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Microsoft releases Windows 10 preview with Spartan Web browser
Microsoft has finally made live its anticipated Spartan Web browser for the preview version of its upcoming Windows 10 OS. The browser is set to replace the age-old Internet Explorer Web browser with its enhanced features and built-in voice assistant, Cortana.
Project Spartan will be made available across the Windows 10 devices and include interesting features like the ability to write or type on a webpage apart from making sharing, reading, discovery easier for the users.
The Windows blog noted that the brand new Web browser has a new design that puts focus on the page and not the browser. It further includes Microsoft's Cortana assistant to help make searches and browsing easier. Cortana in Spartan will be available in the US versions of the build and extend gradually later.
It also has the new inking capabilities that lets you write or type directly on the page, comment on what's interesting or clip what you want and share the 'Web Note' via mail or a social network.
Spartan also offers clutter-free reading with its Reading List that collects all readings that interest you for easy access later and a Reading View that cleans up unnecessary images or design elements from the page to let you focus just on the content.
While the new OS Windows 10 with Spartan is yet to have a consumer rollout, Microsoft has been considerate towards the enterprise customers by allowing them to continue their usage of Internet Explorer 11 browser which is supported on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. They will be able to make it their default browser via group policy.
The Spartan Web browser is not the polished version that will land in the hands of the consumers when it is released with the upcoming OS as Microsoft is still tweaking it based on the previewers' feedback to iron out any issues.
When did the Eiffel Tower open to the public? March 31, 1889
New Delhi: A symbol of love, an architectural achievement, and one of the world's wonders- Eiffel Tower- built in 1889 has come to serve as an identity for Paris, the very place where the maginificent steel tower rests.
Creation of Gustave Eiffel, the iconic structure is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. It served as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair. The 324-metre-high (1,062-foot) Eiffel tower sees some 7 millio
n visitors each year and up to 30,000 a day in the peak summer season.
On March 31, 1889 the Eiffel Tower first opened to the public in Paris and today, Google is celebrating its 126th anniversary with a doodle that shows workers giving final touches to the French marvel.
Corruption topmost risk to Indian business environment: FICCI
New Delhi, March 27 (IANS) A leading industry body on Friday ranked 'corruption, bribery and corporate frauds' as the topmost risk that impact Indian business environment.
The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) revealed the topmost risk to the Indian business environment in the latest edition of 'India Risk Survey 2015' (IRS 2015) survey.
On the 'corruption, bribery and corporate frauds' as the topmost risk, the survey said the recent news coverage and public uproar related to various cases involving major corporate houses justifies this trend as having the highest mind recall value and has also been assigned the greatest concern in recent times.
"Continuing with the trend evident from last year, the focus of the respondents for risk analysis continues to be on how the entire gamut of corruption, scams and corporate frauds are affecting the economy," the survey said.
The survey was conducted jointly by FICCI and Pinkerton Corporate Risk Management.
According to the industry body, the objective of the survey is to inform and sensitise all stakeholders about the emerging risks to the developing economies like India.
Apart from 'corruption, bribery and corporate frauds', the survey revealed that 'information and cyber insecurity', 'terrorism and insurgency', 'business espionage' and 'crime' as other major risks to business environment in India.
The survey said that risks of 'strikes, closures and unrest' and 'political and governance instability', which were earlier in the top five risk brackets have dropped in the rankings to 6 and 11th positions respectively.
"This is a major shift in the yearly trends primarily due to the positive impact caused by a perceived stable government coming to power at the centre post the 2014 general elections," the survey said.
The industry body pointed out that the survey encompasses 12 key risks that pose a threat to the entire economic system of the country; and though each risk is rated on a mutually exclusive basis.
Real Estate Investment-Know its Risks and benefits
The real-estate market is a high-risk market that has been aggrandized purely by how unexpectedly large its returns can be and is dependent largely on perception. For instance, someone who bought a house in Whitefield in Bengaluru in 2005 has seen his apartment's price quadrupling to give huge returns. However, many industry experts and portfolio advisors suggest that even unexpectedly large returns are on expected lines when one factors in inflation, increasing guidance values and more. Keeping tabs on ready reckoner rates in Mumbai for two decades, for instance, can give you a fair idea of what to expect in the next ten years or so. In fact, the most unexpectedly great returns are those that are made in a short span of time, such as 5 or 6 years. This obviously involves huge risks as well.
Investing in real estate
Investing in real estate involves a different approach from buying a house. In many cases, advisors say that people who buy houses rarely sell them, due to the emotional value of owning a house. Investing in real estate on the other hand, involves having more flexibility and exercising practical decisions. Unlike other investments, real estate involves a lot of time, money and commitment and the extra returns justify the extent of the investor's involvement. Unlike the stock market, which shows a point-by-point and day-to-day performance of the market, the real estate industry is decidedly more difficult to track. Real estate investment also means less liquidity and the profits that are made are not booked immediately as in the case of equities or selling stocks.
Ace mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu goes missing in South America
Malli’s friends are launching a private rescue operation, but the mission is likely to cost more than $50,000 for every 24 hours. People can donate money on an FB page created for this.
NEW DELHI: Ace Indian mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu has gone missing during in the Andes range of mountains between Argentina and Chile since the last 5 days.
Reports suggest that the 40-year-old was on a solo expedition to climb the mountain range along the Argentina-Chile border from the base camp of Cerro Tres Cruces. The expedition began on March 24 and he was scheduled to return to the base camp on March 25, but he has not yet done so.
All attempts to communicate with him have been futile.
The governments of Argentina and Chile have both sent rescue teams to look for him. He is considered to be the fastest ‘7 summiteer’ in the world, having climbed the Seven Summits in just 172 days.
The Times of India, quoting his sister Dr Malli Dorasanamma, said that Malli had gone with a group of friends to climb the Ceros mountains. “He apparently began his ascent from the Argentina side and was dropped off at the base camp on 24th March. It appears that from the base camp he set off alone. The rain worsened after he left. He was supposed to return on the 24th, but did not. The area gets a lot of rains and floods,” the ToI report said.
Funding for rescue
Meanwhile, Malli’s friends are considering launching a private rescue mission for him, but the operation is likely to cost more than $50,000 for every 24 hours. For now, Malli's friends and the IIM-Calcutta alumni are contributing to the cause. Malli is an alumnus of IIM, Calcutta and IIT-Kharagpur.
The group has also launched a Facebook page to ask for donations and help to fund the rescue mission.
To contact or contribute to the rescue mission, visit the Facebook page: Rescue Malli Mastan Babu
Meet the Billionaires who gave away thier wealth
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Billionaire financier Warren Buffett, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates are encouraging the very wealthy to give away at least half their worth in their lifetimes through the "Giving Pledge" campaign. REUTERS/Gus Ruelas/Files
Jim Walton and Alice Walton, part of the family that owns Walmart
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and her husband David Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, are part of The Giving Pledge.
- York City Mayor and founder and CEO of Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg, is part of The Giving Pledge. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Files
NewFormer
Former New York City Mayor and founder and CEO of Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg, is part of The Giving Pledge. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/
Read The Heart-Wrenching Open Letter To Deepika Padukone
Actress Deepika Padukone who recently revealed that she is suffering form depression got an open letter from a lady named Reshma Valliappan, who was diagnosed with depression in 2004.
Deepika also tweeted saying that she is dedicating this year to create mental awareness. During an interview she also said that how mental health is important. She has faced the difficult phase of her life while struggling from depression.
Here is the Heart-Wrenching Open Letter To Deepika from a 34-year-old Schizophrenic patient Reshma Valliappan.
Dear Deepika,
Ever since I heard about your coming out of the closet, so to speak, about your struggle with depression, I have wanted to write. I have swung between many personal and political issues concerning mental health since listening to you.
I had to remove your celebrity image in my head and look at you as a human being in order to write this. I’ve self-harmed as a child and continued through adulthood. Often, I have bouts of severe depression where I feel I’m choking for days or weeks, and then, as if with a flip of a coin, I spring up to a high and prance about like the world is mine before I hit a different nerve and drift way into a fantasy land of zombies, ghost and what not. I have my version of depression but that is not what my label is. The one I carry- Schizophrenia- seems to be every Bollywood director’s favourite sell, to the point of having sometimes made a mockery of what someone like me deals with.
The day I came out of the closet, I knew I was going to be even more alone than I already am. As I emerged, I had very few models or mentors who have braved the stigma, and have carried the torch for decades, for people like me. More have begun to join in, and the number of people who feel they can speak out about schizophrenia is slowly growing. This has helped us know that we are not alone with the invisibility of our human condition that is called mental illness. Not alone in the lonely road of existential crises. Not alone as we fight with our caregivers to get them to understand we are people first and not ‘disorders’. Not alone with our own stigma and the stigma we receive from outside ourselves too. When I thought about what it must be for you – all I could do was imagine the world you are in and the one you come from.
As you try to create awareness through your own experience, I write to let you know that you are not alone on this road either, even though in mental health advocacy, the journey is often a lonely one. I also write in to tell you of some of my concerns about how society deals with mental health – so different from other ailments. What many people don’t know is that a person like me has no political or legal rights whatsoever. In the eyes of the law, I may as well be dead. I cannot vote, cannot marry, cannot sign a contract, and I can forget about getting a job.
Most importantly, I do not have the right to choose my own treatment. I can be forced against my will, be dragged into an institution to be locked away forever. I can be given electric shock therapies, have my brain cut open if someone sees fit, I can be raped and abused and the world will not know of me or what I endure. When I say ‘I’, I am not talking only about my individual story, but that of millions of women and men in India who suffer from mental health issues, and what we go through in the name of care.
It is an irony. If I have no rights even after treatment, why bother to get better? How has the system or society benefited me? If I have no say in my treatment and I can be dragged inside on the grounds that I am violent or dangerous – how is it that so many others who commit grave crimes walk free? Most of us have been victims of such acts either outside institutions or within the very walls of psychiatric institutions and facilities that are meant to care for and protect us. Yet, I am the one considered dangerous to society.
I continue being criticized as I fight for what I stand for. I simply ask for what is mine. That I should be seen as equal to everyone else with legal rights. I ask to be treated with dignity and respect, but just yesterday someone told me ‘not all mad people are capable of thinking for themselves. They run away. They live on streets. They can be of harm to themselves or others.’ I have been through all that, but it does not mean I am incapable of thinking.
People like me are incapacitated at many levels. A large number of youth are so diverse in their emotions, thoughts, intelligence, spirituality, but because we have no legal rights, we have often been guinea pigs for the medicalization of human experiences.
There are no biological markers or scans that show mental illness. No way to diagnose it beyond determining whether one is performing all personal, social, filial, professional roles ascribed to us. Society has a set of constructs that one must abide by and if we don’t manage, the diagnosis is quick. To me, depression feels like having access to a range of human emotions that we are otherwise asked not to feel. It tells me that the world is not a beautiful flowery place and I am in touch with these ‘negative’ emotions and that it is okay to do so.
I call my Schizophrenia my experience, invisible to everyone else. I’ve described it as my heart having been broken at many levels, trying to get my attention, so that I listen to myself more carefully. This is what my diagnosis means to me. When I am feeling depressed, I tell myself that a part of me needs to let go. I weep and howl and break. When I am on a high, it allows me to simply love irrespective of any differences that I would have otherwise judged. When I panic, I’ll strip in the comforts of my own room and jump around screaming to music. When I am anxious, I start cleaning my entire house. When I feel nothing, I am nothing. And when I am hyperactive, others tell me ‘Why don’t you take your medication? I ask them ‘Why don’t you take medication to understand me?
I am not dismissing the seriousness of mental health issues, nor am I romanticizing them. Far from it. By no means do I suggest medication is not a part of the solution, I simply want to the choice to take it to be mine, and not have it taken away from me. I don’t want my depression to merely be ‘treated’. I need it to be understood. I don’t want to ‘treat’ myself but I want to be respected as a human being with the choice to say “yes” or “no” to a conventional treatment of medicines and to be given the range of support possible. It is not an ambitious choice. In my personal experience, the system in which treatment exists in India operates on the notion that people like me are outcasts in society. So isn’t it logical to consider alternatives to institutionalized medical care that can at least help part of the way?
I do not expect you to take on our cause alone. I know too well that raising awareness amidst such stigma is an uphill task. But I write to you with the hope that through you, my voice will reach the very world that rejects us, because they accept you – where those who only look at me as a “disorder” will also be able to look at me as a human being.
I write to you for many reasons with pictures I should paint. I write to simply tell you my story, and also to tell you that my story is not unique. I write to say “thank you” for the care and compassion you have brought to speaking about depression and mental health in the open. What we need are listeners. So I write to thank you for speaking, and for listening.
Peace and colour,
Reshma Valliappan
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