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Monday, August 24, 2009

NER(North Eastern Region Trek) 2005

On December 8th an urgent Message was received by our CTO from the Commanding Officer, 12 Orissa Battalion National Cadet Corps(NCC), Col. Anjani Kumar that I was called immediately at Bn for an All India Trek organised by NCC at NER, Shillong. When I arrived at Bn, CO sir already went away I was called by Subedar Major(SM) Dayakant Pandey (Rajputana Regiment) and given a couple of forms to be filled up by tomorrow and to submit them and ordered the on duty Store NCO to issue me the special kit for trek (specially for rainy terrain).

On 9th December I again went to the Bn with all the filled forms duly signed me and CTO and few more things were issued such as Combat dress, Mosquito net, Multipurpose Flask, anklet, rain coat, specially made woolen jackets for cold temperature(because in one of the stage camp the temperature was about 1 degree centigrade ) etc. I returned hostel with all these things and packed my baggages for next day.

On 10th Evening I reported finally with my all baggages. At Bn I met friends from other platoons and troops of our Bn. Total 9 cadets were selected from 12 Orissa Bn. Our attendance were taken and small briefing was given by our SM. He told us about the activities in a trek camp. We are told to stay for that night at Bn.

On 11th Early morning C.O. gave us the briefing of the area (Shillong and NER). Special precautions to be taken there. Amongst 9 members a boy from Dhenkanal College I forgot his name was chosen as Platoon Commander and I was told to act as 2nd in Command. We were given the movement orders from the Bn, Finance aid from the Bn and the contact numbers of all the MCOs at Rly Stations. We gave the numbers to our fellow friends. Then Subedar Azhar Mahmood (JAKLI) took us to Cuttack where we are to report to our Group Commander Col. Sudam Naik at Group Headquarter, 1st Orissa NCC group, stationed at Cuttack. There we met all the fellow members from different BNs 7th Orissa Bn at Bhadrak, 1st Orissa Bn at Cuttack etc. where we met our Camp ANO. Camp ANO gave briefing and selected SUO(Senior Under Officer) Manas Mohanty of 7th Orissa to be the Comander of the Orissa Dte. He is very humble and deciplined. He told us that he is a part of NCC Commando Corps and had done slithering during RDC. At last in the evening Grp Commander gave us the briefing at evening and wished that we have healthy trek. After that the gate of the Grp Hqr closed and our movements were restricted and we were told to take rest because our train was at midnight. Here our strength became 25 and we were told we would meet 15 cadets from Behrampur Grp at Train. The train was Bangalore- Guwahati. We board the train and occupy our seats.

Next day afternoon we reached Guwahati and we were received by 1st Assam NCC BN, Stationed at Paltan bazar,Guwahati. They arranged our further journey to Shillong by a bus from Paltan Bazaar. We reached Shillong Police Bazar at evening where two trucks of Assam Regiment was standing with few officials of Assam Rifles for our reception. Our luggages went into a truck with few cadets and all others were taken to Assam Rifles HQ at Laitkor Shillong. We take out our luggages and then a whitsle blown for formation. the whitsle was blown for few rules to be followed here at the base station. He told us our stay would for the night and the next day and night. The day after tomorrow we would be flagged for trek to move to our 1st stage. He gave the precaution for here climate, food and prevailing situation. This one day stay is for aclimatisation. Those who fell ill will be routed back or would be stayed at base. Our barracks were allocated. We were alloted at the hostel of Assam Rifles Public School. We were lined to enter our barracks and he told us to be there at mess by 8:45 PM.

The next day i.e., 14th morning we were introduced to the camp commanders and officers of Assam Rifles and Air Force Staffs of Eastern Command.


Wednesday, August 19, 2009

The 10 Stupidest Tech Company Blunders


'This iPod thing will never catch on'--and 9 more unbelievable (in hindsight) missed tech opportunities.

Dan Tynan, PC World

Monday, August 17, 2009 06:30 PM PDT

Facebook in Yahoo's rear-view mirror
Some of the biggest high-tech deals never happened. Some of the most promising products and services never came to be. Why? Because the people and companies involved didn't realize what they were letting slip through their fingers, or they simply couldn't foresee what would happen afterward.

Change just a few circumstances, and there might not be an Apple or a Microsoft today. Yahoo might be the king of the search hill, with Google lagging behind. You might be reading this on a Xerox-built computer via a CompuServe account while listening to your favorite tunes on a RealPod.

People say hindsight is 20-20. If so, our vision is acute. Here are our picks for the biggest missed opportunities in the history of technology.

1. Yahoo Loses Facebook

In 2006, Facebook was a two-year-old social network that most people thought of as a digital playground for Ivy League brats. In the world of social networks, MySpace's 100 million members totally swamped Facebook's 8 million. So when Yahoo offered to buy Mark Zuckerberg's baby for a cool $1 billion--nearly twice what Rupert Murdoch had spent for MySpace in 2005--people said, "Take the money and run, Mark." In fact, the then-23-year-old and Yahoo shook hands on a deal in June 2006.

Then Yahoo posted some bad financials, and its stock dropped 22 percent overnight. Yahoo's CEO at the time, Terry Semel, reacted by cutting the purchase offer to $800 million. Zuckerberg balked. Two months later Semel re-upped the offer to $1 billion, but by then it was too late.

Today, Facebook boasts some 250 million registered users and is worth roughly $5 to $10 billion, depending on who's counting. Three years and two CEOs later, Yahoo is still struggling to survive.

2. Real Networks Punts on the iPod

Tony Fadell, inventor of the iPod
People think Steve Jobs invented the iPod. He didn't, of course. Jobs merely said yes to engineer Tony Fadell after the folks at Real Networks rejected Fadell's idea for a new kind of music player in the fall of 2000. (Fadell's former employer Philips also turned him down.)

By then MP3 players had been around for years, but Fadell's concept was slightly different: smaller, sleeker, and focused on a content-delivery system that would give music lovers an easy way to fill up their "pods." (Jobs is famous for driving the design of the iPod.)

Today that content-delivery system is known as iTunes, and Apple controls some 80 percent of the digital music market. Fadell worked at, and eventually ran, Apple's iPod division until November 2008. Real Networks is still a player in the streaming-media world, but its revenues are a fraction of what Apple makes from iTunes alone. (Photo: Courtesy of Apple)

3. Sony and Toshiba Agree to Disagree Over HD

HD DVD versus Blu-ray
Few format wars have been as costly to their participants as the fight over a new high-definition disc standard. In one corner stood Blu-ray, championed by Sony. In the other corner was HD DVD, led largely by Toshiba.

From 2002 onward the two sides wrangled, each signing up allies to support its own competing, incompatible format. In 2008 Sony slipped the knife into Toshiba by paying one of its biggest backers, Warner Brothers Studios, a reported $400 million to drop HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.

Interestingly the same parties had battled in the mid-1990s over a new high-res format for movies. Back then they settled their differences, combining the best of both specs into something called Digital Versatile Disc, better known as DVD.

The missed opportunity to come out with a single HD format sacrificed years' worth of sales for every company involved. Had the two sides joined forces in 2002, high-def discs would be the dominant delivery medium for movies and shows now. Instead, today DVDs still outsell Blu-ray titles by ten to one, and the future belongs to streaming media and video on demand.

4. Digital Research: The Other Microsoft

Gary Kildall, Digital Research
This one is a classic. In 1980, when IBM was looking for somebody to build a disc operating software for its brand-new IBM PC, Microsoft was not its first choice. In fact, none other than Bill Gates suggested that Big Blue approach Gary Kildall of Digital Research, author of the CP/M operating system.

The legend is that Kildall blew IBM off to go fly his plane. The real story is that Kildall was flying to deliver a product to another customer, leaving his wife to negotiate with IBM. Dorothy Kildall didn't like parts of the deal IBM was proposing and sent the executives packing.

Big Blue went back to Gates, who with his partner Paul Allen whipped out MS-DOS, based on Tim Paterson's QDOS (the Quick and Dirty Operating System), which was itself based on CP/M. IBM ended up offering both Microsoft's DOS (for $60) and a version of CP/M ($240) to buyers of the original IBM PC. The cheaper product won.

Before DOS, Microsoft's biggest products were versions of the BASIC programming tool. After DOS, well...you know the rest. Would Microsoft have grown into the monolith it is today without the IBM contract? We'll never know.

5. Xerox Goes in an Alto Direction

The Xerox Alto (Courtesy of Wikimedia)
Here's another classic tale. More than a decade before the Macintosh and Windows PCs, before even the MITS Altair, there was the Alto, the world's first computer with a window-based graphical user interface. Invented at Xerox PARC, the Alto had a mouse, ethernet networking, and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text processor.
A young Steve Jobs
But in 1973 the personal-computer market didn't exist, so Xerox didn't really know what to do with the Alto. The company manufactured a few thousand units and distributed them to universities. As legend has it, in 1979 Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, saw the Alto, and incorporated many of the Alto's features into Apple's Lisa and Mac computers. Shortly thereafter Xerox finally realized its mistake and began marketing the Xerox Star, a graphical workstation based on technology developed for the Alto. But it was too little, too late.

Next: Five more blown opportunities, including Napster, CompuServe, and Craigslist.

6. Recording Industry Plays the Same Old Tune

Napster logo
Perhaps no other industry has missed more tech opportunities than the music business.

In 1999, Shawn Fanning's Napster made it incredibly easy for people to share music online. The record companies reacted by suing Napster for contributing to copyright infringement. Then-Napster CEO Hank Barry called for the music industry to adopt a radio-style licensing agreement that paid royalties to artists for music distributed via the Net. His calls fell on deaf ears.

Napster fans quickly moved on to other peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as Gnutella and Grokster, and music "pirates" became the RIAA's public enemy number one.

In 2000 MP3.com launched a service that allowed members to upload songs from their own private CD collection and stream them to any PC. The recording industry sued MP3.com for copyright infringement and eventually won. MP3.com was sold and changed business models.

Add to all that the RIAA's suits against Grokster, Morpheus, Kazaa, and some 30,000-odd music "pirates." Talk about your broken records.

Today, of course, music-subscription businesses and streaming services such as Pandora dominate digital music. Had the record companies partnered with Napster, MP3.com, or any of the other file sharing networks instead of suing them, they might control digital music sales today--without nearly as many problems with piracy.

7. Compuserve Blows Its Chance to Dominate the Net

CompuServe logo
Look at today's interactive, social-media-obsessed, user-content-driven Web, and what do you see? A spiffier version of CompuServe circa 1994. But instead of dominating the online world, CompuServe got its butt kicked by AOL and that company's 50 billion "free" CDs.

In the early 1990s the Compuserve Information Service had "an unbelievable set of advantages that most companies would kill for: a committed customer base, incredible data about those customers' usage patterns, a difficult-to-replicate storehouse of knowledge, and little competition," says Kip Gregory, a management consultant and author of Winning Clients in a Wired World. "What it lacked was probably ... the will to invest in converting those advantages into a sustainable lead."

Then AOL came along, offering flat-rate "unlimited" pricing (versus CompuServe's hourly charges), a simpler interface, and a massive, carpet-bombing CD marketing campaign. Organizations that had an early presence on CompuServe forums moved over to the Web, which CompuServe's forums were slow to support. In 1997 AOL acquired CompuServe, and "CompuServe classic" was finally laid to rest last June.

CompuServe's failure wasn't due to a single missed opportunity so much as a collection of them, says Gregory. "I really believe [CompuServe is] an important example that reinforces a critical lesson--never stand on your heels in business."

8. Newspapers Fail to Read the Writing on the Wall--Craigslist

Craigslist.org
Newspapers are dying, and by nearly all accounts (certainly, all newspaper accounts), Craigslist's fingerprints can be found all over the crime scene. People have blamed the mostly free online ad service for cutting the legs out from under classified advertising, one of the newspaper industry's cash cows.

As recently as 2005, classified ads brought more than $17.3 billion into U.S. newspapers' coffers. Since then, the use of classified ad sites like Craigslist (as well as Amazon, eBay, and Google) has more than doubled, according to the Pew Research Center, while classified ad revenues have been halved.

If a consortium of newspapers had bought out Craigslist back in 2005, when classified ad revenues were flying high, things could be quite different today. But first they would have had to persuade Craigslist creator Craig Newmark to sell.

In a January 2008 interview with InfoWorld, Newmark said that his company's role in the collapse of the newspaper industry has been greatly exaggerated--mostly by newspapers. "I figure the biggest problems newspapers have these days have to do with fact-checking," he remarked.

9. The Google Before Google

Open Text, an early search engine
In the mid-1990s the hottest search engine technology wasn't the work of Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, or Hot Wired; it was the Open Text Web Index. Much like Google today, Open Text was lauded for its speed, accuracy, and comprehensiveness; by 1995 Open Text Corp. claimed that it had indexed every word on the roughly 5 million documents that constituted the Web at that time. That year, Yahoo incorporated Open Text's search technology into its directory.

But two years after partnering with Yahoo, Open Text abandoned search and moved into enterprise content management. A year later Google made its debut. The missed opportunity? Not realizing how big search was going to be.

"If anything made Open Text special, it was that they came closer to having Google-like technology than anyone else in their time," says Steve Parker, a communications consultant who helped publicize Yahoo's launch of Open Text's search technology. "With a three-year lead on Google, you have to consider whether Google would have been forced to burn cash at a much faster pace, and if they might have run out of time to overtake the market leader. If things had gone differently, that might have been good enough to get [Open Text] to king of the hill."

10. Microsoft Saves a Rotting Apple

Early Apple logo
Ten years ago Apple was in serious trouble. Mac sales were being eroded by cheaper clones from Power Computing and Radius. The company was running low on cash, its stock was trading for around $5 a share, and it was hunting for a new CEO to replace Gil Amelio.

Then Apple received a much-needed infusion of cash--$150 million--from a seemingly unlikely source: Microsoft, which also promised to continue developing its Mac Office suite. The deal was negotiated by then-Apple adviser Steve Jobs, whom the Macworld Expo faithful booed at the deal's announcement. Shortly afterward, Jobs took over as Apple's "interim" CEO. We all know what happened after that.

If Microsoft hadn't missed its opportunity to let Apple wither? We'd be struggling to play WinTunes on our WinPhones. The online music and video markets would be stagnant--or worse, controlled by Hollywood. And we'd be longing desperately for better alternatives to Windows.

When not looking back with 20-20 hindsight, Contributing Editor Dan Tynan tends his geek humor empire at eSarcasm . Follow him on Twitter @tynan_on_tech.



Monday, August 17, 2009

Do meditation.....

When you are out of focus...do some amount of meditation.. It helps

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Saturday, August 15, 2009

Happy Independence Day

Independence Day Celebrations

This year, India celebrates the 62nd Anniversary of our freedom from colonial rule. Independence Day is a day when we pay homage to our great national leaders and heroic freedom fighters - who made many sacrifices, including giving up their lives to liberate India from foreign control.

We remember that our freedom struggle was fought and won, not by force or bloodshed but through the noble principles of truth and non-violence. It was a unique movement in the history of freedom struggles that won us the admiration of the whole world.
Road To Independence

The struggle for India's Independence began in 1857 with the Sepoy Mutiny - External website that opens in a new window in the town of Meerut. Later, in the 20th century, a countrywide movement for Independence was launched by the Indian National Congress and other political organizations, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji strongly advocated non violent civil disobedience in opposition to violent struggles as observed in most resistance movements of the time. Some of the methods of resistance advocated by him were protest marches, prayer meetings, boycott of foreign products and promotion of Indian goods.

The simplicity of these methods of dissent found favour with the Indian public and local campaigns soon became national movements. Some of the main events in the Indian Freedom Struggle were the Non Cooperation Movement, Dandi March, Civil Disobedience Movement and the Quit India Movement. It soon became clear that India could no longer be controlled by colonial powers and the British gave in to the demands of Indian leaders. It was decided to transfer power to India on the 15th of August, 1947.

At 11.00 pm on the 14th of August, 1947, the Constituent Assembly, to whom power was to be transferred, began a meeting to celebrate India's Independence. As the clock struck midnight, India gained her liberty and became a free country. It was then that the first Prime Minister of Free India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru gave his famous 'Tryst With Destiny - External website that opens in a new window' speech -

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.....are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?"

This was followed by the unfurling of the tricolour and the singing of the National Anthem from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Here is some more information about the Freedom Struggle - External website that opens in a new window.
Celebrations All Around

The period leading up to Independence Day is a time of celebration. It is a time when major government buildings are illuminated with strings of lights and the tricolor flutters proudly from homes and other buildings. Independence Day - the15th of August is marked as a National Holiday, to enable each citizen to commemorate the sacrifices made by our brave freedom fighters decades ago and celebrate our freedom.

In the week around Independence Day, the media enthusiastically promotes a spirit of patriotism with special contests and programmes being telecast by radio stations and television channels. Movies about the heroic deeds of martyrs are screened on television while publications bring out stories and reports with a nationalistic theme.

The President delivers the 'Address to the Nation' on the eve of Independence Day. This is followed by the unfurling of the tricolour from the Red Fort in Delhi on the next day. At the State level, we witness special Independence Day functions that include flag hoisting ceremonies, march pasts and cultural programmes. These events are held in State Capitals and are usually presided over by the Chief Minister of that particular State. Celebrations on a smaller scale are held by educational institutions, residential associations, cultural centres and political constituencies.

Another symbol of Independence Day is the sport of kite flying. The azure skies are dotted with countless kites being flown from rooftops and fields to symbolize the free spirit of India. Kites of various styles, sizes and shades, including the tricolour are available in the marketplaces. Kite flying enthusiasts simply revel in this opportunity to display their kite fighting skills.