes me profoundly uncomfortable to think that this is what modern marketing is based on. I would hope effective marketing communicates the value that a product has - if not, you're making a sale, but do you have a real customer?

I fit squarely into the (Indian) demographic they refer to in the article. My wife and I are pretty clear we will return to India in the next couple of years, and have started planning for the transition. In our case the decision is really an emotional one - we identify with India, and see no reason to change that. The latter clause would not have been true for many in the past since there was a much greater disparity in the opportunities present in the two countries then.

Having said that, the energy in India is quite palpable. There is a sense of possibility that is very compelling, despite all the barriers that still exist. So I don't think I'm going to regret the decision from the perspective of personal growth either.