Re: [silk] Looking for some material on Linux
Deepak, If you do get something, would you mind sharing it with me? I have been looking for similar information for a little while now. Venkat Deepak Misra wrote: I am looking for some material on The importance of Linux in India. Content is basically market size potential etc and why it is important for IT and software vendors to focus on this segment - something on those lines I am in parallel doing google searches but have not got exactly what I am looking for. Strangely the searches throw up 3-4 year old docs in the top and I am not sure of the integrity of the data. Obviously fine tuning the search would yield results but I am hoping that someone would have some material already If any one has a canned presentation/paper and willing to share it - please send me by email Thanks Deepak
Re: [silk] Freebase
I have 5 too... private mail please... Venkat Deepak Misra wrote: I have some too. let me know by email if anyone wants some Deepak On 6/28/07, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some more freebase invites available. You know the drill - ask in private mail, please. Udhay This is a VERY interesting (note that it is still in alpha) attempt to leverage folksonomies on a grander scale than has yet been attempted. For those of you who want to explore -- I have 5 invites to give away. The first 5 silklisters who ask (in private mail, please) get them. Udhay http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/freebase_will_p_1.html -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
[silk] anyone needs freebase invites?
Just got 5. -- 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] The most annoying words on the web
On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 07:02:13AM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Explain? Is your IP being blocked by the IRC ops due to your being a Tor exit node? No. It is being blocked because it's a middleman node. Which shows that IRC ops know shit about Tor. -- 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
[silk] 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources
Like it says - an enormous list of online photography resources. I guess the cameraheads here will find lots to play with in this list... Udhay http://mashable.com/2007/06/23/photography-toolbox/ 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources Photos are everywhere on the web. From sharing with friends, to editing, printing, buying, selling, searching, remixing and free hosting, we've lined up a plethora of resources for photo fiends. -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
[silk] a nice history of fiat money
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-does-fiat-money-seemingly-work.html Why does fiat money seemingly work ? written by Trotsky, edited by Mish Imagine that you live on a small island mining the local salt mine, together with Pete the fisherman and Tom the apple grower. You'd exchange your salt for Pete's fishes and Tom's apples, while they would exchange fishes and apples between them. One day Pete says: Instead of fish, from now on I will give you pieces of papyrus with numbers marked on them. (Papyrus grows in near unlimited quantities nearby, to the obvious benefit of Pete). Pete continues One papyrus mark will represent 1 fish or 5 apples or 2 bags of salt (equivalent to current barter exchange rates). This will make it easier for us to trade among ourselves . We won't have to lug fishes, apples and salt around all the time. Instead, we simply present the papyrus for exchange on demand. In short, Pete wants to modernize your little island economy by introducing money - and he already has one of those $1 papyrus notes with him, which he's eager to exchange for salt. You'd laugh him out of the room, since you would realize that the papyrus per se is not of any value. If you were all to agree on using the papyrus, its value would rest on a promise alone - Pete's promise that papyrus he issues is actually backed by fish. Since the stuff grows everywhere, he could easily issue it by the bucket load. In fact, it's unlikely that any of the islanders would ever come up with such an absurd idea. More likely they would use another good for which there is an actual demand (for instance, a rare type of sea-shell that is prized as an ornament and only seldom found on the island) as their medium of exchange. In short, a free market medium of exchange/store of value can only be something with an already established demand. No worthless object would ever emerge to function as money in a free market. So how did it happen? How did essentially worthless objects come into widespread acceptance as money? To answer that question, we need to take a brief look at history. Flashback: Rome 27 BC Rome’s history of inflation and money debasement actually began with Cesar’s successor Augustus, whereby his method was at least not a prima facie fraud. He simply ordered the mines to overproduce silver in an attempt to finance the empire that had grown greatly under Cesar and himself. When this overproduction began to have inflationary effects, Augustus wisely decided to cut back on the issuance of coins. This was the last time that a Roman emperor attempted to honestly correct a monetary policy blunder, aside from a brief flashing up of monetary rectitude under Aurelius some 280 years later. Under Augustus’ successors, things began to deteriorate fast. Claudius , Caligula and Nero embarked on enormous spending sprees that depleted Rome’s treasury. It was Nero who first came up with the idea to actually debase coins by reducing their silver content in AD 64 , and it all went downhill from there. It should be mentioned that Mark Anthony of Hollywood fame financed the army he used in his fight against Octavian – then later Augustus – also with debased coinage. These coins remained in circulation for a long time, obeying Gresham’s Law – bad money drives good money from circulation. Left: An AD 275 specimen of Aurelian’s Antonianus, 1 part silver to 20 parts copper . In AD 274 Aurelius entered the scene with a well-intentioned monetary reform, which fixed the silver-copper content of the then most widely used coin (the Antonianus)at 1:20 – however, just as soon as this reform was instituted, the silver content resumed its inexorable decline. Left: Emperor Diocletian the price fixer In AD 301 Emperor Diocletian tried his hand at reform, this time by instituting price controls, an idiocy repeated numerous times thereafter, in spite of the incontrovertible evidence that it never works (Richard Nixon’s ill-fated experiment being the most recent example) . Naturally, those price controls accelerated Rome’s downfall as goods simply began to disappear from the market place. Merchants began to hide their goods rather than accept the edict to sell them at a loss. This is of course why price controls are always doomed to failure. One recurring feature of Rome’s long history of debasing its money was a perennial trade deficit due to overconsumption. Does this sound vaguely familiar? The leap from clipping coins to outright fiat money How was the leap from debasing coinage to outright fiat money accomplished? There are two distinct intertwined historical developments that led ultimately to the present system. Goldsmiths become bankers The idea of fractional reserve banking was first introduced by the forerunners of our modern day banking system, the goldsmiths. Goldsmiths were used as depositories for gold and silver, and the receipts they issued for such deposits soon began to circulate as the first
Re: [silk] The most annoying words on the web
Udhay Shankar N wrote [at 01:15 PM 6/25/2007] : http://www.techtree.com/India/News/The_Webs_Ten_Most_Irritating_Words/551-81821-643.html The Web's Ten Most Irritating Words Techtree News Staff Email Print Jun 24, 2007 Can you believe that the World Wide Web has actually spawned words that might make users want to pull at their hair in frustration? Interesting - it appears I've been (along with various others) gamed. The whole survey was a plant - i.e., fake from the beginning. Udhay http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/06/making-the-news.html Making the News June 25, 2007 The gist: A lighthearted unscientific poll that was created as a PR ploy for a tech company is quickly evolving into a real news story, being treated as fact by mainstream press. That evolution from marketing effort to established fact can have real impact on people who works in related fields. This phenomenon is worth examining because, while this fairly harmless example hasn't resulted in a lot of drama, it shows the pattern that underlies a lot of the drama that tends to pop up in web communities. First, to begin with the disclaimers, I know a lot of the people involved in this story, either as acquaintances in the tech industry, or socially by running into them at various events. Second, I don't think anybody's done anything egregiously wrong here, I just think the end result is interesting, insightful and a little scary. Here's the story: Last week, I got an unsolicited press release and pitch from a PR company that has sent me announcements for a few years. I get a lot of these pitches, though I never blog about them, and this particular PR company is fairly respectful so I don't mind much. (I'll omit mention of the PR company, though they're fairly easy to find if you're interested.) Towards the beginning of the announcement was the following: Folksonomy has been voted the word most likely to make web-users wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the key-board -- in a poll to mark the tenth birthday of the word weblog by finding the single most irksome new word to have been spawned by the Internet. Folksonomy (a web classification system) out-pointed words including blog (an online journal), blogosphere (the collective name for all blogs), netiquette (Internet etiquette) and webinar (a web seminar) -- in a poll commissioned by the Lulu Blooker Prize (www.lulublookerprize.com), the world's first literary prize for blooks, alias books based on blogs. A folksonomy -- a hybrid of folks and taxonomy -- is a system for classifying web content by tagging key words. The press release was a fairly straightforward pitch for Lulu, one of the more popular services for printing books on demand. They were pretty clearly trying to get the word blook to be named one of the most annoying web words, as an oblique promo for their sponsorship of the Blooker prize. (Blooker, of course, is itself a take on the Booker Prize.) The poll mentioned in the pitch was run by YouGov in the U.K., though I could find no mention of their methodology. As has been noted by prominent bloggers like Jason Kottke, the press release and poll were picked up by some mainstream news organizations, first starting with second-tier small-town papers and moving up to established outlets like Entrepreneur, Salon, and the Seattle Times, as you can see in a Google News search. Now, when I got the email, the first person I thought of was Thomas Vander Wal, who's a friend of mine and whom I'd just been hanging out with at a conference earlier last week. Thomas coined the word folksonomy (see his history of the word's origin) and has some part of his professional identity associated with the word. Fortunately, Thomas' career is far too well-established to really be negatively affected by someone saying a word he created is annoying. In fact, I'm sure Thomas has considered folksonomy to be somewhat annoying from time to time himself. But instead of coining a phrase, he could easily have made a product or service that was being maligned in passing as part of a company's promotional efforts. And that potential is what makes this story interesting. I emailed Thomas late last week to get his opinions on the press release and its migration to mainstream media outlets. I have seen a few variations of this and yet to see any actual source, until you pointed this press release. I was amazed that 2,000 people in Britain knew of the word and knew it well enough to hate it, but the poll being British has only been in 2/3rds of the news articles I read. I was not surprised with the term folksonomy being hated as most people read the continually bad overview of the term on Wikipedia (after pushing from academics I finally posted the concise definition and story about the creation of the term - http://vanderwal.net/folksonomy.html - as they were tired of being corrected that their
Re: [silk] Are menus and recipes intellectual property?
On 27-Jun-07, at 10:20 PM, Thaths wrote: I believe jace has been to the restaurant and can attest to the goodness of the food there. Only ate there once and it was good. Tried finding accommodation there on my way through Bangkok last week, but the darned airport phones only allowed long distance calls, and the visa-on-arrival adventure took all my energy, so didn't.
Re: [silk] Looking for some material on Linux
I have a blog on Linux and open standards at www.osindia.blogspot.com. Hard numbers on Linux market share is difficult to come by but IDC is now planning to start tracking it. If I come across some info, I'll send it across. Venky On 6/28/07, Venkat Mangudi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deepak, If you do get something, would you mind sharing it with me? I have been looking for similar information for a little while now. Venkat Deepak Misra wrote: I am looking for some material on The importance of Linux in India. Content is basically market size potential etc and why it is important for IT and software vendors to focus on this segment - something on those lines I am in parallel doing google searches but have not got exactly what I am looking for. Strangely the searches throw up 3-4 year old docs in the top and I am not sure of the integrity of the data. Obviously fine tuning the search would yield results but I am hoping that someone would have some material already If any one has a canned presentation/paper and willing to share it - please send me by email Thanks Deepak
Re: [silk] Freebase
On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 07:07:11AM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Some more freebase invites available. You know the drill - ask in private mail, please. Same here! -Jeremy -- jeremy bornstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- Like so many uplifting stories, this one begins with cruelty and heartbreak. -*- http://jeremy.org/ pgpQMW0Qy1plX.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [silk] QotD
On 6/28/07, Vinayak Hegde [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 6/28/07, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner? - Frank Zappa, in response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people towards deviant behavior, or influences their behavior in general. Ah This reminds me of an Ogden Nash poem from school This Is Going To Hurt Just A Little Bit - One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open. And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen. Because some tortures are physical and some are mental, But the one that is both is dental. It is hard to be self-possessed With your jaw digging into your chest. So hard to retain your calm When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line or love line or some other important line in your palm; So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity When you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity. And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on. And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve in your head thatyou aren't being irked on. Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs. And others have things done to their gums, And your teeth are supposed to be being polished, But you have reason to believe they are being demolished. And the circumstance that adds most to your terror Is that it's all done with a mirror, Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa, But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa? And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn't because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a horse's hoof. And you totter to your feet and think. Well it's all over now and afterall it was only this once. And he says come back in three monce. And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest, That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition is so that he won't have to go to the dentist. -- Vinayak Thank you, Vinayak, for that lovely revisit of one of my favourites! And though month is supposed to be one of the words in the English language without a rhyme, Nash did his best with both the singular and the his version of the plural of the word. Which school did you go to, which taught Ogden Nash? Can't imagine CBSE putting it into their syllabus... Deepa.
Re: [silk] QotD
Ah This reminds me of an Ogden Nash poem from school Personally, I think The Octopus is unmatched :-) -- Tell me, O Octopus, I begs Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I'd call me Us. - The Octopus, Ogden Nash -- Raul
[silk] Bugs in Intel dual core processors?
Lifted from elsewhere http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-miscm=118296441702631 http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40567
Re: [silk] QotD
Is those things arms, or is they legs? That reminds me of a piece of verse that I read in Arnold Silcock's Verse and Worse: Long before I was Solomon and you were the Queen of Sheba We lived life togther..as one amoeba. .. Anon came division, fission, and divorce... A lonely pseudopodium, I wandered on my course. (The first two lines are not verbatim, but I have never forgotten the last two.) That book is one of my favourites... Deepa. On 6/28/07, Raul Siddhartha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah This reminds me of an Ogden Nash poem from school Personally, I think The Octopus is unmatched :-) -- Tell me, O Octopus, I begs Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I'd call me Us. - The Octopus, Ogden Nash -- Raul
Re: [silk] Bugs in Intel dual core processors?
On 6/28/07, shiv sastry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lifted from elsewhere http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-miscm=118296441702631 http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40567 There have been bugs before on Intel Processors. The most famous of them being the FDIV bug[1]. Another well known one is the F00F bug[2]. But the number of flaws on Intel Core 2 is quite a few. Looks like this is going the way of the Itanium chip. -- Vinayak References: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug 2. http://www.x86.org/errata/dec97/f00fbug.htm
