Monday, November 28, 2005

Captain Google new clothes.

If you were like me, you would have had "get firefox" banners on your blog long, not so long ago. Now captain goog has a new ally, the Firefox. Under its new refferal program you can make a dollar for each person you refer to download firefox. Currently its available only to US citizens.
Now I dont know if I should be happy or sad. It helps spread firefox and infuriates m$. But with so many people using the google toolbar, it just increases the google database.
With urchin already free and growing in numbers, google has a way to get stats about the sites. With toolbar they get to know the color of your underwear.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

POK part of Pakistan?

While the threat that Google Earth apparently poses to national security has been grabbing headlines, there’s another potential controversy that’s been overlooked.

If you open the political map of the subcontinent in Google Earth, you’d find that there’s a well-defined boundary between India and Pakistan, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is on Pakistan’s side. Further, Aksai Chin isn’t a part of either India or China; it is a separate political entity.
-TOI




There was a similar controversy reagding Taiwan/China. Earlier MS had a similar row in India with win95 product. They had to change their political map after India's protest. We need to make similar protests this time too. Might be, the people of Google India, can take this up with their employer, apart from at a diplomatic level.

Google Earth threat to national security?

President A P J Abdul Kalam has expressed concern over the security threat posed by Google Earth's free mapping program available on the internet.

Speaking at a top-level meeting in Hyderabad on Saturday, President Kalam voiced concern regarding "sensitive areas clearly marked on Google Earth". He asserted that terrorists and other subversive elements would use these images for their nefarious activities. Kalam also said that present laws are inadequate and that stringent laws are required to restrain the use of these pictures.

It certainly seems that Google is insensitive to security concerns of India. It shows high resolution maps of high security military installations. India has already made its concerns known and yet google refuses to do anything. It is fooder for the terrorists. I am really for the freedom of knowledge, but this is streaching things a bit too far.