I am reading Murakami.

I think Marquez rocks.

I just heard of bacn.

I think 20-20 cricket is going to be big.

I came to know of an unlikely connection between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Aerosmith.

I know how map-reduce works.

I think manga is brilliant.

I want to visit Japan.

I haven't eaten steak in months.

I think democracy sucks.

I think authoritarian systems suck even more.

I want to watch Rashomon.

I want to move to Turkey

Ziva Software, a startup based out of IIM Bangalore’s NSR-GIV Center run by the NSRCEL has launched a mobile content search service called Zook, accessible via SMS (they’re using One97’s short code 3030), WAP and GPRS.

That's us he's talking about.

Spindu

Trust the idiots at The Hindu to put a positive spin on this:

The new year is another 11 days away, but the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has already announced its first gift to the people: a hefty slash in cinema admission rates across the State.

Charlatan Games

Vir Sanghvi shows something sorely lacking in the Indian media today - Cojones.

The sad reality of the Sai Baba’s ‘miracles’ is that every single one of them can easily be duplicated by even a moderately-talented conjuror. In the old days (dating back to the 1960s), when scepticism was first expressed about Sai Baba’s ‘magic’ powers, critics asked why it was that the watches he produced, seemingly out of thin air, all said ‘Made in Switzerland’ and why they tended to be much advertised brands. (Rich devotees got Omegas, the poor just got sacred ash.)

These magic clothes don't play music. We do. Let's just go out there and be comfortable – jeans, t-shirt, whatever – and see where it goes.

Vinnie Paul Abbott, Pantera

Content over packaging? :-)

I have a new blog: Seen on Orkut - Social Networking WTFs.

Reader submitted content is welcome.

Seen on Orkut

A post on the "Bengaluru/Bangalore" community at www.orkut.com

This is what I term a "Social Networking WTF".

Please help me not to lose my would be wife 9/5/2006 11:56 AM
Hi friends,
I and this gal, were in love till a few weeks back. I used to go and meet her daily till August 26th when she was about to leave for UK. I was supposed go to the airport to see her off on 26th morning 6:00 am. I did not sleep the whole night just becase I wanted to meet her in the morning. But stupidly at 5:00 am in the morning, I was so sleepy that I thought I'd take a nap for an hour. But as always happens, I woke up at 7:10 am when her flight had left. I know I'm stupid and I should not have missed meeting her on the airport. I've been sending her apologizing mails since 27th August but she is not calming down. I've told her, I'll do anything for her in order to repent the henious crime that I've committed but she says, "Forget it".
Now if you want to help me, please write a SCRAP to ******** saying, "Please forgive %^%^. He's really regretting what he did".
I would appreciate this help from you. Please tell all you friends to do that. I don't want to lose her. I'm in love with her.

(***** - The girl's name. %^%^ - The guy's name)

What the hell are my tax rupees doing funding this stupidity?

India has said that Hindi should be included as one of the languages used by the United Nations as it was spoken by a substantial percentage of the world population.

1987: Jessica McClure falls into a well.

1992: Bart Simpson falls down a well.

2006: Prince Kumar falls down a well.

The libertarians have their cartel.

The commies have another India.

I now announce the creation of a club for Desi Nihilists. The founder member is of course, yours truly.

On second thought, this is all pointless. The club is summarily dissolved as of now.

:|

To all those worried about "merit":
The notion of merit went out of the window the day you accepted democracy. Now either shut up, or elect me supreme overlord and dictator-for-life of this nation.

Raskolnikov may be plagued by guilt, but what do you do when you don't understand why he feels so? And that, after reading through one-fourth of the book. :-(

English, August was read. A borrowed copy. Much introspection resulted. Much identification with the protagonist. Extreme unease resulted. Then again, it could also be thanks to too much icecream and booze.

Don't read it.

Kissing Disease

The next time you pucker up, be aware of this.

Fatalities from mononucleosis are very rare in developed nations. Potential mortal complications include splenic rupture, bacterial superinfections, hepatic failure and the development of viral myocarditis.
Uncommon, nonfatal complications are rarely seen, but include various forms of CNS and hematological affection.
CNS: Meningitis, encephalitis, hemiplegia, Guillain-Barre syndrome and transverse myelitis. EBV infection has also been proposed as a risk factor for the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), but this has not been affirmed.
Hematologic: EBV can cause autoimmune hemolytic anemia (direct Coombs test is positive) and various cytopenias.

I was made aware of this by my accursed friend, the doclet, before a date. This was a rather long time ago, and I was reminded of it after reading this post at India Uncut. The doclet also proceeded to embellish the facts by linking mononucleosis with cancer, and scaring the wits out of me. All because she wasn't getting any at the time.

Friends, I tell you.

The 3 year old kid at the table next to us was running from table to table and looking at people. Until she noticed a 3 year old boy at a nearby table. What followed was rather funny, with the poor boy starting from a state of reticence, and finally ending up near tears. She had tried to pull him off his chair, tried to pull his cheeks, attempted to kiss him, and finally, in that most symbolic of gestures, offered him a toffee.

15 years hence, I kid you not, the aforementioned boy is going to be pondering time-induced role reversal. He will then attempt to seek comfort in the cyclical nature of the universe, Karma, Zen Buddhism as he checks the time while waiting for his date to appear.

Mummy, when I grow up,

I want to be a fighter pilot. Wheee!

Idiot.

Shared Stupidity

Muslims join Da Vinci criticism

"Muslims in India will help their Christian brothers protest this attack on our common religious belief," he said.

So that's why these guys were busy slaughtering each other.

Ah well, stupidity is a good enough justification for anything.

Google's Image

You know that a company has undergone an image change, when this happens.

What were they thinking?

Business Book Category

** James B. Stewart for "DisneyWar" published by Simon and Schuster

** Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner for "Freakonomics" published by William Morrow (Harper Collins)

** Thomas L. Friedman for "The World is Flat" published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Nubility brings about social mobility.

Fear and Stupidity in Bangalore

In the wake of the riots following Dr. Rajkumar's passing away, Bangalore has been witness to disturbing levels of paranoid hysteria.

No, I'm not referring to the rioters. Enough has been said about their actions and motives.

(Read the full post here

Who were they?

Not me.

It wasn't the security guard in my office, who said "no problem saar, namma mane hattira ide "( i live nearby)when asked if he needed help getting home.

(Read the full post ,here)

72 Celestial Virgins Fembots

Artha: So I hear Yahoo! has banned Allah?
Apartha: !
Artha: Yeah. They seem to reject every user name with Allah in it.
Apartha: Naive substring matching.
Artha: I don't get the logic though.
Apartha: Pity they blocked it. This might have been a good opportunity for many to attain paradise.
Artha: How?
Apartha: A believer could register all user names containing the string "allah".
Artha: Thus protecting it from desecration.
Apartha: And ensuring a trip to paradise.
Artha: But wouldn't there be infinite possibilities?
Apartha: No. The user name has to be a finite string.
Artha: He could possibly use a botnet to register all such names.
Apartha: Yeah, but thats a shortcut. He probably won't get 72 virgins then.
Artha: ?
Apartha: He might have to settle for 72 female blow up dolls.
Artha: Or more likely, 72 Fembots.
Artha: So what is the paradise-seeker to do if he finds that someone else has already registered an offensive name?
Apartha: Kill them and reclaim the name of course!

Update:The restriction has since been removed.

Technorati Tags: Censorship Stupidity Fembots Religion

Pirating Banned Books

Can someone explain what it means when a book is "banned" in India?

1. Is it legal to bring a copy of the book into the country?


2. If so, is it legal to lend the book to someone?


3. Is it legal to borrow a copy of the book that one has borrowed from someone else?


4. Does the author's copyright for the book still hold in India?


5. Can the book's author sue one for pirating the book?


6. Is it legal to download the book from the internet?


7. Once acquired, is it legal to read the book?

This post has been motivated by a desire to read The Satanic Verses. However, as the book is banned in India, I am not sure of the legality of downloading it for free or even purchasing it through an online retailer like amazon.

Artha and Apartha

Artha: Did you know that women aren't allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia?
Apartha: What!
Artha: Yeah. I read it here
Apartha: Nice. We should have that rule here too.

Identities of people involved have been changed to protect them from the women in their lives.

Fungibility

The question the "Islamic world" may need to ask itself now is: "Is Havarti a fungible commodity?"

Fungibility Cheese Stupidity

Guilt

Over lunch, we were discussing possible venues for a team party. This was a day after the earthquake in Kashmir. One of my colleagues suggested that we should "cancel the party and donate the money to the earthquake victims".

I am reminded of that incident whenever I read this blog.

And yes, the party went on as planned.

The Bordering Insanity Blog Mela

Welcome to The Bordering Insanity Blog Mela.

I received very few nominations, and had to do a breadth-first traversal of the Desi blogosphere for the mela.

Neha has a funny post about the origin of a person's name. I'm just hoping its not a true story. Sidin has a post titled "Work in Progress" which somehow reminds me of the "show about nothing".

The GreatBong again reminds us why he's the master of humour in the Indian blogosphere with this irreverent review of Zinda. Alpha on IIT-ian naming conventions. Jitendra attempts to formulate a Worry Theorem, but the mathematics seems rather dubious!

Melody writes about the Strand Book Stall and its proprietor, the inimitable T.N. Shanbhag. Disclaimer: I'm a Strand fanboy myself.

Shivam Vij ko Ghussa Kyon Aata Hain? Find out here. This post should move anyone short of Nilu.
The Terror in Delhi blog has a superb analysis of India's energy security status.

Sanket's argumentation crisis deepens, as he continues his exploration of Urban Syndromes. Melquíades from Macondo reviews the Urban Syndromes series.

Rashmi at Youth Curry writes on Bhojpuri movies in bunty and babli towns. Sudhish's excellent review of Rang De Basanti here.

Have you ever tried to define success? Sri attempts to quantify success.
The Pukemeister disturbs us, as always. On a side note, you can find the anti-thesis of the blog mela here.
KarmaDude writes on Descartes' dilemma and contrasts it with eastern philosophical thought.

The Palm Leaf has a very informative post on the history behind the Tamil epic, Ponniyin Selvan.

The picture jockey looks very closely at a 2 Rupee coin, here and here.

The next Blog Mela will be hosted by Karthik

Bharateeya Blog Mela @ Bordering Insanity

As is evident, I'm hosting the Bharateeya Blog Mela this week.

The rules are as usual:

1. All blogs must be written by Indians or must have an Indian connection.


2. All blogs must be written between the Wednesday 1st February 2006 and Thursday 8th February 2006. The Mela will be up on 9th February


3. The posts can be of any type except personal journal/diary type entries. Self nominations are welcome.


4. Nominations should be the permalinks to the post. Link to the post in the comments section of this post. If the site does not support permalinks then the blog url, post name and date should be mentioned. Or you can email the link to me (jovian.storm AT gmail.com)


5. The site nominated must not contain any pop ups or pop unders


6. Please do not nominate entire blogs.

A listing of recent blog melas can be found here

Google Videos Workaround

If you're sick of seeing Currently, the playback feature of Google Video isn't available in your country, everytime you go to google videos, try this:

1) Click on the "Put on Site" link on the right side of the videos page
2) Copy the HTML created.
3) In blogger, create a new post
4) Paste the HTML created by Videos into the post.
5) Click Preview.
6) ProfitEnjoy

Update: This will not directly work anymore. The "Put on Site" link seems to have been disabled for visitors from India. However, if you can get your hands on the HTML for the video (mentioned in step 2), you can still use blogger preview.

Video - Rajkumar singing an "English" Song

Disclaimer: I am not responsible if you injure yourself, mentally, physically or spiritually by watching this video.

Slackenerny's back!

As I recall from here, Slackenerny had graduated before the baby was born. So why is he back? Am I missing something here? Fellow grad-slackers, help!

Paritrana, the ideological chimera

After reading this article, I hopped over to read more about the ideology of the aforementioned party, Paritrana. The stated ideology was, to say the least, interesting.

Responsibility is proportional to abilities. Those with superior abilities naturally bear more responsibility and should come forward to change the pitiful condition that the nation is facing. Everyone must do what one should.

This part of their ideology seems to draw heavily from Karl Marx. Except that they seem to have replaced the part about worker's rights and the proletariat by the noble cause of the nation. However, the part about "to each unto his needs" seems to be missing.

The simplicity and wisdom of the glorious past is lost in the complexities of pseudo intellectualism and pointless debates on petty issues of current Indian politics. The wisdom of ages or the truth is so simple that it is not to be paraphrased but to be quoted as it is. This serves as basis of, and draws the outline of party's ideology

"Sabhi sukhi hon"
"Sukh ka mool samriddhi hai"
"Samriddhi ka mool rajya hai"
"Rajya ka mool dand hai"

On initial observation, this section seems to be directly lifted from RSS and VHP literature. The ideology now seems like a fusion of revivalist right-wing and left-wing ideas. Impressive. However, on further inspection, the key word here seems to be "simple". Somehow, this is reminiscent of the Unix Philosophy and Worse is Better. Given that the founders are all engineers, it is plausible that these have influenced the ideology.

So far, revivalist right-wing , left-wing and geek ideologies seem to be the inspirations for this party's ideology. A heady mix indeed.

People have forgotten the meaning of the words they utter. Dand means the system of reward and punishment that makes people do what they should and stops them from doing what they should not.

In less organized societies the punishment side of Dand predominates. In more organized societies the reward side of Dand predominates. In any case it is Dand that rules. The role of the System, the Government, the State, or that of a King is to "regulate" Dand, not to hold it. And when Dand is not properly regulated it destroys the State and its people. That is what has happened in past and is happening in the present society.

Blinding insight on the essence of the carrot and the stick. But wait, contradiction is afoot here!

And when Dand is not properly regulated it destroys the State and its people. That is what has happened in past and is happening in the present society.

Wasn't the past supposed to be filled with simplicity, wisdom and glory?
Maybe this is some mystical philosophy from the past that I am unable to comprehend. I shall give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Dand bridges the gap between ideal and real, by making people do what they accept to do. Dand and only Dand can make the concept of ideal society, a reality.

"Accept to do"? I am lost here. Is this just inane, or some kind of profound tautology which is beyond the comprehension of non-party members?

The philosophy of Dand is the simplest, the best and the only way to go, to peace, to power, to prosperity, to honor, to glory...

Good slogan. Especially the ellipse. Lets hope they get their just Dandas Dand.


Cross-posted on DesiCritics

Bleached

Gaurav at Vantage Point points us to this joke. Possibly the most sublime blonde joke ever.

Spilt Milk Shakes and Hubris

My roommate and I were forced to have lunch at a McDonald's outlet the other day. As we were waiting to place our order, we saw a kid spill a milk shake. He was carrying a tray with 4 glasses of said beverage. He couldn't have been more than 8 years old. Ahead of the kid was his father(presumably), who was carrying another tray, with burgers and fries.

My immediate thought was "What kind of moron gives his 8-year kid a tray full of beverages while taking the tray with a lower centre-of-gravity?"

This and the consequent discussion led to the idea of, hold your breath, "Reproduction Licenses". The fundamental premise behind this idea is that some people are so stupid, they should be forbidden to reproduce. In a society where people are required to satisfy certain criteria before they're allowed to drive, it initially surprised me that no society imposes similar criteria on people bringing more human beings into this world.

But scratch the surface, and you realise that there are constraints (No, I don't mean constraints of a medical nature!). These are societally imposed constraints, though never spelt out explicitly.

It was while pursuing this line of thought, that I realised that I possessed an immense amount of hubris and had a tendency to self-righteous megalomania. My self-righteous outlook has thankfully diminished considerably thanks in large to one person.

Why shouldn't I?

Imagine this:
You're driving on an isolated stretch of highway one day. You come across a broken down car and slow down. The driver of the car is sticking out his thumb asking for help. You stop the car and find that he has engine trouble and wants a lift to the nearest town.

At that moment, you see a huge suitcase full of currency notes in his car. Its open. Its more money than you'll probably make in half a lifetime. The man looks weak, and would be no match for you. There's no one for miles around and there's no way you'll get caught. You pull out a wrench which you've kept handy. You're thinking of possible ways to dispose of the body and what you're going to do with the money.

Freeze Frame
I now leave the rest of this episode to my readers to fill in. What would each of you do in the above situation, and why? Would you go ahead with the plan, kill the man and take his money? Or would you not? All justifications are welcome, though I would prefer it if they were not based on notions of morality and values.

World Peace and Vodka

Saturday was rather dull till my roomie and I discovered that we had a stash of citrus flavoured vodka lying around the house. There were no Pink Floyd records to be found though. So we reconciled ourselves to watching the finals of the Miss World 2005 pageant.

1. The phrase "Beauty with a Purpose" was repeated ad nauseum. It stopped being funny after the sixty ninth time.

2. Miss Russia said something about natural resources. I wholeheartedly agreed.

3. What were they smoking when they named a country "American Virgin Islands"?

4. Last year's Miss World, Maria Julia of Peru, climbed a mountain. The hosts also welcomed the "man who joined her while climbing the mountain".

5. Some of the contestants were "Fast track Winners". Miss American Virgin Islands, Miss Russia and Miss Korea were in this category. Any guesses as to the nature of this fast track?

6. Finally, Miss Iceland, Unnur Birna Vilhjalmsdottir won the contest.
She was described as a "part-time policewoman". I had visions of handcuffs at that moment.

Part 2 - Of Networks and Regional Languages, Or Why I Was Constantly Bored In School

The comments to my last post were so involved that I could only answer them with another post.

Subbudu wrote of an imaginary dialogue between me and "LLover", someone who loves Language 'L'

Ambar: Trying to make me learn lang L is pointless. X people already know Lang E so I am going to forget L. Ls value is less as per Metcalfes law.

LLover: Well, as per Metcalfes law, Ls utility is lower. Therefore you should learn L to make its utility higher. As for the benefits accrued..and the benefits are this, that and the other and you can read fantastic literature and learn this and this and know more about this history etc.


I never said anything about forgetting a language, however impossible that might be.
I was arguing against making people learn languages which give disproportionately low benefits compared to the effort needed. What is happening now is that people like LLover want to make L popular because of their attachment to it.

LLover: What if I am sincerely convinced that IPX is a better protocol? Just because IP is more widely adopted it does not mean, IPX may not be/have been a better protocol. Certainly wide adoption cannot be the only way to say something is better. What if there is a new protocol PP that is a derivative of IPX that is good? Should I not advocate it?

Ambar: No point in that though..

LLover: If you compare Protocols just like you do languages - i.e. by the current state - number of users- then how do new protocols come about? Well I am convinced PP is better and I am going to try to advocate PP to whoever I can reach and sing the glories of PP.

Ambar: Metcalfe will eat you alive :-)


I was talking about Metcalfe, not Hannibal Lecter.

LLover: Maybe not.. Maybe I will deploy PP ..putting a gateway between PP and IP. My neighbor may start liking PP and it may spread in small pockets thus and grow, much like IP did.
Also, Currently my entire office uses PP and I stand much to gain in that my office can understand anyone who can speak PP..So I am just trying to do what I think is the best protocol.

The gateway analogy fails when it comes to natural languages. Do you mean that you'll have a bank of translators so that L speakers and E speakers can communicate? Even when the number of L speakers is miniscule compared to E. I can't think of any situation where this would work except the UN or inter-governmental talks.

Secondly, an Anon commenter had this to say:

As a computer scientist and mathematician, it always makes me cringe when people attempt to use numbers and laws sloppily to prove something. If you want to do that , you better be sure you can back your statements up.

Firstly, Metcalfe's law is a rule of thumb and not a law (somewhat like Moore's Law). All it really says is that in an n-node graph, there are O(n^2) possible edges.

Secondly, if Ambar had bothered to read his own wiki link, he would have mentioned Odlyzko & Tilly's March 2005 paper , which concludes that the value of a network is O(n log n) .


Anon, I agree that Metcalfe's "Law" is more an empirical rule than a Law. And as regards, Odlyzko and Tilly's paper, there's also Reed's Law which talks of an O(2^n) value. The very definition of 'value' is unclear here. The only consensus does seem to be that the value monotonically increases with N.

It doesn't matter whether the value is O(n), O(n log n ) or O(n^2), because languages aren't mere networks . The analogy is imperfect and oversimplified.

Just why are languages not "mere networks"? Is it because people have sentimental attachments to languages?


A few years ago I read the Tamil epic Ponniyin Selvan, which is magnificient and on par with anything I have ever read in any language. It blew me away. I would never have been able to read it if it hadn't been translated into English. I dont doubt that the original is way better than the translation.
THere are equally superb works in many regional languages, which i will never get to read unless I learn the languages, or someone who knows the languages translates it.


Good for you. What interests me is your underlying assumption that these works are in some manner indispensable and the ideas expressed within them will never occur anywhere else independent of them. This is what I mean when I refer to sentimentality being attached to language. Of course my language has something invaluably unique in it!


Suppose there is a network connected to the internet with some amazing pile of info on it. The network is public, but uses a nonstandard protocol. Should nobody bother to learn the protocol, and thus let the information go to waste forever? I'm not saying everybody should learn the protocol, just that someone should. I would argue that the value of the network (equivalently, the obscure protocol used to access it) is either zero or positive. If it's positive, then we have nothing to lose and something to gain by not letting the protocol die out.


The trick is to extract the information from this nonstandard network and move it to a standard network. Come what may, the very fact that it is obscure and non-standard means that the information stored on it is much less valuable and accessible than that on the standard network. The effort required to extract the information makes it less valuable than it could have been.

Gaurav asks,
So when will we start learning mandarin ?

Gaurav, the day that knowledge of Mandarin brings more benefit than learning English, all of us will learn it en masse. I guarantee you that.

P.S: Anon commenters, I would appreciate it if you used names, even pseudonyms so I can distinguish one Anon from another. :D

Of Networks and Regional Languages, Or Why I Was Constantly Bored In School

My first two years at school were in a country in the Middle East. It was compulsory to learn Arabic in school, though it was an 'Indian School'. I kept topping the class in Arabic (to everyone's surprise) until the teacher caught me writing Arabic script from left to right. What followed was not necessarily pleasant. From 3rd grade onwards, all my Hindi and Kannada teachers (atleast 10 in all) would not really have called me a model student. Unfinished homework, pathetic handwriting and a near total lack of interest were probably the reason.

Maybe it comes as no surprise that I now show absolute disinterest whenever anyone talks about how our regional languages are dying and the need to revive them. The reason for my indifference, as I'm sure it is with many people's is simple. Regional languages are by their very definition 'regional'. This means that these are languages with a considerably smaller reach compared to a global language. Hindi, Kannada, Arabic, Tamil are examples of regional languages. English is a global language. Esperanto is a joke.

When it comes to language, numbers are everything. Knowledge of a language allows one to be a member of a communication network consisting of people who know that language. The more languages you know, the more people you can communicate with. However, the effort put into learning a new language must be commensurate with the benefits accrued. In other words, forcing one to spend equal time on English, Hindi and Kannada lessons in school is a completely daft idea.

To put the above into a perspective devoid of the sentimentality associated with any discussion involving language, let me use the analogy of IP and IPX. IP is the Internet Protocol, using which this post has reached you. IPX is a protocol developed by Novell which was popular in the 1980s. IPX is dead for all practical purposes. Why, you ask? Because usage of IP far outnumbers IPX, no one wants to put in the time and effort needed to make their hardware and software IPX compatible.

There are many who talk about the need to protect their favourite regional language(s) from the devastation wrought by a global language. This is like hoping that more computers run IPX instead of IP so that IPX does not get extinct. A person from region X asking for language X to be protected from English is like a hypothetical Novell fanboy calling for IPX to be used instead of IP. However, there are no examples of the latter, whereas there are too many of the former to mention.

As a parting shot, let me quote Metcalfe's Law.
Metcalfe's law states that the value of a communication system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system (n²)

What we often seem to forget is that languages are communication mechanisms. Their purpose is to communicate. Unfortunately, we tend to tie notions of ethnic and community pride and 'culture' to a language, thus making it near impossible to have a rational debate on the topic.

Plagiarism is a Big Deal

Suyog asks whether plagiarism is actually a "big deal". Patrix at Desipundit has a simple counter to this, "Just because you see it everywhere doesn’t make it right."

I don't want to make any arguments regarding the ethics or morality involved here. What I will say is that even from a purely selfish and practical viewpoint, plagiarism is something to be concerned about.

Suyog uses analogies like the following to drive home his point:

You know all too well that you most Tommy Hilfigers you get in India are fake, didn’t you? Did it stop you from buying them? Did you mail the maker or the textile company about shamelessly copying Tommy’s designs?

Extending this analogy to online media, newspapers and blogs is erroneous. When we talk about designer clothes, batteries or print media, there is a clear distinction between producer and consumer. A consumer for TH designs might stand to gain by buying a pirated/plagiarized version.

However, with online media, the distinction between consumer and producer is blurred. Whether it be the ToI online, Slashdot, Desipundit or even my blog, each one of them is a producer and a consumer. The difference is fundamentally of scale and influence. Online media thrives heavily on reputation and is largely self regulated, however little that regulation may be. It thus becomes vital for every blogger in his or her own self interest to discourage plagiarism.

University Blues

No Argument.

BEST. UNIVERSITY. EVER.

Daily Funnies

The Corroded Brain award goes to Praveen Bhat for this post.

Abhay has some great morphs of the said charlatan here.

Moral outrage is driven by envy.

Dugg!

For all you slashdot regulars, digg will probably interest you. Unlike slashdot's moderator system, digg is non-hierarchical. Users are allowed to "digg" a story and the more "dugg" a story is, the better its chances of getting on the main page.

digg is nowhere as crowded as slashdot as of now and I personally feel that the stories on it are way more saner than slashdot. Atleast for now!

Just digg it.

SETI Insecurities

A Science-Fiction Movie-Plot Threat, says Bruce Schneier about this.

SETI signals might also contain a harmful "SETI Hacker" message similar to a computer virus.

Possible. And pigs will start flying by next week.

This reminds me of one of my earlier posts, where I joked about The Universal Platform-Independent virus.

Plagiarism

This blogger is an unabashed plagiarist. I discovered this when I found one of her posts on another blog. She's changed the kannada portions of the original to tamil and has posted it as her own. After I asked her and the other blogger about it, she has since deleted the post but with no explanation. She is also deleting all comments about this from her blog.

Her latest post is a poem, the original of which is here.

Another poem she has plagiarized is from here. This poem is by Sheryl Luna. The plagiarist in question claims in her comments section that "are definitley inspired by my grandmother".

Update: The original by Jagadish is here
The google cache for the copied one is
here

Update 2: The blog has been deleted.

Bibliographic Name Dropping

I've just discovered that name dropping works with books too.

Recent acquisitions:
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
The Emperor's New Mind - Roger Penrose.

Main bhi Intellectual!

On a more serious note, the discounts at the Strand book fair are quite obscene. The low point of my day there was finding a copy of The Selfish Gene for nearly half the price I'd bought it for at Landmark. X-(

I, Fanatic

Reading this brought laughter and memories.

Well, if you can imagine all that, you know for just a few moments how it feels everyday to be a grown adult surrounded by wishful childish thinkers clinging to nonsensical myths as if they were real and insisting, in fact force feeding, that mythology to you; people who sometimes turn quite violent, get downright nasty if you express the slightest disagreement with their specific version of the Jolly Old Guy

Growing up in almost exclusively Hindu environment, I find it surprising now that no one in my (extended) family ever shouted me down or really opposed my often fanatically atheist ideas when I was a child. In retrospect, I was the unreasonable one, often refusing to enter temples with my family, trying to convince my grandparents about how cows were not sacred and we could (and should!) eat them. Thankfullly there was never 'one tight slap' forthcoming.

I'm still an atheist, but I try to avoid getting into arguments with believers. My friends are safe as long as they don't tell me about god.

And yes, I now enter temples when I'm with family.

[Atheism]

TAAQ - Plan B

Thermal And A Quarter have put up their album Plan B for download. I've just listened to a few of the tracks and it looks like I could get to like their music.

Update: "Chainese Item" totally rocks! Every Bangalorean can identify with this one.

[Music]
[Bangalore]