Google's 'failure' !

When I was googling , I happened to google a word - " failure ". For which , I got 78,200,000 search results in 0.11 seconds. The first search result is about .....-- click here

Is that deliberate tweak by anti-b**h google employee or the bitter reality reflected by google's search algorithm ? any thoughts???

Smokers' money

While I was going through the Hindu's editorial , an interesting point caught me between the lines :

......While big strides have been made in combating cancer in recent years, the fight against the disease has been wanting in funds not only for research and treatment, but also for educational and awareness programmes. As cancers of the mouth, throat, oesophagus, and lungs have been linked to tobacco use, funding for such efforts is crucial to the future of containment and control.....

While I was musing on those lines, an idea struck on my pristine grey cells to solve this funding problem. The main culprit of these Cancers found to be tobacco. What if government levy heavy taxes (heavier than what is existing) on the tobacco products and use this tax money to fund the institutions like Cancer institute,Chennai. It may look contradictory to use the money out of the same product which causes disease to cure people. It is similar to what government is doing like encourage the products and issue warnings on them ! One can easily guess this heavy tax if collected will certainly be passed on to the consumers in the name of price hike. This will directly/indirectly discourages tobacco usage and helps to strike a balance between funding problem and health issues.

Anyone would have noticed the policy of the government is like give necessary permissions to tobacco industries to produce products (tobacco products) and in turn help itself to fill its kajana , issue warning messages on the same products,ban the usage of the products in public places, ban smoking in movies saying that it encourages smoking among gullible and then spend huge amount of money in health sector, to fight against the disease which is caused by the same products, without producing any effective results. No one knows where the money -- hundreds of crores of rupees the government gets from tobacco industry every year -- is being used.

The kind of research going around Cancer related issues in the country needs encouragement from the government in all aspects. Not only monetary requirements it should quench but framing the policies to find the right balance between economic and social walks of life.

I have expressed my views as a common mortal and that will anyway demand not me to be an economist of yesteryear !

'Prince of Calcutta' is back

Inventors of Sourav Ganguly's jokes, which are widely distributed through e-mails and SMS , hereafter, may not find ways to strike up on a joke (thats what it is being called) on his batting style or performance. He silenced his critics with his career saving innings (perhaps) - 51 against a better opponent (Srilanka). During his innings he has joined 10000 run club.

When we rewind our memories for few months back, we have seen his pathetic batting display and single-digit innings. Everyone knows he is not technically a sound batsman like Dravid or Tendulkar. Still he was able to score twenty odd centuries. Thats sounds a bit awkward . Perhaps those centuries and accumulation of 10 k runs are possible only due to his gifted off-side drives and breath-taking shots of spinning deliveries.Though his inability to will the willow off the pads and poor shot selection (on the chest), which made him vulnerable, he was able to heap the pile of centuries into his kitty.

Ganguly did played brilliantly in many innings in which of few he had even lead India to victories . His captaincy is the most successful stint by any Indian captain till now, but that can't speak his skills or leadership qualities. His recent batting form was the most sort out news in the media circles. His rejection in the fothcoming Asian-Afro cricket matches made his supporters wake up from deep sleep and make voices just to inform public space that he has following too. Certainly he had worst period of his career and he was trying hard to comeover it. But he is such a lucky kid (to say the least) for having played so many matches with his poor run. Thanks to luck or Jagmohan (God only knows) he had played good number of matches in the name of regaining his lost form. If the same thing happened to any Australian cricketer he would have been sacked long back (eg: Steve waugh). See,this is how our cricket works... oops ! rather our cricket body works !

The 'Mighty Mouse'

Apple - who first introduced 'mouse' to the world has unveiled yet another innovative product. An optical multi-button mouse dubbed as 'Mighty Mouse' enables you to perform 360- degree scroll with its scroll ball. Two buttons at the sides of the mouse and middle click ball along with special sensors which can predict your clicking intentions and programmable buttons, makes this mouse really a mightier one. This mind-blowing product works on Windows operating system also.

Musing on the world of difference the 'Mighty Mouse' could make to the lives of computer literates ......

Sources : Mighty Mouse , Neowin

Links :Apple Insider , Dissect Mouse

A Common man PC

Prices of computers (read PCs) are racing at one heck of a speed . Recently HCL infosystems released the magic sub-10k (Rs. 9990 ) personal computer. Sub-10k is the recent mantra of PC market in the country . Xenitis , a kolkata based company also bought sub-10k Intel based pc to the market. "Computer for Rs. 9990 " based on a processor by Taiwan based VIA Technologies in partnership with esys is also on the cards.

By googling I stumbled upon a article (PDF) , a bit old one but gives interesting insights of low cost PCs , expressing on " A PC for Rs.5000 " ! In fact the author of the article , Rajesh Jain , a tech blogger , with an IIT professor are looking to bring 5K PC to reality (according to article).

One GHz processor, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB hard disk, 15-inch digital colour monitor, 52X optical drive, keyboard and scroll mouse.

This is the specification of the sub-10k PC launched by HCL on Monday. The processor is neither of Intel nor AMD rather one of the processors of VIA technologies. Interestingly the operating system is not a Microsoft product (read windows) . They have opted Linux to keep costs down. I think this brings smiles to those who declared themselves to have "divorced windows and married Linux" , not because of yet another company shipping Linux with its product but for the 'promise to initiate' "open source software centre" in chennai in months time.

In my opinion , this announcement (along with low cost PC) blows trumpet to the IT world that our government is in direction of supporting Open Source products . And the reason being simply to enable the reach of computers and Internet to the mass of people especially to rural parts of our country in cost effective way and help them to enrich their quality of lives.