India's World Cup Debacle

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 West Indies began on 13th of May 2007, with the opening match being played between the host West Indies and Pakistan. India was placed in Group B along with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bermuda. 2007 Cricket World cup had four groups each of which having two strong teams, which were almost certain to qualify for super six, with only one probable exception of Group D which was known as Group of Death and had West Indies, Pakistan and Zimbabwe as strong contenders for the first 2 positions. On 16th of May 2007 India played their first League Match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 against Bangladesh. India was supposed to be in a good nick as it had won two series prior to the World Cup. Sachin Tendulkar was awarded the man of the series in the last series before world cup against Sri Lanka. Sachin scored a fabulous 100 off 76 balls against his last match before world cup. So, Everyone had high expectations from him.Also, Sri Lanka and India were favoured as the most probable teams from Group B qualifying for the Super Six round. India was shattered down by Bangladesh with Bangladesh wrapping up Indian team at a bare total of 191. Bangladesh easily reached the target, and there was no hope for the Indians as 191 was too small total to defend. There was not a single moment in the match when it seemed that the match could turn Indias' way. Meanwhile as we lost the match, the attention transferred to Pakistan's match who were facing a Do or Die situation. Their match was delayed due to rain and was truncated. The match continued and not surprisingly Ireland ousted Pakistan as they had put just 132 runs on board. So Pakistan played the world cup just for 4 days. Pakistan was the first team to be washed away from ICC world cup 2007.
India had lost their first World Cup match and that too against minnows. Their next match was against Bermuda, where the Indian batsman put up the highest total on board in world cup. India won that match. Indias last league match against Sri Lanka proved out to be its final encounter in the World Cup. Now India was in a must win situation. But to the dismay of lakhs of Indians clinical Sri Lanka washed away Indias hope. India was chasing a moderate total but there was no hope left when Sachin was clean bowled on duck by Dilhara Fernando. India's world cup campaign ended in a very poor manner.
Citing the reason for the Indias' ousted from the world cup is easier said than done. You can't just blame the teams Coach Greg Chapell for his uncooperative behaviour(as said by some cricketers). What have the Batsman done? India was all out on 191 against Bangladesh and was unable to chase a moderate total against Sri Lanka. Sachin,Sehwag just played against Bermuda. This has always been the case with Sachin, he always ditches the whole country when it is required the most. In 2003 World Cup final, when India were chasing a huge target of 361 Sachin was just unable to get runs. But we can't blame Sachin as he is not the only one responsible for scoring runs. When all discussion is made about batting we can't just ignore Saurav Ganguly. He was the only batsman who managed to gain some respect. He was making runs but at snails pace , this concept of making slow runs was clear when the contract of getting paid for the time you spent on crease was unveiled( The name of the player was not disclosed by the BCCI ). India's bowling was never good as such. But what can bowlers do when their are so less runs on the board. Sreesanth was not given a single chance. Also captain Rahul Dravid is unable to use his bowlers efficiently, there have been cases where a good wicket taking bowler bowls only 7 overs of his quota of 10. Dravid more or less is reluctant to experiment in the field and he relies a much on spinners. Talking about spinners one question that always bug me is that why was Kumble kept out of the playing 11? There had been so much discussion about the pitches of West Indies, that the idea of dropping Kumble is really insane. One of the big loss to India was that of Ramesh Powar, a talented off spinner who was not selected for the world cup and the reason given was that he just missed the bus because they had to choose only 15 players. Team's Selection panel was also equally responsible. So we can't just blame this on one person, it was a team effort. Summing up, we can say..........actually I can't sum up this topic in a single line.

The Evolution of Personal Computer

Computers had their origin in the well known ABACUS computer. ABACUS was used centuries before and it was invented in between 1000BC and 500BC. This computer actually had beads which were used to perform simple mathematical calculations. The first device which might be considered as a mechanical computer was proposed by Charles Babbage and this first mechanical computer was called Difference Engine. Difference engine was only partially completed when Babbage conceived the idea of another more sophisticated machine called an Analytical Engine. However the invention of vacuum tubes changed the whole concept and we moved towards electronic computers. The invention of vacuum tube was an extremely important step in the advancement of computers. Its purpose was to act like an amplifier and a switch. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. ENIAC was massive compared to modern PC standards. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. The ENIAC led to other vacuum tube type computers like the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) and the UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer). In 1947 three scientists, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain working at AT&T's Bell Labs invented what would replace the vacuum tube forever. This invention was the transistor which functions like a vacuum tube in that it can be used to relay and switch electronic signals. The transistor was faster, more reliable, smaller, and much cheaper to build than a vacuum tube. One transistor replaced the equivalent of 40 vacuum tubes. These transistors were made of solid material, some of which is silicon. Therefore they were very cheap to produce. Transistors were found to conduct electricity faster and better than vacuum tubes. They were also much smaller and gave off virtually no heat compared to vacuum tubes. Transistors were a tremendous breakthrough in advancing the computer. However no one could have predicted that thousands even now millions of transistors (circuits) could be compacted in such a small space. The integrated circuit, or as it is sometimes referred to as semiconductor chip, packs a huge number of transistors onto a single wafer of silicon. Placing such large numbers of transistors on a single chip vastly increased the power of a single computer and lowered its cost considerably. Today we have entered into the fourth generation of computers with the invention of microprocessors.8085 was the first microprocessor envisaged. It was an 8 bit microprocessor able to carry out operations on 8 bits at a time. It wasn't until the 1970's that people began buying computer for personal use. One of the earliest personal computers was the Altair 8800 computer kit. Today we have developed 64 bit processors and processor speed has reached in Giga Hertz Now we might just find ourselves in such a situation where we can't get the desired output from these high end systems because of the lack of software support. AMD Athlon 64 bit was successful, but it was not used with its full capacity until Microsoft released 64 bit Windows. So the current focus is on developing software support which can use such high end systems efficiently and rather than having a single high end system, industry is focusing more on distributed computing. Distributed computing, at its most basic level deals with computing the task with the help of many computers connected in a network. Today Personal Computers have entered life of almost each and every individual and it has certainly made the quality of users’ life better.

Ye hai meri kahani...Engineering admissions

Four Years ago, my H.S.C. result was declared on 4th of June. My aggregate percentage was 86 and I managed to score 90% in PCM. I had decided to do engineering so there was no confusion as such. But because of the battle between engineering colleges and government, the admission procedure was just getting delayed and nothing else. It took whole 2 -3 months to solve this issue and after lots of stays and interim decisions finally the centralized procedure for admission to various engineering colleges across Maharashtra took off. I filled the option form and submitted it at the prestigious VNIT College with my friends, no one was certain about which college they would be allotted. Then after a week or two again the management quota came into play and the Supreme Court decided to allot 50% management quota that year, but on merit basis (It seems quite strange ....but this was the decision given by SC).

I was aspiring to take admission in Pune college, so I came to Pune with my father in September. I filled the management quota forms of 4-5 colleges in Pune and to my dismay the counseling of all colleges was on the same day. It was just impossible to cover all the colleges at same time so we first checked PICT ...my rank was over 700 and the total available seats were close to 180, so we left the hope(Although I realized afterwards that it was possible to get admission even at rank 850..anyways). We went to Singhad College of Engineering (I loved the campus very much, but I was unable to get a discipline of my choice) Then we had gone to PVG(here I missed the cut throat competition by just 2 competitors). So finally we had to go back to Nagpur. By that time I was allotted Shri Ramdeobaba Kamala Nehru Engginerring College Electrical and Power, Nagpur. I came back to Nagpur and joined SRKNEC.I was a little bit nervous.

Back Nagpur when I was attending my college sincerely, attending all lectures, bowing to my seniors, facing the ragging sessions, my destiny played one more game with me. SC ordered Bharati Vidyapeeth to fill the remaining 125 seats through AIEEE. My father got this information through Internet. The counseling round was at Pune. Oh no not again I said. I was in no mood to go to Pune again and come empty handed. After a long serious discussion with my father, it was decided that my dad would go for the counseling round to Pune. I was feeling very ashamed, because my chances of getting admission were very poor and still my father was willing to spend, take time and go to Pune once again just for my admission. He left to Pune for my admission.

On 29th of September at around 7 p.m I received a call from my father that my admission to Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University College Of Engineering was confirmed and that I was allotted Information Technology.