Sunday, January 30, 2005

Litigation - Loser Pays

This is one thing which has puzzled me since I have been in America - the number of law suite ! I still remember a line from 'Philadelphia' where Tom Hanks is arguing with a judge and presents his closing line as 'This is an example of how frivalous litigation threatens to damage the ver fabric of American Society'.

Jim's entry on 'Loser Pays' this really piqued my interest.

It references this interesting paper on Auction Theoritic Framework -(Warning - slightly dense reading )

Nerd Factor ..

No one wants to be one - but a lot of folks end up being so - Whats your score on this nerd test ?
Thanks again to Joe - I made 54 by the way - middle of the road...

Nike - Greek or Roman God ..

These scenes in this ad from Nike looks straight out of Russell Crowes fights in gladiator.

Thanks to Joe for this one.

My vocabulary is expanding .......

word by word. Fug is my latest one Some nice fotos and a detailed explanation on the verb, adjective, adverb, noun etc form of 'Fug'

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Dynamics of Cable and Television - Mini Spins it all out ?

Phenomenal article on the way Ipod Mini may shape the way for a digital revolution. This article targets cable and media companies as significantly at risk in terms of their ability to market and sell movies to consumers. Basically the Mac Mini could function as a 'movie server' to which the movies are downloaded and played via a pre determined queue. This would however require DRM and other security and analysis to get their act going - but in principle is a significant concept - considering that a lot of Net Flix's costs are associated with the physical storage and handling of movies. Good read - and it doesn't suffer from the 'praise Mac for all its worth' nature of some articles on Mac products.

101 Dumbest Moments in Business ..

This one is quite funny ! Its from Business2.0 - Regarding the 101 dumbest moments in business Thanks blogdex.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

When you hit me with da Bomb

This almost made me fall off my feet - Collision Detection reports on a 'Gay Bomb' which the US army thought off a few years back.

What is 'savings'

This is food for thought - interesting perspective on what constitutes savings ? Basically the spending on education and R&D can be construed to be future savings . Don't agree with all the views - but its has some interesting points

P2P Manifesto's

Top notch blog which shares a P2P manifesto - some of the principles are quite interesting.Thanks to smartmobs for this one.

India and the future of AIDS cocktails

Interesting article in the NYT on product vis-a-vis process patents -and India's role in helping the third world combat AIDS.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

What are you worth

Every second ? Check here !Thanks blogdex

iDream, iAm, iProduct

Mmh - We have all heard by now abt the stuff that apple has bought out - including Mac Mini and iPod ShuffleCheck this rant out though ... quite funny.

Monday, January 10, 2005

Will Google.........

Sue this dude ? Type some stuff into the search and see what happens .. Thanks insideGoogle

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Was cleaning up my bookmark's today - and such a wealth of interesting stuff which I bookmarked but haven't got around to reading.Some beneveolent soul has compiled Sienfeld's stuff here Then there is MovieMadness - the essential 100 Will post a few more as I continue cleaning up ..

Monday, January 03, 2005

Wiki - Plus's and Minus's

Excellent article on Kuro5hin about Wikipedia and its limitations and how it can growth into something more potent. Read the commentary - its excellent.My views - somewhere in between - where we have some level of moderate Administrators with limited powers.

Interesting riposte - from Clay Shirky referenced in BoingBOing , here and here.

Address Retrieval Cache

Rohit and the other folks from TsunamiHelp managed to create quite an interesting system for information dissemination. This is called Address Retrieval Cache - and it basically picks an input SMS - which is in a certain format- and sends it out to a set of people who subscribe the particular key word which is parsed. Please try this out by sending SMS's to the site. BoingBoing has picked up this story too.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Best of ... 2004...

This is a VERY comprehensive best of 2004 list .. Thanks Rajesh.

And what a coincidence - Blog is the #1 word of the year according to websters !
Googles slide show is interesting ...

The site is very comprehensive - there must be at least 500 best offs !

Wiki Technology

Am a little late in the wiki game - its been around for a few years ... Quite an interesting collaborative software concept concept.

Wiki's origins date back to 1995 when Ward Cunnigham created this wiki Portland Pattern Repository

The basis summary is that
1. Anyone can post on any topic
2. Anyone can edit anyone's post
2. Its very easy to use
3. Its got a simplified editing structure which helps people with non technical background contribute.
4. Its got the power of openness in another sense - where someone else will correct mistakes / errata / partisan reports

The most interesting wiki's are Wikipedia , Wiki News , wiki wiki web . There is a top ten list here for engine rankings.

I have been following and helping out on updating a wiki mirror for the Tsunamihelp blog
What makes this so powerful is that - a disparate set of users were able to learn the wiki syntaxs and update independent of each other - now the various pages in the Tsunami wiki run with no real 'management' - people just know what to do (This learning process does take time to stabilize though) - And requests made by contributors are not 'imposed' but willingly followed.

The next powerful Idea which a lot of commentators are mentioning - Integration of Wiki and Blogging. Wonder when that will happen in a big way.


=
Name:
Location: London, United Kingdom

Lived in India , UK and USA. An information junkie who can't get enuf of it !