London might have the saddest cops yet...

It doesn't matter if your wife or mum is dying, we need to ticket you. This seems to be the attitude with London Police. And whatever strange name it bears, the office or authority responsible for this greed just lets you know after a few days of furore that the ticket is cancelled. They don't see any reason to apologize to the mere mortals of London city anymore. I would like to thank any supreme powers that exist up there, for not making me one of the unfortunate people who have to live and pay for tickets in London, while their relatives are dying...

Boy, am I glad I graduated... [or, Boy, am I glad I did not go to UCLA]

Okay, this is the one posting which needs no link. And unless you are Rip Van Winkle who just woke up (in which case the internet itself wont make sense to you), you must have read about what UCLA has been upto - trying to, well ignore its students after trying to injure and mutilate one of them.

Here are the first signs that a school is advertising itself as "not safe".

--> "We have a famous rule that lets us demand you show IDs to us after 11pm."

Problem: A school that has this rule must be facing problems. If it were safe, they would not be doing this.

Where would the lax in safety come from?

Paranoia - why paranoia? Why not thugs, rapists and murderers?

Because, they would not be carrying an ID anyway, silly.

So, this is an excellent example of school - sponsored paranoia. I dread to set foot in an environment where, a video shows a kid being tasered, and the school is still "investigating".

This basically means, they really don't give a s*it. And I don't like to pay money and spend time in such a place. Not all of us get to go to school free. And get tasered, hopefully!

What if the student was wrong?

So what, do teachers now start tasering kids for being wrong, refusing to do homework and refusing to confirm? Isn't that what we all do as students - atleast a little.

Here is a scene from the future if you thought, heck ya, you do wrong, we "taser" thou. You go to class without finishing the homework. And your teacher lets your muscles twitch involuntarily at 8am. You did not finish your homework right? Well, enjoy the consequences.

------

So, would I tell my cousins or friends it is safe to go to UCLA?

NOT ON YOUR FRIGGIN' LIFE.

Would I recommend it in the very unlikely event UCLA fires the cops (after dancing around the event, living in denial for months)?

HECK NO.

You gotta do it as an automatic thing. These are students of a university. Not some wierd reformatory kids from the middle ages.

Would I recommend my cousins and brothers to be chivalrous enough to show up on the UCLA campus after the current board of directors, or whatever indecisive, apathetic people that rule the roost retire?

Maybe, after I examine any available public UCLA "taser" records. And, if they stop giving cops awards for actually using those menaces. Maybe...

Till then, "Hey kids, watch out, here is UCLA."

Traveling my style

[Click on post title for link to New York Times article. Requires free subscription, however.]

I have been traveling very little by flight. However, I believe in total simplicity and relaxation. I simply refuse to stuff myself like a dead puppy so that some stranger I am unlikely to meet again in my life might approve. Yes, there is that teeny tiny possibility that this person maybe responsible for all those millions I may earn in the future. But, if I do have to look like a showpiece, am I going to be comfortable earning the millions?

Yes, traveling on your job is different. However, I sincerely wish people were to loosen up a little bit. Till then, when it is for pleasure, it is shorts all the way..even to Alaska, wait, maybe that's a little uncomfortable!

Coming to a museum in the air city next to you, 18000 years from now

A monster upgrades!!! What would the poor Earth citizens of 20007 do? Something that should have been buried in the deepest craters of the galaxy was left around by mistake.....

[Click on the title of the post to identify the LochNess of the future]

What a googling mess!!!

As I shudder at the thought of Google's impending suit to rob me of all the nothing I have, for giving a rat's google about their ETL (English as a Trademark-junkies Language - oh wait, I better TM that)guide, I have to post this link of the write up by Michael Ferguson on Ask.com..

Now isn't this funny!!

http://blog.ask.com/2006/10/you_do_andor_ma.html#comments

Congo - Stories of Courage, Strife and Intrigue

I was just impressed by this article on Congo. It was a first in many ways for me, least of which is the trivia for how we address people from Congo - Congolese.

It goes on into a story of courage of how an 18 year old kid is trying to send himself to college. Did me put me to shame.

The story then leads on into visa cards and banking in the country. Though it sounds like the ramblings of an attention - deficit author, it is still a good read.

I am blogging this so I can go back and read the story of that youth, again, and again!

Publish a website, Get Sued!!!

Here are the links on how you should go about doing this:

The NY Post Article: http://www.nypost.com/seven/10112006/business/
rodman_sues_ex_analyst_over_web_site_business_roddy_boyd.htm

The Matt Murrey Website: http://www.researchindependence.org/

So if I copied the contents of Matt's website, do I get sued as well? Do I dare and find out? I am itching to dare....

What is the world's largest private equity fund?

You are close if you thought it was Blackwell. We do have KKR that is coming up. Lacking the private tally, they are valued at USD 16.5bn.

So what is a private equity fund you may ask?

This refers to the holding of stock in unlisted companies – companies that are not quoted on a stock exchange. It includes forms of venture capital and MBO financing.

Re: http://www.altassets.net/hm_glossary.php#MBI


The same page will tell you what an MBO is...

For you FireFox fans - better learn your trademark rules...or stop supporting this trash.

Go to the last, and Deron's slaves - you might want to show him the last few lines and see if it makes any sense. Keyword - community.



Moral of the Story: Be very, very careful when you support the "tech" underdogs. First Apple, now Mozilla. As soon as they have made some money or fame, they have no qualms in shedding their masks and showing us who they truly are.



Thank God, I never bought the Linux - Apple - FireFox underdog crap.



Srihari

Namibia: This week in government sponsored humor...

Ho ho ho. Santa Namibia brings to you: a new way for the government to prevent progress.

Read, weep and/or enjoy!

So what if you got brain cancer, it keeps our coffers full....

"A cell phone rings in the middle of Mark VandenBrink's presentation. He tells the audience member, "Go ahead and answer it -- I'm a phone guy, so please, leave your phones on! It's better for me." VandenBrink, Motorola's director of mobile devices software, delivered a talk on his company's experiences in the Linux-powered mobile device arena at LinuxWorld Tuesday morning, outlining what the company has learned from its first generation of Linux phones and the changes Motorola plans for the next."

I hope cell phone companies don't get into the same soup as asbestos companies...

Learn Programming in 10 years!!!!

[Click on title for link to original article]

At first, I was attracted to this post for its cynicism. I later realized there is some pithy advice in here!!!

Srihari

The World's Shortest Fairy Tale - Wish it was mine!!!

World's Shortest Fairy Tale:

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "Will you marry me?"

The girl said "No."

And the guy lived happily ever after and went golfing a lot.

THE END

From an anonymous Craigslist Poster...

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

(-Vikram Seth)

China - The land of some seriously smart people (or government officials)

[Click on title to visit external website]

Mirrored at http://renames.blogspot.com/

The way this works out is this. You are the Chinese government. The following are some of your objectives:

1. How do we assert our tyranny and absolute lack of respect for any democratic form of existance?

2. How do we assert being the unwarranted cynosure for capitalist companies?

3. How do we abuse this unique position rendered to us by stupid companies?

4. How do we help our legal system, our cyber-squatters, and in general anyone who will benefit, grab money from these companies?

The answer: The New Law. While one country goes around abusing the internet with stupid laws that disallow you from "annoying people anonymously", another is being very smart.

Now you own a company called cBay. You become very famous in the US. The erstwhile Wall Street Journal publishes a snippet that you might be eyeing China, the next big market (always the next, for the last guzillion years). And then, lo and behold, some dude in Shangai registers your domain cBay.cn .

Across the ocean, somewhere in Europe, say, someone does the same thing with .uk

You hire the UK government and its laws, if necessary the EU and its laws to beat the crap out of this guy and wrestle the domain from him, and maybe, also get him to pay the legal charges for the whole tussle.

Roll back to China. You sue this guy using China's ridiculous if nothing else, legal system. You fight for two years. Who ends up the loser?

If only the Indian government were 10% as smart as the Chinese government.

But given how the Indian Judiciary system delivers rapidfire justice.....

AT&T - Public Enemy No. 1? - Read my blog at...

http://renames.blogspot.com/

No one supports this guy?

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6034391.html

I, as a blogger do!!!! Where would real life entertainment go, if we didn't encourage people like him to abuse abusive laws as a result of their natural stupidity?

Or maybe I am being insensitive. Maybe the ear injury did affect his pea brain....

Fighting "Badware" without the pompous Ivy league drama?

[Thanks to Lakshmikanth for this]

[Click on the title to go to the BBC article (yes the bbc can be useful, or entertaining too..depending on how you interpret the article!)

This is a true fight. A silly website with no real plans is not. Google has of course started pouring money into all sorts of fads, so no wonder they have their heads in and up many things. Let's hope they get their act together.

In the meantime, our 419 friends are getting to be famous at the church of painted breasts and other similarly modified body parts...

The latest incarnation in desi spam....its not Shaadi.com!

It's IITians forming a political party. I am not against the 5 dudes. In a country that is desperate for change, they might just make a difference....but, it should not be to my Inbox.

And, please give them a chance to do something, and then maybe you can fill in on what they HAVE done.

Their being IITians tells me only one thing: At one point, they were better than a lot of people in math, physics and chemistry. How that translates into finding a way to accumalate 540 seats (or has that gone up now?) and make radical changes, I don't know, and frankly, I don't want to.

So please, oh overlords of list cloggers.....stay away from mine when it comes to IITians and their grand schemes for my country. My heart has wept enough for all the widows and bankers of imaginary rich people in the deep jungles of Africa....

Verizon: What do you do when your entire network stalks you?

Okay, here is the deal. Explain this. You wake up one morning, brush, have the coffee, mother nature calls, maybe you shower, you dress up and you walk out of your home. The entire world has given up its day job and is following you. Some construction guy is hanging behind you from a crane, and, you decide that it is the right time to walk into your cellphone company?

I don't even feel like shouting out "Give me a break" anymore. What will all those people following me think? Or do?