S Anand

Today, I couldn’t access Google. When I tried, I got this site instead.

We keep hearing about India’s and Hindu’s peaceful history. But if India’s poor treatment of Buddhism is anything to go by, we’re no better than any others. Guess we were lucky to have Gandhi and a non-overthrowable British Government. Otherwise, we’d have gone to war as well.

Get an idea of how much trouble copyright is generating for Google. via LinuxJournal

distributed.net cracked RC5-64. RC5-64 is an encryption algorithm developed by RSA. It took 4 years. It looks long. But the big deal is, the algorithm therefore can’t be used for long-term security. More importantly, it’s becoming practical to use distributed computing on a massive scale.

Remember the Oracle of Google? Looks like it’s a lot more versatile than I thought. I asked it who coined the word “robot”. And the Oracle picked the right answer despite a mis-spelling!. (The answer is Karl Capek)

Fortune, on the business model of The Rolling Stones.

I found this site on neuroscience (for kids). Nice. Has lots of brain games (no – not smart ones – more like testing your reaction time, etc.) Actually I was reading up on neuroscience because of this article on how neuroscience helped figure out the meaning behind a Zen garden. via missing matter

Open source should not be forced by governments, argues the Initiative for Software Choice. Their argument (which open source proponents agree with) is that software should be chosen on merit. But the argument is also self-serving, as the initiative is funded by software companies.

The Guardian on the parallels between the Roman and the American empires.

Mickey Kapoor owns a restaurant in the US, opposite to Pappadeaux’s restaurant. Every time Pappadeaux puts up a signboard, Mickey puts up a pun-board in retort. Hilarious. via Mala

Stupid US laws. I’m sure this Indiana law is quite popular: Bathing is prohibited during the winter. via kuro5hin

This Economist article talks about the problems with patent laws. A recent report by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights says: the interests of the “producer” dominate in the evolution of IP policy, and those of the ultimate consumer are either not heard or heeded.

Interesting Economist article by Drucker about The Near Future. The usual stuff about megatrends, which is, as always, a good read.

Miss Universe dethroned for either being pregnant, or married. She says she’s neither, and prefers to keep the (rather valuable) tiara.

Joshua, in an insightful article, talks of the tradeoff between reciprocal links and quality.

Wow! Google News is completely revamped! via CNet

More nostalgia. John Keogh patented the wheel. via Ig Nobel Prizes

Nostalgia. Remember when Microsoft was more evil than Satan himself?

Kamat observes that most people find out about the site via a search in Google. I’d say advertising is probably pointless for just traffic generation. If one has something to sell, fine. Not otherwise.

Open Courseware from MIT will be open to the public on Sep 30th. OCW is a set of MIT-designed courses that will be available online to the public. via MetaFilter