Intresting read...

No News Is Good Blogging from NYTimes

"Whatever they come up with, the companies won't be competing with Office, but with Microsoft's coming upgrades to Hotmail and Outlook, as well as a new suite of collaboration software, writes Mary Jo Foley on Microsoft Watch. And here, they may actually win, thanks largely to Microsoft's famous torpidity in releasing software. "Is there a hot technology arena where Microsoft has fielded a new product first over the past few months and others are scrambling to catch up?" she asks. "I am coming up blank."
$100 LAPTOPS Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab is known for highly imaginative - some say fantastical - prognostications on the power of technology. His latest effort, though, has a certain down-to-earth quality: he wants to put laptop computers into the hands of impoverished children around the world at a cost of just $100 apiece.
Since M.I.T. announced the One Laptop Per Child effort in January, five developing nations have signed on, and talks are under way with the state of Massachusetts, PC Magazine's Web site says. At Mr. Negroponte's talk at M.I.T.'s emerging technologies conference, the site notes, "one of the more interesting moments of the presentation came during a question-and-answer session, when an individual who had set up a computer network in Guatemala described coming back to check on the machines and finding them loaded with pornography." Welcome to the developed world."

Using online game to do research.

'Virtual' Virus Sheds Light on Real-World Behavior from npr.org

"A recent outbreak of a "plague" in a popular online game has scientists considering how the virtual world may provide clues to what people would do in real-world pandemics. In the role-playing game World of Warcraft, a "corrupted blood" spell killed characters and affected players in unexpected ways."

This is really really intresting point made in this program. But another step closer to living in the virtual world.

Reconstructed monster to understand it!

1918 Killer Flu Reconstructed from npr.org

"A flu virus that killed tens of millions worldwide after it appeared in 1918 has been recreated in the virological equivalent of the Jurassic Park story. Scientists rebuilt it from pieces of genetic material retrieved from the lungs of people who died 87 years ago. Researchers writing in the journals Science and Nature say the tightly guarded replica is even more virulent than they expected.
Yet public health officials aren't worried that the 1918 flu will again terrorize the population. It's no longer a new virus, and most people in the world have some immunity to the H1N1 virus family.
But scientists are interested in what it can reveal about future pandemics... and they say the copy of the 1918 flu bears an ominous resemblance to the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia."

Listen to the whole program to get the whole picture. This is a good prgram "All Things considered" on npr

thought

Is being idealistic living in a fantasy world?

anonymuncule

Karni hai mujhe us ehsaas se phir mulakat.

Shyam ka vo rangeen asamaa,
asmaa pe vo bikhre tare hazar,
un taaro se jagta asimit-ta ka ehsaas,
karni hai mujhe us ehsaas se phir mulakat.

khamosh jheel ka tharha pani,
pani pe dhundli parchaiya sunaati kahani,
un kahaniyo me chalakte sach ka ehsaas,
karni hai mujhe us ehsaas se phir mulakat.

dolti hawaao me pathiya vo shokh,
pathiyo pe jhilmilati boonde oas ki,
un boodho se jagta vishwas ka ehsaas,
karni hai mujhe us ehsaas se phir mulakat.

rimjhim baarish ke phoaar,
phoaar ka hoota pyasi mitti se milap,
us millap ki khushboo se apnepan ka ehsaas,
karni hai mujhe us ehsaas se phir mulakat.

H-1B issues are India centric?

Waging a battle on foreign Labor from CNET

The comments on this article are interesting too.

quote

Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.
-- John Ed Pearce

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun

Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.
-- Wernher von Braun