needlessly messianic articles written by ankur banerjee on anything that catches his fancy, which is quite a lot indeed - stuff like tech, quizzing, h2g2 - and cups of filthy liquid almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea
AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Exam) 2007 took place on the same day as when I was messing up my module test at ARC. It seems that CBSE was up to the same thing, because apparently, it messed up in some questions too.
You can download the solutions of AIEEE 2007 (all sections - physics, chemistry, math), including a statistical analysis by clicking here. This was given to Career Launcher students, and I’m sure others will find it useful too. For all folks like me out there, who after suitably demonstrating time after time that they’re nincompoops, AIEEE is at least an option in which IF they study they MIGHT get into some college. After all, the thing with AIEEE ranks is that since most who get through in IIT-JEE also get through in AIEEE, and because they generally choose IIT, the bottom feeders of AIEEE do move up in the rank list.
Don’t ask me for my personal opinion on the paper now, I’m VERY busy with SAT prep. Physics seemed easy though, from whatever cursory glance I had.
I said I’d talk only about freebies, so here goes. I came across Petersons.com on Yahoo! Education. It gives a free full length online SAT.
The registration process is quick, unlike most SAT sites which would probably also ask you the color of your T-shirt if they had it their way. On logging in, you’ll find the option for the free SAT; click on it and it will run a system check to ensure you can take the test - which basically means it’ll test whether you have Java.
Contrary to other sites, Petersons.com uses less of images, so technically, it SHOULD be faster-loading too. That is, sadly, however not the case. At times, it takes interminably long for a test question to load.
Coming to the questions themselves, I found their math section considerably of a higher level than other sites. Their math sections even brought in concepts which are introduced pretty late in senior secondary high school in India, which is rare on other practice SATs. Needless to say though, they’re pretty easy and only touch the basics of those concepts.
The critical reading and writing sections are easy at times, and sometimes challenging. The major problem is that their comprehension paragraph windows are too narrow, and require a lot of scrolling, which wastes time. Note to self - need to do MUCH better in English.
Petersons.com also promises an essay section, but you’ve to self evaluate it according to the given guidelines, which may lead to an inflated score overall. It’s not very easy to objectively analyze your essay just after you’ve written it.
On the whole, the site doesn’t look too sophisticated, and should have as a result of this trade-off, been faster loading. Sadly, that is definitely not the case. Definitely give this a shot for some good math questions though.
Always what I suspected, despite Prashanth writing a gushing review on his blog, and claiming Vista is more secure. There’s a new flaw that has been detected on Vista, the ‘most secure Windows ever’. But that’s not what I found interesting. Read the article, and you’ll see that the much-touted Windows Defender, the built in security app of Windows Vista, detects only 65% malware, compared to 75-99% of other security software. And then again, the User Access Control system is turning out to be counter-productive - it throws up so many warnings at everything that I bet most users will turn it off, thus defeating its very purpose.
The fact is, Microsucks is giving away half-baked software simply to retain a monopoly and chuck out the other security software vendors. Even that, it not the major issue in my opinion. What IS major is that many newbies and not-so-techie users may be lulled into believing they’re well-protected because they’ve Windows Defender, and might not go in for proper security suites. THIS is far more disconcerting - having a large section of computers users under a state of illusion that their PC is a fortress.
It’s been ONE really long month for me. It’s no secret that I don’t like cricket that much, and for the Cricket World Cup 2007 to stretch on and on (and on and on…) for more than 42 days has been nightmare. I even a description of cricket in a article writing skill in my recent English Monday test at school which my teacher found highly amusing (and thus, inappropriate for the Boards, which basically means she didn’t give me high marks in that section). Here goes:
After all, what’s so fascinating about 13 boffins trampling grass for hours and hours on end under a blistering sun, only for the motion of a small red ball?
There was more, including a ‘commercial break’ in my article, which the teacher found funny, and thus deserving less marks.
In fact (and boy am I gonna get lynched for this), I was pretty delighted when India was knocked out of the WC, because the hysteria would have been too much to bear if they’d progressed any further. I’m NOT against any sport (soccer anyone?), but all I see around me is cricket, cricket and more cricket. The nerds of our class (that means everyone, except me and a few others), who don’t even know one bloody English band’s name, or crap, have never seen an English movie (or for that matter, even Hindi movies), keep playing cricket with frigging PAPER BALLS in class! :p Yuck! And whenever I step out of my house for some fresh air, I get disgusted to so MANY folks playing cricket in the neighborhood park. Which, along with my attraction to civilized world of broadband Internet, partly explains where I got the inspiration to maintain my shape (that is, round) from.
I mean, there are so MANY groups, and so many people all the time, playing nothing but cricket day and night. It saturates our mind space, ad space, TV space, book space, World Space (satellite radio) and who knows what else! I understand that people like it, BUT WHY IGNORE OTHER SPORTS! Yes, people are fanatical about sports, but then there’s always a balance. Take USA - there are considerable sections of public interested in NHL, NFL, NBA, baseball, Indy races, F1, soccer and so much more. Take England, they’ve got sections of public following cricket AND soccer. And India? Hardly any other sport gets any attention!
BTW, the Nike India cricket ad is one of the high points of this year’s WC campaign. NOT because of the cricket, but because it captures the fanaticism for cricket in India wonderfully. And also because the shots are so complex - take a look and you’ll understand that it must have taken many takes, as the camera positions are switched continuously, yet the crew / equipment is not (very) visible. Made by Abhineo Deo, it was shot on a set! Indeed, this ad is really amazing!
