What the wisemen have to say - to Google

What the wisemen have to say - to Google

Time to get that long thesis completed? Trouble figuring out the optimal approach to your problem? Now you can have PhDs and other wise men answering your questions - for free! Google's new search algorithm indexes "scholarly" material - basically academic research that is kept separate from commercial content. Google also claims that no ads will be served along with the search results.

Related links: Work in progress in Google's labs.

What else went for a swim?

What else went for a swim?

Can't help but laugh when you see these pictures. Click on the image below to see what follows this rescue mission.

Proposed law to prevent remote hunting!

Proposed law to prevent remote hunting!

Some moron is planning on putting the lives of animals a mouse-click away. A kind-hearted fellow human has proposed a rule that anyone hunting animals covered by state law must be physically on site when they shoot!

Firefox extensions - Whats coming next?

Firefox extensions - Whats coming next?

Some extensions for the officially released browser Firefox are real cool (read the Nov 9th post "Mozilla's Firefox launched!"). Extensions are in fact one of the big plusses for Firefox over IE. But this extension takes the cake - an extension to track the homeland security threat level! :) Funstuff apart check out some of the very useful extensions including FoxyTunes - an audio controller built into the browser! Honestly it won't buy me much, because the 2 applications that are well hidden on my desktop are the browser and winamp! That way I appear more productive!! :) I prefer the audio controls on my keyboard.

Is anyone listening?

Is anyone listening?

Sad but true stories from Iraq: Here's one. Here's another. And here is one more. Countless others; each tragic-ridden.

Cold blooded murder.

Cold blooded murder.

About a week ago, one US soldier claimed to have killed a wounded insurgent to put him out of his mercy (Read Nov 5th post titled "Mercy killing or cold-blooded murder?"). Another US soldier shot dead an unarmed wounded Iraqi and was caught doing that on tape. Wonder what his excuse will be and where the investigation will go. Many argue that the American incursion does not constitute a war crime and that most killed are terrorists. They must first see these pictures. And these too. History will not forget this and other heinous crimes commited by the Americans.

Mughal-e-Azam

Mughal-e-Azam

I am a sucker for old movies, esp if it is historically based, more so if it stars Madhubala - one of my favourite actresses! :) And Mughal-e-Azam is at the top of the list. The colourized version of the movie has now been released. The music conversion to Dolby was supervised by the original music composer, 84-year old Naushad. A good review of the colourized movie here and more links related to it here.

More Madhubala here, here, here and... oh well, you just can't get enough of her! :)

A Befitting Farewell

A Befitting Farewell

For 3 years they kept him isolated; but that in no means took away his people's love for him. Plans for a guard of honour and traditional burial where denied by the Palestinian people. Instead they gave him a very emotional people's burial. And this was mainly the Ram Allah crowd. Israel prevented crowds from the West Bank and other Arab nations from attending. It is hard to imagine the chaos that would have reigned had the gates been opened to everyone to attend. A befitting farewell to a people's hero indeed.

A Nation Orphaned!

A Nation Orphaned!

Yasser Arafat, a legend in his own right, passed away at 3:30PM Paris time. A sad milestone in the history of Palestine. Far removed from the region, Arafat's life epitomized to me the life of every Palestinian - determined and defiant in the face of tragic circumstances enforced by a brute state that was ably supported in its human rights violations by the worst war criminal in the history of mankind. A Statesman and a Patriot, he lived his life for his country. He belongs with other greats such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Che Guvera, and Prabhakaran. To some they are freedom fighters, for others terrorists. What is unquestionable is their passion and unflinching quest for what they believed in.

When in 9th grade I wrote a poem about a Martyr, the English in the poem inspired by the previous night's veiwing of Hamlet. I do not recollect every line I wrote, but the gist remains. And it gives me great pride to dedicate it to him and the other legends - Yasser Arafat.
(Incomplete version of the poem "The Martyr")

Rise shalt he not
He who spilt blood for his countrymen,
Rise shalt he not
He who fought for every piece of his motherland;

...some missing lines...

Rise shalt he not
From his shallow grave,
Rise shalt he not
From his heavenly abode;

But there shalt he dwell
In our hearts
Rising time and time again
Never to be ever forgotten.

May his soul rest in peace. In his death he has achieved the freedom that he so longed would happen in his times. Le roi est mort. Vive le roi! (The King is dead, Long live the King!)

Miserable failure

Miserable failure

I don't know the specifics of the Google algorithm to index and query pages, but it doesn't seem to be in line with the 2004 US Popular vote. Go to google.com and search for "miserable failure". The results will look like this. Guess who else is going to be in Gitmo soon! :)

Related links: Google's Technology - demystified!

Mozilla's Firefox launched!

Mozilla's Firefox launched!

Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 was released today after spending a long time in beta. Firefox is my browser of choice and I have been using it for a very long time now. The earliest forms of Mozilla that I used were buggy and had its share of "user" challenges (I still can't believe it took them a few versions before they realized a warning message is necessary when the user tries to close a window with multiple tabs.). Am glad we are over those hurdles now. Here is a brief history of Firefox and here are some reasons why I dig Firefox (earlier known as Phoenix and then Firebird):

• Tabbed browsing: For the uninitiated, in IE, everytime you want to open link from within a IE window, either you load the link in the same window or you open a new window. With firefox, you have the added option of opening it as a tab WITHIN the same browser window. Why would you need this: For me browsing is like running through a dictionary. I open the dictionary to lookup a word and that leads me on to other words and very soon I am a "walking dictionary", at least for a couple hours till my memory cells fade out! So when I open a web page, I start finding other interesting links and I soon find myself with 10 different windows. With tabbed browsing, I basically have only one window with 10 tabs. My taskbar is less crowded and if my manager walks into my cube I have to minimize only one window! :) So heres the math:
  10 interesting links imply: in IE -> 10 windows; in Firefox: 1 window with 10 tabs.
  Of course, Firefox does provide the ability to open a link in a new window too.


• Searching: This and tabbed browsing are my favs. Though it supports "CTRL + f" to open the FIND window, it supports a simpler search method. Hit the "/" key and start typing the word you are interested in and the browser jumps to the phrase as you type it. "CTRL + g" finds the next occurance and so on. If you land on a link, hit enter and it opens the link in the browser. How cool is that!


• Bookmark management: Much better management of bookmarks than in IE. You can associate a keyword to a bookmark.
  Example: Set the keyword to google.com to "g". If you now type "g" in the location bar, it will replace the keyword with the URL and go to google.com. No extra search toolbars; less clutter.


• Quick Searches: Do you use google frequently to look up stuff? Or do you jump to a dictionary site such as www.m-w.com often? Wouldn't it be nice if you dont have to first go to google.com or m-w.com before you can lookup the word/phrase by just typing in the word/phrase in the location bar? Quick Search in Firefox allows just that. Example: If I want to lookup "R.L.Stevenson's Vagabond" on Google (my favourite poem), I just type "g R.L.Stevenson's Vagabond" in the location bar. And the google search results for my query is immediately loaded. :) To set it up, define a bookmark for google, set the keyword to "g" and the location to "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s". Anything you type after g in the location bar will be taken as the query string for the search. And you can type in queries just like you would in google with characters such as + or enclosed in "". To create other quick searches, use similar logic to construct the location string.


• Live bookmarks: RSS feeds can be read into the bookmarks toolbar. So, you know when a new feed is available from your favourite website even without going to the site.


• Open source: Implies more choice for the customer. Developers worldwide continue to enhance the browser and to build extensions to it for specific features. This site should you give you a general idea about the rich options available. This one too.


• And numerous other features such as built-in pop-up blocking, better security than in IE, an efficient download manager, multiple extensions, numerous keyboard and mouse shortcuts, etc round it up. Oh! And its free!!! :)

My recommendation: Go for it! I still use IE, but only if the page does not render well in Firefox which happens a few times esp when the site is flash-driven or sometimes when there are embedded media objects.

Wonder what else went wrong!

Wonder what else went wrong!

3,893 known issues because of software glitches. How many remain to be found?

Mercy killing or cold-blooded murder?

Mercy killing or cold-blooded murder?

The cowboy attitude of the invaders has not ceased since the invasion last year. The "shoot first, ask later" approach cost 7 more Iraqi civilian lives in August - one of them after he was "put to sleep" in order to put him out of his misery by the American troops.

First they put him in a miserable state and then they put him out of his misery! But I guess this too is in line with the justification for the invasion - to put the Iraqis out of their misery by removing their dictator! So I guess the US soldiers just carried out the US Government's policy that recently received the American public mandate to continue with its war crimes.

US Courts deadlocked too?

US Courts deadlocked too?

There has been talk about the US Presidential elections being a tie or neither candidate winning a majority. In this eventuality, if the House of Representatives fails to elect the President by Inauguration Day, then the Senate-elecetd Vice-President would stand-in as President till the deadlock is resolved.

Now, in the eventuality of any litigation, then like it happened in 2000, the Supreme Court will decide who the next President will be. Eventually, the United States will have a President. Or so I thought. As it turns out, it is not so simple.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist who was scheduled to return to the Supreme Court from Cancer treatment this week, is still not back. Unfortunately, all evidence suggests that the Cancer was not completely removed.

So, if the 2004 elections end up in the Supreme Court and if Justice Rehnquist is unable to participate on the case, then the Supreme Court itself may be deadlocked 4-4. Should Justice Rehnquist step down, then Bush may appoint the next Chief Justice and that does not augur of any fairness in the final decision. Should this happen, we will have a democracy, where the President is self-appointed!

On second thoughts, that doesn't sound too bad. The US has "successfully" installed "democracies" in quite a few nations run by US-appointed leaders and is in the process of doing that across other places. If it is good for those nations, it must be good for the US too.

US Elections - demystified

US Elections - demystified

The last time Presidential elections were held in the US, I had just arrived. I was still naive and ignorant of the difference between the popular vote and the electoral vote. This time around am a lot wiser.

In the 2000 elections, when it finally came down to Florida, most networks handed Florida to Al Gore until Fox News came along and said Bush was the winner in Florida and hence the 43rd US President. What followed was quite a circus. Eventually the US had a President with more electoral votes and less popular votes. Now how can that be? If the electoral votes are based on the popular votes and the popular votes go to one candidate, how can the electoral votes go to the other candidate? A few websites and long conversations later, I have better clarity - I think! Thanks to Surabh, Sudhi and Manu for the long conversations that helped in resolving some of this.

Fundamentals - let me lay the groundwork before we go into the details:

• Popular Vote: The vote of the people is called the Popular vote. It is the sum total of all the votes cast by the people for the candidates. Example: Of a total of 125 million people who cast the vote, 75 million may vote for Candidate A and 50 million may vote for Candidate B. If the popular vote was the vote used to elect the President, then by virtue of the majority votes, Candidate A would be the elected President. This is followed in countries such as India to elect their leaders.


• Electoral Vote: Instead of taking the popular vote into consideration, each region may nominate one or more persons called Electors to represent the region in the selection of the President. This will help, among other issues, remove any regional bias in the election of the leader. Example: If Candidate A is very popular in the Western part of the country and if that region has a bigger population, then based on the popular vote, it is most likely that Candidate A will be the elected leader. The regional bias gives Candidate A an unfair advantage. As a result, interests of the people in the Western region will dominate the leader's policies. People who follow Cricket in India, will be able to easily relate to this. On numerous occassions, players from a specific region made it to the national team because the selectors had a regional bias. In order to make it a more even play-field, each region is allocated a fixed number of electoral votes based on the population size (this may be updated whenever a census is carried out). This system applies to the USA in the Presidential elections. In my estimate, in this Presidential elections each electoral vote maps to 0.5 million people. Because, California has a population of about 27.5 million, the state has 55 electoral votes. The electoral votes are cast by the Electors to elect the President.


• Selection of the electors: Each state has its own rules to how Electors are nominated. Electors are often selected to recognize their service and dedication to their political party. They may be State elected officials, party leaders, or persons who have a personal or political affiliation with the Presidential candidate. In some states, the political parties nominate electors at their State party conventions or by a vote of the party's central committee in each State. In some others, the voters in the State choose the electors on the day of the general election. Electors are essentially figureheads. They cast their votes based on the popular vote. So if California votes for Candidate A, then the electors for California will all cast their votes for Candidate A. This is the expectation, but it is really upto the electors. Personally, I see that as a big loophole. Because, a candidate can essentially buy out the electors and get them to vote in his/her favour irrespective of the popular vote. Statistically, I believe 99% of the times, the electors have voted in accordance to the traditions; i.e., they have cast their votes to the candidate who has secured the popular vote.

Now that the fundamentals have been established, let us look at how the electoral votes come into play and how a President who loses the popular vote can still become the President.



In the 2000 elections, Al Gore won the popular vote, but the electoral vote went in George Bush's favour. Some folks believe another recount in Florida would have given Al Gore the state, but the Supreme Court thought otherwise. So the circus in 2000 gave the US George Bush as its 43rd President. Will the 2004 elections be as close and lead on to another circus or would we have a straight winner? We will know shortly as the US goes to vote its President for the next 4 years.

Related links

• A nice primer to the electoral college.


• A good FAQ on the electoral college.