FIFA World Rankings - India #133

The "Football" fever is every where, especially the most awaited match, Argentina vs Germany, is due at 7:20 PM today. Sitting in front of the TV, my father casually asked me about the ranking of India and without any calculations, I told him that it must be after 100. As soon as i spoke this, i was most interested to know the exact rankings and found this thing here on FIFA.com.

India Ranks 133 in world rankings of Football teams and when you click at #133 (against India), it will show you the summary of Indian rankings and you know the highest ever ranking of Indian Football team is 94, in Feb 1996. Since then 14 yrs have passed and the ranking has rose* to 133 ;-)

I don't know whom to blame for this, but indeed the bureaucratic system of India is! We need to take this thing seriously. In the team games, leaving besides cricket, i can't recall where do we stand. You ask a school going kid or a collegiate about their favourite game, and  i assume that more than 80% will come out with cricket as the answer. Hockey being the national game of India, still struggles to make it a part of TRP. Hockey Premier League was a good step towards promotion of the game but regular and continuous push is required in team games other than cricket. Remember that here we are talking about a country with population of 1,139,964,932. 

I thought that keeping in mind the mega event of 2010 i.e. FIFA, Indian sports ministry should have cashed the opportunity and propaganda was not required here, which the private companies took very good care to create a good footballic atmosphere and hence forth must have moved the things further to promote this game in India. 

Now lets move our eyes towards FIFA 2014 and keep fingers crossed for Indian Footballers. All the best buddies!!!

Must do: Tweak BSNL Broadband DNS to...

I am using BSNL Broadband services since August 2005 and due to lack of any other alternatives had to stick only to our sarkaari offerings. The web browsing experience has been simply pathetic with error message "Page not found" coming again and again even for prestigious websites like Hotmail, Yahoo! including Google.

Today i came across an article posted on TechnoHacker, after reading which my same 5 year old BSNL modem has started to do some wonders. Its actually not the modem but the DNS which did the whole thing.

Actually BSNL DNS servers sucks. This is one of the major problem that everyone is facing, most of the time they are damn slow and sometimes they fail to respond. But now things have changed for me and the same can be for you too!

So here is a simple solution to speed up your DNS resolution provided by OpenDNS.

The below mentioned solution is for those who are dialing the connection from their desktop. 

1. Open Control Panel -> Networking and Sharing Center -> Manage Network Connection.
2. Now a window showing all networks will be opened. Select BSNL Connection -> Right click -> Properties.
3. Now, double click on Internet Protocol Version(TCP/IPv4) and in newly opened window at bottom, select “Use the following DNS Server address” .
4. And fill these 2 DNS Addresses in two fields: Primary DNS as 208.67.222.222 and Secondary DNS as 208.67.220.220

and hit OK. That’s it. Your BSNL Internet Broadband DNS Servers changed.

In my case, like majority of guys, i am using auto-dial feature of the modem. Simply log-in to the modem by typing IP address 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1 as the case may be, in your web browser and login into your modem/ router. The default user name is admin and so is the password.

Change the DNS settings from there by un-select the Auto-DNS option  and manually add Primary and Secondary DNS from OpenDNS as mentioned above.

And you are done! Enjoy the actual lightning speed of BSNL BroadBand now!!!

Mobile number portability delayed again; Oct 31 is new deadline

The implementation of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has been delayed again. The Government on Wednesday said that the deadline for introducing the facility has been extended to October 31. The system was supposed to be introduced on Wednesday .

“The Government has taken the decision after reviewing the readiness of the various access/international long distance service providers and keeping in view the complexity and enormity of the testing involved before MNP is implemented,” said a statement. MNP allows subscribers to change their mobile operator without having to change the number.

This is fourth time that the Government is extending the deadline. Earlier, MNP was likely to be implemented in a phased manner in the first phase by December 31, 2009, in metro cities and Category ‘A' Service Areas and in the rest of the country thereafter by March 2010.

Extending time line for MNP implementation, the Government later decided to implement it in whole of the country in one go by March 31, 2010. Keeping in view the status of readiness of various stakeholders, the launch of Mobile Portability Services was extended to June 30, 2010.

Despite repeated extension of deadlines over the past one year, so far only 14 per cent of the mobile networks across the country are ready for the introduction of MNP. On an all India basis, only about 14 per cent testing has been completed and 36 per cent is in progress. In 50 per cent of the networks, testing is yet to be done.

BSNL, MTNL

While the private players are slow with the testing, state-run BSNL and MTNL have not even set up MNP gateways. BSNL has assured that it will set up all the gateways by July 18, after which it will start the testing process. But MTNL has not even issued the purchase order for the gateways. MNP cannot be implemented until all the operators networks have been upgraded and tested.

Source: The Hindu Business Line