Porn in Pockets, thank the iPod

Sex even sells in tiny packages, especially when its portable.

An online social network of amateur pinup girls said that it logged 50000 downloads of sexy featurettes-three to five minute video clips- in the first 24 hours targetting the new iPod-toting crowd.

Apple Computer Inc's new video-playing iPod unvieled the viewing of vidoe flicks, whose use has been largely restricted to the privacy of homes and theatres, in open public of parks and mass transit, by all ages. Porn is no doubt a big business on the Web.

The internet accounted for $2.5 billion of the adult industy's $i4 billion in US revenues last year, which is the same as revenues from cable and satellite pay-per-view showings. Now, the adult video producers like Vivid Entertainment are offering high resolution skin flicks specifically for use on iPod and other portables.

iTunes online already features several hot and heavy podcasts, audio downloads geared to portability. The Apple officials have even refused requests for interviews on whether they might offer adult content on iTunes for iPod owners.

Children are much quicker to grasp technology that their parents, and thus its now easier than ever for minors to view X-rated content on portabes like Sony PlayStation Portable, iPod. The arena is wide open, unfiltered, unrestricted, for adult content. Children are very aware of where it is and how to down load it.

But I think its fine.

Slide show

After a long steady climb upwards for over a year, the rupee seemed to be depreciating against the dollar just after mid-year.

From Rs 43.37 to a dollar on August 1, the currency steadily slipped to 43.92 on September 14, 44.3 on October 3 and now to 45.84 (November 23). Some analysts, mainly foreign, have hinted at a lower band of 48 in the next few months. Does this mean that foreign investors with their deep wallets have found better pastures to graze? Will the stockmarket fall back to its mundane levels? Is the party finally, finally over?

Prompted by the falling rupee, the FIIs were net sellers of equities worth over Rs 2,250 crore in October. High growth and rising external deficits should continue to put pressure on the rupee, which could in turn lead to self-reinforcing capital outflows from equity and cash markets, forcing the currency down further. The virtuous cycle of strong flows, low rates, rising consumption, higher growth and strong corporate fundamentals will likely end.But the RBI is okay with rupee's decline, has hardly intervened by selling dollars. Nor has it talked it up with rhetoric.

The India story is still strong and moving investor hearts. As a result, the long-term tendency of the rupee is to appreciate. Clearly, the recent gyrations of the rupee are a result of allowing market forces to take over, especially the build-up of a current account deficit, and partly owing to build-up of seasonal expectations like the arrival of harvests, festival demand and FII profitbooking. It's also a way of the RBI to test its resilience.

freedom-fate

It is true that we are compelled to move within the circumstances we have created in the past and the conditions which we have inherited in the present, but it is also true that we are quite free to modify them. Freedom exists at the heart of man, that is in his Overself. Fate exists on the surface life of man, that is in his personality. And as man himself is a compound of both these beings, neither the absolute fatalist nor the absolute free-will positionis wholly correct and his external life must also be a compound of freedom and fate.

BSE index new high-9057.97

BSE benchmark index got as high as 9057.97 points today. The Foreign Institutional Investors have been pouring in money pretty generously. During the first three days of the week about Rs 674 crores were pumped in. During November itself, hefty net investments of Rs 4449 crores were recorded.  Infosys, ICICI, ONGC, L&T, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, HDFC, BHEL, SBI, Hindustan Liver Ltd etc were remarkably higher on fresh buying support.
Sustained FI inflow has been occuring since the past 10or so months which is proving really nice for the India Inc.

Is global warming really a threat?

Absolutely, respond most scientists, but they have only recently been able to approach a basic agreement about our changing climate.

First, the Earth has gotten warmer. Since 1850, average global temperatures have risen about .6 degres Celcius. The most likely culprits are the greenhouse gases, such as carbondioxide, released by humans burning fossil fuels, and clearly of lands. Sera levels have also risen about 4 to 8 inches during the past century.

Second, the concentration of greenhouse gases (or GHG) in the atmosphere is near its highest point in recorded history. Since the Industrial Revolution, concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen 30%.

Based on studies of air trapped in ancient ice, today's level are higher than any time in the last 420000 years. If GHG concentrations rise, as expected, concentrations could cross a dangerous threshold, although that designation is contentious.

Finally, almost every scientist agrees upon one thing that the future is highly uncertain.

Projections state a rise of 1.4 to 5.8 degree Celcius by 2100. Other scientific concensus shows cracks beyond this point.

The Earth system has more unknowns that we are generally willing to acknowledge

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The United Nations establishes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach 350 parts per million from the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. Carbon dioxide levels above 500 ppm are thought to pose a "dangerous" level of interference with the climate system, according to the United Nations.

In 1990, the IPCC presents its First Assessment Report, stating that human activities are substantially increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Two years later, the United States, along with more than 100 other countries, sign the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It recognizes the climate system as a shared resource and launches efforts to curb climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol is negotiated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences publishes a report in 2001. The panel declares "temperatures are, in fact, rising" and human activity is the likely culprit, although it does not define the influence of natural climate variability. Predictions of a 3 degree Celsius warming are called "consistent" with climate science.

The Kyoto Protocol enters into force on February 16. The treaty was ratified by more than 140 countries. Concentration of carbon dioxide now stands at 372 parts per million, higher than at any time in at least the past 420,000 years, according to David King, chief science adviser to the British government.

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This is a matter of great concern. I'm worried.

God, No God

Being religious is not what is really required. Incarnates pray to God for wisdom, knowledge, courage, wealth, health. The *one* who is considered the almighty is worshipped to help the one praying get all that he needs or wants. And the religious beliefs drive our incarnate to things better than that he is actually involved with. What that really means is that God is just a reason to give for all the good things that he does or atleast tries to do. The rituals etc. are a path to get close to the almighty.

If the one called God doesn't really exist *somewhere* but exists everywhere then *Everywhere* includes *inside* of the person who is praying and that is the closest distance he can ever get to to attain what he really wants, God, or more precisely all the worldly necessities.

But can the one who prays attain the real God? What will he get when he really reaches that *somewhere*?

Because one is praying to God, which resides *everywhere*, including the *place* inside the one who prays, and that *place* is the closest to where he can ever get to the *one* he prays. If one's praying to himself then why give it a new name-God.

I'm a realist and do not believe in God. I believe rituals only cause troubles. I don't pray at all. I don't believe if one prays for something, one'll get it.

The only thing that is required is *faith*. Faith in oneself. Faith in one's own abilities. Faith in our own confidence and determination. Faith in the hope that one carries when failure overwhelms him.

Faith ofcourse tightly coupled with toiling hard and striving to reach the destiny.

An internal optimist, I always feel blessed. I trust my mind, my heart, my intelligence, and my sensibilities, and they've never let me down and never ever will. When I feel frustrated or angry, I just take a deep breath and move on. I'm absolutely allergic to negative energies.

If the way to get all the positive energy required is through God, I say that my way to attain all the positive energy required is by having *faith* in one's own self. I'm my own God.

Should US control the Internet?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), formulated by the US in 1998, has introduced competition into the market for domain names and expanded the number of names available by introducing new suffixes like .biz and .info as alternatives to standbys like .com and .org.

But the nonprofit body has also been plagued by infighting, charges that it does not operate in a transparent manner, and the perception that it is cowed by the U.S. government.

The European Union withdrew its support of the current system last month.

The United States has made clear that it intends to maintain control.

Though no one country controls the Internet as a whole, the U.S. Commerce Department maintains final authority over the domain-name system that matches easy-to-remember names like "example.com" with the Internet Protocol numbers that are assigned to each computer on the Internet.

If other countries refuse to recognize ICANN's legitimacy, Internet users in different parts of the globe could wind up at different Web sites when they type "www.example.com" into their browsers. It is the ICANN which has the control of the domain naming and mapping of IP addresses to domain names.

Countries like Brazil and Iran have argued in a series of meetings over the past two years that the Internet is now a global resource that should be overseen by the United Nations or some other international body.

Support for moving ICANN out of U.S. controls comes, in part, from the poor image that the US has abroad as a result of the IRAQI war. That's no doubt contributed to the support the European Union has given to the idea of moving ICANN and its domain root server out from under of U.S. control.

Other objections to U.S. control are fueled by concerns about national security. Countries openly worried about U.S. control of the Internet's management systems include Iran, Cuba and China. It's no coincidence that invading Iran, getting into a war with China or "taking back" Cuba once Castro dies have all been openly discussed in the United States as viable options for future intervention.

I totally agree in a context that a resource/technology, if recognized as a global asset, should not remain in control by any 'one'. If it is the way US want it to be then countries like Russia can hold rights not allowing anyone to access the *space* space since they were the first to go there. Or India can copyright and control the usage of *ZERO* ('0') since it was invented by Aryabhatt-Indian mathematicain.

Career Killer

Of the many technology trends, which we have noticed among those that we expect will become a reality tomorrow, a few can be considered potential career killers. Everyone is betting on MDA (Model Driven Architecture). Where would we require Delphi and C# programmers if a business analyst can build models, connect object, draw relationships with the ease of creating a spreadsheet or presentation?

This analogy is a bit too futuristic, but the world of software developers is slowly moving that way. Software vendors are increasingly incorporating model driven development to sell their latest ware. Maybe next year you won't buy an IDE that doesn't have refactoring as an inbuilt option.

Refactoring is a great thing to improve the code quality and lessen the pains in writing the code. But that would surely threaten the position of a developer in a software development firm.

Code generation is another concept that will increase developer productivity, but yet threatens developer roles.

Now a wordprocessor analogy. You are satisfied with your wordprocessor, but does it really help you write better? Even the Grammar check in MS Office system is dumb, compared tro a High School student's grammar skills.

Now the application developers need to revamp their unidimensional approach in development to add simple functions  that are an absolute must in a software application,and then think of features that will further enhance the applications.

Application developer need to think not only out of the box, but beyond it too..

Is 0 = nothing?

0 <> void
0 is not emptyness
0 is not nothing

0 is a conceptualization of measurement realizing the nearness to the minimum. There is *no* such thing as "zero" itself which can be stated to be void.

Though *0* is not a "concrete variety" but it is an abstract variety like all other numbers representing count or measure of stuff.

I see an apple in a basket. Next moment I chew and gulp it down my throat. I say "there are no apples in the basket" or there are zero apples in the basket" instead of "there is voidness in basket" or "there is emptyness in basket".

That's because of conservation of mass/energy law. Matter can neith be created no be destroyed. The apple that was there a moment ago was now converted into something inside my stomach. But it surely didn't become void or vaccum. The matter that made the was still present but morphed into some other form.

Thus the apple didn't make its space empty.
But it became something else which led to its realization as "zero apple" and not "void/empty apple/space"

"Something" or "Nothing" before "Everything"?

Was there something before today's "everything"?

"Everyting" that is, being there, has been a result of *some* realizations of human or inhuman foresights. The question can be answered if we realize the insight that "everyting" happens for the reason "it" happens for.

 

Since we primate folks only know the situation through our brain based virtual reality or model, and what is really going on is beyond us, I can only speak for that common virtual reality we each have because of our common genetic legacy.

 

To consider, I'll examplify the birth of our cosmological universe. Another question arises: What was *that* started our "universe"?

 

Theologies say that "it" was created by *God* out of *nothing*, i.e. one moment there was *nothing* and the next there was a vast empty space that wasn't empty anymore. Another concept is that universes are born, then die or burn off periodically in billion of years. A universe is created by the matter hovering around in another universe, the mega universe, which is contained by another super-mega universe and they are also born and die. This goes on and on till we reach the multidimensional infinity. Those who are religious may at that stage interpret God as that invisible "multi-dimensional infinity" that really created everything and controls everything.

 

Those who do not believe this have their say as there must be *something* that caused "certain circumstantial changes" in the *system* which gave rise to the "universe", i.e. "a cause and a result".

"Everything" according to physics has a *cause*. So must the "universe". That means there must have been *something* which caused the _Big Bang_ and thence the birth of our "universe".

 

But if time itself started with the Big Bang as theorists and mathematicians say, and there wasn't any concept of time, or *anyone* who could have invented *it*, or if there was *time* but *no one* to keep track of *it* so that eventually said there was no time before the Big Bang, how can *anything* exist without a time stamp?

 

The Big Bang was at T = 0. This means at _zero_ time there was _something_ that triggered the immensly powerful thermonuclear reaction to start off with "everything". This energy was there because of *something* that produced "it" burning _*itself*_. But the *it* can not be there before T = 0, if there wasn't any time, how did it materialize at T = 0?

This means there was *something* before T = 0 which had its own conceptualization of a time equivalent dimension for *itself* to exist.

The *it* had a universe of its own which also evolved from $something$.

 

So I strongly believe and theorize a reality of serial universes burning themselves off to give out matter and hence energy for the subsequent universes.

 

The answer to the question of *something* that existed before our "everything" is in the affirmative. And I'd say since "everything" started from the Big Bang, or in another words energy, and conjugating to the law of conservation of mamentum, there was *energy* (which was in continuous exchange with black matter, which of course is a differnet puzzle to solve) which was present before the Big Bang and hence "everything".

Yes, there is always *something* that existed before "anything"

Mt Everest Srinking?

China now thinks Everest, the world's highest peak, is about 3,7m shorter than its own past estimates after conducting a new survey of the mountain this year. Chen Bangzhu, the Director General of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, told a news conference on Sunday that Mount Everest stood 8 844,43m above sea level, with a margin of error of about 0,21m.

Chinese mountaineers and researchers climbed to the top of Mount Everest in May to determine whether the world's tallest mountain was still growing. Chen said that the updated figure did not mean the mountain had shrunk over time.

"The data is so far the most detailed and precise among (those from) all previous surveys," he said.

"We cannot arrive at the conclusion now that Everest has become shorter, because there have been problems ... of surveying technology with previous measurements."

In 1975, Chinese scientists measured the height of Everest at 8 848,13m, a few centimetres more than an Indian survey had found in the 1950s.

Then in 1999, an American team measured the mountain at 8 850m.

Growing or not, Everest is changing in other ways. Official Chinese media have reported that its glaciers are shrinking faster than ever because of global warming.

Apple iPod Nano and Rokr phone

Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday unveiled a cellphone that plays music like an iPod and a pencil-thin "iPod Nano" digital music player, both aimed at extending its domination of the digital music market.

The Rokr phone, developed with Motorola Inc., can store up to 100 songs and has a color screen, stereo speakers, stereo headphones and a camera and is Apple's long-awaited foray into the wireless realm. Cingular will be the first mobile carrier for the Rokr. Several operators in the United Kingdom are expected to offer the phone soon.

In addition to the Rokr phone and the seriously slimmed-down new iPod, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs also said that in 2006, some 30 percent of all new U.S. cars will sport stereos that can easily connect to the iPod.

But some said the silver phone was not stylish enough for the high expectations set by Apple's iPod and Motorola's slim flagship Razr phone, and others cited its somewhat limited song capacity since iPod users are accustomed to carrying thousands of songs.

"It doesn't have the emotive cachet that the Razr or the iPod has," said Yankee Group analyst John Jackson. "When you whip this out in the bar, nobody's going to say, 'That's a cool device."'

The Nano, which is about a quarter of an inch thick by 3.5 inches long by 1.6 inches wide, generated more buzz at the product release in San Francisco than did the Rokr phone, eliciting "Oohs" and "Ahhs" from the audience.

The black and white players, sporting click wheels, holds up to 1,000 songs. Apple has about 75 percent of the market for digital music players.

"It's very important for Apple," said Gartner analyst Van Baker, about the Nano. "It changes the rules of the game."

Meanwhile, the Rokr iTunes phone will be available in Cingular stores on Thursday.

No. 1 U.S. mobile service Cingular Wireless, a venture of SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., will be the exclusive U.S. carrier of the phone, which it will sell for $249.99 to customers who sign up for a two-year service contract.

Cingular does not make money from the songs played on the phones, but hopes they will help boost sales and reduce customer defections to rival services. One analyst said it could become Cingular's top-selling phone by next year.

Dangerous Liaisons

Throughout recent history, the West has used surrogates to fight ita wars which enables it to obtain victories on the cheap. The downside, however, is that the victories are seldom decisive, as the surrogates in turn rise to challange the west.

This gives rise to an unending cycle with the west needing more surrogates to fight its former surrogates.

The instance of World War II is special to look at the pattern. The UK-USA histories produce the overwhelming impression that the British and American forces were instrumental in ridding Europe of Nazi tyranny. More than 80% casualties of German origion were caused not by the US or the UK but by the Soviet forces. The pay-off was to cede half of Europe to Stalin, the then soviet Czar.

To suppress an emerging super power, the USSR, the same pattern repeated itself in 1980s when the West decided to train and arm an Islamist guerrilla force operating in Afghanistan, and headquartered in Pakistan, and formed ISI.

This was like financing one's own assassins.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and this brought about a strange love affair between the West and the Sunni Islamists (the Taliban). Now the West is all agains the Taliban, they even played battle against the Taliban.

The same thing has happened again. To suppress Talibanists, teh West did a tango with General Musharraf.

First, to end Nazi rule, they sought help from Soviet forces.Second, to destroy USSR, the needed Taliban.Third, they wanted Pakistan to help curb Taliban in Afghanistan.

The ISI (Pakistan) had formed MAK(Maktab al-Khidmat) under the watchful eye of CIA(America) to fight the Soviets.

MAK was lead by none other that Osama bin Laden.The now Al-Qaida has been morphed out of MAK.

The West now (after 9/11) seeks help to end Al-Qaida and other associated terrorist groups.

breathing

i found something out about breathing
its not just inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbondioxide

its so much concerned with pain and stress

try holding the breath for about 30
secsand notice the points on the body which feel stressed...
points where pain can be felt

now breathing normally

i felt some stress/pain in
my back (because of my posture)
my hand that holds the mouse
the back of my neck
my butt (though i'm sitting on a cushioned chair)
and even my chest because of the tensed muscles due to lack of breath

now.......breathing normally......
and i found that the magnitude of pain
diminishes (if not completely zeroed)

so to refrain ourselves from experiencing pain is
one of the major reasons for breathing

**and no one can commit suicide by holding his/her own breath**