Markets are like children

I am sure my analogy holds: the financial markets are like children - they hate to be regulated - but if left to go on a free ride, you have to bail them out from their misadventures!

Newspaper sites without logging in

Many newspapers, including NYTimes, WSJ and Financial Times, demand logins when visiting their sites via external links.

However, there is a solution. When using Google News (Google homepage ---->News), clicking on links from these sites do not present login screens. I had observed this, when WSJ articles would open when clicked from Google News but would demand login when clicked from any other sites.

The logic here is that the sites want to increase page views; but they also want to show increased subscribers(or paid subscription in case of WSJ). Also, presenting logins to the Google News bot means that Google News will not know the contents of the page, hence leading to not being displayed on Google News.

NYTimes pages can be accessed by Googling the title. But this presents a problem: You cannot access the second page or view the print page to see the entire article.(I think an already-logged in-link from NYTimes works because of the appended 'oref?=slogin' I guess it is a similar script..)

Talking about FT, it seems to have a very very simple html check. FT thought I wouldn't figure it out. View these images for the fun I had in reasoning and hacking:

Mistakes in websites

Grammatical errors, spelling errors, repetitions... My collection from various websites.

I didn't want to collect them, but they were so many, I couldn't resist. At the same time, if I put them up, my reading habits would be 'exposed'. But yet it is interesting to see these errors. As a result, I do not save pics from foul-sounding websites.

Enjoy.





























































These screencaps are from Gawker, HuffPo, FT, Rediff, CBS, Business Standard, Salon, WSJ, NDTV, CNN and many more. The file name is the site from where it comes along with the date of creation. More as and when the collection becomes large.

End of ultra-capitalism?

Edit 1
With so many banks failing, I was wondering.. The ultra-socialists fell 18 years back.. Now, the ultra-capitalists, with a free hand(deregulated markets, low interest rates, unlimited credit, maximum greed) have fallen into a hole.. Can they climb out? How big is this hole... This will lead to more government intervention, how much is the question. This is why I regard the Europeans as the true masters. They have the right policies in place to meet the inevitable. I guess.

Now with the banks' debt taken in by the government, we are going back to socialism, which is supposed to have effectively ended with the fall of the Soviet Union breaking the myth that capitalism is the future.

It's time to call a Moose a Moose and not anything else

It's in the air: John Stewart, Jay Leno and Bill Maher all understand it. They know it. Why doesn't anyone elsee get it? I will say I can 'informed' enough to raise a red flag. She raises red flags all the time. Does the country deserve this? Of course not! Some geniuses have read my thoughts and penned them beautifully. I will prefer Paleontology to Palintology. Anyday.

When the old man cried

I went to Springer's to crop my ever reducing hair. Now the elderly gentleman is a news junkie, unmistakable from his talking to customers about politics and watching C-Span(amazing channel with that cult following) or Fox News.

Given his penchant for expressing his views and disenchantment with current 43 administration, I asked him a dead question: "Who do you think will win this election?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Whom do you want to win?"

"I wanted Hil larree to win actually."

And so started our conversation about the election cycle. He felt sad that Hil larree was being shunned by everyone. "I don't understand why people would hate her. It's not her mistake if ...." and then recounted that it wasn't her mistake if she stood by Bill during those tumultuous times.

What about the Gov from Alask., I asked. To this, he was very categorical. "With 5 young children and especially one with special needs, I don't think a father can manage alone. When she travels abroad, meets with foreign leaders, goes around the country, those children need a mother more than a father."

Around this time the topic slowly switched from the elections to the 43 administration.

I don't care who wins in November, he said, indicating his displeasure in both candidate's profiles. "We are so much in debt. The Reagan administration and 41 doubled the deficit and now the deficit is more than 10 trillion dollars."

He even stopped cutting my hair, went across the room and played a few-second video recording from C-Span showing a senator from North Dakota with a bar chart displaying in a how much deficit the country was in, with the second bar much higher than the first.

"I play that tape for all Repub. who come here. Too much damage has been done. We are in a lot of trouble. We keep borrowing money from other countries, mainly China. It is our children and our grandchildren who will be repaying all this debt."

"It is our children and grandchildren who will be paying for all this."

With that repeated sentence, the old man's eyes welled up. Then it struck me, for all that I have heard in the news, read in the papers, absorbed online, is the country's situation so bad as to make a WWII veteran become so emotional that tears fill his eyes? Maybe it is.

He proceeded to explain the some of the many photos on his walls. There was a picture of some Repubs altered to include Bill and a family of Repub lobbyists altered to show them wearing Dem t-shirts.

I changed topic to Golf, his favourite game. He was hoping to catch some later that afternoon if the skies cleared. I paid and tipped him and went on my way.

But that scene will always be with me forever: a US Veteran of Foreign Wars brought to tears by concerns for the future of his children and grand children. That is when you know the real state of the nation. When you hear it from an old, wise man.

Overheard: On the Bus

Overheard, on the bus from West Market to Downtown:
"Who do you think will win in November, Oh Bahmah or Mack Kane?"
"I don't know man."
"I'm not gonna vote for Mack Kane. You know what, I seriously don't give a sh#t about Mack Kane, man, not after he picked that woman. How is she gonna run this country when she can't control her personal life? Buy Den is the right guy for the VP."
" "
"I've never seen so much smoke like in the Rep convention man. 9-11 and Reagan - that is the past. The Reps were talking as though every thing was fine. Do you see where the country is now? 3.50 a gallon gas."

Overheard - supermarket

Overheard in the supermarket shelves: "You need something to clear out your system." The lady then proceeds to pick out a bottle of Mountain Dew and place it in her cart.

The Dems on the back foot.. For the first time

For the first time in perhaps over 2 years, the Dems and the left media are on the back foot. For once the novice from Alaska has trumped the phenomenon from Illinois. For once Huff and the others are playing catch up and racing to attack rather than things fall into place for them. For once, for now, just for now, things are going the Rep way. Just for now. I wish so hard for the media to go relentlessly after the Alask. gov. Why hide...

Trip on the Roo Express and survey

Nothing special

I went by the Roo Express(just like that; it's like going by ship from Cochin to Tuticorin instead of taking a train directly).

There were 15 people including myself excluding the driver; 8 of them were talking on their cellphones or holding them; 11 male and 4 female. Everyone but me had a bag on them. One guy had an iPhone and was fidgeting with it. The girl opposite me had wounds on her knees(how? ).

Google Chrome: First look

A first-look review of Google's own new browser, Chrome.

It's fast, sleek, uncluttered, got an inbuilt task manager to kill flash/java/plugins within one tab without affecting other tabs, resize text boxes and has an 'incognito' option for anonymous browsing.

However, since Google is all about profit through ads and cookies, I find it interesting to note that you do not have options to not save history. Basically, for a session, your history will be saved - unlike in Firefox where there is an explicit option for not saving history.

It does not have a separate search box, so your default search box will be the one immediately accessible to you unlike Firefox where you can set different search engines for the search box.

I was not able to find an option to open a window in a non-incognito environment, while browsing incognito, i.e. you can go incognito from normal but not vice-versa.

It's got an 'Inspect Element' option on the right click, which is an advanced version of 'View Source', here you can play around with the html, while the 'View Source' from the menu bar itself is better designed. Really cool for developers.

So far it does not have add-ons, so without Flashblock I am unwilling to use Chrome.

Aha - the fine print reveals more! Check this out from Cnet. Seems like the browser will become more like a TV - the article says Google could push ads through the browser!

Hovering over a link reveals only the partial and not the complete path to which it is headed.

The wheel-click does not bring a scroll cursor.

The shift-ctrl-enter and shift-enter do not work.

I have to click on the star button to bookmark rather than drag the tag to the bookmark toolbar.

The 'Go' button and the 'Stop' button are the same.

Pop-ups are dealt with at the bottom of the screen.

The 'drag tab to open new window' feature is impressive.

Overall, it is inline with Google's tradition: no-nonsense, essential-only product(thought built from Safari's and Firefox's engines, all open source) and obviously built to push it's own ads further. Privacy advocates will be pouring over the terms and conditions, more revelations are expected.
I will still stick to Firefox, with all its add-ons.