CS dude

Bangalore Maduari Kodaikanal Road Trip Part 2

2010-05-01T08:51:00.005+05:30

Next day, we started off with Masala dosas at the restaurant and I have to give it to the folks over here, they really know how to make the yummiest masala dosas! We take off for Kodaikanal from Madurai at 10:30, refuel our car and pump up the tyres. We followed the road towards Dindigual, on way we see a left signboard for Kodaikanal, we chase it, but fail to notice the final right turn, next to pertrol pump which directly leads to Kodaikanal and end up burning extra 15 km’s before we notice our folly.

We reached Kodaikanal at 1:00 and start calling up hotels. The trip meter stands at 577 KM’s. To our not-much-surprise, all the hotels either had zero availability or had posh rates associated with them. Hotel Tamilnadu then came to our rescue, we checked in one of their standard rooms which had Rs 1600 per day tariff. The staff here was extremely helpful and the manager at the reception answered just about all the queries I had and gave me a map and helped me fix up my itinerary completely. After getting all the info, we have our lunch at the restaurant and hop on to the bed our afternoon siesta.

We started our walk towards the lake at 5:10, and reach there at 5:35, but to our disappointment the ticket counter was closed right in front our eyes and were told that the counter is open till 5:30 only, sic. However, wherein lies disappointment, therein lies an opportunity. We decided to cycle around the lake and this was truly an amazing experience. And for a moment it felt like me and my wife were still dating! The traffic on the road did play a spoilsport couple of times. I strongly believe that all motor vehicle traffic should be stopped on this road.

An hour later, we started shopping around, Khyati found an amazing purse, chocolates and hair oil. After the exhilarating-empty-your-pocket shopping experience, we headed out for dinner. Tava was one place which was strongly recommended by people and we weren’t disappointed. The dal makhani here was truly lip-smacking. We reached back our room at 10. The cycle workout, had well, “worked out” and we doze off soon.

Next day after having the buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant, we head out for sightseeing. We start off towards Coakers walk and follow the road straight towards Pillars rock. Our first stop for the day is upper lake view, here you would get an incredible birds eye view of the lake, some one suggested it looks like map of India, though to me it looked more akin to amoeba. We drove next to pine forest, once you go in the forest, the shade brings in a 3 degree temperature drop, we met a group of enthusiastic guys over here, and they were more than willing to take pics for us, no matter how much time it took. Thank you guys! Next up was Berijam lake, but nobody was being allowed to go over there, we were later told that the public will be allowed to enter from next day only. Damn!

Our next stop was Guna caves, parking over here is a mess, a common thing just about every place we visited. There are roadside stalls which occupy half of the road and the other half is supposed to be used for two way traffic, not the best scenario especially when going uphill. Done with parking, once you walk to the top, you might be disappointed to find out that there is a huge fence which blocks your path towards the caves. But the moment you reach the fence and look down, you would surely appreciate the rationale behind that. The slope is quite steep from here on and full of peril. On the other hand, if you climb up to your right, you will surely find one of the most tranquil views of gigantic pillar rocks. From here, you would also get a view of Guna caves. With the cool halcyon breeze gently touching us, we just laid down over there for over an hour and have to really push ourselves to get up and move over to the next destination, which was the official view of the pillar rock. This wasn’t as amazing, considering the fact that we had already got a heavenly view already, and with just too many people at the “official” viewpoint, I decided to get out of this place at the earliest. Further up we went to Green Valley View, this one was more like nano commercial street, with several shops put up in a small compressed space. We didn’t find anything worth to see or buy over here, and left this place also pretty quickly.

Coakers walk was next, here we were greeted by crooks who wanted us to pay for a video camera when we only had still camera. Gash! We took the stand of not paying even a bit extra, and pretty soon they let us in. Coakers walk presents a great view of city for the complete walk. Done with Coakers walk, it was time to feed-the-stomach event, and without second thoughts, there was only one place we had to go to, Tava. We treated ourselves to Prathas this time around, but somehow the dal makhani we had here the other day was still had its taste in me and I couldn’t control the urge and ordered one dal makhani also.

Once the butterflies were made siletn, it was time do what we couldn’t do the other day, boating. We walked to the lake, got ourselves a ticket, and off we go. While boating, we notice one boat on the shore with a family being served with hot tea and snacks by the canteen guy who has his shop right on the shore. For all the opportunities life gives you, I wasn’t going to miss this one. By the time we reached over there, it had started to drizzle a bit, and soon we were boating while eating samosa and sipping hot tea with soft drizzle. It is that just this very moment, which is has made this trip one of the most memorable ones!

Done with boating, we went for another round of cycling, this time it was much better as there weren’t many folks driving and honking around the lake. We also tried our hands on double cycle, but weren’t much successful over there. After cycling we went back straight to our hotel and dozed off soon after having dinner.

We checked out next day at 10 and bid adieu to Kodaikanal[607] at 10:15. Khyati took over driving from here on and she covered up the complete downhill impressing me again how quickly she has had picked up driving. Once we were down, I took over and we passed by Dindigul [695] at 12:30, Thoppur[913] at 3:00. Here, my wife again took over driving and started clocking 120 K’s on her first highway outing itself!. She drove till Hosur where I took over again. We were at home[1062] at 5:30, much in advance of 7:00 PM target that we had set for us.which Khyati wanted to meet so that she could watch Roadies!

Here are the pics......

Bangalore Maduari Kodaikanal Road Trip

2010-04-25T15:10:00.002+05:30

Good Friday is just about the most amazing day of the year. For one, it means no office for both me and my wifey. For two, Saturday and Sunday follow it making it awesome threesome! For three, a no excuse long holiday!

For more than a month we were waiting for this day, we shortlisted few places, but Kodaikanal was on top of both of our lists. Khyati wanted to club in Madurai also. More the merrier, I say.

The day before, Khyati starts off by cooking her signature chips. We already had printouts of maps, travelogues and hotel phone numbers, so packed them all up. For a change we decided not to do any advance hotel reservations so having a printout of hotel phone numbers came in handy. We finished off packing around 11PM. The plan is to get up at 4:30 and start off by 5, but my mind had other plans and no amount of convincing to my mind helped it go to sleep. I finally catch up with sleep around 1 AM.

The alarm starts to buzz at 4:30, and after dilly dallying we start off from our house at 5:45. The first stop was at newly opened Kamat Upachar, Kamandoddi which is part of the do-not-refuel-here Reliance petrol station. We leave from here around 7:10 and at 7:40 we were at Krisnagiri toll booth. The moment we reached here, it seemed we were not the only ones who were planning a vacation! There were just so many people who had weekend plans! We crossed our fingers hoping that we would still get rooms to stay!

Hereon, I decide to push the throttle a bit, and started clocking around 120-140 K’s and reached Thoppur toll gate at 8:30, there isn’t much rush over here, seems like we beat everybody! The tripmeter reads 154Km. Omalur [190] isn’t behind, we reach there at 9:05 We cross Rasamapalayam [256] at 9:55 and Velanchet [328] at 10:50. By 12:30 we are in Madurai [440] and we start looking around for hotels. But boy! The heat over here; reminded me of the hot, hot days in Chandigarh! We checked up the rooms at Hotel Empee and Hotel Tamilnadu, both the places were similar, except Empee had the rooms a bit cheaper, 1200, including service tax for a deluxe AC room.

We checked in around 1:30 and switch on the AC immediately, freshen up and go for lunch in the attached restaurant. I go for a North Indian Thali while Khyati goes for the only-thing-she-ever-orders-in-South-Indian-Restaurants, Masala dosa :). North Indian thalli was amazing, huge amount of rice, cold chapattis, sambhar, and yes, north Indian chole! Welcome to “Real” South India! But to give it to the folks over here, sambhar is amazing, so I soaked all my rice with sambhar and ate it.

We start off our holy trip at 4:30, but we are advised to cover up the Thirumalai Nayak Palace first, as it closes for public at 5:30. The artwork here is pretty amazing, a nice teaser for what awaits at Meenakshi temple. As most of the “palace” part no longer exists, I wonder why it should still be called a palace.

Next up on the list is Meenakshi temple, and the golden lotus greets us, we sit around the lotus for half an hour and soak ourselves with all the divinity around. Gopurams here have magnificent sculpture and paintings. I am bedazzled with the symmetry and attention to detail wherever I put my eyes. We leave from here around 7:00 and on our way back we find that the crowds waiting for security check line has increased tenfold! Thankfully, we were bang on time to enter the temple.

To be continued..

Here are the pictures:

Road Trip To Shivanasamudra

2009-11-29T22:34:00.005+05:30

The only road trips that me and my wifey had been having for more than a month were to the malls for grocery shopping. And it was high time to break the status quo. So, we decided to pack up the bags and head over to Shivanasamudra. It was a pretty easy choice as I had recently seen pics of the falls and there was no way I was going to hold back on going over.

We were planning to start off early around 6:00 but people had suggested that it was OK to go a bit late and 8:00 was a good time to start off. All said and done, we started from our place at 9:30 Albeit, it was Saturday, it took some time to get out of Bangalore and get on to the Mysore road. We reached Kaamat at 11:30 and had a decent breakfast. Decent, because I had heard several rave comments about Kaamat but the food served wasn't warm and I hate eating food which seems to come out of cold storage.

We hopped back into car at 12:00. I however missed the turn required to get onto SH33 due to which I had to travel some extra distance. SH33 didn't please me much as there were few rough patches en route. Guys at Team BHP had recommended to go to Barachukki first and it turned out to be a pretty great recommendation. Its an amazing place and the falls were perfect to just go in and relax. It is recommended to carry extra set of clothing if you truly want to enjoy the falls. One however needs to be bit careful over here as when you are crossing over the stones to reach the falls, there is a great chance of slipping. I had a narrow escape as I myself did slip once, but someone quickly held my hand.

We spent a cool 2 and half hours at this place, after which we started off for Gaganchukki. It was pretty quiet over here and there weren't many people around. We stayed there and enjoyed the falls for half an hour. There is also a hotel over here and one can get a quick bite and enjoy the swings over here.

We started from Gaganchukki at 17:00 and I decided to give my wifey some confidence of driving on highway and let her drive the entire SH33 stretch. We were planing to have dinner at McDonalds but we missed the turn and decided to eat at Kaamat itself. After a round of Poori Bhaaji and Vaada's we hopped back at 8. We didn't want to spend time in traffic near Corporation circle so we decided to take NICE road. As always it is just sheer thrill driving on NICE road as I just love hitting top speeds whenever I am on this road.

We reached back home at 21:30 and it was end of an amazing journey. You can check up the pics on my Facebook page

Route while going: --> Bangalore -> Mysore Road --> Maddur -> Malavalli -> Shivanasamudra

Route while coming back: --> Shivanasamudra -> Maddur --> Malavalli --> NICE Road --> Bangalore

Route Map: Click here

Did You Know?

2009-03-29T21:04:00.003+05:30

My Brother, sent me this video link.

I call it the "Words Most Amazing Facts In 5 Minutes"

Intel SMM Exploit Code Released

2009-03-21T07:43:00.000+05:30

Johanna Rutkowska and her team at Invisiblethings have done it again. Their team which has earlier found several issues with Intel chips have found another major exploit in Intels SMM [ System Management Mode ] which is Ring -2. Yes minus 2, a level which is at a much more privilige level at which OS runs.

In what may be embarrassing for Intel would be that the expoit unveiled by the team also mentions that Intel filed for patents which apparently fixed up these exploits but have somehow not been integrated into the processor. It also describes just how easy it is for someone with root access on Linux can modify mtrr [ Memory Type Range Register ] using /proc file system and get into SMM mode.

Arstechnica is also covering the story "Intel CPU-level exploit could be tempest in a teapot"

Chatter Bots and Humans: What is the difference?

2008-03-18T08:46:00.004+05:30

Have you ever tried Alice, the chatter bot in your EMACS editor? If yes, then how easy was it for you to find out the difference between the both? I bet it won’t have taken more than 30 seconds that human race is still better than the robo one. However, what happens when you just open up a academic institute's website at around 00:30 and it pops up a window with the following message:

Agent : Good Morning
Agent : Welcome to LivServ HelpDesk
Agent : How may i help you

I am curious now, have these people really put in a chatter bot? And I start off..

Guest : Are you awake?
Agent: Yes
Agent : May I know your requirement please ?
Guest : Are you awake? # I reckon the above are standard chatter bot response. Lemme ask again.
Agent: Yes
Guest : How come are you awake? # Hmmm,… Interesting.
Agent: We Provide 24/7 support # Now, this one seems like something else.
Guest: Is this some computerized agent or manual?
Agent : This is manual. #Whoops!
Guest : Oh I am sorry then for bothering you, I will look for info myself
Agent : You are welcome.

Guess which website would probably feel the need to invest thousands of rupees in providing live customer care?

http://www.iiitb.ac.in

I have absolutely no clue, none whatsoever though as to why an educational institute would need to invest money into providing 24/7 customer support services. I am ready to believe that providing education is a service, but IMO, this live support seems to be stretching it a bit too far.

Now as regards to answering as to how to differentiate between a chatterbot and a human? Simply ask :)

Sun's Blackbox

2007-11-18T13:12:00.000+05:30

I have always admired Sun, for all the unique ideas that it seems to come up with. And of late, I have been tracking Project Blackbox.

The concept basically invoves having Data Center on wheels. The size of the box is the same as that of standard shipyard container, so it can even be shipped all the way across, well, on a ship, what else?

Now Sun is going one step further, it is dumping these Blackboxes into old rejected coal mines, wherein they would be just dumped in and would save power as, it would require little external cooling as it would be using ground water(?). This would bring in a cost saving of about $9 million/year. All in all, sounds good, though I always have second thoughts whenever any company comes out with $x million of savings for whatever product they are pushing in, without mentioning the fact that their product itself would cost some $y million more.

Though surprisingly, Blackbox's first customer Stanford, colored it all white, evidently to save more energy, as well, if you remember physics, black, what else. radiates more heat.

Long pending updates.

2007-11-17T10:25:00.000+05:30

Geeeeeeeeeeeeee........

That has been one break from blogging. I really don't know, just exactly why I actually stopped blogging, not that I know, why I started doing it at the first place itself :).

A lot has happened over the time I blogged last over here. And it has been such a long duration that I actually have to open my own blog to see what exactly I wrote earlier. Here is a summary of some of the stuff. Some really cool stuff, some not so cool stuff and something that just completely goes *bad*.

1) For one I got a chance to work on some really cool stuff during my internship at IBM. I worked with Manish, Bhavesh and some of the coolest and the most hardworking people out there. That was fun, but then Booooooooom!! IBM has this hiring freeze and I am out of the scene. So long Deep Blue.

2) Hello Red. I have always liked blue and red. If somebody would give me a sheet of paper and colors I would just use blue and red. That said, I got an offer to work at Oracle. People are really cool over here. I am currently at Oracle’s HQ in US and people here are fun to work with.

3) I went over to meet my folks, and spent one whole month with them. Yippie!

4) Out of hostel and now living my buddies, Kundan , Taran, Vikas and Vivek.

5) Started earning! Yippie!

6) Got a girl! She is sweeeeeeet! Love her. Wait, shouldn’t this be the first one?

A lot has happened. I just hope this tiny miny little update is O.K for all the blogoscope friends and friends who haven’t been able to talk to in a loooooooooooong time and were just wondering if I was dead or alive.

Job At IIIT-B

2007-06-02T19:13:00.001+05:30

Phew!! Finally a blog post! Seems that I was running out of ideas or for that matter had gone brain dead itself.

So here is something that came up while I was chatting with one of my friends.




int get_A_Job_At_IIIT () throw(TooUnluckyException )
{ 


    switch(current_Status ) { 

        enjoy_Maadi: 
        case ALREADY_PLACED: 

            get_Drunk(); 
            get_Flat(); 
            shift_House(); 
            enjoy_Maddi(); 
            break; 
  
  
      case COMPANY_FIRED: 
      case RESEARCH_STUDENT: 
  
          pray_God(); 
          if ( apply_Off_Campus() == true ) 
                goto enjoy_Maadi; 
          else { 
                if ( butter_Professors() == true ) 
                    goto enjoy_Maadi; 

                if ( sit_For_Placements() == true ) 
                    goto enjoy_Maadi; 
                else { 

                    try { 
                        push_Push_Button(); 
                   } 
  
                    catch ( TooUnluckyException& toulex ) { 
                            // Solution not yet known. Ask caller to handle 
                            throw; 
solution. 
                    } 
               } 
         } 
        break; 
        
   } 
  
return 0;    
  
}

Please post your comments and bugs if any.

Testing In The Toilet

2007-01-26T15:59:00.000+05:30

If you thought toilets were the places where you could just escape after a long horrifying testing or debugging session. Think again, Google posts several test cases and test scenarios on the bathroom walls. So, even if you are in the bathroom or the toilet just to ease off a bit, you still might end up looking at the walls for the clues.

http://googletesting.blogspot.com

And

http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2007/01/introducing-testing-on-toilet.html

Geee, I feel like flushing this one off :)

A Post That Should Not Have Been

2007-01-22T22:06:00.000+05:30

I had no intention of posting this. I had thought about writing about it but chose not to as it would involve me taking names of one individual and I did not want him to suffer more than what he already is, and at no point did I wish to get personal with any of such things. I did not want to post it but then again this guy seems to be spreading all the (mis)information about me telling that I was culprit in the whole thing. And I think it is time to clean up my closet a bit.

I was working on a project for one of my course here. We were a group of three people who had got together to do the project. Each one had a module assigned to one individually, among ourselves. One of my friends had decided to take some of the core implementation to himself to which I somehow agreed. However, we had agreed about the interfaces, as he was supposed to call my set of routines I had already told him well in advance about them to him, and he had said it was “Okies” with him. About ten days before the demo when I decided to get it integrated, I realized that there was nothing according to the interfaces that I had specified. To top of it all this guy started cussing me and the other partner for the poor quality and buggy code that we had written even though we had tested it extensively, not to mention he had even gone to the extent of asking the other guy to just take the code from somewhere. And he was generous enough to actually provide the other code. And somehow he knew it would work without issues.
One night before the presentation as I was busy fixing up all the issues that were left over in the integration I had to log into his machine to synchronize the code and I saw folder which was named as one of our senior’s code. One night before the demo, I was just curious how the seniors had done the code, not to mention the fact that even tough my friend kept on saying that he had “referred” this guy’s code, I wanted to know just about how much the codes were “referred”. And here what I found once I got the codes.

Snippet 1 by senior:

int int_no_of_col=0, int_index=0, int_position=0,int_col_size=0,int_flag=0,int_k=0,int_len =0,int_temp_len = 0;

char* chrp_col_name = NULL;

char* chrp_default = NULL;

char chr_col_type ;

char** chrpp_record = NULL;

char* chrp_temp_complete_rec = NULL;

int* intp_element_len = NULL;

int int_def_len;

string str_table_file;

string str_index_file;

string str_table_meta_file;

HeapFile hf_meta_file;

HeapFile hf_data_file;

MetaInfo mi_meta_info;

HeapFile hf_index_meta_file;

char* chrp_final_rec = NULL;

short* chrp_offset = NULL;

int int_sum = 0;

int int_ret_size = 0;

int attr_list[30];

char* chrp_index_name = NULL;

char* save_rec = NULL;

int returnVal;

IndexInfo* temp_index_info = NULL;

int int_page_no;

int int_slot_no;

TreeIndex* _treeIndex = NULL;

rid_list_t* start=NULL,*rid_list=NULL;

//The following decalration is done by Hari. 27 Dec 2005//To remove compile time error: "crosses initialization"string str_absolute_index_pk;

string str_index_pk;

Snippet two by my friend:

int _intNumOfColumns=0, _intIndex=0, _intPosition=0,_intColumnSize=0,int_flag=0,int_k=0,int_len =0,int_temp_len = 0;

char* _chrptrColumnName = NULL;

char* chrp_default = NULL;

char _chrColumnType ;

char** _chrptrptrMetaRecords = NULL;

char* chrp_temp_complete_rec = NULL;

int* _intptrMetaRecordsLength = NULL;

int int_def_len;

string _strTableFileName;

string _strIndexFileName;

string _strMetaFileName;

HeapFile _metaHeapFile;

HeapFile _tableHeapFile;

MetaInfo _metaInfo;

HeapFile _heapIndexFile;

char* _chrptrFinalRecord = NULL;

short* chrp_offset = NULL;

int _intTotalLength = 0;

int _intReturnLiteralSize = 0;

int attr_list[30];

char* chrp_index_name = NULL;

char* save_rec = NULL;

IndexInfo* temp_index_info = NULL;

int _intPageNo;

int _intSlotNo;

//rid_list_t* start=NULL,*rid_list=NULL;

string str_absolute_index_pk;

Can you actually find the difference? For once I feel like sending it to one of those entertainment columns which say “Find 10 differences between the given pictures” .

This kind of similarity extended to the whole 4500 lines of code that he had always been boasting off writing single handedly. And we figured out that the reason he was asking my friend to use somebody’s code was plain and simple, he won’t have to bother about integration. What should have been me and my friends response after this? What could we have done? I for one decided to get out of the lab where we were all sitting and integrating and told him that it was against my conscious to work on the code. Next day, both me and my friend decided to tell the truth to the professor and true even we both got screwed because for quite some time we both were integrating our code with this guys and we decided not to show the integration to the Professor, and we ended up just showing what we had already shown a week before the actual demo. But then again, somehow we both knew what was the right thing to do that day, that moment. I just hope my friend knows the same.

Enemies Of The World

2007-01-21T19:39:00.000+05:30

Ma friend AJ-B has written a wonderful rap. I don't have his webpage but here is his Orkut Profile Page.

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=2991472916677499318

Verse 1
Wot I See.......
Multiple Gunshots
Blood refined in da Blocks
Homiez died on da spot
but no one was Caught
coz he was Minister's Son
Killed a Homie like insane
All sayin' this was bad, but no one feels the pain
but do ya ever thought where it rain
Wot bot the Victam's Mother
Died Homie was her only Hope, Listen Brother
n real killa is not some other
Not Minister's Son, It was us Brother
We elected the Bastards n then we Die
For any Person, No one Stands up n cry
n this is done by us, We can't stand against Crime
insted sayin' this is not done with us, This was his Bad Time
n still we say we r Nice People n Good Skin
Ignoring the fact, Watching Crime is the Biggest Sin
We should stand against n Fight, No one Thinks
Oldies say they r Bad people n they have Mafia Links
but World like these Ancestor thoughts, Real Stinks
We r down People, and thats how its Supposed to be
Everyone looks for Practical Profit, No one's close to me
We can't get a true friend, This is every one's reality
We deserve it coz on Anyone's loss, We have a Fake Guilty
Our teachers, Our Parents taught this too
Live for Others, but they theirselves can't get through
They Save their own ass first, n this is true
(Chorus Singing)
This is the Reality.......We all are Enemies of the World

Verse 2
Wot I See.....
Souljas on the War
Wot we hadn't think of far
Souljas fight, Souljas died
but we say we win the Pride
No one Cares bot the Family of a Soulja
Who'll give the Widow Hand, n whos their to Hold ya
Who's gonna Carry Lil' ones, n whos goin' to Fold ya
n This is the Reality as i told ya
We feel Proud of Winnin' War, but this is Shame
This is our Degrading Atitude, not our Fame
We didn't need but juz Go for a War, juz listen Man
Not against Country's poverty, But against Pakistan
Do ever think ya is any ones needin' this War
Except the Politicians, the Country's Real Scar
Souljas on other side r too humans
but we don't realize, we love Execution
now we've to realize we r humans brother
it tooks madness to kill but Heart to heal each other
Must have a feelin' of Love, Rather
than the Hate fillin' our minds disgraced
Gettin' us out of Human Race
n Undastand bot the Peace's Face
We lick the hoes of real Enemies Politicians
insted of undastanding the Real Humanism
We know wot's Wrong but still we say they r Right in front
Overshadowin' the fact, they r goin' to our Kids Hunt
n makin' our Generation Blunt
n We it seen by our Eyes Naked
Juz thinkin' this fact is really Faked
(Chorus Singing)
This is the Reality.......We all are Enemies of the World
(Talkin')
We Must have to come Up
To be Gathered as One, agsinst Dirty Politics
Rulin' Ma Life, Our Lives, Our Country n even Our World
The Wars r juz a set up
No body wants them, Juz for a Political Satisfaction
n U know wot really is Political Satisfaction
yup....Show of the War n Defence & Playin' with National Budget
Our Taxes goes in their Pocket
n the Heros, Our Souljas, Get killed
Reason behind tat is Only one......We Can't Come Up n Unite
Thats why We all r Enemies of the World Bro

Verse 3
n Still I See.....
So Many Religions, No Humanism
No one Count the Man, but Racism
We listen to the Religious preachings, but we don't ever follow
all taught us same tat God is One n we r 1, Undastand this fellow
We Learn to see every one as a Brother instead of Distant Strangers
Must follow the real learnings of Religions n Be the Straighters
Everyone say their Religion is Glistening
Wot r the real thoughts, Nobodys listening
Love is the real religion, that's what Osho said
Critcizin' him still now, Even when Osho's dead
Religious Preachers say they r juz one in the Human's Hole
Tellin' us stay Stanch bot Religion, n keep Playin with that Role
n Wash Us to Prepare for a Religious War against Each Other
Telling us Religious Killing is a Sacrifice, it Ain't a Murder
Watched the Blood, Where ever I Go,
Why is this for, Still I can't know
n Everyone is up for a Religious Show
Unwillingly thoughts r Comin' out, I Juz want to Cover Spaces
Fucked wid Muslims Hindus Sikhs n Catholics, its Nothin' about the Races
We have to Come Up n let this feeling Fix
Must forget the Mosque Doom on December 6
even 1984 Tragedy in Delhi, Brutelin' of the Sikhs
n Forgive everything, n Juz refer as a Finished Bad Disease
Leave these Nightmares n Go for a Next, A time to Fanatic Freeze
Must follow the Facts, wot Religions really Teach
No One is Up n No One is Under
A World wid Humanism is Similar to Heaven, I Wonder
(Chorus Singing)
This is the Reality.......We all are Enemies of the World
(Talkin')
Every Religion Thoughts have Same Meanings, Juz Expressed in Different Ways
The Person Ready to Forget to be Fanatic bot Religion
n Treat every Human Like a Brotha
n Follow the Real Taughts of Religion
n Believe in Humanism
is Only Counted in Humans
The Rest......U Know Better wot he is.....
According to Me they all are Enemies of the World

Do Certifications Matter

2007-01-20T11:04:00.000+05:30

Jef Atwood has a nice post on "Do Certifications Matter?"

Plagiarism In Academic Institutes

2007-01-14T23:22:00.000+05:30

In life, everybody needs to win. Be better, stand out, get attention, for better or for worse. But then again sometimes we do things the way that is just not the right way to be done. In my undergrad I did most of the projects alone, because well, I could not find anybody to work with me or me not being ready to work with somebody else. At my institute here, however things were quite different. Most of the projects I have done, have been team projects, and I have always had the privilege to work with some of the best people around, it was always fun staying awake the whole days the whole nights and trying to find the "best" way to do the projects. There have been few others who took the easy way out, "referring" other people code and any other easy way to get the job done. A lot of times when you talk to anybody who does plagiarism, everybody has a reason. Some have "genuine" reasons, the project was too complex, and they could not do it by themselves. But then again, I know people who have done this more than once. And they have some how run out of genuine reasons. We all talk about them, but then again rarely do we talk about the reasons and the motivations behind these people. I can only talk about my own experiences. At my institute most professors encourage everybody to do their projects on their own, few of them have somehow encouraged "reusability" which has often been extended to just "copy paste work". But the thing is everybody says the people who do such things will one day be caught, one day they would be noticed. But then again, I think a lot needs to be done with the system itself only. The system may not encourage people to refer other people code, but then again on the other hand it does not even discourage people from doing so. Some of the reasons I think plagiarism is high in an academic institute are.

1) At a lot of these places, the course content remains the same for several years and so do the projects. In a Software engineering project, everybody might have to make a website, your seniors did that, so did their seniors and so did theirs, such kind of "hierarchical" projects encourage people to take code from some where in the hierarchy. Similar is the case with several of the courses like Databases, in which everybody might have to make a database engine, the same thing that might have been done for just far too many years now.

2) The lack of mechanisms, the mechanisms to detect plagiarism just don't seem to be present in Indian institutes, there are no code repositories, of previous batches wherein the code automatically goes through a process for the same.

3) Most of the professors don't give a damn about it. They are happy to see a working interface, a nice GUI that does not have pink color in the interface, and if you press "(" in the name field, it should pop up a message immediately. But none of them actually bothering to even listen to the design and the rationale for the project, the code organization or the coding standards. Why would students bother to learn or spend time on those things if some other guy who will focus more on the presentation or the GUI will end up getting more recognition or a better grade than you. All they want is some program working. This is something you expect from some professors but definitely not those who teach you about morality and telling you what is right and what is wrong, in life.

4) The evaluation, a lot of times, is delegated to Teaching Assistants; T.A though supposed to do the evaluation honestly have other motivations going on in his head while evaluating in such scenarios. Someone might have a crush on someone, someone might have had a fight with someone in the mess, and the evaluation turns out to be a play ground to settle all personal scores, once and for all.

What do you think? Do you think that our academic institutes need to look into how the things are being done, or how they can prevent such things from happening again and again, and well again.

Update: Tarandeep pointed me out to an article by Neil R. Wagner, which talks about academic dishonesty and also points out some statistics about Plagiarism at MIT.

A Society In Decay

2007-01-09T15:26:00.000+05:30

A young man lying on the road, bleeding from his head and nose, shaking like he is going to die the very next moment, what do you do? Run. Everybody runs, but in which direction, in a direction towards the person in need or in the direction which makes you run away from your responsibility, your consciousness and your duty. I don't know what somebody else would do, but when me and my friend came out after having lunch, we see a man in the same situation and the only thing that we did was just run towards the person and try to help him. As we try to help the man, another one joins and hold his nose which just somehow does not stop bleeding. My first reaction was to call up 112, and as I am holding the cell with one hand and trying to stop some vehicle, it was shocking to see people not bothering even a bit to stop and help the guy in desperate need. Soon I get online with cops and try to explain the situation, and give the address, and as I am asking for an ambulance from them an auto stops which is ready to take the guy in. My friend, Taran, decides to go along with him, while I decide to get police involved for two reasons.

1) I thought that this guy had been hit by a vehicle and the guy had escaped.

2) I have been in a situation before and I think I have read enough of news wherin doctors have refused to give proper medical attention and the people have died waiting for one stupid police complaint to be registered.

There was a bike lying on the road, and I thought it was this guys bike and I started to move it to a safe place, I take the keys with myself, just then another guy who has few bruises on his face and arms comes and demands the key from me, as when I ask this guy if he was on the bike with this guy, people start shouting that "NO!, this guy was on the bike and he is the one who hit him!!" I decide not to give the key to the guy and tell him to wait till the police comes. And, sure after sometime I see on cop on his bike nearby and somehow it starts to slow down during the place where the crowd had gathered.

Me: Sir, there has been an accident, and this guy here was driving fast and he hit another guy. The guy was badly hit and we have sent him to the hospital.

Cop: O.K, where is the guy?

[The guy comes in]

Cop: You were driving the bike?

Guy: Yes. This guy has taken the key from me.

Cop: Why have you taken the key?

Me: I don't want this guy to go, he was driving fast, and the guy in hospital might die.

Guy: Sir, I have some bruises, can I go to the doctor?

Cop: Yes.

Me: What? You are not going to do anything.

Cop: Don't worry, "YOU" note down his number, there is a police station nearby, I want you to go there and register a complaint.

Me: What?, you are a cop, won't you do anything?

Cop: I said don't worry, now give me the key.

Probably one of the stupid things that I have done, I gave the key to the cop, and soon, he gives the key to the next guy, and asks him to "Go!!" and as I am standing there surprised the guy goes off in the bike and so does the cop. Trust me, for the next few moments I was completely shocked at what had just happened, the cop should have arrested the culprit right there, right then, why, why, why? The fact is that during the entire five minutes this cop was there, he did not even bother to get down from his bike to do anything about it.

But, then again, I guess it was too late, I started running towards the police station, and when I reach there and try to register the complaint, the cops somehow were reluctant to file it, I had the number of the bike and I wanted that guy to be stopped wherever he was, but these guys are happy to have the number and say that they would get the address from the RTO, and I should leave it to them, no matter how hard I ask them, no matter how hard I request them, it has no effect on theem none whatsoever, they won’t pursue the vehicle. The incharge ignores me completely when I ask him to explain why the cop gave the key away and let the guy go away.

Not to mention, one another important thing, the cop that came to the scene of the crime was NOT sent by the police station. I realized this as, while I was at the police station, and even though by now the police station which should have been intimated by the control room, these cops had no idea that an accident had happened, and I was already there for about ten minutes and it had already been about thirty minutes since I had called up the control room, these people in police station receive a call and as this cop is noting down the address “State Bank of India, Tata Power Limited”, which is the address I had told the control room as the scene of accident, I realize that it takes more than thirty minutes for the control room to intimate the police station, this despite the fact that I had asked the control room to send some one with an ambulance as soon as possible!!

Is this the attitude? Is it the way the cops should perform their duty? If this is the way they must, then God save our society.

And the people who didn’t stop their car ? What can we say. Yes , that back seat of the car would have got dirty / stained with blood and maybe they would have to pay a few thousand rupees to get it cleaned. Maybe they would have had to waste a few hours or a day or two in the usual police hassles but isn’t it better than carrying a feeling that because of you a guy might have died, or worse tomorrows news paper will carry a news item saying that the same guy died, when you could have had that self satisfaction of saving a life. How many people get that opportunity?

Tarandeep Singh Bharaj
Imanpreet Singh Arora

Update: Several People have been asking me what happened to the guy, we will be writing about it soon.

Game On

2006-10-18T09:40:00.000+05:30

Unlike myself, one of my friends who is priviliged enough to watch Television back home, has been telling me about this new India-XBox commercial. And now that I have have watched it I have to say it is REALLY COOL. Watch it!

Video: XBox360 India Ad - extremely funny

What you wanted to ask

2006-10-10T17:54:00.000+05:30

Ever wanted to know from great programmers like Bjarne Stroustrup, Linus Torvalds and Peter Norwig et. al questions like, skills that each programmer must be having and the importance of mathematics and physics in computer science.

Jarosaw "sztywny" Rzeszótko asked many of the people such questions, and gets many interesting answers

http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-programmers-answers/

Slashdot is also covering it at http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/10/10/031226.shtml

How To?

2006-09-11T13:21:00.000+05:30

How to set up an access point in five minutes?

FAT32 Trivia

2006-07-01T12:11:00.001+05:30

Thanks to “The Old New Thing” , at Microsoft for pointing out this interesting document about the history and reasons for the first version of FAT 32 in Windows 95 for supporting partitions only upto 2GB. Must Read

Windows Confidential -A Brief and Incomplete History of FAT32

Deja Vu

2006-06-20T16:04:00.000+05:30

One of my friends pointed me out to some popular videos on YouTube relating to traffic conditions on Indian Roads. If you are an Indian trust, there is nothing much surprising about them. But, it is really funny to read the comments posted by people from around the world, on each of these videos. Here are couple of the videos that are part of every day life of Indians but not so for others.

Chicken Crossing the Road

Indian Driving

Also, do read "The Driving Dutchman"

The Google Myth

2006-06-18T15:39:00.000+05:30

A lot of people worship Google, to them if you present with a search engine other than Google, chances are they would consider you retro. And why not? After all Google gives what you are looking for and claims to have the largest search index and thereby the largest "directory". Or does it?

It seems that a LOT of pages indexed by Google are so called spam pages. Pages which have nothing relating to what you are looking for, and often crop up in top 10, top 50 search results. To read more about just how bad this is check out "Google Index Flooded With Spam"

P.S. Personally I don't worship Google. I use both IE and Firefox, pretty much equally, and IE my default search engine is Yahoo! and Google on Firefox. And a lot of times I prefer and trust Yahoo's results over Google's.

Update: The Register has a bit older post on the same topic at Full-up Google choking on Web spam

Will You Fix My Computer?

2006-06-18T15:23:00.001+05:30

A lot of times we geeks tend to avoid when someone asks us to fix their computer. If I can fix it, why can't he do it by himself? It turns out if you are billionaire, CEO of a company none other than Microsoft and someone asks you to fix the computer, you just can't say no. Jim Allcin the guy behind Windows XP and Vista shares an interesting anecdote about Steve Ballmer, wherein Ballmer while attending his friends son's wedding is asked to fix the computer. And Steve Ballmer spends TWO days trying to fix the computer! Sadly, even after all this hard work he isn't able to and the computer goes to Microsoft's Redmond Head Quaters!!

To read more about it follow this link.

Yikes!! The Thin Line Between Power User And Administrator, Broken

2006-05-02T22:54:00.000+05:30

Mark Russinovich, one of my favorite authors has an amazing post on how a power user on a Windows 2000 and Windows XP machine can bypass the security and gain administrative privileges.

Interesting read, even if you aren't planning to try out any of the techniques :-)

Wi-Fi

2006-05-02T22:20:00.000+05:30

802.11n is the next generation of protocol for Wi-Fi which aims at providing greater range and more importantly bandwidth of 600Mbps.

Here is Arstechnica's article on it

Wireless manufacturers go ga-ga over 802.11n

I Hate Pizza

2006-05-02T22:14:00.000+05:30

If this is what technology has to offer, I am going to think twice before ordering the pizza.

http://www.adcritic.com/interactive/view.php?id=5927

Beyond Technology: Jai Kannada, Jai Karnataka

2006-03-20T19:38:00.000+05:30

I was sitting next to my friend when he pointed out an Orkut community, which is for hardcore residents of Bangalore. Its message goes:

This is a community for all those true blooded, hardcore Bangloreans who believe that people from outside Bangalore, who come and settle down here are the ones who should be majorly held responsible for the recent collapse in infrastructure, bad traffic amongst other negative developments in the city. Facilities originally created for us are being exploited by non-Bangloreans. Growing up in this wonderful city, we knew how this place was 10-15 years ago..or more. We feel extremely attached to this place and we express our hatred and anger towards all 'immigrants' here!!..Come on in and express your solidarity as a Hardcore Banglorean.. and for all you wimps at heart.. stay away!!

If this wasn’t enough for me to use the F word, he pointed me out to the following comment:

they shld be kicked out..as soon as possible..instead if we make infrastructure in bangalore better then junk,happless guyz will come in more numbers....North india is anyway slum...they want to replicate it here as well!!!

Albeit, I have been a part of Bangalore for less than 8 months; and even though most of the time I am confined inside the walls of our campus, Bangalore does have problem. And it’s not because of North Indians. And it is not hard to notice it. You notice it first when you land at the airport. You notice it when you look around for a taxi. You notice it when you take a cab and move around Bangalore. You notice whenever you go out for a walk. You notice it every time. Is it that people of North India, which includes myself, came here and ruined the beautiful airport that exists at Bangalore, damaged the roads that existED, and of course took over all the pubs in Bangalore? Isn’t this regionalism, in its worst form? In the end we all belong to one single nation, India. So, why have this commotion? Why show this immaturity? Especially, since most of the people around actually KNOW the root cause of all this so called evils that plague Bangalore. It is nothing but mismanagement, by the powers that be. I won’t be naming any single person, but I guess deep inside every “hardcore Bangalore resident” knows about it.

But personally, I actually find this whole thing funny. Consider the case of US and UK, there people complain that we, that is Indians, have ruined their economy, and here in Bangalore we complain that Northern part of India, has ruined the economy here. But the question is where do we draw the line, if nations can ruin each others economy, states can ruin each others economy, cities can ruin each others economy, then why not just lock our doors and start living in a closed world, a closed economy? A world where nobody interacts with anybody else. A world where you grow your own food, cook your own food, grow your own cotton, stitch your own clothes. A world without interaction, a world that does not exist.

Where Am I?

2006-03-13T04:49:00.000+05:30

Check up the sidebar to know my current location.

Thanks to Herecast
And of course to the wonderful Wi-Fi network that we have in our campus.

Paul Graham

2006-03-12T13:14:00.000+05:30

Finally, Paul Graham has started blogging. Check it up at

Paul Graham

Free At Last

2006-03-04T23:49:00.000+05:30

Free At Last

It was just a matter of when, but I had to pull the plug. I am talking about Orkut which promotes, social networking, a concept which aims at bringing everybody together. People you have met, people you meet, people you hope to meet one day, and people you won’t ever meet. They are all there. For some months, my friends thought it would be great to introduce me to this concept of Social Networking, so they kept on sending me these “Orkut Invites” and finally, one day I gave in and created an account at Orkut. For quite some time my account just existed, with no information about myself except my name and “Afrikaans” being the only language I could speak. And then, I start getting messages to update my profile, and I decided to do it. Just for the heck of it, I decided to try to invite some of my friends; however, it seemed that most of them were already there. Two days of peace and then somehow I get these fifteen friend requests, and when I approved them, having a figure like twenty on my friends list, when one of my friends had more than two hundred people in her list. I know it wasn’t right, but I just imagined of having a figure like that. The worse part however was that I got addicted, I really don’t know, but in hindsight, the only way I can describe something like this is akin to sleeping with a whore, you know you are not doing it right, but then you just feel like enjoying the moment, except in case of Orkut it is probably worse. Everybody seems to be using Orkut as a substitute to e-mail and worse in some cases as a substitute to Instant messengers. If there is something really relevant, if there is really something I want to share with _MY_ _FRIENDS_, friends I really care about, I would prefer to use mail. Scrapbook on Orkut just seems to be a public place to pee, except that everybody can see you pee. And somehow people seem to be interested in seeing other peoples pee. I don’t mind admitting that somehow during my one month of association with Orkut, I myself did fall in this trap. And the only way out was to pull the plug, so today morning after a lot of thought I decided pull the plug. I logged into “Google Account Manager” and decided to delete my Orkut profile and the only way to describe of what I felt after pressing the button was like getting independence. I could finally be connected to internet and not worry even once about somebody scrapping me, and thinking about what I should write in somebody’s scrapbook.

As far as I am concerned, I am free, at last.

When we need to advertise books

2006-02-26T21:52:00.000+05:30

A new aid to rapid learning has made its appearance. Indications are that if it catches on all the electronic gadgets will be so much junk. The new device is known as the Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge machine. The makers generically call it a BOOK for short. Many advantages are claimed over the learning and teaching aids on which most people are brought up nowadays. BOOK has no wires and no electric circuits to break down; no connection is needed to an electrical power point. It is made entirely without mechanical parts to go wrong or need replacement. Anyone can use BOOK - even children - and it fits comfortably in the hands. It can be conveniently used sitting in an armchair by the fire, for example. Basically BOOK consists only of a large number of paper sheets. These may run into the hundreds if BOOK covers a lengthy program of information. Each sheet bears a number in sequence, so that the sheets cannot be used in the wrong order. To make it easier for the user to keep the sheets in the proper order they are held firmly in place by a special locking device called "binding". Each sheet of paper presents the user with an information sequence in the form of symbols, which he absorbs optically for automatic registration on the brain. When one sheet has been assimilated a flick of the finger turns it over and further information is found on the other side. By using both sides of each sheet in this way a great economy is effected, thus reducing both the size and cost of BOOK. No buttons need to be pressed, passwords remembered, or command sequences used to move from one sheet to another, to open or close BOOK, or to start it working. BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. It is instantly ready for use. Furthermore, the user may turn at will to any sheet, going backwards or forwards as he pleases. A sheet is provided near the beginnning as a location finder for any required information sequence. Once purchased, BOOK requires no further upkeep cost; no batteries or wires are needed, since the motive power, is supplied by the brain of the user. BOOKs may be stored on handy shelves and for ease of reference the program schedule is normally indicated on the back of the binding. A small accessory, available at trifling extra cost, is the BOOKmark. This enables the user to pick up his program where he left off on the previous learning session. BOOKmark is so robust and fully functional that we have not yet found a BOOK that cannot use BOOKmark as it is, right off the shelf! Pick your BOOK up today!

From

New Product

Lego Difference Engine

2006-02-26T21:38:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Grady Booch for pointing out Lego Difference Engine

Hackers Dilemma

2006-01-19T22:34:00.000+05:30

Getting a mail and requests like below is every hackers dilemma.

From DVD John's blog

Hi, Jon! I feel very excited when I write this e-mail for contact you, you’re very very smart person!. I’m an universitary student, I have a big problem, I hope that you can help me, please, You’re my only hope . In this semester at my university, I’m very very bad with the academic result, I dissaprove 3 courses, I’m so much to get depressed. Never in my life I dissaprove so much courses, because I’m study so much, but definitely I don’t have lucky, it’s the only reason for this academic disaster. At previous semesters, my marks are good. I don’t know if you can modify this marks at the Intranet of the university and next with much security I help you with something that you ask me, but that it’s at my reach. Please answer me fast, before the 25th of December, because for this dates, the academic results are deliver to my fathers. And if my father see this marks, they’ll kill me with much security, moreover I compromised with a enterprise for work, and this academic results had seen for with bad eyes for the enterprise.

May, devil bless thee.

Debugging

2006-01-19T16:09:00.000+05:30

Lisp Is Sin

2006-01-16T11:24:00.000+05:30

Sriram has a very interesting post on Lisp is Sin

TechVista-2006

2006-01-15T00:58:00.000+05:30

Microsoft’s Indian Research arm celebrated its first year in India with Tech Vista 2006. It was interesting to attend not only because it was great to know about all the projects that are taking place at Microsoft, but it was great to know as to what research at Microsoft means. I myself got to interact with some great guys C.A.R Haore, Raj Reddy, Andrew Zisserman, Takeo Kanade and Rick Rashid.

Firstly, TechVista marked the launch of the prototype of Microsoft’s Virtual India project. Virtual India, a project done by Microsoft in collaboration with Govt. of India, an important point that one of the speakers emphasized to me later, when I told that the interface and features were just nothing compared to that of Google Earth. According to him, the fact that unlike Google, they took the path of going through all the red tape the actual implementation of this prototype took just about two months, with the rest being used up in “cutting the red tape”. Anyway, the bottomline is that if you are looking for features and something as Microsoft’s answer to Google Earth then you are looking at the wrong place. But then again this was a research meet. Virtual India is just a prototype. Microsoft’s way of saying beta, pre beta maybe ;-).

Next up was a talk by Sir Tony Haore, who talked just like any old man. Sharing his experiences and jokes. It’s funny how old men can make people laugh by sharing their mistakes :-). But something I just won’t forget about TechVista was just how I met Haore. It happens that before Vista started, I had mentioned to Professor Sadagopan about me being excited to “see” Haore. And it just so happens that couple of minutes later professor meets this old guy wearing a hat and mentions to him that students were quite excited on seeing him and, since I was standing next to him, he looks at me. I realize I have to say something but I am wondering, who is this guy. Realizing that I had already lost a few seconds, I decide to say “It is a pleasure meeting you, sir”. However, as I extend my hand to greet this old man, I see an ID on this guy’s coat, which says “Sir Tony Haore”. Damn!!

There were also other speakers, Raj Reddy who talked about his Million book digital library project, this project is aimed at digitization of literature across the various libraries to reach “common man”. I know it sounds quite similar to Google Print, but as Reddy later clarified, this project is also aimed at digitization of literature in Indian languages. More information at http://dli.iiit.ac.in. Later, Rick Rashid talked about Research at Microsoft in general and how research was “giving back” to the Microsoft. Takeo Kanade talked about his project eye vision and humanoid robotics in general. Andrew Zisserman’s talk “Finding Julia Roberts”, dealt with specifics of finding out somebody from a picture/video. What was interesting was how these guys were able to find out Julia Roberts even through her varied hair styles and makeup.

What also caught my attention about this project was that Andrew had named this project videoGoogle. Google, at Microsoft Research conference just did not make sense to me. However, Andrew later clarified that this was his own project and had used Google just as verb. Microsoft had just invited him for the talk. Kundan who was standing next to was like, “Huh!!”. If any Google fanatic from Slashdot is here, then I guess it’s time you need to rethink your viewpoint of M$.

Anyway it was great knowing that Microsoft was genuinely interested in promoting research in India, rather than just promoting Microsoft as a brand.

Thanks Microsoft!!

Update 1 Rajan also has an informative post on Techvista

Vista’s Music

2006-01-08T18:40:00.000+05:30

To get a perspective of the intricacies involved in the implementation of a commercial Operating System, check out the following video of recording of various sounds for Windows Vista.

Robert Fripp at Microsoft’s Campus

Hotmail Revisited

2006-01-04T04:24:00.000+05:30

Till about couple of years back I was one of the avid not to mention forced users of Microsoft’s Hotmail. For many, Hotmail back then was truly “Hot-mail”. It had the largest number of users, a good interface and not to mention “just enough” mail storage of 2 MB. Then GMail came. I won’t write the rest of the story but what I want to share is about my recent encounter with Hotmail. I had to login into one of those “shitty-passport-required” websites and having long forgotten about my old hotmail id, I decided to create a new one. And boy was in for a surprise? The procedure for creating a new account has surely changed but once I logged in I expected to see at least a Gigabyte of email space and instead what do I get? A paltry low 25MB. I just have absolutely no idea how much time will Microsoft take to give at least one Gigabyte of email space to the masses. For one, Rediff was able to provide a Gigabyte of email storage in just a couple of months of launch of GMail. I shudder to think just about how many users Microsoft lost from its foolishness.

Just when Microsoft needed to take the bull by its horns it seems that, Microsoft just lost it.

It's a small world after all

2005-12-26T00:30:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Sids for pointing out Professor Srinath's blog . Welcome Professor.

MIT

2005-12-26T00:14:00.000+05:30

MIT is Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Mario Institute of Technology ?

Girls!!

2005-12-24T23:32:00.000+05:30

Seems like Girls just wanna have fun. Or maybe just swallow cellphones! .

Future of Technology

2005-12-24T13:12:00.000+05:30

From USAtoday

<start source="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2005-12-15-future-tech-gifts_x.htm">

Technology's just getting started

By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
The tech industry is pumping out all sorts of cool products: flat-screen TVs the size of the Acropolis, nanotech golf balls that only Mr. Magoo could hit into the woods, cellphones that mix cocktails for you.

Maybe that last one is still wishful thinking. Remind me to check with Nokia.

At the end of the year, it's time to talk about what you might be giving your loved ones in 2010 or so.

Such as, the Morning After Bot.

"It's a robot that cleans up after a party," says Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University.

"It takes a snapshot before the party and tries to restore that state by picking up bottles and glasses after the party."

What else is coming? We asked around at tech research labs, looking for concepts that might be available in the next half-dozen years.

An electronic coffee table

You thought a coffee table's only job was to look nice while holding martini glasses? Ha!

Lots of companies have been working on large touchscreen surfaces. Both Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft are working on building such a surface into a coffee table, which would be loaded with electronics and connected to the Internet.

"People can sit around the coffee table and surf the Web, share digital photos and videos and play games," says an HP Labs document.

Microsoft Research calls its version the PlayAnywhere project. The smart tabletop would know if you set a coffee cup on it. If you were reading the news on a website, the table would shift the text around the cup. The table could have a database of every board game ever made. And it could, of course, download coffee table books from the Web — so they'd be literally in your coffee table.

GPS walkers

Let's say Grandpa regularly grabs his walker and heads off to bed but winds up in the neighbor's garage.

Stanford has built a prototype of an intelligent walker with embedded sensors, voice recognition and Global Positioning System technology. Grandpa might stand in his walker and say "bedroom." The GPS combined with indoor sensors could know where the walker is, map the route to the bedroom and avoid hazards such as stairs, low furniture and the cat while guiding Grandpa to bed.

By 2010, you'll see GPS integrated into all kinds of things. You'll be able to buy a bike that can keep you from getting lost. GPS even will be embedded in handheld video game players so the games will be aware of what's around you.

Home 3-D fabricators

Today, if you want a CD of Grand Funk Railroad's greatest hits, you load the songs from the Web and burn a disk on your home computer — in a sense, making something that a decade ago you could have bought only at a store.

Imagine that trend continuing.

A decade from now when you want a plastic knob for your dishwasher, instead of ordering it from a factory in Outer Jabip, you could load its design from the Web and make it using a 3-D fabrication machine.

Neal Gershenfeld of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on "home fabs." He's already built a prototype, but it would barely fit in a garage and costs $20,000. He predicts that in 10 years or so, home fabs will cost $1,000 and be as commonplace as ink-jet printers.

SenseCams

Microsoft Research chief Rick Rashid has been pitching this project coming out of his labs.

The idea is you take a miniature digital camera, give it vast amounts of storage and pack it with tiny sensors — an accelerometer that senses when you move, infrared sensors that know when a person is standing in front of you, GPS and more.

You set up your preferences and maybe tell it to shoot a photo every time you stop walking and every time a person comes into view, and every 10 seconds when the GPS realizes that you are within 100 feet of a tourist attraction.

Then you mount your SenseCam on your baseball cap and go see the world.

"We've got a number of tourism companies that are saying, 'Look, instead of our people spending their lives behind cameras when they go on tour and they've never actually seen the Tower of Pisa, only the LCD display of the Tower of Pisa — now there's an opportunity,' " Rashid told the MobiSys conference in June.

Seeing-eye eyewear

London industrial design student Katie Williams has made a prototype pair of goggles that let swimmers see their times and keep track of laps. Embedded electronics project numbers on lenses.

The goggles aren't out yet, but experts say she's onto something.

Golf glasses might use GPS to show the distance to the hole and draw a visual line to the flag. For musicians, glasses could projectsheet music so they'd never have to turn pages. Skiers could see a map showing how to get to the lodge from where they'd just done a face-plant.

Then again, if the skier had a cellphone that mixed cocktails, getting to the lodge would be less critical.

</end>

I am really excited about the fabricators project. The others just seem to be more of marketing gimmicks.

Tim Is Here

2005-12-19T14:37:00.000+05:30

Sir Tim has a blog . And going by the number of comments to his first post it seems that this is going to be one popular blog in the blogsphere.

Knuth And Poetry

2005-12-19T14:18:00.000+05:30

Chitrakavya is a project at IIIT-B which deals with the "Knights Tour Problem". Professor Prasanna here is quite excited about this project and if Professor Donald Erwin Knuth sending poem, "sung", in his own voice is anything to go by, then it seems that even God has his blessings for this project.

Here are the files in which Donald Erwin Knuth is "singing" poems.

Knuth Poem 1
Knuth Poem 2

Background information on Chitrakavaya project which is under Professor Prasanna can be found here.

http://www.iiitb.ac.in/IndexPageMaterial/paduka1.htm

Have Fun!

Blake and Microsoft

2005-12-17T22:48:00.000+05:30

I was going through Blake Ross's post on "The decline of the Windows brand" . He comments that Windows is no longer is a brand and that "Google" is what matters today. He adds "My generation doesn’t know or care about Windows, and why should they?" That is completely outlandish!. I am not sure why he has a problem with Microsoft labeling its products as "Windows Messenger" and for that matter even "Windows Live Messenger". Sure half of the "current generation" might be using Google for their searches but if he does not know about the number of users of Microsoft Windows then FHI more than 90% of desktops today use Microsoft Windows. I am a great fan of Google but I sure don't "God Worship" Google. And if name is the name of the game, what about the name that Google chooses. Google too chooses to prefix its products name with Google. Not to mention suffixed with the godly "beta" tag.

Products need promotion but to promote them on arguments that have no basis is just plain stupid. Blake just seems to be getting better at it.

Godse

2005-11-18T16:28:00.000+05:30

From my friend Sanket's Blog

Godse's defense speech in court (a must read)

This is the speech given by Nathuram Godse in the court when he was tried for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any
superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession.
I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Nairoji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and' Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so,
than any other single factor has done.All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as
a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which one, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence ofHindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to render true service to humanity as well.
Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji's nfluence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence, which he paraded ostentatiously before the country.
No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day. In fact, honour, duty and love of one's own kith and
kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.

In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history's towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots,
Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical, as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen forever for the freedom they brought to them.
The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very well in South Africa to uphold the rights and well being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with
playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him

Correlation

2005-11-18T15:49:00.002+05:30

Talk about timing:

Admissions

Advertisement

He He Ha Ha

2005-11-04T14:55:00.000+05:30

From Kirans Blog. Love it.

<start>

Hi guys
The title is created out of two words - mailing-list and sudoku.

M a l i s k u

Once
upon a time, there was a small town with 24 houses where 24 people
lived. They were called Alpha, Beta, Gamma, .. Psi, Omega. It was a
small town.

They never made any enemies with each other.
In fact, they were the best of friends. If anybody had to leave the
town on any business, he would get very irritated. He would keep
cursing until he got back to the town. He would feel a terrible longing
to return to his friends, to party and to rejoice.

They hardly did any work other than partying. They never grew tired out of it - they seemingly had unending appetites for it.

A
weird bunch of people, they were. They were totally inseparable. It was
hard to talk of anybody without mentioning the entire bunch of 24.

One
day, they discovered a new game. It was a pretty fun game. They called
it "malisku". They put up a large wall in the centre of the village.
Each one of them would then go and paste a paper on the wall - with a
sentence written on the paper. They could do it every day. The goal was
to make a story on the wall, a story in which each person would
contribute.

The tricky part was that they would not meet
each other or see each other. They stayed in their houses and stopped
seeing anyone else. Life became different, but it was pretty much fun
though. They would spend time attending other jobs. Or they would keep
thinking about what they would write on the paper. Or they would
plainly keep on sleeping.

The people grew accustomed to
the wall. They liked it. It was filled up pretty enthusiastically too.
An interesting story started to get built up. Sometimes the story had
twists and sometimes it had none. But mostly, it went along.

In the paper slips, people soon began to identify the ones written by Epsilon.

They went like this,
"hee hee ha ha haha hahaa",
"heee heee hee hee />"ha haha haa hhaa x-)"

One
day, somebody pointed out that these messages made no sense. They were
not contributing to the story. He said Epsilon should paste meaningful
sentences instead. Somebody else said no. He said he liked the
messages. These messages added to the humour part of the story, he
said. Then life went on as usual with the wall.

But one day, something strange happened.

Delta
found a paper slip on the door of his house. He was surprised. It was
signed by Gamma. It said "Sigma is dead. I am sure of it. She has not
come out of the house for days. I know it is against the rules - but I
have been spying on her. She is dead ! "

Then Delta felt
sad, he wanted to investigate. But he did not go speak with Gamma. It
had been a long time since he did some speaking - he had lost the habit
of it. Speaking felt strange. So he posted a paper slip on the house of
Gamma. "Let's go find out. Let's tell others too ! "

The next day, there were two paper slips on the houses of Delta and Gamma.

"They were dead ! They were all dead !! I have seen them personally. They are as cold as bones."

"They are dead ! Dont know when they died. I could not move them an inch. They were as dead as stones"

Gamma
had found a girl who was sitting on a table, writing something on the
paper slip. But she was not a girl, she was a skeleton. The fingers did
not move. The body was locked into a stillness when the girl died, when
she died trying to write a message.

Delta had found a boy
digging into the ground. In fact, the boy had shoveled up 25 feet of
the ground. But then he died - standing as cold as a stone, with the
shovel in his hand. Delta had found a skeleton holding a shovel.

Gamma
had found a boy who was standing in front of a mirror. He had been
looking into it continuously, and then he died there. Gamma had found a
skeleton looking into the mirror.

But the wall continued to display new messages.

Beta wrote. "They went on a holiday."

Gamma wrote, "They were dead."

Delta wrote, "Yes, They were all dead."

Epsilon wrote, "Hee hee />
Alpha wrote, "So they moved into a hotel"

Beta wrote, "Was it nice ?"

Alpha wrote, "It was nice"

Epsilon wrote, "Ha ha hahaa"

Gamma wrote,"....."

Delta wrote, "....."

Alpha wrote, "And they moved out of the hotel"

Later that, Gamma and Delta never wrote on the wall. But Alpha and Beta kept on writing. And Epsilon kept on writing too.

But there was something in the town that happened.
They were all dead !

< end >

<source= "http://the-redpill.blogspot.com/2005/09/m-l-i-s-k-u.html" >

Careers in Indian IT industry

2005-10-29T06:46:00.000+05:30

Professor Sadagopan has an interesting post on carrers in Indian IT industry

Update Thanks to "anonymous" and Sanket for pointing out that this is not a post from "Professor" Sadagopans blog.

Share Your Pain

2005-10-22T07:27:00.000+05:30

Extremely Hilarious, check out how Microsoft is planning to Share Your Pain Video time:3.50 Minutes

Bangalore a disappointment

2005-10-19T11:18:00.000+05:30

When I came to Bangalore couple of months back, a lot of my friends congratulated me on going to the IT dream city of India. Sure, even I was probably more excited about being able to go to Bangalore than getting an opportunity to join IIIT-B.

But, all this turned in to a sour dream the very first day I landed up in Bangalore. Bangalore's roads and its traffic just sucks. It took me more than a couple of hours to cover a distance of twenty five kilometers. And every time I looked out the window of my cab I was like "Is this Bangalore?" followed by “Is this *really* Bangalore?”. I remember, I got so fed up of this that I just wanted to go back to my hometown Mohali/Chandigarh. Figure this, our institute is located in "Electronics City" the so called hub of several IT companies. Infosys is headquartered right opposite our institute. But, while you are on your way to Electronics City and look out of the window of your car you would have a feeling that you are probably entering some slum area. I have been to very few places after coming to Bangalore but while going to any place, the status of infrastructure is just pathetic.

And frankly speaking I am not surprised when Wipro chairman, "Azim Premji" is thinking of setting up their operations in Mohali . Even Infosys is setting up their operations in the newly developed IT park in Chandigarh. Not to mention, Google and Yahoo!, as I have been told, are also planning to set up their development and research centers in Chandigarh.

Seems like I need to get the word "Chandigarhed" trademarked. Though, I can say for sure that this won’t be a word that you will ever see in Oxford. This is because this time it won’t be Americans and the British who will cry foul, it would be Bangalorians. I wish I could say “Wake up” but my gut feeling is that it is just too late.

First ones out

2005-10-09T04:04:00.000+05:30

Friday, 7th October 2005. I just won’t forget this day. While the class was going on, my friend Manu sitting next to me thinks something weird and starts drawing really funny picture of the guy on the other side of him, Parsad. Not sure what was going on their minds the game just got a "bit too funny" Manu draws Parsad and then Parsad wants to try drawing Manu. While this was going on I just could not help myself and joined the party. But, just a few moments down, I see that the camera is right on top of us. I just move myself to tell Manu to just be a bit careful and Bang!, the professor sees us. And very politely he asks us[%] to leave the class. Manu apologizes, but its too late. Out of the Class!!. Graduate School, IIIT-B. Seniors say that we are probably the first ones to be EVER thrown out of the class at IIITB. So much so for novelty.

I just hope my mom does not come across this blog.

[%] Just me and Manu. Parsad got away with it and a kick in the butt after the class.

PhD in India

2005-09-28T17:57:00.000+05:30

From Agastyabhartha's blog

Somu to Prof. Sangal
Somu: Sir , I have heard from various corners and have heard you announce that IIIT aims at graduating 100 PhDs every year starting from the year 2010. I as a PhD student from IIIT would like to know how is it that the Institute is moving towards realising this?

Prof. Sangal: It is said that US produces 600 PhDs only from Information Science field; China it is said (someone from crowd says 2000); and India with all the IITs, BITS-Pilani and IISc, hardly produces 50 PhDs, combined together and it's a shame! IIIT wants to set itself a target which is respectable and challenging. That's how we are looking at the target.

Somu: That does not answer my question, Sir. What are the steps that the Institute is taking towards realising the target? [It requires 100 students who are enrolled for PhDs to think of producing 100 PhDs]

Prof. Sangal: Producing 100 PhDs is the toughest of the challenges that we have set for ourselves. As for the way in which we go about it, we are not yet clear. We are on the look out for a way.

Speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Foundation Day, Sleep Day

2005-09-16T00:20:00.000+05:30

Its Foundation day today here at IIIT-B. When I came to this institute I was told about some big days at IIIT-B

a) Freshers Party
b) Foundation Day
c) Diwali Party

Foundation day is considered to be a pretty big day, big day in the sense that we get good food to eat on this day, if not for anything else. Sure, lot of these big dignitaries come and speak, but good food beats them all. At least that is what I have been told.

But me the innocent soul just wanted to sleep, sleep sleep sleep. It is 16:00, I am feeling sleepy, and I sleep. The function starts at 17:30, I am sleeping, I wake up at 18:30, but I hear voices, I switch on my rooms light, call up my friend, and just lie down for a couple of minutes, and I sleep again. The function gets over at 20:30, and I am still sleeping. The food is about to get over at 21:00 and thank god I am awake. There is no dal but am happy because Kundan who probably had got too much for himself, was kind enough to give it to me than to throw it down the garbage can. So much for good food.

I am a user not a developer

2005-09-15T13:05:00.000+05:30

Donald Erwin Knuth in his lecture series at MIT on "God and Computer Science" said that when it comes to theology, he is a user not a developer. After getting into the the dance hall for the _celebrations_ and not knowing which leg to bring in first and which second, me thinks that when it comes to dancing and singing, I am a user not a a developer.

Category : Imanpreet and IIIT-B

All lines to this route are busy.

2005-09-09T02:06:00.000+05:30

CNN is running a story on a massive solar flare which is already causing disruption in communications.

Inside Mac OS

2005-09-09T02:01:00.000+05:30

I just came across Amit Singh's tour of Mac OS, god knows how I missed it especially since it was slashdotted.

It is an interesting review in flash, but the trouble is that I just hate anything related to flash. And it just seems to lack the usual technical exuberance that Amit Singh is known for. But just check it for nothing.

I want to take bath

2005-09-08T05:51:00.000+05:30

BBC is running a news about a shower built by a British design student that recycles water while you are taking bath.

From the article:

If Londoners were to jump in the eco-friendly shower, it would reduce the capital's water usage by 85 billion litres each year - the equivalent of 85,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

I know the figures sound quite big, but trust me they aint big enough for me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4219890.stm

I am particularily impressed by the pause button.

FYI

2005-09-06T19:44:00.000+05:30

FYI, I have joined IIIT-Bangalore. It is a nice place. I love it. Actually, Bangalore more than IIIT-B. I just love the weather in Bangalore. It is just such a great place. If you are from North India and come here during summers, like I came, you will realise just how much better this place is. Then, my friends here tell the weather generally is quite uniform here. Not many extremes . I know in Chandigarh we used to have weather as low as 1 degrees to as high as 45 degrees. Yikes!

But, coming to IIIT-B. Before joining IIIT, I had a very hazy idea about Graduate School. Was I ready? Should I really go for it? Even after one month of joining IIIT, these questions still stand. I really don't know if this is the right path for me. But, I guess that is just what life is all about. But, IIIT-B seems to be a graduate school that is indeed quite different from others. It has some of the best faculty in whole of India, infrastructure that is just not available to many other institutes elsewhere. But, sometimes I wonder if a lot of stuff here is just right enough. This is graduate school modelled on American Universties. Still, certain rules here like, 100% attendence, just don't seem to resonate well with me. Then what about simple things that every graduate school even India seems to pocess, Library, we have but not sure anyone ever goes in there. I guess that is just what life is all about. But, these are just ramblings.

In all Grad School is just not at all cake walk. I was under the assumption that it was just an extension of what I studied in my undergrad. Ding Dong, that is just not true. Especially if like me, you have always tried to ignore mathematics you will just realize the hardships of Grad School, the hard way.

Enough for now, I know I haven't been blogging much. Let me correct that.

Must Read

2005-03-28T03:44:00.000+05:30

I am reading Paul Graham's essays, here are the good ones that I read

If you are a college student : http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html
If you are planning to launch a startup: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
More essays : http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

Must read.

Yada-Vada

2005-03-18T01:17:00.000+05:30

Read about Protothreads, I have to say that I am indeed very much impressed with what Adam Dunkels has done. Couple of links.

http://www.sics.se/~adam/pt/
http://blogs.bl0rg.net/netzstaub/archives/000493.html

My advice don't try to understand them by following the documentation given. Try to understand _WHY_ it works by following BOTH the code in pt.h, lc.h and lc-switch.h and the documentation. It won't take long.

Anyway, as regards to "The Da Vinci Code" it is still "read-in-progress". I haven't been able to get it issued from Library, so I try to go every alternate day to skim through it. The trouble is that the story has turned out to full of suspense and I just can't resist waiting to read about all the environment that the author is trying to create and I just skip to the action part.

Reading "The Da Vinci Code"

2005-03-13T15:45:00.000+05:30

So, I have finally started to read "The Da Vinci Code", when I picked it up in library I thought it was going to be just me satisfying my curiosity about "Da Vinci". But as I started skimming page after page I realized, that it required a more careful reading. After reading about 100 pages on the first day, when I came back home and started researching on Da Vinci a bit more. I was quite surprised that a lot of what is said in the book is indeed true, though the facts page in the book did mention it, I really did not take it with a bit of seriousness. Partially because I did not know much about this book except for some mention here and there. The book is quite critical of the _current_ practices of the Church, information about "holy grail" and also it is quite an interesting read with all the cryptic codes like "Oh! Draconian Devil". All in all a very interting read.

However, as I was researching on Leonardo, I came across texts written by him, there are about 1600 enteries in it, and it would take a _lot_ of time to go through them. FWIW as I was going through them I came across couple interesting ones.

1330.

WHY DOGS TAKE PLEASURE IN SMELLING AT EACH OTHER.

This animal has a horror of the poor, because they eat poor food,
and it loves the rich, because they have good living and especially
meat. And the excrement of animals always retains some virtue of its
origin as is shown by the faeces ...

Now dogs have so keen a smell, that they can discern by their nose
the virtue remaining in these faeces, and if they find them in the
streets, smell them and if they smell in them the virtue of meat or
of other things, they take them, and if not, they leave them: And to
return to the question, I say that if by means of this smell they
know that dog to be well fed, they respect him, because they judge
that he has a powerful and rich master; and if they discover no such
smell with the virtue of meet, they judge that dog to be of small
account and to have a poor and humble master, and therefore they
bite that dog as they would his master.

1285.

A JEST.

It was asked of a painter why, since he made such beautiful figures,
which were but dead things, his children were so ugly; to which the
painter replied that he made his pictures by day, and his children
by night.

Talk about versatility ;-).

Hurray to Quark

2005-03-07T11:42:00.000+05:30

So some of you might have read that Quark has fired 150 of it's employees, I had actually been expecting this for quite while now. Quark is one of the very few IT companies in my city. The other one is Infosys and together it is said that they account for more than 50% of the software exports from Punjab state.

However, Quark is one of those companies which has some of the worst management practices I have come across, I have only come across there HR management so let me point out some fallacies in it.

When about a year back I was looking for my internship and I visited their office, I ask the wise guy sitting at desk and he asks me to call this Ms P, I call her up and the convo goes on like this.

Me: Hi, Ms P I am wondering if you can provide me any information about internships at Quark
MsP: Could you tell me what you are doing?
Me: I am doing my Msc(IT)
MsP: We don't take in any Msc(IT) students
Me: Any
MsP: Yes any.

Convo ends. I came back home felling a bit dejected. Later that night I called up one of my friends and she told me about one of our mates who had got internship at Quark. My O my, was in a surprise when I got to know her name. This girl could not even write "Hello World" in C and she was hired. Later I talked to one of my friends at Quark and she was absolutely clear about how Quark hires,

a) You are taken in from college.
b) You know someone in management at Quark.

Sure knowing some one big anywhere is a big asset, but when you can't write hello world and you are hired thats shity. Anyway what can I say about those who were fired

R.I.P

Going on 50

2005-02-26T04:29:00.000+05:30

So I haven't been blogging for a long time, I was well what busy. Seems like this job of creating an OS is really getting onto me, when I started I had all the ideas

a) Implementation of Synthesis on x86.
b) Usage of an object oriented programming to implement the kernel.

By far Synthesis is the most revolutionary concept in the overall Operating Systems. Forget Microkernel even Nano Kernel. It is sort of having a virtual machine { Sriram are you listening } in the kernel itself only. Advantages are very obvious. The code can be synthesised at runtime taking into consideration the resources and the running the optimizing code. Consider

for ( int i = 0; i < N; ++i)
do_something();

There are 3 ways to execute it.

a) Everytime the loop is executed read the value of N, bad very bad.
b) Put the value of N in some register. Good but x86 has only 7 General purpose registers.
c) Take N as intermediate in the computation. This is possible because if N is not volatile we can assume that it won't change its value.

so the whole thing can be put in as

cmpl i, 55 ; N is assumed to be 55 here.

Idea number 2, Implementation of Linux in C++. A very bright idea :-). However there are issues here.

a) Noone has studied Object oriented systems in much detail till now.
b) Noone is ready to look at Linux++.

How do you change public opinions. However when I started with the thought process of the whole OS thing I realized that I really did not know much about Operating systems except that last year I did my internship had a bit to do about Operating Systems research. Eventhough my university never had a course in Operating Systems . So I started looking for some information about final year project. Minix sure but who it did not provide the adrenaline factor that I was looking for. So I looked around and last month I came across MIT's 6.828, pretty cool operating system though a primitive one. I am right now implementing the VM. However looking back the whole 1 month back. I have coded just about 50 lines of this Operating system. Other than the JPEG encoder that I am writing and that talk that I had to give in college about design patterns . VM is quite a bitch in Intel.

Linux++ yeah sure, but I am a patient guy{50 lines of code is bad very bad I know}, thinking big is quite good but just like Abraham Lincoln said

"If I am given 6 hours to chop a tree, I will spend the first 4 sharpening my axe"

And O we had our farewell yesterday. Nice party they tell me. But first VM.

Open Source In India

2005-01-28T04:35:00.000+05:30

Slashdot has a story about Open source in India. Like a lot of stuff in India it's overhyped and totally ridiculous. Consider

a) How many Open source projects have you see intitiated byIndians?

b) How many Open Source Contributers do you know from India?

Check out openbsd.org, and the geographical map they show of there devleopers, India does not figure.

c) How much contribution has been made by Indians to Open Source here.

GNU India

2003

Ramanraj K (Chennai) - Rs 1,026

2004

Deeproot Linux (Banglore) - Rs 15,000

Atul Metha (Delhi) - Rs 10,000

Vimal (Kochi) - Rs. 500

For those not from India you just need to divide it by 45 to convert it to US Dollars.

Writing an Essay

2005-01-15T06:59:00.000+05:30

http://www.main.com/~anns/other/humor/collegeessay.html

An Exemplary College Application Essay

3a. Essay:
In order for the admissions staff of our college to get to know you, the applicant, better, we ask that you answer the following question:
Are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets. I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a Mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college

Do No Evil

2005-01-14T05:50:00.000+05:30

We all love google, don't we?. You don't know about a particular programming paradigm, you google. You want to know about latest news, you google. Even if you don't know what you are looking for you still google. Google, today is one of the those companies which commands respect and for that matter envy from a lot. But still a lot of times, while searching, we end up finding something that we never even wanted to look for. Consider this, while I was preparing this blog I did a bit of research on Google, it's algorithms and stuff et al. I started with some random searches like "Google search engine", "Search Engines design". Yes I got a bit of what I was looking for but nothing to say "Whoa!". Clever users could rebuke me that I must be more specific about my search try to put a quote there, use a more specific keyword, use OR keyword, you NOT operator and even use the "means like(~)" operator. I don't agree. Explain or I flame you, is that what you are thinking. Then in that case I owe you an explanation.

PageRank, root cause of evil.

Google indexes it's documents according to PageRank. A bit on PageRank is due for explanation before we proceed. What page rank means that every page has a rank, I bet even your cat knows that. But every ranking has a policy, you could rank yourself as someone senior in your office, while someone could rank you as a bonehead So what matters to us as users is how exactly does google do ranking of pages. Just over a decade back you could search for "President of United States", chances were that you would be taken to a page which would have "President Of United States" written 500 times and then in the end followed by "Sucks". Google changed all that, it started searching on the basis of hyperlinks. Consider this you have set up a webpage of yourself, you would have written on your frontpage "Welcome to my Webpage". With a lot of information about your "Projects" and "Family". In a tiny corner lies "About Me". So how come if I search for "Michael Homepage" I get on to your webpage. Well if you have a lot of friends then, they would have started to put up links like visit "Michaels homepage". So what matters to google is that as long people have interest in you, they would be setting links to you and you would get to there. This simple approch single handedly changed the way search and research was done.

So what's wrong with this. Pretty much all. If you use google on a regular basis you would be surprised about the amount of "spam" that you get. I no longer can restrict myself to "Top 10", a lot of times what you find in "top 10" well is not "top 10" for you. Why? Just about a year back, I could confidently restrict myself to those "top 10" and be happy about it. The trouble is that as people have realized about the basis of PageRank they have been setting up link farms. So you could pay $10000 and the company would set up 1000 links to your webpage with a lot of informative hyperlinks. And if you really want in that "Top 10", also set up a contract with some Indian SEO Company ready to optimize your website for $10000. Just choose your pick. The sad truth is that cooperates today are ready to do pretty much anything to put your webpage on "Top 10". Even sell their souls.

Personalization, Tom, Dick and Harry.

You are searching for "Operating Systems". And so has been your blonde girlfriend, who decides to impress you with your geeky IQ What do you get? Your girlfriend and you would get the same set of links. It's unto you to filter it to satisfy your quest for variety of operating systems and if you are bit (un)lucky you would have to filter this stuff for your girlfriend too, albeit using a different approach. People who spend their day specializing there searches have point. Why don't I try to put in Quotes, try to be specific, like do I want to know about Memory Management, try to add those keywords. Really. I thought I was promised "flying cabs" by 2010. Also consider this, today you searched for "+How +to make chicken", you as usual start filtering out all of these. Some are plainly out of context, they might deal with "Why did chicken cross the road?", Lots of links that you filter out, so couple of days later your girlfriend comes in and you have to make chicken for her, you search again, you get the same set of links, what Google lacks today is intelligence. Yes if I could save dime for every time I had to say that.

AD-sense, I _sense_ a rat.

Google has pretty amazing feature ad-sense, you have a webpage dealing with "Pets", adsense would "sense" that your webpage has information about pets and it would put up advertisements about "Selling and Buying Pets" on your webpage, sharing a percentage of profit with you. Adsense is where a lot of money for google comes in. This ad-sense, again relies on the "textual" rather than "contextual" information on your webpage. That’s where trouble starts, if you are programmer and you searching for "inheritance" in comp.lang.c++, chances are that you will get links like

Sponsored Links

Cash for Heirs in Probate

Credit & job status not important.

Fast Cash to Heirs & Beneficiaries!

www.ifccash.com

Inheritance Cash Advance

If your Inheritance is in Probate &

you want your money now - call us!

www.HeirAdvance.com

XML Inheritance Help

XML Schema Editor - Free Trial!

Visually Derive XML Data Models

www.stylusstudio.com

And no Huston, I did not make them up.

Asta LaVista Baby.

People have often commented that because of monoply of Microsoft, we have lost a lot of innovation. The trouble is that people have learnt to live with Microsoft, if you place in front of them any other Operating system, they won't use it simply because, it won't run their favouraite Game or Email program. Google does not have that that sort of backup. If IBM does come out with it's promised "Natural Language Understandable" search engine along with an index as wide as Google, I would say "AstaLavista Baby".

Conclusion

Being a programmer, has taught me a couple of things, one of them being "Never Underestimate Complexity". If its cold outside, it could very well be burning inside. Surely Google is doing a great job. It has to write a lot of clever algorithms and manage thousands of computers. No mean feat. But, I feel a bit perplexed every week when google comes out with a new product. Why not just just get to the drawing board and think a bit about how we can essentially improve search as a whole? Why not fulfill that promise of "flying cab"? Why not?

So long people.

Inside MSDOS-1.0

2005-01-13T07:48:00.000+05:30

http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Byte/InsideDos.htm
Inside DOS,

Some points on DOS operating system { MSDOS 1.0 }, when I did not even exist on this earth. Facinating.

Design Issues

a) Efficiency --> Well every operating system needs to be efficient, given those times this one had be better. Notably, give maximum consideration to user space, so that _user_ gets to use resources not _system_.

b) Speed --> Coded completly in assembly. Though not primarily because of speed.
c) Compatibilty with CP/M --> Provide compatibilty with CP/M so that software compiled for CP/M could effectively run without modfication on MS-DOS.

Bit on organization.

High memory for transient component of DOS. Could be overlayed by application if need be.
User memory.
Command Resident //Could have been replaced by any other command prompt, did not know this one.
MSDOS.sys
IO.sys
IVT.

File Structure

FAT file system

Sector 0 --> MBR
Sector 1-6 --> FAT
Sector 8-13 --> Copy of FAT
Sector 14-30 --> Directory Structure // Each sector 128 bytes, Each directory entry 32 bytes
// 17 * 128 / 32 = 68 Directory enteries in total
// No it could not be resized.
Sector 31-2001 --> User space.

Most importantly file structre was NOT hierarchical. Only "root" directory. No sub directories.

Maximum file size = 65535 bytes. No not 65536. Pretty efficient overall.

Only _one_ sector buffer. i.e. we only had one single buffer for whole of the file system and that was for just one sector.

Queries to file system had to specify for reading any file. So if we are looking for byte streams like we have now, each record was effectively of size 1.

a) Record size, the size of the record.
b) And the record number.

So if an application wanted to read 2nd record, with each record of 90 bytes. Request would be generated for reading 128-90 from sector 0, and then 90 - ( 128 - 90 ) from next sector.

Some questions:

Though the article says that there was only one single sector buffer, it also says that the IO system was able to "look ahead" in FAT to know if we are to read consecutive, blocks. But if it could do so, then it should be able to put them in some sort of buffer otherwise there is just no use of _looking_ahead_

At one time he gives an indication that the number of sectors for FAT(7) is pretty much fixed, but then again in his example regarding internal fragmmentaion, he conisders FAT to be as long as 24 sectors.

Even looking back just 68 files looks quite pathetic.

Indian cops and CS girls

2005-01-07T05:24:00.000+05:30

Here is an interesting story about Indian cops

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66123,00.html

I have also thought about these cops things in India, I laughed my ass out when I read

" The judge refused to consider the agreement on which the student clicked, for there was no signature in ink . "

As murthy points out according to this ALL of e-com in India in India. Cool so I should stop buying the books from the net.

Anyway one of my friends has watched the clip he told me that the clip is just about 173 seconds long, which makes me wonder can anyone really do something good in those 173 seconds :-).

Also I came across this post on women computer science students

http://cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects-00-01/women-in-cs/stayingwithcs.html

Makes sense to me, considering I really don't know any good women CS programmers, yes I have come across them through net but that is obviously very rare, and I have to admit that whenever I look at them, I can't help saying

"Would you go out on a date?".

Oh well what else.

Why are you in IT?

2005-01-06T01:02:00.000+05:30

Just some thoughts after reading

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sriram/archive/2005/01/03/41183.aspx

Why are you in IT? The moment I ask this question to a lot of my friends and for that matter even foes the answer is.

"Just came in because my aunts son is earning $6000 per year".

Oh well thank you very much. The trouble is that the more I come across people the more I realize why a lot of them are in IT. I am often left wondering "How can you be in IT if you don't _enjoy_ it?". My bad, because I know 1 year down the line a lot of them will be placed in so called branded companies around the world.