What an Idea!

Hi I am Abhishek Bachchan. Your current service provider "Spice Telecom" will soon become "IDEA".

This message is being played when we call Spice Customer Care. IDEA is taking over Spice Telecom. This may be a good news to existing Spice Customers. As per customer support, there will be no changes in Plan Rates for existing customers. IDEA network will provide more stable connection for all its customers. This deal has been in news since Jun 2008.

Did you know, we have a 'Right to not vote'?

AS PER the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1969 Act, in Section 49-O that a person can go to the polling booth, confirm his identity, get his finger marked, and convey to the presiding election officer that he/she doesn’t want to vote for anyone! Yes, such a feature is available, but obviously these seemingly notorious leaders have never disclosed it. It is called "49-O".

49-O: The voter (or elector) deciding not to vote:

If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.

If you think none of the candidates at the ward / constituency are able enough to lead the community, you can always opt not to vote, but if you will use this right of yours you may start a new things in our electoral process, which will further strengthen our democracy.

It is useful in the following way:

In a ward or constituency, if a candidate wins, say by ’x’ votes, and that particular ward has received "49-O" votes more than x, then that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled.

Not only that, but the candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling, since people have already expressed their decision on them. This would bring fear into parties and hence look for genuine candidates for their parties for election. This would change the way of our whole political system. It is seemingly surprising why the election commission has not revealed such a feature to the public.

Please spread the word about this and make our fellow countrymen aware of this right. No political party (or conventional media) would campaign for it. It’s yours and my duty. So, let’s go ahead from today!

Mouse turns 40 years

The well-known computer mouse will complete its 40 years of journey on this 9th of Dec-2008. The first known publication of the term "mouse" as a pointing device is in Bill English's 1965 publication "Computer-Aided Display Control".

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

Since the age of Windows operating system (and also Mac OS), the mouse has become part of computer. The technology era is further making developments with Touch Screen technologies, which may turn the mouse into a history!

Picture on top: The first computer mouse, held by inventor Douglas Engelbart, showing the wheels that make contact with the working surface.

Picture on bottom: Current computer mouse (my brand continues to be Logitech!)

Links:

- BBC News - Logitech says its factory in Suzhou, in western China, has produced the firm's billionth computer mouse.

- The First Mouse Demo.