Sachin Tendulkar has asserted that he would play as long as he enjoys his game and nobody should dare tell him when to stop.
Basking in his new-found glory as the highest Test run getter after breaking Brian Lara's record of 11,953 runs, the batting great said he does not have anything to prove to anyone and nobody should tell him when to call it quits.

"I don't need to prove anything to anyone. I have been around for 19 years and all those 19 years I did not play to prove anything to anyone, not in my first year not in the 10th, 15th or 19th year," a combative Tendulkar said.

"What I need to do is to contribute to whatever my team's requirements are. I'm not here to answer what x,y, and z is writing about me or saying about me. People will say lot of things, not necessarily they are always correct. I don't take thir opinions seriously," he said.

"What happens in the dressing room is more imporant. The planning of the captain, coach, manager and other players are much more important. I just focus on that," he said.

Tendulkar made it clear that though the clamour is growing for the retirement of the senior players in the side, he was in no mood to hang up his boots.

"I'm going to continue obviously, I'm feeling good. As I said, so many things are being said and written and not necessarily those are right. Those are only opinions", he said.

Meanwhile in Mumbai, Sachin's wife Anjali echoed similar sentiments sayinf that the cricketer will not stay a "minute longer" when he is not enjoying the game.

"I can be hundred per cent sure that Sachin will not play for a minute longer when he is not enjoying himself. He is still so eager to go out there and play. He will play as long as he feels he can play," Anjali told reporters.

She also rubbished the speculation that the 'Fab 5' are under pressure from the BCCI for their retirement.

"So far there has been nothing from the Board's side... nobody is telling anyone that you have to retire. I think people respect these guys enough."

5:52 PM
Categories: Cricket. Author: SacHu

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone is reported to have confirmed India will be added to the race calendar in 2011.

Ecclestone also hinted that Russia may get an event in the near future.

"In Russia we have two or three open options," Ecclestone told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport.

"The first regards Moscow obviously. But it is not the time to think about a date.

"Then there is India and here I can say that the race will be on the calendar in 2011."

For 2009 Canada lost its place on the calendar while Abu Dhabi was added as the season-ending race.

Consequently North America will have no race at all after the American Grand Prix was axed last year.

"America works differently," added Ecclestone. "Certain world events such as Formula One in some countries or Olympic Games are financed by the state.

"But in America they are organised by private entities who want to profit before the race is held. That is too much."

Following the success of Formula One's first-ever night race in Singapore two weeks ago there have been suggestions more night races could be added to the calendar.

But Ecclestone confirmed that Singapore will remain the only race under lights in 2009 while adding there is no reason for a European race to be held at night.

"A GP in Singapore was born from the requirement to have a race that was at an acceptable time to watch in Europe," he added.

"All GPs in that part of the world could in theory be moved to night (races) but in 2009 there will be just Singapore.

"In Europe I do not see any reason for a race to be held after sunset."

7:50 PM
Categories: India, Sports. Author: SacHu

Finally Google is going to introduce one good way to monetize YouTube, the world’s number one video website. Now you will find a type of e-commerce ad that we can click to buy digital goods from Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com. Actually there will be a click-to-buy links to its popular YouTube video-sharing service, letting customers purchase songs and games. That link will take users to online stores such as Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com. At present this service is available in US only. In order to gain more money from YouTube Google has also future plans to inserts text and image ads inside youtube videos.

The official Google blog said “We’re getting started by embedding iTunes and Amazon.com links on videos from companies like EMI Music, and providing Amazon.com product links to the newly-released video game Spore(TM) on videos from Electronic Arts.”

This is really a brilliant buiness plan to monetize the YouTube website and make it profitable. So google has taken the first step towards the building a profitable e-commerce application. Hoping this trick will work for YouTube. What do you think? Will it work for Google’s YouTube.

10:50 AM
Categories: Latest Tech. Author: SacHu

Sourav Ganguly, who will retire from international cricket after the Australian series, has said he was tired of the constant humiliation and at being singled out for scrutiny. He has also issued a sharply worded criticism of his team-mates, saying some "have changed their hairstyle more than they have scored".

"I am bound to feel bad. I had to fight with my heart," he told Aajkal, a Bengali daily. "If there is a gun to your head all the time, how long can you bear this? After all, I have played 400 matches for India. I have played badly in only one series. Yet every Tom, Dick and Harry is playing in the team.
"
"There are players who haven't scored in the last three series for India, even for the last one year. There are some who have changed their hairstyle more than they have scored for India."

"How long would I have played? Maybe upto 2009. Maybe seven more Tests. For that I was not prepared to take any more humiliation. I was tired of being humiliated again and again. I don't want to play cricket at the mercy of others."

Ganguly made an impressive return to international cricket after losing his captaincy, and his place in the side, in early 2006. "Everything is possible in Indian cricket," he said. "When Greg (Chappell) dropped me, TP Singh (of Railways, now with the ICL) was my replacement. Where is he now?"

Asked what hurt more, being dropped by Chappell or being excluded from the Irani Trophy squad this year, Ganguly said: "Definitely the Irani Trophy. I couldn't imagine being dropped for that. That's when I said, not again."

"I thought a lot before reaching this decision. I have also thought about my plans for the next one year. If this (selection) committee had come three years earlier, the situation would have been slightly better for me."

8:39 AM
Categories: Cricket. Author: SacHu

Astronomers have sighted a very dense planet-sized object that orbits its parent star in just four days and six hours. The object, COROT-exo-3b, fits into the category of a failed star known as a brown dwarf, but the team that made the discovery has not ruled out the possibility that it is a planet. Brown dwarfs are failed stars. They burn lithium but are not massive enough to generate the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen and helium that powers real stars. Planets do none of that. "It has puzzled us; we're not sure where to draw the boundary between planets and brown dwarfs," said Hans Deeg, an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) in the Canary Islands, Spain. The object has a mass 20 times greater than that of Jupiter, but is roughly the same size. It falls outside the range of planets and stars discovered to date, with the largest planets having 12-Jupiter-mass and the smallest stars 70-Jupiter-mass. If astronomers confirm the object as a planet, it would weigh in as the most massive and densest planet found so far. A full study will be detailed in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. "COROT-exo-3b might turn out to be a rare object found by sheer luck", said Francois Bouchy, an astronomer at the Institut d'Astrophysique in Paris. "But it might just be a member of a new-found family of very massive planets that encircle stars more massive than our sun. We're now beginning to think that the more massive the star, the more massive the planet.

" Ground-based telescopes around the world helped pinpoint the object, including observatories in France, Chile, Germany, Hawaii, Israel and Spain's Canary Islands. The hunt for exoplanets has intensified over recent years, with astronomers usually finding such objects indirectly by observing their gravitational influence on parent stars. Another team showcased what might be the first direct image of an exoplanet around a sun-like star in September.

8:29 AM
Categories: Something Interesting. Author: SacHu

Early wednesday morning, a crowd of hundreds again gathered outside a Mercy Medical Center office on Stafford Street to view what some believed to be an apparition of the Virgin Mary appearing in a second story window. Crowd first gathered Tuesday afternoon, taking photographs of the shadow outlined on the window with their cell phones and saying the rosary. "I think it's Our Lady of Guadalupe," said Olga Romero who lives in the nearby Saab Court Apartments, referring to the apparition of the Virgin Mary reported in 1531 in Mexico. Sister Kathleen Sullivan, senior vice president at Mercy, said an image was observed on the window of a vacant office at the 300 Stafford St. medical building late this morning. "What it is I don't know, but it was certainly humbling to see the faith of the people. It was so beautiful," she said. Word spread, bringing possibly as many as 300 hundred people into the parking lot at one time. The crowd was extremely orderly. Elderly women led others in reciting the rosary and singing. Others were overcome with emotion and crying. Romero said she came to pray for her health. She brought her daughter and granddaughter with her. Deirdre Gogel, of West Springfield, said she found it comforting that the apparition occurred when the United States is going through such trying economic times and people are frightened. Mark E. Dupont, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, said the diocese was informed of the situation by officials at Mercy Medical Center. Dupont said he went to the medical center and saw a clearly defined outline as sunlight shone through a window.

"Certainly it was inspiring people, and Catholics throughout their history have a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin," Dupont said. He said it would take years for the church to investigate an apparition. "We want to be careful not to mislead people, but what we can't debate is the faith of the people," he said. Sister Margaret McCleary, of the Sisters of Providence, said she stopped by after she heard news of the apparition.

8:26 AM
Categories: Something Interesting. Author: SacHu

A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome. Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil. The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world's biggest mud city. Via Quickbird, Masini and colleagues collected high-resolution infrared and multispectral images. After the researchers optimized the data with special algorithms, the result was a detailed visualization of a pyramid extending over a 97,000-square-foot (9,000-square-meter) area.The discovery doesn't come as a surprise to archaeologists, since some 40 mounds at Cahuachi are believed to contain the remains of important structures. "We know that many buildings are still buried under Cahuachi's sands, but until now, it was almost impossible to exactly locate them and detect their shape from an aerial view," Masini told Discovery News. "The biggest problem was the very low contrast between adobe, which is sun-dried earth, and the background subsoil." Cahuachi is the best-known site of the Nazca civilization, which flourished in Peru between the first century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. and slid into oblivion by the time the Inca Empire rose to dominate the Andes.

Famous for carving in the Peruvian desert hundreds of geometric lines and images of animals and birds that are best viewed from the air, the Nazca people built Cahuachi as a ceremonial center, molding pyramids, temples and plazas from the desert itself.

8:22 AM
Categories: Something Interesting. Author: SacHu

Iran has announced plans for a new car designed specially for women.

Its features will include automatic transmission, parking and navigation aids and a jack for changing tyres without getting grease on your chador.

Iran's biggest car producer, Iran Khodro, says it will come in a range of feminine colours and interior designs.

Other features are proposed to make it easier for women when they are doing the family shopping or taking their children to school.

If that suggests a degree of sexist stereotyping in Iranian society, it is, just possibly, true.

Despite the fact that Iranian women now make up around 60% of university students, Iranian men have yet to absorb fully the message of equality.

A recent study by an academic from Allameh Tabatabaii University in Tehran found that working Iranian women believed that the domestic chores should be shared more equally.

However, according to the report "their husbands think and act traditionally".

Indeed, the idea of married men cooking for their wives is viewed in Iran as highly eccentric.

As a result, the report concludes, Iran's new generation of working women "are obliged to play the role of a superwoman to resolve their contradictions in handling all tasks."

It says such women "have become increasingly frustrated with their life".

'Modesty bikes'

Officially, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists that Iranian women are the most equal in the world.

And the authorities proudly boast of the achievements and opportunities open to Iranian women.

But the official Iranian concept of equality is very different from that understood by Western feminists.

Among the more eccentric policies here, Iran recently announced plans for a special bicycle for women.

None of the machines has been spotted yet, but apparently the idea is to provide special covers, to help preserve female modesty as they pedal.

Women, however, are still banned from riding motorcycles.

However, they can often be seen perched on the back, sometimes with one or two small children in their arms, as their husband weaves through the Iranian traffic.

11:37 AM
Categories: Latest Tech, Something Interesting. Author: SacHu