When the quake, and later, waves, hit Car Nicobar's Indian Air Force base, the people there immediately sent a wireless missive to their logistical HQ at Tambaram, Madras. The IAF folks at Madras informed their superiors in Delhi who in turn notified the Home Ministry. The trail got lethargic after that; there were apparently faxes, phone calls and such flying around, but little real action on the ground in the mainland, and definitely none to warn, mostly to mobilise aid to the Andaman Islands.
Essentially, I doubt anyone in the Indian red tape ever imagined that the waves would end up hitting the mainland.
The Piratory of Sion has a long and chequered history of protecting ancient secrets which, when revealed to an unsuspecting public when the Age of Aquarius kicks in, will cause untold chaos and shake the foundations of the intellectual property belief system as it were.
I think I speak for the rest when I request everyone to not belittle the Piratory of Sion by comparing it with obviously fictitious "organisations" such as the Priory of Sion.
In terms of percentage dead, I'd say yes for the region. There are towns in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where less than 20% of the population survived (and 80% of the buildings wiped out). Been pouring over news from the region, and frankly, it's too depressing to believe.
There's a view fast becoming popular back in India that the international media is using double standards when it comes to showing dead bodies; in 2001, CBS, CNN etc refused to show charred corpses at Ground Zero for privacy and sensitivity reasons, but in 2004, any corpse anywhere is fair game.
Then, of course, there are those who vehemently believe you need shock and gore to get aid pouring in.
Not entirely responding to your main point about peer review, but about multi-tasking not being conducive to critical thought:- indeed, this is one reason why I'm beginning to prefer web-discussions [in select sites of course, I leave it to your imagination which;-) ] on world affairs to f2f ones. People around me seem to be just not interested in having a well-thought-out, deep discussion on matters; everyone wants the five-second headliner (or the five-slide PowerPoint presentation), and not a deeper discussion of things.
Sad really; there is an entire art of conversation and speech-making that's fast being lost.
That is true as well; frankly, was amazed that Maldives, Seychelles and Somalia were affected. Heck forget all that; the west coasts of India and Sri Lanka were affected by the tsunami. To take a historical context, it's almost as if the tsunami picked and thrashed all destinations of the great Indian Ocean trade routes!
CEO Sandeep Gupta? I don't know how common the name is
It's the Sandeep Gupta conspiracy. They're taking over the world, one company at a time. The next time you see a Sandeep Gupta, run before he makes you another Sandeep Gupta.
The waves that washed over the Maldives were about 1 meter high. The ones that hit the Seychelles weren't much higher. Very few deaths in both places.
Point taken on continental shelves, but just a clarification: the waves that hit Seychelles were2 m high. Also, note that these island groups are rather removed from the "real" scene of action; heck, they aren't even in the Bay of Bengal in the first place.
Metlin was wrong on that aspect. His town, Madras, was washed away by a tsunami in 1883; this was part of the Indian Coastal Guard manual, which is why it was the only Indian governmental agency to be actually prepared for a tsunami.
We're pretty used to cyclones in the region; after Bangladesh, the south-eastern coast of India gets the maximum number of cyclones in a year. So most of our disaster preparedness (or what little we have) is mosty focussed on that.
Yes, abject poverty exists in India, but all the same, that's not the only reason for the low media coverage; here in Singapore, we're about to have software patents ourselves starting Jan 2005, but you don't see that being covered in the media either.
Let's face it:- media apathy towards IPR issues isn't a rich-poor divide. It exists everywhere.
If promptly recognised, then those in India/Sri Lanka should have had an hour or so's warning.
Been pouring over news reports now. The figure was two hours; we had two hours to prepare.
I would have thought that news of a massive earthquake at sea backed by warnings of a tsunami would have worried enough people to get them to move
While we certainly are lacking in an early warning system of the sort you have in the Pacific, like I said, I doubt anyone in a position of power put two and two together and imagined this would happen. See, like I said, this never ever happened before out here; as with bureaucratic failings of this magnitude, we were guilty of not just inaction, but also a clear lack of imagination.
Mostly coz I doubt anyone was expecting a tsunami. Out there on the Coramandal Coast, we're more on the look-out for cyclones and such; this, apparently, came in within very quickly, within 30 min or so I believe. I'm told the quake was broadcast live on Indian news channels; there was at least one news channel which was filming its bulletin from its studio in Chennai - the cam shaked and there was some chaos while the bullein was being broadcast.
Indeed, the last tsunami we had was in 1977, which came with a cyclone; my grandpa was involved in some heroics [which he loves to narrate whenever we go to his place in rural India;-) ]. I don't know if this is how it is in, say, Hawaii or someplace, but the morning that tsunami hit the coast, everyone apparently went to work normally. It was only by 10AM or so that word spread that the sea was coming in (to use a vernacular phrase for 'tidal wave') and by then, all they could do was to climb onto rooftops and wait for the waters to recede.
It always feels so much more personal when you've been there. I don't think the odds are any different if you've been in one place or traveling the world, but it is always creepy to know "I've been there. That could have been me there."
Tell me about it. Just heard from a friend that they're fishing boats on top of cars in Langkawi; just spent a relaxing holiday out there last month, and boy, is it scary to imagine the scene. Something about it no longer being a BBC video, for instance, and it being about a real place with real people.
Based in Singapore, and am just off calling folks back home in India (and elsewhere).
Felt nothing here *in* Singapore myself, but guys, I can't tell you how awed by the sheer REGION this covered; there was a 2m wave in, hold your breath, Seychelles which is about twice as far from Indonesia as the Indian sub-continent is.
a) Disaster management techniques: We in India need better processes in managing relief work after disaster has struck; compared to first-world standards, we're woefully under-equipped in terms of emergency medicine and an infrastructure that can rescue people within, say, two hours of something striking. Perhaps a volunteer force or something; we really can't be falling back on the Army each time shit happens.
b) (My personal favourite) A redundant communication network: More ham radios/VSAT terminals/whatever throughout the nation. Cheap and requires more of a community participation than governmental intervention (which (a) would need).
That website 'The Register' is not the best written of websites.
See, this is where you made the mistake. El Reg is well-written alright, but for someone looking for information; rather, it's well-written for those sorts who wouldn't mind spending some quality time slacking off on weekday afternoons, after spending the morning reading up "real" news at BBC, C|Net and so on. Like me, for instance.
Seriously though, El Reg has been pretty jihad-ist (and sensational) in its coverage of everything Google-related; beginning to wonder why.
It's really really cool to think that that far out into the solar system there could be geological activity going on. The sun's gotta be something like only -3 magnitude from out there.
Neptune's moon, Triton is apparently so cold, that it has volcanoes made of liquid nitrogen.
Since you weren't mentioning specific packages, I'll answer in a generic sense:- I'd say it's easy in technical terms, that is, there wouldnt be too much of an effort as far as coding goes (zilch). The difficulty here is that you're not just translating words, but an entire sub-culture's lingo; 'save' in 'normal' English is different from 'save' in computer-ified English. In essence, you will have to port the entire sub-culture to your language. This, in most cases, would need a community effort because ideally you'd want to choose not the word that fits the best, but the word that is the most popular for the context.
Oh, it's only a matter of time. Whatever MS' other faults may be, you really have to give it to them on their i18n efforts; they are pretty aggressive about it. Particularly given that Swahili is written in the Roman script; they dont have to make any new technical effort in rendering a new script.
I received a good grade with just a small note from the instructor suggesting I stick more closely to my subject.... I guess he was just happy to have something good to read for a change
See if you can find a copy EP Thompson's essay "The Making of the English Working Class" in which he talks in some depth about Saint Monday. To cut a long and elegent essay very short the thesis is that the current 5 day a week regular hours work pattern is not at all 'natural' as humans tend to work episodically for deadlines if left to their own devices.
Thanks for the pointer. My boss will shortly be receiving a book as a gift.
Slashdot Mirror
Essentially, I doubt anyone in the Indian red tape ever imagined that the waves would end up hitting the mainland.
I think I speak for the rest when I request everyone to not belittle the Piratory of Sion by comparing it with obviously fictitious "organisations" such as the Priory of Sion.
In terms of percentage dead, I'd say yes for the region. There are towns in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where less than 20% of the population survived (and 80% of the buildings wiped out). Been pouring over news from the region, and frankly, it's too depressing to believe.
Then, of course, there are those who vehemently believe you need shock and gore to get aid pouring in.
Sad really; there is an entire art of conversation and speech-making that's fast being lost.
That is true as well; frankly, was amazed that Maldives, Seychelles and Somalia were affected. Heck forget all that; the west coasts of India and Sri Lanka were affected by the tsunami. To take a historical context, it's almost as if the tsunami picked and thrashed all destinations of the great Indian Ocean trade routes!
We're pretty used to cyclones in the region; after Bangladesh, the south-eastern coast of India gets the maximum number of cyclones in a year. So most of our disaster preparedness (or what little we have) is mosty focussed on that.
Let's face it:- media apathy towards IPR issues isn't a rich-poor divide. It exists everywhere.
Technically, not a contender currently, but could be if they start developing some algos out there.
Indeed, the last tsunami we had was in 1977, which came with a cyclone; my grandpa was involved in some heroics [which he loves to narrate whenever we go to his place in rural India ;-) ]. I don't know if this is how it is in, say, Hawaii or someplace, but the morning that tsunami hit the coast, everyone apparently went to work normally. It was only by 10AM or so that word spread that the sea was coming in (to use a vernacular phrase for 'tidal wave') and by then, all they could do was to climb onto rooftops and wait for the waters to recede.
Felt nothing here *in* Singapore myself, but guys, I can't tell you how awed by the sheer REGION this covered; there was a 2m wave in, hold your breath, Seychelles which is about twice as far from Indonesia as the Indian sub-continent is.
a) Disaster management techniques: We in India need better processes in managing relief work after disaster has struck; compared to first-world standards, we're woefully under-equipped in terms of emergency medicine and an infrastructure that can rescue people within, say, two hours of something striking. Perhaps a volunteer force or something; we really can't be falling back on the Army each time shit happens.
b) (My personal favourite) A redundant communication network: More ham radios/VSAT terminals/whatever throughout the nation. Cheap and requires more of a community participation than governmental intervention (which (a) would need).
Seriously though, El Reg has been pretty jihad-ist (and sensational) in its coverage of everything Google-related; beginning to wonder why.
Yup, that's a hard nut to crack. That's why you need IBM computers. :-)
The writing style was a dead giveaway. Even if it wasn't previously unpublished,I'd have sworn the author is an Onion writer.
Good luck, and keep us posted on your progress!
Oh, it's only a matter of time. Whatever MS' other faults may be, you really have to give it to them on their i18n efforts; they are pretty aggressive about it. Particularly given that Swahili is written in the Roman script; they dont have to make any new technical effort in rendering a new script.