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Tagline:They proved Vegas blackjack was beatable...by beating the hell out of it.

Yesterday i found some time to catch up with this movie. When is started watching it i had the ocean's series in mind but knew that its a fact based movies inspired by a true story of the MIT Blackjact Team.

Since i was starved of movies for quiet a long time, i was perplexed by this movie to begin with when it has visuals of aerial view of MIT's campus, but withing 15 minutes i came to terms with the story, to be more precise its a flashy adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s compelling New York Times bestseller.

The narration of the movie majorly revolvs around "Ben Campbell who is a student @ MIT and has an admit from the Harvard Med school(yeah its the same damn expensive university). The movie start with the guy going to the harvard med school and is talking to a man about the Robinson scholarship for his study at harvard Med, as usual the consellor ask for an essay with a dazzle that would make him stand out of the herd who have applied for the scholarship. After this he tries to collect the amount required for his study @ harvard at the same time tries to write essay for the scholarship application. In the meantime his professor micky rosa spots him
for his extrodinary ability to count and his ability to stay calm and composed nature and tries to lure him into his team which has learnt the art of card reading.. he accepts the invite and rest is the story ...

The movie recount how a team of math nerds from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology made millions counting cards at Las Vegas blackjack tables. Under the guidance of former card counter Mickey Rosa, the MIT geniuses milked Vegas, Atlantic City and a slew of riverboat casinos east and west of the Mississippi River until sophisticated facial-recognition software made it impossible for them to complete their elaborate scams and rest is the story

Overall i liked the story but i personally feel some justice could have been made to this story, there wasn't a standout performance by any of the cast. I liked the movie, but i wouldn't say everybody who would watch it would love it..

Anyway i would like you guys to watch this movie only if you like movies about gambling & casinos. Don't be tempted about the casino's its a kinda nerds viewpoint of gambling. On the whole i wouldn't rate it the best but would say a kinda classic movie since its fact based would try to keep it in my huge collection of movies. Do pour in your views about this movie.

Trailer:YouTube, Apple
Genre: Drama/Casino Film
IMDB rating: 7.0 (12,756 votes)
Links: IMDB, RT(31%),Goofs
Directed by: Robert Luketic
Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo
Runtime: 1:57:40
HighRezPosters:#1[510 x 755], #2[429 x 600]

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Red Hat's Fedora Project released Fedora 9 yesterday May 13th, the newest version of its open source    operating system.

Fedora 9 adds key new features to the Linux OS including the addition of the KDE 4 desktop environment that defines the look and feel of this OS. Another key feature added is the ability to run the Fedora 9 OS from a USB drive. You can not only boot the OS from a USB drive, but can also add applications and store data to the drive (a true portable OS).

This is the first major release of Fedora to include the KDE 4.x desktop environment and with it comes new features such as desktop panels that integrate desktop search.

Fedora is one of several Linux flavors currently available, with other well known ones including Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fedora being the core project for testing applications to be added into a more stable RHEL, it paves to be the testing ground for upcoming applications in the RHEL and totaly free to use, unlike RHEL which comes with the technical support

Fedora 9 is newest evolution of the Fedora distribution 
Some of the new features of Fedora 9(Sulphur) include :

• GNOME 2.22
  
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• KDE 4 : which is not among the stable version and i'd personally prefer for 4.1 version which is expected to be more stable than the 4.0 version
  
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• OpenJDK 6 has replaced IcedTea.: For known reasons the sun's Java development kit is being replaced with redhats icedtea
  
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• ext4 is now supported.
  
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• PackageKit is included as a front-end to yum, and as the default package manager (Pup and Pirut are available as alternatives).
  
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• One Second X allows the X to go from exec to ready to accept clients in nearly one second
  
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• Many improvements to the Anaconda installer;[45] among these features, it now supports resizing ext2, ext3 and NTFS file systems, and can create and install Fedora to encrypted file systems.
  
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• Firefox 3.0 beta 5 is included in this release.
  
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• Perl 5.10.0, which features a smaller memory footprint and other improvements.
  
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• The swfdec package, which decodes and renders Flash animations and videos, is now installed by default.
  
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• It is said that Fedora 9 has kernel based mode setting hope someone tests this out as soon as possible
  
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• Perl 5.10.0 is one that will make a difference.(Especially if your code uses regular expressions heavily.)
  
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• A new code base for TeTex.
  
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• A new version of OCAML.
  
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• Fedora 9 features a new artwork entitled Waves which, like Infinity in Fedora 8, changes the wallpaper during the day to reflect the time of day.
  

Many things have been upgraded here, not just the unstable bits.

Some of the Drawbacks which would prevent you to from installing Fedora 9 are :

• KDE 4.0 which isn't that stable,i'd personally wait for the stabler 4.1 version before checking out KDE for sure
  
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• NVidia doesn't have drivers ready, it only has beta drivers available at this point of time
  
• available at http://sulphur.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=238
  
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• there has been problems on installing in Samsung hard drives which shouldn't be a problem for most of us, but is a hitch when you consider the Hardware Compatibility of previous fedora releases.
  

On the funny side of it :
The codename Sulphur for the project was actually elected to be called this way.
[1] [2] [3]
 

No matter what you do, some major component will always be not ready. If it is not KDE, it is Gnome or xorg or Apache or Firefox or whatever.Every release has this problem, not just Fedora 9.

I'll wait for a better Seed to leech ratio for it to be downloaded and wouldn't wait for a long time to get my hands dirty on this release


You can read more about the full release here and download it from the Fedora Project.

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Remember the $100 laptop?? That was the original description of Nicholas Negroponte's dream for a dirt cheap computer that would be distributed by governments to millions of students in dozens of developing countries. A combination of open source software, low-power hardware, and some of the leading educational researchers in the world made for a great headline , and for a seemingly unstoppable force fighting against illiteracy and poverty.




The "One Laptop Per Child," or OLPC, project started with a bang, and has gotten a lot of press attention. Unfortunately, this great story has been plagued by many practical problems, starting with

• the price of the systems, which has risen to about $180.
  
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• Commercial software and hardware companies, such as Microsoft and Intel, have publicly ridiculed the OLPC, saying that it is underpowered and (not surprisingly) incompatible with their current systems.
  
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• As if that weren't enough, many of the governments that had originally pledged to buy one million or more computers ended up backing out of the project, or pledging to buy many fewer.
  
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• Seymour Papert, the researcher who was providing much of the educational vision for the project, was critically injured in a traffic accident.
  
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• Just a few months ago, Mary Lou Jepsen, who designed the high-resolution, low-powered screens that are essential to OLPC's success, resigned from the project.
  
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• And an effort to jumpstart the project by selling OLPC computers to Americans seems to have encountered some hardware problems.
  

The latest blow occurred earlier this month, when Walter Bender resigned from the presidency of OLPC, announced via an e-mail message released earlier. Bender didn't point to any problems with the project, but indicated that his interest is in creating a "community of developers, educators, and learners dedicated to advancing the quality of free and open source software for learning."

The OLPC news site said that Bender's resignation might be because Negroponte is warming up to the idea of using Microsoft's proprietary software on the OLPC, making it more marketable, by bringing in Microsoft's name, money, and compatibility. This would obviously be a terrible blow to the open source community which has encouraged the OLPC project, and to Red Hat, which has dedicated resources to it.

David Pogue reviewed the OLPC back in October, indicating that the OLPC does not compete with regular business laptops -- but it is not designed to do so. Rather, it is designed to be an educational tool for children. If you consider it in that context, the OLPC is a terrific success, Pogue declared.

There has been a great deal of criticism of the OLPC project, from its inception until now. But the project's many internal problems, including the loss of key staff, might prove even more deadly than any attacks that external forces might have waged.

I personally thought that bringing in a OLPC which is about $100 with the open source would kill the market for the propreitary softwares, but i never knew that they had the potential to ruin the whole project by influencing the people key in the project moving out of it. Those who were keen on implementing it sheer away from it. I'd personally love it to be with the open source.


What do you think about OLPC? Will it make a difference if the project switches to proprietary software? Do you still believe it would be better with the open source ?

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The id Software site has announced that work has begun on the next sequel to their most famous game, Doom. Will they be able to resurrect the series after what many considered to be a serious misstep with Doom 3..?

Oh... and they're hiring for the team, so maybe you can steer them in the right direction?"
Their webpage states that..

We are looking for talented, ambitious and passionate individuals eager to join our accomplished team of developers working on the industry’s most innovative and anticipated games. For a complete listing of available positions, visit our id Careers page. Resumes can be submitted via email to jobs@idsoftware.com. All applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.

I hope this time around they build it to the expectation they create around the Quake 4

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Its been a long time since i have posted. Don't know why i was in slumber for so long. So i though i should make my way back to blogging.

Last time i was seriously blogging was when i was seriously preparing
for the G.R.E examination, but this time around i have no shackles to be restricted so look forward to a better range of posts varying from vocabulary drills ,games,movies, music and occasional technical posts and lots of gyaan of Linux .

Hope you pals enjoy this and keep those comments coming in, that really keeps me going.

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