Well, what can I say, I got lucky :-).

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The End of the Teledesic dream. At least Teledesic will die a solvent death. Today, the market has spoken — (relatively) cheap world-girdling comm links are not to be. Of course, with the growth of xDSL and fiber (and cell towers) in dense metrops lessens any attraction satellite comms (with their expense and limited bandwidth - for example, an INSAT transponder can carry 64kbps max and costs beacoup thousands; I can get that on cable by paying about Rs 1000 a month in Madras) may have had. Of course, Intelsat and Inmarsat continue to provide great (if expensive) service to those off the beaten track, but for now, the Internet will remain very much a urban-jungle phenomenon. Pity.

PS. All is not lost. Satellite freaks (the real Wireless freaks! :-)) still have their sugar daddy — the United States Armed Forces still have the most sophisticated planet girdling comm systems by far.

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If the people behind the attack on the Swaminarayan temple in Gujarat were Indian Muslims (which at this point seems unlikely), then I’m afraid the country will see violence the like of which it has never seen before, despite the appeals of calm from Deputy PM Advani, Leader of the Opp Sonia, and (surprise!) the Pol Pot of Gujarat Narendra Modi, and the fervent oh-no-not-agains of the chatterati. If the perpetrators were in fact mercenaries or Pakistani, and there is reasonable proof, there will be enormous pressure on the government to act against Pakistan — either diplomatically, or failing that, militarily (despite the fervent oh-nos from the anti-war left, including — oh, horrors — more articles by Arundhati Roy). Between riots and war, it is almost a Hobson’s choice. No points for guessing which any popularly elected government would choose, though.

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Thomas Friedman in the NYT: countries that are globalizing sensibly but steadily are also the ones that are becoming politically more open, with more opportunities for their people, and with a young generation more interested in joining the world system than blowing it up.

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It is too much, I guess, to expect a Bollywood director to actually make an original film.

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Italy’s Miss Yawn 2002: Italians are just plain tired of the girl-next-door, which they like to call “acqua e sapone” (soap and water look) and apparently want more sex, spice and suspense in their misses.

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Slate: The New Warren Buffett Way: from value investor to vulture investor.

With so many stocks having plummeted, so many companies beset by scandal, so much money fleeing the market, and such a crisis of investor confidence, one might expect that the classic value situations that are Buffett’s hallmark would be everywhere. Buffett should be grabbing an underpriced company every few days. The fact that Buffett, who has oodles of cash to put to work, hasn’t found many — and has instead been nibbling on distressed properties — shows just how overvalued stocks still are.

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Spent some quality time struggling with Java’s I/O routines over the weekend (I know, I have no life…) Any Java/Linux guru reading this — help/comment would be very appreciated. My problem’s about this servlet that does fine on Win2k, but takes ages to execute on Linux, but only when the client is another Java app. Any ideas?

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Peterme: Abnormal American. `See, I lead a fairly simple life. I rent an apartment. I don’t own a car. I don’t make extravagant purchases on a bunch of different credit cards. And because of this, “the computer” doesn’t know what to make of me.’

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Queued this onto my reading list: The Millennial Project. This is definitely not fantasy, some very hard nosed engineering thought went into the writing of this.

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