General

Shirazi of chowrangi.com has an interesting article about computers and paper consumption. He argues that increasing use of computers and web publishing will result in the reduction of paper consumption and hence be good for the environment.

However the statistics that he has presented reflect the very opposite:

Estimate show that paper consumption has trebled during the last thirty years, and given the present trends, it is likely to double by 2010 that is a big cause of concerns because it is linked with seismic environmental problems, from deforestation through industrial pollution to waste.

There can be many reasons for this increase in paper consumption. It could well be argued that the world population has increased and that is the chief cause of this increasing demand for paper.

The Cricket World Cup 2007 starts today at around 7:00 PM Pak time when Windies take on Pakistan. 16 teams from around the world will be vying for cricket's greatest prize. Pakistan is abuzz with cricket mania as the tournament nears. As a cricket fan I will be writing about the tournament and my favourite team Sri Lanka on my cricket blog.

Although the tournament starts today , the real competition begins with the Super eight sometime in April. The tournament will conclude on the 28th of April and I hope to see Sri Lanka lift the World Cup on that date.

The level of western hypocrisy is mind boggling. Western countries like to lecture the world about a lot of things that they themselves are guilty of.

Consider the hypocrisy over freedom of speech. America and other western countries love to lecture the rest of the world about freedom of speech yet their own media is extremely fond of toeing the government line. We saw how the US media helped delude its citizens about Iraq before the invasion and now we see how it continues down the same path as it helps demonize Iran just like the US government wants it to. The western media clearly endulges in self censorship and has an obvious bias especially against Muslims. The BBC, for example, openly talks about racial profiling of Muslims as if institutionalised racism against Muslims is perfectly okay.

Recent news stories suggest that things are much worse in the new colonies of Iraq and Afghanistan. The raid on the offices of an Iraqi journalist's union and the destruction of a freelance cameraman's footage in Afghanistan are just the the most recent examples.

Then there is the rampant intolerance. The west loves to lecture the rest of the world about the need for "moderation" and tolerance while it launches ever increasing attacks on Muslim countries around the world. People in the west can't even tolerate Muslims living on the same planet as them much less those living in their own countries. So much for "freedom" and tolerance!

Here are a few ideas on how bloggers can mess with their readers :

Use an animated feed icon like this guy writes about. The idea is that the animation attracts visitor's attention to your blog feed but I think it is distracting and annoying. Observant readers will have noticed that I use an animated feed icon too. This is because my icon uses slow animation and fade effects which I think does not make it as distracting. If you disagree then its ok because I like to mess with my readers .

Make sure your comment form asks users for their website address. Also make sure that that website address is never displayed in user's comments . Users eager for backlinks will place comments on your blog only to find that they have been duped and their comments don't include links to their sites . A similar tactic is widely used on wordpress blogs where links in comments do not pass page rank because the blog software automatically inserts no-follow attributes.

Write a post supporting censorship and make sure that you enable moderated comments. Enthusiastic users will write lengthy comments only to find that their comments disappear once they press the submit button . Some of them will even protest that their comments are not showing up without realising the bloody irony of the whole business .

Anandtech has done a performance review of Microsoft's new operating system Windows Vista. While Vista's new Aero User Interface has gained the most attention it has a number of new features under the hood. Some of its new features:

• First up is the one I find most interesting. Its a feature called superfetch. Basically superfetch strives to maximize the use of system memory by loading your most frequently used programs into RAM. It works by tracking your usage patterns and anticipating your next actions so it works best for users that follow a common routine when using their PCs. By loading your most frequently accessed programs it fills up RAM almost completely. The advantage here is that it speeds up startup times for frequently accessed software. It also means that the more RAM you add to your computer the faster it will run. The downside is that windows Vista uses much more RAM than previous Windows versions and it takes longer to startup as superfetch loads data into RAM.
  
• Vista can also make use of your usb flash drives to cache data and programs thereby speeding up your system. This feature is called ready boost.
• A common criticism of Windows has been that searching for a file on your local hard drive is slower than doing a web search! Windows vista deals with this by indexing the files on your hard drive for near instantaneous search.
• Parental controls have been integrated into Vista. It allows parents to monitor and filter children's web surfing activities and set time limits on computer usage. A new games explorer allows users to view information about all the games installed on their system. Parents can use the rating feature of the games explorer to restrict access to games.
• One annoying "feature" is aimed at improving security but actually makes common tasks much harder. Its called User Access Control and it requires users to supply their windows password when trying to make changes to their operating system. According to anandtech it makes the simple task of deleting a file permanently a four click process.

Despite including new performance enhancing features like SuperFetch Vista takes up more resources and is slower overall than Windows XP. Of course we will all have to upgrade eventually so the good news is that adding more RAM to our computers can boost Vista's performance.