Netpiler

Youtube - who is this you anyway?

2010-05-23T01:09:00.000-07:00

The Great American wall

2010-04-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

The great state of Arizona is more intent to stop Mexican immigrants from entering the US of A. Come to think of it, its rather surprising how the land that once belonged to the native Americans is now foreign land (majority of Mexicans are descendants of Native Americans).

Its once again survival of the fittest. The native Americans should have had such strong laws about immigration in the first place, that would have ensured their descendants a proper place in todays world. Is this legal, of course as the laws are made to suit those is power. But is it right? of course its right, at least if you believe in survival of the fittest philosophy.

"I am not a skinhead, am just bald"

2010-04-11T09:37:00.001-07:00

"I am not a skinhead, am just bald"

Australian police commissioner overland.

"He is our best Nuclear safety Engineer, he will ensure your safety."

2010-04-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

"He is our best Nuclear safety Engineer, he will ensure your safety."

Nuke security meet

Continentalism - the next wave?

2010-04-11T05:55:00.000-07:00

People in the ancient past lived by loyalty to their king/queen or local ruler. With better communication and trade between cities the differences between the cities started to reduce, giving rise to nationalism. The growth of Nationalism made the people aware of the national loyalty rather than loyalty to a person. With the growing globalization, the differences between people are reducing.

Europe is getting into a union even if just economic in nature. There has also been thoughts of Newzealand joining Australia to form Newstralia. We cant deny the fact that people have even dreamed of uniting Canada with the United States.

May be George orwells idea of mega nations might come true in a not too distant future. But hopefully they will not be at war as it happens in 1984. The idea of different countires in a continent which have same political, religious and ecomic standing coming together is not difficult to understand. Its just nationalism at a bigger scale. May be the world is getting ready for continentalism?

Gmail - increasing the digital divide?

2010-04-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

If you try singing up for new gmail account you may be asked to give your telephone number. Yes its mandatory to have a telephone to have a gmail account. Check out the FAQ google has put up.

May be the super intelligent rich google engineers have failed to realize that many poor people in third world nations dont have telephones and depend on gmail for all communication or they just dont give a dime for the third world. Whatever the reason, it seems the digital divide is just going to get a little bit bigger thanks to the great google and its policies which will no doubt be copied by most other free email serice providers.

The next discriminaotry step would probably be stopping gmail services to third world countries. After all why do the starving third worlders like us need finer things in life like email or blogging?

When will the French ban wearing clothes?

2010-03-30T11:41:00.001-07:00

There has been tremendous opposition to the Islamic Veil in not only France, but all across Europe. It has been rejected on various grounds ranging from security concerns to equality for women. Partial bans have been considered inadequate as they dont seem to fill the security gap.

If the question is just about security concerns or equality for Women, why was a ban imposed on "burkini" swim? How could a women swimming in a pool be a security concern? how does woman wanting to swim with her clothes unequal?

Once again its very evident that Europe is not a melting pot, but rather the same old Christian kingdom. Its a long way from accepting cultures other than there own. If tomorrow the french decide that its against their culture to wear clothes, would they ask everybody in France to roam naked?

It has been argued that the French are just implementing the opposite of whats in force in the middle east. This seems to further add to the notion that the Europeans have the same sense of freedom and equality as the middle east. It seems the French have forgotten the principles of freedom that they owed to defend in the French revolution.

The world without US - propaganda?

2010-03-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

I saw a documentary about the disasters the world would face if WE stopped interfering with world affairs. Its very ironically named "The world without US", emphasizing the fact that we consider ourselves the center of the world.

The movie goes on to show Europe in bad light for not having done anything to stop the carnage in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. Typical of any propaganda movie, it tries to shift the blame on others than to show the facts as they are.

Japan is accused of using the US navy for its defense when it could pay for its own defense. But the movie very cleverly ignores the fact that, it was the US which destroyed the Japanese navy, dropped not one but two atom bombs on the small island before occupying the bases that now serve as American bases. The "documentary" also fails to mention the fact that Japanese are actually paying the Americans for the service of being occupied. The Japanese are not keen on the Americans staying, but thats not the picture painted in the movie.

The movie further goes on to show clippings from communist propaganda movies, which seems a bit out of place. Taiwan is shown in the ruins of a nuclear war due to the lack of American intervention. How much of it is truth? With very clear indications of a typical propaganda material, the documentary tries desperately to rectify the image of America in the eyes of the world.

Automysophobia - does taking a shower help?

2009-12-12T16:31:00.000-08:00

Automysophobia is the fear of being dirty or being perceived as dirty. Its a psychological condition in which a person is afraid of being dirty or afraid of being perceived as dirty.

How to overcome Automysophobia?

Ya the obvious way is to convince the mind to become calm and realise that its an irrational fear and be done with it. However, fear is fear as it is irrational.

So can taking a shower for example, provide any relief? It may in some cases reduce the feeling of being dirty. Please note that if you are scared of the germs that will come with the water, showering may not be a good option. 9 out of 10, taking a shower does really help overcome the fear.
Changing into new clothes can be helpful if the clothes have become soiled or if u atleast feel that they are soiled.
Brushing your teeth and rinsing your mouth can provide a feeling of new found cleanliness
Cutting nails, shaving etc can also provide benefits.
More important than these steps is to remember that none of these steps are overdone. Taking bath 15 times a day will suerly increase the problem rather than reduce it.

If you still feel dirty, inner cleansing methods that purify and calm the mind can also be tried. These methods could be meditation or even sleep.

Find graves online - no its not a cyber graveyard

2009-12-08T04:32:00.000-08:00

For those of who you who would like to visit the graves of the famous and notorious, the need to find graves is over. Find a grave provides an easy to use web 2.0 model site for finding and adding graves.

If you wanted Bonnie of the Bonnie and Clyde, you can find the grave details in the site. If fame and notoriety don't int rest you, the site has the details about various war heroes and even ordinary people.

Tracing family history through the site is made easier. Its like integrating the graveyard records from all over the world. Far from being just a database of grave details, the site allows one to leave flowers at the grave without actually having to visit the grave yard.

Blogosphere-stop four

2009-12-06T16:37:00.000-08:00

The journey around the blogosphere had landed us at the blog of Carl Futia, who is a consulatant and author of a book on Contrarian Trading.

Try as much as i may, i cant find even a single link leading away from his blog. Even the comments are by profiles that are blocked. So i have reached a dead end of the internet. A oneway street if you will.

Chinese spam - why would they do it to me?

2009-12-06T16:29:00.000-08:00

If you see the comments on my last post, you will see that i am being bombarded by chinese spam. What are they trying to do?

I dont understand chinese, so suerly they wont get any benefit out of that.
They would be better of spamming chinese sites rather than a site with 100% english content.
Randomly targetting a site should also have some logic.

So if you are the chinese guy, who is spamming me. stop it. :)

If its japanese spam and not chinese replace chinese with japanese in all the above. Both look the same.

India at world solar challenge

2007-08-01T01:52:00.000-07:00

The World Solar Challenge is a biennial event based on a competitive field of solar cars crossing the Australian continent powered by nothing but the sun.

As the fossil fuels are exhausted, the fuel cost is increasing drastically. Thus, the need to use alternative sources of energy is of utmost importance. For a country like India, the need for such initiatives is imperative due to its economic situation. The present rate of growth can be sustained only with innovations in the field of alternative energy.

India is being represented by "Team Solaris" with car number-95 in Challenge class. Its great to know that a team from Delhi College of engineering is in the race with teams from all over the world.

Lets wish team solaris all the best for the panasonic world solar challenge which is to take place in the month of October.

Orkut closed for maintenance

2007-07-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

Have you ever caught Orkut when they are doing maintenance? It looks like i did..The error message that i got is shown below.

The site however, was accessible just a minute later. I wonder if it is a result of increased traffic or other maintenance work.

Askreamaor write about windows and linux

2007-07-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

Askreamaor writes a blog about windows and linux.
He writes posts about diverse topics ranging from firefox to SEO. He even wrote some stuff about exploiting digg(buy-yourself-to-the-top).

He has just now stated a competition to increase the popularity of his blog. To know more just see the Contest information and Rules page.

Very recently he had gotten into a lot of controversy after writing about the things he is tired of hearing from linux users. But actually he was writing about the other operating systems as well.

Make sure that you check all the stuff he has written about geekism. He has also started of many different sections on topics like search engines, firefox browser, SEO and internet just to mention a few.

Things u will need for world domination

2007-06-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

In case you are planning on becoming the sole king or presidente of the whole world, you will be needing the following things

A secret island hideout
A weapon of mass destruction or some new secret weapon
A peculiar characteristic such as a inimitable laugh
At least one follower who agrees to everything you have to say
A very interesting costume to wear
A arch rival with lot of "Hero" like attributes
A scientist whom you can kidnap (not compulsory)
A self destruct button for your island hideout. This should be the first thing you need to put after making your island hideout.

But i really hope for your sake that you are not trying to get control of the whole world. As it generally leads to your own defeat.

Pacman on google homepage

2007-06-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

The arcade game Pacman has come onto google homepage as well. After finishing the game you get the chance to put up your high score. The score can be compared with the top scorers from around the world playing Pacman on google homepage.

The game can also be played on a poped out window. The game can also be put on your website as any other google gadget or module can be added. Just goto to Pacman search results and add any of the many pacman games.Its a flash game in a module. It would be great if it was made using javascript.

The four main modules for pacman are PacMan v2.4, PacMan, PacXon v1.0 and Pacman.All the four are worth playing. The game is as addictive as it was when you played it the first time.

The games are by and large ad free, except for PacMan.For more variety in the game try PacXon v1.0.

So Get ready! and start eating the dots.

Is web2.0 just read write web or more?

2007-06-09T19:34:00.000-07:00

Although there is a controversy surrounding this word..(some consider it to be just a marketing buzzword) most wold agree that web 2.0 can be used to refer to the shift of the internet towards a read/write approach. Wiki's and blogs would top the list of web 2.0 sites. customised search, content sharing would also be covered by this definition.

The small changes that became popular with web 2.0 are forgotten in this confusion. The way URL's are made has been fundamentally changed.The two main changes are-

The URL contains the year and month of publication. Blogger is a good example for sites that use URL's of the type "http://www.xyz.com/2007/06/hello-world.html"
The URL is a single word tag. The various tagging services have popularized the idea of having the tag as the folder name. For example, we would have "http://xyz.com/blog" which lists all the content related to the word blog.Even wikipedia follows this method.

This trend seems to make the URL's more organised and easier to understand than using numbers and abbreviation.

Blogosphere-stop three

2007-06-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

Wolfstone has to say he is a "university student in Vancouver, Canada, who recently discovered the world of investing. Since i invest mostly in micro cap resource stocks, this blog will focus on covering news and analysis regarding resources with a dash of fun."

from the blog roll of wolfstone we find the next link to carlfutia

The blogosphere that we have followed had one blog about advertising, followed by two about investment. Its yet to be seen if the blogopshere is made up of little pockets of similar blogs or diverse topics interacting together.

5 creatures that prowl the Internet

2007-06-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

These creatures prowl the world wide web for various reasons.

Spider- web crawler (also known as a Web spider or Web robot) is in search of information.
Worm- a computer worm is a self-replicating computer program.
Virus-A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user
Bots- Internet bots, also known as web robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the internet.
Humans of course.

Blogosphere-stop two

2007-06-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

I continue my journey Around the blogosphere further. I found the next link to follow at Andydang, it was in the recent comments section. So the journey proceeds from a blog about

"Andy Dang, a student at Cal State Fullerton. In the process of designing, printing, marketing, and selling his own branded T-Shirts. His goal and the reason behind this entire blog is to sell One Million Shirts! Laugh and cry with him through his endeavors!"

to the blog of Wolf Stone.

May the almighty give Netpiler the courage to sail across the blogosphere and find if the blogosphere is flat or spherical..

Why spam is called spam?

2007-06-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

We come across spam everyday in various forms ranging from the common e-mail spam to search engine spam, comment spam, link spam and what not.Why do we actually call spam as spam?

"Spam" is actually a trademark of Hormel food corporation. It refers to a type of canned precooked meat produced by them. Spam was one of the few meat products that was not rationed by the British during world war II. It was the only food that was easily available to the British.

Monty Python used this in their play, the greasy spoon cafe had dishes containing one or more portions of spam. The repetition of e-mail messages is similar to the repetition of the same dish. Thus, the word "spam" is used to refer to bulk unsolicited e-mail. The word spam has also refers to other types of bulk and unsolicited input, generally done by bots. The popularity of the word in relation to the e-mail has grown so much that, spam recipes have to be advertised on the spam box of gmail.

"SPAM SKILLET CASSEROLE" has to advertised along with other spam recipes on the spam box of gmail..due to the popularity of the word spam.

Pocket tanks-winner

2007-06-07T06:33:00.001-07:00

The pocket tanks game is fun to play, even after palying a 100 games.

The simplicity of the game is what makes it so appealing. Just set the angle and power. Press the FIRE button.

With a very broad range of weapons to use, its fun just to see the firework display. The game has options to play one on one or against the computer.

The AI of the computer can be changed by changing the difficulty level.The weapon to use at a time can also selected from the set of weapons. Every time a tank is hit, the opposite side gets points and the tank that is hit looses points. The dirt ball weapon is useful to cover up the enemy tank and prevent him from firing.

Happy gaming..you can get the game at their official site.

Around the blogosphere

2007-06-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

The word "blogosphere"is used rather casually to refer to the blogging community. But is the "blogo-sphere" really spherical?

Although blogosphere can actually be interpreted as "world" of blogs, i would like to know whether the blogosphere is really spherical. The spherical nature can be verified only by going round the sphere--right?

The trackbacks, blogrolls, comments,links in the main blog posts are the path to traverse. These links are the route that has to be followed. So if the blogosphere is spherical, i will end up at the same place at which i started after "some" finite time by following such a route.

I have decided to go round the blogosphere, just to find out if it is spherical. So journey begins...

But to reach any destination we have to follow some sense of direction. I plan to follow the following rules to find if the blogosphere is spherical.

I will avoid going to the same blog twice.(it would mean i am going in circles)
To prove that i visited a blog i will leave a comment on that blog. (if somebody thinks i am a freak trying to spam a blogs comments-i will just have to go back and start from the place where my last comment was accepted.)
I will choose a link to follow at random.(only condition is it should be a blog)

My blog seems to be a good place to start..I was going through the blog and found "Andy Dang" in my comments. So the next stop is Andy Dang.

Evil turns good

2007-06-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

The recent popularity of Harry potter books signifies a break from the popular belief held in the Post-Christian European cultures. We have come a long way from the days when anybody suspected of witchcraft was burned alive to hero worshiping the same wizards.

The sequel pirates of the Caribbean went along way in painting more acceptable picture of the pirates.The pirates have come to be accepted as the "good guys" from being the "bad guys" in the movies.

Does this suggest a tendency we as a people are developing to admire the evil or is just the end of European influence on popularity?

Both the pirates and the witch's are held as evil in the European context. With a change in the cultural context the witch and the pirate can be seen as more sane creatures. As the globe shrinks, we develop a more unified culture which reflects what was good in every group. The pirates were cruel merciless robbers but the society wants to appreciate the bravery and skill in them.