Intel's Leap Ahead

Intel's CEO Paul Otellini is currently trying to transform the technology giant as we know it

Instead of remaining focused on PCs, he's pushing Intel to play a key technological role in a half-dozen fields, including consumer electronics, wireless communications, and health care. And rather than just microprocessors, he wants Intel to create all kinds of chips, as well as software, and then meld them together into what he calls "platforms." The idea is to power innovation from the living room to the emergency room. The Intel Inside logo will disappear, replaced by an updated Intel logo with a swirl around it to signify movement. For the first time since the early 1990s, the company will add a tag line: "Leap ahead."

Intel's transformation and new strategy is going to announced in next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas and the glitz for the event will be provided by the hip-hop band Black Eyed Peas with their hit song 'Let's Get It Started'.

It is an interesting choice of band for Intel as Black Eyed Peas themselves represent the transformation within hip-hop.

Positive messages and breakdancing are integral parts of hip-hop culture, but by 1990 those elements had been temporarily eclipsed by the tough gangsta image and bleak but compelling lyrics of West Coast groups like N.W.A. However, despite sharing a zip code, Black Eyed Peas' vision goes beyond the cracked-sidewalk vignettes and sampled gunfire of Los Angeles' gangsta style.

Co-incidentally cooking black eyed peas is perhaps the best known American tradition for the New Year's holiday.

Consuming black-eyed peas is the best known U.S. tradition during the New Year's holiday. The tradition, which began in the South, is said to bring good fortune and prosperity.

The stars seem to have been aligned for Intel in this coming year !

Bengals and Tigers

I am not by any means a fan of American football but I like the colorful names they give to their teams. One team whose name always intrigued me was the Cincinnati Bengals. That is a very unusual name for an American team and today they had a story on signing their quarterback Carson Palmer till 2014.

Now Cincinnati's zoo is very famous in the country. In fact it is the second oldest zoo in the US. During 1960's when the team was formed the zoo was famous for having the rare Bengal tiger in captivity which was very uncommon in the United States during that time. Thus the actual Bengal tiger was the inspiration behind the team's name.

Recently, there has been a lot of press about the Bengal tigers in India especially after the tiger poaching incidents in Sariska where it was found from the recent census of the national sanctuary that the entire tiger population was wiped out by poachers. This has led the other famous tiger sanctuaries in India to turn to technology to make their tiger census as accurate as possible. This news item from today's Indian Express talks about the latest pugmark analysis computer program and GPS technology developed by Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) to conduct the tiger census in the Sundarbans reserve early next year.

From American football to ISI's pugmark analysis computer program - this world is indeed strangely connected.

Kerry Packer's Cricket

Kerry Packer died yesterday. Apart from being a media mogul in Australia, Packer also owns the famous Crown casino in Melbourne and the Ellerston polo club, supposed to be one of the best Polo clubs in the world.

I found an interesting story about the origins of the Packer business empire.

His grandfather is said to have found a 10 shilling note in a Tasmanian street at the turn of the century and decided to put it all on a horse. It won and he bought himself the boat fare to the mainland where he got a job as a journalist and started to build the family's media empire

However, Packer's will always be remembered foremost as the man responsible for redefining modern cricket.

In 1977, frustrated at the Australian Cricket Board's refusal to accept a AUS$1.5 million bid for the television rights to screen Australian Test matches and Sheffield Shield Cricket, he signed more than 50 cricketers to play in his own tournament. For a while, the game was split between the establishment - the International Cricket Conference- and Packer's World Series Cricket.

The root of this controversy was the fact that players were unhappy with their salaries and were treated as amateurs. The World Series Cricket corrected that and introduced day and night matches, colored uniforms for players and white cricket ball. But as I learn from Michael Jenning's blog all of it was an accident

The Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) is owned by the state government of New South Wales. This government had no wish to upset the most powerful media mogul in the country, and so the government gave permission for WSC matches to be played at the SCG. However, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) actually belongs to the Melbourne Cricket Club, which would not give Packer permission to play his games there. Therefore, another venue had to be found, and the games were played at VFL park, a ground which was built for Australian Rules Football. Football matches were often played at night. As the lights were already there, WSC decided to experiment with night cricket, and scheduled one day games starting in the middle of the afternoon, and concluding just after 10pm. (This was also excellent for prime time television). The traditional red ball did not show up well against artificial light, and a white ball was substituted. This white ball did not show up well against the white clothing traditionally worn by cricketers, and therefore coloured uniforms were substituted.

Of course in the end, the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) surrendered to Packer and the modern cricket was born. It is somewhat ironic that the Indian cricket team last week became the world's most expensive sporting team beating Juventus football club. I bet Kerry Packer himself had no idea how much influence could his clash with the ACB will have on Indian cricket.

Auguosto Pinochet

As we are preparing for our trip to Chile early in next year, it was interesting to read the article in BBC about its former dictator.

Chile's top court has ruled that former military ruler Gen Augusto Pinochet is fit to stand trial over the 1975 disappearance of political opponents.

The case that is referred to here was codenamed 'Operation Colombo' which was undertaken by the Chilean secret police DINA.

General Pinochet came to power in a coup d'état on September 11, 1973, in which the rebelling Chilean Air Force bombed the Presidential Palace while it was being stormed by Army troops. The previous President Salvador Allende was a marxist and communist with close ties to Fidel Castro. He had nationalized a lot of foreign company assets especially US Copper mines - the main reason for the regime's unpopularity in the western world. Allende is supposed to have committed suicide with a machine gun which bore a golden plate engraved " To my good friend Salvador Allende from Fidel Castro"

Chile was infact the only latin-american country to have sided with the UK during the Falkland Island confrontration.

What I find interesting is that unlike most countries Chile had a long tradition of parliamentary democracy but still a dictator could come into power through a coup.

Fuzzy Logic

Telegraph had an article on the fog problem of Delhi. Fog has been a major transportation problem in Delhi especially for air travel in recent years. The situation is aggravated by lack of any reliable advance fog forecasting system.

Scientists at the Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation in Bangalore have teamed up with a software company to produce fog forecasts 12 to 24 hours in advance... using fuzzy logic - a mathematical technique to handle imprecise concepts.

Fuzzy logic is an extension of Boolean logic dealing with the concept of partial truth.

It is a controversial despite wide acceptance as many statisticians argue that probability is the only mathematical description of uncertainity. Fuzzy logic introduces the concept of possibility theory as an alternative or even as a superset of probability theory. Prof. Lofti Zadeh from Berkeley proposed the fuzzy set theory in 1965.

Plato laid the foundation of fuzzy logic when he indicated that there was a third region beyond true and false

And finally for those into psychedelic rock - the group Super Furry Animals' debut album was also called Fuzzy logic

Uncle Tom's Cabin

NYT reports that the orginial Uncle Tom's Cabin was part of the 3 bedroom house and an acre of land went on sale and were bought by the Montgomery County for ~ $1M.

Among the farm's slaves was Josiah Henson, the man Harriet Beecher Stowe used as a model for the Uncle Tom character in her 1852 novel on slavery, "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

This novel did much to galvanize northern public opinion against slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly began as a ten-month serial in the National Era, an abolitionist newspaper, on June 5, 1851. Abraham Lincoln is said to have called her the "little lady who made this big war." (Answers.com)

A highlight of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I (1951) is a ballet, "Small House of Uncle Thomas" based on the novel.

I also remember reading that Gandhi was inspired by the novel's non-violent theme.

Lamborghini

Lamborghini is about to launch its famous model 'Gallardo' in India

Lamborghini Gallardo could be tagged anything between Rs 1 crore and Rs 1.5 crore. Gallardo would be the latest in the series of crore-plus cars to hit the Indian roads after the likes of Maybach, Rolls Royce Phantom and Bentley Arnage in the recent past

However, there is some interesting background information on how the Lamborghini model was named

Ferruccio Lamborghini - born under the zodiac sign of Taurus - when he founded the famous super car company, that since then bears his name, gave to it the symbol of the fighting bull. Later, when the Miura was introduced, he named the car after a famous bull's race, and this practice became a tradition for the House of the Bull. Honouring this tradition, the Management of Automobili Lamborghini have decided to baptize their latest model with the name of a fighting bull's breed: the Gallardo (pron.: ga:yàrdo)

Frequent Flier Miles

Its nice to be at home and not traveling during the holiday season and planning our next trip to South America, ofcourse using all the frequent flier miles :-)

The Economist just had an article on frequent flier miles which are about to celebrate their 25th birthday.

THE mania began in 1981, when American Airlines launched AAdvantage, the world's first mileage-based frequent-flyer programme, to encourage customer loyalty. Today more than 130 airlines issue miles

However I was not aware that

The biggest collectors of miles today are not frequent flyers but frequent buyers. More than half of all miles are earned on the ground, notably on credit cards linked to airlines' programmes or on telephone calls.

As for myself, I still earn the FF miles, the good old way. By logging air miles. Frequent flier miles mean much more than free tickets for vacations. Its the feeling of superiority everytime you are at the airport, take the shorter line through security and can potentially avoid the middle seats on the flights!!

Blackberry

Amid all the litigation news and fears of suspension of blackberry service in the US, today RIM announced their earnings. I have considered buying their stocks earlier but have never taken the dip. RIM or Research in motion is a very interesting company with a killer product ‘Blackberry’ which is so addictive that users have called it ‘crackberry’ and Andy Grove of Intel once said "It should be reported to the DEA -- it's an addictive thing,"

Mike Lazaridis from the University of Waterloo and Douglas Fregein from University of Winsdor after graduating decided to hire a few of his buddies and start a small company that would engineer products and devices for big companies. He named it Research In Motion. The first contract was to make a data display system for an assembly line at a General Motors factory. Later they also made wireless data modems, including one of the first mass-market ones for US Robotics. All that was before they created the blackberry which has became the killer product for mobile email

Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Bachchan was released from the hospital yesterday. A few days back when I read the news to my wife that he has been hospitalized, she warned me that she will cry if anything were to happen to him. Thankfully, he has recovered and hopefully he will continue to entertain millions of Indians as he has been for past 30 years. I bought a book containing random facts about the Big B (as he is called by the media) when I was regular in quizzing and it was always fun to read. A web search led to some more interesting tidbits about him.

- How would it have sounded if Amitabh was called 'Inquilab' which his father Harivanshrai was contemplating to call him?
- Did voiceover for Satyajit Ray's 'Shatranj ke Khiladi'
- 'Agneepath' won him his only Best Actor award
- In the beginning of his career All India Radio rejected him when he auditioned for an announcer position becasuse 'he did not have a good enough voice'!!
-Shatrughan Sinha was initially cast to play the role of Jai in Sholay
- Launched a music album (Aby Baby) with a lead song 'Ek rahein iir' which was influenced from one of his dialogues from the movie Adaalat

And here are some of his immortal dialogues:
"Hum jaha pe khade ho jaate hein, line wahin se shuru hoti hai." - Kalia
"Rishte me to hum tumhare baap lagte hain, naam hai Shahenshah." -Shahenshah
"Jiske seene mein dil hi nahin, usse dil ka daura kya padega?" - Coolie
"Hamare desh mein kaam dhoondna bhi ek kaam hai."-Shakti
"Jo mard hota hai, usey dard nahi hota."-Mard
"Tumhara naam kya hai, Basanti?"- Sholay
"Daaru peene se liver kharab ho jaata hai."-Satte pe Satta

Chinese general

Here is one I have always wondered about at the airport Panda Express. Finally I get to the bottom of it:

Born on Nov. 10, 1812 in Hunan province and died on Sept. 5, 1885, he was a frighteningly gifted military leader during the waning of the Qing dynasty. He served with brilliant distinction during China's greatest civil war, the 14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, which claimed millions of lives. As a young man he flunked the official court exams three times, a terrible disgrace. He returned home, married and devoted himself to practical studies, like agriculture and geography. He took up silkworm farming and tea farming and chose a gentle sobriquet, calling himself "The Husbandman of the River Hsiang." He was 38 when the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850. For the rest of his life, he would wield the sword, becoming one of the most remarkably successful military commanders in Chinese history. He began his military career as an adjutant and secretary for the governor of Hunan province. He raised a force of 5,000 volunteers and took the field in September 1860, driving the Taiping rebels out of Hunan and Guangxi provinces, into coastal Zhejiang. There he captured the big cities of Shaoxing, still famous for its sherrylike rice wine. From there he pushed south into Fujian and Guangdong provinces, where the revolt had first begun and spread, and had crushed the Taipings by the time the rebellion ended in 1864. Chef Peng or T.T Wang of NYC made him more famous starting in 1970's - when they named their dish after him - General Tso's chicken!

Manhattan project

The other day we were talking about spies and what motivates them to undertake dangerous missions and Klaus Fuchs and Manhattan project came to our minds:

The bomb factory for the Manhattan project was in Hanford, Washington. Why was that location chosen? US army general Leslie Groves, who had directed construction of the Pentagon became head of what had been obliquely named the Manhattan Project, had spent part of his early years growing up at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington. As he looked for a site in the West remote from population centers and with a generous supply of electricity to run the bomb factories and water to cool the reactors. Hanford, downriver from the just-completed Grand Coulee Dam and adjacent to the Columbia River, fit the bill.

Time Person of the Year

Its that time of the year when Time magazine selects its person of the year. And while I am reminiscing about all the quiz questions that I have heard over the years here are some random and interesting ones:

• Charles Lindbergh became the first one in 1927.
• Gandhi was the first non-American in 1930
• FDR has been selected thrice (the most by anyone)
• Wallis Simpson (Duchess of Winsdor) was the first woman in 1936
• Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife became the first couple in 1937
• 1966 belonged to '25 and under' and 69 to 'middle americans' and 75 to 'american women'
• Nixon is the only one to be named in two consecutive years (71 and 72)
• 82 belonged to the 'computer' and 88 to 'the endangered earth'
• Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) in 1999
• The whistleblowers (Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom, Coleen Rowlet of FBI and Sherron Watkins of Enron) took the honor in 2002
• The American GI and soldier was selected in 1950 and 2003