Is there a virtue in poverty!

April 18, 2004 · Filed Under General · Comment 

One of the strikingly down-to-earth statements of Robert T. Kiyosaki in his bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money….. is that parents tend to brainwash their children that being poor has a virtue in it and that it is a sin to be rich! What a pity!!

In my boyhood days all the moral science books and stories invariably portrayed the poor as the very embodiment of virtues and the rich and affluent as villains of the piece, all vices personified! Another fallacy that we were fed with is that all riches are ill-gooten. It was as if poverty is the “equilibirium status” as it were, and that gathering riches in a grave sin. The stories exhorted us to lead a spartan life, sacrifice personal creature comforts (without any cause!) since the poor are God’s children! What a tomfoolery! The person who wrote such books would have sold the copy to the highest bidder and and marketed them with vigour to gather as much money as possible. It is rank hypocracy to negate the natural urges to own and enjoy. Ok, even discounting over-indulgence and hedonism, one has to possess enough to live in this manifested world. Look at the so called “seers” and “mantrics” and “tantriks” - they invariably wear spectacles to correct their vision or apply hair-dye to give a “face-lift”. They need these worldly things in order to draw a crowd to listen to them so that they can dwell at length on the virtues of renouncing attachment towards worldly pleasures!!

It is high time the children are told right things at the right formative years so that they do not end up trudging along in their life “working for money”, rather than “making money work for them”!
Let us stop existing and start living!

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Collateral damage!

April 16, 2004 · Filed Under Techno-Bab · Comment 

In the course of internet’s war on unsolicited spam - the ultimate buccaneer of the internet (at least of the ubiquitous e-mail system), one of the most popular and useful online tools viz: e-Mail lists, is increasingly facing collateral damage!

There are already bounced messages galore, filtered out by the spam killers with ultra-paranoid settings! But it is difficult to write off the email lists so early since they play a significant role in dissemination of information especially in technology-related matters, in addition to being the only source for specific interest groups to exchange information over geographically distributed members at a very low cost, say, at $zilch!

But you can’t blame the folks who put on a clam sentinel on to their inboxes. Just look at the avalanches of spam cluttering mailboxes with penis enlargement blandishments, Viagra advertisements and XXX photos, not to speak of the bonanza from the tainted legacies of enigmatic African ex-dictators.

The alternative is RSS feeds. Already many free agregators have spawned like FastBuzz. You can get to know more about RSS feeds from this article in Sitepoint.com. This blog too is rendered in RSS format. You can aggregate it by adding the XML link provided on the right side bar (with an RSS logo).

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Embrace, Extend and Exterminate!

April 9, 2004 · Filed Under General · Comment 

With the chief adversary Sun neutralized for $1.95 Billion, there is no tangible impediment to the MS juggernaut to rule over the entire cyber world, software, standards, et al!

But what goes up must come down, claim the pundits and soothsayers. Here is one such prophesy from the irresistible Bob, who predicts that suicide is the only way the empire can end!

You can read it here

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Gobbledygooks!

April 4, 2004 · Filed Under General · Comment 

Jungle.com was asked a simple question – Do you still sell blank CDs? Instead of simply saying ‘No’, the company replied:

‘We are currently in the process of consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more mainstream suppliers.’

This along with many such gems had been selected by the Plain English Campaign for Golden Bull Awards for 2003’s worst examples of gobbledygook.

Here is the pièce de résistance:

‘In these Regulations, unless the context otherwise requires, any reference to a numbered regulation is a reference to the regulation bearing that number in these regulations and any reference in a regulation to a numbered paragraph is a reference to the paragraph of that regulation bearing that number.’

You can have the whole list here!

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