Sunday, December 10, 2006

IPC !

IPC = Indian Penal Code.
I have a friend whom I havent met personally yet, but I did hold good conversations with.
So once I ventured into discussion about IPC.

1. Seems like there are 511 sections in it. The moment I saw 511, the only thing I could remember is it is the largest number you can represent with 9-bits. Few DSPs have maximum loopcount of 511 because they could only afford 9-bits for its representation. Anyway, this should say that I am a true electrical engineer.
2. IPR laws are still in nascent in India and there seems to be a growing interest in it.
3. Section 302 is what we hear the most in movies. yes, you guessed it, the capital punishment. For some reason I thought it was removed, or amended. Seems like they do sentence people to death. Side line question: what authority does the judge or the system possess to kill someone? oh btw, here is an interesting trivia: each time a judge sentences someone to death, they break the nib of the pen with which they write the sentence. you know why? it is supposed to symbolize that they shouldnt get anymore of such cases where they need to sentence death penalty. I wonder what they would do if they start writing with ballpoint pens. I believe they would just throw the pen away :)
4. Two kind of laws: civil and criminal, broadly.

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Questions for the week!

1. What is the difference between economics and finances?
2. How does economics influence the social behaviour?

"Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to
work—whereas economics represents how it actually does work." interesting. i wd say economics actually explain how things work as they do.

3. what has falling prices of coffins got to do anything with economics?
4. what is an incentive?
An incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a
bad thing.
There are three basic flavors of incentive: economic, social, and moral.

For every clever person who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is
an army of people, clever and otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying
to beat it.

Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million
American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly.
It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule.
Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a
Social Security number for each child. Suddenly, seven million children—children who
had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms—vanished,
representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.
(Really? I need to explore more on this. Can such thing happen?)

5. Why is Vonage not picking up? Why is Time-Warner pushing for digital-telephony?

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

APR vs APY

Ever wondered what the difference between APR and APY is? And why credit cards always quote APR and banks always quote APY? What difference does it make if we quote APR or APY? From a lenders point of view we always like to get a bigger number, thats why we get APY quoted from a savings/checking account. From a borrowers point of view, we like to get lower numbers. Thats why you get APR quoted.

Here is something from a website: studentplatinum

Basically, APR = Period Rate x Periods per Year
APY = (1 + Period Rate) ^Periods Per Year - 1

so when a credit card quotes a 12% APR, you actually end up paying 12.68% by the end of APY.
And when bank says it has a CD with APY 12.68% all you are getting at the end of one month is 1% of what you put in.

here is another good article from investopedia

So next time you got two different options, make sure you compare apples to apples and get the numbers to correct units. (isn't it a basic engineering principle ??)