MyJottingz

What is email abuse? According to emailabuse.org
" The use of electronic mail to advertise unethically, harass, annoy, or cause harm to the email recipient. Abuse can take the form of bulk email, threatening email, email sent with the intent to slow productivity of, or cause damage to, the recipient's system. It is a world wide problem and anyone with an email address is vulnerable."

As the internet has expanded, the amount of spam emails one gets has also increased drastically. Some experts contend that about 90% of emails that we receive are spam.

There are two sides to preventing spam:

1)Stop them from getting your email address:

There are several methods to prevent that

• Don't post your email address online, create a separate email just for that purpose.
• Never buy anything advertised as spam
• Avoid cc for group emails that you send out
• Never add your friends email address to a mailing list
• Amit has also suggested the option of creating temporary email addresses that expire after a certain amount of time. Spambox and Mailexpire provide such services.

2)What to do if they already have your address

If the spammers already have your email address try to change it. If you can't then there is a spam filter called Spam Bayes.

To learn more about the different types of spam and how to prevent it, go to wordsandpeople.

Now look at the following messages carefully:

“We suspect an unauthorized transaction on your account. To ensure that your account is not compromised,please click the link below and confirm your identity.”

“During our regular verification of accounts, we couldn’t verify your information.Please click here to update and verify your information.”

If you have received similar emails, complete with the header and logo of your financial institution, be careful. It’s a scam called “phishing” — and it involves Internet fraudsters who send spam or pop-up messages to lure personal information (credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security number, passwords, or other sensitive information) from unsuspecting victims

The FTC suggests the following some of which are really common sense.

a) Never reply to such emails.

b) Keep your antivirus software and firewall up to date

c) Don't email your personal information

d) Forward phishing information to spam@uce.gov

e)If you believe you have been scammed file your complaint at ftc.gov

For more details click here

Tags : internet, spam,web, email

We all have our "to do" list. Things like "pay your bills" or "do your laundary". But how about a to do list that includes goals and desires that you would like to achieve. For example it could be "try sky diving" or "climb Mount Everest" or "run the NYC marathon". And what if this list was public and you could see how many more people like you want to do the same thing. Would it not be great? Well 43things.com is just that.

It's pretty ease to create an account and the homepage is just a collage of all the things that people want to do. When you click on a tag it takes you to all the users who want to or have done that thing, thus adding the element of communal support.

Thus it is a networking site but with a difference. Try it out and you will be hooked. 43things is available at www.43things.com



Tags : 43things, goals, life

Sick of watching the promos of Talladega Nights.
That's Will Farrell's latest release. I think he should have stuck to his day job at Saturday Night Live and spared us this misery. If he was mildly bearable in SNL, in films, he is as funny as a doorknob, whether he played an elf or an anchorman.

It's funny how you watch a promo and you can tell if a film is worth watching or not. And more often than not you find the only funny scenes in the movie were already shown to you , that's right, in the promo. You feel like somebody took you for your money, right?

SNL is a great platform to do parodies and poke fun at everyone but take that away and the actors just can't hold their own. It's really sad. Look at Jimmy Fallon, can't seem to make that film career work. Now you are gonna say Mike Meyers, yes he did come from SNL, but with his talent did he really need SNL. He would have definitely found another medium.

Ben Stiller is another one of those actors who has acted in every pathetic movie from the past decade. I think he is so pathetic that he should not even be dignified by writing about him.

It's surprising how these guys find the resources to make their films and then an audience to go and see them. What demographics are they targeting ? Do you have to have a negative IQ to get their humor? I bet they would suck if they had to do slapstick say like the Three Stooges.

Why don't these people retire or simply change professions and make way for fresh blood who can really be funny and make us WANT to go to the movies?



Tags : comedy, films, television, humor

Competitive eating involves the consumption of large quantities of food in a short time period – typically 12 minutes or less. The type of food varies, although contests are primarily focused on fast food or dessert, items are almost always a single type of food such as hot dogs, pie, or mayonnaise.

You would be surprised,I know I was, to know that there is an International Federation of Cometitive Eating. Check out their list of eating contests.

More recently in the news was the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

A 160-pound wonder from Japan set a record by devouring a sickening 53¾ frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating competition on Coney Island.

The win means the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt will return to Japan for the ninth year out of the past 10. New Jersey's Steve Keiner, who won in 1999, is the only American to capture the title in the past decade.

Kobayashi, of Nagano, stands 5 feet 7 inches and weighs just 144 pounds.

Amit draws attention to Rappai who is regular at eating competitions, he ate 700 idlis in one sitting in Kasargod and gobbled up 10 kg halwa in 10 minutes in Thalasserry, records are aplenty.

Among his many exploits include this story:

Once college students took sweet revenge on a restaurateur with Rappai’s help. He took an “unlimited meals” coupon and emptied the day’s food -- three buckets full of rice, one bucket of fish curry and 10 kg cooked meat -- in no time. Finally, law-enforcers had to be called in to end his sumptuous feast.

I wonder if you were to make these two guys compete with one another, what would be the test. Would that be comparing apples and oranges or in this case hotdogs and idlis?



Tags : competitions, sports, culture

It's that time of the year. When they pick the 100 Best Products of the Year.
Also they have chosen the 25 Worst Tech Products of all time.
Guess who figures in this hall of shame. Notable nominees are AOL, Real Player, Microsoft Windows Millenium, Internet Explorer 6 and Sony BMG Music CDs.

Read on here.

Tags : computers, tech, utilities, products

I got this as an email. And it sent me on this fascinating journey into history - from the introduction of paper notes in British India to modern day currency as we know it.


The first set of British India notes were the 'Victoria Portrait' Series issued in denominations of 10, 20, 50, 100, 1000. These were unifaced, carried two language panels and were printed on hand-moulded paper manufactured at the Laverstock Paper Mills (Portals). The security features incorporated the watermark (GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, RUPEES, two signatures and wavy lines), the printed signature and the registration of the notes.





Here is the link. Enjoy the ride.

Tags : India, currency, history, museum

This headline of the Economic Times really grabs your attention.

Last week, the Maharashtra government told the state legislative council that beggars in the city earn a whopping Rs 180 crore a year and that the number of mendicants had risen from 20,000 in 1963 to six lakh at present

Just left wondering, how did the Govt. arrive at this figure. It's not like these mendicants are registered with the state so the officer in charge can do a census and come up with that figure. And come to think of it beggars are not handed out 500 rupee notes, so how do they come up with this number. Well the article does not tell you that so that is left to your imagination. May be the actual number was less or may be more. May be that number was someone's imagination, no?

Update: After my post on begging in mumbai, a Mumbai mirror correspondent decided to find out for real and netted Rs 18 in 4 hours.


Tags : mumbai, India

Remember your vacation pictures at the landmark you always wanted in your photo album, but there were always people around to spoil the view. Well future lab takes care of that with an application called the Tourist Remover. Yup, it does just that that's why the name.




Tags : internet, technology,web, photos

This compact little abode was designed by architect Luigi Colani as space-saving living unit. A six-square-meter cylinder inside the home contains a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. Use your remote control to rotate the room-pod left or right, bringing the desired room into view. A main living area and small hallway round out the rest of the space. Check out the different views of the house here.





Tags : creativity, architecture

Ever since there was a web-gaffe that Google had plans for its own online storage code named 'Platypus', which was later confirmed by their CEO, the online community has been abuzz with blogs and articles on what to expect of Google's latest offering. The reactions have ranged from 'evil' to 'fantastic'.

For non-technical folks, Online storage is the perfect alternative to back up your data from CDs to files such as your favorite mp3s, pictures you want to share of your last vacation to junior's school play video.
Reviews warn however, that online storage is not a replacement for traditional backup systems, but it can be good secondary protection against unforeseen issues such as fire, theft or damage. Also sensitive documents should preferably not be stored online. eHow provides a list on how to choose an online storage.

Until recently the were not websites offerings sizeable storage free.
Yahoo Briefcase offers up to 30MB of free storage. Also you can share files with other Yahoo! users, and additional space can be acquired by registering for more accounts. If you'd like to keep all your saved files under one account you may purchase additional space for about $3 per month for 50MB.

Box.net which is an online backup service gives you 1GB for free space. Openomy also provides 1GB and it was listed as the best third party online file storage in the list of the Best Web 2.0 software of 2005


But for free space nothing beats Streamload.com which
gives 25GB free and you can also store, access, share , host and backup your files.



This Consumer Search artice has some importat pointers while shopping for Web Storage.

• Don't store highly sensitive information on a free site. While most of the pay sites listed here offer SSL 128-bit encryption, Yahoo! Briefcase and Streamload merely offer password protection. You may want to think twice before storing extremely sensitive data.

• Look for sites that allow you to set up both private and public areas. Reviewers say the best storage sites should not require friends or coworkers to be registered before they can access your files.
  

• Check the system requirements. Most online data-storage services come with a small application that manages backups and file transfers, but not all services are compatible with systems other than Windows.
  

• Most sites make it easy to transfer files. Some sites let you store a small client on your desktop to represent a virtual drive as a local drive.

• Look for online data backup with automated scheduling. The best online data-storage services should relieve you of time spent on backup. Whether you schedule backups to take place hourly or daily, this should be a hands-off, automated task.

• Consider your Internet connection. Backup is relatively quick when connected via high-speed cable or DSL. However, if you have a dial-up connection, simple file transfers could take hours.
  
• Utilize other forms of backup. Online data storage is a huge time and space saver, but you should never put all your data eggs in one basket. Major accidents, such as simultaneous damage to all servers, may be unlikely, but can happen. Occasional server issues are not uncommon. Consider alternatives such as CDs, DVDs, external hard drives and USB flash drives for additional storage.
  

Coming back to Google why is this such a big deal? There are obviously fears of privacy.
According to a PowerPoint presentation to financial analysts , Google said that it envisages a future with 'infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power'.

This will allow it to store 100 per cent of user data: 'With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere.'

As a result the computer platform will become less important.

'This will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user,' it said.

'As we move toward the "Store 100 per cemt" reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine.'

Given Google's track record with it's previous products the way it revolutionised the world of search, webmail, desktop search, calendar and maps using technologies such as AJAX, creating rich internet applications everyone's expectations can not be but raised higher. Whether it meets or exceeds remains to be seen.



Tags : internet, technology,web, Google,GDrive

As if the amount of digital ink spilled on the infamous Zidane episode was not enough, there are people out there who want to use this situation to their advantage.

Miscreants are using the incident in the final of the soccer World Cup as bait to install malicious code onto the PCs of unwitting sports fans, Websense Security Labs warned on Friday

When visiting the fake site, people can be infected with a Trojan horse downloader which, in turn, downloads additional malicious software from the site, Websense said in an alert. "This potentially occurs without user interaction," Websense said


Read the full story




Tags : internet, computers,zidane

Jon Stewart at his caustic best when he rips apart the idiots in Washington who legislate on net neutrality and online gambling.

For those who came in late, law makers in Washington want to side with the big companies like AT&T and allow them to provide higher bandwidth to companies that can pay for it.

Read this to find out why all this is so important and how it will affect us.

Tags : internet, Current Affairs

After the million dollar homepage now comes a building dedicated to the same concept.
For those who came in late, milliondollarhomepage was the brilliant idea of a student who decided that they way to pay his way to college was to sell ad space on his homepage pixel by pixel. The idea has earned its creator over a million dollars in advertising sales.Check out the website

Now this same concept has been taken to a building where they are selling ad space, tile by tile. And if you think will there be takers, think again. Some of the biggest brands are already up there.

Amit points out that while the ad pixels will stay on forever, this promotion will run only for a month.



Tags : advertising,creativity,web,internet

Yahoo Messenger users can now talk to MSN Messenger users and vice versa. IM interoperability is not a dream anymore. Yahoo & Microsoft have begun beta testing of this feature. It took a long time coming but it's finally here. And the combined user base is estimated to be 350 million users.
This is bad news for services like Trillian, but they still have the AOL versus MSN-Yahoo market.



Tags : internet

I am tired of reading posts claiming how they are sick of Mumbai's resilience (as if it would be better for them if Mumbai shutdown) and how India is a coward and does not know how to respond.
It's the resilience that keeps this city going. They are not like a Calcutta where burning trams would make the administration reduce the tram ticket price by 5 paise. Here the average guy knows that if he does not go to work no one is going to feed him least of the government. He has to provide for himself and his family even if it means getting on that same train because that's the only means of transport he can afford.
Mumbai must be commended that it rises inspite of it's circumstances. Besides staying at home means giving into your fear and that's the last thing you want, giving those madmen at victory over your mind. Similar sentiments were echoed after the London bombings.

Patrix asks the right question as to what would be an appropriate response?
"Don’t give me the cliched “Lets attack them and bomb the hell out” solution. In today’s changed world where a nuclear bomb makes thousand tanks redundant"

Atanu suggested Gen Patton's speech "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
So we should bomb them to pre-civilization times. Patrix points out that Israel has always used that philosophy and the problem still continues. Not a day goes by where someone does not blow them selves up in a crowded Israeli city.

The foremost advocate of the Patton philosophy, George Bush has said that he actually regretted this
"Saying 'bring it on,' kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people," the president said in answer to a question about mistakes he made in Iraq. "I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner -- you know, 'wanted dead or alive,' that kind of talk."

An appropriate response I think would be to gather enough evidence to link the blasts to Pakistan and stop all diplomacy cricket or otherwise until they clean up their act. Peace talks are pointless if they are going to bomb us in our backyard.


Tags : India, Current Affairs

This was sent to me a long time ago and it's still relevant today


Your brain is like a muscle that needs exercise. You can make yourself smarter by increasing neural connections through novelty and stimulation.

Read a daily newspaper, literary classics and the Web.
You grow smarter by reflecting on issues, events and people and forming strong opinions.

Associate with smart people .
Engaging in conversation with a smart person is like playing tennis with a superior opponent.

Keep a journal.
Your insights—the connections you make about your past, present and future—help to make neural connections.

Travel.
On the road, you're forced to solve ordinary problems (food, lodging, language), all of which have become automatic at home.

Memorize things.
Lawrence Katz, author of Keep Your Brain Alive, says memorizing people's names or other important bits of information is a great way to keep your brain fit.

Take up a musical instrument.
Learning to play the violin, for example, involves physical coordination (working the strings and bow), intellectual challenge (reading music), sensory experience (hearing pitch and harmony), and intuitive work (mastering tempo and rhythm).

Play games and pursue hobbies.
The philosopher Alan Watts used to praise the kind of learning that is effortless, such as the play we experienced as kids.

Create new routines constantly.
Katz notes that unchanging routines make us intellectually flabby.

Change jobs and positions periodically.
Remember when you were in school, learning something new every semester? Some jobs are like a 15-unit class that never ends.



Tags : health

A Mumbaikar is rude ! Hope Readers Digest prints the stories of yesterday in their forthcoming issue about how, time and again, the common Mumbaikar has descended on the streets to help his brethren in distress, be it a 26/7 or an 11/7. In the pictures flashed on each channel and media, did we see yellow tapes, ambulances and city officials? We saw the spirit of the People of Mumbai, rushing to help the victims, no matter what!

This is the comment in response to how the people of Mumbai rallied around to help even strangers, the same Mumbai that was dubbed the rudest city by a Reader's Digest survey.
Mumbai is back on it's feet and everything seems back to normal. Even the stockmarket index went up which proves that the intended purpose (to cause panic and hurt the economy by attacking the financial capital of India) of these attacks was defeated! Well done Mumbai!!!

In his post Patrix points to this article in the Washington Post that asks how long will the patience of the Indian people and their Government continue with their neighbor that does not believe in giving up it's nefarious activities.
This is further confirmed when their foreign minister makes this statement while the leaders of the world have slammed the incident.
''I think the Mumbai incident — however tragic it may be and it is undoubtedly very tragic — underlines the need for the two countries to work together to control this environment, but they can only do so if they resolve their disputes,'' Kasuri said in a vulgar reprise of his military leader Pervez Musharraf's threat some time back that if India did not address the Kashmir issue, Pakistan had ''other options.''

As Rice said 'There is no political cause that can justify the murder of innocent people".
A friend of mine in respone to the attacks said "Let's nuke the b*****s". I guess no one will blame India if it's patience runs out and it does just that.


Tags : India, politics

A very good friend of mine from Mumbai forwarded this to me :

Dear Terrorist,

Even if you are not reading this we don't care. Time and again you tried to disturb us and disrupt our life - killing innocent civilians by planting bombs in trains, buses and cars. You have tried hard to bring death and destruction, cause panic and fear and create communal disharmony but everytime you were disgustingly unsuccessful. Do you know how we pass our life in Mumbai? How much it takes for us to earn that single rupee? If you wanted to give us a shock then we are sorry to say that you failed miserably in your ulterior motives. Better look elsewere, not here.

We are not Hindus and Muslims or Gujaratis and Marathis or Punjabis and Bengaliies. Nor do we distinguish ourselves as owners or workers, govt. employees or private employees. WE ARE MUMBAIKERS (Bombay-ites, if you like). We will not allow you to disrupt our life like this. On the last few occassions when you struck (including the 7 deadly blasts in a single day
killing over 250 people and injuring 500+ in 1993), we went to work next day in full strength. This time we cleared everything within a few hours and were back to normal - the vendors placing their next order, businessmen finalizing the next deals and the office workers rushing to catch the next train. (Yes the same train you targetted)

Fathom this: Within 3 hours of the blasts, long queues of blood donating volunteers were seen outside various hospital, where most of the injured were admitted. By 12 midnight, the hospital had to issue a notification that blood banks were full and they didn't require any more blood. The next day, attendance at schools and office was close to 100%, trains & buses
were packed to the brim, the crowds were back.
The city has simply dusted itself off and moved on - perhaps with greater vigour.

We are Mumbaikers and we live like brothers in times like this. So, do not dare to threaten us with your crackers. The spirit of Mumbai is very strong and can not be harmed.

Please forward this to others. U never know, by chance it may come to hands of a terrorist and he can then read this message which is specially meant for him!!!


With Love,
From the people of Mumbai (Bombay)




Tags : India

Mumbai is rocked once again with bomb blasts. Is this the work of a terrorist group or the continuing proxy war by our neighbor.

Here is a website dedicated to helping during this hour of need. For information you could use the comments section of that post.

Ultrabrown has more

Amit comments on how the media are patting themselves while fear mongering, the opposition parties as usual using the situation to their advantage.


Tags : India

Just got the beta version of the new yahoo mail this morning. And I must say I like it from the word go. Using AJAX the user experience is almost like using a desktop email client such as Outlook. To sign up for this beta version click here

Hotmail users can choose to use the Windows Live Beta version, but once you select it you are discouraged from going back even if you do not like this version. And the beta version leaves a lot to be desired. It is slow and there is very little room for the actual email. The top 35% space of the screen is taken over by banners. Every second day, they have a rollback of features because what they introduced was buggy. It does not look like a product put out by a cash rich company but then Microsoft never had products that worked from day one, they always needed a patch or an upgrade. It looks like a bad time for Gates to step down.

Update: Yahoo Mail Beta also provides support for RSS feeds. On the left hand navigation if you click on the arrow near All RSS Feeds,
you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of your choice. That's cool is it not?



Tags : web

Tim comments on the Lulu.com study which discovered that
"The life-expectancy of a bestselling novel has halved within the last decade.... It has fallen to barely a seventh of its level 40 years ago.... The average number of weeks that a new No. 1 bestseller stayed top of the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List has fallen from 5.5 in the 1990s, 14 in the 1970s and 22 in the 1960s to barely a fortnight last year -- according to the study of the half-century from 1956-2005. In the 1960s, fewer than three novels reached No. 1 in an average year; last year, 23 did."

Does it mean that like the attention span of MTV generation, the average reader moves on to a new book much faster than his/her counterpart a few generations ago, and that it's easier now than ever before for an author to make it to the best seller list.

Another interesting observation is that none of the top 25 albums of all time were published after 2000, and only three of the top 100. But it later points out that this assertion breaks down badly with regard to movies, where seven of the top ten all time bestselling movies have come out since 2000.

About the movies they probably have not taken into consideration inflation while calculating production costs and ticket sales.
I remember years ago while in India, when the film Hum Aap Ke Hain Kaun came out, it was touted as the box office success of all time, but taking into consideration inflation it still could not beat Sholay especially since there was a difference of more than 100 rupees in their respective ticket prices. So the conclusions may not be all correct.

How many times has someone told you "I am attending a marriage" or "It's my cousin's marriage" or "Please come for my marriage".
And everytime in your mind you go WEDDING!!!!!
Do they know or choose to ignore the difference between the two words?

Amit quotes this post about Hashmi's interview to a journalist (just after my rant about our media) guess they need lessons in language now.


Tags : India

We have all been through phone menu systems of customer service at one point or another in our lives. The companies sure make it difficult to reach a real human being in customer service.
Paul English started a cheat sheet on how to break through this maze of menus on their phone systems and reach a human pronto. This has turned into a website called gethuman.com. Bookmark this tip section which lists the respective company numbers and how to break them.

Here is the NPR story on this.


Tags : Society, Life

Now that Google is set to be included in the next edition of the Webster's dictionary, the company has voiced its concern.
"There is a risk that the word 'Google' could become so commonly used that it becomes synonymous with the word 'search,'" Google noted …. "We could lose protection for this trademark, which could result in other people using the word 'Google' to refer to their own products."
It's possible, just as the word Xerox is synonymous with photocopy.
Office Pirates has a hilarious take on this.

Tags : Current Affairs, language

After my post about Bollywood's xerox machine, it seems that it's not just the film industry's prerogative to pass of some one else's work as their own, or to get inspired by someone else's idea be it a film, a book(the Kaavya Vishwanathan episode) and now even reviews.
Amit points out how reviewers from India's prominent publications resort to plagiarism even while writing their reviews.
Kaaya's excuse was that she had internalized certain passages from the books she read. What's the excuse for these publications?
As far the national dailies / magazines go, once reputation was everything, now they are just a bunch of tabloids. This post details all that is so wrong with the print media.
If their reviewers have to resort to plagiarism then it's a sign of the times (no pun intended).The headlines on their websites are so creative that they bear no resemblance to the actual story, just enough to get the visitor to click on them. Often you find stories which have been lifted up straight from the foreign press and displayed as if it was their staff reporter doing their job, and ofcourse. with a different headline. Is this the beginning of the end?
Desi Pundit has summary of blogs that have been set up to keep an eye on the TOI. May be, just may be someone in the TOI will be shamed enough to stop the rot.

Tags : Current Affairs, India

How? By dying while on vacation before getting sentenced . That way the Government's case against one of the biggest corporate criminals in history is dead. This will now complicate the case to seize his assets. With what remains of his estate it will hardly cover even a small fraction of the amounts that the shareholders and ex-employees of Enron are suing for in their class action suits which runs into billions.

Lay has always hobnobbed with the powerful politicians. His association with politicians got him the Dabhol power project in India. Enron by its very nature had a culture of corruption. There were allegations that payouts had been made to the subsequent governments in power in Maharashtra. And then when things went bad they said India was unworkable . In reality it was Enron that robbed India. There was flat denial of any human rights violations.

Lay was a personal friend of Bush. In fact, after news of Lay's death, it was reported that Larry King speculated whether to ask President Bush in his second interview about his association with Lay.

Coming back to Lay, his death, while saving his family from financial ruin, has left a lot of people feeling cheated because not only are they not going to get any of their money back but Lay did not serve a single day of what was supposed to be, atleast a decade, in prison.

Ironically, Lay supposedly always believed in God, so is God calling him for justice?


Tags : Current Affairs, India

This is the title of the story that was emailed to me by my more than one of my friends. It talks about how a soccer crazy fan shows up for a world cup match even though his wife just passed away and he leaves his relatives to conduct her final rites.
While that might just be taking things too far, it does speak to the passion of soccer fans as was evident by how the English fans had descended into mourning after the loss of their favorite team. It was indeed a sad day for English fans, a deja vu, when their team's World Cup quest ended in defeat yet once again.
It was like a flashback just eight years ago, Wayne Rooney gets a red card, pretty much like a younger Beckham got one at that time, causing the full ire of the English fans to be directed toward him for a very long time. So the captain steps down tearfully, Beckham must feel that he has let his fans down once again.
England is never good at penalty shootouts as demonstrated just recently when they lost to Portugal in the European Championship quaterfinals a couple of years ago.

So having stars in its team did not do it for England, just as it did not do it for Brazil. Brazil, which was supposed to have the best team of players in a long while, just could not make it past France. While it did not help that nothing was going right for Ronaldinho, Kaka, Ronaldo and Co. ,their coach had to change their "magic quartet" to a formation that was different from which they began the 2006 quest.

So this makes it a European affair, and while it looks like France is in the finals facing either Germany or Italy but we you never know until the end.

Speaking of soccer, here is a touching article about young hands that toil long hours to make those balls, never getting a chance to play with them but only ending up with untreated wounds.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, whose gonna tell that to these kids, who have to trade their childhood away for a livelihood because they were born in poverty?

Tags : sports, India