Sabre reaches milestone in migration

Sabre has completed the initial migration of its airfare pricing system to HP [formerly Compaq, formerly Tandem] NonStop servers.  In August 2001, Sabre had announced the beginning of  $100million plan to migrate to Compaq [formerly Tandem] NonStop Himalaya servers over a period of three to four years, confident that it could migrate the critical applications from mainframe to C++, Java and SQL.  The intention to migrate had already been declared as far back as December 2000.

Being Indian Abroad

Inspiring article in two parts, dated August 2002 and  October 2002.

December 1971 : Indira Gandhi's correspondence with Richard Nixon

The text of the correspondence is available in documents declassified by the US Government.

Let me quote some of Mrs Gandhi's lines : "... The fact of the matter is that the rulers of West Pakistan got away with the impression that they could do what they liked because no one, not even the United States, would choose to take a public position that while Pakistan’s integrity was certainly sacrosanct, human rights, liberty were no less so and that there was a necessary inter-connection between the inviolability of States and the contentment of the people. ..."

and  "... We do want lasting peace with Pakistan. But will Pakistan give up its ceaseless and yet pointless agitation of the past 24 years over Kashmir? Are they willing to give up their hate campaign posture of perpetual hostility towards India? .. How many times in the last 24 years have my father and I offered a pact of non-aggression to Pakistan? It is a matter of recorded history that each time such offer was made. Pakistan rejected it out of hand. ..."

Kissinger is said to have described the Nixon/Gandhi meetings  as a classic  dialogue of the deaf.

Also read the text of George Bush, Snr [the US Ambassador to the UN] telegram to the US Secretary of State on his conversations with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's Vice Prime Minister.

Same-Language Subtitling ("Karaoke") as means of improving Literacy

Here's an interesting project to improve the literacy rate by using sub-titles [on popular song programs], pioneered in Gujarat.