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!

Those who have seen Powai lake recently will testify to the fact that it is much too polluted. As a result, apparently the fish in the lake have started choking to death. But when the engineer in the Hydraulic Department of BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Anand Deodhar, was asked "Why are there dead fish in Powai lake?", the answer he gave was imaginative to say the least!

If you thought the fish in Powai lake were choking to death because of pollutants, think again. Apparently, they’re all committing a unique kind of suicide: by diving out of the water like dolphins and dashing their heads on rocks.

Sounds far-fetched? Not to the hydraulic department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) that cited this reason, along with others, for the dying fish.

Trust the brains in BMC to come up with such "ground-breaking research"!!

Check out Mumbai's most beautiful buildings

With a host of extravagant features like gold-plated Swarovski taps and rooftop jogging tracks, these buildings are among the hottest in town

And these don't include the 30-storeyed Tanna Residency which is situated just across the street from where I live. Each flat there, reportedly costs around Rs. 3 crores!!

'Outsourcing a problem for US firms, not India' says deputy PM LK Advani as he put forth a sound argument for the same.

"I had no such intention because when any company in America, or Britain or Germany, decides to ask Tata Consultancy Services or Infosys Technologies or any other Indian firm to help it as far as outsourcing is concerned, it (the US company) does so for its own commercial gains," Advani said.

"It (the US company) is not in any way helping India. Its objective is not to help India or to help that (Indian) company. No. So if any US state feels this is not in its interest, let them take a decision," he argued.

Well said, Mr. Advani!! I'm glad you did not "plead" on this issue.

But now... can you do the same on the cross-border terrorism issue? Please cut out the pleadings and start fighting our wars on our own!

Who do we believe?!

Dr. Hans Blix seems to be taking on Bush and Blair as the row over Iraq's weapons grows.

Dr Hans Blix said the secret info they gave didn't help him find any evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing illegal weapons.
...

Dr Blix said his team went to the places which were supposed to contain weapons - but they found nothing.
...

"Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none of the cases were there any weapons of mass destruction," he said.

This comes when British PM Tony Blair is facing hell about misleading the public over the alleged possession of WMDs by Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. In particular, Blair's pre-war contention that Saddam could launch dooms-day weapons within 45 minutes, has come uder a lot of fire. So much so that Blair is now facing a parliamentary probe over his (mis)handling of intelligence reports about the existence of Iraqi WMDs.

On the other hand US President, George W Bush, has managed to steer clear of controversies as his popularity ratings have stayed high even as Blair is finding life tough in UK. But the Democrats are slowly drawing their knives out for him.

On a 'thank you' visit to Qatar, Bush gave a speech to the troops stationed there.

Speaking to troops in Qatar, Bush suggested it shouldn't be surprising that no such weapons have been found, despite the fall of Saddam's regime and the presence of coalition forces in Iraq for more than two months.

"This is a man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder," Bush said. "He knew the inspectors were looking for them. You know better than me he's got a big country in which to hide them. We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth."

Also, BBC reports...

Greg Thielman, who was until September 2002 a top official in charge of non-proliferation and strategic affairs in the US state department's intelligence bureau, has expressed doubt over the objectivity of the US evidence presented to the world.

"Evidence has been distorted and the public has really been misled on issues that helped inform the decision about war and peace," he told the BBC's Today programme.

‘Chemical Ali’ may still be alive

U.S. MILITARY officials told NBC News that they had changed the status of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the infamous “Chemical Ali,” suspected of ordering the 1988 gas attacks that killed thousands of Kurds in the northern Iraqi village of Halabja, from “believed dead but unconfirmed” to “unknown.”

Now this is interesting. The death of 'Chemical Ali' was touted as one of the major successes in the run up to the fall of Baghdad. Pentagon was sure that they had got their man when the military bombed his residence in early May. But CIA, it seems, had been insisting since early May that there was a 40 percent chance that man who gassed the Kurds might still be alive.

If thats the case with 'Chemical Ali', then I guess Saddam Hussein is sure to be alive. They were never certain about him anyways!

“There’s nothing interesting here, just a lot of rubble,” said Pfc. Walter Phillips, 30, of Chicago, as he stood near his backhoe at the edge of a 15-foot crater.

Iraqis nearby doubted whether the soldiers would find the remains of Saddam, who they suspect was hiding at another house, just yards away.

“No, no - Saddam ran away. He’s hiding,” said Munther Meki, a grocer whose shop — its front window gone and shelves empty — is next to the destroyed house.

Today is World Environment Day.

World Environment Day (WED) is an United Nations initiative that is commemorated each year on 5^th June to stimulate environmental awareness among people worldwide. Each year, the UN selects an environmental issue and sets it as a theme for that year's WED. This year, the theme selected is Water - Two Billion People are Dying for It!. The theme supports United Nations' International Year of Freshwater, 2003. This year's theme calls on the people to conserve and safeguard the most precious source of life on our planet - water.

Take this quiz to judge for yourself how water friendly you are!

Google also jumps into the distributed-computing-over-the-Net fray with The Google Compute Project. Its a feature of the Google Toolbar which utilizes the idle processing power of your computer (and other computers participating in the project) to perform calculations for a large research project.

The first beneficiary of this effort is Folding@home, a non-profit academic research project at Stanford University that is trying to understand the structure of proteins so they can develop better treatments for a number of illnesses. In the future Google Compute may allow you to also donate your computing time to other carefully selected worthwhile endeavors, including projects to improve Google and its services.

The Google Compute feature of the Google Toolbar shouldn't affect your regular computing activities and you can easily disable it at any time for any reason.

I think its a nice gesture by Google to start out Google Compute with a project from Stanford. After all... Google started out from the same institution. Netizens who've been on the Net for a long time will recall the good 'ol days when Google was still google.stanford.edu.

For more information, check out the the Google Compute FAQs.

Indian researcher challenges Newton's law

An Indian research technologist in Australia has challenged Newton's First Law of Motion and called for a revision of the classical theory in the light of modern technology.

Arindam Banerjee, an alumnus of Indian Institue of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur and now working for Telstra in Melbourne made this contention in his book, "To The Stars!".

For those who do not know Newton's First Law of Motion, it says, "Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.". This is also sometimes referred to as the "Law of Inertia".

Using his unconventional theory, Banerjee has described in a technical paper, what he calls, a design for 'perpetual motion machines' which can generate energy without burning any kind of fossil fuel or any radioactive process.

The Internal Force Engine, which Banerjee has designed, never runs out of power because it is 'self charging' without the need for any external source of energy.

First annual World Stupidity Awards

What do former Iraqi information minister Saeed al-Sahaf, U.S. President George W. Bush, Tory MP Elsie Wayne and Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman have in common?

They're all nominees for the first annual World Stupidity Awards, a dubious honour to be bestowed June 6

link via Metafilter
Check out the awards' site: Stupidity.ca

Good!! Just what the world lacked!! Awards for the world's most widely followed religion... Stupidity!!

The awards, being organized by the Main Organization Revealing Obvious Numbskulls (MORON), will be followed by a screening of Nerenberg's feature documentary Stupidity.

Award categories include:

- Stupidest government in the world.

- Dumbest person of the year award.

- Award for reckless endangerment of the planet.

- Stupidity lifetime achievement award.

In some categories, the audience will chose the winner. MORON is accepting further nominations and categories at nominate(at)stupidity.ca.

Now... I know some great nominees for each of these categories!! Do you? ;-)

Internet Battle Raises Questions About the First Amendment [NYTimes registration required]

The order, entered by Judge Diana Lewis of Circuit Court in West Palm Beach, forbids Mr. Max to write about Ms. Johnson. It has alarmed experts in First Amendment law, who say that such orders prohibiting future publication, prior restraints, are essentially unknown in American law. Moreover, they say, claims like Ms. Johnson's, for invasion of privacy, have almost never been considered enough to justify prior restraints.

link via Metafilter

Even though this is a serious issue, especially for people who write on Net (like maintaining blogs), I think this is funny!!

And not for one moment does it surprise me!! After all... its Florida!!! ;-)

Why does everybody hate America?

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman attempts to analyze what is it that makes countries around the world hate America... especially now... after Afghanistan and Iraq. He comes up with A Brief Theory of Everything [NYTimes registration required]. And he makes some interesting and valid points. He claims after the fall of the Soviet Empire and the emergence of the Internet-technology revolution in America...

The net effect was that U.S. power, culture and economic ideas about how society should be organized became so dominant (a dominance magnified through globalization) that America began to touch people's lives around the planet — "more than their own governments," as a Pakistani diplomat once said to me. Yes, we began to touch people's lives — directly or indirectly — more than their own governments.

This is quite true. I mean people around the world felt that they were losing control over how their lives are shaped… not on a personal level but as the citizens of their respective countries. As a result, America came to be viewed as a hegemon trying to meddle in affairs not their own. This caused varying degrees of resentment in various countries around the world. While in some countries, anti-Americanism became a raison d’etre of that country’s existence, in other countries, like India, anti-Americanism was restricted largely to vitriolic pronouncements by the obsolete leftists and narrow-minded xenophobic policies of the ultra-nationalists.

Friedman also tries to explain why nations did not rise militarily against America.

Why didn't nations organize militarily against the U.S.? Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World," answers: "One prominent international relations school — the realists — argues that when a hegemonic power, such as America, emerges in the global system other countries will naturally gang up against it. But because the world basically understands that America is a benign hegemon, the ganging up does not take the shape of warfare. Instead, it is an effort to Gulliverize America, an attempt to tie it down, using the rules of the World Trade Organization or U.N. — and in so doing demanding a vote on how American power is used."

That is an interesting metaphor... Gulliverizing!! :-)

Friedman says that he will try to refine this theory (though, I don't really think that this is a new theory!) and come out with sequels to this article. Lets see... at least this article was balanced and rational.