The pretty nurse says, “It’s a girl!”,

Mum s elated, “My doll s here!!”

But somewhere near or far,

An artifice is contrived…

His evil eyes has the glint,

For he has just glanced his share-

His share of something they call pesos!

A man sells the doll, another buys her…

She has crossed those International borders,

With the very blamelessness in her eyes…

She s appalled at why did he do it?!?

She s trained and tried, over and over again,

Sold and sold, by every other man…

She shuffles between her destinations,

She looks into his eyes with aversion,

A plastic beam on her mask,

Utterly abhorrent at heart…

The fire inside her is multiplying,

But she continues looking affable…

She knows her possible prophecy-

She’ll be destroyed or drugged,

She’ll be beaten or suffer from an incurable disease.

But she s already at dis-ease,

The doll inside her is aching…

She does her jail visits honestly-

She s inert if they call a criminal on being caught!

She’s doing it not for anything but survival…

Mama’s doll is no more with a heart!

The fire inside her has remodeled to ice,

Shards of ice ask her to just survive…

The man shows no signs of remorse,

He’s complacent and ‘rewards’ her…

She keeps running the race…

With a strong hope to meet a Marvel at the finish end!

Wake up, we’re her hopes…

We can paint her Marvel…

Traffic on city roads might test our patience,

Human Trafficking is testing our hearts…

Let us make her realize the finish end right now,

Elseways, every doll will loathe being a lass!!

Thank the Lord, the bell rang,
A speed-breaker to my incessant thoughts!
Just can’t visualize two lecturers at a time.
What about the timing of death?
What about birth and the biology behind?
How I wish the bell rang a lil’ late!!!

P.S. : I love this concept, I realise it too often in my dreams now!!

The chances of credence reduce even further when the name is NASA and the discovery is vision-related!

NASA’s stargazing techniques have helped protect VISION in thousands of children [literally!]

The technique has its roots in the year 1980. Scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight worked with research eye specialists and industry partners. Result – they adapted space optics technology into a new eye screening test, called ‘PhotoRefraction’! [The split words seemed very repetitive to me at the first glance.]

During this process, a beam of light shines into a patient’s eyes, bends inside, then reflects an image back to a camera. The result is something like the ‘red eye’ you might see in your vacation pictures – but this holds critical vision clues.

The image clues give a fair idea about one’s sight. For instance, if the eyes are focusing light for normal vision, the image shows a smooth ‘full moon’ of red over the retina. If the eyes have abnormalities, the image changes. Farsightedness reflects a bright half moon over the top of the pupil. In nearsightedness, the light reflects as a brighter crescent moon in the bottom half of the eye. Other potential problems also show distinct patterns of reflection.
However, it does not replace the Professional Eye Testing Procedure; instead, it gives subtle hints of early vision.

This concept is as simple as clicking a pic. Apart from this, it can be tested on any age group, not worrying if the person knows how to read, as in the traditional technique. It is painless and makes mass screening possible.

The best till date example follows…
In a single school year, more than 150,000 Alabama elementary school students were screened. Over 3,000 had early indications of Amblyopia [Lazy Eye] – the leading cause of preventable blindness in children. Left untreated after age seven, it can cause permanent vision loss. It is estimated that 1 in 40 children have precursors of this condition, which leads to 17 percent of all adult blindness.

Since the inception of PhotoRefraction, hundreds of thousands of children have been treated for eye problems that might have gone unnoticed, leading to blindness and decreased quality of life.

After all, early detection leads to early correction.Let us try finding which moon dwells in our eyes (must have heard of having only stars in our eyes!!) so that our vision is saved to see those stars high up in the sky!!!

The nation is so very elated with 10 Oscar Nominations for Slumdog Millionaire in our laps [ I know it’s a reallllyyyy big deal! ], but, a very important category has been overlooked – the short documentary film category!

Two of the final Four Nominations in the very category are from India, regionally, both from UP and dealing with Medical issues…
‘Smile Pinki’, a 39-minute film by Megan Mylan is about a little girl – Pinky Sonkar, from Varanasi, born with a lip deformity. The other, ‘The Final Inch’ by Irene Taylor Brodsky and Tom Grant, deals with the battle against polio in both his legs, based on the life of Mohammad Gulzar, a Meerut resident.

One depicts the happiness (over)felt after a corrective surgery and the other exhibits the ‘Never Say Die’ Spirit!!

Interestingly, the latter faced tons of queries from the Locals while shooting in Meerut following the anti-American feelings among Muslims, but, the crew managed it all.

Nonetheless, both documentaries were completed and submitted their entries and have reached the finals now. Congratuations and All the best to both the Teams…

Whoever the winner would be, it seems that, India is the favourite flavour for this year’s Oscars!

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, believes that, this year, Linux will outship Windows on new PCs. He backed  this up saying that, even though 2008 was a Recession period, the Linux platform positioned itself well. [ True! ]
I and every other PC developer can bet that Netbooks will really take off in 2009 and if Zemlin meant ‘Netbooks’ by ‘PCs’, he’s very correct! [ partly, the reason of which is mentioned later. ]

Since, Linux does well in this new field of Netbooks, it has a better chance of building roots there… But, Mr. Zemlin insists that, Linux will snatch the cake from Windows and dominate the Netbooks! [ My, he is so very confident, nah, over confident! ]
Beep! Microsoft is testing Windows 7 on Netbooks.

[ But, crowd would trust Linux more than Windows 7, since the latter is still in the testing stage.]
Beep!! Beep!!! Linux still has a competition from XP in case of Netbooks!
[ Hence, the word 'partly' used before. ]

Many Linux Users stress that Microsoft has been forced to extend the life of Windows XP and move up the launch of Windows 7 as many consumers and corporations have ignored Windows Vista. [ Please, do not even talk Vista, who can forget the comment made by MS Vice President Mike Nash himself - "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine", after his laptop lacked the appropriate graphics card needed for Vista ]

While Linux enthusiasts have been jonesing for more Linux share on desktops, if Microsoft sees Linux getting traction, it seems far more likely that Microsoft will drop the price of Windows XP and extend its support to maintain share. [ sounds pretty interesting! ]

The most controversial part is the ‘Cheating’ to be done by the Linux Foundation – Including a quick-boot feature on laptops and netbooks that loads a baby Linux instance for instant web browsing, so in some cases a machine will have both Linux and Windows on the box.
The funny bit is that in many cases, a user will open up a machine and start browsing without loading Windows at all. So does the Windows really count???

Not only about MS, The Linux Foundation has been pronouncing death sentences for Sun Microsystems too, [ since a decade! ] And, as it is, Red Hat is like to have a larger market capitalization than Sun.

Keeping Sun and Ret Hat aside, our brains are still stuck at the same question – Windows or Linux???

Well, for this, we’ll have to wait and watch till the Netbooks grip Utilisation Hotspots across the globe…

Who doesn’t know what a TouchScreen does???
No wonder, the China cell phones got ssso much popularity! My friend circle is a big example of this!!

Touch screens, in particular, are more and more popular because of their ease and versatility of operation as well as of their declining price.

In general, the touch screen recognizes one touch and position of the touch on the display screen, then the computer system interprets the touch and thereafter performs an action based on the touch event.

To brief this, [ now comes the core part ]
In a touch screen panel, the position of a touch applied by a user is generally determined by measuring distinct signals generated by each touch input, and then comparing the signals or ratios of the signals to calculate the position of each touch.

The sensing controller is generally composed by one or more microcontrollers, each of which monitors one or more sensors. The microcontrollers may, for example correspond to an integrated circuit (IC), which works with firmware to monitor the signals from the sensing device and to process the monitored signals and report to the processor.

There are several types of touch screen technologies including resistive, capacitive, infrared, etc.

In resistive technologies, the resistive touch screen panel is coated with a thin metallic electrically conductive and resistive layer that causes a change in the electrical current which is registered as a touch event and is sent to the controller for processing.

In capacitive technologies, the capacitive touch screen panel is coated with a material, typically indium tin oxide, that conducts a continuous electrical current across the sensor. The sensor therefore exhibits a precisely controlled field of stored electrons in both the horizontal and vertical axes—it achieves capacitance. The human body is also an electrical device which has stored electrons and therefore also exhibits capacitance. When the sensor’s ‘normal’ capacitance field (its reference state) is altered by another capacitance field, for example, someone’s finger, electronic circuits located at each corner of the panel measure the resultant ‘distortion’ in the sine wave characteristics of the reference field and send the information about the event to the controller for mathematical processing.

Sounds really Exciting to me, huh!!!

Some of these technologies, such as capacitive, are capable of reporting multiple points when multiple objects are touched on the sensing surface. The multi-touch screen is the trend of touch screen.

The technology is directed towards a touch panel with a flexible property comprising: a) A flexible layer; and b) One or more sensors configured to detect a plurality of simultaneous touching positions at distinct locations of the layer and to generate distinct signals representative of the locations for each of the touches.

Any one could jot down these aims, but lets see how this technique works with the basic implementations of TouchScreen…

The sensing device when based on capacitance…
As should be appreciated, whenever two electrically conductive members come close to each other without actually touching, their electric fields interact to form capacitance. In cases, the first electrically conductive member is a sensor and another electrically conductive member is an object such as a finger. As the object approaches the surface of the touch screen, a tiny capacitance forms between the object and the sensor in close proximity to the object. By detecting changes in capacitance at each of the sensor and noting the position of the sensor, the sensing controller can recognize multiple objects and determine the location, pressure, direction, speed and acceleration of the objects as they are moved across the touch screen. For example, the sensing controller can determine when and where each of the fingers and palm of one or more hands are touching as well as the pressure being exerted by the finger and palm of the hand(s) at the same time.

Thus, these ideas can be extended to all the technologies TouchScreen uses while being implemented…
My hands are almost itchy to use this technology man!

What’s more in store???

Windows 7 will support Multi-touch. The operating system is known to have a multi-touch mapping application, photo viewing program, and incorporation in Internet Explorer 8. In January of 2009, Microsoft joined with other investors who invested twenty-four million dollars in N-Trig Ltd., which plans to make computer hardware that takes advantage of Windows 7′s multi-touch support.

Lets wait for this OS now!
Thank you Microsoft!!

1.Across Series 3 – 5, Ross remains the same age (29) for all three years. In Series 3 he tells Chandler, “No thanks, I’m 29″ when offered chocolate milk; in Series 4 when the guys try to party without Gandalf they all say they’re 29; and in Series 5 when he’s trying to reconcile with Emily, he says either he does, or he would get divorced for the second time before age 30.

2. In S1 E1 a lady is seen walking past the window of Central Perk. In series 10 the same clip is used – everything’s identical despite 10 years passing.

3.The Chick changes breeds and gender a couple of times. It starts out as a full size White Leghorn. During the adolescent phase it is a female White Silkie. This is a bantam or small size chicken. In maturity it is a male White Leghorn.

4.In the pilot episode, the guy Rachel left at the altar is called Barry Finkel. In all the other episodes his name is Barry Farber.

5.Mr Heckles’s apartment number changes from 8 to 5.

6.While Chandler is trying to break up with Janice, and Pheobe comes to help, a cameraman is visible in the background (outside of Central Perk) walking from right to left. The camera cuts away from the window angle, then cuts back, showing another cameraman walking from left to right. [in The One with the East German Laundry Detergent. ]

7. After Chandler asks the woman out, he runs back over to the group shouting, “She said yes! She said yes!” As he does this Joey can be seen mouthing the line. [in TOW the Butt. ]

…and this goes on and on and on, I love ‘em, so will stop here itself[ before I get cursed by David Crane and Marta Kauffman {also! } , they're the show creators. ]