Re: [silk] http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/07/bollywood-stung.html
On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Gautam John wrote: If a reduction in the number of reasonably priced stand alone theatres can be attributed to the rise of expensive multiplexes then I do believe that a pirated VCD could reasonably substitute for a family outing to the former... I think the pirated dvd has affected cinema in more ways than one... for instance, i have seen a revival of cinema theatres in many small towns (i speak only for east africa...). most of them rely on a dvd player connected to a projector (which arent so expensive nowadays...) .. all you need then is a big clean wall or a bedsheet... they show english premier league on football nights... hollywood / bollywood blockbusters on other nights... soft-core (jag mundhra /ashok amritraj productions appear to be a particular favourite) for late night shows.. a couple of months and you have recouped your setup costs and made a nice profit too...
[silk] Student Laptop from Elcot
Somebody senior in ELCOT (Govt of TN) sure does not like MS. What do you guys think? The price point is very impressive for the hardware specifications (about Rs 30,000, or USD 730). How did they manage to convince Dell or HP to get past MS' usual arm-twisting? http://www.elcot.in/StudentLaptop2008/index.php http://www.elcot.in/StudentLaptop2008/bundled-software.php -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Request
On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 12:25 AM, Bharat Shetty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But in case anyone knows the better ones, guide me towards such sites. Sacred Texts is pretty exhaustive. http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm#maha -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Are you a different person when you speak a different language?
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: these articles tend to be all from a male perspective-would love to see one from a female perspective. Try this: http://www.amazon.com/Marrying-Anita-Quest-Love-India/dp/1596911859 An extract is visible at http://anitajain.net/extract.htm There is also this film/documentary by a female director that I really enjoyed : I for India http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490984/
Re: [silk] The Happening
On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 6:27 AM, Gautam John wrote: Have you seen it? What do you make of it? Spoiler Alert: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=75893f9a-3391-4ab5-88c8-cf7e74bcd835 Is pretty damn harsh on the movie while: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080612/REVIEWS/545929629 Is surprisingly benign. I saw it yesterday. I quite liked it, the movie as a whole has many narrative flaws ... but there were some really striking scenes . Nowhere near as bad as the last one he made... but not as good as 'the village' / unbreakable / sixth sense...
Re: [silk] Disadvantages of an Elite education
On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 6:19 PM, ss [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 01 Jul 2008 8:16:34 pm Amit Varma wrote: Haysoos! I'm Bishop's as well, though many years after you kind folk, I would imagine. (Did my tenth in 89.) That school's ignominy grows and grows... I have spent several decades out of school and have not met a single alumnus after that and suddenly - on Silk - I meet TWO! Have you guys read Poona Company by Farrukh Dhondy? shiv Yeah, i have a copy lying somewhere packed away in a crate... quite an under-rated book. I recall an email from a friend sometime back saying they were gonna make the book into a film...
Re: [silk] Food crisis, from NatGeo
On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 8:49 AM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote: in many parts of Asia to protect local farmers, due to the very high efficiency of American rice production, and consequently it is not worth it for American rice farmers to bother with the Asian export business. Isn't that efficiency + top-down subsidy ? I would make the observation that the situation has not yet become so bad that people are switching to more cost effective grains, choosing to pay more for their grain of habit instead. The switch is happening and its real... here in Kenya for example - many farmers have switched from growing corn and wheat (the local staples ) to other cash crops - like passion fruit, tree tomatoes, pyrethrum etc. Part of the reason is higher monetary yeild per hectare (which has become more important here because farms here have grown smaller and smaller because of familial inheritance and sub-division - and increase in human lifespan because of better health facilities... ). This switch from food crops to cash crops is happening not just at the small scale farmer level : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/06/biofuels.alternativeenergy thats one of the primary rice production regions of the country being turned over to sugarcane for biofuel... the alternative is to import rice and maize but doing that wasnt cheap anyway because the country has always been primarily a net importer of goods and commodities (and in the near future of basic food...).
[silk] Fwd: India's Cyber Laws
A couple of questions from my journalist brother seeking to outsource his leg work to the wise folks on Silk. Krish Raghav says - 'In the context of the Blackberry issue, would you say that its time to rethink India's Information technology laws? Are Indian Cyber Laws outdated? If they are, are there, say, five instances where this outdated-ness is glaring?' Ive deliberately left 'technology laws' and 'cyber laws' ambiguous, as Im trying to look at as wide an angle as possible - policy on technology, security and encryption, TRAI's machinations, e-governance etc etc. Just as an example, Telecom regulations require any 'service/person/organisation' who uses 'encryption greater than 40 bit key length in the RSA algorithms' (Source: http://www.dot.gov.in/isp/guide_international_gateway.htm) has to deposit the decryption key with the Telecom Authority. Now, 40 bit encryption, as I understand, is hopelessly outdated, and requiring keys to be submitted to the government for just about anything that uses 40bit is quite unwieldy. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Rambo in Mumbai
On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Gautam John wrote: The Indian producers who are banking on Stallone may be disappointed by his star power. The latest Rambo film disappointed at the box office and the British Odeon chain refused to show it for commercial reasons. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/bollywood/article4187558.ece -- never been a fan of the rambo series... though I quite enjoyed the last Rocky movie (Rocky Balboa), where a 100 year old rocky beats up a 25 year old heavyweight champion
Re: [silk] Is conflict necessary for progress?
On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Gautam John wrote: Is conflict necessary for progress? Or is it an impediment? Would individuals be able to reach their fullest levels of potential in the absence of conflict or is conflict necessary to maximise potential, individual and social? Isnt it the other way round... progress causing conflict ? most conflicts have been about competing for resources, the more scarce the resource (diamonds, oil, precious metals, land) , the greater the conflict. the only potential maximised is that of the winner.
Re: [silk] Is conflict necessary for progress?
On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Amit Varma wrote: I was pointing out that the argument that conflict leads to progress is only a few steps away from the invisible hand argument of the Libertarianism. I jokingly (see the smiley?) characterized Libertarianism as an abyss and pleaded for you to step back from it. Given that the more free societies are the most prosperous, some abyss it is! Isnt it a bit silly to talk about free societies == prosperity in blanket terms, when many of those free societies became prosperous out of international inequities and one sided conflicts ?
Re: [silk] Is conflict necessary for progress?
On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Amit Varma wrote: Right. And calling belief in freedom an abyss is not silly? If there is one single cause for human progress, it is our propensity to trade with each other for personal profit. (Indeed, that's exactly what we do at Silk-list as well, trading our time and insights, such as they are, for the far greater insight we get from others.) Yet somehow clamping down on this propensity is considered 'progressive' and people who support the freedom to trade, along with all others, are disparaged. I don't get it. I did my fair bit of reading on various colonial histories. back then it used to be called free trade too and was done with a gun and a bible. there were people back then too spouting mantras about free trade and how the opponents were impeding progress. political correctness has changed since then, its more sugar coated now (the gun and the bible still hold good in many instances... ). my point is, what you call free trade isnt free for everyone. its way cheaper to buy timber from the sudan than from japan on the free trade market because sudanese timber comes from a conflict zone. it might be progressive to buy sudanese timber, but its making them poorer.
Re: [silk] Thoroughly enjoyed this...
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Deepa Mohan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (Is he already on the silklist?) cough..cough. Thank you -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Fwd: [india-gii] New 'Crish' software to track cybercafe users
On 5/30/08, Sumant Srivathsan wrote: Why, oh why, would you want to do such a thing? Although I must say, Die Hard 4.0 was quite entertaining. Where else could you have a fighter jet taken down by a truck? Or the car that brings down a chopper...
Re: [silk] Fwd: [india-gii] New 'Crish' software to track cybercafe users
On 5/30/08, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why, oh why, would you want to do such a thing? Although I must say, Die Hard 4.0 was quite entertaining. Where else could you have a fighter jet taken down by a truck? Or the car that brings down a chopper... You folks haven't seen many Mithun (or Rajanikanth) movies, have you? I am still waiting for Disco Dancer 2, and Commando - 2000 !! (and a reprisal of dialogues like : Maa...mujhe factory mey commando ki naukri mili hai)
Re: [silk] Fwd: [india-gii] New ‘Crish’ so ftware to track cybercafe users
On 5/28/08, Gautam John wrote: May 27: Crish, a newly-developed software, will automatically store the photograph and fingerprints of Internet users in cybercafes in the database of the computer, with the date and time of logging in, making it extremely easy to identify persons who send out fake and threatening emails. But even if it was installed ...how will it work... ? If you have a cybercafe with 20 users... and if most of them are using something like hotmail... how will having my photograph and fingerprint and time i used a cybercafe identify who the anonymous sender of a 'threatening mail' is... ?
Re: [silk] On Innovation in India
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Anil Kumar wrote: My response is in reference to Point - 4: I quite disagree with the 'less government 'support' the better' argument. In India, good examples (IMHO) are the development of the Information Technology sector, now followed by the Business Process Outsourcing sector, both having benefited from various forms of government (both Central and State) support including but not limited to support in procuring land and buildings, reduced to nil stamp duties and registration fees on real estate transactions, tax free income generation. There are a few other benefits and support on administrative and regulatory levels. This support (particularly from Central Government) is administered through the Software Technology Parks of India Scheme. Maybe some of these regulations were incorrect to start with ? or maybe businesses would have still come despite these regulations..? or maybe there are other regulatory mechanisms not directly related which are to blame...? Some years ago i was shocked to see five mobile operators competing successfully in Somaliland (formerly british somaliland... an un-recognized breakaway republic from Somalia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somaliland), the telecom sector there had little in terms of entry barriers... all that was required was a single approval from a government functionary. This meant a lot of competition, low mobile charges (30 cents to call any country in the world...) and very low operational overheads in a country with very poor infrastructure. Compared to that neighboring Kenya had better communication infrastructure, but an extremely pervasive regulatory environment which meant that the 2 mobile operators had atrociously high calling rates. Note that Kenya has had a software-technology-park, nil-stamp duty initiative etc. for quite some time now... but the real problem has been the presence of other stifling laws and regulations...(for e.g. the city council / municipal council has some arcane laws/ fees / and powers which make operating any kind of business very expensive)
Re: [silk] Bush's Arabian visit....
On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 12:48 PM, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: It seems to be $159 one way now (minimum) at flyush.com. It's still very affordable. It's about $60 for a cab, and about $100 for a limo. For about $200 (including a cab ride from the heliport) it's quite a nice ride. Are you expected to tip helicopter pilots? Cheeni Don't they have motorcycle taxis ? ashok
Re: [silk] 'Blade Runner' handed Olympic ban
On Mon, Jan 14, 2008 at 7:23 PM, B.L. Krieger wrote: couldn't 'able-bodied' athlets not just use 'protheses' as well? --bernhard http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/athletics/7141302.stm Paralympic 400m star Oscar Pistorius has failed in his bid to compete at this year's Olympic Games in Beijing. The IAAF, athletics' governing body, ruled his prosthetic limbs give him an advantage over able-bodied opponents and contravene rules on technical aids. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/disability_sport/7405954.stm Ruling overturned... fastest man with no legs is now OK to compete against men with real legs...
Re: [silk] On Intolerance
On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 7:36 PM, Thaths [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is not fundamental to Indians alone. And I don't think it has anything to do with preserving dharma - real or imagined. I have seen first-hand, and I am sure ashok has also witnessed, such summary mob justice being meted out to pick pockets, glue sniffing street kids and many other n'er do wells in Kenya. The rule in Kenya is : 1) If you are a black man, and you are pick-pocketed / or bag snatched, you keep mum and move on. 2) If you are white / brown / or a woman, and you are pick-pocketed, you shout MWIZI (THIEF !!!) and a crowd usually beats the pickpocket to death (a few years ago they used to put a tyre around the thief's neck and set it alight... but nowadays used tires are hard to come by). (The reason for (1) being, its hard to distinguish between the thief and the victim... i have seen one instance where both the thief and the victim were fleeing for their lives)
Re: [silk] Young Saudis ask, 'Where is the love?'
On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 11:04 AM, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: Asking a woman for her number can cause a young man anxiety anywhere. And in neighbouring UAE, Emirati men and women come to malls with rolled up pieces of paper with their numbers on them, which they throw to people who interest them. I saw many secretive couples at a public park last year on a very hot afternoon in Ahmedabad, many of the women had handkerchiefs masking their faces and wore gigantic sun-glasses to make themselves unrecognizable. I also met an askari who sternly warned me not to take any pictures ( i was carrying a camera...). Later, after I had bought him an ice cream, and he had determined that i was a good guy, he told me was a kind of guardian for these lovers - apparently some parents and unscruplous were in the habit of secretly photographing such trysts, and either using it to threaten or blackmail the couples...
[silk] The historical roots of India’s booming service economy
http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1122 India stands out from other emerging economies because its growth has been led by the service sector rather than labour-intensive manufactures. This column summarises recent research showing that India has a long history of strength in services, and its service-led development may play to historical strengths rather than hindering its progress. India's recent spectacular rate of economic growth, combined with the sheer size of its population, means that it is beginning to take its place as one of the key players in the global economy. 1 One way in which India stands out from other Asian economies is in the better performance of its service sector. Whereas other emerging Asian economies, such as China, have experienced growth led by dynamic manufacturing performance, India's growth has been led by sectors such as business services. This is sometimes used to portray India's performance as fragile, focusing attention on shortcomings of the industrial sector. 2 But as much of manufacturing becomes increasingly automated and de-skilled, it is not clear that manufacturing-led growth is such a good long-run bet on the road to development. It may be that a focus on services will prove to be a better long-run route to prosperity. Furthermore, this pattern of service-led development may be more in tune with the legacy of India's past. Measuring long-run productivity performance Although we know a great deal about the long-run development of rich countries such as Britain, we know much less about the past performance of less developed countries such as India. In recent research, we seek to remedy this by drawing on quantitative information collected by the British during their period of colonial rule in India to compare sectoral productivity performance in Britain and India from 1870 to the present. 3 Our research demonstrates that India's recent service-led development has deep historical roots. During the colonial period, India's comparative productivity performance was already better in services than in industry or agriculture. This emphasis on services is in line with much recent research on long-run growth among the developed economies, which finds services playing a key role in comparative economic performance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as during more recent times. 4 India has long lagged behind Britain. Between 1870 and 1970, output per worker in India fell from around 15 per cent of the UK level in the economy as a whole to less than 10 per cent, as India fell further behind. Since the 1970s, India has begun to catch up on the United Kingdom, but by the end of the twentieth century it was still further behind than in the early 1870s. Even with the rapid growth achieved by India in recent years, it will take time for India to regain its relative position of the late nineteenth century. Productivity by sector Agriculture has an important part to play in explaining this disappointing overall Indian productivity performance. The sector remains India's largest employer, accounting for three-quarters of Indian employment in the late nineteenth century and nearly two-thirds of employment today. Furthermore, agriculture is the only sector where India has continued to fall further and further behind, with labour productivity dropping from around 10% of the UK level in the late nineteenth century to around 1% at the end of the twentieth. It is clear that India needs to increase productivity in agriculture if overall productivity performance is to improve substantially. Much of the existing research on economic growth and development emphasises the role of industry. This is particularly so in the context of twentieth century Asia, where the high-profile cases of Japan, South Korea and China have all been seen as manufacturing-led development.5 The Indian case, however, does not conform to this pattern, and this shows up in the comparative productivity data. Indeed, although there have been fluctuations in comparative India/UK productivity in industry, there has been no trend, with India at around 15% of the UK level in the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. Only in services has there been an improvement in comparative India/UK labour productivity, from around 15% in the late nineteenth century to around 30% by the end of the twentieth century. Services have thus played a positive role in India's productivity performance throughout the period, limiting Indian relative decline before 1870 and leading the process of catching-up from the 1970s. The service sector productivity growth is not confined to modern services such as finance – it is also visible in trade and transport. Explaining India's better performance in services The productivity gap between Britain and India has been smaller in services than in industry or agriculture since the First World War. The recent emergence of a dynamic service-led Indian economy
Re: [silk] Why Brazil Loves Linux
On 5/7/08, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: the MS anti-trust agreements are public, and neither in the US nor in the EU do they require MS not to engage in differential pricing for other jurisdictions, or even for different target markets in different jurisdictions. MS does a lot of the latter (windows - regular, not the 3-application version - for $3, say, typically for developing country education and public sector). Is this a valid argument about microsoft being automatically excluded from eu procurements because of the EU ruling ? : http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7567/469 The EU procurement rules possibly exclude Microsoft from current or future procurement procedures, says Heide Rühle MEP, internal market spokeswoman for the Greens / EFA in the European Parliament...
Re: [silk] Why Brazil Loves Linux
On 5/5/08, va wrote: What they actually do is partially fund computerization by providing licenses gratis. uh, oh... not gratis, isnt the cost inbuilt ? Its just that the buyer is unaware of it. Partly why the reseller distribution channel works so well. they peddle a $3 license here for govt. orgs (usually interest is only shown for large-by-african-standards deployments i.e. 1,000+ seats...). and the $3 is usually waived (and hence gratis). this gives them leverage to organize raids (using the govt. machinery) on cybercafes etc... its easier buying knock-off viagra here than pirated ms-windows.
Re: [silk] Canon L series lens
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 4:22 AM, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote: I am looking for a L Series lens for my Canon... (I'm assuming you mean an L-series telephoto lens.) Yep Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM http://www.amazon.com/Canon-100-400mm-f4-5-5-6L-Telephoto-Cameras/dp/B7GQLS/ What are you planning to use the lens for? If it's birds, I'd recommend the 400/5.6L over the 100-400 (it's even cheaper than the latter). If it is for general photography, I'd pick the 100-400 for the zoom range. General photography... thats why I want something with a zoom range... is this significantly better than a good Sigma lens ? Which Sigma lens in particular do you have in mind? They vary. The 170-500 is slow and has no IS (which Sigma calls OS, for Optical Stabilisation) and is supposed to be soft. Yeah the 170-500 with optical stabilisation is the one i was thinkin of... thanks a lot for the advice ! ashok
Re: [silk] Crazy English in China
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 3:28 PM, ss wrote: There's always a problem with generalizing from a small sample[1]. Udhay, I agree with you in principle, but in this case the sample size isn't small. See, http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/10/stories/2007091052840500.htm http://tamil.cri.cn/ http://hindi.cri.cn/ This seems to support my impression that the Chinese are far more serious about foreign languages than Indians are. It could probably be more because of China being a communist state rather than general linguistic curiosity. I have meet plenty of russians who spoke hindi (and in some instances regional languages) fluently. All of them had worked for the government in some capacity and at least 2 of them had worked for the Kgb/Fsb as desk officers. (You can usually find them at various russian embassies with designations like Environmental Desk Officer , Cultural Coordination officer) ashok
Re: [silk] Charitable Giving
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Aadisht Khanna: 2. Having done this, I would obviously like to make sure that my donations get the most bang for their buck. This means the efficacy of the charity I am donating to needs to be certain. If you don't care about getting tax subsidies, find a person in your neighborhood who really needs the money, like a few kids who need help with their school fees, or help with the down payment on an auto rickshaw or some such. This is really easy to do in India, and goes a long way. I think the approach suggested by Srini is the best one... most non-profits waste more money in transaction / administrative costs than actually putting the money to good use. ashok
[silk] Canon L series lens
Hi, I am looking for a L Series lens for my Canon... the one which seems to fit my budget is this one: Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM http://www.amazon.com/Canon-100-400mm-f4-5-5-6L-Telephoto-Cameras/dp/B7GQLS/ any first hand opinions ?... is this significantly better than a good Sigma lens ? ashok
Re: [silk] WiFi in Chennai
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Gautam John [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a tata indicom usb thingy but I haven't been able to get it to play nice with Ubuntu. It works fine for me. Just had to put in the right settings in wvdial (#777, userid/pass = internet/internet). Your other option is to enable Mobile Office (if you are using Airtel) and connect to your phone over bluetooth. With a 3G phone, the speeds are much better than the Tata Indicom data card. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Fwd: [schooltool] Janastu and SchoolTool
this thread is now the second hit on google for the word 'janastu' time to change the product name ...the thread makes everyone involved look like a candidate crazy person? On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 11:15 PM, rene wrote: ss wrote: Question: Did you misuse Dinesh's email id too? Would you be in a position to misuse mine? No, never misused Dinesh's id (don't get the point why this touches your interest), and only 'mis'used email-id's once in a while to send friends birthday greetings from the president of the berlin senate or alike. And, would you (!) be in a position to misuse my postal address? Yes, once you have it you can write it on any letter you are going to send. It's nothing else with email, you can use whatever you like as a sender (as long as your email server accepts that). There is no difference between the trustworthy of an senders email in an email header than the senders address at any letter you get.
Re: [silk] Calorie Count
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Thaths wrote: And parents don't help either by instilling cleaning up one's plate as a value. And insisting that cooking things in pure ghee is somehow healthy ! ashok
Re: [silk] Reverses....
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 12:52 PM, Divya Sampath wrote: In most of the Spanish speaking world, everyone has double-barrelled last names: for example, Maria Gomez Felix. In the US, they tend to hyphenate to aoid giving the impression that the first surname is a 'middle name'. By convention, we may infer that Maria's paternal surname is Gomez and maternal surname is Felix. There are exceptions, some people use the reverse order. In cases where the paternal surname is very common, the person may go by the maternal surnmae, i.e., the painter Picasso or the politician Zapatero. Interesting... this sounds in some way similar to how some tribal groups in Kenya (the gikuyu, the mijikenda...) name their children... the first son is named after the paternal grandfather and the second after the maternal grandfather, girls are named similarly according to paternal and maternal grandmothers. Child number 3 and beyond are named after their paternal/maternal uncles and aunts using the same gender based mechanism. So if you know the family history, and you know the number of the child, you can automatically calculate the name of the child. This is used as the family name, and the child is also given a christian name and a traditional name (usually the name the mother calls the child by...). (the differentiation of surnames is fairly recent i think) This makes it quite common for people to have the same first and last names, e.g. Kabando peter Kabando or Tuva adams Tuva. (where the name usually gets corrupted to Tuva Tuva and then just Tuva)
[silk] then and now....
I dont know if this has been posted before, but i found it very interesting. http://www.gapminder.org/world/ Select a Y-axis indicator, Select an X - Axis indicator, Check the countries you want to compare, Select a bubble sizehit play, rinse, repeat...
Re: [silk] Fwd: [schooltool] Janastu and SchoolTool
On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 7:07 AM, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Tea BeeDi wrote, [on 4/16/2008 9:12 AM]: va, Not so much of a gender crisis I think. This id is shared by some friends. Why? Udhay let me explain, because I completely understand... its like three friends sharing a toothbrush, a pillow, an ice-cream, a pillow etcjust as long as there hygienic precautions it should cause no permanent damage.
Re: [silk] Fwd: [schooltool] Janastu and SchoolTool
On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 6:59 PM, Thaths wrote: Nothing to see under this bridge, folks. Just your garden variety troll. A garden-variety troll with a pony tail mind you...! they don't always come with that (at least the ones i dig up in my garden)
[silk] World Bank subsidising bandwidth
In Kenya the World Bank is funding a bandwidth subsidy http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=5796Itemid=5847 (the article mistakenly says 114 million shillings, its actually $114 million so essentially the world bank is supporting BPOs in Kenya by partially paying for international bandwidth...until an undersea cable brings cheaper bandwidth in 2010) Link to world bank page : http://tinyurl.com/3j8qx8 One Kenyan call-center entrepreneur told the World Bank Board of Directors the region simply cannot compete. To put 25 agents on the phone, it will cost us close to US$17,000 a month. Elsewhere, it will only cost US$600-900 a month, said Nicholas Nesbitt, CEO of KenCall. It is absolutely imperative that something be done right now to make bandwidth affordable. Otherwise, we're going to miss a huge opportunity and people are simply going to say that Africa is not ready for these kinds of jobs, is not ready for business. Does it make any practical sense for the world bank to fund such costs...? it didnt make much sense to me
Re: [silk] World Bank subsidising bandwidth
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 11:19 PM, Thaths [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What is the latest news on landing fiber at Mombasa? IIRC, there were 2 or 3 parallel proposals including one for FLAG telcom to run fiber across the Indian ocean to East Africa. All three still appear to be alive. Though in 2 of them, Reliance appears to have bought a significant stake. The project connecting to the UAE is the one slated for completion in 2010.
Re: [silk] Google Apps email spam filter
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 4:05 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Did you have an irc kiddy playing games, or did you get a hacked php / cgi script sending spam etc around that time? possibly the latter... restart, restore of the mailman settings, restore of the MTA seems to have sorted it out. there seems to have been some php stuff (old wordpress installation) installed on the server which hadnt been updated for ages... ashok
[silk] Google Apps email spam filter
I am on a mailing list that runs on a server hosted in Kenya, about 50% of the email originating from the list gets consistently flagged as spam by GMail... (Note: this does not happen to the many other mailing lists that i am on ). What could be the problem ? (The list admin has tried various things like subsituting the FROM: header address...but to no avail. Also note the problem began recently, nothing significant was changed on the server ) Any ideas, suggestions what the problem could be ? Google blacklisting gone awry ? ashok
Re: [silk] Google Apps email spam filter
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: ashok _ [10/04/08 11:24 +0300]: I am on a mailing list that runs on a server hosted in Kenya, about 50% of the email originating from the list gets consistently flagged as spam by GMail... (Note: this does not happen to the many other mailing lists that i am on ). What could be the problem ? You on a shared server or is it dedicated? Sorry didnt get your reply (is there a list delivery problem on silk-list ?)... picked this up from the yahoo group archive The server we are running is a dedicated server that also runs an IRC server. The problem appears to have started from the middle of March. Funny thing, we just did a restart of everything (including the server), and the number of list emails going into gmail spam has dropped substantially (it seemed to affect only gmail not spamassasin). ashok
[silk] open source in government
Hi, I am looking for examples where governments have developed their internal systems in an open source model. I can find plenty of examples where linux was deployed, and open source components were used (mysql, apache etc...), but few examples for whole systems which were open-sourced (for e.g. a human resource system developed for a government in an open source model...or an exam reporting system used by a government... ) This site for example, for the indian government, http://www.cdac.in does not have any open source applications at all ... any better suggestions, examples ? ashok
Re: [silk] open source in government
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: If I understood Ashok's question right, he is looking for Governments that have contributed back to Open Source, not just borrowed from it. Exactly...thats what i am looking for. There may be a few examples, however I don't know of any significant effort in this direction. Perhaps it's because Governments in general are used to taking rather than giving. There really isn't a culture of feeling accountable for what's been taken, whether it's my taxes or Open Source software. I'd be interested in knowing why you are on this quest. The organization i work for is involved in providing a suite of open source applications for parliaments. At some point there is a requirement for the government departments to take ownership of these application, and customize it as they see, and then make avaliable such customizations for use by other parliaments. I was hoping to find some similar examples, and use that as part of an educational case study for the parliaments.
Re: [silk] romance and reading
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan wrote: I bought that at Luz's Alwar's shop. He might still have a copy or two. Is that the old guy with the flowing beard who has the books stacked on the pavement ? he is still alive ? must be a 100 now
Re: [silk] romance and reading
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: A more modern version - read Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin books? An upper class russian bureaucrat + detective in late 19th century moscow. A very interesting read. I quite like Boris Akunin... I am reading Murder on the Leviathan right now :) ashok
Re: [silk] browser based remote control software
On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://support.webex.com/support/system-requirements.html Ubuntu 7.04, Red Hat 4.0, SuSE 10.0 Linux * Firefox 2 * Mozilla 1.7 or higher * JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled * Requires Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 or higher * No support for Sales Center and Remote Access Turn off the popup blocker in firefox as well srs thanks... just did a trial and it works.. Some of the documentation on their main site seems to mention only windows and mac-osx... hence my conclusion. ashok
[silk] browser based remote control software
I am looking for a browser based remote control software like : http://www.gotomeeting.com http://www.webex.com but for Ubuntu desktops.. the above work only on windows and mac-osx hosts... I cant seem to find anything for ubuntu / linux... I dont want to use the standard vnc/remote desktop method as it requires enabling ports on the firewall and mapping public ips to the pc..etc... any suggestions ? ashok
Re: [silk] replacement in India for a cracked ipod screen?
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Oh thanks. This guy is not even official apple btw.. just a geek who likes repairing stuff like this (and iphones and treos too, or so I hear) Someone...maybe you ? suggested this laptop repair outfit in chennai , ABM Infotech - http://www.abminfotech.com . they did a decent job in reviving the dead laptop i had... and while i was there i saw someone collecting a repaired Playstation...so maybe they might fix ipods too ?
Re: [silk] replacement in India for a cracked ipod screen?
On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 10:12 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi The local apple guys say it just can't be repaired. I know there's 3rd party replacement screens available stateside. Sounds familiar. Ample computer, the official Apple repair guy in Chennai is somebody you must stay away from. He took my father's IMac G5 with a boot-time hanging problem and returned it with a motherboard failure, and claimed that it will cost 35000 Rs to replace it. I have also heard stories of hard disk sizes diminishing during repair stints, so I would recommend that you try the Apple service center in Bangalore or Mumbai. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] black hole eats earth: frivolous lawsuit? or infinitely serious?
On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 6:51 PM, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. After which the 2 lucky survivors of this er..meal get to listen to Vogon Poetry, I presume? -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Thou shall not be disgustingly rich
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 7:03 AM, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: This is very Tolkien-esque. An imagination so fantastic and so well defined, it's hard to believe it's not true. No wonder it works for some people. Dante's Inferno has a nice entertaining description of hell, and the labyrinth like circles of hell (different circles punish different kinds of sin, the final level is where satan is condemned to reside). I wonder if Dante were asked to rewrite the inferno now... he would probably write about a man driving a Hummer being boiled in oil and such... (since doing the same to heretics would be politically incorrect now)
Re: [silk] Thou shall not be disgustingly rich
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell. But, but, but, don't souls supposedly just float around until judgement day, when they can expected to get sorted into heaven or hell? Or have the procedures changed? Are the powers that be tiring of waiting for the day? they have waiting rooms called 'purgatory', 'limbo' and 'hell'. though hell has always sounded like the most entertaining one.
Re: [silk] Write a book, go to jail?
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 3:07 PM, ss wrote: The Hindu religion(?) does not call for any such compulsion and under the circumstances the free practice of all religions in India necessarily means poaching on Hindus as potential converts and a gradual decrease in the number of Hindus. This in fact is the cause of at least some communal strife in India. shiv Arent you contradicting yourself rather severely here. On the one hand you claim one can never escape the hinduness of being born in India... and now you are talking about conversions like its a one-way street ? I remember hiring this auto-rickshaw driver in bangalore (i rented him for a week) - On a sunday the guy told me was going to church (one of those bible slamming american churches, they offered him money to convert... and some kind of regular stipend) - and then on a weekday he was going to the temple because he actually believed in it(with offerings of coconuts bought with money he got from the church) I reckoned he was gaming the system very well, many people seem to do this for economic benefit...I cannot see what is wrong in the whole transaction - its a win-win situation for everyone (except you ;-) ) ashok
Re: [silk] Recycled Computers
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 7:47 AM, Gautam John wrote: Would anyone know if a similar project exists in Bangalore? Sometime back I met someone who worked for this organization: American India Foundation http://www.aifoundation.org/ Don't know if they operate in the bangalore area ashok
Re: [silk] IHT.com Article: First transsexual celebrity, Rose, makes a TV debut
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: I was forcibly enrolled in Mridangam classes at age 7. I had to beat out the same 4 notes for ever - I lost my patience after the first few classes and asked the teacher when I was going to get a hand at trying other things. I was told to not be impertinent and to shut up. Goshdeja vu... i was subjected to the very same thing (I remember watching some students who had been learning for 6 months...and they were playing the same notes i was playing in every session until the 2nd month) My classes ended after I used a diwali firecracker to play a few notes on the mridangam
Re: [silk] Writers not welcome in India?
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 2:25 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: Curiously enough, the Delhi airport lists items prohibited for carrying on planes, with the exception of kripans carried by sikhs measuring under specific dimensions. Last night at Garuda Mall, we saw a Sikh security person carrying a kripan and a metal detector, both of roughly equal size, on the same side of his body. There is a huge transparent basket inside nairobi airport near the xray machines, where they routinely place confisicated nail clippers, dangerous looking ball-point pens, cigarette lighters which resemble guns etc. However, inside the basket, one can always see a couple of large yemeni swords, very many pangas (a heavy machete useful for cutting grass, and splitting open a coconut). Presumably people had tried to carry these inside hand-luggage, since I myself have carried a spear as checked-in baggage...
Re: [silk] [EMAIL PROTECTED] GUI design [ was Re: IHT.com Article: ]
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (I usually dial down touchpad sensitivity a bit to suit my tastes, and these days use a thinkpad with a trackpoint) I always connect a tiny mouse and use that. Works much better for me. The trackpoint is a bit like a US cruise missile. It's pretty accurate to the point of saying Baghdad is the target but when it gets real close, there's quite a bit of collateral damage. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Writers not welcome in India?
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 1:05 AM, Charles Haynes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My point was only that it isn't that unusual even for democratic countries to impose special immigration requirements on media. As may be, but are all writers media? When asked she said she wrote for her personal blog and was not employed as a writer, and still they gave her a journalist visa. Does the average immigration official even know what a blog is ?
Re: [silk] Internet access for senior citizen in special care facility
On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 12:11 PM, rene wrote: If i bought an off-the-shelf antenna how easy is it to hook it up with a standard dlink, linksys type wifi router ... ? Linksys Router (I only know the WRT54G series) have a somehow unique Antenna connector, it's called TNC-RP (stands for reverse polarity TNC). See an image at http://www.i-tec.it/catalog/images/rptnc.jpg (Most of other available routers have a SMA-RP connector, which is smaller.) Thanks for this and all the other advice... i have a working setup now similar to what is described above. Some issues related to legality are still pending from the local council authorities... but its a small town so shouldnt be a major problem. thanks ashok
Re: [silk] Internet access for senior citizen in special care facility
On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: Does this sound feasible ? Is there a better way of doing this ? What you've outlined seems unreliable without someone to support it, is there skilled help available? the senior citizen's son (no young man himself) lives in the house mentioned 250 metres from the facility... but he is not very clued up about fixing problems, though he is able to use a computer reasonably well... If the ADSL goes down he can call some technical personnel to fix it (as he uses it himself). A more reliable solution wouldn't use a PC or flaky connectivity. Inexpensive and reliable however don't seem to co-exist yet in the video conferencing world. Yeah :-( but they cost a lot and require specialized equipment at both ends... Anyone recommend a wifi signal booster that does the require range through old concrete and stone walls ?
Re: [silk] Internet access for senior citizen in special care facility
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 3:22 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: If they are just 250m apart, string Ethernet or something across the rooftops. Contact your local cablewallah, he can do that without too many issues, knows the right cops to pay off etc. this is in a European country so the regulations arent as malleable as they ought to be :-)
Re: [silk] Internet access for senior citizen in special care facility
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 8:10 PM, rene wrote: the right way was mentioned, just get yourself a cheap but good directional Antenna. Forget everything about signal boosters, they are usually crap and will damage the signal and the whole spectrum more than they will help. Use a directional Antenne, this will boost the signal in the sending and the receiving direction and filter the noise which is around you, than 250m should be no problem at all. Okay, understood I found some info online http://www.radiolabs.com/Articles/wifi-antenna.html but most of the instructions seems to talk about homebrew antennas : http://www.instructables.com/id/WiFi-Directional-antenna-fix--from-Aluminium-can./ If i bought an off-the-shelf antenna how easy is it to hook it up with a standard dlink, linksys type wifi router ... ? thanks ashok So primarily I want a point-to-point kind of system with good signal strength, since the idea is to make skype/video available over the connection...
Re: [silk] Project Management Software (web based)
On Feb 13, 2008 8:26 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Umm... not really is what I hear. I say I hear since I had nudged a friend (who doesn't do Agile) to use Mingle and have been hearing some good things about it. That said - what are the features required in the PM software ? The OP never did mention that I think Sorry forgot to mention, yes, I am looking at a PM tool that supports Agile PM methods I will look at mingle, but I also found RallyDev : http://www.rallydev.com . Any opinions on that ? ashok
[silk] Internet access for senior citizen in special care facility
I have the following scenario : 1) A senior citizen with alzheimers who has been confined to a special care facility. 2) Senior citizen's residence is about 250 metres from the special care facility 3) The senior citizen has a part of her family living in the residence mentioned in (2), there are other parts of the family living in other countries. 4) The family living in other countries want to communicate on a daily basis with the senior citizen, preferably via video chat. So the idea is to provide an EEEpc or similar compact laptop for the senior citizen's room in the special care facility room. For internet access : ADSL is available at the house 250 metres away, so setting up a WiFi access point, with maybe a Wifi signal booster. This would then be accessible from the PC at the special care facility. Does this sound feasible ? Is there a better way of doing this ?
Re: [silk] Internet access for senior citizen in special care facility
On Feb 14, 2008 1:59 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Srini Ramakrishnan [13/02/08 23:49 +0530]: Does this sound feasible ? Is there a better way of doing this ? Might work if one can ensure that it's always on, and connected. Perhaps, some remote management software to keep things running might be useful. One of the relatives here or abroad could be designated sysadmin. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Project Management Software (web based)
My suggestion: Basecamp link: http://www.basecamphq.com/ Quite the most elegant and intuitive proj mgmt apps I've seen. On Feb 12, 2008 9:34 PM, ashok _ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi: I am looking for a project management software something free and web-based. web-based is important because there are people on the project from 5 different timezones Any suggestions, something that someone may have used in a similar scenario ? ashok -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
[silk] Project Management Software (web based)
Hi: I am looking for a project management software something free and web-based. web-based is important because there are people on the project from 5 different timezones Any suggestions, something that someone may have used in a similar scenario ? ashok
Re: [silk] Do you think Ubuntu is dead?
I am having altogether more horrible issues with blacklisted Dell hardware (D630 - sigh, office laptop) that causes compiz to crash frequently. But Linux Mint (Ubuntu based as well) seems to be stable so far. Ive disabled compiz though On Feb 6, 2008 10:04 PM, Gautam John [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Feb 6, 2008 8:19 PM, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Amen, brother. I've been playing with Gutsy (7.10) for a while now and am dealing with unpredictable crashes - which are getting more and more annoying. Truth be told, the update to the kernel that was pushed out yesterday seems, at first blush, to have injected some amount of stability into my system. We'll see how it goes. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] greetings and salutations
On Feb 4, 2008 1:14 PM, Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am in Chennai, and so are a few more silk-listers. We could try do lunch. C I second Chandrachoodan. We should try doing lunch at Chennai. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] India special economic zone -- travel and reading recco?
On Jan 29, 2008 9:41 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote Us madras types are pretty eager in doing another silk meet, this time with Cory around .. admit it, Ashok :) Sigh. Ok. I check Boing Boing at least 10 times a day. There, I've confessed. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] India special economic zone -- travel and reading recco?
I think Chennai is a better idea. It has both the big, successful IT SEZs and failed manufacturing zones as well. And it has the advantage of being in South India, where violence is mostly verbal in nature, unlike in the North where the knives tend to come out first. So if you are interested in snooping around, Chennai is a safer bet. You can also see quite a bit of serious environmental degradation in and around the city (Palaar river basin, Pallikkaranai marsh etc) as a result of lax environmental controls and post-tsunami reconstruction. I could put you in touch with the Madras Naturalist Society. They document all these violations in a magazine called Blackbuck. On Jan 28, 2008 11:04 PM, Cory Doctorow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Indeed -- I'm going to go spend at least a week there. But the story calls for a place in which there's at least some abject failure of development as well as success. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Is Wikipedia reliable ?
On Jan 25, 2008 9:47 AM, bharat shetty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, it turns out that Wikipedia has some wrong information at places, he also said. That led me to googling and I came upon this http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page - which promises to be a better Wikipedia, by offering reliable content that can be trusted upon. I suppose there are currently three approaches to this. One is the traditional the expert is right Brittanica approach that we have been familiar with for so many years. The second is the The crowd is the expert paradigm of Wikipedia where everybody has edit authority and the truth is a rather dynamically changing equilibrium (articles in wikipedia keep changing and there is a lot of discussion around knowledge) rather than just expert decree. In fact, in a lot of cases, the discussion page provides more insight than the article page. The third is the knol approach (Google - see screenshot herehttp://www.google.com/help/knol_screenshot.html) that seeks to strike a balance between the top down nature of Brittanica and the chaotic bottom-up nature of Wikipedia. In fact, the concept is pretty interesting. Experts can author pages on their topics and invite a group of peers to collaborate. So this part is close to the Brittanica approach. But the twist here is that there can be several knols on a particular topic and the crowd determines, through votes, rating and hits, which knol is the best for a given subject. -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] paging Bangalore Linux users
On Jan 22, 2008 1:36 PM, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Eugen Leitl wrote: A well-known critical care practicioner Prasanna Simha M [EMAIL PROTECTED] from Bangalore is really trying to get on the Linux train, but sometimes runs into issues. Linux Mint http://www.linuxmint.com (Ubuntu based distro) is a complete breeze to install, easier than Vista, and all the multimedia works fine out of the box. The easiest, most intuitive install I've seen so far. Mostly requires no additional help. I could guide him through skype, gtalk or phone if necessary
Re: [silk] The US of A is officially paranoid.
%26pagewanted=all -- Cheeni Q: Why is this email 5 sentences or fewer? A: http://five.sentenc.es/ -- Krish Ashok Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com GTalk: krishashok www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] The US of A is officially paranoid.
On Jan 22, 2008 7:54 AM, Srini Ramakrishnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My questions about India were really to show that xenophobia style territorial jealousy exists - even towards fellow Indians, and it's fairly common. In fact, it is an absolute miracle that India is still, for most part, a single country. When the Brits left, they had absolutely no hope for India. The differences of language, caste, clan, region etc, they believed, would eventually break India into a thousand pieces. And that brings me to the point about feeling insecure in a post-911 paranoid US. Having been born in a tam brahm family (a curious mix of being at the top of the food chain and yet, vegetarian), and having lived mostly in urban settings, I have rarely been discriminated against, and rarely been the victim of xenophobia within India. Would somebody born into a lower-caste non-urban family in India typically view this as a non-issue, having been on the wrong side of xenophobic violence and discrimination for many generations past?
Re: [silk] The US of A is officially paranoid.
On Jan 22, 2008 8:14 AM, Anish Mohammed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From what I gather, Bhutto dynasty is Shia ( I could be wrong). The wikipedia articles on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nusrat Bhutto do mention that they were Shia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulfikar_Ali_Bhutto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusrat_Bhutto
Re: [silk] Introduction
Ah thang you sir. And with all the PSBB talk, I must mention that I'm from
Vidya Mandir, Mylapore. I mean, it was still a mandir and all in those days.
Now I am told that it is more akin a Vidya Supermarket (Sodexho accepted).
On Jan 19, 2008 7:29 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Likewise.
Ran across your very entertaining blog post tearing into the Hindu's copy
and paste music reviews, compared to Subbudu's fire and brimstone.
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/the-hindu-style-carnatic-concert-
review-generator/#comments
That was after running into your posts tagged sappaadu when googling for
restaurants to do a silkmeet on Jan 25 with Thaths in town.
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/category/sappaadu/
So, poked around, saw that Chandrachoodan knew you. Asked him to drag you
into Silk.
Welcome.
srs
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Anish Mohammed
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 7:27 PM
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Subject: Re: [silk] Introduction
Hi Ashok,
welcome to silk{list/madhouse}
regards
Anish
On Jan 18, 2008 3:06 PM, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an
erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless
driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors
should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Introduction
Ah yes. Aishwarya of the curiously entertaining Google Talk and Facebook
statuses fame.
On Jan 19, 2008 7:42 PM, Aishwarya Subramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
Welcome! I'm also a fan of your blog (and went to school with your brother
Raghav, but you know this). Good to see you here.
On 1/18/08, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless
driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors
should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
[silk] Introduction
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Introduction
My wife has officially certified my driving to be unacceptable and hired a
driver. So the general public can relax.
But I find the 50 rupee fine on bovines interesting. Do they eat the
receipts?
And i agree on the autos. After all the fleecing, they only make about 70
Rs a day on an average
On Jan 19, 2008 7:38 AM, Venkat Mangudi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Welcome to SILK, Krish.
Only some of us would understand your piece of code or the intricacies
of writing Object Oriented code.
You may not find a lot of Silk discussion, in fact many silk listers
do not know who Silk Smitha is, let alone that she was an item girl.
But I can foresee a nice drift on this thread, they usually do at an
amazing pace.
What do you drive? I will add you to the list of BMTC and other BPO
vehicles which drive me insane in Bangalore. :-)
-Venkat
Ashok Krish wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless
driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors
should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Will India Become the New Vanguard of the OpenSourceMovement?
On Jan 14, 2008 3:02 PM, Charles Haynes wrote: I confess that I actually already knew about Shakti, and have seen Remembering Shakti live in the US. I've also seen Zakir Hussain perform a fair number of times, including here in Bangalore when he performed with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. That may be the intial spark of my interest in Indian music actually, lo these many years ago. Theres also Mynta (http://www.mynta.net/) which is in the Shakti mould..., and according to a couple of albums that I have, they sound pretty good. The bengali Baul singer , Paban Das Baul has made a couple of fusion albums, on the Real World label, one was called Real Sugar and the other was called Tana Tani. One of the really interesting albums is the one with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (who plays a modified hawaiian guitar in the indian classical style) and Ry Cooder called a meeting by the river Then of course there are the qawalli proponents: nusrat fateh ali khan has made various fusion albums with michael brooks, massive attack i have also seen a decent fusion album with the sabri brothers
Re: [silk] Today's ET poll on Free Software
On Dec 18, 2007 1:08 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: Well the same office suite does have a Windows build does it not ? So, are HDFC, ICICI the next level ? How does the notion of online presence provided by Mugshot/OLPC fit in ? You would still need to buy a Windows license to run that build of OpenOffice when you can run it for free on a Linux distro :) Also think of a smaller scenario like a mom-and-pop cyber cafe with 10 computers, if they had to buy licenses for everything from the OS to the Office suite its gonna hurt their margins. When they can run a free distro on lower specced hardware without having to scale up hardware everytime a new release of windows pops up
Re: [silk] Today's ET poll on Free Software
On Dec 18, 2007 1:56 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: What happens when there is a preloaded Windows at a pittance (and official at that) ? I have never seen such a preloaded windows version being sold for a pittance ? what happens when they need to upgrade this preloaded windows ? will the upgrade also be free ? Given that most mom and pop shops assemble their H/W - how much effective is a Linux distribution in terms of hardware compatibility ? Much better than before... Here in nairobi most cybercafes used to run on windows, over the last 3 months.. the cyber police has been raiding and slapping them with show cause notices for running unlicensed software. As a result most of these cafes are switching to linux distros
Re: [silk] Failure of Sociology in India?
On Dec 13, 2007 4:59 PM, shiv sastry wrote: snippage But there has to be a widespread self recognition that India is this way. Only sociological studies can prove or disprove a hypothesis such as mine and those studies do not exist AFAIK. Did someone say where's the research data? Well you started with a conjecture then you made an extrapolation on that then you made a empirical conclusion on that...and then you made another extrapolation on that conclusion. I read this book once which claimed the Incas were actually an alien race - it began with that assumption being stated as true, - then made various extrapolations, and conclusions, starting from the primary assumption. Very soon the book had built a formidable pyramid of proof based on assumptions being equated to conclusions. I think you should write a book on this, as a follow up to the book about Pakistan. I believe there is a great market for such books :-)
Re: [silk] Failure of Sociology in India?
On Dec 13, 2007 5:54 PM, shiv sastry wrote: You mean I could be as right or as wrong as Daniken? Of course you are right. If you choose to believe Daniken, that is your prerogative. If you don't, it's not Daniken's problem. Credibility does not matter a whit in the absence of valid information. Anything goes. It is the lack of exploration and the comfortable unvalidated I'll stay within my box conclusions that everyone (and that includes you and me) can reach that seem to be hallmark of Indian intellectualism. You mentioned that narratives for mochis, darjis and chamars dont exist. Isnt that a flimsy presumption ? Then you have gone on to to make various conclusions, why these narratives dont exist. I am sure if you included the vernacular many such narratives would turn up, not necessarily written by themselves but by other people. I don't know much about vernacular Indian writing, apart from whats been translated, but a lot of vernacular literature has been set to film. A good example is the apu trilogy of films by satyajit ray (even his other work...) based on a series of bengali novels. These films provide narratives and strong characterizations (who can forget the character of the aging, homeless grand aunt) of different kinds of people (the cuckolded taxi driver in abhijaan...)
[silk] sanctions and online services
I have the following scenario, with no clear answer : Lets say a Govt. department in Country-X purchases online services from an American company (for e.g. Web hosting...). Country-X subsequently, for various reasons, falls under a US govt. black-list (for e.g. economic sanctions...). Will the American company providing the online services be obligated to shut down services immediately ? Any ideas / pointers ? ashok
Re: [silk] sanctions and online services
On Dec 13, 2007 2:02 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Google has previously done this in the case of Iran Is this something that just Google does or do other service providers also actively shut down services ? What options could be there for safer online service provision ... a scandinavian country ?
Re: [silk] sanctions and online services
On Dec 13, 2007 2:16 AM, Dave Kumar wrote: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/ The extent of economic sanctions varies from country to country, and there are numerous exemptions that may or may not apply. (In general, I'm guessing the exemptions would be less likely to apply to government agencies in the embargoed country.) This is very helpful... thanks ! ashok
Re: [silk] Open Source Evangalism
On Dec 10, 2007 8:39 AM, Gautam John wrote: I'm currently working with a non-profit and as part of our work we run ~400 libraries across Bangalore and many more across the state. We are hopeful, if we find sponsors, of putting a computer in each library both to manage the library and as a tool for the kids to work/play with. As it stands, the computer request includes Windows XP as the OS of choice. If the hardware specifications are recent (dual core processor, 1 gb ram etc...) you could look at a virtualized instance of windows i.e. one that runs as a virtual machine within a Ubuntu installation (AFAIK, a windows XP license allows you to install it on one desktop and also another instance as a virtual machine...)... VmWare player is free (http://www.vmware.com/player)... To manage libraries there is an excellent opensource library management system called Koha (http://www.koha.org/). Basically the virtual windows instance means that even if the virtual windows gets hit by viruses, malware etc.. you can simply delete the virtual windows, and copy a backed up instance of the virtual machine and have it up and running again instantly. Much much easier to manage than having to invest in antivirus and re-installing windows etc... On the other hand, I have been using Ubuntu for a while now and am happy with it and the philosophy behind it. However, it's difficult to translate this into a meaningful argument for a project of this scale. As far as I can tell there is the price/support argument and the philosophy, which matters less than I might expect.
Re: [silk] Open Source Evangalism
On Dec 10, 2007 12:07 PM, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: data centrally. As an aside, we're currently looking for an open source library management package. Edubuntu + koha is just fine for that. Yes, but Koha's a pain to setup. I tried it some time ago and gave up. Yeah, koha has a slight learning curve but the community support is good. You should be able to find Koha skills locally... (I am involved in a project automating parliamentary libraries in africa... and we have used Koha, as skills were available locally within african universities)
Re: [silk] Wikipedia
On Dec 10, 2007 12:28 PM, shiv sastry wrote: A far larger percentage of Hindus and Christians in the West are likely to behave secular and deny religious belief than Muslims. Where do you get such information? i know very many expatriate / people-of- indian origin muslims / hindus who behave secular, and act in ways not associated with the cliches you are suggesting I also know many such people who are religious and traditional despite having lived their lives away from india
Re: [silk] Wikipedia
On Dec 10, 2007 2:55 PM, shiv sastry wrote: I am not talking of private behavior. In public count the percentage of Hindu women wearing bindis or mangalsutras versus Muslim women wearing hijabs in say the UK. how would such a count be attempted... ? You speak as if you already conducted such a count
Re: [silk] Wikipedia
On Dec 10, 2007 4:21 PM, shiv sastry wrote: er yes shiv maybe you counted the same women twice or thrice over... since its hard to differentiate at a glance between two women wearing a hijab :)
Re: [silk] Lights turn red for stunned Delhi jaywalkers
On Dec 6, 2007 3:16 PM, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-30854320071206?pageNumber=3virtualBrandChannel=0sp=true Lights turn red for stunned Delhi jaywalkers Thu Dec 6, 2007 2:10pm IST NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pedestrians don't cross the Indian capital's chaotic streets so much as dash across as if their life depends on it, which it very often does. I got arrested for jay walking the last time I was in madras. The cop seemed to suggest the crime was made worse because I was talking on a mobile phone while jay walking. I tried arguing that i was listening and not talking since he had said talking while crossing was bad. anyway, that pissed him off sufficiently, and I got booked and fined in one of those mobile courts. ashok
Re: [silk] Memory, from NatGeo
On Dec 5, 2007 12:20 PM, Udhay Shankar N wrote: EP has two types of amnesia—anterograde, which means he can't form new memories, and retrograde, which means he can't remember old memories either, at least not since 1960. His childhood, his service in the merchant marine, World War II—all that is perfectly vivid. But as far as he knows, gas costs less than a dollar a gallon, and the moon landing never happened. There was quite a good psychological mystery movie about a guy with such a condition, i think it was called Memento ... the guy keeps losing his immediate memories, so he keeps tattooing reminders and fragments of memories upon himself.. and also tattoos himself to remind himself to be tattooed...
[silk] home book cataloging software ?
I am looking for such a software preferably free, not an online service, and which runs on either linux or mac os x... any suggestions ? ashok
Re: [silk] internet connection with different uplink and downlink channels...
On Nov 27, 2007 11:26 AM, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: Would it be possible to setup an internet service that uses GPRS/EDGE for uplink and a one-way VSAT for downlink ? Here GPRS charges apply only for downloads and upload requests are essentially free... Yes, but you'll need a server at the other end of the GPRS/VSAT links to split and merge your traffic, and some serious packet routing and tunnelling foo (the VSAT broadcast will mangle packet headers, so they'll need to be tunneled through). By other end you mean at the end of the VSAT provider ? I was hoping a combination of NAT and netfilter ... changing outgoing packet headers for the source address might have worked I had a strange phone-call with the VSAT provider just now... I called them to find out if they had done such a setup for anyone. At first, the guy told me it was illegal because you have to uplink through the government provider, then I told him my desired uplink was through GPRS provided by a government telecom operator. Fine, he said, then it would be legal.
[silk] internet connection with different uplink and downlink channels...
I am trying to help someone setup a cyber-cafe in an area with poor internet connectivity. GPRS/EDGE is available but is expensive for running a cyber-cafe type of service. Landline/Wimax etc.. dont exist... VSAT is available but is again expensive for 2-way internet access... I found that the VSAT provider also has a one-way downlink only service, which is quite cheap even for larger bandwidths... (this option is apparently being used for broadcast purposes...) Would it be possible to setup an internet service that uses GPRS/EDGE for uplink and a one-way VSAT for downlink ? Here GPRS charges apply only for downloads and upload requests are essentially free... ashok
Re: [silk] Gmail on the E61 (was New iphone ad)
On Nov 22, 2007 1:09 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For the sake of comparison: I've bought SIM cards in Malaysia, China, Thailand and Singapore and would rate them in that order for ease of activation, ranging from instant to half an hour in queue. All but Malaysia required id. (Contrast: it takes one working day in India.) in Kenya its possible to buy a prepaid SIM (no questions asked, and activated instantly) for 4 shillings (about 5 US cents... ) the story is much the same in many sub-saharan africa countries
Re: [silk] Gmail on the E61 (was New iphone ad)
On Nov 22, 2007 12:47 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: I must also get reasonably wealthy soon, it increasingly looks as if Germany (EU?) is not the right place to retire, or even to live long-term. Any suggestions? So far Switzerland and some parts of Scandinavia look reasonable. Apart from that, I'm drawing a blank. i can think of a bunch of places on the indian ocean rim of africa... as matter of fact, many of these small towns are turning in to holiday / retirement townships as a lot of property is being snapped up by europeans (case in point: malindi and lamu in kenya, inhambane and pemba in mozambique and to some extent zanzibar...). they are relatively cheap and safe places to live in, it does help to have a reasonable amount of cash for buying comforts...
Re: [silk] Dust patches on camera lens...
On 11/7/07, Sthitaprajna wrote: Use a pressurised cannister of air - on the CCD sensor, that will be available at decent camera shops. Um, dust should come off with a microfibre cloth.. but, is this dust, or fungus? For removing fungus, you had best take it to a shop to remove the markings. If the dust is inside the lens element, it is again prudent to get it cleaned up at a proper camera store. It doesnt look like fungus to me... it looks more like the mark shown on this page : http://www.cameralabs.com/workshops/dslr_dust/ I store them nicely... and the climate is dry with very low humidity i dont believe it could be fungus, because that would grow and expand wouldnt it ? this has remained as a circular mark...
