Domain: expressindia.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to expressindia.com.
Comments · 38
-
Tampered EVMs may have already been used
There have been allegations in the past that political parties in India have rigged EVMs and I think that is quite likely despite the lack of "evidence". To understand that, you need to know how the voting system works in Indian elections.
The educated elite in India are apathetic to voting. They have no trust in the administrative system and have no hope that the endemic corruption will ever end. So come election time, the people who vote are mostly the poor who hope that some day, the extravagant promises made by the political parties will be kept . Before election day, the voters are bribed with free liquor and food. The women folk are given new clothes. And finally cash is also distributed to bias the voters to chose a particular candidate. The system which issues voter identification cards is broken and sometimes you can find impostors voting on behalf of actual voters.
Given the amount of money that politicians spend on rigging manual voting, tampering EVMs is just good business practice. It is cheaper and you don't need to chase around thousands of voters.
-
Why can't FBI if Google gives IPs to Indian Police
Google doesn't ask Indian Police for justification. All it takes is an email request, and these IP addresses could be in USA!
A common reason India Cyber Crime cops ask for IP addresses is "cyber defamation"... and India has Criminal Defamation laws still in the books.
(Despite the original land of their laws changing with the times: United Kingdom: Defamation Decriminalised)In 2005, a Singapore company eSys won the 2005 Ernst and Young award, rubbed shoulders with the elite, launched a Foundation and so on.
Things became more noteworthy when eSys used Indian Police Cyber Crime cell to fight their cyber-defamation
... and by 2009, it was clear that there was some serious fraud at eSys.Mumbai Police even ordered an American to delete a Cartoon... did they need an excuse to do that ?
So if Indian Police can get IP address records from USA simply by asking, why not FBI ?
-
Re:Mutagenic effects of Tritium
There were 55 people made sick recently with tritium poisoning: http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Radiation-leak-at-Kaiga-nuke-plant-leaves-55-sick/547611/
-
Re:Good for US overall
They're a hell of a lot more trustworthy and reliable than Pakistan is.
I'm not so sure at all... USSR/Russia and India go way back — during the Ghandi times, KGB's influence over Indian politicians was near-complete. The success of penetrating India was an example, that KGB studied and thought to repeat in other countries. Most of those politicians are still alive and still busy — there was no clean-up, unlike, say, in Germany, which exposed Stazi agents. Kinda...
For all we know, there are, very likely, still people in various Indian ministries (including, no doubt, the Defense), who either never got off Russian payroll, or can be blackmailed by the new Russian agents.
Pakistan's military (rather than the entire country) was, probably, a better ally throughout, even if they aren't without problems of their own...
-
Re:George Carlin Quote
-
Re:They think...
India doesn't use Jury trial since this case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._M._Nanavati_vs._State_of_Maharashtra
I googled for the case and found this:
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Aditi-and-Pravin-get-life-in-jail-for-Udit-Bharati-murder/322113/ BEOS if it was doesn't seem to be the primary evidence for deciding this case. -
Re:Hoax?
Er, the Indian Express has reported it as well, and that's definitely a mainstream newspaper:
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsi d=226966 -
Re:Mod parent up
RSS's mother organization (ABHM, Godse) killed Gandhi.
And rightly so. Gandhi was a racist (remember what he wrote about Africans), a totalitarian dictator, an anti-Semite (read what he wrote about Jews), a pedophile and a fool. He would have dragged our country back to the middle ages with his "ruralization" nonsense instead of industrializing and modernizing our armies and today we would all be under the authority of the Beijing Politburo. You should be thanking Godse for what he did, get rid of the leader of a personality cult (again, much like Stalin or Mao).
RSS activists indulge in arson, without ANY provocation on every valentines day.
Your tangible that RSS was involved in all those things is... where? Remember, fabricated reports from Communist propaganda outlets and their derivatives don't count, you know. Most of those incidents were
the work of disorganized groups of morons. It is very chic in India today to blame all the ills of society on Hindus. I place as much credibility on them as I would on "Zionist Conspiracy theories".They participate in every hindu-muslim riot.
In response to Islamist gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawood_Ibrahim), Islamil Latif, the Deobandi clerics and the JIH (The Indian division of the REAL fascist Jamaat-e-Islami : http://idp.world-citizenship.org/idp/index.php/wp- archive/50, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ26Df02.h tml)/SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India: http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terr oristoutfits/simi.htm) nexus of hatemongers who burn babies alive in trains, bomb other trains in cities and blow up temples of parishioners. For the most part, RSS actually tries to intervene in Muslim-Hindu riots to try to rescue it's victims, but get bashed in the fray. Or is it a lie that the RSS rescued numerous militancy-hit Muslim children in Kashmir, or rescued poor Muslims from floods in Surat while the Islamic Ulema of India watched and laughed because the poor Muslim were lower-caste Dalit Arzal Muslims and the Ashraf upper-caste dominated Islamic Ulema didn't give a rat's ass about them? WHere was the "eternal and all-powerful and all-forgiving Allah" for the Surat flood victims? Nowhere...
Here is an interesting article about a paper written by a Roman Catholic priest (ie a non-Hindu, so there is just about Zero chance of a pro-Hindu bias) on the RSS:
http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19980823/2355 0294.html
Note, in particular, this paragraph.The conclusion drawn by Fr Kundukulam is that RSS cannot be considered as a nationalist organisation in the sense in which the term `nationalism' is generally interpreted in India. Nationalism represents the collective consciousness of the people transcending all barriers of caste, religion, etc. A nationalist is one who is primarily indebted to the nation. Religion has no place in nationalism. In this sense, Fr Kundukulam argues, RSS whose primary loyalty is to the Hindus can hardly be called a nationalist organisation. In his view, RSS is a multi-faceted organisation which is political, cultural, religious and voluntary in nature and approach. Different facets gain upperhand at different times depending on social and political exigencies.
At the same time, Fr Kundukulam argues against branding the RSS ideology as fascism, Nazism, fun
-
Sounds like old (overblown) news to me!The funny thing is that there was another article that was on Slashdot a few months ago. It was titled "Google Aids Indian Goverment [sic] Censorship". Now in response, a Google spokesperson had said (quote via Boing Boing)
The reporting tool that was offered to authorities acts as a hotline to Google Inc., allowing the authorities to communicate requests for removal of content to us. The reporting tool does not give the police any privilege other than a speedier vehicle to notify Google Inc. about flagged users or communities. Authorities have no access to user data and can not remove content themselves by using this tool. The tool is not used to provide authorities with user information such as IP addresses. Google investigates reports received by the authorities via the reporting tool to determine whether a user or community has in fact violated orkut's terms of use. Authorities may use the reporting tool to ask Google to preserve user identifying information for a certain period of time (in anticipation of serving formal legal process for such information), and we will preserve the information accordingly. But no user data is turned over to the authorities absent valid legal process.
So what we seem to have now is another article that basically says the same thing as the first Slashdotted article. And from the Google statement, it appears that the "Priority Reporting Tool" is nothing but a glorified version of the "report abuse" link that every user gets on Orkut. Or did something change at Google in these past few weeks? Is this a new interpretation of the "valid legal process" that the Google spokesperson mentioned in her statement above?
(P.S: For all those of you who are wondering, Orkut is a (Google promoted) Friendster like social networking site that is very popular in the Indian subcontinent and in Brazil too. Recent surveys indicate that Orkut ranks 9th in terms of membership size, behind Myspace et. al.) -
Re:Burning hydrocarbons makes no sense.
Sure, we can mash up some circuit boards and make something. Burning them is silly.
Tell that to the poor people that are doing just that. http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsi d=81450 I saw a documentary about it a few years ago, people melting/burning PCBs for the copper/gold/whatever metal they can get their hands on. I saw women and kids burning old computer boards, they didn't seem to care that they were hovering right above the flames, inhaling the thick black smoke. I wish I could find some pictures, it was rather disturbing. -
This Island "Sank" 20 Years Ago!!Taken from: http://timblair.net/ -- But don't worry the supporting links are from mainstream sources. Terrifying! You'll note, however, that Lean doesn't tell us exactly when Lohachara vanished. Was it last week? A few months ago? Maybe we'll find out later.
As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.
It's the domino theory of island obliteration! As environmentalists always warned, once Lohachara falls, that's it for Egypt.
The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.
Got that right, Geoffrey. I can't remember Lohachara ever disappearing previously.
Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.
By quite a margin, as it happens. Lean doesn't say so, but Lohachara apparently vanished two decades ago. So much for Lean's scoop; the event took place back when Lean had hair, and several years before he emerged from a coma. Some locals aren't buying that global warming line, by the way:
Atanu Raha, director of Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, said the islands were getting eroded by oceanic currents, not by rising sea levels.
"Erosion and accretion are natural phenomena. Across the world islands submerge and new ones emerge. This is natural," Raha said.
Not according to Lean, who evidently believes all weather change is due to Meddling Humans. And that's all change, whether towards cold or heat. In 2004, Lean reported that "Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming". Two years later, he asked: "So where has all the snow gone?" There's no pleasing Geoffrey.
UPDATE. This nonsense was republished in the NZ Herald.
UPDATE II. Lean has previously been convicted of sins of omission and other crimes against journalism.
UPDATE III. Jackalope Pursuivant: "I've seen worse cases of journalistic malpractice, but not much worse."
-
Old news. Literally.d000d! These islands washed away twenty two years ago.
In fact, the intruding salty water has already had its effects on the region's flora and fauna: Lohachara and Bedford islands, with an area of more than six square kilometres between them, "vanished from the map" two decades ago. (See here.)
-
Re:But temperatures are rising on Mars!
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?news
i d=207343
Here's one such article. These people were evacuated decades ago, back when Bush and Global warming were a figment of everyones imagination.
-
Subsidence
Sagar Island (Sunderbans), October 29: An annual 3.14 mm rise in sea level at Sunderbans due to climate change is eating away 12 islands on the delta, says a study by a group of scientists from Jadavpur University.
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsi d=207247/
(Kolkata Newsline)
Careful measurements of sea level change around the globe show similar numbers. Larger reported changes are usually due to subsidence (sinking land), erosion, annual rain (monsoon, hurricane) related flooding and poor land management. Talk a walk on your nearest beach and figure out how many years it would take at three mm/year before anything interesting would happen. Or be noticed. -
Now... or... 22 years ago?
Short-term changes in sea level like waves, tides, and storm surge mask the effects of rising sea levels. When the signal-to-noise ratio is that low, you end up with news articles stating that the island in question became uninhabitable 22 years ago.
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but compared to serious examination of long-term sea level trends, one island isn't a very useful measuring stick.
-
Re:More H1B cap lobbying
Interesting POV from India: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=
3 7181
I find the sense of entitlement to H1Bs in the comment at the end of the article rather interesting. When did workers from one country become entitled to visas in order to work in another country? I must have missed the memo... -
Re:More H1B cap lobbying
What? Lobbying (accepted but illegal government bribery) Interesting POV from India: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=
3 7181 -
Already there in India
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?news
i d=62798
The Delhi Metro is being built keeping cell-phone coverage in mind. -
Re:happy for him
The last time such a thing happened, it turned out to be a fraud. The fact of the matter is that physics is not like pure math. Raw intelligence is not the only requirement, but knowledge, research background and experience count for more. Plenty of famous physicists with only slightly above average IQ's. This bloke's in for a tough time if he thinks he'll be able to get away with it.
-
Re:More infrmation on the story:
The Reuters copy is a bit spotty in its coverage...more information can be found here, here, and here.
Interesting quote from the third source listed above:Under the new regulations, Internet news sites are encouraged to report news that is "healthy" and promotes economic and social progress, Xinhua said. In addition, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported that any news Web site that reports "false or distorted information" will be fined up to 30,000 renminbi (US$3,701) under the new guidelines.
-
More infrmation on the story:
The Reuters copy is a bit spotty in its coverage...more information can be found here, here, and here.
Interesting quote from the third source listed above:Under the new regulations, Internet news sites are encouraged to report news that is "healthy" and promotes economic and social progress, Xinhua said. In addition, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported that any news Web site that reports "false or distorted information" will be fined up to 30,000 renminbi (US$3,701) under the new guidelines.
-
Mod Parent Up: Not Flaimbait
I agree with the person. This is especially true with headaches with dealing with EU. There is an article detailing speech from Tony Blair on this.
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=4 9376&headline=Tony~Blair~spooks~Europe~over~India -
Indian press
This story is all over in Indian press.
http://us.rediff.com/money/2005/jun/23bpo.htm
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1408799,001 300460000.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/115 0344.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/115 0670.cms
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=4 9334 -
Not that different from the rest of the world...
Let's really put this into context. While I find this to be a complete embarrassment, I think people are overreacting. Most of the people are this board on just spouting anti-American comments. And they call us racist.
Let's face it, in a world where people burying children alive as part of a religious ceremony, kill others in the name of Allah, and believe in Papal Infallibility, this surprises you? Really?
Hopefully this will either be laughed out of existence or maybe people will realize the disservice they will be doing to their children.
But just because one school system in one state decides to question science doesn't represent the downfall of mankind, much less whole of the USA. -
Re:The issue is not stupidity
To add to that, we built our own supercomputer, Param, when we were denied access to Crays by the US govt.
Check out this report from a newspaper on how stingy the US is in giving aid. For those who won't bother to read the article, I will quote a few lines here:
"The newspaper highlighted in an editorial that the 15 million dollars initially offered by Washington was less than the figure the ruling Republican Party would spend on President George W. Bush's inauguration in January.The administration has since increased its aid to 35 million dollars."
And before you start trolling that this is from an Indian newspaper, read properly, it is excerpted from guess what - "The NY Times". So you aren't financing our economy or anything.
The original NYTimes article can be found here. Use Bugmenot to login.
Here's the entire article from the NYTimes (this article was published on December 30)
"President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.
We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.
The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.
Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.
Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disburse a single dollar.
Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises."
Also, I don't agree with what the parent says about our voting system. Touch-screen machines have a much lower cost as compared to counting by hand in the long run.
Anybody who says that we shouldn't spend on the space program or o -
"Yes Men" Possibly Responsible for Hoax
This article says the fake spokesperson claims to be a member of the Yes Men group, who has been doing this sort of thing for a while. But there is not confirmation of the Bhopal hoax on their site. (The hoaxster could be lying!)
Here's the salient bit from the article:
"Finisterra, whose identity could not be confirmed, later told BBC's Radio 4 he was part of the group Yes Men, which hoaxes businesses and governments and which has gone after Dow before over Bhopal."
-
Re:no sore losers?
Yes there are sore losers. A government minister in the southern state of Tamil nadu has complained that votes were stolen by a remove control. See this story in Indian express
-
And landing operations will be outsourced to Inida
-
I missed the point the first timeThe real problem with these fish is not so much that they are genetically engineered fish we're going to introduce into the wild -- been there, done that already with GMO crops, whose genes have escaped into all sorts of places no one ever thought they'd get to (like out of the experiment areas or like GMO products rated safe only for animals getting into the human food supply).
No. The real problem is that this is insidious. It's taking technology which is potentially very dangerous and making it feel warm and fuzzy (err, ok, cold and slimy -- but still). This is the problem with this fish. It encourages a laissez-faire attitude about genetically modified organisms -- and I for one don't believe that they should be treated like toys.
One of the problems with genetically modified organisms is that humans themselves are not a homogenous population. What causes no problems for one set of people may make another population seriously ill or kill them (see allergies). In general with normal, unaltered vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, grains, whatever, you know what you're buying. With GMOs you really don't. Do you know what kind of gene the corn in the tortilla chips you ate was crossed with? Nope? I'm not surprised.
-
Re:new world order ish
"I say this from experience competing with people from third world countries for contracts , unless you can price your self down to there level you wont get the majority of contracts
." You are missing something here, people in third world countries such as India don't price themselves out, due to strong dollar policies cost of living is simply lower, so at 20% of your salary here, they can have a better life than you. Don't make it sound as if they degrade themselves to unfairly compete with you. This trend will continue till those currencies come to par with the US dollar which is slowly but surely happening. http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=2 3007 http://www.ciol.com/content/news/CorpResult/2003/1 03071501.asp After that it would not make any sense to outsource jobs to those countries. -
Handwritten notes?
Sorry, you won't even be able to communicate with the Unabomber. When the Fed's raided his shack, they found the typewriter which was used to produce the Manifesto.
-
Re:Such NonsenseWith headlines like "Maoist Crisis Spreads in the Himalayas" and "Bhutan Concerned About Maoist Literature in Refugee Camps", I think I have my countries (you are so tough) straight.
But of course, since you used the F-word, you must be right.
-
Re:when will apple learn?
Maybe around 1995? Y'know, when the company had practically bled to death as a result of being undercut by the clone market?
Think about it; if we have two examples of cloning's impact on a company, which is more likely to apply to Apple? That of IBM, significantly different from Apple, or that of Apple themselves 10 years ago?
(Give up? The correct answer is "Apple themselves." But even if for some reason you still think IBM's experience has more relevance to Apple, consider IBM's much-reduced industry position compared to 20 years ago or so. For that matter, didn't IBM's personal computer division, which you inexplicably refer to as a "strong seller," lose A BILLION FREAKING DOLLARS just a few years ago?) -
Re:The Riddle Of My Plumbing Battery
Just some clever mettalurgy here....
The pillar you are referring to is in Delhi and its mystery has apparently been solved
Apparently the metal had a high hydrogen content and formed a coating of "misawite" . -
Re:Paper is cool
How about 316 stainless steel, or high phosporus iron?
-
Re:Wait a Minute!
I can point you to links about racial attacks in the US too. I can also give you a google link. And I can counter your "muslimonline.com" and Pakistani newspaper links with tons of links to news articles on African American websites.
None of this is going to prove that racial segregation is practiced in the US.
And yes, CNN does make stuff up - all the time. And the guy you are refering to was posting a humorous article. -
Re:News LinksSome good foreign (mostly Indian) news sites that are still holding on:
-
Wired and others will send out free ones tooAccording to A mouse--er, cat--that tells whether ads really work in Medialife Mag:
"A number of big-name magazines and newspapers have signed up to try the CAT, including Forbes, Wired, GQ and the Dallas Morning News.
And according to Expressindia.com:Ads featuring bar codes to be CAT-scanned will begin in September.
Forbes is going to send free CATs to 810,000 subscribers in September; Wired will send 375,000 out to its readers in October. It will also be testing out the Digimarc technology.
Major investors in the CAT include Young & Rubicam, Tandy Corp. and A. H. Belo, publisher of the Dallas Morning News."
"One of the companies offering the new technology to advertisers is DigimarcCorp., based in Tualatin, Ore. It says Ford Motor Co., Visa USA Inc., SonyCorp., International Business Machines Corp. and Brown-Forman Corp.'s JackDaniel's whiskey all have signed on, willing to give it a try, especiallysince it adds only marginally to the cost of an advertisement."
Sadly enough, people will gladly give up even more of their privacy to play with the little gizmo.
bah.