|
 |
 |
The Trouble |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Info: Biography, Pictures, Discography of all CDs & DVDs |
|
| Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.Ken Barnet, a vice president at State Street Corp.It's a hit: Enrollment has nearly doubled, from 50 students two years ago to 90 now.You work on ten to 15 different teams before you leave here.They want to learn how to give shareholders a great return while also being balanced and principled.Market indexes are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes.Time reflects local markets trading time.Intraday data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges.MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc.Intraday data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges.SEC Filings data provided by Edgar Online Inc..But his lawyer, Ramiro Castro, is going to try every defense in the book to keep him here with his family, including this one:
"He's young.He has no immediate family anywhere else.And he has this bipolar attention deficit disorder," Castro said.Think it's too early to dole out awards for 2008?So much optimism, so much systemic anosognosia.After all, NAMI gave our nation's mental health system a grade of D in 2006.The idea that "Tomorrow has arrived!"SSI by virtue mental illness in the five years ending 2006 and tell them they might well be on the path to recovery.George Farthing, an expatriate British man living in America, was diagnosed as clinically depressed, tanked up on antidepressants, and scheduled for a controversial shock therapy when doctors realized he wasn't depressed at all, he was just British!The doctors reported that the satisfaction he seemed to get from his pessimism was particularly pathological.John's wort,' Farthing says.They even told me to sit in front of a big light for half an hour a day or I'd become suicidal.Although Farthing had six months of therapy, he mainly wanted to talk about the weather.Horney, who recommended electroconvulsive therapy.Oh my God, I think we're making a terrible mistake!The Voice Awards honor mental health consumer leaders for their contributions in reducing stigma and discrimination.Additional consideration will be given to nominees who have made a positive impact within special populations, such as racially and ethnically diverse groups and young adults ages 18 to 24.The Voice Awards will be presented at a gala ceremony in Los Angeles in May 2008.Here are some tips from the Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Natural Medicine: Natural Treatments for Seasonal Affective Disorder
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), or winter depression, is very common in the Pacific Northwest.Gyms are a good place to find indoor recreation, exercise classes and equipment to keep you out of the dark.OH vitamin D first as there are toxicity concerns.Most data supports daily doses of 2000 IU of vitamin D3.Each of these therapies has the potential for drug interactions, so it's important to talk with a naturopathic physician about safe, appropriate dosage.This past fall when I was suicidal I tried to get a gun in NJ.At the time I was real pissed, I look at it now that maybe someone was looking after me.From time to time, I've been accused of not sufficiently representing the Republican point of view.Not that we would hurt each other, it was more of safety for keeping ourselves from harming ourselves.Does that make any sense?The task force recommends a new law that would require that counties provide information about involuntary commitment orders to the national background check database.The waiver change is significant, and that should have been the highlighted matter.The Trouble With Spikol, which began as a chronicle of her struggle with mental illness, and has since expanded into humorous musings on everything from graphic novels to how to use a mop.This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from lizspikol.Awards time, and I'm not talkin' Golden Globes
Still SAD?The dawn of the web has frequently been compared to the invention of the printing press.But the web has also destroyed one of the greatest features of nearly every press since Gutenberg: the ability to publish pleasing type.There are two problems here.The most reliable way to insert special characters by far is to use decimal entity notation.Use the others if you wish, but only if you want to be bombarded by Netscape 4.The sentence above illustrates the proper use of the hyphen and the two main types of dashes.Others prefer to insert hair spaces on either side of the em dash, but this is problematic with some web browsers (see the section on spaces for more detail).Some browsers display it no matter where it falls, but this is not the correct behavior.There are fifteen space characters defined in Unicode.Both are visibly wider than a normal space, and once again, Arial Unicode MS is the only mainstream font that includes both, even though they are part of the official HTML 4.That leaves the spaces defined by Unicode but not HTML.There are actually fourteen quotation characters.Eighteen if you count the big, bold versions in the Dingbats section of Unicode.If you are one of these people, put out your hand so I can slap it with a ruler.The correct symbols to use are prime and double prime.They never, ever look like commas.But if it indicates that the thought or quote is just trailing off at the end of a sentence, then only the ellipsis is used, to clarify that no words from a quotation were omitted, as would be the case if the additional period were there.Got a detailed question about which characters allow line breaks to occur?In his free time he operates PushBack.More than you ever wanted to know about dashes, spaces, curly quotes, and other vagaries of online typography.List Apart Magazine and the authors.As a publisher and designer I can direct the flow of attention with better tools (font choices, rules, lines, columns) and better control.And how will the link be handled?Do we really want to maintain two different versions of the same content?I'm not the first person to note the usability problems of PDF, but I consider this a classic case of worse is better.I'm surprised how many authors still reach for the safety blanket of PDF when they and their audience would be much better served with modern HTML.PDF is not merely a PDF; it's a statement.Kevin went to the trouble of packaging this content up as a PDF, even adding Adobe's brand new support for contextual PDF advertising.But I don't see any advanced formatting here!Everything in that PDF would render perfectly as HTML.Kelly's taste in movies for a second.PDF is a packaging format.Anyway Jeff i have to agree with you, PDFs are great, but unnecessary, theres no reason why a competent developer couldn't just build the HTML properly.My main problem with PDF files is their forced page size.IS the huge plus compared to html!That way I could be sure that the professor was seeing the *exact* same thing as I was.They are good for manuals, ebooks, articles people may refer to for medical research, etc
They are easy to send around, especially since they display pretty much identically on all platforms.HTML is by and large resizeable (some sites better than others, some browsers better than others but fundamentally things tend to work well) PDF simply isn't.It isn't designed to be.How do you embed a font in an HTML page?And more specialized fonts for mathematical typesetting are usually not even available.OS X does this so much better.But let's face it: To produce HTML, you need to be an advanced techie user.CSS and stuff is getting more standardized across all browsers, but there are still plenty of tweaks needed (e.HTML, as well as hyphenation.HTML Print s*** big time.I'm working on a web application and I'm using pdf to print some dynamically generated information.For the longest time you couldn't make them for free or edit them for free.When you try and print an HTML document, you're using paper to view a document *designed for viewing by computer*.Oh, and the worst thing about PDFs?PDFs have a lot of advantages.HTML equivalent but why got through the hassle of copy pasting, recreating stylesheets, converting embedded images to links, and on and on.IANAL, but legally a PDF will stand up in court as a valid document, a web page that anyone can change in a moment will not.We see the same idea in the use of CSS and other fancy tricks in HTML pages.Sometimes even on 19" monitor to get readable text I have to zoom in so much, that it requires me to scroll horizontally.With HTML+CSS I can break stiff layout to suit *my* needs.Then why is this "packaged" as a PDF?PDFs are invaluable for material where well defined page numbers are necessary for reference, citation, or discussion purposes.The 'how to read' document you linked above is most probably a case of this.Unfortunately CSS2 only became a w3c recommendation in 1998.Perhaps by 2018 we'll be able to use it.PDFs, because web pages are the web.Because they're print media, really.You can put a cat in the oven, but that don't make it a biscuit!PDF files is and should be handled as documents, something you download to read or print.HTML is a markup language handled by Web Browsers.HTML is good for simple documents and simple applications(talking layout + UI).For me, PDFs are great for things which are really, actually going to be printed on paper, especially in standard formats like booklets, etc.But that's about all they're good for.CHM's do a better job than PDF's.And I avoid sites offering information in this format.PDF is self contained, a container format like AVI if you will.That makes a lot of sence considering that going the other way, printing from HTML, is a bad enough experience to justify it's own article on Coding Horror."Burn Rate" just before Christmas and don't remember Kevin Kelly.Joe Chin: I could create the HTML equivalent but why got through the hassle of copy pasting, recreating stylesheets, converting embedded images to links, and on and on.It's a horror to do this with anything in Office because the HTML is downright filthy.PDFs like that are horrible to read on a computer.Yet, one of those windows being a PDF reader is?The process of converting even a simple print brochure for the web is time consuming and requires technical expertise.That said, PDF implementation on the web sucks.PDF and HTML will continue to fight with each other.There is something that everyone is missing (having said that, I hope it is true...PDFs were not (as far as I know) invented as an alternative to HTML.They were created to fill a need in the printing industry.In the graphics (for print) field, there are 2 kinds of people; Quark people, and Adobe people (who now use Indesign, and used to use pagemaker).How far we have come, indeed.Not only can it integrate nearly flawless compression, but it embeds fonts...PDF file and all your logistical artwork difficulties are solved.Too much has been crammed into the format, and the readers are getting out of control.Now they're set up with a PDF converter, that they "print" to, creating a PDF.Less work for me, they get their goofy fonts (don't know how many times I've tried to explain why we can't use "BalloonLetterz" font on our website).As usual, good thought provoking post from Atwood!So the trouble with PDFs is that people are trying to use them to work around the limitations of HTML?That sounds like the trouble with web designers to me.I've seen a lot of crappy, unreadable HTML on the web.And in my opinion scrolling vertically through a PDF is disorienting.The trouble with PDF is that companies are demanding it.Especially those who are converting old paper documentation, statements and bills to the web.Instead of putting forth the cash to convert paper documentation and statements to HTML, they convert it to PDF.It contains all of the print messages, images, and logos.Large print shops and document authoring tools generate PDF just as they generate the files they send to the large batch printing machines.Those large Xerox and AFP files can be converted into PDF with a little work and the right toolset.If an end user wants to save their paper documents today they simply take the document and stick it in a filing cabinet.Do I click on a PDF and say save?Long and short of it, there are reasons why when I go to Fidelity.There are reasons why my Columbia Gas bill is presented in PDF instead of HTML.And they are generally usability, legal and project funding reasons.One is for print, the other is for the web.HTML just doesn't print nicely and with a PDF I can embed fonts to make it look exactly the way I want it to.If you want to distribute a document as if you were sending it by snail mail, and if it is crucial to keep the page layout, PDF is perfect (as the above example of the student sending an essay to his teacher).Please don't think of screen media and interactive media as an extension of written media.PDF is guaranteed to print the same no matter where it's printed.Links to PDF files assume the user has a PDF viewer installed.The better of the worst at least just let you continue and open the doc in the default program, others force you download the file.Down buttons on your keyboard, or switch to Full Screen view.Yup, and that will only work for ONE page and the result will only be usable in Internet Explorer.What if you want to package up multiple pages (e.Jeff, usually I'm in complete agreeance with you, but I think there's a place for PDF's, and that should be when a document needs to be printed or protected (as others have already stated).For instance there are still some companies that require you to fill out a form and sign it and either mail or fax it in to get what they are offering.Also, for some items, it makes previously published material available without the burden of reformatting, like catalogs and datasheets for electronics parts.These reports are intended to be printed, but also optionally viewed online.PDF is a document file format.It definitely wasn't made to be an interactive web presentation format.The PDF format is perfect for that.CSS is a better choice because even if there are minor formatting issues, they still get all of the information.In a way, this still is a big issue.Does the general populace need an exact representation of you printed brochure for your tourist attraction?Also, consider this: with the advent of digital signatures, PDF gives businesses ways a secure way to look at proposals, add comments, sign when approved and note what needs to be noted without giving everyone in the process the means to edit the document to their liking.PC argument: at the end of the day both OSes are just tools.The tasks that you most often perform will dictate which platform you run.Personal preference comes into play at the intersection of common activities such as surfing the web.They are maintained separately.Because PDFs have a high level of creation overhead, they are born outside of the normal content flow of an organization.If you do so, I'd say you are using it for all the wrong reasons.Second of all, Adobe provides customers (or should I say consumers) with a lot more then just Acrobat to show their content on the web!FLEX, since it is so closely related to PDF and Adobe itself, and because it is a 'new' and hip technology).Also, like most of Adobe's products, Acrobat is cross platform (as far as it goes) which is good thing.Considering that HTML renders differently on every browser on every system on every machine in every country in every language on every resolution..PDF for the web is extra.It was never meant to be.It's a publishing thing.Try shipping a HTML page to your publisher!Foxit is fast, but it is terrible at rendering text (I'm looking at a 21" Trinitron).They kept changing the user interface for no reason though.If PDF readers could reflow text it would be fantastic.Also, PDF allows content creators control over their content, while allowing the content to be passed around.For someone else to read it, I either have to give them the URL, print it out, or save as something like a MHT.But how do they KNOW that the content is the original?PDF allows restrictions that you cannot get with HTML or PDF.PDF is more like a Word document, as it can have many pages, a table of contents, and a vast array of other features that are not dependent on the capabilities (or quirks) of browsers.Waiting 15 seconds to load the viewer each time just plain sucks.Adobe entirely because of Acrobat, it is entirely too damn slow for the web, as it is today, the promotional offers that Adobe pummels us with and the clumsy, giant software updates irk me to no end.I'm too wise, I know it is always the Acrobat lagging my browser, so I do my best to avoid them in my personal surfing.I'm sure Adobe wishes we would all use .Interesting read, thanks all.That will allow me to send it to other people, that may not have access to it otherwise (say it is located on a company intranet, and while the person I'm sending it to has a business reason to see that information, they don't have access to the intranet).I'm not connected to the internet (while I know you can view HTML while not connected, I'm assuming that an HTML version would be displayed on a website, and thus no connection would mean no ability to view).MIME HTML), seems to be the missing functionality that should be standardized in all modern web browsers.I'm with Jeff on this one.PDF has many virtues, but friendliness to the web is not one of them.Printing a web page from a browser is one of the worst experiences I've gone through a web developer.Certainly it's hard to violate the protections (to varying degrees depending on the specific protection you're depending on), but to my knowledge the only PDF protection that can't be broken (yet) is the password protection to read it.ONE page and the result will only be usable in Internet Explorer."AKAIK MHTML isn't limited to encapsulating a single page.For reading and using a book from a computer screen, I think it works far better than a PDF would.The packaging argument makes no sense.And hyperlinking is even better than packaging, because the information in the package is only a copy, and may become deprecated, while the HTML source will always be the most current copy.That's the biggest killer.To these folks, PDF is the defacto way that you extract content to transmit to others.Sorry Jeff, I don't think you get why people use PDF.It's because they expect someone to print the document and web browsers are impossibly lame when it comes to printing pages.It is dynamic, and it looks different from machine to machine.You want things to look the same to everyone.Because he distributes it to his students.Because students love loopholes ("Oh, well MY copy of that didn't include that clause, so you can't hold it against me!"It's true that some people might stupidly be using PDFs as a replacement for HTML, but I suspect they are in the minority here, and any attempt to understand why people use PDFs via this lens is going to be misleading.For example, it is incredibly hard to take notes in a separate file while viewing a PDF on the screen.Acrobat are not all compatible with how most academics use notes and they have a lousy interface).Well, I know that I'd put it to good use, anyway...If the OS has antialiasing, your text will be antialiased to your settings (damn IE not supporting SVG).If the author has put text on an image (and I've seen this on PDFs too) you are limited to the AA setting the author chose exactly the same.If the users are browsing your site, they sure have a web browser, and it costs the same to publish (on Internet) a PDF or a webpage.PDF solves all that, and that's the only time I think it makes sense.The real problem with PDFs in a web context or for local usability is search.At least in January 2008, PDFs are nice for printing and layout, but lousy for search.Maybe an idea for an article: How does your website show up on paper?HTML and PDF address totally different objectives and should not be compared.You should not mix thing up.Of course the web masters should now this differences, and that is really the problem.IE (at least IE6, dunno about IE7) does a lousy job in printing oversized web pages.It chops off content and can't resize.And everyone has Preview installed, too.On my Mac, I smile whenever someone offers a PDF; in my experience, most Windows users frown for the platform limitations you've already cited.Web authoring tools, after all.On the Mac, you can easily print any document to PDF with no loss in fidelity.As most have said: it's print media vs.The problem stems mostly from Adobe which is on far too many machines.It's difficult to see why you're calling it "elitism" when he's simply making his content available in both HTML and PDF.PDFs for computer science papers, which I generally print and read offline.Kelly made the perfect choice for the book.Is his blog in PDF format?Doesn't modern content management system generate both versions from the same source anyway?The only problem with PDF as a representation is that browser integration isn't seamless when moving from PDF to HTML.For those who have never written a TeX document, the basics are easy and the complex is possible.Yeah, that's the ticket...However, if TeX syntax had been adjusted to sexps, it could be manipulated easier than XML, Lisp has certainly proven that.But the geeks have tried to lock the door behind them to make nothing else possible."HTML as a representation, and that is the only reason why PDF's are out of place.Professor Tom's talk of digitally signing PDFs put me in mind of this other fun page, although it's not relevant to the security of PDFs, but rather to the security of MD5.Foxit really does take the edge off PDF reading.For all the flexibility, and the browsers that tout an Acid2 pass.It could guess the next matrix for a series of glyphs quite easily.But it sucks big time for anything meant to be read on the screen.Apparently due to this limitation (particularly on handheld devices) it's also possible to format PDFs so that they can reflow without shrinking the text to unreadable sizes.LIKE the fact that the page can be dynamically sized to suit my needs.Sure, PDFs are useful if you're designing primarily for print.Vindictive designers who think their design is more important than the content they're presenting and want to use PDFs as a medium to strike out at the web for cutting into their turf.PDF straight from my browser; having them displayed as PDFs originally doesn't save me any time or effort.You can do the same in HTML, except for IE's poor support for such.Still, generally speaking, text superimposed over images is the least of my worries when reading content.How the primary content, which is generally given in paragraph form be the delivery mechanism PDF or HTML, renders is far more important.Not sure how inflexibility is a win for the reader.If you're talking about the user annotating the file, that's a clear case for PDF.Or, are you saying rotation of the page *and content* is a boon in PDF?Again, if I as a reader want this, I can print my HTML doc to PDF and rotate it however I like.If you put it out in PDF, you lock in your particular preferences, your particular screen size and resolution, your particular paper size and orientation.This means that HTML designers must "lock in" the display resolution of graphics often long before they are displayed, which is just as bad as PDF designers locking in all those things listed above.Mathematical equations are clumsy in HTML (generally unsupported out of the box, and so get rendered as images and fall into the case above).Now try searching for the word 'fulfills'.At least in January 2008, PDFs are nice for printing and layout, but lousy for search."It seems someone has already fixed this problem.Website owners create their original documents in something like Word or even something obscure.HTML, so they resort to the next best choice: PDFs.Probably the new GNU pdf project will be so flexible, that a firefox plugin could be readily cached into memory and display content in a quick, unjarring way.With Adobe it seems like there is a pretty dramatic resizing of an external window into the browser area, or, its just external to the browsers direct control all together.Sure MathML may one day help solve this, but it's not pratical to use yet.This may also include things that need exact reproduction, color calibration, etc.Thus it is ideal for handling very large documents of many thousands of pages in size.Properly written PDF software does not need to hold much of a PDF file in memory at any one time, nor does it need to read from the first byte and work toward the end.Anything that needs to be heavily cross referenced, including by page numbers, etc.Vector artwork, especially for maps and cartography where precision are important.SVG can almost compete here, but it's still not as ubiquitous as PDF.Adobe Reader is configured to run as a browser plugin.I'm working on a project right now where, for a POP system, we need to generate reports.PDF has a proper place in the world, but the web ecosystem isn't it.What are the Mac users crowing about?Windows can handle PDF files just fine; it's the experience of opening them that's a problem.My annoyance with PDFs, is that when im reading a 600+ page ebook, there is no bookmarking feature in Foxit or Adobe reader.So there's an argument in favour of PDFs: It's what you use to bypass broken browser printing.Just a single, solitary "I'm up to here" button would have been welcome, but noooo...PDFs as the speed bump of the Web.In most cases even printed you have a pile of inaccessible information, though that seems to be more the product of poor organization combined with the nature of paper documents.Generally I'd rather they just go away, for many of the reasons already given by others.With a single PDF it is made easier to save and print.Which IMHO is quite right.The simplest example is waiting until age or something else results in your eyesight deteriorating to the point where 8 point is no longer usable.As I have pointed out to many undergraduates ...But what are PDFs good for?Because I should not have to care how my text looks.Usually I don't give a rat's ass about the designer's layout so I prefer html.Browsers are the problem.PDFs are all about printing.The site I engineer makes extensive use of charting and my customers demand high quality, low bandwidth, and printable reports.Saving a complicated web app as an html page is also a joke.My tools of choice for doing this are ASP.Jeff, more isn't automatically better.Again, this is from programmers, people who use computers professionally every day and should know what options are available to them.They probably used DocBook (industry standard amongst technical writers), Latex, or some other form to create documents that separate content from presentation (e.There seem to be two types of people in this comment thread: those who are graphic or layout designers (or at least loyal to their cause), and those who are web programmers (or who fall into ranks behind them).This is a Good Thing, at least often enough to be mentioned.Webcomics to this day consist generally of solid images, so the exacting layout can be immutable.We don't have a domain name we're willing to pay for eternally, nor a fancy content management system that stores everything in Docbook XML.Our index is a binder and a crappy interal site designed by monkeys with no proper search function.PDFs are a lifesaver in that environment.PDF works better for that.The central criteria for choosing an output format is the reader's information transfer needs.But otherwise, PDFs are too often bloated.Finally, PDFs would be much more palatable, I think, if one wasn't so generally dependent on Adobe's hideuously bloated software to read them.Of course, the fixed layout sucks for online browsing.Woe to you if you happen to use the text search function.This is an example of horrible design, and IIRC, it's existed in at least two versions (5 and 6).What if you want to extract the images and save them in their original format?Yes, there are extensions to let them do hypertext kind of things, but hardly anyone actually uses those features.They look "exactly" like what the person who created it wanted.Long term, of course, PDFs make life hell for site maintainers.That Adobe Reader 8 and other programs do not is an issue with Reader and those other programs, not with the PDF file format.Word users, even though I may have created the document using the software.Also, I download and keep copies of PDF documents (think IBM 'Redbooks') for reference and think they are really good for this.If that is the case he can probably create the example you show above in about 5 min in Quark.IE7 is not too quirky and it will probably only get better with version 8.My system produces PDF insurance documents which have been reviewed by the legal department.CSS creating "unexpected consequences", so we create the PDF documents that provide exact replicas of the paper documents the clients (and their clients) expect and in fact require.So while I agree that PDF is overkill for many purposes, it has significant purposes left.Another thing is I don't know why so many people are so concerned with it printing.In graphics design and prepress PDF rules and indeed is standard.It always takes too long to load, and sometimes doesn't even work.HTML, but you're not allowed to have HTML in your comment.SlickEdit: advanced code editing in 40 languages across 8 platforms.Data Dynamics Reports for .Quicklinks
main detailscombined detailsfull cast and crewcompany creditsuser commentsexternal reviewsnewsgroup reviewsawardsuser ratingsrecommendationsmessage boardplot summaryplot keywordsAmazon.Plot Outline:
The trouble with Harry is that he's dead, and everyone seems to have a different idea of what needs to be done with his body...Plot Synopsis:
This plot synopsis is empty.Awards:
Nominated for 2 BAFTA Film Awards.Miss Ivy GravelyMildred Dunnock ...Quotes:
Miss Graveley:
How old do you think I am young man?NOT trees, plants or birds are a house
with a rocking chair on its porch and that corpse.Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe), is an artist.Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.Had Hitchcock said
so, the film would never have been produced.It is only barely present in the lines given the characters, but the
subtext is always there.The Trouble With Harry.It's there in all his pictures.The Trouble With Harry.Fell asleep, how does it end???Terms and Privacy Policy under which this service is provided to you.Route 101, the main drag though the Valley, it has nothing on Hosur Road.Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, cows, donkeys, and dogs jostle for every inch of the roadway as horns blare and brakes squeal.Drivers run red lights and jam their vehicles into any available space, paying no mind to pedestrians clustered desperately on median strips like shipwrecked sailors.With virtually no mass transit in Bangalore, Indian technology firm Infosys Technologies Ltd."India has underinvested in infrastructure for 60 years, and we're behind what we need by 10 to 12 years," says T.Real estate has shot through the roof, with some prices doubling in the past year.India needs manufacturing to boom if it is to boost exports and create jobs for the 10 million young people who enter the workforce each year.Suddenly, good infrastructure matters a lot more.Yet industry is hobbled by overcrowded highways where speeds average just 20 miles per hour.Across the state of Maharashtra, major cities lose power one day a week to relieve pressure on the grid.Government officials were shocked last year when Intel Corp.Although Intel declined to comment, industry insiders say the reason was largely the lack of reliable power and water in India.Narayana Murthy: "If our infrastructure gets delayed, our economic development, job creation, and foreign investment get delayed.The infrastructure deficit is so critical that it could prevent India from achieving the prosperity that finally seems to be within its grasp.Without reliable power and water and a modern transportation network, the chasm between India's moneyed elite and its 800 million poor will continue to widen, potentially destabilizing the country.Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University, figures gross domestic product growth would run two percentage points higher if the country had decent roads, railways, and power.Without better infrastructure, "we can't continue with the growth rates we have had.""If you have to build a road in China, just a handful of people need to make a decision," says Daniel Vasella, chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Novartis (NVS
)."If you want to build a road in India, it'll take 10 years of discussion before you get a decision."In elections last year in the state of Tamil Nadu, for instance, a new government was voted in after it pledged to give free color TVs to poor families.Nearly all sectors of officialdom are riddled with graft, from neighborhood cops to district bureaucrats to state ministers.Japan's Maruti Suzuki says trucking its cars 900 miles from its factory in Gurgaon to the port in Mumbai can take up to 10 days.Once at the port, the Japanese company's autos can wait weeks for the next outbound ship because there's not enough dock space for cargo carriers to load and unload.Companies often have no choice but to make the best of a bad situation.Wim Elfrink, Cisco's chief globalization officer.India, more than double what it billed in 2005.But when GE dispatched three employees to survey a potential site the railway favored in the northern state of Bihar, the trio returned discouraged.Jennifer Thompson, director of international planning at Oshkosh Truck Corp.That told her there's great potential in India for selling Oshkosh's mixer trucks.That explains why so many multinationals are flocking to India.But while the laws of supply and demand would argue that India's infrastructure gap can be filled, that logic ignores the corrosive effect of the country's politics.But a government power authority set prices so low that it was uneconomical for Dabhol to operate, and the whole deal fell apart.But according to American construction company executives, it's not working well.During his decade in power, Naidu didn't do enough for rural areas, and his challenger promised to channel state funds into irrigation projects and electricity subsidies.Agriculture is stagnant in part because of a lack of the most rudimentary of roads to get to and from fields.One reason little practical help makes it from the seats of power to India's impoverished villages is that so much money gets siphoned off along the way.The most potent weapon India's reformers have against corruption is transparency.Aruna Newton last fall helped organize something of a women's crusade to speed up infrastructure improvements.Nearly 15,000 volunteers now monitor key road projects and meet with state officials to press for action.They even enlisted the state chief minister's mother, who helped get his attention.The state of Andhra Pradesh rolled out the red carpet last year for MAS Holdings Ltd.Sri Lanka, South Asia's largest garment manufacturer.It promised subsidized electricity, new access roads, and even a deepwater port if the company would place a huge industrial park on the southern coast.And it chose India over China."If we can work together, there's no stopping growth in this country."It will be owned by a private company, which will turn it over to the Karnataka state government after 60 years.These companies are also equity investors.India's hopes rest on the airport deal's success.Will the airport open on time?Two government authorities are responsible for building the road that leads to the airport, and they're locked in a dispute over how to do it.BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
![Lagwagon : Double Plaidinum [VINYL]](/covers/18/18229/alb_73507_th.jpg "Lagwagon : Double Plaidinum [VINYL]")
