Ask the Jihadist

Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri will soon answer the hundreds of questions submitted by journalists, militants and others about the terrorist network’s future, its media wing announced….

Haah! Check here.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford - Truly inspiring.

Read the text version here & watch the video here.

Steve Jobs definitely deserves respect not only as a technologist and entrepreneur, but also as one of the most remarkable minds of our era.

His speech at Stanford tells three stories which end with words of advice. The stories are about his life – battles and experiences – wholesome, educating, and inspiring.

The first is about connecting the dots. This talks about how you should learn and expand your knowledge and skills without worrying of how it’ll help, because sometime in the future, everything will fit in..

“…you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

The second is about love and loss. That you should never give up the search to find work that you truly love to do.

“Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

The third is about death. That it is an eventuality that we all must face. That someday in the future, we will not walk the earth as we do today. The best part about creation is that the old make way for the new. Your time is limited and you must make a mark.

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

Plagued

Yes, I was surfing some shady sites and now my laptop is ailing.. Spyware, viruses, the works..

Before running your brain cells off balance, let me tell you that I was on the hunt for a serial (key) to make Adobe Dreamweaver C S3 work. I did find a serial which worked, but I suspect that the short hunt on a couple of sites are the cause for my current problems.

The last day and a half were spent implementing some corrective measures. I was unaware of a couple of things and so I’d like to point you to some simple steps to strengthen your security while surfing the web.

The best source I could find was at TechMonkeys. 2 pages that really help are:

1. Basic tutorial to Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, Anti-Spyware which can be found here.
2. Guide to safe surfing which is here.

I’d missed only a couple of steps and fell victim to some nasty spyware..

Hope this helps!

Btw: I hate IE !! Firefox rules !! And Safari is catching up..

Profiting from others death?

In the US, shady brokers are making horrific deals. Read here.

They first find a person who has life insurance and is currently in need of money. Then they find investors who currently have some money to invest for a phenomenally high return with literally no risk. The investors agree to pay the insured person’s premiums plus some more cash up front, and the insured person agrees to make this investor his/her beneficiary. In simpler terms, when this insured person dies, the investor will claim the insurance amount! In the middle, this broker makes money too.

The pangs of old age are unimaginable. And if you don’t have any beneficiaries, are hard up for money, and without any other sources of income, this could be an option you’d consider, I guess. It does not seem morally correct, but then at that age, the position you’d be in, and relentless persuasiveness by brokers may just cause you to give in.

On the whole, I think the insurance industry should take such astonishing figures into account and introduce regulations/features that would dissuade policy-selling.

Paying premiums through cash values is an option, but it doesn’t provide money if you’re hard up and have current needs right?

Stretching my moral boundaries, a one-off deal between a seller and an investor (for mutual benefits) may just be acceptable.

However, commercializing this is not. Even what the Legacy Funding Group is doing (providing beneficiaries the net amount) is wrong! They benefit from the death of the insured (and by a fairly large margin!) – so who knows, they may just encourage it !?! No idea how far they could go too..

I may be a skeptic, but its ‘people’ and ‘money’.

Sleepy Pilots!

An Indian carrier managed the unthinkable – their pilots just.. fell asleep in the cockpit !! Read here.

Apparently, this was a flight flying from Dubai to Jaipur and then on to Mumbai. However, the strain led to the pilots taking a short nap after taking off from Jaipur. Eventually, they were well past Mumbai and nearly at Goa when emergency protocols helped wake them. Haah !!

The carrier is obviously trying to hush up the matter and not be a laughing stock in the Indian airline industry which has seen a phenomenal boom over the last few years…

Samba Masala!

For anyone who loves music with a beat… Check out Samba Masala !!

You can watch their videos here.

Samba Masala has set Singapore abuzz with their pulsating rhythms and Latin grooves. The highly energetic performances are trademark of this fusion Asian/Brazilian percussion band.

As for the musicians – well, they’re university students !!

Roger Federer should learn from Bejan Daruwalla

Another brilliant entry for the WTF category!

According to Mr Bejan Daruwalla:

“He should come more often to the net, because he has the reach, the agility, and the dexterity to volley for an outright winner, or to make a strong opening for it, and with the next volley, finish it. The Sun and versatile Mercury in Leo, is the key to it.”

WTF ???

The beastly beauties of Patna

Heh..!!

Karan Thapar… the Quibbler !

I used to think highly of Mr Karan Thapar and his interviewing style at first. But having seen about 5 interviews and read some interview transcripts, I’ve concluded that he’s nothing great. At best, a Quibbler.

His strengths are his strong communication skill and composure while dealing with high profile personalities. In most interviews, he starts by bringing up an issue of importance, then wording out the interviewee’s stand on it, and then he starts ranting and quibbling. He likes twisting phrases, drawing poor conclusions, framing absurd answers and putting words

in the mouth of his interviewees.

Now dont get me wrong. On one hand, I do admire his ability to make such important people look foolish. But on the other, I feel that more often than not, he looses track of the crux of the topic rather focussing his attempts to bring out the a few shortcomings of his interviewees. Sometimes, he does manage to stumble upon a powerful personality who is ignorant or ill-minded. But on the whole, his interview skills merely aim to frustrate his guests.

However, faced with an equally good communicator, Mr Thapar’s weakness is blatant. His background

research seems dodgy and logic flawed. A good example would be his interview with India’s current Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

I may not be the best judge of an interviewer, but in my humble opinion, Mr Thapar doesn’t cut class with the best.

Those with reasoning skills as good as his, would now conclude that I hold utmost hatred for this man and the work he does. Wrong. I used to think ‘highly’ of him. Now I think he’s just a decent interviewer getting his way along. Dont be surprised to see future posts regarding him!

Powering Up

This is my second attempt at blogging. My previous blog, which I published using Blogger, didn’t really come off as expected.

So here I start again.

Its well past midnight. I have work tomorrow. And so I think I should hit the sack for now. Hopefully, this second coming will be closer to what I want my blog to be. Keeping my fingers crossed!