I can understand the customer's sentiment.

People are paying more to DTH providers for the same service the cable operators provide. DTH providers are riding on the consumer's hatred for the cable operators.

I thought PHP is a programming language and Oracle a database.

Learn iptables. There are many good books available covering iptables and server security topics.

Right. The companies offering payment gateway services in India are charging king's ransom.

7% transaction fee, $US1000 non refundable deposits, etc make it impossible to collect money online. There is sure an opportunity. I hope Google or another company starts payment gateway services in India.

PayPal is, if you want to charge is 5 currencies PayPal supports. Google doesn't allow you to create a merchant account if you are in India.

Google Checkout is unavailable for Indian merchants.

Don't write it anywhere. The only safe place to store the passwords is your brain. Make a scheme to generate a strong password using mnemonics. When you look at the screen to type the password, you should be able to determine the correct password. In your password generation scheme make associations between your 'salt' and the system that prompts for password.

I have seen two engineers write an application for about a year. They managed to deliver the project with great difficulty. No comments, no code formatting, no version control, no tests, no docs. After they completed the said project, they learned a whole lot of software engineering. Now these engineers use version control, adhere to coding standards, have API documentation, maintain end user documentation in docbook, write unit tests, use design patterns, read security books, attend lot of conferences, etc. They are now so much more confident about the quality of the software they develop.

They are scared as to when the old customer will come back and ask for a feature addition. The only choice they have is to rewrite the application.

Go, get a driving license, ration card, voter's ID card in exchange for money if you will. If you can buy any of these identity cards you can definitely buy passport and a PAN card too. It could cost you a bit more, though.

Few years back, the Government of India started a project to implement social security number system just like in the western countries. They started accepting forms for this ambitious project. Initially, they started offering this form for people holding a PAN card. I haven't heard of any progress till now.

India needs a strong leader to see this project completed. Let's see how Nandan Nilekani helps in this regard.

The point is why study COBOL at all? You could always write code in a current day programming language. It is very obvious that the programmer understands what he/she is writing. Needless to say, in the industry there are things like spec, prototype, design, tests, mock up, etc. If the students study a programming language better suited to be used in present day business applications it exposes him/her to modern day concepts and implementations. I cannot imagine how COBOL helps someone understand how to write modern business applications.Teaching COBOL to undergraduate students isn't very productive.