Re: [silk] Why India's Internet connections are falling
On 10/9/07, Venkat Mangudi wrote: Well, it makes sense to me that you would first want to help these people make a living before equipping with a laptop. What parts did not make sense to you? Just curious. basically the parts where the writer quotes the UN to make comparisons which are not really valid. for instance: computers can't solve the problems of a place where almost half a billion people live on less than $1 a day, and many lack clean drinking water. . The above is a UN goal, i dont see why OLPC has to meet that goal ? OLPC aims to provide better educational tools, at low cost. If it ends up helping someone, well, thats just a bonus. Then the writer himself claims how much technology has changed his life, yet he doesnt seem to think it can change someone elses, so they dont need to have it. For many years basic communications infrastructure (telephony, cellular) was heavily taxed and regulated by governments in africa (and in india) in the belief that these are luxury items used only by a few privileged and thus need not be made accessible to anyone else. Its the same idea at work here. The other part that the UNESCO quote mentions is provision of blackboard, chalk, teachers etc. There are plenty of UN /other NGOs doing just that with not much success. One factor being, the mode of funding is project based - fixed duration, milestones based projects for e.g. $4 million to be spent in 5 years. There are usually many delays - logistics, bureaucracy, funds that didnt arrive on time etc. Sooner than you think, 2 years are over, and things are done hurriedly in the next 3 years. The project implementation teams ups its sticks and jets away [since the funding is over they have no reason to be there]. Very soon the project collapses, since there is no fallback, support etc. OLPC on the other hand appears to be a community backed project on open source principles [both on the hardware and software front]. So, there is always some backup and support available. I see them moving slowly, which is encouraging because they are getting feedback from the few places where they are doing test rollouts. Whether they can translate the same principles lower down the chain in the countries where they intend to deploy is still a big question mark
Re: [silk] 9/11 again
On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 06:34:16AM +0530, shiv sastry wrote: Nations like the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain that are similarly democratic, developed and wealthy have faced terrorism for decades. Israel and India too Since RAF, there has been no terrorism in Germany. And it's not a good thing. When the ruling class and the base lose touch it's time for a little mayhem.
Re: [silk] 9/11 again
Since RAF, there has been no terrorism in Germany. I recall missing being blown up at FRA by a couple of hours in the late 80's -- was the RAF still active then, or was that just a one-off? -Dave
Re: [silk] 9/11 again
On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 03:10:22PM +0200, Dave Long wrote: Since RAF, there has been no terrorism in Germany. I recall missing being blown up at FRA by a couple of hours in the late 80's -- was the RAF still active then, or was that just a one-off? According to http://www.rafinfo.de/zeit/index.php they largely shut down by 1990. The activity peak was 1977 (Offensive 77, deutscher Herbst). I see a global trend towards authoritorian systems, aided by brinworld (ubiquitous automatic surveillance, and enforcement). Unless we do something, we'll live in an neverending nightmare. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Re: [silk] 9/11 again
On Wednesday 10 Oct 2007 7:00 pm, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 03:10:22PM +0200, Dave Long wrote: Since RAF, there has been no terrorism in Germany. What is/was the RAF? I see a global trend towards authoritorian systems, aided by brinworld (ubiquitous automatic surveillance, and enforcement). Unless we do something, we'll live in an neverending nightmare. This is an interesting statement and I have thoughts that were sparked off by the ongoing civil war in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Once upon a time (prior to 1947) there was democracy in that region, and there was a respected Pashtun leader called Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan popularly known as frontier Gandhi because he implemented Gandhian principles on non violence in a region full of squabbling tribes. In elections held in pre-partition India the NWFP provice had voted for Nehru's Congress and had no real intention of joining Pakistan. But the forces of history and the machinations of Jinnah , Olaf Caroe and later Mountbatten and Nehru ensured that the tribal belt to Pakistan's Northwest lost its democratic forces, Jinnah's Muslim league armed and empowered Islamic Tribal leaders in the region and the NWFP joined Pakistan. Gaffar Khan was jailed in Pakistan. The point that I am getting at is that a democratic nation state requires two important conditions to survive 1) The state has to be the most powerful armed entity. Coercive powers must be retained by the state. 2) The state itself must not be one individual, but should be an entity that follows a constitution, and that entity should be controlled by a series of people who are voted in and out of power. When the state loses its coercive power to someone else - you can get civil war. If that someone else does not subscribe to democracy such as in the NWFP, then democracy dies and is very difficult to revive. Even force cannot revive it easily - unless massive force is used to eliminate all armed entities who are opposed to the forces of the democratic state. That means we get mass murder, genocide, human right violations and collateral damage from the very forces who are trying to restore order and democracy. This is by definition a murderous mess. This is what is happening in Iraq now. Coming back to Eugen's statement: I see a global trend towards authoritorian systems, aided by brinworld (ubiquitous automatic surveillance, and enforcement). When the democratic nation state is threatened by armed coercive forces that threaten to get stronger than the state a coercive response based on force is the only effective way of combating that. The authoritarian systems that are being used by democratic nations have the tacit support of a significant proportion of the citizens of any democratic state. But the democratic state also allows the survival of opponents. If the opponents to the use of authoritarian systems get powerful enough in a democracy, those authoritarian systems may get rolled back a bit. But rolling them back will automatically ensure the rejuvenation of forces that threaten the democratic state, and authoritarian systems will be put back in place. The difference between a functioning democracy and a non democratic set up is the ability to either increase or roll back state authority as the situation demands. The democratic state may have supporters of 3 different viewpoints vying for influence 1) Supporters of the authoritarian systems used by the state 2) Democratic opponents of the authoritarian system being used in their state. 3) Opponents of the state itself in terms of ideology, borders and power structure. shiv
Re: [silk] 9/11 again
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 shiv sastry said the following on 11/10/2007 07:39: What is/was the RAF? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFHDZ6hRQoToz9njMgRCE8dAKD2c/rIn7JjWYkO+SnRoX3sqmk/zwCfQKv/ DjBkwedaghiDJm0xxXA9IF8= =ba4z -END PGP SIGNATURE-
[silk] The Future of Food
There's a picture gallery here... http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/30a9f39472685110vgnvcm104eecbccdrcrd.html THE FUTURE OF FOOD Doctor Delicious Ted Allen For a closer look at the amazing high-tech gadgets found in the kitchens of today's most adventurous professional chefs—as well as some ingenious tools you can use at home—launch the photo gallery here Dave Arnold would like to fix you a gin and tonic. Sound good? It will be. It will be very, very good. It will be like no gin and tonic you have ever seen or tasted in your life. It will also be considerably more involved, shall we say, than cracking open the Tanqueray and Schweppes. First, Arnold believes, he must clarify the lime juice. Why? Because his uncompromising conception of culinary perfection requires that gin and tonics be completely, crystalline clear, that's why. And so, from a closet in the back of a teaching kitchen at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, behind a door labeled Caution: Nitrous Oxide in Use, Arnold wheels out a cart piled high with laboratory equipment—a rotary evaporator (rotovap) that he salvaged from Eli Lilly on eBay, cheap, and that he has jerry-rigged for just this sort of thing. At his side, FCI chef and V.P. Nils Noren supports a somewhat wobbly condenser as Arnold pours a liter of freshly squeezed lime juice, pale green and cloudy with pulp, into a teardrop-shaped Pyrex vessel. Because heat would destroy the flavors and aromas of the elixir, Arnold brings the vessel just above room temperature by partially submerging it in a bath of precisely regulated warm water. He then connects it to a vacuum so that the juice will vaporize at low temperatures. Arnold flips the switch. The machine gurgles and hums, the vessel spins merrily, the lime vapor drifts up into the condenser, and an absolutely clear liquid begins dripping into a beaker. The result smells like lime, but it's lost much of its punchy flavor in distillation. So Arnold works to bring his clarified juice back into balance. From a series of plastic bottles, he adds 4.5 percent powdered citric acid, 1.5 percent malic acid and 0.1 percent succenic acid to the solution, places the beaker atop an electromagnetic stirrer, drops in a little Teflon-coated magnetic bar, and flips the switch. Instantly, the bar begins spinning, whipping up the liquid and dissolving the powders. Voilà! Clearlime, Arnold calls it. A touch of quinine powder and some simple syrup (2:1 sugar and water), some water, and, after a couple hours of labor, he's halfway there. Now he custom-makes his own gin, really just a neutral spirit infused with whatever aromatics are catching Arnold's fancy and then distilled (the latter part of which is, in fact, illegal—but hey, it's all in the name of science). Today it will be two cucumbers, celery ribs, roasted orange slices, and one bunch each of cilantro and Thai basil, all coarsely chopped and added to a fifth of Absolut vodka. Everything goes into the vessel and back onboard the rotovap, and another beaker is filled. The two liquids are combined about 1:1, heavily carbonated with a healthy injection of CO2 (Arnold loves carbonation), and chilled for 20 minutes to a blistering cold in a freezer (he hates it when ice melts in his drinks). And so, sans rocks, sans garnish, Arnold pours the concoction into champagne flutes and serves it. I like my drinks stiff, he notes, and he is not kidding. This take on the GT is, literally and figuratively, a distillation of the classic's flavors. It's a pure, Platonic ideal of the GT, strong as a martini. The sensation is not so much of drinking something as it is of breathing it, the effervescence unusually intense and refreshing, the flavors and aromas magnified, permeating the palate and nose with a sharp, aggressive, limey crispness, underscored with soft notes of cilantro, roasted orange and cuke. And it only took three hours. It's a crazy level of things you have to do to get the product I want, Arnold says, but here's what happens when you do everything possible to get something the way you want it. Yeah, sure, it's ridiculous, but. . . You should see how he cooks a steak. Bigger Motors Dave Arnold is the man behind the curtain of today's hottest movement in cooking, molecular gastronomy. He's the Q to James Bond as embodied by esteemed mad-scientist chef Wylie Dufresne. A former paralegal, performance artist and, briefly, Domino's Pizza driver, Arnold has become the go-to gearhead for machines and techniques to help chefs realize their wildest culinary fantasies. And wild they are: Carbonated watermelon. Gelatin spheres with liquid centers that pop in your mouth. Broths and sauces whipped into foams. Shrimp flesh extruded into noodles. Hot-center desserts with exteriors flash-frozen by liquid nitrogen. Vanilla beans sizzled tableside with lasers. (It should be noted that Arnold disapproves of sizzling things tableside with lasers, because of safety concerns—which, for
