savageinfidel

Telangana supporters gather to advocate for the region's statehood. The concept of statehood has always been a contentious debate in India. It’s recently gotten international press as Telangana, a region of Andhra Pradesh, is fighting a stormy battle for statehood. When India gained independence from the British in 1947, the modern-day Indian map began to emerge. States were created and borders were drawn. The map continued to take shape in 1956 with the States Reorganization Act, a piece of legislation resulting in the single largest change in state borders since India’s independence. The act called for state boundaries based on linguistic differences.  So, Karnataka was created for Kannada speakers, Kerala was created for Malayalam speakers, Gujarat for Gujarati speakers, and so on. Modern day Andhra Pradesh was created for Telugu speakers.  It seems despite their linguistic alignment with the other regions of Andhra Pradesh, the people of Telangana were unhappy from th...

Top private equity firm, Carlyle Group, gave Beats Electronics $500 million Friday valuing the company at $1 billion. In exchange for growth capital, it will be taking two of six positions on the high end sounds and audio tech company's board. The money will be used to buy back HTC's final twenty five percent stake in the company, ending a partnership that did not go quite as planned. The Taiwanese smart phone company bought half of Beats three years ago for $309 million dollars, and used the technology in its smart phones. As its cell phone sales have since far lagged behind Samsung, it has moved to sell its holdings in its partner, in order to focus on its most important business segment. Beats has started to expand into the speaker business, revealing a new line of pill speakers marketed in notable pop songs "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke and "We Can't Stop" by Miley Cyrus. It has already captured sixty four percent of the premium headphone market,...

China's official news agency, Xinhua, reported on Tuesday that Shanghai would open up its planned Free-Trade Zone on September 29. The roughly 29 square kilometer area in Shanghai will be exempt from trade barriers and censorship rules that affect all parts of China outside of its Special Economic Zones. The ridding of mandated customs inspections of all imports and exports aims to boost trade volume and attract foreign investment in China's most populous city. The most attention-grabbing quality of the new Free-Trade Zone is the lifting of internet censorship bans on Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times, allowing unrestricted access to these sites only within the small zone in the city. The new policy aims to attract foreign firms to spur local banking, insurance, shipping, and healthcare industries, among others. “In order to welcome foreign companies to invest and to let foreigners live and work happily in the free-trade zone, we must think about how we can make them fe...

Netflix recently announced a second deal with a cable company to bring its online streaming service to cable. The deal with Swedish company Com Hem would add a potential 600,000 customers to its service. This comes after Virgin Media struck a similar deal in the U.K to bring Netflix to at least 1.7 million of its customers. The two cable providers would begin offering the service to subscribers of their respective TiVo DVR services. While this deal may seem like big news for the two companies, Netflix and Com Hem's DVR service must have a balance to properly coexist. This is because any DVR system can undercut the streaming service provided by Netflix or vice versa. For example, if I wanted to watch an episode of Law and Order SVU, I could potentially look it up on Netflix or just have TiVo record all SVU broadcasts onto the DVR hard-drive. The TiVo service that Com Hem provides can be anywhere from twice as expensive to seven times as expensive as Netflix, and with Netflix right o...

President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani both openly stated their support for a new diplomatic effort regarding Iran's nuclear program. Obama, addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, stated that there was "basis for a meaningful agreement." In recent weeks, Rouhani, who was elected in June, has suggested that he is open to developing a program in which Iran is allowed to further their nuclear energy program but prevents them from building a weapon, claiming that a nuclear weapon program would "contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions." Obama said that Secretary of State John Kerry was working with the Iranian government to resolve the negotiations about Iran's nuclear program. In his statement to the UN General Assembly, he stated that success in the negotiations would be a "major step in a long road to a difficult relationship, one based on mutual interests and mutual respect," adding that "the roadblock...

Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry. It looks like it's time for you to take a giant step away from the highly competitive smartphone market. Anyone remember when these things were the cool phone to have? That lasted all of 6 months. 4 or 5 years ago when smartphones were in their early beginnings and people had to deal with the horrible data plans that offered sub-3G speeds, Blackberrys were a viable option. So viable that the market loved their stock, and it enjoyed levels above $70/share. In 2011, it had a pretty solid run too since companies worldwide adopted the Blackberry as a cheap and efficient work phone for employees. But now with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Iphone 5, 5s, and 5c dominating the market, there's no room for the tiny screen and tiny keys that Blackberry offers. Their new smartphones haven't been cutting it. Blackberry failed to penetrate the consumer market, and that's the market where the money lies. Just today, Blackberry was finally acquired by an...