(1) Does our representatives care about what we think or what the majority of their constituents think?
They wont if we are the minority, and surely an Anti-DMCA bill wont be debated among the majority of its consituents as most of them dont know/dont care. But what if we as a collective, helps the general public in understanding what this bill means, how beneficial it could be for them as well as the ability to innovate, then we might have a chance.
Also by performing as a collective, there is a bigger chance of us being picked up by local media and increases our chances of being noticed by the public. Otherwise either they wont care, or even if we do make an impact, it will be far less of a magnitude.
Come on, people. This community can boast of the multitudes of free thinkers and informed citizens that posts in this forum. Only this forum can boast of the thousands of clicks that can shred a gigantic server like it were paper. Even 1/3rd of the people who post here were willing to stand shoulder to shoulder and walk down the streets of D.C, the world would sit up and take notice. Dont underestimate our power.
Instead of debating whether this would pass or what hurdles it will have to clear to pass, can we talk about what I can do to help these guys?
And yes, we can be cynical and weep all we want about how money wins in the end, but how many of us did a darn thing about it?? If someone wants to put together an Anti-DMCA rally in D.C, heck, I will be with you shoulder to shoulder..
Lets not whine about how we are defenseless against the MPAA lobby's millions, lets talk about how we plan to kick their ass!
This is similar to my argument about outsourcing.. When news break out that another firm has outsourced to India/Vietnam/China/Russia, there is a sudden outpour of anger and indignation, but once the last post is written, no one seems to care.. What we need is a permanent revolution (yes I am well aware of who said that!)..
What a tragedy it will be, to squander what we have achieved today.
What a tragedy it will be for all of us to destroy earth with out ever setting foot on another planet in the name of space exploration.
What a tragedy it will be for us to wither away and die, our gaze constant at the dwindling light in the horizon, watching all that we could have discovered and knowing all that we missed.
What a tragedy it will be for our sons and daughters who look upon us to set an example, who look upon us to lead and instead find us fighting in the name of God
What a tragedy that other civilizations, alien to ours, will oneday reflect upon what we were capable of, but miserably failed.
I dont follow this guy's articles/rants much, but he is basically regurgitating everything everyone has been talking about and cramming down everyone else's throats for a long time.
(1) Microsoft Loves developers who code on MS technologies - Sure, thats why they reel them in with swags. They lost a ton to Java, and they alienated another bunch when they moved to.NET and didnt provide a straight forward migration to.NET from VB6.0 and other crap that they built. They expected that since all their developers loved them to death, it would have been easy to just port them from the antiquated VB6.0/5.0 to VB.NET. The industry/developers didnt move fast enough for them, which is where Microsoft suffered.
(2)Compatibility - This was bound to happen, one day. With the rest of the world/industry/developers willing to sacrifice backward compatibility for the sake for something new/better, MS also realized that in order for them to move forward and keep pace, they have to do the same. Sure, they will have to piss some people off, but heck, they assumed the advantages would far outweigh the negatives. Wrong! But I am glad that Microsoft decided to shake free from the outdated Windows API model and embrace the new, and thereby have the balls to sacrifice some backward compatibility. You cant keep everyone happy for the rest of their lives. Some tradeoffs need to happen. You cant survive otherwise.
So what is this guy talking about other than whats already blatantly obvious to the rest of the world?
SBC came up with the creative scheme where it was cheaper for you to go through them for all three services instead of going to seperate firms. This law will force them to first of all split these services up and price them differently. Its purely up to them whether to stick with the high price these individual services would in turn cost or to price them competitively so that the customer gets the best of both worlds.
When I was comparing DSL and Cable, the reason I didnt choose BellSouth in Atlanta was I had to sign up for a phone line if I just preferred DSL. I have two cellphones and they pretty much fulfill every need. I shouldnt have to go for a bundle unless I needed them both.
I would say its SBC's choice from now on as to whether they charge their customers the humongous price of all three services combined or to bring the individual prices down to a better competitive rate. The price of the bundled solution may go up a bit, but it would help the consumer in the long run in providing him with far more choices than he originally did.
is a word better suited to Hotmail which still holds a tight noose around its subscribers, zapping them and their accounts everyonce in a while when the account goes above limit.
I forked over 20 bucks the last year in to Bill's coffers but I dont plan to do so now that Yahoo and Google has services far better.
Religious Freedom existed in my state far before it did anywhere else. Historically, Christianity existed there right around AD 52 when Saint Thomas purportedly arrived in Kerala and started converting people to Christianity.
Surprisingly, even though there were Hindu Kings and a flourishing muslim community (yup even then) this new religion was awarded the same respect and freedom like all others, allowing it to flourish. Also around AD 500, the first set of Jewish refugees reached our shores as well, fleeing from persecution at the hand of Nebuccadnezzer and set up a synagogue as well.
Even now, despite all the crap that happen world over between Muslims, Christians and Jews, all three live pretty harmoniously across this little strip of land.
Writing so much about where I come from, fuck, I feel like going home..
Since most of the population is still Hindu, conversions are usually from Hindu to Christian. Conversations are still a very touchy topic and to be objective about it, you need to understand both aspects.
For one, the people who are being converted below to the lowest rung of the social/economic ladder, poor and has absolutely no medical care which they can afford. Christian organizations and missionaries who work through them, provide them with basic care and medicine as well as educate them as well. Now this part I like, its the conversion that comes at the end of it which I dont agree with. Especially the ones which are purportedly based on monetary promises. But can you really blame people wanting to live a better life by giving up their religion, which didnt really help them in the first place? Understand that Caste system was rampant (and still is to a lesser extent) across the country and even though the lower castes were Hindu's they couldnt gain access to any of the temples (I am proud enough to be part of the state which abolished this heinous act by allowing religious freedom as well allowing people to worship in temples which they previously didnt have access to)
Now, Hindu religious leaders (some of them) oppose these conversions, yet I dont necessarily agree with their viewpoint. They really didnt care about these people and now that they are converted, all of a sudden they become their best friend. Some of the newly converted are re-converted (which is funny, does the Hindu Gods care?).
Anyway this is probably the first time where Hindu leaders and Christian leaders clashed and once again certain political leaders were first to take advantage by banning religious conversions across the state.
Now a bit about the state which is possibly the most progressive, left wing state which has sweepingly introduced many socio-economic reforms across the state and which started many a cultural revolution across the country. You can find more info about it at Kerala Tourism and Wikipedia
The temple and mosque you are talking about is the Babri Masjid Temple. I googled for some objective information relevant to the controversy regarding it and I found it at Wikipedia
Now, this screwed up temple/mosque caused religious tensions to flare up in my land which had none since the partition time (a lot were killed when Indian and Pakistan were split). Fanatics on both side and from outside India along with Politicians looking for mileage took advantage of this and this resulted in mindless killing and riots, but still were sporadic and localized and hardly ever were reflected on normal lives elsewhere in India where Hindus and Muslims lived quite contently.
This incident single handedly caused religious relations to take a downturn and has been behind pretty much every other riot we had to suffer across the land. Still, whenever we do have one of them, it is still localized (means Hindus and Muslims all over dont start killing each other and do employ reason and wisdom before lunging at each others throats) and put to rest soon after.
Now Christians (wimps that we are;) ), want no part of it. Christians in India, relatively have been more peaceful than all the other religions in India, but recently have started getting some flak about the religious conversions taking place where they have missionaries, being accused of them being forced conversions (not physically, but with the promise of monetary benefits).
That being said, India is far from the cauldron of religious fanaticism its accused of by the Western and Far Right/Religious media. And Christians have to bloody live with the fact that they cant "save everyone". Rest of the world dont really give a flying fsck about being saved. They just want to live the rest of their lives being honest human beings, living a happy life with their families, having enough to provide food and shelter, with out getting bombed the fuck out! Sadly, not everyone sees it that way.
I was drinking coffee when I read this and it came out of my nose:). Not a pretty sight especially when you are at work.
Are you finished? Well, Allow me to retort !
This three way race going on in India you talk about, I hope someone can add a catalyst to it, in order to speed it up, so that in a few years we have taken care of 1/6th of the World population magically. Then U.S can invade India and start eating curry/rice with out paying for it (Sorry we dont have much oil).
I am a Christian (albeit not a practising one) from the Southern tip of India, a state where Christians, Muslims and Hindus coexist happily 99% of the time( We have a few skirmishes once in few years and then everything go back to normal).
I am sorry, but I know instances of where there have been sporadic violence between Hindus and Muslims (recently in Gujrat) but I wouldnt term it as religious cleansing! Also, there was violence against Sikhs (Sikh extremism) in the 80s but for the last 15 years there have been practically none.
And for sure, Christians had got licked in a few parts around the country, but the number of Christians killed in the name of religion across the country is probably a handful. And considering we have a Billion people to govern and keep happy, its a miracle more are not being banged up!
And the comment about Christians killing Sikhs, that was pretty funny too.
So my friend, I dont know which part of the world you hail from, but you definitely need to stop reading TBN or whatever other religious network you getting your feed from, cause unless you can get your ass down to India and get some firsthand evidence of the ethnic cleansing you talk about, then we collectively are going to kick your ass back to where your crawled out of!
You dont have to look very far to find Christians fighting Christians.. Protestants against Catholics actually. And it was as worse that you would find in Middle East. They were bombing civilians, killing kids, shooting soldiers..all the fun stuff.
So yes, Religion, no matter which, makes us all blind if taken in too large a quantity.
Then again, Religion is not the core of all evil, its people, who interprets it to their needs, their wishes. Get rid of people and all Religions will co-exist happily.
You must be talking about Tresspasser, a phenomenally screwed up game which boasted of its realistic and powerful physics engine, but ended up as a frustrating exercise in futility for everyone who tried to play it.
Simple functions such as picking up an item took minutes instead of seconds and required careful manouvering using your hand!!!! Also most of the puzzles were about stacking boxes on top of one another and halfway through you were bound to push one over and you had to start all over again (since all of them will topple down as well thanks to the "realistic" physics engine). In the end you wanted to feed the entire game development team to the raptors, only if you could find one, since they were darn rare. Also you would only come across them one by one (even though they were pack hunters).
Anyway I had a ceremonial burning of "Tresspasser" the very next day and I had played probably half an hour of it and only then did I come across this little gem of a review from Gamespot.
"Trespasser is the most frustrating game I have ever played. Of all the games I have ever reviewed, this one has been the most disappointing. Of all the games I have played, this is the one I am most adamant about never wanting to play again. I don't want to sound mean-spirited, but all gamers should know that Trespasser is a frustrating game, filled with boring gameplay and annoying bugs. It is not fun. It is monotonous and tedious to the point of nausea."
Surprisingly if you scroll down on the review, you would see another person (other than me) who bought the game and chose to review it with a rating of 7 which leads me to believe that it were the head of "Dreamworks" or Mr.Hammond!
I have WEP turned on for my wi-fi network and turning it on is painless, effective and having no prior knowledge of wi-fi was easier than any other task that I accomplished.
Worst part was finding all these insecure networks popping up all across my apartment community with names such as "default", "linksys", "Diablo", "Sourabh and Sonali", "choke-the-chicken", "mamasboy", "ilovematures". If these idiots can be half as creative in setting up encryption, it would be worth it. But then again, I dont want them to get too smart either, cause for one, its easier for people like me to piggy back on to tide us over before the comcast dude sets up the new 3MBS pipe.
Still, it boggles my mind that these people would protect their PC's with the latest anti-virus software with the toughest passwords and still leave the biggest door open for everyone to come and play around. Pretty soon, i am gonna have to visit my neighbours with a clue bat
The CEO had this Physician buddy to whom he owed a favor and since I was pretty much twiddling thumbs between projects (and playing copious amounts of Quake) it landed on my lap.
I had to take a VB Form based App (this was way back in 98) which was essentially for a Doc, which takes him through a million forms with questions (with a liberal dab of option buttons/check boxes/list boxes and combos) which he would choose and choose and after what seemed an eternity, will finally spew out some BS in the last form which sounded like what the disease was, the symptom list and what he should do.
Anyway, the problem for me was (did I tell you that it had a million forms of all sizes) all the labels/text boxes/frames/ FUCK!! all the controls had dark green/purple/red/radiant blue/deep yellow/bright orange and every conceivable color as ForeColor and Back Color. Which meant that if the Patient even saw the UI, he would go color blind for a week. So I was assigned the task to clean it up and not touch the functionality. Ofcourse I pleaded with the CEO to let me rewrite the piece of shit software (in better words), but they wont let me. Why? It was the bastard's pet project, so I had to clean it up and thats it. And Did I tell you that there was not even a fucking DB used to store all the information being entered, it went in to a Text file. I guess the sonofabitch while learning VB on his own, didnt buy a book advanced enough to teach him the 123's of Database Management.
Anyway, to top it all, I had to give justification about my hours to my Project Manager. I toiled day in and day out (to the extent that I promised myself never to touch the UI ever again), and cleaned up the mess to a point where if someone looks at the UI, he or she doesnt clutch their heart and keel over (Think Dilbert!)
All through the two weeks it took me, I had to suffer all my counterparts sitting around me coding in C++ and passing smart ass comments on how the backcolor of TEXTBOX1 didnt match the Forecolor of LABEL1.
Why is it that everytime *another* corporate decides to ditch their bonafide american employee and jump in to bed with an indian firm so that he can save 20% and earn 50% more bonus for the Senior staff, all of the slashdot crowd and rest of the civilized society starts bad mouthing the people across the ocean who does their job for a fraction of the original cost?
Why is it that your Indian counterparts end up the bad apple, while you safely chose to ignore the people who made the decision to outsource and the govt who chose to standby and watch. Is it because that its easier to do so?
What happened to the path of civil disobedience? What happened to when people disagreed with the policies of the Govt chose to clog the streets with political rallies, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others and march in unison?
What happened to "lets start a campaign against firm "A" who has decided to ditch loyalty for quick cash" and actually follow through with it by actively campaigning against the corporations who chose to fire its employees, stash their millions in Cayman Islands by withholding tax and reward their CXO's with millions in bonus and stocks.
Nope, its far too easier to just blame the Indians!
I heard someone say "If you are not offended atleast once when you drive through your neighborhood, then you are not living in a free society".
Cant believe a nipple would do this much damage.
And dont get me started on the news media who wants to put two stars between "F" and "k". I thank them for making it complex enough so that toddlers and teenagers wouldnt understand along with the rest of the population.
I have nothing against US having its own policies as to the lineage and status of the person who is chosen to run/ruin this country. Not my country, not my President.
Now, instead of biting on to Immigration and President ship, shouldnt you accept the fact that you were completely clueless about what you knew about India, its culture, its society and how we treat our women?
Seriously, for my sake, start reading up on India with an objective mind. Sure, you will find a lot you will disagree with, but I hope at the same time it will open your eyes towards a civilization and people that had its roots for over thousands of years, long before the Roman Empire.
We dont like to linger in our past and dote on our history. Same way, we do not take lightly anyone trying to walk shod over something that is sacred to its people. Do not pass judgement on something of which you understand so little.
I already addressed this "cruelty to women" in the same thread elsewhere, so heres the link. Agree or not, its up to you.
Now, you speak volumes about how we abuse and devalue our women.. (Devalue is such a perfect word!). Would you care to switch on your TV?? Hmm.. how about you look at the print media, the Ads, the Sports. Everywhere you see nothing but SKIN!. Now after what America and its people has done to degrade and devalue the image of women, I am not sure there is anything left for us poor Indians to do!:)
Seriously dude, climb out of your hole and visit India for once. You will find it not much different than any other place you been to. Dont take what you read/watch on TV, at face value. Dont you want to find out for yourself???
You really need to stop believing what others tell you and get a job in India.
Now you may pick on the U.S. and call it silly things as 'former land of the free'. But how is India any grander in that respect?
Now, If I dont agree with my President (Or Prime Minister or any Govt Official), I have the freedom to express my thoughts, in the middle of the street if I prefer.
Try the same here and they will lock you away for being a terrorist
Bloody Foreigners??? What are you? Can you trace your lineage all the way to the ship that brought the first set of immigrants to U.S? Was that your Great Great...Great Grand Father on that bloody ship?? If not, then shut the hell up! You are no different than any other immigrant in this nation.
And yes, we do trust our "Bloody Foreigners". I see that you on the other hand do not. Which is sad because you really should peek your head out in to the real world more often.
Now now.. lets not issue blanket statements shall we..
From those last two lines, you come off as someone who absolutely has no understanding nor knowledge of India, its culture and its people.
Sure, I agree that women are abused in various parts of this country, but women arent obviously hated!! Remember, we had a woman as our Prime Minister when the rest of the world was still letting their women run around in Bikinis and swinging to pop culture:) (Yes, that is a blanket statement).
The biggest problem in India is that there are still an immensely large population that has no education, has no healthcare, has no idea how to stand up for their rights. Corrupt politicians are not delegated to the Western world, we have them as well.
The Hindu Religion (Despite being a Christian myself, I have immense respect for Hinduism and for other religions as well), does not look down upon the women, the so called "holy" individuals who wanted to bend their religion to their needs and wishes, decreed that women were inferior. As a religion and among its scriptures and texts, Hinduism has utmost regard for Woman as a Mother, Wife, Sister, Friend and an Equal. And believe me, this religion and the indian culture has existed for thousand more years than the Western Civilization and Christianity (heck, Christianity came to India way before it reached the Western world, in 52B.C when St. Thomas reached the southern tip of India). So yes, this is a Land which is steeped in culture, which has treated women with utmost respect in all corners of it, and yet has been vandalized and abused by people in power, by religious nuts, who had their own agendas.
And when United States (formerly known as Land of the Free) shudders at the thought of letting immigrants who werent born here, having a shot at being President, India has no qualms in letting the Wife of a Former Prime Minister who was born and raised in Italy, get a swipe at becoming the nation's Prime Minister. Also, voting rights for Women, We didnt had to think twice about that either.
Oh one more thing when you are still trying to comprehend.. Gay Marriage is Legal in India (we just dont let them fornicate, now thats another story!):)
So please crawl back to your trailer and show not your face and your intellect to the rest of us (That if you didnt know was surely a blanket statement, but meant solely for you)
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, Arnold will take a break from being the Governor of CA and will be test driving this beauty..
Seriously, what better character to fire this weapon than our very own Governator?
Alright you Illegal Aliens..line up.. preferably in a straight line..Hold...
I had a different opinion.
(1) Does our representatives care about what we think or what the majority of their constituents think?
They wont if we are the minority, and surely an Anti-DMCA bill wont be debated among the majority of its consituents as most of them dont know/dont care. But what if we as a collective, helps the general public in understanding what this bill means, how beneficial it could be for them as well as the ability to innovate, then we might have a chance.
Also by performing as a collective, there is a bigger chance of us being picked up by local media and increases our chances of being noticed by the public. Otherwise either they wont care, or even if we do make an impact, it will be far less of a magnitude.
Come on, people. This community can boast of the multitudes of free thinkers and informed citizens that posts in this forum. Only this forum can boast of the thousands of clicks that can shred a gigantic server like it were paper. Even 1/3rd of the people who post here were willing to stand shoulder to shoulder and walk down the streets of D.C, the world would sit up and take notice. Dont underestimate our power.
Instead of debating whether this would pass or what hurdles it will have to clear to pass, can we talk about what I can do to help these guys?
And yes, we can be cynical and weep all we want about how money wins in the end, but how many of us did a darn thing about it?? If someone wants to put together an Anti-DMCA rally in D.C, heck, I will be with you shoulder to shoulder..
Lets not whine about how we are defenseless against the MPAA lobby's millions, lets talk about how we plan to kick their ass!
This is similar to my argument about outsourcing.. When news break out that another firm has outsourced to India/Vietnam/China/Russia, there is a sudden outpour of anger and indignation, but once the last post is written, no one seems to care.. What we need is a permanent revolution (yes I am well aware of who said that!)..
If we forget this moment..
What a tragedy it will be, to squander what we have achieved today.
What a tragedy it will be for all of us to destroy earth with out ever setting foot on another planet in the name of space exploration.
What a tragedy it will be for us to wither away and die, our gaze constant at the dwindling light in the horizon, watching all that we could have discovered and knowing all that we missed.
What a tragedy it will be for our sons and daughters who look upon us to set an example, who look upon us to lead and instead find us fighting in the name of God
What a tragedy that other civilizations, alien to ours, will oneday reflect upon what we were capable of, but miserably failed.
I dont follow this guy's articles/rants much, but he is basically regurgitating everything everyone has been talking about and cramming down everyone else's throats for a long time.
.NET and didnt provide a straight forward migration to .NET from VB6.0 and other crap that they built. They expected that since all their developers loved them to death, it would have been easy to just port them from the antiquated VB6.0/5.0 to VB.NET. The industry/developers didnt move fast enough for them, which is where Microsoft suffered.
(1) Microsoft Loves developers who code on MS technologies - Sure, thats why they reel them in with swags. They lost a ton to Java, and they alienated another bunch when they moved to
(2)Compatibility - This was bound to happen, one day. With the rest of the world/industry/developers willing to sacrifice backward compatibility for the sake for something new/better, MS also realized that in order for them to move forward and keep pace, they have to do the same. Sure, they will have to piss some people off, but heck, they assumed the advantages would far outweigh the negatives. Wrong! But I am glad that Microsoft decided to shake free from the outdated Windows API model and embrace the new, and thereby have the balls to sacrifice some backward compatibility. You cant keep everyone happy for the rest of their lives. Some tradeoffs need to happen. You cant survive otherwise.
So what is this guy talking about other than whats already blatantly obvious to the rest of the world?
SBC came up with the creative scheme where it was cheaper for you to go through them for all three services instead of going to seperate firms. This law will force them to first of all split these services up and price them differently. Its purely up to them whether to stick with the high price these individual services would in turn cost or to price them competitively so that the customer gets the best of both worlds.
When I was comparing DSL and Cable, the reason I didnt choose BellSouth in Atlanta was I had to sign up for a phone line if I just preferred DSL. I have two cellphones and they pretty much fulfill every need. I shouldnt have to go for a bundle unless I needed them both.
I would say its SBC's choice from now on as to whether they charge their customers the humongous price of all three services combined or to bring the individual prices down to a better competitive rate. The price of the bundled solution may go up a bit, but it would help the consumer in the long run in providing him with far more choices than he originally did.
is a word better suited to Hotmail which still holds a tight noose around its subscribers, zapping them and their accounts everyonce in a while when the account goes above limit.
I forked over 20 bucks the last year in to Bill's coffers but I dont plan to do so now that Yahoo and Google has services far better.
Forgot to add one more thing.
Religious Freedom existed in my state far before it did anywhere else. Historically, Christianity existed there right around AD 52 when Saint Thomas purportedly arrived in Kerala and started converting people to Christianity.
Surprisingly, even though there were Hindu Kings and a flourishing muslim community (yup even then) this new religion was awarded the same respect and freedom like all others, allowing it to flourish. Also around AD 500, the first set of Jewish refugees reached our shores as well, fleeing from persecution at the hand of Nebuccadnezzer and set up a synagogue as well.
Even now, despite all the crap that happen world over between Muslims, Christians and Jews, all three live pretty harmoniously across this little strip of land.
Writing so much about where I come from, fuck, I feel like going home..
Since most of the population is still Hindu, conversions are usually from Hindu to Christian. Conversations are still a very touchy topic and to be objective about it, you need to understand both aspects.
For one, the people who are being converted below to the lowest rung of the social/economic ladder, poor and has absolutely no medical care which they can afford. Christian organizations and missionaries who work through them, provide them with basic care and medicine as well as educate them as well. Now this part I like, its the conversion that comes at the end of it which I dont agree with. Especially the ones which are purportedly based on monetary promises. But can you really blame people wanting to live a better life by giving up their religion, which didnt really help them in the first place? Understand that Caste system was rampant (and still is to a lesser extent) across the country and even though the lower castes were Hindu's they couldnt gain access to any of the temples (I am proud enough to be part of the state which abolished this heinous act by allowing religious freedom as well allowing people to worship in temples which they previously didnt have access to)
Now, Hindu religious leaders (some of them) oppose these conversions, yet I dont necessarily agree with their viewpoint. They really didnt care about these people and now that they are converted, all of a sudden they become their best friend. Some of the newly converted are re-converted (which is funny, does the Hindu Gods care?).
Anyway this is probably the first time where Hindu leaders and Christian leaders clashed and once again certain political leaders were first to take advantage by banning religious conversions across the state.
Now a bit about the state which is possibly the most progressive, left wing state which has sweepingly introduced many socio-economic reforms across the state and which started many a cultural revolution across the country. You can find more info about it at Kerala Tourism and Wikipedia
The temple and mosque you are talking about is the Babri Masjid Temple. I googled for some objective information relevant to the controversy regarding it and I found it at Wikipedia
;) ), want no part of it. Christians in India, relatively have been more peaceful than all the other religions in India, but recently have started getting some flak about the religious conversions taking place where they have missionaries, being accused of them being forced conversions (not physically, but with the promise of monetary benefits).
Now, this screwed up temple/mosque caused religious tensions to flare up in my land which had none since the partition time (a lot were killed when Indian and Pakistan were split). Fanatics on both side and from outside India along with Politicians looking for mileage took advantage of this and this resulted in mindless killing and riots, but still were sporadic and localized and hardly ever were reflected on normal lives elsewhere in India where Hindus and Muslims lived quite contently.
This incident single handedly caused religious relations to take a downturn and has been behind pretty much every other riot we had to suffer across the land. Still, whenever we do have one of them, it is still localized (means Hindus and Muslims all over dont start killing each other and do employ reason and wisdom before lunging at each others throats) and put to rest soon after.
Now Christians (wimps that we are
That being said, India is far from the cauldron of religious fanaticism its accused of by the Western and Far Right/Religious media. And Christians have to bloody live with the fact that they cant "save everyone". Rest of the world dont really give a flying fsck about being saved. They just want to live the rest of their lives being honest human beings, living a happy life with their families, having enough to provide food and shelter, with out getting bombed the fuck out! Sadly, not everyone sees it that way.
I was drinking coffee when I read this and it came out of my nose :). Not a pretty sight especially when you are at work.
Are you finished? Well, Allow me to retort !
This three way race going on in India you talk about, I hope someone can add a catalyst to it, in order to speed it up, so that in a few years we have taken care of 1/6th of the World population magically. Then U.S can invade India and start eating curry/rice with out paying for it (Sorry we dont have much oil).
I am a Christian (albeit not a practising one) from the Southern tip of India, a state where Christians, Muslims and Hindus coexist happily 99% of the time( We have a few skirmishes once in few years and then everything go back to normal).
I am sorry, but I know instances of where there have been sporadic violence between Hindus and Muslims (recently in Gujrat) but I wouldnt term it as religious cleansing! Also, there was violence against Sikhs (Sikh extremism) in the 80s but for the last 15 years there have been practically none.
And for sure, Christians had got licked in a few parts around the country, but the number of Christians killed in the name of religion across the country is probably a handful. And considering we have a Billion people to govern and keep happy, its a miracle more are not being banged up!
And the comment about Christians killing Sikhs, that was pretty funny too.
So my friend, I dont know which part of the world you hail from, but you definitely need to stop reading TBN or whatever other religious network you getting your feed from, cause unless you can get your ass down to India and get some firsthand evidence of the ethnic cleansing you talk about, then we collectively are going to kick your ass back to where your crawled out of!
You dont have to look very far to find Christians fighting Christians.. Protestants against Catholics actually. And it was as worse that you would find in Middle East. They were bombing civilians, killing kids, shooting soldiers..all the fun stuff.
So yes, Religion, no matter which, makes us all blind if taken in too large a quantity.
Then again, Religion is not the core of all evil, its people, who interprets it to their needs, their wishes. Get rid of people and all Religions will co-exist happily.
I knew I had a typo there, but I was eating at my desk and I was too lazy to spell check :) or google
You must be talking about Tresspasser, a phenomenally screwed up game which boasted of its realistic and powerful physics engine, but ended up as a frustrating exercise in futility for everyone who tried to play it.
Simple functions such as picking up an item took minutes instead of seconds and required careful manouvering using your hand!!!! Also most of the puzzles were about stacking boxes on top of one another and halfway through you were bound to push one over and you had to start all over again (since all of them will topple down as well thanks to the "realistic" physics engine). In the end you wanted to feed the entire game development team to the raptors, only if you could find one, since they were darn rare. Also you would only come across them one by one (even though they were pack hunters).
Anyway I had a ceremonial burning of "Tresspasser" the very next day and I had played probably half an hour of it and only then did I come across this little gem of a review from Gamespot.
"Trespasser is the most frustrating game I have ever played. Of all the games I have ever reviewed, this one has been the most disappointing. Of all the games I have played, this is the one I am most adamant about never wanting to play again. I don't want to sound mean-spirited, but all gamers should know that Trespasser is a frustrating game, filled with boring gameplay and annoying bugs. It is not fun. It is monotonous and tedious to the point of nausea."
Surprisingly if you scroll down on the review, you would see another person (other than me) who bought the game and chose to review it with a rating of 7 which leads me to believe that it were the head of "Dreamworks" or Mr.Hammond!
Oh Ok. So you hated Ford Focus and bought a Nissan Sentra. Huh?!
Oh! We werent supposed to say that out loud? Are we hunting terrorists now???
You bastard!!
*Sighs*
*Proceeds to change all my passwords starting with the bank account*
I have WEP turned on for my wi-fi network and turning it on is painless, effective and having no prior knowledge of wi-fi was easier than any other task that I accomplished.
Worst part was finding all these insecure networks popping up all across my apartment community with names such as "default", "linksys", "Diablo", "Sourabh and Sonali", "choke-the-chicken", "mamasboy", "ilovematures". If these idiots can be half as creative in setting up encryption, it would be worth it. But then again, I dont want them to get too smart either, cause for one, its easier for people like me to piggy back on to tide us over before the comcast dude sets up the new 3MBS pipe.
Still, it boggles my mind that these people would protect their PC's with the latest anti-virus software with the toughest passwords and still leave the biggest door open for everyone to come and play around. Pretty soon, i am gonna have to visit my neighbours with a clue bat
The CEO had this Physician buddy to whom he owed a favor and since I was pretty much twiddling thumbs between projects (and playing copious amounts of Quake) it landed on my lap.
I had to take a VB Form based App (this was way back in 98) which was essentially for a Doc, which takes him through a million forms with questions (with a liberal dab of option buttons/check boxes/list boxes and combos) which he would choose and choose and after what seemed an eternity, will finally spew out some BS in the last form which sounded like what the disease was, the symptom list and what he should do.
Anyway, the problem for me was (did I tell you that it had a million forms of all sizes) all the labels/text boxes/frames/ FUCK!! all the controls had dark green/purple/red/radiant blue/deep yellow/bright orange and every conceivable color as ForeColor and Back Color. Which meant that if the Patient even saw the UI, he would go color blind for a week. So I was assigned the task to clean it up and not touch the functionality. Ofcourse I pleaded with the CEO to let me rewrite the piece of shit software (in better words), but they wont let me. Why? It was the bastard's pet project, so I had to clean it up and thats it. And Did I tell you that there was not even a fucking DB used to store all the information being entered, it went in to a Text file. I guess the sonofabitch while learning VB on his own, didnt buy a book advanced enough to teach him the 123's of Database Management.
Anyway, to top it all, I had to give justification about my hours to my Project Manager. I toiled day in and day out (to the extent that I promised myself never to touch the UI ever again), and cleaned up the mess to a point where if someone looks at the UI, he or she doesnt clutch their heart and keel over (Think Dilbert!)
All through the two weeks it took me, I had to suffer all my counterparts sitting around me coding in C++ and passing smart ass comments on how the backcolor of TEXTBOX1 didnt match the Forecolor of LABEL1.
Why is it that everytime *another* corporate decides to ditch their bonafide american employee and jump in to bed with an indian firm so that he can save 20% and earn 50% more bonus for the Senior staff, all of the slashdot crowd and rest of the civilized society starts bad mouthing the people across the ocean who does their job for a fraction of the original cost?
Why is it that your Indian counterparts end up the bad apple, while you safely chose to ignore the people who made the decision to outsource and the govt who chose to standby and watch. Is it because that its easier to do so?
What happened to the path of civil disobedience? What happened to when people disagreed with the policies of the Govt chose to clog the streets with political rallies, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others and march in unison?
What happened to "lets start a campaign against firm "A" who has decided to ditch loyalty for quick cash" and actually follow through with it by actively campaigning against the corporations who chose to fire its employees, stash their millions in Cayman Islands by withholding tax and reward their CXO's with millions in bonus and stocks.
Nope, its far too easier to just blame the Indians!
I heard someone say "If you are not offended atleast once when you drive through your neighborhood, then you are not living in a free society".
Cant believe a nipple would do this much damage.
And dont get me started on the news media who wants to put two stars between "F" and "k". I thank them for making it complex enough so that toddlers and teenagers wouldnt understand along with the rest of the population.
Sucks to be a bigot.
Have a nice life.
I have nothing against US having its own policies as to the lineage and status of the person who is chosen to run/ruin this country. Not my country, not my President.
Now, instead of biting on to Immigration and President ship, shouldnt you accept the fact that you were completely clueless about what you knew about India, its culture, its society and how we treat our women?
Seriously, for my sake, start reading up on India with an objective mind. Sure, you will find a lot you will disagree with, but I hope at the same time it will open your eyes towards a civilization and people that had its roots for over thousands of years, long before the Roman Empire.
We dont like to linger in our past and dote on our history. Same way, we do not take lightly anyone trying to walk shod over something that is sacred to its people. Do not pass judgement on something of which you understand so little.
I already addressed this "cruelty to women" in the same thread elsewhere, so heres the link. Agree or not, its up to you.
:)
Now, you speak volumes about how we abuse and devalue our women.. (Devalue is such a perfect word!). Would you care to switch on your TV?? Hmm.. how about you look at the print media, the Ads, the Sports. Everywhere you see nothing but SKIN!. Now after what America and its people has done to degrade and devalue the image of women, I am not sure there is anything left for us poor Indians to do!
Seriously dude, climb out of your hole and visit India for once. You will find it not much different than any other place you been to. Dont take what you read/watch on TV, at face value. Dont you want to find out for yourself???
You really need to stop believing what others tell you and get a job in India.
Now you may pick on the U.S. and call it silly things as 'former land of the free'. But how is India any grander in that respect?
Now, If I dont agree with my President (Or Prime Minister or any Govt Official), I have the freedom to express my thoughts, in the middle of the street if I prefer.
Try the same here and they will lock you away for being a terrorist
Bloody Foreigners??? What are you? Can you trace your lineage all the way to the ship that brought the first set of immigrants to U.S? Was that your Great Great...Great Grand Father on that bloody ship?? If not, then shut the hell up! You are no different than any other immigrant in this nation.
And yes, we do trust our "Bloody Foreigners". I see that you on the other hand do not. Which is sad because you really should peek your head out in to the real world more often.
Now now.. lets not issue blanket statements shall we..
:) (Yes, that is a blanket statement).
:)
From those last two lines, you come off as someone who absolutely has no understanding nor knowledge of India, its culture and its people.
Sure, I agree that women are abused in various parts of this country, but women arent obviously hated!! Remember, we had a woman as our Prime Minister when the rest of the world was still letting their women run around in Bikinis and swinging to pop culture
The biggest problem in India is that there are still an immensely large population that has no education, has no healthcare, has no idea how to stand up for their rights. Corrupt politicians are not delegated to the Western world, we have them as well.
The Hindu Religion (Despite being a Christian myself, I have immense respect for Hinduism and for other religions as well), does not look down upon the women, the so called "holy" individuals who wanted to bend their religion to their needs and wishes, decreed that women were inferior. As a religion and among its scriptures and texts, Hinduism has utmost regard for Woman as a Mother, Wife, Sister, Friend and an Equal. And believe me, this religion and the indian culture has existed for thousand more years than the Western Civilization and Christianity (heck, Christianity came to India way before it reached the Western world, in 52B.C when St. Thomas reached the southern tip of India). So yes, this is a Land which is steeped in culture, which has treated women with utmost respect in all corners of it, and yet has been vandalized and abused by people in power, by religious nuts, who had their own agendas.
And when United States (formerly known as Land of the Free) shudders at the thought of letting immigrants who werent born here, having a shot at being President, India has no qualms in letting the Wife of a Former Prime Minister who was born and raised in Italy, get a swipe at becoming the nation's Prime Minister. Also, voting rights for Women, We didnt had to think twice about that either.
Oh one more thing when you are still trying to comprehend.. Gay Marriage is Legal in India (we just dont let them fornicate, now thats another story!)
So please crawl back to your trailer and show not your face and your intellect to the rest of us (That if you didnt know was surely a blanket statement, but meant solely for you)