In german...

...language its called schadenfreude, one way of understanding which is being pleased at someone else's loss. So reading about what is happening in India with respect to the Commonwealth games, I am feeling a great sense of schadenfreude. Good to see some country other than Pakistan country in the bad news.

Hard evidence of child labor at 2010 Commonwealth Games

Muslims would need...

...to be careful while talking, lest they be overheard, and a plot to blow up the former-anti-aircraft-gunner-for-the-Nazis Pope be discovered.
Read it all here:
Mark Steel: That's right, it was all a Muslim plot

For a very...

...long time I was a loyal user of Microsoft's Outlook Express, the simple email client. In Vista its called WinMail, and somehow I was able to carry over all my email and settings from Outlook Express to WinMail when I switched laptops about an year ago. Due to some reasons, which I might write about some other time, I had to start using Outlook, the big email client that is part of Microsoft Office. I have never liked it, since all I need is a simple client to send and receive email, and have no desire or need to use the calendars or tasks or what not. However, I have gotten used to Outlook, but there is one thing that I discovered, which has really put me off.

In Outlook express, you could define folders for your email, and use message rules so that all incoming email went to the different folders according to the rules. Now the important thing was that whenever new email arrived, there would be a notification (in the form of a sound and a small envelope showing on the taskbar. This held for whether the email went to the default Inbox, or any of the user-defined folders. Somehow, in the fancy Outlook, there is a fancy notification, but that works only if the email goes to the Inbox, and not if it goes to any of the user defined folders!!! I just cannot believe this. This means that I have no way of knowing if there is an important email, since for important emails I have self-defined folders, and I have to physically open Outlook to see if there might be a new email. Whether this is sloppy design, or sloppy implementation, I know not, but more likely this is sloppy implementation, since this if this "feature" could be had in the simpler Outlook Express, it should also be possible to have it in the fancier one.

While misery...

..., despair, non-rule-of-law, tyranny (for the own people) and all the bad words one can think of are associated with the so-called Muslim world, its good to see at least one Muslim-majority geographical entity taking small steps forward:
Turkey's Erdogan hails constitutional referendum win

The month of...

...Ramadan has ended, 30 days which seemed at the beginning as unimaginably long, passing at the speed of light. Time does fly, but it seems it flies superfast in Ramadan. Eid mubarik to all.