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How would you feel if your teacher tells you that you will be tested on the first 5 chapters of your maths book? That’s cruel but acceptable,  you would say. But what if the test has questions on 5 totally different chapters instead? Of chapters you weren’t told to prepare? For a moment let’s forget how you would feel about it and let’s think of a term you would use for it. Google it if you wish to but you’ll find nothing. I’ll tell you. From 13th May 2012 onwards, it’s going to be called getting Clatted.

For the last 2 weeks I haven’t studied anything but Current Affairs and they have the audacity to ask this in the exam:

Name the ocean which is ‘S’ shaped.

Excuse me for a moment but what in hell’s name? And this is what the syllabus had to say about the GK section.

This section will only test students on their knowledge of current affairs (broadly defined as matters featuring in the mainstream media between March 2011 and March 2012)

Dissimilar, much?

Now I’m no eistein (or John Austin, in this case) but unless and until the ocean changed it’s shape to that of the letter ‘S’ during the time period between March 2011 and March 2012, the question was invalid in regard to the paper. It had no place in CLAT 2012′s paper. And this wasn’t the only question. Let me tell you some more.

“Man is a social animal” – Which thinker said this?

Seems like a legit question? Yes. The answer? Aristole. Someone who died in 322 BC. And if my calender is correct, Aristotle could not have said that between March 2011 and March 2012. Even the Mayans would agree with me (the world’s not ending by the way. Yes, you’ll stay a virgin this year).

And here’s another one.

Leukemia is a disease related to what?

Was Leukemia discovered in April 2012? September? November? January? March? It was discovered in the 5th century! HOW IN HELL’S NAME *tries to cool down* is this Current Affairs? Have mercy on me and enlighten me. I beg for it.

See all GK questions of Clat 2012 here, on ClatGyan.com.

And GK wasn’t the only section where they screwed up. NLU Jodhpur continued to show there ignorance in the Legal section as well. Terms like void ab initio weren’t explained when it was said that even commonly known terms like patent will also be explained. Some questions didn’t have  principles stated (not a mistake. We were supposed to use the legal knowledge we had, something we were supposed to have.). Some questions required advanced knowledge about certain laws which, quite naturally, required prerequisite knowledge. And advanced one at that.  And the number of questions that were valid  barely managed to cross the single digit mark. Some question required extensive knowledge about particular laws (things that are taught in the first/second year to law students). And this happened after this had been said beforehand.

Candidates will not be tested on any prior knowledge of law or legal concepts. If a technical/legal term is used in the question, that term will be explained in the question itself. For example, if the word patent is used, the meaning of patent (“a legal monopoly granted by the government for certain kinds of inventions”) will also be explained.

I have only one thing to say. FILE A PIL!

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This is a guest post by Kate. She is fond of reading, writing and travelling. Recently she read an article on samsung series 9 review. These days she is busy writing an article on samsung galaxy y s5360 review for her blog.  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

Are you a pro shooter struggling to lug in every single tool in your rucksack? Cameras are heavy; tele and wide lenses are no different either. On top of that, carrying a laptop is a real pain on your neck.

Are you a foodie, relish every culinary indulgence and love to share them on your blog? Or, you could even be a mother who wants to capture every single experience in your toddler’s life.

Every one of you can make use of the new iPad. With ‘5 MP’ ‘five-element’ lens, it won’t replace pro-lenses or cameras but can definitely serve amateur uses.

However, we are not too worried with its photo-taking capability. Rather, we want to magnify its photo and video editing and sharing feats. New iPad’s Retina display is probably the best and vivid most visual option right now in mobile device segment. Besides, you get a whole bunch of apps to make life easier with photo and video files. Read on to know them.

iPhoto ($4.99)

It is Apple’s standard photo editing app you get in iLife suit. This app allows importing photo and image from every possible camera and scanner; you won’t need separate driver software. After importing images and photos you can label them, tilt them and sort them in groups. You can also individually manipulate them with basic editing tools like, crop-resize, red-eye reduction, contrast-brightness adjustment and few others. With AirPlay you can share photos straight from iPad to other i-devices.

Photoshop Touch ($9.99)

This is Adobe’s iPad version of Photoshop. Well, you can’t expect Photoshop CS5 finesse; however it comfortably takes care of your basic editing requirements. You get layers, filters, selection and adjustment tools. So, even pro-shooters can work on their JPEG files for a while. Do you want t remove any part in your photo? Just select that and use Refine edge tool.

Photogene for iPad ($2.99)

Since a long time, it is photographers’ favorite app. It works wonder with tiny P&S cameras or with heavyweight DSLRs. Other than its wide range of photo editing tools, you can also work with RAW files. That’s a boon for Pros. Go out, shoot, transfer onto iPad and fiddle with the image – you get an instant idea what you have got. Besides, you also get to work on big size images.

Snapseed ($4.99)

Apple crowned it with ‘App of the year’ tag in 2011. You can do almost every editing work to make your shot a head-turner. However, with auto correct features, it is more useful for armatures; serious photographers can make use of its different filters like, Drama, Grunge or Vintage. It comes from Nik Software.

PhotoSync ($1.99)

It’s not easy always easy to get photos and images on your iPad despite Dropbox and camera connection kit. With PhotoSync, it could be a breeze. You can transfer to and from your desktop and other mobile devices. Not even individual files, you can get large group of image files with just few finger tabs.

FX Photo Studio HD ($1.99)

This is another easy to-work-on app with many useful tools. It sports 194 filter, effects, overlays and frames. You can use masking tool for painting any specific effect on photo. So, just capture a frame, put it under this app and publish on line.

Halftone ($0.99)

Do you love to give your shots a comic makeover? Then this must be your best choice. It’s no simple photo filter app. Instead it allows doing funny stuffs with your photo. You can change paper style, add captions and speech balloons and change graphic presentation. Once done with funny edits, you can directly post them on social networks or print them in postcard sizes for mailing.

8mm HD ($1.99)

 Do you cherish watching old flickering movies? You can produce one of them with your iPad. Just get this app. It offers different lens styles and film effects. Just for an example, you can shoot with Super 8 lens and using Noir. Check how things are coming out. Not satisfied? Try other option because there are whole bunch of them.

PhotoToaster ($1.99)

In case you don’t like auto-corrects and love tweaking things manually, this could be your app. Color-correction or lights adjustment – you are only limited by your imagination. Get loads of preset filters and effects at fast and furious speed.

Pixlr-o-matic (free)

Unlike other apps, it’s free; but that doesn’t make it any less able. You get enough filters and effects. Change overlays, borders and use those built-in effects to roll out a stunner. You can also use randomizer to check out how things are panning out. Don’t know when you’ll fall in love with any particular look!

So, our beloved lens-men and lens-women! Take your iPad out and let the desktops and laptops RIP.

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This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at accredited online colleges about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5@gmail.com.  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

With the dawning of the digital era, printed texts and written books are being replaced. While there was a huge uproar from book junkies and purists over the digital switch early on, much of that has faded now. Paper books are still popular, but many people (including the initial objectors) have hopped on the eBook bandwagon and are generally happy with the experience. Kindles and Nooks have won the heart of many literary purists who at one point swore reading on screen could never provide the literary experience that paper pages does.

One thing that the eBook industry has struggled with from the start is the lending process. Books have a wonderful way of uniting reads because friends can share meaningful reads with one another. You can pass a beaten up and worn out book to a friend and it can really mean something. What many kindle users (including myself) may not have known when they first started using their device is that you too can share your kindle buys with friends.

How to Lend Kindle Books

The first step in lending a book you’ve purchased on your Kindle to a friend is making sure that the book you have is lendable by the publisher’s standards. As eBooks become more popular, more and more publishers will get with the program when it comes to allowing lending. However, as it stands the lend-ability of eBooks can be spotty. When you link to your Kindle Library from your Amazon account, you can look at the details of each book you’ve purchased to see if they are available to lend. Do this by clicking the + sign button near each of the book icons. This will display a window that explains that a book can either be loaned out or cannot. If you can lend the book, there will be a button that says “Loan this book” next to it.

You can also check to see the lending status of a book from you Kindle when you are purchasing a book in the Kindle Store. The product detail page will show whether lending on that purchase is “Enabled” or “Disabled”. If the book that you want does not have lending “Enabled” and you know you’ll really want to lend it you, you can wait to see if the publisher changes their policy. However, this may take a long time or may never happen at all.

Loaning it Out: When you find a book that is loanable all you have to do is click the “Loan this book” button in your Amazon account page for the book. A pretty self-explanatory window will appear where you enter the recipient’s email address, name, who it’s from, and a personal message if you like. The person you are sending to has up to seven days to accept the loan, but only 14 days to keep the loaned book to read.

While lending is not available on every purchase you make from your Kindle more and more publishers are catching on to the craze. If e-books are truly hoping to replace paper books, then they are going to have to offer the same things paper book offer plus some. While they certainly have the “plus some”, the lending process is one area that e-books have been behind on for several years. Amazon’s lending policies are a huge step for e-books and a wonderful way to share your e-reads.

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I just got off the phone with a sales executive from Dell and have the most weird expression on my face right now. Read on to know why.

I am planning to buy a gaming notebook (more on that later)  and had decided on the Alienware M17XR3 3D and was about to place my order in a few days. But why would  God let me have bit of fun. So just days before I was going to place my order  a sales executive from Dell called me to inform that I should look at some other notebook because Dell has stopped importing of the Alienware M17XR3 from Malaysia and has declared it End Of Life (EOL) or to put it in a relatively non technical term, discontinued.

Alienware M17X discontinued EOL

A similar fate has been been met by the second of only two of the 17inch offering in notebooks by Dell, the XPS 17 3D. It has also gone End Of Life. And no one knows why, or atleast none are aren’t ready to tell, as of now.

Maybe the M17XR4 is on its way? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Dell is coming up with a new 17 inch laptop. Maybe. Maybe not. Hold your horses, it’s too early to speculate.

If you still wish to buy a Alienware M17 R3 or the XPS 17 3D then you can buy them through dealers. But mind that the machine will be pre-configured and you won’t be able to customize anything in it. Support will still be given to past and future purchases.

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Ahhh…It is that time of the year again. The amusingly cold weather, the smell of burnt gunpowder in the air, the heebie-jeebies of your parents transferred to you while lighting that extremely dangerous bomb and ofcourse the sweets. So many goddamn sweets! That, my friends, is Diwali. Wrapped up in 35 words. But there is so much more to it than only crackers and sweets.

There is family for the social bee,
there is food for the foodie,
there are gifts for the greedy
and love for the needy.

It is tacky, I know. Thanks for pointing it out anyway.

Happy Diwali

And that’s not where it ends. That is where it begins. A hectic day for basically every soul in every Indian household and a lovely night for most (read women don’t get to enjoy that much). While the shopkeepers make enough to buy a couple of gold bricks, the average guy is hit hard. Wow, I am diverting from the topic. The topic? What is the topic? BAH. Nevermind. This post is done. Happy whatever.

PS: The auspicious timings for pooja on 26th October 2011 for Diwali 2011 are from 6:03pm to 07:58pm in stable Ascendant (Taurus sign).

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This is a guest post by Joe Pawlikowski. He edits BBGeeks, a site dedicated to helping BlackBerry users get the most out of their devices. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

When you announce a device in September for an anticipated first quarter release, you’re setting yourself up for abounding speculation. Research In Motion tried to get out ahead of the tablet market in 2010 when they announced the BlackBerry PlayBook. But even then they admitted that it would be a while until the official release. In the interim we heard rumors galore, some good and some bad. Yet one struck me at the time as a wonderful idea that had zero chance of happening.

At some point in early 2011, we learned that the PlayBook would support Android apps. The rumors were vague at the time, but sources pointed to two possibilities. The first was what actually happened: RIM would create an Android Player and allow developers to easily port their apps. That’s not a terrible solution, especially for a platform that lacks for apps. The only problem is that the number of apps available to RIM is necessarily limited:

Key features which will be unavailable to Android apps running under the compatibility layer on the PlayBook and future BlackBerry devices include Android’s famed battery-sucking Live Wallpaper, SIP and SIP VoIP, anything built using the Native Development Kit, apps containing only App Widgets, and apps containing more than one activity tied to the Launcher.

In addition, any packages which rely on Google Maps, in-app billing services, Android’s text-to-speech engine, or the cloud-to-device messaging system will all be rendered unusable under the company’s runtime system.

While these limitations don’t render the Android Player completely useless, it does mean that eager PlayBook users will be disappointed when they finally see what’s available. The pressure is back on RIM to attract developers that can fill out its library and replace many of these incompatible apps. That’s going to take some time, and RIM doesn’t exactly have a lot of time. The PlayBook is already six months old, and it doesn’t even have email, calendars, and contacts yet. By the time RIM gets all these updates out, it will probably be time to start thinking about the follow-up product.
The second rumors tantalized at the time, and in hindsight it absolutely should have been the path RIM took. The rumor: The PlayBook would be an Android tablet. This likely wouldn’t have been a pure Android tablet, as we saw in the spring with the Motorola Xoom. Instead it almost certainly would have been more along the lines of the Amazon Kindle Fire. That is, it would have run Android, but it would have been distinctly a BlackBerry tablet. That’s really the beauty of Android: anyone can build code on top of it and create something distinctly their own. RIM would have benefitted greatly from this, in a number of ways.

Read more: What BlackBerry Needs To Go High-End

First, it would have given them a viable product at launch. When RIM launched the PlayBook, seven months after announcement, it came with little fanfare. Some BlackBerry users enjoyed it because of its integration with a BlackBerry smartphone. That is, they could get email, contacts, and calendars by bridging their two devices. But even then, it took a while for the PlayBook app library to grow. If they had launched with Android they would have had a full app library, plus all of the email, contact, and calendar features of Android. Gmail users would have loved it, and even those who don’t use Google services would have a number of external email options. It would have been a complete tablet.

In the meantime, RIM could have continued to work on its own tablet offering. As we’re starting to see, they do have something going with the BBX platform. Heck, it was easy to see that they had something going with the PlayBook. Despite its incompleteness, the PlayBook clearly has the potential to compete in the tablet market. But if RIM had released an Android tablet in early 2011, they could have been far along on their own tablet platform by now. In early 2012 they could have released a BBX-based PlayBook, complete with email, contacts, calendar, and, with a little luck, a relatively large catalog of BBX apps.

It’s easy to understand why RIM wanted to release a tablet in 2011. They had fallen behind in the smartphone race, and the tablet market was just starting to develop. By getting out ahead of the pack they might have made an impact. Yet I can’t help but think that they would have been better off creating an Android-based tablet to start. They would have then had enough time to work more on their own model, making sure that it was a complete product at launch. Unfortunately, they’re still running out an incomplete product. Even when the native functions drop, I have to say that I’m more excited about the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It’s a shame that RIM couldn’t have jumped on that Android bandwagon, both for the present and for the future.

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This is a guest post by Paul who believes in the importance of using VoIP. He can also help you with the best internet and phone packages. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

Decades ago, when the ability to make phone calls to people from all over the world was announced, it heralded a great new world. People were so excited at the kind of progress we have made and very few people could hardly believe we would be where we are today.

Then, it was very difficult to make phone calls, and only the rich could afford having a phone in their home. How things have changed. Now, we can make phone calls and even see those we are calling through the 3G technology. Over time, a lot of new things have happened, and one such thing is the introduction of the VoIP technology. This article will be giving you 4 benefits of using VoIP technology instead of a mobile plan with your ISP.

Benefits Of Using VoIP

1. Cheap Call Rates

One thing about making phone calls is that it has always been expensive. Developing a technology for people to make phone calls isn’t something just anybody can do, and the few ISPs who controlled the system either charge excessively for it or make people go through ridiculous long-term contracts. Communication is an essential part of our lives, and if not free, I believe it should be relatively cheap. If you’re tired of the excessive price you are being charged just for using the mobile calling system then you need to start using the VoIP technology. Most VoIP services allow you to make cheap calls to any part of the world for a cheap monthly, or yearly free, and there are even VoIP services that allow you to make a limited amount of free calls every month.

2 .Save Money on Mobile Purchases

A lot of us spend more money on devices that help us make phone calls than we can ever imagine. We spend money buying the right mobile phone, we spend money on the sim cards we need to make phone calls, we spend money on activating and recharging our mobile phone regularly, and some of us even spend money on long-term ISP contracts. This isn’t a problem as far as the VoIP calling technology is concerned. You can easily get high quality calling services to suit your needs for very cheap prices.

3. Save When You Travel

A lot of us love to travel the world and see cool places and people from other parts of the world, but aside from all the expensive airline tickets and travel fees we have to pay, we also have to go through the ordeal of paying excessively to communicate with our loved ones during our travels. One disadvantage to using your ISPs mobile calling technology when you travel is that you get to pay roaming fees; you have to sign special contracts and do some other irritating things. If you decide not to use your ISP you might end up paying excessively to use another ISP in the country you are travelling to and all that ends up sucking a lot of money from our pockets. With VoIP, you don’t have to worry about all that since you don’t need a sim card or an ISP. The only thing you need to make VoIP calls is an internet connection, and you can easily get that from any part of the world.

4. Get Better Quality Calls

Many people will think that VoIP calls will be of a worse quality because of how cheap it is, but that can only be farther from the truth. VoIP calls are generally known to provide a better experience than most mobile calling technology, and you also don’t have to pay heavily to enjoy better quality calls.

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Cookies are so yesterday. The Dark Side has something new to lure you now. It now has a new apprentice. Toast.

The Dark Side Has Toast