Links

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

IBM’s research shows that people who are trusting adopt the Internet more than those who are suspicious by nature.

Interesting article: suggests that Tamil nationalism a moderating force to religious politics.

Yahoo India’s TV Guide. I’ve been waiting for this for sooooo long! Comments Som Patterkine 23 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: Hi. The Yahoo India TV Guide is really just a list of links. Not very good. The one that I have found better is http://www.zipazap.com This is perhaps one of the better TV Guides especially on accuracy. I looked up the promoters of Zipazap and they all seem to be solid TV professionals that explains the quality of info on this site. Bye Som

Ralph Nader talks about how businesses are using GATS to their own ends. The argument is that trade laws are used as a lever to subvert local laws, which protect citizens from businesses. via RobotWisdom

Chatting with your computer – the new way of interacting with your DOS prompt.

Corporate scandals at a glance. Nice, the way they’ve linked Martha Stewart and her daughter to Sam Waksal. (Wax-all?) via Metafilter

Daypop is out of disk space. Poor thing! Could we lend it some? I mean, could sites like Daypop work out a distributed architecture, using web services? Or using things like space drives? via Scripting News

Esperanto is quite an easy language to learn. This article from kuro5hin teaches you the basics in 10 minutes. If only it were a widely spoken language… Still, I’m going to learn it.