User revolt at Digg.com and after thoughts

On May 1, 2007 there was a huge revolt by Digg.com users.

The reason: A story was posted by one of the users which detailed how a HD-DVD security key was cracked. The cracked key was also apart of the Title of the story.

Since Digg.com is favorite for Geeks (and mine too) this quickly came to notice of many users and started getting diggs by the loads. Now, when the HD-DVD company folks got a sniff of the fact that their DRM was cracked, they forwarded a Legal Cease & Desist notice to Digg.com to bring that story down with immediate effect. Fearing a legal lawsuit the Digg.com staff deleted the story without any reason given to the user who posted it.

With this all hell broke loose!

Till this day Digg.com prouded itself to be Democratic site where users decide everything. However, when it brought down this story (which in turn was posted by the user) the million odd users of Digg went berserk. They couldn't take the fact that the Digg staff considered a potential lawsuit threat more important than their freedom to post and digg the stories. As a backlash for the next 24 hours every story on Digg was a variation of the original deleted story and each of this story went ahead to get more than 10, 000 diggs each. This is what I call Badass!

This shows how pissed the users got. The Digg front page was quickly swamped with the HD-DVD stories and nothing else.

I as a big fan & a self confessed neo-Geek was following this saga with morbid fascination. This is the first time I've seen an online revolt at such a unprecedented scale.

This was nearly equivalent to bunch of Shiv-Sena goons storming the Pune electricity board and beating the hell out of electricity board officers for having done a crappy job of providing electricity to the city.(Yeah, I supported this act of Shiv-Sena ! And I'm proud of it)

The saga finally ended when Kevin Rose (founder of Digg) bowed down to peoples demand and resurrected the deleted story . In his blog post he finally agreed that Digg will fight a lawsuit if needed but will not succumb to MPAA copyright crap!

This saga one again strengthens my trust in Democratic society and power of the people.

Freedom has to be defended at any cost! Way to go Diggers!

What do you guys think of this ? So you support my view ? Please comment and let me know.

Pull the match out and its already lit !

Innovation in what? Matchbox design. Yep, innovation is everywhere. Pramthya and Daddu (smokers) are going to love this.

Lucifer matches, a company producing matchboxes has designed a clever matchbox where a matchstick is already lit by the time you pull it out of the matchbox. No need to drag its tip across the rough surface to light it.

Check the picks and visit the link at

http://www.notcot.com/archives/2007/04/lucifer_matches.php

Fantastic example of aesthetic utilitarian art. I love this !

Look at this pic. I discovered while reading BoingBoing. It absolutely startled me as to how uniquely it was designed. It's like a wall decoration and a fruit bowl. This is constructive imagination at its highest.

It took about 10 secs to get this. It's actually a fruit bowl with a hollow ring. Fruits are placed in the bowl all through the ring.

If you need to pick up one and eat you use the opening at the bottom.

If you need to refill it, you just add more fruits from the top.

Absolutely unique and a fantastic innovation !! I'm sold out on this one.

Its time to look at health seriously !!

A long time friend of mine, Kartik Jayaraman has launched a great site called Desifitness.com. Kartik has been researching on Health and Nutrition since a few years now and Desifitness has hit the nail at the right spot at the right time primarily because it targets not only exercise and fitness but also the diet and nutrition of desis which is so much different from everyone else.

The life style of desis in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh etc (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi, especially in foreign countries like US or UK can be fairly lethargic. Since things are situated pretty far away people end up traveling everywhere in car. Sometimes even a couple of minutes brisk walk is also a far cry. Moreover, work pressure adds increased stress. Less time for day to day activities like cooking means eating mostly outside (burgers , pizza, KFC etc).

All this collectively leads to complete neglect towards health. As a result most of the desi junta ends up having a big belly which later is hard to shed.

DesiFitness.com offers a forum where Desi's can discuss, ask and opine on different issues they face as far as health is concerned. I'm subscribed to the forum. It has some of the best health and nutrition experts on-board, who can be consulted easily.

Overall I highly recommend this site to Desi professionals no matter which part of the globe they are from.

Another gem from Osho

Every now and then this Osho makes me realize that life is worth living and nothing is wrong in this world. In fact everything is right. All you need to do is stop compromising with life and everything will be right.

Here is another gem:

"There has never been a person like you before, there is not anybody else like you right now in the whole world, and there will never be anybody like you. Just see how much respect God has paid to you. You are a masterpiece — unrepeatable, incomparable, utterly unique. Even the hardest heart,
the rock-like heart, will start melting in gratitude"

My dear NRI

My Dear NRI

You leave me speechless at times. Your concern for your homeland and patriotism gives me goose bumps. You are forever obsessed with anything and everything Indian – cricket, bollywood, kollywood, corrupt politicians, carnatic music, and everything else which one would associate with the word INDIA.

But somewhere in this love affair, you lose your objectivity. Your obsession for anything India gets transformed to a nit-picking campaign which you brilliantly blow up to ridiculous proportions. For example, if a kid gets lost in an Indian city even for a moment, for you that’s a sufficient enough evidence to conclude India is unsafe for children. Going by this logic, if an adult loses his way in an Indian city, I guess we should all conclude India is unsafe for adults too.

Every third post in your blog would be about the lack of discipline in Indian roads, the corrupt political system, the unscrupulous bureaucracy, the snail’s pace functioning of government departments etc. If only the rating agencies like Standard and Poor or Moody’s got a chance to read your blog, I guess India would be downgraded from ‘Sumaara Irukku’ to ‘Naasama Pochu’.

It is an irony that in this very nitpicking campaign, you betray the same Indian trait which you decry with all your heart among your resident brethren. I mean, you sit safely in a developed country and keep on gossiping about your underdeveloped motherland. How useful is that? Look at it in another way, you make a living in a foreign country and all but obsessed with your home country when you could do a lot to better your adopted country – typical Indian trait again.

Chinese Communism

The Govt wants the land cleared for building some complex. The family living there won't budge. This is in Chongqing, central China.

For a complete read of the article read here

Sikh Park

There is this Sardar who's started Sikh Park on the grounds of South Park. Check one of his riffs.

Do you think this is true?

Do you think this is still the state of Asian culture?

Osho Thought

Existence is abundant - millions and millions of flowers,
millions of birds, millions of animals — everything in abundance.
Nature is not ascetic, it is everywhere dancing — in the ocean, in the trees. It is everywhere singing — in the wind passing through the pine trees,
in the birds....
What is the need of millions of solar systems,
each solar system having millions of stars?
There seems to be no need,
except that abundance is the very nature of existence;
that richness is the very core; that existence does not believe in poverty