Saw a program on TV about how HIV-positive people are treated in rural Tamil Nadu for their illness; all kinds of quackery goes on, with some touting that drinking donkey milk will cure a patient of HIV. But this treatment takes the cake: rather than drink the milk of a donkey, make love to it (I swear, I am not making this up). In one instance, an HIV-positive man was forced to spend six months locked up in a room with a donkey. Needless to say, the man's health did not improve and he died.

People who suggest such treatments must be punished by being raped by a donkey kept in horny isolation for six months.

Having recently started working in Oracle again, on the server side to be exact, I am struck by how unintuitive the syntax is. To query an initialisation parameter, you would have to say 'SHOW PARAMETER <parameter name>'. To determine some other database property, you may have to fire a SELECT statement against a data dictionary view. The point is, there is no universal way of doing things. This may not seem like a big deal for someone steeped in DBA-related matters, but definitely makes the learning curve steeper. Of course, there are GUI applications like DBArtisan that hide this complexity, though I don't think they are very amenable with regard to programmability/scripting.

This got me thinking: why doesn't somebody write a parcel in VisualWorks that hides this complexity? We could have an object model that maps on to the various DB objects (mind you, what I have in mind is different from a typical client-side database package that is used for end-user database applications). For example, we could have a Database object at the top of the hierarchy. You will then do stuff like:

aDatabase := OracleDatabase new.
aDatabase host: someIP sid: someSID user: someUser password: somePassword.
allTablespaces := aDatabase getTablespaces. "returns a collection of all the tablespaces"
allParams := aDatabase getInitParams. "dictionary of init.ora parameters"

I think I will post this to comp.lang.smalltalk.

Looking at all the allegations of vote fraud in the American presidential elections, one thought comes to mind repeatedly: for some reason, Americans seem to have very liberal attitudes when it comes to conflict of interest. There doesn't seem to be any problems with someone belonging to a political party and at the same time overseeing the elections as a supervisor, for example. State Supreme Court judges can also belong to political parties, it seems. When such a judge is presiding over cases involving the party he is affiliated to, it is human nature for him to lean (even if only subconsciously) towards his party. Even if he doesn't, and delivers his judgment with the best of intentions, the verdict may still appear tainted. Why isn't something being done about this?

On a related note, if politicians in India start taking a leaf out of their American counterparts and begin to move back and forth between corporate board rooms and legislative/parliamentary assemblies, what little democracy we have will effectively be over.

Another gem from alt.poltics.usa:

When Bush won re-election, a giant bulls-eye target was suddenly painted on the head of every American.

Bush is the guy you go into a bar with, who is already drunk, and he keeps trying to pick fights with people. And they think you're associated with him. There's nothing secure about that feeling.

Some more great sigs I ran across in Slashdot:

1."I drank what?" - Socrates
2. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
3. Repeat after me, we are all individuals.
4. Lost: Pet sig. Insightful yet humorous. If found, call 555-5555.
5. 404 - Sig not found
6. No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.

About 80 million people didn't vote in the current American presidential elections. While some of these people would have been simply apathetic, a sizeable fraction didn't vote because they saw no point in voting; both the choices were unappealing to them. What if this group, say 20-30 million people, took to casting an invalid vote instead of staying away altogether? People would start noticing this (only about 3% of the total votes cast are 'spoiled' on an average). A better option would be for these people to vote for a third-party candidate, but that would presume that their political leanings were towards one candidate, which may not necessarily be true. This way, they at least present a uniform bloc without splintering their vote.

I thought this was a satirical piece at first:

That is why the unthinkable must become thinkable. If the so-called "Red States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart--not by secession of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter. Here is how to do it.

Having been amended only 17 times since 10 vital amendments (the Bill of Rights) were added at the republic's inception, the U.S. Constitution is not easily changed, primarily because so many states (75%, now 38 of 50) must agree. Yet, there are 38 states today that may be inclined to adopt, let us call it, a "Declaration of Expulsion," that is, a specific constitutional amendment to kick out the systemically troublesome states and those trending rapidly toward anti-American, if not outright subversive, behavior. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Only the remaining 38 states would retain the name, "United States of America." The 12 expelled mobs could call themselves the "Dirty Dozen," or individually keep their identity and go their separate ways, probably straight to Hell.

I bet somebody at The Onion is right now saying, "Damn! I wish I had thought of this idea first!".

Andrew Tanenbaum (he of the MINIX fame), the Votemaster behind electoral-vote.com, plugging the Masters program at the university he is teaching in:

If you are a senior majoring in computer science and are seriously thinking of leaving the country due to the election results, you might be interested in my international English-language masters program in parallel and distributed computer systems.

;-)

The U.S. presidential election results have been quite a bit of a surprise to me; I was expecting a landslide victory for Kerry, considering the amount of animosity felt towards Bush by everyone.

But reflecting more deeply on this, I think I relied too much on the Internet to serve as a barometer of public opinion (even after considering that Americans are probably one of the most wired folks on the planet). It could also be that I was only seeing one side of the story, since I tend to avoid pro-Bush sites generally.

A person who doesn't spend much time online would have a consistent world-view; whatever he/she has been reading in the newspapers and watching on TV (i.e. the candidates are neck and neck, things are too close to call, etc.) would have been affirmed by the election results.

BTW, why do only Ohio's provisional votes matter? What about the provisional votes from other states? Is it because the margin of difference between Bush and Kerry is larger than the total provisional votes in other states?

I think the Democrats not thowing in the towel is more of a gesture to their supporters, to show that they are still fighting. Unless more than 75% of the provisional votes in Ohio go to Kerry (seeing that the race is so close, this is probably pretty much impossible), we are in for another four years of Bush (shudder).

BBC's online coverage of the election is fantastic, BTW. It's Flash-based, with a lot of information (going back till the 1948 elections).

A humourous comment about the US presidential elections in Slashdot:

Wait a minute... something just occurred to me!

If some insidious government officials were to approve the installation [sic] an easily-corruptible voting system in order to co-opt the election according to their agenda, and if the mass media then convinced the masses that the election is really close and could go either way, then it wouldn't be quite so transparent when the election was rigged in favor of one candidate!

Holy crap!

Either the above comment is true, or Americans really do prefer Bush. I don't know which of the two possibilities is scarier.

This occurred to me as I was reading the Rude Pundit's usual castigation of Bush: when you take sides in a bitterly contested fight, you demonise the opposite side. You cheer their misfortunes, gloat over their mistakes and revel in their miseries. But once the battle has been won, I always find that a wave of pity and tenderness washes over me as I contemplate the plight of the loser; all his sins are instantly forgiven. He returns to being a human being as prone to making mistakes as anybody else, probably wracked by feelings of self-doubt and vulnerability.

I wouldn't mind feeling some of this pathos for Bush on November 3 :-)

All the problems related to election fraud in the US would vanish if one thing were to happen: the states agree to cede to the Federal government's authority in the conduct of the presidential election. The federal government could then come up with a uniform method of electronic voting throughout the country. This method can be vetted by a professional body like the ACM (speaking of the ACM, they have devoted a full issue to this topic).

When India, with all the scope for corruption here, can conduct a blemishless electronic vote (at least there have been no complaints of large-scale fraud), the current state of affairs in the US doesn't reflect well on its technological/political maturity (imagine the mortification of having to listen to advice from Cuba and Zimbabwe on how to conduct an election).

Another thing I cannot understand about the American elections is voter registration. Why must a voter be registered as a Republican/Democrat/Independent before the election? Doesn't this sort of invalidate the concept of a secret ballot? Is this a way to ensure that people vote only once? If so, can't this be done without asking people to disclose their voting preferences?

The print and electronic media should desist from mentioning any computer security firm when they release news about new virus threats. No purpose (except free publicity for the company in question) is served by doing so. Why cannot they just say that "an analyst at a leading security firm today said that..."? It's not like anybody would complain (except said analyst, perhaps). Attributing a statement to a source when the source wants to remain anonymous is a no-no, but not its opposite. In addition to putting unscrupulous companies in their place, who knows, we might even see a reduction in the number of threats.

There is a line of argument which goes like this: "both Arabs and Israelis are Semites, therefore to accuse Arabs of anti-semitism is essentially meaningless, because it implies that they are against themselves". Next time you read an article containing the term anti-semitism, mentally replace it with anti-Jewish (which is the article's real intention) and this bogus argument vanishes.

The fact that the charge of anti-semitism is used to deflect genuine criticism of Israeli actions is another matter altogether, of course.

Just finished watching the first part of the State of the Union debate on BBC World. One thing I learned was that Madeline Albright suports India's candidacy for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Another was that James Woolsey (former CIA director) was the only person who showed any cognisance of the fact that Peak Oil may be upon us. He rightly stressed that we need to start developing alternative energy sources and should also work on conserving the available resources. This point was made in the context of the emergence of India and China as strong powers and their energy demands in the coming decades.

I also got to see George Soros and Sid Blumenthal for the first time. When you read quite a lot of things written/said by somebody, you form a mental image of them in your mind. When you finally see that person, it invariably turns out that the mental image is at odds with how the person actually looks.

It looks like our government is going to offload its dollars. I don't remember this being reported in our newspapers though (it could be that I missed it).

There is a slew of programs in BBC World this weekend covering the presidential elections in the US. Personas featured include Michael Moore, Sidney Blumenthal and Bill O'Reilly. I foresee a lot of fireworks. I have one question: Was the program featuring O'Reilly recorded before or after the scandal?

My Linux machine has become very sluggish of late. I think the culprit is either YaST Online Update or Gnucash. I noticed the slowdown only after I installed or started using them. Either some security patch or one of the packages required to run Gnucash is causing this problem.

I had neglected balancing my cheque book for quite some time, so it was no great surprise to see that things were pretty messed up when I attempted to do so recently. It took a marathon session with OpenOffice Calc (that's the OSS equivalent of MS Excel for the uninitiated) and poring over my barely legible cheque book entries from more than a year ago (yes, that's how long it's been since things were fine) for me to get things back on track again.

Flush with the above accounting success, I downloaded and installed Gnucash. After some twiddling around and reading sections of the online help, I have set things up the way I want them. If I continue making entries in Gnucash religiously for the rest of the year, I will know exactly how much I spent on coffee this fiscal...

Bruce Schneier has this to say on what works and what doesn't when defending targets against terrorist attacks.

According to Bruce, none of the predominantly used mechanisms (ID cards, face recognition software, screening attendees) work. The one solution that works is:

"...smart security officials watching the crowds. It's called 'behavior recognition,' and it requires trained personnel looking for suspicious behavior..."

But even then, there is no way to stop a really determined terrorist willing to die in the process of committing the act. If he is not able to blow himself up at the location of his choice (bang [pun unintended] in the middle of the spectators in a stadium, for example), he would then do so at the checkpoint where he is about to be busted.

I have a simpler solution: as Michael Rivero is often wont to say, stop messing with other countries' people, and the terrorists will go home. But then what do you do with the home-grown variety? Try to ensure that there are no alienated groups ready to take to violence because they feel that justice is being denied to them. This may not solve the problem completely; there will always be someone with a grievance (real or imagined) that is not being addressed, but application of the 80:20 rule (80% of the violence is due to 20% of the causes) will at least make the problem manageable.