Not another stampede

224 dead in a stampede at a temple fair. This kind of news has become depressingly familiar in India. With all the commissions and judicial probes being appointed, someone surely ought to have come up with something to prevent such tragedies recurring, no?

What a shame! One can only pray the we have seen the last of such tragic incidents. The Story

The toll in the stampede at the Chamunda Devi temple here today rose sharply to 224 with 77 deaths reported today by the relatives of the deceased even as the shrine today opened with fewer devotees amidst heightened police presence along the two-km route leading to it.
Jodhpur Divisional Commissioner Kiran Soni Gupta said the fresh cases of death came to notice today when the relatives of the dead reported them to the authorities which verified them and found true.

Gupta said the 77 dead were taken away by their kins directly to either private hospitals or crematorium on the day the tragedy had struck the temple yesterday when 147 deaths were confirmed.

Although the temple reopened today, the turnout of devotees was much thinner than on the first day of Navaratri festival yesterday, officials said.

More than 100 police personnel were deployed along the route to the temple located in the 15th century fort.

"The devout are visiting the temple but it is different from what it was yesterday before the tragedy struck. It was like a mela and now is deserted," they said.

Over 55 persons, who sustained injury in the stampede, are being treated in various hospitals, they said.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasudhara Raje, who had visited the stampede site yesterday, has ordered a judicial probe into the incident.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi went to the stampede site today, met those injured in the incident and assured them of all possible help from the Centre.

Runaway spending

HAHAHA, earmarks are a mark of runaway spending. What about the freaking Iraq war? Jesus Christ. Talk about a big elephant in the room.

I like Obama's answer. 18 billion dollars is important, but 300 billion dollars is more important. Is McCain gonna harp about this all day long?

How is McCain going to cut spending, keep taxes the same or reduce it and maintain a war. Jeez, earmarks, earmarks. "I was called the sheriff - lol".

Ireland is better than the USA? My friends.

Tax cuts, talk about the fucking deficit.  Do these guys know how to balance their books? Did McCain just smirk? 

Spending controls, spending controls, how much does a war cost Senator? How about cutting some expenses there?

Oracle enters the appliance market

but couldn't they name it any better? Exadata ???? Ughhh . How terribly original?  I wonder how Teradata, Neteeza and the EMC folks will respond to this and how Oracle's going to use its might to get penetration into the market.

Could IBM be far behind? When is DB2's version coming up? Given that DB2 seems to follow Oracle every step, can we expect IBM to do something similar? This is a smart move by Oracle though and should help it from at least losing data warehouse implementations to the appliance vendors.  I was not terribly impressed by Oracle Warehouse Builder (what a nightmare to install, configure and just get to code) or Discoverer, but with the acquisition of Siebel and Hyperion and integrating them into their new Business Intelligence suite, this should help Oracle even more in their play for the market. Expect to see more bundles being thrown at customers to hit the smaller players on the pricing front. 

Here's the story.

The product family consists of two components.

HP Oracle Database Machine is pre-configured for performance, pre- tuned, and certified for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition tools and Oracle Real Application Clusters. Complete configurations can be ordered from Oracle, with hardware support by HP. The HP Oracle Database Machine is a high-performance system configured for data warehousing that includes a grid of eight database servers featuring: 64 Intel processor cores, and Oracle Enterprise Linux; and a grid of 14 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers that include up to 168 terabytes of raw storage and 14 GB/sec data bandwidth to the database servers.

HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers are key performance enablers for the database machine and can be ordered separately if customers have an existing data warehouse and merely require the storage enhancements. Customers can build data warehousing solutions using HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, which feature industry-standard components including two Intel processors, up to 12 TB of raw storage and InfiniBand connectivity delivering 1 GB/sec of data bandwidth per storage server.

The HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server uses a massively parallel architecture to dramatically speed up Oracle data warehouses by shifting the data-intensive part of query processing away from Oracle Database Servers and closer to the data.

HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers deliver 10x or more performance improvements in data-intensive query processing, have virtually unlimited I/O scalability, are easier to optimize for data warehousing, and provide mission-critical availability and reliability.

And here's the most interesting part - "No changes are required to existing queries or business intelligence applications to deliver extreme performance for large Oracle data warehouses. " I am looking forward to seeing how it works out in practice.

The link

The immigration process explained

in a simple flowchart. The particulars are complicated as hell with the rules seeming to change by the day with no one seeming to know just what the current situation is at a given time.

Here's where I am or rather where I will in about 7 months time. At the beginning of a long drawn out process with a ton of paperwork to fill involving all the people I have worked for before. Not a fun thing to but a necessary evil nonetheless.

Given that I am just starting the process next year, it is gonna be a long while for me to get the prized Green Card. One stage at a time, one slow long drawn stage at a time to become a permanent resident.

World's Larget Ice Cream Social

Free ice cream, and for a good cause too. Please pass this around.

Throughout the month of September, Cold Stone Creamery will be selling Make-A-Wish wall stars to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation, an organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. Be sure to visit your local Cold Stone Creamery to try two new flavors, Nutter Butter^® and Marshmallow, and the very special “Make-A-Wish Creations” inspired by Jack and Emily, two Wish Children.

• Jack's Creation - Marshmallow ice cream with OREO® Cookies, Chocolate Chips and Fudge
• Emily's Creation - Nutter Butter® ice cream with White Chocolate Chips, Kit Kat® and Yellow Cake

To cap off this special month, don't miss the 7th Annual World’s Largest Ice Cream Social at participating Cold Stone Creamery locations nationwide, a special night to join together and share the simple pleasures of life with a FREE ice cream and family fun. On September 25th from 5:00 - 8:00PM, guests will be treated to a 3 oz. serving of Jack or Emily's Creation. All donations will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation.