What I got was totally unacceptable: the audio quality is horrible! There's a constant droney hiss sound over the entire
track, which just ruins the interview.
If your broadcast is interesting and insightful, the poor audio quality will not prevent you from getting early converters.
You are right, I forgot the 'Da Vinci Code' and even the silly 'sexploitation' flick 'SINS' which had a Christian priest getting into an affair. Infact 'Father, son and holy war' has an episode where a Muslim cleric is asking believers not to do masturbation as its 'unholy' or whatever.
But if you look at the way 'organized religions' act in India, I think I can communicate with a Christian priest/bishop/evangelical/fanatic more reasonably than with a Muslim or Hindu fanatic.
In short, I did not mean to blame a particular community - I was explaining how censorship works in India and the examples happened to be Hindu issues.
Unfortunately, India too often gets lumped in with the Islamist extremests to the west (of India) or the Communist despots to the east (of India).
Who are the dorks who modded such utterances insightful???
North western border of India has Pakistan which is not "Islamist extremests" (is Germany only "neo-nazis"?).
West Bengal which is to the east of India and the southern state of Kerala has communist parties in power. Both the states are topping in literacy, education, and other welfare related indices. How can they be "communist despots"?
CPI-ML and Naxals (a militant left-wing organization) are a growing problem in states like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar etc. Read history and you can trace the issues to the minority of the uppercaste Hindus unwilling to share land, political power or other resources.
Censorship in India is inconsistent and haphazard to say the least.
Local and Central governments will ban/reject a book/film on the pretext that it will be dangerous to religious sentiments or social harmony. An example is the James Laine's book - An Epic on Shivaji, books by Salman Rushdie, the Peter Seller's comedy 'The Party', and even the innocuous (though a bit silly) documentaries made by Louis Malle in the late 60's.
Most of the Anand Patwardhan documentaries were banned/not cleared and his battles with the Indian censor boards show the tolerance level for the overlords are very low. One of the documentaries (if my memory is correct 'Father, Son and Holy War') had footage of the chief minister of the state of Maharashtra and later the speaker of Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) - Manohar Joshi - seen extolling Hindu women during a rally in a remote Maharashtrian town to give birth to more children to offset the rise in Muslim population (typical FUD by hardliners). If such utterances can be made at a political rally, I have no idea what banning the documentary will prove.
The same time, the most vulgar, sexist and reactionary Hindi (Bollywood for you), Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam or other popular cinema pass the censors with absolutely no problem.
Also the Indian Government is yet to relax its hold on radio and licenses to operate a station - which actually reach the 100% of the Indian population (compared to 10-20% reach of the mostly urban satellite/cable.)
I had to buy a new laptop urgently since the Thinkpad T21 died and no amount of prodding will get it back to a stable state.
I bought a barely used/almost new Acer Aspire with a 64bit Turion processor for about 600USD. Its by far the fastest laptop/computer I have used. It has only 512megs RAM. I don't think a 64bit processor will get outdated soon - some of the components (like the slower hard drive) might.
It was not so long ago that India appeared in the American press as a poor, backward and often violent nation, saddled with an inefficient bureaucracy and, though officially nonaligned, friendly to the Soviet Union. Suddenly the country seems to be not only a "roaring capitalist success story" but also, according to Foreign Affairs, an "emerging strategic partner of the United States."
When India conducted its first thermo nuclear experiments in the 70's, one of the striking cartoons to appear in American news papers was of Indira Gandhi (then Prime Minister) appearing with a begging bowl alongside the leaders of US, USSR, Britain, France.
Western worlds fascination with India grew after the second world war - when the West asked the question - why after all the technological and other progress we ended up with two world wars? Searching for answers they looked at India - a civilization which has never been an aggressor in its 5000 plus years of existence - but imbibed all attacks on its soul and territory with typical nonchalance.
Now the western suits are salivating at the market of a 300 million middle class. For the last two decades the shills have been demanding the only way for India to progress is to open up though similar experiments in countries like Argentina ended up tragically. What they don't realize is that India was and is open for the last 5000 years!!!
As a filmmaker I have seen no real advantage with any type of copyright. Even for the many movies/TV shows/music where the producers/publishers are running scared/suing people I don't think they are losing much revenue over copyright thefts. I am waiting for research to prove that the so-called revenue losses from copyright infringements are non-existent or minimal. The same applies to software.
Most of the popular Indian films are versions of Western/European/Korean/Chinese/Japanese films - how can you prevent someone from copying your work when your base idea to begin with was taken from elsewhere and usually without permission?
We may not print answers to the "hard-hitting questions" as often as you might like. In many cases, however, the reason you don't see answers to those questions in print is because the person we ask refuses to answer them.
So why dont you publish the "hard-hitting questions" you ask in interviews and give a "no-comments" or "no answer given" as the answer? Till you do that, I dont have a reason to believe you and the original comment is more believable.
Saying that all sources has to be available for everyone is so mindblowingly insane that I'm surprised that anyone would bring it up.
Please read what I wrote before ranting. I said the whole idea of a source is a "joke" - not sources has to be available for anyone.
I've been a wikipedia editor for two years now, and have an editcount in the several thousands. So yes, I do get the idea of wikipedia. I don't appriciate being insulted by someone who has only the vaguest idea what wikipedia is (which is fairly obvious by your comments)
The reason I made a comment like that is the condescending attitude you showed in your first post - (Neither of you probably know very much about wikipedia.). Even with your lengthy explanation of being a Wiki member/editor/overlord/god-almighty for many years as you may claim, I dont think you have got the "idea" behind wikipedia and if the policies of wikipedia are going in the directions you suggest, I will say the community is on a slippery slope.
Wikipedia should not try to be the final word on subjects/topics - it should be the starting point. I hope the so-called editors/pointy-heads do get that.
And I dont have enough time to make you understand the above "idea".
We do remind users that every edit needs a reference, and it doesn't matter whether everyone can read it or not by everyone, aslong as it is verifiable by someone.
"Verifiable by someone" is a joke. Are you going to ask someone who is a "human" to hunt down some reference at some library or bookshop or other source in case of a dispute and post the result? How do you moderate such a "peer review"? Does Wikipedia has enough budget and resources for that?
If the answers are "yes", then what is the difference between Wikipedia and Brittanica or other encyclopedias? I dont think you got the "idea" behind Wikipedia.
1) Reminding users to cite sources every time they make an edit (perhaps require it for non-grammatical edits)
This is not practical or possible on many occassions. Check this page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijaya_mulay or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaikom_Muhammed_Bashe er - most of the information/data are from non-Internet sources (what is the point of "sourced from a Malayalam book on Vaikom Muhammed Basheer", it cannot be verified anyways by majority of users.)
2) Being able to ban IP addresses and ranges from editing wikipedia
If someone is determined to post, using a simple proxy server they can get that done...banning or restricting access never works in a community project like Wikipedia. Will you recommend banning the commonly available proxy servers as the next step.
4) Have two versions of articles: 'newest' and an 'approved'?
You are bringing unnecessary overheads - one should trust the intelligence of users of Wikipedia - the way it works now with a message "neutrality of the content is disputed" should be enough. And for disputed content there are often other sources.
"Copy-protection won't matter one wit because it is done by professionals with the equipment to do it right, and it is so firmly a part of the society I don't know anyway you could stop it if you really tried."
I am not Chinese. But you made a wild unsubstantiated statement.
Developing economies like India and China has official versions of audio-visual content priced very high. Last I checked an official DVD of a typical Hollywood film goes for USD8 and above in both the countries. This is equivalent to paying $80 and above in US for the DVD of a feature film. Will an American buy if a DVD costs $80? You will try to get your fix illegaly.
Remember watching a film in theaters costs anywhere from 50 cents to 1.5 dollars in these countries.
So rather than going for the "volume" will bring profits approach, the industry associations and producers go for "ours is a luxury item" approach.
Between, I make films - you do a search on my ID and you will find films made by myself - so I know a bit of what I am talking about.
When you are logged into a google account (like GMAIL) and if you open Google News (same/different tab/window), you are shown 'Customized News'.
For me it is very annoying. I dont want Google to 'Customize News' based on my previous browsing history or whatever algorithms have thrown up. Google or for that matter any organization should not dictate what I should read. And I dont like Google keeping track of news/stories/websites I read and connect that to my Google Account.
There is an option to switch to Standardised News, but that means another hit on the server.
I dont think running IE7 Beta with the iexplore.exe.local hack screws up other Windows functionality.
I am running IE7 fine with IE6 on XP Pro SP2. But I am careful not to run both the apps the same time.
Few of the settings/resources are shared by both the apps - like the temporary internet files folder.
Also, one of the big drawbacks is you cannot do an "Open link in New Tab" with your mouse. The memory allocation for IE7 and Firefox 1.5 seems to be same with few tabs open.
And, if you admire Bill Gates, you have a serious lack of ethics.
Though I will not include Bill Gates in the list of 'truly evil', some of the role models Indians consider are people of totally dubious background.
About 10-12 years back there was stock market crash in India engineered by loopholes-in-the-system+backdoor-deals by a rogue trader - Harshad Mehta.
I have seen many reports/articles/interviews where he was admired for his money making skills and quotes like 'I want to be like Harshad Mehta' with all the sincerity. For the last two/three decades there are very few socio-cultural icons in the subcontinent...the people who can be role models.
Usually dalits don't reach that level. most dalits are below poverty line, and have to think where their next meal comes from. so education is something which they can't afford.
How incorrect and misleadingly simple are your assumptions!!!
'Poverty line' is not limited to Dalits of India. If you were reading Indian media, you would have seen articles on debt ridden farmers suiciding in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradhesh and Kerala - none of them are 'Dalits'.
Reservation in State run schools and colleges (liberal arts/pure sciences/engineering/medical) guarantee SC/ST (scheduled caste/scheduled tribe - 'Dalits' are a part of SC/ST, Gandhi called them 'Harijans') admission and an affordable fee structure. You should visit REC's - Regional Engineering Colleges (probably as good as IITs)- and check how many SC/ST candidates study there before making wild claims 'Dalits dont get education'!
And there is no correlation of success of SC/ST candidates from an urban background doing better in job hunting than their rural counterparts. If an SC/ST candidate reaches an interview stage at a modern organization with an 'equal opportunity employee system', only his/her capability and the personal prejudice of interviewers will matter.
And of course these jobs aren't available to the greater majority of the population, especially to the Dalit (formerly known as "untouchable") segment.
Modern Indian organization (especially in IT) are having all the equal employment opportunities you see in any Western organization.
Can you prove a 'Dalit' is unfairly treated during recruitment at a company like INFOSYS or WIPRO?
'Dalits' (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) are having reservations for jobs in Indian Public sector organizations.
Also, we should not try to generalise India to comfortable sound bytes...the reality is far more complex.
They are much more cautious about the economic development in India. They mention corruption, bureaucracy, strong communist parties in parliament as the major threats.
1. Do not believe everything The Economist prints.
2. Corruption is an issue in most developing countries.
3. Bureaucracy is as good or bad as any other country.
Communist parties frequently act as the checks-&-balances in the Indian political process - opposition to the extreme right political parties, opposition to the selling of profit making private sector enterprises (IMHO needless), radical redrawing of Indian labor laws and the list goes on.
I am not a sympathizer of Indian communist parties. They support many idiotic ideas and sometimes are as virulent as the extreme right. But the two states of post-independence India with the highest literacy and social progress - Kerala and West Bengal had communist parties running the state governments for a long time.
After 20 years I visited Calcutta (capital of West Bengal and now known as Kolkata)- the city is the exact opposite of Shanghai.
Slashdot Mirror
What I got was totally unacceptable: the audio quality is horrible! There's a constant droney hiss sound over the entire track, which just ruins the interview.
If your broadcast is interesting and insightful, the poor audio quality will not prevent you from getting early converters.
You are right, I forgot the 'Da Vinci Code' and even the silly 'sexploitation' flick 'SINS' which had a Christian priest getting into an affair. Infact 'Father, son and holy war' has an episode where a Muslim cleric is asking believers not to do masturbation as its 'unholy' or whatever.
But if you look at the way 'organized religions' act in India, I think I can communicate with a Christian priest/bishop/evangelical/fanatic more reasonably than with a Muslim or Hindu fanatic.
In short, I did not mean to blame a particular community - I was explaining how censorship works in India and the examples happened to be Hindu issues.
Unfortunately, India too often gets lumped in with the Islamist extremests to the west (of India) or the Communist despots to the east (of India).
Who are the dorks who modded such utterances insightful???
North western border of India has Pakistan which is not "Islamist extremests" (is Germany only "neo-nazis"?).
West Bengal which is to the east of India and the southern state of Kerala has communist parties in power. Both the states are topping in literacy, education, and other welfare related indices. How can they be "communist despots"?
CPI-ML and Naxals (a militant left-wing organization) are a growing problem in states like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar etc. Read history and you can trace the issues to the minority of the uppercaste Hindus unwilling to share land, political power or other resources.
Censorship in India is inconsistent and haphazard to say the least.
Local and Central governments will ban/reject a book/film on the pretext that it will be dangerous to religious sentiments or social harmony. An example is the James Laine's book - An Epic on Shivaji, books by Salman Rushdie, the Peter Seller's comedy 'The Party', and even the innocuous (though a bit silly) documentaries made by Louis Malle in the late 60's.
Most of the Anand Patwardhan documentaries were banned/not cleared and his battles with the Indian censor boards show the tolerance level for the overlords are very low. One of the documentaries (if my memory is correct 'Father, Son and Holy War') had footage of the chief minister of the state of Maharashtra and later the speaker of Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) - Manohar Joshi - seen extolling Hindu women during a rally in a remote Maharashtrian town to give birth to more children to offset the rise in Muslim population (typical FUD by hardliners). If such utterances can be made at a political rally, I have no idea what banning the documentary will prove.
The same time, the most vulgar, sexist and reactionary Hindi (Bollywood for you), Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam or other popular cinema pass the censors with absolutely no problem.
Also the Indian Government is yet to relax its hold on radio and licenses to operate a station - which actually reach the 100% of the Indian population (compared to 10-20% reach of the mostly urban satellite/cable.)
I had to buy a new laptop urgently since the Thinkpad T21 died and no amount of prodding will get it back to a stable state.
I bought a barely used/almost new Acer Aspire with a 64bit Turion processor for about 600USD. Its by far the fastest laptop/computer I have used. It has only 512megs RAM. I don't think a 64bit processor will get outdated soon - some of the components (like the slower hard drive) might.
Pankaj Mishra is correct.
It was not so long ago that India appeared in the American press as a poor, backward and often violent nation, saddled with an inefficient bureaucracy and, though officially nonaligned, friendly to the Soviet Union. Suddenly the country seems to be not only a "roaring capitalist success story" but also, according to Foreign Affairs, an "emerging strategic partner of the United States."
When India conducted its first thermo nuclear experiments in the 70's, one of the striking cartoons to appear in American news papers was of Indira Gandhi (then Prime Minister) appearing with a begging bowl alongside the leaders of US, USSR, Britain, France.
Western worlds fascination with India grew after the second world war - when the West asked the question - why after all the technological and other progress we ended up with two world wars? Searching for answers they looked at India - a civilization which has never been an aggressor in its 5000 plus years of existence - but imbibed all attacks on its soul and territory with typical nonchalance.
Now the western suits are salivating at the market of a 300 million middle class. For the last two decades the shills have been demanding the only way for India to progress is to open up though similar experiments in countries like Argentina ended up tragically. What they don't realize is that India was and is open for the last 5000 years!!!
As a filmmaker I have seen no real advantage with any type of copyright. Even for the many movies/TV shows/music where the producers/publishers are running scared/suing people I don't think they are losing much revenue over copyright thefts. I am waiting for research to prove that the so-called revenue losses from copyright infringements are non-existent or minimal. The same applies to software.
Most of the popular Indian films are versions of Western/European/Korean/Chinese/Japanese films - how can you prevent someone from copying your work when your base idea to begin with was taken from elsewhere and usually without permission?
We may not print answers to the "hard-hitting questions" as often as you might like. In many cases, however, the reason you don't see answers to those questions in print is because the person we ask refuses to answer them.
So why dont you publish the "hard-hitting questions" you ask in interviews and give a "no-comments" or "no answer given" as the answer? Till you do that, I dont have a reason to believe you and the original comment is more believable.
Correction: I said the whole idea of a source is a "joke" should be I said the whole idea of a verifiable source is a "joke"
Saying that all sources has to be available for everyone is so mindblowingly insane that I'm surprised that anyone would bring it up.
Please read what I wrote before ranting. I said the whole idea of a source is a "joke" - not sources has to be available for anyone.
I've been a wikipedia editor for two years now, and have an editcount in the several thousands. So yes, I do get the idea of wikipedia. I don't appriciate being insulted by someone who has only the vaguest idea what wikipedia is (which is fairly obvious by your comments)
The reason I made a comment like that is the condescending attitude you showed in your first post - (Neither of you probably know very much about wikipedia.). Even with your lengthy explanation of being a Wiki member/editor/overlord/god-almighty for many years as you may claim, I dont think you have got the "idea" behind wikipedia and if the policies of wikipedia are going in the directions you suggest, I will say the community is on a slippery slope.
Wikipedia should not try to be the final word on subjects/topics - it should be the starting point. I hope the so-called editors/pointy-heads do get that.
And I dont have enough time to make you understand the above "idea".
We do remind users that every edit needs a reference, and it doesn't matter whether everyone can read it or not by everyone, aslong as it is verifiable by someone.
"Verifiable by someone" is a joke. Are you going to ask someone who is a "human" to hunt down some reference at some library or bookshop or other source in case of a dispute and post the result? How do you moderate such a "peer review"? Does Wikipedia has enough budget and resources for that?
If the answers are "yes", then what is the difference between Wikipedia and Brittanica or other encyclopedias? I dont think you got the "idea" behind Wikipedia.
1) Reminding users to cite sources every time they make an edit (perhaps require it for non-grammatical edits)e er - most of the information/data are from non-Internet sources (what is the point of "sourced from a Malayalam book on Vaikom Muhammed Basheer", it cannot be verified anyways by majority of users.)
This is not practical or possible on many occassions. Check this page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijaya_mulay or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaikom_Muhammed_Bash
2) Being able to ban IP addresses and ranges from editing wikipedia
If someone is determined to post, using a simple proxy server they can get that done...banning or restricting access never works in a community project like Wikipedia. Will you recommend banning the commonly available proxy servers as the next step.
4) Have two versions of articles: 'newest' and an 'approved'?
You are bringing unnecessary overheads - one should trust the intelligence of users of Wikipedia - the way it works now with a message "neutrality of the content is disputed" should be enough. And for disputed content there are often other sources.
"Copy-protection won't matter one wit because it is done by professionals with the equipment to do it right, and it is so firmly a part of the society I don't know anyway you could stop it if you really tried."
I am not Chinese. But you made a wild unsubstantiated statement.
Developing economies like India and China has official versions of audio-visual content priced very high. Last I checked an official DVD of a typical Hollywood film goes for USD8 and above in both the countries. This is equivalent to paying $80 and above in US for the DVD of a feature film. Will an American buy if a DVD costs $80? You will try to get your fix illegaly.
Remember watching a film in theaters costs anywhere from 50 cents to 1.5 dollars in these countries.
So rather than going for the "volume" will bring profits approach, the industry associations and producers go for "ours is a luxury item" approach.
Between, I make films - you do a search on my ID and you will find films made by myself - so I know a bit of what I am talking about.
"Many details of the film deal remained unsettled or undisclosed on Monday, including the choice of director..."
My vote is for Uwe Boll.
How can the rate of an observation be "alarming" if it has only recorded 3 of 6,000,000,000 years of existense?
Is this alarming enough?
Come on, let's get started! How do you say "penis pills" in Hindi?
Laude Lasoon.
Ok, here you go.
When you are logged into a google account (like GMAIL) and if you open Google News (same/different tab/window), you are shown 'Customized News'.
For me it is very annoying. I dont want Google to 'Customize News' based on my previous browsing history or whatever algorithms have thrown up. Google or for that matter any organization should not dictate what I should read. And I dont like Google keeping track of news/stories/websites I read and connect that to my Google Account.
There is an option to switch to Standardised News, but that means another hit on the server.
I dont think running IE7 Beta with the iexplore.exe.local hack screws up other Windows functionality.
I am running IE7 fine with IE6 on XP Pro SP2. But I am careful not to run both the apps the same time.
Few of the settings/resources are shared by both the apps - like the temporary internet files folder.
Also, one of the big drawbacks is you cannot do an "Open link in New Tab" with your mouse. The memory allocation for IE7 and Firefox 1.5 seems to be same with few tabs open.
Couple of days later, I get an email from an Indian employee of Google saying that they have not detected any fraudulent clicks.
QUESTIONS:
How did you find out the email you got was from an Indian?
Is it from the name of the employee?
If the reply was from a non-Indian, would you be satisfied with the answer?
Can you give us proof the "spike" you are mentioning?
And, if you admire Bill Gates, you have a serious lack of ethics.
Though I will not include Bill Gates in the list of 'truly evil', some of the role models Indians consider are people of totally dubious background.
About 10-12 years back there was stock market crash in India engineered by loopholes-in-the-system+backdoor-deals by a rogue trader - Harshad Mehta.
I have seen many reports/articles/interviews where he was admired for his money making skills and quotes like 'I want to be like Harshad Mehta' with all the sincerity. For the last two/three decades there are very few socio-cultural icons in the subcontinent...the people who can be role models.
Usually dalits don't reach that level. most dalits are below poverty line, and have to think where their next meal comes from. so education is something which they can't afford.
How incorrect and misleadingly simple are your assumptions!!!
'Poverty line' is not limited to Dalits of India. If you were reading Indian media, you would have seen articles on debt ridden farmers suiciding in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradhesh and Kerala - none of them are 'Dalits'.
Reservation in State run schools and colleges (liberal arts/pure sciences/engineering/medical) guarantee SC/ST (scheduled caste/scheduled tribe - 'Dalits' are a part of SC/ST, Gandhi called them 'Harijans') admission and an affordable fee structure. You should visit REC's - Regional Engineering Colleges (probably as good as IITs)- and check how many SC/ST candidates study there before making wild claims 'Dalits dont get education'!
And there is no correlation of success of SC/ST candidates from an urban background doing better in job hunting than their rural counterparts. If an SC/ST candidate reaches an interview stage at a modern organization with an 'equal opportunity employee system', only his/her capability and the personal prejudice of interviewers will matter.
And of course these jobs aren't available to the greater majority of the population, especially to the Dalit (formerly known as "untouchable") segment.
Modern Indian organization (especially in IT) are having all the equal employment opportunities you see in any Western organization.
Can you prove a 'Dalit' is unfairly treated during recruitment at a company like INFOSYS or WIPRO?
'Dalits' (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) are having reservations for jobs in Indian Public sector organizations.
Also, we should not try to generalise India to comfortable sound bytes...the reality is far more complex.
I encourage Indian politicians to reject any such pressure.
If wishes were horses.....
They are much more cautious about the economic development in India. They mention corruption, bureaucracy, strong communist parties in parliament as the major threats.
1. Do not believe everything The Economist prints.
2. Corruption is an issue in most developing countries.
3. Bureaucracy is as good or bad as any other country.
Communist parties frequently act as the checks-&-balances in the Indian political process - opposition to the extreme right political parties, opposition to the selling of profit making private sector enterprises (IMHO needless), radical redrawing of Indian labor laws and the list goes on.
I am not a sympathizer of Indian communist parties. They support many idiotic ideas and sometimes are as virulent as the extreme right. But the two states of post-independence India with the highest literacy and social progress - Kerala and West Bengal had communist parties running the state governments for a long time.
After 20 years I visited Calcutta (capital of West Bengal and now known as Kolkata)- the city is the exact opposite of Shanghai.
As a result, RFID passports will now include a thin radio shield in their covers...
OIOW (or in other words) passports with built in tinfoil hats.