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E-Week has a good round-up of the current state of affairs in the DVD industry. With the blu-ray, HD-DVD, EVD and FVD all gearing up, war is the only appropriate term to describe what we are about to witness in the coming months..

NASA has reportedly said No to a request by the Russian Space agency to extend ISS missions to one year. NASA cited the current reduced operational state of the ISS and the lack of sufficient research into the medical ramifications of prolonged space missions on astronauts, as the primary reasons for the refusal.

Russia wanted NASA to lengthen ISS missions primarily to allow it to cater to the lucrative space tourism market. The full story is available here.

The Economic Times is carrying a story today on the barrage of NRI silicon valley techies who are investing heavily in Bollywood.

More than a dozen odd Indo-American techie-sponsored projects are in the pipeline, a trend that is now even attracting attention of hardcore venture capitalists from the Silicon Valley.

Sometime over the past 2-3 weeks, the ban on Yahoogroups seems to have been lifted. It appears to have been narrowed down to just the offending URL : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kynhun. I've been able to confirm this via VSNL & Hathway. However, I've been informed that a Dishnet corporate proxy can reach the kynhun URL fine :S So the inconsistencies continue to remain.

The ban was implemented in late September 2003, and I recall being confronted with an 'Access Denied' message a few weeks ago, whilst attempting to reach http://groups.yahoo.com/. Therefore, it seems to have taken the 'powers-that-be' 7 whole months to learn how to implement an access list correctly, or it's taken 7 whole months for some petty minister's ego to simmer down (subsequent to the Yahoo rebuff).

If anybody can shed more light on this, please do so via the comments section..

Forbes is carrying an article on a new market for spammers - 'marketing' stocks. The messages tip the recipient that a stock - 'ABCD', is very likely to rebound shortly - even with a 5% success rate, an under-performing stock might see a dramatic turn-around.

Mark Tully has written an interesting piece on the success of Cyberabad, and whether it will play an role in the upcoming elections.

Optimism in Cyberabad and cynicism in the Old City — that would not surprise Dr Vidyasagar who has diagnosed an Indian complaint called SLIME or The Self-Loathing Indian Mentality. He traces it back to that old villain, Macaulay. Today he blames the English language press for spreading the disease. I remembered visiting the Hyderabad Press Club to discuss Naidu’s e-governance reforms when I was writing about them a few years ago. So negative was the response that in the end I asked: “Can’t one of you find anything good to say about the reforms?”

The full article can be read here.

The 2003 Nebula awards were announced on Saturday. The winners were:

• Novel : The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon
• Novella : Coraline, Neil Gaiman
• Novelette : "The Empire of Ice Cream", Jeffrey Ford
• Short Story : "What I Didn't See", Karen Joy Fowler
• Script : The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair & Peter Jackson

The complete list of nominees and excerpts from the winners is available here, and here. I really wish they hadn't published the photo ;D

MIT's Technology Review has published a well-written article on a few companies that exist solely for the purpose of invention - unrestricted by board-room policies or bureaucratic short-sight, and revel in their freedom to imagine, create and evlove new ideas and technologies. A fascinating article..

The Indian government is reportedly unhappy with American visa regulations that require biometric screening of travellers using diplomatic passports, albeit on personal business.

Last week, senior officials from the external affairs ministry met diplomats in the US embassy here to seek "clarifications" about a key grey area in the fingerprinting rule: what happens to holders of diplomatic passports? As matters stand, the only exception permissible under the new US statute is for diplomatic passport holders travelling on official work.

The Economic Times is running a story on the financial earnings of the IITs' research labs. Surprisingly, it's been IIT-Kharagpur who've topped the list, ahead of IIT-Delhi and Mumbai.

In the financial year 2003-04, the institute has been able to earn a whopping Rs 90 crores from research projects and industrial consultation, more than double of what IIT Powai and IIT Delhi, its nearest competitors could do.

Profits were up from Rs.58 crore last year.