This Rocks !!
“You obviously do not see it then?” she responded.
“You placed me next to a black man. I do not agree to sit next to someone from such a repugnant group. Give me an alternative seat.”
“Be calm please,” the hostess replied. “Almost all the places on this flight are taken. I will go to see if another place is available.”
The Hostess went away and then came back a few minutes later.
“Madam, just as I thought, there are no other available seats in the economy class. I spoke to the captain and he informed me that there is also no seat in the business class. All the same, we still have one place in the first class.”
Before the woman could say anything, the hostess continued, “It is not usual for our company to permit someone from the economy class to sit in the first class. However, given the circumstances,
the captain feels that it would be scandalous to make someone sit next to someone so disgusting.”
She turned to the black man and said “Therefore, Sir, if you would like to, please collect your hand luggage, a seat awaits you in first class.”
At that moment, the other passengers who were shocked by what they had just witnessed stood up and applauded.
Google Local on Palm Treo 650
Here comes the first one:
I wanted to intsall google local on this device, but Google local says it doesn’t support Palm and Brew based phones. But there was a catch, it says it supports the Java based phones. So I installed the IBM’s Java micro edition from Palm’s website, which is free. But then when you try to download the generic google local, it just downloads the link and that too on the card. So whats the trick?
Start the IBM Java application and click on install, type this URL there and you are good to go.
google.com/glm?brand=Generic&model=Advanced+MIDP2&agree=yes
Euro English !!
The European Union commissioners have announced that an agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government concluded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phased plan for what will be known as ‘EuroEnglish’.
In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”. Sertainly,sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard “c” will be replased with “k”. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” sound will be replased by “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” 20per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to arrive at the stage where more komplikated revisions are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, that have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e”s in the languag is
disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” by “z” and “w” by “v”.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou”, and similar revisions vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand on anozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Ever had problems while installing XP SP2 on OEM machine?
If you ever hit the problem that your WinXP SP2 installation hangs while in the installation process (for example while “Checking Product Key” or something alike) try this:
1) Go to the CMD prompt.
2) Then type cd \windows\inf and make sure we are in that directory.
3) Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)
4) Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)
5) Then goto start – run – type c:\windows\inf and you will see the files in the folder.
6) Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and take a backup of it to desktop (by copying it to desktop) and delete the INFCACHE.1 from c:\windows\inf.
7) Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.
Sanatan Dharma by Swami Vivekanand
HD Upconversion DVD Player
After my recently found interest in converting home movies from analog to digital format, I thought it was about time to investigate in a new DVD player which could support all formats. In the quest, I found about some DVD players which can upconvert regular 480i and 480p signals to high-defintion 720p and 1080i signals.
Requirements:
- Be able to play all the formats (DVD-A, SACD, and DivX will be added benefit.)
- Be able to convert Standard Defintion or SD (480i) Enhanced Defintion or ED (480p) signals to High Defintion or HD (720p and 1080i). Confused about all these singals? I will write about them in detail in my next post.
And googling revealed there are three good contesters for this category.
- LG LDA-511 (Same as LG DVB418)
- Panasonic S97S
- Samsung DVD-HD850
(I am not mentioning prices as they might change by the time you read these).
I went and bought LG DVB418 from Bestbuy. Hooked it up to my receiver and HDTV, The picture quality is awesome, sound is good. It plays all of my backup DVDs on DVD-R and DVD+R, I haven’t tried a DivX and MPG4 disk yet. And in attempt to upconver the signal here is what I learned.
My HDTV does not support 720p but 1080i only. I bought my 36″ Panasonic HDTV (CRT) in 2003, so this is one of the drawbacks of adopting to new technologies too soon. Second, its not a widescreen TV.
The first problem of having ability to play only 1080i is not actually a problem. But when I upconvert the signal to 1080i it becomes 16:9 format signal or wide screen image. Which does not look good on my letterbox HDTV.
And, the LD DVD player upconverts signal only on non-copy protected movies over the component ouput, on HDMI output however it does not have any problems. And yet again, my HDTV (being 3 years old) does not have HDMI input.
So much said, now I am reconsidering whether I need an upconverting DVD player or wait till I buy a wide screen plasma TV 
Update:
Finally bought the LG DVD player. Its awsome, hackable to support all region DVDs. Upconverts regular DVD to high definiton and has crisp picture quality. And yes, you just burn your DivX files to a DVD/CD as a regular file, no need to convert them as DVD-MPEG, put the disk in the player shows you the directory listing. Select the file and bang…now you can fit 4 movies in one DVD
About SD, ED and HDTV
Well, let me stick with NTSC signals here because thats what I have to use 90% of the times.
TVs basically show still images, changing so fast that they look like video (or movies). In NTSC format this is done 30 times in a second or what is called 30 frames per second (30 fps). So they had 1/30 of a second to show a frame. This picture or frame consisted of 480 horizontal lines.
Old fashioned TVs could not handle this information so fast. So they used to divide this picture of 480 lines into odd and even number lines. So to show one single frame they had to do two attempts. Dividing the time alloted to show a frame by 2. In the first half or 1/60 of a second they show the odd number lines (1, 3, …439) and in the next 1/60 of a second they should the even numbered lines (2,4, …480). This scheme is called interlacing giving the name 480 interlaced or 480i or Standard Defintion TV (SDTV).
This worked fine for a while till bigger screens like 60″ started coming in. With them the interlacing scheme showed jagged lines because if an object moved between showing odd and even numbered lines, the borders of the object were jitterred.
Then came the progressive scan or the ability to show the full frame in 1/30 of a second. No need for interlacing. New chips and processors can handle this and much more. This is whats called 480p or 480 lines, progressive scan also called EDTV or enhanced defintion TV. The resolution for these two types was 640×480. (Ratio 4:3)
Then the two wide screen formats came in 1280×720 and 1920×1080. The aspect ratio changed to 16:9. But 1080 signal is still coming as interlaced called 1080i. People thought a progressive signal is better than interlaced, even with less information so cameup with 720 lines of progressive signal called 720p. Both of these are called high defintion or HDTV signals. Both have advantages and disadvantages. 1080i has more information but interlaced, 720p has less information but is progressive.
What will be the next thing?? 1080p. A signal with 1080 horizontal lines with progressive scan.
Siddhuism
1. Statistics are like bikinis… what they reveal is suggestive, what they hide is essential!
2. Spit on your hands! Take the black flag! And start slitting throats!
3. Wickets are like wives… you never know which way they will turn!
4. He looks like a brooding hen over a China egg!
5. It is very difficult to kill a man who is hell bent on committing suicide!
6. He is as innocent as a freshly laid egg!
7. When you are dining with the demons, you’ve got to have a long spoon!
8. If ‘ifs and buts’ were ‘pots and pants’ there would be no tinkers!
9. The ball went so high it could have got an airhostess on its way down!
10. This team is like bicycles in a cycle stand… one falls and the entire row falls!
11. The scoreboard is running faster than an Indian Taximeter!
12. The batsman is like a three-wheeler. Sucks a lot of fuel, but cannot go beyond 30 per hour..but is there always when you need.
13. The wily fox is back… it is an ill omen when a fox licks the lambs!
14. A big outcry but no outcome!
15. All that comes from a cow is not milk!
16. Just because a rose smells sweet, you do not use it in the soup!
iPod Problems? Here is a solution.
Answer: Try following steps.
1. Hookup the iPod to a power supply using the Firewire cord (connect to the AC outlet and not to a computer.)
2. Put the iPod in sleep mode by pressing the Play/Stop key and holding it for a while.
3. Reboot the iPod by holding the Top button (Menu) and the Enter button in the middle for a while. After a while you see the Apple logo and iPod reboots.
4. Repeat the step 2 and 3 again.
5. Restart Windows and if you are using Win XP make sure no other user is logged in (Two people can be logged in simultaneously on XP by the method of chosing switch user instead of logging off. Make sure you dont do that and you are the only one logged in.) Uninstall any Real Player that you have installed.
6. Re-install the latest version of iTunes from Apple’s website.
7. Now try connecting the iPod again using the Firewire or USB. And wait for a while if iTunes does not start, do it yourself but give some time before that like a minute or two. If everything went well, now you should be able to see your iPod in iTunes.
Q2: Still no luck?
Answer: Try following steps.
1. Install the latest iPod updater (on a different computer if available).
2. Connect using the USB or Firewire cable and Restore the iPod. Updating only does not help. If you had the music on iPod which you dont have a copy of, try saving the music on your computer with vPod or ElhPod applications.
3. Try the steps above again.