A,E,I,O,U Kings 4 U

Rakhi Celebration in India stands for the sacred relation between a brother and a sister. On the special occasion of Raksha Bandhan, people of all age group can realize the actual value of having their own brother and sister in their life. The bond of love between a brother and a sister is the most beautiful relation on this earth. This festival brings in the feeling of strong and divine relationship among siblings. Rakhi celebration strengthen the affectionate relationship and love among brothers and sisters.

On this auspicious day, sisters tie a rakhi or a silvery/golden ribbon around the wrist of their brothers and wish them to remain free from any evil influence throughout their lives. In turn, brothers also promise to protect their sisters from any odd situation at any cost.

Value of Rakhi thread

Rakhi is not a mere string of thread but a strong knot of never dying relationship between a brother and sister. A simple thread of Rakhi has that much of emotional strength that can create an eternal bond between a brother and a sister. Raksha Bandhan is also associated with other values like love, joyfulness, rituals, sentiments and pray to almighty God. As this festival promote these values of life, the festival of Rakhi is considered as a unique festival. The values of this great festivals overlap the boundaries of all casts, religions and nations. On this auspicious day, several rituals and traditional customs are fulfilled by the family members.

Preparation of Rakhi festival

Rakhi festival is known worldwide for its carnival spirit and strengthening the bond between brothers and sisters. All girls start preparing for this occasion many days before the festival. They start presuming the gifts which they would get from their brothers. They shop for colorful and designer rakhis. They also buy delicious sweets for their brothers. On the day of Raksha bandhan, brothers, sisters and all other family members take early bath and young boys and girls wear new and clean clothes. After the completion of all rituals and customs, they enjoy the taste of different dishes of tasty food, which are cooked in their homes.

Generally, Rakhis are designed out of silk material or thick thread. But one can also find Rakhis with some gold and silver foils. These glittering foils are often used in making beautiful array of fancy Rakhis. Colorful tattoos of cartoon characters are also being used to make Rakhis more attractive, trendy and elegant. The modernization of style of Rakhi celebration has also been taking place these days.

Many greeting card companies have been entering into the market of greeting card, and people are buying these cards and sending their best wishes to their nears and dears through these cards. As per the traditional belief, brothers sometimes bestow token gifts to their sisters that includes clothes, jewelries, chocolate boxes, sweet boxes and other miscellaneous objects.

plz comment on this.........

all credit goes to the author

disclaimer :- the info given might be wrong , or obsolete , and i am not responsible for it

if u find anything wrong , i will correct if asap

DISTURBING FACTS ABOUT GOOGLE

1. Google's immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines ; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8. Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

in addition ,

10 ) google never tells about its earnings from its various branches it only shares the total amount

11) till now google supported mozilla firefox , but now it has its own browser,

and unlike mozilla , google is not a non profit organization , and it has its own shareholders ..........

12) google owns youtube , which itself has virtually infinite copyright videos

which they remove "on notice " . but how do the company know ?

no one can monitor all the vids

people please use some other search engines sometimes just to break the monopoly ,

i know u would say that what difference will it make , but you can spread the word around .................. :)

some terms to be explained for noobs

cache copying = google copies the pages its bot visits , along with the text and images , and some can be copyrights !

Is Nokia losing its mojo? The Finnish company has been the largest mobile-phone maker in the world for more than a decade, and it remains a financial juggernaut with $70 billion in revenue. But Nokia is losing ground in the fast-growing and lucrative smart phone business. Apple, Research In Motion, and companies such as HTC that use Google's Android operating system have come on strong, creating a serious challenge for the industry leader. "Apple has [created] a superior user experience; Android is also gaining a lot of traction," says Jari Honko, an analyst at eQ Bank in Helsinki. "Yes, Nokia is in trouble in smartphones."

Nokia is unlikely to lose its top spot in mobile phones. But it could see revenues and profits suffer if Apple takes over as the largest player in smart phones, which some analysts believe could happen. Generator Research, a British consulting firm, forecasts that Nokia's share of smart phones will slide from about 40% now to 20% by 2013, while Apple climbs into the top spot. "If Nokia gets dispositioned in the segment and Apple starts calling the shots—which is what's happening now—you are going to start seeing (a larger) impact in three to four years," says Andrew Sheehy, co-founder of Generator.

Nokia is fighting hard to stop that from happening. The company is hoping to regain momentum with a series of initiatives, the most important of which is aimed at making Nokia phones as good as the iPhone at running software programs. The company is trying to attract more independent developers to create applications for Nokia phones, and it's pushing to make Nokia devices vastly easier to use—a key shortcoming today. "We're not happy with the current situation," says Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice-president at Nokia. "But you need to be careful not to focus too much on one slice in time. You will see major improvements."

Nokia is getting some traction with developers. Last year it dropped all licensing fees for the tools people use to create software for Nokia phones. And in July it created a global library of applications so developers can distribute their new apps to any wireless operator Nokia works with. The result? The number of apps in Nokia's Ovi Store has doubled in two months, to 3,500. Still, that remains far behind Apple, which offers 65,000 apps at its store.

Nokia is trying to capture some Silicon Valley magic, too. London-based Symbian Foundation, which builds the operating system used in most Nokia smart phones, has set up an office in the Valley and is recruiting heavily. Symbian expects 30% of its 200-person staff to be in the region eventually. "People say, 'What do you mean—you're hiring?'" says Larry Berkin, Symbian's head of global alliances.

Vanjoki says Nokia won't rely just on Symbian, which some techies view as limited. The company has created an operating system called Maemo for tablet computers, and it could be installed in high-end smart phones. "It will be a key future asset," he says.
Investors are nervous about Nokia's fortunes. The company's stock has slid 16% so far this year, while shares of Apple and Research In Motion have zoomed more than 80%. Apple's market cap is now three times Nokia's, though Nokia has twice Apple's revenues. Still, Vanjoki vows Nokia will come out on top. "I'm confident about the future," he says. "We are going to strike back."