BizTalk!@AIMK

Though its already late but its never too late, so here AIMKBlogger presents some of the SNAPS from the Grand Fest.

Once upon a time in India NIMC aka AIMK, Abhinav Dasgupta as Bhuvan in AIMK’s farewell to MBA 10

Shivani as tomboy Anjali from blockbuster Kuch kuch hota hai…

Anisha Talwar as Basanti from Sholey

A group of people from MBA 10 as unidentified roles from Bollywood… my poor Bollywood knowledge you won’t find any captions in below pics

Like every other campus, people at NIMC aka AIMK are no different when it comes to cyber combat. I have been knowing finest snipers, few of the toughest assault team (Hellboy, DT, Rage to name a few)

Counter Strike

Counter Strike, the power puff game which rocks whole night all across the campus through the LAN. The latest version of this game is Counter-Strike: Source - It blends Counter-Strike’s award-winning team play action with the advanced technology of Source™ technology. Featuring state of the art graphics, all new sounds, and introducing physics, Counter-Strike: Source is a must-have for every action gamer. The popularity is still rising and even students have started arranging tournament in college fests with AIMK always as winners, after all practice pays.

Counter-Strike was developed first as a Half-Life modification. Therefore named “Half-Life: Counter-Strike.” The original version was a 3rd-party Half-Life modification, but since then it has grown into a commercial mod and later advertised as separate game in itself. It still uses and runs on the Half-Life game engine and is based on its unchanged structure. The game provide ultimate dynamically streamlined multi-player experience activated via Steam, and is currently the most played PC shooter in terms of players.

Pocket Tanks

When I joined campus it was pocket tank which was attraction of everybody during interaction period. During that times it was my room-mate Sandeep who had a computer (single in our block of residence) who installed and almost everybody tried his luck in battle field.

Pocket Tanksis a 1-2 player computer game for Windows and Mac OS X, created by Blitwise Productions, developer of Super DX-Ball and Neon Wars. Adapted from Michael Welch’s earlier Amiga game Scorched Tanks, dozens of weapons ranging from simple explosive shells to homing missiles, and the ability to move the tank.At the moment, players can have up to 210 different weapons total. Pocket Tanks is often abbreviated as PTanks.

Before I got introduced to Counter Strike (though I played very less - and was first one to create a community on CS in AIMK) it was the Need for speed which was being played by most of our MCA 5 super seniors, they were excellent players, some were using their dorm computers while many were using the Net Labs, it was all fun with this Network Car racing game, another hit in the campuses and any other place. Here one name who championed this game must be referred - Ashok Karki from batch MBA 7 (unbeatable in his era).

NFS - Need For Speed

The Need for Speed series was originally developed by Distinctive Software, a game studio based in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to Electronic Arts’ purchase of the company in 1991, it had already created popular racing games such as Stunts and Test Drive II: The Duel. After the purchase was made, the company was renamed Electronic Arts Canada. The company capitalized on its experience in the domain when it began developing the Need For Speed series in late 1992.

Need for Speed: ProStreet is the latest title in the Need for Speed series. Key features of the game include realistic damage, a return to realistic racing (instead of the arcade-like racing of previous titles), modelling, burnouts and more.

Pac Man

Apart from above three games which were ubiquitous during my two years stay at AIMK, I personally liked to play Pac Man and Mine sweeper both were great time pass.

Pac Man: This game was quite popular among few of my MCA 5 super seniors also.

When Pac-Man was released on May 22 1980, most arcade video games in North America were primarily space shooters such as Space Invaders, Defender, or Asteroids. Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre and appealing to both males and females. Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time. Upon its release, the game became a social phenomenon that sold a bevy of merchandise and also inspired, among other things, an animated television series.

Initially, Pac-Man’s enemies were referred to as monsters on the arcade cabinet, but soon became colloquially known as ghosts.

The ghosts are bound by the maze in the same way as Pac-Man, but generally move slightly faster than the player, although they slow down when turning corners and slow down significantly while passing through the tunnels on the sides of the maze (Pac-Man passes through these tunnels unhindered). Pac-Man slows down slightly while eating dots, potentially allowing a chasing ghost to catch him.

Blinky, the red ghost, speeds up after a certain number of dots are eaten (this number gets lower in higher levels). The accelerated Blinky is unofficially called Cruise Elroy, although opinions differ on the origins of this term.

Minesweeper

The game comes with Microsoft Windows for free and is a great time pass. It is a single-player computer game. The object of the game is to clear an abstract minefield without detonating a mine. The game has been rewritten for nearly every system platform in use today. The most well-known version is Minesweeper for the Windows platform, which comes bundled with versions of the operating system from 3.1 and on. And why only Minesweeper, how one can forget our games given by Microsoft for free?

Project IGI (I’m Going In)

Project I.G.I.: I’m Going In is a tactical first-person shooter developed by Innerloop Studios and released on December 15, 2000 by Eidos Interactive. It is one of the first computer games to feature realistic weaponry and tactical combat situations.

Equipment. In Project I.G.I. the player is required to assess the situation and use the weapon best suited under the circumstances. At his disposal are a multitude of weapons which may include land mines and sniper rifles to captured enemy weapons.
Knives: Combat Knife
Sidearms: Glock 17, Colt Anaconda, Desert Eagle
Submachine Guns: MP5SD3, Uzi (also in pair)
Assault Rifles: M16A2/M203, AK47
Shotguns: SPAS12, Mk3A1 Jackhammer
Sniper Rifles: SVD Dragunov
Heavy Weapons: M249 SAW, LAW80, M2HB
Explosives: HE Grenade, Flashbang, Proximity Mine
Special: Binoculars, Map computer (gives realtime satellite image of the terrain), Medipack

Plot - David Jones is sent off to find Josef Priboi, a Russian arms dealer who is believed to have information on a stolen nuclear warhead. As he helps Captain Harrison, an ex-Green Beret, apprehend Josef, he discovers that the brains of the operation is Josef’s uncle Jach, whom Jones then attempts to apprehend instead. He discovers his location by planting a virus in Jach’s communications center.

While Jach Priboi is taken away in helicopter by Jones, he is shot down by Ekk. Jones then has to clear the border and find his equipment. He then hijacks the train carrying Priboi and takes him in for interrogation. Learning about the involvement of Ekk, he sets off to catch her and find the nuclear weapon.

Road Rash

But how one can complete this discussion of most favorite games of AIMK without mentioning Road Rash?

This is one of the most violent illegal bike race on the streets. The game’s title is based on the slang term for the severe friction burns that can occur in a motorcycling fall where skin comes into contact with the ground at high speed. Presented in a third-person view similar to Hang-On, the player competes in road races, and must finish in the top 3 places in every race in order to proceed to the next level.

As levels progress, the opponents ride faster, fight harder and the tracks are longer and more dangerous. Placing in each race gives a certain amount of money which increases considerably as levels progressed. This money allows the player to buy faster bikes which are needed to stay competitive. The game is over if the player can’t pay for the repairs when their motorcycle is wrecked, or can’t pay the fine for being arrested.

Gold Miner

During my last semester I learn a few new games and found people like Sapta, Charu, Abhishek Malik and few more have started playing online games. These games were very light weight and simply good time pass. Interestingly these were not big issues playing in net lab as these doesn’t required strong hardware requirement or anything like that and all. One of such interesting game I found worth playing was Gold Miner.

There were plenty of games available and if you got bored of one you could start another and try something completely now. The most of the games were so simple - Based on Flash - you don’t require to press your mind and the website which offered these games was called Heavy Games :).

Gold Miner (three versions - Gold miner, GM Vegas, and GM SE) takes our bearded friend to the modern-day mother lode! Can you get all the way to golden Las Vegas? With new levels, challenges and gadgets the action is bigger, brighter and more enjoyable than ever before. Gold Miner Vegas is family-friendly and fun for all ages. Mine this entertaining game today!

When your mining claw is aimed in the right direction click the mouse to launch it. Click on the track to move your cart left or right.

Use your mouse or keyboard to move the Gold Miner, drop your mining claw to pull treasures from the ground!

1. It’s a race against the clock to reach your goal before time runs out.
2. Elude the rocks, bones and living creatures that get in your way.
3. Throw dynamite sticks to blast through large obstacles.
4. The bigger the gold nugget, the more it’s worth! Diamonds are worth even more!
5. Mystery Grab Bags contain money or extremely useful power-ups like the Super Claw!
6. In between levels spend your money wisely with the shopkeeper.
7. Your niece, Jewel Miner, may show up to help.
8. Be on the lookout for Hansel and other meanies!

Delta Force

Talk of Combat games and there are numerous which are liked by many, but in this long list I can add one more (striking out few more) games called Delta force.

The 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D) — commonly known as Delta in the U.S. Army, Delta Force by civilians, and Combat Applications Group by the Department of Defense — is a Special Operations Force (SOF) and an integral element of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

Delta Force’s primary tasks are counter-terrorism and national intervention operations, although it is an extremely versatile group capable of assuming many missions, including, but not limited to, rescuing hostages, raids, and eliminating covert enemy forces. Delta Force conducts missions similar to those attributed to the British Special Air Service (SAS), on which it was originally modeled and by which its founding was assisted.

Delta’s unconventional nature also allows its members to carry highly-customized weapons. Like any other military unit, Delta has dedicated mission taskings including snipers and squad machine gunners. The flexibility of Delta means that weaponry is quite varied and often depends on the mission at hand or personal preference of the individual operators. Below is a list of common or highlighted weapons; the list should not in any way be considered complete, and it should also be noted that Delta Force operators often have access to the entire armory of the United States Army.

Pool

I would be injustice if I wouldn’t mention Pool here. After all I have found Arjun Lal and Abhishek Choudhary palying this game more often.

Pocket billiards, most commonly referred to as pool, is the general term for a family of games played on a specific class of billiards table, having 6 receptacles called pockets (or “holes”) along the rails, in which balls are deposited as the main goal of play. Cue sports that are played on pocketless tables are generally referred to as carom billiards.

Pocket billiards uses different equipment from carom billiards. Other than the table having pockets, the balls for pocket billiards are generally smaller and range from 2.25 inches in diameter to 2.375 inches in diameter.

Many mores which can’t be named in here…

[_{Courtesy Wikipedia} ]

Economic Times and National Council of Applied Economic Research jointly conduct a survey to measure confidence index whether business or political. This survey is done periodically and for the quarter ending December 2007 is out.

The BCI (Business Confidence Index)

BCI of India is at 154 points, 8 points more from last quarter (with a growth of 8%). This shows that Indian Industry is brimming with confidence, though there are indications of a slowdown in industrial growth and corporate earnings. If the positive sentiment persists despite the turmoil in the capital market, corporate earnings may be back on track in the coming quarters.

Deloitte created the “Business Confidence Index” in 1997 with the aim of making available accurate and timely information on the country’s economy and economic situation”

The YarnandFibers Textile Business Confidence Index has become a barometer of the textile industry. It is the only kind of index in India which provides quick assessment of the performance of Indian textile companies and also the prospect in immediate future. The index, based on the perceptions of CEO/leader, is valuable for corporate strategy and business planning.

The political confidence index

This is also increasing for the third consecutive quarter to its highest level (127.7, 5.2 points higher).

The Consumer Confidence Survey is based on a representative sample of 5,000 U.S. households. The monthly survey is conducted for The Conference Board by TNS. TNS is the world’s largest custom research company. You can know more about it here.

[_{Global Business Confidence Index}]

[_{BCI - Indian Textile Perspective}]

Every year, Army Institute of Management Kolkata, celebrates it’s annual B-School Meet in the form of an event called Inferno. It comprises of not one, not two, but a whole lot of exhilarating, spine-tingling, nail-biting episodes, games and contests. To win prizes there is not an easy task. One needs to display his creative instincts, his vigor, his liveliness, his passion for participating and winning a fortune at INFERNO! In a thriller of a quest, one locks horns with the best students from around the region for conquest of the booty – bags full of exciting prizes.

This absolute event took place this year on 23^rd February at Volleyball ground of AIMK. The various events that were organized include:

·         LaunchPad: The team has to launch a new product. The launch must cover all the aspects of a real life launch. Basically, sell your idea.

·         Counter Strike: Just Win by defeating your opponents in the world-famous PC game.

·         HR Arthashastra: Case Studies.

·         Quiz Wiz: Show your knowledge.

·         Dress Your Thoughts: Advertisement Special.

·         Wealth Guru: How well can you solve your financial issues?

·         Trade Master: The virtual(on line) stock trading game.

·         Fashion Furore: How fashion-forward are you? (This is the first time such an event has been organized @ Inferno)

Following are some of the colleges which had participated in this Mega Event:

·         IIM Calcutta

·         NIT Durgapur

·         Calcutta University

·         IISWBM

·         Heritage

·         Globsyn Business School

·         Techno India

·         Indian School of Business

·         Bhawanipur College

·         IIFT

·         IAM

·         EIILM

·         EIM

Also, this year has seen a whole lot of sponsors, pitching in to have a chance at providing support to the 3^rd Best B-School of Eastern India. The Times of India had been given exclusive coverage rights.

Following are some of the sponsors for the event:

·         The Times of India

·         Aditya Birla Nuvo

·         Red FM

·         Lakme

·         Loreal

·         Amway

·         INOX

·         Veeyu

·         C3

·         Kaya Skin Clinic

·         ADA

·         Trendz

I personally congratulate all the participants, prize winners, and, of course, the brains and the brawns behind this Mega Successful Event.

For more details, visit The Ultimate Renaissance or Armageddon Meets Renaissance

This is my favorite subject to write about just because this is my work sector. This article published in Economic Times (21 Jan, 2008, 0504 hrs IST,KG Narendranath, TN) is of great significance for anybody interested in contemporary situation in one of the India’s basic sector - Textile.

Exporters from most sectors seem to have shown the resilience to withstand the rupee’s appreciation against the US dollar over the last 10-11 months, but not the exporters of textiles and garments. When expressed in dollar terms, non-petroleum products exports had grown 17% in April-August and overall exports 22% in April-Nov. But the textile and garment exports continue to de-grow and no reverse swing appears in sight.

The reason is not far to find. The Indian textile industry continues to have a major structural weakness (poor and inadequate weaving and processing capacities) which restricts its not easily destructible exporting ability to a few areas—yarn and casual/fashion wear garments.

In fabrics, the Indian industry has hardly any comparative advantage in export markets and due to this, its competence in mass consumption (regular wear) garments, which need to be made of good quality fabrics, is also very restricted. So India’s ability to compete in the export market in times like this is limited to some 40% of the markets (of relatively less value-added items) where it has reasonable presence.

India’s poor fabric production base can be best understood by the fact that the 30 largest garment exporters import fabrics to meet 60% of their requirement. This is because of the meagre domestic supply of good quality fabrics (dense and shade-consistent fabrics).

No dramatic increase in India’s fabric-making capacity was expected in a matter of a two-to-three years. Blame the strong rupee, whatever new capacities that have been built in recent years are now frozen.

Till July 2004, a discriminatory tax regime had discouraged the setting up of new weaving units in the organised sector. The small weavers using power (powerlooms) were not required to pay the excise duty, while the organised industry had to pay the tax.

The powerloom-friendly tax regime was established in 1985, and prior to that, weaving capacities were simply not allowed in the organised industry. Since large weaving units were a taboo, naturally, large fabric processing units also did not come up.

China, which has almost swamped the western markets for mass consumption garments, has hundreds of big capacity fabric units equipped with modern shuttleless looms and proportionate level of processing capacity. So, China’s domestic raw material base is very robust. In contrast, India’s poor quality, grey (unbleached) fabrics are not fit for making regular wear garments, which form a large chunk of export markets.

Now that the fiscal problems have been resolved, the government ought to give special incentives for new investments to build large weaving and processing units. These incentives could be routed through the TUFS itself, in the form of, say, a higher rate of interest subsidy or even upfront capital subsidy. Also, the rigid labour regulations need to be urgently recast for ease of production operations.

The scheme for high tech weaving parks announced by the Centre is yet to gather steam. And plans for large processing units —like the one at Kadallur in Tamil Nadu—are stuck for want of environmental clerance. The government would do well to clear these hurdles.

[Source: Economic Times]

Discover Happiness. This was the name of the b-school meet event. one of the part of it was Battle Royale - A competitive duel between different colleges, where new products and services are churned out and showcased through corporate presentations.

Various rounds

Round 1- HR. A critical situation was given to the teams and they had to apply their HR knowledge to analyze the situation and present the solution, teams were asked to enact the case on stage. In the AIMK team participants and their respective roles were Pardeep kumar(CEO), Bhavini Singh (Director HR), Navendu Sharma (GM HR).

Round 2- Finance . A fund raising game was introduced and teams were asked to manage fund and to raise your money by applying you finance concept. AIMK participants with their respective roles were Amrita Talukdar (Director Finance), Riya Mondal (GM Finance).

Round 3- Marketing. Have to give a presentation on INNOVATIVE BANKING SERVICES covering what kind of new services a bank can offer. Participant were Pardeep Kumar (CEO), Abhinav Das Gupta (Director Marketing), Anand Dodrajka (GM Marketing)

Round 4- Business Quiz. Participant were Pardeep Kumar, Abhinav Das Gupta and Amrita Talukdar.

Under the sponsorship of TIMES OF INDIA, with big prize amount, AIMK people have again proved that they can win such battle on any ground.

All data storage in modern times are done on disc, be it a computer hard drive or a CD-R disc. Blu-ray and HD-DVD have upped the ante when it comes to the amount of data that you can hold on a disc, but at some time they will eventually become obsolete. Right now our data storage needs are currently met, but as the amount of data available continues to rise, storage technology must evolve with it. The next generation of storage technology is going to be Holographic Data Storage.

What is holographic storage?

With CD-R and DVD-R technology, data is stored on the surface of the disc as distinct magnetic or optical changes. With holographic data storage, an entire page of information is stored at once as an optical interference pattern within a thick, photosensitive optical material.

How do they do this?

This is done by intersecting two coherent laser beams, the object and reference beams, within the storage material. The object beam contains all the information needing to be stored, while the reference beam is designed to be simple to produce. The resulting interference between the beams causes chemical and/or physical changes in the photosensitive medium that the data is being stored on. Basically “burning” the information to the storage medium, this mark is called the grating. When the grating is illuminated by one of the two waves that were used to record the information, the light is refracted in a way that the other wave is reconstructed. These gratings can be stacked or superimposed in the same thick piece of media, as long as there is a distinguishing spacing or direction, allowing the stacked bits of data to be accessed independently. In addition to larger storage capabilities, holographic storage also boasts to accelerate data transfer rates to about one billion bits per second and reduce access times to just tens of microseconds.

The benefits:

1. Larger storage capacity – Some companies are developing a technology that enables the storage of between 100GB and 1TB of data. Compare this to Blu-ray and HD-DVD, which max out at 50GB. Amazing leap in the amount of data you can store on one piece of media.

2. Accelerated data transfer – The holographic data storage medium in the works boasts data transmission speeds of 100Mbps to 1Gbps. The new HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs clock in at 36.55Mbps, which is only a fraction of the holographic data storage transfer rate.

Well, if you’re like me, you learned quite a bit about a new technology from this short article. This new technology is quite a ways off from being accessible to the common consumer, but some companies are in the process of developing holographic data storage for the corporate sector. Technology is a strange beast, always changing, always mutating. The sky is the limit, and only time will tell where we’ll be headed after the rise and fall of this yet-to-be-seen data technology.

This is again from my own industry where I work, not only we produce word class Linen fabric at Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd. (Unit: Jayashree Textiles Ltd.) from pure European flax fibre but also export the finest quality of flax yarn as well as textiles.

We cater to the top notch apparel and garment manufaturere for their international as well as domestic brands. Being in export market we are facing the same hurdle these days from which there is current slow down in the industry.

Facts about textile industry in India

Export target of India for current year is $25 bn but the trends shows it can barely hit a $18 bn. Despite the facts that India is the second largest textile and cotton yarn (threads) producer of world. Over 60% of world’s installed looms and 22% of the global spindles are in India. Its wage rates are barely 40 to 50% of the wages in developed countries. But current share of India in global apparel and textiles market is only $14 bn (global market $450 bn) – just 3%.

Our industry has often been hyped as the industry of promise, for driving job creation, exports earnings and industrial growth in the economy. So now why this slowdown next. In my earlier article about this sector I had discussed about the rupee value appreciation against the dollar over the past few months, and thus textile industry is back crying for government intervention and an unending supply of incentives.

So there does the problem lies - The Industry structure which is too fragmented and consists of too many small players who have not bothered to either create sustainable and strong brands or even create markets for themselves. According to a background paper on the industry prepared by the India Brand Equity Foundation in 2006, “India’s textile industry comprises mostly small-scale, non-integrated spinning, weaving, finishing, and apparel making enterprises.” The operative term is “non-integrated”.

For example, at the bottom end of the chain, at the spinning level alone, there are 1,135 small scale and 1,564 large units. In the weaving/knitting segment, there are 3.9 million hand loom units, 1.8 million power loom units, and only 0.1 million units in the organized sector.

In addition, there are 2,100 processing units and 77,000 units (mostly small scale) in the garment/ apparel segment. No wonder, despite the presence of so many weavers/ knitters, India’s fabric imports from both the US and EU have grown over the years. This fractured condition is also reflected in the large number of export promotion councils and industry associations.

What this clearly shows is that the industry needs composite mills with scales of economy (For example Jayashree Textiles Ltd). Tragically, there are about only 280 large mills, that can loosely be called composite mills, integrating the entire chain of spinning, weaving and sometimes even fabric finishing. But, they account for only about 3% of industry output.

The government has made many announcements to remedy some of the problems of textile industry. The prime minister has suggested the setting up of a committee comprising members from the ministries of finance, textile, commerce and industry, National Manufacturing Competition Council and various industry leaders to figure out a “durable, productive and pragmatic solution to the problems of the textile industry”.

let me put it as simple as possible to begin with “It is The profit that results from the difference in the cost of printing money and the face value of that money.”

During the era of metal-based money, the monetary base consisted of precious metals produced by the public and converted into coins by the State. The difference between the face value of the coins versus the cost of acquiring the metals and minting them generated a financial benefit for the State.

Seigniorage may be counted as revenue for a government when the money that is created is worth more than it costs to produce it. This revenue is often used by governments to finance a portion of their expenditures without having to collect taxes. If, for example, it costs the Indian government Re 0.5 to produce a Re 1 bill, the seigniorage is Re 0.90, or the difference between the two amounts.

Imagine you start the year with one ounce of gold. You trade it in for a gold certificate, which allows you to redeem the certificate for an ounce of gold. You keep the certificate for a year, then trade it in. At the end of the year you have exactly what you started with: one ounce of gold. No seigniorage occurred.

Now imagine that you have one ounce of gold, but the government doesn’t issue gold certificates. Instead the government will convert your gold into currency at the market rate. If gold were $500 per ounce, then at the start of the year you trade your ounce for $500. You keep the currency for a year, then at the end of the year you trade the currency back in for an amount of gold. However, this time the price of gold increased over the year, so gold is now $525 per ounce. You will receive slightly less than an ounce. This slight loss is due to seigniorage.

Even if you were then to use the currency to buy something, someone is holding the bill for the entire time and the government still has the gold. Pithily, seignorage is the carry on money in circulation.

But, now with the eMoney in use, concepts are changing. Electronic money (e-money) is one such new product which has appeared on Indian horizon recently. So says an article of Reserve Bank of India’s Website.

Can somebody explain why Notes are carried as liabilities on the Central Bank’s balance sheet while Coins are not (asset)?

Pharmaceuticals is one of the essential industry of any economy and government plays its role in many ways. Currently India’s one-fourth of the domestic pharmaceutical market is controlled. The total pharmaceutical industry size in India is Rs. 30,000 crores ($5.7 bn). Global pharma industry is estimated to be about $400 bn. Typically pharmaceutical companies spend about 15% of their turnover of R&D.

In an recent development, government of India have asked to withdraw 294 comb ination drugs. No, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to withdraw 120 combination drugs from the market. A combination drug consists of two or more molecules used to treat multiple ailments. For eg., pills which cure cold and also act as pain killers.

Lets recall how the government in recent past have acted in Pharma industry, In the beginning of year 2007, The Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers proposed to control the prices of 354 essential medicines by going into their cost of production.

Also, the ministry had asked the pharmaceutical companies in Nov last year to contribute a share of their turnover to provide free medicines to the people through drug banks and medical camps for the poor to show an interesting example of PPP (Public Private Partnership) . If the companies fail to meet their commitment, they would not be allowed an annual upward revision of prices.