Trying to make a point

Robot invented to crawl through veins

2009-07-07T01:47:00.001+05:30

Creepy crawly

Monday, 6 July 2009, 16:34

SCIENTISTS FROM Israel's Technion University have unveiled a tiny robot, made using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, purportedly able to crawl through a person's veins in order to diagnose and potentially treat artery blockage and cancer.

The little robot - with a diameter of just one millimeter - has neither engine nor onboard controls, instead being propelled forward by a magnetic field wielded on it from outside the patient's body.

Controlling the tiny bot externally means boffins have been able to shrink it to a previously impossibly tiny scale, allowing it to crawl its way through the typical human body's veins and arteries using miniscule outstretched arms which grip the vessel walls. Yes, that made us shudder too.

Scientists reckon the mini bot can even withstand massive blood flow and is able to push forward regardless of the magnetic field actuation direction, doing away with any need for exact localisation and direction retrieval.

A controller can move the little crawly creature in increments, with its speed of up to nine millimeters a second regulated by varying external magnetic field frequencies. Outside control also means the robot can be made to work for an unlimited amount of time, rather than suddenly - not to mention inconveniently - keeling over to die of battery failure in the middle of a medical procedure.

A small cross sectional area on the tiny robot apparently allows fluids to flow with minimal interference making intra-vascular motion more feasible, and opening up the possibility of minimally invasive medical treatments, as well as diagnosis within the body. Researchers are also apparently toying with the idea of attaching miniscule cameras to the bot, as well as other "tools" it may need to perform internal surgery.

As if getting under people's skin wasn't enough, Technion researchers say they're also looking at putting the ant-like creature to work in urban water distribution systems, to look for any leaks that need plugging.

We hear that research is going swimmingly. µ

From the INQUIRER

Apple admits its Iphones are overheating - the INQUIRER reports

2009-07-07T01:42:00.001+05:30

Don't use them in Britain this summer

By Nick Farrell

Friday, 3 July 2009, 12:13

WHILE WE WERE reporting that some of Apple's new Iphones are getting hot enough to discolour their casings, we failed to notice that Job's Mob was advising punters not to use them when the temperature is a little hot.

This will be news to those Iphone users who battled with the UK's heatwave this week, but apparently Apple revised a support document about Iphone temperature to include the Iphone 3GS.

Apparently you can operate an Iphone - either 3G or 3GS - only where the temperature is between zero and 35 degrees Celsius, which translates to 32 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit for you INQ readers in the US.

High-temperature conditions might temporarily shorten battery life or cause the device to temporarily stop working properly, warns Apple.

This could explain why many Iphone users have also been reporting that battery life on their pretty toys is not what Apple marketing had claimed.

Apparently you should not leave your phone in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed the safe operating range. We guess that carrying one around in your pocket is also a bad idea.

However this means Apple finally has a reason for overheating Iphones that is not based on poor design. It can blame the British weather just like we all do. µ

The exact article from the Inquirer without modifications

Proud to be an IBMer- Sequoia

2009-06-29T02:43:00.001+05:30

20 Petaflop Sequoia Supercomputer – IBM is rocking all the way..

Sequoia will be based on the IBM BlueGene technology, exceed 20 petaflops (quadrillion floating operations per second) and will be delivered in 2011.. This particular super computer is said to have a performance more than the TOP 500 Super Computers put together. IBM has been the leader in super computing for a long time and Sequoia is another feather to its hat.

More here in IBM’s Press Release: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26599.wss

IBM history of TOP500 leadership:

From November 1999 to November 2008 (20 TOP500 lists) IBM systems have accounted for the vast majority of the total computational horsepower of each TOP500 list.
IBM has held the #1 system position for five years straight, dominating 10 lists.
IBM has had the #1 system 12 times over the 16-year history of the TOP500 list.
#1 system with DOE/NNSA/LANL Roadrunner
#1 system for 10 TOP500 lists in a row, a new record
#1 in aggregate performance for 20 lists in a row with over 8,903 of 22,608 Teraflops (39.4 percent)
#1 in TOP20 with seven (35 percent)
#1 in TOP50 systems with 17 (34 percent)
#1 in TOP100 systems with 35 (35 percent)
Fastest machine in USA (BladeCenter QS22/LS21 at LANL)
Fastest machine in Europe (Blue Gene/P at Juelich)
Fastest machine in Canada (System x iDataPlex at SciNet)
Fastest machine in Middle East (Blue Gene/P at KAUST)

And yet, IBM is environment friendly.. In the ranking by Green500.org in Jun’08 (awaiting Jun’09 pretty soon)

IBM holds all top ten places with a number of IBM BladeCenter QS22 and LS21 Clusters and Blue Gene/P Solutions.
Out of the first 40 ranked systems, 39 are IBM-based.
Out of the top 100 systems, 76 systems are IBM-based.
The top three supercomputers -- all IBM -- surpass the 400 MFLOPS/watt milestone for the first time -- with the leading system delivering almost half a GFLOP per watt.

References

http://www.top500.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/new-top-500-supercomputer-list-shows-ibm-takes-10th-straight-1-20090623/

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24702.wss

http://www.green500.org/cert/certdisplay.php?month=6&year=2008&list=green500_200806.csv&start=1&line=101

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

MJ departs to entertain Heaven !

2009-06-26T22:37:00.001+05:30

It is a sad and yet controversial demise.. But then he was and will be a legend for all times to come. I pray his soul rests in peace..

Heck with India's Foreign Policy!

2009-06-02T10:12:00.003+05:30

Wikipedia quotes India in its article "India has a long history of collaboration with several countries and is considered a leader of the developing world...... India has taken part in several UN peacekeeping missions and in 2007, it was the second-largest troop contributor to the United Nations"

Wow, sounds great isn't it ? Apparently, in the recent years, I have no clue as to what or who is influencing India's Decisions on Foreign Policy, because it has turned out to be a TOTAL MESS.

Indra Gandhi recongised the importance of the struggle of LTTE as a movement to upkeep the rights of those who were deprived of it.. Then came Rajiv, who kinda posed that he understood the whole history of the Lankans, but never really did which ended up in his death.. Having said that, it should be noted that there are speculations that too many top people in India have their hands soaked in Rajiv's death...

Later when BJP took over in the 2000s, no support whatsoever was given to Lanka.. The India I have known is a peace keeper, a country holding a good stance esp with Lanka..

The Congress came back to power and a steady supply of you-name-it, was sent to the Lankan Army... I personally think this should have never happened.. All of this was because some country China wanted to establish its power in the Waters of Sri lanka, eventually have a check on Indio- US troops movement in the area..

Google and you'll find loads and loads of proof for all the statements above.. What is dis heartening is not the fact that India doesn't support LTTE, but the fact that tens and thousands of innocent people are being killed. The biggest genocide of 21st Century is happening next door .. The highlight to all of this is the Lankan President commented to an Interview in NDTV, "I was fighting India's Battle: Rajapakse" As crazy as it sounds, see the video..

I might have to discard my "PROUD to be Indian" face with the most dumb thing of voting in favour of no war crimes investigation against Sri Lanka the UN meeting in Geneva on May 27,2009.. Where is the world going ? What happened to all those rules and diplomatic talks of those developed countries around the globe ???

Does anyone even think there is injustice happening to fellow humans ?

I always was a strong supported of NDTV.. Not anymore.. Lately, all news coming out of this crap channel seems to be sensored, cooked and made bland without the actual details....
from somewhere: tell the public about the role of a free press in a free society - and to tell the News That Didn’t Make the News and Why

I wish I could do something, but as it turns out, I live in India, I LOVE my country and I have to live with it.. Because those who were elected represent the people of India heavily support personal vendetta rather than a Nation's status in the World Arena... ridiculous ? So was the reaction of the ruling congress when the opposition party wanted to work with Swiss Banks to get back the loads of black money( I freaked out and I will write a separate article on that later..)

I am not a lunatic, I am not crazy. It is the overwhelming ill feeling about the wrong decisions my country is making and that we are just standing and watching people treated like a worthless cent..

India not only has its hands dirty with Sri Lanka, but also with Nepal.. India has been allegedly supplying arms to Nepal even after the official annoucement from India to no longer continue arms support since the King's regime in Nepal came to end..

HT:Nepal Maoists call strike over Indian arms supply 'resumption'

On Monday night, Maoist MP Bamdev Chhetri and Sunil led a raid that they say netted two trucks with Uttar Pradesh number plates in Butwal while a third managed to evade the dragnet.

Nepal's Armed Police Force and civilian police, they say, were escorting the vehicles.

"We halted the two trucks for six hours, requesting human rights activists to come and check what they contained," Sunil said.

"But police attacked us and forcibly took the two vehicles away. Two dozen party men have been injured in the police attack."

My heart grieves for those dead in Lanka .. Some day, the future will speak of the grave mistakes India did as a country.. Someone in some part of the world will speak, we should not be like Indians sitting there watching..

With those 120+ nukes all set to fire at the push of a button, it is high time India gets its act together and revisits its foreign policy..

"Desperate times call for desperate measures"

Laterz

Live and Let Live

2009-05-27T03:54:00.003+05:30

The goal of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010 is the subject of several key international agreements. Each recognises the rapid degradation of ecosystems and habitats, the increasing threat to many species populations and the urgent need to take action that will halt the decline in irreplaceable natural resources.

In political terms, these commitments represent a radical departure from previous approaches. For the first time, an overall conservation target has been adopted rather than generally formulated objectives or specific measures that may or may not have the desired conservation effect. In that sense, the significance of these agreements cannot be overstated.

However, given the current rapid decline in biodiversity, both in Europe and worldwide, and the ever-increasing extent and intensity of many human activities, the objective of halting the decline in biodiversity by 2010 will require unprecedented efforts in adapting our activities to the needs of natural systems.

More....

Encourage your company to participate in the Countdown 2010 Declaration

Ten Things We All Can Do That Make a Difference

Take public transportation, bike, walk, or carpool to work at least one day a week. Avoid air travel where possible.
Buy food, preferably organic food—vegetables, fruits, dairy, eggs, and meat—from a farmer’s market at least one day a week.
Eat sustainably harvested seafood and farmed fish that is herbivorous, like catfish, tilapia, and shellfish. Avoid farmed carnivorous fish like salmon and shrimp.
Install at least one compact fluorescent light bulb in your home—it will save roughly 30 EUR in electricity and replacement bulb costs each year, and reduce carbon emissions by a ton every three years.
Turn off lights in empty rooms.
Lower the thermostat by at least 1 degree ° C in winter.
Stop using herbicides and pesticides on your lawn.
Only drink wines with natural cork stoppers.
Tell everyone what you are doing to conserve biodiversity and ask them to join you. Support representatives who act for biodiversity.
Above all, do not waste—reduce your consumption, buy only what you really need, and re-use and re-cycle whatever and whenever you can.

From: http://www.countdown2010.net

Laterz

xperia- I am loving it

2009-05-26T01:11:00.004+05:30

When I got my phone from "Sony World", I was the third to buy the phone in the whole of my city.. Was even thinking if I had made a mistake by just reading reviews and not asking for real world experience with the phone esp in a hot weather as my place..

So far, I haven't felt bad for choosing the phone.. It turns out that SE is on the look out for a new phone in the Xperia family.. X5.. Crazy looks can't think about any other phone.. too good to be real.. see the pictures for yourself..
Pic from: techarena
There is too much speculation on the OS.. I truly wish SE dumps M$ and goes for UIQ or may be Android.. THIS is NOT A IPHONE HYPE .. lol.. People tend to say this all the time.. iphone is no where closer to comparison with the Xperia. I even heard of Apple working with SE to run MAC OS on the X5. I would hate to see MAC on a SE..
Pic from - Estato
Laterz...

linked in

2009-05-25T01:08:00.006+05:30

Have always been thinkin, wht the heck is with linked in anywayz, why do people keep publishing their facts in public, but after registering myself today with linked in and creating a profile for myself, i was able to experience what exactly it was all about.. Try it .. Worth having an account.. Neverthless, it would be a waste to just create a profile and forget about it.. Keep updating quarterly or at least half early..

Will help some day.. just my 2 cents

btw, check out my profile.. http://www.linkedin.com/in/balajia
I am open to comments..

Back to some blogging...

2009-05-25T00:49:00.002+05:30

It has been months since my last post.. Haven't had the chance to organise myself.. Now is never late..

Am starting to write and dig some of my time for some personal life... and of course, blogging.. Will get the balls rolling...

Was listening to Russell Peters the other day, God he drives me crazy, extremely funny.. "Somebody Gonna Get Hurt Real Bad" lol...

laterz

Online Degrees: Are They Right for You?

2008-07-04T16:24:00.001+05:30

Search for "online degree" on Google and you are liable to come back with more than 23 million returns.

"Get your degree fast!"

"Never go into a university!"

"We are accredited!"

As gimmicky as it may seem, there's a real need for this service. To advance careers, many professionals find they need to return to school to obtain a degree or to further their education with a graduate program. It has become possible for universities to offer distance learning options via the Internet that can be flexible enough to avoid interrupting professionals' jobs. These programs are noted for their reduced cost, increased flexibility and the convenience of obtaining the degree from home in some cases. But there also is the perception that an online degree is easier than obtaining a diploma in a traditional college campus setting.

At the same time, using an Internet-based program of study introduces its own set of challenges. Candidates need to be highly motivated to complete self-study, discipline is needed to complete long-term assignments and for synchronous programs - those in which you attend a class with a teacher in real time online - students still have to make time to attend classes. Online students have to be able to filter out distractions.

As the concept of attending a university online has become more accepted in professional societies around the globe, the number of degree programs and institutions has skyrocketed to address a varied landscape of learning needs. New online learning models have emerged, from hybrid models in which a student takes classes on a flexible schedule at a nearby campus, to options that are completely online with a real-time teacher or completely self-governed. Every year there seem to be more and more options to extend professional learning online, but how can students tell whether an online degree is the right career move?

Types of Degree Programs

The first thing to consider when looking at an online degree is the type of program being offered by an institution. In recent years, programs have been introduced that provide students with more and more autonomy and control of their programs of study. While programs vary by institution, most online degree offerings break down into three categories: hybrid programs and synchronous and asynchronous online learning.

Hybrid study programs offer students the opportunity to take some classes online and some in a traditional university setting. Online synchronized study offers students the choice of studying through an online portal system; however, the student is expected to appear for most classes on a real-time schedule. These classes often are presented via video and webcam over the Internet in the evenings and offer the student the ability to pose questions, interact with a real professor and obtain real-time support for the learning material.

Recently, online institutions have introduced courses that are completely online self-study, also called asynchronous learning. These courses often boast a series of assignments that need to be completed in a certain timeframe, with an online feedback system or forum that allows students to pose questions to the professor and their classmates.

Early distance learning and online learning programs allowed students to attend many of their classes at a local institution's traditional campus and then pay to attend certain courses via an online learning system in a hybrid model. This hybrid model offers students the opportunity to choose the "best" method for their individual learning needs, as well as the option to take some classes at a campus. Even in classes that are entirely presented through the online distance learning mechanism, there still is the opportunity to visit a professor on campus and obtain personal support for concepts presented in the class.

This level of support comes at a cost to the students in the flexibility of their programs of study. Many of the classes offered in this hybrid environment are synchronous - that is, they offer either video or other learning content that is taken by a class of students at a given time. Often, this can mean professionals will need to plan to either be available at home at a certain time, or they will lose that access to the professor and instead attend a recorded session.

Online degrees with synchronous learning provide a completely online program, so the student will not need to plan to attend in-person classes but still will participate in real-time online sessions. These programs attempt to offer students a balanced learning environment. While students are not required to appear on a traditional campus, they still must plan to "attend" some classes online during certain times offered as video broadcasts, usually supplemented with a chat or voice channel to allow students to ask questions.

Many institutions that use this synchronous learning environment for online students will also offer "office hours" - posted times when a professor is available to answer a question quickly - roughly analogous to when a student at a traditional university would be able to come and ask a question of a professor. While many synchronous learning programs will provide better real-time support for students and the ability to directly ask questions and get answers, students interested in one of these programs will need to be careful about scheduling and will need to balance work or other family demands against the times classes are conducted on the computer.

More and more common these days is asynchronous online learning - the completely independent self-study method. In a self-study environment, the student is completely responsible for learning, and the institution takes more of a mentoring role, connecting students with resources for study material and textbooks, ways to get help and grading exams. As the student is completely responsible for his or her own learning, the course can be self-paced and there is no time that the student is required to be available to attend an online class.

Stephen Gatlin, president of Gatlin Education Services, a provider of learning content to online organizations, described the independent self-study method. "Students can create their own study schedule and complete courses in their own time," Gatlin said. "The instructional design is such high quality that the actual learning experience is rich and interesting, as well as effective." These kinds of programs offer the most flexibility for the student but the least direct support for the student's learning. Students often can look forward to online Web-based forums or e-mail for learning assistance.

Online Degrees Fit in the IT Industry

With online degree programs' relatively recent introduction to the IT industry, many students are unfamiliar with the level of acceptance of online degrees offered and how certifications fit into the degree programs. This varies by institution and can be based on the location of a learning institution's headquarters and the university's technology partners. These are key questions students should ask the counselor of any institution they approach because many programs offer certification as part of the program; however, the degree of integration varies, including how program fees are incorporated.

When examining a school's value for your career, one of the most important things to examine is the level of accreditation of the school. There are six regional accreditation associations in the United States, and the school you are considering should be listed with one of them. Without regional accreditation, the degree or credits you earn with a given school may not be recognized by outside businesses or other schools.

As long as the school has been accredited by one of these six associations, the degree you earn from their programs will have the same standing as a degree earned from a traditional university. When asked what caution he would have for a student considering an online degree, Pat Partridge, vice president of enrollment at Western Governors University, indicated that a student shouldn't "think it's easier. It's generally not. Studying and preparation is still essential."

Many of these online degrees are focused on technology, and as a result, can offer a student a more comprehensive learning experience than some traditional university settings.

"Our programs are developed around core competencies recognized by the marketplace as being relevant," said Ruki Jayaraman, director of the College of Information Technology at Western Governors University. "Unlike traditional degrees in [computer science] or IT, the degree programs at WGU are not only designed to develop hands-on skills and capabilities in current areas of information technology, but also help students become competent in project management, leadership and professionalism."

By attending programs integrating additional components that go beyond the technology and general education focuses of many traditional institutions, students can gain exposure to many of the real-world scenarios they will encounter in the field.

As part of this beyond-the-classroom focus, many organizations integrate information technology-centric industry certifications into their degree programs. Being aware of how an institution of choice uses certifications can help a student choose a program that will provide the basis to build a successful career right after graduation. Many institutions provide the learning necessary for a student to certify and then allow students to choose whether or not they would like to take that extra step on their own. Other programs integrate certifications as exams in technology-focused courses to provide an industry-based assessment of a student's learning. An enrollment counselor at any university should be able to explain how certifications are integrated into the degree program.

Matching a Program With Your Life

With the wide array of options that students have to pick from in online study programs, they should take the time to choose the program and university that works best for them. Each of the available types of programs places different demands on the student, and institutions have different ways of implementing the programs within each category. Students interested in self-study programs should be aware that a balance exists in most programs between flexibility for the student and the amount of support resources available for each class.

When considering an online program, it is important to take the time to find out about the program and the institution offering it. It is important that a student understands the time and commitment involved in enrolling in an online degree program.

"Do the research," Jayaraman said. "Talk to people who have had experience in online learning to ensure that you not only understand what the learning responsibilities entail, but that you are prepared for them."

Some students may choose to give up some of the flexibility in a fully self-paced asynchronous online program in order to obtain some of the advanced support from professors that a synchronous or hybrid program may make available. For self-study programs, it is critical that each student is prepared to put in the time to complete course material every week.

"Students will need to have the discipline to commit themselves to 20 to 30 hours a week for learning and preparation," Jayaraman said. "Unlike a traditional brick-and-mortar institution, where students have structure and a schedule for attending classes, students can sometimes get lost in an online world, where they lose the connection with others in their cohort group and, sometimes, the motivation for learning. They must have the discipline necessary to stay focused."

Making the Decision

In the end, students will have to make the decision about which program type and institution most closely matches their schedules, abilities and career aspirations.

Each program has differences in learning format, mentoring resources, exams and assessments, access to professors and resources required for completion. Taking the time to examine the available programs, find out how the university works, how certifications are integrated and the total costs will help you determine if an online degree program is right for you.

Certmag

Worst nightmare of Intel - Official Investigation by FTC

2008-06-11T18:55:00.001+05:30

It is the first blow for the processor giant. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which supervises free trade in the U.S., announced that it was launching a formal antitrust investigation against Intel. The stakes are high for both Intel and AMD; the total market for microprocessors racked up $225 billion in sales last year.

I can here the cheer at the AMD Headquarters and so do I. Yes I am an AMD Freak. Intel's Nehalem has been bothering AMD since its release and also the recent lost battles against Intel are a big wound in AMD.

The announcement has turned to be the much sought medicine to get AMD ready for the next battle. Both the companies have spends have spend tens of millions of $$$ in Legal issues and PR.

William E. Kovacic, the new chairman of the trade commission, the successor of Deborah P. Majoras, with the backing of some of the fellow commissioners has drawn first blood !! Majoras was a more lenient appointee, and helped work out the antitrust settlement in 2001 with Microsoft. D. Bruce Sewell, Intel’s senior vice president and general counsel, says that the U.S. antitrust laws are different than European ones, and it will not be charged. Intel is planning on racking up its Capitol Hill efforts, though, likely in the form of lobbyist dollars.

AMD's top executives expressed their pleasure over the Commission's decision. Tom McCoy, executive vice president for legal affairs at AMD, stated, "Intel must now answer to the Federal Trade Commission, which is the appropriate way to determine the impact of Intel practices on U.S. consumers and technology businesses. In every country around the world where Intel’s business practices have been investigated, including the decision by South Korea this week, antitrust regulators have taken action."

The largest U.S. antitrust investigation since the Microsoft one of the 90s came the same week as more good news for AMD; Korean officials slammed Intel with a $25 million fine for violating its fair trade laws. The Korean officials discovered that Intel illegally paid Samsung Electronics and the Trigem Company $37 million in payments between 2002 and 2005 to not buy AMD processors. The European Union's European Commission (EC), which charged Intel with "the aim of excluding its main rival from the market" is expected to expand its charges this year.

Intel currently owns somewhere between 80 to 90 percent of the worldwide microprocessor market. Many U.S. citizens do not realize that U.S. laws do allow monopolies, unlike elsewhere, but forbid companies with a monopoly from using its dominance to restrict competition.

With mounting evidence worldwide, Intel faces a tough case before the FTC. However, it will likely do what it takes, or perhaps more aptly write the lobbyist checks needed to prevent it from becoming the next Microsoft. Meanwhile, AMD will also likely step up its efforts in hopes that it can stop its downhill slide by a court victory over Intel

Million $$$ Question - Will the world end in 2012 ?

2008-06-07T12:06:00.001+05:30

It is time to break the silence. A lot of gossip and chit chat is going on about the world ending in 2012. Lots of reasons are laid down by experts from various fields. Be it religious, astronomic, scientific, geological... You name it and the experts have reasons. I would like to share with you my views about this...

Mayan Calendar

Before we see about the reason laid by the Mayan calendar, lets refresh our idea about Mayans...

The Mayans were a bloodthirsty race and were good at two things:

Building highly accurate astrological equipment out of stone
Sacrificing Virgins.

The Mayan Calendar is something profoundly different than just a system to mark off the passage of time. The Mayan Calendar is above all a prophetic calendar that may help us understand the past and foresee the future. It is a calendar of the Ages that describes how the progression of Heavens and Underworlds condition the human consciousness and thus the frames for our thoughts and actions within a given Age. Thousands of years ago they managed to calculate the length of the lunar moon as 329.53020 days, only 34 seconds out!
The Mayan Calendar is not predicting the end of the world 2012, but the start of a new era; the golden age.

More : Here

Sun Storms

Solar experts from around the world monitoring the sun have made a startling discovery: our sun is in a bit of strife. The energy output of the sun is, like most things in nature, cyclic, and it's supposed to be in the middle of a period of relative stability. However, recent solar storms have been bombarding the Earth with so much radiation energy, it's been knocking out power grids and destroying satellites.

When the solar cycle reaches its peak in 2012, it will hurl at Earth mammoth solar storms with intense radiation and clouds of high-speed subatomic particles millions of miles across, the scientists said. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.

The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor belt on the sun.

We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world's weather into chaos.

The sun's conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun's equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.

More Here

The Atom Smasher

Scientists in Europe have been building the world's largest particle accelerator. Basically its a 27km tunnel designed to smash atoms together to find out what makes the Universe tick. However, the mega-gadget has caused serious concern, with some scientists suggesting that it's properly even a bad idea to turn it on in the first place. They're predicting all manner of deadly results, including mini black holes. So when this machine is fired up for its first serious experiment in 2012, the world could be crushed into a super-dense blob the size of a basketball!

More Here

The Bible says...

If having scientists warning us about the end of the world isn't bad enough,religious folks are getting in on the act as well. Interpretations of the Christian Bible reveal that the date for Armageddon, the final battle between Good an Evil, has been set down for 2012. The I Ching, also known as the Chinese book of Changes, says the same thing, as do various sections of the Hindu teachings.

Super Volcano

Yellowstone National Park in the United States is famous for its thermal springs and Old Faithful geyser. The reason for this is simple - it's sitting on top of the world's biggest volcano, and geological experts are beginning to get nervous sweats. The Yellowstone volcano has a pattern of erupting every 650,000 years or so, and we're many years overdue for an explosion that will fill the atmosphere with ash, blocking the sun and plunging the Earth into a frozen winter that could last up to 15,000 years. The pressure under the Yellowstone is building steadily, and geologists have set 2012 as a likely date for the big bang.

The Physicists

This one's case of bog-simple maths mathematics. Physicists at Berkeley University have been crunching the numbers. and they've determined that the Earth is well overdue for a major catastrophic event. Even worse, they're claiming their calculations prove, that we're all going to die, very soon - while also saying their prediction comes with a certainty of 99 percent- and 2012 just happens to be the best guess as to when it occurs.

Slip-Slop-Slap-BANG!

We all know the Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that shields us from most of the sun's radiation. What you might not know is that the magnetic poles we call north and south have a nasty habit of swapping places every 750,000 years or so - and right now we're about 30,000 years overdue. Scientists have noted that the poles are drifting apart roughly 20-30kms each year, much faster than ever before, which points to a pole-shift being right around the corner. While the pole shift is underway, the magnetic field is disrupted and will eventually disappear, sometimes for up to 100 years. The result is enough UV outdoors to crisp your skin in seconds, killing everything it touches.

Disclaimer: This is a collection of ideas from various web sites. I personally feel the world is not going to end in 2012.

Windows 7 would be Tweaked Windows Vista

2008-06-03T07:19:00.001+05:30

Last week, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) gave a teeny, tiny bit of information about the successor to Windows Vista, currently named Windows 7. There wasn't a lot of real meaty data in its disclosures, but it said enough to reset any expectations you might have that Windows 7 would be a radical departure from Windows Vista.

The biggest clue about the necessarily modest goals of Windows 7 is the time frame. In the team blog, Chris Flores says it's "still on track to ship approximately three years after the general availability of Windows Vista." Since Vista became available in November 2006 for businesses and January 2007 for consumers, the company has a few months of leeway built into that goal. However, Vista has been a slow seller. Microsoft would be best served financially by having Windows 7 ready by the 2009 holiday season. That would mean Windows 7 needs to be wrapped up by September 2009 so that OEMs can test and preload systems for retail sale.

Here we are in June 2008, about 18 months from that date, and Microsoft hasn't shown its Windows 7 work to the public so far. We knew a lot more about Vista when it was 18 months from ship -- of course, that was because it slipped several times so we didn't know it was 18 months away at the time. If Microsoft really wants to meet that date while still providing a product that's faster and more compatible than Vista, it doesn't have a time to add major new features. Windows 7 will not be nearly as disruptive as Vista was to XP.

So what will be in Windows 7? We can expect to see a few new trimmings such as Internet Explorer 8.0, and probably a new version of Media Player. There will be an obligatory new default UI theme so that users will know they're not running XP or Vista. The most important changes will probably be tweaks to excise the bloat and performance hiccups that Vista introduced into the Windows foundation. Perhaps Microsoft will finally provide some tools that help users and developers determine which software and drivers are clogging the system; they got tantalizingly close to that with Vista's performance event logging, but it requires too much sleuthing to connect the dots and find the culprit.

The development of Vista was a major a nightmare for Microsoft; it started out with incredibly ambitious goals and ended up totally resetting those goals in the middle of the process. It cannot afford to let that happen again. The best way to guarantee a firm ship date is to set modest goals for Windows 7 and avoid risky features or major changes to the operating system. Vista may not be as far from that goal as it appears; Windows Server 2008 is built on the same foundation but is much faster. The success or failure of Windows 7 will depend on how well Microsoft does those tweaks.

Me A Moderator @ Sadikhov.com ?

2008-05-31T23:28:00.001+05:30

May 22 2008.... The morning was a bit hectic.. Was cleaning up Cisco section at Sadikhov.com... It was a total 128 pages with 100 topics in each page.. (you do the math ).. Followed by by NIS sessions at my institute.. The infra really freaked my out.. The computers were in a mess.. Had to ghost'em all with server and xp... Then after lunch I managed 30 minutes to *SPAM* sadikhov...
I had couple of PMs which were "report to a MOD" which I wasn't supposed to get as I was a HM.. Then when I got back to the index page, my goodness, my name was all green (i suddenly thought. Have I just turned out colour blind ).. Then came the good news from FS.. That I and 13^th were promoted..
Now I have full rights to spam the whole world.. SO guys keep your keyboards ready.. I might just be replying / moderating any of your posts anywhere in the forum.. 'cos the Dirizhor has been let loose.. God stop him from spamming the board...

Please pour in .. So that the blog spams can be modified as you all feel. That much will do for now... Catch you all soon

How To Check If The Links Are Active Or Not ?

2008-05-31T23:26:00.001+05:30

Universal Link Checkers can be used for most Hosting sites
Well it is always tiring to wait for the page to load and then find if it is working or not. So here are some which might help you WEB BASED SCRIPTS
These do not require any download, and can be used right online
http://rapid-hook.com/

Supports:

This one is one of the fastest ones!
http://www.mtworld.info/filec/
Supports:

This one supports the most sites, but can be a little slow at times!
http://rapidgrab.org/linxtool/
Link checker supports:

Link convertor supports:

This one is extremely fast, and can also convert links to premium ones for you

Fix arrives for AMD machines attacked by XP SP3

2008-05-17T09:44:00.001+05:30

A KINDLY GEEK has produced a free tool to resurrect AMD machines borked by installing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

The fault affects mainly HP machines with an OEM splash screen and a number of Asus mobos, to which XP refuses to talk on the grounds that they're not fully ACPI compliant.

Jesper, over at msinfluentials, has a handy tool you can get your hands on for nothing which is said to fix the problem. Not having tried it ourselves, we cannot say for sure if it works or not, but if you've got a dead AMD system, whaddya got to lose?

Jesper warns against putting his tool in an Intel system, because it'll break it.

IBM solves global warming... maybe

2008-05-17T09:42:00.001+05:30

BIG BLUE today announced that using a large lens to concentrate the sun’s power, it captured a record 230 watts onto a centimeter square solar cell, in a technology known as concentrator photovoltaics or CPV.

The IBM research team developed a system that achieved breakthrough results by coupling a commercial solar cell to an advanced IBM liquid metal thermal cooling system using methods developed for the microprocessor industry.

That energy is then converted into 70 watts of usable electrical
power, about five times the electrical power density generated by typical cells using CPV technology in solar farms.

If it can overcome additional challenges to move this project from the lab to the fab, IBM believes it can significantly reduce the cost of a typical CPV based solar energy system

Industry suddenly realises multi-cored chips are useless unless used

2008-05-01T13:05:00.001+05:30

STANFORD UNIVERSITY HAS joined forces with IBM, AMD, Sun Microsystems, Nvidia, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel to create innovative software that will let chips better process several simultaneously.

According to the New York Times, the partnership between the University and the six rival computer and chip makers will be formally announced this Friday, and the project will be dubbed the “Pervasive Parallelism Lab”.

In mid March of this year, Chipzilla and the Vole announced that they’d be funneling a combined $20 million into building specialised labs at Berkely’s University of California and Urbana-Champaign’s University of Illinois for parallel computing research, which would effectively tackle the same problem.

The massive amounts of funding and effort being channeled by the big players into such research programmes shows just how worried the software industry actually is about future microprocessors with 8, 16 or more cores on a single chip. The concern is that the software would not be able to work properly with the new hardware because without optimal programming, applications don’t profit from added chip power, and in some cases can even become slower because of it. This means that customers could just decide that it’s not worth their while to upgrade their system.

Clockspeed is no longer as important as performance per watt in computing, and hiking performance is now the domain of multicores, with most corporate server microprocessors and gaming machines having about eight cores.

To help the software take better advantage of the increased number of cores, the competing teams of boffins are going to have to experiment with new programming languages and tweaks in the hardware, as well as going back to the drawing board on things like operating systems and compilers (which translates programming gibberish into commands a computer can actually understand).

With all the effort going into it, it definitely seems that sequential programming will soon be a thing of the distant past, whilst parallel programming’s day is yet to come

Exceptional bloggers have the ability to…

2008-04-25T17:56:00.001+05:30

Be unique. Give your readers something no-one else can give.
Write dirty. Readers can’t form a relationship with information alone.
Acknowledge feedback. Never let an email go unanswered, even if you write back to say you don’t have the time to answer right now!
Omit unnecessary words.
Weave outbound links into your content. This will add another layer of depth to what you write.
Be consistent. Establish a blogging rhythm readers can follow.
Be vulnerable. Get to know readers on a personal level.
Recognize opportunities and take them.
Keep an orderly and constructive comments section.
Write captivating headlines without resorting to hyperbole.
Listen to feedback, both positive and negative.
Acknowledge when you have made a mistake.
Have the courage to reverse bad decisions, even if you invested time, effort or money in them.
Be prepared to invest considerable time into one post.
Format text for clarity and readability.
Write posts which can be scanned, but:
Be gripping. Encourage readers to consume every word.
Approach existing ideas in new ways.
Recognize which blog elements are useful and which elements are clutter.
Understand social media.
Give without expecting to receive.
Avoid self-indulgence. Blog selfishly.
Stay motivated. Find a way to satisfy both your readers and yourself.
Communicate with other bloggers.
Do not close yourself off from competitors. Learn from them.
Answer every question that comes your way.
Be resilient in the face of personal attacks and criticism.
Embrace simplicity.
Pay attention to what others write about your blog. You can learn a lot from it.
Don’t be afraid to say a lot in just a few words. Length does not directly correlate with meaning.
Be ambitious. Don’t under-sell your abilities.
Be audacious. Innovate, experiment, create a spectacle.
Demonstrate why you’re an expert.
Care about spelling, grammar and expression.
Break out of generic looking themes. Be visually unique.
Use stories and anecdotes effectively and to illustrate a point.
Disagree with others respectfully and convincingly.
Spend time constructing links into your blog.
Get involved in your niche. Comment on other blogs writing on your topic and become part of the community there.
Take an interest in your commenters. Respond to them, visit their blogs, offer assistance or answers.
Create a navigable list of categories. 10-15 provides a balance between specificity and usability.
Select images which help convey the meaning of your posts. Differentiate between images with relevance and pure eye-candy.
Give credit where credit is due. It’s better to reference and acknowledge sources too often rather than too little.
Provide archives. It can be disorienting not to know how long a blog has been in existence. Some readers prefer chronology to category.
Carefully mind your reputation. Be conscious of the way you conduct yourself in spaces outside your blog.
Develop a unique logo or icon for yourself or your site.
Do more than aggregate and post links. Even if you are pointing elsewhere, make yourself and your reactions the central focus.
Don’t link out to the same sites again and again. This makes it easy for readers to skip you and go straight to the source.
Be honest about your shortcomings.
Feed the need for self-improvement. Help your readers become better at something.
If something has been said before, don’t say it again. Conveying the same meaning in different words is not new content.
Build a collection of links you could use to support future blog posts.
Return favors. Help those who help you.
Develop a basic knowledge of HTML. You will be surprised how many opportunities you have to use it, either to tweak your template or gain control of your blog posts.
Read great writing. It will lift the way you write.
Write ahead. Always keep a few posts unpublished for periods of busyness, laziness, or emergencies. This will help ensure real life does not negatively affect your blog.
Keep organized. Make notes of blogging to-dos, develop schedules and stick to them. You will be much more productive with a structure in place.
Write guest-posts. You will be surprised at the opportunities a solid idea and a polite email can open up for you.
Offer to help other bloggers. Aside from possible indirect benefits, it’s just good karma.
Understand that whitespace is not wasted space. A blog full of ’stuff’ is a claustrophobic blog.
Differentiate between spam comments or trackbacks and legitimate ones. Delete trackbacks from scrapers. Don’t reward them with backlinks.
Understand that you will not succeed by being a doppelgänger. The harder you try to make your blog’s content resemble that of a more popular blog, the more likely readers are to head to the original instead.
Make it easy for readers to submit your articles to social media, but don’t over complicate the process.
Be prepared to part with widgets that do not benefit your readers.
Understand the value of social proof, as well as the damage caused by its absence.
Be transparent. Disclose your biases and affiliations, particularly when it comes to potential profit.
Recognize when advertisements are negatively impacting on your blog. Be willing to part with or change them if necessary.
Understand that there is a simple correlation between the effort poured into a blog and its quality. There is no secret to popularity; it is achieved mainly by hard work.
Don’t measure your success against the achievement of goals you have no direct control over. Traffic levels, RSS subscribers and Technorati rank are all outside your control. Aim to achieve goals for which the only variable is you.
Keep track of milestones. The result will be something you can look to whenever your morale is low.
Understand the true worth of traffic statistics. Once you do that, you’ll realize there’s no benefit to be had in checking them more than once per day.
Don’t sit in your blog’s email account. Check it once in the morning and once at night. If you are not sticking comments in moderation you can cut this down to once per day.
Strike a balance between blogging and real-world commitments. Don’t sacrifice what’s important for the sake of your blog, as this is a surefire way to cripple your motivation in the long-term.
Brainstorm ideas in advance. Don’t think of a topic as you stare at the blank screen. Make the most of times when you are inspired and develop a catalog of post ideas you can browse as soon as you have the time to write.
Ignore tradition. Don’t be hampered by established ideas on what a blog, or a blog in your niche, can be.
Overcome the taboo against banning commenters, if necessary. Most of us, thankfully, will never have to consider this, but some will. If a commenter is doing nothing but making your comments section a horrible place to be, or continuously bothering you, be willing to reject their comments. The belief they have in being able to say whatever they want is not worth more than the happiness of you and your readers.
Focus on what you’re good at. You will gain more by utilizing your strengths than trying to develop weak skills into something half decent.
Recognize that most ideas are simply new combinations of old ideas.
Learn from other bloggers. Ask questions of those you admire.
Read blogs outside your niche. They will teach you new ways of doing things.
Read feeds quickly and efficiently. This will allow you to extract the maximum amount of information in a minimum of time.
Be a source of solid knowledge. Before presenting something as true, make sure you have verified the facts.
Don’t focus on generating links at the expense of value. Lately I’ve seen a number of blogs hold contest after contest. The bloggers were so busy promoting them that they stopped creating actual content! You are not moving anywhere if, for every new reader you gain, an existing one becomes disillusioned with your blog.
Use numbered headlines in moderation. Too many can fatigue readers and decrease their impact.
Avoid making unsupported claims. If you pull statistics out of the air for the sake of grabbing attention, readers may become skeptical about your honesty.
Choose the right words. You don’t need to be Hemingway, but putting effort into the way you express yourself will pay off.
Suggest, don’t command. There is a difference between giving advice and presenting what you write as the be all and end all. I have seen a number of bloggers giving advice while simultaneously implying there will be negative consequences for not following it (you will lose lots of subscribers, for example). Be aware that you are not the supreme authority on how things should be done, because readers certainly will be.
Be involved with your commenters. If you don’t have time to respond to each comment, at least acknowledge those who’ve put significant effort or thought into their responses. There is nothing worse than spending time on something only to have it ignored.
Allow readers to search your blog. A search bar is incredibly easy to implement and the result is a powerful tool for your users.
Be aware of SEO, but don’t let it control you.
Get involved in a forum relevant to your topic. This is a simple way to build your public profile and promote your blog. It’s enjoyable, too.
Don’t go on hiatus or ‘take a break’ from blogging. Many bloggers experience times when their passion for blogging wanes. Rather than going on hiatus commit yourself to low-intensity blogging for the duration of the slump (links, short posts, and so on). Many blog readers see the word ‘hiatus’ or ‘break’ as a euphemism for ‘I’ve given up blogging’. A few easy posts here and there will show them that you’re still thinking about the blog.
Weigh up effort required vs. reward. Your time is precious, so be mindful to use it on the tasks which provide strong returns. For example, five guest posts on new blogs is unlikely to yield the same rewards as a single guest post on a highly trafficked blog.
Bring the most important details to the top of your About page. Your credentials should come before anything else, because this is what new visitors to your About page are most interested to know.
Subscribe to your own feed and make sure it is in good health.
Chat to your readers. Allow them to add you to Gchat, or to your instant messenger service of choice. You can develop a more solid relationship in five minutes chatting than you can across a series of emails.
Be inventive with how you promote your blog. Brainstorm new strategies for generating inbound links, though you should always ensure they are ethical.
Be observant. When you see content which has become popular, ask yourself why. Consider how you could adapt these characteristics to the content you create.
Ask questions of your readers. It is difficult to give your readers what they want when you don’t know what that is. Don’t spend hours trying to guess what that could be. Ask them! Most of the time they will be more than happy to tell you.
Avoid being stubborn. If you consistently receive complaints or negative feedback about an aspect of your blog, consider scrapping it — regardless of how dear it is to you.
Murder your darlings. Not everything you write will be great. Not every word or paragraph you commit to the screen should be kept. Learn to mercilessly cut out writing that is sub-standard, even if it means scrapping an entire post and starting again.

Windows 7: First Hands

2008-04-22T20:59:00.001+05:30

courtesy: Thinknext

YouTube - Windows 7

India becoming too expensive for tech firms

2008-04-20T02:19:00.001+05:30

Have to find somewhere cheaper to exploit

OUTSOURCING TO INDIA may soon become a thing of the past for small to mid-sized technology firms, due to the increasing costs of rent, salaries and a looming end to the government’s tax holiday.

India’s technology, and especially software industry, has seen spectacular growth over the last few years, tripling in size to reach an astounding $52 billion. But it seems that the bubble may be about to burst.

The slowing US economy is having a big impact on India’s future as a market for outsourced business, with foreign firms tightening their belts as India’s currency strengthens, and operational costs soar, not to mention the fact that skilled manpower is becoming scarcer, and those available are demanding higher salaries. To add to tech companies’ concern, the government tax policy is also looking a bit uncertain.

Sankaran P. Raghunathan, president at the IT SME Association, an umbrella for 3,200 small to mid sized IT firms, told the WSJ's Marketwatch, "operating in India has become extremely difficult because of the government's fiscal policies."

He added that under the current Indian tax laws, software companies can take advantage of a tax holiday for income they make out of products manufactured at designated software-technology parks, which lowers taxes to between 12 and 15 per cent, as opposed to peak corporate tax, which stands at 33 per cent. But the tax legislation is nearing expiry in a year’s time, leaving an uncertain future ahead.

Big companies won’t necessarily be as affected as their small counterparts however, because they can take advantage of legislation allowing them to set up their own special economic zones, where they can keep their taxes to a level of between 18 and 22 per cent.

President of Nasscom, another umbrella organisation, Som Mittal, said in a statement that the industry hasn't yet given up hope for the government to extend the tax holiday, saying “we believe the government appreciates the issues that are there, and we still have one year to get this going."

Still, until the future looks a bit less shaky, foreign firms might have to consider relcocating somewhere cheaper than India

Intel's G35 failure needs a fix

2008-04-09T19:26:00.001+05:30

TO SAY INTEL has botched graphics over the past few years is being kind. Now, the G35 is shaping up to fail in all the same ways as its predecessor, the G965. If you remember, the G965 was promised to have features such as T&L in hardware and other shader model levels that it simply did not deliver. They were coming, it was said, just wait for the next revision. That revision was delayed, sometimes to make it compatible with the Broken OS [means Vista here folks!], sometimes to prioritise video, sometimes because the moon wasn't in phase with Venus.

In the end, the G965 has yet to deliver the promises made at launch. That launch was at Computex 2006, June. As of this writing, it is Q2 2008, and the launch features are still not implemented. What a shame. G965 was heralded as the first of a new programmable graphics architecture, flexible, fast and power sipping. Intel didn't add 'works' to the list, and it is badly missed. The first spin, called G965 was supposed to do DX9 with all the Shader Model (SM) goodies in hardware, and as soon as MS got the Broken OS out the door, DX10 would soon follow.

If you are still waiting for the G965 DX10 drivers, well don't. Due to unfixed bugs in the architecture, it is never going to happen, but at least you got your DX9.0x. Newer variants of the 965, specifically the 965GM and it's relatives did have the bugs patched, and will have DX10. Someday. Maybe. We hope. Next driver release. Unless...

A year or so after the G965's release, it was supplanted by the G35, which other than changing the naming scheme, offered a slightly wider and faster GPU core. Ironically, it came out before the G965 had it's drivers in the pseudo-working state they are in. Yes, G965 never worked right for it's entire lifespan, and has only been mostly posthumously patched.

Back to the G35. That part was a second generation of the architecture, fixed bugs, faster and wider. It came out months after the Broken OS, so DX10 should have been there out of the gate, right? Should have been, but wasn't. DX9 with all the SM goodness as well, right? Well, hell no. They just got much of that working a month or so ago. DX10 is promised in the next driver revision - quite soon from what we are told.

There are two problems with this. First, is that they have been promising the next revision panacea for two years, and there are more confirmed checks in the 'will never work, sorry' column than the 'works' column. Call me fatally skeptical here. Second is that the G45, the successor to the G35 will be out in within weeks of the 'working' driver.

Yup, you read that right, the G35 is going to be the second Intel GPU to utterly fail, it has really good odds of being supplanted before it ever works. Will it work? I really think this one will, but I have only been wrong eight or nine times before when thinking that. Intel has the sort of track record that rivals AMD's Barcelona promises, just twice as long.

G45 is set to be released in about a few months, in the same quarter as the 'working' G35 drivers. It is in effect a slightly wider and faster G35, and Intel has promised about 1.7x G35 performance. If you consider that G35 gets about 650 on 3DMark06 with 'well tuned' drivers, that would put G45 at about 1100. If the drivers function.

If you recall, I said that I was indeed hopeful that the G45 would work more or less right out of the box. Why do I make such obviously marginally sane claims? Because the G45 is a direct descendant of the G965, and almost all of the driver work can carry over.

If Intel only started work on the drivers from the day of the chipset's public release, it has had two years to fix things. Likely as it looks, moles deep in the Intel GPU division tell me that this is not the case, they were working on drivers before the G965's release. Gasp.

The same holds true for the upcoming G43 and G41, instead of putting them on an older i945 based cores, the budget chips are actually on the newer programmable G965 cores. So, if the G45 works, so should the 43 and 41. If it doesn't, well, there is the next revision, and Windows 7 is right around the corner in Intel driver years.

In the end, it all comes down to the fact that Intel can't get a driver out the door to save their lives. The GPU cores are pretty OK, they do the job, they aren't Nvidia level laughable on power, and as long as you don't look at 3D, they are mostly functional.

Intel was partially hobbled by an architecture that didn't work out; programmable is fine if you have enough horsepower to to the job. But sources tell me the major problem with the early iterations of the architecture was that there was simply not enough horsepower. This bodes well for the G45 working, but casts a long shadow over G43 and G41.

Scrambling to make up for it with driver tweaks was a losing game, so things never worked. Distracting people from making the promised release functions to add Broken OS support and video tweaks was simply stupid. If you are thinking gross management failure along with technical failures, you may be right there too.

So, short story, G965x never worked before it was supplanted. If G35 works before it is supplanted, it will be by weeks. G45 has a shot, but we have heard that before. What a mess.

Barcelona appears in ten different flavours

2008-04-09T19:21:00.001+05:30

Finally...

AND SO TODAY is Barcelona day. AMD has finally announced the broad availability of its quad-core server chip, some six months after it was officially launched and never have the fortunes of a company been so dependent on a single sliver of silicon.

"We're off to the races now, and the product is out," John Fruehe, worldwide market development manager at AMD appears to have told Dow Jones. "All of the fixes are in place, and everything looks wonderful," he said.

Barcelona's launch back in September 2007 acquired the aura of a farce when for months afterwards samples of the chip failed to appear. AMD identified numerous errata with its native quad core technology and wisely pulled the product rather than have its customers' servers fall over, which would have been even more catastrophic.

At the launch AMD salesman Alberto Macchi denied to the INQUIRER that the chip was six months late even then. A fact acknowledged by none other than Hector Ruiz just a few days later. AMD has barely spoken to us since.

AMD announces ten OEM validated platforms featuring the chip today. Top of its list of hopeful fellow travellers is HP which has been touting Barcelona-based systems for some time now.

Randy Allen hyped the partnership in a statement today. Allen, who is corporate vice president and general manager, of AMD's server and workstation division, said HP was continuing to "respond to customers who see the benefit in our unique Direct Connect Architecture with some of the industry’s most innovative designs."

Barcelona will be slipped into some HP Proliant G5 servers announced recently. Allen described them as a major leap forward and take advantage of the increased performance, energy efficiency and sophisticated virtualization and power management enabled by the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor.”

HP seems to be offering eight of AMD's ten validated Barcelona platforms. In all, there are ten platform out about in the channel Allen said; "Channel partners uniformly display strong commitment to their customers’ business requirements and are among the first to deliver the technical innovation that Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors add to each of their distinctive product lines. ”

Personal Statement: Top 10 Rules and Pitfalls

2008-04-02T20:20:00.001+05:30

Writing the Personal Statement: Top 10 Rules

Strive for depth rather than breadth. Narrow focus to one or two key themes, ideas or experiences
Try to tell the reader something that no other applicant will be able to say
Provide the reader with insight into what drives you
Be yourself, not the 'ideal' applicant
Get creative and imaginative in the opening remarks, but make sure it's something that no one else could write
Address the organisations's unique features that interest you
Focus on the affirmative in the personal statement; consider an addendum to explain deficiencies or blemishes
Evaluate experiences, rather than describe them
Proofread carefully for grammar, syntax, punctuation, word usage, and style
Use readable fonts, typeface, and conventional spacing and margins

Writing the Personal Statement: Top 10 Pitfalls

Do not submit an expository resume; avoid repeating information found elsewhere on the application
Do not complain or whine about the "system" or circumstances in your life
Do not preach to your reader. You can express opinions, but do not come across as fanatical or extreme
Do not talk about money as a motivator
Do not discuss your minority status or disadvantaged background unless you have a compelling and unique story that relates to it
Do not remind the organisations of its rankings or tell them how good they are
Do not use boring clichéd intros or conclusions

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is..."
"This question asks me to discuss..."
"I would like to thank the admissions committee for considering my application."
"It is my sincere hope that you will grant me the opportunity to attend your fine organisations."
"In sum, there are three reasons why you should admit me..."

Do not use unconventional and gimmicky formats and packages
Do not submit supplemental materials unless they are requested
Do not get the name of the organisations wrong
Do not incorporate technical language or very uncommon words

10 Steps to a Successful Career Change

2008-04-01T19:07:00.000+05:30

This helped me when I was looking for some confidence

Interested in a new career? If so, it is important to take the time to evaluate your present situation, to explore career options and to choose a career that will be satisfying for you.

Ten Steps to a Successful Career Change

1. Evaluate your current job satisfaction. Keep a journal of your daily reactions to your job situation and look for recurring themes. Which aspects of your current job do you like/dislike? Are your dissatisfactions related to the content of your work your company culture or the people with whom you work?

2. Assess your interests, values and skills through self help resources like the exercises in What Color is Your Parachute. Review past successful roles, volunteer work, projects and jobs to identify preferred activities and skills. Determine whether your core values and skills are addressed through your current career.

3. Brainstorm ideas for career alternatives by discussing your core values/skills with friends, family, networking contacts and counselors. Visit career libraries and use online resources like those found in Job Search websites

4. Conduct a preliminary comparative evaluation of several fields to identify a few targets for in depth research.

5. Read as much as you can about those fields and reach out to personal contacts in those arenas for informational interviews.

6. Shadow professionals in fields of primary interest to observe work first hand. Spend anywhere from a few hours to a few days job shadowing people who have jobs that interest you. Your college Career Office is a good place to find alumni volunteers who are willing to host job shadowers.

7. Identify volunteer and freelance activities related to your target field to test your interest e.g. if you are thinking of publishing as a career, try editing the PTA newsletter. If you're interested in working with animals, volunteer at your local shelter.

8. Investigate educational opportunities that would bridge your background to your new field. Consider taking an evening course at a local college. Spend some time at one day or weekend seminars. Contact professional groups in your target field for suggestions.

9. Look for ways to develop new skills in your current job which would pave the way for a change e.g. offer to write a grant proposal if grant writing is valued in your new field. If your company offers in-house training, sign up for as many classes as you can.

10. Consider alternative roles within your current industry which would utilize the industry knowledge you already have e.g. If you are a store manger for a large retail chain and have grown tired of the evening and weekend hours consider a move to corporate recruiting within the retail industry. Or if you are a programmer who doesn't want to program, consider technical sales or project management.