Zoey, Our new cat

Arab Americans - How Not To Make Friends

you have to make up your mind whether you are Arab or American. You cannot be both when it comes to an existential fight.

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The Benevolence of Bill Gates

An aura of invincible altruism surrounds the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.but their investment policies have come under fire

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Bad Products Made in China - Can the Dragon Drag On?

Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys, which totals close to a million plastic pre-school toys, due to excessive amounts of lead in the paint of these toys. Even though it is still ubiquitous to find Chinese manufactured products, public paranoia is slowly setting in about Chinese goods

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All Charges Dropped Against Dr. Haneef, Indian Doctor in Australia

Dr. Haneef is effectively a free man and the Australian government wiping some muck off their face after dropping all terrorism-related charges against the Indian doctor in a Brisbane magistrates court.And so it goes.

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Severus Snape, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It is the relationship between two of her strongest characters that interests me. Despite his lengthy time off-stage, Snape is a significant character in the series, and his emotions towards the eponymous hero are quite well-known. It is in the Deathly Hallows that the author makes clear what lies at the root of all the resentment and the anger.

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America - Fear is the Key

There's a presidential election looming and 'tis the season for fear mongering. The FBI seeks to replenish the government's stock of fear capital by alerting us against foreign-born spies. Ordinary folks like you and me that roam the corridors of American businesses and institutions.

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Thomas de Zengotita: Maliki Lets Us Glimpse The Truth About Iraq

This war has been a massive exercise in national narcissism from the beginning. How fitting that efforts to bring it an end must feed the same appetite.Truer words were never spoken.

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Indian Doctor Charged Over UK Bomb Plot in Australia

Dr. Mohammed Haneef, the Indian doctor held for questioning in connection with the Glasgow bombing on the 30th of July has been charged with 'providing support to a terrorist organization'. This comes soon after earlier glimmers of hope for the family amidst media reports that the Australian police might not detain him any longer.Don't give SIM cards to your family, folks, even if it means breaking a contract.

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The Colors and Horrors of Passchendaele

The never before seen color photographs of the bloody battle of Passchendaele

The horrors of the Great War were, on a relative scale, immense and shocking. These pictures are stunning and tell much through the visual images.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The movie does justice to the funny yet dark book that is The Order of the Phoenix.

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PS3 Price Drop causes a 2800% increase in sales

After official confirmation of the price drop, sales at Amazon.com for the 60GB PS3 have spiked by 2800% and have overtaken the Wii and Guitar Hero: Rock the 80s as the best selling item in the Video Game category.Microsoft is sure to drop the XBox 360 price too, so I'm all happy now:)

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Keith Olbermann: Bush and Cheney Should Resign - the original article

The J'accuse of the 21st century, a damning indictment or will he be ignored, Cassandra-like

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Star Wars at 30 - the Republic, the Empire and the Rebel Alliance

We've seen the galactic Republic be replaced by an Empire, which is challenged by a rebel alliance that topples the empire, to replace it with a new Republic.Our world too, has gone through tumultuous change, though not quite in the same order.The American Republic faced down the Russian 'Evil Empire',deal with a Rebel Alliance, & become an Empire.I love the Star Wars films, and writing this article brought it all back to me.



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Child Soldiers and India's Insurgency

It is detestable indeed that young children are being exposed to death, destruction and violence at such a young and impressionable age. The social costs are appalling, not to speak of the personal tragedy.



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The Problem With Micropayments - Sorry, Wrong Number

Everyone who imagines a working micropayment system either misunderstands user preferences, or imagines preventing users from expressing those preferences. The working micropayments systems that people hold up as existence proofs — ringtones, iTunes — are businesses that have escaped from market dynamics through a monopoly or cartel



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Fantasy Cricket: The Best of the Rest vs. Australia

Can an entire XI could be picked from the Rest of World that could challenge Australia?



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Fascist America, in 10 easy steps...

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them allClever, but strained logic.



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Should IT Companies Have Tax Holidays?

Indian IT Companies, the ones either remaking the software services world, or taking away jobs, have risen to their size, in part because of a near zero-tax policy. Why should certain big companies, which have gone public, have a brand name, and are making colossal profits, be enjoying a tax holiday?

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UNICEF (India) Chief Accused of Attempted Rape

UNICEF India chief Cecilio Adorna was accused by a 44-year old woman, Archana Pandey, that he sexually harassed and attempted to rape her. These are serious charges and if convicted Adorna can spend couple of years in Indian jail. The police won't file a case and the media won't cover the issue.

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FY2008 H-1B Visa Cap Reached On Day 1

The hard reality of the flat world is that despite mobility of capital and information, labour and people are still subject to borders and policies and little men in suits.

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Indian State To Tax Broadband Services and Light Energy

A Subordinate committee of the Karnataka legislature in India has found 'light' to be a 'commodity' and wants all the broadband services to be taxed for the sale of this commodity

WTF! Seriously, WTF!

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The Complete A-List of the Indian Blogosphere

Based on the questionable Alexa rankings, but a good round-up of the top Indian blogs

Desicritics placed well, but I don't really care much about rankings, etc. It's interesting how the Internet rewards socialization over stand-alone value. Some excellent sites don't list here because they don't focus much on linking or being linked to, but are worth checking out.

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LTTE Launch Air Raid In Sri Lanka - The World's First Terrorist Air Force

The LTTE might have changed the game, perhaps for the worse, with the use of two light aircraft to drop four bombs on a military base north of the Colombo International Airport today, killing at least three people and injuring sixteen.

Bad news, folks.

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Cricket World Cup 2007: The Indian Saga Ends

There will be a national mourning, houses will be ransacked and effigies burnt.

This team sucked, really, really sucked. Now you're gone, baby, gone.

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Martin Fowler on Being Transactionless

"A couple of years ago I was talking to a couple of friends of mine who were doing some work at eBay. It's always interesting to hear about the techniques people use on high volume sites, but perhaps one of the most interesting tidbits was that eBay does not use database transactions."

A very interesting way of looking at the design of large programs from a pioneer in the field.

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Naomi Campbell Begins Cleaning Public Toilets In New York, 3 Days To Go

Somebody please lend Naomi Campbell a French maid costume instead of a bland service uniform.

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Commentary: What goes boom must go bust - MarketWatch

Booms turn to busts not because something 'happened.' They turn to bust because there is simply no other path.
It is said that when men go mad they do so all at once. But they gain their sanity slowly and one by one.

Peerless, perspicacious writing.

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The Scandalous Cricket World Cup 2007

They don't need sportscasters for this show - they need a gossip columnist.

India plays Sri Lanka tonight, and either books their return tickets early or slogs for another few weeks. We'll see.

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Grand Canyon Skywalk to open today

Rising 4,000ft (1,220m) from the canyon's floor and 70ft (20m) beyond its rim, the Skywalk is being described as an engineering first.

I would love to check this out!

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Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix Qualification Results

The season has now officially started, with the qualification for the first Formula 1 race of the year, at the Albert Park, Melbourne, also known as the Australian GP. The qualification was as exciting as one thought it would be with some of the "back-markers" showing it to the front runners and other expected strong performers lagging.

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Google's Quest for Global Web Dominance

Google and the other Internet giants' quest for global web dominance through 'insiderization'

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Formula 1 2007 Preview: The Australian Grand Prix

After five months of anxious anticipation, the day is nearly here for the start of 2007 Formula 1 season. And what a season it is going to be! No Schumacher. Some big names have switched teams. Then there's the rookies.

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Crime, Sociopaths and Revenge: Asian Film At Its Finest

While Infernal Affairs has had the privilege of being remade by Martin Scorsese, not all films coming out of East and Southeast Asia share this honor. Many other films deserve the exposure that Infernal Affairs received, and almost all of them are not going to get it. Some will be on display at the Asian American Film Festival in Berkeley.

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President Musharraf's Brutal Assault on the Pakistani Judiciary

In what appears to be now a very carefully thought out plan, the Chief Justice was dismissed by the President on Friday on alleged charges of "misuse of authority." Why hasn't there been any international condemnation of Musharraf on this blatantly unconstitutional attack on the judicial system of Pakistan?

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Indian Food Bloggers Take On Yahoo! India's Plagiarism And Win

March 5 was a big day in the Indian blogosphere; on that day, a horde of bloggers took on that giant named Yahoo! (India) and toppled it. A big win for victims of plagiarism anywhere!

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Google University on YouTube at Starbucks in Barnes and Noble

It makes sense that for-profit institutions like Google, Amazon, Barnes and Noble or even Starbucks, begin to consider applying for university accreditation, and offering degrees of their own. Google could provide college education better, cheaper and caffeinated!

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Protesting Against Coca Cola

An Interview with a convenor of anti-Coke protests in India. An excerpt "Coca-Cola didn't come here to produce a primary need like medicine, but to gain huge profits. They are doing a corporate rape on the state. They are not giving much employment opportunities, development and not even any financial benefit to the state."

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The XBox 360 in India - The Ground Realities

In the context of India, it's meaningless to compare sales figures with more developed, and culturally different markets. No next-gen console can sell millions of units in present day India.

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Ralph Fiennes Joins The Mile High Club

Ralph Fiennes has apparently joined the Mile High club by having unprotected sex with an air hostess in the bathroom of a plane heading towards India where he was supposed to talk about HIV and unprotected sex.

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Not So Excited About the Apple iPhone - A Critical Mass of Idiots

Apart from the "oh-so" design, what is so special about this phone? They were waiting for a perfect rollout of their iTunes store with music videos and songs so that it becomes a compelling proposition for Apple to sell a device which could play their wares on their hardware. It is a win-win situation for the telecom companies and Apple.

I'm not too confident this is the right thing at the right time - will one billion cellphones change? Not overnight.

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Entrepreneurship as a Competitive Advantage

Immigrants are behind 25% of the startups created in the USA between 1995 and 2005. The existence of so many start ups in America is no accident, and immigrants do not simply go to America and create enterprise. Rather, many go to America because they can create enterprise.

Good article.

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Blogger/Booger - What's The Difference?

You are Time Magazine's Person of the Year, Your Life Goes On

Time Magazine, in a break from tradition, and in a year of transition, selected You as their person of the year. You, as in, us citizens, us bloggers, us Youtubers, us citizen soldiers, us whistleblowers. Contrariwise, you know it's a bubble when 'the Beast with a Billion Eyes' outflanks the Tehran Don.

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The Ugly American Redux, No More

Numerous reactions to the U.S. Elections - my own, on America's "macaca moment" is evolving in my cranium.

For now, a gem from HuffPo:

The ugly American mark two is dead. Overnight six years of glib European identification of "American" with right-wing fundamentalism is over. The gun-toting, pre-Darwinian Bushite, the Tomahawk-wielding, Halliburton-loving, Beltway neo-con, damning abortion as murder and torturing Islamo-fascists has been lain to rest, and by a decision of the American people. Americans should be proud and the world should take note.

Yesterday's result could hardly have been more emphatic. George Bush's election wizard, Karl Rove, said he would make America's midterm elections "a choice not a referendum". He would ask them to choose a congress not vote on his boss. The electorate did both. In a high turnout the majority rejected the tenets of the religious right and of "big government" neo-conservativism. They expressed concern over the corruption and warmongering of Washington and the state of their economy in Bush's hands. For the Republicans there were no consolations.

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Family Zone

 


Bamboo, Dee & the kids at Infosys 

The Kids At Infosys

 

Visiting Tomorrow 

Monkey See

 

Who's Your Daddy? 

The Last Supper Of The Virgins

 

Provenance unknown, but well-composed, and a clever interpretation of the classic picture. 

Desi Advertising At It's Worst

  

Aayan on M.G. Road, Bangalore

  

Kolkata - A Classic Scene

  

Windows Vista Readiness

Don't buy PCs or Laptops for a while:) And don't forget your notepad.

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Call Centers: The Great Data Theft - Channel 4's Dispatches

Channel 4 exposes some holes in the big cheese of Call Centers. The great boom in the Indian economy owes a great deal to the call centres, BPOs and other associated industries - which could come down like a house of cards if these companies decide to up sticks and move out, en masse.

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Wisconsin farm has third rare white buffalo SOMETHING BESIDES A COW!!!

Only in Wisconsin would cows be news:)

SOMETHING BESIDES A COW!!! -
MILWAUKEE - A farm in Wisconsin is quickly becoming hallowed ground again for American Indians with the birth of its third white buffalo, an animal considered sacred by many tribes for its potential to bring good fortune and peace.

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bLaugh Blogging Truths

Apple's new iPod pricing and features

Apple's not-news announcements earlier this week didn't change the world, but some new features were introduced to the iPod line (of which I have a 5G one), and you can now buy movies at exorbitant prices that will only play on your PC.

ahas this interesting table comparing the new iPod prices to the available memory:

1) What’s the new iPod pricing scheme?

iPod shuffle 1GB: $79 ($79 per GB)
iPod nano 2GB: $149 ($74.50 per GB)
iPod nano 4GB: $199 ($49.75 per GB)
iPod nano 8GB: $249 ($31.13 per GB)
iPod 5G 30GB: $249 ($8.30 per GB)
iPod 5G 80GB: $349 ($4.36 per GB)

By storage capacity standards, the 80GB iPod is the best value in iPod history - under $4.50 per Gigabyte, and the cheapest top-of-line iPod Apple has ever introduced. Even the 1GB shuffle is only slightly more expensive than the now discontinued $69 512MB iPod shuffle.

I wonder when these prices will reflect in Indian stores.

The movie pricing and restrictions make this another way the industry refuses to recognize the ability to reach out to customers and make this a viable channel. bittorrent is the killer app - and they don't want to accept that.

Some thoughts on a viable solution for utilizing bittorrent as a sales channel coming up...

Like iTunes for Digital Comic Books!

While looking for a good free CBR/CBZ reader, I came upon Comic Rack, and I found nirvana. Comic Rack is a reader that builds XML libraries like iTunes complete with covers and meta data for the files. The software is in early development, but is something to keep an eye on if you're looking for a good reader/database program

I like CDisplay, but this will be worth checking out..

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Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax

PHP and Ajax are literally on a roll. You see websites pop up all the time with fancy ajax effects. Did you know that Google Maps is also a heavy user of Ajax? This is a review of a good book on Google Maps which explains the various ways in which Google Map API can be used to create and integrate user interactive maps on ones personal website

It's a review, but still a good pointer to a book one shall scout out

Prediction: PHP+Ajax is going to go head-to-head with Adobe Flex

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I Hate Summary RSS Feeds

I subscribe to over 200 RSS feeds that I check daily, earlier with Bloglines, and more recently with Netvibes It's the easiest way I've found of handling information overload - my use of multiple computers both at home and at office means I'm never going to be using a desktop-tethered software for handling RSS.

One thing that gets me, though, and it's not the fault of the software, is the number of producers who have cryptic one-line summaries for their feed entries. and I'm expected to click on or right-click/new tab-window and find out if it's worth digesting - I mean why do RSS and not give me the whole shebang? Traffic is important, but I can't believe it will impact your traffic that much to give me the whole story - if I use it, I'll link to you, so you get your backlinks. Why put me through the rigmarole?

Desicritics has all full-text feeds, and we don't seem to be hurting for traffic. I've actually found our traffic increases and we have a number of referrers from netvibes, etc.

Most of the short-feed bums are media-types, like the New York Times, and Slate. It's funny Slate doesn't get it, being such a pioneer.

Give it all to me, baby!

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Malice Aforethought

The Jason Fortuny Craiglist experiment has netted nauseating results, but as J. Leroy points out, was malicious in intent, and for simple reasons, wrong.

Malice, in my mind, is never justified. It is small and wrong. You can rationalize anything. But rationalizations are not justifications, they are attempt to excuse.

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Ban Indian Companies from the H1B program

A strong case can be made for allowing H1B visas only for people holding advanced degress from US universities.The following points make for a much bigger case of banning all Indian companies from the H1B and L1 visa program:

Some interesting insights into one of the Indian IT industry's biggest shibboleths - the addiction to US revenues through onsite-led offshoring

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HP's Patricia Dunn Should Go

It is high time that HP stands up and in the process sends a firm, loud and clear message that it is once and for all putting behind the shame and agony of the ugly happenings centered around its board members. For a global technology company, being able to respect privacy rights and behaving in an ethical manner, is an absolute must

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Frothy Bubble Chambers or the Tao of hot

What do the following have in common? a) Scobie's lament about web2.0 stars b) Jason and Kevin's skirmish over taste-makers c) The NYT reports on web 2.0 taste-makers?

All three of them are using old-school thinking to understand hotness. They all seem to think that the world is one â??superclubâ??

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Simplest way to using ajax

If your programming abilities are not good enough, but Web 2.0 is beckon - it's for you.

Nice teaser, we'll see...

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I, Cringely . September 7, 2006 - Apple controls Amazon?

What I think is coming next week is exactly what I thought was coming last January when Apple at the last moment changed its mind about an earlier set of announcements. We'll see a bunch of iPods, two televisions, and the Video Express adapter I first wrote about more than 18 months ago. Also, how Amazon blinked, but may still win the e-video wars

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Live Documents is Powerful Stuff

A new service called Live Documents allows Windows PC users with Office already installed on their computer to syncronize documents across multiple users over the Internet. The next step for Live Documents should be to look for a partner amongst the online office players to make their service work across applications as well.

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More Than a Grudge and a Ring: Why Asian Horror Films Rock

Over the last decade or so, Asian cinema has taken over the horror film genre, and effectively left its own indelible stamp upon it. While western film makers continue to recycle the tame tired plots and ideas, Asian movie makers have gone into their cultural well to dig out new tropes and concepts - or, at least, new variations.

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TorrentPortal Down

TorrentPortal, one of the better torrent trackers around, is down for a while. They are apparently upgrading their servers and will be down until September 10th.

They have an offer of 15 free ringtones for US-residents. I guess there are people who like that kind of thing.

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UK tests out wikipolicy theory, with predictably hilarious results

England's Environment Secretary published a draft policy as a wiki. Guest editors changed headlines like â??Who are the parties to the environmental contract?â?? to â??Where is the party for the environmental contract? Can I come? Will there be cake? Hooray!â?? Here's the final page before the site was locked and reverted.

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Reporting on FOO Camp 06

The events at O'Reilly's FOO Camp 06, and a brilliant piece on Applying Web 2.0: Leveraging Network Effects for Fun and Profit. Intentional or not, many of these techniques for embracing the power of networks have been used by sites like MySpace and YouTube to a considerable measure of success.

There's some real 'secret sauce' here - well worth perusing.

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Working with Web Services in Adobe Flex 2

Flex 2 may be the hot new contender for King of the Hill in development frameworks, here's one example why

"Flex automatically does the work of transferring a class type when using remote objects (one of the many reasons to use remote objects). However, when using SOAP Web Services, strong typing is broken because the class associations aren't automatically transferred to internal Flex classes. It's unfortunate, and leaves a bit of a gap when trying to use strong typing and compile-time error checking

I figured there had to be a better way. After hunting around a bit, I came up with a solution that worked for my project. All that was needed was a generic object transfer utility to translate the incoming objects into typed classes that are created on the Flex side. Once the transfer objects have been written on the Flex side, then class introspection can be used to dynamically populate the values from untyped Web Service objects. Let me show you how I did it."





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Google chief joins Apple's board

Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt has been appointed as a board member of Apple Computers. What's next - Google on the iPod?

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Celebrity Fish Dies at Chicago Aquarium

CHICAGO -- A huge Shedd Aquarium grouper that became an instant celebrity -- and inspiration to cancer patients -- after becoming the first fish in history to receive chemotherapy and bounce back from cancer has died.

The Shedd Aquarium is really beautiful, we've been there a number of times, and always loved it.

The Grouper was 24 when he died Tuesday.

The 154-pound "super grouper" was abandoned at the Chicago aquarium in 1987, left at the reception desk in a bucket. Shedd officials nursed the fish -- then a she -- to health and put her in a tank. Bubba changed gender in the mid-1990s, which is not uncommon for certain kinds of fish.

Bubba was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, and two years later, Shedd officials took the unprecedented step of administering chemotherapy.

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BoingBoing and Penis Pumps

This is in reference to the laff-out-loud penis pump being mistaken for a bomb report:)

Why would he need that in his hand-baggage anyway?

India-bound NWA Flight Turned Back, Escorted To Amsterdam By F-16s

Things seem to have been a bit more out of sync on the Wednesday flight. The pilot, while over German airspace soon after taking off from Amsterdam, requested permission to return, and also asked for a military escort. It appears seven passengers have been detained

I think I've taken this flight - scary, but probably nothing serious.

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AJAX Will Make it Mainstream, I Promise

Ajax does not solve the world's problems, or make Web 1.0 bad business ideas, like portal start pages, suddenly good ideas. "The thought that adding drag & drop to a portal homepage and not having any rich integration with a family of sites is a viable business seems pretty absurd to me..."

I like the ending, on the value of RSS feeds to geeks, and only geeks, or more precisely, information mavens:

Subscribing to feeds seems cool to geeks because it solves a geek problem; having too many sources of information to keep track of and optimizing how this is done. The average person doesn't think it's cool to be able to keep track of 10 - 20 websites a day using a some tool because they aren't interested in 10 - 20 websites on a daily basis in the first place. I'm sure a light sprinkling of AJAX can solve that problem as well.

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Airport security measures ever make you feel stripped naked?

UK Airline, obviously angry about the security measures that have cost them money, post pictures of naked people on their site as a joke. "New Airport Security Procedures
Puts The Fun Back Into Flying, Doesn't it?"

The image says it all




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Digg Signature Creator - Generate your own personal Digg Signature

DiggSig allows Digg users to enter their username and will generate a personal forum signature, including their latest Digg, Rank, Stories Dugg, Stories Submitted in addition to other useful Digg.com stats from their account. Signatures automatically update so to show your latest stats. Works on MySpace, forums, personal websites, etc.

I really like this. Very Ajax page too. Here's my DiggSig:





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Blinks - Homer Simpson in Just One Second

Clear Channel Radio has found its first buyer for blinks - Fox Broadcasting Co. is the first to purchase and use two-second radio spots in an effort to promote the fall season premiers of "Prison Break," "House" and "The Simpsons."

What would a one-second ad sound like? What would it look like? Could it only work for high-recognition items that already have an associative reaction in consumers?

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Meebo for your website! - ajax im version 2

ajax im is a complete instant messaging system for your website; akin to Meebo without needing to pay for tons of expensive servers. This system uses Javascript/PHP/MySQL to allow users to communicate between users of the ajax im script on your site. No refreshing of the page is ever needed, as everything is updated in real-time via the JavaScript.

Looks cool, will check it out for Desicritics

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Pricing Cuts Hit Nascent Online Video Market

In a testament to just how quickly the online video market is evolving, Guba is already starting to cut pricing. With competition building, the novelty alone of being able to buy videos isn't enough to help establish a name in this space

The Internet is the fastest price leveler and competition de-differentiator in the history of, like, forever, on a macro scale, as opposed to local levelers.

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Pakistan forfeits Test, Mushy's for it

This says it all

It was the first time in 129 years, and 1,814 matches, that a Test had been conceded by forfeit.

Given that it's Darrell Hair, one wonders who's really at fault here. Also worth noting,

In an interview on Pakistani television, team captain Inzaman-ul-Haq said that he'd spoken to Mr Musharraf on the telephone and that the president had offered his full support for the actions the team had taken at the match.

Open Source AJAX ToDo List Ready To Go

* Javascript effect with script.aculo.us
* Drag&drop each element
* Almost full Ajax
* full Css layout
* Javascript calendar (dynarch.com)
* Optimized for firefox 1.5
* Drag&drop each element

- Needs work, but easy to add to one's website

I'm installing it tonight on my machine - will report back

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Snakes On A Blog - A Premiere Report From The Snake-Blogger

This guy blogged about the movie pre-release for nine months, you can imagine his report on the premiere is long, and detailed - and almost post-coital at the end.

Haven't seen the movie yet - will and then let's see...

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Nice Google Maps cum PHP Demo

A Good Google Maps tutorial using PHP and MySQL that breaks down the code involved quite well.

Prerequisites

• An Apache webserver running PHP and MySQL (other webserver with PHP and MySQL will probabely do as well).
• A table in your database with lat, lon and description fields.
• Some basic HTML and PHP knowledge.

We are going to use PHP to dynamically create an HTML document with the appropriate Google Maps javascript code.

It works.

The Kingdom of Nouns

A fine read on the dangers of program design relying too much on a single metaphor, like Object-Oriented Programming and Java

The residents of the Kingdom of Java aren't merely happy — they're bursting with pride!

StateManager.getConsiderationSetter("Noun Oriented Thinking", State.HARMFUL).run()

Or, as it is said outside the Kingdom of Java, "Noun Oriented Thinking Considered Harmful".

Object Oriented Programming puts the Nouns first and foremost. Why would you go to such lengths to put one part of speech on a pedestal? Why should one kind of concept take precedence over another? It's not as if OOP has suddenly made verbs less important in the way we actually think. It's a strangely skewed perspective. As my friend Jacob Gabrielson once put it, advocating Object-Oriented Programming is like advocating Pants-Oriented Clothing.

Java's static type system, like any other, has its share of problems. But the extreme emphasis on noun-oriented thought processes (and consequently, modeling processes) is more than a bit disturbing. Any type system will require you to re-shape your thoughts somewhat to fit the system, but eliminating standalone verbs seems a step beyond all rationale or reason.

Read the whole thing.

If you want tech-political-science fiction, your best bet is the writings of Neal Stephenson. Of course, this is not to discount many other fine writers, science fiction tends to coalesce around political themes often enough, but Neal blends an awareness of historical perspective with a keen sense of what may come, or might come.

Reason has a good review of his Baroque Trilogy, coupled with an interview

Stephenson has a substantial libertarian following as well, and not merely because the decentralized, post-statist social systems he describes in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age (1995) are so radically different from modern government. The Baroque Cycle is, among other things, a close look at the rise of science, the market, and the nation-state, themes close to any classical liberal’s heart. Reading it means reading three long, encyclopedic books and maybe spending half a year in an earlier century. It’s not the kind of thing the average reader takes on lightly. But once you find you have a taste for Stephenson’s broad range of obsessive interests, his fine ear for period and modern English prose and speech, and his gift for making the improbably comic seem eminently human, the question no longer is whether you’ll read his books—it’s when.

Also available today is a sort-of review of Snow Crash. advocating a 'forced disarmament' of Muslims to solve terrorism.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah uses a combination of military might, ruthlessness, ethnic solidarity, and religious fanaticism to form an entity more powerful than the state of Lebanon, and arguably more powerful than the state of Israel. What we are seeing unfold in the Middle East may be a step toward the sort of post-national environment envisioned by Neal Stephenson.

I believe that what we need going forward is a policy of disarming Muslims. I believe that we must keep devout Muslims away from weapons, and keep weapons away from devout Muslims. I can work with Muslims, send my children to school with Muslims, and be friends with Muslims. I do not have an issue with their religion, as long as they do not have weapons. However, the combination of weapons and Islam poses unacceptable danger to the rest of us.

And so it goes.

No Books, iPods on board - British Government bans hand luggage

if you weren't bored enough on flights, following the recent plot busted by Scotland Yard to blow up planes in mid-air, apparently through a bomb in hand luggage, the UK government has banned all hand-luggage on planes,

except for a transparent shopping bag carrying a few permitted items: a couple tampons, baby food (if another passenger is forced to taste it first), glasses without cases (deadly, deadly cases!), contact holders (but no cleaning fluid!), keys (but no electric fobs), and your wallet. You're not allowed to bring on magazines (deadly, deadly magazines!) or books, no laptops, no iPods, no oversized watches (!), and so forth.

The War within exceeds the war without - and we all pay the price of fear.

Firefox Buying IE, says bLaugh

Millenarianism and fatalism are perhaps economic reactions to change, but it's also innate in the human character to hope beyond hope, even when comes the deluge. Bryan Caplan asks, why worry?

There's not enough time in the day for me to know enough about all of these disasters to doubt them on their specific merits. But I do it anyway. How do I justify it?

The superficial reason is that people are trying to get attention, which leads to a "race to the scariest story." That's true, but it hardly seems strong enough to justify my blanket skepticism. The fact that people exaggerate hardly proves that the end is not nigh.

My deep reason is simpler: The fact that we've gotten as far as we have shows that true disaster must be extremely rare. Unless fears almost always failed to materialize, we'd already be back in the Stone Age, or plain extinct. It's overwhelmingly unlikely that we've gotten lucky a million times in a row. Thus, unlike my co-blogger, I think there is a good reason to expect global warming models to be milder than models predict. Namely: As a rule, disasters are milder than predicted.

In other words, we're still here, aren't we?

From In Sequence,

Born Marius Nintendus, Saint Nintendo was born approximately 284 A.D. to a noble Roman family. He is often depicted as a child, although his martyrdom is said to have occurred after he reached full manhood.

One day, Marius Nintendus was chosen to attend the Roman games as part of a festival in honor of the Emporer. But Marius Nintendus chose to bypass the games in order to indulge in the simple pleasures he so loved, such as collecting stray coins along the streets of Rome and, of course, hunting wild mushrooms.

Marius Nintendus was later called upon by the Prefect to account for his whereabouts during the games. The famous question posed to Nintendus translates roughly to, "Why were you not at the play station at the appointed hour?" Unsatisfied with Nintendus's response, the Prefect ordered that he be publicly tortured and put to death. Marius Nintendus last, inspiring words were said to have been,"But I shall always have the higher score."

Marius Nintendus is the patron saint of truffle pigs.

Hilarity ensues!

Quote Of The Day

"In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes."
  - Mogens Jallberg

CSS Galleries

A single RSS feed of all of the major CSS showcase and gallery sites (CSS Mania, CSS Drive, Unmatched Style etc.). Indexes all featured sites into one simple feed, with thumbnail.

I really need to study this collection

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Worth visiting Website: Gliffy

Gliffy allows you to create diagrams on the fly without the need to download any software. Another of those Web 2.0 wonders, it gives you a number of premade symbols and shapes which you can incorporate in your drawings. The Gliffy interface is extremely user-friendly and fast considering it is still in its beta.

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Taliban Kill Indian Hostage

The bad guys never go away, do they?

An Indian engineer working for a Bahrain based company, Mr
Suryanarayana, was kidnapped at gunpoint near Kandahar on Friday along
with his driver, by the Taliban while working on a project in
Afghanistan.

Quoting the Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Rakesh Sood, CNN/IBN and other news sources
reported this morning that Mr Suryanarayana has been killed and his
body found in Kandhahar. News channels are also reporting that the
Taliban has claimed to have killed the hostage as he tried to escape
from captivity. The as-yet unidentified beheaded body was found by a
highway police patrol.

TV channels are also reporting that the Indian Prime Minister's Office has issued a condemnation of the killing.

The Ultimate WiFi Speed Boost

Guaranteed to work for all routers, the result of years of scientific research.

If you're not 100% satisfied, return the unopened bottle in the original packaging within eight hours, along with the original receipt, a color copy of your drivers license, and a check for $12.95 to cover handling, restocking, and legal fees. You'll receive a complete refund within 10-12 weeks.


X should not be used in the presence of pregnant women, women who have been pregnant, or women who may some day become pregnant.

Made in Malaysia, by Malaysians. Not intended for use by Malaysians.

The Goering Collection - The Consolidated Interrogation Reports

Reading these reports on the Goering interrogations, long kept secret, and prepared by the Art Looting Investigation Unit, or Project Orion, illustrates how much art was stolen in the war years, and how many dealers, museums, etc. benefited from the German occupation. The best collections in museums the world over consist of stolen goods. Adolf Hitler's grand project, the Sonderauftrag Linz, or Museum of World Art at Linz was but one example. The conflicts between Hitler's acquisitiveness and Goering's own, termed in the reports 'Finders Keepers' agreements are interesting, and indicative of reasons why Hitler imprisoned Goering in 1945.

Post the War, Stalin's own Palace of the Soviets, had a Museum of World Art, built up by re-retrieving stolen art, or perhaps re-stealing it, with the help of the Extraordinary Commision. Then there's the Elgin Marbles and all the treasures of the British, not least the Kohinoor.

Perhaps I'll expand this into a more detailed article sometime.

Paris Hilton to play Mother Teresa in a Movie

How hilarious? This is really happening. The next thing we see is Osama Bin Laden playing Jesus.

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Romantic Spot

romantic spot
Originally uploaded by red_hooded_wolf.

Let the lave go by me...