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IIPM - BEST ONLY IN CLAIMS?

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This started off as a normal investigation, into the malaise affecting the education system and the checks and balances that need to be brought in. After all, we all know that the government cannot be a sole participant in making the youth employable and the country a prosperous one.

Everyone that we spoke to was of the unanimous opinion - while a systemic overhaul is essential to improve the quality of many bad institutions in the country, the least we could do is to protect students and parents from being misguided and misled by willful wrong-doers. There are institutes where students walk in with their eyes open and know what to expect. And there are those where they walk in, blinded - misled, misguided and misinformed, by a campaign where media, regulatory agencies and academia become willing accomplices. While we can't do much about the informed decisions, we have to take up the cause of those who were cheated, an act that robs students of their career and in a way, their life.

As we scanned the ads, spoke to experts, affected parties and counselors, we realised that one name cropped up the most - IIPM. We decided to investigate. We sent mails to all those, that IIPM draws upon to validate its claims in its advertisements, namely - journalists, editors, foreign universities, employers. We spoke to current and former students and their parents. What our investigation unravelled left us cold. Here is an institution that enjoys all the privileges of an academic institution (according to IT authorities, it claimed exemptions citing Section 10(23C) (VI) of the Income Tax act, 1961) with zero responsibility and accountability. Here is an institution that brazenly uses its power and reach to make unsubstantiated claims that play with the lives of students and parents alike. We know we are opening a Pandora's Box, but are prepared for the repercussions, knowing fully well that you, our readers are with us. We were shocked by our findings, and what you are reading is just a part of it. We await your verdict.

BBA/MBA degrees

IIPM CLAIMS to award PG/UG degrees from IMI Belgium. We checked with NVAO, the accreditation organization of Netherlands and Flanders(Belgium) about IMI Belgium. The response from them is given below. This implies that the degree that students earn would be useless for higher education or employment anywhere in the world, where formal degrees are required.

-----Original Message-----
From: XXXXXXXXX@nvao.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 8:14 PM
To: XXXXXXXX info@nvao.net
Subject: RE: Kind attn: XXXXXXXX,as per telecon yesterday
Dear XXXXXX
To answer your first question, I would refer to our official register of recognised institutions and degrees: http://www.highereducation.be . Please read two items in our section FAQ:- http://www.hogeronderwijsregister.be/faq/117/48 - http://www.hogeronderwijsregister.be/faq/117/49 IMI Belgium is not a recognised higher education institution (neither in the Dutch nor the French speaking part of Belgium). Since it is not recognised it cannot award recognised degrees.
In our position it is difficult to answer your second question. For us only registered institutions with accredited programmes are considered credible.

Best regards

Saud Bahwan Group Position: Senior sales officer Salary: 275 Omani Rials or Rs.34,000 P.M plus 23 rials as food allowance Job: It is a two year contract and not a job offer Conditions: Passport to be surrendered and Termination at employer's discretion during probation with 48 hours notice. Khimji Ramdas Position: Section Sales. Salary: 250 Omani Riyals or Rs.31,000 P.M or 3.7 lakhs P.A Job: It is a two year contract Conditions: If you leave before 24 months, you pay the company recruitment, visa, air ticket and other expenses. Even if you have to temporarily leave for an emergency, deposit the same amount with the employer. Al Sharawi Group Position: Executive Trainee Salary: 2300 AED in the first year progressively reaching 3000 AED in the 4th year (27600 P.M in the first year going up to Rs.36000 P.M in the 4th year). Conditions: If you resign during the contract, you can not take up employment in competing companies, and pay the company two months salary. Frequency Advertising LLC Position: Marketing Executive Salary: 3500 AED(incl HRA) or Rs.42,000 P.M.or 5 lacs P.A Conditions: Office hours 8.30 am to 6.30 pm, 6 months probation, No leave entitlement during probation. Ceramin FZC Position: Management Trainee - Sales & Marketing Salary: 3000 AED (incl HRA) or Rs.36,000 P.M or 4.4 lacs P.A Conditions: 12 months training period, Valid Passport to be submitted at the time of joining. Note: All the jobs excluding Frequency LLC provides single accomodation

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) feels that the government needs to intervene to rationalize the negative zone inflation as it reflects slowdown in production activities with piling up of inventories due to lack of demand creating speculation for further decline in prices.

“Negative inflation rate indicates that there is room for further rationalization of the interest rate structure in order to boost demand in the economy”, said Mr. Sajjan Jindal, President ASSOCHAM.

Mr. Jindal feels that the need of the hour is to accelerate growth in the economy with stable price regime in order to encourage demand.

India's annual rate of inflation turned negative breaking a record of 32 years, falling to minus 1.61 per cent for the week ended June 6, 2009.

Inflation, as measured by changes in the wholesale price index over a 12 month period, could even turn out to have some bright spots, policy makers and economists said.The bond markets shrugged off predictions of deflation, saying it is just a statistical effect. “The market understands that this deflation is more of a statistical effect and will not last for more than two months. An inverted yield curve - where long-term bond yields are lower than short-term bond yields - that usually precedes recession and deflation is not seen in India,” says government paper primary dealer IDBI Gilts managing director N S Venkatesh.

Deflation is completely out of the question till industrial output con-tracts in the range of 5%-7%, which does not seem plausible as of now. Dr Pronab Sen country’s chief statistician said that this negative inflation scenario is not going to hurt anyone and it is completely different from the deflation, which we witnessed 33 years ago.

"Then the deflation was driven by an extremely good harvest season and a subsequent drop in food prices to record lows. Unlike then, this time around, the negative inflation will have a positive impact on growth," said Mr Sen.

"The manufacturers stand to benefit as the prices of inputs are coming down at a faster pace than fall in prices of finished goods. The domestic consumption demand remains strong even at a time when the demand from overseas and from private in-vestments has fallen," Dr Sen added.

"Just because Reserve bank of India is looking at Wholesale Price Index as one of the indicators for formulation policy responses, it falling into negative territory does not mean deflation," says Chetan Ahaya, Managing Director, and Research at Morgan Stanley. Currently, though private investment and overseas demand have contracted, domestic consumption remains strong enough to drive growth. Hence, the chances of inflation levels staying below zero for a sustained period is ruled out.

I would be the first one to condemn filling wallet with coins

but what can we do ?? RBI have unveiled 10 rupee coins to public recently...
i know u r eager to have a look at it...




One more perplexing thing is RBI wanna launch 100 rupee coins in market also...

imagine u throwing a coin on your desk or by mistakenly given a coin to a beggar...

with regards

"Ever rocking POLI"

.....will be back with a intresting post...

A large variety of optimizations are provided by GCC.These reduce the size of the machine code or some of them try to make it run faster at the expense of size and yet others may try to improve its ability to debug the code.Depending on them there are different levels of optimizations :

LEVEL 1 : -O1
Command: gcc -O1 -o test test.c
The goal is to reduce size of compiled program while increasing its performance.You can check the time using commnad time ./a.out

LEVEL 2 : -O2
Command : gcc -O2 -o test test.c
GCC performs nearly all supported optimizations that do not involve a space-speed tradeoff. As compared to -O, this option increases both compilation time and the performance of the generated code. The code that takes 10-11 seconds to execute will take less than half the time.

LEVEL 2.5: -Os
Command : gcc -Os -o test test.c
The special optimization level (-Os or size) enables all -O2 optimizations that do not increase code size; it puts the emphasis on size over speed. This includes all second-level optimizations, except for the alignment optimizations

LEVEL 3: -O3
Command: gcc -O3 -o test test.c
Optimize yet more. -O3 turns on all optimizations specified by -O2 and also turns on the -finline-functions, -funswitch-loops, -fpredictive-commoning, -fgcse-after-reload and -ftree-vectorize options.

Besides these options you can even give architecture specifications that can further improve the results.
Command :gcc -lstdc++ -march=i686 -O3 test.cpp -o test.out [Ref: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7269]

Also techies can check http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Optimize-Options.html
for further information on the subject.
You can check astounding differences in time taken by compiler, by executing this code with different optimizing options.

#include
#include
int main() {
//std::cout << omp_get_max_threads() << std::endl;
const int N = 1 << 10;
const int M = 1 << 14;
int a[N];
int i=0;
int j=0;
// #pragma omp parallel for
for (i = 0; i < N; ++i)
a[i] = 0;
// #pragma omp parallel for
for (i = 0; i < N; ++i)
for (j = 0; j < M; ++j)
a[i] += j % N + 3;
printf("%d", a[7]);
printf("\n");
return 0;
}

Many of my friends and readers adamantly refused to make the switch to Windows Vista when it came out. Some who bought new machines with Vista installed immediately “downgraded” the OS. A few proclaimed that they would give up XP only when you pried it from their cold, dead hands. But even in the last category, many of them are impressed with what they’ve seen in the Windows 7 beta.

While some tech pundits are saying 7 isn’t really all that different from Vista — and indeed, one of the attractions for Vista users is that 7 can generally use the same drivers and run the same apps as Vista — the consensus among anti-Vista folks I know who’ve tried the 7 beta seems to be that the new operating system is “Vista done right.”

Here’s why I think you’ll see many of the XP diehards happily embracing Windows 7 when it’s released.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: UAC has mellowed out

User Account Control in Vista is like living with an overprotective mother — when you’re 30. It’s constantly popping up to warn you of impending danger, even when you’re just trying to take a look at Device Manager or perform some other innocent task. It hovers over you and nags you constantly: “Are you sure you want to do that?” Like Mom, UAC has our best interests in mind, but it can drive you nuts in the name of “security” — especially when you consider that it doesn’t really define a security boundary. (For more on that, see Mark Russinovich’s TechNet Magazine article “Inside Windows Vista User Account Control.”

Windows 7 doesn’t do away with UAC, but it does give users options regarding its behavior. By reducing the number of unnecessary and redundant UAC dialogs, making the prompts more informative, and providing users with more control over UAC, Windows 7 maintains many of the benefits of the feature without intruding on users’ computing lives so much that they turn the whole thing off in frustration.

2: Explorer is no longer a pane in the behind

In a misguided attempt to alleviate the need for horizontal scrolling, Vista made the left navigation pane in Windows Explorer a constantly moving target. As you move your mouse, it will automatically scroll back and forth. My husband calls this auto-scrolling feature the “whack a mole” phenomenon because of the way the contents of the pane seem to dodge back and forth.

You can avoid the auto-scrolling by dragging the pane to make it wide enough to accommodate the entire tree, but that isn’t a good option on a small screen, such as the one on my compact VAIO notebook.

In Windows 7, the navigation pane stays still, so you no longer risk getting seasick from all the swaying back and forth.

3: Graphics cards coexist peacefully once more

In XP, we could use pretty much whatever graphics cards we wanted for multiple monitors. I had a machine with three cards installed: an NVidia, an ATI, and a Matrox. XP would stretch my desktop across all three monitors attached to those cards. When I upgraded that machine to Vista, I found that I no longer had multiple monitors. Some research revealed that to use multiple graphics cards, they would have to all use the same driver. That meant I couldn’t use cards from different vendors together. I had to shell out a few bucks to get more ATI cards before I could use all my monitors again.

According to reports, Windows 7 has added support for multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors. Now this probably doesn’t mean you can combine ATI and NVIDIA cards in an SLI-configuration, but it sounds as if we can have our multi-vendor multi-monitor setups back.

4: Clutter and bloat are reduced

Vista was perhaps the culmination of Microsoft’s efforts to be all things to all users. Along with the built-in applications we got with XP, Vista added a contacts program, a calendaring program, a photo editing program, and so forth. While some users appreciate all these free applications, many others have been annoyed by the “extras” they don’t need or use. If you’re planning to install Office with Outlook, there’s no need for Contacts and Calendar. And if you have your own favorite and more powerful graphics applications, such as PhotoShop, there’s no need for Photo Gallery. The extras just clutter up your Programs menu and take up space on the hard disk.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has removed a number of the extra programs and now offers them as free downloads from the Windows Live Web site. This way, those who want them can have them, and those who don’t won’t have to deal with removing them.

5: Boot performance is better

Another common complaint about Vista has been the inordinate amount of time it can take to boot up. This might not be an issue for those who leave their systems on all the time, but if you turn off your computer every night, waiting around forever for it to get started in the morning can turn into a major annoyance.

A Microsoft spokesperson indicated that the company’s goal for Windows 7 is a 15-second boot time, whereas three quarters of Vista users report boot times of more than 30 seconds. Although the beta of Win7 may not have achieved that 15-second mark yet for most users, the majority of beta testers I’m hearing from say it’s substantially quicker than Vista on the same hardware. That’s been my personal experience, as well. Since it is still a beta, it’s not unrealistic to hope that continued tweaking will get that time down further before the final release.

6: Notifications can be fine-tuned

In XP and Vista, you can disable the balloon notifications in the system tray, but what if you’d like to continue to get notifications from some applications but not from others? Windows 7 allows you to customize the behavior by simply clicking the little arrow next to the tray and selecting Customize. In the dialog box, choose which icons you want to appear in the tray. For each application, you can select whether you want to display notifications or hide them, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

Windows 7 gives you much more control over those notifications in the system tray.

7: Security messages are consolidated

In Vista, you have several security-related icons in the system tray, and you might have notifications popping up from each one. To make changes to security settings, you may have to open several applications. In Windows 7, all the security messages have been consolidated into one icon. When you click it, you’ll see all messages related to firewall, Windows Defender, Windows Update settings, and so forth, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

Windows 7 consolidates all security-related messages in one system tray icon.

By clicking the Open Action Center link in the message box, you can make the changes that are recommended or (for example, in the case where you have an antivirus program installed but Windows doesn’t recognize it), you can select the option to turn off messages regarding that application, as shown in Figure C.

Figure C

You can make changes or turn off particular security notifications in the Action Center.

8: Side-by-side windows auto-size

Most of the monitors sold today come in a wide aspect ratio that’s better for watching movies, which is also handy for displaying two documents side by side on the screen. With Vista, though, you have to manually size those docs. Windows 7 has a cool new feature by which you can drag windows to each side of the screen and they will automatically size themselves to each take up half the screen when you let go of the cursor.

Even better, if you drag the window back away from the edge, it goes back to the size it was before. How cool is that?

9: Home networking gets simple

For home users without a lot technical know-how, networking has been made simpler in Windows 7. A new feature called HomeGroup allows all Windows 7 computers on a network to share files, printers, and other resources more easily. Thanks to Libraries (collections of certain types of files, such as music, photos, or documents), you can access files anywhere on the HomeGroup network as if they were stored locally, and you can search across the whole HomeGroup.

Windows Media Player in Windows 7 can stream the music and videos on one PC in the network to another, and even play back songs from iTunes libraries on other computers.

Connecting to a wireless network is also easier; now you can click the wi-fi icon in the system tray and select a network from the list, instead of opening up a separate dialog box to make the connection.

10: Taskbar preview really works

In Vista, you can hover over a taskbar button — for Internet Explorer, for example — and see that three instances of IE are open. You see the open pages stacked as shown in Figure D, but they’re so small that it’s difficult to really tell which page is which.

Figure D

The Vista taskbar preview gives you an idea of what your running application windows contain.

In Windows 7, the preview feature has been enhanced so that it becomes an extremely useful function. Now when you hover over a taskbar icon, you get actual previews that are placed side by side and are large enough for you to identify (Figure E).

Figure E

In Windows 7, you can actually tell what’s in each of those preview windows.

And that’s not all. If you’re playing a video in one of the windows, that video plays in the preview window, too. And if you right-click the IE icon in the taskbar, you get a list of your IE history files, as shown in Figure F. You can just click any of those and go immediately to that page.

Figure F

Right-clicking the taskbar icon gives you more options; in the case of IE, you can select from the history files, open a new instance of the browser, unpin the program, or close the window.

Well, it's official now. The much awaited Xbox360 will now be available in India too. The price of the xbox 360 will be between Rs.20,000 and 24,000. Microsoft's marketing directors in India have selected youthful brand ambassadors from the Hollywood industry and the Cricketing world. Akshay kumar and Yuvraj Singh will lead the promotional ads in India.

The majority of the Indian public will not be able to afford this but it is mainly for the upper class people as each game will be costing anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 rupees. They have also decided to launch the game 'Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007', lets hope that does his batting form some good too!

A warm welcome to all the geeks and non geeks,here i will post all the latest happenings of the techworld(hopefully.....hehe)....so..se you around..............

yours,
gEEk_LoRd