Posts from — February 2003

Bollywood told to stub it out

The World Health Organisation has accused the Bollywood film industry of encouraging teenagers to smoke by increasing the amount of smoking shown on screen.

In a report to be released on Tuesday in Geneva, the organisation also said it used to be mostly bad guys who smoked. But now more than half of Bollywood heroes were also shown lighting up in films.

The United Nations’ health body studied Bollywood films released in the last 10 years.

Well… I guess this is all that United Nations will continue doing, once its existence is rendered redundant by certain member countries.

It is estimated that 15 million people a day watch Bollywood films, either at the cinema or on television. Many see the stars as a leading cultural influence.

The health organisation is now calling on Bollywood to end on-screen smoking altogether.

Gee! … and they say Shiv Sena talks too much about cultural influence/invasion, banning and stuff like that!!

But I agree with one thing… down with smoking!! … at least in public places!

[update]
Amrita says Hi to everybody, from Chandigarh. She’s on an industrial trip and is stuck with a slow PC and a slower net connection. But it seems she’s living it up… she’s enjoyed chai from a matki in Mathura and a sexy tandoori in Chandigarh. And she’s looking forward to the fresh snow thats reported to have fallen in Kufri! :-)
[/update]

Why the Buddha laughs!. Laughing Buddha has been interviewing some pretty ladies apart from keeping us all well updated on the World Cup action from South Africa!

Looks like his latest role is being a wicket-keeper… since he’s been Stumping Ms Goretti!! ;-) :-P

Yayyy!… I found some info in Giant Robot!. Thanks to Metafilter, I found this link giving some info about Johnny Sokko and his flying robot called Giant Robot.

I used to love this series when they used to show it on DD when I was a kid! ;-)

Investigators say hole in aluminum wrecked the Shuttle. The panel investigating the loss of the space shuttle Columbia said that a hole developed in its aluminum skin, allowing superheated gas to flow into the left wing and causing the ship’s destruction.

NASA also released a highly detailed map showing for the first time that the Columbia’s sensors began detecting subtle signs of trouble when the craft was still above the Pacific Ocean, 400 miles off the coast of Sonoma County in Northern California.

The new map, combined with the board’s finding that a hole was burning through spacecraft’s skin, suggested that observations of glowing pieces falling away from the shuttle over California carry significant clues to the ultimate cause of the disaster. It could mean that the catastrophic series of failures began almost the moment the Columbia re-entered the atmosphere, lending credence to theories that its exterior had been damaged earlier — perhaps by a piece of foam insulation that fell off during launching, perhaps by space debris or by some other phenomenon like a storm in space.

Read about the details here ()Registratin required)

Hacking the hacker! Kevin Mitnick, hacker par excellence, recently came out of federal probation and started a new security consulting company called, Defensive Thinking. Twice in the last two weeks, hackers/vandals have managed to hack into the website of Mitnick’s company.

The latest breach was by a hacker from Texas who said he hacked into Mitnick’s site because he wanted to be hired as Mitnick’s security officer.

In the earlier breach, a hacker calling themselves Bugbear simply added a page to the website saying; “welcome back to freedom mr.kevin ;)”.

In both instances, the hackers took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft’s popular Internet Information Server (IIS) to break into the web server.

Golly!! hearing this… I am wondering how many customers Defensive Thinking is going to get!!