Why Nano?

The entire portal has been built on open source technologies, involving minimum investment, following the essence of the Nano – low cost, but high technology.

Blog/Homepage

Association with organizations/ academic institutions

Publications

Mailing Lists

Misc references

A regular search result is a unorganized list of pages from all the above categories. I see that the mailing lists take precedence, which is not surprising. On the whole, I find it all messy.

The larger issue here is the ineffectiveness of search engines when it comes to informational queries (compared to navigational queries). An evaluation conducted by Prof. Bing Liu shows that Google fairs just a wee-little better than Yahoo! and MSN Live. In this context, I found kosmix‘s approach very promising. They call it a vertical search. They organize the results into categories, like a homepage. Ah well, some day they should be ‘tags’ and not ‘categories’ maybe. That would be a great feature next feature for Google.

Combine ideas such as those of Prof. Luis von Ahn’s  on using CAPTCHAs and games to solve computing problems with social networks and one can achieve viral computing!

Though a superhero, Bruce Schneier disdanes the use of a mask or secret identity as ‘security through obscurity’.

Found that on the web somewhere. It’s so funny. To give a little context, Bruce Schneier is crypto and computer security guy. Security through obscurity is the school of thought that systems which are closed/black boxes are secure because people don’t know enough about it to hack. This is generally considered a very weak argument by the security community.

The documentary explores the failings of the health care system in the US and the increasing shift of interest from the citizens to the insurance companies. He contrasts this with the socialized health care systems in Canada, UK and France — showing they are not a failure. And as always, he ends it with a brilliant plot (won’t spoil that for you).

All the world’s a daze
And all the men and women merely pray-ers;
They have their triumphs and their tribulations
And one man in his time passes many phases
His madness maturing in seven stages. At first the irritant,
Quick and cutting, caring of no harm;
Then the irritated, with his temper
And frowning face, fumes around like a furnace
Unpleasantly in space. And then the presumptuous,
Aloof and assuming, with a tall list
Made of his discontents. Then the quick-tempered
Full of strange contentions, and a sword at hand
Extra hard on honour, strong and quick in self-defense,
Seeking the bubble reprisal
Even on a peaceful ground. And then an overt good-humoured,
Taking at ease, all things around
With new attitude to build the fair himself
Full of readiness to push and fall;
And so he passes this phase. The sixth phase shifts
Into the passive and dispassionate priest,
With an unassuming facade and welcoming stance
His hard-learnt rationale, well sav’d, a world too conflicting
For his sunked temperament, and with his accepted axioms,
Turning again into inconclusives, smiles
And smirks at his indiscretion. Not last of all (hopefully),
That follows this estranging phase,
Is the urge to turn mad in the literal sense;
Sans reason, sans rationale, sans r’epertoir, sans everything.

From Wikipedia -
In general, the American dream can be defined as being the opportunity and freedom for all citizens to achieve their goals and become rich and famous if only they work hard enough.

I was at a talk on intellectual property. In the context of a company owning the ideas of its employees, this is a part of the dialog that transpired between a student and a professor of law.

Student: So, if I have a great idea why should I work for a big company and give it away to them?

Prof: Because u need their resources and infrastructure for your research. Of course, if you are from the dot com era, u might just need a laptop. Go buy one and work at home by yourself.
Student: But that is ridiculous. It means that I will have to work 9 to 5 in my office for a living, come home and work on my great idea at night. When it’s mature, quit the company, wait for a while and come out with it. What about my family and kids? When will I spend time with them?

Prof: [Smirks] Yeah, we used to call this ‘the american dream’.

Not to talk of how heart-broken the student looked!

So, the american dream is more inclined to foster corporates? Generally speaking, isn’t that the socio-economic structure of a majority of the societies? Can it be any other way? Can an artist/creator own his creation?

I have hope that publishing houses and recoding companies be history some day. But what about the more fundamental economic protocols?

I’ll call myself God from today, coz I think that someday I’ll be omnipotent!

This is an unsourced quote, commonly attributed to Stalin. When raising funds during the world war, Stalin is said to have advised that the one should talk of the individual stories of Russian soldiers. Quoting numbers will not have the same pyschological impact.  Extremely insightful! Call it the art of persuasion a leader should have.

“It is easier to be God – u only have to help those who help themselves.”

An improved, rather next version of this reasoning -

“It is easiest to be God – u only have to wait for people to help themselves and take credit for it.”