from www.youtube.com
Ref : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7y7NafWXeM
டைம் பாஸ் சாட்டில்
from pkp.blogspot.com
Ref : http://pkp.blogspot.com/2009/08/blog-post_20.html
Ref : http://pkp.blogspot.com/2009/08/blog-post_20.html
அவன் பெயரும் கோபால் தான். ஆனால் இன்னொரு கோபால். சரியாகச் சொன்னால் கோபாலிகா-வாம். முப்பது வயது. இந்திய ஐஐடியில் என்னவெல்லாமோ மிகப் பெரிய டிகிரி படிப்புகளெல்லாம் படித்து முடித்து விட்டு பிழைப்புத் தேடி அமெரிக்கா வந்தவன். இணையத்தில் சாட் செய்வதென்றால் அவனுக்கு கொள்ளைப் பிரியம். அதிலும் முகமறியாத அனானிகளிடம் சாட் செய்வது என்றால் இன்னும் இஷ்டம். அப்படித்தான் அந்த பதிமூன்று வயது அமெரிக்க பெண்ணும் அவனுக்கு அறிமுகம் ஆனாள். நிறைய சாட்டியிருக்கின்றார்கள். ஆனாலும் நேருக்கு நேர் பார்த்ததில்லை. அரசியல் முதல் அந்தரங்கங்கள் வரை அநேகம் பேசியிருக்கின்றார்கள். படங்களும் பரிமாறப்பட்டன. எத்தனை நாட்கள் தான் பேசிக் கொண்டிருப்பதாம். நேரில் சந்திக்கலாமே என முடிவெடுத்தார்கள். அதீத எதிர்பார்ப்புகளோடு இந்த கோபாலும் ஏற்கனவே சொல்லப்பட்டிருந்த மீட்டிங் பிளேசுக்கு போனால் அங்கே இவனை வரவேற்றது ஒரு under cover agent from Chid Predator Unit. அவன் கையும் களவுமாக பிடிபட்டதாகவும் அவனை ஜாமீனில் எடுக்கவே $15000 ஆகுமென சொல்லுகின்றார்கள். எல்லாம் நிரூபிக்கப்பட்டால் இது பெரும் குற்றமாக (First degree felony) கருதப்பட்டு 20 ஆண்டு சிறைத் தண்டனையும் $25000 அபாராதமும் கிடைக்குமாம். பொழுதுபோகாமல் இணையத்தில் விளையாடி அந்த விளையாட்டு இப்போது இவனுக்கு வினையாகியிருக்கின்றது.
மைனர்களிடம் சீண்டுவது இங்கு பெருங்குற்றம். பள்ளிப் பேருந்துகளை நடுச்சாலையில் நிறுத்தும் போது அதில் மின்னும் சிவப்பு ஒளியைக்கண்டு மொத்த சாலைகளும் ஸ்தம்பித்து நின்று சிறார்களுக்கு சாலையைக் கடக்க வழிவிடும். சிறுவர்களை அடித்தாலோ அல்லது திட்டி அது அழுதாலோ Child Abuse என யார் வேண்டுமானாலும் 911 அழைக்கலாம். எல்லாம் டீனேஜ் முடியும் வரை தான். பள்ளி முடிந்து கல்லூரி போனதும் பொத்தி பொத்தி வளர்த்ததெல்லாம் பூ...ம். கோபாலுக்கு இதுவெல்லாம் தெரியாதிருந்ததா? அல்லது தெரிந்திருந்தும் இது ஒரு வெர்சுவல் உலகம் தானே எப்போது வேண்டுமானாலும் Undo செய்துகொள்ளலாம் என நினைத்திருந்தானா? அல்லது அமெரிக்காவில் இதெல்லாம் சகஜமென ஆழம் தெரியாமல் காலையிட்டு பார்த்தானா தெரியவில்லை. இணையத்தின் இன்றைய மெகா பரிமாணம் நம் ஊரில் வருமுன்னேயே இது குறித்துச் சொன்ன "காதலர் தினம்" கூடவா இவன் பார்த்ததில்லை?
இனி சாலையில் போவோறெல்லாரும் இவனுக்கு தேவர்களாகவும் தேவதைகளாகவும் தெரிவார்கள் .இவன் மட்டும் தனக்கு படுபாவியாகத் தெரிவான். http://locator.thevision2020.com ல் Sex Offenders அல்லது Child Predators வரிசையில் இவன் பெயரையும் போட்டாலும் போட்டு விடுவார்கள். உருப்படியாய் எதாவது செய்கின்ற நேரத்தில் சும்மா வம்புக்கு சாட் செய்து வாழ்க்கையை தொலைத்துக் கொண்டான். பாவம் அந்த கோபால்.
Year's Best Optical Illusion: Scientific American Gallery
from www.scientificamerican.com
Ref : http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=B5B09611-E7F2-99DF-37B57709D6F8FB20
Ref : http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=B5B09611-E7F2-99DF-37B57709D6F8FB20
FREDERICK A A KINGDOM, ALI YOONESSI AND ELENA GHEORGHIU, McGill Vision Research, Dept. Ophthalmology, McGill University
No, you have not had one grappa too many. These images of the Leaning Tower are actually identical, but the tower on the right looks more lopsided because the human visual system treats the two images as one scene. Our brains have learned that two tall objects in our view will usually rise at the same angle but converge toward the top—think of standing at the base of neighboring skyscrapers. Because these towers are parallel, they do not converge, so the visual system thinks they must be rising at different angles, as demonstrated by this year's winner of the Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest, sponsored by the Neural Correlate Society.
Calvinball
Other kids' games are all such a bore!
They've gotta have rules and they gotta keep score!
Calvinball is better by far!
It's never the same! It's always bizarre!
You don't need a team or a referee!
You know that it's great, 'cause it's named after me!—The Calvinball theme song[50]Calvinball is a game played by Calvin and Hobbes as a rebellion against organized team sports; according to Hobbes, "No sport is less organized than Calvinball!"[51] The game was introduced in a three-week story in 1990, where Calvin is bullied into signing up to play baseball, cursed when he proves a poor player and insulted when he quits.[51] Calvin and Hobbes usually play by themselves, although Rosalyn plays once in return for Calvin doing his homework, and does very well for herself after eventually realizing that the rules are made up on the spot.[52] Most games that Calvin and Hobbes play eventually turn into Calvinball.[53]
The only consistent rule is that Calvinball may never be played with the same rules twice.[54] Scoring is also arbitrary, with Hobbes reporting scores of "Q to 12" and "oogy to boogy."[55] The only recognizable sports Calvinball is similar to are the ones that it emulates (i.e., a cross between croquet, polo, badminton, and volleyball.) Equipment includes a volleyball (the eponymous "Calvinball"), a soccer ball, a croquet set, a badminton set, assorted flags, bags, signs, and a hobby horse. Other things are included as needed, such as a bucket of ice-cold water, a water balloon, and various songs and poetry.[56] Players also wear masks that resemble blindfolds with holes for the eyes.[52] When asked how to play, Watterson states, "It's pretty simple: you make up the rules as you go."[57] Calvinball is a nomic (self-modifying game), a contest of wits and creativity rather than stamina or athletic skill, where Hobbes (and on one occasion, Calvin's baby-sitter, Rosalyn) usually outwits Calvin, who takes it in stride, in contrast to his bad sportsmanship when he loses other games.
via en.wikipedia.org
How to do almost anything with Posterous
Online sharing and blogging service Posterous has been getting a lot of attention recently. The development team is adding features regularly and it’s fast becoming the best way to share content with all your different social services while also keeping it all in one place too. The best bit is you can do it all via email.
With so many ways to use Posterous it can be difficult to keep track of them all. Here we’ll take you through everything you need to know about it and suggest a range of ways you can use it to make your online life easier.
The basics
Creating an account
Setting up your own Posterous blog is simple. There are no forms to fill in; you simply send an email to post@posterous.com. Whatever you put in this email becomes the first post for your new blog.
Once the email’s sent, a Posterous blog is set up for you and you’ll get an email straight back inviting you to create an account. This is completely optional; if you don’t create an account anything you send to Posterous from your email address will still be posted to your blog without you ever having to visit the admin panel.
There are advantages to creating an account though – if you want to choose a custom URL and site name you’ll have to go for it. What’s more, most of the features listed below are only available if you have an account. It’s free, so you’ve nothing to lose.
Preparing your posts
There are four ways to post content to Posterous. There’s a blog-style WYSIWYG editor on the site and you can send messages via SMS from your mobile phone, but the two most powerful ways are via email and via the Posterous Bookmarklet.
Via Email: When posting via email, the Subject line is the post’s title and any text or attached files also become part of the post, either embedded or as a download. The way Posterous handles media is seriously impressive. Images will display in the post, for example, while MP3s and videos are playable directly in the page. Even other files, such as PDFs and Word documents, are viewable directly from your blog. It will embed Google Maps as well – just paste the URL into your post.
Posterous accepts any formatting you’ve added to your email. Bold text is bold, links work perfectly and everything looks just as you intended. If you want more control, logging into your account gives you access to a traditional blog text editor with all the tools you’d expect at your fingertips.
You can add tags to posts by adding them to the Subject line in the format ((tag: The Next Web, guide, Posterous)).
Via the Bookmarklet: Alternatively, there’s the Posterous Bookmarklet. This sits in your browser’s bookmarks bar and allows you to select any text, video, music or photos you like from any web page and post it instantly.
Making Posterous work for you
Here are a few ideas for getting the most out of Posterous.
Use it as a blog
If you don’t need the plugins and customisation options of a mature blogging platform like Wordpress, Posterous can easily act as your blog. Being able to easily publish posts with rich media via email from anywhere makes it simple to run a blog without worrying about the admin side of blogging. You can even run it as a multi-author blog by allowing other people’s email addresses to be able to post to your account
If you want to move your existing blog to Posterous, that’s easy too. There’s a simple import option to get all your existing posts ported over. If you already have a domain name, that can be set to point at your Posterous account.
Use it to update your existing blog
If you can’t bring yourself to give up your existing blog, that’s okay. You can use Posterous to easily email posts in to your other blogs. All major blogging platforms are supported.
Use it to post anything almost anywhere
Beyond its easy blogging features, Posterous’ big selling point is that it can share anything via email to a wide range of services. Setting up the services you want to post to is a simple case of entering appropriate details on the Autopost page. Then, by simply sending a photo (for example) to post@posterous.com, or selecting it from a webpage via the Bookmarklet, it could be sent to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and FriendFeed simultaneously, as well as to your Posterous blog. Any tags you added to your post would be picked up by services like Flickr too.
With Autopost to Twitter enabled, it’s easy to use Posterous as an alternative to Twitpic. Many desktop Twitter clients, including Tweetie and Seesmic Desktop, support posting images via Posterous with the added benefit of them going wherever else you’re set up to autopost to.
Of course, sometimes you might only want to post something to one service instead of many. An video might be worth tweeting about but you might not want it on your Youtube account. To handle this, the Bookmarklet has the option to exclude services, while you can specify services you wish to post to via email using different email addresses.
To only post to Twitter, you’d use twitter@posterous.com, for example. To send to a number, but not all, of your services you can use the format twitter+youtube+vimeo@posterous.com to just send to those services. If you have a number of similar accounts, but only want to post to one, that’s covered too. If you have three different blogs but only want to post a picture of a swan to the one called ‘Birdwatching’, you could do that by emailing #birdwatching@posterous.com
To send the picture to only the Birdwatching blog and your Flickr account, you’d use flickr+#birdwatching@posterous.com
Use it to work as a group in private
By setting your Posterous blog as Private and allowing colleagues to post to it, you can use it as a private working environment. Co-workers can use it to email in ideas, images, audio and video for their colleagues to access anywhere and work with. With email subscriptions available, each post can be received by every member of the group without them ever having to log in.
Use it as a podcasting platform
Podcasts can often be difficult to set up. Finding the right host for your audio and uploading each podcast can take a lot of valuable time. With Posterous it’s possible to subscribe to any users’ RSS feed within Apple iTunes. Any audio files you post are then made available as downloadable podcasts.
It can’t get much easier than recording your podcast and sending it as an email attachment. It’s almost certainly the easiest way there is to dip your toe in the world of publishing audio online. The URL you need to subscribe to in iTunes is itpc://YOURUSERNAME.posterous.com/rss
Use it as a ‘Web Scrapbook’
The Bookmarklet makes it really easy to keep a record of things you like from around the web in one place. For example, graphic designers could keep examples of others’ work on their blog (either publicly or privately) as inspiration for the future. Researchers could keep useful articles all in one place. The ability to crosspost these clippings to your Delicious bookmarks adds even more value to this idea.
Keep track of who’s visiting your Posterous blog
Google Analytics is fully supported by Posterous. Just set up a Google Analytics account then head to your account’s set up page to get started.
Conclusion
Posterous is a flexible tool that is developing fast. Customisations via themes and premium features for those willing to pay are among the improvements planned for the future.
Florida man blames cat for downloading child pornography
from www.guardian.co.uk
Ref : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2009/aug/07/cat-download-child-pornography
Ref : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2009/aug/07/cat-download-child-pornography
Don't let your eyes deceive you. This sweet-looking fellow could be capable of downloading pornography. Stew Milne/AP
Dogs have been blamed for eating homework - now a Florida man says his cat downloaded child pornography.
Police are charging Keith Griffin of Jensen Beach, Florida with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after finding more than 1,000 images on his personal computer.
Griffin told police he had been downloading music, and that his cat jumped on the keyboard when he left the room. He said "strange things" appeared on the computer when he returned.
He is being held in Martin county jail on $250,000 bond. No word on any charges against the cat.
• This article was amended on Monday 10 August 2009. The headline was changed.
Choices, Careers and Livelihoods « Fighting for Freedom
from kishoreathrasseri.wordpress.com
Ref : http://kishoreathrasseri.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/choices-careers-and-livelihoods/
Ref : http://kishoreathrasseri.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/choices-careers-and-livelihoods/
My seventh semester is underway, and I feel this is a good time to write about this, as companies have just started visiting the campus for recruitment and most of my friends are eagerly writing the tests and facing the interviews amid fears that campus placements could be seriously down this year, due to the recession.
The fact that I'm not putting myself up as well, with a "FOR HIRE" board, seems astonishing and hard to digest, for most. It has invoked countless enquiries as to what my future plans are. When I tell them that I have no real concrete plans, though I may do a post grad, they are perplexed and exclaim that I could have at least appeared for the placements just to be "secure". Secure from what? The vacuum created by the loss of an address that defined your life for the past four years perhaps, as a job would give you a new one? And what kind of security? The promise that some company will buy your time and skills and give you lots of money in exchange?
I've been often reminded of the fact that I would need money to live (strangely, something which most people feel that I'm oblivious to). But there is a difference between making money to live, and living to make money. I have never been attracted by the prospect of making a lot of money. As Henry David Thoreau said, "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone". On the other hand, I think I know why people generally are obsessed with making money to such an extent that it is the central concern in their lives (of course, a small fraction of the people are lucky and get to work on things which they are really passionate about, but this is a minority).
The urge to earn more and more money, is ultimately down to a deep insecurity regarding one's own survival (and other comforts to a lesser extent). Obviously, in today's society and economy with specialized divisions of labour, none of us have any survival value. (That we take pride in this condition and consider it to be a sign of progress seems incredible to me, but that is the topic for another post). For example, a software engineer knows only how to code, and if his company goes bust, he doesn't have the skills or resources to earn a living off the land. So his obvious concern would be to earn as much money as possible, so that he is "safe". The more specialized the division of labour, the deeper is this insecurity.
Like Christopher McCandless says in Into the Wild, "Careers are twentieth century inventions". For the most of us, doing this work or that doesn't make much difference if we get the money we need to support our families and lead a good life. Indeed, this makes a lot of sense. In fact, what people want is a livelihood and not a career. It is unfortunate that in our times, you invariably need to take up a career offered by an institution to earn a livelihood, and the difference between them has become almost imperceptible. I can't imagine the Kalahari bushmen leading careers in picking berries. It's just something they do for their livelihood.
Now I'll tell you why I don't like modern "careers". It is a rat race out there to earn as much money as possible to "secure" oneself. In fact, people struggle too much just to stay alive. Some of the things you put into your work in exchange for wages, are simply invaluable and irreplacable. Each one of us might be aware that every decision and choice we make, is a tradeoff. When we choose something, we inevitably have to forego something else. And for me, taking up a career is a huge tradeoff, one that is almost unacceptable.
First, the amount of Time, Energy and Health that one has to put into a career. Any anthropologist would tell you that ours is the most laborious lifestyle ever developed on this planet. No other creature has to work so much just to stay alive. Nor did humans for a few million years, nor do the few tribal people who have survived. I accept that I cannot just jump off our culture at will, but what I can do is to reassess my actual needs, (as opposed to imagined needs and fear of future needs) and work only so much as to fulfil them, instead of sacrificing myself for earning money and then wondering what to do with it.
Another thing that is compromised, I feel, is Freedom. It is a word that is often used in misleading ways. For example, you often hear that when you get a job, you get economic freedom and independence. What the speaker probably means is that you no longer have to depend on your parents for your livelihood. But as I see it, a job just transfers your dependence(at least in modern economies with specialized division of labour) from your parents to the company and the wider economic structure without which your job wouldn't exist. So that's why I feel that taking up a career means compromising one's freedom to a large extent. Again I realize that I can perhaps never be completely independent of the global economy, but I can experiment with alternative ways of living that would minimize the dependence.
To quote Thoreau once again, "The price of anything is the amount of what I call life, that you exchange for it". So taking up a career is indeed a costly affair. If I reject a particular career, it is because I roughly realize the terms of the trade off and find them unacceptable. It is actually because I feel there is something to be gained by searching for alternative ways of living, and not down to frustration or indifference or prejudice. Of course, this is another trade off, where I'm compromising social "security" for other things which, obviously, I personally consider dearer.
It is one thing to know all this, and quite another to actually experiment with one's life. That's why I admire people like Gandhiji and Thoreau so much. I don't really know what I'll end up doing, but I am damn sure that what I'd like to do is to find my own path, however dense and unforgiving the undergrowth seems, and not to follow the beaten road, "secure" and "promising". It doesn't really matter how long the path runs or where it leads, as ultimately it is the journey itself that is important and fulfilling.
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