musings

An interesting comment...

Saw this on Slashdot as a comment to an article on multinationals moving away from the US.

Look I am an Indian, and I think that there are a few things all of you need to know.

America is not going anywhere for now. The fundamentals of your future lie in the hands of your people, especially the select few who have a vision and can buck the status quo. As long as you have plenty of such individuals you are going to weather any geo-political storm.

Whereas in my nation life is so linear that it is a goddamn joke.

Almost every kid is expected to be an engineer and most of these engineers hardly even know what the hell they are talking about. As Feynman would say their knowledge is fragile.

Our educational system itself is a joke. Trust me on this.

At the same time entrepeneurs are discouraged and looked down upon. They are sorta treated with ice, as everyone wants a son in an MNC with a prestigous MBA. So, basically our society is choking itself. Sure, these people are awesome paper pushers, but despite the fact that some of them do have a decent brain they all seem to fail to do anything different.

No revolutions are put into motion. No brilliant new synthesis are formulated. No groundbreaking patents are filed. In short, the truly important stuff is in stasis.

Your society whereas pushes its outliers and that is why, as Kay once put it, most software is written on one side of the atlantic. I think that you should stop looking at IBM and start looking at MIT. That is where your future lies.

And seriously drop all of that economics mumbo-jumbo. As the foundations of society are the ability to create things, transport those things and dessiminate them. I think that those earning a living by making a killing in stocks are living a sham.

Oh and Thomas Jefferson would kill himself if he saw Bush in action. Despite his failings Obama is, at least, a breath of fresh air. So, value him for that. At least he had the courage (unlike me) to step up to the plate.

P.S. – /.s javascript is screwed, haven’t they heard of simplicity?

The comment itself is here

Multi-talented MAFIAA

Evidently, the MAFIAA (Music And Film Industry Associations of America) have a lot of talent. Read on.

As seen on Slashdot:

Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Anti-Piracy Dog Uncovers Huge Cache of Discs

So apparently recording agencies are able to do anything except record good music. They can bribe judges, hire lawyers, buy congress, complain, make commercials and now train dogs. You would think that with all this money they could come up with a working business model other then abusing the legal system.

Religion and Abuse - smells like a power trip to me!

From the BBC:

The report said that girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

Frequent assaults, humiliation, worthlessness. Reminds me of my early school days, when I went to a school run by nuns. Coincidence? I think not. These are signs of how rotten societies get when organized religion has its way with people. Its evident that God and Religion have nothing to do with each other and are only linked by the filth of the human mind.

Read on. Keep a barf bag handy. BBC NEWS | Europe | Irish church knew abuse ‘endemic’

Religious books?

Someone on one of the tech mailing lists I subscribe to portrays a couple of religious books as books that portray “murder, war, sexism, torture, genocide, sexual mutilation, slavery, revenge, rape, gambling, prostitution, and so on.”

Wanna take a gander on which books these are?

Congratulations!!! Starbucks profits decline by 77%

Finally! The trash that Starbucks peddles is getting them less money. Sadly, they still make a profit. I wish they would just sink and disappear.

I remember when the idiots introduced “Venti” as a size and would look at me silly when I asked for a small. “Oh, we don’t carry that. Would you like a tall instead?”

Can’t even roast and brew a decent cup of coffee. And the clueless who drink it? They think “bitter” is how coffee is supposed to be. Suckers.

Good riddance. BBC NEWS | Business | Starbucks profits decline by 77%

Laser beams pointing to "God"

Check out this story. Mecca mosques ‘wrongly aligned’

They are going to use laser beams to point to “God”. Here’s an idea. Align with “God” by being nice to people, by helping your neighbors, and by appreciating that the world belongs to all of us.

I say “God” because its an entity that really can’t be defined…replace it with your own muddled world view.

April Fool's Day: Too stupid to be true?

It’s so hard to tell which ones are too stupid to be true and so stupid they probably are true.

Taken from Slashdot | Conficker Worm Strike Reports Start Rolling In

Serendip

Serendipity – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a camel blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right. Now do you understand serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon’s, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table.”

Don’t know where “Seren” comes from, but “Dip” or “Deep” is similar to “Dweep”, meaning island is Hindi. Etymology is a fascinating branch of inquiry, and its amazing how words come about.

Which scares more?

Take a look at this picture. I can’t tell which is more scary. The Zune or the bug in the Zune.

Why do consumers buy such trash?

Imagine that. You want a pair of headphones to listen to music. You can’t plug in any garden-variety headphones into the new iPod. Third-party iPod shuffle headphones will require Apple-licensed authentication chip. What kind of digital tyranny will it take for consumers to finally revolt and break free of such stupidity?