Blue 2009 Bollywood Movie

A treasure lays buried deep at the bottom of an ocean. There are many people who want to get there by risking life, be it theirs or someone else’s.

‘Blue’ is touted as Bollywood’s first underwater, action adventure thriller. Directed by Anthony D’Souza , the movie is inspired from Hollywood flicks like ‘The Deep’ or ‘Jaws’, but it is not a copy.

The film is about a lost treasure, which three friends try to find undersea. Akshay Kumar , Sanjay Dutt and Zayed Khan play the respective roles.

But in this hunt for the treasure, there’s deceit and betrayal by someone in the group.

Lara Dutta is paired with Sanjay Dutt in the film. The actress did not know deep sea diving before signing the film and underwent a rigorous Scuba diving training to prepare for her role.

The movie’s second heroine Katrina Kaif doesn’t have a big role. But director D’Souza says Kat will surprise the audiences with her role. Sunil Shetty also has a brief role in the film.

Most of ‘Blue’ has been shot

in the Bahamas. Akshay, Sanjay and Zayed swam with real sharks while shooting their stunts in the film.

While shooting one such stunt under water, Akshay Kumar had a narrow escape when he accidentally hit his head against the metal of a sunken ship and began bleeding. Blood attracted the sharks, but before any mishap could happen, the actor was safely pulled above water.

To tone up his muscles, Sanjay Dutt hired the services of a special body building trainer from the US – Lawrence Gonsalves, who guided the actor on losing his former beefy body and developing a leaner physique.

Special water-resistant make-up was required for the film’s leading lady Lara Dutta. For that the producers roped in Hollywood make up artist Nikoletta Skarlatos.

‘Blue’ also feature a special appearance by Australian pop sensation Kylie Minogue who has not only sung for the film but also shot a sizzling video with Akshay Kumar.

Oscar winner A R Rahman has composed the tunes of the film’s songs. In fact, Kylie Minogue agreed to sing and dance to her song in the film because she was captivated by Rahman’s composition.

The movie apparently also has an underwater song picturized on the entire cast.

With a budget of over Rs 100 crores, ‘Blue’ is touted as Bollywood’s most expensive film to date. Made under the banner of Shri Ashtavinayak Cinevision, the movie is set to release in May, 2009.

Chrome Frame: Google Offering plug-in to convert IE into Chrome

Google has developed a plug-in for Internet Explorer (IE) that will allow Chrome to run in IE. Chrome Frame is a new browser plug-in developed by Google which will give user a chance to feel Chrome browsing experience inside Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Many experts have claimed that IE has fairly low web standards and is susceptible to virus attacks and lacks in performance as well. Many users are turning to Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or even Apple Safari for safe browsing. But that does not change the fact that IE is still the largest used web browser (as it comes integrated with Microsoft operating system).

Many corporate houses still run IE. But after the launch of Chrome Frame things will change dramatically. Chrome Frame creates a new frame inside IE and with this frame Google packs all the essential data in a lightweight plug-in to convert IE into Chrome. Chrome Frame also injects the latest versions of Chrome’s Webkit and JavaScript engines into IE. Google claims that its goals are noble and they just want to provide users with better performance browser.

While it is true that running two browsers in one will take more resource from computer but Google says that Chrome is designed to give resources back to the machine when users are not using them with the browser.

Google claims that it won’t be explicitly advertise Google frame in IE but will use subtle methods to alert users of its existence. For example, if users browse to a Google app in Internet Explorer that may render better in Chrome, Google might have a message on the page informing about the plug-in.

Chrome Frame is still in testing stage and will work with IE6, IE7, and IE8 on any Windows-based machine. Microsoft has still not made any comment on this but there are chances that Microsoft will ban Google Frame.

Conficker: Experts from all over the world fail to defeat internet worm

Till now no one can even think that a worm could knock down global internet. Even tech experts have failed to conquer this deadly worm called Conficker, which has already infected five million computers, and may soon crash the internet in all countries. So dangerous is the threat, that the world’s largest computer security companies have joined together with governments around the world in an unusual alliance to pool their resources and solve the problem. So much so, that a group (Conficker Working Group) to defeat the worm has also been created. The worm, which was first detected in November, last year, spreads rapidly to computers through a flaw in the Windows operating system. Infected machines are co-opted into a “botnet” army, which can be controlled and used by the hackers to launch unprecedented cyber attacks. “The general agreement in the security world is that Conficker is the largest threat that global internet is facing from a cyber crime point of view. It has proven to be extremely resilient. It’s almost impossible to remove,” Rodney Joffe, a Director of the Conficker Working Group, told Sydney Morning Herald. “The best minds in the world have not managed to crack the code behind this yet.” Microsoft has offered a 250,000 dollars reward for information leading to the identification of the individuals – or rogue governments – behind Conficker. But so far international effort to find a solution has yielded few results. The creators of the worm can do anything they want with the infected machines including stealing users’ banking details or flooding government servers to knock them offline. The worm has a built-in mechanism to prevent people from scanning their computers with anti-virus software, says Joffe. Unfortunately, even for those who wipe their computers clean and start fresh, if they back up any important data on a portable hard drive, the clean machine is re-infected when the drive is connected to the computer. The worm also spreads automatically between computers on a network and infects machines without the user having to do anything other than switch their computers on. While majority of the botnets can be destroyed by disabling the server used to issue commands to infected machines, but with Conficker the location of this sever changes every day and state-of-the-art cryptography means it’s almost impossible to crack.

Current IT Scenario in India

Intel to cut 1,000 managerial jobs worldwide…HP to cut 24,600 jobs following EDS takeover..Satyam Computers to axe 4,500 employees…TCS, Wipro recast hiring plans…Wipro Tech puts 3000 staff under scanner…Where is your skills rated??? The long term trends for the first 10 languages (programming) are…….. The other languages in the list of top 50 are….more(aurosblog)

Highest Paid Executives in US

Recently Associated Press published a list of 500 highest-paid public company executives. A few from them are:

1. Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp. (ORCL), $84.6 mln
2. John Thain, Merrill Lynch & Co. (MERPO), $83.1 mln
3. Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. (CBS), $67.6 mln
4. Richard Adkerson, Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc., $65.3 mln
5. Bob Simpson, XTO Energy Inc. (XTO), $56.6 mln
6. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), $53.9 mln
7. Kenneth Chenault, American Express Co. (AXP), $51.7 mln
8. Eugene Isenberg, Nabors Industries Ltd. (NBR), $44.6 mln
9. John Mack, Morgan Stanley (MS), $41.7 mln
10. Glenn Murphy, Gap Inc. (GPS), $39.1 mln

They are basically US based public company executives.

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

Forbes Asia published a Thailand rich list : Nishita Shah ranked No. 19

Forbes Asia published a Thailand rich list on July, 10 2008 in Singapore. The rankings are almost filled with the same face as in the lists of 2006 and 2007. The Asia rich lists have been sponsored by SG Private Banking (Asia Pacific).

The notable and outstanding rich woman in all rankings is clearly seen to be Nishita Shah, an Indian origin who is the youngest on the list along with her family, she is ranked No. 19 and worth $375 million. The 28-year old is featured in a profile story in this week’s issue of Forbes Asia. She spoke about her plan of launching her own fashion label “Nsha” on three continents at the end of the year as well as helping to manage her family’s 140-year old business which includes Thai-listed Precious Shipping as her farther, Kirit Shah, last year made her a managing director of GP Group.

Nishita was born to be a business woman. To follow her father’s steps, she had graduated from Boston University with a degree in business and finance. For four years she learned all about the various companies, visiting most of them.

“My dad said I could study anything I wanted as long as it was business,” is her favorite speech. Not business alone she concentrated on, but she also has gone through something “creative” as she like to say. Her father suggested that she had fulfilled one of his own dreams and study flying. She earned an instrument rating for a single-engine plane and a private pilot’s license. In between flights she took yoga and surfing lessons.

With her clothing company “Burn Baby” with a mission statement “luxury active wear” for “modern urbanite women”. Nishita is a hands-on executive. At the same time she continues to read coal, shipping and metal reports every morning and sits in on meetings on the 15 days of the month when her father is overseas. Aside from Nishita Shah’s companies, her father, Kirit, has collected stakes in all sorts of companies for the GP Group. Here are some of what GP’s invested in, including the clan’s percentage stakes: Alva Aluminum 75%, Amari Atrium Hotel 95, Ambika 100, Eka 75, Mega LifeSciences 75 , MJets 50 and Premthai Energy 100.

Celebrity golfer Tiger Woods also have made his way into the list of next generation billionaires compiled by American US business magazine Forbes. Noting that the world’s current crop of billionaires has plenty of money but “not much youth”, the American magazine said the average age of the 1,125 people on Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest is 61.

So you could be the next now. How?
To know more follow my links here.

iPhone 3G launching in India on 22 Aug

Vodafone is delighted to announce that the iPhone 3G will be available in India from August 22, 2008
It will be available in 8GB & 16GB models, priced at Rs 31,000 and Rs 36,100 respectively.

Be the first to get the iPhone
As they have received a large number of registrations. As there are limited stocks, make sure that you get yours first, by paying an advance of Rs 10,000 to confirm your booking.

Where can you make this advance payment?
The iPhone 3G will be available at select Vodafone Stores. All you need to do is drop in at any select Vodafone Store between August 20 and 21 and make the advance payment by cash or credit card. Don´t forget to show the iPhone booking SMS, which you would have received from them, when you visit the Vodafone Store to pay the advance. To find a Vodafone Store near you, click here

Get an appointment now. No queues for you.
Once you pay the advance, they will immediately give you an appointment date and time, starting
August 22 when you can go and experience a full demonstration and collect your iPhone, all ready to use with your contacts and settings, by paying the balance amount.

Hurry! Limited stocks.
Remember, the sooner you confirm your booking, the earlier you´ll get your iPhone. We have limited stocks and it will be on first come, first serve basis.

Buy a Vodafone connection now!
If you are not a Vodafone customer, you will need a Vodafone connection for your iPhone 3G.
They would recommend that when you go to confirm your booking, please do get yourself a Vodafone connection too. Remember to carry a passport sized picture, photo ID proof and address proof as these are required for activating your Vodafone SIM card.

Happy to help
If you have any queries, log on to www.vodafone.in/iphone or call us on 9732097320 and we´ll be happy to help.
Hurry and be one of the first to make the iPhone 3G your own.

I just got the mail from Vodafone Customer Service and thought of sharing it with you. I know people are wondering here and there for the exact price of iPhone 3G in india. So go ahead and grab your own iPhone.

Rail Sampark 139

Indian Railways introduce a whole new Integrated Train Enquiry System(ITES) with modern, improved customer centric facilities. This service can be accessed by dialing ‘139′ from any landline, mobile or cdma phones. Rail Sampark -139 is a round the clock service. In addition to hindi and english the service is also available in other regional languages in South east and west zones. Through this system customers have choice of either getting the desired information through Interactive Voice Response System(IVR) or they can press * to speak to a highly skilled customer care executive to get instant information on arrival/departure, PNR status, Accommodation Availability, fare enquiry to name a few.
As they said this is gift to the nation from Indian Railways.

I just got the mail stating all this information from Indian Railways Tourism Department and thought of sharing with you. With this what you think The Indian Railways is improving a lot after Mr. Lallu Prasad had taken the lead. I can say No One Can stop India Now. The day is not too far when we will be a developed nation.

How to get your system information in Ubuntu

I stumbled upon the nifty “lshw” tool today. lshw lists your hardware. Try it now:
$sudo lshw

You can get specific details by using the -C flag:
$sudo lshw -C disk
will list all you hard disks.

It create an html page with your hardware details if you do a:
$sudo lshw -html > your-file-name.html

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

SimpleDB in EC2 Ubuntu

I am showing here the How to guide for amazon-simpledb-cli(Command Line Interface)
This tool depends on the following Perl modules from CPAN:

      Getopt::Long     Pod::Usage     Digest::SHA1     Digest::HMAC     XML::Simple

You can install them using the "cpan" command on many Linux distros:

sudo cpan Getopt::Long
sudo cpan Pod::Usage
sudo cpan Digest::SHA1
sudo cpan Digest::HMAC
sudo cpan XML::Simple

This tool also depends on the Amazon::SDB modules provided by Amazon(not the one in CPAN). Amazon's modules can be found here:

http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1136

Here is the How to for the above:curl -Lo amazon-simpledb-perl-library.zip \       http://amazon-simpledb-perl-library.notlong.com

unzip amazon-simpledb-perl-library.zip

     sitelib=$(perl -MConfig -le 'print $Config{sitelib}')     sudo scp -r amazon-simpledb-*-perl-library/src/Amazon $sitelib

Finally, this command line interface can be installed with:

     sudo curl -Lo /usr/local/bin/simpledb http://simpledb-cli.notlong.com     sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/simpledb

Now to test your installation::

1. Extract the amazon-simpledb-2007-11-07-perl-library.zip file into a working directory.
2. Edit desired sample. For example: src/Amazon/SimpleDB/Samples/CreateDomainSample.pl




• Set AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key

 my $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID        = "";my $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY    = "";               




• Set request parameters. For example, find following pre-generated snippet:

 use Amazon::SimpleDB::Model::CreateDomain; # @TODO: set action. Action can be passed as Amazon::SimpleDB::Model::CreateDomain# object or hash of parameters# invokeCreateDomain($service, $action);               




• And set action with DomainName parameter:

 use Amazon::SimpleDB::Model::CreateDomain; my $action = Amazon::SimpleDB::Model::CreateDomain->new;invokeCreateDomain($service, $action->withDomainName("MyDomain"));               




3. Run CreateDomain sample:

   perl src/Amazon/SimpleDB/Samples/CreateDomainSample.pl           

4. You should see the output similar to the following:

    CreateDomainResponse       ResponseMetadata           RequestId               95cdcb68-f46c-400b-8265-8c2de2a5c475           




5. Experiment with samples. When ready, install library in the perl include path and use it.

SEE ALSO    Amazon SimpleDB (SDB)    http://www.amazon.com/SimpleDB-AWS-Service-Pricing/b/?node=342335011

    Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide    http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonSimpleDB/2007-11-07/DeveloperGui    de/

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)