A second collection of stories entitled More Twisted was published in 2006  by Simon & Schuster. This collection contains fifteen previously publised stories together with another new Lincoln Rhyme mystery.

Looking foward to lay hands upon this one………………….

Twisted  is a 2003 collection of short stories by crime writer Jeffery Deaver.  The book was published in 2003 and features 16 short stories, including one featuring Deaver’s fictional detective Lincoln Rhyme.

The best part about the book is that each & every single story is in itself a masterpiece. If I will ever make a film, one thing for sure is that I am gonna  pick one of the stories of Twisted only. Storier are full of delirium till the very end. Reader is not even allowed to make the wildest possible guess about the ending of a story. The stories always turn out to be 180 degrees opposite of what the reader has predicted. Truly, mesmerizing & yet, thrilling.

Author has shown great reluctance in sharing the real character of his actors. What actually happens is that  the victim turns out to be the assailant & vice-versa. The real character is kept under several wraps till, the end.

It is definitely a must read for all those who are actually looking forward to some thrill. It will undoubtedly, make some hot adrenaline juices flow across your body.

Some of my faves  include :

ü  Without Jonathan

ü  For Services Rendered

ü  Beautiful

ü  The Fall Guy

ü  Gone Fishing

ü  Nocturne

]]> http://nikhil22dec.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/twisted-by-jeffery-deaver/feed/ 0 nikhil22dec http://nikhil22dec.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/direct-from-dell-by-michael-dell/ http://nikhil22dec.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/direct-from-dell-by-michael-dell/#comments Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:15:17 +0000 Nikhil Jain http://nikhil22dec.wordpress.com/?p=77 ]]>

Indeed a nice book wherein writer ,who is himself a CEO has stressed heavily on cutomer relationship management(the same job I am looking forward to do ……..).Well,not being cheeky,but,yes,I totally corroborae with Michael’s opinions on the imporatnce of understanding cutomers.His ability to go against the tide,when everbody admonished him, is something which I greatly admire.His Direct Selling Model,still an iconoclastic idea,is undoubtedly,the reason behind Dell’s enormous success.While,others were predicting future trends,Dell was driving the wave just because of Michael’s sheer determination & courage & of couse, attitude(I would rather call it Dell’s panache).Michael is,from now onwards,christened one of my favourite CEOs.

Now an excerpt from the book itself.

Dell Computer Corporation is an $18 billion company and the second largest manufacturer and marketer of personal computers in the world. Founded on a deceptively simple premise – to deliver high-performance computer systems directly to the end user – Dell Computer is the envy of its competition, consistently growing at five times the industry rate, and a perennial darling of Wall Street.

In Direct from Dell, Michael Dell himself tells the incredible story of Dell Computer’s successful rise, which began in his college dorm room with $1,000 in capital.

Not just for CEOs or those in high tech, the strategies revealed in Direct from Dell are invaluable to managers across industries. From starting a successful business to his pioneering use of the Internet, Dell shares his perspectives on:

Though,it is an interesting book but still, what I particularly felt was that the author has been  talking about very simple things in a very lucid manner & which any normal boy belonging to a business class family knows.&  that’s  the beauty of this book.For a boy who has not got such financial exposure, this book can do wonders.

Authors have emphasised specially on making the definitions of Asstes & Liabilities clear, leaving no stone unturned to make them clear to the speaker.Undoubtedly, the book is able to live upto the expectations & has  attained it’s ultimate objective i.e. Distinguishing what the rich teach their kids about money-That the poor & Middle Class Do Not!!!!The book is full of instances,personal as well as others.The concept that “Rich don’t work for money but Money work for them” is also prettty enlightening.

Below written is the summary of the book : 

The book is largely based on Kiyosaki’s upbringing and education in Hawaii, although the degree of fictionalization in his anecdotes is disputed. Because of the heavy use of allegory, some readers believe that Kiyosaki created the Rich Dad character as an author surrogate (a literary device), discussed further in the criticism section below. Many readers believe that the “Rich Dad” in the book is actually the founder of Hawaii’s widespread ABC Stores.

Anthony Robbins holds a seminar called ‘Wealth Mastery’ and one of the keynote speakers is Keith Cunningham. During the seminar Cunningham claimed to be Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad. This is highly unlikely not only because of the similarity in age between Cunningham and Kiyosaki, but also because Kiyosaki had stated in his books that Rich Dad had died in 1994. In addition, Kiyosaki mentions Keith Cunningham as “a dear friend of mine” on page eighty-five. Some have claimed that Rich Dad was a person named Richard Kimi, the deceased founder of Sand and Seaside Hawaiian Hotels.

The book highlights the different attitudes to money, work and life of these two men, and how they in turn influenced key decisions in Kiyosaki’s life.

Among some of the book’s topics are:

• the value of financial intelligence
• that corporations spend first, then pay taxes, while individuals must pay taxes first
• that corporations are artificial entities that anyone can use, but the poor usually don’t know how

According to Kiyosaki and Lechter, wealth is measured as the number of days the income from your assets will sustain you, and financial independence is achieved when your monthly income from assets exceeds your monthly expenses. Each dad had a different way of teaching his son….

Lehman Brothers bankrupted, Washington Mutual Sold Out, Merril Lynch bailed out. In short, the entire US economy came down to its knees. Here, comes the era of The Second Great Depression 0r The Great Recession.
A very good afternoon all of you, this is Nikhil & I am here to express my concern over the Global Meltdown & its adverse impact on India.
As the famous cliché suggests, whenever the US sneezes, the world catches a cold. The same has been true with the Great Recession .With The Eurozone, UK and Japan officially in recession, the phenomenon has reached a global level & has been correctly named as Global Meltdown.
This global recession of course has its impact on the Indian economy. As this recession is believed to be one of the greatest financial crises in the history of world’s economy, India directly or indirectly, is going to be affected by this.
Some, like the US, the UK, Germany and Australia are key investors in India.
For instance, the US is India’s largest trade partner and foremost export destination, accounting for nearly 17 percent of India’s exports.
From the estimated growth rate of 9%, Indian growth rate has been reduced to 6.7 percnt. This is nothing else but, the prognostication of adverse impacts of Global Meltdown on Indian Economy.
The global crisis has adversely affected the FIIs who had invested in real estate and related firms. Many FIIs are heavily selling their holdings in numerous Indian companies and that is reflecting in gloom and doom scenario in stock exchange.
With the withdrawal of FIIs from the Indian realty scene, the real estate developers are in a shaky position. The US crisis is affecting Indian industries across all sectors.
While sectors like IT and export are directly affected, others like banks and the auto sector have seen a slowdown in demand.
Also, textile companies are suffering because of less demand from foreign countries and consequently less revenue from exports.
The year 2009 will also be very difficult for the tourism industry because of the economic situation prevailing worldover.
With such adverse conditions, India is definitely going to suffer in the long run because of this global meltdown. The only way to rescue Indian economy from the havoc of global meltdown is global restructuring not global meltdown.

Undoubtedly, an intersting book.Full of exemplary figures, this book is good if you are looking for an ideal.This book particularly talks about IIT alumni who have made big in the world.

The book deals with the comparison of IITs with other Institutes of Technology and even universities in USA and elsewhere, like Massachusetts, Harvard, Princeton, California, Illinois, and Tokyo or Singapore. The book discusses the social changes in India and their effect on IITs in contrast with the institutes elsewhere in the world. The book also discusses the peculiarities of campus life in IITs, and how the author went on to be a professional journalist while being trained to be in Electronics.

The foundations of the IIT system, beginning with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision, to the nature of the curriculum and life on campus, and the efficacy of the Joint Entrance Examination, the all India culture, and the world view are dealt with in the book. The author also mentions the academic, professional and social interactions between undergraduates in classes, exams, hostels and extra curricular events. The concerns of brain drain, returns to India, the distorted sex ratio among students, the general conditions in the country also form the part of the discussions. The book does not discuss the admission process to IITs other than JEE.

The book is an exploration of how India could create a first class system of engineering education. It also discusses some issues concerning the IITs, namely the “brain drain”, which is the migration of its students to other countries. It tells how much hard work goes into qualifying in the IIT examinations. It also gives the history of the institution. It has listed the achievements of some of IIT’s most famous passouts. The book also has a lighter side to it, a chapter, named ‘The Weirdos’, details some of the more eccentric personalities at the university.

After the end of the cold war in early ’90s, the well-known American sociologist Alvin Toffler talked of the “Third Wave” or the down of a post-industrial civilizations and envisioned a new and more humane quality of power based on

Knowledge and information as against the traditional concept of power based on violence and

material wealth. Wishing you all a very good afternoon, this is Nikhil & I opine that peace & non-violence are more required today than they were ever required in the past.

 With nuclear enabled adversaries like Pakistan, China, India has got no other option but to resort to age-old concepts of peace & non-violence. Peace & non-violence are completely in.

To quote an example of what war could inflict on the millions of human lives, I would like to mention America-Iraq war. A war raised in the name of war against terrorism actually landed millions of innocent peoples in great losses & trouble with almost no success in capturing the real terrorists.

The irony of the day is that nuclear arsenals created during the Cold War, waged between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR)  are still in existence & can destroy the world many a times over. Today to safeguard the hoi polloi of the world, we don’t need nuclear warheads but nuclear bunkers .There are several other instances where war has waged nothing but destruction.

Mankind is currently sitting on the nuclear time-bomb, ready to explode any time, & the only solitude is nothing else, but, peace & non-violence. Wars lead to nothing but mutual destruction as has happened in the Israel-Palestine case. Such great damage could have been easily averted by employing the diplomatic weapons.

What world needs today is not war but peace, not competition but co-existence to survive & prosper.

Gone are the days of Neolithic age, where weapons were the only means of ensuring survival. Today the benchmark is continuous growth & that requires esprit de corps, the feeling of mutual respect to each other. What world needs today to ensure this dream is an empowered organization which can curb the dangerous warheads like Korea, Germany, Japan & of course, US. We, as the denizens of the most beautiful planet of the solar system, Earth, cannot afford to have one more world war.

Undoubtedly, it is the most outrageous biography I have ever read or even heard of…The main protagonist has been criticized like anything…Though, at the same time it enables the readers to know about a person, already over-hyped, from a different perspective…

No doubts, iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business is an unauthorized biography by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon. With so much of negativity written into it, no sensible person would have acknowledged it as his authentic biography…..

An interesting thin about the title of the book is that it is an acute example of double entendre. The word iCon seems to be a stylized version of icon i.e. a visual representation (of an object or scene or person or abstraction)  but on a closer look(after reading the book) ,I notice that “iCon” actually means I Con which means A swindle in which you cheat at gambling or persuade a person to buy worthless property indirectly targeting none other then Steve Jobs…..

Peculiar observation, I know, but that’s my personal opine & I consider it really bold of the authors to write this openly….

Following is a small description of the man called, Steve Jobs….

Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the American co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. and the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios.

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, created one of the first commercially successful personal computers. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface.^[8] After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT’s subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple Computer Inc. brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then. Steve Jobs was listed as Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Businessman of 2007.^[9]

In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios.^[10] He remained CEO and majority shareholder until its acquisition by the Walt Disney Company in 2006.^[2] Jobs is currently the Walt Disney Company’s largest individual shareholder and a member of its Board of Directors.^[11][12] He is considered a leading figure in both the computer and entertainment industries.

Jobs’s history in business has contributed greatly to the myths of the quirky, individualistic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design while understanding the crucial role aesthetics play in public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both functional and elegant has earned him a devoted following.

Jobs is currently on a leave of absence from Apple due to health issues.

Jobs was born in San Francisco and was adopted by Paul and Clara  Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California who named him Steven Paul. His biological parents, Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali^[7] — a graduate student from Syria who became a political science professor^[7] — later married and gave birth to Jobs’s sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.

Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High School and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California,^[13] and frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California. He was soon hired there and worked with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee.^[15] In 1972, Jobs graduated from high school and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester,^[16] he continued auditing classes at Reed, such as one in calligraphy. “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts”, he said.^[17]

In the autumn of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Steve Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games, with the primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India.

Jobs then backpacked around India with a Reed College friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of philosophical enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences “one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life.”^[18] He has stated that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.^[18]

He returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game Breakout. According to Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered US$100 for each chip that was reduced in the machine. Jobs had little interest or knowledge in circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. At the time, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had only given them $600 (instead of the actual $5000) and that Wozniak’s share was thus $300.

Beginnings of Apple Computer

In 1976, Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, with funding from multimillionaire A.C. “Mike” Markkula, founded Apple. Before Wozniak co-founded Apple with Jobs, he was an electronics hacker. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for some time, having met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. Steve Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a computer and selling it. As Apple continued to expand, the company began looking for an experienced executive to help manage its expansion. In 1983, Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola, to serve as Apple’s CEO, saying, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water to children, or do you want a chance to change the world?”^[25][26] The following year, Apple set out to do just that, starting with a Super Bowl television commercial titled, “1984.” At Apple’s annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as “pandemonium.”^[27] The Macintosh became the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface. The development of the Mac was started by Jef Raskin, and eventually taken over by Jobs.

While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time had described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. An industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs’s working relationship with Sculley, and at the end of May 1985 – following an internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs – Sculley relieved Jobs of his duties as head of the Macintosh division.^[28]

NeXT Computer

Around the same time, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer. Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced; however, it was largely dismissed by industry as cost-prohibitive. Among those who could afford it, however, the NeXT workstation garnered a strong following because of its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the scientific and academic fields because of the innovative, experimental new technologies it incorporated (such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port).

The NeXT Cube was described by Jobs as an “interpersonal” computer, which he believed was the next step after “personal” computing. That is, if computers could allow people to communicate and collaborate together in an easy way, it would solve a lot of the problems that “personal” computing had come up against. During a time when e-mail for most people was plain text, Jobs loved to demo the NeXT’s e-mail system, NeXTMail, as an example of his “interpersonal” philosophy. NeXTMail was one of the first to support universally visible, clickable embedded graphics and audio within e-mail.

Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by such things as the NeXTcube’s magnesium case. This put considerable strain on NeXT’s hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.

Return to Apple

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $429 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996,^[29] bringing Jobs back to the company he founded. He soon became Apple’s interim CEO after the directors lost confidence in and ousted then-CEO Gil Amelio in a boardroom coup. In March 1998, in order to concentrate Apple’s efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs immediately terminated a number of projects such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, “afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs’s summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company.”^[30]

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company’s technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs’s guidance the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the “interim” modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title ‘iCEO’. ^[31]

In recent years, the company has branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. In 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, iPod, and internet device. While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminds his employees that “real artists ship”,^[32] by which he means that delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and attractive design.

Jobs is both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the “reality distortion field” and is particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known as “Stevenotes“) at Macworld Expos and at Apple’s own World Wide Developers Conferences.

In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple’s poor recycling programs for e-waste in the U.S. by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple’s Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. However, a few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker. The banner read “Steve — Don’t be a mini-player recycle all e-waste”. In 2006 he further expanded Apple’s recycling programs to any U.S. customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and “environmentally friendly disposal” of their old systems.^[33]

Stock options backdating issue

In 2001, Steve Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7,500,000 shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30, which allegedly should have been $21.10, thereby incurring taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report as income. Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. If found liable, Jobs may face a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. Apple claimed that the options were originally granted at a special board meeting that may never have taken place. Furthermore, the investigation is focusing on false dating of the options resulting in a retroactive $20 million increase in the exercise price. The case is the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations,^[34] though an independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006 found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003.^[35] On July 1, 2008 a $7 billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of Directors for revenue lost due to the alleged securities fraud.^[36][37]

Pixar and Disney

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.^[38] The major cause of the low purchase price was George Lucas‘ need to finance his 1983 divorce without significantly reducing his stock and control of the Star Wars enterprises.^{[citation needed]}

The new company, which was originally based in San Rafael, California but has since relocated to Emeryville, California, was initially intended to be a high-end graphics hardware developer. After years of unprofitability selling the Pixar Image Computer, it contracted with Disney to produce a number of computer-animated feature films, which Disney would co-finance and distribute.

The first film produced by the partnership, Toy Story, brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next ten plus years, under Pixar’s creative chief John Lasseter, the company would produce the box-office hits A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), and WALL-E (2008). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatouille each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar’s contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in early 2004 Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films once its contract with Disney expired. Personal animosity between the two executives was largely blamed for the companies’ failure to renew their partnership.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. Once the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company’s largest single shareholder with approximately 7% of the company’s stock.^[11] Jobs’s holdings in Disney far exceed those of Eisner, who holds 1.7%, and Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who holds about 1% of the company’s stock and whose criticisms of Eisner included the soured Pixar relationship and accelerated his ousting. Jobs joined the company’s board of directors upon completion of the merger.

Jobs also helps oversee Disney and Pixar’s combined animation businesses with a seat on a special six-man steering committee. One of the committee’s first decisions was to discontinue the production of so-called “cheapquels” (cheap direct-to-video sequels). Many also see Jobs as a valuable and influential advisor to Iger and Disney on technology matters.

Management style

Much has been made of Jobs’s aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune noted that he “is considered one of Silicon Valley’s leading egomaniacs.” Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Mike Moritz’s The Little Kingdom, one of the few authorized biographies of Jobs; Jeffrey S. Young’s unauthorized Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward; The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon.

In iCon: Steve Jobs the authors point out that Paul Jobs, who adopted Steve, was also known to be aggressive: “Paul was soon hired as a kind of strongarm man by a finance company that sought help collecting on auto loans — an early repo man. Both his bulk and his aggressive personality were well suited to this somewhat dangerous pursuit, and his mechanical bent enabled him to pick the locks of the cars he had to repossess and hot-wire them if necessary.”

Jobs has always aspired to position Apple and its products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in terms of innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007 by quoting ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky:^[40]

Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a “mature, mellow individual” and never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers.^[41]

Personal life

Jobs married Laurene Powell, on March 18, 1991. Presiding over the wedding was the Zen Buddhist monk Kobun Chino Otogowa.^[42] The couple have three children. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born May 17, 1978), born to Chrisann Brennan, an early girlfriend.^[43] She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity.^[43] Lisa Brennan-Jobs is a journalist who wrote for The Harvard Crimson, and Apple’s Lisa Computer was named for her.^[44]

In the unauthorized biography The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as saying she “believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan.” In another unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children. Baez included a mention of Jobs in the acknowledgments of her 1987 memoir And A Voice To Sing With.

Steve Jobs is also a devoted Beatles fan He has referenced them on more than one occasion at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60 Minutes, he replied:

In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent years renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building’s north tower, only to sell it almost two decades later to U2 frontman Bono. Jobs had never moved in.

In 1984, Jobs purchased a 17,000-square-foot (1,600 m²), 14 bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion, designed by George Washington Smith in Woodside, California, also known as Jackling House. Although it reportedly remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the mansion for ten years. According to reports, he kept an old BMW motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in 1998. He allowed the mansion to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June 2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to prevent demolition. In January 2007 Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property, by a court decision.

He usually wears a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by St. Croix, Levi’s 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 992 sneakers.^[48] He is a vegetarian.^[7]

Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting when Jobs first criticized Dell for making “un-innovative beige boxes.”^[49] On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he owned then-troubled Apple Computer, he said “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”^[50] In 2006, Steve Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple’s market capitalisation rose above Dell’s. The email read:^[51]

In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.^[52]

Health concerns

In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a malignant cancerous tumor in his pancreas. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very grim; Jobs, however, stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. After initially resisting the idea of conventional medical intervention and embarking on a special diet to thwart the disease, Jobs underwent in July 2004 a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or “Whipple procedure”) that successfully removed the tumor. Jobs apparently did not require nor receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy. During Jobs’s absence, Timothy D. Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.

In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His “thin, almost gaunt” appearance and unusually “listless” delivery, together with his choice to delegate significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and internet speculation about his health.^[59] In contrast, according to an Ars Technica journal report, WWDC attendees who saw Jobs in person said he “looked fine”;^[60] following the keynote, an Apple spokesperson said that “Steve’s health is robust.”^[61]

Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs’s 2008 WWDC keynote address;^[62] Apple officials stated Jobs was victim to a “common bug” and that he was taking antibiotics,^[63] while others surmised his cachectic appearance was due to the aforementioned Whipple procedure.^[64] During a July conference call discussing Apple earnings, participants responded to repeated questions about Steve Jobs’ health by insisting that it was a “private matter.” Others, however, opined that shareholders had a right to know more, given Jobs’ hands-on approach to running his company. The New York Times published an article based on an off-the-record phone conversation with Jobs, noting that “while his health issues have amounted to a good deal more than ‘a common bug,’ they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer.”^[66]

On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary to Jobs in its corporate news service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. (News carriers customarily stockpile up-to-date obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure’s untimely death.) Although promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on the error, intensifying rumors concerning Jobs’ health.^[70] Jobs responded at Apple’s September 2008 keynote Let’s Rock by quoting Mark Twain: “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”; at a subsequent media event, Jobs concluded his presentation with a slide reading “110 / 70″, referring to his blood pressure, stating he would not address further questions about his health.

On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the company’s final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions about Jobs’s health.^[73][74][75] In a statement given on January 5, 2009 on Apple.com,^[76] Jobs said that he had been suffering from a hormone imbalance for several months.^[77] On January 14, 2009, in an internal Apple memo, Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had “learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought” and announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009 to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who had previously acted as CEO in Jobs’s 2004 absence, will once again be the acting CEO of Apple.^[14] Jobs will still be involved with “major strategic decisions”.^[14]

According to John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Apple’s reporting of Steve Jobs’s health can be taken to be accurate, since otherwise the board would be in breach of their legal responsibilities as directors of a publicly-held company.

Jobs was also parodied in Mypods and Boomsticks, a 2008 The Simpsons episode which features an adventure into the ‘world’ of Mapple, MyPods, and “Steve Mobbs”.

Honors

He was awarded the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan in 1985 with Steve Wozniak (the first people to ever receive the honor),^[79] and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category “Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under” (aka the Samuel S. Beard Award) in 1987.^[80]

On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune Magazine.^[81]

On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. 

The Children of Húrin is an epic high fantasy novel which forms the completion of a tale by J. R. R. Tolkien. He wrote the original version of the story in late 1910s, revised it several times later, but did not complete it before his death in 1973. His son, Christopher Tolkien, edited the manuscripts to form a consistent narrative, and published it in 2007 as an independent work.So may be that’s why the language used in the novel is too difficult to understand.Though the story is amusing but to persist till the very end was indeed a very laborious task.While I kept on forgetting the names of the characters,places(happening with me the very firt time) etc,reading this novel became really tricky.The story goes on like this -

The story begins with the coming of Húrin and his brother Huor to the hidden city of Gondolin. Whereupon dwelling there for a year, they swore an oath not to reveal its location to any beings and were permitted swift passage to Dor-lómin. Therein Húrin married Morwen Edhelwen, and two children were born unto them, a son Túrin and a fair maiden daughter Lalaith. The book continues with the story of Túrin’s upraising, Lalaith’s early death and Húrin’s departure to war.

In the disastrous defeat of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears Húrin was captured alive. Morgoth personally tormented him, trying to force from him the location of Gondolin, but despite his efforts, Húrin defied and even scorned Morgoth. For this, Morgoth placed a curse on him and his family whereby evil things would befall them.

At Morgoth’s command the allied Easterlings overran Hithlum and Dor-lómin. Morwen, fearing her son’s capture, sent Túrin to the realm of Doriath for safety. Shortly afterwards, Morwen gave birth to a second daughter, Nienor. In Doriath, Túrin was taken as foster-son by King Thingol and became a mighty warrior, befriending Beleg Strongbow as one of the march-wardens. However, after several years Túrin accidentally caused the death of one of Thingol’s advisers, an elf Saeros, who had harassed Túrin earlier. Believing himself to be a criminal in the eyes of Thingol, Túrin fled Doriath and entered the wilderness.

Túrin joined a band of outlaws, the Gaurwaith, and soon became their leader. Meanwhile, Thingol learned of the circumstances of Saeros’s death and pardoned Túrin for the act, sending the Elf Beleg out to search for him. After a year, he succeeded in tracking down the band, and after being briefly tortured by the lawless gang in Túrin’s absence, was set free and was able to deliver to Turin the message of the king’s pardon. However Túrin refused to return to Doriath. Beleg then departed in order to participate in battles upon the north-marches of Doriath.

Some time after Túrin and his men captured Mîm the Petty-dwarf, who ransomed his life by leading the band to the caves in the hill of Amon Rûdh where he made his home. The outlaws entrenched themselves in the caves, and soon Beleg returned and joined them. The band gradually became more daring and successful in their warfare against Morgoth’s troops, and Túrin and Beleg even established the realm of Dor-Cúarthol. However, after a couple of years Mîm, because he hated the Elves and was jealous by the attention Túrin paid to Beleg, betrayed the outlaws, revealing the band’s headquarters to Morgoth’s forces. The outlaws were overrun, Túrin was captured, but Beleg escaped.

Beleg followed the company of Orcs, meeting a mutilated elf, Gwindor of Nargothrond, along the way. They found Túrin sleeping and released him from his bonds, but Túrin, thinking that an Orc had come to torment him, slew Beleg before realising his tragic error. Gwindor led Túrin to Eithel Sirion, where Túrin regained his senses, and later to Nargothrond. There Túrin gained favour with King Orodreth and earned the love of his daughter Finduilas. After leading the Elves to considerable victories, he became the chief counsellor of Orodreth and virtually commander of all the forces in Nargothrond.

Messengers send from Círdan warned Túrin to hide Nargothrond from Morgoth, but Túrin believed that Nargothrond was strong enough to withstand assault. However, after five years Morgoth sent a great force of Orcs under the command of a dragon Glaurung and defeated the army of Nargothrond on the field of Tumhalad, where both Gwindor and Orodreth were killed. Morgoth’s forces sacked Nargothrond and captured its populace, and in an attempt to prevent this, Túrin encountered Glaurung. The dragon enchanted and tricked him into returning to Dor-lómin to seek out his mother and sister instead of rescuing Finduilas and other prisoners, what, according to the last words of Gwindor, was the only way to avoid his doom.

When Túrin returned to Dor-lómin, he learned that Morwen and Nienor had already fled for Doriath. In a rage Túrin incited a fight and had to flee once more. He tracked Finduilas’s captors to the forest of Brethil, only to learn that she had been murdered by the orcs when the woodmen had attempted to rescue her. Almost broken by his grief, Túrin sought sanctuary among the Folk of Haleth, who maintained a tenacious resistance against the forces of Morgoth. In Brethil Túrin renamed himself Turambar, or “Master of Doom” in High-elven, and gradually overruled the Chieftain Brandir.

Meanwhile Morwen and Nienor heard rumours of Túrin’s deeds at Nargothrond and attempted to find him. They were attacked by Glaurung, who enchanted Nienor so that she forgot everything, while Morwen was lost. Eventually Nienor reached Brethil, where she was met by Turambar, who had never seen her; not realising their kinship, they fell in love and married, despite the counsels of Brandir.

After some time Glaurung came to exterminate the Men of Brethil, but Turambar killed the dragon by stabbing him from beneath while he was crossing the ravine of Cabed-en-Aras. However, as Turambar pulled out his sword, Glaurung’s poisonous blood scorched his hand, knocking him unconscious. The pregnant Nienor found Turambar lying unconscious, and the dying Glaurung returned memory to her. Realising in horror that her husband was also her brother, she threw herself off the nearby cliff into the river Taeglin, and was washed away. When Turambar woke and heard from Brandir that Nienor was dead, he killed him in wrath, believing that Brandir had lied in envy at Nienor’s love and fearing the fulfilment of his own doom. However, after Túrin had learned all the truth from Mablung, he threw himself upon his sword Gurthang.

The main part of the narrative ends with the burial of Túrin. Appended to this is an extract from The Wanderings of Húrin, the next tale of Tolkien’s legendarium. This recounts how Húrin was at last released by Morgoth and came to the mound of his children. There he found Morwen, who had also managed to find the place, but now died in the arms of her husband with the following sunset.

I am really very sorry but I find myself unable to comprehend why an acomplished writer like Paulo Coelho Deides to write Veronika……..After reading  “The Alchemist “,I wasn’t expecting this atleast from Paulo.The plot of the story is very normal. A yaung gal who is fed up of her very normal life tries commiting suicide.She ended up in a mental asylum getting treated for a fictitious heart alment & there the actual story begins……

Plot summary

Veronika, who leads a seemingly perfect life, lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She decides to commit a premeditated suicide by ingesting too many sleeping pills. While she waits for her death, she decides to read a magazine.

After seeing an article in the magazine which wittily asks “Where is Slovenia?,” she decides to write a letter to the press justifying her suicide, the idea being to make the press believe that she has killed herself because people don’t even know where Slovenia is. Her plan fails and she wakes up in Villete, a mental hospital in Slovenia, where she is told she has a week to live.

Her presence there affects all of the mental hospital’s patients, especially Zedka, who has clinical depression; Mari, who suffers from panic attacks; and Eduard, who has schizophrenia, and with whom Veronika falls in love. During her internment in Villete she realises that she has nothing to lose and can therefore do what she wants, say what she wants and be who she wants without having to worry about what others think of her; as a madwoman, she is unlikely to be criticized. Because of this newfound freedom Veronika experiences all the things she never allowed herself to experience including hatred, love and even sexual awakening.

In the meantime, Vilette’s head psychiatrist attempts a fascinating but provocative experiment. Can you “shock” someone into wanting to live by convincing her that death is imminent? Like a doctor applying defibrillator paddles to a heart attack victim, Dr. Igor’s “prognosis” jump-starts Veronika’s new appreciation of the world around her.