city02

just like racism did not end in america with the election of the first black president, similarly corruption will not end with the passage of ANY bill there are over a dozen laws on the books already to deal with many different forms of corruption - we don't need more laws; we need better enforcement mechanisms and faster delivery of justice both don't need additional bills but better funding and infrastructure to enable them i have nothing against the bill [either version is better than nothing i suppose] but i have no expectations that it will be a magic bullet to kill corruption which is endemic in our country i can guarantee you will still be forced to pay bribes to get your work done after passage of the bill

the bharti beetel tablet at rs. 10 k looks like a better deal http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/Bharti-group-firm-launches-9-reuters-575706125.html?x=0&.v=1 if anyone buys it please post your review where is it available? i was about to go for the rs. 12 k rcom tablet but now have decided to wait ...

Avoid this website like the plague - i had the misfortune of using them and their incompetence caused avoidable delays in efiling my returns and cost me thousands in penalties [about 10 times the fee for online filing!] 1. don't try to pay in the last week of july since their server gets overloaded and 'loses' the link to the payment gateway. after i entered and verified my SCB card details, the redirect back to the taxSpanner site never completed [the site froze up with a blank page in the browser after password verification by visa]. despite getting an sms alert for the transaction on my visa card from the bank, the merchant could not find any 'proof' of payment and did not credit my account. after calling the bank multiple times, i found out that the merchant had never claimed the payment! SCB even gave me an 'auth code' that i emailed but the site still could not locate the transaction. fortunately all unclaimed amounts are reversed by the bank after 10 working days [about 2 calendar weeks] but shockingly there is absolutely NOTHING you can do other than wait! 2. no phone support only email replies after a week's lag which is highly unprofessional for any site let alone a paid service there are delhi and bangalore numbers for 'official' purposes which means no customer complaints and they don't pick up the phones either. 3. data errors believe it or not, my address was CHANGED from mumbai to bangalore and also my father's name! i have NEVER seen this problem with any other site let alone a tax / efiling one. after you enter and reconfirm all your personal data, its e-filed and when you open the ITR-V the details have 'magically' changed to the bangalore address and father's name to 'P.DAMODARAN' this hapened twice over a period of 2 weeks so its not a freak / one time error or bug. 4. poor user interface there are too many problems in the site to be listed here but some that caused me major problems were the: TDS data entry screen which arbitrarily limits you to only 6 rows and if you need a 7th, you have to re-enter ALL your bank, branch, TAN details again as a new TDS form! why not just a another row with the click of a button since the bank is the same? home loans page which asks you to name / title your particular property and then keeps calling it 'untitled property' after that screen! why bother naming it then? upload of form 16 and then ask to retype ALL the data in it. either don't upload the form, or if you must then COPY all the data from the PDF to the web form as default which would save a lot of time and errors. it defeats the point of having a softcopy! it takes half a dozen clicks to get from 'other interest income' page to the TDS page which is where most bank interest would go and this should have been a single click. here is a copy of my many emails to those guys:

same answer - no its not possible for circular blades to change the direction of your facial hair growth! that's a myth if others believe it also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaving http://www.malehairr...l-shaving-myths

i tried this and got the discount as of today but it gets cancelled if you go for the 0% emi option and is back to rs. 12,999

i beg to disagree - if protesters turn violent, then non-lethal force is justified world wide as we saw in the london riots. before anyone gets upset - i'm not saying if the use of force was justified in this particular case; its a general response to a genralisation above. we should be celebrating a 'divergence of opinions' since that leads to a better discussion in any forum. nothing wrong with 'full blown debate's either - as long as they remain civil / polite they should be encouraged.

has anyone here heard of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law 21 year old observation and still holds true today!

until tablets reach netbook price points for a given screen size, they will not have any meaningful impact on the market in terms of volumes sold so if a 10" netbook costs about rs. 15-16 k, that should be the target pricing for a 10" tablet currently its about double that amount ... i find them too expensive despite owning a car and driver so i'm sure the rest of the middle class will also get 'sticker shock' ! rates are around rs. 3 k - 3.5 k per inch and need to reduce by half rs. 1 k - 2k / inch for tabs

without knowing more details of your particular asset allocation, you should start a SIP of about 1% of your investment amount monthly into a few funds that you like if you don't have a strong opinion, then just go for a mix of index funds and gold funds after a 100 months you won't be unhappy! that's over 8 years so equities would have out performed all other asset classes by then if there is a weekly option and you really want to risk it, you could do 1%/week and see how you stand in 23 months but i would not recommend it since equities need at least 3-4 years to outperform and we still might not have recovered fully by next FY 2012-13 its actually very hard to give meaningful advice without a complete picture of your net worth BTW, your comment directly contradicts since that implies ZERO ability to take risk and your only choice is bank FDs!

i disagree! first we should define what 'safe' means to you; it could be: guranteed / insured capital [first rs. 1 lakh per bank - not branch in your a/c] or fixed returns [fixed deposits] or preservation of capital / principle [company deposits] or lower volatility or inflation adjusted [real] returns or risk adjusted returns since there is no universal definition of 'safe' its purely based on perception and hence different for different segments of the investing population gold and land do NOT qualify as safe on the first 4 criteria above but do so on # 5 the jury's out on # 6 since there is much more liquidity risk with land / property than gold there is virtually NO reason to buy gold physically anymore since you could buy ETF or 'paper' gold virtually this eliminates storage / theft risk, impurity / fraud risk, any insurance risk associated with physical precious metals there are old wives tales that state you % investment of your total assets in cash & equivalents [e.g., FDs] should be your age so a 25 year old could be 75% in equity / property and a 50 yr old could be 50% in MF / gold etc. while age based may be easy to remember, your time horizon is actually far more important. if you need the money within a month, stick to bank savings a/c, within a quarter, stay with bank FDs within a year, you can try company FD under 2 years, put it in bond funds under 3 years, put in hybrid funds / gold over 3 years, put in equity funds / property barring some notable exceptions, higher risk = higher reward = higher volatility = highest inflation beating ability Agreed 100%

I wanted to upgrade my wife's 2 gb SD card bought from Croma to a 4 gb and ran into a strange problem for the first time. This digicam is about 5 years old and i'll update the model number when i get home. i got a sandisk 4gb card first and it gave a 'card error' so upon closer inspection i saw that it was actually a SDHC card instead. i assumed this must be a new format that does not work on older digicams. now you can't return or exchange anything from croma unless its in 'saleable condition' which means once the packaging is opened, it over. fortunately for me the manager had not yet arrived and the supervisor got a 'card locked' message on a digicam. when his assistant tried another digicam, they got a 'unwriteable' message which is essentially the same thing. since they did not realise there is a lock tab on the side of the card, i kept quiet and they finally allowed me to exchange it for a 4 gb croma branded sd card. i was so happy with this consession, i forgot the old 2 gb card at the store [when i opened the cam at home the slot was empty] despite going back to search for it a few hours later we could not locate the old one that worked. even the 2nd SD croma card did not work so i'm wondering if there is a size / space limit on older cams. has anyone else had this issue with 4gb SD cards before? needless to say my wife was upset that i lost the family photos on the old card which was much more important than the actual cost of the 2 gb [about rs. 400]

so i think my question would be how do we know if our digicam supports anything over 2 gb before we open the packaging?

i just bought a norelco for $80 in DC a month ago and its amazingly better than my older phillips [rs. 4-5 k at croma a few years ago]: mine is silver / grey but similar to the image on the left the blades are so much better that i don't even need to apply the 'pre-electric' liquid to my face before shaving to soften my coarse beard the charge lasts twice as long as philips it takes half the time to fully charge up its multi-volt so it works on 110 - 220v worldwide its so much easier to shave that i even managed to shave while watching tv lying in bed [though only when the wife was out of town!] after 1-2 years of just weekly use the logo sticker on one of the three blades falls off which does not affect performance however, i also keep a Gillette as backup [M3 power or fusion with 4 blades per cartridge instead of 3] which needs a AAA battery so that i can shave against the grain for extra smoothness that my wife demands! on an unrelated note: i tried shaving with a regular mach 3 and was shocked at how much worse it was than the battery version of gillette ... it took more time / strokes and more cuts [usually in the neck area] for the same end result unfortunately i have not seen the turbo in india yet but highly recommend it for those who are not using electric shavers i have been using electric shavers for 15 years now without any side effects and my beard is NOT coarser or 'circular' as mentioned in prev posts here i just shave 2-3 times a week instead of daily since i'm too lazy most shavers work best on flat surfaces like your cheeks but not as well on bumpy / angled surfaces like neck / adam's apple so you can feel the difference and need to do a little 'touch up' it takes less than a week for my skin to adjust so its not as big a deal ... i have not yet come across any electric shaver that allows me to use it 100% as mentioned above - its only smooth when moving your hand with the grain but you can feel the roughness against the grain for which there is no substitute for my gillette. hybrid is best of both worlds

i know its too late now but which hospital did you go to? i have a contact at KDA hospital in andheri if you need a 2nd opinion before going back ...

http://www.simpletaxindia.org/2010/07/234-234b-234c-interest-calculator-free.html this is very useful if a human is doing your taxes for you so you can double check their calculations i saved a few thousands in incorrect charges u/s 234 b that my helpful CA had nicely added on! its only applicable if 90% of your advance taxes have NOT been paid ... in my case 92% was paid via TDS with 'friends' like these who needs enemies?

gave it a try also here is my version of an easy site tax filing site design as opposed to the half a dozen i've tried out: no registration required! use facebook / twitter / yahoo etc. for login upload form 16 take all details like name, addr, dob, etc directly from pdf upload form 16a [if any] connect to NSDL to get all TDS details highlight any deductions missed for tax planning purposes enter any other income / rental [first real data entry] any taxes / expenses / loan interest for deductions in case of any refund take bank details [optional] in case of dues, allow online / netbanking payment review before submitting pay then submit [amazon style - payment / login is delayed as much as possible in the flow since its a 'barrier'] print or get digital sign provide option to have return emailed as backup [so even email is not required if you don't want a backup] the future versions would allow upload of home loan pdf also to bring in principal & interest details to further reduce data entry

true, but i feel differently - if you need it, you buy it [assuming you can afford it] supply follows demand in this situation but its great that you will be able to put it to some use i have 2 DVR at home and both are about 3/4th full despite my deleting some daily after watching! i just can't go back to live TV, the commercial breaks seem so intrusive and irritating when you get used to fwd them...

i tried it but got stuck in their password requirements - they need a symbol which means i'll never be able to remember it! all my passwords only have 'dash' which is not acceptable to the site! talk about completely useless restrictions... its astonishingly hard to find a good site for filing online. i guess i'll stick with my CA doing the online filing for now. how hard would it be to provide a password hint at all logins? [not a secret question since many sites require your to remember the questions itself or type it in]

did you mean 'indulged' instead? if you had no use of the dvr, maybe you could have saved some money and gone for a regular DTH. biggest use of recorder is to save programs when you are away from home / travelling or usually asleep [e.g., 11:30pm - 7:30am, etc] ... if you don't mind missing your fav shows then its of little use.

i feel its a mistake to fix on the same brand before checking the discounts. what if the service is annoying for any reason on one of the TVs? you are stuck with the same aggravation for the other one also just go on the basis of final discounted price for both to see which combination gets you the best deal many shops may discount additional if you buy both TV from them regardless of the brand tata sky will work on any of the brands you mentioned so that will not be a constraint if you have the budget go for LED else go for LCD i have a 32" LG plasma and the 'ghosting' is very visible when you power off so avoid these also some power component tends to burn out unless you remember to switch off from the mains which can cost rs. 6-7 k to replace our was replaced after 15-18 months of purchase and the warranty is 1 year as usual i don't have to worry about this issue on my older panasonic LCD which has been used twice as much without any burnout

is there any site where you can upload your form16 and not have to retype all the data? many of the sites i visited required either a payment first before upload or asked you to email the attachments instead i don't want any human intervention, just upload forms and refresh the data immediately [fully online - no offline] i tried http://easyitfiling.com/ but after entering a bunch of data and providing my email, password etc it timed out then asked for a user id which was never set and is not the same as email since i tried it i have of course emailed them but no reply yet...

i thought that there was a limit for CDMA also - no tower can handle unlimited active callers regardless of any future technology. its possible the limit for CDMA is higher than the limit for GSM or that CDMA slowly degrades voice quality while with GSM its all or nothing for tower congestion.

chirag, i hate customer care as much as any other subscriber but if anyone MADE you sign anything, its probably limited to the particular branch or office where he is from and not a corporate policy to do something illegal nationwide...

i also use matrix and cdma roaming rates have some down for the US from rs. 1/sec [rs 60 / min] to about rs 25/min outgoing and 20/min incoming [incoming sms are now free]

i think its good that apple is cutting prices even if its on outdated but certainly not obsolete devices. [ i would never buy ANY phone at rs. 19 k since my budget is below rs 9-10 k for a QWERTY with 3+mp cam & flash with dual SIM / quad band. ] this cut will allow double the number of people who buy and experience an iphone. i hope its successful since it might prompt the arrogant marketers [at apple] to further slash prices again...