October 2002

Sachin Tendulkar scores 20,000 runs in international cricket.

I downloaded Mozilla 1.2 beta. It loads fast. It runs fast. It hasn’t crashed. It’s tab feature is great. It’s Type Ahead Find feature is fabulous. It’s add-ons are great. I think I’m going to switch browsers again! (My only crib, though, is that I can’t customize keyboard shortcuts. Or I don’t know how yet.)

Kramnik ties with Fritz. The chess game between the world champion and the computer ends with 2 games each. via RobotWisdom It is now clear that the top program and the world champion are approximately equal." – Vladimir Kramnik

Digital photography comes of age. Kodak’s 16 mega-pixel digital camera is a dream. Upto 16 bits per colour (we at best have 8), ISO 100-400 (ISO 400 is very sensitive film, suited to night photography), 1.6 seconds reload time, … via Nilesh

Why onions make you cry. via Potti

Water problems at Chennai. And Mumbai. And Ahmedabad. And Andhra. The rest of the world will, too, in a short while.

Google games on Metafilter.

A 3D search engine from Princeton. Quite an interesting attempt. I’m not sure what to do with the result of the search, though. via missing matter

Good article on how Google Answers works. Unfortunately, the guy who wrote it was fired from Google Answers. (Incidentally, this Fortune article mentions that Google makes over $100 mn a year. That’s incredible!) via GoogleBlog ‘A frequent visitor’ wrote in asking if I meant ‘guy’ as in ‘guy or girl’, because the person who wrote it is a girl. I didn’t know that. Thanks! (Wonder if that re-inforces the stereotype of the female librarian…) ...

Microsoft’s ’true story’ of a Mac-to-PC convert isn’t true. The “convert” works in a Public relations firm hired by Microsoft. And probably didn’t switch in the first place. (The original ad)

AllTheWeb’s Alchemist: customizable CSS interface. Possibly the first non-Google search-engine innovation I’ve seen in a few years. AllTheWeb lets you customise the look and feel of your search results. It looks quite flexible, but I wonder how much the interface will be constrained by the bounds of Cascading Style Sheets itself. Google’s API may end up being the truly customizable interface. via andersja

Music-swapping continues. An RIAA spokesman says, The problem would have been far worse if we had not stopped Napster. We would have seen far more venture capital companies taking a shot (at P2P sites) if Napster had succeeded. However, consumers are continually becoming more accustomed to downloading music for free KaZaa’s the most popular right now, but not for long, perhaps. KaZaa also faces a possible Napster-esque end. The recording industry has sued the service and court date looms in December ...

Hilarious review of ‘Baba’. Baba is the latest film by Rajnikanth. via Potti

After Lessig’s hearing at the Supreme Court, here’s the next step towards rationality on copyrights. The US Copyright Office is asking for public opinion on what could be considered an exception to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. via Scripting News

How do I kill thee? Let me count the ways. Several end-of-world scenarios – scientific and religious. via MetaFilter

Problems in online education. David McGrath teach English online. He ends up … spending hours copying excerpts from her paper into cheater catching software programs and search engines to verify that it was authentic. [It is not authentic] 30 to 40 percent of the time. Universities today certify the ability to do original work, in addition to training students. Corporates, I think, value the ability to create a good quality report, irrespective of originality. This is a mismatch. Maybe the whole objective of courses, at least online courses, will change shortly. via Plastic.

Opera works well with mobile phones. I don’t understand how, personally, but Opera has revamped its site focusing on smartphones, and seems to have a good technology here.

The Economist on the Nobel prize in medicine. The Human Genome Project was a formidable achievement, but one that was managerial as much as scientific, and there is no Nobel prize for management. Instead, Sir John has been given a prize for real scientific work which nobody could doubt was of Nobel quality.

Lessig argues copyright to the Supreme Court. Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford, and argues against excessive legislation of the Internet and related technologies. Good guy.

Nicholas Negroponte on “Being Wireless”. Five years ago, I put a wireless LAN in my home in Boston. At the time it cost about $2,000 for the base station and $500 for each device I wanted to connect. Today, it costs $120 and $50, respectively, and the price is dropping. That’s about Rs. 10,000. My next gadget is identified.