Banning Orkut

It was with surprise that I read yesterdday about moves to ban orkut and thought it probably was a joke till I read about the Shiv Seniks attacking a Cyber Net Centre in Thane, Maharashtra.

One wonders what will remain of the democracy if there is such a blatant attack on Freedom of Speech and Expression. There are moves to develop a software which will partly ban orkut and prevent access to sites which spread hate India campaign

I do not think this makes sense at all. Will the government now plan a ban on paintings which hurt the sentiments of many? China....here we come.

If the Government finds a way to block an URL, the techies will find a way to bypass that and still access the site.

There are so many porn sites on the web easily accessible to anyone surfing the internet.Why does the Government not do anything about banning that? It was reported by a Television Channel (ETV) that Billions of Rupees are going out of India due to
porno sites. It says, 33% of Men and 8% women browse porno sites from office computers itself while working -quoting AC Neilson. The International porno biz is around US$60Bn. It is behind lot of abductions and other sex related crime in India. We can easily assume the loss to India could be around US$ 3BN directly and if we take in account other costs like Judicial, Administrative and Social, it becomes too difficult to evaluate.

If the Government wants to do something about cleaning up the Internet for India, they should begin with banning these sites.

On the other side, my broad band service provider has blocked Blogspot and says it is one of the sites that Government of India has issued instructions for blocking. No amount of reasoning that I can access it from my work place or using dial up has worked till last evening when I have threatened legal action. Hoping better sense prevails.

Mama Pendse

The one person... err thing..that is always online on my yahoo messenger is Mama Pendse, the artificial intelligence based bot (chatterbox). I have not used him much but when help is typed, he gives out a list of topics he maybe able to help one on.I have not used it much but once when I had trouble getting the synonym for a word, I did take his help and the result was accurately what I was looking for. So he is always there on my messenger. When I typed help, this was what he had to say...


mama_pendse: These are the commands I understand
mama_pendse:
Command Name tracknumber
Description This will tell you whose phone number is this( USA , pune , mumbai , bangalore ) )
Usage : tracknumber , tracknumberusa, tracknumbermumbai,tracknumberbangalore,tracknumberpune

mama_pendse:
Command Name rail
Description This will tell railway timetable ( only for India )
Usage : rail deccan OR rail shatabdi ;

mama_pendse:
Command Name horo
Description Horoscope
Usage : horo aries OR horo sagittarius

mama_pendse:
Command Name explain
Description This is a online Dictionary
Usage : explain beauty OR explain revenge

mama_pendse:
Command Name findinfo
Description Searches addresses and telephone number of person , Only in US
Usage : findinfo firstname surname

mama_pendse:
Command Name country
Description Gets Information of any country
Usage : country India

mama_pendse:
Command Name to_spanish
Description Translate into spanish
Usage : to_spanish Some text in english

mama_pendse:
Command Name to_french
Description Translate into french
Usage : to_french Some text in english

mama_pendse:
Command Name to_german
Description Translate into german
Usage : to_german Some text in english

mama_pendse:
Command Name to_italian
Description Translate into italian
Usage : to_italian Some text in english

mama_pendse:
Command Name from_spanish
Description Translate from spanish to english
Usage : from_spanish some text in spanish

mama_pendse:
Command Name from_french
Description Translate from french to english
Usage : from_french Some text in french

mama_pendse:
Command Name from_german
Description Translate from german to english
Usage : from_german Some text in german

mama_pendse:
Command Name from_italian
Description Translate from italian to english
Usage : from_italian Some text in italian

mama_pendse:
Command Name phonespell
Description Convert your phone number into easy to remember words?
Usage : phonespell 1-883-792-8791

mama_pendse:
Command Name distance
Description find distance between any two cities in the world
Usage : distance mumbai, orlando

mama_pendse:
Command Name time
Description Know time in any country
Usage : time usa

mama_pendse:
Command Name xrate
Description Gets Exchange rate between two countries
Usage : xrate usa India

mama_pendse:
Command Name google
Description Search the internet ,(Uses google (TM) api to get search results from internet)
Usage : google tajmahal

mama_pendse:
Command Name climate
Description Gives Climate information of any city in world
Usage : climate orlando , climate mumbai

mama_pendse:
Command Name quote
Description This will tell you Share Price
Usage : quote VRTS OR quote MSFT

mama_pendse:
Command Name traffic_usa
Description Know about traffic condition around your area, send me command traffic_usa zipcode
Usage : traffic_usa 10001,traffic_usa 32771

mama_pendse:
Command Name comment
Description Let me know how I am doing , please send me your comments about me
Usage : comment "your comment goes here"



I also found him on orkut

There is also one community for Mama Pendse on Orkut

Mama Pendse was created by Bhargav Pendse and activated in Pune, India in the year 2000.
Not sure if anybody finds him useful and not sure how accurate people find his answers to queries to be.....