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Articles in the Tech and Culture Category

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[12 Aug 2006 | No Comment | 44 views]

I hate spam. Everyone does. As if email wasn’t good enough, spammers have also been trying to exploit my blog ever since I started blogging. Luckily, I have a very good Bayesian spam filter called Akismet in place, that filters out all comment spam from my blog. The best part is that I don’t have to use annoying “CAPTCHA” tests like images to distinguish valid comments from spam.
Anyway, since I was taking a break, I decided to analyze where all the spam was coming from. I looked up the IP …

Life and Personal, Tech and Culture »

[10 Aug 2006 | No Comment | 39 views]

As the June 16th edition of the Wall Street Journal so succintly put it, “Genes, not experience, explain why the lives of some take a bad turn”. We are what our genes define us as. There is no going against our genetic code. Genetically engineered customized medications are going to revolutionize the coming decades just as the Internet of the present day.
What we miss while showing appreciation for the Internet is that it is more a victory of data mining than pure computer networking. It’s the actual applications that make …

Life and Personal, Tech and Culture »

[7 Aug 2006 | No Comment | 46 views]

Just how many times have you looked above your seat in an aircraft and wondered why they have those “No Smoking” signs at every row? I know I have! I think the last time I was on a flight that allowed smoking was in 1988. The aircraft had designated sections for smokers in every class, and the sign would go off a few moments after the plane took off.
Well, now days, almost every country has banned smoking in flight, making those signs pretty pointless, and constantly lit. In retrospect, what …

Tech and Culture »

[7 Aug 2006 | No Comment | 42 views]

I am a big fan of developing web services using open source tools and open standards. One of the technologies I have extensively used in the last 5-6 years is J2EE. Backed by Sun Microsystems, it is a great platform to deploy phenomenal server based applications. Of course, there are other up and coming frameworks for developing all sorts of web services, but, holistically speaking, only Java and .NET are mature and active enough to be a universal web development technology.

Economy, India, Life and Personal, Tech and Culture »

[30 Jul 2006 | No Comment | 54 views]

I wuld have probably dropped out. Yes, that’s right! I would have probably dropped out. I was in college during the peak time of the dot-com boom, and there’s no way I would have stayed in college and forgone the great opportunities in the economy back then.
Even in India, I was able to experience the rise of the dot-com era in a very spectacular way, and I am pretty sure that things would have been a lot different for me if I were in the US. Who knows, I could …