why?

Strange. About 300 the movie. Why are iranians opposing the movie the most, when they have forgotten their past persian empire, culture and religion?

Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com

Agriculture

An amazing article on agriculture. Finally, not much of that same old theories.

Today a farmer gets a fraction of the final retail price while a substantial portion of the prices that we pay for our food goes to the retailers, wholesalers, middlemen and others.

Isnt it good that companies like Reliance are striking deals directly with the farmers(here and here and here). Granted that they wont pay the farmers substantially higher, but atleast, the whole chain of moneylenders and middlemen can be eliminated. Better for both farmers and consumers.

 

Thanks socialism

China pips India to get the Intel chip fab plant.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/mar/26intel.htm

Socialist mindset - Majority of India is poor and lacks water, cleanliness and power, so how come you want investments, industries, good roads, cleanliness and power.

Thanks reservations. Thanks minorities. Thanks socialism. Thank you.

RIP Woolmer!

The betting mafia claims someone who had nothing to do with it...

http://www.rediff.com/wc2007/2007/mar/23woolmer.htm

How not to code 2...

Another example of how not to code - I came across this sample today

    public static boolean isNull(Object obj) {
        logger.trace(6 , "isNull() starts...");
        if (null == obj) { return true; }
        logger.trace(6 , "isNull() ends...");
        return false;
    }

First of all, Why....

Ok, now what tangible benefit is achieved? Any inputs ...

Note - Programming language is Java 2 (Java SDK version 1.4.2)

Access Control

I was looking for some new plugins for Google Desktop Search. I clicked on a link with the following URL. It showed me an error which said - "Access control prevents you from viewing this page or something like that". (In essence, my workplace server has blocked me out of that page). But why? See the url below. Damn!!

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/gdsextreme.html
By the way, Some cool plugins for GDS -
I suggest using Larrys help file indexer here - http://desktop.google.com/plugins/indexthechm.html. A pretty useful Google Desktop Search plugin, that lets you search for chm files (the help files that come with many programs). So you can use this instead of searching in the program help (which does not return results so accurately). I tried it and it seems pretty ok.

A plugin to index any text file is also available here. http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/indexitall.html?hl=en
You may want to add Java, C, CPP, BAS, or any other extension to it - extensions that are not normally indexed by google desktop. Before installing this plugin, just check if GDS indexes that file. If not, then install this plugin.

Also, there is another plugin - mshelp2 plugin, here http://desktop.google.com/plugins/mshelp.html. The mshelp2 is the help file format (hxs) that is used in MSDN and .net SDK documentation. I havent used it, but might be pretty useful.

There is also another plugin for indexing archives. Why do they need that ? As far as I have seen, Google desktop does search into compressed archives.

How free is freedom of speech

If something is

1. <b>blatantly false</b> (naked Hanuman holding Sita is false, mohamed offering virgins was not. well, both are false as per atheism, but thats another story)

2. <b>offensive to over 70% (+- 10%) of the population</b> in question
3. <b>overwhelmingly illogical and unreasonable</b>
4. supported by the secular intellectuals of India :P

then it probably is offensive.

How not to code

Code snippet -

 

Object obj = iter.next();

logger.trace (6 , "This is exception class: " + obj.getClass () );

AppError appErr = (AppError) obj;

logger.trace (6 , "This is exception erroCode: " + appErr.getErrorCode () );

 

Nothing wrong with this, this would work fine(provided that iterator, logger etc are initialized)...

But then....

I fear ... I puke

The reason... The sight of blood makes me puke... I am not bloodthirsty. Contrary to the general assumption... I hate it...

minority report

The fourth comment on this post -

http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/?p=2321#comments

by Praveen.

 

Yeah, wooing the minorities is really a farce, because if they really were minorities, nobody would bother about them !

 

Strange

Why do the Levis guys print the waist size and length on the back leather label of their jeans, for everyone to see. And damn, the belt wont even cover it.

Test Mail publish

Test to blogger mail.. and publish..