Virteacon: January 2011

2012 Myths

I was just browsing through the Internet when I came across this excellent article on the 2012 myths, it even turns out that the Mayan Calendar did NOT end in 2012, rather it was just an end of a cycle. Read the Full Article here, I have copied it below as well.
Thanks to National Geographic for providing such an awesome extract.

The end of the world is near—December 21, 2012, to be exact—according to theories based on a purported ancient Maya prediction and fanned by the marketing machine behind the 2012 movie.
But could humankind really meet its end in 2012—drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?

And did the ancient Maya—whose empire peaked between A.D. 250 and 900 in what is now Mexico and Central America—really predict the end of the world in 2012?
At least one aspect of the 2012, end-of-the-world hype is, for some people, all too real: the fear.
NASA's Ask an Astrobiologist Web site, for example, has received thousands of questions regarding the 2012 doomsday predictions—some of them disturbing, according to David Morrison, senior scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "A lot of [the submitters] are people who are genuinely frightened," Morrison said. "I've had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn't want to be around when the world ends," he said. "Two women in the last two weeks said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn't have to suffer through the end of the world."
Fortunately, with the help of scientists like Morrison, most of the predicted 2012 cataclysms are easily explained away.

To those who are totally unaware what a Nintendo 3DS is, its a Game Console which would look as shown in the pic above. It's the successor of the Nintendo DS and DSi, and similar to those consoles, it has two screens. The bottom one is a touch screen, and the new one innovates the top screen. It can show images in 2D as well as 3D, hence the name 3DS. And the interesting part is that - it can TAKE 3D pictures. Yes, you heard it right. It has 3 cameras, one facing the player and two of them pointing outwards, which would be taking 3D images. Nintendo strongly promotes the fact that this piece of magic does not require any glasses to be viewed in 3D. Hence, unless one uses it, we cant predict the experience we are into. The Nintendo 3DS is priced at $249.99

PSP 2 - Challenge to Apple iTouch?

Wondering what NGP is? Defined by Sony as Next Gen Portable, NGP is the next version of PSP(Playstation Portable) a.k.a PSP2. Now this piece of hardware looks totally awesome, a 5 inch touch OLED screen, along with a touch pad behind the screen, which is totally unconventional. But you can see how it works in the video I post below, and I should say that its quite an improvisation done by Sony. The NGP is not slim as its predecessor. It comes along with WiFi+3G, two analogue sticks, and even a rear and front camera, totally awesome composition of features plus its rigged up with Motion sensing system. Here is the video portraying all the features of this little devil -

Bermuda Triangle - Still a Mystery

The following is a true experience encountered by Bruce Gernon on how he escaped one of the World's high rated mysteries - The Bermuda Triangle. One of the oldest, yet most appealing mysteries existing in the world, has lots of explanations, but no solid ones yet. Apparently, he broke the laws of nature and physics in his adventure through the unexplained. The following is the account as per said by Mr. Bruce Gernon.
Source : www.bermuda-triangle.org

“It has become a permanent part of my memory, since I have been memorizing it for over 30 years. I have done this in the hopes that someday I will contribute to the solving of this mystery.” Bruce Gernon

My dad and I had been flying our own plane in the Bahamas since 1967, and had made at least a dozen flights to and from Andros Island. Everything seemed normal on that fateful day in December, just after 3 p.m., when my dad and I and Chuck Lafeyette, a business associate, lifted off the runway at Andros town Airport in a brand new Beechcraft Bonanza A36.
It was shortly after takeoff when I noticed an elliptical cloud directly in front of us about a mile away, hovering only about 500 feet above the ocean. It was a typical lenticular cloud, but I had never seen one that low.

Wondering what BSNL has to do with the awesome Apple iPad? Well, its a fact that BSNL is officially bringing on the iPad to India! Surprising I know, its not Airtel, neither Docomo - but BSNL. BSNL has been impressive providing 3G services all over India compared to the services provided by other vendors. The iPad would be something that every techie would be looking forth to. BSNL turned out to be the first vendor to launch 3G services, but was less impressive when the other vendors launched it. As usual BSNL turned out to be monotonous without much exciting offers, and others like Tata Docomo and Airtel have been firing on offers to boost up their 3G services. BSNL officially launched the iPad plans on 28th Jan,2011. Here is how it turns out to be -

R3B00T

Learn how this became a reality Here.

Paypal India Does it again!

Paypal India users, get ready for a ridiculous setback. Starting from March 1,2011 Paypal India is introducing a bunch of new rules regulated by the RBI, making the Firm similar to a bank rather than a free flowing online transaction system. Here is what we can find in the New rules :

"As part of our commitment to provide a high level of customer service, we would like to give you a 30-day advance notice on changes to our user agreement for India.
With effect from 1 March 2011, you are required to comply with the requirements set out in the notification of the Reserve Bank of India governing the processing and settlement of export-related receipts facilitated by online payment gateways (“RBI Guidelines”).
In order to comply with the RBI Guidelines, our user agreement in India will be amended for the following services as follows:

Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services; and
Export-related payments for goods and services into your PayPal account may not exceed US$500 per transaction.

Zuckerberg pawned in his own world

Wondering how? Most of you might be knowing, but for those who don't - Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook account was hacked on the 25th of Jan! Facebook are about to introduce drastic security changes after this incident. As a major step ahead, Facebook is introducing an 'Always On' https soon. This means that, as all other secure domains(Eg: Mail providers, and Paypal) Facebook will also be on https. I found out that Facebook has begun experimenting on this, I'm not sure whether this was available before, but when my friend tried to login from another place into my account, he was redirected to an https page which required a confirmation code(Mobile or Email) for successful login. After this event, when I tried to login, I was warned that my account was tried to access by someone and also pin pointing the area from where it was tried. I had to change the Password thereby.
This is a huge security issue coming up, the future would be exploring all kinds of measures to improve this. Facebook has also launched email service, so we can see that it would offer https pretty soon, and from then, Facebook address bar would look like this :

Birth of REBOOT

I don't exactly remember the dates, but I remember the events, how it began and finally how its going to end. Here I write down the journey of a few enthusiasts to create something new, to make it big. And thus we had buzzes, to create something new, being upcoming Final year students we wanted it to be special. In fact all of it started right in the beginning our Final Year(Correct me if I am wrong), my friend Sunny K.R put forth a suggestion to publish a Branch Magazine. That was the start, the spark to ignite a whole new flame of innovation, and thus people started to think on it seriously.

So after the initial personal discussions, the matter went to our staff and guide Mr. Sudheep Elayidom, and thereafter he lead the torch. For the magazine to launch, we came to know that we had to rejuvenate our rusted association - Association of Computer Engineering Students(ACES). That was the first step, Nawal Kishore, Sunny K.R and Mazin Ismail were the Charioteers of the movement. These people ran in and out selflessly to make the association a reality, and hence it came up. With official recognition, we had to decide a few people as the President, Secretary and Treasurer of the Association. And thus we had an election, again which was made a huge success by the above mentioned people(Sorry if I missed out any). The news spread out like a wildfire, even though we had certain set backs, the Charioteers never lost their belief. The treasurer was unanimously elected as Jiju D. and we had Contestants for the post of President and Secretary. No event will take place without difference in opinions, and it happened here too. People condemned the above mentioned for every mistake, but they were giving a 110% to make this a reality. Not many knew about this, and thus the day of election came up.

Wondering why I am writing about this now? Well, I was jobless, and not many games are being released now. So I was racking up on my collection and found out a game which I disliked the first time I played it. I thought will give it a shot, and turned out to be a pretty decent game.

Google @Cusat

This was a shock for the whole campus, I still remember the day when the staff had put up the poster of Google on the Placement Notice Board. We all thought it would be the Google Woman awards event, but it was not. Google was indeed visiting to our campus! Even the Sir of our Placement Cell had to recheck to believe it, he infact showed us the mail Google had forwarded to the cell. Google became the next big thing among the senior students making their path to life, infact this has caused a lot of confusion and anxiety among students, the word "Google" became the mantra.

Not much details were available regarding the criteria and job profile, there was a rumor that it would come with No Criteria, which were up for the grab for many unlucky people. Later the news came that the criteria was 60% throughout and no standing supplementaries, which had a setback on the campus, but was still Google. The next big setback came with the Job Profile -

Facebook responds to the Hoax

It's the world of Hoaxes, type up something controversial at your will, and people would do the rest. This is one of the worst widespread hoaxes, and I have only one advice to people - Use common sense people! Facebook is the Future! It is not going to end just like that - and certainly not an announcement by Mark Zuckerberg!

TCS Freshers - Take a Look

Read my whole experience at TCS here - My life with TCS - a Walkthrough

Updated : Read more on TCS Freshers - TCS
Was just Googling around for details on the Training Program of TCS. And I found and interesting blog on this, eventhough its about the training in 2006, its really interesting to read - I never thought I'd be in such an atmosphere again! Before that, I also found a list of certificates you need for the program.
Here is the list -

1.1-8 sem marksheet (attested xerox + original)

2. Consolidated marksheet (attested xerox + original)

3. Transfer certificate (attested xerox + original)

4.Provisional degree (attested xerox + original)

5.10th(X-th) marksheet (attested xerox + original)

6.12th(XII-th) marksheet (attested xerox + original)

7.Birth Certificate( attested xerox + original)