How I got trapped by a TV show..!

I m sharing this story with all my friends so they dont fall for traps like this...

Last week i was at my friends place in bangalore watching television around 11:30 pm swapping channels as usually, got struck with Image channel, watching some show. Show was that anchor was showing actress photo and to identifying the actress from small part of picture shown on screen. I could easy figure out the actress was shilpa shetty, who ever would answer that will be awarded Rs 90k and even if you answer wrong award was Rs 3k.

I thought i could try my luck my just dialing at STD calling rates, it is around 30 paise/minute for my connection and wining that price would be high on my luxuries, (usually i never do this but price money tempted me..!). I was on line waiting for my chance to come. Computer tone says that "Keep waiting on the line, you will definitely get you chance so be ready with your answer". So was i waiting for my turn to come. I was waiting on the line for more than 15 minutes after some time i realized that there was a scrolling running down the screen in very small letter which was difficult read in my friends portable television. Its says that Per call charges are Rs 12/- minute..!!!!

I felt like what the GOOF BALL..!!! I was never intended to pay so much. By the time i disconnected the call it was around 20 minutes, they charged around Rs 240/- I m not pretty sure how much they play fair game but really i feel it was a perfect trap for the viewers. After discussing with my roommate, his said that his colleague had tried the same few days before and he was on call for longgg time and he had a post paid connection..!!!!

Simple Fixes, great results for Thermal Heating and BIOS problems

 The last month my PC was having serious issue. It shuts down all of a sudden without any warning message or even a beep sound, as soon as i open youtube or yupptv or live cricket or multiple browsers at once it shuts down in 5 to 10 minutes maximum. Then i was force to not to open these kind of stuff, so had to just check my mails and shut it down (If it gives me a chance to do that!!). When i boot is again after few minutes it says that "shut down has occurred due to thermal heating press enter to continue".
 
Then i enquired with in an PC service center he said that, heat sinks or CPU fan may not be working properly so to may cost around Rs 3000 to 5000. This was alarm on my monthly budget. To give a last try i has check with my friend who work in this areas. He suggest me that CPU fan or heat sinks do not fail that easily as my system was just 3 years old and suggested me to buy an thermal paste.

Got that from the near my computer service center for just Rs 20, opened the CPU cabinet slowly removed the CPU fan as it pins are very delicate and fixed very tightly with plastic screws. (Only open if you know exact procedure to open, if broken they may not be available in stores, that would be another head ache!!). Remove the white color paste between CPU processor and heat sink. Clean it completely as it might have gone dry and lost it property of heat transfer. Now apply the thermal paste on processor head and on heat sink where it contacts processor. Only apply a very very thin layer of paste on it (Not usually like paste you apply on tooth brush). Fix back the CPU fan properly with screws tightened. After doing so it solve my problem.

Another serious and confusing problem i faced regarding my system was with system OS. Windows operating system fails to load the system, or it gets hang after opening IE or use to behave strangely or system will not boot properly it will take long time to load. So i thought operating system got corrupted may be cause of virus. So i have format the C drive and load the OS again. But the problem was not solved this was happening again an again so i planned to switch to Ubuntu (Linux OS). Even that did not work..!, then i though hard disc might have got bad some tracks due to repeated formatting and installations.

Then i enquired with in an PC service center he said that, he said that mother board might have failed, for some reason i usually do not trust these guys, so then after browsing on internet i found that this may happen due to BIOS failure also. BIOS failures may occur if it is unable to store the default settings, this usually happen in two cases if mother board itself is of gone case or if CMOS battery dies out. So as first one was expensive and had to loose my data, i thought it would be great it if second option works.
C Programmer's Guide to Net Bios
Brought a CMOS battery from stores cost Rs 20 and then replace the old one. Then i again formatted the system and installed the windows OS, then after happily it never gave me a problem again..!!!

Why Telangana need to a separate state??

To read on this article readers please visit my new exclusive blog on this topic.

http://jayahotelangana.blogspot.com/

please don't forget to post your views in comments tab..

Thanks for reading....

Does video games spoil kids??

I would like to share my personal experience about video games.

Last month on vacation i went to my home town for couple of weeks. Like most of us, Internet has become very much part of my life, can't stay away from it for couple of day. I usually spend most of my leasure time in browsing stuff of my interest. As i had not carried my laptop to home town, i had to look for some local net cafe center (even though net speed is dam slow). My home town has 4 to 5 Internet cafes, i usually go to near by cafe which had 9 old desktops approx all in white..!!

On a Monday morning i was in real hurry to do some money transfer to one of my friend, who need it in urgent and send out some important mails to office. The moment i reached the net cafe i was saw a bunch of kids in the cafe(age group of high school). I asked the cafe person that "can i get a system by chance?". He smiled at me and said "this week is full of holidays so all the kids are here to play video games, not sure but you may get one after an hour". So i returned back home, had to kill some time at by watching TV stuff, then came back to cafe hoping to get one.

I was given the same old reply by the cafe owner. So i moved to next cafe check out (hoping to get one). Annoyingly, this cafe was also much busy with kids all over the place playing games. I waited for half an hour there turned back home and to come in evening.

In the evening when i went to my near by cafe with serious intentions to finish my work. Shockingly kids were still glued to computer playing dam seriously like hell, this time i got wired and ask owner to get me one boss!!!, but he said i had no other option than using cafes owner desktop to finish of my work(which he usually does not allow customer to use it). Quickly i finished my work and turned back.

From my observation i figured out that kids were playing without a break for hours together(some had skipped lunch also), as they were are of such kind which take hours to finish one game, cafe owner make decent money by make kids to addicted to games(I observed this even with some big boys). Video games make kids to get more aggressive towards them and losing interest on studies and even rest of the real world around them. So i think parent should keep an eye on kids, what they do in holidays. Its far better if they do send kids to training camps of some physical games or dance or music class which would build self confidence rather than this mind hijacking games.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment on the topic.

How Companies Make Money??

Hi Readers, this week posting is contributed by my dear friend Sana Khan

To understand how companies make money, let me take few classic examples from different sectors of our industry.

Firefox
Firefox one of the most popular application on Internet and highly used freeware software in computer history, so how do they buy time and money for their research and development projects?? Firefox actually earns approximately $ 40,000,000 per year!! Google pays all this amount on making Google as default search engine toolbar on Firefox main page. The deal with Google helps Firefox to earn there 85% of total earnings. People also donate to Firefox for there development work, donation also plays an important role in earning money. And rest of money comes from T-shirts and other accessories with high price tag at Firefox stores, people like to have brand on what they wear and use.

Media
To explain how media makes money, let me take an much localized example of our Telugu Television Channels and Newspapers. Media earns a large amount of share from advertisement. Ads are of two categories Commercial and Entertainment. The market rate for 10 seconds advertisement on Television varies from Rs 7000 to Rs 30,000 on non-news channels like Gemini TV, ETV and Maa TV. These are going rates for commercial products such as real estate, cosmetics, Mobile phone, insurance and all other ads you see on TV. Usually Commercial ads are buyed on annual basis. The Rate of Entertainment ads would be fraction of the commercial ads, with varies from Rs 1900 to 2500. This concession is mainly because movie trailer also have 'entertainment value' for the channels and of interesting to audience too.

Pepsi and Coca Cola
Its really amazing to know how much these beverage companies make out of each sale. As they manufacture these products in bulk so that would not cost them much. Lets take a small exam of Aqua water bottle sold at various bus stops, railway station and shopping malls would cost around Rs 14/- Liter. Almost with the same quality localized home deliver suppliers are selling 20 Liters of water Can for Rs 25-40 approx with fair enough profits. This clear shows how much these beverages companies make out of each product. Lets take another small exam of cool drinks
For instance price of coke = Rs 12
The total cost of production filtered = Rs 2.50
For whole sale dealer's profit margin = Rs 1.00
And for retailer = Rs 0.50

Remaining Rs 8/- goes directly into the pockets of Companies. Out of these ample profit they spend little amount on advertising and branding. As these companies are usually MNC's major amount of profit is shipped across the sea's sadly... People may have to think of some alternative Indian products which would help our nation at least to circulate our money with in the county.