21 feb 05

The Word of the Day for Feb 18 is:
billingsgate \BIL-ingz-gayt\ noun

: coarsely abusive language


Example sentence:
A steady stream of billingsgate could be heard coming from the
basement after my father hit his thumb with his hammer.

Did you know?
From the time of the Roman occupation until the early 1980s,
Billingsgate was a fish market in London, England, notorious for the crude
language that resounded through its stalls. In fact, the fish merchants of
Billingsgate were so famous for their swearing that their feats of vulgar
language were recorded in British chronicler Raphael Holinshed's 1577
account of King Leir (which was probably Shakespeare's source for King
Lear). In Holinshed's volume, a messenger's language is said to be "as bad a
tongue ... as any oyster-wife at Billingsgate hath." By the middle of the
17th century, "billingsgate" had become a byword for foul language.

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Sending photos by e-mail now easier and free
By Anand Parthasarathy



BANGALORE, FEB. 20 . Those who regularly need to send large photographs as
e-mailed attachments will be familiar with two problems: The photo is too
big - my e-mail service won't allow attachments larger than one megabyte or,
with my dial up connection it takes too long to go.

If you are among those hoping to find some solution to these problems, a new
software tool may be the answer to your unsaid prayers. What's more, for
basic use, it's free.

A San Diego-based company has used the just-concluded "Demo 2005" conference
in Scottsdale, Arizona to debut a truly cool tool called "Photoleap" that is
a great help for sending and receiving bulky digital photos by email. It is
available as a free download from http://www.photoleap.com/downloads/ and
comes in separate editions for Windows (XP or 2000) PCs and Apple Macs (Mac
OS 10.3). Before installation on your desktop, you have to furnish your
e-mail address and the application will be launched as soon as you receive a
mail from Photoleap.

The software, once installed, looks much like the "Outlook" email tool and
in the free version, it allows you to send up to 25 photos in one mail, each
not more than 3.5 MB in size. After a thirty day trial, you can continue
indefinitely using the tool with this limitation - or pay $29.95 a year,
which allows you to send up to 250 photos at a time, each up to 8.5 MB.

The download itself is 1.92 MB and as a trial, this correspondent sent a
large cinema still. The photo was over 500 MB in size and with a normal
dialup connection, it typically takes 3-4 minutes to send the mail. Sent
through Photoleap, it was mailed almost instantaneously - and received
within seconds on another e-mail account as an 11 KB file - that's almost a
50 fold compression.

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CPI(M) turns party of the young

By C. Gouridasan Nair



MALAPPURAM, FEB. 20. The State CPI(M), which has often been described as the
party of the aged, has turned younger over the last few years. Out of the
party's total membership of 3.16 lakh, 60,000 are aged below 25 years and
roughly 2 lakh aged between 25 and 50 years. The organisational report of
the State CPI(M), presented to the 18th party State conference on Saturday,
says that the party has only 55,000 members aged between 50 and 70 years and
just 5,362 members aged above 70 years. And, most significantly, the report
reveals that 50 per cent of the party members are persons who joined the
party after 1997 and that 90 per cent of the party members joined the party
after 1977, after Emergency.

The CPI(M) State secretariat member, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, who briefed
media about the deliberations of the conference, said the report has also
noted there was a fall in the rate of decline in party membership since the
Kannur State conference three years ago. The drop out rate, which ranged
between 7.56 per cent and 14.43 per cent during the period prior to the
Kannur conference, had fallen to between 6.95 per cent and 13.64 per cent
during the last three years. The party membership grew by 23,000 over the
last three years.

Mr. Balakrishnan said that the number of women party members had risen by
8,500 during the report period taking the share of women in the total
membership of the State party from 7 per cent at the time of the Kannur
conference to 10.11 per cent. The number of Scheduled Caste members rose by
12,520 and that of Scheduled Tribe members by a mere 123 during the period.
The membership of mass organisations allied with the party had also risen
during the period, from 1.13 crores to 1.23 crores. This does not, however,
imply that the State party has the support of so many persons because there
is the possibility of the same individual being the member of different mass
organisations, the CPI(M) leader said.

Mr. Balakrishnan said the class composition of the party in Kerala is
clearly pro-working class with 51 per cent of the members being industrial
and farm workers and farmers. Only 0.04 per cent of the total membership
(142 persons) is landlords and 0.01 per cent (35 persons) belonging to
affluent sections of society, he said.

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