Innovative Wedding Invitation

Soooo touchy... :|

She jumped up as soon as she saw the surgeon come out of the operating room.She said: 'How is my little boy? Is he going to be all right? When can I see him?'
The surgeon said, 'I'm sorry. We did all we could, but your boy didn't make it.'
Sally said, 'Why do little children get cancer? Doesn't God care any more? Where were you, God, when my son needed you?'
The surgeon asked, 'Would you like some time alone with your son? One of the nurses will be out in a few minutes, before he's transported to the university.'
Sally asked the nurse to stay with her while she said good bye to son. She ran her fingers lovingly through his thick red curly hair. 'Would you like a lock of his hair?' the nurse asked. Sally nodded yes. The nurse cut a lock of the boy's hair, put it in a plastic bag and handed it to Sally.
The mother said, 'It was Jimmy's idea to donate his body to the University for Study. He said it might help somebody else. 'I said no at first, but Jimmy said, ' Mom , I won't be using it after I die. Maybe it will help some other little boy spend one more day with his Mom .' She went on, 'My Jimmy had a heart of gold. Always thinking of someone else. Always wanting to help others if he could.'
Sally walked out of Children's Mercy Hospital for the last time, after spending most of the last six months there. She put the bag with Jimmy's belongings on the seat beside her in the car.
The drive home was difficult. It was even harder to enter the empty house. She carried Jimmy's belongings, and the plastic bag with the lock of his hair to her son's room.
She started placing the model cars and other personal things back in his room exactly where he had always kept them. She lay down across his bed and, hugging his pillow, cried herself to sleep.
It was around midnight when Sally awoke. Lying beside her on the bed was a folded letter. The letter said:

'Dear Mom ,
I know you're going to miss me; but don't think that I will ever forget you, or stop loving you, just 'cause I'm not around to say 'I Love You'. I will always love you, Mom , even more with each day. Someday we will see each other again. Until then, if you want to adopt a little boy so you won't be so lonely, that's okay with me. He can have my room and old stuff to play with. But, if you decide to get a girl instead, she probably wouldn't like the same things us boys do. You'll have to buy her dolls and stuff girls like, you know.
Don't be sad thinking about me. This really is a neat place. Grandma and Grandpa met me as soon as I got here and showed me around some, but it will take a long time to see everything. The angels are so cool. I love to watch them fly. And, you know what? Jesus doesn't look like any of his pictures. Yet, when I saw Him, I knew it was Him. Jesus himself took me to see GOD! And guess what, Mom ? I got to sit on God's knee and talk to Him, like I was somebody important. That's when I told Him that I wanted to write you a letter, to tell you good bye and everything. But I already knew that wasn't allowed. Well, you know what Mom ? God handed me some paper and His own personal pen to write you this letter I think Gabriel is the name of the angel who is going to drop this letter off to you. God said for me t o give you the answ er to one of the questions you asked Him 'where was He when I needed him?' 'God said He was in the same place with me, as when His son Jesus was on the cross. He was right there, as He always is with all His children.
Oh, by the way, Mom , no one else can see what I've written except you. To everyone else this is just a blank piece of paper. Isn't that cool? I have to give God His pen back now He needs it to write some more names in the Book of Life. Tonight I get to sit at the table with Jesus for supper. I'm sure the food will be great.
Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. I don't hurt anymore the cancer is all gone.. I'm glad because I couldn't stand that pain anymore and God couldn't stand to see me hurt so much, either. That's when He sent The Angel of Mercy to come get me. The Angel said I was a Special Delivery! How about that?
Signed with Love from God, Jesus & Me.

I am copying this from an email with the title ‘This is Beautiful - Try not to cry...’
Thats very true, isn’t it? 

10 tech leaders who could become Obama’s CTO

As a presidential candidate, part of Barack Obama's technology policy platform included hiring the U.S. government's first chief technology officer (CTO). If Obama follows through on this, who is likely to get the job? Here are 10 top candidates.

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During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama used technology to organize, communicate, and raise funds in innovative ways that gave him an advantage over opponents in both the primaries and the general election. It's clear that Obama views tech as a powerful catalyst, and with the U.S. facing an unprecedented array of economic challenges, Obama will need to use technology to drive efficiency and institutional transformation.

A part of his policy platform, Obama has stated that he plans to hire the nation's first chief technology officer (CTO) to play quarterback in driving these changes. A CTO is typically an organization's top engineer and focuses on outward-facing technologies (see What's the difference between CIO and CTO), but based on Obama's policy statements he wants to use the national CTO position to:

• Build a 21st centrury technology infrastructure
• Unite and lead the CIOs and CTOs of various federal agencies
• Architect innovative tech solutions to help solve big problems

As a result, Obama is going to need a visionary tech leader who can rally both technologists and standard Washington bureacrats around a common purpose. It also wouldn't hurt to bring in a big name — someone who already has a strong reputation that will translate into political capital. Here are top 10 candidates.

10. Shai Agassi

This former technology head of SAP has the business experience and the interest in larger societal issues to do well as America's CTO. However, he's recently founded his own company, Better Place, to create an entirely new business model and power system to run the electric cars of the future. Because of his passion for that project, it's doubtful he would want the U.S. CTO gig.

9. Larry Lessig

Lessig, a Stanford Law professor, is the founder of Stanford's Center for Internet and Society and has been an outspoken commentator on U.S. technology policy. Although Lessig has a conservative background, he publicly endorsed Obama for president. At times, he has even been rumored as a candidate for numerous political offices himself. He would be an excellent tech policy wonk and a decent visionary, but he does not have a traditional tech background and that would likely hurt him in gaining the respect of the federal tech executives that he would have to lead.

8. Padmasree Warrior

Warrior is one of only two candidates on this list who is currently serving as a CTO. She was previously CTO at Motorola and in 2008 moved over to the CTO job at Cisco, where she is tasked with driving technology strategy and innovation and serving as an evangelist of what's possible in the future. She's also demostrated an interest in politics, having attended the Democratic National Convention in August and expressed enthusiasm for Obama's vision of America.

7. Shane Robison

The other current CTO on this list, Robison is the executive vice president of technology and strategy at Hewlett-Packard. All of the CTOs of the various HP business units report up through Robison, as does the forward-looking HP Labs and the company's corporate marketing department. That kind of breadth of experience would serve Robison very well as U.S. CTO. He's also a visionary who understands the larger context of the current technology revolution and its impact on business and society. It's unclear whether he has any interest in politics or if he could be wooed away from HP.

6. Vint Cerf

Cerf is sometimes called the "Father of the Internet" because he and Bob Kahn designed the TCP/IP architecture that made the Internet possible. Cerf, who currently works as Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1997 by President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 by President Bush. He has outstanding technical chops and extensive experience working with government technology agencies, but his leadership and management credentials aren't quite as strong as some of the other candidates.

5. John Chambers

One of the technology industry's most passionate characters, Chambers has a will of steel that would help him cut through the bureaucratic stone walls in Washington. The Cisco CEO is a terrific visionary and one of tech's most effective leaders when it comes to getting a team to execute. Chambers has also shown an interest in politics — even being rumored for an eventual run at political office. He endorsed John McCain for president and was a significant donor to the McCain campaign, so that could hurt him in being considered as Obama's CTO.

4. Ed Felten

A Princeton computer science professor, Felton founded Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy and is a leading researcher, commentator, and blogger on technology law and policy. He famously served as the Department of Justice's leading technology witness in its antitrust suit against Microsoft. He would be an excellent policy wonk, but doesn't have as much experience leading technology teams.

3. Bill Gates

The biggest name that nearly everyone is forgetting is Bill Gates, the former Microsoft leader who retired from his full-time gig at Microsoft in June so that he could devote his energies to the Gates Foundation. He obviously has his sight set on larger societal impact. What better way to make that happen than helping define the critical technology policies of the next decade? Melinda can handle the foundation. Gates has the vision, the iron will, and the ability to rally the troops that would make him a successful CTO. The only problem is that he is still technically the chairman of Microsoft and it would be a conflict of interest to continue in that roll while serving as U.S. CTO. Plus, the government uses a lot of open source solutions and Gates has never been an open source fan.

2. Julius Genachowski

Genachowski went to Harvard Law School with Obama and served as an advisor to the Obama campaign on technology issues, even helping to draft Obama's technology platform. He previously served as chief of business operations at InterActive Corp, was an FCC advisor during the Clinton administration, and founded his own company, LaunchBox Digital, to help tech startups. Since the election, Obama has named Genachowski to his transition team. It's likely that he will have a role in the Obama administration, either as the first CTO or, more likely, as head of the FCC.

1. Eric Schmidt

The Google CEO endorsed Obama in October and has served as an unofficial advisor on economic and technology issues throughout the campaign. Since the election, Schmidt has served on Obama's newly-formed economic advisory board. Schmidt is a pragmatic, low-key leader who can successfully work in collaboration with other leaders. He is not as much of a visionary or a bulldog, but his temperament might be the right fit for this position. At the end of last week, Schmidt denied that he is interested in the position, and no one could blame him for not wanting to leave Google, which is at the top of its game and still has an excellent future. Nevertheless, don't rule him out just yet. He remains the most likely candidate for the job.

source : http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=850&tag=nl.e101

Tamil as a Classical Language - By George L. Hart

Statement on the Status of Tamil as a Classical Language

Professor Maraimalai has asked me to write regarding the position of Tamil as a classical language, and I am delighted to respond to his request.

I have been a Professor of Tamil at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1975 and am currently  holder of the Tamil Chair at that institution.  My degree, which I received in 1970, is in Sanskrit, from Harvard, and my first employment was as a Sanskrit professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1969.  Besides Tamil and Sanskrit, I know the classical languages of Latin and Greek and have read extensively in their literatures in the original.  I am also well-acquainted with comparative linguistics and the literatures of modern Europe (I know Russian, German, and French and have read extensively in those languages) as well as the literatures of modern India, which, with the exception of Tamil and some Malayalam, I have read in translation.  I have spent much time discussing Telugu literature and its tradition with V. Narayanarao, one of the greatest living Telugu scholars, and so I know that tradition especially well.  As a long-standing member of a South Asian Studies department, I have also been exposed to the richness of both Hindi literature, and I have read in detail about Mahadevi Varma, Tulsi, and Kabir.

I have spent many years -- most of my life (since 1963) -- studying Sanskrit.  I have read in the original all of Kalidasa, Magha, and parts of Bharavi and Sri Harsa.  I have also read in the original the fifth book of the Rig Veda as well as many other sections, many of the Upanisads, most of the Mahabharata, the Kathasaritsagara, Adi Sankara's works, and many other works in Sanskrit.

I say this not because I wish to show my erudition, but rather to establish my fitness for judging whether a literature is classical.  Let me state unequivocally that, by any criteria one may choose, Tamil is one of the great classical literatures and traditions of the world.

The reasons for this are many; let me consider them one by one.

First, Tamil is of considerable antiquity.  It predates the literatures of other modern Indian languages by more than a thousand years.  Its oldest work, the Tolkappiyam,, contains parts that, judging from the earliest Tamil inscriptions, date back to about 200 BCE.  The greatest works of ancient Tamil, the Sangam anthologies and the Pattuppattu, date to the first two centuries of the current era.  They are the first great secular body of poetry written in India, predating Kalidasa's works by two hundred years.

Second, Tamil constitutes the only literary tradition indigenous to India that is not derived from Sanskrit.  Indeed, its literature arose before the influence of Sanskrit in the South became strong and so is qualitatively different from anything we have in Sanskrit or other Indian languages.  It has its own poetic theory, its own grammatical tradition, its own esthetics, and, above all, a large body of literature that is quite unique.  It shows a sort of Indian sensibility that is quite different from anything in Sanskrit or other Indian languages, and it contains its own extremely rich and vast intellectual tradition.

Third, the quality of classical Tamil literature is such that it is fit to stand beside the great literatures of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Chinese, Persian and Arabic.  The subtlety and profundity of its works, their varied scope (Tamil is the only premodern Indian literature to treat the subaltern extensively), and their universality qualify Tamil to stand as one of the great classical traditions and literatures of the world.  Everyone knows the Tirukkural, one of the world's greatest works on ethics; but this is merely one of a myriad of major and extremely varied works that comprise the Tamil classical tradition.  There is not a facet of human existence that is not explored and illuminated by this great literature.

Finally, Tamil is one of the primary independent sources of modern Indian culture and tradition.  I have written extensively on the influence of a Southern tradition on the Sanskrit poetic tradition.  But equally important, the great sacred works of Tamil Hinduism, beginning with the Sangam Anthologies, have undergirded the development of modern Hinduism.  Their ideas were taken into the Bhagavata Purana and other texts (in Telugu and Kannada as well as Sanskrit), whence they spread all over India.  Tamil has its own works that are considered to be as sacred as the Vedas and that are recited alongside Vedic mantras in the great Vaisnava temples of South India (such as Tirupati).  And just as Sanskrit is the source of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, classical Tamil is the source language of modern Tamil and Malayalam.  As Sanskrit is the most conservative and least changed of the Indo-Aryan languages, Tamil is the most conservative of the Dravidian languages, the touchstone that linguists must consult to understand the nature and development of Dravidian.

In trying to discern why Tamil has not been recognized as a classical language, I can see only a political reason: there is a fear that if Tamil is selected as a classical language, other Indian languages may claim similar status.  This is an unnecessary worry.   I am well aware of the richness of the modern Indian languages -- I know that they are among the most fecund and productive languages on earth, each having begotten a modern (and often medieval) literature that can stand with any of the major literatures of the world.  Yet none of them is a classical language.  Like English and the other modern languages of Europe (with the exception of Greek), they rose on preexisting traditions rather late and developed in the second millennium.  The fact that Greek is universally recognized as a classical language in Europe does not lead the French or the English to claim classical status for their languages.

To qualify as a classical tradition, a language must fit several criteria: it should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich body of ancient literature.  Unlike the other modern languages of India, Tamil meets each of these requirements.  It is extremely old (as old as Latin and older than Arabic); it arose as an entirely independent tradition, with almost no influence from Sanskrit or other languages; and its ancient literature is indescribably vast and rich.

It seems strange to me that I should have to write an essay such as this claiming that Tamil is a classical literature -- it is akin to claiming that India is a great country or Hinduism is one of the world's great religions.  The status of Tamil as one of the great classical languages of the world is something that is patently obvious to anyone who knows the subject.  To deny that Tamil is a classical language is to deny a vital and central part of the greatness and richness of Indian culture.


(Signed:)
George L. Hart
Professor of Tamil
Chair in Tamil Studies

http://tamil.berkeley.edu/Tamil%20Chair/TamilClassicalLanguage/TamilClassicalLgeLtr.html

New category of languages and New Classical Languages

New category of languages as `Classical Languages' was created by Government of India, and the following criteria were laid down to determine the eligibility of languages to be considered for classification as a `Classical Language':-
i) High antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1500-2000 years.
ii) A body of ancient literature/texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers.
iii) The literary tradition be original and not borrowed from another speech community.
v) The classical language and literature being distinct from modern, there may also be a discontinuity between the classical language and its later forms or its offshoots.

Source : http://nganesan.blogspot.com/2008/11/classical-tag-for-dravidian-languages.html

Indian government announced Tamil as a Classical language. Then added Sanskrit. Now, on November 1st 2008 this respect has been given to Telugu and Kannada.

Jail vs Prison

I was thinking that Jail and Prison are same. But today I came a cross this an information 'Jail vs Prison'.

The link that I have given here has many useful 'vs'

Definitions

Jail: A place of detention; a place where a person convicted or suspected of a crime is detained.

Prison: A place of long-term confinement for those convicted of serious crimes.

Difference

The most notable difference is that prison inmates have been tried and convicted of crimes, while those in jail may be awaiting trial. A prison is under the jurisdiction of either federal or state, while the jail holds people accused under federal, state, county and/or city laws. A jail holds inmates from two days to a year.

Source : http://www.diffen.com/difference/Diffen.php

Packt Award Roundup: Joomla! Takes Runner-up

Each year Packt Publishing opens the voting booths for users everywhere to cast votes for the best content management system. There are a number of very qualified contenders in each of the categories including CMS Made Simple, Plone, and Drupal. This year, Joomla took the runner-up prize in the categories of Best Overall Open Source CMS Award and the Best PHP Open Source CMS (tied with CMS Made Simple). This results in a total prize winnings of $3500 to the Joomla Project.

Even though Joomla has taken home several Packt Awards in the past, Joomla Core Team member Andrew Eddie asserted, "This has made me more determined to do better next year."

Also, Joomla developer Johan Janssens was awarded the Open Source MVP 2008 prize, a new category in this year's awards, for his outstanding contributions to Joomla.

We at the Joomla Project would like to thank all of our wonderful users to voting for us and a big congratulations goes to Drupal for taking first place in the Best Overall Open Source CMS Award category. We also want to congratulate all the other winners.

Joomla Core Team member Brad Baker summed it up, "The future is bright for open source content management systems like Drupal and Joomla, whichever you use."

Source : http://www.joomla.org/announcements/general-news/5218-packt-award-roundup-joomla-takes-runner-up.html

Twitter - Microblogging

I have started a Micro blogging using Twitter :) You can find those feeds on right hand side.. Its a cool technology.. I love Web 2.0 technologies :)
Find it here :
http://twitter.com/sarves

IITC - International Information Technology Conference

IITC was held at BMICH, Sri Lanka on 28th and 29th. This time there were few Key note speakers from Australia and Sweden.
This time I also presented a research paper titled "Role Based Competency Modeling for e-Learning Content Development". This falls on E-Learning area.

What I proposed is, how we can model competency using existing standards IMS RDCEO and IMS LIP.

IMS RDCEO - IMS Reusable Definition of Competency and Education Objectives
IMS LIP - IMS Learner Information Profile

www.iitc.lk

How to add Tag could on your blog

You may see that I have added a tag cloud on the left hand side. I was searching for a way to add that and finally found a way in following link. Its not that hard... http://phy3blog.googlepages.com/Beta-Blogger-Label-Cloud.html

Enjoy... :)