Archive

Archive for October, 2005

Rebates and fraud

October 29th, 2005 arun 2 comments

Just found a check in my pile of mails to be taken care of and it was void if not cashed by a certain date, which happened to be last week.

I’m sure the fine print would’ve said the company will not reissue the check. A quick web search didn’t find any consumer advocacy group that fights this kind of profiteering. If you know of one, please let me know.

Categories: Gadgets Tags:

No McDs in Gujarat

October 27th, 2005 arun 2 comments

The supreme court of India says so

Categories: India Tags:

Potty training

October 15th, 2005 arun No comments

Early potty training in vogue for some US parents

I certainly agree about the harmful effects on the environment, but don’t see much of an option living in a country with carpets everywhere and two working parents.

Categories: Kids Tags:

Alternative DNS

October 9th, 2005 arun No comments

Politics and the Internet don’t mix very well.

“Given the Internet’s importance to the world’s economy, it is essential that the underlying domain name system of the Internet remain stable and secure,” the letter said. “As such, the United States should take no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the domain name system. Therefore, the United States should maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.”

These politicians have little clue that the Chinese government can legislate that all ISP DNS servers in China use the UN root servers instead of American ones. The C-net correspondent seems to be more interested in lecturing over the democratic credentials (or the lack thereof) of Tunisia and Cuba, than addressing the issue.

Categories: Politics, Technology Tags:

Dell “open source” PC

October 7th, 2005 arun No comments

United Networks was featured on the Register today as a company with an interesting business model.

They resell Dell PCs with your Linux distribution of choice.

Categories: Open Source Tags:

Cheaper Windows for India

October 2nd, 2005 arun 1 comment

Cheaper Windows for the Rs 10000 PC. The cost of windows is projected to be 10% and “piracy” rates at 73%.

Categories: India, Open Source Tags:

Another XNU/MacOSX article

October 1st, 2005 arun No comments

What Is Darwin (and How It Powers Mac OS X) seems to be another article about MacOSX which didn’t offer any new insights into why Apple continues to use it instead of FreeBSD, despite all the performance criticisms levelled against it recently by Anandtech.

Also, both Apple and Sun seem to have very little understanding of how to compete against Linux (hint: Single CD distro which people can recompile from scratch including the kernel)

Categories: Open Source, Technology Tags:

Why I stopped reading CNN

October 1st, 2005 arun 1 comment

Well, I haven’t read it regularly for about a year now, but some people in my family do. So I occassionally get to read about why I shouldn’t be reading it :)

This article was under the headline “US launches attack against Al Qaeda in Iraq” this morning. Compare this to the BBC.

Categories: Politics Tags:

Oil trumps freedom

October 1st, 2005 arun No comments

Another article that ends as

Political cover thus found, the department vowed to continue working with Saudi Arabia on the matter.

Categories: Politics Tags: