Mayur's Posterous

Indian Rupee Symbol to be Decided Today

The Union Cabinet will today decide on the symbol for Indian Rupee, a privilege (unique identity) available only to major currencies like dollar, euro, pound, sterling and yen.

Indian Rupee Symbol

 

Indian Rupee Symbol

The proposal, said to be prompted by the growing influence of the Indian economy in the global arena, involves a shortlist of five symbols (finalists above) for the Indian rupee drawn up the finance ministry, reflecting the Indian ethos and culture (via)

A year back, Government announced contest to design the symbol (winning entry gets Rs 2,50,000) and the prime criteria for the selections were

  • The symbol should be applicable to standard keyboard.
  • The symbol has to be in the Indian National Language Script or a visual representation.
  • The symbol should represent the historical & cultural ethos of the country as widely accepted across the country.

Take a look at the five options above. Which one do you think should be the winner?

 

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Spain 1 - Portugal 0

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I couldn't watch the entire match but good to see Villa keep Spain's hopes alive. I caught the final 20 minutes of the match at a local cafe outside Grand Al Mariah and the Arabic commentary was ... better than hearing those goddam vuvuzelas!

"WALLAH SERGIO! WALLAH ZORRO! YA SALAAAAAAAAAAAAAM EL NUNO! WALLAH RAMOOOOOooooOOOOOooooSSSSS!!"

Did you know that YouTube has a vuvuzela option on every video on their website? Seriously, load up a video. OK, this video and click on the soccer ball that's on the bottom right. BZZZZBZBZBBBZZZZZZZBBZZZZBZZZZZZZZZ

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Android 2.2 FRF85 Update For Nexus One Rolls Out - DeviceMAG

The final update for version 2.2 of the Android operating software has been released by Google for Nexus One handsets on the AT&T and T-Mobile network. Google has also released an update file on its Android site that allows for the new update to be installed on any build of the Android OS.

The update called FRF85 that has been “bulletproofed” became available first as an OTA update for AT&T Nexus One users and later became available for T-Mobile Nexus One users. This is the first build to be distributed on a wide scale that offers support for version 10.1 of Flash.

The latest build will also support the WiFi mobile hotspot feature as well as internet tethering on Nexus One devices. Support for multiple Latin-based keyboard languages is also included in the FRF85 build. There will also be an improvement in the performance of the handset after installing the update.

The Android 2.2 FRF85 update for other Android-based smartphones from manufacturers such as HTC and Motorola will also become available later, though it could take some time owing to the customized user interfaces that are present in those phones.

The Android 2.2 FRF85 update file that is compatible with all the previous builds of Android is available for download here. Else, you can keep checking the notification bar of your Nexus One phone if you are interested in an OTA update.

Source: Engadget


I still can't see the OTA update. I'll try updating manually and report back.

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Predators

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Entourage season 7

This trailer was ... what's the word I'm looking for? ... MEH

Anyway, enjoy the opening credits:

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I Think You're Fat - Esquire

Brutal Honesty

Dan Winters

Brutal Honesty

Here's the truth about why I'm writing this article:

I want to fulfill my contract with my boss. I want to avoid getting fired. I want all the attractive women I knew in high school and college to read it. I want them to be amazed and impressed and feel a vague regret over their decision not to have sex with me, and maybe if I get divorced or become a widower, I can have sex with them someday at a reunion. I want Hollywood to buy my article and turn it into a movie, even though they kind of already made the movie ten years ago with Jim Carrey. I want to get congratulatory e-mails and job offers that I can politely decline. Or accept if they're really good. Then get a generous counteroffer from my boss.

To be totally honest, I was sorry I mentioned this idea to my boss about three seconds after I opened my mouth. Because I knew the article would be a pain in the ass to pull off. Dammit. I should have let my colleague Tom Chiarella write it. But I didn't want to seem lazy.

What I mentioned to my boss was this: a movement called Radical Honesty.

The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough -- a world without fibs -- but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you're having fantasies about your wife's sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.

Yes. I know. One of the most idiotic ideas ever, right up there with Vanilla Coke and giving Phil Spector a gun permit. Deceit makes our world go round. Without lies, marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered, governments would collapse.

And yet...maybe there's something to it. Especially for me. I have a lying problem. Mine aren't big lies. They aren't lies like "I cannot recall that crucial meeting from two months ago, Senator." Mine are little lies. White lies. Half-truths. The kind we all tell. But I tell dozens of them every day. "Yes, let's definitely get together soon." "I'd love to, but I have a touch of the stomach flu." "No, we can't buy a toy today -- the toy store is closed." It's bad. Maybe a couple of weeks of truth-immersion therapy would do me good.

I e-mail Blanton to ask if I can come down to Virginia and get some pointers before embarking on my Radical Honesty experiment. He writes back: "I appreciate you for apparently having a real interest and hope you're not just doing a cutesy little superficial dipshit job like most journalists."

I'm already nervous. I better start off with a clean slate. I confess I lied to him in my first e-mail -- that I haven't ordered all his books on Amazon yet. I was just trying to impress upon him that I was serious about his work. He writes back: "Thanks for your honesty in attempting to guess what your manipulative and self-protective motive must have been."

Blanton lives in a house he built himself, perched on a hill in the town of Stanley, Virginia, population 1,331. We're sitting on white chairs in a room with enormous windows and a crackling fireplace. He's swirling a glass of Maker's Mark bourbon and water and telling me why it's important to live with no lies.

"You'll have really bad times, you'll have really great times, but you'll contribute to other people because you haven't been dancing on eggshells your whole fucking life. It's a better life."

"Do you think it's ever okay to lie?" I ask.

"I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie....I lie to any government official." (Blanton's politics are just this side of Noam Chomsky's.) "I lie to the IRS. I always take more deductions than are justified. I lie in golf. And in poker."

Blanton adjusts his crotch. I expected him to be a bully. Or maybe a new-age huckster with a bead necklace who sits cross-legged on the floor. He's neither. He's a former Texan with a big belly and a big laugh and a big voice. He's got a bushy head of gray hair and a twang that makes his bye sound like bah. He calls himself "white trash with a Ph.D." If you mixed DNA from Lyndon Johnson, Ken Kesey, and threw in the nonannoying parts of Dr. Phil, you might get Blanton.

He ran for Congress twice, with the novel promise that he'd be an honest politician. In 2004, he got a surprising 25 percent of the vote in his Virginia district as an independent. In 2006, the Democrats considered endorsing him but got skittish about his weeklong workshops, which involve a day of total nudity. They also weren't crazy that he's been married five times (currently to a Swedish flight attendant twenty-six years his junior). He ran again but withdrew when it became clear he was going to be crushed.

My interview with Blanton is unlike any other I've had in fifteen years as a journalist. Usually, there's a fair amount of ass kissing and diplomacy. You approach the controversial stuff on tippy toes (the way Barbara Walters once asked Richard Gere about that terrible, terrible rumor). With Blanton, I can say anything that pops into my mind. In fact, it would be rude not to say it. I'd be insulting his life's work. It's my first taste of Radical Honesty, and it's liberating, exhilarating.


Esquire Editor-at-Large A.J. Jacobs is the author of A Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, published by Simon & Schuster.

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Dilbert comic strip for 06/27/2010 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

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DAS WAR UNGLAUBLICH! 4-1 YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!

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England, like Italy, played some ugly football.

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National Geographic's Journey to the Edge of the Universe.

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Currently watching this show.

Fun fact(s): Voyager 1 (launched in 1977) was originally sent out there to take pictures of Jupiter and Saturn but has exceeded NASA's expectations and is now hovering on the edge of our solar system. It still communicates with Earth, takes 13 hours for us to send it a signal and vice versa. As of March 2010, Voyager 1 was at a distance of 16.9 billion kilometers from the Sun and is currently moving at the rate of 17 kms/sec - it will enter interstellar space within the next 5 or so years. Included in the spacecraft is one of the two Voyager Golden Records. This phonograph record contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, that may find it.

This Voyager 1 is 33 years old and the processor on my cell phone probably has more than 10 times the computing power than the microchip on that spacecraft.

Now compare this to life's everyday drama.

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