No prosecution of war criminals, torturers and mass murderers; no prosecution of those that declare a war on false pretense; no prosecution of those that indulge in grand larceny and financial fraud, immiserating the lives of many; no prosecuting of the rich and the powerful; but over-zealous hounding of a young, idealistic, brilliant man whose onlyContinue reading “Carmen Ortiz Did Not Act Alone in Hounding Aaron Swartz To His Death”
Category Archives: Technology
Ode to a Beloved Clunker
MPA 4634 and DIA 8499. Those strings of alphanumeric characters, as might be surmised, are licence plate identifiers. More precisely, they were the licence plates for the same car, a Fiat 1100D that was our family car for over twenty years. Over those years, I graduated from the back of the car to the front, toContinue reading “Ode to a Beloved Clunker”
Free Software and ‘Appropriate Technology’
Last week, as part of a panel session organized at Queens College of the City University of New York, I spoke briefly on ‘Free Software and Appropriate Technology.’ I began by introducing the term ‘appropriate technology’ by setting it in the context of India’s attempts to achieve self-reliance in energy production, an effort that inContinue reading “Free Software and ‘Appropriate Technology’”
Flying Solo, As Author, For a Change
Sometime this week or the next, my fourth book, Brave New Pitch: The Evolution of Modern Cricket (HarperCollins India 2012), will make its way to bookstores and online book-sellers. My fourth book differs in one crucial regard from those that have preceded it: I have not co-authored it with anyone; its jacket lists but oneContinue reading “Flying Solo, As Author, For a Change”
If Machines Do All The ‘Work’, What Will Humans Do?
At The Atlantic Moshe Vardi wonders about the consequences of machine intelligence. Vardi’s article features the subtitle ‘If machines are capable of doing any work that humans can do, then what will humans do?’ and is occasioned by the following: While the loss of millions of jobs over the past few years has been attributedContinue reading “If Machines Do All The ‘Work’, What Will Humans Do?”
The Extravagant, Space-Time Distorting Business of Time Cleaning
This morning Jason Read of the University of Southern Maine posted the following photograph on his Facebook page (due to Tom McGlynn, to whom I owe thanks for letting me reproduce it here). Jason added: Just looking at it makes me want to write a bad science fiction novel about the unglamorous, dangerous, and low-payingContinue reading “The Extravagant, Space-Time Distorting Business of Time Cleaning”
Mr. Panetta Warns of Danger And Would Like to Spy on You
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta comes a-calling, warning us of the dangers of cyberwarfare, of a new ‘Pearl Harbor’ that lies ahead. He conjures up devastating visions of the nation’s ‘cyber-infrastructure’ by a band of code warriors, sneaky rogues that could: [D]erail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. TheyContinue reading “Mr. Panetta Warns of Danger And Would Like to Spy on You”
The ‘Long Live the Paper Book’ Argument Needs To Mention DRM
Justin Hollander’s defense of the traditional paper book (‘Long Live Paper’, New York Times, 10 October 2012) is well-meant but given the severity of the challenge it faces from e-books, it is a relatively milquetoast argument. It gets to the nitty-gritty late, and as such is unlikely to convince those enamored of their convenient, pocket-stuffing e-readers.Continue reading “The ‘Long Live the Paper Book’ Argument Needs To Mention DRM”
Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru
Yesterday, while writing on the corporate deadliness of The Wire‘s Stringer Bell, I noted in passing, some structural resemblances between that character and Breaking Bad‘s Gustavo ‘Gus’ Fring. But, in many ways, Gus goes well beyond Stringer in bringing the corporate to the corner. In particular, in his channeling indiscriminate violence into murderously well-directed andContinue reading “Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru”
The Not-So-Easily-Captured Wonders of US-95
If you drive north-west on US-491 from Cortez, Colorado toward Utah, your route will take you to Monticello, UT. At that point, you can take US-191 south or north. Someday you should go north on 191, for that will bring you to Moab and all of its attendant attractions. But if it is your firstContinue reading “The Not-So-Easily-Captured Wonders of US-95”
Samir Chopra 