The new segaway human transporter

I was fascinated to know the long waiting scooter was for sale. It seems amazon is the only shop which sells this scooter and this costs 5000$ (oops!! i can buy a better car!). This scooter is now seems been given out for rent. Economic times article spoke about this. Seems this scooter runs on the battery (eco-friendly) and also contains a GPS so that the thieves cant steal it.

But what shall happen, if the thieves are intelligent (anyway!).

The sad news is the scooter is available for rent only in spokane, the second largest city in washington state. Rentals cost as much as $20 for each 30-minute increment, for up to 90 minutes Users can also pay $5 for a test drive, or "pre-glide" :)

But i would like to try one..

Anyway, Anand would be off to US for the Teched @ Dallas, i can ask him to try it if he can find one there :) i bet he is as adventurous as he claims to be :).

Its been pretty rollercoaster ride for me and was full of fun :). I had been unknowingly busy . First it was the CNUG meet, It was the second meet where i saw more people. The introduction to ORM was good. I had no idea when i came into the seminar what ORM was, i understood it. The demo by madhu was quite intersting. I wish madhu would have shown a complete cycle it would have been still better. Anyway, it went late until 9 PM, and many faces told that they also need to go home.

Good work Madhu & Arun.

Second it was more official than anything. I have been asked to go to Germany. Now i need to pack my bags once again.

Psychoanalysis

I had been making a report for my MBA in the subject called Psychoanalysis. I came across this site
George boeree . This guy is a prof in the university. He had numerous links to various tests like the BIG Five, OCEAN , etc.. Also for psycho Enthusiasts there are tons of articles starting from sigmund freud to carl gustav jung (my favourite guy).

George has also written an article on the 7 diff perspectives of a human being. Thats a wonderful article. I shall try to write a brief about this whenever i find time :)

More to come.....

Happenings..
At the end of day, the infosys sexual harassment is getting murkier...Its now opens a pandora's box and the feud between paneesh and murthy (narayan murthy) is going out of bounds. Have to wait to see its end :(

But the real news is Microsoft has lost more money in gaming components this year than the previous year. Lets have a detailed flow of info on their profits and losses division wise :)

The company's Business Solutions division, which makes and sells software to small and medium-sized businesses, had an operating loss of $67 million on revenue of $148 million.

MSN, Microsoft's Internet access and portal service, had a loss of $92 million on revenue of $619 million.

Software for devices and mobile phones generated a $42 million loss on $39 million in revenue.

Ok!! ENOF IS ENOF ...lets see where are they making profits :)

Desktop software, including the Windows operating system, had an operating profit of $1.99 billion on revenue of $2.5 billion.

Server software for managing computer networks had an operating profit of $421 million on revenue of $1.59 billion.

The Information Worker segment that includes the Office suite of document, spreadsheet and e-mail programs had an operating profit of $1.94 billion on revenue of $2.47 billion.

So seems the losses are in millions and the profits are in billions :) ...its a good news nah!!

High IQ Society

I am happy to say that i could get into the High IQ Society. i scored a perfect 132, and it requires 126 to qualify. Its a good sport..it was timed, and within 12 minutes we are supposed to complete 50 questions. And i took under 7 minutes (i took 7:44) minutes to be exact :) .

http://www.highiqsociety.org/flash/nonmembers/iqtests.htm

The only thing is if you find the time running after clicking next dont panic (i did!!), for every question it resets the time from the duration which you have clicked next . So, no need to panic... :). IF anyone else also, could get into that society drop me a line at ajay.kumar@polaris.co.in .

BTW, once you complete it ,it asks for a subscription with 59.95$ . I dont think i am gonna subscribe .. Its pretty and costly!

Longhorn release
The most awaited news is out. The release of longhorn is going to happen only in 2005. Longhorn has been in speculation for sometime considering the fact that with longhorn the dimension of PC is going to change. We have to wait until another a year and half to know what it is gonna be ...anyway, i bet its worth waiting for :)

A good puzzle
a very good puzzle... I shall take the guy for a treat if he solves this one :)

two MIT math grads bump into each other at Fairway on the upper west side. they haven't seen each other in over 20 years.

the first grad says to the second: "how have you been?"
second: "great! i got married and i have three daughters now"
first: "really? how old are they?"
second: "well, the product of their ages is 72, and the sum of their ages is the same as the number on that building over there.."
first: "right, ok.. oh wait.. hmm, i still don't know"
second: "oh sorry, the oldest one just started to play the piano"
first: "wonderful! my oldest is the same age!"

Puzzles & Riddles
I just came across a site alled www.techinterview.org a site that is useful for many logical puzzles. Its worth giving a try.

Cheers!!

Waka Waka Poem
First, the poem itself (there are many versions, this is just one):

<> ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * <> ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , system halted

In English, this reads:

waka waka bang splat tick tick hash
caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash
bang splat equal at dollar under-score
percent splat waka waka tilda number four
ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash
vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma crash

Which os are you?
I just took a OS Test ...which OS i am ...
The results are not that devasting ... :) .

Microsoft Search engine @ Google
I just read the news from sells brothers (www.sellsbrothers.com) that google has a specific search page for microsoft related sites.
and you know what it is not known to many people at all. This is purely a microsoft search engine. So search for anything and you will land up in any microsoft.com site :) . So MS lovers enjoy. The google site is at www.google.com/microsoft.html

Ajay