Review Of Wikipedia

One of the most compelling reasons why one should use Wikipedia is that it is open-source. For those who can’t understand the term open source think of it as something which allows anyone to edit the information present on the site. Let me give you an example Windows is closed source because Microsoft doesn’t allow anybody to edit the codes they have written for Windows though people do that and that is why we have so may tweaks for Windows. On the other hand Linux is open source. So basically open source is for those softwares which are not for profit.The huge number of users who register with the site to submit articles are also increasing daily and hence it it the most comprehensive encyclopedia which can be edited by only registering with the site. The number of articles have increased tremendously and not only in English. But be ready for the cons too. Recently, Wikipedia’s founder faced criticism of altering the article written about him. Another alarming report came in the newspaper recently that college students copied an article from Wikipedia and it was factually wrong. This is not to say that the information provided on the site is wrong but only a warning to all the people out there who think that they can directly copy from the site and think that their work is done. I shouldn’t sound too pessimistic after all this site was a pioneer for online encyclopedias.Hope you enjoy surfing this site. It has got tons of info. Just verify the info if you want it for your projects or stuff for school.Happy Surfing.

Review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter is without a doubt the book which almost all children have read today. Therefore there were a lot of expectations for the seventh and final installment of the HARRY POTTER series. But J.K.Rowling lets the fans down with the plot, the same which enthralled readers across the age spectrum with its freshness and novelty. This doesn”t mean that the book is bad, as it is a must read for all Potter maniacs which includes me.
So we have Harry and gang attending Bill and Fleur marriage which gets attacked by the Death Eaters. They escape only to find out that the Ministry of Magic has been taken over by Voldemort’s supporters and all muggle witches and wizards are being persecuted by the ministry. The Order of the Phoenix is in hiding. It is in this situation that the Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione try to search for the other Hocruxces. They find that the locket which Harry and Dumbledore had found in the cavern on the night of Dumbledore’’s demise had been placed there by Regulus Black- Sirius’’s brother.
I think Rowling loses her plot here a bit for we are now introduced to a new topic that of the Deathly Hallows. The first is a wand which is more powerful than all other wands. The second is a cloak which makes the wearer invisible. The third is a ring which brings back people to life. Voldemort knows of the wand as he tries to find it and eventually does ironically in the tomb of Dumbledore whose wand it was before death. So Harry and his friends finally destroy all the Hocruxces except Nagini and one more. Neville kills Nagini with Godric Gryffindor’s sword and here it is finally revealed whether Snape is on Harry’s side or Voldemort’s. Also a great secret is revealed about Voldemort. It’s also revealed why Dumbledore died in the previous book. Harry with the help of his friends take over the school from the Death Eaters control and here a final battle takes place between Harry and Voldemort.
So finally the good points of this book are that past secrets are revealed for example the past of Dumbledore, why he fights with Grindelwad. Snapes’ past is also revealed and this helps us in understanding his actions.
The main negative point about the book is that many characters are killed in this book. The final fight between Voldemort and Harry is also bad. I can’t understand how Harry can fight and survive (doesn’t mean he survives in the end) without actually being knowledgeable in spells like Hermione is. The spells Harry uses against Voldemort is also a big let down. All in all, this is an impossible book for Potter maniacs to ignore. For others I would suggest they should read it if it comes their way.

I will give it 7.5 out of 10.
Happy Reading.

Review of iPod Touch

After a long time I got my hands on my own iPod touch and I finally got to know why people over the world are crazy about the iPod. The touchscreen feature is really amazing as it results in only one button present on the ipod which isn”t on the screen. The sensors present in it are amazing and leave the present technology light years behind. This helps in the viewing the pictures in either landscape or portrait form. One can switch the photos just by moving our finger over the screen. For zooming one can either double click or just keep two fingers close and move them apart on the screen.Now coming to its amazing sound quality. The amplifiers in the ear-phones is out of this world. It amplifies the sound to such an extent that I advise anybody who doesn”t want to spoil their ears to hear the music at half the volume max. The video quality also is quite good and the sound quality is again just out of this world.Not only can one listen to music and see videos i.e movies, one can even browse the net  using Safari after buying an attachment( unfortunately I couldn”t get one as the hole in my pocket was already quite big) but, only in a Wifi hotspot.One can also see videos on Youtube but one requires an Internet connection first.The clock feature is also good as we can modify it to see the time of about 15 different cities at once. Apart from this you can store a ton of info about your loved ones in contact from their phone numbers to their birthdays, anniversaries, email ids etc.Now for the cons, firstly if you remove the Internet features then the iPod doesn”t have much features. Secondly, you can”t increase the space for e.g-my iPod touch has 16 GB space, now I can”t increase it to say 30 GB.Thirdly, if the screen cracks even a bit then, the device becomes unusable till it is repaired by Apple. Fourthly, the videos you might be having need to be first converted into .mp4 format only then can you watch the videos on the iPod. But the biggest and I really mean the biggest problem is that you need iTunes to put any data on the ipod. You need the latest version of the iTunes which is a 56 MB file available for download from the net. So for those of you not having broadband available home it is going to be difficult for you to synchronize the iPod. There are some other minor hitches too but they can be ignored.Just because there is such a long list of cons don”t think that the iPod touch is a bad buy. It is a priceless buy if you have Wifi connectivity and even without it, the iPod has some great features which are way ahead of the other products in its field.Just one word of caution actually two. First, choose the amount of space you want in the iPod carefully. Second take care of it as the apple of your eye and don”t let it’’s screen get scratched.Hope you have fun after buying this gizmo.

Review of “The Summons”

Ray Atlee is a Virgina law professor, recently divorced guy who gets a letter from his father- a once powerful judge in Clanton, Mississippi. His father orders him in the letter to come and meet him to settle the family estate. Ray’’s brother Forrest also receives such a letter.Once at his father’’s house, Ray finds that his father is dead and on searching the house he finds 3 million in cash hidden in a shoe box. He hides the money and doesn”t let anybody know about the money. His fathers friends help him to bury his father. He doesn”t understand who would gain from his father’’s death. This is the beginning of odd things happening to Ray. He is followed by someone who knows that he has 3 million. His efforts on hiding the money in a bank locker go waste as the unknown person pursuing him finds his locker and tries to ransack it. And all this while he can”t figure out how his father got the 3 million dollars. He wonders if his father used to gamble and tries to find out anything solid but it turns out that his father didn”t gamble. Then out of the blue he finds that his father had officiated in a case where he rewarded the plaintiffs generously. And the lawyer on the plaintiff side calls him and asks him to meet him.Ray does so and finds out that a man who worked for the lawyer may be behind the attacks on him(Ray). Finally Ray tired of all this trouble goes to his father’’s house and gets attacked. On the attacker’’s demand he leaves the money in the house and leaves the place. He receives a call from the afore mentioned lawyer that the man who was the lawyer’’s employee had been caught the previous day. Ray is totally surprised at this and gets to know who actually was behind the attacks on him and it totally shocks him. Read the book to find who that person was. It is a great twist and one should read it.Overall, I would rate the book 6 out of 10 but full marks to Grisham for the last twist.

MY VIEWS ON THE INDIAN POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

Even those who aren’t political analysts can say safely that the recent Gujrat state elections were one of the most keenly contested elections in recent history.
Before the elections, Mr. Modi’ s naysayers had said that he was outmaneuvered on all fronts. Furthermore he had lost the campaigning of the RSS. And the last straw they declared was the revolt of party seniors like Keshubai Patel and others. The media too was extremely harsh on him. In fact most of the news channels were showing negative clips and news about him. But in an almost stunning move like the rebirth of the a phoenix from ashes he came and won the elections everyone was saying he was going to lose. His unexpected win had all the news casters eating their hats.
But what was much more important than the election results were that the famed Gandhi name doesn’t stand against real development. This fact was clearly demonstrated by the UP state elections where despite the best efforts of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, the Congress showing was one of the worst in recent years.
Another thing which is happening now is that the two main national parties- the BJP and the Congress are becoming weaker, thus allowing for regional parties to hold sway over them, the Congress more than the BJP. The UPA has demonstrated this fact by giving in to the various demands of the NCP, the DMK and the left parties. This policy of appeasement has cost the country dearly a la the nuclear deal.
The congress’s naiveness shows clearly when in says that the BJP is a communal party just because the BJP says that it has a Hindu vote bank. As Mr.Arun Shourie wrote if the Congress says Muslims are its vote banks, then it becomes secular while the BJP becomes communal.
The Congress with its policy of minority appeasements is slowly alienating the majority of the people from voting for it. It only shows the level by which it has fallen since real leaders like Mahatma Gandhi led it.
The only thing which remains to be seen is that whether the Congress learns from its mistakes and stops appeasing the minorities at the cost of the majority.

REVIEW OF MAHABHARATA

The Mahabharata is one of India’’s two great ancient epics. And Rajgopalchari has as such narrated it brilliantly. It something for everybody and I am not merely saying that in a moralizing sense. It contains scenes of war, faith, love, duty, obedience, adventure. One of the reasons why it is a great book is that there are a large number of characters in the book having different natures. Even the good natured characters do wrong things at times and vice-versa. It is clearly a delight to read about how the characters have to deal with their personalities at different stages of the book. Secondly the 18 day war almost at the end of the book is supposedly its greatest plus point as one can learn so many lessons from it. To sum it up it is basically about the war between good and evil at a immense scale. It starts with the story of Shantanu the Bharata king who rules Hastinapur. On the banks of Ganga he meets his first wife,the goddess Ganga. They marry and have children. The first seven she drowns in a lake because of a curse incurred by them in a previous life. As Shantanu questions his wife, when she is in the process of drowning her 8th son,on her behaviour of killing her sons she reveals her real identity and taking her 8th son leaves him. After some time Shantanu bereft of a wife rules his kingdom in a ascetic manner and one day when he is roaming near the banks of Ganga, the goddess appears and hands over their 8th son Devavrata to Shantanu. Shantanu immensely happy takes him home and crowns him heir-apparent to the kingdom of Hastinapur.To be continued.

REVIEW OF PREY BY MICHAEL CRICHTON

Well to be fair, I had not read any of Michael Crichton’s books till now. By chance I picked up his book Prey and started reading it. As with everything there are a lot of pros and cons with the book. Though the book is not slow at any point it lacks in the story part.

It has an engaging storyline about artificial intelligence basically. A cloud of nano-particles have escaped from a research lab in the desert of Nevada which is evolving with each hour.

The protagonist Jack, a programmer is married with three kids. He finds that his wife starts to behave in a strange manner and he suspects an affair. He is unemployed and currently a house husband due to no fault of his. He is suddenly asked by his former boss to help settle a programming problem in the same research lab in the Nevada desert, where his wife works. But before he can come to any decision his wife has an accident which makes him more determined to find out what is the problem is.

What he finds, does indeed blow him away. The situation gets totally out of control and he finds himself totally at a loss. To make matters worse two of his former subordinates who were working for him in a previous job die albeit unexpectedly and to top it all his wife joins him at the lab.

Jack finally manages to stop the nano-particles havoc but upon doing that is immediately confronted with another bigger threat. This is a great twist to the story which will be ruined if I mention it here.

At the end I would rate it a 6.5 out of 10.

Happy Reading.

Fools Die- A Review

After reading Mario Puzo’s “Godfather” ,the rest of his books just don’t manage to match up to it. Sure this is a good book in its own sense and all that but it doesn’t match up in the least to the Godfather. It starts with 4 friends(Merlyn,Cully,Jordan and Diane) gambling at a hotel cum casino. While Cully and Diane work at the place the other two have come there simply to gamble. Then one night Jordan wins 400,000 $ in baccarat and pops off himself. Then onwards, Diane is totally ignored and and the book focuses primarily on Merlyn and Cully to some extent. Merlyn by the way is a budding writer whose first book flopped.Merlyn gets married,starts taking bribes, gets caught and moves to Hollywood when his second books becomes a runaway success. He has an extramarital love affair with a part time actress(Jannelle) who seems to sleep with everybody(excuse the pun) both men and women. Finally Cully dies as well as Merlyn’s brother and Jannelle as well.Merlyn survives and the conclusion is that he proceeds to the same casino where he met Jordan and Cully to gamble. It’s a book that can be read when there are no suitable alternatives but otherwise one would be better off reading The Godfather.

Conspiracy of Calaspia-Insanity Series

The first book in the Insanity series by young authors-the Guptara twins is quite promising. The storyline is quite good and overall the book is well written that is, if one manages to proceed beyond the first 100 pages or so. Of course I am talking about the uncorrected version so perhaps they might have rewritten it in a better manner. Also though the storyline is quite refreshing they then mess it all up making some parts very predictable which should not actually happen. The ending is not quite predictable but how the hero fares becomes very predictable. Though overall I feel that this is a good book by budding writers.

300, A Review

300 starts off as a basically good film with all the decription of how a boy is raised in Sparta. The director then proceeds to tell us why animosity arose between the Spartans and the Persians. The first half ends with the Spartans marching off to the defend Greece from the invading Persian forces. The second half is all about how the Spartans fight and hold off the Persians for a while before being betrayed by one whom King Leonidas(Gerald Butler) dosen’t allow to fight alongside them. The deaths of the Spartans are quick and not a long drawn out spectacle which happens in most movies. All in all I rate the film to be a good film. One point of dissappointment though, the Persians are shown as brutes and commanding a brutal army all of them who are dark skinned.