13 October 06 - 09:30Pistol found in unclaimed bank locker

A pistol gifted by a Raja to a British officer in 1920s found in an unclaimed locker of State Bank of India.

The Times of India reports that an antique (sic) pistol supposedly gifted to Lt A B Greenwood, sometime in the 1920s by an unknown Raja was found (along with 261 rounds of ammo) in an unclaimed locker of the State Bank of India's head office at Fort, Mumbai.

An interesting aside - as per receipts found with the pistol, the (highly engraved) custom made gun is supposed to have cost Rs. 300 at the time while the ammunition recovered is supposed to have cost Rs. 200. By the same measure, 261 rounds of .32 cal IOF (KF brand) ammo would cost less than Rs. 9,000 today... of course these days, there is little chance of purchasing any kind of pistol for a proportionate amount of around Rs. 13-14,000!!

Read the full article here >>

Cheers!
Abhijeet

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25 September 06 - 16:47Asif and Abhijeet on CNN-IBN

Asif (a fellow member at indiansforguns.com) and I, were interviewed by CNN-IBN on the 16th of this month. The topic was gun control and why Indian citizens need to have a right to keep and bear arms (RKBA)!

The interview was aired the same evening, you can either read the text transcript on the CNN-IBN site here>>

OR

If bandwidth is not an issue you can see the archived (low res) video on their site here >>

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25 September 06 - 00:00Over 3 lakh unlicensed guns in Delhi

Dug this out from an old post of mine at Yahoo groups to quote elsewhere, but then decided it should be posted under the RKBA section as well...

Over 3 lakh unlicensed guns in Delhi
Maneesh Pandey
11 May, 2003 TNN

NEW DELHI:Ninety per cent of the crimes in Delhi are committed using unlicensed guns. From the rudimentary desi katta - a rusty pipe attached to a crude wooden grip and a trigger - to the more sophisticated 'Star' guns smuggled in from China and Pakistan, the illegal gun market is thriving like never before.

Officials say legal firearms are used only in stray cases of suicides and domestic violence. Delhi Police estimates that the number of illegal guns is five times higher than the 55,000 licensed guns in the city.

Ooooh!! I love it when the cops say things like that!! But is anyone in parliament listening!!!

Cheers!
Abhijeet

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08 July 06 - 01:49Microsoft is a software pirate!

Oooh! I simply love this one! PC Welt (a German magazine) carries this amazing article titled "Did Microsoft use Warez for Windows XP?". For the uninitiated warez refers to pirated / cracked illegal copies of software. You can read the original article in German here or the English version here.

In a nutshell, someone at Microsoft used pirated software to make some of the audio files for the Windows Media Player tour. What's ironic is that Microsoft, the quintessential retailer of proprietary "closed source" software and a rabid anti-piracy advocate has been caught in the act of using a pirated copy of a US $400 audio encoding software.

And don’t take my word for it, see for yourself: -

Open notepad in Windows.
Select open and goto your Windows Directory (usually C:\Windows\).
Open the "Help" sub-directory.
Open the "Tours" sub-directory.
Open the "WindowsMediaPlayer" sub-directory.
Open the "Audio" sub-directory.
Open the "Wav" sub-directory.
Select any one of those files.

Instead of playing them in MediaPlayer or any other audio software, open the file in Notepad. Now scroll all the way to the bottom.

See those strings "SoundForge 4.5" and "Deepz0ne"? Yep, this means that the file was created with a cracked version of Soundforge, cracked by a cracker called Deepz0ne. Good show Microsoft! Always knew we could rely on you guys for ethical business practices! LOL

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14 June 06 - 15:09Interesting take on gun rights

Every once in a while one comes across an article that reflects ones own thinking so well that it's almost spooky! This is exactly the feeling I got while reading this article on the "American Handgunner" website. I make no bones about the fact that I am as pro-gun as one can get, BUT and this is a big BUT – I simply DO NOT buy the argument that citizens possessing guns either prevents a tyrannical government from coming to power OR helps replace that government with a better dispensation! History is littered with enough examples to disprove this argument – just look at our own neighbourhood... Afghanistan is chock a block full of weapons in the hands of civilians, but that hasn't helped it move anywhere close to a free and fair democratic society!

The author extensively quotes from Etienne de la Boetie's "The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude" and one cannot help but draw parallels with India's fight for independence. It seems so much like we have exchanged one set of oppressive rulers (the British) for another (the Politician-Bureaucrat combine)! Boetie's essay seems to have an explanation as to why we Indians have so readily accepted this new dispensation without so much as a whimper. Why is it that so few of us are bothered by our governments repeated infringements of civil liberties? Why does the vast majority not protest the rampant corruption that ails our institutions? And why, why is no one even willing to listen (let alone act)? Boetie's essay seems to have some pretty interesting answers... a disturbing analysis of human nature – check it out and draw your own conculsions.

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10 June 06 - 02:44The science of love

Stumbled upon this excellent article on the Cornell University website describing the science behind love. It starts off with "OVER the course of history it has been artists, poets and playwrights who have made the greatest progress in humanity's understanding of love. Romance has seemed as inexplicable as the beauty of a rainbow. But these days scientists are challenging that notion, and they have rather a lot to say about how and why people love each other."

And further down "Scanning the brains of people in love is also helping to refine science's grasp of love's various forms. Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of a new book on love*, suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment. There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting."

After reading the article, what is placed before you in a rather cut & dried fashion is that there really is no such thing as romance or love, we are all just hooked onto the pleasure that these chemicals in our brain give us and you/ your girlfriend/ boyfriend/ spouse/ partner/ mate/ or what have you are NOT in love at all - its all just a form of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)! They speculate that doctors might someday even figure out ways to make people fall in and out of love, without the associated pain! Gee wow! Isn't science simply wonderful... I recall once being told by someone that no one falls in love unless they want to... wonder if that person was talking about the same damn thing...

Anyhow, check it out here and form your own opinions

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09 June 06 - 01:20Software Wars

A caricature of the strategic map for the ongoing software wars... It would be funny, if it weren't for FUD, SCO and the other illegal WMD's being employed by one side... hmmm, reminds one of "Dubyaman" and his blatantly unethical style of doing things!

Check out the original here.

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08 June 06 - 20:10Stop IE!!

STOP IE! If you're tired of hearing your friends and acquaintances telling you that Internet Explorer is probably the best thing since sliced bread, look no further! This is an entire site listing out the many flaws in Internet Explorer - bugs, security vulnerabilities, non-compliance to web standards etc. Of course you can find all of this information at other websites and online forums BUT number ONE - it is all in one place AND number TWO they point you to the alternatives available, in a very objective manner.

Check it out here.

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