calculus in india: ck raju's research, etc.

jul 5

i was asked to provide references. here's one from ck raju whom i have met and had some discussions with. the force of circumstantial evidence for the invention of the infinetismal calculus in kerala is quite overwhelming. the gregory series should rightly be renamed after madhava, neelakantha, et al based on the usual principle of first discoverer getting the credit.

this is one of the problems i have about the deification of the DWMs. some of the deification rightfully belongs to DIMs (dead indian males). :-)

i also discussed this issue with the manuscriptologist kv sharma. he has the authoritative critical edition of the 'aryabhatiya' to his credit, among many, many other manuscripts in mathematics that show an astonishingly high level of mathematical knowledge that is not acknowledged by europeans to this day.

http://www.indianscience.org/essays/31-%20E--Infinitesimal%20Calculus.PDF

ian pearce's website has a lot of info on indian mathematics and is worth a visit. the particular page about this topic is. pearce is a young research scholar, and when i talked to him, he said he was convinced that indian mathematics has not gotten anywhere near the recognition it deserves.

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Projects/Pearce/Chapters/Ch9_4.html

if you want to know where all the conversion money is coming from

jul 4th

forwarded by a friend. these are official statistics from the government. of course this is only the tip of the iceberg. for instance the billions coming in by hawala from west asia are not counted here (kerala alone got rs. 740 crores according to that very secular paper, the hindu).

http://www.mha.nic.in/FCMC-Presentation.ppt#280,24,Slide

vivek paul departs wipro

jul 4

what do you guys think the impact of this will be, if any?

any speculations as to the reasons why he left?

us news: an emerging alliance with india

jul 4th

interesting that this commentator thinks this is a good deal for the us, and sees the value in an asia-pacific alliance aimed at containing china: the moral equivalent of NATO which was intended to contain the soviet union.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneweb/mb_050701.htm

happy 4th of july weekend to the folks in america!

many happy returns of the day, or words to that effect

for a sobering thought, here's clyde prestowitz's book, a review in the nytimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/books/review/03BLODGET.html?

alarmist, isn't it? this is the democratic perspective, atlanticist indeed. if the jobs were going to europe or if it was germans investing in the us rather than japanese or chinese, i think there would be much less worry.

even a fairly sensible person like paul krugman was getting excited about the chinese bid for unocal. i say, sell them whatever they'll pay good money to buy. the japanese ended up getting poor value for their investments in the us in the 1980s, and the chinese are likely to do the same.

incidentally, vsnl just completed its purchase of the tyco undersea cable.

washington post: war criminal kissinger apologizes for indira gandhi name-calling

jul 2

the war criminal is only apologizing because he hopes to get some fat lobbying fees from indians at some point. yet another side-effect of india's economic growth.

and what about them cambodians, doc? good old christopher hitchens has a vicious book on kissinger, too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/01/AR2005070101930.html

http://www.versobooks.com/books/ghij/h-titles/hitchens_kissinger.shtml

tech happenings

jun 30th

lots happening in tech these days.

google hits $300. amazing. i thought they were overvalued at $200 and so did not buy. now i wish i had. i'd sell now if i had shares, although i am impressed by google. this is frothy valuation.

what's this about google earth? sounds like a great product, but when i went to download it, they had taken downloads off the net. allows you to 'fly' around a virtual globe using satellite photos. i've found the new google maps very good, esp the ease of navigation, and the satellite photos are quaint. the google earth technology sounds orders of magnitude more interesting.

palmone has acquired the rights to the 'palm' name from the software company, palmsource. palmone is doing well on the basis of the treo, which got a dazzling rave review in the nytimes. i have been a palm user for almost 8 years, but now i have an ipaq as well. what do you guys think, does the palm have a future? i like the palm much better as a simple, single-purpose device rather than the ipaq which is a computer. but the ipaq screen is much better. i synchronize with avantgo for news from the net, and it's easier to read text on the ipaq.

how does one move palm contacts and datebook data to the ipaq? is there a simple way to migrate palm data to the pocket pc? is there some utility somewhere? i am certainly not planning to retype all the contact and datebook info.

the amd suit against intel seems to be pretty broad and vicious, and perhaps has an element of truth in it.

sanjay kumar, ex-ceo of computer associates, has been accused of paying off someone $3.7 million to not reveal damaging information to the feds. that man is in a lot of trouble.