April Fool Pranks

Wired investigates the prank culture online and comes up with dehydrated water and the desktop infinite energy generator from the Museum of Hoaxes.

The History of Chipmaking at IBM.


A neat article about the history of the PowerPC chips at IBM. (The ultrafast G5 computers from Apple are powered by the IBM PowerPC G5 processor. Other macs are powered by PowerPC chips from Motorola. As far as I know, the PowerPC architecture is licensed to many manufacturers including Sony and Motorola. A nice graphical roadmap showing the history of the PowerPC processors is available on Motorola's site.) In New York today, IBM unvieled its plans to build customizable microprocessors which may physically reconfigure themselves to adapt to applications. Interestingly the processor powering the Mars Pathfinder missions is derived from the POWER1 chip.

For more history, check out Apple's History.

And now, P2P sharing will probably be labelled a criminal offence too. Time for me to quote Ayn Rand.

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against . . .We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

[Atlas Shrugged / Ayn Rand]

Exploding head syndrome - just something I found last night while exploring Wikipedia in a sleep deprived state.

Project Looking Glass

Sun Microsystems has been developing a new 'concept' Desktop System that's called Project Looking Glass. From what they have demoed so far, the main focus seems to be an attempt to bring 3D capabilities to the desktop to make the process of using applications more intuitive. An interesting concept is the ability to rotate windows to read/write stuff behind them. To be honest though, this seems to be a project that will inspire other projects that attempt to change the paradigm of a 'Desktop', but will itself die a silent death. For one, Looking Glass (if it is ever released) will run only on Linux and Solaris machines. (About Solaris, the less said the better - it's a visual monstrosity and should probably be used only for number crunching which it is very good at.) Also, following in the Solaris tradition, Sun manages to keep the Looking Glass desktop ugly inspite of 3D windowing and translucent windows. It is pathetic when great programming is marred by lousy design on the front end. Which is also why I admire Apple so much - the technology inside is matched by the design outside. However, the project is pre-beta, so we might be pleasantly surprised by the direction it takes, especially if Sun decides to open-source it. We could do with a new concept of Windowing other than the ones we've been used to so far (read Windows and Mac OSX).

Notes on Indian Popular Cinema

Philip Lutgendort has this wonderful site devoted to Indian fillums that provides a rare insightful glimpse into this amazing genre of filmmaking. What's really wonderful is the range of movies that Philip along with Corey Creekmur has reviewed in this site - it covers almost all the sub-genres of Indian cinema such as the purely romantic movies, the action movies, and of course the 'masala' movies. Who exactly is this Philip Lutgendort? An associate professor of Hindi and modern Indian studies at the University of Iowa!

How does yer hankerin' t'read this?

The dialectizer does a great job of converting text and pages into some really funny dialects including Redneck, Moron, Jive, Elmer Fudd, Cockney and Pig Latin! If you wanna see how this page look like in some of those dialects, use the 'Translate this' pulldown at the bottom of this post.

Dihydrogen Monoxide Alert!!!!

City officials in Aliso Viejo, California fell victim to this long running hoax about Dihydrogen Monoxide commonly known as H₂O, or water! There are dozens of hoax websites that look official enough to convince people - [google search]. Next time you read a report about some serious "study" about the "dangerous" effects of some new stuff, remember that statistics can support almost any desired result. See how dangerous water is:

The chemical compound dihydrogen monoxide (or DHMO) has been implicated in the deaths of thousands of Americans every year, mainly through accidental ingestion. In gaseous form, it can cause severe burns. And, according to a new report, "the dangers of this chemical do not end there."

The chemical is so caustic that it "accelerates the corrosion and rusting of many metals, . . . is a major component of acid rain, [and] . . . has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients." Symptoms of ingestion include "excessive sweating and urination," and "for those who have developed a dependency on DHMO, complete withdrawal means certain death."

But of course, there is no excuse for the stupidity of those city officials.

Distractions at work...

If you want to chill out for a while, check out these really simple flash games at Orisinal. The games are really simple, but are highly addictive. Especially this egg game.

If you want more, here's this nice game of Smack the Pingu.

The Science of Murphy's Law!

Is it true that things will go wrong if they can, or is it just our selective memory of screw-ups? A study published in Scientific American a few years ago shows that the universe is actually out to get you! Robert Matthews' research showed that in most cases, there are scientific reasons why things seem to go wrong. For example, the classic story of toast falling buttered side down - apparently that is because the table is too low to allow the toast to spin completely on its way down. And yes, the lines near you at the supermarket are more likely to get to the cashier's counter.

What about the flipping of a coin? It seems that it is not completely unbiased as assumed by mathematicians and everyone else for centuries. Research at Stanford has shown that if you flip a coin, it is more likely to end up with the same side up as the one you started out with. The bias isn't too strong, but it helps to know that at least 51% of the time, the coin will land heads if you start out heads.

If you want to have a surer way of predicting the way a coin will land, just stand it on the edge and spin it - When the coin wobbles and comes to rest, it is more likely to end heads up!

Now you know what to do when it is time to settle that argument...

Anyone remember what Yahoo! used to look like in the good ol' days? Old fashioned, but (in my opinion) so much better than the cesspool it is now.