Arbit Scratchpad

Strong, spirited, powerful, inspiring, enlightening GO READ THESE YOU CANNOT REMAIN UNCHANGED AFTER READING HIS WORDS. . . http://www.vivekananda.net/fouryogas/Untitled-3.htm AND http://www.vivekananda.net/ READ MORE ABOUT THE GREAT INDIAN MONK - SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

With the hope that . . . Tons of Success and Joy awaits you and me in the coming New Year; Lots of wishes from my side for great times ahead - 2003 AD and beyond; Reach great social, professional, academic, intellectual and spiritual heights; Always brim with self-confidence, yet maintain strict self-control. May God and his divine providence assist you all the way;

Swami Vivekanada's Chicago Address ( AN EXCERPT ) Response to Welcome At The World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 11th September 1893 Sisters and Brothers of America, It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. l thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects. My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation w...

HUMAN CLONING - The argument continues . . . Cloning produces a new individual using only one person's DNA. The process is technically difficult but conceptually simple. Scientists remove the genetic material from an unfertilized egg, then introduce new DNA from a cell of the animal to be cloned. Under the proper conditions, the egg begins dividing into new cells according to the instructions in the introduced DNA. MORE HERE http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20021228T230000-0500_37258_OBS__DOLLY__SCIENTIST_WARNS_AGAINST_HUMAN_CLONING.asp http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=1063797&nav=0RdED5vb http://www.clonaid.com - the company creating all the news Interesting Read : An Interview with "a software generalist" in the Linux community, who answers technical questions on-line, concerning all aspects of Linux. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/26/1040511127721.html

A stunning movie (though Ebert gives it 0.5/5) - The Ghost and The Darkness , just watched it. Ill give it a *** (3/5) - Man-eating Lions in Africa set in 1898 colonial british era . . . Om Puri in the cast too. The photography and pace is all in all good. Got this article : Indian and Israeli Spy Agency (thats RAW and MOSSAD) Team Up, Target Pakistan

Where DO WE GO from here? FIRST CLONED HUMAN BABY ! [From Google news - Now 9:00 PM - 25 mins ( BLOGGER SETTINGS GIVES ERRONEOUS TIME IN INDIA . . . )]

Tomorrow? Never Know ! Tomorrow's technology begins today - Researchers in industry and academia tinker with self-repairing systems, molecular circuits and more. From New.com CNET Top Ten Trends in 2003 - The Red Herring Magazine is out with the forecast of the top ten trends for the next year. The list includes Wireless, Hardware/Software, Venture Capital, Semiconductors, Nanotechnology, Financial Reporting, Telecommunications, Biotechnology, Broadcasting and Broadband. From http://www.webjives.com/

INDIAN CINEMA Satyajit Ray's Cinema I have watched only a handful of the works of Master Director Satyajit Ray - But Pather Panchali ( Song of the Little Road ) is still pending. Pather Panchali, Ray's first foray into the film making world, was completed in 1955, and proceeded to win the top prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. It's a quiet, simple tale, centering on the life of a small family living in a rural village in Bengal . . . Here are two reviews - Here and here And in direct contrast Ritwik Ghatak About a 100 miles east of Calcutta lies Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Dhaka was the center of cultural activity of East Bengal and, along with Calcutta, saw the birth of major cultural movements in the first half of twentieth century. However, the independence of India in August 1947 saw the partition of Bengal. The trauma of this partition remains etched in the minds of the people whose lives were forever changed by it. Nowhere is this perhaps better...

Added a blog search engine facility - called FreeFinder . . .Lets see if it works UPDATE (sometime later) : seems to be working fine Great ! RANDOM TIP : RedHat users may find out their exact kernel architecture (which is not always the same as "uname -m" output) with the following case-sensitive shell command: rpm -q --qf '%{ARCH}\n' kernel

A Short Summary of Hyper Threading Hyper-Threading Technology brings the simultaneous multi-threading approach to the Intel architecture(where multiple threads can execute on a single processor without switching). Hyper-Threading Technology makes a single physical processor appear as multiple logical processors. To do this, there is one copy of the architecture state for each logical processor, and the logical processors share a single set of physical execution resources. Processes or threads can be scheduled to logical processors as on conventional physical processors in a multi-processor system, and instructions from logical processors will persist and execute simultaneously on shared execution resources. Each logical processor maintains a complete set of the architecture state. The architecture state consists of registers including the general-purpose registers, the control registers, the advanced programmable interrupt controller (APIC) registers, and some machine state regist...

FROM Microsoft must include rival Sun Microsystems' Java programming language in its Windows operating system, a federal judge ruled Monday MORE HERE ALSO on Blogs from WIRED KEEP UPDATED ON THE INTEL P4 Explore Intel's Hyperthreading technology Technical Resources Read more about The Simputer - a full-featured, powerful handheld computer. It is an acronym for Simple, Inexpensive, Mobile, People's Computer Also see http://simputer.org

"I am back" Christmas tomorrow - phone was dead, blogging in abeyance from the net; Caldera Linux does not seem to have much though a few things like Aktion media player and Java SDK are pre-installed - no games especially GNU Chess - a favourite of mine though I have never beaten it. ON Monday, December 23, 2002 I have been unable to blog for the past few days because of a dead phone and frequent shifting of cables and the associated repair work. In the meantime something went wrong . . . Here is how it all started - I suddenly wanted to intall Linux into my vacant partition (actually an earlier corrupted install) that I had reserved for the same. I chose Caldera OpenLinux Workstation - loaded with all the dev features. I selected the partition and said 'format' and then the boot loader option(GRUB/Lizard, not good old LILO) asked if it could write into the MBR(Master Boot Record) and I checked the option true and the OS boot options as Linux and pre-exis...

RANDOM LINKS THAT I VISITED - RSS XML RDF etc. An Indian Blogdex coming up ? A step-by-step guide to building an RSS 1.0 document by hand. http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=5310/new1013637412/2.lst http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ bEYOND html - http://www.newarchitectmag.com/archives/2000/02/beyo/ http://www.newarchitectmag.com/archives/2000/02/beyo/ and FRESH BLOGGER BLOGS

UPDATES FOR LAST 3 DAYS - PHONE DEAD TRY ANOTHER DAY -> I started reading a book called Deep Time by David Darling on the theme - travel of a particle from the beginning of the Universe to its end and further. After A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, I am somehow finding this book not very interesting, am flitting from reading a few pages and then not feeling like continuing again - this cycle repeating again and again and again. -> India has its latest and fastest supercomputer PARAM Padma at 1 teraflops(floating point operations per second). The fastest in the world right now is the Earth Simulator at Japan - 36 teraflops. MORE -> I am yet to read (buy?) Prey by Michael Crichton but this the first book that I have had an overdose of reviews and critciisms and praises before actually reading the book - call it commercialization or brand marketing - brands do sell in this world and the marketing strategy in this case inline with modern day practice ...

The term "zeitgeist" comes from the German "Zeit" meaning "time" and "Geist" meaning "spirit". The term is defined in English by Merriam-Webster's Collegiate� Dictionary as " the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era ." Google believes that this word and its definition appropriate to describe the program it implemented to share global search statistics and trends from the world's most popular search engine. Hence the 2002 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

Just finished a hilarious book, Headcrash by Bruce Bethke incidently attributed as the creator of the term Cyberpunk. - the book is about the cyberhero's (woefully inadept in real life but a geek all the same) adventures in Virtual Reality with an anti-character virtual identity . . . and how the VR-crazy humans are finally taught a lesson.

Wow THE SEGWAY ! - I had seen mentions everywhere, but never tried to understand the concept earlier . . . The science behind The FAQs

Microsoft into the Embedded market with full force Windows is cheaper than Linux Other TechUpdates

Just check this out : GREAT - Google Viewer and this :

UPDATES - SOME MINOR/MAJOR ADDITIONS AND CHANGES IN THE BLOG AND WEBSITE structure

I got a shock today, I rang up Gangarams Book Bureau to find the price of Richard Preston's The Demon In The Freezer, my my it costs Rs. 1000 (Hardbound, paperback yet to arrive in india I was told, its almost Rs. 1300 at www.fabmart.com ) never have I bought a single book as costly as that. The costliest I have bought till now, Stroustoup's The C++ Programming Language was some 600 bucks. Though TDITF seems like a great book . . . Will wait till it comes down to the flea market.

I am finding lots of references to Richard Preston as an alternative to Crichton though one writes on Non-fiction and the other not. His latest book . O T H E R L I N K S : Excerpt from The Demon in the Freezer Cobra Event Biography MIT presents Richard Preston

Call it racism or whatever - but have you got these looks ? A handful of volunteers decided this; very unfair naa ?

"The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big." Richard P. Feynman - December 29th, 1959 "In not too many decades we should have a manufacturing technology able to: Build products with almost every atom in the right place; Do so inexpensively; Make most arrangements of atoms consistent with physical law. Often called nanotechnology, molecular nanotechnology or molecular manufacturing, it will let us make most products lighter, stronger, smarter, cheaper, cleaner and more precise." Nanotechnology: It's a Small, Small, Small, Small World By Ralph C. Merkle, Ph.D. ON NANOTECHNOLOGY - Introduction & Basics How Nanotecnology will change the world . . .

Bad News: Two Van Goghs stolen from museum ABOUT VAN GOGH - LIFE AND TIMES

Started reading HEADCRASH by Bruce Bethke a funny cyber tale I guess from the first few pages . . . -Review-

Finished CONGO - GREAT BOOK . . . ONE BOOK in which Crichton gets more emotional than others with amy[the gorilla] - Earlier I had read The Great Train Roberry, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline and the stunning Andromeda Strain. Need to get hold of Sphere and prey . . .

NOW READING : Congo by Michael Crichton is turning out to be a treat with the rain forests, primates, cannibals, 1979 hi-technology and Amy . . .

The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham ( REVIEW CONTINUED . . . ) I had earlier written - a classic book about the duality in life and everything else. If there is good why is there evil - a moving first person narrative describing both sides of life in a character running through the medley of characters their lifes and vanities from early 20th century Paris and London and a bit of America and India too. At a later stage, the book accepts certain aspects of the Indian spiritual knowledge as the most pure and ideal form. It emphasizes in terms of the main character of focus, Larry who is being described by the author himself in first person; about the universal truth that ideal life should be detached from everything - there should be no attachments to anything in life. It also describes the amoral and disreputable side of the social structure prevalent then in Europe and France(Paris) in particular. It depicts, merrily or boisterously at times, the wrong facets of life ...

SOME PRETTY INTERESTING QUOTES : - Even the cactus is beautiful, but never in the company of roses. - I chose to light a candle while they were cursing the darkness. - The toughest part in taking criticism is not accepting it gracefully, but identifying how you can make it work for you. - The Internet cannot be a truly democratic medium unless everybody is able to draw upon the benefits of computers, irrespective of their comfort with English. This belief has gained momentum worldwide and is perceived as the key to bridging the digital divide. - Having seen that babies command greater attention than fancy gadgets, I can safely believe that there's still some hope for humankind.

The new series of comments on the website guestbook are welcome Thanks guys . . . Ill look into and follow your suggestions and comments seriously. lookout for changes. A good weekend indeed ! Just finished Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham - a classic book about the duality in life and everything else. If there is good why is there evil - a moving first person narrative describing both sides of life in a character running through the medley of characters their lifes and vanities from early 20th century Paris and London and a bit of America and India too. Now Reading (just started) - CONGO by Michael Crichton THOUGHT FOR THE DAY (Plagiarised from somewhere cant recollect now, cause I liked it) : You insult me; I feel bad. I insult you; We both feel bad. Better you insult me and we leave it at that.

I was reading an article in The New Indian Express where C N R Rao - former IISc Director, lambasted the hype surrounding Information Technology in India - saying 'imagine if everyone were a IT guy in India where would scientific development take place from' - young students are losing interest in the core areas of sciences and arts. Somewhat related to this but on a different plane are a series of thought-provoking essays I had found earlier - Questioning Technology [Why then -- if we have so much information -- are we in an age of such unenlightenment . . . ]

PREY released - waiting for arrival in India Official Site The Amazon editorial reviews -

Finally you can find me at the Indian Blogger's List maintained by Anita Bora .

Linux vs Windows continues . . . The world-wide market share for Linux (some 0.05% or so) may be dismal - but just to think that all of us are scared stiff to use Win XP - PIRATED for the reason that we will be caught. I have got news of someone (friends of my friend's friend) being actually caught using illegal copies and had to cough up some Rs. 10,000/- odd. Then why not use a FREE OS like LINUX or a advanced feature rich version from a distro for about Rs. 100. This is just beyond me. I guess the hardware compatibility issues are keeping people away - internal modems, sound card problems etc. Reliability is another issue. But with companies like HP and IBM supporting the Open Source ( OSDN ) movement such doubts will surely be quelled. With a equivalent for everything in Linux as in a proprietary OS like Windows ( 2000, XP ). Especially in our country, India, where we cannot afford to shell out 10K everytime for as many licenses as PCs. With the new BlueCurve and other such...

I dont know if I agree fully with Atul Chitnis on this . The Bangalore LUG here. Because competition is always a good thing - and what is just will surely prevail. I remember last year, I attended the 3 day Linux Bangalore 2001 - this time no chance clashes with office hours seems - I will really miss it.

BANGALORE LINUX USERS GROUP - Linux Bangalore/2002 J.N.Tata Auditorium, Bangalore, India - December 3, 4 & 5, 2002 A three day conference on understanding and using Linux technologies. This conference aims to cover a large number of areas that include Core Linux technologies, Open Source, Embedded Systems and other allied technologies. LIST OF TALKS

Two Search Engines I use and all about B L O G S and B L O G S there . . .

The newly reconfigured Blogdex :

Life has become monotonous, eh! No not exactly I am liking this new schedule (early to bed & early to rise makes a man healthy . . . and wise) - probably my entry into a job after those diverse school and college days makes me react in a certain manner. I would only like to mention that the internet speed at office is indeed amazing - almost 2 Mbps - unknown atleast to me, frankly. Well I was reading the Amazon Editors' Picks on Digital Culture . Seems like a good list (some technical some social) but I dont know if any of these are good enough in terms of building up a healthy social atmosphere - where you spend more 'quality time' offline than online. As someone was telling me today that all festivals and festivities are a way of putting aside the daily tensions and dissapointments aside and enjoying the variety of traditional, cultural and social events atleast for that time being. Too Much Information! -> READ THIS MY Google EGO SEARCH RESULTS ! M...

Need to update my website - coming up soon - 6 working days per week is a bit too much; but nothing doing I guess have to go by the rules of the job. Need to download & try and learn up to use MoveableType . This surely is a Journo Blog - all free speech - here I 'applied' to be included into the Indian Blogger's List. (You can too... )

Just to mention it here I had tried to install IPv6 ( http://ipv6.org )on my system a few months back - I installed the set of TCP/IP protocol software from trumpet.com for Win 98 but hopeless; it did not work - I was able to dial in and get connected with the new set of protocols but none of the sites were opening(including IPv6 ones). Rick had tried and was successful long long back on Win XP. I am stuck with my Win 98 system. Lets see if someone else has been successful on Windows 98 . . . ? This guy's(NetAhoy) blog seems interesting ! I reached him because he had signed my guestbook. A list of Indian bloggers is at indianbloggers.blogspot.com - though my blog is missing . . . ! Some disturbing news on Michael Crichton's Prey -> Rick informed me - the book ships on 25th Nov 2002.

I am back again blogging - PCs were provided at work today - the PII system (the fan actually) from Siemens makes a lot of noise on booting then vanishes. Apart from that the saga continues - got two CDs from Rational - Rose Evaluation version & a CD titled Inside the UML. Checked them out - Rose and other software after being installed is asking for a license - donno what to do? The UML tutorial and other PDFs were good. We might be using these in our project at BEL especially for requirements capture etc. Not Rose most probably. Thats it - Oh yes these are very good links especially this and this [parent site] too . . .

I am blogging after a long while after joining BEL. We had VC++ training from 22nd Oct to 05th Nov. Well right now I am about to jump into a project at BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited) classified as RESTRICTED and am not supposed to make public. The Software Technology Center at BEL is real cool and plush but we are getting tired ( YAWN ;-) ) reading the proposals and users requirements etc. The work atmosphere is also kinda good with amiable and friendly team mates. The inducted new comers like me have varied reactions on the projects alloted to them. Ill be assigned the project probably tomorrow and BEL uniforms (cream shirts and brown trousers) are to worn worn ( oh very dull !!! ). Bought a few books from a local book fair today. Thats about it for now. Gung Ho ! Project work and coding from tomorrow.

MIT's course material ONLINE for FREE (In the course of next 10 years, every subject taught at MIT will be available ONLINE for FREE) MITOPENCOURSEWARE

Here I begin on a unknown path in life Looking forward to the FUTURE. HOSTEL STAY IN BEL FROM TOMORROW Blog it out they say . . .

A Review of RH Linux 8.0

There are many things that get recharged on practice - like my drama skills that had become almost completely non-functional. Now that we are again doing a Bengali play (comedy) FLU by Sailesh Guha Neyogi in our old Joymahal Durga Puja group after a long long time, I am surely getting replenished on the acting front; only the rehearsal classes are running haphazard and a bit irregularly (good for me) because all members of the troupe are busy with what else LIFE, including our versatile director. Rote up the dialogs that is the fun part. As grown up adults we now have the privilege of inventing dialogs(of course with entirely different meanings) when we forget the original ones ! No such freedom existed when we were much younger.

September 30, 2002 Red Hat Releases Red Hat Linux 8.0 THATS TODAY FEATURES STORY

I watched the war classic The Longest Day with a big cast and plenty of war-time action. This is a movie about D-Day (06 June 1944) when the allied (British and American) forces invade France starting from Normandy, Omaha and other beaches - the biggest challenge to the Germans in the World War II. The large scale war scenes are well crafted being very authentic and the mass attack sequences are scintillating. The movie displays the allied strategy with paratroppers landing helped by French resistance groups as diversionary tactics and how the Germans are tricked into thinking it as a small scale commando effort. And then the beaches are invaded by troops from about a whopping 5000 allied warships. The stone wall is blasted using Bangalore torpedo charges. Too much emotion is not mixed up with the realistic depiction of that phase of the war. It ends with a poignant scene when an injured allied soldier mentions, "He is dead(pointing to a German soldier), I am crippled and you (t...

ISSUES ON MAY BE - THEOLOGY IN GENERAL THIS IS WHAT ONE OF MY FRIENDS ABHINAVA CHAUDURI (shaon) HAD WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO ONE OF MY ARTICLES IN THIS BLOG I PRESENT THE CONTENTS OF HIS MAIL VERBATIM - OF COURSE MY WAY OF SEEING THINGS COMES AFTER THAT. Why do Humans Kill Humans? Good question,it seems you are a little confused. let me help you out a) Money :- Because money has become the soul need of 20th century civilization b) Power :- It comes with money, but in this ever growing population of the world,it is hard enough for some one to reach the top, and so he will try stay at the top as long as possible. And others will try to depose him. c) Religion :- Now, Now a very interesting point to be raised in the lieu of recent events. Well, lets take India as an Case Study. c1. From about the 6th and 7th century hardcore caste systems were in place- caused deprivation of basic amenities to a lot of people - hence violates all basic human r...

Famous Blog Search Engines Daypop AND blogdex - By an MIT student Daypop and Blogdex both offer Billboard-style lists of the top fresh links in the weblog community. Their popular links are often called memes. Whats the BLOGOSPHERE ?

Windows Media Player 9 (beta) released Download the beta player here 2.8 GHz PENTIUM OUT - reaching 3.0 GHz soon I guess - A protoype of about 6.0 Ghz was displayed at The Intel Developer Forum - Fall 2002 recently. Here you'll find info on blogging and other microcontent news ie the new form of journalism - compact content updated regularly. The recent articles in this site below talk of a blogger's mentality ... Read more at www.microcontentnews.com Also another good blog - find more blog links here. www.evhead.com Try these too http://www.ojr.org/ojr/technology/ http://www.microcontentnews.com/resources/ MY LATEST DEFINITION OF BLOGS An amalgam of ideas, thoughts and pointers to interesting niches on the web. AM I SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME ON THE NET PERKING UP BLOGS ? Happens Initially due to overexcitement I guess . . .

Why do humans kill humans? All the hue and cry from the National Human Rights Commission seems to have died down this time - no response even after two days of the massacre - mad mindless bloodbath. Where is the so-called pseudo-secular front? I am referring to the recent gruesome violence perpetrated by the foreign-trained armed terrorists at the sprawling magnificent temple(though not famous for me; I had not heard about it till this carnage - shows my ignorance) - The Swaminarayan Temple made entirely of sandstone at Akshardham in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Not a word of sympathy from the secularists - since the victims were from the 'majority community' and in India they are always treated in the same manner whether Godhara, Kashmir or otherwise; the media also adds to these partisan views. The reaction should be the same and condemned, when humans lose lives in such dastardly and deplorable acts. True the clashes after Godhara in Gujarat were tragic and equally inhuman; ...

Of the 3 movies I watched recently (past and this week) - Schindler's List(1993), The Lord of the Rings(2001) and Vertical Limit(2000); the first two are each around 180 minutes long. ( I seem to watch the movies a bit too late) Schindler's List had the second CD spoilt so I watched the 1st and 3rd CDs - seems like a very realistic portrayal of Nazi Germany. The depiction is very objective and Spielberg just presents the facts as a chronicler not in anyway mixing it up with his ideas or views etc. Cant say much more because I missed the important part where the story develops. The Lord of the RingsTHE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - a big movie based on the novel by JRR Tolkien. I liked the starting but then midway it seems to stretch a lot which at times makes it monotonous - though effects in a hall would be profound. A richly computer animated film, as Frodo Baggins(Elija Wood) travels across from the Shire to Mordor - but does not quite reach it - made by a Newzealand based...

My fully refurbished site/homepages at : http://in.geocities.com/shamit_bagchi/ A noiseless front page is what I was aiming at, which has been achieved to a large extent. Other pages to modularize the site has been added - of course frames still exist; I find the concept of frames useful to provide navigational ease. I have an extreme inner urge to not reduce my website status to an Orphan Annie !!!

SOME O'REILLY LINKS XML Chapter from O'REILLY'S latest book on Java http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava2/chapter/ch23.html [Almost everything to start you off on XML and parsing features in Java - Introductory to more details] O'REILLY'S Open Books http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ [Their free online books available here] O'REILLY'S FEATURED WEBLOGS http://www.oreillynet.com/weblogs/ JAVA - Top Ten Tips and Tricks http://java.oreilly.com/news/learningjava_0500.html [By Jonathan Knudsen] [O'Reilly's Website is at: http://ora.com]

LINUX NOTES To View programs that start at the time of booting on Linux ntsysv To mount Windows partition in a dirctory under Linux mount -t vfat /dev/'win-partition' /'directory' eg: mount -t vfat /dev/hda3 /win OR mount -t msdos /dev/hda3 /win When files are corrupted in Linux at bootup type: fsck /dev/'linux partition' eg: fsck /dev/hda2 If Linux does not boot properly boot using F1 on LILO and then type linux single rmtree - to delete directory like deltree on DOS

Is this our ultimate state of computing "nirvana." I some times think . . . Sitting in front of a piece of cantankerous machinery is an awfully dumb way to spend most of the day. as Charles Cooper puts it Whom do we blame for our current computing state? The early industry was basically handed blueprints by Microsoft and IBM some 20 years ago. Then it was left up to those who followed to figure out how to make the best of what was a pretty ungainly attempt at human-computer symbiosis. Of course the Macintosh user interface and the personal digital assistant are some sops, but we're still a world away from where we should--or could--be. The first company that figures out how to free us from our collective computing straitjacket will strike financial gold.

LINKS : CNET'S TECHNOLOGY PORTAL http://www.news.com Old Hindi Music: http://www.70mmbollywood.com/musicmania/mmsea.cfm SOURCE CODE : http://www.codeproject.com/

1) From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2251386.stm New 'moon' found around Earth An amateur astronomer may have found another moon of the Earth. Experts say it may have only just arrived. Much uncertainty surrounds the mysterious object, designated J002E3. It could be a passing chunk of rock captured by the Earth's gravity, or it could be a discarded rocket casing coming back to our region of space. It was discovered by Bill Yeung, from his observatory in Arizona, US, and reported as a passing Near-Earth Object. It was soon realised, however, that far from passing us, it was in fact in a 50-day orbit around the Earth. Earth's new 'moon' is space junk - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2253385.stm Earth's second one is called Cruithne. It was discovered in 1986 and it takes a convoluted horseshoe path around our planet as it is tossed about by the Earth's and the Moon's gravity. MORE AT: http://burtlebu...

Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace which I read a few months back is a great classic involving several generations. In this novel of epic proportions ; the protagonist Rajkumar grows up from a a poor young boy to an old man as the locales in the novel shift from Burma to several parts of India and America in between and running through many other South-East Asian nations - Thailand, Singapore etc from the 19th century till after the WW-II finally ending in the 1990s. Its largely a family saga and this family tree does branch out at a furious pace. The language nurtured by Ghosh's style is very mellow and subtle; yet it never ever got me bored. And even though the book is well researched out and voluminous - about 550 odd pages; the narrative flows without confusing the reader too much unlike Ghosh's Calcutta Chromosome which ends to leave the reader in a tizzy - the only other book of his that I have read till now. The complex British Raj scenario extending from Burma to...

Bought AGATHA CHRISTIE's ' Curtain : Poirot's Last Case ' from Sapna's - Nice wry humour and interesting beginning with a crippled arthitritis ridden Hercule Poirot on a wheel chair . . .

So blogs are I guess an introvert's best way out to say what he feels and preserve for eternity; unless of course there is a blog server crash or a WTC like thing; today being the anniversary of that shocking event - an event stranger than fiction or any sci-fi/action movie I have ever seen. A good link on blogs : http://www.msnbc.com/news/795156.asp A team blog is what I am trying to create but its yet to come up - disinterested extroverts I guess . . . The Howrah-Delhi Rajdhani train accident was real gruesome on 10th Sep - about 150 killed. SAD Results yet to come for 8th sem; gotta wait till then.

Finally I got the much awaited Linux drivers for my Rockwell HCF modem from an initiative by Conexant(nee Rockwell) and Mark Boucher from Homepage of the Linux drivers for Conexant modem chipsets project! http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/ But my dream of surfing using Linux remains unfulfilled... This is what happened: I installed the drivers on Red Hat Linux 7.1 and rebooted. On getting into KDE a deafening high frequency sound started blaring out of the speakers - I had installed both the Riptide and Conexant HCF drivers - so probably the error lay with the sound card settings . Then using Kmix & Xmix I reduced the sound and volume levels And then tried to log in using Kppp after getting my ISP's Primary DSN but after dialling and the connecting sound Nothing at all - this was after I made the dialling mode as pulse from tone.. The sound just became a constant monotone after that I got other messages and warnings like "This facility is not ava...

BE 8th Sem exams got over GREAT RELIEF Waiting for Michael Crichton's release of Prey in November 2002 Heard Shaan's Tanha Dil today on Radio City FM 91 Great Song; Liked it a lot . . .

My first message - Here I am This is me . . .