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Category Archives: philosophy

Mind stopping

In an ancient Buddhist monastery in china, there was to be a competition to decide who follows in the master’s footsteps. Each monk that wished to come forward was to write a poem showing his understanding of Zen. The most advanced student, whom everyone expected to win, wrote the following: The body is the Bodhi […]

Ambitious analogy

From Corbin Simpsons essay in Wikipedia entitled “TINC“: Wikipedia is socialist. Not Socialist, and certainly not Communist, but undeniably socialist. All of its content originates from the community. To deny this social aspect is to deny the entire philosophy of Wiki in its myriad forms. Our voices, no matter how small, quiet, and hopelessly opinionated […]

Buddha, by Deepak Chopra

A major distinguishing feature of Buddhism compared to other religions is that the story of the worshiped one is that of a normal human. One not gifted in any particular way or blessed by any God – just of one who tried his hardest to attain the truth. Buddha is the retelling of this story. […]

Random thought

‘She hit me on the head with the rock again.’ ‘I think I can confirm that that was my daughter.’ ‘Sweet kid.’ ‘You have to get to know her,’ said Arthur. ‘She eases up does she?’ ‘No,’ said Arthur, `but you get a better sense of when to duck.’ — From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to […]

Fleeting art

I recently read about the environmental artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who’s art mission seems to be to greatly change a landscape (usually through fabric) – for two weeks. After that, everything goes back to normal. Interesting projects include wrapping the German Parliament, the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, and installing over 7,500 saffron fabric […]

Bullying – the new corporate mantra

If you’re a small-time business operator and move into a seedy neighbourhood, you probably wouldn’t feel too surprised to see a ruffian walking up to you one day and demanding that you pay his gang some protection money, or “hafta”, as they call it in India. These days, however its not ruffians but chairmen and […]

Windows Vista and software freedom

When you buy Windows Vista, you’ll be purchasing a product that is, to borrow a phrase from the anti-DRM guys, defective by design. Microsoft announced enhanced anti-piracy measures for Windows Vista today. If Vista detects a pirated computer, it will lock down your system to a reduced functionality mode after a certain amount of time. […]

Battery back!

Last Friday, after exactly 5 weeks, I finally got my new Powerbook battery. I guess Apple gets their estimates right – they’d said it would take 4 – 6 weeks! An interesting observation – during the five weeks of torture, I so wanted to buy a new laptop. I was nearly at the edge of […]

How great minds really think

One blogger out there had the amazing idea of e-mailing a few great programmers and asking questions related to coding. He’s posted the answers, and they’re definitely worth a read, and probably a lot of thought as well.

Profound geek quote of the day

“To me, vi is Zen. To use vi is to practice zen. Every command is a koan. Profound to the user, unintelligible to the uninitiated. You discover truth every time you use it.” –reddy@lion.austin.com [via] By the way, vim 7 is out. Mac version here.