Rape Of Bahasura

I read this article today. 
(http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/rasheeda-bhagat/article2016234.ece?homepage=true).

Amma and Didi have been elected in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal respectively as heads of state. There is wild jubilation all around. The previous chief ministers (CM) were thought to be awful.

Now the guy who was the chief minister in Tamil Nadu gangraped the state along with his coterie of wives, daughters, sons and nephews.

This went on to such an extent that I started going to the temple to break coconuts and hoping that the lady (opponent of the man who was CM) comes to power.

I am reminded of a mythological character from Mahabharata, Bahasura who was an asura (cannibal) who used to terrorize people in the villages. He would eat up a lot of villagers frequently. The villagers who got sick of this finally decided that they will propose to Bahasura that they, the villagers, would send one person along with lots of food every fortnight to be eaten by Bahasura.

Bahasura agreed immediately to this proposal. Without any effort on his part he will be provided food and a man to eat. This is called sticky revenue, assured incomes without any effort, in the industry.

The villagers were happy because the forced "gangrape" by Bahasura was replaced by voluntary "rape".

In Tamil Nadu, the people have done the same thing. They have opted for rape by the new CM to gang rape by the previous CM.

Update:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bihar-to-implement-Right-to-Service-Act/articleshow/8320473.cms. There are also such CM's.

Microsoft And Skype

I read this
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/10/microsoft_skype_buy_near/ and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/06/who_should_buy_skype/) today.

Microsoft plans to purchase Skype for $8billion. Skype's annual revenues are approximately $1b and profits are about $30m (http://gigaom.com/2011/05/06/facebook-skype/, http://www.businessinsider.com/skype-ipo-analysis-rebtel-2010-8, http://gigaom.com/2010/08/29/is-skype-up-for-sale/). They have 124 million active users, about 25m concurrent users and 8m paying users.

Note:

Annual profits have been extrapolated from 6 month data given in the article above. This value could be off by about 10%.

This means that the average revenue per user (ARPU) is about $8 per year, considering only active users. ARPU for Bharti Airtel, a leading telecom company in India is about $8 per month. While Airtel and Skype address different (types of) markets this data would be good to have in mind.

As per the article above, Skype has 8m paying users. This is 6% of their active user base. 

ARPU of paying users is about $125 per year or $10 per month. This sounds reasonable.

But a valuation of $8b for an annual revenue of $1b and profits of 30m seems too high. We seem to be chasing paper money again.

Let history remember this day that I said MS is making a colossal mistake.
Related reading:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576315501698635160.html
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/cloud-computing2/microsoft-skype-136128
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/idINIndia-56917620110514

Maths Puzzle 16 - Arithmetic Progression

A friend gave me this sum to solve.

One day John went to the woods and he wanted to pick up some cones. Under the first tree he found 11 cones, under the second one was 6 more cones than under the first one, under the third one he found 6 more cones than under the second one and so on... How many cones did John find if in all together if he went under 77 trees?

Now this is a classic Arithmetic Progression (AP) problem.

An AP series is like:

a, a+r, a+2r, a+3r .... (a+(n-1)r..

where a is the 1st term, there are n terms and the difference between the each term and the next term is constant = r.

The sum of such an AP series can be found as follows:

Total cones T = a   +                 (a+r)     +   (a+2r) +  ......       + (a+(n-1)r)                     

                T = (a+(n-1)r   + (a+(n-2)r) +  (a+(n-3)r) ....            +     a                         (same as above in reverse order)

                  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adding both 2T= (2a+(n-1)r) +(2a+(n-1)r) +  (2a+(n-1)r) +  .... + (2a+(n-1)r)  

        2T = (2a+(n-1)r)*n

T = (2a+(n-1)r)*n/2

now a = 1st term = 11

r = difference = 6

n = 77

T = (2*11 +(77-1)*6)*77/2

   = (22+76*6)*77/2

   = 478*77/2

   = 18403