Asteroid will pass through earth next week ! Dont miss it !

Last month I had mention about an astroid hitting earth in January, now here are some update on the topic. Are you interested reading in it ? Read further !


By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer Thu Jan 24, 10:33 PM ET
LOS ANGELES - An asteroid at least 500 feet long will make a rare close pass by Earth next week, but there is no chance of an impact, scientists reported Thursday.

The object, known as 2007 TU24, is expected to whiz by Earth on Tuesday with its closest approach at 334,000 miles, or about 1.4 times the distance of Earth to the moon.
The nighttime encounter should be bright enough for medium-sized telescopes to get a glimpse, said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which tracks potentially dangerous space rocks.
However, next week's asteroid pass "has no chance of hitting, or affecting, Earth," Yeomans said.
An actual collision of a similar-sized object with Earth occurs on average every 37,000 years.
Spotted last October by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, 2007 TU24 is estimated to be between 500 feet and 2,000 feet long. The next time an asteroid this size will fly this close to Earth will be in 2027.
Scientists plan to point the Goldstone radar telescope in California and the Arecibo radar telescope in Puerto Rico at the asteroid and observe its path before and after its closest approach to Earth. Researchers will use instruments to measure its rotation and composition.
The 2007 TU24 rendezvous comes a day before another asteroid is projected to pass close to Mars.
Scientists have effectively ruled out a collision between the Red Planet and the asteroid 2007 WD5, estimating it will pass at a distance of more than 16,000 miles from the Martian surface. Initial observations of the Mars-bound asteroid put the odds of an impact at 1 in 25, but scientists later dropped the odds to 1 in 10,000.

USA Visa Bulletin February 2008

Fam-ily	All Charge- ability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA-mainland born	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIPP-INES
1st	08FEB02	08FEB02	08FEB02	01JUL92	22JAN93
2A	15MAR03	15MAR03	15MAR03	01MAY02	15MAR03
2B	01JAN99	01JAN99	01JAN99	22MAR92	22JAN97
3rd	08MAY00	08MAY00	08MAY00	08JUL92	01APR91
4th	08JUL97	15NOV96	08OCT96	01NOV94	15FEB86

	All Charge-ability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA- mainland born	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIP-PINES
Employ-ment -Based
1st	C	C	C	C	C
2nd	C	01JAN03	U	C	C
3rd	01NOV02	15NOV01	08MAY01	22APR01	01NOV02
Other Workers	01OCT01	01OCT01	01OCT01	01OCT01	01OCT01
4th	C	C	C	C	C
Certain Religious Workers	C	C	C	C	C
5th	C	C	C	C	C
Targeted Employ-ment Areas/ Regional Centers	C	C	C	C	C

Interesting ! American ISP to go Indian way !

* Around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.
- Company spokesman Alex Dudley, Time Warner Cable (is is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company)

This is an interesting fact to explore. Like 80-20 rules, for internet bandwidth its 50-5 rule ?!! But many of the internet users take internet as a mere facility for entertainment. Specially in country like India, where millions of internet users exists and available bandwidth is not upto the mark. 5% users eat 50% bandwidth ! Think that, rest 95% would suffer from slow internet !

Time Warner is starting internet service by download-able data size. Like we had in India early days!

Lets stop forwarding emails (which are of no use, not adding any value) like "Vote Congress" - who the hell are you to decide for me ? Forward this email to 15 and you will get surprised gift ! -Not am I a computer literate person ? Why are you trying to make me fool ?

Everyone can do following -
@ Stop forwarding such emails. DO FORWARD EMAIL WHICH YOU FEEL WILL ADD VALUE TO SOMEONE. One email can not add value to everyone, for sure. When you forward to "Everyone" in your address-book, think THRICE.

@ When you register to some groups ( Yahoo, Google etc) and if you know that you are not going to read all the emails of the group. Select the option "Not to receive" emails in your mailbox. As and when one needs can login to the group and read it.

@ Download what you need ! Many have habit of downloading everything they can find and merely they use it ! Rather, download it when it required. You may mark the link in your mailbox to store information.

@ Manage your emails, contacts, information etc systematically. That will save your time and bandwidth both.

@ Many novice people feel "great" when they send ( rather forward) email to many ! Is that s greatness ? Would term as "foolishness". Specially students and new internet learners. My ex-CEO used to take hard step to many new employees for sending such non-sense. New employee (mostly freshers) felt that they found something "great" and send that out to "everyone" including top bosses. And they got punished for it. Dont feel great about it. If its on internet and you could find it, assume that many others already know that. They are good people that they didnt forwarded it.

@ Will Saibaba or Merry or any god/goddess hurt you if you dont forward it ? Never. Do you feel your God or Goddess dont have mind to think ? If you feel, you forward it.

@ Always try to find fact about any forward you receive, like someone is need of blood urgently or any other thing. I always try to find the fact and 99% of time its a fake story. That way you dont need to forward such emails. And you can say that this is a fake story to senders and make him/her feel shame on that action.

Ooops... very long message on just forwarding.. but worth writing it.

Reliance Power & Future Capital IPOs

My Strategies to apply to these IPOs -

#Applying in both of them 100% retail subscriptions.

#Reliance Power - I will opt for part payment. So need to invest only close to 25,000 Rs. Chances are high that all fully subscribes will get around 20 shares per application. That will cost around 9000 per application. They will refund 25,000 -9,600 back to our account later. So no need to invest 1,00,000 as of now.

# Only disadvantage I see is you can not sell them on day 1 if you get shares of more than 25000. But that is not a question in this case. Other point is why one will sell it very soon ?

# Will make application of 1,00,000 in future capital ipo.

# As of now, as per rumors both IPOs will be handled by Karvy.

# Today's market crash was due to basket selling - making room to invest in Reliance Power !! So hopefully we will see market going up tomorrow with the help of Infosys result.

Keep investing !

Bill Gates and his predictions

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer Fri Jan 4, 1:04 PM ET

For the 10th time, Bill Gates will inaugurate the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by touting new Microsoft Corp. products and describing his view of the future of computing.Before you rush to the edge of your seat Sunday, consider this: Gates is a mediocre prognosticator.
In fairness, as the old joke goes, predictions are very hard, especially ones about the future. Scouting a technology on the horizon is one thing; it's another to foresee the business-execution problems and competitive troubles that might waylay it.
But hey, this is Bill Gates. That savvy guy who has spent more than 30 years atop what remains (for now, at least) the dominant entity in personal computing, a company that pours $7 billion a year into research and development. His drawing power is so strong that CES organizers always give Gates top billing at the industry's premier extravaganza.
And so, since this is Gates' last keynote before he leaves his day-to-day Microsoft duties to focus on philanthropy, it's as good a time as any to scour his track record.
Let's confine the examination to Gates' speeches at CES and Comdex, a now-defunct show that once rivaled CES. Because if we went beyond Gates' Las Vegas addresses, we'd have to mention his 2004 pledge to the World Economic Forum that spam would be "solved" by 2006. And that wouldn't look good.
First, the highlights.
They include Gates' debut of the Xbox video game console at CES in 2001. The Xbox became Microsoft's most successful piece of hardware.
In 2000, Gates correctly explained the rising importance of networked mobile devices, even as PCs were still becoming more prevalent. Indeed, the following year he predicted that the percentage of American homes with PCs would grow from just over 50 percent at the time to 75 percent by 2010.
Depending on where you get your market research, Gates more or less nailed it. Analyst firms IDC and Forrester Research Inc. say the figure has already hit 75 percent, while Gartner Inc. says we're almost there.
And if you were paying attention to Gates in 1999, you would have had early word about the importance of XML, a programming system that has made it easier for computers to share information.
As for his lesser moments ...
• At CES in 1995, Gates described a way to make "the computing experience better." Its name was Bob. Bob was a $100 Microsoft program that tried to make word processing, accounting and e-mail more intuitive. Featuring images of rooms in a house and characters such as Java, a caffeine-crazed dragon, Bob let users click on say, a piece of paper on a desk to launch a letter-writing program. The idea was very much of its time: Some analysts gasped that Bob put Microsoft way ahead of Apple Inc. in a crucial race to incorporate cartoon characters in PC use. But Bob required twice as much memory as most home computers had back then, found few buyers, and became an infamous bomb.
• In 2002, Gates told CES that "entertainment will never be the same." Why not? Because of a wireless device code-named Mira. It was a portable, touch-screen monitor that could display Internet content and music files streamed from a home PC into more relaxed settings like the couch or the kitchen. But it didn't work with the Home Edition of Windows XP; it required the pro version. And it couldn't show video. Microsoft licensed Mira's technology to hardware companies for "smart displays," yielding more hype at the 2003 CES. But at laptop-like prices north of $1,000, smart-display sales were rare, and Microsoft said in 2004 it was moving on.
• At Comdex in 2002, Gates said the next computing revolution would include SPOT — Microsoft's "smart personal objects technology." The idea was that pens, watches and other everyday things could tap into the Internet and show real-time tidbits of information, like news headlines, weather updates or sports scores. Well, first Microsoft and partner companies had to design a new operating system and low-power chips for objects, plus a wireless transmission network for SPOT data. The initial output — some watches, a weather gizmo and a coffee maker — was far from revolutionary. Only now is SPOT beginning to show real value, in navigation devices.
• Even when Gates has been right, he's been wrong. Take that 2001 speech in which Gates prophesied PCs in 75 percent of American homes. He also said that within five years, the most popular form of the computer would be the Tablet, a sleek device that responds to handwritten commands from a pen-like stylus. Gates didn't come close. IDC counted 3.3 million Tablet sales worldwide in 2007, just 1.2 percent of all PCs.
To his credit, Gates has been known to display a sense of humor about himself, so he probably is a good sport about his weakness as an oracle. But a Microsoft spokeswoman said he was unavailable to comment.