Damn you!

Get out of my head!

Help make him an Internet legend? Hehe

Open source: enabling the small-time entrepreneur

Many people by now have heard of Gogola, the "Google-inspired" golawala on Linking Road, Bandra.

But what is this?

A Firefox window



An Apache webserver



Go FOSS!

I picked a winner!

Miscellany

** It is possible to have a "the best fifteen minutes of my life" over and over again.

** New addiction discovered.

** Old addiction re-discovered.

** Why should Microsoft, Apple and Canonical be fighting tooth and nail to recruit LA Laker Lamar? 'cos OdomOS would be bug-free :-)

** Being without the Internet for an extended period of time is painful. Being on the verge of getting a connection for a week is moreso :-(

** The damn POTUS comes on television way too often, hence I would vote for Obama because he appears more presentable on TV. Image is everything.

** The tech world is bubbling with news about Microsoft decentness, be it Windows Media Player 12, Secondlight or the INR 15k price-tag on the Xbox 360 Core system.

** The Wii has flown out of one's list of desirables. Primarily due to price gouging by Nintendo, the lack of a decent TV comes in a distant second.

** Hooray! Wikipedia search has spelling suggestions!

21st century, not 1984

In a way, the world-view [...] imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

Wake up, sheeple! Stop swallowing the modern spew that passes for journalism! Think for yourselves!

Do you really want those people?

Do You Really Want Those People? (Score:4, Insightful)

by John Hasler (414242) on 1:55 Monday 29 September 2008 (#25186841)

2007: "IT? That's sooo 2000! They all lost their jobs in the dot-com bust! Finance is where it's at!"

2008: "Finance? That's sooo 2007! They all lost their jobs in the Wall Street bust! IT is where it's at!"

Is Google female?

Via Slashdot (like most of my recent posts):

Let's just hope Google (and her telco partners) don't f*** it up.

Extending that thought - can brands themselves (and not the image they project) have gender?

Just not cricket!

Via Slashdot:

The recent problems at the Large Hadron Collider will now keep it idle until spring 2009. The official press release is here. [...] The total amount of time to [fix things] will spill over into CERN's scheduled winter maintenance/shutdown period, which is partly done to save money on electricity during the period of peak demand.

Nooooooooooooooooo!! I want the End Of The World to happen due to a science experiment, well before some crackpot 'world leader' decides he can't keep his grubby hands off the Big Red Button!

And also, as another commenter said:

I spent all my money over the last 6 months on alcohol and parties, secure in the knowledge that the world would come to an end this October when the LHC came up to full power.

This is unacceptable. I demand they destroy the world now.

Amen to that!

Microsoft Morons

Yuval Sinay's native language might not be English, but that still doesn't excuse this TERRIBLE Knowledge Base page:

Via.

Update: More Microsoft KB hilarity.

Quintessential Googleness

Google shadiness

Google has this habit of testing out new features without so much as a peep. Just today, I discovered this: an option to search the "I'm Feeling Lucky" site (for sites that offer additional options below the main search hit) from within the main search results page.

Nice. Saves me the effort (sometimes) of doing a "site:example.com" manually. I don't think that site would like it too much though, as it could detract from their pagehits.

iMeh, redux

What's that sound? I feet a great disturbance in the iForce, as if millions of voices cried out in iLust, and were suddenly silenced.

The Nokia N96 was tipped at a price-point of 36k. I guess Nokia might peel that back a tad and make it more like 32-34k. At 16gb + features that iPhone lacks in + the non-requirement of Our Lord & Saviour Sir Steve Jobs' blessing for everything you do, should see this slick piece do a fair bit better than the iPhone.

Sadly, however, it seems likely that the type to plop down 30k+ for a cellphone might not be too sensitive to a Rs.2000 difference, and forge on ahead for the "TEH SHINY!!1" and "2 KEWL 4 U LOL!" factors..

Have Babelfish, will use

I wonder if there's a Chinese bar called 403 Forbidden. That would be cool..

iMeh

Why I will not buy an iPhone:

Although I'm tempted by Apple's user interface extravagance, I simply can't live without a hardware keyboard, microSD slot, and the countless other features that Lord Steve has deemed unfit for his iChildren.

Amen to that, brother.

Update: Crowing about aforementioned countless features.

Limeritech!

Paraphrased from the QDB:

A programmer started to cuss
Because getting to sleep was a fuss
As he lay there in his bed
Looping around in his head
was: while (!asleep) sheep++;

Ha ha, indeed :)

Interesting thought

Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, wanted to compete in the Olympics. NOT the Paralympics, but the regular one - with prosthetic limbs.

The IAAF (fairly, in my opinion) disqualified him because of the ridiculous mechanical advantage he would have over the other runners because, essentially, the man's wearing springs where his legs should've been! However, recently, the CAS upheld his appeal and overturned the IAAF ban, thus allowing him to compete.

This is where I get to the point. It would be terribly interesting to have some sort of a "Supralympics" where basically, anything goes. Steroids, bionic attachments, jet-engines in shoes, and other assorted artifical enhancements! A commenter on Slashdot echoes my feelings:

I've wanted this ever since I watched the Olympics and realized how bored I was. Putting people who won the genetic lottery into similar training programs and seeing who comes out on top isn't that interesting to me. But pushing people 'beyond' their natural limits, and in the process potentially expanding the meaning of being human and the possibilities for the species at large...that's interesting.

It would be, indeed!

Reflection on the Mumbai Indians vs KKR whitewash

It wasn't a Twenty20 match, it was a Twenty match.

Badum-tish!

Not cricket? Think again!

All too often, one is left stranded for words when Captain Jojo brandishes his cricket-purist tendencies in one's face. The combination of a lack of suitable eloquence, and laziness in bothering to string together a coherent argument meant one would always come out second-best in such discussions. The hunt for a reasonable argument in favour of Twenty20 games of cricket was well afoot. Okay, not WELL afoot, but it was chugging along (again, that laziness..)

Until now.

Peter Roebuck's article, and a very nice clutch of comments following it, do the job very nicely.

No version of cricket featuring fearless tacticians, shrewd selections, daring strokeplayers, fast bowlers, legspinners, swift running and athletic fielding deserves to be scorned.

As I see it, all that is stiff-upper-lip talk for:

In your face, purists!

Update: As bolsters, a couple of earlier articles, one again by Peter Roebuck, and one by Lawrence Booth.

Short open letter

Dear IPL commentators,

Stop ruining the sixes that are hit - nobody gives a rodent's posterior about the DLF Maximum Sixes.

Kindly STFU about it.

kthxbye.

London

The actions of a government reveals its proclivities.

So, for instance, when Nandigram chaps are fired at, you know the West Bengal government means business. When a state government concerns itself with regulating attire at cricket matches, you know where its priorities lie.

But what happens when government entities show an rather disturbing tendency to make decisions that tend towards the pelvic region?

In early-to-mid 2007, the Beeb asked its users to come up with their own attempts at designing a logo for the 2012 Olympics. And ended up selecting as one of its 12 best attempts, a most sneaky, yet hilarious design.


And now, the UK's Office of Government Commerce finalized this logo, in their re-branding efforts.


which, on a simple 90-degree clockwise rotation, becomes this:
That guy certainly looks happy, eh?

Hmm... does this mean the UK's relations with The Netherlands and the Down-Under nations will see an upswing? Only time will tell.

In the meanwhile, some ponderables remain - what conclusion can be drawn from this? Is all this intentional, an honest mistake, or a damning psychological indictment of the government's true tendencies?

Simple cricketing hypothesis

Hmmm...

Race - a metareview

After a long hiatus, the combination of a good night about town with the utter joblessness that one feels while waiting around for a diploma pushed me into attending one of the "New Release!!" Hindi movie screenings that happen on campus.

This movie, as the observant amongst you readers will have noticed, was (surprise!) Race.

Usually, after watching a movie, a good friend and I scrounge through its IMDB and Wikipedia entries to see if we can dig up nuggets about said movie. And if it happens to be a very new one, we look up the reviews online, to see if it conforms with our opinion of the movie.

Our opinion of this movie: BLARGH!

One of the crappiest Hindi movies to have ever seen the light of day, it is rendered worse by the fact that so many otherwise decent actors agreed to work in this craptacular waste of time. Even our joblessness felt cheated!

HOWEVER!

What totally, completely, utterly rocked our sensibilities (even beyond the McKinsey Life Insurance shown in the film!) was the existence of a shocking number of positive reviews this movie was receiving! So I decided to pick through six random reviews, just to bring to light the awesomeness in the perception gaps between different people.

1. 'Race' - An okay entertainer

Starts off well by saying subtlety and restraint aren't exactly the hallmarks of Abbas-Mustaan (how the heck do you spell that second guy's name?!), but then actually lauds Akshaye Khanna on his performance! To be fair though, he wasn't bad, but certainly not praiseworthy. Acting cannot be graded relatively!
They do mention that Sameera Reddy sounds dumb quite convincingly. What they fail to mention is their opinion on whether this is by design or not :-D

2. “RACE” - One of the 10 Best Thrillers

The most shocking review of them all! Its title alone makes one cringe. The entire body of the review is so stuffed with hyperbole, one is actually left wondering if it isn't really poking fun at the movie. The one thing they do get right is a square-peg-in-round-hole reference to Sameera Reddy.

3. Indiainfo Movie Reviews

Another review calling this movie a sure-fire "Best" for 2008 - with the 3rd month in the year not over yet! Worse yet, it goes on to heap praise on the writing and (urk!) the dialogues! The dialogues, incidentally, was unanimously voted as the corniest, most predictable tripe to ever be dished out on-screen, after our screening.

4. Economic Times Review

Finally, sanity prevails! Finally, a review that gives this movie its rightful place in Bollyworld! Finally, somebody gathers up the cojones to look past "dumb", and call Sameera Reddy (in the movie) silly, naive, stupid and irritating!
Only one gripe though: it pans the movie in totality, and then labels it 'not bad'. BZZZT!! Wrong!

5. Rediff: Too many twists spoil this Race

My most favourite review of the lot. Praises Kapoor's "Sanjay Dutt-Musafir" knock-off look, but captures the movie best in two words: vague mess.
Says it isn't objectionably bad, but that's okay, there's not much that needs objecting to.

6. My own review

This one's simple and short: what is wrong with this movie?

Answer:

Not bad? Bah. Avoid at all costs!

The life

No obligations.
Sitting under a tree.
Ass on grass.
A cup of tea.
A good book.
A sporadic hearty laugh.
A light breeze.
The occasional drop of rain.
Passers-by giving longing glances.
And of course, good company.

This, my friends, is the life.

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