Other Nations Hope to Loosen U.S. Grip on Internet from NYTimes
"When Libya lost the use of its Internet domain ".ly" for five days last year, it needed help from an agency in California that reports to the United States Commerce Department.
Anyone looking to do business with an .ly Web site or e-mail an .ly address probably met with a "file not found" or "no such person" message. For anyone on the Internet, Libya was just not there.
In a day when Internet access is critical to world commerce - let alone casual communication - even a five-day lapse is a hardship. And when one government needs the help of another to make its citizens visible again on that network, it can be a damaging blow to its sovereignty, and perhaps a matter of national security, even if the cause was a dispute over payments, as in the Libyan case.
What if, by historical chance, France or Britain controlled country domain names on the Internet? Would the United States settle for asking another government to fix its own addresses?
That kind of power to hinder or foster freedom of the Internet, centralized in a single government, is the crucial issue for many of the 12,000 people expected in Tunis this week for a United Nations summit meeting on the information age."
Nov 15, 2005
Owning internet
Free MS product... any takers!
Microsoft eyes making desktop apps free from CNET
"Although no specific plans have been made, executives within Microsoft are examining whether it makes sense to release ad-supported versions of products such as Works, Money, or even the Windows operating system itself, according to internal documents seen by CNET News.com.
"As Web advertising grows and consumer revenues shrink, we need to consider creating ad-supported versions of our software," two Microsoft researchers and an MSN employee wrote in a paper presented to company executives earlier this year. The document was prepared for one of Microsoft's twice-yearly Thinkweek exercises, in which Chairman Bill Gates and other top executives gather to consider potential new avenues for the company to follow."
Curiosity is good.
Lack of curiosity is curious from triangle.com
"Over dinner a few weeks ago, the novelist Lawrence Naumoff told a troubling story. He asked students in his introduction to creative writing course at UNC-Chapel Hill if they had read Jack Kerouac. Nobody raised a hand. Then he asked if anyone had ever heard of Jack Kerouac. More blank expressions.
Naumoff began describing the legend of the literary wild man. One student offered that he had a teacher who was just as crazy. Naumoff asked the professor's name. The student said he didn't know. Naumoff then asked this oblivious scholar, "Do you know my name?"
After a long pause, the young man replied, "No."
"I guess I've always known that many students are just taking my course to get a requirement out of the way," Naumoff said. "But it was disheartening to see that some couldn't even go to the trouble of finding out the name of the person teaching the course."
The floodgates were opened and the other UNC professors at the dinner began sharing their own dispiriting stories about the troubling state of curiosity on campus. Their experiences echoed the complaints voiced by many of my book reviewers who teach at some of the nation's best schools.
All of them have noted that such ignorance isn't new -- students have always possessed far less knowledge than they should, or think they have. But in the past, ignorance tended to be a source of shame and motivation. Students were far more likely to be troubled by not-knowing, far more eager to fill such gaps by learning. As one of my reviewers, Stanley Trachtenberg, once said, "It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care about what they don't know.""
Nov 13, 2005
quote
Some pray to marry the man they love, my prayer will somewhat vary; I humbly pray to Heaven above that I love the man I marry.
-- Rose Pastor Stokes
anonymuncule
ek shyam zindagi ke
dubo jane vali barsat,
garajte chamkte badal hazar,
halki barish ke phuar,
kahi urdte badal char,
saf kula nila asman,
uspe chamakti kirne beshumar,
dhimi hawa lati kushboo unjaan,
dhondne use badhte kadam char,
ujagar hota phuloo ka rang tamam,
khamoshi ko jagati panchiyo ke awaz,
dhime dhime pattiya gungunati koi raag,
dhalte suraj ki aakh micholi sab ke saath,
phir sitaro bhare aachal me sab samoti raat.
ye zindigi ki ek shyam aur sang hota tumara saath.
Nov 12, 2005
Just a note.... for the few and far readers
If u are seeing this entry as the top entry of my blog then I am still in the writting mode(and this mode may just change by the time I finish this note). That is my blog will be more of what I write than what I read.... so it can be safely avoided :) You won't be missing much!
Nov 11, 2005
anonymuncule
kushi ka pal, aachnak aata hai aur bina kuch kahe chala jata hai.
gum ka ek lamha, rukh sa jaata hai aur her ehasas per apne nishan chod jata hai.
anonymuncule
Aajnabi
Jab zindagi main andhera chane lage,
Jab kisi modh per dil thanha lage,
Jab shyam asuoome dhalne lage,
Jab rahien manzillo se door jane lage,
Jab manzil per khushiyon ke talash ho,
Jab naaye humraaz samajhne me tumko naakaam ho,
Jab vo thakne lage jo thame thumara haath ho,
Tab...
us andhare main,
un aasuoo main,
us modh pe,
us manjil pe,
Tum aapne saath ek aajnabi ko paaoge.
anonymuncule
Words!!!!
shatter dreams,
build hope,
bring you close,
tear you apart,
strengthen relationships,
weaken trusts,
spin lies,
hide truth,
comfort you,
hurt you,
express thoughts,
confuse feelings,
start a war,
end in peace,
destroy characters,
save lives.
Oh words just so many words...
can we live without them?
are we bound to them?
can we see above them?
are we limited by them?
can we feel beyond them?
Nov 10, 2005
anonymuncule
Swikar
Pyar, parivar,
Niradhar swikar.
Dosti, mohabath,
Vichar swikar.
Mehaman, vidwaan,
Achar swikar.
Guru, bhagavan,
Vishwas swikar.
hhhmmmmm
A pope for our times: why Darwin is back on the agenda at the Vatican from Times Online
"He argued that the real message of Genesis was that the Universe did not make itself, and had a creator. “Science and theology act in different fields, each in its own.” In Rome, the immediate reaction was that this was a Vatican rejection of the fundamentalist American doctrine of “intelligent design”. No doubt the Vatican does want to separate itself from American creationists, but the significance surely goes further than that. This is not another Galileo case; the teachings of the Church have never imposed a literal interpretation of the language of the Bible; that was a Protestant mistake. Nor did the Church condemn the theory of evolution, though it did and does reject neo-Darwinism when that is made specifically atheist.
Indeed, one can go back nearly 1,500 years before Darwin and find St Augustine of Hippo, the most commanding intellect of all the early doctors of the Church, teaching a doctrine of evolution in the early 5th century. In one of his greatest works, De Genesi ad Litteram, he stated that God did not create an organised Universe as we see it now, but in the beginning created all the elements of the world in a confused and “nebulous” mass. In this mass were the mysterious seeds of the creatures who were to come into existence.
Augustine’s thought does therefore contain the elements of a theory of evolution, and even a genetic theory, but does not have natural selection. St Augustine has always been orthodox. He did not foresee modern science in AD410, but he did have an extraordinary grasp of the potential evolution of scientific thought. Cardinal Poupard’s address to the journalists should not be seen as a matter of the Roman Church changing its mind and accepting Darwin after 145 years."
One win one loss
Evolution Slate Outpolls Rivals from NYTimes
"The vote counts were close, but of the 16 candidates the one with the fewest votes was Mr. Bonsell, the driving force behind the intelligent design policy. Testimony at the trial revealed that Mr. Bonsell had initially insisted that creationism get equal time in the classroom with evolution.
One incumbent, James Cashman, said he would contest the vote because a voting machine in one precinct recorded no votes for him, while others recorded hundreds."
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