The Academy Awards 2009

So lets talk about Academy Awards, yeah The Oscars! Commenting about the best picture, yeah Slumdog Millionaire really deserved that award. It was a perfect blend of good story, perfect cast selection and perfect shooting spots and of course great music. I can't really comment about the best actor and actress because i haven't seen both of those movies. Anyways, coming on to the red carpet, Angelina entered with an elegant black gown (not the best though). She looked stunning in that hair-do and was looking most beautiful. Among the guys, (ahem:P) this tall guy called Dev Patel stood out. (Ahh! I still can't get that smile out of my head that he flashed when he posed for a snapshot.....Yeah! Yeah! I know he is too young for me:D). 

In my opinion Amanda Seyfried was the best-dressed. She looked gorgeous in that brick red Valentino gown with this pretty bow embellishment.

About the supporting actor I do have an objection, I mean who on earth thinks Chritian Bale played the lead role in The Dark Knight. I would rather say the Two-Face, Aaron Echkart had a greater part in the movie than him. At least the Academy Awards should have nominated Heath Ledger in the Best Actor's category,if they could not give it. 

What the hell goes wrong with Mark Zuckerberg every February?

I think Mark has a special entry on his calendar every February maybe which says "Annoy the Users" and then maybe some days later "Settle down The Matter". Last February Facebook made an announcement which meant to deliver the message that we might not be able to delete our personal data ever.....EVER from Facebook but later after a demand from several thousand users the restriction was removed, enabling the permanent deletion option.

This February there was a change in terms of services again. This time it said that the data you upload on Facebook will be the property of Facebook and maybe it might use the data anyway it likes to (maybe license your personal pictures out to companies etc.). Obviously there was an uproar against this change too which made Facebook back down again. 

But what remains a mystery is that why did Mark ever want to own our personal information?What did he possible want to do with it?:-/

A shock that recharges your car!

Sounds pretty kool right? Well these MIT guys have created a shock absorber thing known as GenShock. It works in a way that it harnesses energy from small bumps on the road, generating electricity. The team says that they can produce upto a 10% improvement in fuel efficiency by using regenerative shock absorbers. So, if you have a car equipped with GenShock you want mind those chuckholes:-)

They started the research with the question that where is most of the vehicles' energy getting wasted and they came up with the conclusion that a big part of energy is wasted on travelling on bumpy roads. I tried to gather information regarding how this GenShock actually works but couldnt really get some handy details.

They have calculated that a company such as Wal-Mart could save $13 million a year in fuel costs by converting its fleet of trucks. Now thats what I call Technology!:-)

Cryopreseravtion - Trying to cheat death?

Have you ever heard the idea of being dead but not leaving the world completely? Well here is an interesting phenomenon that helps you in doing so. This interesting concept is called Cryonics.

In this process at the time of “deanimation” your body will be cooled down and filled with a kind of antifreeze. Then the body is put in an insulated capsule and kept frozen with liquid nitrogen. The idea behind doing all this is that your body will remain in this state till the doctors can figure out the cure for whatever killed you and once they are up with the solution they will thaw you out.

Cryopreservation costs from a range of $33,000$to $150,000. I don’t have much idea about why there is such range because it is useless even if you spend the largest amount for it. Anyways, Cryonics can only be legally performed on humans after they have been performed “legally dead”. Now here I’ll explain you different kinds of deaths. One is the kind I just mentioned, legally dead, that means a legal pronouncement by a qualified person that further medical care is not appropriate and the person should be considered dead. Then another kind of death is clinical death; a term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing. Then we have the information-theoretic death. This kind of death is associated with the destruction of the human brain to such an extent that theoretically it is impossible to recover the original person. The justification behind cryonics is that people who are clinically or legally dead might not be dead according to the definition of information-theoretic death which means that they can be brought back to life maybe after a couple of years.

Presently, this process of cryopreservation is irreversible i.e. there hasn’t been any successful attempt of bringing a person back to life once preserved. Still many people are in favour of the idea, specially the rich ones. “You can’t take it with you” is what they hear from their children or maybe elderly parents so what if they never leave the world completely? What if the doctors succeed in reanimating their body so then they can start suing whoever had been blowing away their money maybe in the past 1000 years or so. Because there is no near future of this thing. In fact, there is no future of this thing! I think that people who are spending their thousands of bucks on this thing should rather give away this money for some better causes. They can’t be brought back to life again anyway.

Obama's Blackberry - My research over the matter

Now that Obama has won the fight for keeping his Blackberry and e-mail, a number of security issues arise. "He has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends in a way that will be limited and security-enhanced to secure his ability to communicate, but to do so effectively and do so in a way that is protected," Robert Gibbs said.

Since Obama is considered a change agent and also a friend of technology, some have said it might be valuable to see him take advantage of quick access to e-mail and the Internet. A BlackBerry in the hands of the most powerful man in the world might serve as a valuable channel for feedback from advisers, average citizens and even rivals.

The real issue with communicating over e-mail is that it's too risky for a president, since nobody can prove he did or didn't send an e-mail. Also, there are worries about spies tracking Obama's whereabouts, since a BlackBerry keeps transmitting to get new e-mail off RIM's Network Operations Centre. That information can be used to track someone's location, a real danger for a U.S. president in an era of terrorism. Spies can use radio tracking equipment, similar to that used by military forces around the world to track troop movements.

RIM has in the past built BlackBerry devices for certain customers that include software and hardware to add high-level encryption. With such end-to-end encryption, which relies on the Advanced Encryption Standard 256(AES-256), it would be hard to imagine "even a foreign power throwing huge computer power to brute force crack that kind of encryption," he said. But encryption is not the weak link in using a BlackBerry. The weak link is how he could prove that he didn't send an e-mail to a woman claiming he had a link with her?
“If it were a regular BlackBerry, the Chinese and Russians would be devoting millions of dollars to get into it” said a security analyst.

Even though Gibbs repeatedly called it a BlackBerry, some say that the handheld is probably something else. The device Obama pulled from his pocket looked too large to be a BlackBerry. Its silver skin looked like that of the Sectera Edge, which is already being used by thousands of federal government workers.

The security analysts say that Obama will use the Sectera Edge, designed by General Dynamics Corp. and L-3 Communications, because it meets the government's highest security requirements. It runs on Windows CE software, not the BlackBerry operating system, and it presumably would not rely on an e-mail pathway through a network operations centre outside of the U.S. as the BlackBerry does, with NOCs in Canada and Europe
While speculation generally centers on Obama using a Sectera Edge, Fran Jacques, a spokeswoman at General Dynamics in Scottsdale, Ariz., said she could not confirm that Obama is using one. Two security analysts said the Sectera Edge could well be the device Obama will use because it will resolve many of the security concerns, including the need for super-encryption of messages. Despite new talk about encryption, a security expert said the main issue about how the president would use his super-encrypted BlackBerry is whether it was being used for contact with people outside government. If Obama wanted to reach an outsider via the BlackBerry, then the person getting his messages would need to have a BlackBerry equipped with super-decryption capabilities. That's not likely to happen because of the cost involved in sharing encryption technology for public use, said Daniel Castro, a senior analyst for security matters at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Castro said in an interview that the biggest security threat with using a standard wireless device is that a foreign government or a group perceived as a threat could triangulate his location fairly easily. Castro also posited that an outsider could turn Obama's BlackBerry into a microphone that could then transmit voice messages to an outsider without Obama's knowledge.

“Perhaps the NSA and US telecommunications companies have created a special, more secure digital pathway for Obama's messages to travel on, one that would resist the inevitable penetration attempts by foreign governments” says a blogger Marc Ambinder

Ironically, Obama will be limited in the circle of people he can communicate with over the handheld, just when the new president was hoping to reach out to more. "That's what it's like to be president," Castro said.

President Barack Obama said in a television interview broadcast that he has a very secure handheld device, but he would not divulge whether or not he's still using his coveted BlackBerry. "It has everything," Obama said in an interview shown on NBC, referring to his handheld and its security and other features. "It can turn into a car." he said for a laugh. Obama hasn't shown the device publicly, only offering a glimpse of the handheld's backside when he made a press room appearance on Jan. 22.

The people who know Obama's top secret email address are exceedingly few: Biden, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, senior adviser David Axelroad, press secretary Robert Gibbs, a few other top advisers and a selected group of friends from Chicago. Even some cabinet members, like Defence Secretary Robert Gates don't have his email address. And, it's likely that his top secret email address will be changed on a regular basis.

If you are lucky enough to get an email from him, it's encrypted in such a way that it can't be forwarded to your parents, or anyone. No attachments will get through, either.

Anyways, whatever it is I guess the media should get over it now. Enough of Obama’s Blackberry and his e-mail. I think they should let Obama live the way he wants and get a life for themselves too.