With 882 stations on 14 lines, Tokyo’s amazing subway system is one of the largest — and busiest — in all the world. The system map is a twisted mass of squiggles that resembles a Jackson Pollack painting, and conditions on its trains give new meaning to the word “crowded.” It all had me more than a little nervous as I headed to Tokyo for a business trip.

Khan, while recalling his contribution to the country, also acknowledged that former premier Benazir Bhutto [Images] gave him permission to “acquire help from China and North Korea” for Pakistan’s missile programme.

Writing a column in the Urdu-language daily ‘Jang’, Khan, who was under house arrest since 2004 after admitting to selling nuclear secrets to countries like North Korea and Libya, had harsh and angry words for Musharraf.

The 72-year-old had earlier accused Musharraf of forcing him to issue a confession on state-run television.

“One of the traitors and foreign agents in the cloak of presidency tried to harm me but could not succeed in his goal and was expelled from the Aiwan-e-Sadr (presidential house),” Khan wrote.

“He himself has been disgraced fully…Now that self-styled commando cannot set foot on the streets of Pakistan for his whole life. If he does, people would tear him into pieces and serve them to crows and kites,” he said.

He also wrote that in 1999, he had made a proposal to Musharraf to launch a satellite but “the dictator” did not accept it. “However, I am proud of the services I made to the country and I provided atomic power to it.”

Rahul Raj was allegedly shot dead for hijacking a double-decker BEST bus, taking the passengers hostage and firing shots inside it, terrorising passengers and staff.

CNN Hologram Interview – Waxy

I started to ask Studs about the pioneering Chicago organizer Saul Alinksy, whose name has been disparaged recently by the Republicans and as soon as he heard that name, he belted out,

At the Hack in the Box conference, held in Malaysia, Peter and Fredrik gave a talk this morning, where they offered some background information on how the site became the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, in a relatively short period of time.

The two, who just turned 30, have a long history of copyright infringement which started back in the ’80’s, with Peter cracking Amiga games and Fredrik copying Commodore64 software. At the time they had never heard of copyright infringement, they were just doing what everybody else did. To the amusement of the audience, Peter said he didn’t think piracy was ‘wrong’ when he was a kid, but now that he’s an adult, he knows it’s not.

We should teach our kids that if he is second in class, don’t study harder.. just beat up the student coming first and throw him out of the school

Parliament should have only Delhiites as it is located in Delhi

Prime-minister, president and all other leaders should only be from Delhi

No Hindi movie should be made in Bombay . Only Marathi.

At every state border, buses, trains, flights should be stopped and staff changed to local men

Many More Points : http://www.desihotmasala.com/2008/10/support-raj-thackeray-superman-of-india.html

Lekota has invited stakeholders to a national convention on November 2 to discuss an electoral alternative to the ANC.

Is it time for a new political force in South Africa? Would an ANC split be a good or bad thing? What lessons would such a split hold for political movements in your country? Send us your views.

It’s business as usual on the sublime, occasionally terrifying Konkani coast.

Tucked along the Arabian Sea on India’s western shore, and located mostly in the tech-centered state of Karnataka, the region has its own language and pace and a seashore that’s largely escaped tourist development. What the region lacks in hotels, travel infrastructure and calm-inducing roads it makes up for in unspoiled, breathtaking sea vistas and an ever-present sense of spirituality.

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

If you quit now, you’re in good company. Notorious chatterbox Jason Calacanis made millions from his Weblogs network. But he flat-out retired his own blog in July. “Blogging is simply too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that drew me to it,” he wrote in his final post.

Impersonal is correct: Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.

Social networking sites may in time change ownership. They and the data stored on them will almost certainly exist longer than their creators. All too often, these profiles serve as online memorials, obituaries, and a last place for loved ones and the general public to honor the dead.

Even as the financial planners assure equities are the best assets for long-term investments, people are actually shifting loyalties to fixed deposits of PSU banks or they are simply sitting on liquid cash.
“Cautious investors have obviously panicked and gone into a shell. The sudden flight from relatively safe liquid funds to fixed deposits is a classic example of panic,” says Swapnil Pawar, financial advisor & director, Park Financial Advisors.

None of the finance related websites managed to breach the top 20 mark though this situation will definitely change when Hitwise release data for October.

We were all warned of this many years ago. When the Clinton administration sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan in reprisal for the attacks on our embassies in East Africa, the missiles missed Osama Bin Ladin but did, if you remember, manage to kill two officers of the ISI. It wasn’t asked loudly enough: What were these men doing in an al-Qaida camp in the first place? In those years, as in earlier ones, almost no tough questions were asked of Pakistan.

Fly Away

An Aids Free World

A Child Dies Every 90 Seconds

Click here for the Survey

Reading the front pages of most serious Indian newspapers can be quite depressing. Even as we have stood on the threshold of breaking through on the economic front, the absence of real political leadership holds us back to a frustratingly large extent. There isn’t much we can do at this point of time – or in the next 5-6 years. But beyond that, we can create a very different Indian political leadership.

(more…)

If you take the time to read the Microsoft EULA it is disturbing to say the least. But I won’t get into that here – many others have bashed this EULA to bits. Notice that there is no option to not accept their terms – you agree, or else… Or else what? I stared at the screen, and decided it was time to take the leap to Linux.

I found an 800 number on the HP website and made Phone Call #1:

PHONE CALL #1 – Saturday, 5/24/2008 – ~5 PM

After talking through the voice-activated menu, I finally got a fellow who identified himself as Jack Marcelo at 5:15 pm. I explained to him why I was calling, and he tried to get all my personal info of which I would only divulge name and phone number. He explained the store warranty was 14 days and I should contact Best Buy to return the laptop and get a refund. I told him I did not want to return the laptop (hardware), just the Windows Vista operating system (software) that came with it. Then I explained again that the EULA for Windows Vista said to contact the manufacturer, presumably HP, for a refund.

He said that HP is bundled with the laptop and they cannot be separated.

He said there are other computers like Compaq that come with Windows XP that I could get instead. I told him again that this is not what I wanted. I turned on my new HP laptop, and read him the license agreement. I told him the EULA says I can be refunded for the software. He said a “case manager” would call me Monday or Tuesday at the latest since they do not work over the weekend.

Tuesday came and went, and I had not heard from HP so I called them:

Screen writer Anjum Rajabali’s first hunt for a home in 1991 took months as he heard the same refrain from real estate brokers: “Sorry Mr Rajabali, no Muslims allowed.”

Hey! What’s Going On? Anyone?

It is a testimony to the contradictory legacy of Pervez Musharraf that his departure from the President’s office in Islamabad should occasion joy in Pakistan but a sense of unease within the Indian establishment.

Last week, two leading op-ed columnists argued that current crisis in Kashmir calls for India to yield to the demands of the separatists, hold a plebiscite and accept the verdict of the Kashmiri people, even if that means secession.

Swaminathan Aiyar comes from a liberal perspective: he dislikes “ruling people against their will” and that “India has sought integration with Kashmir, not colonial rule. But Kashmiris nevertheless demand azaadi. And ruling over those who resent it so strongly for so long is quasi-colonialism, regardless of our intentions.” Vir Sanghvi, on the other hand, takes a cost-benefit approach. He argues that the costs of holding on to Kashmir—in economic and political terms—outweigh the benefits.

At first I thought I should write my own version of Five People You Meet in Heaven. But I am 99.95% certain that I am not going to heaven. Then I thought I should change it to Five People You Meet in Hell. But I don’t want to meet any of my friends and family in Hell. And I most definitely do not want to meet certain other people down there (I am not saying that I don’t want them to be in Hell. I just want them to be in a separate section, far away from me). Plus why waste breath writing about people who bug you.So, I am writing about IT. Although the people I have met can be found in any other industry too.