S1dd - My Other Blog..

A few weeks back I blogged about Bill H.R. 5921. This is a part of three bills introduced by Rep. Lofgren. The other two are H.R. 5882 and H.R. 6039

Here is an email I received from Adsense today:

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://www.ibookdb.net/book/78456.

As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content.

Please make any necessary changes to your web pages in the next 3 business days. We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to your account within the next three days, your account will remain active but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note, however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

As soon as I got this email I removed all Adsense ads from ibookdb and replaced them with YPN because currently I have no means of turining off a particular ad for a particular page and I can’t ensure that I find all adult books on ibookdb reliably and accurately.

Also, this same book is displayed on many other sites with Adsense showing on the side, so I emailed Adsense support with links to other sites as proof. Some of these other sites are a lot larger than ibookdb, so I’m hoping that Adsense will just let me use those ads because after all the adult content is in the book, a limited preview of which is available to anyone at Google Books, and not on ibookdb.

Here it is - 5% off upto $15. Enjoy!!

Amazon is now taking pre-orders for the 3 Cell Wind

I just pre-orded a 6 cell MSI Wind from Buy.com and here is a 10$ off coupon. This is the second time I’ve ordered anything from Buy.com and during checkout I got this page with a lot of fine print offering me $10 off my next order if I sign up for a shady sounding service. The no thanks button was tiny and nearly invisible. Be warned, click no.

It looks like MSI still has a few(<20) black and very few white (<10) in stock today (1:35 PM). Looks like a lot of people are waiting for the six cell. Also inspite of their one Wind per customer policy many people were able to order multiple Winds thanks to an error on the MSI website. Some of those got cancelled and are probably what is available today.

The MSI Wind is now listed at the MSI website. The 3 cell it seems will be shipped on Jun 21. I’ll wait for the 6 cell in July before buying. Here is a link - shop.msicomputer.com. The site is still not taking orders (1:09PM Eastern).

Other retailers who have it listed are:
1. Amazon
2. RK Computers (link from MSI website
3. Low Price Joe
4. Q2 Designs

Nobody still has it in stock and most retailers who mention dates, mention 20th Jun or later. I wonder why MSI pulled this stunt, stating boldly that they will start shipping today. Also the retailers don’t know if they will get the 3 cell or the 6 cell battery versions.

Update (1:52PM Eastern): MSI has taken off the 6 Cell and Linux Winds and the 3 Cell ship date has been pushed back to Jun 27. Maybe the EEEPC 901 and 1000h will show up before the Wind?

Update (3:10PM Eastern): MSI has taken off all the Winds from it’s website now and there is no official release date any more. The msimobile.com main page still links to the press release with today as the release date. I now have my doubts that I’ll find one next month too. Crap!

Update (3:56PM Eastern): 3 Cell Ones are back and in stock (limit one per customer) - currently 56 black and 24 white in stock. Shipping Jun 27. For a product that created so much hype these low numbers are ridiculous!! I’m still waiting for the 6 Cell.

Everyday I get phone calls from “Unknown Name”s with phone numbers that are fake. What good is the Do Not Call registry if people can call you with fake phone numbers and not be held accountable with no means of finding who called? If I pickup, I generally get some sort of automated message and if I get a human once in a while, they refuse to provide a business name or a call back number and hang up if you press them for it. If I don’t pickup, the answering machine picks up and the message left is blank.

The only real company that I used to get phone calls were is random people trying to sell me DISH Network (even though I already had Dish at the time). I could never extract a business name or number from any of these either. Most of them would hang up if I asked about what Dish location they work for, a direct number to call them and if they actually work for Dish (which they claim to do) and a means to verify that they do. These have stopped now. Maybe DISH got a lot of complaints about this?

The MSI wind now has an official site and an official price of only $499 making it cheaper than the EEEPC 900!! Still no sites have it listed except Expansys UK, which is charging over $600 for it. I’m waiting for it to show up on NewEgg or Amazon so I can order it as soon as it is available.

It’s a shame the cheaper $399 linux version has no Bluetooth and a smaller 3 cell battery forcing me to buy the XP version. but well with an 80GB drive, I can probably dual boot the thing.

Update 10AM ET 06/03: MSI Wind now available at MWave but specifications do not match MSI site.
Update Noon ET 06/03: Out of Stock Already at MWave. It seems that they never had any stock to start with. At least now the specifications have been corrected. Be warned that MWave requires that you fax them an ID and your credit card front and back. This is ridiculous and very unsafe. I do not recommend buying from these folks.
Update 11AM 06/09: Amazon listed the MSI Wind on Friday. They stated a price of $549 for the XP version and had a 3 cell battery listed and were taking preorders. Now Amazon is no longer taking pre-orders and no price is mentioned.
Update 11AM 06/09: Hand Built - an unknown newcomer site has listed the MSI Wind for sale at 499 + 10$ UPS ground shipping. And many users of an MSI WInd forum I visit have placed orders there.

Parchayi and me were both excited to hear that Masala Wok, an Indian Chinese chain opened up in Herndon. We’ve been missing Indian Chinese food anywhere close by and last weekend while we visited a friend in Northern VA, we paid a visit to Masala Wok.

I ordered the Masala Wok Spicy (description - Paneer stir fried in a zesty szechuan sauce), which turned out to be a shocking pink strange looking curry with Paneer and a mismatched collection of vegetables not even close to the szechuan sauce that we are accustomed to as Indian Chinese. Once I overcame the gross misuse of food coloring, I tried it and it was really bad. So I can’t recommend this dish at all.

Parchayi ordered the Ginger Masala - Chicken seasoned with spices cooked in ginger sauce - which looked better and tasted slightly better than mine but I would call it mediocre at best.

Our friend ordered the Biryani and that was average according to him. He recommends visiting Curry N Kabob for the best Biryani in the DC area and I have to agree. Curry N Kabob has fantastic food.

To the owners of Masala Wok, may I recommend a visit to Seattle to try out Inchin’s Bamboo Garden in Redmond to eat some real Indian Chinese.

For a change, a new bill with a great idea has been introduced by Congresswoman Lofgren and Congressman Goodlatte that will eliminate per country limits in Employment Based Immigration. More details here

The per country limits in immigration are understandable for promoting diversity but are totally brain dead when applied to employment based immigration. Not only is that bad for American business, it discriminates against employees from countries like India and China because there are several years (from 1 - 5 depending on how lucky you are) for which they cannot switch jobs or move as a result of backlogs in immigration, some caused by incompetance and most caused by the per country limit. Also being laid off etc. often requires restarting the entire process again at the new employer.

Also, the problems of legal immigrants don’t get as much press time as those of illegal immigrants. In fact many proposed bills for illegal immigrants make it more worthwhile to be an illegal immigrant than a legal one, especially for people who have teenage children and are stuck in the immigration queue for years on end.