We all know that BSNL sucks. So what’s new to add in this post?

The telephones in our area dint work. In fact almost the phones went dead. It dint work from 11 PM on March 29th till 4 PM on March 31th. Almost it went dead for 41 hours! They said it was a “major cable problem”.

Most of us don’t care about the telephone not working. We have mobiles and there are plenty of PCO here.. but along with the telephone Internet also wont work. I had no access to dataone “broadband” in that period of 41 hours. It’s very difficult to live without the Internet for 12 hours and now I had a ordeal to live without the net for 41 hours.

Another thing that was bothering me was, I had almost 300mb of data which is yet to be used in my entitled 1024mb. I almost thought that I would go waste. But it dint happen. I have a lot to download, almost 125 torrents in queue.. so was worried.

Still no unlimited transfers plan in BSNL Dataone
I am fed up of staying awake till 2AM or waking up at that time of hour. Nowadays, I really don’t bother about the torrents. I have given some torrents to my friends to download. I can no longer wait for that elusive plan.

There are some rumours that they might actually introduce new plans including unlimited plans shortly, but till now, they have not announced about the same.

My Dataone loves listening to songs!
Yeah, it’s true! It won’t connect unless you have some media player running with some files. I run Foobar (it’s light) and play some music. I browse/download while my dataone listens to music.I have no idea as how this happens. It refuses to connect if I don’t play any music!

BSNL Sucks. Period.

*As I write this, I have La Grande illusion (The Grand Illusion) torrent running in BitTornado*

What prompted me to write this?

The DVD of the movie Rang De Basanti was encrypted in such a way that it could not be copied. UTV did it’s best to stop the DVD being pirated/ripped but the pirates won! The DVD rip of Rang De Basanti is released in many desi torrent sites and available for download. UTV needs to learn that all this copy-protection won’t work. After all, Microsoft product DVDs are copy-protected and we can rip them easily.

It’s a waste of time for all the firms to copy the pirates.. we all knew how hard Microsoft tried the security code for all it’s products and how the pirates broke the “code” within hours.

Just look at the legal threats that The Pirate Bay gets: http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php. Still they run a good site and do “social service”.

ONE nail drives out another
UTV sells the Rang de DVDs for 500 bucks. Isn’t too costly when you get to download the DVD 5/DVD 9/DVDrip (single/double CD) for free? I myself thought of getting the DVD, but this 500 Rs tag is too costly for me. Instead I have asked my friend to download the DVD 5!

So that brings the question : “Is piracy a charity/social service?“. Who will want to buy Microsoft Office for 20,000 rupees, leave alone movie DVDs for 500 rupees.

In my opinion, the best way to defeat pirates is by beating in their own game. If they sell the DVDs for 200 bucks, then they can sell more DVDs for a lesser margins and in the end of the day, they stand to gain.

These firms needs to take cue from the Railway minister, Laloo Prasad and see how he transformed Indian Railways in two years.

…and there is no stopping me!
I download 15-17gb of data every month (and maybe even more if I have a better Internet connection).

I burnt 14 DVDs today alone and dint burn all the stuffs that I wanted due to want of blank DVD medias. I have almost 50 DVDs with more than 200+ movies (and still I am yet to burn many movies in DVDs).

VLC Player 0.8.5 Test 1

VLC player 0.8.5 test 1 was released a few days back for windows and other OSes.

I had a tough time with the download of the .exe file. The VLC website dint load and Firefox showed me operation timed out error. Then I downloaded the file via torrents. It was really simple and hassle free from the usual download, no need to select source, location, open up many pages etc, etc..

What’s new?
Here is some of the major changes that I noticed:

• Drag & Drop support in the playlist
• The 400% sound bar is corrected to 200%. I think there was never 400% boost in the volume, anyway the 200% of the new version seems to be the same as the 400% of the older version.
• Another interesting thing that I noticed is that, we can actually get to see the thumbnails in action. i.e. if we have a video file in any folder, the thumbnail also plays the file simultaneous with the VLC player.

There is a hell lot of changes, to know more, visit their Home Page

Still some work is yet to be done
The only complaints I have are with the progress bar. Not having one in full screen mode and when clicking on it, it doesn’t go where you wanted.

The seek bar and seeking the file to a place is still not proper. This problem is really irritating while playing DVDs. We can just seek to just one chapter at a time.

The rmvb and the real media file playing support needs to be there. I don’t even have a real player/real player alternative installed in my system, because I don’t like those players!

Again, I am very much satisfied with the best Media player that I have come across and hope they make many more improvements and bring out the 1.0 version soon!

Homepage
Download Now!

Update: (04.04.2006)
VLC media player 0.8.5-test2 beta is released
Download | Change log

A new shopping mall has born in Chennai today. It’s the Chennai Citi Center. It has come up in Radhakrishnan Salai, next to Kalyani Hospital.

I was passing by that area with my friends and we wanted to check it out (or rather do some Window shopping). It’s just opened today at 1830 hrs and not much stores has opened up now at this point of time.

Adidas, Wills Lifestyle, Landmark (4th store in Chennai), Raymond, Florsheim, W, Food world, Helvitica (2nd store in Chennai), Lifestyle, Pepe Jeans, Le Chocolatier, Suxus are some of the brands that will open their stores shortly. Even offices spaces will come up along with the retail space.

Even INOX Cineplex is expected to come up shortly! INOX Leisure Ltd has signed up to open a five-screen multiplex here. It will have a total of around 1,200 seats. Yeah, they’ll all be in the same league as Mayajaal screens, Studio 5 or Six Degrees. But who cares? It’s the so called “small screens” that run to packed houses as they run newer Hindi or English flicks. This is great news for me as this Chennai Citi Center is near my house as Satyam cinemas.

First-themed complex in Chennai

Theme malls are the happening thing and attract crowds with offers of special services, discounts and designer labels.What works in a theme mall is the cluster of choices that are made available to the consumer.

Lifestyle is the anchor tenant for the retail section and Inox is the entertainment anchor tenant. So we’ll have a variety of stores and choices in front of us.

A French theme
When you pass by the mall, I am sure you won’t feel that you are in Chennai. The entrance looks like Arc De Triomphe! Don’t take my word for it. Even you’ll feel the same after catching a look at it. The entrance of Chennai Citi Centre and Arc De Triomphe strike a resemblance and looks alike. It’s not only the exteriors, even the interiors have some element of French Architecture. This is a refreshing change from the usual monotony of glass structures.

Fraser and Nag (a Dubai-based firm) and Eskay Design have done the architectural design for the mall. “The shopping mall will have a French theme, with both the exteriors and interiors designed based on French architecture”, claims the spokesman. And right so!

With Chennai Citi Centre, Spencer Plaza, Abirami mall and various other malls which is waiting to take off, Chennai is now the Mall city of India! I am looking forward to an European style of Shopping experience right here in Chennai.

This is cricket season and many would be loking for live audio or video streaming of matches. We have India Vs England, Sri lanka versus Bangladesh, New zealand Vs West Indies and Australia Vs South Africa series going on..

[Update] - 19/07/2007

Live Cricket Streaming for India Tour of England, 2007

Enjoy!