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KNOW ABOUT KNOWLEDGE

MOST rookie taxi drivers applying for a hackney carriage licence don't have a clue where they're going in Manchester.
A total of 84 per cent of applicants are currently being refused a black cab licence for failing the knowledge test about the city's roads, council figuresreveal.
The level has slipped so low that town hall chiefs have ordered coaching sessions for wannabe cabbies.
"The test has become extremely difficult," said George Simms, secretary of the Manchester Cab Owners' Association.
"Even someone with loads of experience would fail it. If it goes on like this we're going to have a shortage of cab drivers."
Candidates to drive black cabs have to answer a series of questions that show they know the local area as well as passing a driving test. They are asked to describe the shortest and most direct route between major locations within Greater Manchester - for example the town halls in Manchester and Bury.
Drivers are also asked in the test how to look up a street in an A-Z map. If they get this section wrong, they fail automatically.
But many qualified Mancunian cab drivers think the city's test is not tough enough.
Brian Sweeney, a taxi driver for nearly 30 years, said: "If you make the test any easier, you're going to get a third rate taxi service."
Cabbie Zahid Khan, 50, passed the Manchester exam four years ago.
"Lots of drivers don't really know the city," he said. "It surprises me so few pass the test - it's easy if you do your research. I think it should be harder and broader, covering more areas."
London cabbies are required to study for up to two years to gain "The Knowledge" and their hackney carriage licence. They have to learn more than 320 set routes and should be able to drive a passenger unaided to any street within six miles of central London.
Unlike Manchester's one-off test, London applicants are interviewed on average 20 times before being granted a licence. The difficulty of the questions increases throughout the two years.
The private hire exam is easier than for the hackney carriage licence.

What’s as puzzling as the how many children’s products are being recalled for lead paint contamination is how companies’ (Fisher-Price, Mattel, Toys R Us etc.) Quality, PR and Marketing were and are asleep at the wheel.

For starters, who was ultimately responsible within the children’s product manufacturer for monitoring the quality and safety of these products? How is PR saturating online and offline media with damage control stories (as I haven’t heard or see any when I see the barrage of Toys R Us concerned consumers venting online). How is marketing reaching out to their customers (assuming they know who all their customers are) to reassure them?

A Google search for “toys r us lead paint” (the suggestion in the Google search bar) shows the #1 search result (out of 1.9 million) as a Toys R Us sponsored search ad which simply takes you to their corporate web site (to buy more lead tainted toys?) with nothing addressing the lead paint crisis on the home page. Although near the bottom of the page they do have a safety information link which takes you to a boilerplate safety letter from the CEO which doesn’t mention lead paint

General Knowledge Base is an extension of human memory," says Tomas Rutkauskas, author of GKB and CEO of Baltsoft. "Culture is all about creating extensions. For example, a coat is an extension of our skin that keeps us warm, a mobile phone is an extension of our mouth and ear that enables distant talks and a remote control is an extension of our hand to control a TV remotely. They all extend our capabilities and make our life easy and convenient. We created GKB to extend our information management capability. It allows you to accumulate a massive amount of knowledge and store it in the digital form, readily available to anyone, anywhere."
Creating a knowledge base with GKB is a breeze. The program has an inbuilt editor whose uncomplicated Word-style design is familiar to millions of users. Among many other options, it supports tables, hyperlinks, styles, right-to-left languages and spell check. Customers will also discover the ability to export articles created in GKB to many popular formats, including TXT, RTF, DOC, HTML, XML and PDF. Individual or batch mode export is available. Once you created an article in the editor, you can attach notes, descriptions to it and group it with other articles. The advanced search facility supports a search based on different document criteria.
Designed with an ordinary user in mind, GKB has become popular with a wide spectrum of customers. "I downloaded over a dozen trial versions of PIM's. If I had started with GKB, my search would have been over right away," says Kathryn Kortay. "Not one PIM met my criteria except GKB:easy to learn, reasonable price, no size restrictions on files, intuitive structure for categories within databases, advanced search features with "easy to browse" method to make retrieving articles simple. And these are just a few to name. Normally, when I am learning a program I hit a "wall", become completely frustrated and just plain "give up". With GKB's tech support and user forum, I feel the support of others and get fast answers when I need them."
GKB Features at a Glance- Easy to manage categories tree;- Microsoft Word-style document editor;- Ability to group documents in a very effective way;- Ability to export documents to PDF, HTML, RTF, TXT and Microsoft Word.- Ability to share database with several users remotely - LAN, VPN, WAN, Internet;- Powerful search facility;- Up to 128 GB of data storage.

ACTION PLAN TO ATTAIN TRUE HAPPINESSMost of us have a mistaken notion about happiness. Weequate it with fun and pleasure. Pleasure comes out ofwhat we do and happiness is derived from what we havedone. Fun is what we experience during an act, whilehappiness is what we experience after an act. It is adeeper, more abiding emotion. Pleasure and funhappiness and we finite is infinite. Eating, sleeping,mating and all other fun –filled life like watching atennis match, attending a party in a five-star hotel,traveling in an expensive car may be considered aspleasure and cannot be viewed as a moment ofhappiness. The fun activities referred to above maybring us certain amount of relaxation and make us toforget our pressing problems of life but will neverbring us the true happiness. Many are under theimpression that cine stars are the happiest persons onearth as they can command whatever the luxury theywant. But the fact is that these very people arevictims of depression, alcoholism, drug addictiondivorces and even suicides. Their life is a standingtestimony to prove that what they ‘seem to enjoy’ inlife do not bring real happiness.There are four dimensions of happiness; (A) CreativeActivity (b) Inter-Personal relationship (c) CosmicConsciousness (d) Self –Mastery.(A) CREATIVE ACIVITY: The more we are active,producing tangible results that are useful to thesociety, the greater is the chances for our happiness.When an author writes a book, he derives the greatesthappiness. The monetary reward that he gets in theform of royalty is a pittance when compared to thereal joy of creation. A person who enjoys what he doesis showing the way for true happiness. All those whoattained it and fame are those who concentrated incontributing something useful to the society withoutbothering for monetary returns. They blossom forthinto geniuses in the intimate analysis byconcentrating their total attention in creation. Whenwe create something new, we become like God, who isthe creator of the whole universe. It is not areceiving that we are happy but in giving andcontributing. In yogic parlance, it is stated that aperson who is happy with his work is a karma Yogi.(b) INTER-PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP: When a person has nohatred, jealousy, sentiment, anger, irritation,malice, and not even misunderstanding towards anybody,who is always full of love and affection for everybody is a happy person in this world. Happiness is apositive feeling, which can be shown without anyconsideration. If a person shows love and affectiontowards another person with a view to deriving anybenefit, then is may amount to business and cannot getthe true happiness. It is an attitude of the mind,which can be consciously developed over a period. Whenthe mind reaches a stage of purity of love, affection,sympathy, consideration, empathy, concern, it isfilled with ever flowing happiness and joy. Such aperson is called a Bhakthi yogi.© COSMIS-CONSCIOUSNESS: The world is filled withmysteries and wonders. Do we know for certain why wewere born in a particular place and to certainparents? When do we die? In a train accident many dieand a few escape without any hurt. Can we fathom thereason for the death of so many in such an accident?Some children are born mentally retarded. Why is itso? There are innumerable situations like that forwhich we have no answer. Very recently, many peopledied of earthquake in Maharastra States. Why shouldits happen to such poor and innocent people? What havethey done to deserve such a punishment? Many thingsthat happen like that cannot be explained throughlogical reasoning. We have to simply accept them asthe natural phenomenon. If we worry over such thingsfor which we have no control, we shall be tormentedwith fear and agony. We won’t be able to be happy.Accepting the inevitable is one of the dimensions ofhappiness. Further, do you realize the magnitude ofthe universe? How big is it? There are trillions andtrillions of suns and stars. In the cosmic design, themother earth is a tiny tot. If the earth itself is atiny tot, how big is India and how big are we in thecosmic design? When we develop this kind of cosmicconsciousness, what we get in life is the developmentof the virtue called humility. The more we are humble,the greater is the possibility to attain truehappiness. Saints and seers are the happiest personsin this world as they have developed the sterlingquality of humility. One who has understood themysterious phenomenon of this universe is called aJnana Yogi.(d) SELF-MASTERY: The lasts dimension of happiness isderived from self-mastery. A person who is capable ofcontrolling his body, mind and emotions is said to betruly happy. People who fall easy prey to all sorts ofundesirable habits, like smoking, drinking, drugaddictions are not only wasting their money but becomevictims to a variety of diseases. The more we are ableto have mastery over our self; the possibility ofattaining happiness is greater. Development ofsterling qualities like, purity, honesty, sincerity,loyalty, truthfulness, generosity, confidence,courage, require self-mastery. One who has developedthese virtues could be considered as truly a happyperson. Such a person is a king (‘Raja”) of kings.0 InYogic language he is a Raja Yogi.Happiness is a positive state of the mind, which canbe obtained, paradoxically through sacrifice,suffering and strenuous labor and not in wallowing inluxury and indulging in all kinds of unwantedpleasures. In the ultimate \analysis, Pleasures, maybring suffering, whereas, suffering and sacrifice fora noble cause will crown one with glory and happiness