With the first phase of elections in Gujarat less than a week away, it’s anybody’s guess whether Dr.Death a.k.a. Narendra Modi can trump India’s Italian Bahu a.k.a Sonia Gandhi.

While Chief Minister Narendra Modi is in the dock over communal violence in 2002 that led to the massacre of many Muslims in Gujarat, his arch rival Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi is an unimpressive leader whose only claim to fame is that she was lucky (or may be unlucky) enough to marry into the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Lately, the Congress party has referred to Modi as Dr.Death for justifying the death of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in a police encounter.

So for the hapless people of the western Indian state of Gujarat, they are caught between the Scylla of Narendra Modi and the Charybdis of Sonia Gandhi.

We don’t envy those poor folks of Gujarat.

Yes, Aaja Nachle is a dud at the box office.

So, who’s to blame?

The stupid movie’s stupid director Anil Mehta, of course.

Instead of acknowledging his limited talents as a director, the bozo is whining that critics have harmed his first film Aaja Nachle’s prospects at the box office through their negative reviews.

Now, Anil has taken his sob story to Reuters:

Many of us read what the critics have to say before going to the theatres and with such negative reviews coming out, it has automatically hurt the film badly.

And it’s all the fault of the reviewers, you see not the pedestrian story that lacked depth:

Reviews like this create a very bad word-of-mouth and that is what has happened.

Whoever said the malady of the ignorant is to be ignorant of their ignorance surely had Anil Mehta in mind.

Anil Bhai, better stick to cinematography and stop overreaching for stuff that’s beyond your abilities.

Kollywood’s Young General (a.k.a Ilayathalapathy in Tamil) Vijay must be crying himself silly into his beer over the sorry fate of his recent movie Azhagiya Tamil Magan.

This much anticipated movie of our self-styled Young General turned out to be a disgraceful affront to his fans and has deservedly met with a less than enthusiastic response at the box office.

As one critic wrote in a stinging review:

Asingamana Tamil Magan would be a more apt name for this repellent farce of a movie featuring Vijay in a double role opposite the young Delhi girl Shriya Saran.

Even in the long gone days of silent movies, film-makers would not dare to unleash an abomination like Azhagiya Tamil Magan on viewers.

Horribly amateurish, completely bereft of a story or any semblance of logic, Azhagiya Tamil Magan brings disgrace to the entire Tamil movie industry.

To make matters worse for our Young General , his rival Surya Sivakumar’s movie Vel (released at the same time) received a far superior reception at the box office.

Yes, Tamil movie fans are not the smartest bulbs on the planet but even they refused to put up with rubbish like Azhagiya Tamil Magan.

Let’s see what Ajith brings us next week with the Billa remake.

In preparation for its February 27 launch, Microsoft rolled out Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 for beta testers on Wednesday.

Customers can download and test Windows Server 2008 at http://www.microsoft.com/ws08eval

Microsoft claims that 1.8 million customers have obtained Windows Server 2008 evaluation code so far.

Windows Server 2008 is the next generation of the Windows Server operating system and an upgrade to the ageing Windows Server 2003.

Key enhancements in Windows Server 2008 include those related to networking,  security features, remote application access, centralized server role management, performance and reliability monitoring tools, failover clustering, deployment and the file system.

India’s active Internet user base in 2007 is still a pathetic 32 million, according to a new survey report put out by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

This represents a growth of 10.9 million active users over 2006.

The IAMAI is also throwing out a figure of 46 million Internet users in the ever used or claimed used category, representing a 42% growth over the previous year.

IAMAI President Subho Ray expressed disappointment over the Internet usage in the country:

[A]lthough a growth of 40 per cent year on year makes us happy, especially since for the last couple of years the rate of growth was between 30-35 per cent, relative to what can be achieved and what needs to be achieved, the growth rate is not very satisfactory….Broadband which would drive more applications, functions and businesses and therefore more users, now really needs to take off in India in order to make the growth sustainable.   

The cities covered by the survey included Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Patna, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Surat, Nagpur, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Durg, Vishakhapatnam, Trichy, Bellary, Panipat, Trissur and Jalgaon covering 65,000 households.

They say that even the rats desert a sinking ship.

While Padmasree Warrior is certainly no rat, this shrewd corporate warrior has abandoned the sinking Motorola and sought refuge in the safe harbor of networking leader Cisco.

Padmasree is joining Cisco as CTO, the same position she held at struggling Motorola where she was responsible for the company’s $4 billion research and development investment and had operational responsibility for Motorola’s global team of 26,000 engineers as well as Motorola Labs, its software, emerging early-stage businesses and the company’s intellectual property portfolio.

With her well-timed move to Cisco, Padmasree is living up to her description on the Motorola web site as wickedly intelligent.

Padmasree parachuted into Cisco just days after Motorola’s board announced on Friday plans to bring in a new CEO Greg Brown to replace Ed Zander. Motorola’s handset division is gasping for breath with an operating loss of $138 million in Q3 on revenues that fell 36% to $4.5 billion.

We think Padmasree - who was named CTO of Motorola in 2003 - is much overrated. But, hey we don’t call the shots in the corporate world.

In typical gushing corporate-speak, Cisco CEO John Chambers Continue Reading…