November 2004 – Bobby Maisnam

Alexander

November 25, 2004 by Bobby

Just came back after watching “Alexander“. And I was really disappointed. I had expected a lot from the movie.
The movie is long (3 hours) and most of the dialogues are boring. I think the movie is just plain stretched out. Many times in the middle, I felt really bored. One of the battle sequences is good but the others are just not worth seeing.
I had watched “Troy” and I was really impressed with it. And I was hoping that “Alexander” would be on the same lines. But after watching the movie, I realize it does not even come close to “Troy”.
And when I went to buy the ticket, I was told that they do not accept credit cards. So, I had to go the ATM machine and spend $2 extra. So, I spent $10 in total for an extremely boring movie!
Final Verdict: Do NOT see the movie! It’s not worth it.
The next movie I am waiting for is “Ocean’s Twelve” which is releasing on Dec 10th. I hope it will be good.

Kevin Sites clarifies

November 23, 2004 by Bobby

I generally do not write about politics or wars. However this one is worth looking at.
Last week, NBC cameraman Kevin Sites, embedded with the Marines in Fallujah, wrote a startling report of a marine who shot and killed an already wounded Iraqi insurgent on Nov 13. On his website, Sites explains why he went public with the video footage. He wants to counter speculation that he is an anti-war activist or anything but an impartial journalist.
More Links:
– The open letter (Nov 21) | cached copy (141 kb pdf)
– The original report on MSNBC (Nov 16) | cached copy (19 kb pdf)
– Instapundit’s post on this topic
– KevinSites.net
More about this later.

Why is “i.e.” read as “that is”?

November 20, 2004 by Bobby

Some people read “i.e.” as “eye eee” and some others (me included) read it as “that is”. Did a quick search on dictionary.com and found that “i.e.” stands for “id est” which is Latin for “that is”. Now, I know! 🙂

Gmail POP access

November 16, 2004 by Bobby

My gmail account now has POP access. Gmail started providing POP access for its email accounts in phases a couple of days back. The last time I checked, I still did not have POP access. I checked today and found that now my account has been provided POP access.
The first step was to enable POP access. I did that by selecting the following options in the “Forwarding” > “Forwarding and POPAccount” section:
1. Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)
2. When messages are accessed with POP: keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox.
The account configuration was pretty much straightforward. Configuration instructions are given in the Gmail Help section.
After setting up POP access for my gmail account, I tried sending and receiving emails using Outlook Express. It is working great.

Hotmail offers 250 mb email storage space

November 13, 2004 by Bobby

Update (2/26/2005): If you want to increase your hotmail space, please see this page. I have not tried it yet but from the list of responses, it seems that the procedure works. A cached copy is also available here in case the page mentioned above goes down.

Hotmail now offers 250 mb of email storage space. Just checked my hotmail account and yes, it does have 250 mb email space now. When Yahoo mail increased its email space to 100 mb a couple of months back, I had read somewhere that hotmail was also planning to increase it’s email space in August 2004. Two and a half months later, that seems to be a reality.
As for me, I still use my University email account. It offers only 20 mb of space but I use it because it offers IMAP access. Also, it has 6 MX records i.e. basically 6 mail servers handling the incoming email. This means that if one of the email servers go down, the others will pick up the email. Most email providers have only 1 or 2 MX records. Yahoo and Hotmail have 4, Rediffmail has 3 and Gmail has 2 MX records respectively.
POP is good but I like IMAP a lot better and it is much more convenient. I have a gmail account but I seldom use it because it does not provide POP or IMAP access. It would be great if I could have access to an email service with good storage space (200mb+) and which offers IMAP access. I am even willing to pay for it. I have tried the free version of Fastmail and it works pretty good.
Related entries from my blog:
– Rediffmail now offers 1 GB of email space (June 17, 2004 10:35 PM)
– Yahoomail now offers 100 MB of email space (June 15, 2004 06:39 PM)
– Got my Gmail account! (June 12, 2004 01:40 AM)
Correction (6:39 PM 11/13/2004): It seems Gmail does offer POP access now but not to all its users yet. I just checked mine and POP access has not been enabled for my account yet :(. If Gmail starts supporting IMAP, it will be really great!!! :).

Happy Diwali and Ningol Chakouba

November 12, 2004 by Bobby

Happy Diwali to everybody!!! This year, Diwali is being celebrated today – Nov 12. Kali Puja in West Bengal was yesterday (Nov 11). Diwali is the festival of lights and is one of the most important festivals for Indians worldwide.
Manthan – the Indian Students Association at UTK celebrated Diwali couple of days back – on Oct 31. The reason was that was the only date the UC Auditorium was available before Nov 12.
Ningol Chakouba is on Nov 14. (Ningol=daughter of the family, chakouba=invite to a feast). It is a festival which celebrated in my home state – Manipur. On this day, parents invite their married daughters and their children to a feast and share experiences. Sort of like a family reunion. It’s a lot of fun and the food is great!
Image courtesy: 123Greetings.com

Bush wins

November 3, 2004 by Bobby

George W. Bush has won his second term as president.

Sen. John Kerry conceded defeat to President Bush on Wednesday and asked the country to put the bitter divisions of the election behind them.

Source: CNN
As of now (2:51 PM 11/3/2004), Bush has 274 electoral votes (51%) and Kerry has 252 electoral votes (48%). 270 electoral votes are required to win the election.
Was watching the election analysis on TV yesterday night and one of the commenters mentioned that Ohio was the deciding state. Whoever won Ohio would win the election. Seems like Bush held a 136,000-vote lead in Ohio.
The presidential election system in the U.S. is a bit complex and I don’t understand it fully. A better explanation is here.
Time has a nice photo essay about Election Day (Nov 2) 2004. It seems the US presidential elections was even held in other countries like like Germany and Israel!