Hasta La Gadget!

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call ‘the breaks.’ In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things – read and write – and wait. – Countee Cullen

Knowledge is one of the most excellent purifiers of our mind and intellect. Books are one among many sources of knowledge. By means of the book, we can dwell and live through the mind of another person. It is one of the process of advancing ourselves to the full potential. There is nothing more valuable in life than learning. Learning awakens us, it guides and inspires us. Slowly and steadily, books have led little man to become giant men and redeemers of the society.

True wisdom is beyond books, mind and intellect but books can definitely be the first steps towards attainment of wisdom. Since time immemorial, important facts, knowledge, events and wisdom have been recorded in the book-form. Writing was invented long time before the invention of radio, tv and video recordings. So, the recording information in the form of writing has a long history.

On the other hand, for those who love wisdom, for those that are passionate about truth will naturally incline to the books. There is a foundation of knowledge available in books. This is not to say that books are ready-made formula to our desires and aspirations but there are books available that present methods to lead us to whatever we want. Books like Bhagavad Gita present truth that if practiced can lead us to the absolute truth and enlightenment.

A mortal can become immortal by reading a book. If one is sincere about life and living, there are thousands of books written by men of wisdom for thousands of years available anywhere. In today’s age of internet, millions of books are available to read online. Mostly, our life is determined by what is in our mind. Mind contributes in the formation of our body and being. Person with purified mind and intellect sees a completely different world than a person with impure and lazy mind.

Oldest form of books have been traced to The Ancient Vedas. Vedas are the guides to seekers of spritiual knowledge and enlightenment. With the advancement of civilization, the truth teachers have recorded their knowledge in their books for the benefit of their disciples. Book writings have had a revolutionary impact for thousands of years now. Books like Bible and Bhagavad Gita have continued to guide men. They have created giants like Lincoln and Gandhi. Single Lincoln and Gandhi thus created through the influence of these books have led masses and caused great social and political changes the impact of which we are feeling even to this day.

Of course there is no such source of knowledge and wisdom like tuning to cosmic or universal mind but most of us are unaware of the methods to do so. Until we reach that point books can be of great advantage. Most of the insights that we never had appear upon reading few pages of a book. There is always some truth that we can receive from every book. Our job is to experiment with that truth and find out for ourselves. The truth is always there but once we experiment with it, it becomes a part of our being, our consciousness is advanced.

We are not recommending people to be obsessed about book writing or become a bookworm but we are trying to convey the fact that books are vehicles to the truth, at least few good ones are. We are far better off in picking up a book and reading than indulging ourselves in other useless endeavors.

Every man or woman should attempt to collect their experiences and things they have learnt in the form of a book. They should let their imaginations wander and express in their writings. One never knows the kind of new ideas that will hit us during these endeavors that can possibly change our lives.

After we write something, we tend to reflect on it with different eyes. We never know that our thoughts might have great value for future generations. These days many companies in America and other countries allow writers to publish and market their books for free. This has opened up a new world for aspiring authors.

Society is molded by thoughts. One good book can change the society forever and influence generations to follow. Most of the time it is not what is written in the books but the thought that it provokes in the reader.

Different people are at a varying degree of truth and in their advancement, they relate with different teachers and different books. In their journey, your experiences and knowledge might work as a ladder for some people to the greater truth. On the other hand, if you are living a worthwhile life, you should record your thoughts and understanding for people to enjoy or learn.

Knowledge doesn’t complete us but sharing our knowledge enriches ourselves and others at the same time. It is a duty of every learned person to bless others and what better way can there be in the present time than book writing? Seekers of truths depending upon their understanding will always find the appropriate teacher if they are sincere.

To most of us, we come across the kind of book we need whenever we are looking for that information. Like Emerson said, “The whole course of things goes on to teach us faith. We just have to obey. There is a guidance for each of us.” The cosmos always brings us into situations that are most likely to help us advance and progress in our journey. For such people, books can be friend, father, mother, brother or sister. Books can be a guide and a redeemer.

There is so much to be grateful because illumined seers and enlightened masters have left us so much knowledge in the form of books. Even today we can read what was in their mind and heart. These seers though they have left the body are voluntarily willing to instruct us through their writings and teachings. All we need is an open mind and desire to communicate. Krishna, Buddha, Patanjali and Shiva are equally available to us if we are only sincere.

I don’t know how we would have known about all these personalities if books were not written about them. Books about a person of the past open a completely different world for you and helps us see the world through their eyes. Person like Krishna’s life are of utmost importance if read and understood. Buddha’s teachings if read and applied can lead us to peace of mind and bliss. What other thing can be so valuable?

Even an ordinary person if engages in writing will find this thoughts coming out clearly. He will be able to recollect things he never thought were in his mind. A person is able to understand himself and others better in this way. It is hard to say why some people find joy in writing and reading a book. Some people are just drawn to particular books while some others read only if they happen to come across something they find interesting.

Our own consciousness is the storehouse of unlimited knowledge but until we get in touch with it, we are in need of external sources like books for the attainment of greater wisdom. Books are thus not to be the end but the means to the expansion of our horizons. The ultimate goal is always to come in touch with our own consciousness.

It must be remembered that to guide the less intelligent men in the society, truths can be written in a way that is relatable to them. Men of lower intellect need to be taught in different way than advanced monks and yogis. Truth can not be told but only experienced but even Krishna and Jesus have tried to explain the unexplainable so that we would go deeper to find the truth.

Good books can thus be instrumental in helping men find the absolute truth in themselves that guides and sustains everything. The best book is not the one that has all the greatest philosophies of the world in it but one that can explain us what we have within ourselves and help us find that.

Book that are full of positive ideas and thoughts can largely contribute to the progress of the community in many ways. They can create positive mind among people which automatically leads to people in mode of goodness. People in mode of goodness will always create better families, better society and better world. This kind of ripple effect can continue for hundreds of years.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

By Joseph Menn, Dustin Volz and Mark Hosenball

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI is investigating a cyber intrusion at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) that may be related to an earlier hack at the Democratic National Committee, said four sources familiar with the matter on Thursday.

The previously unreported incident at the DCCC, which raises money for Democrats running for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, may have been intended to gather information about donors, rather than to steal money, the sources said.

The breach and its potential ties to Russian hackers are likely to sharpen concern, so far unproven, that Moscow is attempting to meddle in U.S. elections. The issue has clouded this week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

The DCCC intrusion could have begun as recently as June, two of the sources told Reuters.

That was when a spoof website was registered with a name closely resembling that of a main donation site connected to the DCCC. For some time, Internet traffic associated with donations that was supposed to go to a company that processes campaign donations instead went to the spoof site, two sources said.

The sources said the Internet Protocol address of the spurious site resembled one used by a Russian government-linked hacking group, one of two such groups suspected in the breach of the DNC, the nationwide strategy setting and money-raising body for the Democratic Party.

The DCCC had no immediate comment. Donation processing company ActBlue had no immediate comment.

The FBI referred questions to a statement it made on Monday on the DNC hack: “The FBI is investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC and are working to determine the nature and scope of the matter. A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”

While private cyber experts and the government were aware of the DNC hack months ago, embarrassing emails were leaked last weekend by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group just as the party prepared to anoint Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate for the Nov. 8 election.

The revelation of the DCCC breach is likely to further stoke concerns among Democratic Party operatives, many of whom have acknowledged they fear further dumps of hacked files that could harm their candidates. WikiLeaks has said it has more material related to the U.S. election that it intends to release.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned after the leaked emails this past weekend showed party leaders favoring Clinton over her rival in the nomination campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders. The committee is supposed to be neutral.

Cyber security experts and current U.S. officials, who asked not to be identified, have said there is strong evidence that Russia was responsible for the DNC breach.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday the U.S. intelligence community was not ready to “make the call on attribution” as to who was responsible for the DNC hack. The White House said earlier the FBI had not disclosed any information about who was behind the hack.

Clapper, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, acknowledged that “there’s just a few usual suspects out there” who might be responsible for the cyber intrusion, suggesting it was the work of a state actor rather than an independent hacking group.

Russian officials have dismissed the allegations of Moscow’s involvement. “It is so absurd it borders on total stupidity,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel in Aspen, Colorado; Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Diane Craft)

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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We often talk about the benefits of business intelligence, but we rarely explain what business intelligence is and why you should even consider it. More often than not, we are faced with this dilemma as we find ourselves excited at the “prospect” of what our business intelligence (BI) tools should offer, without knowing what it really can do.

In a recent blog post published by Panorama, they tackled an important yet simple business question, “What is Business Intelligence?”

BI is a tool that helps organizations improve decision making by tracking, processing, storing and analyzing data and transforming it into insights. Business users can in turn use these insights to make the right decisions in the right time, cutting costs, identifying new business opportunities and improving their organization’s performance.

Do we need business intelligence?

Yes!

Today we live in a world where organizations collect and store huge amounts of data. If that data is not put to good use to serve the company for a specific purpose, it becomes a heavy and expensive burden for the organization. It is very easy to get lost in all the data as the analysis process can be long and tedious; but with BI, the process becomes optimized plus with solutions like panorama NECTO 16 , it has become almost automatic! Users can get knowledge that will improve their decision making in just two clicks!

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Not only large corporations need BI. Small businesses do too!

When most of us started our businesses, business intelligence (BI) was a special treat only the big-chip companies could enjoy, because well, employing analytics software required building data centers and hiring IT specialists and consultants.

If it helps big organizations make better business decisions, then it should be able to help small business make sound and effective decisions for their businesses too!

Times have changed, and today, small business BI is a booming industry. The same technological explosion that made the whole world fit into our pockets; in the shape of a smartphone or a tablet, also drastically reduced the size and cost of analytical solutions. For the first time, it is possible for small businesses to deploy BI to fulfill different needs, analyze their performance, predict their future, and make better decisions.

For small businesses where one person is a jack of all trades, it means that your employees can pull out the particular piece of information they need even if it exceeds their immediate area of expertise.

Through this, members of your team are empowered to view the same data from multiple locations and make data-driven decisions together. Business intelligence for small business doesn’t require any programming knowledge; neither need you to invest in trainings. All you need to do is to create a dashboard that will make everybody, from the top of the ladder to the bottom, understand that regular data analysis pays off. Gathering high-quality data is not a one-time effort and you must re-evaluate your goals periodically to determine whether your BI setup is helping you achieve them. The more you empower individuals to use and share data, the better their access to vital customer and financial information, then the more effective they will be in contributing to the achievement of your goal.

Also, getting visual is one of the best ways to explore and understand data, particularly when presenting it to customers, investors or other stakeholders. To present data in a digestible and persuasive way and not to lose your audience’s attention, it’s advisable to use infographics – best choice of BI for small businesses. With this smart solution you can display business data on compelling charts without spending too much time on chart formatting and design.

Furthermore, it helps you to grow your business. How is it possible? BI tools are smart and will help you reveal some trends in your past performance that could otherwise go unnoticed. You can identify crucial trends in your data with the potential to unlock new growth opportunities. By analyzing your past performance in context and trying to understand the factors that influenced the best or worst results, you can discover the key to the future growth.

However, please note.

When small businesses go shopping for BI and analytics solutions, the tendency can be to take a giant leap. The prospect of having all your data integrated and available to end users sounds exciting.
Also, management may think the system they buy should accommodate any future needs that may arise as the business grows. This may make many of them to lose sight of the fact that the solution must be simple and easy to manage in order to be successful in the long term.

Of course, the sweet talking salesmen from different solution providers also play a role in confusing the decision makers and making them sway from their immediate needs, and they sell a complicated system that’s far too expansive for a small business that basically only needs to analyze little data.

Therefore, the best approach for a small business is to consider a BI suite that provides the best data connectors for their most important data. Business intelligence solutions with straight-forward incorporation requirements and immediate impact, is a much better alternative for small companies.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

My mom and I live very far apart: 9,929 miles, to be exact. It’s a 24-hour trip, door-to-door, from my place in New York City to my parents’ house in Sydney, Australia.

I don’t live that far from where she grew up, though; she was born with the 1950s, on Long Island, where my 102-year-old grandmother still lives. Mom moved to Australia more than 30 years ago, a happy fate that often befalls those who fall in love with Australians. My sister and I were raised there; we grew up freckled and muscly from swimming outside all year round. And then, we both left home for college. I came to the east coast of the US, and I stayed. I’ve been here for 11 years now, living, working, voting, becoming a barely adequate cook.

There are predictable days when I wish my mom were here with me. Birthdays, breakups, particularly bad weepy days in my menstrual cycle. Those are days when I wish she could be there for me – to soothe me, to buck me up, to stick her head into my nearly empty fridge and somehow throw together a delicious meal for us both.

Then there are the moments when I wish we could be together so that I could be there for her. When she has setbacks at work, when she misses her faraway daughters, when she’s tired and run down and overwhelmed. There have been more of these as I age, as our relationship shifts from mother and child to mother and adult daughter, as I am no longer separated from her by adolescence and the teenage insistence that I know more than she does. We are not friends ― this is not “Gilmore Girls” ― but we are both women now, far more similar than we’ve ever been.

There have been few periods in the last 11 years when I have wished more ardently and more often to be with my mother – physically with her, not just talking to her on the phone or exchanging daily emails – than during the ascension of Hillary Clinton to the top of the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket. Over and over again, I find myself thinking, God, I wish my mom were here.

My mother is almost of Clinton’s vintage, with her slight relative youth making a few crucial differences in her life path. She graduated from high school in 1968, beginning her adulthood at a legendarily tumultuous moment in American and world history. It was also the moment when America’s most prestigious universities were beginning to open their ivy-wound gates to women; my mom transferred as a sophomore and became of the first few hundred women to earn an undergraduate degree from Yale. From there, she went to graduate school, in the newly created and not-yet women-heavy field of public health, and then to the State Department, where she was one of very few women. A petite and pretty New York Jew, just 25 years old, she was sent around the world for USAID, including a three-year stint in Panama, with my father, by then her husband, in tow. She worked, mostly with men, to improve the health of people in developing countries, most of them women. After 10 years, she and my father moved to Sydney, where they’ve lived ever since.

There are many people who cannot relate to Hillary Clinton, who cannot see themselves or anyone they care about in her. She’s a wealthy, straight, white woman, a mother, an ambitious career woman ― and there are some people to whom she simply does not speak, with whom her experiences and views of the world do not resonate. I’m not one of those people. Simply put, Hillary Clinton reminds me of my mom. 

When I look at Hillary Clinton, I see a woman who is almost always the smartest person in any room she enters, and who, for a long time, knew that when she walked through the door she’d be assumed to be less intelligent, less informed and less qualified than most of the men who sat at the table with her.

I see a woman who has perfected the art of tolerating questions that insult her intelligence and that seem to bristle at the fact that it occurred to her to be in the room in the first place.

I see a woman who, after decades of being subject to sexist beauty standards, is now also subject to ageist ones ― who, in addition to doing her difficult and substantive job, has also had to fight tooth and nail to ensure that her face fits the requirements we impose on an aging woman who dares to show hers in public.

You know that smile Clinton smiles in a debate, when her opponent is insulting her to face, and she has to respond firmly but sweetly, forcefully but genially, in a way that both counters the argument and also draws the audience toward her? I know that smile. I have seen my mother form that smile. I have practiced that smile ― in college classrooms, at work, on OKCupid dates ― never realizing until this year who taught me how to do it.

When I listen to Hillary Clinton, I hear the careful and considerate algorithm that runs through my mother’s head before she answers a question. I hear the mental flowchart she conjures as she thinks about how to be correct while also avoiding hurting a single feeling or raising even one hackle. I hear the cautious tread of someone who knows that her mistakes will be punished far more than her successes are rewarded ― and who also feels pressure to conceal that caution, to appear natural and comfortable. You know, “authentic.”

It’s not an exaggeration to say that watching Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign has reshaped my relationship with my mother. As I’ve thought and written – and raged – about the ways that sexism and ageism play out in our politics and media narratives, I’ve begun to see my mother’s life through a new and more compassionate lens.

Last year, when Clinton’s campaign had just launched, the matter of her age was repeatedly raised: was she just too old to be President? Leaving aside the comparable ages of her rival in the primary and of her eventual rival in the general, this question caused a spike of rage in my chest every time I heard it raised. Of course she’s old, I’d think. She had to spend an extra 15 years convincing everyone that she was qualified enough. And now that she has, now that she’s arguably the most qualified non-incumbent person to ever contest the presidency in more than 200 years of presidential contests, she’s being discounted because she’s now OLD? This is bullshit.

It’s the same bullshit, not coincidentally, that I’ve watched my mother go through in the last few years. Over the phone, I’ll tell her about the colleagues or clients who discount my ideas, who assume I’m less worthy of their time, because I’m young and I’m a woman. She offers me a glimpse at my future, where colleagues or clients will assume I’m less worthy of their time because I’m old and I’m a woman. Her decades of work and experience ought to be rewarded the way they are for men, whose age is perceived as wisdom, whose graying temples are marks of distinction. Instead, I’m hearing her frustration on the other end of the phone line as she tells me, yet again, that she didn’t get the position, that it went instead to a man her age or a woman 15 years her junior. At one point, during the last presidential election, we were both dyeing our hair darker ― her to conceal her gray roots, and me to make myself look a few years older.

When I look at and listen to Hillary Clinton, when I think about the road that has brought her to this moment and the hurdles that were thrown up in front of her along the way, I’m also thinking about my mother, and about her life. Perhaps this is how men feel all the time when they consider presidential candidates – this man reminds me of my father, of my grandfather, of my brother, of me. This is the first time I’ve been able to look at a would-be President and see someone who looks like my mom, sounds like my mom, gives awkward and ungainly high-fives like my mom. Like I inevitably will one day. It’s the first time I’ve been able to listen to a would-be President and know that she can empathize with my mother, and my best friends, and my grandmother, and me. It is an unexpectedly emotional experience.

The night Clinton secured the pledged delegates required to make her the mathematically presumptive nominee, I sat on my apartment floor with my laptop on my coffee table, fighting and failing to hold back tears, trying to save face in front of my boyfriend and his sister. Here in Philly, I watched the roll call vote from my hotel room and, when I saw the counter tick over 2883, I started to weep. I’d stop, and then I’d think about my mom, and her mom, who’s 102 ― she was born in 1914, six years before the 19^th Amendment first gave large numbers of American women the right to vote, and she cast her first vote for FDR in 1936 – and I would lose it all over again.

In a few hours, I know I’ll be crying again. From here in the convention hall, with a direct sight line to the podium, I’ll watch Chelsea Clinton introduce her mother. And then I’ll watch Clinton officially accept the nomination. And I will wish, with all my heart, that my mom were here.

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AT&T has rolled out WiFi calling to the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. The carrier announced the software update and its features on Wednesday, with WiFi calling being the big change that comes with it. The update is being delivered as firmware over the air (FOTA); if you have either handset on the carrier, you may have already seen … Continue reading