Entries from September 2007 ↓

Well what can I say, I’m so sad and depressed with what Google said to me today. Google called me a computer virus :( Oh you mighty Google, how ever mighty you might be, you can’t call a real person a computer script. People use CAPTCHA to avoid this situation, but you guys at Google used a CAPTCHA but still you called me a computer, too bad, real bad.

How it all happened

I was trying to create a new Google mail account, yaa I already have many but this desire thing, it never dies. I was trying to get hold of an impressive name when this insult was thrown at me. I tried quite a lot of combinations for my username, may be this is what pissed Google off.

Computers may be impressive electronic devices, but when some one praises the work done by a computer, they are actually praising the the algorithm that made the computer do that task which was in fact written by a human but when things like this happen, its the algorithm creators that are culprits.

I actually don’t know how they chose the old 7 wonders of the World but each of the wonders was pretty worth the title it was given. How and when did this need or may be desire to choose new 7 wonders arise? Nobody knows. At least I don’t and I also don’t think most of you even knew that there was a process underway to choose new 7 wonders until the pre-final and final voting started. Most people who voted may still not know what the final 7 wonders are, what they cared for is if the wonder they voted for made it to the top 7.

History of the 7 wonders

The very old 7 wonders (2nd Century BC) known as

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient world

Pyramids of Egypt at Giza*
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus
Temple of Artemis
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes
Pharos of Alexandria

*The only Ancient wonder that still exists

The new 7 wonders

Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Colosseum in Rome
Taj Mahal in India
The Great Wall of China
Jordan’s ancient city of Petra
The Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru
The ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico

The new 7 wonders website says

More than 100 million votes had been cast by citizens around the world using modern communications technology in this unprecedented global dialogue

What? Did that text have the number 100 million in it? Lets do some math here, the world population is 6 billion+ and they chose new 7 wonders of the world by considering the votes of 100 million which is a mere 0.01% most of whom were people trying to get their national monument into the list. Forget about the wonders people are  far less interested in electing their political leaders even though every democratic country declares the  election day a national holiday. They want to use the day to relax and get some relief from daily chores. Think of a farmer working on his fields, would he be worried about electing new 7 wonders of the world. So such small turnout can be justified but what about modern communication technology? Leaving alone the developed countries, how many in the world have access to modern communication technology.

The only thing cool about this new 7 thing seems to be the choice of date to announce the new 7 wonders, 07.07.07 (7th of July 2007) at Lisbon which again has 7 letters in it. Strictly speaking it was not really a tuff choice. They at least had to have something interesting to draw the attention of the rich who can donate more and more funds for …. guess what monument conservation and documentation worldwide. Ok monuments are important and they are symbols of various cultures but aren’t there other things like hunger deaths and AIDS which are more important than monument conservation?

The website goes on to say that they have used part of the funds raised to create a 3D model of the statue of Bamiyan Buddha which was destroyed by the Taliban and if the Afghan people are ready to rebuild they are ready to fund that project too. Doesn’t this seem like they are way away from moral thinking? Afghanistan is a country ripped apart by terrorism and war since the time of the cold war when the super powers used it as  a pawn in their strategic moves. Rebuilding some monument would be their last choice.

Well that’s what I think of the new 7 wonders but different people think in different ways, what do you think?

There are just so many people and they can have so many needs depending on the so many things they keep doing, its difficult to address everyone’s needs.

While Some people are unaware of the procedure to change filename extensions in Windows XP because they never bothered about it, there are others who work on making great web sites using different technologies and combinations built with technologies of which Ruby on Rails is one, some find it easy to follow tutorials but some need a guide to install it on Windows which can be considered as one of the easiest on noobs and user friendly OS.

There are people immediately when they find a need fot it while others wait for opinions and try to see how essential it is in the mean time. Some are satisfied while some are very frustrated like the Netfirms customers who were unable to setup wordpress permalinks on their blogs.

Ok all this is to make my blog more efficient by deep linking, sorry if you had to read through this, its not that bad isn’t it?

Its a well established and widely observed fact that when a blogger doesn’t post for a while then the next time he starts with one of the following messages

• I was very very very busy with my dog the whole time
• I had been out for a while touring the beautiful deserts of Iraq
• I really couldn’t manage so many things I had to go for a surgery to add an extra pair of limbs

and so on…..

Well everyone knows that you didn’t post because you couldn’t. Why bug people with your reasons? Just say I was lazy. Well I said it, I was lazy and busy and been out and so couldn’t manage to post.

Coming to the next part, its time to assure the readers so that they don’t run away from this part of the Internet

• I will keep posting regularly, from now on!
• I will make it a point to update now and then
• Now that I’m free I can keep you informed

Ok thanks for the assurance, we don’t want assurances but we want posts to feed this thing called the brain.

All this bragging is to make you feel that this blog is not dead! Yes its alive!