We are screwed. For ever!

If you had thought you knew something about the money and banking system, I dare you to watch Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" which tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. This is very scary stuff. Not for the faint hearted

MSMs are terrible when it comes to integrity!

http://www.wwe.com/inside/cenaoncnn/
Thanks Redditors for the news. It is absolutely disgusting how the MSMs edit the same piece to portray the opposite of what is being said. John Cena (The WWF wrestler) in the unedited version clearly and passionately says that he has not used drugs even in his life and goes on further to discuss the state of affairs. CNN takes the same video and edits it and makes it look like he has taken performance enhancing drugs and challenging everyone that they won't be able to detect it.

CNN - The most trusted news? Not in my books. Gives me more reasons to not watch. I am very happy to go to WWW for my news where at least I am one click away from finding the truth.

Wikipedia edits in realtime

http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html?map.it

All I can say about it that it is extremely cool. Wish I had time to do things like that!

In the so called Capitalist/Free market...

I have seen it before and and here is yet another example of why government/businesses pay only lip service to capitalism in America! A lot of times, they resort to lobbying and other means to control the market. I got to know about the news from social networking sites but here is the direct link to the news:

http://www.votesolar.org/state-initiatives/arizona.html

Excerpts from the site:
"Net Metering: The state currently has no net metering standards, so individual utilities are free to develop their own. This is a disastrous situation, and there is no better example than what Arizona Public Service, the state's largest utility, is trying to pull. In their latest rate case, APS filed for a net metering tariff that would be devastating to solar in their service territory. To begin with, APS's net metering proposal would cap installations at 10 kW. Fine for the residential market, but that pretty much eliminates commercial systems -- and larger systems are, on average, cheaper to install. But more insidiously, APS made the claim that customers installing solar systems deprives it, the utility, of "lost revenues" for which it deserves compensation. And to make up for it, it wanted to be paid about 6.7 cents for every kWh a customer-sited solar system generates. That's right. If you buy electricity from them, it'd cost you 11 cents a kWh. If you install solar and don't buy electricity from them, they would still get paid 6.7 cents. We've got together with some colleagues, hired a lawyer, and successfully fought APS's proposal. APS will offer net metering up to 100 kW for the time being."

Now don't get me started on AT&T/Comcast and others...

Apple just lost a potential user

Well what Apple did is very in appropriate. Anil put it very well. I am a Windows user and have always been a Windows user. I had some thoughts about trying out Apple's products at some point in the future. Now that they have showed that they have not grown up yet, I have no doubt that I am going to be a Windows user for a while.

With such a tightly controlled Hardware and Software (a.k.a Proprietry), anyone can build a better experience. Infact, being the Microsoft employee I know for a fact that the 3rd part hardware & software are the biggest sources of problems looking the the crash reports! What say you Apple? Open up the platform and you will feel the wrath.

On the other hand, Windows World is better for geeks who have a taste of their own when it comes to Hardware. We don't wait for you Apple to come up with a upgrade. We do it ourselves in the Windows World BTW.

Book of the Month: Best kept secrets of Code reviews

Just finished reading Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review and I would recommend it to anyone involved with Software Development.

I have been a big advocate of peer code reviews as I have personally seen its benefits over the years in Software Developement. At Microsoft, peer code review is essential and integral requirement for code check-ins. Two key benefits I see are

• Provides an opportunity to learn and share knowledge. I have learned so much from code reviews on how to write good code than any other book has taught me
• A good review helps identify issues in code that otherwise would be detected much later in the process. As numerous studies have shown (pointed in the bug), it is of tremendous help if a team is concerned about code quality

WTF? Shouldn't this be illegal?

Bush Vs Zombies. You got to see this

Don't know how they do this! But it was hilarious.

Michael Badnarik, Who?

Never heard of him until today. But after having watched couple of his speeches/lectures, I just love him. I understand where he comes from since I share a lot of his passion. But I did not know he was a Presidential candidate and a Software Engineer. Hit the following link to watch some of his classes.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Michael+Badnarik

The closest we have for him in 2008 Presidential nominees is "Ron Paul". I like Ron and I sincerly hope that he gets through the Primary. He is the only Republican candidate I like. On the Democratic side, Obama comes closer but not anyone else.

How to lie with statistics

How to Lie With Statistics is a very interesting little book that I read recently. The book is very thin (less than 100 pages) but is fun to read. This book was originally written at least a decade ago but you still see those lies with charts and graphs every now and then. Very refreshing to learn about those dirty tricks!

Belive it or not, I learned the true difference between the different averages that people quote (i.e. mean, median and mode).

TV Ad asks you to call congress and tell what you think about the Iraq war

But if you call the number provided in the TV spot, they ask you if you support the war and if you don't, don't put you through...Huh?!!

See it for yourself.

I am very disappointed with democrats

Senate vote gives temporary boost to Bush's eavesdropping power

Senate today voted to give what the President wanted in terms of giving him more power!!! That is un-believable

I am starting to seriously doubt whether Dems truely stand for Civil liberty, prevent further destruction of the constitution and the expansion of executive powers.

I think they are setting themselves to lose another presidential election for sure.

Heroism and the language of fascism

Heroism and the language of fascism is the topic of the day.

I commend the author for having the courage to write what she felt. You know what, this has been my long standing belief about Police and Soldiers with the exception of fire fighters.

Especially in America, there is hero workship with respect to Police and Soldiers. What makes them so special compared to a teacher who dedicates her life to education or a person who gets in the sewer and maintains it so that we live in better conditions?

Talking about soldiers, how many go serve the military because they wanted to serve the nation. I am fairly certain that it is a minority. Folks I know went there because there was nothing better for them. A cousin of mine went to Army and did medicine and served as long as he was required to. Now he is out of the Army and earning a million dollar a year as Neuro Surgeon. If serving the country makes you a automatic hero, why does military have to spend so much in advertising, offer bonuses and sometimes issue stop loss orders or even announce Drafts?

IMO, anyone who does civil service with honor and integrity and for the well being of the nation is a Hero. This is irrespective of whatever profession it is. Period.

This also is due to celebration of mediocrity in United States. You just have to be yourself (what ever it maybe) and you are Awesome. Doesn't have to accomplish above anyone. Just doing what everyone normally does gets praise here.

Go Rosa Brooks!

I would not have trusted technology this much

Maybe if I was a pilot and have known the about the sophistication, consistency and reliability of the systems available.



I am still disappointed with today's PCs in terms of their reliabiltity and dependability. The PC I am writing this blog from has a fresh install of XP SP2 and fully patched. Still IE7 crashed on me couple of times today :-(

Why I think Lauren Turner should have been fired?

First off she wrote a post critisizing the sicko movie by Micheal Moore (which by the way is a must see). She used the corporate blog to write her personal opinion despite the obvious conflict of interest. She then did a follow up blog to do damage control. I still think her response is not genuine but instead standard corporate speak. What up with her usage of "some readers"? The whole blogsphere was disappointed and some furious about the blog post and she claims that only some misread here quote?

"...Not so good is that some readers thought the opinion I expressed about the movie Sicko was actually Google's opinion. It's easy to understand why it might have seemed that way, because after all, this is a corporate blog. So that was my mistake -- I understand why it caused some confusion."

It is despicable for her to even claim that advertising is a democratic medium and so was o.k for the Healthcare industry to put ads for the search keywords. BULLSHIT. In fact it is dictatorship and one sided since there aren't many people/non-profits who can afford to compete with the Healthcare industry. The whole primise of the blog was about how the industry can buy ads and use Google's dominance to suppress dissent with the current healthcare system.

I still think she should be fired...

I too was succumbed to the lust...

I am talking about the iPhone before you jump to any conclusions. I was sitting in my home office on Thursday night and started thinking about whether I should go on Friday and get an iPhone for my wife as a Gift. I went into AT&T's website and read/researched about the phone/plans etc and end up deciding not to buy one. Reasons are quite simple. Though I am on the market for a SmartPhone, the price of the phone and the Plan is simply outrageous. My common sense won me over my lust finally. If I buy one, I would wait for a price drop or the second generation.

The Art of deception and Bush

I respect true Republicans and what they stand for in terms or protecting the constituition and advocating small government etc etc. But Mr. Bush is just a dumb bastard (with all due respect Sir) who seem to want to take away the freedom that America represents. Anything and everything he does seems to take away the bill of rights and the constutuitional protection that people have in this country.

Something that upset me quite a lot is the recent revelation that his team is using the Air brushing techniques to re-write history just as in the past Soviet repressive regimes did. It was considered unacceptable and deceptive back then when communists did it. But do we hold ourselves to the same values? See it for yourself:



Here are some links to learn more about Air brushing..
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/false.html
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

Can a beef producer test all its cows for Madcow if it wants to?

We are talking about a meat producer in capitalistic and free market economy? The answer is "NO". This is happening in America and the Feds are fighting to keep the producer from doing it. What the fuck?

News link here

Excerpts:
A beef producer in Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows. Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well. A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was scheduled to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal, effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge has played out. The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the U.S. meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government lacked the authority to restrict it.

Now we have 3 presidential candidates who don't believe in

Science. That is right. There are 3 GOP candidates who don't believe in evolution but instead believe there is a higher power that created all. The three stoogies have been identified as Sen. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo. What is quite perplexing about this whole thing is that America is the high tech nation and once of the most advanced societies. These are the people who is going to lead the nation that has a huge stake in World politics? I sincerely wish Jesus doesn't vote for them or let people vote for them.

How many more have to die before we realize it?

It just pisses me off so much. The concept of people invoking the second ammendment to carry weapons that have no real use what so ever (I am talking about assault rifles et al) is just absurd. The rest who claim that the hand guns are for self protection don't understand that the concept of MAD (mutually assured destruction) just makes the world a sick place to live. I really wish that some law is passed such that it makes it real hard for anyone to own a gun.

What am I so pissed about it? For obvious reasons like the latest killing spree that took 32 innocent lives. I have seen enough of damage and lets not aggravate the situation by pouring more guns into the hands of people (good or bad).

Is Microsoft really that evil as some people say?

I leave that to the reader to make the decision. But I am disappointed with Microsoft on what it decided w.r.to the Gears of war downloadable content. I consider myself a pro gamer loving my XBox360. Most of all, GOW is one of the few games I played twice (Normal & Hard difficulty) and finished it. Having said that, Microsoft's decision to charge folks for the downloadable maps after paying $59.99+Tax for the game is ridiculuous. If Money can buy good brand image or public image, Microsoft should be ranked higher than Google or Apple for example. It is the loyal customer base you stupid Microsoft.

To give you some background, here is what the Epic top brass has to say:

"Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps," said Rein. "So what we've agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That's what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players."

In this case, I side with Epic.

Is Microsoft really dead?

I don't normally miss out on reading Paul Graham's essays as they are very well written and thoughtful. I infact recommend to folks I know who haven't heard of him. But I think in his latest essay he contradicts himself and went down the path of ranting with his essay Microsoft is dead. If his point was to convey why Microsoft doesn't matter anymore because desktop is dead and web 2.0 is taking off, then why go into lengths about why Apple is so great ignoring the fact that it is also a desktop operating system. I did comment on the essay and let me see if it gets any response or gets deleted. Here is what I exactly commented:

Paul, I have great respect for you. But I think you contradit yourself a bit when you say this "..everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop". That by itself is a accuate and I can agree with. But you go on to rant about how Apple has put MS on the run and how you fund people that use Mac etc etc. Don't you consider Apple a desktop too??

Oh, you should watch this!

My everyday ritual is to watch the right wing talk show O'Reilly Factor on Fox and then switch to the left wing talk show by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC to get a fair and balanced view. Note that I consider myself in center left and because of that I am having a world of fun hearing views from far left and far right. I have to admit though that I disagree with Mr.O'Reilly most of the time since he does not reason which is pretty typical conservatism.

This clip of O'Reilly tops everything and you probably have not seen anything like it yet. Have fun watching the hypocrasy in action. I give thumbs up to Geraldo for holding the ground.

Most Magnificent Trees in the World

Check this out. It is really really amazing to learn about the oldest to the coolest trees. I really wish I had some time to dig up more like this!!

Absolutely amazing ships

I came across Sea Giants blog entry link from Digg. Absolutely amazing. I have heard of them but this is the first time I saw their size and capabilities. What is very cool about them are that they are semi-submersibles.

While you are there, check out his other entries too. They are awesome too.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships is what I have been reading last month. I have lately been very interested in behavioral sciences and social psychology topics. This certainly is an interesting book that looks at and explains that less known portions of the brain like emigdula and the brain chemistry reacts and plays a role in our social interactions.

I would give this a rating of 3 stars out of 5. It might be absolutely be an awesome book for social psychologist but I feel that it could have been little more interesting for the common man

We are not impressed with Wii

For all the hype and talk, I actually got an opportunity to experience Wii. I was all pumped up and excited. When my friend turned on the machine, my disappointment started.

First, the menu is rudimentary and aweful. I have not seen any less appealing layout/navigation. I own an XBox 360 and I love the user interface, colors and the customization.

Second, I played some games to check out the graphics and game play. Graphics is horrible. It felt like that the clock was set back 10 years. Having played Gears of War, Kameo and Pimps at Sea (Alpha) on XBox360, I was horrified at what Nintendo has released.

Verdict: If not for the innovative controller, this is a piece of crap. I would rather recommend PS1 ororiginal XBox to the folks.

Did slavery end nearly 140 years ago?

I am appalled by the comment by made by the member of the house in Virginia Del. Frank D. Hargrove that "Slavery ended nearly 140 years ago with the Civil War and added that our black citizens should get over it.".

I beg to differ. The history I know tells me that it was alive until the early 20th century. If this comment came from an ordinary citizen, I wouldn't have given much attention. But he is a lawmaker and this is not the first time these folks who should know better says some despicable things. One thing is for sure. America is yet to get over its racism and it lives alive and well in some (maybe more) people's world.

Apple says iPhone, Cisco says iSue

Yesterday, the entire World & the blogsphere was talking about how cool the iPhone is. Today, they all are talking about the Cisco's copyright infringment suit. I am an Apple Inc. stock owner BTW. My take on it this

• Apple was completely stupid enough to announce and use a copy righted name in Good Faith? This does not make sense to me at all
• I definitely have to agree Apple is bringing some new ideas to the market with the new phone. But I do not agree that it is revolutionary. Using touch and On-Screen keyboards are not anything new. A Windows Mobile based phone can do all that iPhone can do (and more). It is just that the Mobile Operators and OEM's who build on Windows Mobile probably did not think the high cost would cut for the target audience which is the mass market. I for one will not pay $499 for such a device. For me a reasonable price is to not exceed $199.
• I am fed up of Apple naming everything iSomething. That simply shows that it is not being very creative. Infact, I rather prefer names like OSX, Safari, KeyNote which are much more attractive.

I really want Apple to rename their device instead of paying Cisco in millions.

How to get a Windows tax refund?

This is awesome. Power to the consumer. I have always been critical about the EULAs which are unnecessary and nothing but non-sense just for the reason that no one ever reads them let alone the ability to understand the legal language. I am glad that he was able to use it in his favor (for the first time in the history, I think)

I am so glad he was able to get a refund. Yes, I am a Microsoft employee, but I am a strong consumer advocate as a well.