From today, I have decided that anybody who wants a copy of any Linux distros from me, has to buy them from me. In other words, I am withdrawing the option of giving me blank CDs in exchange for copies that I burn using my CDs.
The cost per CD is Rs. 20. So an FC3 copy (4 CDs) will cost Rs. 80. I am also offering an FC3 update CD with updates that I have downloaded from four major FC3 repositories.
Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers with health insurance.
Health is going to be a major issue in India in 2005. My previous post in this topic talks about what Brazil did out of desperation to get out the trap in which India just went into.
Yes, I am against product patents in medicine (apart from software patents, of course).
Have come back online somewhat after the motherboard of my workstation got fried. It is still in repairs, and I am having to use a spare box that I had loaned to a friend sometime back. I just had to fit the motherboard from the other box with my present hard disks.
Seeing an existing Linux installation adapt to a completely different system, with hardly any problems gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling, coz’ I know the kind of problems that can happen if you do this with, say … Windows XP?
Madhu Menon writes in at India-GII:
“I’ve always been skeptical of Rediff’s technical chops (they still have a bug in their email system that I mailed them about 2-3 times many years ago) so this comes as no surprise:
http://www.sumankumar.com/2005/01/hosting-your-site-on-rediff-think.html
My friend Srini from Chennai, who runs a logistics firm, booked a domain name along with some web space on Rediff. Now, my friend wanted to host his site elsewhere. So, he had to change his DNS entries on Rediff.
How tall are you, compared to dozens of Hollywood celebrities? This site lets you enter your height and then check how you compare to Brad Pitt, Brooke Shields and scores of others.
(Via BB)
After Hotwire Internet, my ISP in Delhi, shifted to a new web based login and a good bandwidth management solution, their uptime dramatically improved.
After a while, the web login began to irritate me. I couldnt any more do the first thing I normally do in the morning - stretch my hands out underneath the rajai(warm blanket), grope for the power button, switch on the computer and squirm back into the cozy blanket waiting for the mails to get downloaded by the time I really get out of bed.
Taking a cue from the practice of region encoding of DVDs, hardware manufacturers in US have started making their products only usable in the country of their production.
H-P has quietly begun implementing “region coding” for its highly lucrative print cartridges for some of its newest printers sold in Europe. Try putting a printer cartridge bought in the U.S. into a new H-P printer configured to use cartridges purchased in Europe and it won’t work.
Airport security in France, on supposedly a routine drill, put a bag of explosives in an unknown passenger’s bag and … misplaced the bag. Somewhere in the world, there’s a navy blue suitcase with a small pack of explosives tucked in its side pocket.
As Schneier writes in his latest newsletter:
It’s perfectly reasonable to plant an explosive-filled suitcase in an airport in order to test security. It is not okay to plant it in someone’s bag without his knowledge and permission.
“Amitav Ghosh, renowned novelist, accompanies the Director on a search through the island of Car Nicobar towards the seafront where the town of Malacca once stood. Discovering in stages how little he had understood the power of the tsunami, the writer finds himself completely unprepared for the experience. This is the concluding part of a special three-article series for The Hindu.”
http://www.hindu.com/2005/01/13/stories/2005011309081100.htm
I turned to follow him and we were heading back towards the blazing palms, when he stopped to point to a yellow paint box, peeping out of the rubble.