Scary chicken

For the last couple of days the most used word in and around media is chicken. It is just because of the confirmation of bird flu in chickens from Maharashtra and few other parts of the country. Within just two days of this news outbreak, the poultry business is terribly hit. It already dropped by 30 - 40%. CNN-IBN has series of articles regarding bird flu on their website. The worse part is that it can affect human beings also, though not even a single case is confirmed in India. Well this will definitely keep chickens away from people for alteast the next 10 - 15 days. Indian government says that, they were well prepared for this situation. Let us see how much their preparation helps to bring this situation under control in the days to come. EU is debating on vaccinating the birds to prevent them from this deadly disease. Meanwhile,[*] chicken will be left out of my menu.

Microsoft in Lakshadweep

When I was doing my B.E, I heard that M$ is coming to Lakshadweep to teach computers to school children. Now they are there, advertising there products in this group of small islands.

As far as I know, the computer literacy rate is very low in Lakshadweep. Most of the students are not even aware of what a computer is. You can say that most of them haven't seen it. In the early stage of my adventure with computers, I learned Unix, DOS, WordStar, Lotus 123, Dbase, FoxPro, etc.. They were the best those days and I never heard about Microsoft's Word, Excel, Access at all. I was able to understand that DOS and Unix are Operating Systems, WordStar is a word processor, Lotus 123 is a spreadsheet, Dbase and Foxpro are database management systems (DBMS). Now when M$ is going to feed students about computers, they will only learn Word, Excel, Access. They can't even realise that there are wonderful softwares, which fall into various categories as that of Word, Excel and Access. They can't even compare M$ applications with others, since M$ might have framed the syllabus so carefully that students will only learn about their products. When students get out of school, they will only be aware of internet as a combination of Windows and Internet Explorer. It is the weakness of the education department not to learn more about the environment and frame a better syllabus, which is much more generalised and covers more information. And it is their weakness to avoid a product based company to creep into the education system. This will only malign the system and also question the freedom of students.

There was only a single machine in my school, when I was studying. Now there are around 30 Pentium PCs. All these machines will be now running Windows as operating system and basic applications from M$ like Word, Excel, Access, etc.. All these basic applications come as a single package, M$ Office. The education department might have spent money for 30 M$ Office suite and Windows. May be after two to three years the department has to spent some more moeny for the latest or upgraded version because of lack of support for old versions from M$. They could have reduced the cost through much more cheaper approach. Free softwares like Linux and OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, etc. could have reduced the cost to far extend.

Now M$ bug is in the system with its propoganda, it is too late to do something. Can we remove this bug anyhow? When will the resposible people identify this trap? Are these people involved in this business?

Its been a long time

Its been a long time since I blogged. I was busy all these days in project work.
Hope I will start blogging regularly here after. :)

What Really Matters in Chennai ? (Bus & Water)

Recently I got a job in a Software Company that is situated in Chennai. In the beginning I was staying with my friend, Barubo, in Velachery (I dont know how many of you know about that place). The company in which I am working is situated in Nungambakkam, which is in the heart of the city. The only commutating mode that was economical for me was Bus. In order to reach my company at 9:00 a.m, I had to start by 7:00 am from the flat. You might be thinking, "Is that 2:00 hrs journey?". Its not, If I start at 7:00 I used to stand during the whole journey because every seat gets occupied before the bus reaches my stop. If I start after 7:00 the story is different, I had to struggle in the bus which is crowded with school goers. Once I get out of the bus I feel like taking bath once again. Thank God that Software Companies provide A/C rooms. I wonder, how those people manage, who dont have such facility? The return journeys were even horrible. As I was very new to this big city, I found it very difficult to find out where the bus has reached within the crowded bus. I get completely exhausted when I am back in my apartment.

After struggling with bus, I shifted to Nungambakkam. The present room in which I stay is 15 mins walk from my company. I was happy that here after I can forget bus. Happiness went off as water in the bore well got drained out. Now after paying a huge amount in advance and there are three other fellows who share the room with me, I dont know what should I do? I have to wait in a very long queue carrying pot for a chance to use the Government pump. Even in my busy schedule I manage to pump some water out of the bore well, releasing most of my energy, which is already been sucked out by the workload in the company.

Nature is playing very hard with Chennai People. What people expect from God?? Few drops of rain. Will God respond? Pray to god so that, he may shower us with rain water.

Gmail (A new approach to E-mail from Google)

Today I created a new E-mail account in Gmail with the help of an invitation from a fellow netizen.

One fine morning in April 2004, when I was reading Hindu Newspaper in Madurai, I read an article regarding the Launch of beta version of Google's GMail. I was trying to create an account from that day itself but I couldnt. To create an account on Gmail, an invitation from those who already have an account is necessary. Finally, today I was able to create an account. Thanks to Eashwar :).

Well, Gmail is still in beta stage. I dont know when will they go public. Almost everyone is running for a gmail account so that they can keep their desired nickname for e-mail address before someone else grab that one. Even I couldnt keep what I desired. Hey, someone might have got bush@gmail.com, osama@gmail.com, etc.. :P. Seems to be interesting. There are lots of contest conducted online to give away invitations. It will be a tough time for those servers on which Gmail is being hosted on the day of its pulbic announcement.

One feature that took the free e-mail service providers by storm is 1 GB of space provided by Gmail. The next day, Yahoo announced 100 MB space for their existing users and new users. Rediff bounced back with 1 GB offer.

Google has integrated its powerful searching technique to Gmail. Finding out a specific mail in the archive is going to be very easy because we all know that how efficient is Google's search technique. The 1 GB offer will allow a normal human being to store his mails for lifetime without deleting a single mail.

The Web Interface is Cool. The Server Scripts are driven by python which provides an added advantage. Waiting for Gmail to go Public :)

Wondrous Wikipedia

These days I started using another wonderful service on Internet, Wikipedia (The Free Encyclopedia in many languages). It is developed using the wiki software. It hosts information about almost every topic. Its a wonderful resource worth exploring. A brief information about all topics are available here in this site. More information can be found on the topic from the link given in the External Links Section of that topic. Since it is built using the wonderful Wiki Software all the pages on this site are editable by registered users which enables lots of other people to contribute to the Information Pool.

I am sure that this wonderful project is going to stay forever on internet and it will become popular soon among almost every netizen.

Hats off to Larry Sanger and Ben Krovitz

FM is alive and here to stay

I used FM radio when i was in schools to hear songs. Since i was born in lakshadweep, which is isolated from mainlad, it was a real good medium to spend some time. When I was in 12th grade, stopped hearing about this wonderful technology. Today we can see almost everyone using FM especially to hear songs. There are plenty of channels like Suryan, Radio Mirchi to name afew available throughout the metros. These days mobile phones come with facilties to use FM. I dont know how many more devices will come with this technology in future.

I think FM is going to stay here for long. Long Live FM!

Created this blog today

I created this blog today. I was fascinated by the concept of blog. I found lots of blogs where people post lots of things related to good topics. I thought i will create one for myself and I will post whatever I like , that I think should know. In this blog i will be trying to post articles or comments that may or may not make others interesting.

I dont know when this concept evolved. I was following this concept from last 2 months. I read lots of blogs which really interested me. I thought i will also have one.