Interesting Analysis :D

I found this on a friend's Gtalk Status and I couldnt stop posting it here...

Taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment,explained:

Q.What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A.It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q.Where will the government get this money?
A.From taxpayers

Q.So the government is giving me back my own money?
A.Only a smidgen.

Q.What is the purpose of this payment?
A.The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set,thus stimulating the economy.

Q.But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A.Shut up

There's an obvious pun to it, but fun and hilarious nevertheless :D

Making your Resume and making it Great!

I've heard it from a lot of college students, especially when they enter 2nd year, that they've got to start working on a resume. Everyone seems to be worrying about it. I worried about it too. But guess what, its not difficult to make a great resume. Its as simple as presenting yourself in the right way and selling yourself to your target employer / internship provider. Its also a skill, which when mastered not only gets you a great resume but also teaches you not to over hype or undervalue and yet convey convincingly.


So here are some myths that should be dispelled:

• Making a Resume is a one time process: Its not. Its a continous process. Even 5-10 years down the line you would find yourself fine tuning your resume and making it better. Every new revision makes it better than the previous; a step closer to perfection.
• I can copy off a great template and be done: You cant. The more personalized your resume is the better and more impactful it is. You must devote time and energy if you want a great resume that presents you the way you want to be seen.
• A resume should not be attractive, decorative or graphic: Only partly true. But yes, people prefer to accept resumes that are not flowery and digress from the norm. But standing apart from the crowd with sleek and classy resume esp for the role of a layout artist or animation is not a bad idea. But of course where ever professional matters are involved, like student internships or job applications, you should stick to a simple textual resume format.

Apart from these, few additional tips:

• Prefer to send pdf version of resumes wherever not mentioned.
• If you submit resumes to job search sites like monster.com or naukri.com, make sure to include searchable keywords like
  - Experience
  - Responsible
  - Skill set
  - (Specific skills like Java, C, C++, portfolio management, Adobe Creative Suite etc etc.)
  but make sure that if you're not submitting your resume to public search sites, do not include phrases like "experience of x years" or "I was responsible for xwy". Instead, you should write "I was the business consultant of abc company from 2005 to 2009 where I consulted 30 firms and 20 individual clients ..." and "I handled 30% of sales from xyz department"
• For students, you must learn to supplement project details with credibility, like a web link or mention of a certification, grade etc. Rather than explain a lot about the project and what you learnt, write your contribution to the project and briefly touch upon what you picked up and learnt.
• Do not attach resumes with your mail while mailing professors for internships or for a job. Instead, upload your resume on google sites or another such free hosting service and provide a link within your mail. Most professors receive a bunch of spams with attachments that fill up their inbox. As a result they have stringent anti spam filters. You dont want your application going into their spam list, do you?

HANDY TIPS FOR PROFESSIONALS:

• List jobs first, and in reverse order.
  List your most recent job at the top and the rest in descending order. This is the order employers/recruiters expect to see your experience; don’t disappoint or confuse them. A rare exception to the rule: if you are graduated from a prestigious college and you’re working at a filler job. All you Harvard degree graduates who are scooping ice cream, list your Harvard education first.
• Omit your mailing address.
  Who is going to contact you by snail mail anyway? Your email address and cell phone number is all anyone needs to contact you. With your resume floating around the internet, keep some information private.
• Include accomplishments in addition to responsibilities.
  If you made a suggestion that your boss used, if you saved your company money, if you streamlined the work process, it counts. Don’t be shy about highlighting accomplishments on your resume. Back them up with statistics, if possible. How much money did you save the company? What percentage of the budget was it?
• Keep the resume concise.
  Stick to one page, unless you have been working ten or fifteen years. If early jobs are not relevant, leave them off.
• Never stop revising.
  As I said earlier, your resume can always be improved so keep tweaking it. Add a better word, a better phrase, a new accomplishment. Keep old versions of your resume in case you need information that you previously deleted.
• Don’t Lie.
  You knew this would be on the list. Employers routinely check job histories and education claims. Lies about either your job history or degree are the easiest for employers to uncover. The newly named dean of admissions at MIT lied on her resume when applying for a clerical job twenty-eight years ago. With the promotion in the works, her lies were discovered and she was fired. Never lie!
• Omit the Ugly.
  Mediocre grade point average? Leave it off. Have a 4.0? Put it front and center. Not all information is mandatory. Some people omit listing jobs they only held a short time or that might give them a bad reference. However, if the omission creates a gap that you are asked about in an interview, remember tip number one: don’t lie.
• Mind the Gap
  I know someone who waitressed a couple of years after college. She omits her graduation year from her resume so there is no obvious hole, but no lies either.

FOR INTERVIEWS AND JOB APPLICANTS

The resume is a tool with one specific purpose: to win an interview.
If it can do that, its a great resume. If not, it isnt. simple. Theres no great formula to it. Its just art and practice, but if you follow the right guidelines, more often than not it will work positively.

Most importantly you should learn that a resume convinces the employer that you have what it takes to be successful in this new position or career.
Also, it should be readable. The reader should want to read more. Not throw it away in favour of the next resume in the list...

SOME SAMPLE STARTING POINTS (RESUME TEMPLATES)
Remember that these are not end products. They are the starting points. You must personalize and build on them to make your great resume.

College Students:

• http://www.collegegrad.com/resumes/resumes.shtml
• sample resume: http://www.collegegrad.com/jobsearch/Best-College-Resumes/Sample-Resume/
• Quickstart templates: http://www.collegegrad.com/resumes/quickstart/
• U. of Missouri - Columbia College of Business: 5 good samples and templates

Professionals

• Samples: http://www.resume-help.org/free_resume_examples.htm
• Alyson Doyle's Contribution to the Resume Center at About.com: Another 30+ samples of cover letters with specific samples for a handful of positions.
• 
  

Additional resources:
Resumes arent everything. At many places, you will need to supplement them with a cover letter and a good email (esp if you're mailing a professor for an internship). Here are some good websites for that:

• http://www.career.vt.edu/JOBSEARC/coversamples.htm
• Action keywords to include in your resume: http://www.resume-help.org/resume_action_words.htm
• http://vault.com/nr/ht_list.jsp?ht_type=9 "Great list of 25+ cover letters including this one which is a MUST READ, 'Sample Cover Letter: Borderline Extortion Letter' - Want to know how to pry more money from an employer by playing competing offers against each other?"
• Microsoft cover letter templates: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT101467921033.aspx
  
• Where else can you post resumes apart from monster and naukri? Here is a good one: http://www.jobrecos.com/index.php

Instead of giving you tips for cover letters, here's what an employer said about the 12 cover letters he received for a job post:

11 of the 12 resumes had cover letters which is actually pretty good because if you skip that step, you simply look unprofessional. The problem is that they all of the cover letters looked exactly the same and had the same message.

" Blah, blah, blah very qualified and a good fit into your company...blah, blah..."

There was nothing at all that made me want to read the resume. It's unsettling because the last thing I want is an "ordinary" salesman. I want to hire someone that stands out a little and the cover letter is your one chance to make a connection with someone you may never meet.

Some Resume FAQs: http://www.resume-help.org/resume_faqs.htm


So begin your resume writing journey now, and enjoy the benefits. All the very best.

Trace a mobile number in India

Well, if you own a mobile phone in India, you have definitely gotten missed calls, many times from unknown sources. Some of you might have got unsolicited calls from strangers, or even friends posing as strangers at times.


So here is a trick that can get you to know more about an unknown mobile number anywhere in India.

Check this page out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_telephone_numbering_in_India

It gives a detailed analysis of the area and network provider of the mobile number.
So next time anyone plays a prank, or if u have an unknown number, you know how to know more :P

Tiny teenager from India is smallest girl in the world

A teenager from India who stands at a tiny 1ft 11in (58cm) tall is the smallest girl in the world. Jyoti Amge, 14, is shorter than the average two-year-old child and only weighs 11lb (5kg).

Scroll down for more...

She has a form of dwarfism called achondroplasia and won't grow any taller than her current height.

Due to her size, Jyoti has to have clothes and jewellery made for her. She sleeps in a tiny bed and uses special plates and cutlery to eat, as normal-sized utensils are too big.

Despite this, she goes to a regular school in Nagpur, central India, where she has her own small desk and chair, and her classmates treat her like any other student.

Jyoti also shares common interests with other teenagers, with a love for DVDs and fashionable dresses.

She said: 'I am proud of being small. I love all the attention I get. I'm not scared of being small and I don't regret it.

'I'm just the same as other people. I eat like you, dream like you. I don't feel any different.'

Jyoti is treated like a mini-celebrity in her home town, where people flock to meet her and some even treat her like a goddess. She will even be releasing an album with her favourite Indian pop star, the bhangra/rap star Mika Singh.

'I'm proud of being small. I love all the attention I get because of it.'

Her dad, Kishanji Amge, 52, said: 'I can't separate myself from her even for a single day. I love her very much. 'She makes me proud. Lots of gurus come to see and bless her. They pray for her happiness and long life.'

Sun Acquires MySQL - A twist to the Open Source Tale

Well, times are getting better for Sun™, because Sun™ acquires MySQL and it now forms part of the Sun Microsystems™ Family.

This was announced by the CEO of Sun™ Jonathan Schwartz by email to all the employees and in his blog.
MySQL is one of the fastest growing and most popular Open Source DataBases in the World.
This is a big news for all the developers, and all the employees of Sun™, you can read more of this new in the Blog of Jonathan Schwartz - http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/

With millions of global deployments including Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile, MySQL will bring synergies to Sun that will change the landscape of the software industry by driving new adoption of MySQL's open source database in more traditional applications and enterprises. The integration with Sun will greatly extend the commercial appeal of MySQL's offerings and improve its value proposition with the addition of Sun's global services organization. MySQL will also gain new distribution through Sun's channels including its OEM relationships with Intel, IBM and Dell.

"The combination of MySQL and Sun represents an enormous opportunity for users and organizations of all sizes seeking innovation, growth and choice," said Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL. "Sun's culture and business model complements MySQL's own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation -- software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation. We are tremendously excited to work with Sun and the millions of members of the MySQL open source ecosystem to continue to deliver the best database for powering the modern Web economy."
MySQL's open source database is the "M" in LAMP - the software platform comprised of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl often viewed as the foundation of the Internet. Sun is committed to enhancing and optimizing the LAMP stack on GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows along with OpenSolaris and MAC OS X. The database from MySQL, OpenSolaris and GlassFish, together with Sun's Java platform and NetBeans communities, will create a powerful Web application platform across a wide range of customers shifting their applications to the Web.

Things look exciting and moving towards change, lately. Lets hope that change is for the best!

FOSS.IN/2007: INDIA'S PREMIER FOSS EVENT

For those who came in late (or were just living under a rock for a while):

FOSS.IN in India's largest and probably best known Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conferences, and is now spoken about as one of the the four primary, grassroot-level FOSS conferences in the world, the other three being being linux.conf.au, OLS and linuxconf.eu.

The conference sees thousands of participants coming together from across India and from many parts of the world, to listen to talks on cutting edge FOSS technologies, given by leading FOSS developers and contributors from across the world. They also participate in discussions, BoFs, workshops and just a lot of honest-to-goodness fun, meeting people, exchanging ideas, hatching plans for world domination.

FOSS.IN differs from other conferences by being completely developer and contributor focused. There are no "preaching to the choir" evangelism talks, no bandwidth-robbing introductory talks, no boring "I could have read this on the web" talks - this conference is hard-core developer/contributor oriented.

FOSS.IN will help professional and student developers, who have development experience but no prior FOSS experience, to become successful FOSS contributors, by exposing them to the minds of some of the most brilliant developers in the world. They will learn about cutting edge technologies that come out of the FOSS community to literally change the world, and they will learn what it is like to work in a team of geographically dispersed people.

And existing FOSS developers and contributors will get together and fine-tune ideas and projects, learn new and interesting ways to change the world they live in, and help new developers to come up to speed.

The newly introduced Project Days give you a chance to get involved with eight of the most talked about FOSS projects on the planet, and will learn to contribute to them.

But most of all, participants at FOSS.IN have an unbelievable amount of fun.

At FOSS.IN, you are not artificially kept at the fringe by unreal, self-serving commercial interests - you are mainstream. This is one of the most anticipated technical events every year, and there is a good reason for this.

So how do you participate?

Simple.

If you are a FOSS developer/contributor, you should submit proposals for sessions for the Project Days and/or the Main conference. But you better hurry up - the last date for submission is October 8th, 2007.

If you are not (yet) a FOSS developer/contributor and want to learn how to be one, you attend the event as a delegate - i.e. part of of the audience of thousands of people who are there to learn, interact and have fun.

If you are an organization that would like to see India producing more and more FOSS contributors, whose razor sharp skills will also show up in their work in your organization, then you should consider sponsoring the event. While many of the sponsor slots are already filled, there is room for a few more.

And finally, if you are a member of the FOSS community, and want to be at one of the most happening (technically and socially) FOSS events in the world, then make sure you have your calendar marked for December 4th through 8th, 2007.

We guarantee that you will have the time of your life.

You can find lots of information about the event on the FOSS.IN website.

See you at FOSS.IN/2007!

Tutorial: Install Ubuntu Studio Theme

The Ubuntu Studio theme is a cool and amazing theme for your Ubuntu!


Recently, I described how to get your Ubunto to clone the Vista glass effect and other effects introduced by M$. However After an experience of beryl and Ubuntu Studio, I was convinced this is more stylish!


Ubuntu studio is generally targeted at users who need to be creative and productive. And its got the added style factor to it too. (Although many are content with standard beryl effects, which outperform vista's aero any day :)).
Here is a better description:

Ubuntu Studio is a variant of Ubuntu that concentrates on three creative tasks: video editing, audio recording and graphics.

Ubuntu Studio is based on the Feisty Fawn release of Ubuntu but does away with Ubuntu's default orange/brown theme in favour of a sexy charcoal gradient affair with highlights of a nice neon blue.

Certainly for audio recording, people should pay Ubuntu Studio a look-in. There is a large array of tools preconfigured on a low-latency kernel making real-time recording and processing manageable.

Well that was about Ubuntu Studio itself(Read more abt it here); this tutorial will tell you how to install the "theme" on Ubuntu 7.04.

Get to the good old terminal and follow these steps:

1. Add a new repository:
   

   $ sudo su -c 'echo deb http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio feisty main >> /etc/apt/sources.list'

2. Get the key and Install it:
   

   $ wget -q http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

3. Update the repository:
   

   $ sudo aptitude update

4. Install the new theme:
   

   $ sudo aptitude install ubuntustudio-look

...And that should just about do it! Enjoy!

MICROSOFT OR GOOGLE? THE OPEN SOURCE BATTLE

On Aug. 10, Redmond submitted the Microsoft Permissive License to the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Should the license be approved, Microsoft would receive the "open source" seal of approval that only the OSI – by self-proclamation – can okay

Many open source watchers have applauded Microsoft's OSI approach. You'll remember that Microsoft has dubbed some open source software the work of cancer-ridden communists. So, seeking "open source" approval shows the software maker has come a long way.Of course, one could argue that Microsoft – once blessed with the open source label – will only abuse its status.

I think it would be near impossible for an outside observer not to take Microsoft's side here.

For one, Microsoft has done all the OSI asks by submitting its license in the proper fashion for review. If the license meets the OSI's open source definition, does it really matter who submitted it? Is this Russia? This isn't Russia, Danny.

Beyond that, Google hardly stands as a model open source company – a point noted by Hilf. Google has become the poster child for the software as a service (SaaS) abuse of open source software. The ad broker uses copious amounts of open code but gets around returning changes to "the community" by claiming it does not redistribute the code. Instead, Google simply places the software on servers and ships a service to consumers.

The Free Software Foundation avoided closing the SaaS hole – a problem caused by an archaic notion of distribution as being tied to a diskette or CD – with GPL v3. Google couldn't care less about that though, since it will avoid any problematic license

"We have enough engineering resources that, if the license has obligations we are not interested in, we can just not use it," DiBona said, at the recent OSCON conference.

Google's secretive nature leaves us in the dark as to how much code it has turned back to "the community." The best statement I've seen thus far has a Google official claiming to have put back 1 million lines of code.

MAC OS-X: The Greatest Operating System Ever?

I dont know...whether it is the superb interface, or the next-gen technology behind it; The constant innovation, or the rapid imitation of its features among other competitors, the user experience, or the very discovery of what defines user experience...

Here another justification to just that..enjoy.

A recent paper on "Secretly Monopolizing the CPU Without Superuser Privileges." demonstrated how normal non-administrative programs could steal more clock cycles from the CPU than the scheduler normally allocates.

The researchers presented a proof-of-concept program that allows a specified task to "cheat" and consume more CPU cycles than the operating system would normally permit. The program was designed for Unix-based systems, though it could theoretically be altered to affect any multitasking operating system(Probably also includes our old buggar M$ Windoze). The program in the paper, called "cheat," can run as a regular non-administrative user.

How is it done? Simple. A task could hide itself by arranging for its process to run immediately after the CPU interrupt "tick," and stop running right before the next tick.
By avoiding the ticks, the standard operating system would never notice the task is running. Without any modification to an operating system, all methods of monitoring tasks would not display the cheating task.

Seven different Operating Systems were tested and guess what? only Mac OS X was immune to the cheat attack!

The explanation was that it uses a slightly different scheduling algorithm for its timers. Isnt it analogous to saying that it uses a superior scheduling algorithms? (Atleast in respect of this particular anomaly under consideration :)).

The researchers say they doubt cheat-like attacks will become common because while they could be used to avoid detection, using most of a computers CPU would noticeably slow the computer and raise suspicion. However, programs could be written to cheat a little bit, and would be extremely difficult to detect and remove. The researchers say it is possible to protect the operating system against cheat attacks, but performance suffers as a result.

So say it. Mac rules. End of story.

Apple iPhone Nano: Hoax or Reality?

Theres a lot of storm brewing over whether Apple is bringing out a 'Nano' version of the iPhone.


The thought obviously has followed Apple's trend with the iPod.
In this post I will analyse the fact sheet as stated by several sources.

News reports began appearing yesterday(09/Jul/07) that Apple may be planning to build a cheaper and smaller version of the iPhone, following the slim and sleek modeling design of the iPod nano. According to reports, Apple is silent on the subject.

About two weeks ago (the night before the iPhone was available in stores) David Letterman did a skit on his CBS program which featured an iPhone sneak peek. According to Dave, the nano version would not be cheaper. On his broadcast he stated the nano version would be $1100. You can watch a clip of Letterman's skit on youtube.

Lets build a background about what we are talking about first:

The EETimes Online News Reports:

LONDON — Apple Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) is working on a second iPhone, based on the form-factor of the iPod Nano music player, according to online reports that reference a note to clients written by J.P. Morgan analyst Kevin Chang.

The iPhone Nano would be much lower cost than the iPhone and come to market in the fourth quarter of 2007, the reports said.

"We believe it's a strong sign that Apple could potentially convert every iPod Nano into a Nano phone," Market Watch quoted Chang as saying. (He obviously meant the market share of iPod Nano, not to really 'convert' every iPod Nano into Nano phone! ;-) )

Chang expects the iPhone Nano to have a scroll wheel interface, limited functionality and be priced at about $300. Chang concluded that Apple could potentially ship 30 million to 40 million units of the iPhone Nano in the 2008 financial year, the report said.

Alright, if there's a fire, there has got to be a spark behind it. This might be it: Apple submitted a patent today that could be direct evidence that a downscaled Nano-like iPhone is in the works. Here is the patent application for you to see.

This patent clearly depicts a rotary-styled keypad that works in conjunction with the already existent scroll wheel in iPods. Not only that, it displays a direct correlation between the numbers being selected and the classic 3 letter to a number layout (i.e abc, def, ghi, etc.)

Here is the reaction it got from online news agencies:

An Apple patent application dated Thursday has sparked speculation among bloggers that the computer maker may be planning an iPhone light that would focus only on voice communications and music.
"The invention pertains to a user interface for controlling an electronic device, particularly a multifunctional device that is capable of operating in multiple modes as for example a phone mode for communications and a media player mode for playing audio files, video files and the like"

My personal Opinion:

I dont really know whether the iPhone Nano is in the works or not, but id definitely say that if it is, this patent application is not the clue to it.
After Having revolutionized the gadget industry with its touch interface, I wouldnt think that the rotary interface would be such a big indication towards iPhone Nano.
Chances are Apple is simply patenting all embodiments of iPhone knockoffs so a few hacks in Japan and China don’t get silly with themselves.

Anyways, If it does come out with an iPhone Nano, these possible models may be just what I expect, given Apple's innovative edge to creating cool gadgets:

Lets wait and see if, when and how Apple chooses to surprise us!