November 2002

The Onion on the plans of top Indian physicists.

Huh? Corp. If you have money, and they have shares, buy! They’ve got the soundest business model you’ll see around. via Vijay

Strange quarks causing earthquakes. Literally. via RobotWisdom

Scientific American’s review of the Simputer. Perhaps the greatest obstacle for the Simputer, though, is cost. Will people in developing countries be able to justify the expenditure of $250 on a device that may be helpful but is not essential? via Kamat’s Potpourri

Kiruba’s interview with Google. Nice questions! And good to see the post on MetaFilter. via MetaFilter

The Economist argues that in making ’ethical practices’ and ‘social responsibility’ prominent, corporates create a vicious cycle of guilt-until-proven-innocent. I agree with that part. But I wonder if the incentives in companies are aligned to benefit all stakeholders. Sure, in the long-run, everything is factored into the stock price. But the short (not even the medium) run is what managers need worry about, given the dynamic job market.

Tuvalu is a small country with 11,000 people. It’s highest peak is under 5 metres. (Yes, metres.) It pretty much gets submerged every year. Incidentally, it’s also the home of the .tv domain name. via Maltesh

What technical skills are in demand? Just a quick sketchy search by Keith. Intruiging that the top 3 technologies in demand are SQL, UNIX and Oracle, followed by C and Java.

The Bangalore Bloggers’ Meet in the eyes of Ayesha and Harris.

Your recommended blog list via Anita

Ilayaraja’s Rakkamma on the BBC Top 10 songs via Prachi

Compendium of multimedia projects via RobotWisdom

There’s some good tech stuff at Accenture’s R&D page. via andersja

IBM has this cool tool: Multimodal browser extension. With this, I can create a textbox on my site, which you can fill in by speaking to the web page. The underlying standard is W3C’s XHTML+Voice. Two years ago, I’d have downloaded it and had it on my site in a few hours. Today, I’m a married consultant. I don’t have a few hours. :-(

Lazy Geek on the possibility of Mani Rathnam and Kamal Hassan working together on Dragon Fire.

How the FBI hounded Bobby Fischer via Pathologically Polymathic

Bought one of these Eicher Maps. They’re fantastic. I sure wish I had access to the GIS on their website! Have a whole bunch of cool ideas.

The Mumbai police are using a hacker to resolve some cybercrimes. It’s interesting to note some of his efforts: freeing the IDBI, HDFC sites from hackers, and tracking Chhota Shakeel’s money laundering. via FilterCoffee

An article in the Scientific American linking two-leggedness, non-vegetarianism and our brain size. Contrast that with this (funny) talk.origins post on the trade-off between a large brain and two-leggedness. via Ravikiran, via RobotWisdom

An intruiging case of 22 Patels in a cricket match. via Kamat