Conspiracy theory #8987: There is no moon!

I am not sure if the guys behind this site are serious or not, but The Mad Revisionist has a detailed argument on why the whole moon thing is a hoax. There are no arguments on why the moon doesn't exist, but it argues by saying that there is no incontrovertible evidence to show that it exists either, hence it must not exist. I think they are just being funny since their 'scientific experiments' would put even Einstein to shame :-)

UPDATE: While we are on the topic of weird things, this has to be one of the weirdest auctions on ebay. (ebay link while it lasts)

Tags: funny, jokes, humor, revisionism, conspiracy

Primetime Math!

Suresh at The Geomblog has details about the mathematics behind the new CBS thriller Numb3rs where an FBI agent uses the mathematical skills of his genius brother to solve his cases. More power to them!

Tags: numb3rs, cbs, maths, mathematics, tv, show

How do you build an antenna using C++

Beats me, but some guy sure needs to know the magic of building antennas using C++. From comp.object:

HI everyone,
I was trying to build an antenna in C++. I don't know where to start. can anyone help me?? if there is some code that would be even better. I don't care about the type of antenna as long as it communicates.
THanks
Shastri

That's not too hard. Well, there is a slight problem about antennas being hardware and C++ being a programming language, but we shall not be bogged down by such technicalities. No sir! Here's one suggestion on how to do it (from the same thread):

If you created a mathematical model of the geometry and electromagnetic properties of the antenna; and a mathematical model of the electromagnetic environment that the antenna was in, then you could subdivide space into a set of tiny three dimensional cubes and apply Maxwell's laws in each cube. (This is called Finite Element Analysis, or "Meshing"). In each cube (or finite element) you could calculate how the electromagnetic environment in that cube induced currents in the antenna in that cube.

Ah well, it's that simple. Or you can just use HTML instead.[via The Daily WTF]

Tags: humor, comp.object

100 Photographs that Changed the World

From Life magazine's 100 Photographs that Changed the World on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. (emphasis mine) On October 22, 1962, after accusing the U.S.S.R. of installing nuclear missiles on Cuba, President John F. Kennedy ordered a blockade of the island. When the Soviet ambassador to the U.N. refused to deny the charge, U.S. ambassador Adlai Stevenson confronted him with these photos of missile sites taken by the high-flying spy plane, the U-2, and the Soviets were compelled to back down. The presentation of seemingly incontrovertible evidence would become known as an “Adlai Stevenson moment.” Robert F. Kennedy later admitted that he and his brother found the grainy images quite baffling, and banked on the interpretation proffered by the CIA: “I, for one, had to take their word for it." Only a handful of these great pictures are available online but every one of these pictures comes with a great story. [Gallery 1 | Gallery 2 | Amazon]

Tags: life, photographs, history

__ ___ ___ ____ ____ __ ____ ____ /__\ / __) / __)(_ _)(_ _) /__\ ( _ \(_ _) /(__)\ \__ \( (__ _)(_ _)(_ /(__)\ ) / )( (__)(__)(___/ \___)(____)(____) (__)(__)(_)\_) (__)

[quick link | wikipedia resources]

Tags: ascii art, ascii, art

Bunny suicides

Here's something to cheer you up at the beginning of the dreary week ahead (or to inspire you to do something similar at the end of the week). Andy Riley's simple cartoons document the efforts of a bunny to commit suicides that are sick and hilarious at the same time. The complete collection is available as two books - The book of bunny suicides and The return of bunny suicides.

[A collection of bunny suicides]

UPDATE 1: The above link does not work anymore (I'm guessing they were removed due to copyright problems). Also, the books seem to have generated their fair share of controversy due to its depiction of violence towards bunnies. Chill guys, we know it is just supposed to be funny!
UPDATE 2: Another link to the Bunny suicides collection.


Tags: bunny suicides, cartoon, funny, andy riley

Predicting hit music

Sounds weirdly fantastic, but Hit Song Science (HSS) from Polyphonic aims to automate the process of finding which CD has the potential to be the next big hit by comparing the principal components of a song against a database of 3.5 million hit singles. Apparently the music industry is already using this software (which doesn't come cheap at €4,000 per CD) and the HSS score of a song is on its way to being a generic term denoting a band's potential for success.

Since HSS tries to fit the features of a song into an (already clustered) database of previous hits, the apparent intention is to find out if the song has the stuff that people have liked previously. Wouldn't this system lead to bands creating more music of the same type since anything innovative would probably end up having a low HSS score? (Or as this article claims, would it give label execs more freedom to try exotic stuff since they have more hits on their hands?)

Tags: hss, music, hit, polyphonic, hit song science, record

Thoughts on the second presidential term

The Christian Science Monitor has a collection of views from newspapers around the world on Bush's second presidential term. Opinions range from optimism and praise for his foreign policy to discomfort at the thought of a more confrontational second term. Quotes from their roundup:

Bush's speech focused on the 'power of freedom', saying that the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. On that, not many people will disagree. The differences are over what he understands by 'freedom' and how the benefits of democracy should be spread in the world – or indeed whether it is any country's business to export democracy to others... It is possible to have the freer world that Bush speaks of, but the idea that those who are strong and have a larger arsenal have an unchallenged right to impose their will on the weak, undermines democracy. – Nation (Kenya)

Critics who were hoping that he would get mired in detail about Iraq were mistaken. Instead he went back to basics, reaching out to the belief of most Americans in the fundamental importance of freedom and using that to explain his policies at home and abroad. At times it sounded more like a sermon than a speech. Mr. Bush may not be much of a speaker. But sometimes the message is more important than eloquence and what he had to say yesterday had the power of real conviction. – Irish Independent

Tags: america, president, bush, inauguration, world, opinion, democracy

Source code search engine

Koders is a specialized search engine that searches for source code in many programming languages. You can also choose to search for code available under a particular license. For those who wish to implement a source code search engine on their own computers, gonzui is an open-source tool (cross-platform) that indexes your source code files and allows you to search from your browser.

Tags: koders, gonzui, open-source, search, engine, code

Earth impact calculator

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona has a site that computes the effect of an impact on earth. You can feed in the size of the projectile and other parameters such as the impact angle, impact velocity etc and it gives a complete analysis of the resulting effects on earth. Very geeky and very interesting!

Tags: earth, impact, calculator, planet

We the people

Two events have prompted me to write this post. One, I saw Swades and even though parts of the movie are heavily flawed, I was touched by the message. The movie follows Mohan, an Indian born NASA scientist who visits India after a long time and experiences the pain of poverty in rural India. At first he resorts to blaming the government for not improving things, but gradually he realizes that true change can only be brought about by us, the people.

Two, Britain has approved a project called the 'new Marshall plan' under which it has promised to pay 10% of the foreign debt bill of the entire developing world so long as the nations promise to utilize the money saved on education, health and welfare. Also, Britain cancelled the total debt of Mozambique (a total of £80m) in addition to paying 10% of its foreign debt. This is a great step that should be followed by more nations.

So here we are, in the 21st century, bridging the world using the Internet, sending probes to Mars and beyond, planning a space tourism industry and at the same time millions of people are living in crushing poverty and dying of starvation. If we could send a man to the moon within half a century of manned flight itself, why can't we all put our heads together and ensure that every human being enjoys the fundamental right to life? If we were to forget national differences and prejudices, how long would it take for humanity to wipe out poverty and ensure a minimum standard of life for everyone? After all, this is our world and we hold the keys to our destinies. If we, the people decide that we do not wish to let our fellow human beings suffer any longer, how can this problem continue?

We know there are a million organizations working to improve conditions in countries around the world, but today, in 2005, we still have the problems that we had a hundred years ago. There must be a better way to do things! Let us say that we want to improve things 'substantially' within a decade. Can we get some ideas on how to do it? (Also, I am not an economist or a social scientist, so I am curious to know if it is a bad thing to have too much social change in a hurry)

Tags: swades, people, poverty, welfare, education, health, britain, india, marshall-plan, ideas

Verizon sued for disabling bluetooth features

After shafting subscribers by disabling file-transfer features from the Motorola v710 phone, Verizon is now at the receiving end of a lawsuit. I fully expect my bluetooth phone to allow me to use bluetooth in whatever way I see fit and it is disappointing to see Verizon stoop so low as to disable features Motorola has built into the phone, just so that the subscribers will use Verizon's paid 'Get it Now' service. Which means that if I take a picture with the phone, I would have to pay Verizon to transfer the picture to my computer instead of using a direct bluetooth connection! It isn't as if they mention clearly what features are disabled when you buy the phone.

Service providers may argue that the phones are subsidised and charging for these features will help offset the low initial price of the phone. However, we already help offset the low price by paying for service. Unless the phone is being given for free (which means that you are not paying more to get the extra features in the phone) I see no reason why we should get a crippled phone. Instead of offering value added services that go beyond the existing features of the phone, service providers seek to screw customers by extracting every dime they can from them. Just like the MPAA/RIAA..

There are so many ways Verizon could make extra money through file transfers without disabling OBEX. Let me list a few ways off the top of my head:
1. Induce users to send pictures through the network by offering a photoblogging feature like Textamerica. (Moblogging sites like Textamerica are free though - but every time you email a picture to Textamerica, the service provider makes money since data transfer through the network is not free. Make it dirt cheap and more people would email pictures directly through the phone instead of uploading them from their PCs.
2. Offer to print photographs cheaply.

That's just two random suggestions, but I'm sure Verizon can come up with some innovative ways of adding value to the file transfer feature without preventing those who want to use Bluetooth from doing so. Screwing customers can only get you so far when users can switch carriers without losing their numbers.

Tags: verizon, lawsuit, motorola, v710, bluetooth, obex

Technorati Tags

You may have noticed that there are tags below my blog posts now. These are tags that enable Technorati to find other blogs that have the same tags, along with tagged pictures from flickr. Adding these tags to your blog can be tedious, so Oddiophile has a javascript bookmarklet that lets you generate the required html that you can paste into your blog post.

In case you want to generate slightly different html, here's how to modify the bookmarklet: On Internet Explorer, right click on the bookmarklet link and 'add to favorites'. On Mozilla, just drag it to your toolbar to create a bookmark. If you rightclick on the favorite/bookmark and choose properties, you can see the bookmarklet code. Here's the bookmarklet

javascript:(function(){var a='';var t=prompt('Enter Tags:','');var tr=t.split(' ');a+='Technorati Tags: ';for(var i=0;i 0){a+=', ';}a+='<a href="'+unescape('%22')+'http://www.technorati.com/tags/'+tr[i]+unescape('%22')+'" rel="'+unescape('%22')+'tag'+unescape('%22')+'">'+tr[i]+'</a>';}a+='';prompt('Copy this code, press OK, then paste to your blog entry:',a);})()

Copy-paste this to a plain-text editor like notepad and change the portion in bold to whatever you want. Now copy-paste this back to the 'URL' (if you are using an IE favorite) or the 'Location' (if you are using Firefox).

Why should you tag your blog posts? The most important reason is that it helps create a more meaningful web where pages are linked together with meaningful tags. As the creator of your blog you know what your post is about, and therefore your tags give more meaning to it than any other method that uses word count or incoming links. One step closer to a semantic web!

Tags: technorati, tags, semantic, flickr, blogs, photos

And now... *drumroll* open source beer!

A bunch of guys at Copenhagen have created the world's first open-source beer named Vores Øl. You cannot buy the beer from them, but you can use their recipe to create your own commercial beer as long as you publish the recipe for the derivative beer under the same Creative Commons license. (This blog is published under a similar CC license) I can seriously imagine people scratching their heads and trying to get the next great open-source idea..
UPDATE: In case you are wondering how to use the recipe, here comes the FreeBSD-powered fridge to help you brew it.

Tags: open-source, beer, vores, freebsd, bsd, fridge

How to fold a shirt

This Japanese-sounding video shows the fine art of folding a shirt into a perfect rectangle in just three steps. For a person like me who has to labor over this process only to end up with ugly creases on a shirt, this was absolutely mindblowing! Now to take care of that overflowing closet..

UPDATE: I tried hard to fold my shirts as shown in the video, but somehow my shirts still come out looking like the map of Texas.

Tags: t-shirt, fold

Community edited resumes!

In the spirit of open-source and community edited encyclopedias comes the next best thing in cooperation - community edited resumes! At Resumewiki, you can create your own profile, resume and cover letter and allow your peers to comment and edit them. When you start your three-step process, do change 'ExampleName' to your own profile-name (the guide is a little vague about this), and you may be wise to omit some personal information. This may be a great tool to send your resume/cover letter to a close group of friends who may be willing to peer-review it.

Tags: community, resume, rewumewiki, wiki, jobs

Google Hacking Mini-Guide

The guys at Informit.com have a mini-guide to finding sensitive data using Google, including admin pages, password files and unprotected directories. Since the article is not brand-new they have missed out on the latest hack - finding unsecured webcams. For more hacks including programming using the Google API, check out the book that Google itself recommends.

Tags: google, hacking, amazon, webcams

Open Source Web Design

I have been asked to design personal websites for friends more times than I can remember, and I always feel terrible when I have to disappoint people just because I do not have the time to work on a website - good design takes a good amount of time. (For two of my own sites, I resorted to using Blogger's templates for want of time) For everyone who has stuff to put up on a personal website or a weblog, but lacks the web-designer gene, here is the mother lode of website templates - the Open Source Web Design site. There are nearly a thousand templates in there, so the chances of finding a good template that does not look like a thousand others is quite good.

For those who like to hack around with their own html and css, here's yet another guide on using CSS efficiently.

Tags: open-source, templates, webdesign, html, css

1-4 inches makes a massive difference

How can one resist looking at a site which bills itself as 'Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines'! The cartoons are terrible, but that just makes them funnier.. check out Spamusement! (Try relating the title of this post to the cartoon shown on the left, heh)

Tags: spam, cartoons, jokes

iDrool.. It's the Mac Mini!

Dang! My head just exploded! Look, that's what your computer has been reduced to.. a two inch high cuboid that's just 6 inches long. Oh yeah, it packs all the connectors like ethernet, firewire, USB 2.0.. u name it.. and it's BYODKM (Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse), but you can easily hook up that dell monitor/keyboard and the two button scroll mouse that you were using with your windows box.. who doesn't have a few of those lying around! The sweetest part is the price - $499! And don't get me started on the $99 512 MB flash based iPod which doubles as a flash drive..Allow me to drown in my own drool...

Tags: apple, mac, macmini, mini, shuffle, ipod, flash, music, mp3

Hate talk

Power99 WUSL-FM broadcast a segment where one of their hosts verbally abused a call center representative in India, calling her a 'bitch' and a 'filthy rat-eater'. Here's the recording, here's the transcript and here's how you can contact the station. [more details | reactions]

Tags: radio, hate, bpo, outsourcing, india, race

CES 2005 Products

CES 2005 at Las Vegas has been in the news for Bill Gates's somewhat fouled-up presentation, but there have been some great product launches too. GPS Watch has a list of all the cool new GPS products launched this week including this baby from Garmin that does everything the StreetPilot 2610/2650 does in a smaller package and a lesser price. (Thanks Gireesh!)

Tags: gps, garmin, ces, c320, c330, streetpilot, 2610, 2650

A day in the life of the President

Absolutely brilliant photography in black-and-white by Christopher Morris. And lookie, the prez uses an iPod too!

Tags: photography, photos, pictures, president, christopher, morris

First Monday presents..

a detailed research report on the media's portrayal of hacking, hackers, and hactivism before and after September 11. Hacking is almost always termed as a malicious act by the popular media but hacking really is a broad term that encompasses many activities. For example opening up a piece of software or hardware to find out how it works is hacking. Learning how to use systems and creating new ones is also hacking. (Remember the adage: Linux was created by hackers!) Unfortunately hacking now symbolizes the act of breaking into computer systems or bypassing security measures. I like to say 'I am hacking this board', or that 'I can hack out a program', but that always generates weird looks from people (who are also engineers). A Google search for definitions of hacking will show the general opinion on what hacking means to most people.

Tags: hacking, hackers, google

How to study..

An excellent guide on time management, taking notes in class, writing reports etc.

Tags: study, time, class

CSS tips and a bunch of Photoshop tutorials

I have been intending to use more CSS on my website so I can get rid of the tables and change the styles more easily in the future, but while I haven't had the time to do that, I have put in more CSS and someday I intend to write a short tutorial on how to use very simple CSS to get some interesting site layouts. On this note, here's some CSS tips I found on Evolt, and while we are at it, here's a truck load of Photoshop tutorials which I am sure you will love.

Tags: css, photoshop, webdesign, html, tutorial

Lessons from a job search..

As a fresh graduate, I am working on my job applications and I'm learning new truths about the application process every day. When I first graduated with an undergrad degree, I didn't have to worry about such things since I had a job offer in my final year of engineering. This time, however it is a different story in a different country and a different economy. I have been refining my resume for over three semesters now with advice from a wide range of sources. I have learned about making scannable resumes, making the important features stand out, minimizing whitespace, using professional fonts and even using good quality paper. Some of it has definitely worked since I did bag an internship at Motorola last summer, but applying for a full time position is turning out to be slightly harder. Here are some of the things I have learned:

1. Use the school career services website, but don't rely on it for new postings. Do use a search agent so that you do not miss any interview pre-select slots for on-campus interviews.

2. Post a resume to the websites of all your target companies. Every time you hand a paper-resume to an HR person, or mail in an application, they still need you to fill out their online profiles so that you are 'in the system'.

3. Use online services like Monster. I used to think that online job sites were junk, but with an improving economy, I know many people who have found interviews (and jobs) using these sites. In case of Monster, it helps to use the premium version for a few months since it pushes your resume to the top of the heap when employers search using keywords. (It also allows you to use a less crippled search).

4. Use local resources. For example, in Arizona, you can find local companies using the member list from the Arizona Technology Council. The same place has an associated job site where member companies can post jobs. It is not as extensive as (say) Monster, but it's a good place to find smaller companies in the area.

5. Heather Leigh from Microsoft has a blog post where she says "Don't apply to 50 jobs at the same company" since it gives the employer an impression that you are either a. not selective or b. desperate. (I wish I knew that before I applied to a dozen (similar) jobs at Qualcomm.) [Thanks Vivek!]

6. Keywords matter. A lot. Employers can find your resume only if it has the keywords they are looking for, so it helps to find the keywords in the job postings you are aiming for. Of course, you should not fluff your resume, but it helps to use the keywords employers are using, instead of using your own set of acronyms/descriptions.

7. Be very patient. I am still waiting for people who I know will respond eventually, to respond. After all, it's my priority not theirs.

Once I bag the job I am looking for, I'll write about How to Successfully Perform a Job Search. Until then, enjoy my impersonal posts.

How wacky can your Google calculator search be while still generating a correct answer?

Umm.. how about twice the speed of light in miles per half day..

Face Analyzer

Face Analyzer claims to be able to determine your gender and race using image processing techniques on your photograph. It does a great job of determining gender, but it determined different racial characteristics for me when I used different images of myself. However, it determines the race of many photographs accurately enough. It also attempts to generate a personality profile based on facial features, and while the accuracy of this would be a matter of opinion, it did give me a 'theta academic' characteristic for all my photographs. Worth a spin!

Goodbye Crossfire

After Jon Stewart bitchslapped Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson on CNN's high decibel political show Crossfire (video), there wasn't much credibility left for the show (at least for me), and now CNN feels the same way since Tucker Carlson is on his way out and the 23 year old show itself faces demise. Maybe we can now see you without your bowtie Carlson..

From The Daily WTF (a collection of true tech related WTF stories), a case of programming concepts highly misunderstood by a consultant:

selectthese = ""
Select Case Request.QueryString("category")
Case "1"
selectthese = "1"
Case "2"
selectthese = "2"
Case "3"
selectthese = "3"
Case "4"
selectthese = "4"
Case "5"
selectthese = "5"
Case "6"
selectthese = "6"
Case "7"
selectthese = "7"
Case "8"
selectthese = "8"
Case "9"
selectthese = "9"
End Select
If selectthese = "" Then
selectthese = "1"
End If


Fingerprint security?

How far would you trust fingerprint based security systems if you knew they could be beaten by a combination of Photoshop and gummy bears?

POD Art

POD Gallery has a beautiful collection of art which are available as display quality prints in sizes upto 44x55" on paper and canvas. Also check out their POD Erotica gallery (not work safe)

Joel on CS

Joel Spolsky's advice for Computer Science students, and Sriram Krishnan's perspective from India on why he might be wrong.

The Sitzpinkel way

My fascination with toilets runs deep. It delights me that someone has researched and analyzed German toilets after a few glorious turd battles.
From the site:

We've had innumerable bad experiences with German toilets. In Berlin, we lived on an upper floor and the water pressure was too weak to push a healthy-sized log off the shelf. After a few minutes' fruitless flushing you'd be forced to grab a wad of toilet paper and give the horrid thing an encouraging nudge. Then followed a lengthy bout of brushing and cleaning to remove the skid marks from the porcelain. At the other extreme, in Munich we lived in a basement suite where the water pressure was too high. Worse, the shelf was actually slightly concave, forming a shallow bowl. The first time I flushed the toilet the water came rushing through so forcefully that a small chunk of poo launched off the lip and shot out over the floor. After that we always held the lid down when we flushed. I swore you could feel a kick as the turd ricoched off the underside.

India may have weirder toilets, but did you know that the ancient Indians had a toilet code with different rules for married and unmarried people?

Why I will never have a girlfriend

When geeks don't get dates and are faced with the possibility of a lifetime of chastity, they attack the problem in the only way they know - through cold statistical analysis. Tristan Miller, from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence has written a paper which explains why his chances of finding the right girl would be statistically negligible. [how can we call it a research paper without a proper LaTeX formatted pdf version!]

I hate to be pedantic about something that is obviously meant to be a humorous piece, but it's hard to resist some analysis. Of course, the argument is fallacious, else no one in this world would really have a girlfriend. Assuming everything else in Miller's argument is true (which takes plenty of liberties, such as assuming normal distributions everywhere - something mathematicians always do when faced with an unknown distribution), the conclusion is debatable. There is a pool of 18,726 females with compatible qualities, and Miller assumes that only one of them would be 'the one' for him. However his earlier argument takes pains to create this pool where everyone is a potential match. Therefore, the only limiting factor would be his own indecisiveness about the suitable person.

Ye Olde Computer

Here's a 1971 book which describes the working of computers for the layman using beautiful color illustrations and easy to understand text. You can also compare the 1971 and 1979 editions. Computers sure were clunky those days, and they did get a little better hehhh.. And look how monitors went from cool light-pen enabled devices to boring displays. I'm still waiting for the 1971 kind of displays. How It Works...The Computer

Time for a new calendar?

If we had exactly 52 weeks in a year, (52*7=364 days) we could start the year on the same day of the week year after year. Dick Henry, a physicist at the John Hopkins University has used this idea to design a new calendar which means that you do not have to print a new calendar each year. For five or six years at least.