Monday 17 June 2013

The world of the Telegram

When the doorbell rang in the middle of the night, the 'who could it be at this hour' question ran through everyone's mind. If the voice on the other side of the door said 'telegram' then the curiosity intensified into an electric form of anxiety that raced through the house bringing everyone within earshot to the door. One signed for the sealed envelope, ripped it open and read out the contents, all hearts clogging up one mouth. Sometimes the news was exactly of the kind that made telegrams so feared while on other occasions, telegram said something to the effect  of 'Arriving 17th instant Rajdhani with family. Book return 6th May." Of course, one had the more harmless greetings telegrams (number 5 Many Happy Returns of the Day) but those were unlikely to be delivered in the dead of night. By virtue of their speed and stealth, telegrams were messengers of fate, letter bombs that  interrupted the placid predictability of life with some sudden and significant new development. 

For a technology that now seems rudimentary at best, the telegraph was in fact a truly radical and discontinuous innovation that marked the beginning of the Information Age. Noam Chomsky argues that the shift from sailing ship to telegraph was more radical than from the telephone to the e-mail and it is easy to see why. The telegraph made it possible not only to compress meaning into some rudimentary sound signals that could be sent and received  over vast distances but do so wirelessly and in real time. The Morse code allowed the telegraph to move beyond more basic signals into the fullness of language and radio technology freed it from wires. The collapsing of distance that we see as a fundamental attribute of technology today was first made evident in the telegraph which made it possible for different parts of the world to have the same experience at the same time. The ability to unite the world around a moment is a powerful experience that makes our parallel existences palpably simultaneous. 

At a time when other modes of communication were unreliable, inaccessible and slow, the telegram was the final recourse available when a message just had to be delivered with a guarantee. In its manner of use, respect for its importance was usually maintained; the telegram was never just another way of reaching someone. The expensiveness of the telegram meant that for most normal people, language would need to rid itself of its finery and communicate in guttural droppings of meaning. Articles, prepositions, conjunctions, were among the casualties of this mode of communication, as words huddled together without the relief of semantic cushions to create hard bits of meaning. Other modes of reaching were far more adept at more leisurely interactions. The telegram delivered the promise of technology without any of its gloss, it murdered distance, but did so without any great finesse. There was clearly a trade-off to be made between speed and the richness of communication which is why the telegram worked best when it was conveying a piece of news with some finality- someone passed the exam, someone else passed away, a trip date got postponed.

In some ways, the telegram in the laconic abruptness of its form, emphasised the fact that the dominant meaning of communication at that time was very different.  In that world, relationships were lavished with time, attention and conversation. Postcards and inland letters were deemed to be wasted if every inch on its sides were not filled up with crawling postscripts of sundry kinds. Distance made the urge to stay connected that much deeper, and the fact that typically no message could be exchanged in a time period less than a fortnight at the least, given the slowness of the postal system, meant that we derived disproportionate communication from relatively infrequent contact. Vacations became a time when relationships were tanked up with a couple of months' worth of interaction, which was lived off for the rest of the year, topped up by periodic postcards and letters, which were read aloud and then re-read several times. A trunk call was rare-  the difficulty of getting through (particularly because often, it involving one party calling from a Post Office and the other using the neighbour's phone) and the cost involved pretty much ensured that. In any case, when the need was to urgently communicate some bit of information, nothing could beat the telegram. 

Unlike the idea of always being connected that has become the norm today- everyone meaningful is either on social media or a text message away- we lived a life only partially illuminated with knowledge. At any given point in time, there were so many aspects of our own life that we had no access to. When someone went abroad, for instance, for long periods of time, one's loved ones had no idea as to what was happening. Any meaningful form of communication was slow, so slow that by the time one received and replied, things could have changed dramatically. Relationships found a way of thriving in this constrained world by substituting imagination and yearning in the place of actual contact. The telegram was a way of ensuring that if it came to the crunch,  virtually instant communication was always possible. Armed with this lifeline, the idea of connectivity focused on richness rather than frequency. Every physical contact was heightened by the anticipation that preceded it and the wallowing in memories that followed it. By itself, the telegram is hardly a great loss, but it does also tell us that the world that depended on it has also changed in a fundamental way. That we don't need the telegram any more is a clue to the fact that we are connected all the time, but it may also point out that being connected is not the same as feeling a connection.

Source:-The Times of India

Syllabus for RBI Assistant Exam 2013

Reserve Bank of India will conduct Online Examination for the recruitment to fill the 525 posts of Assistant in various state offices of RBI. The online test will be held tentatively on 20 July 2013, 21 July 2013, 27 July 2013, and 28 July 2013.

Scheme of Selection:
Selection will be through Online Examination and Interview. The Online Examination will be for 200 marks and is tentatively scheduled to be held on 20.07.2013,21.07.2013,27.07.2013,28.07.2013
Sr. No.
Name of Tests (Objective)
No of Questions
Maximum Marks
Total Time
1
Test of Reasoning
40
40
2 Hours
2
Test of English Language
40
40
3
Test of Numerical Ability
40
40
4
Test of General Awareness
40
40
5
Test of Computer Knowledge
40
40

Total
200
200


Things to be noted on exam scheme:
*The above tests except the Test of English Language will be available bilingually, i.e. English and Hindi.
* A candidate has to qualify in each part of the Objective test separately. There will be negative marks for wrong answers in the Objective tests. 1/4th marks will be deducted for each wrong answer. Candidates will have to pass in each of the objective tests.
* Other detailed information regarding the examination will be given in an Information Handout, which will be made available for the candidates to download along with the call letter for examination from the RBI’s website.
* Roll No. of the candidates successful in online examination will be available on RBI’s website and a brief notice thereof will be published in leading newspapers around end of August 2013.
* Only such number of candidates will be called for interview who stand sufficiently high in merit on the aggregate marks of the Objective Tests, such merit being decided by the Bank in relation to the number of vacancies to be filled in.
* Final selection will be on the basis of candidate's performance in the written examination and interview taken together in order of merit.

Objective Tests (200 marks): The 2 hours Online Test will be consisting of 200 objective type questions divided in five distinctive sections. Each question will carry 1 mark and for each wrong answer 0.25 marks will be deducted.   
Syllabus:

  •              Test of Reasoning: (High Level)
  •               Test of English Language: (Grammer, Vocabulary, Synonymous and antonyms,                      Comprehension, etc.)
  •                 Test of Numerical Ability (Simplification, Probability, Approximations, Series, Table analysis, Percentages, Equations, Averages, Ratio and proportions, Simple and compound interest, Data interpretation, Bar graphs, Pie chart)
  •                   Test of General Awareness (National and international affairs, Latest in Banking, Current Finance and Economical events, etc.)
  •                    Test of computer Knowledge (Computer terminology and keyboard shortcuts,Internet and computer Hardware, Computer Networking, Operating system concepts, Database concepts, etc.)

Note: In order to qualify the Online Exam, a candidate has to secure a minimum standardized score in each section of the Objective test.

Backup your Blogger Blog

Anytime you might loose your blogger account. After hacking your blogger account along with your blog the hacker can do anything. He can either delete, export or use your blog in his own name! Maybe you have spent thousand hours to establish the site. And you lose everything. Isn't it very terrible? So why don't you back up your site before it's too late? 

Blogger has an option to back up the whole blog with comments! So, if you have the backup copy of your site, anytime you can open a new blog and restore your previous blog with comments. 


Even you can restore your backup copy of blogger blog in WordPress Site. WordPress is capable of restoring blogger sites from the .xml file.


 You can read that post or have a look at the steps below:
  1. Sign in to your blogger account.
  2. Go to Settings from Design or Dashboard.
  3. Hit on the Other options from Settings tab.
  4. Look at the Blog Tools: Import Blog - Export Blog - Delete Blog.
  5. Hit on the Export Blog.
  6. Now click Download Blog.
  7. Save the .xml file in your hard disk.

If you wanna restore your blog from a previously saved copy then follow the above steps again. Just in the Blog Tools- Choose Import Blog. Then choose and upload the .xml file that you've already in your hard disk. 


If you're using a premium blogger template or if you've modified your template in your own way, then you should also back up the template. I also discussed about how to back up blogger template earlier. You can read that post or just have a look at the below steps:
  1. Go to the Template option from the Settings.
  2. Hit on Backup/ Restore button from the top right corner.
  3. Hit on Download Full Template button to download the template.
  4. Or Choose File to select and upload your desired template. 

Screenshots of the tasks are not given in this post. If you wanna see the related images then go to the above links. 


Source  : http://munnamark.blogspot.com/

No plan to increase retirement age of employees"- PTI Report

"No plan to increase retirement age of employees"- PTI Report

New Delhi, Jun 16 (PTI) Central government employees are in for a disappointment as the Centre is at present not considering any move to raise the retirement age to 62 years.

A senior official in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, which acts as nodal department for personnel matters, said there was no such proposal to increase the age for superannuation of government employees.


"There is no proposal to increase the retirement age to 62 from 60 years".

Source: PTI News
[http://www.ptinews.com/news/3724917_-No-plan-to-increase-retirement-age-of-employees-]

No plan to increase Central Govt Employees’ Retirement age: Zee News

A hot news is coming from Zee News that DoPT has not been working on any proposal to increase the retirement age to 62 from 60 years for Central Government Employees.  A senior official from DoPT has confirmed the above news to media and also clarified that  a committee has been formed for increase the retirement age of specialists in scientific and medical fields (scientists) to 64 years.  Last updates from parliament question session is also indicating that there is no proposal under consideration in this regard.  


The news article of Zee News, which is showing updation time of 13.28 of 16th June, it means it is very latest news in this regard, the text of the said news is reproduced below:-

New Delhi: Central government employees are in for a disappointment as the Centre is at present not considering any move to raise the retirement age to 62 years. 

A senior official in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, which acts as nodal department for personnel matters, said there was no such proposal to increase the age for superannuation of government employees. 

"There is no proposal to increase the retirement age to 62 from 60 years. The Ministry is not working on any such proposal," the official said. 




Recent media reports claimed that the Ministry has written to Prime Minister's Office for raising the retirement age and sought the Union Cabinet's nod for the purpose.

There are about 50 lakh central government employees working in various departments across the country. 

Officials in the Ministry said increasing retirement age requires a detailed consultation with all stake holders and discussion with the Finance Ministry. 

Without the Finance Ministry's permission, the matter cannot not be processed, they said. 

At a time when government is working on austerity drive by cutting expenditure and putting in efforts to rein in current account deficit (CAD), the move to increase retirement age will also burden the exchequer's kitty, they said. 

The CAD, which is the difference between the inflow and outflow of foreign currency, had touched a record high of 6.7 per cent in the October-December quarter of 2012-13 on the back of rising oil and gold imports.

The retirement age for a majority of central government employees is 60 years. However, the age for retirement in case of teachers and scientists is 62 years. 

The age of superannuation in states like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Assam is also 60 years. 

In a related development, the government has decided to further increase the retirement age of specialists in scientific and medical fields (scientists) to 64 years. 

"A Committee has been formed under the chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the purpose," said another Personnel Ministry official. 

read more at Zee News