Marina Bay Sands is the world’s most expensive hotel, it’s boat-shaped ‘SkyPark’ perched atop the three 55 storey towers. This three towers are connected with a one hectare roof sky park offering 360-degree views of Singapore’s skyline and featuring beautifully sculptured gardens, restaurants and a swimming pool.

 

The SkyPark will be home to the world’s longest elevated swimming pool, with a 475-foot vanishing edge, perched 200 meters above the ground. While the water in the infinity pool seems to end in a sheer drop, it actually spills into a catchment area where it is pumped back into the main pool. At three times the length of an Olympic pool and 650ft up, it is the largest outdoor pool in the world at that height.

India’s financial website Moneycontrol.com was hacked last week, as unknown hackers inserted a malicious code inside the website’s pages, making visitors to it vulnerable, US based cyber security firm Websense Security Labs said in its security alerts released on Tuesday.

According to the San Diego based Websense, the main Indian site of Moneycontrol.com was compromised and injected with malicious code on November 6, 2010. The injected code redirected users to an exploit website. “Once a user visited the Moneycontrol.com, the malicious code took the user’s browser quietly to an exploit website http://www.Brenz.pl – in a typical “drive-by” attack. Brenz.pl is an exploit site pre-loaded with an exploit kit called Eleonore,” says Websense Labs Senior Researcher Elad Sharf.

Exploit kits contain malicious programs which can be downloaded to infect a particular computer. “A list of exploits are delivered to the user’s browser once Brenz.pl is visited and any successful attempt of exploitation results with the user being infected with a Trojan called Virut,” Mr Sharf adds. Virut is a file infector that targets .exe and .scr files, extensions used for applications and scripts respectively. The site was cleaned up the next day.

Active injected codes can potentially impact a site’s performance. When a website is injected with code that leads to an exploit site, visitors generally experience hanged or slow browsers, and often a a browser crash, as well, says Sharf.

Eleonore on the other hand has potential to exploit common vulnerabilities in applications like Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.

According to CERT-in, India’s Computer Emergency Response Team at Ministry of IT, SQL injection attacks are on the rise. Such an attack is designed to inject an iframe into the website source which will force visitors to download a javascript file, says CERT-in. Many websites have been found infected with such scripts. After successful exploitation, malware such as Trojans are downloaded to the user’s system, says the agency. It advises caution even while visiting trusted websites.

Have You ever wondered how luxurious the most expensive house can be? You should read this one. Antilla is the new house of Mukesh Ambani. This house break the record for most expensive house in the world. This is the first home in the world that exceeds $ 1 billion. This house is 570 feets high, the price of this house is around $ 2 billion. This house is built in the middle of downtown Mumbai, India that sadly in the middle of the area that full of poverty.
Ambani is a global conglomerate and the richest man in India, new emerging economies country. He explains that his new home will have more floor space than the palace of Louis XIV at Versailles.
Each of Ambani’s family will have their own personal health club. They will also have six levels garage for 168 cars. Most of the tower built from glass. This ultra modern house featured the panic room, cinema and employ around 600 servants and staff. Each level also have a lush garden.
The Building of Mukesh Ambani house

the lobby of Mukesh Ambani House

the ballroom of Mukesh Ambani house

the bathroom of Mukesh Ambani house

traditional lounge of Mukesh Ambani house

modern lounge of Mukesh Ambani house

Can You imagine that this house just for 1 family? Husband, Wife and 3 Children? I can’t imagine how life in the most expensive house in the world. This house will be stayed for a while as most expensive house in the world since the gap of price from the second place of the most expensive house is quite large.
Congratulations for Mukesh Ambani for your new most expensive house in the world.

Forbes’ Celebrity 100 Power List (with earnings):
1 Oprah Winfrey – $315 million

2 Beyonce Knowles – $87 million
3 James Cameron – $210 million
4 Lady Gaga – $62 million
5 Tiger Woods – $105 million
6 Britney Spears – $64 million
7 U2 – $130 million dollars
8 Sandra Bullock – $56 million
9 Johnny Depp – $75 million
10 Madonna – $58 million

Ahmed, a rich guy, loved fast cars and he did have a few in his
possession. He loved to speed and could not be bothered about breaking
speed limits. Many a times he was caught by the cops and speed radars,
fined, but still he never bothered until. One day as he was driving at
a very high speed as usual, he saw a cop following him. The cop
overtook him finally and asked him to stop and checked his license. He
then took out his pad and started writing, and then handed over the
sheet of paper to Ahmed. How much was this one going to cost?!!! Wait
a minute. What was this???? Some kind of joke? Certainly not a ticket.

Ahmed began to read:

“Dear Ahmed,

Once upon a time I had a lovely daughter. She was six when killed by a car.You
guessed it – a speeding driver’s car. A fine and three months in jail,
and the man was free. Free to hug his three daughters. I only had one,
and I’m going to have to wait until Heaven, before I can ever hug her again.

A thousand times I’ve tried to forgive that man. A thousand times
I thought I had. Maybe I did, but I need to do it again. Even now. Pray
for me.. And be careful, Ahmed, my son is all I have left.”

Ahmed turned around in time to see the cop’s car pull away and head
down the road. He watched until it disappeared. A full 15 minutes
later, he too, pulled away and drove slowly home, praying for
forgiveness and hugging a surprised wife and kids when he arrived. Life
is precious. Handle it with care.

So drive safe. Definitely speed thrill, but remember, IT ALSO KILLS.

An overseas holiday used to be thought of as a reward for a years hard work. Now, an European country has declared that tourism is a human right and pensioners, youths and those too poor to afford it should have their travel subsidized by the taxpayer.

Under the scheme, the pensioners could be given reduced price trips to other countries, while teenagers could be taken around to old industrial unused to experience the cultural diversity of Europe.

The idea was formulated by a government official of Italy, the EU said.

I think, going by the news reports over the years, the idea would have been taken from the Kuwait press reports.

Well here in Kuwait, a similar idea in is being reported in the local press for a long time now. The folks here are going abroad for an extended medical treatment. This is in-spite of the Kuwait medical industry boasting of the latest medical treatments being available locally.

Many reports have claimed that the idea of an abroad medical treatment is merely a guise to claim a state-sponsored holiday, given the fact that these trips are usually to a Western nation with great shopping and holidays locations.

I don’t know how much truth is there in these press reports, but state-sponsored abroad trips (for whatever reasons) is the brain child of some clever Kuwaiti minister, for sure. Of course, medical reasons are counted among human rights.

As far as human rights is concerned, on the other issues which are more serious, the HRW is keenly watching Kuwait and has also issued reports about its gross violation.

Well whatever be the reasons of travel, justified or not, the idea of state-sponsored foreign tourism, is the brain child of Kuwait. (Does it need to be patent protected?)

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India ?

Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.

Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India ? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).

Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India . That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel’s parent) are breathing easy you can’t be farther from truth.

Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit that Apple’s Iphone and Google’s Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?

The “Mahabharat” (the great Indian epic battle) is about “what is tomorrow’s personal digital device”? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – “who is my competitor?”

Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says “What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?” The smart ones get the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won’t compete on pure audio? “Elementary Watson”. So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as “digital.”

In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question “who is my competitor for tomorrow?” The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared “internet is a fad!” and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today’s competitor. Today’s competitor is obvious. Tomorrow’s is not.

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India ? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. ( India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton ’s law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India . PC’s price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film’s competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour “tamasha” (entertainment) . Cricket season might push films out of the market.

Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is “I don’t remember!” For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is “alarm clock.” The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called “alarms.” What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon Valley ). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said “Have breakfast …or… be breakfast”! That sums it up rather neatly.

— Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi

Since the inception of IPL, it has acted as a magnet for people with big money (with or without any due credentials) and looking for a quick road to fame. Over the last 3 years, everybody joined the bandwagon of the IPL circus.

All those who did, made good money, exploiting the passion of the cricket hungry India and business of all sorts related to IPL cropped up over these years. And all of them shared the booty.

Now with the Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor spat gone sour on the Kochi team owners, that the IPL circus elephant has turned into a hydraheaded monster, all those even vaguely or remotely profited from the IPL name, no wonder, want to ditch it like a leech.

Day by day, the IPLGate is getting wider and wider and opening up new players with hidden agendas.The IT dept has gone full force into the scandal and much heavy steam is expected in the coming days. Many top notch people will find their faces scalded by this. Everybody who got money in the name of IPL is currently under the IT scanner; right from players, organizers, sponsors, team owners, fund managers, telecast & media rights owners, associated IPL brand companies.

Match-fixing and betting is another angle that is being investigated, with tons of money going into it. Being illegal, nobody wants to officially comment on it.

Even the BCCI officials and ministers are believed to be hand-in-gloves with those high profile IPL managers. Some heads have already rolled out and many more are likely.

Much heat is being generated from the politicians and are blaming the government, probably because they did not get the share of the booty. All those tainted parliamentarians, who made a killing with the earlier scandals are now raising their voices to blame those connected to IPL.

Well, in the whole deal, the game of cricket has been sullied. The perception in the minds of the people has changed, though a bit temporarily. Given the time, the fans will forget all this and clamor to cling to the stadiums and the TV screens to enjoy a good game of cricket.

The end result in this game is still awaited and will surely be a long bloody final.

Billionaires have quick reaction times to both opportunity and crisis.

Here’s a great story from Martin Fridson about the importance of quick reaction time to crisis. Future billionaire Phillip Anschutz was contract drilling for Chevron in 1968, when a spark from a truck set his entire field ablaze.

Anschutz found himself facing ruin as he had borrowed heavily to secure the lease. The average person watching his capital go up in smoke would have been forgiven for curling up into a ball on the floor and going catatonic. Not Anschutz. What he did was quickly buy the lease of his panicked neighbor by assuming his liabilities and then raising $100,000 by selling Universal Studios the rights to film his burning oil rigs for their film Hellfighters, which had John Wayne playing the famous oil field fire-fighter Red Adair. The money allowed him to then hire the real Adair to put out the fire. In the end, Anschutz realized a “healthy profit.”

Its the calm and the ability to see the opportunity in adversity, that makes a great man.

What would you have done at this time?

Billionaire Warren Buffett shares his business lessons and wisdom.

Here are the hi-lites:

When do you decide to invest in a firm?

The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble. We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table. (Mr. Buffett bought Coke when it had its biggest fiasco after launching New Coke; he bought American Express when it went through a loss making phase in the early 60’s)

What do you look for in people when they come to sell their firms to you?

I don’t look for the usual credentials such as an MBA, a pedigree (Harvard, Wharton), or cash reserves or market cap of their firm.

What I look for is just a passion in their eyes; I think that’s the key. A person who is hungry will always do well. I prefer it when people even after selling stay on and work for the firm; they are people who can’t wait to get off their bed to get to work. Passion is everything; there is no replacement for innate interest.

Why do stock market crashes happen?

Because of human nature for greed and insecurity. The 1970s were unbelievable. The world wasn’t going to end, but businesses were being given away. Human nature has not changed. People will always behave in a manic-depressive way over time. They will offer great values to you.”

What are the things that are taught wrong in Business school and the corporate world?

I like such open ended questions, I think Business schools should refrain from teaching their wards about profit making and profit making alone, it gives a sense of 1 dimensional outlook to the young students that loss is a curse. In reality, in the corporate world, failure and loss making are inevitable. The capital market without loss is like Christianity without hell. I think they should teach the student on how to buy a business, how to value a business? Not just on how to determine the price of a business. Because price is what you pay, value is what you get.

How do you feel after donating $ 40 Billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation? You are a hero to us!

I feel nothing. I haven’t sacrificed anything in life. I have had a good life. I donated after I turned 75. I think I admire those people who sacrifice their time, share their food and home, as the people to be emulated not me. Besides, what is money before a man’s life?

What do you think are the pitfalls in donation?

I have never donated a dime to churches or other such organizations; I need to believe in something before I end up doing that. I have been observing the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation for years now and I am confident they will do a fantastic job of making use of the money. I am a big believer in Outsourcing, others believed in me as an Investor and gave their hard earned money to invest. I believe in Bill Gates, he is a better donor than me.

You seem to be so well read, tell us how it all started.

My father was a stock broker, so we had all these financial books in our library. He introduced me to those classics and I got into them. I am lucky that my father was not a fan of Playboy! Reading is the best habit you can get. Well, you can learn from teachers too, and have mentors but there are so many constraints attached- they will talk fast, talk slow, they might talk like a pro or they might be terrible communicators. Books are a different animal altogether, I love reading! The beauty about reading and learning is that the more you learn the more you want to learn.

What is the 1 biggest advice you would impart to a young investor like me?

Think for a moment that you are given a car and told this is the only car you would get for the rest of your life. Then you would make sure that you car is taken care of well, it is oiled and detailed every now and then. You would make sure that it never gets rusted, and you would garage it. Think of yourself as that car. You just get 1 body, 1 mind and 1 soul. Take care of it well. Invest in yourself that would be my advice.

So, what is your roadmap to becoming a billionaire?