Why you don't need Cable Guy? Set up Cable Connection yourself

Every time we keep hearing the story about: "The Cable Guy" aka "Comcast Guy".

US has 40.2 M cable internet customers like me. Every time the cable guy is supposed to come to connect internet, he ends up ruin ruining our day or at least half a day. If an average person changes 5 cable connection five times in his productive life, It amount to 200M days.

If you put a $ amount to it with a minimum hourly wage: 200*4*8M $ =6.4 Billion $ waste.

I did not realize until yesterday evening. I ordered a internet connection for my new apartment. It got a "Cable Guy Visit" appointment for yesterday(which is 11 days after I moved in).

The guy came, knocked on the door. Without even calling me up, he left. To cut the story short, I got no help from Cable Guy.

I was on call with Customer care from Comcast but it did not help either. I decided DIY approach. Let's understand it in steps:

1. Find the place where Comcast has hub for our apartment building.

2. find the wire that comes your apartment.

3. Peel 1 inch of the wire to copper wire(centre core) of the co-axial cable.
4. Peel of plastic jacket another 1 inch only to the metallic shield.

5. Heat the metal jacket and put in the connector. If you don't have the connector, there should be extra one lying near that area from prior connection. Just heat the connector, the exsting wire would come out. Once you got the connector and put in your wire. Heat it a little bit so that you wire becomes intact in the socket.

6. Connect the wire to the Comcast hub (metal point, having multiple outlets)

7. Come home, Connect your modem to the cable outlet at home. You can buy Cable Modem from Best buy or WalMart. Motorola Surfboard Modems are pretty standard and cost around $50-70. If you get it from Comcast, they charge you $3/month extra for it.

8. Turn on the modem. You should Online(or Data) light ON ( Stable and not blinking).

9. Call up Technical Support of ISP and Give him HSP MAC ID of your modem. He will associate it with your connection.

10. Restart the modem.

11. Connect your modem and your computer with the ethernet cable.

12. Your should show you connected to Comcast. Download the installer. Install the program. It will walk you through the Registration process.

13. Now you are on the internet.

14. If you want to connect a wireless router, Take out the ethernet cable from your computer and connect it to WAN port in the wireless router.

15. Restart both modem and router again.

16. Wireless connection should be available to your computer.

I hope you enjoy the DIY approach. It saved me another appointment and another five hours away from work.

Feel free to leave comment if you need any help or you like the post.

What does prediction market mean for India

Prediction markets are the most advanced form of Markets in the world. It is an online platform for users to trade on chances of future events.

It is used to predict future events and help in forecasting problems. It started in early 2000's, when people started talking about wisdom of crowds.

It was soon proven that prediction market is the most accurate form of forecasting intrument. In 2004 and 2008 US presidential elections, prediction markets predicted the exact percentage of votes for president. It was a huge success.

The first real money prediction market - indiaPX comes to india very soon. This prediction market will cater to four categories: Politics, Business, Sports and Movies.

The aim of such prediction market is to use the wisdom of crowds to solve nation's forthcoming problems by using the trading data to arrive at statistically significant results. I think, it is a big step towards solving the forecasting problem in India.

It not only tells us about the possiblity of future events but also prepares us for those events before hand.

Let's make our democracy functional by using the prediction market for India.

Evolution of Markets

Hi All,

First real money prediction market coming soon to india. Check their latest ad:

The Polyester prince - Why ban ?

I do not undestand why do we need to ban a book in the democratic society. The Polyester Prince is a very well written book by Hamish. International media has given it a huge applause.

Even if few facets of one's life are not cleanest ones, it does not make Dhirubhai Ambani anything less than a hero. He has been a hero not only for Reliance, its shareholders but also for the entire nation.

I'm currently writing a casestudy on Reliance and will post it here once its done.

Till then, enjoy reading: The Prince of Polyester (pdf version)

Book Publishing - See The CHANGE !!

 Machiavelli wrote books on barks of tree in 600AD. The publishing of knowledge continued to innovate. The barks of tree got converted to paper. Paper became the primary agent to transfer knowledge. We have not seen any innovation in the medium for so many centuries. 

Is it poised for disruption ??? Are e-books, the next medium of knowledge ??

e-books, the electronic form of rendering book knowledge became popular in late 20th century. Most of the publishing houses still think that the revenue model of hard copy books is the most profitable model. I tend to disagree on that. 

Like google, the publishing industry can also move towards the ad-based reveniew model. The e-books can have targeted ads and get the revenues out of it. If the e-books are free, the better the ebook is, more will be its circulation. The more the circulation, the more eye balls an ad gets. Like any content on website, its the content in an e-book. 

Ebook can have targetted Ads. A Finance book can have ads from Investment Banks and financial institutions etc. All those Ads can be clickable ads and it can again be a Ads-per-click model. 

This will not only make the good content free and widely avalaible but also remove the middlemen from the industry. This will be open sourcing of the content in the publishing industry. The costs of the publishers will go down in publishing the content from the authors. 

Today the biggest threat to publishing industry comes not from piracy or used books but from the you-tubing of the content. Most of the big universities have set up their online universities on I-Tunes, YouTube and Open Course Ware formats. Wikipedia is the biggest threat for all the publishers. There is no content which is not available on Wikipedia. 

So instead of being shy of technology, the best way is to adopt it to their advantage !!

Googlevangelism

Hey Guys, 

Just thought that I coined two new words but they already existed.  The reputation of these two words would depend upon how Google & Apple perform in the time to come. 

Googlevangelism - refers to evangelism of all the Google products. Some googlevanglists fight for the reason that google products are much better than it peers. I tend to disagree on G1 - T-mobile, Google's Android based phone. 

Applevangelism - refers to evagelism of all the Apple products. Apple has created a cult following its brand and its products. They are not only the best in the industry but also give you a satisfaction of owning. Although I only own I-pod, you can gues which category i belong to. 

No wonder these two companies are number 1 & 2 on Innovation index across all the industries. 

Own a house early in Life ... What it means ?

House has always been the most cherished assets of any individual in all the times. There are two significant type of assets that a person owns in his life. The first being the assets which makes him earn his livelihood. Historically for a farmer, it was the land and currently for a skilled professional, it is the skillset. This is the biggest investment of his life. He invests time, money and effort. Second, comes the House. The house in which he wants to spend the rest of his life peacefully with his family. He works hards, saves money and tries to get the house as soon as possible. The question is how soon is soon ????

Going back to the historical trends in US. There was a time, when automotive engineers were in great demand around 40's-60's. The average income for these engineers was much more than their peers in other industries. This resulted in letting them own the house earlier than their peers. As the industry matured, the average kept pushing higher and higher. Now its same as the average age in any other industry. The same thing happened for software professionals in early 90's but it has now gone to the same levels as the other industries. As a matter of fact, it is now  lower than other industries becuase offshoring started in 90's.

If you look at the trends, you will find out that an average software professional in India can own a stable and reasonable  house a the age of 30-35 in India. The average age of owning a house for a professional in this industry is much lesser than average age for other industries. What is the reason for the anomaly? Ofcourse, the anomaly comes from the $$ money that they earn at onsite in US for 3-4 years of their life. Is it going to continue??

With improving technology, there will be lesser and lesser component of onsite roles. With coutries like Brazil and Vietnam coming up as outsourcing centers, India's role in outsourcing industry will go down. The Indian software industry will become mature and growth rate would go down too. Inturn, this will result in the increase in average age to own a house among indian software engineers in India. Few years down the line, it will be no better than professional in any other industry. 

Average people who own the house very early in life are the ones who made the right choice about the industry. The other average people who surpass them in making up more and better assets are the ones who invest in the long term.  

The trend shows that if you get into a industry which is growing and is still in the nascent phase, the growth in the industry is phenomenal and leaves so much money with you as savings that you can afford to have bigger assets early in life. The problem is not only this advantage goes away very soon but is also followed by lull in the industry because of intense competition in the market.  Therefore, Make hay while sun shines. 

The other way to buck the trend is to keep investing in the other big asset you have. Your skillset. The key is the agility in terms of aquiring new skills and moving up the ladder. This is the long term investment. It might sound like loosing a golden goose at a point in time, but it is a failsafe approach. It never hurts.