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An $8.8 billion write-down of its latest acquisition - Autonomy seems to be the latest mishap in the HP saga. And with it comes proof that HP has been following a path which is heading south. From the exciting times of Lewis Platt and John Young to the bleaker times started by Carly Fiorina, HP has lurched from disaster to disaster. And the list looks endless. Fiorina decided to move to reorient the company to a marketer of computer equipment and enterprise systems. Her acquisition of Compaq Computer so that HP- Compaq would be the leader in low-cost personal computers was a disaster.  She tried to focus simultaneously on high-end enterprise systems. Luckily or unluckily she had bid for the business consulting practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers, but lost to IBM.  NCR's Mark Hurd followed her and appeared to appeal to the stock market. The efficiency expert, he focused on short term sales growth and cost reduction, doubling the company’s ear...

"18 Again" launched with much consternation and hype a vaginal tightening cream. I am not going to talk about the efficacy of the product and neither is it to ridicule the product per se. Frankly, I don't care.   This is more to do with the hypocrisies associated with a product like this.  The positioning of the product along with the commercial  And more importantly sexual intercourse / sex is still looked as a matter which I dare say, most people enjoy but something which cannot be talked about in the open. What the f#@* (well ...fuck!)?    Positioning of the Product 'Like a virgin' - the heroine croons in the commercial. But unfortunately this advertising reinforces the sexist view in India that pre-marital sex is something to be frowned upon, a taboo which is even seen as sinful by some.  According to the company the cream empowers women but rather than empowering women it will reinforce the pat...

The airline industry in India has been going through an enormous amount of pain. It has seen more downs than ups. At a time when the economic outlook is far better than the US or European geographies, the whole business is going through a crisis of sorts; some due to its own doing and some due to extraneous factors. Market In recently announced statistics, the domestic market has increased 1.1% year-on-year in Mar-2012 to 4.87 million passengers. This is the slowest month of domestic passenger growth since May-2009 when passenger levels declined 4.4%. Passenger traffic increased 6.55% in 1Q2012 to 15.3 million. For 34 consecutive months the market has seen growth however it is the third month in the same period which has seen a single digit growth. There has been 16 months of double digit growth prior to that. The drop in traffic can be directly attributed to the reduction in coverage by Kingfisher Airlines. Till such time, India's growth rate was among the highest ...

Most of you do not know my uncle. T.C. Krishnankutty Menon (TCK), or to me Aniyanmaman, passed away recently.  He resided in Trichur, in God's Own Country,  a town more famous for its literary figures, jewellers, temples and Pooram. I was born there and he stayed in a house next to ours - we were all from the same family. TCK was, in a sense, a true blue Keralite. He did his schooling in Trichur followed by his graduation in Chemistry at Maharaja's College, Ernakulam, quickly followed by a post-graduation through research. He joined Sri Kerala Varma College, Trichur after that, in two spells and taught there till his retirement. In-between he did drop into the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi for his Ph.D but for reasons which lie buried with him, he returned to Trichur and that's where he stayed for the rest of his life. His visits out of Kerala were few and far. A Keralite he was but parochial he was a not. In a s...