Yesterday, I decided to buy and read the DaVinci code book and I visited a reputed shop. And surprise, he had stocked the pirated version of the book. The funny thing is he was of the impression that this was the original version. I have seen shops which sell pirated DVD containing three Star Wars Movies in one and it cost only 75 cents. And amazingly it is done in open and nobody cares. Of course whether the person will get the real satisfaction in watching the movie or not is entirely different thing.
I always stick to buying original even if I have to pay more for it. This is because then the author of the book or the people who slogged to create the product will get some returns. If I can't afford it, I would rather not buy the product than buy pirated goods.
Teaching is a very good profession. Infact there are very few professions which give the same job satisfaction as one gets in teaching. This is more so in higher education where the students are more mature and seriously want to learn.
As far as school is concerned, the kids are more unruly and some dicipline is required. I remember when I was studying in school, we had corporal punishment. At that time, if we stepped out of line like flouting any of the school rules, we were sure to get cained. Those were the times when the dictum - spare the cane and spoil the child - was the norm. We were even made to kneel down on the hard floor for hours for as simple things such as not doing the homework or not coming to school in full uniform. I think the school concerned could take up a mild form of punishment like making the student sit for extra time in class or something instead of outright expelling the student.
The food at google is said to be one of the finest you can get anywhere. Infact, there is a popular story (not sure if it is true) of Yahoo employees sneeking over to google cafteria for a taste of their excellent variety of rich food.
I have heard that making calls through ones computer, one has to put up with reduced clarity and unnecessary noise. I am curious how good skype is w.r.t making calls using a normal phone. Does it suffer from low clarity and noise interference ?
We have reached a stage where people don't think twice about the path taken to make a quick buck. And the increase in phishing attacks only goes on to prove it. And people (especially those who have just taken their first few steps in getting online) fall for the ploys of these criminal activities more frequently.
Clorophyl the stuff you see in the leaves of most plants use sunlight to generate energy. In fact, the plants have mastered the art of converting sunlight to energy which helps them grow. Why not use the same thing to power our machines ?
Turning up in a bath robe for work is taking it to the extreme. May be it was a PR exercise on the employees behalf. Any way it is really good to have such loose dress code at work. Ultimately, people should be alowed to wear what they are most comfortable in rather than insisting on a particular attire to bring uniformity at the work place.
Things are shrinking at a fast pace...
on
Gadgets, Then & Now
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· Score: 2, Funny
Holy cow!! Going by this trend, things are going to be very very small in the future. Maybe we might need eyes with microscopic powers to use some of the gadgets of the future.
Well, coffee - that is the 100 % pure variety - does make a person feel fresh and alert. But usually, I have found the coffee powder we get in the market contain over 40% chicory (caffene?). Only 60% is coffee powder. So how can one conclusively prove that it is the coffee which is causing the desired symptoms and not the other ingredient ?
I have a 64 MB Nvidia card which gives decent performance while playing many openGL based games. I wonder what is the specification of a PC which get it classified as a gaming rig...
If I am a celebrity and if there is a demand for my autograph, I might also choose to charge for it. It has atleast two advantages.
One: It reduces the crowd as only those who are serious about getting the autograph will pay up. The others who get autographs just for kicks will stay away.
Two: It helps the cause a little bit. Especially if it is a person of the likes of Stallman who is associated with a not-for-profit movement.
Any way, charging $5 for an autograph or $2 for a photograph is much better than charging hundreds of dollars for a piece of software.
I have seen many people who work in tech support complain about the unearthly working hours. Especially if the call center caters to the US clients, then out of the 30 days a month, one has to work for atleast 20 days in the night shift. The pay is relatively good. But the burn out is higher. The employees are given training to talk like the americans using the american slang especially if the job involves accepting calls. It seems really surreal to see one of these guys talk. And the people stay at one place only for a couple of months and then move on.
So IMHO, irrespective of the pay, a call center job is not exactly a cushy job. One should not measure a job in terms of money alone. Job satisfaction also counts a lot.
It is projects such as these which will make the propritery OS companies make a run for their money. Just think of it... The company making these hardware devices need only invest money for the hardware and not for the OS. The OS comes at an unbeatable price. Thus they are able to bring down prices of their devices and make it available to the masses. Cheap computing in the making I would say.
He is a person who has mastered the art of getting people to read what ever gibberish he writes. This is a mark of a true professional writer. There are people to lap up any article he throws at them. And such people are on the rise.:)
I think the viruses cause damage only if the person uses his machine logged in as root. If he is logged in as an ordinary user, I wonder how it is going to make a difference? At the most, some of his personal files may be modified or his keystrokes logged or the virus may use his machine to propagate to other machines. So what is the hoopla about this proof of concept virus which was created in a lab in some anti-virus company? I suspect this is a conspiracy of these anti-virus companies to stay afloat by creating a buzz about a virus in Linux.
It is not the extensions really. I have not installed any. Still it takes up a lot of memory. Also the firefox build that is installed in Ubuntu dapper displays the web pages with an 'i' character missing from the text in the webpage.
Firefox is my favourate web browser. But unfortunately, linux build of firefox is a memory hog. I wonder if it is the linux distribution maintainer's mistake or there is a bug in firefox code for linux.
Corporates always take decisions keeping an eye on profits. They don't have the luxury to take decisions with philosopies in mind. That is because they are to a certain extent answerable to their share holders.
This is where a project like Debian gains significance. Since it is not funded or controlled by any corporation, it lives up to the philosophy guiding it and will not be swayed by market dynamics.
I have heard that in the western countries, the cows are fed food mixed with animal fats to increase their body mass. There is a pertinent theory that it is these wrong practices of making the cow eat meat instead of grass that gave rise to the mad cow disease.
Now reading this article makes me wonder if another man made disease is in the making ? Perhaps it would be aptly named mad swine disease.
I wonder why they didn't find any other blog to give as an example. the blogs on myspace are the most cluttered and ugly ones I have ever seen. I can think of a lot of other more interesting ones like wordpress.com and blogger.com just to name a few.
Flickr and digg are good examples. What about slashdot.org ? This is also driven entirely by the readers albeit with some strict moderation in accepting stories.
@Zonk There is a typo in your post. It is march 14th and not april 14th. I guess on this day, the irc channel is going to get a flood of traffic. I wonder how many users will be allowed to enter the channer and participate in the discussion. Will there be a cap on the number of people logged in at any time ?
Still can't beat the japanese
on
Tree Climbing Robot
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Isn't google already providing a kind of unlimited storage via gmail ? You can attach a file of upto 10 MB as attachment to an email. And not many word documents are of these sizes.
And if they do provide online storage, I suspect it will be as an extension of gmail rather than a seperate entity.
It has a keyboard, a color display, the specs of a mobile phone, and obviously a state of the art speaker (I can't vouch for that by looking at the pic though). So I have come to the conclusion that it is a Mobile-TV-Internet-Cell Phone.
I have given it the name MTvICP . That is what it is!!
Slashdot Mirror
Yesterday, I decided to buy and read the DaVinci code book and I visited a reputed shop. And surprise, he had stocked the pirated version of the book. The funny thing is he was of the impression that this was the original version. I have seen shops which sell pirated DVD containing three Star Wars Movies in one and it cost only 75 cents. And amazingly it is done in open and nobody cares. Of course whether the person will get the real satisfaction in watching the movie or not is entirely different thing.
I always stick to buying original even if I have to pay more for it. This is because then the author of the book or the people who slogged to create the product will get some returns. If I can't afford it, I would rather not buy the product than buy pirated goods.
Teaching is a very good profession. Infact there are very few professions which give the same job satisfaction as one gets in teaching. This is more so in higher education where the students are more mature and seriously want to learn.
As far as school is concerned, the kids are more unruly and some dicipline is required. I remember when I was studying in school, we had corporal punishment. At that time, if we stepped out of line like flouting any of the school rules, we were sure to get cained. Those were the times when the dictum - spare the cane and spoil the child - was the norm. We were even made to kneel down on the hard floor for hours for as simple things such as not doing the homework or not coming to school in full uniform. I think the school concerned could take up a mild form of punishment like making the student sit for extra time in class or something instead of outright expelling the student.
The food at google is said to be one of the finest you can get anywhere. Infact, there is a popular story (not sure if it is true) of Yahoo employees sneeking over to google cafteria for a taste of their excellent variety of rich food.
I have heard that making calls through ones computer, one has to put up with reduced clarity and unnecessary noise. I am curious how good skype is w.r.t making calls using a normal phone. Does it suffer from low clarity and noise interference ?
We have reached a stage where people don't think twice about the path taken to make a quick buck. And the increase in phishing attacks only goes on to prove it. And people (especially those who have just taken their first few steps in getting online) fall for the ploys of these criminal activities more frequently.
Clorophyl the stuff you see in the leaves of most plants use sunlight to generate energy. In fact, the plants have mastered the art of converting sunlight to energy which helps them grow. Why not use the same thing to power our machines ?
Turning up in a bath robe for work is taking it to the extreme. May be it was a PR exercise on the employees behalf. Any way it is really good to have such loose dress code at work. Ultimately, people should be alowed to wear what they are most comfortable in rather than insisting on a particular attire to bring uniformity at the work place.
Holy cow!! Going by this trend, things are going to be very very small in the future. Maybe we might need eyes with microscopic powers to use some of the gadgets of the future.
Well, coffee - that is the 100 % pure variety - does make a person feel fresh and alert.
But usually, I have found the coffee powder we get in the market contain over 40% chicory (caffene?). Only 60% is coffee powder. So how can one conclusively prove that it is the coffee which is causing the desired symptoms and not the other ingredient ?
I have a 64 MB Nvidia card which gives decent performance while playing many openGL based games. I wonder what is the specification of a PC which get it classified as a gaming rig...
If I am a celebrity and if there is a demand for my autograph, I might also choose to charge for it. It has atleast two advantages.
One: It reduces the crowd as only those who are serious about getting the autograph will pay up. The others who get autographs just for kicks will stay away.
Two: It helps the cause a little bit. Especially if it is a person of the likes of Stallman who is associated with a not-for-profit movement.
Any way, charging $5 for an autograph or $2 for a photograph is much better than charging hundreds of dollars for a piece of software.
I have seen many people who work in tech support complain about the unearthly working hours. Especially if the call center caters to the US clients, then out of the 30 days a month, one has to work for atleast 20 days in the night shift. The pay is relatively good. But the burn out is higher. The employees are given training to talk like the americans using the american slang especially if the job involves accepting calls. It seems really surreal to see one of these guys talk. And the people stay at one place only for a couple of months and then move on.
So IMHO, irrespective of the pay, a call center job is not exactly a cushy job. One should not measure a job in terms of money alone. Job satisfaction also counts a lot.
It is projects such as these which will make the propritery OS companies make a run for their money. Just think of it... The company making these hardware devices need only invest money for the hardware and not for the OS. The OS comes at an unbeatable price. Thus they are able to bring down prices of their devices and make it available to the masses. Cheap computing in the making I would say.
He is a person who has mastered the art of getting people to read what ever gibberish he writes. This is a mark of a true professional writer. There are people to lap up any article he throws at them. And such people are on the rise. :)
I think the viruses cause damage only if the person uses his machine logged in as root. If he is logged in as an ordinary user, I wonder how it is going to make a difference? At the most, some of his personal files may be modified or his keystrokes logged or the virus may use his machine to propagate to other machines. So what is the hoopla about this proof of concept virus which was created in a lab in some anti-virus company? I suspect this is a conspiracy of these anti-virus companies to stay afloat by creating a buzz about a virus in Linux.
It is not the extensions really. I have not installed any. Still it takes up a lot of memory. Also the firefox build that is installed in Ubuntu dapper displays the web pages with an 'i' character missing from the text in the webpage.
Firefox is my favourate web browser. But unfortunately, linux build of firefox is a memory hog. I wonder if it is the linux distribution maintainer's mistake or there is a bug in firefox code for linux.
Corporates always take decisions keeping an eye on profits. They don't have the luxury to take decisions with philosopies in mind. That is because they are to a certain extent answerable to their share holders.
This is where a project like Debian gains significance. Since it is not funded or controlled by any corporation, it lives up to the philosophy guiding it and will not be swayed by market dynamics.
I have heard that in the western countries, the cows are fed food mixed with animal fats to increase their body mass. There is a pertinent theory that it is these wrong practices of making the cow eat meat instead of grass that gave rise to the mad cow disease.
Now reading this article makes me wonder if another man made disease is in the making ? Perhaps it would be aptly named mad swine disease.
I wonder why they didn't find any other blog to give as an example. the blogs on myspace are the most cluttered and ugly ones I have ever seen. I can think of a lot of other more interesting ones like wordpress.com and blogger.com just to name a few.
Flickr and digg are good examples. What about slashdot.org ? This is also driven entirely by the readers albeit with some strict moderation in accepting stories.
... we could see our grand children zipping to Mars and beyond for their honeymoon or school picnic....
Interesting but scary
@Zonk
There is a typo in your post. It is march 14th and not april 14th. I guess on this day, the irc channel is going to get a flood of traffic. I wonder how many users will be allowed to enter the channer and participate in the discussion. Will there be a cap on the number of people logged in at any time ?
Japanese are the leaders in creating robots.
Isn't google already providing a kind of unlimited storage via gmail ? You can attach a file of upto 10 MB as attachment to an email. And not many word documents are of these sizes.
And if they do provide online storage, I suspect it will be as an extension of gmail rather than a seperate entity.
It has a keyboard, a color display, the specs of a mobile phone, and obviously a state of the art speaker (I can't vouch for that by looking at the pic though). So I have come to the conclusion that it is a Mobile-TV-Internet-Cell Phone.
I have given it the name MTvICP . That is what it is!!