What does a blog title look like? What do you write in a blog? What do you eat for lunch? What do you do with life?
So much for questions. Just trying to make sense of what is around..
“Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.”- Winston Churchill
I must admit myself as a golf illiterate, having been routinely bamboozled by the birdies, putts,flops, bogeys, eagles, albatross and vultures ( what is it about the birds?). All I know about the sport is that you have got to put the ball into the hole with the help of a stick in the minimum number of attempts. I am also aware that a certain Tiger Woods has been running around with the dough for quite some time now.
United States scores over rest of the world with nearly half of the world's total 32,000 golf courses. But according to this article, golfing has seen a decline over the past several years in the US. The number of people who play the sport has declined from 30 million to 26 million since 2000. The golf boosters (number of people who play 25 times or more a year) declined from 6.9 million in 2005 to 4.6 million in 2000.
This is a part of the broader decline in the outdoor sports like tennis,swimming and hiking among others. The reasons vary from the ravaging hurricanes to family commitments to popular electronic games to the long duration of the game and related etiquette rules (like not using their cell phones on course).
So the game about which Wodehouse famously wrote, "Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious." in danger of losing its charm?
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” - John Allen Paulos
Imagine having your laptop stolen! It was insured alright ensuring you suffer no financial losses, but how about the data? No worries there.. my machine is password protected you might say or I use disk encryption softwares. Really? Read on... : )
According to researchers at Princeton University, data stored on your machine can be recovered - yes, even if you locked it - with the help of something as innocuous as a dusting spray!
How does it happen? DRAMs (Dynamic Random Access memory) is a type of memory that is used to store data while your machine is running. It is a kind of "leaky bucket" (a capacitor) which has to be filled in periodically (charged) otherwise it runs out of water. It was believed that DRAM loses its data as the power is switched off. But actually it fades out over a period of seconds to minutes, depending on the chip manufacturer.
The researchers found out that cooling the DRAM chips with a spray of "canned air" would make the chips retain their contents for as long as 10 minutes! Use of liquid nitrogen would prolong this to hours. The chips could then be removed from the laptop and their data read from.
How they did it!
But I have Disk Encryption Software on my machine? Very well! The disk encryption softwares store their master decryption keys in DRAM. This is something like handing out the keys of the locker to the thief! The attacker can easily extract the keys from your DRAM and access your data. In this process, the researchers were able to beat the commercially available disk encryption software Bitlocker that comes with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 OS.
Security Risk According to a report by Symantec, average laptop contains data worth approximately $972,000. Sometime back, GE reported the theft of an employee's laptop containing Social Security Numbers (SSN) of 50,000 employees. Ernst & Young, Fidelity investments, The Boeing Co., Ameriprise Financial are just some of those who suffered due to loss of a laptop containing sensitive data.
“I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there” - Maureen Reagen (daughter of R. Reagen)
Its election time in the United States again. This time its a race between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama to the top seat. Funnily enough the Republicans are counted out even before the voting takes place. Looks like the Democratic party's nomination for the Presidential seat is a sure shot. Just to re-emphasize the impression the "dumb guy" has made on the Americans.
Remembering 2000... The elections in U.S. are generally hard fought and closely contested. The Presidential elections of 2000 contested (primarily) between Bush and Gore were certainly one of the closest in recent history with the State of Florida being the center stage. With 85 % of votes being counted in Florida, Bush had been leading over Gore by over 100,000 votes - leading the media to declare Bush as the next President. But with votes coming in from the remaining 3 heavily Democratic counties the lead dwindled to 2000 votes. The media retracted its predictions and Al Gore, who had conceded the elections to Bush, promptly took it back!
After first recount the lead came down to 500 votes - leading to cries of hand recounts and foul play. Finally the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in, ending the recounts and finally Bush's lead was declared to be 537 votes (out of 5.8 million cast). It was later found that 175,010 votes were never counted in Florida. Interestingly enough, under the recount rules originally requested by Bush, Gore would have won and vica-versa! (Source : Wikipedia)
2008 - Time for change? The 2008 US Presidential elections are unique in many ways. This is the first election since 1958 when neither an incumbent President nor Vice-President is running for their party's nomination. This is the first time when You Tube viewers quizzed the candidates by submitting videos of their questions. First time the Americans abroad could vote online. If Hillary gets it right, she would the first woman in American history to be the President. The same goes true for Honolulu born Obama who would be the first African-American to go to the highest seat.
The Hillary Vs Obama debate is being played out on all fields - sample these You Tube videos.
So far the election has been dominated by themes of race,gender and faith with Bill Clinton saying, "As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender". He also said that voting along race-gender lines"is understandable, because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time." Voting woes But as far as technology goes, its back to the future this time. The voices against electronic voting machine's vulnerability to fraud received another boost when a computer science professor at Princeton published images of unattended e-voting machines on his web page.
On the "Super Tuesday" voters reported more than 1100 separate incidents ofproblemswith E-Voting machines. This, however may seem trivial considering that almost 50 million used the machines this Tuesday. In addition there were problems of machines not booting or failing in several states. The state of California has made a decision not to use e-voting after serious flaws were found in the machines.
The Indian connection The elections have already received a Desi tone with Obama labeling Hillary as "Sen. Clinton (D-Punjab)" or the senator from Punjab referring to the cash support from Indian-Americans to her campaign. At a recent fund-raiser, she reportedly joked, "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily." Whatever it might turn out to be, these are anxious moments for the Americans and exciting for the rest of us :)
The recent India - Australia test series was very well contested. Except for the first match at MCG which was a one-sided affair and the last couple of days at Adelaide it was a fantastic series - certainly one of the most hotly contested series in the recent past, after the Ashes 2005 may be.
Sadly however, the series will be remembered more for the off field controversies than the contest on the field. Bad umpiring decisions, protests, racial comments, sledging, unsportsmanlike behavior on the field was all on display. The result - an umpire sent packing back to his home, a match referee being castigated in public, a captain accusing the other team of unfair play and finally two teams filing cases against each other's players.
A pack of wild dogs? Is this cricket? Or is this War? Certainly the latter as is promoted by the broadcaster itself. Its a "cricketing war" between two nations. One a reigning champion that prides itself on playing "aggressive" cricket and other - a challenger that managed to get under the skins of the victors - or at least matching them in their cricketing skills.
Everything that goes up must come down and so it was for the Aussies. They have played fantastic cricket over the years and deserve to be World Champions. But when paid back in their own coin they break - the invincibles mind you - just like any other team! A tree laden with fruits always comes down but the Aussies have turned egoistic bumblers today - lashing out at every body who comes in their way and all this in the name of "aggressive cricket".
That it all started with Harbhajan's congratulatory recognition to a fine delivery by Brett Lee in the form of a pat on the backside is hardly surprising. The mental makeup of the Australian team is revealed by the statement made by Mr. Andrew Symonds during the hearing. In reply to being asked what was his objection to the "pat on the back", he said, "Did I have an objection to it – my objection was that a test match is no place to be friendly with an opposition player, is my objection.”
And as Hon. Justice John Hansen noted, "If that is his view I hope it is not one shared by all international cricketers. It would be a sad day for cricket if it is."
The Big Bullies? The Australians have been hypocrites, for them everything is so - selective honesty, selective goodwill,selective judgment, selective sledging and then - out they come like whingers. Ok let me start, first Recall the gentlemanly "agreement" between the two sides regarding the catching - and what was Ponting doing claiming off an obviously grounded catch?
Secondly over the years Australians have claimed that their "sporty" attitude ensures that what ever happens on the field stays on the field. (Really?) And who went to the referee complaining like school kids. Couldn't it have been settled between two captains? And as Tony Greig said on , "If you want to nail Harbhajan....sit him down (with the captains) and nail him". Who brought the lawyers into it?
Thirdly, let's see the transcript of the stump microphone during the Sydney Test:
Hayden approaches Harbhajan. Hayden: "That's the last time." Harbhajan (apologetically): "No listen he started it." Hayden (putting his hands up): "Doesn't matter mate, it's racial vilification mate. It's a shit word and you know it."
So you go on abusing someone, expletives after expletives and when the person snaps - you report him! Very well done - that's what "mental disintegration" is! So far so good - but once in a while you find somebody who refuses to be cowed like a Ranatunga or a Harbhajan who don't hold back anything - you go back whinging to the referee. That's very un-sporty mate!
Indian side Indians are no holy cows themselves. Indian crowds behaved badly when Australians last toured. Symonds did well in the 4-2 series win for kangaroos and was subjected to racial taunts throughout the series culminating in Mumbai - where there were massive rallies in the crowd waving offensive banners and shouting "Symonds is a monkey" and "Aussies suck" with middle finger in full display et al.
These incidents were the root cause for what has happened now. Its time we put our house in order. Sections of crowd displaying such behaviour should be identified and banned from watching any future matches. Be it Mumbai or Sydney crowd trouble has to be handled in a proper manner.
Cricket is the biggest There is no place for personal banters or racial taunts in cricket or any sport. A little bit of friendly banter is good and keeps the spectators hooked but once in a while it gets ugly and things go out of hand.
One of the reasons behind this fiasco was the ineffective conduct of the two umpires in the middle. Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson did not earn too much respect from the two sides by virtue of their decisions in order to command over them. They are the ones out in the middle and can judge much better than anybody else sitting in the commentary box or the drawing room. In effect, under such cases umpires need to step up and see that the matters do not go out of hand.
The game of cricket is the biggest of all individual egos and so it must stay.
