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...

Fired Kodak Manager sues, Was fired for opposing lower-resolution images

Fired for protesting a cost-saving proposal that would have quietly compressed millions of digital images stored by customers. Kodak insisted it would never condense images in a lower-resolution format -- and thereby potentially diminish their quality "without our customers' knowledge."

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Sepia Mutiny Goes Foolish

The folks at Sepia Mutiny have brilliantly replaced their entire site with something, well, wierd - a day early, more the merrier.



The weblog link itself takes one to first a Wordpress site, and then a blogger blog purporting to be the real Sepia Mutiny, a victim of cyber squatting.

The main page itself has tons of inside jokes that are pretty neat.

Ants need Wet soil

Discovery of the week:

Argentine ants in Southern California need wet soil to
live and breed.

I could've told them that.

Steve Ballmer's Kids Don't Use Google or IPods

Fortune interviews the dude with the 'Developer' yell, and he doesn't disappoint in acerbic responses.

AOL is not making any investment in the future of the media and advertising business.

Do you have an iPod?

No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions
they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this
dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you
don't use an iPod.

Internet Censorship, the Pakistani Way

If the government controls all outside links, one might think that it should be a simple matter to censor the internet. Yet this isn’t the case-the current filtering system in place is very crude. There is a list of banned addresses which the Pakistan Internet Exchange look at, and block requests by users to the computers on the blacklist.

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20000 Hong Kong Citizens Info Leaked Online, Governmental Silence

Information on 20000 people from Hong Kong's Police files found on a commercial server. This is undoubtedly the worst breach of data privacy in Hong Kong's history. The Government remains mum. The data was taken offsite by a consultant whose contract did not cover data security.

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Stanislav Lem, Sci-Fi writer dies, where do they go?

Do science fiction writers and mystics get a different afterlife? They spend their creative urges imagining a world different from their own, it only seems fair they should be allowed a universe different from anyone else's when they pass over.

Stanislav Lem, author of fine books like Solaris, the Star Diaries, etc. died on March 27 at 84.

It was in this extraordinary tradition that Lem wrote, for all that he
chose the science-fiction form — and he was a prime examplar of it. He
was a true polymath and at the same time a virtuoso storyteller. He was
truly described as “one of the deep spirits of the age”.

AJAX IDE released

Must check out this cool IDE for AJAX-style web apps - Morfix WebOS AppsBuilder

South Park Without Chef

South Park won't be the same without Chef - his songs, his horny nature, and his explanations to the kids were a key part of the show. Some analysis of the episode "The Return Of Chef", shot post the announcement of the departure of Isaac Hayes is over at Blogcritics.

In his eulogy for Chef, Kyle says "Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us." That's quite a public admission of vulnerability coming from these macho pirates. After all, like L Ron Hubbard, Parker and Stone have many enemies.

On the surface, this episode looks normal, but it's not a typical South Park. The style of their animation is the same as ever. The narrative structure is customary. Like the returned Chef, it looks standard.

Technorati Tags: south+park, television, chef

Coming this Fall - Marie Antoinette

Magritte's Lovers

ARTas galleries

Some interesting art galleries here - worth browsing the ARTas Erotica gallery

Greasemonkey This!

A complete book on GreaseMonkey scripting is available for free online - Greasemonkey is the Firefox extension that allows people to 'hack' scripts onto webpages for convenient stuff.

Some interesting case studies make this book worth the reading, I'm sure:

• 5. Case Studies
  • 5.1. Case study: GMail Secure
  • 5.2. Case study: Bloglines Autoload
  • 5.3. Case study: Ain't It Readable
  • 5.4. Case study: Offsite Blank
  • 5.5. Case study: Dumb Quotes
  • 5.6. Case study: Frownies
  • 5.7. Case study: Zoom Textarea
  • 5.8. Case study: Access Bar

Epic Records to Feature Artists on Xbox Live

The Artist of the Month feature on Xbox Live will have free exclusive artist content & high-definition music videos. Through the Xbox Live Game with Fame program, Live subscribers can also enter a monthly sweepstakes to win a chance to play against the musicians. The first artist in the AOM series is British singer-songwriter Natasha Bedingfield.

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