Expansive with the bat and explosive with the bombast, the South African-born Kevin Pietersen is not one for the quiet life. Pietersen, an enthusiastic, bold-minded and big-hitting No 5, first ruffled feathers by shunning South Africa - he was disenchanted with the quota system - in favour of England; his eligibility coming courtesy of an English mother. He never doubted he would play for England: he has self-confidence in spades but, fortunately, he has sackfuls of talent too. Sure enough, as soon as he qualified in September 2004, he was invited to tour Zimbabwe for that winter's one-dayers, where he averaged 104 in three innings. Success here earned him a late call into England's team against none other than South Africa in early 2005. Undeterred by hostile receptions from the home crowds, he announced his arrival - loudly, of course - with three centuries in five innings, and in doing so demonstrated his peerless eye for the ball and for making headlines, too. On reaching his maiden ton in the second ODI at Bloemfontein, he kissed his badge with unreserved fervour and afterwards announced his next ambition: getting a tattoo of three lions and his England number. Playing at Test level was next on the Pietersen to-do list, and, as a man who puts his money, if not always his mind, where his mouth is, it was only a matter of time. Overlooked for two Tests against Bangladesh, he made his debut against Australia at Lord's of all places, and responded with a pair of hard-hitting fifties in a losing cause. Six dropped catches in the series appeared to have dented his brash confidence, but with the series at stake, he once again showed his unswerving eye for the limelight by clubbing a phenomenal 158 on the final day at The Oval, to secure the draw that England needed for a first Ashes triumph in 18 years. First to congratulate him on his feat was Shane Warne, his good friend and captain at Hampshire, whom Pietersen had joined at the start of the season after three eventful and fractious years at Nottinghamshire. Unsurprisingly, that innings proved hard to live up to, but astonishingly Pietersen managed it, clubbing two more big hundreds in his next two Test innings in England, the second of which - against Sri Lanka at Edgbaston - included a remarkable reverse-sweep for six off Muttiah Muralitharan. In Australia the following winter, he once again lived up to his reputation with hard-earned runs, but his tour ended in disappointment when he flew home with a fractured rib, courtesy of Glenn McGrath after the first match of the CB Series. While England's World Cup was a miserable failure for the team it was a personal success for Pietersen who hit two centuries - including his first ODI ton in a winning cause against West Indies - and confirmed his role as England's leading batsman. His dominance continued against West Indies with a majestic 226 at Headingley - finally beating his previous 158, a score he had made three times previously. It was the highest score by an England batsman since Graham Gooch's 333, and his march towards greatness continued. But then followed the inevitable dip - 10 innings without so much as a fifty - before he bounced back with an uncharacteristically backs-to-wall 129 in England's third Test against New Zealand in Napier.

Achievements:

• ICC Emerging Player of the Year 2005
• ICC One-Day Player of the Year 2005
• Awarded the MBE on 31st December 2005
• Wisden Cricketer of the Year 2006

Full name: Kevin Peter Pietersen
Born: June 27, 1980, Pietermaritzburg, Natal
Major teams: England, Hampshire, ICC World XI, KwaZulu-Natal, Natal, Nottinghamshire
Nickname: KP, Kelves, Kapes
Batting style: Right-hand bat
Bowling style: Right-arm offbreak
Height: 6 ft 4 in
Education: Maritzburg College, University of SA

If you're scared and you know it,
Hide your eyes
(Cover eyes with hands)
If you're scared and you know it,
Hide your eyes
(Cover eyes with hands)
If you're scared and you know it,
Then your face will surely show it
If you're scared and you know it,
Hide your eyes
(Cover eyes with hands)

If you're sad and you know it,
Cry a tear
(Bring fisted hands to eyes and say "Boo Hoo")
If you're sad and you know it,
Cry a tear
(Bring fisted hands to eyes and say "Boo Hoo")
If you're sad and you know it,
Then your face will surely show it
If you're sad and you know it,
Cry a tear
(Bring fisted hands to eyes and say "Boo Hoo")

If you're angry and you know it,
Stomp your feet
(Stomp feet twice)
If you're angry and you know it,
Stomp your feet
(Stomp feet twice)
If you're angry and you know it,
Then your face will surely show it
If you're angry and you know it,
Stomp your feet
(Stomp feet twice)

If you're happy and you know it,
Shout "Hurray!"
(Shout "Hurray!")
If you're happy and you know it,
Shout "Hurray!"
(Shout "Hurray!")
If you're happy and you know it,
Then your face will surely show it
If you're happy and you know it,
Shout "Hurray!"
(Shout "Hurray!")

Content wouldn't be king without broadband. And broadband would be a waste without the content. It has now become a 'virtuous' cycle of one driving the other. There are now 162 million websites (one form of content) worldwide. That sort of content both sustains and requires a huge broadband services and equipment market.

Broadband technology related chips - whether used in core infrastructure or the CPE devices - generated $8.4 billion in 2007. There are other allied equipment segments also that have grown due to broadband. One segment that I can immediately identify is 802.11x market. We are seeing growth in WiFi equipment mainly to access broadband from devices like laptops, PDAs and mobiles.

For VoIP and IPTV type applications, broadband is a pre-requisite. It took years for telcos to bring broadband services to the market. While the bloggers like us may choose to endlessly blog about mobile and web 2.0, the fact remains that broadband is the single biggest telecom success story of the past 10 years.

really makes sense Faisal....

I wonders about Newton's reaction after watching Rajinikanth movies. Well, you don't have to be a Newton to get psyched. Any sane person will get psyched watching Rajinikanth and his stupid heroics. Mindboggling, absolute bombastic angular calculaton. Defying all laws and phenomenon of physics.

Newton's head started spinning. He was convinced that all his logic and laws in physics were just a huge pile of junk and apologized for everything he had done.

Newton went crazy......

The term sniper is attested from 1824 in the sense of sharpshooter. The verb to snipe originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India-in the sense of: ¡°to shoot from a hidden place,in allusion to snipe hunting, a game bird known for being extremely difficult to hunt. Those who were skilled at the hunting of this bird were thus dubbed "snipers".

During the American Civil War, the common term used in the United States for much the same function was "skirmisher". A Civil War army often protected itself by using such concealed marksmen, who were deployed individually on the extremes of the moving army. Generally, such skirmishers were selected on the basis of prior proven hunting and marksmanship skills. Often these were either young soldiers with promising maneuverability and field craft, or older men with refined marksmanship and tactical skills. The term 'sniper' was not in widespread use in the United States until after the American Civil War.

In the last few decades, the term "sniper" has been used rather loosely, especially by media in association with police precision riflemen, those responsible for assassination, any shooting from all but the shortest range in war, and any criminal equipped with a rifle in a civil context. In the Bosnian War, and for much of the Siege of Beirut, the term 'sniper' was used to refer to what were generally ill-trained soldiers who terrorized civilians, mainly by firing at them from windows and rooftops. During the Siege of Sarajevo, the main street of the city became known as "Sniper Alley".

This has rather expanded the meaning of the term. It has also given "sniper" mixed connotations. Official sources often use other terms, especially for police snipers: "counter-sniper", "precision marksman", "tactical marksman", "sharpshooter, or "precision shooter". Some of these alternatives have been in common use for a long time; others are closer to undisguised euphemisms.

Snipers in warfare
Different countries have different military doctrines regarding snipers in military units, settings, and tactics. Generally, a sniper's goal in warfare is to reduce the enemy's fighting ability by striking at a small number of high value targets, such as officers.

Soviet Russian and derived military doctrines include squad-level snipers, which may be called "sharpshooters" or "designated riflemen" in other doctrines. They do so because this ability was lost to ordinary troops when assault rifles (which are optimized for close-in, rapid-fire combat) were adopted.

Military snipers from the US, UK, and other countries that adopt their military doctrine are typically deployed in two-man sniper teams consisting of a shooter and spotter. The two have different functions and hence their assignment corresponds to their skills, but a common practice is for the shooter and spotter to take turns in order to avoid eye fatigue.

Typical sniper missions include reconnaissance and surveillance, counter-sniper, killing enemy commanders, selecting targets of opportunity, and even anti-mat riel tasks (destruction of military equipment), which tend to require use of rifles in the larger calibers such as the .50 BMG. Snipers have of late been increasingly demonstrated as useful by US and UK forces in the recent Iraq campaign in a fire support role to cover the movement of infantry, especially in urban areas.

The current world record for the longest range sniper kill is 2,430 meters (7,972 feet), accomplished by a Canadian sniper, Corporal Rob Furlong, of the third battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, during the invasion of Afghanistan, using a .50 BMG (12.7mm) McMillan TAC-50 bolt-action rifle. This meant that the bullet had a flight time of approx 4.5 seconds, and a drop of approx 70 meters (230 feet).

This impressive feat of marksmanship is not typical for the effective range with a high first hit probability of the employed rifle. The ambient air density in the Shah-i-Kot Valley where Corporal Furlong operated is significantly lower then at sea level due to its 2,432 m (9,000 ft) mean elevation. This increases the maximum effective range of a high powered sniper rifle like Corporal Furlong used by approx 600 m (1968 ft).

The previous record was held by US Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock, achieved during the Vietnam War, at a distance of 2,250 meters.

If I was down to my last dollar, I'd spend it on public relations.

- Bill Gates

Organizations are the subsets of society and cannot remain dumb. They necessarily need to communicate and actively interact with other clusters of the society in order to make their way upwards on the success graph. It is not an easy job as the clusters are heterogeneous and the nature of interaction with the people outside the organization is diverse. So, to manage this tricky task, a professional approach known as Public Relation is employed by the organization.

Public Relation involves supervision and assessment of public attitudes in addition of maintaining mutual relations and understanding between an organization and its public. An organization needs to interact at constant rate. As the channels of communication have multiplied drastically, its main function is to improve those channels and making out new ways of setting up a full duplex, two-way flow of information and understanding.

Public Relations and Technology World

Recent decade has witnessed a massive growth in High Tech Sector. A large number of Tech firms, all around the globe, over the time have adopted and occupied this field. Hundreds are still budding out in developed, developing as well as under-developed parts of world. High tech industry has turned out and evolved into a huge marketplace. An enormous number of reasons count for growth of such organizations. Large scale Automation, expanded businesses, innovations, advancements in science and technology can be a few major drivers.

The Tech industry is dynamic, fast moving and has constant new product or upgrades and above all fierce competition between brands. In addition to that, disruptive technologies are impacting the world in which we live. Today, all kind of technologies rely on public awareness and support. High tech companies are not only required to prove their technologies to customers, but media and analysts as well. If they misunderstand the value of technologies, these business entities will struggle for support. It can have a drastic impact on the existence of an organization. Jobs will be eliminated, budgets cut, and support will be directed elsewhere. Public relation prevents and eliminates the risk of getting entangled in such situation.

A good Public Relation program practice can help out the Tech firms to have clear messages and distinctly articulate their vision. It can help the organization in becoming industry leaders by advancing their technologies. It can help out the organization in making the statistics and numbers more understandable and meaningful so the audience comprehend the message and supports the initiatives.

Technology is all about innovations. But it is complex too. The people who are the ultimate users of these innovations cannot easily understand what an innovation means for them. It is the job of public relations department of that organization to make the end users really understand what benefits are in a particular innovation. And this can be done by them through events, shows, trade fairs and may be through publications like trade journals, etc.

PR can play a very vital role for the Tech Industry in branding. It is known for dominating the art of branding in the technology industry. It is considered the most effective at building brands as it delivers credibility. It can be a "lifeline" to the early-stage high tech companies. Instead of investing in advertisement and other forms of marketing, these companies can put all of their money meant for marketing, in Public Relations. With limited resources, PR delivers the most value for the buck while also delivering the highest level of credibility and understanding.

PR is effective at building and sustaining buzz. A well designed PR program for a High Tech firm gives it a competitive advantage. It can build an image and generate visibility. A good healthy media relation with the relevant key media person, securing story opportunities and responding well to media inquiries as interest in your company builds momentum. It can place the unit under the spotlight, making it stand out in a crowded market. Other PR programs can take the form of industry relations with trade associations, marketing communications, trade shows/special events, analyst relations, and awareness campaigns designed through award recognition and speaking opportunities.

Another interesting thing prevalent in the Tech industry is the concept of "Technology Partnering". A company produces a specialized component, partners with other system providers which in turn comes out with an integrated offering to the market. One can hardly point out a single Tech company without having technology partners. PR performs the role of regularly coordinating and communicating with these partners. To come out with a single offer to the market, coordination is a vital element for success.

Managing PR for such a sector has been and shall remain a challenge. Since the growth has been limitless horizontally as well as vertically, the publics associated have grown to an extent which is beyond imagination.

Shortcomings

Though PR lends a helping hand to the tech companies and helps them to meet their objectives, they have some inherent flaws that need to be corrected.

Most PR personal are not too tech savvy and get lost while explaining technology to their audience. They are not knowledgeable enough about the tech field hence communicate a message that is misconveyed. They use the same methods to market or communicate a tech product as they market other conventional product which is a big problem.

Another thing that is quiet noticed is that PR takes time and does not necessarily work on the schedule. Planting new ideas or changing minds is a slow process. But when a PR program rolls out over a longer period of time, prospects have time to adjust their attitudes. Brands that take this approach are longer lasting, too.

Past, Present and Future (Trends)

Lessons from the past reveal that the Tech industry has been built on successful Public Relations. There are examples of plenty of mega players in the present High Tech world. Among them renowned companies like Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google, Microsoft, Intel, BlackBerry are some of those companies that built their initial identities via PR. Other tech giants like SAP, Cisco and Oracle also built positions via public relations before spending big bucks on ad campaigns. There are countless others.

Nowadays, Public relations employs diverse techniques such as opinion polling and focus groups to evaluate public opinion, combined with a variety of high-tech techniques for distributing information on behalf of their clients, including the internet, satellite feeds, broadcast messages, and blogs. With the advent of Internet Technologies and the need to get online on the web a new form of PR known as Interactive Online PR has come into existence. It includes blog monitoring, Web conferences, online press rooms, news and online monitoring, social networking strategies etc. But the Internet is yet to become a mass medium, it is all about niches. Hence it may take some time to evolve but it has a great future there.

Recent trends to organize regular in-house meeting between the board and employees are catching up, so as both the parties can interact and put forth their ideas and complaints, if any, so as to streamline the operation as well as ensure the growth. Coming-up with regular in-house journals also gives the employees a feeling that they are being heard in the organization and that they are taken seriously. This gives them a feeling of relationship with the organization.

The future of public relations is going to be more complex and no organization can really afford to remain in the business without a proper and optimum public relations wing. The department will be doing most of the marketing for the organization and this would force organizations to have a team of professionals from varied backgrounds in their public relations departments. The team would be comprising of not only communications experts but marketing guys, sales engineers and may be organizational behaviorists who can really interact with publics from across nations with different cultures, languages and what not.