Orkut gets money minded

Orkut has finally stared to contribute towards filling Google's pocket.....They waited for the people to get totally attached to this social networking website and now they think its time to earn some bucks....In orkut communties when you open a particular topic/thread you will now find a small banner for the sponsored links.....It actually makes a lot of sense from the user prespective to have such ad banners in the forums ....I noticed this on a fiat palio community thread....Now one can ask questions and talk about a certain topic in the community and you have google's expert searching techniques to flash relevent (in most cases ) ads which you might want to take a look at......I just hope i dont see such an advertising banner on my scrapbook or with my profile .... As long as orkut doesnt trespass in my personal space I will be ok with them flashing ads in communities...

Can Zune stand up to the ipod

Microsoft recently launched its own mp3 hard drive player. Its looks pretty neat and the features include WiFi, 30 Gigs under the the hood, built in FM , a 3-inch screen with basic music , pictures and video playback. The screen is a QVGA . The zune is said to support MP3 , AAC , WMA and h.264.
Zune will be available in different colour variants - black , brown and white. Now about the wireless Zune-to_Zune sharing which is being discussed in the gadget community. One will be able to share a music track with a friend (a fellow Zuner :-)) and he gets 3 times to listen to it over a three day period (what crap...this funda is not gonna work in India) after which this friend of yours has to buy his own copy of the song from the Zune marketplace unless your friend is an unlimited Zune Pass subscriber....
Now coming to the price.....Wal-mart accidently published online the intended price of the Zune . This ipod rival would retail for $284. Good move by apple i must say for dropping the price of ipod video from $299 to $249. Lets see whether Zune would prove to be the Super Assassin of MS or Next Apple victim

Accused Number 117

Sanjay Dutt's life has been a tragic one.....Mahesh Bhatt quoted "Happiness and suffering are the part of the same frame in Dutt's life" .. Sanju baba lost his mother a few days after his debut in bollywood...then he got into drugs and had to go through a rehab...he was arrested in 1993 for his alleged involvement in Mumbai bomb blasts under TADA ( Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act ) when his movie "khalnayak" in which he played villian busted the box-office....
The guy has seen the most frequent highs and lows in Bollywood---Drugs, AK-47s , jail, death of parents, death of wife...Whats most impressive about sanju baba is that he has survived 25 years as an actor in Bollywood, from his first movie "Rocky" in 1981 to "Naam" in 1986 to "Khalnayak" in 1993 to "Munna bhai MBBS" in 2005 to "Lage rahi munna bhai" in 2006....And he has improved with age like a good wine .... But, the irony is that even after being a big shot in Bollywood sanju baba has never been able to have a hold on his fate.....Accused number 117 in the Mumbai Blasts case he doesnt know whats in store for him in the future...

The Serpent and the Rudraksh

This happened early in the morning today and I have to blog it right away to retain the juices of the story....When I came down to my parking lot today I saw that there were 3 cars parked behind my Palio. I had a choice between getting late and brush myself with the terrible peak hour traffic of Delhi or to let Aprothena be parked for the day and take an auto and boy I never thought that I would be starting my day with the weirdest of the thing which was waiting for me at the chirag Dilli flyover...
The red light at Chirag Dilli flyover is relatively a long one and is usually very noisy....I was blowing some air in my shirt to beat the heat when suddenly a safron clad long bearded "Baba Ji" came by the auto I had taken....He had a typical Baba attire and to show off his so called "sidhis" he was holding a snake.....not a cobra, not a rattle snake , not a russels viper , not even a krate (which are harmless during the day but deadly in the night) but a venomless brown sand snake which looks the same at the head and tail......I guess this Baba had no clue that I am an avid fan of Animal Planet shows showcasing snakes and crocs . Late Steve Irvine's (popularly known as the crocodile Hunter) show and few others are pretty informative about serpents. So, I knew that this stupid looking snake is totally harmless. Now baba wanted me to give a little donation and I told him that I am not carrying any change......but, Baba ji had already thought of an evil plan against me so he told me "Yeh paisa waisa hamare liye kuch nahin hai Bacha..Apni pocket se sabse bada note nikaal aur bas Naag dev ko chuu de ....bahut paisa payega" . I thought this would be fun so I opened my wallet and got the 500 bucks note and touched it to the snake...But, he said let me do it the right way and literally snatched the note out of my hand and did a trick and somehow hid the note and told me "Naag devta tera note khaa gaye hain...Abb tujhe paise ki chinta karne ki koi jaroorat nahin hai" ..And he gave me a Rudraksh as bhole nath ka prasad .At this instant I came to realize what this asshole was trying to do and I held his hand and gave a little twist to his arm ( I am pretty good at it :-) ) and suddenly the guy tried to scare me with the snake.... I took his stupid snake out of his hand and threw it to the other side of the auto and the onlookers ( a few bikers and a lady in santro ) were very amused and then I gave two solid whacks on his face and baba instantly had a personality switch and he was apologizing to me and gave me my 500 bucks note which was totally crampled and he had hid between his cuffs.....I think the snake was pretty confused ... It would have been the first time that it had encountered Delhi traffic....The car drivers were kind enough not to run over it otherwise I would have been feeling sorry for the poor animal...The light turned green and I asked my auto driver to start driving while I was still twisting baba's arm....Baba started saying "Sorry Sir ...Sorry Sir " At this I gave him another whack on the face....this was a strong one as I could feel it on my palm as well....and I left his arm saying never to do it again....The guy followed me for a while shouting "Mera Rudraksh to wapis kar do" but I didnt do that...I saw him asking the car drivers to slow down so that he can pick his snake and continue his business....But, I am pretty sure he will think twice before pulling such a trick on anyone....My autowala was thoroughly amused and told me that I earned 500 Bucks today........The rudraksh is still with me....Couldnt help taking a photograph and post it......Usually i feel bad when i treat poor people or beggars badly but I am proud of what I did to this asshole ...I just hope that the snake wasnt hurt....

The Gandhian Way

I finally watched "Lage Raho Munna Bhai" ....I think its a nice movie.... Some people may think that the glorification of Gandhi was totally unnecessary and others might see it as a good effort to put the Gandhian way back into the people....
Almost everyone of us must have said that this Gandhian ideology cant work in the current scenario but we never question why it wont work? ....or may be we just dont want it to work...I know there are a lot of incidents in everyones life when we think that we have been victims of the corrupt system....but we never ponder on the fact that may be we are responsible to a certain extent for making this system the way it is now....how many people among us have stood in the line and given a driving test to get a drivers license ( I know I have...) . When we are caught by a traffic cop for overspeeding or jumping a light why do we want to take a shortcut by bribing him. why cant we just go through the normal procedure and get a ticket...well we always have an excuse- "The system is sick". We always have the prespective that the cop has stopped me just because he wants money...If for once we change this prespective and accept to get booked for the offence gracefully then may be we can contribute a little bit to get the system on track....
Coming to "The truth" ideology. This is extremely difficult for anyone to follow in its purest form. But I think there is a definite criteria we all should follow ....Always be truthful about your feelings for someone, never to tell a lie which if uncovered may hurt someone in any way and the foremost is to be truthful to yourself. Hiding stuff from your folks about your smoking/drinking etc etc is acceptable or not is a debatable topic so I wont even go there ( ha ha such an escapist I am at times)...rest we all know like "we have to tell thousand lies to cover a lie" blah blah blah....
Now coming to non violence....being slapped is one thing and being bombed is something else....I was just wondering to what an extent this non-violence ideology is scalable....you slap me on left cheek...I extend my right cheek seems okk....but you stab me on left side and I extend my right side to you....or you bomb Bombay and I offer you Delhi seems a little stupid....So where to drop this non-violence and pick up the stick....Can we quantify violence...You know something like
0-level abusive language ,slapping, punching, kicking
2-level Beating the shit out of someone, breaking nose, Bones etc
3-level stabbing, breaking skulls
4-level Shooting someone
5-level Bombing
So till what level should we be Non-violent to the person opposite us.
Finally coming to Gandhi ji ...I am actually a nobody in comparison to that great man to even try to be a critic here....All I can say is that you have be a hell of a man to actually achieve what this great man has achieved with his principle of truth and non-violence....

Ubuntu-"Linux for Human Beings"

"Ubuntu" is an african word that means humanity to others or I am what i am because of who we all are
There was a time when i used to tell people that although linux is my favourite OS but for the ease of PC usage I would prefer Windows....But, Ubuntu has changed everything...Now I can assure you that latest kernel version 2.6.15 is totally amazing and totally user friendly ....Infact their tag line also says "Linux for human beings" ...How appropriate... The only thing i had a problem with using ubuntu earlier was syncing my ipod mini with my laptop but gtkpod which comes with 2.6.15 has solved that problem also....Even all the  extra buttons for volume control , wifi activation etc on my presario v2000 work wonderfully on it and if one has a high speed internet connection then getting new applications and softwares can be done in no time at all with the package manager called synaptic which is a UI wrapper built around the friendly debian originated apt-get command...And the best part is that its all free.....

Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah....

Most of our plans which happen to formalize come from this guy who has visited almost all the continents (Antarctica is not worth visiting anyways ) so we call him GG'lumbus. Montu urf GG urf Gaurav Gupta has a nack to do different things and that too differently..... soon to be nicknamed " the lone hiker " .... the best part about him making any plan is that you know that we have to do it because somewhere deep down below we know that it is going to be worth it... so when Montu dropped in the idea of visiting Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah to listen to the famous sufi qwaalis ,it didnt take me long to jump in..... Since Montu had to come all the way from gurgaon he was running late and a stage came when we thought that its not going to happen...but he made it just at the right time and we were all set to Hazrat Nizamuddin....

The moment we arrived at Nizamuddin I had this feeling that I would be encountering something which I have never seen before and this was it...... The faith that people have in this Dargah is amazing....There were some foreigners also among the devotees....As we kept going inside the crowd increased and the "gali" reduced to a size that only one person from either side can cross .... There are small shops adjoining this gali where one can buy flowers and chadars etc...We left our shoes at one of the shops from where we took some flowers for the dargah....As soon as we entered the Dargah the whole claustrophobia was gone and we came to this brightly lit place which was echoing with the soothing sufiyana qwaalis... we sat around the qwaals after paying homage to the holy shrine....It was an amazing experience , totally different from anything else I have experienced.....There were oldish looking guys with huge hand fans and they were waving these fans as fast as they can just to make the devoteed enjoy this holy musical experience in comfort....one set of qwaaal got tired and their place was taken by another one and so on......I must tell you that listening to a qwaal on a CD is completely different from a live qwaali and that too at such a holy place where every word that comes out from these qwaals is pure and full of devotion....
By the end of the qwaalis we were very hungry and yet again Montu had a surprise package for us....He led us through the narrow lanes to Karims and we ate and we ate and we ate.....it was totally amazing end to a totally amazing evening....