Links

Deckard was a replicant! The movie BladeRunner starring Harrison Ford raised a controversy. Read the script if you like. Was he an android? The author says he was.

An interesting story about a hacked computer network and how they recovered.

CNet argues that on the Internet (in the US), you have just about no civil rights. Among other things, your employer can monitor your web surfing and e-mail – even at home.

Pickover’s site is always a pleasure to visit. His puzzles are great, but you really go there for a blend of art, computers, mathematics and science.

First and second looks much cheaper than Fabmart or Rediff. Compare Archer’s “To cut a long story short”, for example. Rediff: 167. Fabmart: 127. First and second: 105. Or “Built to last”. Rediff: not available. Fabmart: 354. First and second: 274. Oh well, I’m going to need a bot. Why can’t I make one?

Kjell Sandved goes about taking photographs of plants and animals that have strange patterns. You have to see the moth with a ‘Hi’ written on it to believe.

This site has a menu of messages that have been forwarded many times over. I never saw the point in forwarding jokes in the first place. You can always catch up with the good ones at rec.humor.funny.

Microsoft dumps Java. Doesn’t worry me to much. I’ve never had much use for Java as a user. They’ve ‘adopted’ Perl, though. And I was always a Perl fan.

CNet has a comprehensive outline on what’s happening all over the world on digital signatures. Frankly, I’m won over by CNet’s “Big Picture” concept.

First and Second claims to be the largest bookshop in India. It’s possible. They’re the only ones that stock The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. I ordered them instantly, and it came in 2 days! I’m sold.

I’ve scanned the photos I took at Lehman Brothers during summers. Comments Praveen 10 Jul 2000 12:00 pm: I would really like to see some photos of LB Mumbai.

Whose sites are the most popular on this server? Last month, the top 10 sites were admissions, placement, Prof. Srinivasan’s, and Prof. Bandi’s. I ran http-analyze to get these results.

A paper at eLab talks about how CDNow prices its online advertisements. It argues that CPM is an archaic model, and measuring advertisement performance is more important.

Apps.com is a directory of Internet applications.

An behind-the-scenes report on a hacking attempt. These guys set up a trap and waited for it to get hacked. Once it did, they recorded the conversations of the hackers. If you’re UNIX savvy, it’s a must read.

The Internet Law Journal has a lot of stuff on legal issues on the Net. It’s going to come in handy for our dot-com project. So is dotcomfailures.com, which has details on failing dot-coms.

I bought Built to Last, Archer’s To Cut a Long Story Short, Crichton’s Timeline, Best Practices, and Handy’s The Age of Unreason at Fabmart. It was delivered in 5 days as promised.

Prof. Apte mentioned that the currency forward is not an unbiased estimator of the future spot rate, but is the certainty equivalent of it. The Kelly FAQ gives a good description of what certainty equivalence means.

Clinton signed the e-signature law. To be implemented in October, it’s an interesting contrast to our IT Bill.

The new Emerging Digital Economy report is out. I found the second and first extremely informative.