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A pause...

This is to announce a temporary suspension of blogging on this weblog

For the next few days, I'll be located at a new place on the web, carrying out my blogging activities as usual. This is the result of my being one of the beta testers for TypePad. So, while this blog remains static until further notice, I shall be actively blogging on the brand new TypePad blogging system.

My new temporary address is http://optimystic.typepad.com

So please head over there to catch me blogging and continue to leave your valuable comments and opinions!

Harry Potter house up for sale

The house that played host to the loathsome Dursleys and their magical nephew in the Harry Potter movies is on the market, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

With fans gripped by the fifth book in J.K. Rowling's series, the owner of No 4 Privet Drive -- in reality No 12 Picket Post Close -- is putting the house up for auction with a price guide of 250,000 pounds.

Go on! Bid on it!! If you are able to buy it, then you'll have to excuse the occasional appearance of Dobby, the house elf or the swarm of owls that descend on the house every once in a while!! ;-) :-P

Reaching Through the Net to Touch

Researchers at the University at Buffalo, New York, announced last week they have developed a system that lets one person experience the sense of touch felt by another. They said they could transmit the sensation across the Internet.

In about five years, people may use the system to feel the force and pressure Tiger Woods experiences every time he wallops a golf ball. It could be used in e-commerce, enabling buyers to feel fabrics before they buy...

Hmmm... and not just that. Maybe a gentle touch by that special someone too!

What's more, the sensory data can be saved, allowing one sensation to be accessed indefinitely.

So that you can feel that special first touch years later when you are relaxing in your easy-chair with your dentures in a glass of water on the table nearby!! *Heh*

But then... you wouldn't want to use this technology if you are a regular in adult chatrooms!! :-P

Whoa! The cowboy shooteth from the hips.

'There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on,' Bush said. 'We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.'

What does that remind you of? It reminds me of what Dirty Harry says in Sudden Impact... "Go ahead, make my day!" :-P

Sex at 60 mph is OK in Germany

Having sex while driving at 100 kph (60 mph) down a motorway is not an offence in Germany. But if you hit something make sure you don't run off.
...
"The man was convicted of hit-and-run and sentenced to a fine of 600 euros," court spokesman Juergen Mannebeck said on Tuesday. "It's hard to believe but in fact no law was broken with the intercourse on the motorway. It's a situation lawmakers never thought about."

Ahem Ahem!! LOL!!

The courts worldwide, are an endless source of mirth!!

Giving Sharers Ears Without Faces

In response to recent threats to file traders, peer-to-peer developers say they're seeing an upsurge of interest in tools that purport to hide identities.

You'll recall that RIAA had recently threatened to track online file-sharers and sue them. If you don't recall, read my post about it.

This was bound to happen! Is RIAA so naive?!!

Behold the pentaquark

Physicists have discovered a new class of subatomic particle that will provide unexpected insights into the fundamental building blocks of matter.
...

The new particle is the so-called pentaquark - five quarks in formation. Until now, physicists had only seen quarks packed into two- or three-quark combinations
...

The discovery of the pentaquark, also known as a new exotic baryon state, should have far-reaching consequences for our theory of particle interactions that attempt to explain the structure of matter.

[link via Metafilter]

Bloggers Gain Libel Protection This is a victory for free speech advocates and also for bloggers... well, at least in the US!

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers.

Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily.

Now you see it, now you don't!

That's how the template of this blog (hosted on Blog*Spot and obviously powered by Blogger) has been behaving in the past few days.

It all started when Blogger took that momentous step towards moving all its users over to Dano. I was surprised to see the Dano interface on my non-Dano blog and took me a few moments to realize that Blogger had started the migration.

All seemed good. I tried to post an entry on Friday morning. Thats when I realized something was amiss because I just could not publish my blog. So, I tried to find the error details and saw that my template had disappeared completely. The template box was empty... nice and clean!

There have been times in the past when the template has looked funny. But that has been when the folks at Blogger were probably doing some routine maintenance work. But this time the template had disappeared completely. Even so, I waited half a day for it to re-appear as magically as it had vanished! But being a Muggle, magic was obviously out of the question!

So I went to Control and lodged a complaint quoting the error I was getting while publishing the blog and explaining that my template had vanished into thin air of the cyberspace. But it has been more than 72 hours since I entered my complaint and the status of the complaint still shows "Unreviewed" which is just a euphemism for "nobody has given a shit's worth of attention to the complaint".

So today, I built up my blog's template from an old backup that I had kept. (foresightedness at its shining best!). But only a few minutes after that, my template disappeared again! If this is what the new Dano experience is all about... spare me folks! I'll move over to Movable Type (which I'm going to do in about a month's time, anyways!).

I advise all you Blogger users to take backups of your templates immediately and keep taking backups when you make any changes to the template. I believe even Anita had a scary experience, a couple of weeks back, when her template vanished. So... chant the backup mantra to be safe!

So it was template rebuilding time for me today. And while I was at it, I made a few changes to the template...

I added a dotted line between posts to act as a divider since it was often confusing to differentiate between posts on my blog.

I changed the "New Post" indicator which indicates that a blog has nad a new entry posted to it (duh!). The new indicator is tinier and not-so-distracting as the last one I was using.

And the most important update I made was the addition of the Sideblog. You can see it just below on the zonkboard on the right hand column. Sideblog is a tiny blog just like the one they have on... ummm... Metafilter for example. I'll be using the Sideblog to make announcements and/or to post some special links or... errr.... well, ok! I haven't thought of a use for it yet. But it's a nice tool and I'll put it to good use! :-)

Well, that's about it for the moment!

The Box Office Oracle is supposed to be your "one-stop film prognosticator". You can just put in the info of a Hollywood film you've always dreamt of making, i.e. the title, the actors, the director, the budget, etc. and the BOO (Box Office Oracle) will tell you exactly how much money your film will make or whether your film stands a chance at the Oscars. It also predicts which critics will gush over your film and which ones will skewer it!

Sounds like cool fun! :-)

I tried my hand at it and this is what I got...

A Greater Threat (PG-13)
(Courtroom Drama/Mystery/Thriller)
Starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer
Also Featuring Willem Dafoe, Joaquin Phoenix, Kathy Bates, and Emily Watson
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan and Frances Walsh

Projected Budget Range: $30-39 Million
Planned Release Date: June

Projected Box Office Receipts:
$12.34 million (Opening Weekend)
$73.36 million (Total Domestic Gross)

Chance of getting Oscar Nomination: 13%
Chance of winning at least one Oscar: 4%

Critic Most Likely to Praise: Chris Gore, Film Threat
Critic Most Likely to Skewer: Desson Howe, Washington Post

[link via Metafilter]

RIAA Prepares To Sue Hundreds Of File Sharers

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have today (June 26th) begun gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to "share" substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks.

To gather evidence against P2P users who make illegal downloading possible, the RIAA will be using software that scans the public directories available to any user of a peer-to-peer network. These directories, which allow users to find the material they are looking for, list all the files that other users of the network are currently offering to distribute. When the software finds a user who is offering to distribute copyrighted music files, it downloads some of the infringing files, along with the date and time it accessed the files.

Draconian, I say!!

The Ministry of Magic is spreading its tentacles!!! It must be stopped!!

Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinh says that the India-China pact signed in Beijing is a win-win for India as well as China.

Sinha said the border agreement has "recognised" the Nathu la Pass in Sikkim as a "border pass" between the two countries.

For the full-text of the agreement, click here.

So you've just received a junk email encouraging you to visit a website for some irresistible pornography or to consolidate your debts! Well, it's time to oblige the people who fill your mailbox with spam. Let FriedSPAM visit their sites for you -- about a million times! After all, you are only doing what the spammers are asking you to do.
[link via Metafilter]

Indiatimes is Connecting people...

One of my colleagues wants to buy a new cell-phone. He's bored with his Siemens C35. So, yesterday he decided to check out a few new models and their prices. So he hopped over to the Indiatimes Auctions site since he was not averse to buying a second-hand piece.

He was looking for a Nokia model. I suggested Nokia 3650, just because of its unconventional looks and colour display. He liked it but he kept on searching some more.

That is when he landed up on an auction for the stunning Nokia 6800. It was going for Rs. 36000. My colleague had never seen this particular model before so he read through all the impressive features that 6800 boasted. At the end of the features-list was the customary link to the picture of the piece being auctioned. It said, 'see picture'. Click on it to see this strange Nokia 'model'.

Boy!... if I get one of those, I sure don't know which are the right buttons to push!

One more post about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. You might feel I'm going overboard (and crazy) about the bespectacled wizard (with the lightening shaped scar on his forehead, if I may add!)). But then, isn't everyone?!

Barnes & Noble, the largest US bookseller said on Sunday that the weekend sales figures of HP5 were on course to top 1 million copies (??!!!). They had anticipated a sale of 1 million copies by the end of the first week. But the rate of 80 copies per second ensured that the 1 million mark would be achieved in the first 48 hours alone!

Tesco Supermarket in the UK is supposed to be the biggest single outlet for HP5. It had sold more than 300,000 copies in the 24 hours after the launch. Tesco had sold about 42,000 copies of HP4 in the first week after its launch. So... compare for yourself!

Ok, get those sales figures out of your heads and check this review of the book. [link via Instapundit] It claims that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has Libertarian overtones to it!

I'm on page 550 of Book Five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's an excellent read, and the only reason I'm putting the book down to blog is because I can barely contain my enthusiasm about this -- I can't believe the overwhelming libertarian overtones in this book!

Before you read the review, I must warn you that though there are no spoilers mentioned, there are still some plot details included in the review.

But like all the reviews that I've read so far, the review ends with...

I finally finished the book, and I highly recommend it. Amazingly, and despite my previous assumptions, the series is getting better and better as it continues.

Oh well! Now I HAVE to start the book ASAP!!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Reviewed

Lets see how HP5 fares at the hands of the critics...

NY Times feels Harry Potter loses his innocence in this book

This Harry Potter is less Prince Hal than a budding Henry V; less the callow boy in "The Sword in the Stone" and more of the young King Arthur.

A considerably darker, more psychological book than its predecessors, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" occupies the same emotional and storytelling place in the Potter series as "The Empire Strikes Back" held in the first "Star Wars" trilogy. It provides a sort of fulcrum for the series, marking Harry's emergence from boyhood, and his newfound knowledge that an ancient prophecy holds the secret to Voldemort's obsession with him and his family.

BBC says Rowling has brought the magic of reading to a global audience

Rowling's magical formula, so hard to replicate, is that she can keep the reader - whether young or old - enthralled.

The pages seem to turn themselves as though some unseen force drives us through the book.

The Globe and Mail says the Phoenix rises to expectations

Flashy, fast-paced, but a little flabby, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is here — all 766 pages of it.

The most anticipated book of the summer, Phoenix, the fifth book in J. K. Rowling's celebrated series of novels about an orphaned wizard raised in the home of the Dursleys — that beastly suburban family of muggles — lives up to its advance press.

The Age says its pretty gripping and the best so far!

Phew! What a read this book is! After reading 300 pages of the 766-page book, I'm pushing myself to type this review because I want to go back to the gripping story

Edmonton Journal declares it to be worth every minute of wait

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix -- the eagerly awaited fifth instalment of J.K. Rowling's revered Harry Potter series -- is as creative, engrossing and satisfying as any Potter fan could hope.

Now... only if Fabmart could deliver the book to me!! I'm fuming right now!!! x-(

Guess what day it is today??! It's the Big Day today!!

I mean that literally!! 21st June is the longest day of the year. It's a solstice.

Solstice revellers watched sunrise from the Stonehenge in England, which is considered to be of particular significance as many believe that the site was built as an observatory thousands of years ago.

By the way... I really am experiencing the longest day as I wait expectantly for my copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to be shipped to me!!

Ladies, gentlemen and the rest... I'm pleased to announce the 17^th edition of the Bharateeya Blog Mela. Without further ado, let us dive into the murky depths of the Indian Blogosphere (hah! kidding!!) and uncover some pearls to hold aloft and admire!

Rohini kicks off this week's Blog Mela with a post on something that everyone of us has experienced sometime or the other. She wonders... even though Indian call centres are supposed to be The Good Ones amongst them all, why, then, do we have to face the music?!

In Rick Nightmares, Anita relives some of the nightmares that she has experienced in various Indian cities when it comes to riding the ubiquitous autorickshaws.

On his travels in Kerala, Jayakrishnan Nair notices posters alerting people to the Evils of Globalization, which according to him is contradictory to the facts.

Niraj picks up the thread and tries to expose the Globalization Hypocrites.

In another insightful post, Jayakrishnan Nair tries to explain What Causes Globalization.

Sampada tries to analyse the causes that have led to the decline of the once flourishing Marathi film industry and hopes that it will see better days.

Dina presents the first draft for a Youth Program that she wants to initiate.

In Of Cards - Credit and Debit types [scroll down to the bottom of the page for the post. Dated 16 June 2003], Lazy Lump talks about how we take credit and debit cards for granted nowadays.

Nilesh is perplexed about why the Women of the species are not active in hacking (hacking, not cracking).

A Bharateeya Blog Mela would be incomplete without an entry from Dancing with the dogs!! Shanti talks about the Muslim Personal Law and the reluctance of Muslims to reconcile to the idea of having an Uniform Civil Code in India.

Ind posts an informative post on the Flag Code of India. In another one of her posts, Ind shares a recipe for a Dates and Walnut Cake (yummmmm!)

That brings us to the end of this week's Blog Mela. I hope you enjoyed going through all those interesting posts. The next Bharateeya Blog Mela will be hosted by Yazad on his brand new website at www.yazadjal.com!!

Ciao!

SCO seems to be growing too big for its boots. It has gone on criticizing almost everybody connected with Linux and in the latest court document it has presented, SCO criticizes Linus Torvalds

SCO's amended suit against I.B.M., filed late Monday, contends that Mr. Torvalds, who has overseen the development of Linux, appears to have a casual attitude toward intellectual property rights. Linux is distributed free and improved upon by a far-flung network of developers.

SCO harps on the fact that Linus has, in the past, spoken freely against the concept of software patents. As a result, SCO contends that Linus is unwilling/inable to identify the IPR origins of the contributed source code that has gone in towards the development of Linux.

But Linus, candid as ever, has been known to pooh-pooh the concept of IPRs and patents on software.

"I do not look up any patents on principle because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know."

"The fact is technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them,"

In any case, I'm sure that the open source community that has been involved in development of Linux will be up in arms against SCO (it already is!). And that's because, SCO has dared to speak against their "God"!!

Bharateeya Blog Mela #17

The seventeenth edition Bharateeya Blog Mela will be hosted here on this blog

Directions for submitting entries
* Please submit your nominations for the Mela at webmaster @ opti-mystic dot net
* You can also submit your nominations as comments to this post

Other Rules
* You can submit any type of posts except that it should not be a personal journal entry.
* You can nominate either your own or someone else's posts.
* Please send URLs (permalinks) of the individual posts (not the blog URLs themselves)
* Only the posts dated between 11 June 2003 and 17 June 2003 will be considered for Bharateeya Blog Mela #17.
* Entries should reach me by 12 noon IST on June 18 2003 (that makes it roughly end of Tuesday for people in the US)

If you want to know what this Blog Mela is all about read this and this. Go here if you want to see some examples.

SCO has been hogging media footage recently with its statements about IBM's Unix license and Linux. The Big Blue has maintained a dignified silence through the ordeal as lots of other wannabes have jumped on the bandwagon set rolling by SCO.

Now IBM has decided not to bow to SCO threats as it has released a press statement that is short and to the point.

IBM's Unix license is irrevocable, perpetual and fully paid up. It cannot be terminated. This matter will eventually be resolved in the normal legal process.

Touché!