The Ramlila cast — including Rama, Ravana and Lakshman — Ahmad explained, needed to offer namaz and break roza . Not a single protest was heard thereafter. The show resumed only after the actors rolled up their prayer mats post-namaz and shared the iftari snacks — right on stage.

Masood Ahmad took over as manager of the BKT Ramlila Samiti from his father Muzaffar Hussain, who floated the outfit and also the concept of a mixed cast along with a Hindu friend in 1972. The move generated much curiosity and even a whisper campaign initially. But things have gradually settled down.

The casting coup of the year, says Ahmad, is the new Lord Rama — gawky 15-year-old Mohammad Sher Khan from BKT Higher Secondary School.

Khan, who’d been playing Bharat and Shatrughan for three years, is exultant about his elevation to lead status. ‘‘I have read Ramcharitmanas several times and particularly liked the ‘kirdar’ of Rama,” he declaims grandly. An unimpressed director, Sadiq Khan, exhorts the youngster, just back from school, to go over the script once more.

The stage props are garish, the make-up is loud and the costumes even louder at the dress rehearsal on B K T Gram Sabha land, 20 km from Lucknow. But they nevertheless serve as a soothing balm for nerves shredded by the Delhi, Gujarat and Malegaon blasts, and for the reverberations in nearby Azamgarh.

“All that blood and gore and the mutilated bodies shown on TV seem like part of a different world,’’ says 75-yearold Maqbool Ahmad, a carpenter from Nishatganj. Ahmad is still to get over the death of nine-year-old Santosh Yadav in the Mehrauli blast. He says, with a shudder, that the child could well have been his own grandson.

Original article courtesy of Times Of India click here

Times of India home page click here

The striking difference between Nokia’s Symbian offering and Linux offering is that Linux devices were positioned as tablets meaning that they cannot connect to cellular infrastructure. They can be used at Wi-Fi hotspots or connect to cellular infrastructure using a mobile phone over bluetooth connection and access the internet. These restrictions reduced the market size for Nokia’s Linux based tablets since you need an additional mobile phone to access the internet on-the-go. Recently at OSiM world conference, Nokia has promised it would add 3G support to the network stack of its Maemo Linux OS. This is really significant for Maemo although it lags behind other Linux-based Mobile OS such as openmoko, limo and Android.

Let us consider a scenario on how you will be able to replace your mobile phone with a Maemo5 or other internet tablets. Mobile phones connect to the cellular infrastructure using both voice and data protocols. Voice evolved first (as you know) and 3G HSPA has been recently added to the infrastructure. At the same time, the rise of IP telephony is staggering. There are dozens of companies that are using SIP to provide IP telephony service to end-users. Current limitation for these users is that they need either a hardware SIP phone or a soft SIP client on their desktops. For usage on a mobile phone, the end user needs a high-end so-called smartphone. This again limits the market size.

Let us now merge the upcoming maemo5 platform with the SIP phone and compare it with the current smartphone. With 3G supported by Maemo5, users will be able to buy only data-access plans (instead of voice+data) from mobile operators and use a soft SIP client to get voice functionality. In Singapore, level 3000 series or 3xxx xxxx are being deployed as IP phone numbers. I subscribe to pfingo; there are other companies as well.

Armed with a micro-computer aka tablet and with SIP connectivity over 3G networks, I am truly autonomous and will not miss my trusty mobile phones. Shall we call this CIP Phone ? in short for CELL IP PHONE ?

You can follow the links below for more Information
ISRO press release
NDTV news on the launch

Next year, I plan to participate in more running events in addition to the Singapore Marathon. As a service to my fellow marathoners, I have started compiling the list of all running events in Singapore in 2008. Please visit back as I add in more details in the days and weeks ahead.

1. Sundown Marathon: Sun down or simply night marathon is the first of its kind in Singapore. Most runners who I have talked to are excited about this as this makes the running more easier in cool weather and more importantly an Unique Singapore experience of the night skyline. Here is the link to the official sundown marathon website. The event is also introducing (to the best of my knowledge) an ultra-marathon category of 84 KMs. The race is targeted to be on 31st May 2008.

2. Lion City Marathon: Following closely on the heels of Sundown marathon is the Lion City Marathon. The unique feature of this marathon is that it caters to not only runners but also to inline skaters and physically challenged athletes. It is scheduled to be on 29th June 2008. Here is the link to the official Lion City Marathon website

3. Following the new ones in the early part of the year, are the veteran runs in Singapore. The next one I believe chronologically is the “Singapore Bay Run - SAFRA Sheares Bridge Run & Army Half Marathon”. With over 70,000 people having participated in 2006 this could easily be the biggest running event of the year. As of today, I don’t have the website link and the event date. Will update soon.

4. To end each calendar year with a sense of satisfaction/achievement is the Singapore Marathon. In 2007, over 40,000 runners participated. It is held the first Sunday in the month of December. I guess that should be on 7.12.08 next year. Here is the link to the official Singapore Marathon website

I will add more running events as I get the details… stay tuned
(if you have some details, updates or corrections please post a comment)

For this year 2007, I have been selected as the “RHCE of the year, APAC”. I was a bit hesitant to write about this in my blog for a few months for the fear of being stamped as being boasting. Now, due to the encouragement of my friends, I finally decided to post the details of my award. Thanks guys, you know who you are are!

Resources:
1. Red Hat Press Release about RHCEs of the year 2007
2. My article which was selected as the winning entry.

This year, with the guidance of some veteran marathoners I did a proper & satisfactory training and participated in Half-Marathon. Not only I completed it, but I came out with a personal best timing. Last time it was 3:50 minutes and this year it was 3:12 minutes.

I hope that the next year, I will be able to complete well within 3 hours and also participate in more running events.

For the rest of the news click here

Dr George Gheverghese Joseph from The University of Manchester says the ‘Kerala School’ identified the ‘infinite series’- one of the basic components of calculus - in about 1350.

The discovery is currently - and wrongly - attributed in books to Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz at the end of the seventeenth centuries.

click here to read the complete article carried by physorg.com