Beware of Hoax email – Two Moons

I have recently received an email from one of my colleagues. It says:

 

Subject : FW: Two moons

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THIS

** Two moon on 27 August ***

27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for………….

Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky Starting August.

It will look as large as the full moon to the naked Eye. This will happen On Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch The sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons. The Next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.

Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY Will ever see it again.

  

I was very much excited to see this event. But fortunately I made some investigations before forwarding this to my friends.

 

My research revealed that it was a hoax message.  This rumor was first begun circulating in 2003, it went around again in 2005, it appeared for the third time in 2006. It is now 2008, and making the email rounds again. How many times can a “once in a lifetime” event occur?

Actually the Mars cannot come too closer so that it could be comparatively bigger like the Moon. Mars will always appear as a star from our earth. It can be seen brighter sometimes due to changes in orbital distance but it cannot be visible as big or even as a amall part of our Moon.

Find out what NASA has to say about this here.

Johnlee Sam

Interesting way of Marketing

In 2002, Sony Ericsson hired 60 actors in the cities to meet strangers and ask them

“Would you mind taking my picture?” They were handed a camera-phone (of course Sony Ericsson) to take the shot, after that the actor would remark on saying what a cool gadget it was. And thus an act of civility was converted into a branding event.
 
This was an interesting way of marketing the product. Read this and more here

Johnlee Sam

What I like to read?

When I watch TV or read newspapers and magazine I often think that how can they publish such substandard materials and oversell the nonsense. Whenever anyone ask why they don’t publish much about the stories about some substantial service in the various fields the answer is, “It doesn’t sell.” People are more willing to read nonsense gossips than what an obscure person is doing to educate street children. Is it correct?

 

I read lots of newspapers and magazines. The majority of them include:Readers Digest, India Today, Times Of India, Economic Times, Vanitha.

Among all these I rate RD as the best magazine.

 

Reader’s Digest was founded in the U.S., its international editions have made it the best-selling monthly magazine in the world. The magazine’s worldwide circulation including all editions has reached 21 million copies and over 100 million readers.

 

Reader’s Digest is a monthly general interest family magazine. Although its circulation has declined in recent years, the Audit Bureau of Circulation says Reader’s Digest is still the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States, with a circulation of over 10 million copies in the United States, and a readership of 38 million as measured by Mediamark Research (MRI).”

 

Now I would like to tell you what does this magazine publish? details of lives of Jennifer Lopez or Pamela Anderson? Certainly not. This magazine sells optimism, extraordinary battles of ordinary souls, clean humor, family values etc. Reader’s Digest sells and sells better than other magazines whose editors claim that story of ordinary mortals don’t sell.

The most interesting segments of the magazines are:

Word Power – Learn new English words.

Laughter, the best medicine – Jokes and fun the real humor

Life is like that – Humor and real life experiences.

All in a days work – Unforgettable experiences at workplace

RD Health – Tips and information about health

RD Challenge – Brain Teasers 

And the remarkable things are … You just get one and read today to discover. 

Enjoy…

 

 

FMCG Directory

Frauds at Bangalore Petrol Pumps

Operators at various petrol pumps in Bangalore (may be in other cities too), are cheating customers by breaking up the delivery of petrol in two steps, and distracting them in between the steps. Most of us are conditioned to check only when the meter first starts running, and when it finally ends. If the petrol is given to us in two batches, some of us either miss (or are distracted) at the point when the meter needs to be reset to start the next batch. Operators take this opportunity to make money on our expense.

I noticed this 4-5 times when I was filling the petrol by measure. I noticed that the operator pretends that he has not listened the requirement properly from us. For example if you ask them to fill 5 litres. They will deliberately fill 1 litre and stop. when you say again that you required 5 litres, they will continue filling petrol and the meter shows 4 litre count. Here is the catch. You will feel that he has filled 1 litre first and then 4 litres in the second batch so total 5 litres. But the truth is he didn’t reset the counter. insted he has increased the counter to 4 litres. We think that it is additional 4 litres. but the fact is that it is total 4 litres. So, you got 1 litre petrol less. This is the cheat.

So beware of these people when they dont fill the petrol in one shot and always ask them to reset the counter to zero before each fill (whether you are continuing the filling).

Johnlee Sam

‘Aaj Tak’ news channel is become ‘Ad Tak’

This is to check that whether the popular news channel ‘AAJ TAK’ is going to get renamed as ‘Ad Tak’. Because it seems that they have limited themselves to ads.

 

Like everyone else I am also interested in being updated with the latest news. I prefer reading the news online. I watch news occasionally when I am at home. Most of the time I see news on NDTV, Aaj Tak and CNBC.

 

Recently I was watching news on the so called award winning (three years continuously for best News Channel) news channel Aaj Tak. I felt that those guys are gone far the way on just making money. It is no more a news channel. Whenever I tune to the channel it is showing the Ads. These people are misusing their popularity and fooling the viewers.

 

The recent example is of the news of the Noida double murder case (Aarushi-Hemraj murder).  The channel has highlighted the news so much that the entire nation is watching the news daily to see any big breakthrough for more than a month now. And I am feeling very bad to express that the channel is badly exploiting the interest of the viewers.

I observed that the channel was coming up with lots of breaking news segments on this story. In this news segments they pretended that they are going to do a big news flash in this case. Their correspondents were spying the entire seen. But all to just display ads and making money. I was shocked when I accidentally saw one of the segments. The news presenter says ‘Please don’t go away, we are going to make a big disclosure in this event’ and the advertisement starts for next ten minutes. Immediately after resuming to the news they will remind the points which they have told just before the break. And to my utter surprise, they again say ‘Kahin mat jaayiye. Abhi aur bhi khulase baaki hein’ and take the next break within one minutes of resuming. Literally this is the truth. I was stunned. I ended up watching up only ads for 45 minutes and nonsense and rubbish news in a segment of one hour. It is really shameful.

 

I believe that they would have badly raised their TRPs only by doing this. Now I think that this is the secret to become the number one news channel. Just give the viewers an impression that they are investigating and covering every bit of the news by deploying too many correspondents who are behind the scenes day and night and getting this kinda bogus news.

They have made the life of Noida police miserable as those fellows stated some childish theories and arrived at some weird conclusions because of the day by day pressure built by the involment of media. They didn’t even let the CBI to investigate the case in peace. I remember the scene when they were showing a footage of their correspondents interviewing the accused ‘Krishna’ while the CBI was taking him for the Narco Test. Their correspondents were chasing them in the plane and at that airport too. This is really interrupting the system and it should be not tolerated. The news channels may have the rights to express their views and opinions. They also have the right to reach the bottom of the story by doing all the investigations. But I think that they should not be allowed to interrupt in the activities of such dignified bodies like CBI.

 

I don’t think that they will succeed in their wicked deeds. The public is not fool. They know what information is get and they will look some other alternatives to get it.

 

 

Johnlee Sam

IPL Match – Sachin the worst

I am not a cricket crazy. But I don’t hate cricket. I watch a match whenever I have a good mood or the match is interesting.

I watched some of the innings of the IPL 2008. Last night I watched the IPL final and that was an exciting match. I don’t think we could have a better finale to this tournament. Rajasthan after beginning as the least likely to win at the start of the tournament went on to win the cup. My congratulations to the Rajasthan team and supporters. Chennai, hard luck but very well fought.

Mumbai Indians is team which I dont liked. I dont like the players like sachin in the match. I know many of you take him as GOD. But don’t mind I personally have a bad opinion about him. I agree he was a good player. But I think he never does anything for the team nowadays. All he does is for benefiting himself. Getting endorsements and publicity. He is totally out of form. I think he should retire now.

Anyways the new boys are doing well.
My best wishes to:
MS Dhoni
RP Singh
Yousuf and Irfan Pathan

Keep it up guys.

Johnlee Sam

Why calculator and telephone have a opposite key layout to a computer numeric keypad?

Have you ever thought that why a calculator and a touch-tone telephone have a opposite key layout to a computer numeric keypad?

I tried to investigate the reason behind this. I don’t have the correct theory but a few theories exist.

The first theory is that When the touch-tone telephone was being designed in the late 1950s, the calculator and adding-machine designers had already established a layout that had 7, 8 and 9 across the top row. Data-entry professionals, and others who used calculators were quite habitual at navigating these keypads. They use to hit the numbers extremely quickly, which was great for data entry, but not so great for dialing a touch-tone phone. The tone-recognition technology could not operate effectively at the speeds at which these specialists could dial the numbers. The telephone designers figured that if they reversed the layout, the dialing speeds would decrease and the tone-recognition would be able to do its job more reliably. This theory has little proof to make it reliable, but it does make sense.

A second theory refers to a study done by Bell Labs in 1960. This study involved testing several different telephone-keypad layouts to find out which was easiest to master. After testing several layouts, including one that used two rows with five numbers each and another that used a circular positioning, it was determined that the three-by-three matrix that had 1, 2 and 3 across the top was the easiest for people to use.

Another theory is based on the layout of a rotary telephone. On a rotary dial, 1 is at the top right and zero is on the bottom. When designed the new touch-tone keypad, putting the 1 on the top-right didn’t make much sense, because Western writing is read from left to right. But putting 1 on the top-left, and the subsequent numbers to the right, did make sense. Using that formula, the resulting rows fell into place, with zero getting its own row at the bottom.

All of these theories are there to explain why telephone and calculator keypads are exact opposites, but none of them can be pinpointed as the actual reason. It is common practice today to use the telephone-keypad layout when designing new products that utilize a keypad, such as ATMs.

Johnlee Sam

Google Cannot Serve more than 1000 results

Today, I was wondering why people don’t go beyond initial 2-3 pages of their search. Maybe, it is the interface of the search engines which promotes such behavior or maybe people really don’t care to go beyond initial pages.

Whatever be the case. I decided to visit the LAST page of Google’s search results. To get the total number of search results from Google (for example, it is 108,000,000 for the term AJAX), I divided the number by 10 and then modify the Google’s search URL accordingly (for example, for 2nd search page the URL is: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ajax&start=10&sa=N.
So, my hypothesis was that the URL for last page for AJAX results would be http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ajax&start=10800000&sa=N.

Well, I tried going to that URL. And for my surprise Google, in small-greyish-dull-looking-font, says “Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 10800000.)“. I tried some other number which was greater that 1000 but the same result.

Did I commit a crime for asking results starting from 10800000? If Google claims to have found so many results, why doesn’t it shows so many results? Then what is the use of saying “Results 1 – 10 of about 108,000,000 for ajax. (0.18 seconds)” if I can’t go beyond 1000 results?

Its Pathetic. Frustrating!

zneyindia.com