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Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Transforming power of Open Source?

Attended a Technology Conference today where the theme was "Open source will save the world" and the only free stuff that was handed out was a copy of Microsoft OneNote. Hmm....

The sessions were pretty good. Geoffrey Moore did a very interesting talk about Drawin, Innovation and Inertia. The panel on opensource was kind of lame. Some people can't get over the Redmond bashing. Some dude mentioned the purchasing power parity equivalent price of Windows for a Bangladeshi would be about $60000. Now, I looked up the price of SuSE 9.3 - student edition is about $59 bucks. Wonder what does that translate to a Bangladeshi - possibly, $40000. The CEO of RHAT made a compelling and very passionate case for subscriptions model licensing. The Yahoo COO almost took us back to 1999, talking about "eyeballs", ad. revenue and one id that will unlock the world. Hey, I ain't gonna fall for that again...

Saturday, March 26, 2005

US to sell fighters to Pakistan - Bush will call it "exporting democracy"

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | US to sell fighters to Pakistan

So a few days after Condi Rice offers India F-16s to replace its aging MiG-21s, the US government sells F-16s to Pakistan to help fight terrorism. Nice try to force India's hand and help the US defence industry. Who do they think they are trying to fool. It is this kind of policies that resulted in 9/11.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Agent Orange lawsuit is dismissed

Agent Orange lawsuit is dismissed

Well... what can I say. At least, they did not say Agent Orange was an immuno-booster like the Florida Oranges.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

AQ Khan and the world's IQ

BBC NEWS | South Asia | The story that refuses to die

A good article about the AQ Khan saga. Wonder whether the Pakis think that world is so stupid to believe that AQ Khan operated on his own. Wonder when would the General's luck run out. He certainly has more lives than a cat.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Old habits die hard... for both Congress and the Press

Sometimes the "secular" press in India keeps its silence. And, this is one of those times. Not much noise about Jharkhand and Goa where the parties involved did what they have done for years in subverting democracy. I guess, in both instances the reason for the silence is the general feeling that a "secular" government is better than a right wing one even if the popular vote did not indicate that.

Are we willing to walk with the devil to cross the "secular" bridge? We seem to be constantly taking focussed shots at the institutions that are a must for a vibrant democracy. And, this is true with the "secular" parties and the right wing ones.