What happens to your email account after you die?

Melbourne, Nov 4 (ANI): Saving that parting e-mail from your first love in your inbox? Well, chances are, after you pass away, your spouse and the entire family will know about the long held secret.

This is because web email services like Hotmail and Gmail do not let users specify what should happen to their messages when they die.
In fact, email services owned by Internet giants like Google and Microsoft have a policy of keeping your data after you die and letting your next of kin or the executor of your estate access it. These services can hold tens of thousands of messages.
Accounts with Google's Gmail can hold up to 7GB - or roughly 70,000 emails with a small to medium picture attached to each and they archive the messages you've written as well as received.
When it comes to deleting the data, Microsoft's Hotmail will remove an account if it is inactive for 270 days, while Gmail leaves the responsibility to the next of kin.
Of the top three providers, only Yahoo! refuses to supply emails to anyone after the user has died. The user's next of kin can ask for the account to be closed, but cannot gain access to it.
A Yahoo! spokesperson said the only exception to this rule would be if the user specified otherwise in their will.
Meanwhile, social-networking site Facebook has recently publicised a feature called memorialisation that lets the family of deceased users keep their profile page online as a virtual tribute.
MySpace, on the other hand, says it addresses the issue of family access to sensitive data on a "case by case basis".
A spokesperson for MySpace could not rule out letting a user's next of kin log into their profile - potentially giving them access to private messages. (ANI)

It was one of my best knocks: Tendulkar

Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	4s	6s	Ct	St
Tests	159	261	27	12773	248*	54.58			42	53		51	102	0
ODIs	435	424	39	17168	186*	44.59	20005	85.81	45	91	1870	181	132	0

Hyderabad, Nov 5 (IANS) Batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar rated his 175 against Australia here Thursday as one of the best knocks of his career.

Tendulkar scored 175 off 141 ball, enroute to his record 17,168 runs, but couldn't prevent India from losing the fifth ODI to Australia by three runs.

'I thought we started off really well then lost wickets. Suresh (Raina) and I had a good partnership but in the end, it was disappointing. The pressure to keep scoring runs was there and we took it very close. But I feel it was one of my best knocks,' said Tendulkar, who was adjudged as the Man of the Match.

The batting maestro praised Raina for playing a strokefilled run-a-ball that got India close while chasing 351 to win.

On his personal milestone of crossing 17,000 runs, Tendulkar said: 'I care about playing for India, it's a passion and I have been absoloutely honoured to play for India so long.'

India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said that the match was lost due to mental calculation.

'They got off to a good start and we never got into a postion to contain them. It was up to us to chase it. We got a good start and we came in the end due to Tendulkar and Raina. We lost it in our mental calculation, not because of our talent. It was one of the good ODI tracks we have seen in India, you have to be smart. Hopefully we will be up for the next two games,' he said.

Australian captain Ricky Ponting also applauded Tendulkar for playing one of the best knocks in his 20-year-old career.

'It was one of the amazing games and certainly one of the best innings ever from Sachin. Sachin didn't play many bad shots today! It's really unbelievable how we have played, considering all the injuries,' he said.

The new size zero - Sony's ultra slim 'Vaio X' notebook

Your laptop has got even lighter and slimmer - precisely 655 gms in weight and half an inch in thickness. Sony has launched its latest series of ultra slim laptops (11.2 inches in size) called the 'Vaio X'. With this release, the company has surged ahead in the race to the world's lightest notebook, ahead of Apple's MacBook Air and Dell Adamo.

Check out what Sony's new Vaio X notebook has to offer -

• The model comes in two styles - one with a smooth glossy finish and the other being a matt metal look
• It supports different battery variants (if not the standard one, the weight could increase to 755 gms)

• 
  
  The battery is said to last 'a working day' or 16 hours
  
• 
  
  11.1 inch LCD display having a resolution of 1366x768 pixels and is LED backlit
  
• 
  
  Despite its smaller size, the keys in the keyboard are quite well-spaced
  
• 
  
  Integrated with mobile broadband (UMTS) - no external broadband cable required
  
• 
  
  Besides two USB ports, it also has a VGA port, Ethernet socket and SD/ Memory Stick reader
  
• 
  
  It has an in-built Motion-Eye webcam
  
• This notebook comes with 'Windows 7' pre-installed
  

Sony plans to make a big impact with this miniature series, having romped in the original size-zero, Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor as its brand ambassador. The celeb couple, Saif and Kareena, aren't new to laptops, with Saif having previously endorsed the Chinese brand 'Lenovo', which later saw a rise in its India sales.

Sony has set aside Rs 15 crores for its marketing in India, possibly the reason for the laptop being priced at Rs 65,000. Despite being pricey, the laptop is expected to do well, purely for its chic design and being the world's lightest notebook.

Next on the line is the touch-screen VAIO.

Cloud Computing: The power of one

In their quest to find answers, experts have demonstrated that the future of medical discoveries, environmental challenges, energy deficit, all lie in collaborating through Cloud Computing.

With Cloud Computing, users have been able to access data, share expertise and high-end infrastructure from around the world, and vice-versa. The resources are shared through a public platform like the internet. Several companies like Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, etc have invested heavily as they reach out to users.

Cloud Computing companies have customers of three kinds -

• Infrastructure-as-a-service: Option of renting and utilizing computing power and storage capacity of vendor's quality.
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Vendors license particular services to subscribers on-demand and once the contract expires, the services are disabled.
• Platform-as-a-Service: Here a developer is given the opportunity to utilize various web-tools to build and host applications.

The Cloud (other computers in the network) does have its pros and cons in this formative stage. Its advantages include,

• Better performance by PCs in the cloud network, as fewer processing will be loading in each individual PC, the rest on the Cloud.
• No more spending on computer upgrades, instead services of another high-power PC can be made use of.
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  Lesser hardware and software required, so costs of maintenance are tremendously lowered.
  
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  Permanence of data, as all information stays in the cloud, even if you experience a hard-disk crash.
  
• 
  
  Sync with experts worldwide on multiple projects and avail optimum results through the Cloud.
  
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  Work from any PC and on the move, with the availability of internet access.
  

Cloud Computing also has some drawbacks like,

• The over-dependence on the providers.
  
  
  
  
  
• The reliability of the vendors.
  
  
  
  
  
• Protection laws in different countries vary. For eg, according to EU data protection regulation, personal information cannot be transferred outside the European Economic Area.
  
  
  
  
  
• Threat of unauthorized access to confidential data.
  
  
  
  
  
• Requires internet throughout and near-impossible to work with dial-up connections.

The concept isn't entirely new and is evolving even today. In the recent past, several variations have been introduced through 'Grid' and 'Utility Computing'.

- Grid Computing is a virtual super-computer formed by a cluster of computers in concert, each performing complex tasks.

- Utility Computing is a format in which subscribers are charged based on their usage, similar to the way in electricity is charged.

As new developments take place with increasing frequency, your world is on the brink of transition.

FACTBOX - Largest U.S. bankruptcies

       CIT Group Inc, a major lender to small and mid-sized U.S. businesses, on Sunday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company had assets of $71 billion and total debt of $65 billion as of June 30, according to its petition filed in the U.S. bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York.

The following is a list of large U.S. bankruptcies since 1980, according to court records and the website BankruptcyData.com:

COMPANY/YEAR TOTAL ASSETS

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (2008) $639,000,000,000 *

WorldCom Inc (2002) 103,914,000,000

General Motors Corp (2009) 91,047,000,000

CIT Group Inc (2009) 71,019,000,000

Enron Corp (2001) 65,503,000,000

Conseco Inc (2002) 61,392,000,000

Chrysler LLC (2009) 39,300,000,000

Pacific Gas and Electric Co (2001) 36,152,000,000

Texaco Inc (1987) 34,940,000,000

Financial Corp of America (1988) 33,864,000,000

Refco Inc (2005) 33,333,000,000

Washington Mutual Inc (2008) 32,900,000,000 *

IndyMac Bancorp Inc (2008) 32,734,000,000

Global Crossing Ltd (2002) 30,185,000,000

Bank of New England Corp (1991) 29,773,000,000

General Growth Properties Inc (2009) 29,560,000,000

* - from court documents

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Anupreeta Das)

Sachin Tendulkar 47 short of 17,000-run milestone

Mohali, Nov 1 (IANS) Sachin Tendulkar, who is two weeks short of completing his two decades in international cricket, will be chasing the personal milestone of 17,000 ODI runs when he pads up in the fourth One-Day International against Australia here Monday.

The batting maestro is 47 short of achieving the feat. The batting friendly track at the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) Stadium here might turn out to be the lucky strip for Tendulkar, who has not been in best of form in the series so far, having scored 50 runs in the three matches.

It would be Tendulkar's second ODI outing here.

The PCA Stadium occupies a special place in Tendulkar's heart since it is the same venue where in October last year against Australia, he surpassed West Indian Brian Lara as the highest Test run scorer and also became the first cricketer to score 12,000 Test runs. Only a small crowd had turned up to witness that slice of history.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had also felicitated Tendulkar.

BCCI secretary N.Srinivasan said that no celebration has been planned this time around but for sure a sell-out crowd will be cheering for Tendulkar.

Tributes have started pouring in from teammates and opposition captain Ricky Ponting.

Yuvraj Singh called him the 'Grand Pa' of Indian cricket. 'He has been playing for the last 20 years and it is interesting to see that the hunger is still there in him. Playing with him has been a great learning experience.'

Ponting said Tendulkar is an ideal role model for young cricketers.

'The way Sachin has carried himself for the last 20 years has been exceptional. He is an ideal role model for youngsters,' he said.

Three out of 11 oil tanks still ablaze at IOC depot in Jaipur

Jaipur, Nov. 1 (ANI): Indian Oil Corporation on Sunday confirmed that three out of 11 petrol tanks are still blazing at the Sitapura oil storage depot near Jaipur, while the rest are spewing smoke.

"A factory adjacent to IOC factory caught fire; some bitumen fell on the top floor and it caught fire due to high temperature. After that police and fire fighting personnel had come to the site the fire is not now controlled. The digging of the trench is almost complete. Fire is still raging in three tanks. There are total 11 tanks in which 8 tanks it is mostly smoke," Kuldeep Ranka, Collector of Jaipur.

Earlier in the day, two more bodies were spotted at the burning Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) fuel depot near Jaipur, pushing the toll to ten.

"The unidentified charred bodies were noticed in the wee hours of the day near one of the blazing tanks, but was not possible to reach there because of the heat," said Inspector General of Police, B.L.Soni.

So far, nearly five lakh residents in the radius of five-kilometer area around the fire spot have been moved to safer locations after it was declared "danger zone".

Among those who were evacuated were all the patients, doctors and staff of a government hospital and engineering and medical students of 10 hostels.

According to IOC sources, a total loss of 300 crores has been estimated.

The IOC also said that it would take al least 15-18 months to rebuild the facility in Jaipur.

Earlier Petroleum Minister, Murli Deora had ordered a probe to ascertain the cause of fire. (ANI)