Linus Torvalds flips Nvidia

Linux creator Linus Torvalds isn’t happy with Nvidia. And he wants you to know it.
Late last fortnight, at a hacker meetup in Finland, Torvalds laid into Nvidia, calling it “the single worst company” the Linux developer community has ever dealt with, complaining that the chip maker doesn’t do as much as it could to ensure that its hardware plays nicely with his open source operating system. He even turned to the camera filming the event, flipped the company the proverbial bird, and dropped the proverbial F bomb.
“Nvidia, fuck you,” he said, as the room erupted with applause and laughter.

See the you-tube video below.

Linus Torvalds flips Nvidia

Using JACK for GStreamer

Gstreamer includes a jackaudiosink in the gstreamer-plugins-bad package. To get started install this package. You would also need some more stuff to get the whole thing working so just follow the below apt-get command,
shell$ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad jackd jack-rack jack-tools patchage
Now to route the gstreamer audio data via JACK you need to do some tweaking to the gstreamer properties in gconf-editor.
shell$ gconf-editor

Now navigate to /system/gstreamer/0.10/default. In the ‘audiosink’, musicaudiosink’ enter the following:

jackaudiosink connect=none

If you leave off the 'connect=none', the sink will automatically connect to the outputs of your soundcard in Jack. You may want this for default audio and chat (just remove 'connect=none'), but not for music if you want EQ, dynamics, etc. processing on it. You may want to change the description of the sinks as well...otherwise it just shows up as 'ALSA custom' in gnome-sound-properties.

Next, we make a rule for jack.plumbing. In the version of jackaudiosink that ships with Feisty, the outputs are by default named 'GStreamer:out_x'; In Gutsy, they are named by the program, so for Banshee, they would be 'Banshee:out_x'.

Save this in your home directory as '~/.jack.plumbing':

(connect "GStreamer:out_1" "jack_rack:in_1")
(connect "GStreamer:out_2" "jack_rack:in_2")
(connect "jack_rack:out_1" "alsa_pcm:playback_1")
(connect "jack_rack:out_2" "alsa_pcm:playback_2")

Now you need a script to automate it. Put this in a script (again, you may need to modify the jackd command to suit your set up, depending on what your primary soundcard is labeled as in ALSA, and if you have -RT kernel, running jack with '-R' will give you better performance), save it in your home folder, 'chmod +x' it:

jackd -dalsa -dhw:0 &
sleep 2
jack.plumbing &
sleep 1
jack-rack -n &

Now you're set. Try running that script, and if everything works, jack-rack should pop up. If it doesn't, jackd didn't start correctly. If you save a jack-rack file, you can tell jack-rack to load it in the script above by just adding the path to the file after the '-n'. If jack-rack popping up on every boot annoys you, get alltray (sudo apt-get install alltray) and run jack-rack like so: "alltray jack-rack -n &", and it will dock in your system tray.
Alternatively you could omit the jackd server start in the script and start it with the qjackctl and then run the above script for JACK plumbing.
Now run your favorite gstreamer audio application (exaile, banshee, rythymbox, etc.) and see if you have any sound when you hit play. If not, open patchage and manually connect the output pins from your sound application to the input pins of jack-rack (just drag and drop). Jack rack's output should already be connected to the outputs of your soundcard.

OR just to test with Gstreamer alone follow these steps:

Run the above script that pops up the JACK rack.

Now start your favourite gstreamer pipeline (example gst-launch0.10 audiotestsrc ! audiocovert ! jackaudiosink) and check if the audio data (sine in the example case) is routed via JACK.

Installing Ubuntu using USB Flash Drive

Create a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive

You would first need to download the UNetbootin software. This is not a installer, rather just double click on it to run it.Select your options as shown in the image below and press OK button.

The process will extract the files from the ISO image, copy them to the flash drive and then install the bootloader. Depending on what you are installing, this really doesn’t take very long. Once the process is completed, you’ll be prompted to reboot… which you don’t necessarily have to do unless you want to test booting the flash drive on the same machine you are using. Otherwise you can hit the Exit button.
Booting from Flash Drive
Now that you are all finished, you can try and boot from the flash drive. Every BIOS is different, but most of them will have a message like “Press F12 for the Boot Menu”, which is highly suggested. The boot menu will allow you to select the USB drive as the boot device. Instead of the regular Ubuntu boot menu that you might be used to seeing, you will see the UNetbootin menu, which has essentially the same options.

Quickly Fill Multiple Cells with a Value or Formula in Excel

This might be quite useful for people working on excel regularly.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter to quickly fill multiple cells with a value or formula. For example, you may want to enter a bunch of 0's (zeros) in a range of cells. Or, you want to apply the same formula to a range of cells without changing the cell formats.

1. Select a range of cells
2. Enter the value or formula
3. Instead of pressing Enter afterwards, press Ctrl+Enter to fill the entire range of cells.

This is basically an alternative approach to entering a value in a single cell and then copying that cell and pasting the value or the formula. Using Ctrl+Enter does not copy formatting.

If you are using a relative reference in your formula (like =A1), then the formula in the other filles cells will be the same as if you entered the formula in just the one cell and then copied that cell to the other cells in the range. If you want the formula reference to not change when you use Ctrl+Enter, you will need to use an absolute reference (like =$A$1).

Priority Inversion

When tasks share resources, as they often do, strange things can and will happen. Priority inversions can be particularly difficult to anticipate. Here's an introduction to priority inversions and a pair of techniques you can use to avoid them.

Most commercial real-time operating systems (RTOSes) employ a priority-based preemptive scheduler. These systems assign each task a unique priority level. The scheduler ensures that of those tasks that are ready to run, the one with the highest priority is always the task that is actually running. To meet this goal, the scheduler may preempt a lower-priority task in mid-execution.

Because tasks share resources, events outside the scheduler's control can prevent the highest priority ready task from running when it should. If this happens, a critical deadline could be missed, causing the system to fail. Priority inversion is the term for a scenario in which the highest-priority ready task fails to run when it should.

Resource sharing

Tasks need to share resources to communicate and process data. This aspect of multi-threaded programming is not specific to real-time or embedded systems.

Any time two tasks share a resource, such as a memory buffer, in a system that employs a priority-based scheduler, one of them will usually have a higher priority. The higher-priority task expects to be run as soon as it is ready. However, if the lower-priority task is using their shared resource when the higher-priority task becomes ready to run, the higher-priority task must wait for the lower-priority task to finish with it. We say that the higher-priority task is pending on the resource. If the higher-priority task has a critical deadline that it must meet, the worst-case "lockout time" for all of its shared resources must be calculated and taken into account in the design. If the cumulative lockout times are too long, the resource-sharing scheme must be redesigned.

Since worst-case delays resulting from the sharing of resources can be calculated at design time, the only way they can affect the performance of the system is if no one properly accounts for them.

Priority inversions

The real trouble arises at run-time, when a medium-priority task preempts a lower-priority task using a shared resource on which the higher-priority task is pending. If the higher-priority task is otherwise ready to run, but a medium-priority task is currently running instead, a priority inversion is said to occur.

This dangerous sequence of events is illustrated in Figure 1. Low-priority Task L and high-priority Task H share a resource. Shortly after Task L takes the resource, Task H becomes ready to run. However, Task H must wait for Task L to finish with the resource, so it pends. Before Task L finishes with the resource, Task M becomes ready to run, preempting Task L. While Task M (and perhaps additional intermediate-priority tasks) runs, Task H, the highest-priority task in the system, remains in a pending state.

Many priority inversions are innocuous or, at most, briefly delay a task that should run right away. But from time to time a system-critical priority inversion takes place. Such an event occurred on the Mars Pathfinder mission in July 1997. The Pathfinder mission is best known for the little rover that took high-resolution color pictures of the Martian surface and relayed them back to Earth.

The problem was not in the landing software, but in the mission software run on the Martian surface. In the spacecraft, various devices communicated over a MIL-STD-1553 data bus. Activity on this bus was managed by a pair of high-priority tasks. One of the bus manager tasks communicated through a pipe with a low-priority meteorological science task.

On Earth, the software mostly ran without incident. On Mars, however, a problem developed that was serious enough to trigger a series of software resets during the mission. The sequence of events leading to each reset began when the low-priority science task was preempted by a couple of medium-priority tasks while it held a mutex related to the pipe. While the low-priority task was preempted, the high-priority bus distribution manager tried to send more data to it over the same pipe. Because the mutex was still held by the science task, the bus distribution manager was made to wait. Shortly thereafter, the other bus scheduler became active. It noticed that the distribution manager hadn't completed its work for that bus cycle and forced a system reset.

This problem was not caused by a mistake in the operating system, such as an incorrectly implemented semaphore, or in the application. Instead, the software exhibited behavior that is a known "feature" of semaphores and intertask communication. In fact, the RTOS used on Pathfinder featured an optional priority-inversion workaround; the scientists at JPL simply hadn't been aware of that option. Fortunately, they were able to recreate the problem on Earth, remotely enable the workaround, and complete the mission successfully.

Workarounds

Research on priority inversion has yielded two solutions. The first is called priority inheritance. This technique mandates that a lower-priority task inherit the priority of any higher-priority task pending on a resource they share. This priority change should take place as soon as the high-priority task begins to pend; it should end when the resource is released. This requires help from the operating system.

The second solution, priority ceilings, associates a priority with each resource; the scheduler then transfers that priority to any task that accesses the resource. The priority assigned to the resource is the priority of its highest-priority user, plus one. Once a task finishes with the resource, its priority returns to normal.

A beneficial feature of the priority ceiling solution is that tasks can share resources simply by changing their priorities, thus eliminating the need for semaphores:

void TaskA(void)

{

               ...

               SetTaskPriority(RES_X_PRIO);

               // Access shared resource X.

               SetTaskPriority(TASK_A_PRIO);

               ...

}

While Task A's priority is elevated (and it is accessing shared resource X), it should not pend on any other resource. The higher-priority user will only become the highest-priority ready task when the lower-priority task is finished with their shared resource.

While not all of us are writing software for missions to Mars, we should learn from past mistakes and implement solutions that don't repeat them. Many commercial RTOSes include support for either priority inheritance or priority ceilings. Just make sure you enable one.

Source: EETimes

What is JACK?

JACK Architecture

JACK is system for handling real-time, low latency audio (and MIDI). It runs on GNU/Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OS X and Windows (and can be ported to other POSIX-conformant platforms). It can connect a number of different applications to an audio device, as well as allowing them to share audio between themselves. Its clients can run in their own processes (i.e. as normal applications), or can they can run within the JACK server (i.e. as a "plugin").

JACK was designed from the ground up for professional audio work, and its design focuses on two key areas: synchronous execution of all clients, and low latency operation.

Traditionally it has been hard if not impossible to write audio applications that can share data with each other. In addition, configuring and managing audio interface hardware has often been one of the most complex aspects of writing audio software. JACK provides a system for freely connecting independent audio data I/O points, thus allowing the audio output from one JACK-savvy application to be sent to the audio input of any other JACK-aware client. The system supports multiple connections to and from any audio I/O points, and all data streams are synchronized to sample-accuracy.

As a sound server, JACK operates between the low-level sound system drivers and any JACK-aware client applications, managing the flow of multiple freely interconnected audio data streams.

Features:

• JACK is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU GPL and LGPL licenses as published by the Free Software Foundation, http://www.gnu.org/. The JACK server uses the GPL, as noted in the source file headers. However, the JACK library is licensed under the LGPL, allowing proprietary programs to link with it and use JACK services.
• JACK provides a high level abstraction for programmers that removes the audio interface hardware from the picture and allows them to concentrate on the core functionality of their software.
• JACK allows applications to send and receive audio data to/from each other as well as the audio interface. There is no difference in how an application sends or receives data regardless of whether it comes from/goes to another application or an audio interface.
• On Linux all devices supported by ALSA (PCI, USB and Bluetooth) or FFADO (FireWire) will work with JACK.
• Routing audio from Flash to JACK is possible.
• Routing Gstreamer audio via JACK is possible.
• If you use applications that use the ALSA API for audio I/O and not some intermediate such as GStreamer or PulseAudio, you can still force most of them to route their audio to/from JACK.
• There is NO extra latency caused by using JACK for audio input and output. The only impact of using JACK is a slight increase in the amount of work done by the CPU to process a given chunk of audio.
• An audio app in order to use JACK must be callback-based. This means that it should not block on writes or reads from a PCM device; rather, it should be "driven" by a function that gets called at regular intervals. This is a design decision.
• Although not a requirement, Jack supports any streaming data type, not just audio.
• Applications connected using Jack may have their own graphical interfaces. Jack does not make any specifications as to different GUI toolkits or libraries. As a consequence of this, different parts of a running Jack setup may be spread across multiple processes.
• Jack provides full, sample accurate synchronation.
• To represent audio data, Jack uses 32 bit IEEE floats, normalized to value range [-1,1].
• Only noninterleaved audio streams are supported.
• Jack client may consume or produce multiple data streams.
• It should be possible to connect already running applications.
• It should be possible to add or remove Jack clients while the server is running.
• "Zero-Copy" architecture
• as an API JACK provides many benefits because of its high-level of abstraction:
• no hardware configuration
• no software (driver) configuration
• no format negotiation (all channels are mono, 32 bit floating point)
• no main loop (JACK-managed thread handles it)
• on the other hand:
• requires multi-threaded (lock-free) programming skills
• involves use of a client/server system
• "pull" model is harder for some kinds of apps

Sharing files between a Windows guest and Ubuntu host using VMware and Samba

VMware Workstation (and presumably the other enterprise-grade products in the VMware family) come with the handy “shared folders” feature which makes sharing files between a host and a virtual appliance nice and simple. The free products (VMware Player and Server) do not, unfortunately, have this ability and so we must find another way.

This quick guide shows how to use Samba to achieve the same aim. It is aimed at Ubuntu users but (the general concepts at least) should work on any modern Linux distribution. It is also written with a Windows XP guest in mind but a similar process should work in Windows Vista, Windows 2000 and other operating systems.

The goal is to set up a network share which both operating systems can transparently read and write to.

For reference, I am using Ubuntu 9.10.

Which VMware?
I’ll presume you have VMWare already installed with a Windows XP guest virtual appliance already set up. This guide is aimed at users of VMware Player and Server editions (I am using VMware Player 3.1).

VMware Player is a simple:

sudo apt-get install vmware-player

away. For the Server edition, you’ll probably want to consult the wiki.

Install Samba

If you don’t already have Samba installed, now would be a good time to do it:

sudo apt-get install samba

In order to keeps things clean and easy to manage, we’ll set up a new user account to own the share. This account name will be used when connecting to the share from within Windows. For the purposes of illustration, I will be creating a share called sandbox with the username and group also being sandbox.

Create the new group and user account with no login privileges:

sudo groupadd sandbox
sudo useradd --gid sandbox --shell /bin/false sandbox

To avoid creating a redundant home directory, you can add:

--home /nonexistent

to the end of the previous command.

Now you need to add a matching Samba account. You’ll be prompted to set a password – make note of this as this is what you will use to connect to the share from within Windows.

sudo smbpasswd -a sandbox

Next you’ll need to create a directory to be used as the share (assuming you don’t already have one). Create a directory, setting the username to your usual login and group to sandbox. Then chmod the directory 775 (assuming you wish both yourself and the virtual appliance to have read/write access). Here is what I entered:

cd $HOME
mkdir sandbox
sudo chown :sandbox sandbox
sudo chmod 775 sandbox

When you write to the share from within Ubuntu, new files will be created with the default permissions 644 with the username and group being your own user account. When your Windows client connects to the share, it will access it as if it were the local system user sandbox and so the group permissions will apply and you won’t be able to write to any files created from within Ubuntu.

To get around this problem, we can set the groupid bit for the sandbox directory which means all new files created will inherit the permissions of the parent and so the sandbox user from within Windows will be able to make read and write changes as desired.

sudo chmod g+s sandbox

If you don’t understand the above, don’t worry, just chmod the directory with the command above and all should be well.

Setting up the Samba share

Now all that’s left to do is to tell Samba about our share. Open up /etc/samba/smb.conf in your favourite text editor.

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

Firstly, we need to set the security mechanism to user. Look for the line:

security = user

and make sure it is uncommented (remove the preceding semicolon if there is one).

Now, scroll down to the Share Definitions section and add the following:

[sandbox]
path = /home//sandbox
valid users = sandbox
read only = No
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777

Be sure to set the correct path to your share. Save the file and restart the Samba daemon:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

That should be it. You should now be able to connect to your share from within the Windows guest. At this point you need to know what IP address to connect to from within Windows. This depends on what networking mode you are using for your virtual appliance.

Bridged Networking
In this mode, your guest OS has its own IP address and so the address it needs to connect to is your usual host machine’s address. In this case your address is probably the top line from the output of this command:

ifconfig
grep "inet addr:"NAT networking

In this mode, your guest OS shares your host’s address (in terms of other machines on the LAN) and communicates with the host via a private network. In this case, the IP address you need to connect to is most likely the bottom one from the output of this command:

ifconfig grep "inet addr:"

Connecting to the share from within Windows
If you are unsure as to your host’s IP address, try and ping it first from within the Windows guest to confirm you have the right one.

Having worked out what IP address to connect to, you should now be able to connect to your share from within Windows.

The easiest way to do this is:

1.Open up My Computer
2.Go to the Tools menu and then Map Network Drive
3.Choose a drive letter to map the network share to
4.In Folder, enter: \\HOSTIP\sandbox (replacing HOSTIP)
5.Click “Connect using a different user name” and enter:

username: sandbox
password: yourpassword

6.Click OK and then the Finish button to connect

Hopefully, congratulations are in order. If not, be sure to make sure that any firewalls you have running (host or guest) have the correct rules set to allow communication between the two systems.

SOURCE: 2tap

How to Add Shared Folders in Vmware Player

You have to add some shares to the configuration file of the virtual machine. Open the .vmx file in a text editor and add the following lines at the bottom of the file to add some random shared folders and enable the drag-and-drop feature:

isolation.tools.dnd.disable = "FALSE"

isolation.tools.copy.enable = "TRUE"

isolation.tools.paste.enable = "TRUE"

sharedFolder.maxNum = "2"

sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"

sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"

sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"

sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "FALSE"

sharedFolder0.hostPath = "C:\"

sharedFolder0.guestName = "C"

sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"

sharedFolder1.present = "TRUE"

sharedFolder1.enabled = "FALSE"

sharedFolder1.readAccess = "TRUE"

sharedFolder1.writeAccess = "FALSE"

sharedFolder1.hostPath = "/"

sharedFolder1.guestName = "/"

sharedFolder1.expiration = "never"

You can add more or less shares, but don’t forget to change the sharedFolder.maxNum value accordingly. Don’t worry about the locations of the shared folders, they can be changed with your VMware software.

Credit goes: http://chrysaor.info/?page=faq#shared_folders

 

Blues New ERA

Chelsea has just signed “El Nino” and Luiz.

 

I hope this herald’s a new era of blue’s domination of EPL. The premier league is still in our sights with two games against the “Manure”. Also these two new signings could help us in the Champions league endeavor.

 

  

 

Sahara Packers And Movers

Hello Folks,

This review is based on my experience of dealing with Shara Packers and Movers (THE WORST ONES YOU COULD COME ACROSS). I now feel I should have read reviews about them before dealing with them. I had two assignements with them, one within banagalore and one from Blore to Dharwad. I am hereby sharing my experiences on both:

1) Within Bangalore: I got in touch with this joker Manoj Jain () who took my calls initially. He has a unique way of cheating people. He will come home and asses your items to be transfrred and will quote a value. Then you confirm with him whether this is the final price and ask if there are any additional costs to which he will say there is none. So I confirmed with him and he said it would be 4500 Rs. On the day of transfer a vehicle comes and they come and pack your belongings. These packers are pretty rude and talked in a rude way with my mom and wife when they asked them to be careful about fragile items like TV etc. The vehicle they sent was in such pathetic condition that it stopped almost every 4-5 kms causing traffic jams. To cover a distance of 20 kms they took 5-6 hours. Then on top of that when they arrived they absolutely did not care about they materials. They just dumped them and asked for the money. The next shocking part was that the bill said 5300 Rs. Then when I tried calling this gutless guy Manoj Jain he did not even pick my call. So I had to pay them 5300 and then on top of that the packers demanded 100Rs each.

2) Blore - Dharwad: This was even more shocking experience. I had contacted Manoj Jain for this particular logistic for which he had qouted 12500 Rs. On top of this another guy said that it would be better if we took insurance worth 1.5Lacs by paying a premium of 4500 Rs for which I still have not revieved the insurance papers. The bufoon Manoj Jain had promised that he will send it by courier which he never did. Absolute pathetic guy. Never ever deal with this person or Sahara packers and Movers. The truck came and loaded the boxes one day prior to departure. When the packages arrived at dharwad we were all shocked to see them in completely damaged. See the pictures. Wht is worst their Hubli manager Praveen (9342833179) has absolutely no sense in dealing with customers. He started shouting at us on hearing our complaints. Ther workers who were suppose to fix the furniture did not do their work at all. When I complained this to their managers in blore one Bhaskar (9379961333) and Dharamveer Paliwal (09341832333) they said they will asses the damage and fix them accordingly which they have not done till date. The incident happend in the first of November.

THE MOST SHOCKING ASPECT WAS THEY HAD LOADED TWO CONSIGNMENTS WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE. THE FOOLS EVEN MADE THE MISTAKE OF OFFLOADING A  BOX WHICH DID NOT EVEN BELONG TO US.

PLEASE AVOID THESE CROOKS.

ABSOLUTE CHEATS. DO NOT DEAL WITH MANOJ JAIN (9880522866), PRAVEEN (9342833179), BHASKAR (9379961333), DHARAMVEER (09341832333) or SAHARA ALL TOGETHER.

Pics Of Damaged Goods

K's Design World - Review

If there was an interior designer you wanted to avoid this (K’s Design World) would be one. One of the most unprofessional interior designers you could come across. They not only use cheap material which tend to lose their performance but are totally unprofessional. This review is based on my experience of interacting with them over a period of 5-6 months. The organization is led by three people Kavita (Designer), Praveen and their father Suresh. Initially they will contact you for work and will say that they have done work worth 20 Lacs (which I really really doubt by their quality work now) etc. They will show you pictures of the work done (again which I doubt if it was theirs). Following are the issues which I faced while working with them.

1. There is no customer sign off before starting the work. Everything is verbal commitment. And when you call them up for any inconsistency they will say, we never discussed that.
2. No reply to emails. You keep sending them mails after mails but there would not be a reply. Now you are confused if the work you asked for will be done or not.
3. No co-ordination between the carpenters and designer. The designer says something and carpenters end up doing something else.
4. Quality of materials. They probably use the lowest quality material available in market.

Some of the major issues that I faced are following:

1. Initially during design discussions it was committed by them to provide extra racks in wardrobe which was never done.

2. In the TV unit there is no provision provided for connecting devices to the TV. It has to be done in a hard way. They have just left dummy cables to which I need to attach the connectivity cables and pull around. Most pathetic work around provided.

3. During the work their carpenters damaged the house which needed re-painting and filling job which cost me extra 15000 INR.

4. I cannot comment on the quality of ply used for the wardrobes. Almost all of them have a bend. I do not reckon they have used well seasoned wood.

5. The polishing of the veneer work is very poor. Firstly they have splashed paint all over the wall and along with it they have left the places (that cannot be reached by eye like underneath the wardrobe door, backside of draws etc) as is.

6. The quality of steel hinges, magnets and locks used is very poor. Most of the hinges and magnets have already started to rust.

7. The carpenters are very arrogant and do not listen to you. They are very careless while transporting materials. They have damaged the walls and doors.

8. Their work is very inconsistent witch uneven gaps in wardrobes.
 

If anybody wants to have a look at their work you can contact me @ vallabha.hampiholi@gmail.com

I can give a tour of my apartment.  

Commonwealth Shame

It really is a shame to see the preparations for the games. I mean the way we have been competing with China in every aspect, but look at the difference the way China hosted Olympic games!!! It puts the whole country in poor light. Several participating countries are so concerned that they have delayed their arrival into Delhi. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard highlighted security fears surrounding the Games and said athletes should decide for themselves whether or not to attend. Two foreign vistors were shot and wounded by suspected militants on Sunday. "There is obviously widespread concern about the Commonwealth Games," Gillard told reporters in Canberra.

The Games, held every four years for members of the organization of mostly former British colonies, are estimated to have cost $3-6 billion. We had hoped to use this event to display our growing global economic and political clout, rivalling China. Instead, it has snowballed into a major embarrassment for the government, having to fend off criticism of shoddy construction, inadequate security and unfit accommodation. In a sign of desperation, the government has ordered the organizing committee to hand over management of the Games Village, which will house 6,500 athletes, to the government.

I certainly feel ashamed of the whole arrangements. On one side we try to pose as if we are a great emerging market but when given such responsibility we have failed collectively. Government has totally been out of touch and failed to recognize the importance of the games.

World discus champion Dani Samuels of Australia has pulled out of the Games because of security and health concerns, as did England's world triple jump champion Phillips Idowu. Four other champions have quit due to various reasons, including injuries.

Triple Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt of Jamaica is the highest profile athlete to skip the event.

A Dengue epidemic has spread through New Delhi, sending thousands of people to hospital.

"They (athletes) may not be able to sustain their performance so they find out some reason or other why they are not participating, but these things happen in every game, every competition," Lalit Bhanot, spokesman of the Delhi organizing committee, told CNN IBN.

Images of stray dogs, stagnant water, workers urinating in public, and human faeces found at the unfinished athletes' village have overshadowed the successes of the Games -- the main stadium and other sporting venues. A portion of false ceiling in the weightlifting venue caved in on Wednesday, a day after the collapse of a footbridge by the main stadium, injuring 27 workers.

The event has also been plagued by security concerns. Two foreign tourists were shot and wounded at the weekend by unknown assailants in Delhi and Australian TV broadcast how a reporter bought bomb-making devices to smuggle through security points. Indian police have denied he ever crossed a checkpoint.

I just hope that the games are cancelled and our country is saved from the humiliation of being such poor planners. Also hope that the government looks into things that led to such failures in order to avoid such embarrassments in future.

Spain - World Champs

Spain were not just good on the night but were so throughout the tournament.

Few would have predicted them to be the world champs after their initial loss to Swiss. But they bounced back from that set back spectacularly. They improved game after game. By conceding just 2 goals and scoring 8, they have become the lowest scorning nation to ever to win the cup. They stuck to their passing game no matter what and ground the teams to score winners very late. Most of their score lines read 1-0. But they had the highest number of shots on target. Probably their finishing was not as efficient as the Germans.

Getting back to the final game, if the Dutch had won, it would have been bad for the game because the way they approached the match was just not in the spirit of the game. The Dutch played beautiful football until the finals. It's one thing to have a game plan, be organized and get men behind the ball, but kicking your opponents off the pitch is absolute disgrace. The Dutch played to a game plan that was off beam. They had few breakaways but their approach was to stop the Spanish playing and I personally didn't want to see that, I wanted an open game. By the end of the match, the entire Dutch team apart from Maarten Stekelenburg and Wesley Sneijder were on yellow card. They had a player sent off as well. They in fact were lucky that De Jong was not sent off early in the game, for that wild kick on Xabi Alonso. It might not have been the best final but Spain have been the best side for the last three years and they always tried to play the game in the right way and they for me were the worthy winners on the night.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good:

1)      Spain, Uruguay, Argentina and Germany

2)       Iniesta taking off his blue Spain jersey to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the words, "Dani Jarque: siempre con nosotros" — "Dani Jarque: always with us.”Jarque collapsed and died at the age of 26 on a preseason tour of Italy last year, one month after being named captain of Espanyol. Iniesta and Jarque were teammates on Spain's under-17, under-19, under-20 and under-21 teams.

The Bad:

1)       The final game with umpteen yellow cards

2)       England, Brazil and Italy

3)       Jabulani 

The Ugly:

1)       Play acting

2)       Horrible tackles (Van Bommel kicked anything that moved)

3)       France

4)       Annoying vuvuzelas

Feel free to pour in your comments.

The World Cup So Far

It’s been quite hectic work wise. So here is my latest blog and obviously it’s on my favorite sport “Football” and favorite occasion “World Cup” 

I personally think that this world cup has failed to deliver in terms of atmosphere and enthusiasm. The previous world cup held in Germany was fantastic. Also I do not know why FIFA has to introduce a new ball for every tournament. The Adidas Jubalani has created more news than the players on the field. Also why doesn’t FIFA introduce goal line technology I do not understand? FIAF makes Billions of dollars and I think they can invest a few bucks on the technology to avoid some dubious decision that can make/break a teams fortune especially in the knockout stages. 

Well I have been supporting Argentina from the qualifiers and I was very nervous during their qualifying stages. They were almost knocked out (Phew!!). But what a team they have been in the tournament. They have turned it around brilliantly. I would say that Maradona has done brilliant job. He has been soaking up all the media pressure and has not let the pressure affect his players. With the team full of attackers (Messi, Tevez, Higuain, Milito and Aguero) I thought he would have a tough time in team selection. But his team selection has been on the spot. With just 2 goals conceded and 11 goals scored they look in ominous form. They are my favorites to lift the cup come July 11^th.

Apart from some beautiful football we have had some controversies and seen some ugly part of it as well. Here are few of my selection:

1. Team of the Tournament So Far: Argentina  
2. Shock of the Tournament: Italy’s Exit In Group Stages  
3. Most over hyped team: England  
4. Overachievers: Ghana  
5. Dark Horse: Netherlands
6. Sore Losers: France 
7. Player of the Tournament So Far: Lionel Messi - He has not scored yet but has been a tremendous team player and has assisted critical goals.  
8. Misfiring Players: Rooney, Ronaldo, Lampard, Henry, Anelka and so many others  
9. Coup of the Tournament: France players rejecting to train  
10. Shocking decisions: Lampard’s disallowed goal, Tevez’s offside goal, Klose red card. FIFA (Sepp Blatter) wake up.  
11. Shocking display by players: Rob Green Vs USA  

Please comment your views.

Chelsea The Champs!!!

It’s been 3 years since Chelsea lifted the title. What a way to comeback and win the title away from Man Utd. King Carlo has now done what the “Special One” did in his first season. But now he has an opportunity to get better by winning the FA cup next week. This Chelsea team is the best that has been assembled over the years. They have experience and the will to fight till last minute. And to top it all they are a group of mean scoring machines. To score 103 goals over 38 matches is no mean effort. Before the final day they had put 7 goals past their opponents and what better day to better that. 8 goals on the last day of the season. Truly Amazing. Here are some of the turning points of the season that truly put the league in their hand:

1.       Didier scoring the winner in dying moments to seal the victory against Hull on the opening day.

2.       Malouda’s last minute winner against Stoke

3.       Chelsea double against Red Devils, Gunners and Kops

4.       Getting together and putting the Champs Lge exit behind them

5.       Putting Terry and Cole controversies behind them