Appreciation for Sapna Book Store

Sapna Book Store (SapnaOnline.Com) is a well known chain of book stores. Excellent source of books, especially Kannada books.

I had ordered a few books online recently.

After a couple of days, I got an e-mail from them informing me that the price of one of the books has come down and they were issuing a coupon for the difference. It was a coupon for Rs. 25.

Certainly very refreshing. Very rarely businesses offer such a gesture. Thank you Sapna Online.

I would have liked the difference directly refunded to my bank account. If that was not possible, the coupon should have been open ended without any expiration date. In this case, the coupon had to be used by May 31st.

In order to use the coupon, I ended up ordering another Rs. 250 worth of books. Wanted to get free shipping also. So, minimum had to be more than Rs. 199. :)

Behavioral finance at work here. It's hard to give up when something is 'free'. To make use of Rs. 25 coupon, spend another Rs. 225. :) No wonder economist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel prize researching such irrational consumer behaviors when it comes to money.

To tell you the truth, I was not a big fan of Sapna earlier. During 1994-97, I had visited their Bangalore store (near Majestic) a couple of times. There used to be a few annoying employees who went around saying 'No reading. No reading.' They were there to dissuade people from reading (scanning/browsing) books there. Attitude was like - don't browse the books. Just buy and leave. Most irritating behavior. They should come and see how book stores operate in the USA. You can take any new book from the shelf, read as long as you want lounging on comfortable furniture, once your are done, leave the books right there and leave without buying anything. Nobody to bother you or buzz in your ears 'no reading. no reading'.

By this gesture, that old resentment about Sapna is gone, partially at least :)

Online shopping experience is excellent. Well designed online portal.

Competitive Cricket or Staged Drama?

Recently read the book - All Cricket Matches are Fixed by Atul Kumar.

Excellent read. 5/5.

There are several other excellent books which describe match fixing, cricket betting, involvement of the powerful and the mighty, underworld, honey trapping etc. in great detail.

Specialty of this book is the excellent use of data and analysis. Extensive data about cricket matches is available. Can you apply statistical analysis to determine if matches are fixed or if cricket is played as a natural game? That's exactly what the author has done and kudos to him.

Using basic probability and statistics concepts, the author shows that most of the matches are fixed. If not completely fixed, certain sessions are definitely fixed (spot fixing). If highly unlikely events start happening very regularly beating all odds then you can safely conclude that results are manipulated. For example - if you toss a coin ten times, how likely you are going to get heads all ten times? Very very small probability. But if you get such a result even once, you can be sure that the coin has been 'fixed' to show heads every time. Same principle applied here. Using historical data of cricket matches, the author applies probability and statistics to show that cricket matches are manipulated if not fixed entirely.

There is another book 'Fixed' (not sure about the title) which was the first book to look at soccer matches and use data and analysis to come to similar conclusion. All matches are fixed.

While on the subject, I recommend following books if you are interested:

No Ball by by Chandramohan Puppala

Fixed!: Cash and Corruption in Cricket by Shantanu Guha Ray

Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy by Ed Hawkins

Thank God, I don't follow cricket anymore. Was a fan till 1996. After moving to the US and after becoming busy with other activities, cricket craze fell off. Also cricket is fun when watched with friends. Still remember some of the high-octane matches watched with friends. Nail biting finishes. Arguments. Disappointments when power suddenly failed.

Fun old days. But if it was all a horrible staged drama, good riddance! :)

Cheers!

MS-Office replacement with LibreOffice

Bought a new laptop a few months back. It came with MS-Office trial version installed. Like many latest laptops, my laptop does not have a CD/DVD drive. So, there was no easy way to install my old MS-Office (2003) from the CDs. Not even sure if the latest version of Windows OS supports MS-Office 2003.

As such I wanted to move away from proprietary software and was looking for opensource alternatives. Came across LibreOffice, an open source product, as a possible replacement for MS-Office.

I have been using LibreOffice for last 6+ months and very happy with it. I have only used word processor and spreadsheet tools from LibreOffice. It's been able to accomplish everything that MS-Word and MS-Excel did in the past. Very happy with its quality and usability. Much better than bloated MS-Office. Usability of MS-Office also went down significantly after they made major changes a few years back which changed the UI drastically from how it was in MS-Office 2003. Simplicity was gone. Old skills and tips & tricks became useless. Compared to that LibreOffice UI is simple, straight forward and less cluttered.

Google Docs and Google Sheets are another option to replace MS-Office. They are really very good and versatile. However since they are cloud-based, you don't have a rich editor which can harness the laptop's power and provide relatively richer editing capabilities and experience. For simple word processing and spreadsheet needs, google docs and sheets are more than adequate. Another advantage is you can access them on the go as your docs are all on your google drive.

LibreOffice can process MS-Office documents. You can save in original MS-Office format or choose to save in LibreOffice's open source format among many formats it supports. Macros work without any issues. Security is good. Periodic updates are provided.

Very happy with LibreOffice and Google Docs / Sheets. Happy to have gotten rid of MS-Office. Recently read somewhere that MS-Office is highly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Are opensource products more vulnerable? Don't know. Since code is available, hackers can find vulnerabilities easily. On the other hand, chances are open source community itself finds holes sooner and plugs them before they are exploited. :)

LibreOffice also has mobile apps. I have not used them much. I prefer OpenDocumentReader Android app which can open any doc saved in open doc format.

Kudos to LibreOffice and its creators. Thanks a lot to the opensource community.

Mystery around Arafat's death...

Excellent documentary shedding new light on Arafat's 'suspicious' death. The western world was tired of his stubbornness and locals were tired of his selfishness. Everyone wanted a new leader who could pave the way for negotiations. So, did they conspire to get rid of him secretly??? Watch and decide for yourself. Really nice work of investigative journalism.