Of Plagiarism, U turns and IE 7.0
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Last week of April, a happening week indeed; Newsmakers -
How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life - Book written by an American born Indian, Kaavya Vishwanathan (a freshman @ Harvard) has been taken off the book shelves after she was accused of plagiarism (to which she acknowledged later).
Her book was the first in a two-book deal worth 500,000 dollars signed when she was just 17; But alas ... it turned out that more than 40 passages were similar (quite similar actually) to a novel by Megan McCafferty. Although she claims it to be unintentional, the harm's done and its gonna hurt real bad as she learns it the hard way.
U turn by Afridi - Shahid Afridi has decided that it was not a good idea to bail out on test cricket and focus more on his ODI Career. Noob. Its like a childplay now-a-days with players announcing their decision without consulting the mgrs. or even other players only to find themselves back in the spotlight. It should be a binding condition in the players contract that they can't get up one day and decide to retire. What message does this convey to other players and the world on how the Team Management works ??
I believe he took the decision of not playing in tests because he was dropped from a recent test match against Srilanka. But then its doesn't go that way right ? Wake up next day - call a press conference - and go like ... "Mein Test Cricket nahin khel raha ".
IE 7.0 - Microsoft have come up with Internet Explorer 7.0 lately. Pretty much similar to Opera/Firefox as they have tried to focus on tabbed viewing amongst other features. How successful it is needs to be seen, I've installed it today but am yet to play around with the addins.
Archived in: Plagiarism India Afridi Cricket Harvard Microsoft Internet Explorer Firefox Srilanka Pakistan Boston
Posted by Rajesh @ 1:43 AM; PERMALINK,
6 Shouts:
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At April 30, 2006 10:14 AM,
Mosilager said...
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Kaavya - apparently books are not written any more, they are produced by a team... like the music production companies. Very sad, really, for the future of authors. I think she just went with what her producers said and of course, she's one one who gets the blame.
IE7.0 - what is up with microsoft and testing to see if you actually bought windows from them? they first sent down an upgrade which tested it, then when I tried to download ie7 it asked me to test again so I got very annoyed and deleted it without installing. They're going a bit too far with this validation crap. -
At April 30, 2006 6:38 PM,
RPM said...
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There is no doubt that adoption of RSS will increase manifold, because IE7 is going to have a feed detector and manager within the browser. So now, even the regular Joe will be able to see the orange feed icon and add a particular feed to their IE favorites or wherever they get stored.
And there is no denying that once IE7 will become final, it will be the dominant browser again.
Lookout for increase in hits on your blog :-) -
At April 30, 2006 10:21 PM,
Rajesh said...
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@ Mosilager - I do think she has a good writing talent and its not often that you find teenagers of her age writing books. But yeah she and her team wouldnt have thought it would be such a big lift off. I read a few comparisons(from the 2 books) and some of them are word-2-word lift offs.
IE7... Yeah they have started this security and checking genuineness of their products recently. I too had to check for that but did not have any trouble installing IE7. But yeah I guess they are taking it a bit far. Can't imagine what happens in SE Asian countries ...
@ Rpm - Yup. It has a feed detector and is a pretty sleek one. And its true, pretty easy to add the feeds too. But I had started liking firefox and am not sure whether I would be shifting to IE anytime soon.
Oh yeah, gotta look for the # hits and the browser types ;) -
At May 01, 2006 2:21 PM,
ammu said...
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I had been wanting to read that book by Kavya. Hmm...it's grave.
Ahh...I loves me my tabs...I'll be happy with IE7 if it integrates it. But for now, there's nothing that'll make me leave Firefox. (except of course site which just dont work firefox!!)
On another note...did you notice that the google Da Vinci Code puzzles are getting a little harder. As in, it takes more than just 30 seconds to do them now ;-) -
At May 01, 2006 11:23 PM,
Rajesh said...
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@ Amrita - Let know if you get hold of the book, for I believe they are already out of the stands.
Yup! IE7 has tabs, pretty much the same as firefox (a few tricks with the mouse added though) :D
Puzzles - absolutely correct; didnt get time over the last 3-4 days but am back today on the latest and yeah it didn't take much time. But hey shhhhhhhh ... -
At May 05, 2006 1:33 AM,
RPM said...
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@rajesh: I did try out the new IE and it works wonderfully - two things I like a lot with tabs in IE are: 'Quick View' of all the open tabs, and also when you take the mouse over to the tab stub, it lets you open a new tab there.
And of course, I love their implementation of Feeds ...
Can't wait for SP1 ;-)
