The bank interest on loans is getting higher and higher over the past few months. If the trend is any indication, it is likely to go up further. SBI, one of the leading Indian public sector banks has today increased the interest rates on home loans by .5%, taking 10-15 year floating loan to 9.5%. It is likely to hit double digits (10% or more) during this year itself. The likely impact is that the real estate value will be stabilized (if not go down a little) over the next few months. There was time (about 6-7 years back) when the housing loan interest rate was as high as 16%. It is not entirely unlikely that the interest rates reach 16% during the next 2-3 years. The real estate values had gone very high in view of low interest rate during the past couple of years (7%-8%). The reason is simple, that a person could pay higher principle, and a lower interest. It is beyond the imagination of a common man that the interest rates could go to 15-16% during the next several years, but very well could happen in India. It needs to be seen what would happen to the Indian economy. One scenario is that the Dollar will harden and the inflation raises, and the second is that the real estate prices come down during the coming years. In any case, it is going to hit hard the common man.

As most of you know, Amazon.com is very popular for selling books. There are several thousands of websites that provide links to Amazon books through the web pages. The individual webmasters get referral fee when a visitors click on the link, and purchase books. Typical revenue for a well established website is given below for the year 2005-2006:

Total number of clicks:4917
Unique visitors:3979
Items Ordered (Amazon):70
Items Ordered (Third party):72
Total items ordered:142
Conversion:2.89%
Referral Fees:$112.36
Cost Per Click:c2.29
Cost Per Click per Unique Visitor: c2.83

Amazon is obviously getting a large cheap traffic from established websites. It is likely that websites are going to stop driving traffic to leading portals like Amazon sooner or later.

Reliability and accelerated testing are vital for any electronic/communication products. This is done primarily to eliminate any infant failures, and also to determine any potential failure mechanisms and fix the same before the product is shipped to the field. A comprehensive tutorial is available at tutorialsweb.com. The contents are given below for brief review:

1. Reliability and its requirement

2. Reliability Vs. Quality Control

3. The bathtub Curve

4. Accelerated Tests

4.1 Accelerated Life Testing
4.2 Reliability Enhancement Testing
4.3 Environmental Stress Screening

5. Environmental Stress Screening

5.1 The Environment
5.1.1 Temperature Tests
5.1.2 Atmospheric
5.1.3 Radiation
5.1.4 Dynamic Testing
5.2 The Objective of ESS
5.2.1 Burn-in
5.3 Application of ESS in Manufacturing flow
5.4 ESS Implementation:
5.4.1 Types of Failures detectable by various environments
5.4.2 Differences in the screening of components and equipment
5.4.3 Design of Screens: Important points
5.4.4 Effect of Temperature and Humidity on on some electronic components
5.4.5 Reduction or Elimination of ESS
5.5 Case study
5.6 Screening Effectiveness

6. Reliability Handbooks

7. Glossary of Terms

8. References

9. Related standards

Read complete tutorial Reliability and Accelerated Testing

A tutorial on Surface Mount Assembly and Surface Mount Components (SMT Assembly) is available at
http://www.tutorialsweb.com/smt/smt.htm
The contents include the following:

• Soldering in Electronics
• Introduction to Surface Mount Technology
• Manufacturing using SMT
• Solders, Fluxes, and Solderability
• Solder Printing
• Reflow Soldering and Manual Soldering
• Inspection and Rework
• Antistatic Precautions

Other resource:

http://www.smta.org

CCNA exam trainer is made available from CertExams.com.
The available features are listed below:

CCNA Practice Quiz Questions
- Multiple choice single answer
- Multiple choice multiple answers
- True/False Type questions
- Drag-n-drop Type questions
Control Panel Log-in for complete configuration control
- Input question randomization
- Select number of questions for exam
- Select answer randomization
- Save and manage results
- Enable/disable options with a password
Network Simulator
- Simulate a router network
- Design a router network
- Use existing network labs to gain experience
The software can be downloaded at CCNA Exam Trainer

According to reports, Medha had shown very low blood pressure resulting from extreme exhaustion. Her condition is stated to be serious, though the government officials are maintaining that her condition is stable. She is on her 14th day of fasting.
This is only exhibiting the callous attitude of the concerned officials and the government. It is surprising that even the local media is not covering the struggle appropriately with hardly any news appearing in local news papers!
Update: Medha Patkar had broken her fast on the 20th day after the Supreme court of India warned the Government of Gujarat that if necessary the courd would order stopping all work on Sardar Sarovar Project. The court had directed the state government to take all necessary steps to rehabilitate the replaced people of the region.

Medha Patkar, an environmentalist is on fasting for eigth day in a row. She is fasting on to death in protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam project across Narmada river. There was a widespread agitation against Sardar Saroval dam in India led by Medha Patkar and several eminent environmentalists. Recently, it was decided to increase the height of the dam that would reportedly displace several families, and environmentally disastrous. According to the news reports, Medha is fasting for proper rehabilitation of people displaced due the dam construction, and to stop the dam work that would result in environmental disaster. Her condition is reportedly critical, and admitted to AIIMS hospital. It is surprising to know that the government had not done much to rehabilitate the displaced people (because of the dam construction), and address the concerns of the environmentalists.
Related links:
http://www.narmada.org/sardarsarovar.html

Arundhaty Roy -Novelist in response to the government trying to suppress the movement by arresting Medha Patkar (Environmentalist):
"The government is building its new India on the backs of the poor. It just does not want to admit it, but it is."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1748912,00.html

Update: Medha Patkar...Health Condition Worsens

According to reports, Medha had shown very low blood pressure resulting from extreme exhaustion. Her condition is stated to be serious, though the government officials are maintaining that her condition is stable. She is on her 14th day of fasting.

This is only exhibiting the callous attitude of the concerned officials and the government. It is surprising that even the local media is not covering the struggle appropriately with hardly any news appearing in local new papers!

eState Bank of India, the largest public sector bank in India closed its business for public. Reason? the employees of the bank are on indefinite strike because the management has not accepted their demands such as higher pension, salary, etc. This is the first time during past several years that a public sector bank employees have gone on indefinite strike (atleast as far as my knowledge goes). Normally, they resort to one day or two day token strike stressing for their demands. We can see lot of customers flocking to other banks for banking works like money withdrawals, drafts, etc. By any means, it is a boon to the private sector banks since many individuals and businesses are likely to switch their operations to a private sector bank in the next few days. Alteast as of now, there appears to be no end for the strike with both the parties sticking to their stand. It is just un-imaginable that thousands of SBI branches closed operations, and lakhs of employees are striking work!
Update: The strike ended on Monday (10th April) which exactly one week after it had started. Most of the demands made by the employees' union were reportedly met by the Governement and the management.