Will the chemistry between Prince Harry & Pippa Middleton spark enough to turn into the next royal marital bond? Will they be the next “Royal Couple”?

What do you feel?

Click on the image for animation.

8 x 8 = 64

5 x 13 =65

Can you find the flaw?

Can you solve this?

The man behind the source of WikiLeaks – Bradley Manning.

In his Army dress greens, Pvt. Bradley Manning looks like most of his fellow soldiers; but beneath the uniform, many suspect, is a man who may be responsible for the leaking of over 90,000 secret military reports to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Bradley Manning. Manning has told of leaking classified diplomatic reports, along with this secret video, to the whistleblower website Wikileaks.org.

Manning was stationed at a base 40 miles east of Baghdad, at Forward Operating Base Hammer. Manning, who enlisted in the Army in 2007, was working as an Army intelligence analyst, pouring through classified information. What he saw with his clearance level, it is believed, left him disillusioned with U.S. foreign policy.

The twenty-two year old Manning went online to find someone who would listen. He tracked down a former computer hacker in Sacramento, California named Adrian Lamo. Manning read an article in Wired, a magazine on the technology world, that featured Lamo and thought he would be a kindred spirit.

Access to Classified Networks

Manning allegedly asked Lamo, “If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight plus months, what would you do?”

Authorities believe Manning had already done plenty.

In online chats and e-mail conversations, Manning allegedly took credit for leaking video of a 2007 Army helicopter strike in Baghdad to Wikileaks. The strike resulted in the death of innocent civilians including two Reuters employees and an unarmed Baghdad man. The video’s release in April caused a media storm.

Manning allegedly said that he had discovered “incredible, awful things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C.”

Lip-Synching to Lady Gaga

The young soldier wrote of how he downloaded the classified information.

“I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’,” he told Lamo.

While pretending to sing along to Lady Gaga’s hit “Telephone,” Manning would actually be erasing the music from the CD and recording intelligence onto it instead.

Lamo says weak computer security let the disgruntled soldier copy confidential military reports that would soon be part of one of the greatest leaks of government information in 40 years.

During all of this, Manning also wrote to Lamo of feeling socially isolated and at times, getting in trouble with his supervisors as he questioned the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lamo said he grew increasingly alarmed. When Manning claimed to have a quarter million classified embassy cables, Lamo went to the FBI fearing that the soldier’s leaks could put lives at risk.

“Had I not acted, I would have always wondered, had I gotten someone killed,” Lamo said.

PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

DESPERATION:
When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS

DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES – LET’S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z ‘S

A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
I’M A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

MOTHER-IN-LAW:
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER

The bottom-line reason that traditional sales tactics are inefficient and ineffective is that the seller is motivated by an attitude; of “whatever it takes “to push product out the door in order to make a quick sale. Typically, the seller knows a lot about the product’s features and benefits, has a good story to tell, and persistently overcomes objections until the deal is closed. Yet many sellers seldom delve deeply enough to uncover the prospect’s true motivation for doing business, especially from the buyer’s perspective.

You can dramatically increase your closing ratio by understanding that prospects buy for their reasons—not yours. The art of the sale is in developing the-desire-to-acquire-in-your-buyer! People buy emotionally, then rationally justify their decisions. Touting features and benefits followed by applying price pressure, actually sets up sales resistance, which then leads to a frustrating conclusion for both buyer and seller.

Easily close more profitable sales and the lifetime value of a repeat customer by asking open-ended questions first. You are naturally curious to find out what problems the prospect has that matches up with the benefits of your product or service. Here are some examples of open-ended questions:

• How long has this been a problem?
• What have you done so far?
• When did the problem first happen?
• What is important for you to do right now?

Highly paid sales professionals are problem solvers positioning themselves as trusted advisors, rather than product pushers. The motivation for the prospect to do business comes when the prospect acts on your advice to immediately solve an important problem. (That’s right; the customer is buying you and your understanding of his problem first!)

Nick Murray, the famous financial sales coach, says it best: “People don’t care to know, until they know you care.”

Pain-problems are stronger motivators than gain-problems. Most sales messages are geared toward what a customer has to gain in the transaction, and are met with skepticism because the customer is afraid that she might be disappointed in the promised future result. Whereas, pain-problems demand immediate satisfaction, otherwise if nothing is done the pain will continue to get worse.

No pain—no sale.

You, the professional seller, must know your product’s features, benefits, the market it serves, and be knowledgeable about your competition too.

Nonetheless, you will be spinning your wheels, unless you develop the skill of asking the right questions to uncover your prospect’s buying reasons and position yourself as a problem-solver; not a problem-giver.

IPL is ‘the’ much hyped sport event and the most ‘eye-ball catching’ sport event for this season (I think, next only to the upcoming Football World Cup).

Players who were on the same side and created collective strategies to defeat the opponents, now face the same the brunt of the same strategies now being deployed from the earlier fellow players who are now their opponents. So when it comes to they playing on the Indian team, will  they be at a disadvantage having shared the strategies and the weakness of the fellow players with the foreign players of the same IPL team.

Also players having migrated to the other side, now are now defeating their own motherstate teams. What kind of loyalty does this promote? Just take the case of Ambati Rayudu, an original Hyderabadi player who was instrumental in defeating the home Hyderabadi team, Deccan Chargers. Is cricket promoting brain drain?

Somebody out to file a RTI on this front, I think.

On the first day, she sadly packed her belongings into boxes, crates and suitcases.
On the second day, she had the movers come and collect her things.
On the third day, she sat down for the last time at their beautiful dining-room table, by candle-light; she put on some soft background music, and feasted on a pound of shrimp, a jar of caviar,and a bottle of spring water. When she’d finished, she went into each and every room and deposited a few half-eaten shrimps dipped in caviar into the hollow centre of the curtain rods. She then cleaned up the kitchen and left.
On the fourth day, the husband came back with his new girlfriend, and at first all was bliss.
Then, slowly, the house began to smell…
They tried everything; cleaning, mopping, and airing-out the place. Vents were checked for dead rodents, and carpets were steam cleaned. Air fresheners were hung everywhere.

Exterminators were brought in to set off gas canisters, during which time the two had to move out for a few days, and in the end they even paid to replace the expensive wool carpeting.

Nothing worked!
People stopped coming over to visit. Repairmen refused to work in the house. The maid quit.
Finally, they couldn’t take the stench any longer, and decided they had to move, but a month later – even though they’d cut their price in half – they couldn’t find a buyer for such a stinky house.
Word got out, and eventually even the local realtors refused to return their calls.
Finally, unable to wait any longer for a purchaser, they had to borrow a huge sum of money from bank to purchase a new place. Then the ex-wife called the man and

asked how things were going.

He told her the saga of the rotting house.

She listened politely and said that she missed her old home terribly and would be willing to reduce her divorce settlement in exchange for having the house. Knowing she could have no idea how bad the smell really was, he agreed on a price that was only 1/10th of what the house had been worth .. but only if she would sign

the papers that very day..She agreed, and within two hours his lawyers delivered the completed paperwork.
A week later the man and his girlfriend stood smiling as they watched the moving company pack everything to take to their new home …… and to spite the ex-wife,

they even took the  curtain rods!

Now that’s a wife’s vengeance, when she doesn’t get a decent alimony & treatment.

Easter approaching soon and to further the credibility of Christianity and Jesus Christ, there are more good news.

Computer artists claim to have recreated the face of Jesus Christ using digital technology.

The image was created by taking information and blood encoded on the Turin Shroud – the blood-stained linen that many believe was the burial cloth of the crucified Jesus Christ – and transforming it into a 3D image.

In a two-hour TV special on the History Channel, to air in the U.S. tonight, the computer artists will reveal their image of Jesus in full.

Revealed: A computer image shows a 3D recreation of the face of Jesus Christ

But the results may surprise some viewers. According to the company that made the image it does not resemble the popularized version of Jesus.

Computer artist Ray Downing, the president of Studio Macbeth, said: ‘We ‘lifted’ the blood and isolated it [on the computer] so that it would sit ‘in air’ [on a transparent background].’

He explained that because the Turin Shroud was wrapped around, rather than being draped on the body, the blood was transferred to the cloth as it was wound.

The image was made by taking information and blood encoded on the Turin Shroud, below, and transforming it into a 3D image

Therefore it did not align with the places on the face from which it originated.

The ancient shroud contains a faint impression of the front and back of a human body, along with blood, dirt and water stains.

The year-long project culminated with a team of graphic artists using the newest technology to create a computer-generated image.

‘I have a lot of information about that face and my estimation is we’re pretty darn close to what this man looked like,’ Mr Downing said.

Mr Downing claims that his technique of computer imaging actually uncovered what substance created the image on the shroud and enabled him to see for the first time the actual face of Jesus.

And he said he said he would offer an explanation for how the image ended up on the shroud.

Downing added: ‘I will reveal at the end of the show the type of event that must have occurred 2,000 years ago.’

Source

Article by Pritish Nandy in TOI - source

“Many of us knew of Arthur Andersen, the global consulting firm. But when it broke up and morphed into Accenture, not many made the exact connection. The connection was made on that fateful day when the media decided to out Tiger Woods for his sexual transgressions. Suddenly all the brands he had endorsed, from Accenture to Nike, made it to the headlines of every newspaper, with eager readers panting to find out who drops him first. A golfer worth a billion dollars is not the worlds most loved person, however much he may be admired. But this columns not about celebrity hunting.Its about controversy. The power of controversy.
Nothing builds a brand quicker than controversy. The uglier the controversy,the more profitable its outcome. You can ask me why this happens in a world where we are always taught to sidestep trouble,walk the straight and narrow. The reasons simple: Controversy polarises opinion. When public opinions polarised on any issue,be it Tiger Woods or MNIK, Raj Thackeray or Mayavati, Husain or Bt Brinjal, it immediately grabs headlines. You cant help but notice it. In fact,everyone notices it and then,thanks to the net,everyone reads up everything on it. No amount of paid publicity can ever achieve the phenomenal reach controversy delivers. A broken theatre and a few torn hoardings can give an unbearably boring film screaming front page coverage for days on end,and fans a righteous cause to fight for. Yes,it was the Sena that made MNIK such a success. There was little buzz about its promotions till Saamna attacked it and SRK cleverly turned the table on them.
This brings me to the smart art of conflict management. Take an issue,any issue. Instead of spending a fortune on putting out your point of view,its much easier to design an emotionally charged controversy around it so that people can take extreme positions. Make it a clear love/hate choice and,before you know it,everyones on one side or the other. The commercial objectives will be instantly realised. Funnily,no controversy ever goes to waste. The worms in Cadbury chocolates led to Amitabh Bachchan being brought in to repair the brands image. He not only repaired the image but brought the brand back into business, stronger.
Every time consumer activists attack soft drinks,they sell more,almost as if by consumer defiance. The more we rant about transfats,the more people flock to fast food counters. Its not only the young who refuse to have health concerns forced down their throat; everyone resents being told what not to do. Any pressure exerted, be it not to see MNIK or not to drink Coke or not to eat a burger at McDonalds only helps to increase their sales. Word of mouth, an old aphorism we used in the context of movies that people saw, liked and spread the word about, no longer works. People want to make their own choice these days. A tiny movie called Thanks Maa has got rave reviews this week. Will they sell one extra ticket. Unlikely. Will the film be around in theatres long enough to reap the benefit of word of mouth publicity. Unlikely. Quality and saleability walk on divergent tracks these days.
Actually good, clean entertainment is no longer in great demand. Good, healthy,nourishing food hasnt even taken off. Brain dead cinema rules. So does wicked food. The moment you talk about wholesomeness,you drive away consumers. Good is confused with bland. It works on the same principle that Sarat Chandra (author of Devdas and Parineeta) once espoused, that the more you denigrate a woman, the more you call her immoral, the more attractive she appears to everyone else. Simple question: Would you rather spend an hour with Mother Teresa, listening to her homilies, or with Angelina Jolie risking your perfect marriage.
So lets not kid ourselves. If you have something to sell,go make such a huge controversy around it that the world stops dead in its tracks. Husains fortunes were flagging when the saffronites went for him. Tyeb, Souza, Gaitonde, even young Subodh Gupta had hijacked his best selling tag. Auction after auction saw Husain’s prices tanking. Now,post this silly controversy,hes back–right on top. Raj Thackeray followed the same strategy in politics,instigating one controversy after another,to ensure that he created a space for himself in Maharashtra politics. Its not a unique strategy. Balasaheb Thackeray, Mayavati, Jayalalitha, Mamta Banerjee, and even Sonia Gandhi used every controversy to further their political cause. Each controversy helped consolidate their presence in politics,enhanced their play. Just as Sanjay became a bigger star after Khalnayak and his stint in jail. Salman has hit a purple patch with every controversy. Saif even got a Padma Shri for riling the Bishnois.
It all goes to prove the point: If success is what you seek,go get yourself a controversy. Or else,consign your dreams to oblivion.”