I usually scowl at political news. Today was an exception: Abdul Kalam to be the next Prez? Neat. This guy is a smart man, a good human being, great scientist, and a good speaker. Somebody the average Indian can look up to.

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If you see ‘undeletable’ files on Windows NT-family OSes, even as an administrator, it may be a sign of worm, virus or rootkit infestation. (You can easily verify if the files have been locked by another process using Process Explorer or FileMon).

The easiest way to remove these undeletable files is

rd \?\D:\full\path\to\folder or
del \?\D:\full\path\to\folder\file.ext

You may get a ‘file in use by another process’ error — relogin and you should see the files removed. MSKB 120716 says that should be

\.\D:\some\folder

but I had problems with that. Good links on this at incidents.org and anetforums.

(Post Updated 2004-11-24.)

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Scoble: I see wave after wave of layoffs (even at Oracle) while the boss makes obscene amounts of money. [...] No one “earns” $700 million dollars. You can’t tell me that Ellison did 7000 times more than I did last year for society. Maybe he did 7 times more. Maybe 70 times more. But 7000? Give me a freaking break.

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Good post on Google as a shared memory (via jrobb). I have lousy short term memory, especially for things I am not very interested in. And ever since I found google.stanford.edu in 1998, I think of it more and more as an extension of my memory. These days I increasingly find myself not storing an interesting factoid, but a pointer to the factoid, a sort of informal version of Phelp and Wilensky’s Robust Hyperlinks. I’ll probably be among the first to line up for a Google Cybernetic Interface to be wired to my skull :-).

Postscript. Visiting the TBTF Archive is always a rewarding experience — it’s an account of the rise and rise of the Internet, of a more optimistic (euphoric?) era, written by one man long before blogs were even a gleam in anyone’s eye (TBTF started using blogger way before the weblog craze, actually). If there’s a site on the ‘Net I’d say I miss, it would be TBTF. Oh well.

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There are times when referer logs can be positively amusing. Example: What’s the first result you get when you search for all of these together on Google: cnet slashdot newsforge register yahoo? Well, (at least as of posting time) The ChaosZone Blog!

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Did anyone within the Office teams even try to use their ‘Internet Integration’ features? If yes, could they please explain why right-clicking a hyperlink in a Word document (and, I’m pretty sure, in the rest of Office) when you’re viewing it in a IE frame doesn’t have a ‘open link in new window’ option? It’s irritating, because I lose the doc I was currently reading. So much for encouraging the use of Office formats on the web.

Charitable explanation: they are holding this off so they have something to add in the next release :-).

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Cool. On the same day that uncle Jaswant soothes some nerves, uncle Advani is sure to raise hackles in Islamabad with his little talk about Indo-Pak reunification (as (mis)reported by on the Times Of India’s front page — Advani was only talking about a possible confederation).

Those familiar with the BJP’s Jana Sangh/RSS roots may suspiciously remember that BJP hardliners — Advani included — have classically believed in a Greater India (’akhand Bharat‘) — this includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and even Burma(!), and may look for echoes of that in this pronouncement. While there is little doubt, I think, that ‘akhand Bharat‘ is a concept close to Advani’s heart, the BJP would be far too selfish to push such a measure with any seriousness — forget about international opprobrium, the resulting unification could only drive the BJP’s already stagnant nationwide percentage vote share down (assuming universal suffrage).

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Art & Commerce in the Digital Decade: Protecting intellectual property will take cooperation and innovation. No, it’s not an EFF essay, it’s a Microsoft position paper. (via the Reg)

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John Robb: [music labels are] exactly the kind of business that will continue to face consumer backlash in the new economy. They are inefficient and have erected artificial barriers to competition in order to charge excessive prices. Until albums arrive on my hard-drive at $2-3 a pop, they won’t get any of my business. Nothing in between works. This may take ten years, but in the meantime I will continue to use Kazaa.

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From the chris-carter-are-you-taking-notes dept: NYTimes: Last fall, something peculiar began to happen at more than two dozen elementary and middle schools scattered across the country. Suddenly, groups of children started breaking out with itchy red rashes that seemed to fade away when the children went home — and to pop up again when they returned to school.

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