Heavy rain Walkthrough

Heard that this is a different type of a game where the Games evolves through the choices we make through the game and the game finishes when all the four playable characters die.Nice isnt it

Should India stop playing international Cricket?

There is a case for it
India for long has been single handedly funding International Cricket.About 80% of the Cricket economy comes from India and all other Cricket Boards get huge revenues whenever India tours them through the sale of TV rights aimed at Indian viewers.It is time for India to make a bold decision and stop this leakage
This will be a good decision based on the American leagues.NBA,NFL,MLB all are domestic leagues with exclusive American players barring a few exceptions.But they still trump up their league as the "World" championship and have you ever wondered why the Baseball final series is called the World Series when USA does not even qualify for the finals in the recently concluded World Baseball championship.Japan won that year.America is very protective of its sport economy and have managed to keep it within its boundary.
They have managed to do it by creating a glitzy league and played down the International matches.The viewership for the US campaign for Basketball Gold in Olympics 2008 was abysmally low when compared with the ratings for the NBA Finals for that season.This provided the fact that USA came third in the recently concluded World Basket ball championship would have expected to increase the viewership for Olympics.
The reason is quite simple Americans simply dont care whether USA wins or loses in international matches but they are looking for the great visual experience in their domestic leagues which they can relate to their respective home cities.
I give full kudos to Lalit Modi for the creation of IPL which has already been valued at 4 Billion dollars for a 4 week tournament.There is scope for a couple of more leagues in cricket and it should be played year round and should try to have only Indian players as it will help to ensure that the entire sport economy of India stays within India.Indian viewers will also mature just like the Americans do and support the leagues.
Will any of this happen I dont think so.This is purely a business decision and our decision makers rarely use their heads when they make decisions.

Wonderful Bharati songs

http://tamil.techsatish.net/file/vijay-tv-pongal-special-kannamabharathi-songs/

URL Shortening Service

URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web where a provider makes a web page available under a very short URL in addition to the original address. For example, the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TinyURL&diff=283621022&oldid=283308287 can be shortened to http://tinyurl.com/mmw6lb.
Thats the service the tinyurl website provides
Thats the reason why you will find a lot of links starting with tinyurl

Racial Slurs

Just came across this file which explains all the racial slurs in the English language along with their meaning.The list is quite exhaustive
Uploaded it to esnips
http://www.esnips.com/doc/d4c20095-33bb-4aff-8c42-c04fbe8e1470/Racial-slur-database

a nice interview with Shailesh Gandi RTI Activist

List of National Highways in India

I have uploaded the List of National Highways in India in the following
http://www.esnips.com/web/balaji6161-Webarticles

What has happened to the oil in Iraq

I was browsing and analysing the economic effect of the Post Saddam Iraq through reading many articles on the subject in Iraq.First of all,lets look at what happened in the Post war Iraq regarding oil.Paul Bremer, the chief executive of Iraq representing the US ordered the full privatization of the oil resources of the country leading to the International companies readily ending owning most of the oil resources of the country.The important factor is that he has also allowed full repatriation of profits to their parent country and also with a tax rate of 15%.Morover there is no indication of any subsidies for the domestic sales.This policy is worse than Colonial times cause the only thing that Iraq has got is the oil.Ofcourse Iraq's economy will grow with the increase of oil production but Iraq will lose its hold of its resources at the hands of International oil companies who has the right to repatriate their windfall profits they will make at Iraq's expense to their parent companies.Moreover i don't think any company will agree to provide them at the subsidized rates for the Domestic use in Iraq whereas almost all oil exporting countries are providing the same at subsidized rates.Whats best is for the Iraq to have a centralized planned economy of the oil like Saudi Arabia and full control over its resources and certainly increase the tax rate along with the controls on the repatriation of profit.Iraq with its huge oil resources and the market prices for oil should have had a GDP per capita greater than the United states itself just through the export of oil.But due to the sanctions and the subsequent war they have fallen back.The Iraqi economy will still grow but certainly not at the direction in which the Iraqis will want.
A full report on the Iraqs cost of conflict based on opporunity cost is analysed and given an India based political think tank

Bruce Lee interview

Just saw this interview of the great actor bruce lee
Just liked the part where he talks about being like water

Indian Hackers haunt Victorian businesses

Sydney, Feb 12 (AFP) Australian police today said they were investigating a string of hacking attacks against Melbourne-based companies, reportedly linked to recent violence against Indian nationals.

The cyber raids, which have occurred in the past week, are being probed by a specialist taskforce, a spokeswoman said, refusing to confirm media reports that they were linked to the Indian assaults.

"The Victoria Police e-crimes squad is investigating reports of alleged hacking of a number of different business servers hosted in Melbourne," the spokeswoman told AFP.

"The ongoing investigation is in its infancy and it would be inappropriate to comment any further."

The Australian newspaper reported that several Melbourne construction and engineering firms had been attacked in recent days by a hacker called "Ghost Buster".

"Your server data have been compromised ... and have been encrypted," Ghost Buster wrote on one.

Watching poker again

This is a nice clip of Caesars Cup Team Europe V Team America
Europe won : 4 : 1

Porkalam - movie review

I watched this movie last month directed by Bandi Saroj kumar. This movie's story is very original.You have Kishore - the bad guy in Polladavan playing the lead here and he does it with sincerity.This movie intigued me from the start cause i was wondering what is that computer graphics coming up on screen whenever the Hero is walking or going to start a fight.Then the Director comes up with the surprise halfway through the movie that he is "blind".The photography of this movie is excellent.This is an "original" movie (not often do you see movies like that in Tamil.)

Duleep Trophy much more exciting than International test cricket

Who would have thought that there will come a day when Cricket watchers in India will find the Duleep trophy final much more exciting than International cricket.The series between the No 1 and No 2 of the world in cricket(IndVSA) has failed to live up to its expectations.Kallis and Amla literally killed my interest in watching the match with the least attractive strokeplay ever and on the other hand Yusuf pathan was going all guns blazing chasing an improbable 500+ runs in the secong innings.The fact that he scored more than 200 runs at the strike rate of 110 reinforced my interest in that match.Kallis and Amala could take a leaf out of his innings and try to be more entertaining than to bore the hell out of us.This year has been wonderful for Indian domestic cricket - both the Ranji and Duleep Trophy finals have been peaches and even the Indian media has started to take notice.

Australian police Bizarre remedy for attacks on Indian students

http://www.timesnow.tv/Indian-students-urged-to-dress-poorer/articleshow/4338002.cms

The article above shows the bizarre statement by the Australian police advising the Indian students to look poor.I think that the Indian students can agree to look "poor" in Australia if the Australian government agrees to change the Australian police to "Drag" Costume as they are the most girlish police i have ever seen.

Sherlock Holmes Movie Script

Just read the script of the movie"Sherlock Holmes" i loved it
Uploaded to http://www.esnips.com/webfolder/8c80f3df-b8b8-4696-87b4-778c85e34433

Another "Slum" hindi movie nominated for Oscars

There is this trend of American directors trying to depict "Poor India" inorder to get recognition on the world stage . Every year there has been a movie or docu depicting "poor India" being nominated for Oscars.Certainly the Academy seems to like these type of movies.
This year.Kavi - A story of child slavery in India has been nominated for Oscar awards 2010 for Short film (Action)
The year before - Slumdog millionaire swept the Oscars ,the year before that A short docu depicting the life of children of prostitutes in India was also nominated .Guess who is the director of that(An american for sure).Clearly the Academy has felt that if you want a story of India - it has to be about Poor india and also directed by a Westerner.All others are not worthy for selection.I'm happy that A R Rahman got an Oscar for "Slumdog Millionaire" All of us Indians know that his work in "Roja" "Taal" "Delhi 6" are far better than that crappy "Jai Ho" song.Any ways ARR is truly a legend of our times and lets celebrate his genius.