Friday, December 19, 2008

Blogging from Windows Live Writer

Microsoft has been criticised for almost everything. MS also deserves some of it. MS also has the reputation of designing shoddy products.

But one product from MS has received praise from almost everyone who has used it. It’s Windows Live Writer. Blogging is a breeze with Live Writer.

Live Writer is part of the Windows Live suite and is free. It can also be downloaded separately.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Google employees get Japanese Space Toilets

Google Employees Even Get Japanese Space Toilets

Google employees are so special that they even get Japanese space toilets on which to rest their stock options.

SFist found these sexy Japanese Toto toilets in Google’s headquarters. They feature front and rear cleansing along with a dryer and some sort of insane wand cleaning system that may be part of Google’s 80-20 projects policy. The toilets are fairly common in Japan - heck, there are even toilets that offer birdsong to cover up embarrassing noises - so perhaps they’re these were installed as a treat for their Asian employees.

The real question, however: Is there an API?
From Techcrunch

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Bilawal Bhutto 'in trouble'

We all have received scam emails requesting our account details offering us a cut of huge funds. Almost all are from unknown guys - mostly from Africa.
For a change, here's one I received recently - from just across the border - from 'Bilawal Bhutto'.
Unfortunately, the scamster forgot that far from being hounded by Musharaff, it is Bilawal's party that is ruling Pakistan now.
Here is the email:


Dear Sir/Ma

My name is Bilawal Bhutto the son of Benazir Bhutto who was mudered in Pakistan by the present Pakistan Government on Thursday, 27 December 2007, Ms Bhutto was leaving a rally of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) supporters in a park in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when attackers opened fire. Then a bomb was set off by the same attacker which left my mother dead and some 20 other people. You can find details of the killing of my mother on these website below:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6653475.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2228796.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7165892.stm
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1699006,00.html

Life has become unbearable since she was shot dead. Since then, my family and I have been Living with shock and uncertainties, the Government of Musharaff has made life difficult for us by ensuring that we are not disposed to our finances and other properties that is owned by my mother and this has made life difficult for us. Just before my mother died she called my attention to the money she deposited in foreign account and charged me to look for a foreigner who would assist me in the retrieving of the funds abroad which she wanted to use for the election, So l would be very grateful if you could accept to help me archieve this great objective.

For now, let all our communication be by e-mail because my line are right now connected to the Pakistan Telecommunication Network services. I will give you details after I have  received a response from you. Please contact me through my private email address:- bilawalbhutto01@jmail.co.za

Thank you very much.

Bilawal Bhutto

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The HTC Charger story

What do you do when your mobile’s charger goes phut? Buy a new one.
How do you buy a new one? Go to the nearest mobile shop or an authorised dealer (so that you get a genuine one) and buy one.
Easy. Right?
But the HTC mobile phone guys thought it shouldn’t be so easy. So they devised a new way. How?
First, you have to ring up HTC customer care. You can use their toll-free number (Oh! Thanks a lot!)
Tell the customer care guy you need a battery. He will give you a complaint number and go to the ONLY service centre in your city - which may be 25 km away. No other service centres? Sorry. This is the only one, the customer care guy will tell you.
So you take down the address and go in search of the service centre. You may have to go around several times in the area to discover the service centre located in a tiny lane, which you may easily miss.
Why can’t HTC just sell their chargers in shops like mobile phones?

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Osho on Tibet

'Tibet In Darkness'
by Acharya Rajneesh (Osho)

Acharya Rajneesh

"If there were something civilised in man, every nation would have stood against the invasion of Tibet by China. It is the invasion of matter against consciousness. It is invasion of materialism against spiritual heights"
Acharya Rajneesh


. . . . . . . . . . . . .


Unfortunately, Tibet has fallen into a darkness. Its monasteries have been closed, its seekers of truth have been forced to work in labour camps. The only country in the world which was working -- a one-pointed genius, all its intelligence in the search of one's own interior and its treasures has been stopped by the communist invasion of Tibet.

And it is such an ugly world that nobody has objected to it. On the contrary, because China is big and powerful, even countries which are more powerful than China can ever be, like America, have accepted that Tibet belongs to China. That is sheer nonsense -- just because China is powerful and everybody wants China to be on its side. Neither have the Soviets denied the claim of China aside -- even India has not objected. It was such a beautiful experiment, and Tibet had no weapons to fight, they had no army to fight; they had never thought about it. Their whole thing was an introvert pilgrimage.

Nowhere has such concentrated effort been made to discover man's being. Every family in Tibet used to give their eldest son to some monastery where he was to meditate and grow closer to awakening. It was a joy to every family that at least one of them was wholeheartedly, twenty-four hours a day, working on the inner being. They were also working but they could not give all their time; they had to create food and clothes and shelter, an in Tibet it is a difficult matter. The climate is not very helpful; to live in Tibet is a tremendous trouble. But still every family used to give their first-born child to the monastery.

There were hundreds of monasteries… and these monasteries should not be compared with any Catholic monasteries. These monasteries have no comparison in the whole world. These monasteries were concerned only with one thing -- to make you aware of yourself.

Thousands of devices have been created down the centuries so that your lotus can blossom and you can find your ultimate treasure, the diamond. These are just symbolic words, but the destruction of Tibet should be known in history, particularly man becomes a little more aware and humanity a little more humane… This is the greatest calamity of the twentieth century that Tibet has fallen into the hands of materials who don't believe that you have anything inside you. They believe that you are only matter and your consciousness is only a by-product of matter. And all this is simply without any experience of the inner -- just logical, rational philosophising.

Not a single communist in the world has meditated, but it is strange -- they all deny the inner. Nobody thinks about how the outer can exist if there is no inner. They exist together, they are inseparable. And the outer is only a protection for the inner, because the inner is very delicate and soft. But the outer is accepted and the inner is denied. And even if sometimes it is accepted, the world is dominated by such dirty politicians that they use even the inner experiences for ugly ends.

Just the other day, I came to know that America is now training its soldiers in meditation so that they can fight without any nervous breakdown, without going mad, without feeling any fear so they can lie down in their ditches silently, calm and cool and collected. No meditator nay have ever thought that meditation can also be used for fighting wars, but in the hands of politicians everything becomes ugly -- even meditation. Now the army camps in America are teaching meditation so that their soldiers can be more calm and quiet while killing people. But I want to warn America: you are playing with fire. You don't understand exactly what meditation will do. Your soldiers will become so calm and quiet that they will throw away their weapons and they will simply refuse to kill. A meditator cannot kill; a meditator cannot be destructive. So they are going to be surprised one day that their soldiers are no longer interested in fighting. War, violence, murder, massacre of millions of people -- this is not possible if a man knows something of meditation. Then he knows the other whom he is killing. He is his brother. They all belong to the same oceanic existence.

If humanity were a little more aware, Tibet should be made free because it is the only country which has devoted almost two thousand years to doing nothing but going deeper into meditation. And it can teach the whole world something which is immensely needed.

But communist China is trying to destroy everything that has been created in two thousand years. All their devices, all their whole spiritual climate is being polluted, poisoned. But they are simple people; they cannot defend themselves. They don't have anything to defend themselves with -- no tanks, no bombs, no airplanes, no army. An innocent race which lived without any war for two thousand years… It disturbs everybody -- even to reach there is a difficult task. They live on the very roof of the world. The highest mountains, eternal snow, is their home. Leave them alone! China will not lose anything, but the whole world will be benefited by their experience.

Tibet should be left as an experimental lab for man's inner search. But not a single nation in the world has raised its voice against this ugly attack on Tibet. And China has not only attacked it, they have amalgamated it into their map. Now, on the modern Chinese map, Tibet is their territory.

And we think the world is civilised, where innocent people who are not doing any harm to anybody are simply destroyed. And with them, something of great importance to all humanity is also destroyed. If there were something civilised in man, every nation would have stood against the invasion of Tibet by China. It is the invasion of matter against consciousness. It is invasion of materialism against spiritual heights.


"Osho is an enlightened master who is working with all possibilities to help humanity overcome a difficult phase in developing consciousness."
HH the XIV Dalai Lama

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