The Era of Uncertainty

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2011-05-24T04:11:00.001-07:00

i have permanently moved to

hantan.wordpress.com

catch me there

Glenn McGrath's wife Jane loses cancer battle

2008-06-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

Enlarge Photo Australia's Glenn McGrath bowls at a team training session in La Sagesse during the World...

Sun, Jun 22 04:10 PM

By Julian Linden

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Jane McGrath, the wife of former Australian fast bowler Glenn McGrath, died on Sunday aged 42 after a long battle with cancer, Cricket Australia announced.

Jane died peacefully with her husband and their children by her side after her health had deteriorated in the past week following surgery in March.

"It is with deep sadness that the family and friends of Jane McGrath, beloved wife of former Australian cricketer Glenn and loving mother of James and Holly, must announce she passed away at her home this morning," said a statement released by Cricket Australia.

English-born Jane's long battle with cancer has been headline news in Australia for the past decade because of her marriage to McGrath, one of Australia's most successful and popular sportsmen, and their promotion of breast cancer awareness.

The couple started up their own foundation to raise money for research and training nurses and were recognised for their charity work earlier this year when they were appointed as Members of the Order of Australia.

COURAGEOUS STRUGGLE

"Jane's courageous struggle touched all Australians," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a statement.

"Jane was an inspiration whose legacy will continue to benefit so many others."

Jane was first diagnosed with breast cancer during Australia's Ashes tour of England in 1997 then bone cancer in her hip in 2003 but made a full recovery both times.

She was then diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour in 2006, prompting McGrath to take eight months off cricket to care for her and their two young children while she was undergoing radiotherapy.

He returned to the team later that year to help Australia regain the Ashes from England and win the World Cup for a third time in succession before announcing he was retiring despite still being at the top of his game.

The news of Jane's death was greeted with a deep sense of sadness on Sunday.

Television stations interrupted their normal programmes to announce her passing while thousands of spectators at sporting events across the country observed a minute's silence.

"All of us who met her were charmed by her dignity and good humour as she tackled her battle with her illness for more than 10 years," Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland.

courtesy- yahoo news

Origin of companies- Bed bath and Beyond

2008-05-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

Remember the film "Click" where adam sandler plays the lead role? then you must remember the store "bed bath and beyond" where he goes to and has a sweet nap(and thats where the entire story takes place, though not literally.. )

Being an Indian, i was surprised to find that BB&B is a company that features in the Nasdaq100.
lets look at the history of that company now.

BB&B was founded by Leonard Feinstein and Warren Eisenberg. Both men possessed over a decade of retail experience in 1971 when they formed Bed 'n Bath, a small chain of specialty linen and bath shops in suburban New York. As employees in management positions at Arlan's, a discount chain that fell on hard times during the early 1970s, the two sensed an essential change in retailing trends. "We had witnessed the department store shakeout, and knew that specialty stores were going to be the next wave of retailing," Feinstein told Chain Store Executive in 1993. "It was the beginning of the designer approach to linens and housewares and we saw a real window of opportunity." Bed 'n Bath's first two 2,000-square-foot stores were located in high-traffic strip malls and carried such brand-names as Cannon, Wamsutta, and Fieldcrest, as well as a line of lower&ndash′iced linens and bath towels.

During the 1970s Bed 'n Bath expanded at a healthy but unremarkable pace, and by 1985 the chain had grown to 17 stores located in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California. During this time, however, a number of similar bath and bed specialty shops had opened. What had begun as a niche market was growing increasingly competitive as retailers sensed a "cocooning trend" among baby boomers. Specialty chains such as Linens 'n Things, Pacific Linens, and Luxury Linens sprang up to tap into this new market. Feinstein and Eisenberg opened their first superstore in 1985 in an effort to set themselves apart from the sudden wave of competition that had appeared.

The new superstore was revolutionary in a number of ways. Over ten times the size of Bed 'n Bath's original shop, this 20,000-square-foot outlet offered a comprehensive line of home furnishings in addition to Bed 'n Bath's traditional linens and bath products. While most department stores and specialty shops offered only a few select brands, Bed 'n Bath's superstore offered seemingly every possible color, style, and size of each product. Until this time, most independent home textile retailers either copied department store merchandising techniques or followed the mundane merchandising style used by discount retailers. Eisenberg and Feinstein did neither. Bed 'n Bath, along with chains such as Toys "R" Us and Blockbuster Video, became pioneering "category killers": large specialty retail outlets that beat their competition by offering virtually every possible product in their specific category at everyday low prices. Other than semi-annual clearances to reduce inventory, the company never held sales. They claimed that their prices were already lower than other stores' sale prices.

In 1987 Eisenberg and Feinstein changed the name of their organization to Bed Bath & Beyond in order to more accurately reflect their superstore format. By 1991 Bed Bath & Beyond had opened seven new superstores in New Jersey, California, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, and Florida, and expanded two existing stores into the superstore format. Sales reached $134 million that year, generating earnings of $10.4 million. Eisenberg and Feinstein funneled the revenue back into the company.

The company's success was considered unusual for the home products industry. As one analyst said, Bed Bath & Beyond "took a less than strong category and made it important." It did so by making ordinary household products seem exciting, even romantic. Customer service was an essential part of this marketing strategy. The company strove to build word-of-mouth advertising through a unique combination of family atmosphere and attentive customer service. Both management and sales personnel worked the floor, arranging merchandise displays, helping shoppers carry products, and otherwise making themselves useful. According to Fortune, even Feinstein and Eisenberg would gather on the floor on Saturday, to "tidy merchandise and ... pick up bits of litter." Check-out waiting time was reduced by increasing the number of cash registers, and the company developed a policy wherein, if the store was out of a desired product, Bed Bath & Beyond would deliver it to the customer's home, free of charge. Due to this strategy, Bed Bath & Beyond was able to keep paid advertising to a minimum. The company often saturated the market with advertising when a new store opened, then successfully relied on word-of-mouth to keep customers coming in.

Origin of companies- Baidu

2008-05-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

Baidu.com, is the first chinese company that has made it to the Nasdaq 100. here's the origin of their name

"Many people have asked about the meaning of our name. 'Baidu' was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. '...hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.' Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal."

Origin Of Companies - Amazon

2008-05-25T02:12:00.000-07:00

When you are in doubt and you dunno how to decide, then use "Regret Minimization Framework".
How does it work? think that you are 80. now ask yourself, if you , at 80 would regret not having chosen to undertake a venture? if the answer is yes , then minimize the regret and go ahead. this was exactly how JeFf bezos decided to start Amazon.com..
Named after the largest river(not longest), it was previously called Cadabra.com but it was soon dropped cos it sounded close to cadaver(meaning corpse). A company folklore says that the founder(jeff) wrote the business plan while he and his wife drove from Fort Worth, Texas to Bellevue, Washington, but this is largely denied by early employees
The first book Amazon.com sold was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought

The Business plan funda
Amazon's initial business plan was unusual: the company did not expect a profit for four to five years; the strategy was effective. Amazon grew steadily in the late 1990s while other Internet companies grew blindingly fast. Amazon's "slow" growth provoked stockholder complaints: that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the dot-com bubble burst, and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered, and, finally, turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2002: U.S. $5 million, just 1¢ a share, on revenues of more than U.S. $1 billion, but the profit was symbolically important.

The amazon umbrella.
lots of companies come under the amazon umbrella, namely,
IMDb

PlanetAll

Alexa Internet

mobipocket.com,
junglee,
joyo.com
and few other companies

origin of companies - adobe

2008-05-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

This is in keeping with my promise of writing about the origin of companies along with a few other trivia.. here's the second of the series. the first u'd remember was the post about RIM research in motion..
Adobe- origins

the company was founded when charles geschke and john warnock left Xerox Parc to develop and sell Postscript page description language. the name of the company Adobe was named after the creek that ran behind the house of one of the company's founders..
a picture of the creek (useful for quiz purposes)

origin of companies - Akamai

2008-05-23T21:42:00.000-07:00

when u log into ur mail, if u check the status bar of ur browser, u can find this word appearing and disappearing.. akamai.. Akamai is basically a hawaiian word meaning smart or intelligent.

The origin of Akamai..

Akamai's beginnings lie in a challenge posed by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in early 1995. The father of the Web foresaw the congestion that is now very familiar to Internet users, and he challenged colleagues at MIT to invent a fundamentally new and better way to deliver Internet content. What he probably didn't expect was that posing such an academic problem would ultimately result in a service that is revolutionizing the Internet.

MIT Professor of Applied Mathematics Tom Leighton, who had an office down the hall from Dr. Berners-Lee, was intrigued by the challenge. Dr. Leighton, a renowned expert on parallel algorithms and architecture, has served as head of the Algorithms Group at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science since its inception in 1996. Dr. Leighton recognized that a solution to Web congestion could be found in applied mathematics and algorithms. He solicited the help of graduate student Danny Lewin, and several other top researchers, to tackle the problem.

Dr. Leighton and Mr. Lewin were joined by other scientists with expertise in computer science and data networking to develop the mathematical algorithms necessary to handle the dynamic routing of content and solve what was, by then, a frustrating problem for Internet users.

Building a Business
These world-class scientists developed a set of breakthrough algorithms for intelligently routing and replicating content over a large network of distributed servers — without relying on centralized servers typically used by Web site owners today. Jonathan Seelig, then enrolled in the MIT Sloan M.B.A. program, joined the founding team, and they began building the business plan that would lead to Akamai's inception.

In 1998, the group entered the esteemed annual MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition, where the company's business proposition was selected as one of six finalists among 100 entries. The distinction signaled that Internet content delivery had serious market potential. Akamai obtained an exclusive license to certain intellectual property from MIT, and development efforts began in the fall of 1998.

In late 1998 and early 1999, a group of experienced Internet business professionals began to join this founding team. Most notably, Paul Sagan who was a former President of Time Inc. New Media, a founder of Road Runner cable modem service and who helped launch NY 1 News, became chief operating officer and eventually president of Akamai Technologies. George Conrades, former chairman and chief executive officer of BBN Corp. and senior vice president of U.S. Operations for IBM, assumed the helm as chief executive officer a few months later.

Launching Commercial Service
Together, these computer scientists and experienced Internet professionals founded Akamai, a company dedicated to ending the "World Wide Wait" through intelligent Internet content delivery. The company launched commercial service in April 1999 and announced that one of the world's most trafficked Web properties, Yahoo!, was a charter customer

Chilling stories of the chinese earthquake

2008-05-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

Nearly every building in the tiny rural town of Wufu withstood the forceful earthquake that shook China on Monday. One major structure - the New Number Two Primary School - collapsed, killing some 300 children.Now grieving parents, many of whom dug through rubble with their hands in a frantic effort to save their children, are venting their anger at local officials who they claim knew the building was substandard.Jumbled mounds of concrete and brick are all that remain of the three-storey schoolhouse that caved in just moments before afternoon classes were to begin. Notebooks, backpacks, clothes and a tin lunch box litter the picked-over rubble.The scene is repeated in towns and cities across the quake-damaged section of Sichuan, where more than 50,000 people may have died, including hundreds of students crushed when their schools collapsed.

Millions of survivors left homeless or too terrified to go indoors faced their fourth night under tarpaulins, tents or nothing at all as workers patched roads and cleared debris to reach more outlying towns in the disaster zone.

"There are still bodies in the hills, and pits are being dug to bury them," said Zhao Xiaoli, a nurse in the ruined town of Hanwang. "There's no way to bring them down. It's too dangerous."

One couple with a baby told Hatton that at their house they had no food, no water and so they walked for two days to get to a refugee center. After watching the interview, bystanders gave precious milk to the couple's granddaughter before the family waded into the crowd hoping to find shelter.

At the crematorium, some grieving relatives were rushed through funeral rites by harried workers. Scores of bodies lay on concrete in a waiting area - outnumbering the handful of chapels usually used in funerals.

Thick black smoke streamed from the crematorium's pair of chimneys as families cleaned and dressed the dead in funeral clothes, including fresh socks and sneakers for children.

Fireworks were set off every few minutes and families burned incense, candles and spirit money. Such traditions meant to send the dead peacefully into the afterlife were once banned by the communist authorities but have revived in recent years with free-market reforms and rising prosperity. Burial, which likewise the government once tried to stamp out, has become common in the countryside, although still difficult for people in crowded cities.

In a sign of nervousness, 50 troops lined the road outside Luoshui. Five farmers watched them dig the burial pit, after performing brief funerary rites. Local police detained an Associated Press reporter and photographer who took photos of the scene, holding them in a government compound for 3½ hours before releasing them without explanation.

Today in Dujiangyan an eight months pregnant woman was pulled to safety after spending 50 hours trapped in rubble.In Yinxiu – one of the worst-hit towns – soldiers said only 2,300 people may have survived among the population of 9,000.

Chinese officials now plan a minute’s silence before each leg of the Olympic torch’s journey through the country ahead of this summer’s Beijing games.

I signed up for PPP

2008-05-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

yippeee. i've atlast got my blog approved by PPP. For those who dont know what i am writing about, PPP is PayPerPost. doesnt it sound interesting? you get paid for posting ppl, believe that?
Well let me tell you why i signed up for payperpost. payperpost is one easy way to make money.
i heard about PPP from one of my school mates, called ramanujam. we named him blogger boy, and his antiques online are now spreading like wildfire

How does it work?
it works like this. an advertiser asks u to write about them, and you can air your views about them. If what you write is approved by them then, Voila, you get paid..

Do you really get paid?
yes you really get paid. they pay you thro your paypal account. dont have a paypal account? sign up right away, its very easy and simple.

Why PPP?
PPP is one of the most famous websites to make money. online. I have a lot of spare time for the next few months and so i decided to sign up for it.

What to do with the money?
good question. if you earn money, then its your hard earned money and u have all the rights to use it. AFAIK, i'm going to buy a bike for myself and decided to earn as much possible and as fast as possible.

The Italian job

2008-05-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

I saw this movie The Italian Job. starring Mark Wahlberg and Charlize theron. Mark you must be remembering from the Departed as the last man standing in the movie. in this film he plays Charlie the master mind behind a heist. The way they brought down (literally) the safe was seriously amazing. but it was just a precursor to the things to come. after pulling it off beautifully, one of their gang betrays them and takes the gold all for himself. the rest of the story is how they track him and get the gold back from him. a repeat of the safe bringing down incident takes place but this time they bring an entire armoured vehicle down. (to know what i am speaking of grab a packet of chips and watch the movie;)

though the techniques used were good, it was a sort of deja vu. a few things were predictable.

charlize theron was hot property wasted in the movie. jus to add to the glamour quotient. she plays an important part in the film as the one who cracks the safe.

edward norton, of Fight Club fame was a bit too crass here. a villain, i expect, need to be strong person. meaning a seemingly invincible fellow and not like a stupid crook who has money with him.
the rest of the crew deserve no special mention. a rating of 7 would do for the film

The Importance Pradarshanam

2008-05-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

Pradarshanam

First this must be a new word to all my overseas readers. So let me first explain what it is. Pradarshanam is the act of going around a Deity a specific number of times. I go to my neighbourhood Anjaneya temple almost everyday and come around the presiding deity 12 times. all these days, i did it without thinking why. I tend to become introspective, when i am really troubled or when i feel i am contended. i am currently feeling both these expressions while i write this.
today when i was doing this pradarshanam i decided to think y i was doing all this. firstly going to a temple makes one happy. it gives me a peace of mind and lets me relax a bit. secondly i do this pradarshanam thing as a routine. but y did i do so? parents asked me to ? yes. what was the reason behind it? i didnt know.
let me find out. firstly when u go in circles in a clockwise direction, it stimulates your chakras, which also spin in a clockwise direction, thus reinforcing their speed. this looked like one possible explanation to me. but what about those who dont believe in this chakra theory? there must be a possible explanation or a hidden meaning. here's one i found out - no matter what you do, even if u come back to the starting point, just keep doing it. sounds to me as a living example of the Gita.
it can also mean this - You start and end at the same point ( the alpha is the omega, the beginning and the end are the same) this sounds like too good to be true, and is one of the simplest truths man can comprehend. one can only experience it, not understand it. and this act of pradarshanam is the closest way one can realize this.
may be i am reading too much into too little or trying to justify a baseless superstition, but one thing i learnt from this effort was that every act of stupidity makes sense at one level or the other. What say ? :)

E Commerce - Shopping Cart

2008-05-05T23:25:00.000-07:00

E commerce

Electronic Commerce is nothing but the buying and selling of goods online, over the internet. it gives you the freedom of sitting at your home and buying and selling stuff like groceries, books, gadgets, you-name-it. there are many ways in which you can use e-commerce, that is there are many models involved. the prime ones being shopping cart model, storefront model, auction model, name your price model and reverse auction model. lets see about the shopping cart model

online store software

One of the ways in which online shopping can be done is through the Shopping Cart Software. Shopping cart software is used to assist people in making purchases online. This application typically provides a means of capturing the clients payment information or they may make use of credit cards.

Shopping cart software typically consists of two components namely the store front and the admin. store front is where you get to see the user end of the software and how users interact while the admin part is where the administrator has ful control over the software.

An Example of a Shopping Cart software : Ashop Commerce's shopping cart software.online store software

Ashop Commerce has created a cutting a cutting edge shopping cart software. Before we go about the software, let me first tell you readers about what a typical online software cart should contain
1. easy to access
2. user friendly
3. customizable
4. contain intuitive features

Ashop commerce's award winning software contains it all. this has been built to provide services to small and medium business. Companies which need their current internet presence to turn into a profitable venture must use this software. the software is fully customizable and users have full control over its functionality. if you wanna test this software click here.

My Experience
i tested the shop front demo of the software, and i was impressed. It provides a 128 bit SSL security which is really secure. there is also a live sales chat plug in which one can use. It also gives a free news letter option, which can help retain users. it even provides for multi currency support. and helps in choosing our payment option. overall its a great software to use, and i would surely recommend this to companies who want to use it

Cafe Coffee day

2008-05-03T22:53:00.001-07:00

My Favorite coffee hangout? yeah thats Cafe coffee day..

The tasty Devils Own, the sizziling brownie, the chocolate fudge, yummmm.. i just cant help control myself. befor i go into detail, lets get to know more of the company

A division of Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Ltd. (ABCTCL), it is commonly known as Coffee Day or CCD. It opened its first cafe in 1996 on Brigade Road Bangalore and today has the largest cafe retail chain in India - with 436 cafes in 69 cities. The cafe chain has had much success riding, and to some extent creating, the cafe culture wave that swept across metropolitan India following strong economic growth resulting in an increase in youth spending power.
Cafe Coffee Day sources coffee from 10000 acres (40 km²) of coffee estates, the 2nd largest in Asia, that is owned by a sister concern and from 11,000 small growers. It is one of India’s leading coffee exporters, with clients across the USA,Middle East Europe and Japan.
The strategy CCD has adapted is to place a cafe in every possible location where some business can be generated. So in Bangalore, in the main shopping district, there are 6 outlets in a 2 km radius. Another model which CCD has adapted is to be present in educational institutions and Corporate campuses either in the form of detailed Cafes or its economical model of CCD express. These innovative strategies have ensured that the competition is at bay and ensured CCD's dominance in the Indian market though many of its outlets are incurring losses.

they even opened India 's first ever cyber cafe. Its first Wi-Fi cafe was opened on Lavelle Road,Bangalore

its not just the coffee thats great there. they dont just sell coffee. they sell an experience.. an experience thats worth the money. truly

elevator 22, 22 things to do on an elevator

2008-04-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

1) CRACK open your briefcase or handbag, peer Inside and ask "Got enough air in there?"
2) STAND silent and motionless in the corner facing the wall without getting off.
3) WHEN arriving at your floor, grunt and strain to yank the doors open, then act as if you're embarrassed when they open themselves.
4) GREET everyone with a warm handshake and ask him or her to call you Admiral.
5) MEOW occasionally.
6) STARE At another passenger for a while. Then announce in horror: "You're one of THEM" - and back away slowly
7) SAY -DING at each floor.
8) SAY "I wonder what all these do?" And push all the red buttons.
9) MAKE explosion noises when anyone presses a button.
10) STARE, grinning at another passenger for a while, then announce: "I have new socks on."
11) WHEN the elevator is silent, look around and ask: "Is that your beeper?"
12) TRY to make personal calls on the emergency phone.
13) DRAW a little square on the floor with chalk and announce to the other passengers: "This is my personal space."
14) WHEN there's only one other person in the elevator, tap them on the shoulder, then pretend it wasn't you.
15) PUSH the buttons and pretend they give you a shock. Smile, and go back for more.
16) ASK if you can push the button for other people but push the wrong ones.
17) HOLD the doors open and say you're waiting for your friend. After a while, let the doors close and say "Hi Greg, How's your day been?"
18) DROP a pen and wail until someone reaches to help pick it up, then scream: "That's mine!"
19) BRING a camera and take pictures of everyone in the lift.
20) PRETEND you're a flight attendant and review emergency procedures and exits with the Passengers.
21) SWAT at flies that don't exist.
22) CALL out "Group hug" then enforce it.

The Indian Quizzing League

2008-04-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

The Indian Quizzing League, Chennai (or IQL) is a non-profit organization aimed at spreading the concept of knowledge sharing in the country and also provide a forum for quiz enthusiasts to present their skills and quiz regularly.

About

The Indian Quizzing League, or IQL, is a quizzing league based in Chennai. India. A group of four quizzing enthusiasts - Karthik Narayan, Ananthakrishnan Ganapathy, Ananthashankar and Vijay Govindarajan from Chennai, being members of the Quiz Foundation of India, took the first step in creating a new quizzing group in late 2007. The idea was to form a quiz group to change the face of quizzing beyond the normal winners. The idea became reality when the group met for its first public quiz meet on January 12, 2008

So far the group has grown to around 10 regular members who meet every Saturday at 17.30 P.M. for a quiz conducted by one or two of its members at the Cafe Coffee Day outlet in the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras campus.

Events

Members of the IQL organise and conduct quizzes for a number of schools, colleges and companies based in and around the city.

Membership

There is no membership fee required to attend the meetings. Membership online is available here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/quizakn/

IQL goes on the concept of knowledge sharing, whereby in each meeting, aspects other than quizzing are presented and shared with each other.

The IQL group has its own blog here http://quizakn.blogspot.com

C# the new wave

2008-04-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

i learnt C# int my final semester. Every 10 years or so a new approach to programming hits like a tsunami. In the early 1980s, the new technologies were Unix, which could be run on a desktop, and a powerful new language called C, developed by AT&T. The early 90s brought Windows and C++. Each of these developments represented a sea change in the way you approached programming. Now, .NET and C# are the next wave. Microsoft has 'bet the company' on .NET. When a company of their size and influence spends billions of dollars and reorganizes its entire corporate structure to support a new platform, it is reasonable for programmers to take notice. It turns out that .NET represents a major change in
the way you'll think about programming. It is, in short, a new development platform designed to facilitate object-oriented Internet development. The programming language of choice for this object-oriented Internet-centric platform is C#, which builds on the lessons learned from C (high performance), C++ (object-oriented structure), Java (garbage collected, high security), and Visual Basic (rapid development) to create a new language ideally suited for developing component-based n-tier distributed web applications.

Witty quotes

2008-04-11T23:21:00.000-07:00

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings."
- Bill Blake (ok, William Blake)

When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine."
- Arthur C. Clarke

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all who wander are lost."
- JRR Tolkien

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."
- Morpheus (matrix)

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The story of king ChitraBhanu

2008-04-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

In the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata, Bhishma, whilst resting on the bed of arrows and discoursing on Dharma, refers to the observance of Maha Shivaratri by King Chitrabhanu. The story goes as follows -

Once upon a time King Chitrabhanu of the Ikshvaku dynasty, who ruled over the whole of Jambudvipa, was observing a fast with his wife, it being the day of Maha Shivaratri. The sage Ashtavakra came on a visit to the court of the king.

The sage asked the king the purpose of his observing the fast. King Chitrabhanu explained that he had a gift of remembering the incidents of his previous birth.

The king said to the sage that in his previous he was a hunter in Varanasi and his name was Suswara. His only livelihood was to kill and sell birds and animals. One day while roaming through forests in search of animals he was overtaken by the darkness of night. Unable to return home, he climbed a tree for shelter. It happened to be a Bael tree. He had seen a deer that day but let it live, after seeing the deer's sad family. As hunger and thirst tormented him, he was kept awake throughout the night. His canteen leaked water as he thought of his poor wife and children who were starving and anxiously waiting for his return. To pass away the time that night he engaged himself in plucking the Bael leaves and dropping them down onto the ground.

The next day he returned home and bought some food for himself and his family. The moment he was about to break his fast a stranger came to him, begging for food. He served the food first to stranger and then had his own.

At the time of his death, he saw two messengers of Lord Shiva. They were sent down to conduct his soul to the abode of Lord Shiva. He learnt then for the first time of the great merit he had earned by the unconscious worship of Lord Shiva during the night of Shivaratri. The messengers told him that there was a Lingam at the bottom of the tree. The leaves he dropped fell on the Lingam. His canteen, which leaked water, washed the Lingam and he had fasted all day and all night. Thus, he unconsciously worshiped the Lord.

As the conclusion of the tale the King said that he lived in the abode of the Lord and enjoyed divine bliss for long ages and now he has reborn as Chitrabhanu.

My Favorite Bad Quotes - Part 2

2008-04-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

My favorite Bad Quotes part 1

2008-04-04T23:04:00.000-07:00

A word of Gratitude, to all my friends

2008-04-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

A Word Of Gratitude...

Four years passed by

And now I look back with joy

Of the memories passed

And love depart

I was busy so were you

But neither forgot to share a few

Love and hatred abound

From defeat we rebound

Those crazily long bus rides

Over bumpy Chennai roads

And equally crazy staff

I’ll never forget those

Culturals and symposia

We enjoyed attending

Sports and frolics

We freaked never ending

I did many a mistake

I summon the guts to say sorry

To the hearts I caused to ache

In our life’s safari

A word of gratitude

To every one who read this

For their never ending love

That filled my life with bliss

A word of gratitude

To the pretty soul there

For guiding me out of a slump

And showering me with unbridled care

A word of gratitude

To my decent little gang

For helping me script my past

And enjoy life with a bang

A word of gratitude

To my former friends

You made for a good ally

But every good thing comes to an end

A word of gratitude

To the passer by

I learnt a lot from all of you

Thanks for sparing the pain of goodbye

A word of gratitude

To all those who shared my secrets

And kept them

And let them die with memory and time

A word of gratitude

You mean a lot to me

My mind’s content with gratefulness

For every moment I spent with you all

Thank you, my friend, keep in touch

- Anantha shankar

Sachin - a masterpiece par excellence

2008-03-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

A lot has been said about Sachin. Need I add more? Lets see a few great words from ppl, who have carved a niche for themselves.

In terms of technique and compactness, Tendulkar is the best
Desmond Haynes.

I have watched a lot of Tendulkar and we have spoken to each other a lot. He has it in him to be among the very best
Sir Garfield Sobers.

He is 99.5 per cent perfect. I'd pay to see him
Viv Richards.

I saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him. Now I never saw myself play, but I feel that this player is playing much the same as I used to play, and she looked at him on Television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two... his compactness, technique, stroke production... it all seemed to gel
Sir Donald Bradman.

Technically he stands out as the best because of his ability to increase the pace at will
David Boon.

There is no shame being beaten by such a great player, Sachin is perhaps only next to the Don Steve Waugh.

Sachin is an attacker. He has much more power than Sunny. He wants to be the one to set the pace. He has to be on top. That's the buzz about him
Jeff Thompson.

If I've to bowl to Sachin, I'll bowl with my helmet on. He hits the ball so hard
Dennis Lillee.

I'll be going to bed having nightmares of Sachin just running down the wicket and belting me back over the head for six. He was unstoppable. I don't think anyone, apart from Don Bradman, is in the same class as Sachin Tendulkar. He is just an amazing player
Shane Warne.

When it comes to judging the best among these fabulous band of batsmen, my vote goes to Tendulkar. He has an uncanny ability to come out on top under different circumstances and under different conditions, whether it is Test cricket or one-day internationals. And more importantly, he has done this so young
Shane Warne.

Don't bowl him bad balls, he hits the good ones for fours
Michael Kasprowicz.

Hell, if he had stayed, even at 11 an over he would have got it
Allan Border (after India won the Coca-Cola cup in Sharjah).

He is a perfectly balanced batsman and knows perfectly well when to attack and when to play defensive cricket. He has developed the ability to treat bowlers all over the world with contempt and can destroy any attack with utmost ease
Greg Chappell.

You have to decide for yourself whether you're bowling well or not. He's going to hit you for fours and sixes anyway. Kasprowicz has a superior story. During the Bangalore Test, frustrated, he went to Dennis Lillee and asked, "Mate, do you see any weaknesses?" Lillee replied, "No Michael, as long as you walk off with your pride that's all you can do"

He has defined cricket in his fabulous, impeccable manner. He is to batting what Shane Warne is to bowling
Richie Benaud.

West Indian great Brian Lara said Sachin Tendulkar was a peerless batsman with a lot more to offer. Lara, Test cricket's leading scorer with 11,294 runs, regarded Tendulkar the best batsman he ever watched despite the prolific success of Australian captain Ricky Ponting and South African Jacques Kallis. Lara said: "For me, the best batsman in the world is Sachin Tendulkar. I admire Jacques Kallis' consistency and Ricky Ponting, with the purple patch he's going though. Everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. But if there's one person I've admired over a 15-year period, it's definitely Sachin."

to conclude, it is a matter of fact that India still need Sachin in a big way. All this talk of the youngsters taking can be termed as foolish. The reason why Tendulkar is so important for the team is because of his ability to inspire others and make them perform under pressure.

Bus Day - Memories I shall cherish

2008-03-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today we had our final bus day, the last time one can freak uninhibitedly in college. And what a way to enjoy it. I didnt attend the proceedings in the morning as i had to show my project demo (which incidentally got an A+ from the project coord). Had to be fully tension free for it to go the way i wanted. but from what I heard, it was an all out powder, jigina (the sparkling powder which sticks to skin), foam, and pepsi abishekam.. apar had the honor of being drenched in pepsi, lol. and when ppl got down, they messed up sriram, who hadn't come to the morning proceedings.

evening it started with me starting the proceedings, getting bulbs, and in turn giving them back. perfect kalaai. then started the group midhi (what i call kick-backs) it rained hands on my back.. what a way to kill a person's resistance and drown his strength..

I'm a bit dazed bout what happened next, but i'll go on with the things i remember. i(the terror of 17, as they affectionately call me) was paired up with an mca girl named sai prathicha or whatever. and she gave me some gift the juniors had bought for me..

the highlight, as usual was gbps who was paired with his tuition mate cum schoolmate cum collegemate cum classmate cum bus mate cum are mate - vasantha.. yes no one could believe the divine co incidence that existed between them. and if anything was boring in bus, prasanna(gbps) would come to the rescue.

then we went to the beach - the first bus to do so for a bus day. after guys had fun mimicking the tomato festival of spain the whole bus went to the beach and enjoyed the fresh salty sea air for a while. there a policeman started advising us. one thing among his comments i couldnt forget was the comment he made seeing our colored selves "Are you ppl North Indians??" i dunno how the hell he could ask such questions, as most of our skins have had the pleasure of sustainin the darkening effect of the sun.

then the juniors ragged on their own, and we did our age old ragging - proposals.. i, as usual, failed to provide the entertainment it shud do, thanks to the deteriorating quality of juniors every year. then we had some good natured fun with DUmb charades..

All in al it was one of the four bus days i wouldn't forget.. thanks juniors for the wonderful time..

Funny quotes about religion

2008-03-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

Funny Quotes About Religion

From: doina, 2 months ago

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Narayanamurthy's speech

2008-03-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

Got this by Mail. Infosys is my company (that is the company i'm placed at) and Narayanmurthy is the founder.. gr8 person actually.. read on this excerpt of his speech

Dean Cooley, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, and, most importantly, the graduating class of 2007, it is a great privilege to speak at your commencement ceremonies.

I thank Dean Cooley and Prof Marti Subrahmanyam for their kind invitation. I am exhilarated to be part of such a joyous occasion. Congratulations to you, the class of 2007, on completing an important milestone in your life journey.

After some thought, I have decided to share with you some of my life lessons. I learned these lessons in the context of my early career struggles, a life lived under the influence of sometimes unplanned events which were the crucibles that tempered my character and reshaped my future.

I would like first to share some of these key life events with you, in the hope that these may help you understand my struggles and how chance events and unplanned encounters with influential persons shaped my life and career.

Later, I will share the deeper life lessons that I have learned. My sincere hope is that this sharing will help you see your own trials and tribulations for the hidden blessings they can be.

The first event occurred when I was a graduate student in Control Theory at IIT, Kanpur, in India. At breakfast on a bright Sunday morning in 1968, I had a chance encounter with a famous computer scientist on sabbatical from a well-known US university.

He was discussing exciting new developments in the field of computer science with a large group of students and how such developments would alter our future. He was articulate, passionate and quite convincing. I was hooked. I went straight from breakfast to the library, read four or five papers he had suggested, and left the library determined to study computer science.

Friends, when I look back today at that pivotal meeting, I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.

The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974. The location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore, India, my home town.

By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the next morning, and I could not eat because I had no local money. I slept on the railway platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the Sofia Express pulled in.

The only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy. I struck a conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the travails of living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by the young man who thought we were criticising the communist government of Bulgaria.

The girl was led away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated. I was dragged along the platform into a small 8x8 foot room with a cold stone floor and a hole in one corner by way of toilet facilities. I was held in that bitterly cold room without food or water for over 72 hours.

I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard's compartment on a departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul. The guard's final words still ring in my ears -- "You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting you go!"

The journey to Istanbul was lonely, and I was starving. This long, lonely, cold journey forced me to deeply rethink my convictions about Communism. Early on a dark Thursday morning, after being hungry for 108 hours, I was purged of any last vestiges of affinity for the Left.

I concluded that entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

Deep in my heart, I always thank the Bulgarian guards for transforming me from a confused Leftist into a determined, compassionate capitalist! Inevitably, this sequence of events led to the eventual founding of Infosys in 1981.

While these first two events were rather fortuitous, the next two, both concerning the Infosys journey, were more planned and profoundly influenced my career trajectory.

On a chilly Saturday morning in winter 1990, five of the seven founders of Infosys met in our small office in a leafy Bangalore suburb. The decision at hand was the possible sale of Infosys for the enticing sum of $1 million. After nine years of toil in the then business-unfriendly India, we were quite happy at the prospect of seeing at least some money.

I let my younger colleagues talk about their future plans. Discussions about the travails of our journey thus far and our future challenges went on for about four hours. I had not yet spoken a word.

Finally, it was my turn. I spoke about our journey from a small Mumbai apartment in 1981 that had been beset with many challenges, but also of how I believed we were at the darkest hour before the dawn. I then took an audacious step. If they were all bent upon selling the company, I said, I would buy out all my colleagues, though I did not have a cent in my pocket.

There was a stunned silence in the room. My colleagues wondered aloud about my foolhardiness. But I remained silent. However, after an hour of my arguments, my colleagues changed their minds to my way of thinking. I urged them that if we wanted to create a great company, we should be optimistic and confident. They have more than lived up to their promise of that day.

In the seventeen years since that day, Infosys has grown to revenues in excess of $3.0 billion, a net income of more than $800 million and a market capitalisation of more than $28 billion, 28,000 times richer than the offer of $1 million on that day.

In the process, Infosys has created more than 70,000 well-paying jobs, 2,000-plus dollar-millionaires and 20,000-plus rupee millionaires.

A final story: On a hot summer morning in 1995, a Fortune-10 corporation had sequestered all their Indian software vendors, including Infosys, in different rooms at the Taj Residency hotel in Bangalore so that the vendors could not communicate with one another. This customer's propensity for tough negotiations was well-known. Our team was very nervous.

First of all, with revenues of only around $5 million, we were minnows compared to the customer.

Second, this customer contributed fully 25% of our revenues. The loss of this business would potentially devastate our recently-listed company.

Third, the customer's negotiation style was very aggressive. The customer team would go from room to room, get the best terms out of each vendor and then pit one vendor against the other. This went on for several rounds. Our various arguments why a fair price -- one that allowed us to invest in good people, R&D, infrastructure, technology and training -- was actually in their interest failed to cut any ice with the customer.

By 5 p.m. on the last day, we had to make a decision right on the spot whether to accept the customer's terms or to walk out.

All eyes were on me as I mulled over the decision. I closed my eyes, and reflected upon our journey until then. Through many a tough call, we had always thought about the long-term interests of Infosys. I communicated clearly to the customer team that we could not accept their terms, since it could well lead us to letting them down later. But I promised a smooth, professional transition to a vendor of customer's choice.

This was a turning point for Infosys.

Subsequently, we created a Risk Mitigation Council which ensured that we would never again depend too much on any one client, technology, country, application area or key employee. The crisis was a blessing in disguise. Today, Infosys has a sound de-risking strategy that has stabilised its revenues and profits.

I want to share with you, next, the life lessons these events have taught me.

1. I will begin with the importance of learning from experience. It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place. I believe the Infosys story is living proof of this.

Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions.

2. A second theme concerns the power of chance events. As I think across a wide variety of settings in my life, I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.

3. Of course, the mindset one works with is also quite critical. As recent work by the psychologist, Carol Dweck, has shown, it matters greatly whether one believes in ability as inherent or that it can be developed. Put simply, the former view, a fixed mindset, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and not achieve their full potential.

The latter view, a growth mindset, leads to a tendency to embrace challenges, to learn from criticism and such people reach ever higher levels of achievement (Krakovsky, 2007: page 48).

4. The fourth theme is a cornerstone of the Indian spiritual tradition: self-knowledge. Indeed, the highest form of knowledge, it is said, is self-knowledge. I believe this greater awareness and knowledge of oneself is what ultimately helps develop a more grounded belief in oneself, courage, determination, and, above all, humility, all qualities which enable one to wear one's success with dignity and grace.

Based on my life experiences, I can assert that it is this belief in learning from experience, a growth mindset, the power of chance events, and self-reflection that have helped me grow to the present.

Back in the 1960s, the odds of my being in front of you today would have been zero. Yet here I stand before you! With every successive step, the odds kept changing in my favour, and it is these life lessons that made all the difference.

My young friends, I would like to end with some words of advice. Do you believe that your future is pre-ordained, and is already set? Or, do you believe that your future is yet to be written and that it will depend upon the sometimes fortuitous events?

Do you believe that these events can provide turning points to which you will respond with your energy and enthusiasm? Do you believe that you will learn from these events and that you will reflect on your setbacks? Do you believe that you will examine your successes with even greater care?

I hope you believe that the future will be shaped by several turning points with great learning opportunities. In fact, this is the path I have walked to much advantage.

A final word: When, one day, you have made your mark on the world, remember that, in the ultimate analysis, we are all mere temporary custodians of the wealth we generate, whether it be financial, intellectual, or emotional. The best use of all your wealth is to share it with those less fortunate.

I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time.

Thank you for your patience. Go forth and embrace your future with open arms, and pursue enthusiastically your own life journey of discovery!

Raghuvaran- an actor par excellence

2008-03-19T06:46:00.001-07:00

One of the actors i've loved watching was raghuvaran. His acting in RUN, Mudhalvan, Sivaji, Bheema were telling in their own way. A natural actor, his short but punch dialogues were a rage of his time. his "I know" is something one can never forget.. he passed away on March 19th, 2008(today) in Chennai due to a cardiac arrest. He is survived by his 8-year-old son Rishivaran.
The greatest actor, he's donned various roles, the roles of father and as villain bringing him loads of fame than in other roles.

I pay my humble tributes to this great actor. may his memories live longer than I do

Sam Anderson and In da Club

2008-03-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

In Da Club is a hip hop song by one of my favorite artists. the tune is pretty sleek and the beats are lovely. but i thot that the video didnt pretty well live up to my expectation. so i was browsing around aimlessly when i stumbled on a master piece. please please please take a complete look of the video and then u'll understand why I hate tamil movies. the dance steps match the song perfectly. awesome mix, i shud say

Quote UnQuote

2008-03-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

somethings in life are painful. the rest, funny right to the point of in sanity. wan more explanation? i'll let people speak for themselves. here's a collection of lessons ppl have learnt the hard way, mixed with true gyan they wanted to share to the world..

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.
Robert Bloch

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
who else but Oscar Wilde

“I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.”
Wilde

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.
anon

“By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.”
Wilde

When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car.

Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers. - Homer Simpson

You laugh because I'm different...........
I laugh cause I just farted!

What are the three words guaranteed to humiliate men everywhere?
'Hold my purse.'

If your wife wants to learn to drive, don't stand in her way.

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them. - George Bush

GDPI for IIM K

2008-03-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

back after a short hiatus. i was busy with my quizzes at college and my IIM K interview. my interview was decent, but gd wasnt up to the mark. i wasnt the usual assertive ananth, but a very subdued, lest i be looked as aggressive. for a complete link of wat happened, check here.

thats my other blog, a more personal one, where i keep tabs about my life and write about a few lessons i've learnt.

The interview took place at IIM B. a very lovely place, as sweet as IIT madras. i enjoyed nature's beauty there and needless to say it is among the best colleges in India.

IIM K is not far behind. the beauty of IIM K campus is unmatched. i'll go as far as saying that it is the best in the world. check the following link, and be astounded. IIM K’s beauty

last but not the least, please pray for my result. i'm desperately in need of it, friends

JAM Topics

2008-03-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

"She offered me her honor, I honored her offer
So all night, I was off her and on her"

Too much Viagra causes a stiff neck.

I was just looking at your name tag... honest !

Suicidal twin murders twin by mistake.

Constipated people don't give a crap.

Sympathy, Empathy, Venkatachalapati

Bal Gangadhar Senna said Garage is my birthright!

Abortion is Love's labor lost, No Foetus can beat us

My Aunt uses viagra on her face to give herself a facelift

A psychic midget escaped from prison and the headlines read, small medium at large

Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, "I think I'll Squeeze
these pink dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out?"

Who was the first person to say, "See that chicken there... I'm gonna eat
the next thing that comes outta it's bum."

Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don't
point to their bum when they ask where the bathroom is?

Why does your Obstetrician, Gynaecologist leave the room when you get
undressed if they are going to look up there anyway?

Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both
dogs!

If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables,
then what is baby oil made from?

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?

Sick my Duck

Men and women should not put their differences behind, because it is physically impossible or very very painful

Children in backbenches cause accidents and accidents in backbenches cause children!

A discussion should be like a woman's skirt..short enough to arouse interest and long enough to cover the pertinent points;)

"Flies" cause diseases...so don't keep yours open;)

Darwin awards

2008-03-03T21:20:00.000-08:00

many awards have been given to various people, for doing various kinds of services to humanity. Be it the Nobel , or the Bharat Ratna, or the SSN Rolling Trophy, you can find a significant contribution to the humanity by the people who have received these awards. On similar lines, the Darwin awards have been given for people who "do a service to Humanity by removing themselves from the Gene pool", i.e., lose the ability to reproduce. It is for people who kill themselves by doing acts that may fatally injure themselves or render them sterile. As described in the Darwin Award books: The Awards honour people who ensure the long-term survival of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion. Even you can win this award. If you are really interested read on. but there's a catch. There are five requirements for qualifying for the Darwin awards.

* Inability to reproduce — Nominee must be dead or rendered sterile.

Potential awardees may be out of the gene pool due to age; others have already reproduced before their deaths. To avoid debates about the possibility of in-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, or cloning, the original Darwin Awards book applied the following "deserted island" test to potential winners: If the person would be unable to reproduce when stranded on a deserted island with a fertile member of the opposite sex, he or she would be considered sterile.

* Excellence — Astoundingly stupid judgment.

The candidate's foolishness must be unique and sensational, perhaps because the award is meant to be funny. A number of foolish but common activities, such as smoking in bed(after an exhausting activity), are excluded from consideration, while smoking after being administered a flammable ointment in a hospital and specifically told not to smoke is grounds for nomination.

* Self-selection — Cause of one's own demise.

Killing a friend with a hand grenade would not be eligible, but killing oneself while juggling hand grenades would be eligible.

* Maturity — Capable of sound judgment.

The nominee must be at least past the legal driving age and free of mental defect.

* Veracity — The event must be verified.

The story must be documented by reliable sources, i.e., reputable newspaper articles, confirmed television reports, or responsible eyewitnesses.

These awards have been given out since 1985. For explanation's sake lets see who got the 2005 Darwin award.

(13 January 2005, Croatia) One fateful afternoon, 55-year-old Marko retreated to his semi-detached workshop to make himself a tool for chimney cleaning. The chimney was too high for a simple broom to work, but if he could attach a brush to a chain and then weigh it down with something, that would do the trick. But what could he use as a weight?
He happened to have the perfect object. It was heavy, yet compact. And best of all, it was made of metal, so he could weld it to the chain. He must have somehow overlooked the fact that it was also a hand grenade and was filled with explosive material.
Marko turned on his welding apparatus and began to create an arc between the chain and the grenade. As the metal heated up, the grenade exploded. The force of the explosion killed poor Marko instantly, blasting shrapnel through the walls of the shed and shattering the windshield of a Mercedes parked outside. Marko's chimney was untouched, however.

Sounds like he blew it! Santa, if you are reading this, be careful in future.
here's another that happened last year and won critical acclaim.

(20 June 2007, South Carolina) A passing cabbie found a 21 year-old couple Znaked and injured in the road an hour before sunrise. The two people died at the nearest hospital without regaining consciousness. Authorities were at a loss to explain what had happened. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked cars or motorcycles.
Investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof. "It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof," Sgt. Florence McCants said.
This is a true Darwin Award trifecta: TWO people die, WHILE in the act of procreation, due to an ASTONISHINGLY poor decision. Bottom line: If you put yourself in a precarious "position" at the edge of a pointy roof, you may well find yourself coming and going at the same time.
Ironically, one of the deceased was named "Tumbleston."
How true it is that "What goes up must come down."

TV nEws Channels

2008-03-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

the problem with news channels is that there are so many out there. Competition has led to each striving to get more airtime. for this they shud portray what the viewer wants the most. for business there are specific channels and the viewer will watch that. but the general human tendency is to watch the tv for enjoyment. portray anything glamourous, or gory or spine chilling or touching -there customers are watching it. within a blink of the eye, half an hour is gone. the intent of the TV 'news' channels have been fulfilled. i never cared for Sunjay dutt or give a crap if he's married to Manyata or if that marriage is nullified. but i cant help it. i no longer choose what I see. the internet provides a good alternative, but it is a static piece. i know what to expect next. this bores me. hence i get back to the TV and start gobbling the crap they offer me.

You may ask "Why is it that most of us don’t make an attempt to know things and find out more? Is everything becoming a fairy tale?"
the spirit of inquisition starts with one basic motive - need. I don need to know whats happening is the mentality of an average indian. We indians are not used to a risk taking life and are contented with a secure job. our mindset is a risk averse one. this kinda mindset doesnt allow us to look beyond what we have. there's no necessity for it. We tackle problems as they come. we dont have a proactive approach towards our life.
Only one thing is certain. Everything is interconnected. We are products of what we were and what others were, what they have made us become. Life's like that.

Osho on fuck

2008-02-29T06:15:00.000-08:00

this is the fucking best video i've ever seen. the sheer fucking quality of the message together with its fucking universality will make an indelible mark on whoever listens to it. look at the left side of this post and click on one of em and laugh your way to fucking glory.
the way he maintains his composure throught the show is brilliant, tho towards the end he himself ends up laughing.

Things not to list as a weaknesses in interviews

2008-02-28T22:27:00.000-08:00

As i was browsing for the right words to describe my weaknesses, i stumbled upon this particularly funny list. it is a list of things that u shud not list as weakness in ur interview

"Kryptonite."
"A tendency to burn things down."
"Spreads diseases effectively."
"Fear of work."
"You're a weakness!"
"Bad at math and stuff."
"Social me not."
"Will work for sexual favours :P"
"Vomits wildly at the mention of any state capital."
"Steals other people's possesions and returns them wet."
"Sometimes I like to lick coins I find on the ground."
"I'm a bleeder."
"I eat socks."
"I AM socks."
"Umm, I write lists in class."

once upon a time..

2008-02-27T08:48:00.000-08:00

* Once upon a time quality was craftsman's pride, now it is a departmental mess.

* Once upon a time mouse was an untouchable mammal, now it is hand held pest.

* Once upon a time wisdom was cultivated by wise people, now it is flashed on T-shirts.

* Once upon a time teacher tought and students learnt, now teacher trade and students consume.

* Once upon a time population was a problem, now it is a flourishing mass market.

* Once upon a time competition brought out the best, now it brings out the worst in people.

* Once upon a time there was a golden rule, now if you have gold, you rule.

* Once upon a time truth telling was good for your soul, now it is bad for promotion.

* Once upon a time success meant living by ideals, now it is about using above all principles.

Rajnikanth - Awesome Myths

2008-02-26T19:56:00.000-08:00

Rajanikanth makes onions cry

Rajanikanth can delete the Recycle Bin.

Ghosts are actually caused by Rajanikanth killing people faster than
Death can process them.

Rajanikanth can build a snowman...... out of rain.

Rajanikanth can strangle you with a cordless phone.

Rajanikanth can drown a fish.

When Rajanikanth enters a room, he doesn't turn the lights
on,............. he turns the dark off.

When Rajanikanth looks in a mirror the mirror shatters, because not
even glass is stupid enough to get in between Rajanikanth and
Rajanikanth.

Brett Favre can throw a football over 50 yards. Rajanikanth can throw
Brett Favre even further.

The last digit of pi is Rajanikanth. He is the end of all things.

Rajanikanth does not know where you live, but he knows where you will
die.

Bullets dodge Rajanikanth.

A Handicap parking sign does not signify that this spot is for
handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot
belongs to Rajanikanth and that you will be handicapped if you park
there.

Rajanikanth' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd, no
one fools Rajanikanth.

If you spell Rajanikanth wrong on Google it doesn't say, "Did you
mean Rajanikanth?" It simply replies, "Run while you still have the
chance."

Rajanikanth can do a wheelie on a unicycle.

Once a cobra bit Rajanikanth' leg. After five days of excruciating
pain, the cobra died.

When Rajanikanth gives you the finger, he's telling you how many
seconds you have left to live.

Rajanikanth can kill two stones with one bird.

Rajanikanth was once on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune and was the first
to spin. The next 29 minutes of the show consisted of everyone standing
around awkwardly, waiting for the wheel to stop.

Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs.
Rajanikanth can kill 100 percent of whatever he wants.

There is no such thing as global warming. Rajanikanth was cold, so he
turned the sun up.

Rajanikanth can set ants on fire with a magnifying glass. At night.

Rajanikanth has a deep and abiding respect for human lifeâ€¦ unless
it gets in his way.

It takes Rajanikanth 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.

Rajanikanth once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by
yelling, "Bang!"

In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Rajanikanth could
use to kill you, including the room itself.

Behind every successful man, there is a woman. Behind every dead man,
there is Rajanikanth.

Rajanikanth destroyed the periodic table, because Rajanikanth only
recognizes the element of surprise.

Rajanikanth got his drivers license at the age of 16 Seconds.

With the rising cost of gasoline, Rajanikanth is beginning to worry
about his drinking habit.

The square root of Rajanikanth is pain. Do not try to square
Rajanikanth, the result is death.

When you say "no one's perfect", Rajanikanth takes this as a personal
insult

RUPERT MURDOCH

2008-02-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

"All power corrupts, absolute power is even more fun" -Simon Travaglia

Rupert Murdoch is a man with such kind of power. My god then he must be having loads of fun. Born on March 11th,1931, he has grown the giant mammoth of a media company ‘the News Corporation’ into one of the largest and most influential media groups in the world from a small town newspaper in Australia. Beginning with newspapers, magazines and television stations in his native Australia, Murdoch expanded into British and American media, and in recent years has become a powerful force in satellite television, the film industry, the Internet, and other forms of media. His tentacles have spread everywhere in the globe.

Murdoch was born in Melbourne(famous for MCG among other scenic attractions) and studied at Oxford University on UK. His father died in 1952 and left a will stating that Rupert should begin his career at The News "if they consider him worthy of support." At that time Rupert had written in Oxford student newspapers and had worked for a number of newspapers in a junior capacity. At the tender age of 23, he became the managing director of ‘The News’ and immediately developed an enthusiasm for the newspaper business that was not there before. His drive and energy infected the staff and the paper's circulation and advertising revenue began to grow. He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion. He bought a rundown Sunday Newspaper in Perth, Western Australia, and, using the tabloid techniques that Northcliffe had taught his son, made it a roaring success.

Over the next few years, Murdoch established himself in Australia as a dynamic business operator, expanding his holdings by acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory. including the Sydney afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror, as well as a small Sydney-based recording company, Festival Records. His acquisition of the Daily Mirror allowed him to challenge two powerful rivals in Australia's biggest city and to outwit his afternoon rival in a long circulation war.

The departure in 1966 of the Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies saw a chaotic six years of politics after Menzies' chosen successor Harold Holt drowned, to be replaced by John Gorton and then William McMahon. In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph. In that year's election, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it win power. As the Whitlam government suffered a great loss of public support following its 1974 re-election, Murdoch soon turned against Whitlam and supported the Governor-General's dismissal of the Prime Minister.In the meantime, Murdoch turned his attention overseas. His business success in Australia and his fastidious policy of prompt periodic repayments of his borrowings had placed him in good financial standing with the Commonwealth Bank and he obtained its support for his biggest venture yet, the takeover of a family company which owned The News of the World, the Sunday newspaper with the biggest circulation in Britain.

When the daily newspaper The Sun came on the market in 1969, Murdoch went to his bankers again and snapped up what had been a money-losing upmarket broadsheet with a declining circulation and relaunched it as a cheap racy tabloid which by 2006 was selling three million copies a day. Murdoch's biggest thrill came the day he was able to take over The Times, the paper his father's mentor Viscount Northcliffe, had once owned. The distinction of owning The Times came to him through his careful cultivation of the owner who had grown tired of losing money on the property. During the 1980s and early 90s, Murdoch's publications were generally supportive of the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to Labor and the party's leader Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a serious political issue in Britain particularly with regard to Murdoch's enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq.

Murdoch acquired Star TV from a Hong Kong company in 1993 created offices for it throughout Asia. Including Singapore, China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, etc. It is one of the biggest Satellite TV networks in Asia.

The effect that Rupert Murdoch has had on media and entertainment industry is massive. Along the way he created an empire that has gone from strength to strength, securing positions in every important media and country. he has married three times(goodness gracious) first in 1956 to Patricia Booker, divorced her in 1967, went on to marry Anna Tõrv on the same year. Anna and Rupert divorced acrimoniously in June, 1999. Seventeen days after the divorce, on June 25, 1999, Murdoch, then 68, married Chinese born Deng Wendi, later changed to Wendi Deng. She was then 30, a recent college graduate from Yale and newly appointed vice-president of STAR TV. Anna Murdoch was also remarried, in October 1999, to William Mann. aye that sure sounds different in India but as Goundamani says in one of his films “this and all is normal in political life my friend” .

With his great success and power he has also created a lot of critics but Murdoch continues to brush them all aside and is happily living his life with his young wife and continuing to grow his global empire.

Pranksters et al

2008-02-21T08:45:00.000-08:00

Oldest Prank
The most daring but successful prank in history was carried out by Doge Dandolo in 1203/4, when he first derailed, then hijacked, the Fourth Crusade, tricking the Crusaders into doing the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do. The crusade was supposed to conquer Egypt first, and then take back Jerusalem. Venice was contracted a year earlier to provide the ships to carry a sizeable army across the Mediterranean. When the crusaders arrived, their numbers were lower than anticipated, and they were unable to pay the agreed amount for the vast armada that had been assembled in Venice.
The aged Doge Dandolo, seeing an opportunity to hoodwink the crusaders, made a big show of "taking the cross" himself, and offered to forgive their debt if they would come with him on a short detour first. This was agreed, and together they first sailed to and sacked Zara, a Christian city that Venice had recently lost to Hungary, and then sailed on and sacked Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire-with Dandolo making sure that most of the crusaders never knew that Pope Innocent III was threatening them with excommunication if they did so.
There is a wonderful irony in the fact that a blind octogenarian not only managed to con the gullible crusaders out of recapturing Jerusalem for Christ, which was their primary goal, but also tricked them into sacking the main centre of Christianity in the east instead.
Finest prank
The finest prank in history was perpetrated towards the end of the second world war, against a background of gloom and horror that made it all the more brilliant. German and allied airforces were launching bombing raids on each other's factories with ferocious regularity. The Germans hatched a plan to deceive allied intelligence by building mock wooden factories painted in industrial colours, the hope being that the enemy would waste much of its precious ordinance on them. Soon enough the British figured out what the other side was up to, and sent a lone Avro Lancaster to an industrial area near Duisburg. The plane's mission: to drop a wooden bomb on one of the fake factories.
Imagine the looks on the faces of the German army officials, staring at a harmless "bomb" made from wood, and looking up at the sky, where a crew had earlier put their lives in jeopardy for the sake of a jape. Even they must have been touched by the humour of it.
The road-digging prank
The classic version, pulled by students on numerous occasions, goes as follows. A group of mischievous types procures hard hats, pneumatic drills and other construction-related items. They then cordon off a city-centre section of street and start tearing up the tarmac. One of the group calls the city police to report that students dressed as construction workers are ripping up the road-come quickly! A little while later, he calls the state police, explaining that he and his colleagues, a group of road workers only trying to do their job, are being harassed by a bunch of pranksters dressed as policemen. Before long, the city police arrive to arrest the students, and the state police come to arrest the city police. Chaos ensues.

India Statistics

2008-02-21T05:58:00.000-08:00

India is my country. All indians are my bros and sis... reminds me of my good ole days at school.. anyways, for here is a must-know for all indians

national country name: Bharat (Hindi)
capital: New Delhi
population: 1.06 billion
area: 3,166,414 sq km (appr. equiv to Western Europe)
population density: 310 persons per sq km
urban: 26.8%
rural: 73.2%
GNI (GNP): USD 470 per capita per year
highest point: 8598m (Kanchenjunga)
languages: 22 official + 1600 minor languages and dialects (dec2003)
national language: Hindi
major languages: 40.2% Hindi; 8.3% Bengali; 7.9% Telugu (1991)
number of states: 28 + 7 union territories
money: Indian rupee
time: GMT + 5,5 hours
electricity: 240V, 50Hz
government form: constitutional democracy
government: Congress party led UPA coalition
Prime Minister: Manmohan Singh
President: Pratibha Patil
religion: 80.5% Hindu, 13.4% Muslim, 2.3% Christian, 1.9% Sikh, 0.8% Buddhist, 0.4% Jain, 0.01% Zoroastrian, 1.3% other (2001)
literacy rate: 64.8% (male 75.3; fem 53.7%) (2001)
gender ratio: 933 fem to 1000 male (2001)
child (0-6 yrs) gender ratio: 927 fem to 1000 male (2001)
life expectancy: 61.5yr male; 62.7yr fem
daily calories intake: 2,388 per capita

French Class

2008-02-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

A language instructor was explaining to her class that, in French, nouns are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. "House," in French, is feminine -"la maison." "Pencil," in French, is masculine -"le crayon."
One puzzled student asked, "What gender is computer?"
The teacher did not know, and the word wasn't in her French dictionary. So for fun she split the class into two groups (appropriately enough, by gender) and asked them to decide whether "computer" should be masculine or feminine noun. both groups were required to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that computers should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer"), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for possible later retrieval.

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("le computer"), because:

1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.

2. They have a lot of data, but they are essentially clueless.

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you'd waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

Of course, the women's group won!

Research In motion

2008-02-19T23:34:00.000-08:00

the first thing that comes to one's mind when you think about Blackberry is its sleek nature and widespread usage. Lets take a look at the company which was behind this marvel of technology, which is "research In motion".
RIM is a Canadian based wireless company headquartered at waterloo, Ontario.In 2007, RIM was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, the only wireless technology company to receive this honour.

The ubiquity of the BlackBerry devices in the corporate environment and the compulsive use of its ability to quickly send and receive e-mail has earned it the nickname "Crackberry" as users feel they can not live without it.

Trivia:Since the turn of the century, RIM has been embroiled in a series of suits relating to alleged patent infringement. Its propensity at litigating elicited the moniker "Lawsuits in Motion" in the media

Nasdaq 100

2008-02-18T23:25:00.000-08:00

The NASDAQ-100 is a stock market index of 100 of the largest domestic and international non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange, it is a modified market value weighted index the companies weights in the index are based on their market capitalization with certain rules capping the influence of the largest components. Market capitalization is nothing but the product of the price value of the share and the number of shares issued by the company.

Mostly the companies are in United states but a few other companies are from other countries also. As of December, 2007 the countries (excluding the United States) represented in the NASDAQ-100 are;

* Bermuda: Foster Wheeler and Marvell Technology Group
* Canada: Research In Motion
* Cayman Islands: Garmin Ltd.
* China: Baidu.com and Focus Media Holding
* India: Infosys
* Ireland: Ryanair
* Israel: Check Point and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd.
* Luxembourg: Millicom
* Singapore: Flextronics
* Switzerland: Logitech
here goes a list of the companies and their tickers
1. Activision, Inc. (ATVI)
2. Adobe Systems Incorporated (ADBE)
3. Akamai Technologies, Inc. (AKAM)
4. Altera Corporation (ALTR)
5. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)
6. Amgen Inc. (AMGN)
7. Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN)
8. Apollo Group, Inc. (APOL)
9. Apple Inc. (AAPL)
10. Applied Materials, Inc. (AMAT)
11. Autodesk, Inc. (ADSK)
12. Baidu.com, Inc. (BIDU)
13. BEA Systems, Inc. (BEAS)
14. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (BBBY)
15. Biogen Idec Inc (BIIB)
16. Broadcom Corporation (BRCM)
17. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. (CHRW)
18. Cadence Design Systems (CDNS)
19. Celgene Corporation (CELG)
20. Cephalon, Inc. (CEPH)
21. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (CHKP)
22. Cintas Corporation (CTAS)
23. Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO)
24. Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS)
25. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation (CTSH)
26. Comcast Corporation (CMCSA)
27. Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST)
28. Dell Inc. (DELL)
29. DENTSPLY International Inc. (XRAY)
30. Discovery Holding Co (DISCA)
31. DISH Network Corporation (DISH)
32. eBay Inc. (EBAY)
33. Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS)
34. Expedia, Inc. (EXPE)
35. Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. (EXPD)
36. Express Scripts, Inc. (ESRX)
37. Fastenal Company (FAST)
38. Fiserv, Inc. (FISV)
39. Flextronics International Ltd. (FLEX)
40. Focus Media Group Limited (FMCN)
41. Foster Wheeler Corporation (FWLT)
42. Garmin Ltd. (GRMN)
43. Genzyme Corporation (GENZ)
44. Gilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD)
45. Google, Inc. (GOOG)
46. Hansen Natural Corporation (HANS)
47. Henry Schein, Inc. (HSIC)
48. Hologic, Inc. (HOLX)
49. IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)
50. Infosys Technologies(INFY)
51. Intel Corporation (INTC)
52. Intuit, Inc. (INTU)
53. Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG)
54. Joy Global Inc. (JOYG)
55. Juniper Networks, Inc. (JNPR)
56. KLA-Tencor Corporation ([KLAC)
57. Lam Research Corporation (LRCX)
58. Lamar Advertising Company (LAMR)
59. Leap Wireless International, Inc. (LEAP)
60. Level 3 Communications (LVLT)
61. Liberty Global, Inc. (LBTYA)
62. Liberty Media Corporation, Interactive Series A (LINTA)
63. Linear Technology Corporation (LLTC)
64. Logitech International, SA (LOGI)
65. Marvell Technology Group, Ltd. (MRVL)
66. Microchip Technology Incorporated (MCHP)
67. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)
68. Millicom International Cellular S.A. (MICC)
69. Monster Worldwide, Inc. (MNST)
70. Network Appliance, Inc. (NTAP)
71. NII Holdings, Inc. (NIHD)
72. NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA)
73. Oracle Corporation (ORCL)
74. PACCAR Inc. (PCAR)
75. Patterson Companies Inc. (PDCO)
76. Paychex, Inc. (PAYX)
77. PetSmart, Inc. (PETM)
78. QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM)
79. Research in Motion Limited (RIMM)
80. Ryanair Holdings, PLC (RYAAY)
81. SanDisk Corporation (SNDK)
82. Sears Holdings Corporation (SHLD)
83. Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (SIAL)
84. Sirius Satellite Radio, Inc. (SIRI)
85. Staples, Inc. (SPLS)
86. Starbucks Corporation (SBUX)
87. Steel Dynamics, Inc. (STLD)
88. Stericycle, Inc (SRCL)
89. Sun Microsystems, Inc. (JAVA)
90. Symantec Corporation (SYMC)
91. Tellabs, Inc. (TLAB)
92. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited (TEVA)
93. UAL Corporation (UAUA)
94. VeriSign, Inc. (VRSN)
95. Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX)
96. Virgin Media (VMED)
97. Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFMI)
98. Wynn Resorts, Ltd. (WYNN)
99. Xilinx, Inc. (XLNX)
100. Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)

The Jodha Akbar Controversy

2008-02-16T06:45:00.000-08:00

Jodha Akbar is a film by Ashutosh Gowariker, starring a greek god by the name of Hrithik Roshan and an Indian goddess named Aishwarya Rai. They are coming as a pair after a reasonably successful Dhoom 2. The music is by the revolutionary ARR, a legend by its true sense and he has reinforced his status as the best musician on earth thro this movie. but recently this movie has been hit by a spate of controversies. the Movie was recently not allowed to be screened at theatres in rajastan and wsa also banned at ahmedabad. Rajput men and women also attacked the movie at Indore. so what was this controversy all about? lets see
Firstly the protesters claim that the fact that Jodha was Akbar's wife is factually incorrect. According to them, Jodha Bai was not the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber as shown in the film. The princess was the daughter of Motaraja Udai Singh of Marwar and that she was married to Akbar's son Salim alias Jehangir. And Mughal king Shahjahan was her son.
this is also supported by noted historians.

Wife or Daughter-in-Law

They have cited books to prove the above claims, Jodha Bai was the wife of Jehangir, aka Salim. Incensed by the distortion of the facts, the Rajput community of Rajasthan has threatened to not only boycott Jodha Akbar, but also stall its release in the state. As per the historical evidences, it was Jehangir who was married to the House of Jodhpur. The princess he thus married later came to be known as Jodhabai.

Real Story

the real story they claim is that Akbar did forge an alliance with the Rajput family, when he married the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber. However, there is no evidence to suggest that she was called Jodhabai. Rather, she was later titled ‘Maryam Rahmani’ or ‘Mother of Rulers of the Universe’. Infact, Gowariker has himself claimed that there is some confusion regarding the name of the Rajput wife of Akbar. Nonetheless, he claims to have taken permission from the Royal Family of Jaipur to use the name Jodha Bai.

so thats the story behind Jodha akbar. but i've also heard that its a lovely movie and that the stars are a treat to watch. thats usually what happens when u have adonis as the hero and the worlds most beautiful lady as the female lead. looking forward to watch the movie.

Microsoft Should Make Cars -- GM Should Make Software

2008-02-15T08:18:00.000-08:00

Sometime back, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating the following: "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:

For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day. (lol)
Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.(thats humiliating to MS)
Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would accept this, restart, and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart; in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT.' Then you would have to buy more seats.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was more reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads. (prteey true)
The oil, water, temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car fault' warning light.
New seats would force everyone to have the same back-end size.
The airbag system would say 'Are you sure?' before going off. (roflol)
Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more.
Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
You'd press the 'Start' button to shut off the engine. (a pun to close the proceedings)

Petrol Diesel prices up.

2008-02-14T19:15:00.000-08:00

India Raises Petrol prices yaar..
lets see first the current petrol/ diesel rates in the country.
An excerpt from the Hindu

"Petrol in Delhi will now cost Rs. 45. 52 against Rs. 43.52. In Kolkata it will be Rs. 48.95 against Rs. 46.86, in Mumbai Rs. 50.51 against Rs. 48.38 and in Chennai it will be Rs. 49.61 against Rs. 47.44.

Diesel in Delhi will now cost Rs. 31.76 against Rs. 30.76.

In Kolkata it will be Rs. 33.92 against Rs. 32.87, in Mumbai Rs. 36.08 against Rs. 34.94 and in Chennai Rs. 34.40 against Rs. 33.30."

not much of a difference.. but this hike is coming at the wake of spiralling crude oil prices.. the crude oil price touched $100 a barrel on Jan 2nd.. a whopping $100. currently it has settled to somewhere in the early $90s.

How does this price increase affect the common man? the price increase is just marginal. Now the Left parties oppose to a Two rupee hike in the price of petrol, as if two rupee is a matter of life and death for the common bike/car owning middle class people. Its just a sacrifice people can very well afford to make, but the left feels that armageddon has neared. It's been feeling that way since India's independence, but thats a different story;)

lets see what Murli Deora has to comment on the issue- “We have tried to ensure that the common man does not suffer. This is just a marginal hike to save the oil marketing companies (OMCs) from bankruptcy. We appeal to the people to cooperate with us. The hike will come into effect from midnight on Thursday night,” Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora said at a press conference.

Mr. Deora said the CCPA also decided to raise the quantum of oil bonds to be issued to state-run oil retailers to partly compensate them for selling auto and cooking fuel below the cost.

At present, 42.7 per cent of the under-realisation on petrol, diesel, LPG and kerosene was met by the government through issuance of oil bonds. The percentage now was 56-57 per cent, Petroleum Secretary M.S. Srinivasan said.

The government companies would earn around Rs. 840 crore in the next six weeks of this financial year.

The Rs. 2 a litre increase in petrol would give Rs. 180 crore additional revenue a month to the public sector oil companies. In the case of diesel, it would be Rs. 360 crore a month.

Petrol and diesel prices were last raised in June 2006 and LPG prices by Rs. 20 a cylinder in November 2004. Kerosene prices have not been changed since 2002.

So thats were the issue stands.. lets see later if more developments take place

Blackle- the black Google

2008-02-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

Heard of Blackle? The power saving Google? If not then read on. There’s quite a noise going on about a new power saving technique- using black screens instead of white. Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." - Says a research by Judy A. Roberson.

In January 2007 a blog post titled “Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year” proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages. Here is an excerpt from the blog.

“As noted, an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts. I thought I would do a little math and see what could be saved by moving a high volume site to the black format.

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.”

Even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly, seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

The site encourages you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.

Help us spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. If you have a blog then give us a mention. Or put the following text in your email signature: "Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time".

That’s something that makes that makes everyone think. As usual, there’s always a backlash to everything that seems good. The first thing is the statistics. Is the statistics valid? Almost most of the computers use LCD monitors and not CRT. Even 25% as suggested was unacceptable to many. LCD monitors have a permanently on backlight and it doesn’t matter whether we switch the colors from white to black. Moreover LCDs save a lot more power than CRTs. The second is regarding the queries. The queries are not only text but also other forms. But I don’t think that makes a really big difference.

Whatever people may say, I, like many fellow Chennaites, use a CRT monitor, and I shall do my part in saving energy, by “Blackling” instead of googling

Anime

2008-02-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

A style of animation developed in Japan, characterized by stylized colorful art and often adult themes.

Anime is an abbreviation of the word "animation". Outside Japan, the term most popularly refers to animation originating in Japan. To the West, not all animation is considered anime; and anime is considered a subset of animation.

While some anime is hand drawn, computer assisted animation techniques have become quite common in recent years. Like any entertainment medium, the story lines represent most major genres of fiction. Anime is broadcast on television, distributed on media such as DVD and VHS, and included in video games. Additionally, some is produced as full length motion pictures. Anime often draws influence from manga, light novels, and other cultures. Some anime storylines have been adapted into live action films and television series.

History

The history of anime begins at the start of the 20th century, when Japanese filmmakers experimented with the animation techniques that were being explored in France, Germany, United States and Russia.

During the 1970s, there was a surge of growth in the popularity of manga comics — which were often later animated — especially those of Osamu Tezuka, who has been called a "legend" and the "god of manga". As a result of his work and that of other pioneers in the field, anime developed characteristics and genres that are fundamental elements of the art today. The giant robot genre (known as "mecha" outside Japan), for instance, took shape under Tezuka, developed under Go Nagai and others, and was revolutionized at the end of the decade by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Robot anime like Gundam and Macross became instant classics in the 80s, and the robot genre of anime is still one of the most popular in Japan and worldwide today. In western countries the word is used usually only to refer to animated programming of Japanese origin, with the term "cartoon" or "animated series" used for most other visual styles. However, some anime are co-productions with non-Japanese companies like the Cartoon Network. Thus, anime is no longer specific to the Japanese market.

Genres

Anime has many genres typically found in any mass media form. Such genres include action, adventure, children's stories, comedy, drama, erotica, medieval fantasy, occult/horror, romance, and science fiction.

Anime features a wide variety of artistic styles. They vary from artist to artist or by studio to studio. They are generally characterized by detailed backgrounds and stylized characters in a variety of different settings and storylines, aimed at a wide range of audiences.

HOOKED ON THE HOOKAH

2008-02-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

Like the trippy caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, hipsters are hitting the hookah pipe. These days it’s the ‘hep’ thing to do. Youngsters who haven’t even had their first puff of cigarette have started to visit hookah spots. Yes, cigarettes are not the current fad. This is surely not because of the statutory warning on every cigarette pack but due to a particular myth- hookah is not harmful as cigarette smoking. A typical case of jumping from the boiling water into the frying pan.

Now that the hookah bug seems to have bitten everyone - lets get down to the brass-tacks of what a hookah is all about - and what it means in terms of health bytes. Medical research on hookahs shows that they have many health benefits. Hookah is known to contain vitamin A, B and C. A review of the health effects of hookah use in the medical journal ‘Pediatrics’ concludes that the harmful effects of hookahs are much less than those caused by cigarette Many people familiar with the hookah say they are not as bad as cigarettes because the water in the basin of the pipe absorbs the dangerous chemicals found in the tobacco, a theory that is not too far from the truth.

Tobacco is placed on a metal plate with a hole in the bottom that connects to a water-filled metal container below and is heated by special charcoal. When the smoker inhales, smoke travels through the water, down the tube and into the smoker's mouth. The result, enthusiasts say, is a delicious assault on the senses that has none of the harshness of cigarette or cigar smoking.

Passing the smoke through water, as is done in a hookah pipe, does remove some toxic compounds, but existing research documents that still many toxins do remain in the water-filtered smoke. One study, detailed in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, indicates an average session of hookah smoking lasts an hour, or 171 puffs of tobacco smoke. By smoke volume, this adds up to inhaling about 100 cigarettes.

Another study in the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal that reports each puff of hookah smoke packs about the same amount of tar and almost three times the nicotine, the addictive chemical found in tobacco. “What’s worse is how hookahs are lit, with a piece of charcoal” said epidemiologist Samira Asma, the associate director for the Centers for Disease Control’s global tobacco program. “On top of extra nicotine and cancer-causing compounds, you inhale a lot more toxic carbon monoxide.” A case-control study of 214 Chinese tin miners found there was a two-fold increased risk for lung cancer among those who had ever used water pipes compared with nonsmokers. Twenty two of twenty five cases of lung cancer in a study in India were among those who were regular hookah users. Research with a series of Egyptian patients showed that hookah smokers who smoked in groups had increased rates of infection when compared with nonsmokers. Thomas Eissenberg, a psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-author of a hookah study, noted that he found that "Every risk of cigarette smoking is also associated with water pipes." Yes it also gives rise to testicular cancer, that sure must scare a lot of you

The reason why many people resort to hookah, apart from the fact that it’s the ‘in’ thing is that it tastes delicious. Unlike cigarettes, hookahs don’t leave a bad taste in your mouth. What’s more, hookah comes in loads of flavors. Flavors include mint, jasmine and mango. Double apple - a mixture of red and green apples - remains a bestseller. In our very own local ‘Mocha’ there’s rose, peach, orange, coffee and a lot more. The special flavors are Casablanca and red wine and so on. Casablanca has a mint touch and that makes it a cool favorite among Chennaites.What’s more, it’s easy on the pocket too. Two hundred bucks for a single pipe and a fifty extra gives you a double pipe.

Cool smoke or hot smoke, cigarette or hookah, everything is the same vice with different names. Yeah, it does analogies with Ram or Rahim, but that’s not the point. The day is not too far when our government wakes up, as usual- after it’s too late, to the harmful effects of hookah, raise a big cry, burn two dozen buses and do nothing but stick this piece of message on the hookah glass- “Statutory warning: hookah smoking is injurious to health”. That day is not too far.

Spy Jargon

2008-02-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

Abort: This is one is pretty straightforward. It means to terminate a mission before it is completed, usually abruptly.
Access: An agent's ability to obtain sensitive information through government channels.
Agency: Slang for the SDI.
Agent of Influence: an agent with political power in a nation, planet or system if interest to the Agency.
Agent provocator: a spy who generates social and political turmoil.
Alimony: compensation paid to a long-term undercover agent when his assignment is complete.
Angel: slang for a spy of an opposing agency.
Apparatus: a spy ring; also called a "cell".
Attache: a military officer assigned to a foreign capital as a liaison and to gather data
Babysitter: bodyguard
Bag job: breaking and entering to steal or photograph intelligence material
Bigot list: the names of people who know of a certain clandestine activity, and who must therefore be safeguarded, or prevented from speaking about the projeects to outsiders.
Black: term used in specific phrases to signify something is covert of illegal in nature
Blind date: meeting someone at their choice of place and time, wirth all the associate risks.
Blowback: false rumors spread in enemy territory that are reported by their news agencies as the truth
Bodywash: a mundane explanation for an agent's death, to prevent outside suspicion.
Bogie: an unidientified agent or organization
Broken: a term applied to an agent who has become a liability; also known as "going bad"
Burn: to publicly uncovr an agent's true identity; also used by agencies, meaning to cut off from Control an agent who become a liability
Classified: sensitive material shown only on a need-to-know basis. Classifications include confidential, secret and top secret, in ascending order of security
Clearance: approval to read or handle classified material
Clean: to make secure, also known as "pacify"
Cobbler: Bothese slang fora forger; also called "shoe maker"; Bothans call fake documents "shoes".
Cold: the mental state of a spy working in hostile territory, often for months or years at the time; to get out is called "coming in from the cold"
Consumer: the final user of intel data
Control: the person in charge of an agent (that's means me), operation or organization; also known as "case officer" or "handler"
Cooking the books: slang for skewing intel to support political aims
Cousins: Bothese slang for spies of SDI
Cover: false ID, also known as "cryptonym"
Cutout: middleman between agent and agency
Dead drop: a locaion where an agent can safely leave intel data or reserves; also known as "dead letter box"
Deep cover: long-term insertion into hostile territory under an assumed identiy
Defector: someone who voluntarily shifts his allegiance from organization to another, defectors are said to have 'turned'
Dirty: treacherous
Disposable: Term applied to anything that can be sacrificed to ensure a mission's success
Doctor: Bothese term for police; agents arrested are said to have an "illness"; agents in jail are said to be at the "hospital"
Double agent: someone openly working for one intelligence agency and secretly working for another one, also called "double"
Ears only: data too sensitive to be commited to paper.
Eyes only: data that should be not be discussed without explicit permission
False drop: a place where an agent pretends to leave messages, or where messages are left in spoof code
The Firm: Alderaani term for the Agency
Floater: someone used for one-time or occasional operations, often unwittingly
The Great Game: the intelligence and counterintelligence profession
Go private: to retire from the game
HUMINT: data gathered by human, rather than satellites or computers
Illegal: a spy working in enemy territory with no diplomatic protection, usually with "legend"
IMINT: imagery intelligence, data gathered by aerial and satellite photography
Legal: an agent protected by diplomatic immunity
Legend: an artificial identity and history, usually employed by deep cover operatives
Letterbox: a cutout (see above) serving the in same capacity as a dead drop
Liquidate: to eliminate wayward agents
Load: to leave something at a dead drop
Make: to recognize someone, for example: "I've been made" means "I've been identified"
MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego): the four most common motivations exploited by agent recruiters
Mule: a covert courier
Noise: slang for collateral attention agents draw to themselves or their mission while on the field. Noise is generally discouraged
Operational climate: a description of a local and the chacen of a mission succeeding there
Padding: extra characters added to the beginning and end of encrypted data to help prevcent it from being deciphered
Peeps: photographs used for blackmail
Plausible deniability: the valuble ability to effectively refute involvment with an operation
Plumbing: plugging leaks within an agency
Sanitize: to eliminate all evidence of an agency involvment
SIGINT: signals intel, data gathered through eavesdropping on electronic signals
Sleeper: an agent established in a target area who does nothing beyond his cover until activated
Stringer: a freelance agent
Walk-in: someone who approaches an intel agency without being prompted
Wetwork: assassination (also known as "closing a contract", "neutralizaing", "sanctionning", "terminating with extreme prejudice", or "demoting maximally")

Marketing Demystified

2008-02-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

1. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. "Marry me!" - That's Direct Marketing"

2. You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: "He's very rich. "Marry him." -That's Advertising"

3. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: "Hi, I'm very rich. "Marry me - That's Telemarketing"

4. You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car) for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say: "By the way, I'm rich. Will you "Marry Me?" - That's Public Relations

5. You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says:"You are very rich! "Can you marry ! me?" - That's Brand Recognition

6. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" She gives you a nice hard slap on your face. - "That's Customer Feedback"

7. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" And she introduces you to her husband. - "That's demand and supply gap"

8. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person come and tell her: "I'm rich. Will you marry me?" and she
goes with him - "That's competition eating into your market share"

9. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say: "I'm rich, Marry me!" your wife arrives. - "That's restriction for entering new markets"

YEARNINGS OF A NEW AGE

2008-02-05T09:37:00.001-08:00

There exist several man-made wonders that leave us spellbound. The telephone is surely one among them, though we take it for granted totally. Here of course we are not comparing man’s creative capabilities with that of God. It’s just that none ever thought such a thing would even be possible.

Try reducing the level of abstraction we generally use with regard to the telephone. We are actually able to listen to the true voice of a person a trillion miles away. To this day, it brings smiles to our lips and tears to our eyes to actually feel the true emotions of our loved ones though we do not have the boon to be close to them physically.

The array of enhanced variations of Graham Bell’s telephone is quite indispensable today. But I’m convinced man will not stop here. Now that he has gotten used to listening to voices from the other side of the globe, speaking to them, exchanging ideas with them, seeing their images and even observing their movements, he would definitely wish TO FEEL them.

Man will find a way to overcome this yearning one day. It will be hard to come by though. Without much-needed magic, we cannot afford to disapparate at one end and apparate at the other end instantly. It would work more like the telephone itself. We would probably trap the information contained in a person as a whole, convert it into transportable form and reconvert it back again. Well, I guess we can count on our competent inventors to find a smooth way out

DOES COUNTENANCE REALLY COUNT?

2008-02-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

So what’s in a face? ‘Agaththin azhagu mugathil theriyum’ translates into ‘the face is an index of the mind’. But the existence of the counter-quote ‘appearances are deceptive’ confuses me. Is this an off shoot of the yin-yang theory? Maybe..

It cannot be denied that countenance brings a person some strong opinion from others. But is this opinion always correct? Well, I strongly think otherwise. But, ‘the first impression is the best impression’, which is why some of us are doomed. People tend to anticipate future reactions based on their very first thought on us, which they form by just observing our countenance. just imagine what would have happened to Michael Jackson, if only he had

Probably for man, everything comes down to physical stuff. Showing in action goes way beyond just thinking or speaking about it. If health fails, nothing at all can be accomplished. Well, maybe he understands better the language spoken by faces.

Many a times we have noticed that strangers grade us right. This is because facial expressions, over time, form lasting features on faces.

The importance we attach to our faces cannot be denied. When we look at the mirror, we do not look at a face, but we look at ourselves. We look at our face and say , “that’s me” whereas we look at our arm and say, “that’s mine”.

The face is not the only way to express emotions. It is just one way among many- words, tone of voice, posture, music, behavior, etc. If people think observation of countenance is the only way to judge others, they are sure to miss out on something important. The society’s strongly- conditioned beliefs about ‘looking good’ are to be blamed. If a person has true talent, countenance will not count in any way

THE END OF FLAT SCREENS?

2008-02-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

The mantra 3D and 3G are often heard these days!! Of these 3-D monitors are emerging successfully in various standards..Perspecta 1.9 is the first 3D display that lets users view 3D moving images from any direction around it. It can be viewed from top or from below. The viewer can also zoom in and out in real time. The system includes a 20-inch(50.8cm) dome displaying full-colour and moving images that occupy a volume in space,giving users a 360 degrees all encompassing view—without the need for special 3D goggles. Perspecta is plug-and-play , rendering all movement from widely used open-standard 3D applications.

Developed by US-based Actuality Systems, the Perspecta System is made up of a circular white polymer screen, 25cm in diameter, mounted on a 1-metre-high black box so that people can walk around it. Like a giant spinning lollipop, the screen, encased in a transparent polycarbonate shell, turns at 15 revolutions per second.

To display the image, software inside the Perspecta chops a 3D model generated by the computer into 198 separate pieces, like slices of cake, which are then projected onto the screen in quick succession by a graphics accelerator that feeds image slices to an optical system mounted below the screen. The result appears to the viewer like a 3D image composed of 100 million “volume pixels” or “voxels”.

:)

2007-05-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

Now is the winter of our discontent.

Sleep less

2007-05-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

Sleep less. This is one of the best investments you can make to make your life more
productive and rewarding. Most people do not need more than 6 hours to maintain an
excellent state of health. Try getting up one hour earlier for 21 days and it will develop
into a powerful habit. Remember, it is the quality not the quantity of sleep that is
important. And just imagine having an extra 30 hours a month to spend on the things that
are important to you.