Ugliest Website of All Time

Who wants to see the ugliest website of all time? And it needs additional plugins to display all the media on this page. And it is, I think, about wedding gowns.

 

My eyes!! My eyes!!

Article on Security

I hate to make this a blog where I drop in links from around the world and feel happy at having put something on it. I definitely wouldnt want to do that. Anyways, came across this link on email today.

If you are reading it, dont read it as the six dumbest ideas in Computer Security. Rather read it as the One reason why Computer Security is all screwed up. The first one. Most of the others are a form of the same idea. Read about the description of Default Permit strategy. Think about it.

That is probably one of the biggest things that is causing havoc with having to run an ever-losing race with vulnarabilities, hacks and other evil in the networked world.

And to think all one had to do was ask

-- ravi

Books et al

I have kind of caught the reading bug again. Have been reading a bit recently. Well, nothing to the levels I used to as a kid, but decent neverthless. The current one is called In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by a guy called John Gribbin. I think I really want to read the book twice. If not anything it will be something I can talk to unsuspecting friends about quantum physics. <evil grin>

Also have been reading another landmark series - The Dune series written by Frank Herbert. I have read the six books of the main series. Additionally I have read three of the preludes written by Frank's son, Brian Herbert. One day I will sit down to put together a perspective on the books.

Remind me,
-- ravi

GMail: A First Look

I am sure that it would be very different for someone like me, who has been desperately looking forward to have a dekko at GMail to give anything other than a positive first view of GMail. So I sat over it a full weekend, and I still feel the same about it. So here is my review of GMail. This in fact is one of my first full fledged reviews.

gee mailing away,

- GMail <> Gnu Mail?

GMail

This is todally wonderful. They actually said that I was an active user of blogger. Wonder how they found that out. Read news that this beta was now being opened for blogger users. Was disappointed when I came here the last time and did not figure out how to do it. Anyways, now that I am in, feels totally wonderful.
I dont know what it is about technology that gives me the shivers. Have been feeling hopelessly cold the last few minutes, because the excitement has still to settle in. Whopeee! I am Betaing for GMail...

The first reports of GMail rolling in. Using it for a few minutes, the the single most important feature is the simplicity of the interface - almost austure. No more options to sort by this and that. No more complicated interfaces to to deal with the various sort options you use to view messages by. There are just three elements - the mail, the message group it belongs to and the time it was sent. Period. Nothing else matters.

Have exchanged almost 11 mails till now and I have just four items in my inbox. One of that is a set of conversations with 8 different mails in it. So this is their famed feature of message grouping. Also, there is no complicated viewing of the mails possible - grouping order is just based on time and nothing else. Virtually no views of threading are possible as of now. Dont know if that is a good thing or not. Will tell you later. The interface for viewing the grouped conversation is also interesting. More about it in a more structured Beta Report. Will do it over the weekend.

Second most important item as far as first looks is concerned. The mail is blindingly fast. As fast as google. Imagine what that is going to do to your view of the Internet. Keep imagining, will get back to it later.

As I said - will come back with a full report during the weekend. However the reason I am writing this is to link to my site and increase the number of pages linking to it. Seems www.anarchius.org is not being linked by enough sites for it to be spidered. Will change it. Also keeping track of all that I am doing to get it onto the google index. Will keep you updated on that too.

warm regards,

- anarchy

www.anarchius.org

Nothing works like praise... does it?

Check this out. I am sure a lot of you know about dmoz right? In their own words, it is the largest human-edited directory on the web. Which mean, in simple words, that people, not machines or algorithms, make the entries in this directory. Which also means that quality, has no proxies in this directory. What people feel they say. This is what dmoz says about this blog - "It will be intelligent, and it will make you think."

I have been smiling like an idiot ever since. And know what, I am going to be back - with a vengence now.

There is actually someone out there, who took the time out to read my blog, and put in a kind (read awesome) word for me. Well, this is how praise starved idiots react I guess.

I sure hope I can live up to that - "It will be intelligent, and it will make you think."

GAWD

Bring forth the end of the post for the season begs to end.

Wish you a happy new year - 2004

- ravi

User Interfaces

Gawd, I _*HAD*_ to post this.

check this out for the best in User Interfaces.

we aim to please

- ravikiran n.

another link

I had to blog this for future reference. This is a story that talks about the origin of Murphy's Laws. Considering that I have quite an affinity for these laws, I am sure I will remember to check this out one day in the future.

And no further update on the site yet. Dunno when I am going to get any response on it.

hope dyeth not

~!nrk

Talking about Sites

I thought I will put this in print.

Well, is there a site I like more than Slashdot? Yeah there is. It is called ArsTechnica. What makes this so special is the fact that this site does not give only news. It talks tech, smells tech and looks tech. And with a tremendous signal to noise ratio - better and more than any site, encyclopedias included.

Gawd it rawks,

~!nrk

Today's Weird Site

Well, todays weird site is this one. I love this kind of history. And the Internet is full of stuff like this. Spend time on it dude, and you will know what I am talking about.

Will put up more stuff as and when I come across it.

warm regards and stuff like that,

~!nrk

Listen!

Day before yesterday, I bought this. For those of you who dont want to click or dont have the internet attached to your internet connection, that is a Creative Inspire 2500 2.1 speaker set.

A 2.1 Speaker is 2 satellite speakers and one subwoofer. The power is about 17+6+6 watts RMS. But that is the last thing i care about. The quality is brilliant!!

I had another set of speakers that were also from Creative, but of the SoundWorks category. Now I used to think this was the best ones. But somehow, they seemed as if they were kinda screechy. Somehow high on the tweeters. But with this, the sound is a lot more clearer. The highs and lows are very very well balanced. I dont think I am an audiophile, but this sounds a lot better than the one I had earlier.

scream, with speakers that are well balanced.

~!nrk

w00t

Ever read the jargon file? I think you should. It is a window into some of the most inventive of human intellect. And no, you dont really have to understand everything that is written on those pages. That is not the reason for reading them. The idea is to just skim them and read on, just to find ideas and thoughts that are truly unique in their own right.

Guess I am blabbering right now. Just wanted to remind myself to read this so wrote this in.

H.A.N.D

~!nrk

I am Jack's Brilliance.

What is in a mind? What is it that differentiates one mind from the other. I have Artificial Neural Networks as a course this term. And they tell me it is all in the weights.

Let me elaborate. Artificial Neural Networks work like this. Inside your head are tiny little orange balls called neurons. There are a number of these things in your head, millions of them. And they are connected to each other to form a network. These connections help in "learning". What basically happens is that every new situation is an input to the network. And with each new input, the neurons "learn" the input and reconfigure themselves. This happens over time, and hence people grow wiser as they gain experience.

So, essentially, it all boils down to two things

• the way learning happens with each new input
• how much of these inputs are provided

Now my arguments goes like this. It is tempting to assume that the human learning differs from each other in the learning function used. But this may not be the truth because, if there were different learning rates and learning methods, and some were better than the other, Mr. Darwin and his theory would have ensured that the best remain while the others would die. In fact this would also mean that the child would always be more "brilliant" than the father and so on. But clearly this is not the case.

Hence the case for the other idea. That what actually differs from person to person is the inputs given. "Hold on...", you will be saying, "moron, all people live in the same world, how can each persons input be different from the others". My answer is simple. People do not live in the same world. Each person lives in his/her perception of the world. And this is what makes the difference.

Here I want to define a term - Sphere of Perception. It is that selected inputs that are filtered from the various inputs, and fed into your learning network. It in essence captures what you see the world as, and what you would like to learn from. We will understand it more as we go along. But one final clincher. Remember, how the big talk always asked you to see the truth, and gain enlightenment? Well, that proves my point. The constant struggle of man should be just for one thing. To gain enlightenment - by expanding and extending one's sphere of perception.

I have to Submit an assignment in ANN tomorrow. Doesnt seem as if I will be able to make the deadline. Lets see how it goes.

Perception IS the reality, all else is an ILLUSION.

~!nrk