doshiamit.net

My Sunday morning routine includes reading some pf the opinion pieces in TOI, Indian Express and the HT. Hindustan Times is normally first, mainly due to Vir Sanghvis column. They also offer individual columnist RSS feeds, or at least a feed for Vir Sanghvi’s column. So I didn’t get a link last week or this week in my Reader, so went to the website. I opened the op-ed page, in anew window and did a search from the main page for Vir Sanghvi. I found his newest article on the op-ed page, so, was about to close the search page, when I saw it. Here is a screenshot:

The dude must have written hundreds of columns for HT, he is the Editor of HT, but the search feature doesn’t like him.

An absolutely fascinating article from Popular Mechanics, that looks at 10 Science Fiction Movies, and how well they predicted the future. Ive seen all the movies except Soylen Green and Destination Moon. It seems like  a pretty good list but there are at least 2 movies missing, both directed by Terry Gilliam.

Brazil was released in 1985. It dealt with themes of a surveillance society and how a bureaucrat goes about trying to achieve happiness. Its whimisical but there are some uncomfortable truths about our society portrayed in the film.

12 Monkeys also directed by Gilliam, has time travel as a part of its plot, which Im guessing is not something forseeable in the near future, and might be why it wasnt included in the list. Thats just one part of the plot. We see a world which has been wiped out by an weaponized virus, we see how Animals have reclaimed urban areas.

The article was written in memory of Arthur C. Clarke, who predicted a number of future technologies such as Geo Stationary Orbit.

We use msn/live messenger at work internally and with a number of clients. It was the most reliable in 1999-2001 when we started using IM in the office, and while its not the best, its normally fine. We do use skype and Gtalk quite a bit too. I like using gtalk the most because of its extremely clean interface, and lack of crap unlike yahoo and msn.

I think today might the last straw as far as msn goes. I opened the main contacts window, started talking to someone and than all of a sudden I see an ad pop up on my screen. Scared the shit out of me. For a second I thought I had some sort of adware/malware on my machine which is causing pop ups on my desktop:

I’m trying to remember if I have ever seen another application display an ad like this, where they are moving out of the window used by that application and I think adware is the only time I have. I’m not the only one pissed off by this . Funnily enough neither of these people are from the US or UK, but from The Netherlands and Hong Kong which makes me wonder if this is a problem for MSN Windows Live worldwide or just in select countries. I have got to believe that if this happened to people in the US or UK, Id find a lot more railing against Microsoft.

And FYI that close button doesn’t work, so the damn ad is there on my desktop as bloody long as it wants to be.

There are 30 more here

This is a documentary from the 30’s predicitng what Fashions would be like in 2000

Found via reddit

I came across this one today(via reddit). Heres an excerpt:

Why did Lord Vader decide to break all protocols and personally pilot a lightly armored TIE Fighter? Conveniently, this placed Lord Vader outside of the Death Star when it was destroyed, where he was also conveniently able to escape from a large-sized rebel fleet that had just routed the Imperial forces. Why would Lord Vader, one of the highest ranking members of the Imperial Government, suddenly decide to fly away from the Death Star in the middle of a battle? Did he know something that the rest of the Imperial Navy didn’t?

Heres another classic Star Wars conspiracy theory:

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.

The leaders according to this theory are R2D2 and Chewbacca:

Fortunately, before coming to Tattoine, R2 had already arranged transport, which is waiting at Mos Eisley, under the command of the Rebellion’s other chief field agent and espionage asset. Chewbacca.

20 years earlier, Chewbacca was second in command of the defence of his planet. He’s there in the tactical conferences and there on the front lines and is a personal friend of Yoda’s. When he needed reliable people to join the embryonic Alliance, who else would Yoda turn to but his old friend from Kashykk? Given his background, there is no way that Chewie would spend the crucial years of the rebellion as the second-in-command to (sorry Han) a low-level smuggler. Unless it’s his cover. In fact, Chewie is a top-line spy and flies what is in many ways the Rebellion’s best ship.

I love this stuff

Amit Verma pointed out this editorial by Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M). I have a visceral hatred for these communists, so take what I say with that in mind.

I have never read a more confused babbling of statistical nonsense put together. There is actually a purity of thoughtlessness that is pretty impressive, if it weren’t for the fact that this never elected dude, has a pretty powerful voice in the government.

There is no coherence, or any kind of argument here other than :

America BAD! Globalisation Bad! Business Bad! Poor GOOD! Staying Poor EVEN BETTER!

I was going to do this bit by bit but its just not worth it. Heres a sample of the ‘thinking’ so you dont have to click thru and go through the same 20 mins of trying to follow a non existent argument.

The consequent appreciation of the rupee by over 11 per cent during the last year has seriously affected Indian exports. Textiles, the largest net export earner, has seen a decline of -7.9 per cent in its total revenue and profit margins.

I’m no economist, but if you calculate your profits in rupees, and your contracts are in dollars(Almost all exporters do this) when the dollar becomes cheaper, that is bound to affect your profitability. He also completely neglects the (more important) fact that Textile quotas from the US were abolished a few years ago, and thats led to a decline in Indian Exports. In my opinion this is because of the communists, who will not allow labour regulation reform, which means nobody who can have a factory in China would want to put one in India.

What does he want? Or is he just happy complaining about things without actually doing anything, in the same way they’ve been doing by “supporting” the government from outside?