[shriphani]

Maybe this is because "Ubuntu launch event" attendees can have all their questions answered with project wikis? I can't imagine what pressing questions google and wikipedia can't solve about the latest ubuntu.

Also, a Godel prize was won in this decade at IITK (for AKS) and (not sure about this) Niraj Kayal (the K in AKS) began working on this during his undergrad years.

I didn't graduate from an IIT (different continent) but my friends from there executed very well in their internships, theses, grad school applications, papers etc. Talent is not geographically bound and to a certain extent JEE performance correlates with good reasoning and math skills (universally transferable in engineering at least).

[rushabh]

The talk was on the Aakash tablet, India's very ambitious and highly controversial and potentially disastrous low cost tablet project [1]. Dr Phatak is one of the top adivsors to the Indian government on e governance and the recently appointed head of the project. I can't believe there were no questions for that talk.

Confession: I did not ask one either, as I was not as well aware of the latest developments. I questioned the next presenter though who talked about the Spoken Tutorial. And it was the only question asked.

[1] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/167/aakash-tablet-india-...

[shriphani]

I am really not sure what can be asked whose answer won't be a rehash of the gov's PR. I can't expect why the average person in India would scream "Scandal!" at the project's failure - the government doesn't have a fantastic track record and doesn't have the resources to attract the kind of people that can make such stuff (i.e. the Aakash Tablet) happen. The average Indian isn't so concerned about their government screwing up because that is the norm.

Anyway that was offtopic. The IITs have a very high average IQ that manifests itself well in the form of publications and the accomplishments of the alumni/students/faculty - they are definitely not "education factories" and an engineering degree from there is very respected. Pitting them against institutions with endowments in excess of 8bn is unfair.

[sundae79]

Sure they do, that is why there is not a single nobel prize won by an IITian when ten Indians have a nobel prize.

[shriphani]

I assume a lot of IIT's top faculty and brightest kids major in engineering. That puts their nobel count at a disadvantage.

[sundae79]

I agree with you. IITians are not good at fundamental science for which nobel is awarded, otherwise they would have gotten it by now.

[wpietri]

Maybe, but I noticed the same thing in my experience working with a couple of Indian development teams.

There's a cultural divide in the US between large companies and startups; startup people tend to be more inquisitive, more self-directed, and more willing to challenge authority. The Indian teams I worked with struck me as being like a US large company team, but even more so. Nobody would ask questions or challenge assumptions, especially in group contexts.

I don't know why that was, but with US large-company teams it's because they're reluctant to risk looking dumb in front of people with power. Or worse, to make the people with power look dumb. They are more likely to value obedience over being correct or having a successful project. Basically, they are very focused on keeping their jobs.

[kamaal]

Its the same everywhere. In large corporates only 'Cover your ass' strategies work, US or otherwise. And none one wants to annoy their boss, so whatever he says is right.

Besides when you do well no one appreciates, but when you do something wrong every one comes after you.

This is a problem with large teams in general and has nothing to with Indians or Americans in general.