No, *you* do the math!

napster, the born again legal service to download music is touting a "to go" $15/month service to fill any non-iPod music player and asks us to do the math in comparing it to the iTunes service where you might pay $15000 to fill it with 15000 songs. but the fact is that the songs are worthless once you stop paying the monthly fee. and the biggest kicker is that it won't play on an iPod!
as rob from the washington post, says "...it looks less like a service that allows you to pay to get new music and more like one that forces you to pay to keep your existing music".
nope, the math doesn't add up indeed! looks like "napster to go" is going ... going ... gone!

IsNot! Is Too ...!

ok, here's a new low for ms (no clue how much lower they can go, since last i heard, even the lords of the netherworld looked down on them). eWeek reports that the visual basic division of ms has filed for a patent of a certain IsNot operator (our own belowed "!=" operator) that is supposedly "... a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two variables point to the same location in memory."
DUH and double DUHDUH!
watch out folks, the next patent in the works is "a natural system for the absorption of oxygen and the release of carbon-dioxide in an effort to purify plasma laden fluid".
i wouldn't hold my breath for that one!

so, paris loves china

... or atleast that is what the hilton heiress would have us believe. ever since her sidekick's contents became public property, random folks reading blogs worldwide became privy to the unlisted numbers of such celebs as andy roddick and christina aguillera. and down there among all those famous names was one "chows, mr"!
please!!! atleast have the decency to list him as mr,chows!
anyway, it took me 3 clicks to get what i wanted and the answer was no: Lohan, Lindsay(+1-347-596-xxxx) would not go out on a date with me (or atleast i guess that is what those primeval screams meant) - but i had to sympathise with her: i was, after all, caller number 1392 and the time was 2 a.m. in hollywood. soooo sad .... why do these things keep happening to our own little clueless clod?
kudos to t-mobile for having known of this security breach months ago and never letting the unsuspecting public know about it.
anyone in the mood to call anna kournikova.........?
;-)

Webmail for Nuts

for nuts? no way! squirrelmail is actually quite fantastic and easily configurable! the hard part was getting it to work over my existing tomcat installation because it uses php and tomcat has no idea what that is.
first step: hide tomcat behind apache: huge thanks to galatea for an excellent guide on the installation (oh btw, the instructions on apache's own website suck!). it took me awhile to realise that apxs only comes with apache2-dev - but after that it was all smooth sailing ...
next: the actual squirrelmail install - this was surprisingly easy: apt-get rocks (and so does debian :-)) .
minutes later mail.prash.net was up and about, looking for nuts!

iPods at Microsoft?

apparently the higher-ups in good old gates' country are a bit peeved to see those telltale white cords hanging from their employees' ears!
here's a hint: make better products m$, and maybe people will take notice.

corollary: apple is now back to the number #1 spot as the most recognized brand on the planet taking over from google. unbelievably, al jazeera is #5!

valentine's day (and other hallmark holidays)

it's february 14th.
again.
it's the day the rose growers have been waiting all year in anticipation of. the day that turns months of dismal losses into instant moolah-shmoolah (like my favorite radio talk show host curtis sliwa would say). a day that can make the most womanly-wise man tremble at his knees for want of that unattainable never-to-be-returned gift.
and that's why i have a policy at home. there will no roses (that's easy: you make up a story about how you don't like it when roses are cut from plants for our own selfish sake and how they look most beautiful swaying proudly in the wind still attached to their little branches).
there may be a nice dinner involved, but i cannot guarantee we will eat before 11:30 p.m. because that is the only remaining time slot i got when i called the restaurant on feb 14th of last year!
and as for the gifts? there will be no receipts attached.

i prash, therefore i am

not knowing what to call my new blog, i decided to use my gmail id as the name of my blog. simply put, it means 'i, prash' (a la i, robot) or 'i am prash'.
ok, but what about the tagline? rene descartes' famous quote 'cogito ergo sum' (i think, therefore i am) came to mind and i knew i had it.
welcome then, to your one stop resource about everything prash: news about myself, my current likes and unlikelies, and of course much information about my projects on my spanking new linux system.
hope you keep coming back for more!