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If you're talking about this then you're going to have to find a better source:

http://vactruth.com/2011/03/28/news-of-smallpox-outbreak-in-india-raises-fear/

Wasn't even Jakarta, get your facts straight.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/jharkhand/small-pox-resurfaces-in-jharkhand_695012.html

Wasn't smallpox either:

http://www.sify.com/news/no-small-pox-in-jharkhand-officials-news-health-ldxuknedjcc.html

The Taj Mahal took 16 years to build. It's nigh impossible to find something that isn't physical taking over 14 years to create.

I thought we were talking about copyrights, which deal with non-physical ideas and expressions, but if we're talking about patents you might have a point, maybe. Not sure you could really patent "the Taj Mahal," though -- and if you did, the market would be pretty narrow.

The Taj Mahal took 16 years to build. It's nigh impossible to find something that isn't physical taking over 14 years to create. Software is about the only thing.

Yes, better to trust an upstanding "unbiased" organization like CBS who doesn't engage in anything fake. Right?

UK doctors leave 722 objects inside patients in 1 year

I would have that patient(*) arrested for trying to steal a complete surgery unit...

As per TFA (as I only read them once every while, when I read it I quote it), it just states 6 issues (security, user freedom) and says "don't do it too much, don't do it too little"). Useless, because the point is knowing exactly what is too much or too little.

*: I know it says "patients"... but the joke is worth it..

UK doctors leave 722 objects inside patients in 1 year

I'm willing to bet there are no terrorists whatsoever, this is all just mass hysteria, induced by opportunistic politics, grabbing of attention and votes, selling tons of security equipment, services, jobs, contracts, news, etc.

Regarding your bet, don't give up your day job.

Maybe you haven't heard, but an organization called Al Qaeda declared war on the United States, and essentially the rest of the world for not following their blighted form of Islam. You can read some of the goals of their leader, Osama Bin Laden, in Bin Laden's letter to America. As you can see, he has a fundamental hostility to democracy, non-Islamic religious belief, and many of our basic freedoms. He demands that we convert to Islam, give up democracy, drop the separation of church and state, and change many aspects of our culture or he and his minions will keep trying to kill us. He demands that we stop drinking alcohol, charging interest on bank loans, start separating the sexes, punishing homosexuality, oppress Jews, etc.

The sort term goal they have is to overthrow the governments in Arab & Muslim countries to install religious dictatorships to impose their narrow brand of Islam. They also hope to limit the spread of freedom and other "Western" ideas. Ultimately they plan to take over the world in a reborn Islamic super state. It sounds far fetched, but that is their goal. They understand that it might take 1,000 years, and that they are just moving the ball forward.

You can see a limited list of their handiwork below:

The most recent attempted bombing
The Underwear bomber
African Embassy Bombing
9/11 suicide attacks
Bali bombing
Madrid bombing
7/7 bombing in London
Another of the countless bombings in Iraq
Pakistan hotel bombing
Hotel bombing in Jordan
The "shoe bomber", and his current hijinks
Plan to attack Wembley stadium
Plan to bring down seven airliners
Attempted bombing in Germany

PS - In order to cut down on the confusion, a simple rule of them you can use is that "mass hysteria" doesn't tend to leave craters and stip the walls off buildings, collapse buildings, or rips bodies apart by shrapnel.

Breaking news: MinLove reminds us that Al Qaeda still loves us, has always loved us, and many of our best friends, and wants to love us even even more in future! Al Qaeda can only love us. We should meditate on why they do not love us as often as other people. Make your holiday plans now, destinations are filling up!!

I saw that Bruce Willis movie ... it wasn't that good. It was all based on a '97 speculative tech article that was based on a speculative post coldwar war game exercise that might as well have included zombies in its ridiculousness. They had to come up with something since they no longer had a red bogeyman that could do an unknown number of things to the west ... well, until we saw that all they had hiding behind their huge iron wall was a tiny limp dick.

That's not to say we're not vulnerable to things like ... um ... box cutters? That's why we have to take off our shoes and get our junk felt up before we get on a plane. Even though it actually won't even prevent anything.

A bunch of us amateur astronomers pwned it. We imaged it in UV, optical, NIR, IR, microwave and audio too. We tapped directly into its downlink, and guess what ... Turns out this whole thing is a cover for a top secret military mission, possibly to intercept or interact with alien ships lurking at the Lagrange Points.

First off, turns out the Bolometer, officially allegedly used to measure Cosmic Microwave BG, seems to be doing nothing of the sort. It's just continuously looping this music. Either the Big Bang is a dance party gone uncontrollably wild, and/or God is South American, and/or this top secret military mission was partly funded by Latin American drug money, built with Gitmo prison labor.

Tellingly, the spacecraft itself in optical imagery iooks like this galaxy. Obviously this is a rather pathetic camouflage of some sort to hide the real mission from public scrutiny, or a telling clue as to its Latin drug money financing source. OR, the said aliens come from said galaxy so our military is just being friendly. Take your pick as to the likely truth - all of the above.

Also a whistle blower revealed that the subcontract to camouflage the spacecraft was outsourced to this now bankrupt Indian IT shop, which in turn was bought up by this other Indian company that makes civilian and military SUVs! That explaines why, bizzarely sometimes the spacecraft looks like thisthis SUV, at other times like this older one which was made under license by the same Indian company! This too, points either to the military nature of this mission, or it's just a glaring bug in the camouflage code, coming as it is from habitually incompetent Indian coders.

Imagine, if Indian outsourcers screw up a mega military project in this fashion, how can the American taxpayer trust them with our credit cards and jobs?

In higher resolution IR images, we could clearly read the mission code name painted in invisible ink. It read Operation Bolero, also clearly indicating its military origin!

Interestingly, hidden right next to the mission name was a tiny nude picture of the actress Bo Derek from this movie. Clearly, only a sex starved military rookie or an Indian geek (also sex starved) or more likely, a Gitmo prison laborer could slip such a tasteless Easter Egg on a super secret military mission!

All this evidence - admittedly circumstantial - clearly supports our hunch that this is a top secret military mission, illegally outsourced to India in defiance of congressional regulations - not to mention at grave risk to the security of homeland - and possibly financed by drug money from Latin America!!

This needless to say, is a humongous threat!! Evil FUD against righteous FLOSS!!

Wake up netizens!! Exercise your 2nd Ammo rights and load up on its name sake, ammoooo! Who else can defend this great nation from a grave threat - of alien invasion, Latin American Drug peddlers, or worse, our own military in collusion with aliens - but the self-righteous Joe Public armed with hunting rifles! Think of the children! Who will save them from such evil resident at the Lagrange Points!

Wake up! Before its too late and Earth turns into Soviet Alienia, and clocks are forced to freeze at 1984; where outlandish Sombrero Hats top you, and the white noise drone of the Cosmic Microwave BG is broadcast from loudspeakers at every street corners!!

We amateur astronomers, of course plan to climb down pronto from roof tops and retreat to our mom's Windows-less basements, where we plan to dance the Bolero with our Linux Powered RealDolls until the threat passes.

Plus, the US allows Pakistan to spend aid money on weapons against India

Is that you, Sify?

From what I have been reading, it looks to me like the situation may be even worse in the UK and Australia than in the USA. Although I don't know if the UK and Australia have anything like the USA work visa scam.

These are all recent articles:

Barclays to cut 1,800 U.K. IT staffers in offshoring move
> "London-based Barclays PLC today disclosed plans to offshore 1,800 of the 2,800 IT jobs at its U.K. operations to locations in Singapore, Hungary and India over the next three years."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=outsourcing&articleId=9110183&taxonomyId=60

Oz bank to offshore 400 IT jobs to India
> "National Australia Bank is expected to send another 400 information technology jobs to India by the end of the year."
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=41867

Aviva sells offshoring operations to WNS for 115 mln pounds
> "LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Aviva Plc. said it has sold its offshoring operations to India-based outsourcing services provider WNS Holdings Ltd. for 115 million pounds in cash."
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=41867

More bank jobs move to India
> "THE National Australia Bank could more than halve its local technology workforce over the next five years, as it sends jobs offshore as part of its massive technology transformation program, codenamed Neos."
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24020156-15306,00.html

Make the most of IT
> "US versus UK"
> "Bank of America or Citigroup have done a significant amount of offshoring. But three insurance companies, including Aviva in the UK, have offshored 15 per cent each or more of their work."
> "In the US, no company has offshored over 7 per cent of their work. Headcount-wise, US companies may have a lead, but in terms of the quantum of work, the UK companies have demonstrated far greater amount of offshoring."
http://sify.com/finance/it-bpo/fullstory.php?id=14715010

Seems that the UK and Australia also get the same BS hype:

Offshoring to India creates jobs in U.K.
> "Outsourcing work by British companies to India does not cause job losses but boosts employment, according to a research by economists at the University of Nottingham."
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/11/stories/2008071156181700.htm

The task of this piece on the front page of today's Washington Post is to establish the believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon design.

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The Swiss 'businessmen', Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, are alleged to have sold several nuke related stuff to Lybia and other countries.

There is more to the Tinner story, but for now let me concentrate on the date. The WaPo says the laptop has been discovered in 2006. But Tinner was under CIA control at least since the 2003 bust of nuclear related stuff on board of the 'BBC China'.

The German magazine Der Spiegel had a big story about this in March 2006:

Two circumstances could prove to be Lerch's undoing: first, the fact that the German ship "BBC China" was intercepted in October 2003 carrying a cargo of containers filled with nuclear technology headed for Libya and, second, that the incident prompted a panicked Gadhafi to disclose the names of all those who had supplied the Libyans with material and expertise for their nuclear program.
...
The authorities caught up with Gotthard Lerch, who Tahir calls his "main contractor," in Switzerland. They also arrested members of the Tinner family -- Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco -- all on the suspicion of having built parts for Gadhafi's nuclear weapons program in return for 15 to 20 million Swiss francs.

Tinner was flipped by the CIA at least since the 'BBC China' event but likely even earlier. Another man taking part in the alleged smuggling was also turned by the CIA or has worked for the CIA all along.

Indeed it somehow seems like everybody involved in the issue was somehow related to the CIA.

The usual story is that the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Kahn was the one who ran a smuggling network. That may not be true at all. Khan denies having been involved in such. A new book asserts that it was then Prime Minister of Pakistan Bhutto who personally gave Pakistani nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for North Korean No Dong missiles for the Pakistani army.

A Dutch court somehow 'lost' legal files about the Khan case and the CIA likely had a hand in this too. The CIA also successfully pressed (link in German) the Swiss government to destroy information it had about the Tinner case. Tinner will thereby never be convicted.

Now please explain to me how people arrested in 2003 and flipped by the CIA at least since then managed to keep nuclear plans on a laptop that were somehow found only in 2006?

This whole story stinks from A to Z

When you use use this : http://shopping.sify.com/shopping/product_detail.p hp?pid=13175533&prodid=14195964

"The demand continues to grow in this sector, and I suspect that online degrees will gain increasing currency because traditional schools will simply become less attractive to those that don't want to put up with everything from weird antics of professors to parking problems."

Here's something you may want to read

The summary author would have been more correct in linking to the following story rather than attempting to make commentary by selecting the link they did: http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14200860

It's not "another take" they link to, but rather "another story". Related, yes, but lets try a little harder (yes, it's slashdot, etc, etc but it doesn't hurt to try)

No need to apologize - your bit of speculation is spot on. I'm Indian and the Indian film industry used to be awash in underworld money - it's gotten a bit better in recent years, but still is quite significant:

http://sify.com/movies/bollywood/fullstory.php?id= 13294051
Of the 143 Hindi films (excluding dubbed ones) released in 2000, barely 5 or 7 were funded by the underworld. Of the 150 films of 2001 or 140 of 2002, not more than 8 or 10 in each of the two years could have been made with funds from questionable sources. How can 4 or 5 per cent be taken as representing the entire production sector?

Isn't India a 3rd world nation, which even gets aid from my government (US)?

"Tsunami hits Asia
India rejects foreign aid for relief work "

http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=13 638871

For the quarter ending March 31, the Redmond, Wash.-based company earned $2.56 billion, or 23 cents per share, up from $1.32 billion, or 12 cents per share, a year ago.

I just find it comforting, with my deflating techie salary and rising energy prices, that at least somebody is having a good time.

this and this

It's getting more and more competitive, though. For every 1 tech job in India, there are usually over 500 candidates. Firms in India can afford to be picky.

If it were just about throwing people in front of computers, then the quality of Indian software engineers would be lacking. But evidence shows the opposite. In 2003, 1671 American firms applied to the Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute for Level 5 CMM (Capability Maturity Model) certification. This is the Holy Grail of software quality certifications. Now compare those 1681 US applications with the mere 238 Indian firms that applied. Yet, out of the 78 certifications that were actually granted, 50 of the certifications went to Indian firms.

Indian firms are becoming serious players in the field of software engineering. It's not just about cheap labour. Sure, you may have some mindless codemonkey positions available like we have here in the states, but those aren't the jobs that people are after (here or there). Those are the firms that take care of their employees. Have you seen the office parks in Bangalore? Electronic City looks like it was airlifted straight out of our mid-1990s Silicon Valley. India's tech economy is *growing* while ours is drifting along at best. People may be making 20k a year now (which translates to 80k when you account for the much lower cost of living), but salaries are steadily increasing, the social and political situation is slowly improving, and soon there will be fewer reasons to move here. After all, how many programmers from Singapore or Japan have you seen immigrating to the states lately?

mywdt is expensive to call countries like India. I use Reliance

No wonder, when you are routing the calls illegally. Snippet from here

[snip]

Reliance Infocomm is alleged to have routed international calls on the networks of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited under the garb of domestic traffic. As a result, the two PSUs lost out on their due share of access deficit charges (ADC) on international calls.

[/snip]

When an internatinal call lands in India, the party which brings the call is supposed to pay a certain amount (10 cents per minute) to the terminating network. But Reliance showed the international traffic as local/national traffic and got away without paying any charges. Recently, they were asked to cough up US$ 50m as fine.

I live in Chennai(Madras),(Capital City of the State Tamil Nadu - the region worst affected by the Tsunami in India ). For us, this is the first time ever something like a Tsunami hits our coast. The earthquake itself was not deadly but the tides alone were responsible for the death of more than 1000 people according to some reports. Since this happened early in the morning and the day being a sunday, not many people were awake at that time. In my city alone almost 100 poor fishermen who live in the huts along the seashore were washed away. Coastal regions in the Southern parts of my state where even more affected - a lot many were drowned in the flash floods. The fact that I was sleeping unaware of the whole thing at that time, less than a kilometre away from the sea, sends a shiver down my spine.
You can find some pictures here.

You must not drink http://sify.com/news/offbeat/fullstory.php?id=1354 833 Busch beer.

In Bombay city, India, the high cost of Internet access used to mean rations on daily Internet usage. Monthly charges used to be something like Rs 2500 -- ISP charges + phone usage

Last year, my father signed up for a broadband service. It is faster than 56K (speed varies coz it is a shared line) and costs around Rs 1000 a month. The savings are in avoiding those per call phone charges.

Infant mortality skyrocketed in the rest of Iraq during the sanctions years. Lack of access to medicines, clean water, basic nutrition.

TheGuardian says that your claim of 500,000 children being killed is false.

Of course, it is a shame that Saddam spent the money for their food and medicine on building large lavish palaces, buying weapons, building illegal missiles, and stashing billions abroad. Don't you agree?

There is little we Europeans can do directly to change NASA's decision which, apparently, is final.

Screw NASA; what about an online fundraiser (paypal, anyone?) to raise money for a Hubble servicing contract with China?

Or, maybe, NASA could raise some cash just selling Hubble outright on EBay? China or India buys it, services it, and does a lease-back with the UN who rents it out to international astronomers?

See, that's the kind of planetary cooperation the extraterrestrials are looking for to invite us into the galactic federation....:-)

According to this story, the shuttle mission was cancelled because of NASA's new focus of going to mars, given to us by the vision of George W Bush.

While it would only take $40 million to service hubble, $3.5 million is alot easier to raise than the additional $38.5 million for hubble.

So the choice is not really between fix up Saturn V or service hubble but rather between man on mars or servicing hubble.

What would you rather have, a man on mars collecting samples (that may be done by a robot for a fraction of the cost) or all the scientific discoveries of the universe that are continuosly made by hubble?

It's a safe bet that because of George W. Bush "man on mars" initiative any Saturn V repairs are going to be completely off the radar as well, unless maybe you get a bunch of schoolchildren to toss in their dollars (as they did for the statue of liberty).

If I were an astromoner, I'd be pretty mad too.

From this article:

[The crater] was only revealed by close-up pictures of the site taken by another NASA orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, minutes after the British probe was supposed to have landed last Thursday.

"minutes after" ????

here's a mapthat shows a couple (from really far away).

Isidis Planitia is at the equator, 1/4 in from the right - there's a big crater under the "a", but you can see others...

and here's a close-up

The gray circular area on the right, in the middle, is the area in question - the crater you can see under the letter "a" in the previous map is the one that's just barely cut off on the right in this one... I think the one they think the probe is in is the one slightly north and about an inch to the west of that one.

I'm not sure when these were taken, but I was looking at them back in the spring, so they've been up for a while, i.e., not since only "minutes after" the probe disappeared...

AND, as you can see, it's very easy to tell that there are craters there - and I'm not even a scientist, nor do I have access to ALL the pix of mars...

-bs

Come down to India. Here in Bangalore there are plenty of hotspots though most are operated by Sify. Sify in my neighborhood charges Rs. 60 (aprox US$ 1.4) per hour which is good if your are on the move otherwise I prefer my Rs. 900 (approx. US$ 20) per month broadband at home.

Electronic voting done right in India

A quick google brought this up. Facts on China's Shenzhou spacecraft

Very good point, only tarnished by the fact that per capita income is apparently calculated by taking an average of the GDP over the population. Actually, I'm not sure of the exact formula [my training is in CS, not Econ ;-) ], but the point is, per capita income probably does not depend on declared incomes.

A better way to explain the discrepancy is by considering regional clusters; states such as Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh have, in the past 10 years, shown a SGDP growth similar to what you would have seen in the so-called "Tiger" economies in South East Asia. (Indeed, Maharashtra was considered a more competitive environment than the whole of India in a recent study; lost the link, sorry about that). While at the same time, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and others house 45% of India's poverty, and contribute the maximum to India's population growth.

That is to say, while you hail cabs in Chennai and Hyderabad by calling them up on the cabbie's mobile phones, you can easily get mugged and kidnapped in Patna, possibly by an elected Member of the Legislative Assembly.

Welcome to 21st century India, we're like this only.

Saddam got key to Detroit

Saddam's wife, daughters safe in Syria:

I couldn't find this on CNN

Washington, March 24

Two US cruise missiles misfired on Turkish territory, without causing any reported victims, the Pentagon said late Sunday.

"Two Tomahawk cruise missiles misfired, landing on an unpopulated area in Turkey. There are no reported casualties," Pentagon spokesman Major James Cassella said, citing the US Central Command.

The first missile came down around 15.30 GMT in open country about one kilometre from the village of Ozveren, leaving a one-metre deep hole, said the governor of Sanliurfa province, which is around 100 km from the Syrian border.

The second missile fell some three hours later near Viransehir, about 200 km from where the first impacted, according to Turkish news agency Anatolia.

Turkish military authorities have begun an investigation. Turkey on Friday opened its airspace to US aircraft heading to Iraq.

Didn't you hear?

Gore's not running.

Odd, a quick google groups search turned up these on the first results page alone:

Hate Crimes Against American Muslims Skyrocket
COLORADO HATE CRIMES ROSE AFTER TERRORIST ATTACK
Spurt in hate crimes against US Muslims
Hate crimes against Muslims increase

The times of india.

Indian Express

NDTV news.

Sify news

Rediff News

Hindustan Times

Internet News

Cnet.com

Four solar flares and a pair of powerful magnetic gas clouds spawned in a monster sunspot were headed for Earth on Friday and could affect power systems, satellites and some radio transmissions, a top space weather forecaster said.

Story

Most of the search-engine hits on my rocket engine patent disclosure page have been from SIFYSEARCH -- a web portal in India.