See no Evil, Hear no Evil

The Hindu is a respected newspaper in India. It carried a rather interesting report on its front page on December 1,2006. "A controversial judicial appointment", it said. The report notes :

New Delhi: The appointment of Justice Vijender Jain as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court took place under contentious circumstances. According to an appointment file noting by President A.P. J. Abdul Kalam, these included "divided opinion at the level of the [recommending Supreme Court] collegium"; a collegium that was expanded, in the first instance, from three to four members "in departure from" para 5.1 of the relevant Memorandum of Procedure; "dissenting" and "deprecatory" written remarks against the appointment by three Supreme Court judges; and reservations expressed by the President, who returned the file to the political Government for reconsideration.

However, these hurdles were fairly quickly overcome and the notification for Mr. Justice Jain's appointment came on November 27. He was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on November 28.

The report also comes with excerpts from the President's file on the appointment. This kind of stuff should've made it to the headlines of every newschannel and caught the attention of the media. The Parliament is in session and the opposition should've raised the issue. The only channel I get is Doordarshan and Doordarshan news. Nothing was mentioned in DD News. I do not know if other newspapers or newschannels have reported this. How come there is no noise on this issue?

Is it just me or is something happening behind the scenes that we're not aware of? Is there something wrong with the report or is someone preventing the media from reporting this? Can somebody please tell me???

Google alert for Debian Etch

Well... :-)

I created a Google alert for "Debian Etch" some time back. Which is how I saw the blog alert that led to my earlier post on Etch. Today morning I checked mail and saw this with the alerts...

I'm waitin.........
By Anirudh(Anirudh)
The latest version of the GNU/Linux distro Debian, Debian Etch (currently in testing), is likely to come out this December. yayy!!! Test rides say the all new Debian is, well... all new :-) ...
Hello World - http://gingerjoos.blogspot.com/index.html

Interesting :-)

I'm waitin.........

The latest version of the GNU/Linux distro Debian, Debian Etch (currently in testing), is likely to come out this December. yayy!!! Test rides say the all new Debian is, well... all new :-)

Here's one report : http://distroshack.livejournal.com/4832.html .Steve says the new Debian Installer is very user friendly as is the overall experience of using Debian. That's good news :-) I just can't wait to get my hands on it.

New Blogger Beta

Blogger has now introduced a beta of its Blogspot service. I switched to the beta service today. :-)

All you need to publish a blog now is a google id. Now there's a closer integration between blogger and rest of Google.

You will have noticed that the template has changed. Blogger now comes with newer templates. The servers are also new too. The older blogger servers kept having problems, so they've switched to new servers which follow Google prescriptions. I had been having trouble accessing the blogger site, now I can access the beta site without trouble. Cool! And once the exams get over, I hope to be back blogging really strongly. :-)

Have fun :-)
~~~~Me

Damn the loudspeaker!

Loudspeakers are a wonderful invention. We couldn't have big meetings, speeches, concerts and things like that if not for loudspeakers. However, they are misused to a great extent. (Just like mobile phones are?)

Right now I'm having great trouble doing anything. Why?

Tomorrow is when the harvest festival of Kerala, Onam , begins(sort of, explanations for another day). Tomorrow is onnaam onam or uthraadam. It's holiday time all over Kerala. Schools and colleges have closed for a week or so. Offices close for a few days at a stretch. Uthraadam is the day before the main day of Thiruvonam. Celebrations all around....

Some take this as an excuse to do anything. They get 'fit' ( i.e. drunk) and go about causing a nuisance. Some others play the horriblest songs imaginable on loudspeakers...

They're playing some pathetic remixes of old songs now. Annoying is a thorough understatement. Headache is killing me. I'm sure they're dancing in an alcohol induced carefree attitude. Not a tiny thought to the rest of the population who must bear it with grit teeth. I was hoping to study something for the exams that are approaching. It's difficult to study about the 8085 when you have a headache induced by blaring music, don't you think?

Like I said, loudspeakers are misused too much...No wonder there is a ban on loudspeaker use between 10 pm and 6 am. I only wish they had not relaxed the ban.

Happy Onam to all........... :-)

Yipppeeeeee!!!

yayyyy!!!! Here I am in college checking out if my email post worked. Apparently it has. And now I should be able to blog much more regularly, I guess. Good! I've been waiting to blog for so loooooooooonnnnnnngggggggggg..... :-)

Watch this space for more....

testing.......

Hmm...long time no post....

I got a VSNL/TATA Indicom 64kbps connection recently. Ever since I am not able to access blogger or my blog or any blogstpot blog. Anyone got an idea why?

Then I remembered I could post using email...decided to try it out. So if anyone can see this, please tell me so. :-)

Thanks....

Some movies...

Saw some movies recently...Some bits on them...

"The Evil Dead" is a 1981 film. One of those classic horror movies. Lots of blood and gore. When you see the movie, you know at once that a lot of the later day horror flicks were heavily influenced by it. The classical elements are all there. A group of guys and gals staying in some desolate place. Ancient evil magic invoked accidently by them. The magic then hunting them down one by one. Evil trees and evil laughs. Cellars and axes. Evil books and burning them. Name it and you have it.

"V for Vendetta" is the latest offering from the Wachowski brothers. It is based on a graphic novel of the same name created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Personally I liked it, but all the reviews haven't been that superb. The film is very dark in its outlook. Hugo Weaving as the protoganist V is simply superb. He meets the challenge of doing a role behind the mask with amazing success. His voice is superb as ever. This role of his will be remembered for long along with that of Agent Smith in the Matrix Trilogy. Natalie Portman stars as Evey Hammond. The movie is beautifully made and is sure to be counted as one of the best ever.

I managed to get DVDs of the original Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes IV,V and VI). I had seen the newer trilogy already. Pretty good...Nice story, nice effects (for that time). Harrison Ford as Capt. Hans Solo is brilliant. Too bad, they didn't have those excellent sabre duels as in the newer ones. I rather liked the last sabre duel in Episode I. :-)

Nothing more of significance...

>>>Anirudh

PS : The church bells are ringing now. Guess it's Easter already. Happy Easter...

SSA Gobal recruitment drive

Today SSA Global visited the campus for a recruitment drive. The particpating colleges in the placement drive were Model Engineering College, Govt. Engineering College Thrissur, TKM College, School of Engineering Thrikkakara and CUCEK Pulinkunnu. The tests were conducted online. It featured a lot of tough questions on Java and C/C++. The interviews have begun and are scheduled to continue tommorow.

SSA Global is the third largest ERP company in the world. The recruitment is towards its Hyderabad centre, which is one of the largest centres of SSA all over the globe. This office was formerly a part of BAAN and many of the employeers were part of it too. SSA uses a lot of the BAAN tools and believes in acquisitions that make it expand. Its most recent acquisition is that of Epiphany.

One of those who arrived as part of the team from SSA was Vyas Thottathil. A really nice guy, Vyas is what I would call a 100% pure MECian. Even after so much experience in the industry, Vyas still keeps the MEC spirit burning within him. Vyas...we are all proud of you. Thanks for being what you are. :-)

So long then...watch this space for more news.

April Fool!

The day is here once again. The day I had been hoping for.

I was chatting away with a friend on my Instant Messenger at 12 o'clock at night of March 31/April 1 when I got this message : Happy Birthday. The celebrations had begun. It was All Fool's Day.

I log off some time later and I log on back some time ago. I get this offliner from the same person. http://www.google.com/romance . I had been pretty much hoping to see Google's April Fool joke and here it was. It made me go ROTFL. Way to go GOOG. :-) And here is the press release about it.. http://www.google.com/romance/press.html . :-)

I looked at the "News" section of my GDS sidebar. I see this "Microsoft buys Office.Org" - Slashdot. Wow! Superb. Slashdot pitches in too...

Happy All Fool's Day!

Wipro Technologies Campus Placement Process 2006

Wipro Technologies ( info from Google Finance ) became the first company to recruit students from the current Semester 6 batch of Model Engineering College. Wipro selected 75 students ( 13 to VLSI and the rest to the software division ) in all. The selection process started off with a test in the morning of the 20th. This was followed by technical interviews. Those who cleared the technical interviews were asked to attend the HR interviews. A few ( 18, I believe ) of the HR interviews were conducted on the 21st. The number of selected students are more than last years intake of about 60 from MEC. Clearly the software industry is still riding on a boom and MEC students are as good as ever.

>>>Anirudh

Excel2k6

Back after a long time!

My college (Model Engineering College) is conducting a technical festival on February 2,3 and 4. It is called Excel2k6 and it sure looks like it is going to be fun. This edition of Excel is much bigger than last years. Lots of intersting stuff.

The organisers have decided to go in for some really big sponsors. The main sponsor ( Platinum sponsor) is HP. The first news channel in Malaylam, Indiavision, is the media sponsor. Other sponsors include Larsen and Toubro , Linux For You and Electronics For You.

The speakers this time are big too. Mr. Anand Parthasarathy, well known IT journalist of The Hindu, will speak on Technology trends in the information age. Dr. Ravi Kothari of IBM Research Labs will speak on Data Mining. The Indian Navy is holding a lecture too. I am told they do not do usually hold lectures or go visting colleges. This was a special case, it seems. There is a lecture on Avionics by Mr. P Radhakrishnan, a retired ISRO scientist.

I am looking forward to the ethical hacking workshop. Mr. Kalyan Varma, renowned security expert and Linux Guru, has agreed to conduct the workshop. Toonz Animation, one of the leading animation companies in India will conduct a workshop on Animation. S.P.A.C.E, a society that promotes Free Software under the IT Department Government of Kerala, will do a workshop on doing projects the Open Source way. Besides, Trident Tech Labs will hold a workshop on VLSI and VHDL.

School students can also join in the fun. They have contests too.

The contests for Engineering students are going to be very competitive. The papers selected for the paper presentation have already been put up. Partcipants come from Kerala and outside.

Boy, I am really gonna enjoy this. Hope I get some prizes too!

Wish me luck!
GJ

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