2002 49

2002 in pictures – links on MetaFilter.

A Nike ID story. An e-mail correspondence between Jonah and Nike about creating a personalised ID called “sweatshop”.

An interesting legal conundrum. When Nike was accused of running sweatshops in Asia, it responded with press releases and ads claiming that it did not. Marc Kasky filed a case saying that Nike was advertising unfairly, and won. Now corporates are raising the question of whether corporate statements are free speech, and can be similarly protected.

Interesting site on uniforms of airline stewardesses. via boing boing

Who invented cubicles? Herman Miller, 1950s. Now we know whom to blame! (However, I must admit to a secret liking for cubicles.) via MetaFilter Comments L K Tucker 21 Feb 2007 5:23 pm: Robert Propst is credited with the invention according to a bio on the Herman Miller Inc. site. He denied it. His open plan system was modified when workers using the first prototypes began having mental breaks. The human vision startle reflex had worked in the “special circumstances” those first close-spaced workstations created.

Insight from a NY Times article on how the Internet can be accessed from flights: the reason you shouldn’t use a laptop on a flight during take-off and landing is not because of electrical interference; it is that the laptop could be a dangerous loose flying object in case of turbulence. Now, that makes more sense.

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

Photos from the Mumbai Bloggers’ Meet.

Lavish weddings. Sounds a bit of a waste… but if I were offered a wedding in Disneyland, with “Cinderella’s Crystal Coach”, I’d probably pay the $40,000. If I had it, that is.

Salomon Smith Barney sold the CEO of WorldCom lots of IPO shares at a low price. The CEO made lots of money. Technically, that’s a bribe to your customer. But then, so is every free offer, or cross-sale. What makes the SSB-WorldCom deals illegal, this article argues, is that they’re so BIG, and they’re made of OTHER people’s money.

Broad and insightful talk by Diamond on why history unfolded differently across continents. Note that he’s talking about why and not how. Based on his book: Guns, Germs and Steel.

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

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

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

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

The world’s 100m record is broken. Without drugs, this time. At 9.78 seconds, Montgomery has been running at over 35 km per hour. I used to drive that fast, on average.

Writing screenplays. Interesting: modern murder-movies are based on Three Little Pigs, Psycho is based on Little Red Riding Hood, Pretty Woman on Cinderella, …

Speaking of bugs, here are some famous software glitches – right from the Patriot missiles misfiring to the London Millenium bridge wobbling. Some links are broken, though. (More glitches and links)

Music helps identify software bugs. I’m sure it can be extended to many other forms of ordered data. DNA sequences, time series, etc.

Man has epilepsy. Woman thinks it’s a heart attack. Gets upset and sues epileptic. via Metafilter

ABC News managed to smuggle uranium into the US. Reminds of when George Stalk was talking about the security checks in India being much tighter than in the US. He was body-frisked twice, and barely escaped a third random check.

Garth is working on audio-blogging tools. Given the amount of poetry I see among bloggers, this might unleash a host of blog-singers.

Bizarre. Funeral homes offer to convert cremated ashes into a diamond.

The most cruel sentence I’ve heard. Death by stoning. Crime: childbirth over 9 months after divorce. Redeeming feature: stoning to take place after weaning.

Air Sahara is auctioning tickets. Pity Chennai is not on their list!

Incidentally, this kitchen hosted my latest attempt at making pasta. I found a simple pesto sauce recipe, and ended up spending about Rs. 500 for the ingredients. We managed to eat it. Barely.

Conway and Doyle prove that it is possible to divide by 3. The paper, which is distributed under the GPL, unfortunately comes without a warranty. (via Gimbo)

I have a cold. And although some Chinese may say otherwise, it has nothing to do with cold weather.

PC Pit Stop. A good tune-up for your PC. I managed to improve my hard disk performance by enabling DMA, and my memory by reducing the video card shared memory.

False mathematical proofs. I ended to get all except the first wrong! (BTW, Math Mistakes is a good read. Thanks, Sriram!)

While on the subject of spoofs, gatt.org is a pretty good one on wto.org. WTO doesn’t like it, though. Links: 1 2

For those as ignorant about the World Cup as I am, the FIFA website has a summary of Stage 1 and Stage 2.

This purple and crimson diamond is supposed to be the most valuable object in the world. (Weight for weight.)

Effective networking.

Several ways of receiving mail on a mobile phone.

Things Mil and his girlfriend have argued about. I dread to think of my future.

Free annual reports online.

A non-verbal dictionary.

The Doomsday clock has been advanced by 2 minutes. It now reads 7 minutes from midnight. That’s the level is was during the cold war.

Spraying dots prevents theft. The range of application for the technology appears wide.

Valentine’s day. This year, I rather looked forward to it. Funny that some people didn’t.

Scantips. Ways to improve your scanning.

Patterns of life. Yes, the life that JHC created. No, not THAT one. This is John Horton Conway’s.

740 digits of pi in a poem.

Tron killer app: what is it? (a trailer!)

Kirk Kerkorian’s wife is asking for $323,000 a month for child support. Here’s the breakup of that figure. But then, Kerkorian’s the 29th richest man.

I opted out of many popup ads. Not that I particularly mind them… I just wanted to test out the code.

Ender’s Game is a pretty good book.

Surrealism.