Wednesday, August 31, 2005

"Patently" Infringing

Yesterday Creative technology was awarded the patent for orgnasing digital music under different categories. This is similar to the way music is stored in an IPOD and thus this patent may mean APPLE may have to share its fortunes with Creative.
Creative's CEO also said that they had the NOMAD jukebox 13 months before Apple came out with their IPOD.
So these guys had the idea much before Apple did. I decided to check out what they did, financially, with this idea and the one year lead they had. Comapring the two stock prices on yahoo showed this -


Apple stock has gone up by 150% where as Creative's stock went down by about 10% in the last on year. Well, may be stock price is not a good indication of the company's performance. May be we can compare income of the two companies-

A quick check of their balance sheet showed this:
(net income)

2004 Creative 134 mil Apple 276 mil

2003 Creative 23 mil Apple 69 mil

2002 Creative -19 mil Apple 65mil

From 2003 to 2004 Apple's income has increased by 200 million where as that of Creative has gone up by about 100 million. Creative's statement, from 2004, attributes the growth to increased sales from their MP3 players and other personal entertainment products. Looks like Creative's growth has been pretty good but just that they could have done much better than Apple with the advantage of being in th market before them.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Kavidhai

well, lets try Kavidhai too.. (Tamil Poetry)

kaatru, puyal, maram
kadhal, nee, naan,
verodu ennai aativaithaye...

thural mazhai paathu vandha ennai,
puyal mazhaiyil muzhgadithaye,
ezhuda endru sollum sooriyan illai,
unnodu vandha megam vizhiyai maraithadhey,

paarvai andri, balam indri , patuthivitta ennai,
kai pidithu konjam karai yetrividu kannama...

shud try writing this in Tamil too.

காற்று, புயல், மரம்
காதல், நி, நான்
வெரொடு என்னை ஆட்டி வைத்தாயே
(not sure about verodu..)
தூறல் மழை பாற்து வன்த என்னை,
புயல் மழையில் முழ்கடிதாயே
(There are probably some spelling errors..)
எழுடா என்று சொல்லும் சூரியன் இல்ல

will try to explain this later.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Latest news - man forgets wife in Gas station !!

Read this on CNN today :
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ROME, Italy (Reuters) -- A Macedonian man left his wife at an Italian service station and only realized he had driven off without her six hours later.
The couple, who were travelling with their 4-year-old daughter, pulled over for petrol in the coastal city of Pesaro as they were heading back to their home to Germany.
After filling the tank, the husband drove away -- without noticing that his 30-year-old wife had got out of the car to go to the toilet.
--------------------------xxx------------------------------------

Is this possible ? Is his wife so quite ? How can one not know that a person is missing from his car ? Or is he so used to ignoring his wife that he did not notice her absence ? Or did he place her in his SEP field ? ( Somebody Else's Problem, according to Hitchhikers Guide the easiset way to make something disappear is put it in somebody else's problem field, then one will not notice it even if it is right in front of one's eyes as the brain would just block it out !!)

anyway, thought this was really weird.