Google Acquires Youtube :

So Google decided to take the easy way out. Instead of working on Google Videos , they decided to take over the competition.
But many believe that google has made a tactical mistake and Fox/Myspace will make them pay.

You Tube has become a major source of video sharing, often copyrighted. Much of this Content is Fox owned. And it can make Google Pay. Google will have to tighten up its DRM.

Google -- We work to identify and remove any infringing content that may appear on Google Video using the process set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If we receive a notice or otherwise have reason to believe that content submitted by a particular user infringes another person’s copyright, their account may be terminated.

Youtube --“All of the content on YouTube — including videos, comments, and ratings — is posted at the direction of users. We take copyright issues very seriously. Our terms of use make it clear that users should own or have permission from copyright holders to post any videos. We encourage copyright holders to contact us appropriately if they have any objections about specific postings.”

REMORSE.

It is but with deep remorse,
That I wonder which is worse,

To see her in his arms or,
To know that I had the chance, to change all this so wrong,

If only all this I had foreseen,
The first time I laid eyes on her face so serene,

I knew then that I had lost,

The man I was then , I no more was,
To be with her , body and soul , all my life ,
Was my dream , my wish supreme,

If only I had told her so,
Maybe things would be different, my remorse not so,

Does she ever think of me,
During those lonely moments or,
When he touches her unseen,


Maybe Iam not the only one,
This remorse might be, after all , a shared one.

HIM.

He is said to work in a mysterious way,
Tis but another instance, they would say,

I for one cannot understand,
Why He has chosen this deck of hands,

Does He think this to be funny ,
For me its nothing but misery,

Iam but in constant pain,
To think of him holding her again,

Her memories are enough for me
But nobody deserves this destiny,

I just wish that next time around,
She’s with me, and he’s not around.

LOVE.

How does one know they’re in love?

Is it the fluttering of the heart, the warming of the flesh?

Is it the anticipation of seeing her again that,

Wakes you up and don’t let you sleep again,

How does one know that one’s in Love?

Is it the quickening of the steps when you catch a glimpse of her,

Or the smell of her fragrance the seems to linger forever,

How does one know that one’s in love?

Me thinks it none of these

Its more to do with the way one feels

With her, there’s a whole new you,

As they say, she completes you,

Big or small, great or not, this fate has befallen them all,

But for only a few lucky ones ,does love conquer all.

DESTINY.

Why does it hurt so bad...

I barely knew her 'tis a fact..

All those memories streaming back...

All bcos of a glimpse few days back...

Wat purpose will all this serve..

For I know in the end i'll lose my nerve..

They say ‘tis better to know then to wonder..

But is really so I truly ponder..

To get hurt is my destiny..

How I know this, is a mystery..

But I can't stop thinking about her..

For she’s my girl, Iam crazy 'bout her.

Its a Deal !!

Recently read the international bestseller by Herb Cohen on how to negotiate. Its a great book and I would greatly recommend it.
Negotiations play an important role in business and everyday human life in general. Heck we negotiate with ourselves on a daily basis. Our brain negotiates with our heart on whether we should get up an hour earlier, whether one shpuld bunk that economics class later that day, whether one should eat that last piece of cake or even whether one should laze around at home or take the wife out.

Essentially what Herb Cohen says is this:
Any negotiation hinges upon three key variables:

Power, Information and Time: Who has the upper hand in each.. you or the other side.
He goes on to describe two different styles of negotiations:

Soviet style: Named after the strategy followed by the leaders of the erstwhile Soviet Union..it is basically winner takes all. Makes use of extreme starting positions, limited authority and emotional tactics.

Win -win style: Both sides benefit. Kind of follows the " Mi casa es su casa" approach..
For more.. read the book.

GOD is DOG spelled backwards....

Religion , It is the great Indian pastime, apart from cricket of course.From the time a child is born, he is subjected to regular dosages of religion- with myriad customs and rituals.
The child accepts everythings unquestioningly..until he enters his teen years.For me the quest began when I was twelve. Iam a hindu, so lets start with that.
The problem with a teenager is that he/she is in search of a role model,an ideal,as was the case with me, and nothing less than a numero uno would do.
So started my quest for the Zeus of Hindu gods.I knew that there were a lot of them, but never thought that there would be over 3 million of them..
I figured that I was in for some serious research..but soon encountered a roadblock.It seems all the ancient gurus and swamis who wrote our sacred books had soft spotsfor particular gods.
Might be they got some gud boons from them :-). Well the situation was similar to a critical analysis of a Arsenal- Man U match by the opposing fan groups.
It seemed that everytime I read a book about Lord Shiva, he turned out to be the "MAN" as u may please.
Everytime a calamity arose , all the other gods rushed to him for protection.
Ditto for a book on Lord Vishnu or Lord Brahma.(Reference: All those mytho serials..)I figured I needed to increase the scope of my quest...

to be contd..

Xerox(PARC) + MAC = WINDOWS.


This is a widely circulated story.. part fact,part fiction all action about how the Windows operating system was developed.
I thought that most people would be knowing about this but was surprised at how few actually did.
But first. Legal Disclaimer: I disavow all responsibilty towards the accuracy of this post.

So here goes...

Xerox had a research centre in Palo Alto where revolutionary new ideas were borne --> menu driven interfaces, the beginnings of the GUI we use today.
Jobs of Apple working along with people from the Xerox(PARC) developed the Mac user interface.
But obviously an interface on its own wasn't of much use.It needed some applications.Jobs had heard of Redmont,Washingtonbased company , Microsoft, which had recently gained prominence through their development of the Disk Operating System.

He hired them to develop applications for the Mac.Microsoft developed the applications but also managed to wrangle licences to certain features of the Mac UI.( Core competency anyone :-) ). Later on they incorporated more and more of the Mac features and voila.. we had WINDOWS.
It is believed that Jobs lost the court case due to those licenses.
Incidentally,Microsoft is also accused of copying DOS...

Scotty got beamed out....
One of the major headlines this week was the ouster of founderand CEO of Sun Microsystems.., Scott Mc Nealy.There had been rumours to this effect for quite some timenow. Apparently the board and Scott did not see eye to eye any longer.
Sun Microsystems is a big name in the IT world with Java and Solaris platforms. However its revenues have been dipping of late.
The board and Sun's Wall Street backers wanted large scale layoffs to deal with the situation but Scott was opposed to it.
He is also known as a rabid anti Microsoft guy.. led Sun's lawsuit against Billy and his boys..and with rumors of increasing cosiness between the two IT giants.. seems a good time to let old Scotty go.

Scared n Lovin it..
The other night I watched "The Exorcist 2" and was thoroughly bored by it.
Dunno how but somehow Horror has become equated to lots of gore + gooey blood. While that may induce u to puke ..it sure doesn't scare u.
The one film which really scared the shit out of me was"The Omen". I first saw it wen I was around 10 and could'nt sleep for a coupla days.
Because of the success of this film .. there were a number of sequels.. which were all crap.
This film also popularised the concept of the Devil's No-666.However this is a misconception.
:-) As the story goes..The devil appeared to an ancient prophet in a dream.The prophet was so scared by the experience that he lost his power of speech.
On waking up, he drew a picture of the devil..and put the number 666 on his head. However, while dreaming human beings see numbers inverted... so wat the prophet actually saw was 999.
Probably u knew that... if u r more of a reader...then checkout
Stephen King's " Salem's Lot" or John Saul's "Creature"..
so..."Ave Satani!"

The Gospel Of Judas
Recently there has been a lot of frenzy generated by an ancient document which has purportedly been written byJudas Iscariot and/or his disciples.
National Geographic showed many specials on it..This is also along the lines of Dan Brown's " Da Vinci Code"..secret hidden for centuries...will shake foundations of the modern Church and the Christian religion and so on.
The document is in pretty bad shape and is currently being restored by experts.Only a part of it has been deciphered and the crux of it is that Judas did not betray Jesus. He was only carrying out Jesus's command, who in order to fulfill his divine destiny had to be crucified.
The document has been widely criticised as a hoax and discreditedby the Church.I would think that the humanisation of Jesus would only helpin making him more popular ...at a time when the younger generation is increasingly turning away from the church.
Perhaps its because it removes Judas as a symbol of evil..many hold him responsible for the spread of anti -semitism in the world.
This document is believed to be the work of the Devil.. :-)If u ask me Lucifer or Astros was a pretty wronged guy himself
but thats another story....

Crabs , Money and Death..
Doing an MBA naturally makes u curious about other jobs, wat these jobs entitle and how much they pay. After all.. wat we do most of the time is talk about job profiles...career goal paths.. salaries.. increments and blah.. blah ..blah.
So wat wud u say about a job wit the following description:
Around 5- 10 days of work per year.
Stand to make between 25000 - 100000$.
Probability of dying-100%
Probabilty of suffering grievous injury-200%
No sleep... guaranteed emotional trauma.
Iam not making this up.. the job Iam refering to is king and snow crab winter fishing in the Bering Sea.
It is statistically the most dangerous job in the world.Someone almost always dies whenever these guys set out.
Seeing how the job pays.. there is no dearth of takers for the job.
Every winter the race starts.. with a fixed fishing quota for each season.. fishing ships compete with each other to get maximum share.
In such a competitive situation.. sleep is obviously a luxury. Fishermen develop a condition in which their eyes r fixed in the staring position.. they r unable to blink.Another condition is wen ur arms freeze.. and apparently the only way out, in theabsence of any medical help, is to pee on them. :-)
wat the heck.. the money is gud.. any takers??

LIGER = LION + TIGER

The 10ft Liger who's still growing... He looks like something from a prehistoric age or a fantastic creation from Hollywood. But Hercules is very much living flesh and blood - as he proves every time he opens his gigantic mouth to roar.


Part lion, part tiger, he is not just a big cat but a huge one, standing 10ft tall on his back legs. Called a liger, in reference to his crossbreed parentage, he is the largest of all the cat species. On a typical day he will devour 20lb of meat, usually beef or chicken, and is capable of eating 100lb at a single setting. At just three years old, Hercules already weighs half a ton. He is the accidental result of two enormous big cats living close together at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida, and already dwarfs both his parents. "Ligers are not something we planned on having," said institute owner Dr Bhagavan Antle.


"We have lions and tigers living together in large enclosures and at first we had no idea how well one of the lion boys was getting along with a tiger girl, then loo and behold we had a liger." 50mph runner... Not only that, but he likes to swim, a feat unheard of among water-fearing lions. In the wild it is virtually impossible for lions and tigers to mate. Not only are they enemies likely to kill one another, but most lions are in Africa and most tigers in Asia.



But incredible though he is, Hercules is not unique. Ligers have been bred in captivity, deliberately and accidentally, since shortly before World War II. Today there are believed to be a handful of ligers around the world and a similar number of tigons, the product of a tiger father and lion mother. Tigons are smaller than ligers and take on more physical characteristics of the tiger.Look at the size of the head on this thing.. :o)

Hypnerotomachia Polyphili.
Wat the hell ... is wat ur thinking I believe.
Hypnerotomachia Polyphili--> Loosely translated , it means
" Polyphilo's quest for love in a dream".
It is a book , written sometime in the fourteenth century, and like all old things its quite valuable. Iam sure u know about the Guttenberg Bible... the first book published Guttenberg... Its the most valuable book in the world.
After that comes the " Hypnerotomachia Polyphili". It supposedly tells the story of a young man named Polyphilo who has a dream in which he searches for his love.. a girl named Polia.
But acadamecians and scholars believe that the book actually contains a great secret ..which many have died trying to figure out but no one has succeeded.
The book's extremely complex and contains passages in Greek, Latin, Hebrew , French andEnglish to name a few.
This book is the subject of the bestselling novel " The Rule Of Four" by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason . For fans of Dan Brown and "The Da Vinci Code" .. this novel is a must read. Enjoy...

In my quest to stay productive during my summers, I am writing this blog.. an assimilation of posts from my various blogs spread around the world wide web.

I assure the reader that all of this has been done sitting in my cubicle.. doing my summer project.

I don't think anybody will be reading any of these posts... courtesy my creative abilities. but wat the heck.

In the words of Arne Saknusemm," Go forth O, virtuous reader.. and u will discover a secret inside " :-)

A midsummer day's dream:


Now that I have started my summers, I find that I have loads of time on my hands. Everday I wake up around 4 ( Yeah thats AM , my insomaniac friends :-) ), watch some TV , go for a walk, come back .. , watch some more TV, surf the net and reach my office by 9: 30 .

As soon as I enter, I go and greet my Boss and we engage in our daily morning masochistic conversation.

Boss: " Well Rajesh, hows the project going ?"

Me: " Very well sir, Iam making gud progress"

Boss( with averted eyes): " Gud gud, Its a very important project u know.." poor guy cant lie to my face.

Me: "Yes sir, absolutely. Did u manage to have a luk at the presentation, Sir"

Boss: " No unfortunately, I was too busy.. definately will have a luk today..."

Me: " Yes sir..."

Thus ends the morning ritual.

Then I go and sit in my cubicle. I have exactly eight hours to spend now. One hour --> lunch.

Schedule for the remaining 7 hours:

Per hour:

First 15 minutes: check netmail...followed by yahoo account 1, 2,3... check gmail account and finally indiatimes account.

next half hour: actually do something about the project...

Next 15 minutes: Check netmail...followed by yahoo account 1,2,3.. check gmail account and finally indiatimes account.

Quite a hectic day as u will no doubt agree.....

To start off, I am a very lazy person. To the extent that my ideal is Homer "D'oh" Simpson.

Don't bother checking my profile.... u won't find anything there. If I knew anything at all about myself... I wouldn't have struggled so much with those "Tell me about yourself" and "Strengths and Weaknesses" questions that seem to be the norm nowadays in B-school and Corporate interviews.

Since the only two things that lead to firing of my neurons are books and computers... there's gonna be a surfeit of these two topics.

Enjoy :-)