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The Education System

2010-12-25T12:56:00.000-08:00

While reading "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman, I came across a chapter on his experiences in Brazil education system. While you read this, you would realize that this is the ditto situation we have in India. He has presented it very well.
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In regard to education in Brazil, I had a very interesting experience. I was teaching a group of students who would ultimately become teachers, since at that time there were not many opportunities in Brazil for a highly trained person in science. These students had already had many courses, and this was to be their most advanced course in electricity and magnetism–Maxwell’s equations, and so on.
The university was located in various office buildings throughout the city, and the course I taught met in a building which overlooked the hay.
I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately. But the next time I would ask the question–the same subject, and the same question, as far as I could tell–they couldn’t answer it at all! For instance, one time I was talking about polarized light, and I gave them all some strips of polaroid.
Polaroid passes only light whose electric vector is in a certain direction, so I explained how you could tell which way the light is polarized from whether the polaroid is dark or light.
We first took two strips of polaroid and rotated them until they let the most light through. From doing that we could tell that the two strips were now admitting light polarized in the same direction–what passed through one piece of polaroid could also pass through the other. But then I asked them how one could tell the _absolute_ direction of polarization, for a _single_ piece of polaroid.
They hadn’t any idea.
I knew this took a certain amount of ingenuity, so I gave them a hint: “Look at the light reflected from the bay outside.”
Nobody said anything.
Then I said, “Have you ever heard of Brewster’s Angle?”
“Yes, sir! Brewster’s Angle is the angle at which light reflected from a medium with an index of refraction is completely polarized.”
“And which way is the light polarized when it’s reflected?”
“The light is polarized perpendicular to the plane of reflection, sir.” Even now, I have to think about it; they knew it cold! They even knew the tangent of the angle equals the index!
I said, “Well?”
Still nothing. They had just told me that light reflected from a medium with an index, such as the bay outside, was polarized; they had even told me which way it was polarized.
I said, “Look at the bay outside, through the polaroid. Now turn the polaroid.”
“Ooh, it’s polarized!” they said.
After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant. When they heard “light that is reflected from a medium with an index,” they didn’t know that it meant a material _such as water_. They didn’t know that the “direction of the light” is the direction in which you see something when you’re looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. So if I asked, “What is Brewster’s Angle?” I’m going into the computer with the right keywords. But if I say, “Look at the water,” nothing happens–they don’t have anything under “Look at the water”!
Later I attended a lecture at the engineering school. The lecture went like this, translated into English: “Two bodies . . . are considered equivalent . . . if equal torques . . . will produce . . . equal acceleration. Two bodies, are considered equivalent, if equal torques, will produce equal acceleration.” The students were all sitting there taking dictation, and when the professor repeated the sentence, they checked it to make sure they wrote it down all right. Then they wrote down the next sentence, and on and on. I was the only one who knew the professor was talking about objects with the same moment of inertia, and it was hard to figure out.
I didn’t see how they were going to learn anything from that. Here he was talking about moments of inertfa, but there was no discussion about how hard it is to push a door open when you put heavy weights on the outside, compared to when you put them near the hinge–_nothing!_
After the lecture, I talked to a student: “You take all those notes–what do you do with them?”
“Oh, we study them,” he says. “We’ll have an exam.”
“What will the exam be like?”
“Very easy. I can tell you now one of the questions.” He looks at his notebook and says, ” ‘When are two bodies equivalent?’ And the answer is, ‘Two bodies are considered equivalent if equal torques will produce equal acceleration.’ So, you see, they could pass the examinations, and “learn” all this stuff, and not _know_ anything at all, except what they had memorized.
Then I went to an entrance exam for students coming into the engineering school. It was an oral exam, and I was allowed to listen to it. One of the students was absolutely super: He answered everything nifty! The examiners asked him what diamagnetism was, and he answered it perfectly. Then they asked, “When light comes at an angle through a sheet of material with a certain thickness, and a certain index N, what happens to the light?”
“It comes out parallel to itself, sir–displaced.”
“And how much is it displaced?”
“I don’t know, sir, but I can figure it out.” So he figured it out. He was very good. But I had, by this time, my suspicions.
After the exam I went up to this bright young man, and explained to him that I was from the United States, and that I wanted to ask him some questions that would not affect the result of his examination in any way. The first question I ask is, “Can you give me some example of a diamagnetic substance?”
“No.”
Then I asked, “If this book was made of glass, and I was looking at something on the table through it, what would happen to the image if I tilted the glass?”
“It would be deflected, sir, by twice the angle that you’ve turned the book.”
I said, “You haven’t got it mixed up with a mirror, have you?”
“No, sir!”
He had just told me in the examination that the light would be displaced, parallel to itself, and therefore the image would move over to one side, but would not be turned by any angle. He had even figured out how _much_ it would be displaced, but he didn’t realize that a piece of glass is a material with an index, and that his calculation had applied to my question.
I taught a course at the engineering school on mathematical methods in physics, in which I tried to show how to solve problems by trial and error. It’s something that people don’t usually learn, so I began with some simple examples of arithmetic to illustrate the method. I was surprised that only about eight out of the eighty or so students turned in the first assignment. So I gave a strong lecture about having to actually _try_ it, not just sit back and watch _me_ do it.
After the lecture some students came up to me in a little delegation, and told me that I didn’t understand the backgrounds that they have, that they can study without doing the problems, that they have already learned arithmetic, and that this stuff was beneath them.
So I kept going with the class, and no matter how complicated or obviously advanced the work was becoming, they were never handing a damn thing in. Of course I realized what it was: They couldn’t _do_ it!
One other thing I could never get them to do was to ask questions. Finally, a student explained it to me: “If I ask you a question during the lecture, afterwards everybody will be telling me, ‘What are you wasting our time for in the class? We’re trying to _learn_ something. And you’re stopping him by asking a question’.”
It was a kind of one-upmanship, where nobody knows what’s going on, and they’d put the other one down as if they _did_ know. They all fake that they know, and if one student admits for a moment that something is confusing by asking a question, the others take a high-handed attitude, acting as if it’s not confusing at all, telling him that he’s wasting their time.
I explained how useful it was to work together, to discuss the questions, to talk it over, but they wouldn’t do that either, because they would be losing face if they had to ask someone else. It was pitiful! All the work they did, intelligent people, but they got themselves into this funny state of mind, this strange kind of self-propagating “education” which4is meaningless, utterly meaningless!
At the end of the academic year, the students asked me to give a talk about my experiences of teaching in Brazil. At the talk there would be not only students, but professors and government officials, so I made them promise that I could say whatever I wanted. They said, “Sure. Of course. It’s a free country.”
So I came in, carrying the elementary physics textbook that they used in the first year of college. They thought this book was especially good because it had different kinds of typeface–bold black for the most important things to remember, lighter for less important things, and so on.
Right away somebody said, “You’re not going to say anything bad about the textbook, are you? The man who wrote it is here, and everybody thinks it’s a good textbook.”
“You promised I could say whatever I wanted.”
The lecture hall was full. I started out by defining science as an understanding of the behavior of nature. Then I asked, “What is a good reason for teaching science? Of course, no country can consider itself civilized unless . . . yak, yak, yak.” They were all sitting there nodding, because I know that’s the way they think.
Then I say, “That, of course, is absurd, because why should we feel we have to keep up with another country? We have to do it for a _good_ reason, a _sensible_ reason; not just because other countries do.” Then I talked about the utility of science, and its contribution to the improvement of the human condition, and all that–I really teased them a little bit.
Then I say, “The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that _no_ science is being taught in Brazil!”
I can see them stir, thinking, “What? No science? This is absolutely crazy! We have all these classes.”
So I tell them that one of the first things to strike me when I came to Brazil was to see elementary school kids in bookstores, buying physics books. There are so many kids learning physics in Brazil, beginning much earlier than kids do in the United States, that it’s amazing you don’t find many physicists in Brazil–why is that? So many kids are working so hard, and nothing comes of it.
Then I gave the analogy of a Greek scholar who loves the Greek language, who knows that in his own country there aren’t many children studying Greek. But he comes to another country, where he is delighted to find everybody studying Greek–even the smaller kids in the elementary schools. He goes to the examination of a student who is coming to get his degree in Greek, and asks him, “What were Socrates’ ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty?”–and the student can’t answer. Then he asks the student, What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third Symposium?” the student lights up and goes, “_Brrrrrrrrr-up_”–he tells you everything, word for word, that Socrates said, in beautiful Greek.
But what Socrates was talking about in the Third Symposium was the relationship between Truth and Beauty!
What this Greek scholar discovers is, the students in another country learn Greek by first learning to pronounce the letters, then the words, and then sentences and paragraphs. They can recite, word for word, what Socrates said, without realizing that those Greek words actually _mean_ something. To the student they are all artificial sounds. Nobody has ever translated them into words the students can understand.
I said, “That’s how it looks to me, when I see you teaching the kids ’science’ here in Brazil.” (Big blast, right?)
Then I held up the elementary physics textbook they were using. “There are no experimental results mentioned anywhere in this book, except in one place where there is a ball, rolling down an inclined plane, in which it says how far the ball got after one second, two seconds, three seconds, and so on. The numbers have ‘errors’ in them–that is, if you look at them, you think you’re looking at experimental results, because the numbers are a little above, or a little below, the theoretical values. The book even talks about having to correct the experimental errors–very fine. The trouble is, when you calculate the value of the acceleration constant from these values, you get the right answer. But a ball rolling down an inclined plane, _if it is actually done_, has an inertia to get it to turn, and will, _if you do the experiment_, produce five-sevenths of the right answer, because of the extra energy needed to go into the rotation of the ball. Therefore this single example of experimental ‘results’ is obtained from a _fake_ experiment. Nobody had rolled such a ball, or they would never have gotten those results!
“I have discovered something else,” I continued. “By flipping the pages at random, and putting my finger in and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what’s the matter–how it’s not science, but memorizing, in every circumstance. Therefore I am brave enough to flip through the pages now, in front of this audience, to put my finger in, to read, and to show you.”
So I did it. _Brrrrrrrup_–I stuck my finger in, and I started to read: “Triboluminescence. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed..
I said, “And there, have you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You haven’t told anything about nature-what crystals produce light when you crush them, _why_ they produce light. Did you see any student go home and _try_ it? He can’t.
“But if, instead, you were to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.”‘ Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.” I used that example to show them, but it didn’t make any difference where I would have put my finger in the book; it was like that everywhere.
Finally, I said that I couldn’t see how anyone could he educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. “However,” I said, “I must be wrong. There were two students in my class who did very well, and one of the physicists I know was educated entirely in Brazil. Thus, it must be possible for some people to work their way through the system, had as it is.”
Well, after I gave the talk, the head of the science education department got up and said, “Mr. Feynman has told us some things that are very hard for us to hear, but it appears to he that he really loves science, and is sincere in his criticism. Therefore, I think we should listen to him. I came here knowing we have some sickness in our system of education; what I have learned is that we have a _cancer!_”–and he sat down.
That gave other people the freedom to speak out, and there was a big excitement. Everybody was getting up and making suggestions. The students got some committee together to mimeograph the lectures in advance, and they got other committees organized to do this and that.
Then something happened which was totally unexpected for me. One of the students got up and said, “I’m one of the two students whom Mr. Feynman referred to at the end of his talk. I was not educated in Brazil; I was educated in Germany, and I’ve just come to Brazil this year.”
The other student who had done well in class had a similar thing to say. And the professor I had mentioned got up and said, “I was educated here in Brazil during the war, when, fortunately, all of the professors had left the university, so I learned everything by reading alone. Therefore I was not really educated under the Brazilian system.”
I didn’t expect that. I knew the system was bad, but 100 percent–it was terrible!

Is Kindle an alternative of paperback books?

2010-11-29T01:05:00.001-08:00

Can a digital device compete with the paperback book?
I was in favour of the argument during discussions/arguments with my wife but I really could never win the argument or convince her.
Though I always argued in favour of digital device but always felt it can never replace.

And in the mean time, Kindle came. I gifted to my wife on her Birthday. Well, she has hardly got time to use it but I have been using it most of the time.
Now, I feel a digital device can compete with the paperback book and win.

My criteria for a e-book reader are as follows:
1. Screen Look & Feel
The screen of Kindle feels exactly like a paper print. The fact that it does not flow like PC or Phone makes it very soothing to eyes. This is one of the main criteria for a e-book reader to qualify. The more the ambience light the better you can read.
The downside of this property is that you cant read in dark.

1.1 Font
Elderly people need bigger fonts and younger ones want smaller fonts. Some of the reprints of paperbacks are pretty bad. This is one of the biggest problem I face while reading books. Thankfully, in Kindle I can change the font and the quality of print can never be an issue.

2. Battery
The battery should last long. I should not be charging it everyday. Kindle's battery life is about 15-20 days easily if it is not indexing.
This durability of battery is pretty good.
If you have put thousands of book, for first few days it drain the battery because it is indexing the books in background.

3. Weight
It should not be bulky. The weight of Kindle is about 289 gms which light that most of the book. The only book in that weight I can think of "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.

4. Easy to use
Like a book, it should be pretty easy to use. I should not be browsing around and searching for where I left the book.
Kindle does it in extremely good fashion. My recent book bubble up in the menu and when I open it, it takes me to the page I left.

It is also pretty easy to transfer book from my pc to kindle. It can be done eithe via USB cable using Calibre Software or by sending mail to your free kindle account (your-login@free.kindle.com)

5. Should not Crash
When people start designing hardware or device, they tend to put each and everything which lead to complexities and crashes apart from battery drainage.

Kindle have done it smartly but they are also overloading it with features slowly for example they have put a browser and a music player in it. But so far, it is going pretty good. It doesn't crash or hangs at all.

Other features:
Dictionary:
We always needed a dictionary lookup with zero effort. I have a physical OXford dictionary, Dictionary on my phone and PC. I also purchased an electronic oxford dictionary for 7K but while reading you rarely get up and look for a word because it is too much of an effort. But with Kindle, I am using the dictionary for the first time in My Life while reading because it is effortless. All you have to do is bring the cursor to the word and the meaning is displayed with a zero hinderance to your reading. If the word is in top half of the screen, the meaning is displayed at bottom. If the word is in bottom half, the meaning is in top. What a design!!

Text-To-Voice:
I had always found almost all text-to-voice clarity of all softwares pretty bad. But Kindle's voice is pretty clear and understandable. When I am tired of reading I would just put the earphone and turn the voice on. It read it for me. I have done it for around 50 pages so far and I am pretty comfortable with it.

Music Player:
Kindle comes with music player which can play music but I hardly prefer it.

Internet:
Although, it is not the objective of the device to help browse internet but since it is almost always going to be your companion on travels, it is useful to have internet in it in case of emergency. But I would hardly use it because i have internet on my phone.
Inside the browser also, it has a feature called "Reading Mode" which is quite useful if you want to read article on web like a book - I mean navigation controls and page layout.

Shockingly, it comes with Internet which is free for lifetime and is available in almost every coordinate of world. Unbelievable, isnt it?
When my Tata Photon USB and Airtel GPRS wasnt working on a travel, using this device I could check my pnr status of train. Since 3G is not yet available in India, the internet automatically switches to EDGE.

In the end, I must say I am enjoying reading on kindle more than paperbacks.

Orkut Ad Block

2009-07-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

I just realized that orkut has shamelessly started putting random and embarrassing ads.
So, I tried AdBlock Plus which doesn't seem to work. So I quickly wrote a script to block the ads from orkut.

Here is the JS script for GreaseMonkey:


var timeOutIds = [];
function clearAllIntervals()
{
 for(var i=0; i< timeOutIds.length;i++)
 {
  var id = timeOutIds[i];
  window.clearInterval(id);
  if(console)
   console.log('cleared the interval : ' + id);
 }
}
var total = 0;
function hideBlock()
{
 if(total > 10)
  return;
 else total++;
 var frame = unsafeWindow.frames['orkutFrame'];
 if(frame)
 {
  var div = frame.document.getElementById('rhs_ads');
  if(div)
  {
      div.setAttribute('style', 'display:none');
   clearAllIntervals();
   console.log('Hiding the ad');
  }
  else
  {
   console.log('ad div not found.');
  }
 }
 else
 {
  console.log('ad frame not found');
 }
}
var timeOutId = window.setInterval(hideBlock, 1000);
timeOutIds.push(timeOutId);
console.log('scheduled : ' + timeOutId);

All you have to do is install the greasemonkey ad-on for firefox. And the an icon of a face would appear on the right bottom of the screen.
Just right on that icon and say new user script.
Under includes put 'http://www.orkut.com/*' and 'http://www.orkut.co.in/*'
And when the empty window of editor opens just copy-paste the above script and refresh you orkut screen.

BINGO!! No Ads.

My First Marriage Anniversary

2009-07-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

It was our first marriage anniversary (9th July) so we went out to Shamirpet Lake while sister was planning some big surprise at home. It was a great at Lake. We roamed around a lot.

On the way back on our skooty, an auto (full of eggs) was overtaking from left. Yes, from left. It is common in Hyderabad. As I applied the brakes, one car (perhaps Qualis) started over taking from right. The right side of handle hit the car and we fell down.

I wasn't hurt but there was a lot of blood around. It was Sravani's thumb. It was crushed badly but she was calm and in senses even after realizing what happened. Leaving my skooty there, we waved for lift. Thanks to Hyderabad culture we got lift quickly. He left us Appollo. After First Aid and X-ray, we were told that there is no need of amputation, just the surgery will do but there is no surgeon available.

By this time, Ritesh (my business partner) with Lokesh (my co-worker) has reached hospital and took us to Yashoda. I knew plastic surgeon here so I called him on mobile. He did the operation and Sravani was admitted for a day.

Today, we got relieved and are back. We celebrated our Anniversary my sister's way.

Nevertheless, It is more memorable day now.

Bing-Bang: Microsoft might monopolize the web market

2009-06-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

With the advent of Bing, Microsoft might try to eat the market. I am getting the hibbie-gibbies after thinking about it.

I remember my days before Google. People used to open at least 2 windows for search (Most prominent were Alta Vista, Yahoo and ask jeeves) in Netscape Navigator. We had to keep opening lot of windows as the thing we were looking for might even be on the second page of search results. Since the net was slow, we would be more aggressive about opening as many windows as possible. One top of that, since PCs were few more then one person would use a PC to search.

First Microsoft Killed Netscape.

We were left with IE and we all know the history of IE. The one responsible for most of the viruses around.

Anyway, lets get back to the search engine.
Now, one fine day (after living with the internet for around 2 years), I came to know about Google. I still remember the feeling of the first page. It looked like designed for non-profit by some student because we were used to seeing the popup/ad-filled pages. Since that day, I haven't looked back to any other search engine for serious use. Google was definitely 100 times (i.e. 10,000 %) better than yahoos and altavistas.

Now, Bing comes with hardly -1% to +1% improvement( effectively 0%) and $ 100 M ad budget. I feel that given that budget microsoft can takeover the market. Reason being simple "99% People breathe windows. Windows is their conscience".

What if IE6, IE7 and all the stuff that links to search engine, all points to Bing? And the user find the things which he is looking for on Bing. will anyone care to open google?

No matter how bad MSN Messenger had been, it always had biggest user base. Reason was simple, microsoft forced every one to open an account from inside windows. There are links everywhere (when you run outlook express, netmeeting etc etc.).

MSN live space still claims to have 3rd biggest user base (after myspace and facebook). Did you ever heard about MSN live space? I opened once but never used afterwords.
So, the key point is Microsoft's marketing and control over me could trick me into opening an account but could not hold me longer.

Since for search engine, user has less inertia of change as compared to emails or a social network. There are chances that people who are taken to Bing at least 4-5 times would remain there.

One of the main crowd pullers for Google is Firefox to whom they pay $50m to $66m a year. Can't Microsoft snatch that deal now?

Given all this thought process, I feel that Microsoft will have 50% share in search engine market in 1 year.

So, my question remains to Google, "why didn't you create an OS for a normal user? Why?!"
See, all of the end users of windows suffer. At lest 20% people who are using windows have one problem or the other. An individual has to format his/her windows pc at least once in 3 months. This is based on my 8 years of experience.

I feel there is a huge scope of improvements. I am using Mac for past 1 year and it has been such a breeze. I never looked back.

I have used Linux but it doesn't provide a great UI experience. One has to be at least 10 times better than windows to beat it at this time.

So, My conclusion is this, Unless Google comes up with a search engine which is 10 times better then current Bing or an OS which is 10 times better than windows, it would be difficult to survive.

Disclaimer: This is my personal view point based on the current situation. I can not be held by neck for any of this.

Setting the gmail's status as 'a new fortune quote' automatically

2009-01-26T23:58:00.000-08:00

This tiny little thing sets my status after picking it from the unix command called 'fortune' (it gives out a quote possibly funny).
So, I just used Smack API and implemented it.

import org.jivesoftware.smack.packet.IQ;
import org.jivesoftware.smack.packet.Presence;

public class PresenceGoogle extends IQ {

protected String userName;
protected String status;
protected boolean visible;
protected Presence.Mode mode;

/**
* Override toXML in the case of mode is away
* Because Google Talk interprets the 'away'
* status as idle, and idleness is a
* per-connection property, you cannot set an
* 'away' status using this method. To set an
* idle status message, send a
* standard stanza. :
*/
@Override
public String toXML() {
if ( mode.equals(Presence.Mode.away) )
{
Presence p = new Presence(Presence.Type.available);
p.setMode(mode);
p.setStatus(status);
return p.toXML();
}
else
{
return super.toXML();
}
}

/**
* Constructor
* @param userName the userName
* @param status the new status
* @param visible the visible state > false to be invisble
*/
public PresenceGoogle(String userName, String status, boolean visible) {
super();
this.userName = userName;
this.status = status;
this.visible = visible;
setType(IQ.Type.SET);

// I am not sure this code must be test
// in case of a domain different of gmail.com
// using gmail.com...
if( userName.indexOf("@") != -1)
{
setTo(userName + "");
}
else
{
setTo(userName + "@gmail.com");
}

mode = Presence.Mode.available;
}

/**
* Constructor
* @param userName the userName
* @param status the new status
*/
public PresenceGoogle(String userName, String status) {
this(userName,status,false);
}

/**
* Return the XML of changing status
* for google
* according
* http://code.google.com/apis/talk/jep_extensions/shared_status.html
*/
@Override
public String getChildElementXML() {
StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder();

// set query header
buf.append("");
// set status
buf.append("").append(status).append("");
// set mode
buf.append("").append(mode).append("");
// set invisible mode
if ( visible )
{
buf.append("");
}
else
{
buf.append("");
}
// close query
buf.append("");

return buf.toString();
}

public Presence.Mode getMode() {
return mode;
}

public void setMode(Presence.Mode mode) {
this.mode = mode;
}

}

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.Properties;

import org.jivesoftware.smack.XMPPConnection;
import org.jivesoftware.smack.XMPPException;

public class SetStatusMessage {
public static XMPPConnection getConn() throws XMPPException
{
String login = "sandeepxxxxgiri@gmail.com";
String pass = "xxxx";

return getConnection(login, pass);
}
private static XMPPConnection getConnection(String login, String pass)
throws XMPPException {
XMPPConnection connection = new XMPPConnection("gmail.com");
connection.connect();
connection.login(login, pass);
return connection;
}
public static void setStatus(XMPPConnection connection, String msg)
{
PresenceGoogle pg = new PresenceGoogle("sandeepgiri",
msg, true);
connection.sendPacket(pg);
}
public static void setStatus(String login, String pass, String msg) throws XMPPException
{
setStatus(getConnection(login, pass), msg);
}

private static String readStdIn() throws IOException
{
InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);

StringBuilder input = new StringBuilder();
String str;
while( (str = br.readLine()) != null)
{
input.append(str);
}
return input.toString();
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException, XMPPException {
String login;
String pass;

if(args.length == 2)
{
login = args[0];
pass = args[1];
}
else if(args.length == 0)
{
String userHome = System.getProperty("user.home");
if (userHome == null) {
throw new IllegalStateException("user.home==null");
}
Properties props = new Properties();
props.load(new FileInputStream(userHome + "/.setstatus.properties"));
login = props.getProperty("login");
pass = props.getProperty("password");
}
else
{
System.out.println("Usage: \n 1. setStatusMessage \n\t Sets the status message using the login and password.\n 2. setStatusMessage \n\t Reads login and password from .setstatus.properties");
return;
}
String quote = readStdIn();
setStatus(login, pass, quote);
}
}

Then I wrote this command setfortunestatus.sh:
$cat cat ~/scripts/setfortunestatus.sh
CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/Users/sandeepgiri/scripts/gmailstatus/smack.jar
CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/Users/sandeepgiri/scripts/gmailstatus/smackx.jar
CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/Users/sandeepgiri/scripts/gmailstatus/smackx-jingle.jar
CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/Users/sandeepgiri/scripts/gmailstatus
/opt/local/bin/fortune -s|java -classpath $CLASSPATH SetStatusMessage

Now, I scheduled it using Lingon in my macos x.
In case you do not have fortune on your Mac OS X, you could just use "sudo port install fortune". This would use fortune macport.

Alive Again with GWT

2009-01-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

Since I have switched to Web Programming I had almost lost my charm to do programming because most of the time would go into data plumbing:
1. Getting the data from database and creating objects
2. Taking these objects filling into the templates
3. Generating HTML from servlets
4. Converting my Java objects in XML or JSON etceteras etcetras...
5. fixing browser incompatibilities
6. SQL Queries incompatibilities amongst various Databases.
7. Worry about typos in JS code which will take hell lot of time to figure out.

So, recently I discovered GWT (Google Web toolkit). Its not that I didnt know about GWT, I have known it for more than a year.
But recently I found that it makes the service call as easy as calling a method of library - Passing the argument and getting the objects returned. Wonderful! It solved problem 2,3,4, 5 & 7.

Regarding remaining problems, I think Hibernate would do. Let me give it a try. It seems to have a big learning curve.

I then rolled up my sleeves and wrote my first Web Application which was done out of self interest. Yes, I mean it the first webapp for fun. So far, I had been designing applications out of business need. Perhaps I have written around 7-8 web applications so far. I have been doing it since 2001.

I wrote my first app called 'Talk' - it is similar IM but you dont have to press enter..It is sent as you type. If you have used talk of unix, you woould understand.

Looks wonderful. I am about to finish it and then I would host it on google code. Then you have understand what it looks like. But definitely it would be more interesting then exising IMs.

Monitoring your servers with shell script

2008-12-06T04:01:00.000-08:00

Here is my take on monitoring system.

Purpose:
The idea is to monitor the servers and see if X server is running on Y port. I generally have to monitor 4-5 servers and have to check whether MSSQL, Mail Server, Tomcat etc are running on these machines.

So, I maintain a server.txt which has:
server1 80
server1 1433
server1 25
server2 80
server3 25

$ cat monitorserver.sh
#
# This script reads server.txt and checks if each of the server is up using tel.sh
#
SCRPT_HOME=`dirname $0`
cat $SCRPT_HOME/server.txt |while read server port;
do
ret=`$SCRPT_HOME/tel.sh $server $port`
if [ $ret = "0" ]
then
msg="$server at $port is down"
say $msg
fi

$ cat tel.sh
#It takes two args one server other port and print 1 if up otherwise 0
((echo "o $1 $2"; echo "quit")|telnet 2>&1)> /dev/null

How much time would it take to copy?

2008-11-23T08:43:00.000-08:00

You are copying files A, B, C, D from place SOURCE to TARGET.
The progress of each as displayed by windows is:
A: 10 minutes remaining
B: 30 minutes remaining
C: 75 minutes remaining
D: 157 minutes remaining

How much time would it take for the copying to finish?

Assumptions:
1. The bandwidth is evenly distributed amongst various connections.

The macbook hardware sucks

2008-11-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

Can you believe that two harddisks crashed in a year?

I got a macbook on sept 7, 2007 and the hard disk was crashed in feb 2008. Can you believe it?
And worst part of it, Apple knows about it? If they knew about it why didnt they notify users and got it back?
I am keeping my whole business data in it. It is not only about the goddamn Rs. 2000/- worth!
Fine. They replaced it then since it was in warranty.

And now again it crashed on 21 Nov 08. Now the laptop is no longer in warranty.
This is not the first laptop I am having. My Acer one which I bought in 2003 still works cool. I have worked on that alot.
So, The question remains how can a hard disk crash in just 8 months?
Possibly they put some hard disk which was destined to fail as soon as I am out of warranty.

The apple resellers suggested me to buy further warranty for 2 years which was costing me 13K. And this is how those guys tried to convinced me to buy a warranty:
"See sir, the combo drive which is known to fail after a years costs 14K. I would suggest you to buy warranty cover."

I mean "What?" It like selling you the insurance by showing you a gunmen and then telling "See any one can be shot any day. This our gunman has shot around 10 people last year."

I think I would buy the warranty because I see no choice but in future I am not going to buy this god damn thing.
I like the quality of Mac software so I would rather buy some other may be IBM's laptop and install mac os x on that.

Guys, in case you are planning to buy a mac. Buy any other high end laptop and install Mac OS X under Virtual Machine. VM have become quite stable and efficient these days.

Hope it helps.

Few Quotes

2008-11-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

It is not uncommon for an entrepreneur to face a depression and thats the time when these quotes help.

Here I just got some from VentureHacks:

“The price of being a wolf is loneliness; the price
of being a sheep is boredom. Choose one or the
other with great care”
- HUGH MACLEOD

Start where you are

“If you are facing in the right direction, keep
walking”
- BUDDHA

“All great truths begin as blasphemies”
- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing
more to add, but rather when there is nothing
more to take away”
- ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Source: http://venturehacks.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/a-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-starting-up.pdf

DateTime in Java Application

2008-10-27T02:33:00.000-07:00

Handling DateTime is not a easy game especially in case of web applications when there various servers running in different timezones

In case of a web application you have :
1. A web client (browser) which represents time zone of end user.
2. The database which is lying in US
3. A web application server which is in Canada
4. A Rules and Reports which are being done in India and hosted on an Indian Time Zone File System and Database.

Now how do you handle this? To add to the complexity what if something was in China where they have a totally different calendar. If you see the Date handling of Java, it has been revamped couple of times. There are a lot of deprecated code.

The crux is use GMT for internal communication while talk to the end user in there local time zone.

So, how do we handle date? As per unix convention, the date is stored as a very long number representing the milliseconds that passed since 1 January 1970. Remember that this is in GMT. So, whenever you present this data to the end user just convert this to the end user's TimeZone and Calendar.

That pretty much solves the problem.

A year ago I didnt know this so I did a dirty code which took me 7 days to fix it. I just hope that you learn from my mistake and dont repreat such a thing.

~Alpha0

Say it

2008-10-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered that there is command "say" in Mac OS X which reads out the words.
You can call this in the followings ways:

say "Hello!"

echo "Hello!" | say

So, now I am playing around with it. What am I doing with it?

1. I am montoring my servers and if any one goes down it tell me "server xyz is down".
2. If there is an upcoming event it says it loudly.
3. My ant scripts tell me that the build is finished

Man, I am enjoying this.

Quake 3 on Mac OS X

2008-10-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

I am quite fond of this point-and-shoot game called Quake 3.

I was missing it badly on my mac os x. Even more since the windows running through bootcamp/parallels is crashed. Some virus problem basically.

So I found it. Can you believe it is an open source? An open source game!! It was possible because quake 3 made their engine open source. These guys apparently fixed lotsa bugs too.

It is called ioquake3. But that doesnt mean you don't have to buy quake Cd. You would still need the cd to copy the map package.

Enjoy Quaking!!

Brought back a dead laptop to life

2008-10-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

I have a very old laptop which lying the store. I had no hopes with it. So, I thought may be I could use it for making it a music system. Its specifications:

1. 233 MHz Processor

2. 64MB RAM

3. 3GB HDD (later on I found out that it was all gone.)

4. Can not boot from CD. Can boot from harddisk or floppy (yes floppy).

So, I bought 4-5 floppies and created the floppy by writing image of Smart Boot Manager to floppy.

I decided to install Damn Small Linux(DSL).

Then I realized that the hard has too many bad sectors. I didnt need too much of space for a Frugal Install of DSL. So, I made around 6-7 partitions and tried to install dsl in each. Finally I found that partition 4 was okay. And it got installed.

I need to find out how to configure its sound card. Once thats done I would try to connect various hard disk/usb drives to it.

Then I will have a cheap/excellent music system taking too little space.

Mounting NTFS partition on MAC OS X in read/write mode

2008-10-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

When you boot your macbook having boot camp, you can see the windows drive with name "Untitled" but it is read only. I want to write to it so that I could manually clean the viruses.

So, what I did was I downloaded and installed "ntfs-3g" but that didn't solve the problem instead the drive disappeared. Then I ran this command and rebooted:

sudo bless -device /dev/disk0s4 -legacy -setBoot -nextonly

You should replace disk0s4 with your own disk. you can see the device marked "Microsoft Basic Date" after running:

diskutil list

Now, it working perfectly fine. The only problem I faced was it directly booted into windows, I had to press alt after the Chime to get booting options.

CAUTION: IRCTC is buggy and unreliable

2008-10-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to book ticket for the following from IRCTC :

Source: HYB (Hyderabad)
Destination: Delhi (Delhi)
Date: 14 Oct 08
Type: e-ticket
3rd Ac
Tatkal

Every time i tried it said "Not Available" but then my brother told me the tickets are available. I was surprised. Then I checked using my brother's login, the tickets were available and I booked. Then again I tested using my account, it said "Not Available".

Urgh!!!

I thought about what possible error could be?

For load balancing, they might be using multiple database instances. Say all users from a-m would be connected to database 1 and rest would connect to 1. And in the back-end they would be syncing both the databases. And synchronization as we all know is never seamless. It fails unpredictably.

So, may be the database to which my user is connected didn't have the data.

These guys seriously need some technical guidelines.

Git: From centralized repository to distributed way

2008-10-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

Have you ever used svn or cvs or any similar tool that helps us manage the source code?

So far, I loved SVN. It is pretty stable and helps me keep all the code centralised. Every file has got a detailed history and can be rolled back in time. I loved it. We are a team of around 5 members. We were really happy about having a central repository.

Lately, I heard about git which is distributive in nature. It acts as a personal repository to the people and people can synchronize.
At first, it sounded like an aweful idea. How can you decentralize such a thing where the main purpose is centralization?

It sounded as if someone came out saying "Earth revolves around sun" while everyone believed that "Everything revolves around sun". It sounded crazy.

Then I went through the talk by Linus himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

And I concluded that GIT is actually just few steps ahead of SVN or similar philoshopy.

In SVN, everyone checkout and commits to central repository but the moment they checkout they really have a sepate copy of the source code tree. And if user can not use svn to keep track of the changes untill it is ready to be committed. So, one had to branch etc.. That too he cant do if he doesn't have permission to.

This kind of issue I face a lot when I work from home and want to see the last changes or want to commit my changes.

Lots of companies have multisite offices and they have a centralised repository of code which is in another country. So, the committing the code takes hell lot of time. So, perforce came up with the solution of syncing the repositories but that doesnt really scaleup well. So, essentially perfoce tried to do the same thing on a very narrow sets of vectors.

Reviewing of code is yet another problem. So, using svn what we do is we make separate separate branches for various people who keep on working on the braches and one they want to commit the reviewer will see the changes and commit.
In this process, you are also trying to branch out the code. The other problem is creating too many branches. When there is a new joinee in a team would you create a separate branch from him for every project?

So, I have started realizing that Git solves problem to a greater extent. It seems that Linus Torvals has put the sun in the centre and things seem alright.

Though it will take me sometime to understand the virtue of this new tool. Til then I would continue with SVN.
I am going to parallely start using git. I just installed git on my Mac OS X 10.4.

Cool Yoga Ad

2008-10-06T03:59:00.001-07:00

It says:
Ready to try Google Chrome for efficient browsing minutes after release and hesitant to try pranayama (a form of breathing exercise) for efficient living even centuries after discovery"

These guys are smart.

Autoback on USB plug in on Mac OS X

2008-10-02T03:56:00.001-07:00

I wanted to backup as soon as my USB named 'cbac' is inserted.

Thanks to launchd, it is quite easy. launchd is a single substitute to 'inetd', init.d and cron scripts.

All I have to do is watch the /Volumes folder and launch the script if /Volumes is changed.
The script will check if 'cbac' exists, like this:

if [ ! -e ${backupVolume} ]
then
echo -n "[*]-- BackupVolume : ${backupVolume} NOT connected - Exiting" | logger
exit 0
else
echo -n "[*]-- BackupVolume Connected - Continuing" | logger
fi

To configure my script I used lingon which provide a neat graphical interface to launchd.

Rest was taken care by rsync.

But the only problem is: in case, the rsync is already finished and the device is already plugged in as soon as some other USB is inserted it will try to run the process again. Anyway, rsync doesnt mind it neither do I because rsync wouldnt backup again. So, its fine.

But remember to send message to logger so that the error/info message of the scripts are visible on Console.
you can send the message to logger in the following manner by piping to 'logger':

echo "hello, world' | logger

rsync - The backup god

2008-10-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

I had been testing various solutions for backing up. The problem is not as simple as it sounds.

I have take a remote backup of various machine with a data size (2GB) through a transfer speed of 25 KB/s.

I tried various solutions ranging from SyncBackSe, Acronis, Backup4All, Genie etc. Neither of the solutions solved the problem.

Let me detail my problem:
1. Before backup various scripts (one for taking the snapshot of MS SQL Server DB, one for taking the SVN hot copy) have to executed on the remote machine.
2. Once the backup is completed it should send me emails.
3. Since there is a file of around 1 GB which changes slightly every day, it is not possible to transfer the whole 1 GB file every day.
4. It should not leave certain copies here and there.
5. It should work from command line as well
6. The transfer should be secure
7. It should be very simple to use.
8. It should work on windows, Linux as well as Mac OS X.
9. The process should be transparent. It should tell me how it works clearly.

Though I knew that rsync is the god but I didnt use it for two reasons:
1. I didnt know if it would work on windows

I found out there are various wrappers of rsync for eg. DeltaCopy available for windows which are essentially rsync compiled with cygwin. DeltaCopy comes with an installer. The only glitch is the 'DeltaCopy Server' doesnt start with the button provided on interface. Once you register the service, you can go into WIndows' services and set the login/password and start it.

Please note, I didnt use the Delta Copy client instead I used the command 'rsync' shipped with Delta Copy and followed the manual of rsync.

2. I didnt know how does it work.

This was the main hurdle for me to start. Unless I know how a tool works I dont use it. So, I read its algorithm.
It basically has a server client model - though for local copying it doesnt uses server client. Anyway, it is easier to understand from server-client model.

So, when rsync copies files from machine a to b, the machine a sends the file list and b decides which are to be copied. Then A splits the files to be transferred into small piecies and sends only the signatures of the files, B decides which piecies are missing and then A sends only those files across. The transfer can also be zipped to further make it fast.

To have a betten understanding, please go through this
Once I understood this part I went ahead with rsync.

So, finally rsync solved all my problems for free.

BTW, if you a planning for an extensive backup plan for whole organization, you better use Amanda.

Google Chrome

2008-09-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Those who want Google Chrome Browser can DIY from http://dev.chromium.org/

Good Luck!

Partially moved to Mac OS X

2008-08-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

I started my days with unix in 2002. I was always so enthusiastic about playing with my comp. I lately realized my lethargic nature towards work. So, I thought it is because I have been using windows always. So, to have some spark in my life I planned to completely move to Mac OS.
The main deterrant was Microsoft SQL Server which obviously would run on Windows*.

So, I found a round about way, I would run windows inside mac just for the sake of "SQL Server". So, I installed parallels. It works neatly. I gave only "256MB" RAM and guess what, it is faster than it used to be when RAM allocation was high. No idea why?! Other cool feature in parallels is "pause". So, I dont have to shutdown my machine again. Just pause the Windows and put Mac to sleep.

Other deterrant was my build script which used to launch "startup.bat" when invoking a target. I put an OS attribute in "exec" task.

Finally, every thing in place. I am really happy about it.

our application runs pretty fast on mac os.

it takes hardly 2 mins to build the entire application which used to take around 12 mins on windows.

My next plan would be to move to Linux after may be say 5 months.

"All we need is an spark in life!!"

Biggest Problem in S/w Engg: Time estimations

2008-04-21T13:46:00.001-07:00

The biggest challenge I find in software engineering is time estimation.
The most dificult question is to answer your boss when she asks "How long is it going to take?".
You might try various techniques like spilitting the work into smaller pieces but it is still susceptible to 200% error easily.
Why is it so?
In the brick-and-motor industry I can extrapolate easily.
For example: If it take 2 days to make a pillar, it would take 20 days to make 10 pillars. Such extrapolation in software industry isn't possible as it would take 2 days to make one pillar as well as 20 pillars. It is just a for-loop away.

To solve a problem in software enggineering the most time consuming part is what exactly has to be done. So, if you start analysing the time required, you would have to find out what has to be done and by the time you finish it, you would realize the output is only few days away. So, there is essentially no difference between estimating the time and solving the problem. BTW, to satisfy my boss, I generally give answers in terms of "3months, 6 months, 1 year.."

The Web Programming - 2

2008-04-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

In continuation with my earlier topic The Web Programming, I want to add few more things to it.

If you look at the web application from a broad perspective it is simply few things:
1. User is presented some data
2. User submits the data and the data is recieved.

Keeping only these things in mind, the JSP kind of application would suffice. But such a development requires extreme amount of work.

How do you present data?
First is using a template kind of mechanism similar to JSP/Velocity and other thousands of such template engines are available.

But it poses lot of challenges. As an example let us say we want to show the user a country list with "India" selected. How do you do this using templates?
The answer is "You can't".
All you have to do is maintain a separate list of countries in db and then do this:
for($i in $countries)
{
if(isSelected($i))
{
out += "";
}
else
{
out += "";
}
}

For Ajax guys it would be easier, the would just spit out the selected country in the HTML and then onBodyLoad() their javascript code would select the right combo box.
Thats a very right approach.
So, we concluded
* Let the presentation be done by HTML and Javascript.
* There should not be any manipulation of HTML on server side.
* The HTML templates should only have variables(at most) to be substituted by server.

But we cant have this always. There are situations where you got to prepare the HTML on server side. I will come to this point again.

Now, lets say we have ajax everywhere. we only communicate the JSON object to the server. What about the server side?
While using JSON is quite simple in javscript, in java it is a lot of work to parse and understand the JSON model.

Let us say you have a dashboard which displays various blocks say the Current Sales per Country, The Progress Report, The cumulative sales etc (You can see google analytics for example). Each of these blocks have a details page which too contains the same block and few more details.

So, it becomes quite obvious to create separate server side program for each block which would spit out the html.

And to create a page there are numerous things you got to do:
1. Create the HTML page
2. Create a servlet which would supply the data in JSON
3. Create a mapping in web.xml

So in summary the various problems with the AJAX (AFAIK) are:
1. You might need to prepare/modify the HTML on server side.
2. Parsing the JSON on server is a headache.
3. A small component requires lot of things to be done.
4. A web programmer needs to learn a server side language too which in itself is a big.

Except for 3, these questions are answered by Whitebeam. But Whitebeam might not be installed by your Hosting provider. So, we need to look for a solution on similar lines but that can be run within PHP or Java.

For 3, I am working on a prototype.

Hope to make the web programming a breeze some day.

A wrong thing is always wrong in more than one ways

2008-01-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

It might sound like generalization but let me present my case before you move away.

Here I am trying to say if you are making a mistake it is always wrong at least in two ways not only one. This can be explained with the following example.

A Bad performance appraisal
If a company doesn’t have a proper performance appraisal, it is wrong in two ways:

Employees get disgruntled and attrition rate increases

Overall output decreases because the wrong people, who got appraised, are at hire posts. So, the overall output decreases.

A wrong product design
If you designed the product in wrong manner, there are at least two aftermaths

The product would not function properly and harm the user.

You wasted lot of money making it.

A wrong amount paid
In finance, if you made a wrong transaction it always shows up in two places. This is nothing but double accounting system where both payer as well as payee maintains their account. If payer pays more, it will show in both accounts.

Unequal weights in a balance
It is like a Simple Balance, where if the weights in both the panes are not equal, the difference would be double.

Philosophically speaking, the tendency of nature is to bring the equilibrium. If one makes a mistake (i.e. disturb the equilibrium), it can be felt in more than one ways.

So, if you are stuck at a decision where you are unable to decide whether something is wrong or right. Weigh each. The one which is wrong will definitely have two different explanations of why it is wrong.

Lord macaulay's adderss to british parliament, 2 feb, 1835

2008-01-21T04:11:00.000-08:00

Fate,it seems, is without a sense of irony.

Railways say: You are not allowed to press that key

2008-01-08T00:26:00.000-08:00

I am guilty of pressing Windows Key on Indian Railways' website. I am afraid I might be jailed. If you dont believe this, have a look at the screen shot:

Why did dinosaurs commit suicide?

2007-11-30T13:04:00.000-08:00

As Mr. Smoking Joe stood up to give his final thesis on the very common mystery “Why did dinosaurs disappear?” a huge clamor started in the hall. Not because the topic was boring but because Smoking Joe is famous for his awkward line of thought.

He stood calming arousing the curiosity further as cleared this throat and tapped the mic. “The dinosaurs didn’t die.” He spoke after a gap, “They committed suicide.” A big uproar started in room. Some laughed, some shouted, few sat patiently to listen to the reason and few got irritated and tried to leave the hall.

There was a large chart on the screen which was showed an exponential graph and then a sudden break.

“This shows the growth of intelligence of any being. I have divided it into three parts. First part which is a linear growth refers to the phase when a being changes itself as per the natural conditions. If the being survives, it moves to the second phase. The second phase which is exponential growth shows starts as the brain starts developing and the creature starts modifying the surroundings.” Smoking Joe pointed his finger to the middle of screen.

“And whats that break at the end.” shouted someone from the crowd.

“My friend, that’s what the answer to mystery, is. So, here is my story on what might have happened. ” Joe said in read-aloud voice.

---

There was a sudden call from The Lord to all the dinosaurs of the world – An emergency conference. Everyone has to attend on video-cast. Tune in to your video-box at 4:00PM. At 4:00PM sharp, the screen switched on, a dinosaur of 1/3rd of the maximum age appeared on the screen.

“Good evening everyone. I am the Lord.

As I stand here, I feel it’s my duty to convey my thoughts to all of the Dinosaurs of the world.

We all feel happy about our scientific advancements but are we happy with our life’s? No. We changed everything to alleviate the pain. We invented ACs to avoid the pain but as we did so we adapt less and a slight difference in temperature gives 1000 times the pain it used to be without AC.

We created vehicles to avoid the pain of walking but as we had all sorts of vehicles, we no longer can even move which is 1 million times more painful than walking.
In every walk of life we changed the surroundings so that we don’t have to change but irony is we couldn’t run away from the pain.

It seems that there is no such thing called solution. It further produces much more troubles. It doesn’t converge. It diverges. Had nature of universe been converging, the big-bang explosion would have never happen.

We just keep on transforming energy from one form to another and keep on increasing entropy.

So, what if I offer you the relief from pain - A single solution for the comfort – A single solution which doesn’t let the entropy increase because of our actions?
The solution is to the end the pain-creating-body painlessly.

So, I am going to play a frequency which will resonate with your skull’s frequency and we will all be in peace. So, if you are not yet convinced, please switch off your boxes now. “

---

“And then all dinosaurs ended their life.”

There was a silence in the room and people didn’t realize that Smoking Joe had already left.

The Web Programming

2007-11-11T14:13:00.000-08:00

When a programmer who has been programming desktop application starts writing a web application, she finds herself in a big dilemma and frustration.

First question is which language to use? .NET, Java, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. She has been programming in Java all though her life, so she opted for Java.

And when she starts learning various technologies, she is totally flustered with various options available. There is too much to learn for her. There are hundred of frameworks (Struts, Spring, Tapestry, JSF to name a few) and for client side (Ajax part) there are even more frameworks (GWT, YUI, scriptous etc).

If you aren’t aware of what each one does, here is a quick summary:

.NET: Tries to make the disconnect world of HTTP connected. Have a arrangements to convert C# to JavaScript
Java: Seems like Java wasn’t for web application programming but it has been forced to fit.
PHP: HTML having the code between . For a newbie, it is easy to mess up and create gaping security holes.
Perl: Tries to provide multi-line printf so that it becomes easy to spit out the HTML
GWT: Google web toolkit, converts Java into Javascript to avoid 1) Learning curve for Java developers. 2) Incompatibility issues between various browsers which GWT takes care of.
YUI: A need collection of Javascript+HTML+CSS component that makes like of a web programmer quite easy.

Inside Java,
Servlets: Handles lot of session handling task. You need to use out.print("<html>…</html>") to spit out HTML.
JSP: java code embedded in HTML pages. The idea was to separate the business logic from presentation but it really tough. Imagine printing to the user with alternate color row. You obviously have to embed logic in JSP. So, they came with JSP Custom tag. At the same time lot of other presentation engines came into picture like velocity.
EJB: Quite a big mess which provoke people to come up with other frameworks.
Spring: Simple tries to avoid glue code by providing various object factories.
Hibernate/iBatis: Tries to map objects with database. It is really difficult to have a tool that maps object to Relational database. It soon starts to become mess.

After analyzing a bit, I reached to this conclusion, there is a little missing point somewhere. It is not common for an architect to realize that a minor missing point at base level leads to huge chaos.
When we thought the sun revolves around earth, there was lot of problems describing various effects. And as soon as we just made a minor change i.e. kept sun at the center, everything just gets resolved. So, a minor shift in base can lead to huge-huge differences.

So, what is going wrong in this web programming?

The things (for example preparing what HTML has to be displayed) we are trying to do on server side should ideally be done on client side in JavaScript. The server should just behave like a database.
So, if we could just put certain filters on the server side dictating what is accessible to whom, the problem could have been solved. The database is primarily responsible for all the chaos because of the following reasons:
1. It is difficult to basically expose database over HTTP
2. Databases generally come with the per user licenses
3. It is difficult to program database because SQL as such is not Turing complete.

As of now, it is huge pain in Java to write an application. It involves the following parts:
1. Writing the various classes
2. Writing glue code to fill the objects using data from database
3. Writing glue code to put back the data in object into database
4. If we use Hibernate/iBatis for step 2 &3, there is huge headache of maintaining configuration.
5. The filling the template with this data.
6. If there are lot of presentation tweaks needed, one need to write her custom tags and all that jazz
7. And a lot more…

So, what do I suggest?
Think of server as a place to keep data and only the security rules. Everything else should be done using JavaScript.
So, I should be able to get the data by just calling something like http://server/mydb?select * from x, y where x.id = y.parent; select a, b from z
And it should return me an array of data tables or result sets with only the row and columns that I am party to.
I should be able to define who can access which rows and columns.
That’s it.

The challenge here would be supporting transactions which are actually impossible in the disconnected world of HTTP.
Now, all you need to focus on is your JavaScript and HTML. It is equivalent to writing desktop applications.

Trippy: The Right Brain vs Left Brain test

2007-10-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

This is something I found amazing. I am still thinking why is it happening.
Check http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22492511-5005375,00.html?from=mostpop

The intelligence

2007-10-12T12:47:00.001-07:00

One more thing I want discuss here today, the definition of intelligence. Any thing that can do one or more of these operations is said to be intelligent according to my definitions.
1. Can perform operations
2. Has memory
3. Should be able to perform conditional operations
4. Should be able to call itself (Recursion)
5. Should be able to connect to other similar entities and perform operations with/on them. (Swarm behaviour)

Note that looping is not needed. Moreover, when you want to design your own programming language, keep in mind to fulfill all five requirements. Last one adds the biggest significance to the intelligent behavior. For example, each neuron which collectively makes the brain is a dumb machine.

Am I creating or destroying?

2007-10-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

A thought has been crawling though my head for long. Finally I have gathered enough words and courage to write it down.

The thought is “The things are made automatically. You don’t have to make them deliberately. The more you try to make the more destruction you are doing. All you have to do is make the framework or ecosystem.”

Sounds funny? Let me describe what I mean to say. Please!

Those who are acquainted with programming would be able to make out. Let me give you few examples.

Design of Programming Language:
A programming language should have as few modules as few as possible but it should allow you to make modules and syntax. All you have to make is a lambda function. The more things you put in the core of language, the more you will repent. You will have to undo most of your efforts.

Designing IDE:
If you ask the author of Eclipse the definition of eclipse, he would say, it does nothing by itself. It has no feature of its own. It is just a place where various things stay in.
The core of eclipse is nothing more than a skelton which executes the plugins for the functionality.

CMS: (Content Management System)
Similar to Eclipse, Drupal also doesn’t do anything at its own. It is all done by plugin.

So, when I am writing code, I have this thought crawling in my head - "I am just writing something which will have to be deleted tomorrow. "
To my boss, it might have sounds as if I am trying to find an excuse for not writing code

Look at the most complex system of the world i.e. Human. It is also made by none. It was created automatically. It is just a result of logic. Let me detail why I call human a result of logic. There are electrons. Which dictate the behavior of atoms and hence the chemical nature of molecules that made the Human. So, the Human is made because the behavior of Nucleus and electrons. You might argue that the electrons are physical entities not the logical entities.
The universe was created from nothing. The nothing was converted into physical thing by logic.

A computer, compiler etc is just an output of logic. So, while some argue that its time, I say its logic that plays the biggest role in universe and is omnipresent.

See, when there is lot of thread spread around on the floor. It is actually not entangled at all but when we try to collect it, we actually make it worse so much that we sometimes have to break it and waste our days just to resolve an already resolved thing.
Similarly, if you disturb rubic’s cube a little, you will have to put lots and lotsa of efforts to solve it.

Controlling your apps in Windows on Macbook using Remote Control

2007-09-29T13:25:00.001-07:00

Note: The project home is https://sourceforge.net/projects/arw/

The MacBook comes with a beautiful remote with an 'iPod Nano' look.
I use windows too on MacBook. By default, this remote doesn't do anything in windows except for increasing/decreasing volume. So, I wanted to control my applications using this remote.

How cool it would be giving a presentation with Powerpoint, play/pause movie, next/previous song in winamp, moving to next/previous picture in picasa using a remote?

Here is the tool for doing all this:
Click here to download the application!

I used AutoHotKey tool to prepare this app. It is an amazing tool. I admire the people who have created it.
I have incubated it in sourceforge.net: Check ARW Home

Notes:
MENU - opens iTunes.
+/- - increases/decreases volume
The behaviour for Picasa, Windows Media Player, iTunes, VLC, Microsoft Powerpoint and Winamp is quite intuitive.

The default behaviour is:
Play/Pause - Will press Space bar
Forward - will press right arrow key
Previous - will press left arrow key

I struggled a lot for this. Earlier I though I need winlirc to get signals from IR but then I realized that the remoted has already been mapped as USB keyboard, I just have to remap the key. Many Many thanks to AutoHotKey.

Windows XP inside Mac OS X

2007-09-23T18:56:00.001-07:00

I always had this bad impression about VMs that they are slow. 'Parallels Desktop' proved my perception wrong. It is fast enough that you can find the difference because whether you are running windows or you are in VM inside Mac OS X. I am impressed.

Have a look at this pic.

Here is a video of MacBook

2007-09-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

It has a Wallsaver installed. It shows the various minimize and maximize effects.

Impossible surprize test

2007-09-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Can there be a true surprize test? Your knee-jerk reaction would be "why not".
The truth is there can never be a true surprize test.

A teacher tells "I will take a surprise test on any day of next week."
She will never take test on saturday (last of the week) because everyone knows that it is going to be today so it is no longer surprize.

So, she will never take test on saturday. Similarly she will not take test on friday too because we all know that on saturday, she cant take test so "friday" can not be the surprize test day.
Going with the same logic, she can not take test on any day of the week.

Had it been "a year" instead of "a week", the same is also true.

Hence, there can never be a surprize test.

PS: This is something that Vaibhav, one of the interns who worked with me, told.

Macbook Rocks!

2007-09-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

It was my just another bday and all I got was wishes!!
But when I reached Hyderabad, I got the highly unexpected gift - A MacBook!
Can you believe?? I couldnt.
My 'would be' gifted this. I always was despo about Mac and was in need of a laptop as I cant really afford desktops because I have to run for demos and implementations of our product.

So, MacBook has both Windows as well as OS X Tiger.

I can just say that this is the best gift of my life so far.

The Manager

2007-08-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

It has been a long since I shared my experiences here. If you don't know, I started a product development firm at my flat. I was highly involved with the development so could not get time to do any thing else. Now the product is out and we have sold it to few big names.
I want to share some of my experiences as sharing all would require a book.

Your people work with you not for you

This statement might not make much of a sense until you say it loud. Trust me you can make out the difference. When you
don't have much to pay in an industry where salaries are decided by foreign currency, you really cant afford people who work for you but you still can afford people who can work with you.
I occasionally hired interns, took libraries from open source and made an industry leading product without a VC funding.

Love your people and respect their capabilities

Everyone who has worked with me had a special ability. Not all were good programmer.
- Some were good at getting things done.
- Some were good at optimization.
- Some were good at knowing what's going on in industry
- Some were good at arranging things
- Some were good at talking
I remember a statement by Smoking Joe, Everything is useful. For example, 90% things can be used as ashtray.
That's very true in case of people. Everyone is useful. I remember a day when we needed a person just to stand on out stall.
So, the thumb rule is Love your people and listen to what they say or do.
I take care of their food and lodging and even help in their personal issues.
Trust me. Their efficiency will be at least five times.
It is a surprise to me that even after leaving, people who worked with me help me a lot.
I have another tradition; everyone who leaves me can take a book from our library. If he/she
doesn't like any, I buy him/her a good book of his/her choice.

A common fashion which is propagated by people who cant code is "Coding is low end task". Never let such a philosophy propagate. While programming is an art, most of the people confused by the management disrespect it.

And one more thing to the management guys, never use the word 'resource' for a person.
I even have names for PCs, rooms, hard drives and pan drives.

Set small targets that give some output

Divide a big target into smaller pieces. Each step should give some
output. It is easier said than done. Dividing a project into smaller parts is
not as obvious as it may seem. Unless you know what needs to be done and how
would you do it, you can't divide the task. Let us take an example. We needed to
implement SMS integration. Here are the steps which we took:
1. Write an independent piece which just sends SMS
2. Write Rules which send SMS conditionally
3. Integrate 2 with 1
4. Write a template mechanism which formats the message conditionally
5. Make template such that it takes care of special character used for
  demarking variables.
6. Integrate it.
7. Make the design such that it can be extended for any kind of SMS gateway
8. Make the gateway settings such that similar gateways can be switched quickly
9. Integrate it
The steps were even smaller. If you look at these closely, these tasks were
cumulative meaning that 2nd was composition of 1st and 3rd was composition of
2nd and 1 and so on. This is my style of avoiding frustration of not seeing the
output. In essence, "Badi lakdi mat uthha" (Don't pick the big log). Pick a smaller
one and then put other smaller ones onto it.

Have the deadlines

At first, I found it strange to have deadlines. I think we have been trained to work by deadline by our colleges and school. We study to pass exams for at least 20 years.
To have the sense of urgency, have deadline for people who are working with you and for yourselves.
Since we are two partners in firm, both of us put deadlines for each other.
It works.

Let people divide the work - Democracy

In the beginning, it seemed to me a tough task to decide who will be doing what. But soon enough I found a way. List the tasks and describe each and put onto the table and let people pick the one which they want to work upon.
The common misconceptions about this are
1. People will pick the interesting stuff and rest will be left
  There is no such thing called non-interesting. It is up to the leader to describe the task in a way that it looks challenging. If it really is (testing for example) attach it to every task.
2. People will not pick the task of their competency
  Even if a person takes up the task which is not his/her competency, he/she will produce a better output because of these reasons:
  One, he/she is no longer interest in the things which he/she has been doing all the time. He/she needs a break.
  Second, he/she has taken a task voluntarily. He/she will try his/her best to reach the goal no matter what comes in the way.
  That's the difference between starving and on hunger strike.
Automate and facilitate as much as you can

There are few things you should do without even thinking twice.

Facilitate:
1. Setup SVN (TortoiseSVN is good windows client)
2. Setup a bug tracker and wiki
3. Have a whiteboard ( I mean physical not software toy)
4. Have all amenities available for people. It takes at least 20 minutes to get back once a programmer gets disturbed.
Automate:
1. Have ant build. We have single ant command to compile/create/install/run and compile and run installer for our product.
2. Write SQL Scripts and UNIX shell scripts more often than you think.

Reward in public and punishment in private

This is something which I learn't from my dad when I was running a north Indian vegetarian restaurant. After seeing my behavior with people, my dad told me this when there was no one around. Yes. It matters a lot. If you shout at people when there is no one around, it is more like an advice. If you do it in publish, you will turn that person down forever.

These are few things I have learn't in my small venture which drastically different from what I learn't in my 3.5 years of experience in a slave driver firm.

Why do I love you?

2007-06-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

This is one good reason I heard after a long while.
I cant help laughing and posting it here.

Girl (to boy): I like you

Again after a day.
Girl (to boy): I love you
Boy: Listen. Why me? The other guy I saw you with is better fit for you. He is more handsome. You better go ahead with him.

Girl: Yeah. Thats the problem. He is too handsome. He is more beautiful than me. He will go away with anyone. And you. You will not find a better girl keeping in mind the funny look you have. So, you will always stick to me.

Thats why I love you.

Boy: ?!!!??

PS:
For guys, If it is must to marry marry with a beautiful one so that you need not carry her for your whole life.
For girls, its the other way.

Deleted: Phishing Friendly Bug in Orkut

2007-05-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

For those who are wondering where did the post "Phishing Friendly Bug in Orkut" go.
Google has asked me remove the post. I appreciate them for being quite serious about security and taking such matters seriously.

Here is the message from Tony@Google:
--------------------
Sandeep,
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. Google takes the security of our services very seriously and we are currently investigating your report. We appreciate your cooperation and discretion on this matter while we are looking into it.

Since this issue may possibly affect the security of our user community, I would like to make a friendly request that you temporarily remove your public blog post, "phishing-friendly-bug-in-orkut", until such time as we can resolve this issue. We appreciate you taking the time to notify us of this issue, and we will follow up with you soon.

Thank you again,
Tony
Google Security Team
------------------

Light your fags!

2007-05-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

No Quilt in sight
This cold breeze arouses the hell out of me
Its best to share somebody's quilt
Go borrow heat from the next fellow's oven
Light your fags with the heat of my bossom

Its burning up inside me!
Let smoke not slip out of your lips
The world's smoked out already.
No crime's been charged
Why do I still feel sentenced to death?
Haul me to your court one afternoon.
Handcuff me with my anklets.
Haul me up in the afternoon.
Sentence me.
Punish me severely.
Light your stoves with the heat of my bossom.

Its burning up inside me!
No Knife's sharp enough to match your nibbles.
The way you leave your teeth marks behind..
Farmers could forget how to hack their crops
Would you settle down with a brute like this?
Nobody watned me.
Nobody woke me up.
Suddenly you come into my quilt
Impressing me with your clove breath
Burn your coals with the heat of my bossom

Its burning up inside me!
Its best to share somebody's quilt.
Go borrow hear from the next fellow's oven

You might have guessed by now! If you haven't then either you don't understand hindi or you havent seen Omkara. Or may be you are a geek who watches movie in fast forward way.

No. It is not a sicilian obscene (Andy's words) song. It is english translation of "Beedi Jalaile" from Hindi movie "Omkara".

I can't help laughing my pants off.

--Alpha0

I got scammed

2007-05-05T13:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, it was a lovely evening until I got mail from my hosting provider that your server has crossed limit of sending 10000 mails.

To serve my customers, I have taken few servers from one of the popular hosting provider. My application sends and receives lot of emails.
Every mail my server sends goes though the hosting provider’s server.

Crossing the relay limit means my server can not send even a single mail to anyone. And since my customers include government too for whom delay of emails is equivalent to committing a crime, it was doubly a panicky situation.

"But my server can’t send 10000 mails in last four hours”, I thought “It at most sends 300 mails per day."
When I looked into the logs of mail server, I realized someone is sending junk mails through my server. The mail is as follows:

From: "PayPal Inc."
Subject: Update Your PayPal Account
PayPal Department Notice
You have received this email because you or someone had used your account from different locations. For security purpose, we are required to open an investigation into this matter.
PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of customers. To protect the security of your account, PayPal employs some of the most advanced security systems in the world and our anti-fraud teams regularly screen the PayPal system for unusual activity.
Our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with PayPal's User Agreement and to ensure that your account has not been compromised, access to your account was limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved. To securely confirm your PayPal information please click on the link bellow:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login [link to http://sklep.skwp.org.pl/images/update/cgi-bin/webscrcmd_login.php]
Please Note:
If we do no receive the appropriate account verification within 48 hours, then we will assume this PayPal account is fraudulent and will be suspended. The purpose of this verification is to ensure that your account has not been fraudulently used and to combat the fraud from our community.

Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team
Copyright © 1999-2007 PayPal. All rights reserved.
Information about FDIC pass-through insurance

The mail is obviously a fraud mail which has a link to some other server than paypal. It was a phishing attack on paypal through our server.

I quickly shutdown my mail server and switched the authentication on for any mail targeted to the users outside of my server. I felt relieved and switched on the server again.

But again after an hour or so I got mail from hosting provider that I have crossed my limit of 10000 outgoing mails. Strange! Then I realized, the mail server had kept lots of mails which it couldn’t send in outbox. I quickly search the mail that contained the above mentioned message and deleted those mails.


for i in `grep *|awk "www.paypal.com" -F: '{print $1}'`
do
echo $i
rm $i
done

Then I checked my server’s logs again, it actually was trying to send mails to around 120000 users. URGH!

Now, I am relieved. Everything is back on track.

Lesson learnt: Trust the god but lock your door.

~Alpha0

Every Moment...

2007-04-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

Every moment brings something.
It might be a ring.
I know what a ring is.
I just have to defend against the temptation
Of picking it.

Every moment that passes by
Decides whether I will be a success
Or a failure like most of us.

Every moment that I am given
I shall be held responsible for it
A moment or a lifetime later.

Every moment that I spend
Makes the universe conspire,
Either in my favor
Or against me.

Running Mac OS X on your Intel / AMD machines

2007-04-23T13:54:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting weekend project. You can run Mac OS X on your Intel / AMD machines in a VMWare environment and even get a pretty decent performance.

You will require a copy of the VMWare Workstation. You can download it via Bittorrent from here. In addition, you will require the latest ISO of Mac OS X. This is a mega-download ( 4.38 GB) and you can grab it from here.

Unfortunately installing Mac OS X in a VMware environment is not a straight forward process. But thankfully there is a detailed How To available here.

Have fun!

Cross Compiler for Motorola A780

2007-04-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

A cross compiler toolkit aka Crosstool is a set of tools that a need to build programs on one platform (Windows for example) and run on another (Mobile for e.g).

I followed the instructions at http://lsb.blogdns.net/ezx-crosstool and downloaded the http://lsb.blogdns.net/files/ezx-crosstool-0.5.tar.bz2

1. Opened shell of Cygwin (a set of unix commands that have been ported to windows)
2. tar -xvf ezx-crosstool-0.5.tar.bz2
3. cd ezx-crosstool-0.5
4. ./build.sh
It gave some errors because certain programs (like flex) were missing in my cygwin installation. So I installed those programs using cygwin setup

Build.sh compiled the whole toolkit just that it took around 4 hours.

Finally, it finished. But it gave some errors while running the test script called "testhello.sh" because of some variables were not set. I fixed it.

It then compiled everything, and kept in tmp directory in the bins directory.
I cd'ed to that location and copied those three arm-linux-* to my phone.

Note:these binaries wont run from the phone's file explorer. You either need to install eConsole or would have to telnet to the phone.

Then I ran these binaries. They printed beautiful message "Hello, World!".

Now I am going to compile the application like skype which I downloaded from http://lightweighttelephony.org/.

Thank you World - "Hello, World!"

~Alpha0

New additions to my gadget family

2007-04-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

Here is a snap of the new gadgets (excluding my A780 Motorola Mobile. I am saying it new because I have rediscovered it).

Double Entry System for everyone

2007-04-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

To keep track of my expenses and income, I maintain my account based on double entry system.

What is double entry system?
Basically you create registers for the things you want to maintain. And you keep on transferring money from one to another. While doing so you create entry in both sides. In one account it will be minus while in other it will be addition.

For example I maintain following registers: Company Income, Company Expenses, My Wallet, Home Expenses (Rent, phone, electricity, maid etc), Bank Accounts

So, to keep track of all this I was maintain exel sheets and used to do the double entry. I just started using jGnash - an open source product. It is quite helpful because I dont have to do the double entry my self. Moreover, it comes with builtin reports and charts etc.

But the problem is it is desktop based.

I was just wondering if there is some website where I can register and maintain my accounts.
Do you know of such a thing?

ie7.com

2007-04-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

I just typed ie7 in internet explorer's address bar and pressed CTRL+ENTER.
Can you guess what I saw on the screen? Just check this screenshot.

Hacking Motorola A780

2007-03-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

My weekend went by playing around with my mobile Motorola A780 Smart phone.
This is one of the best handsets I have got so far.
It has Linux based OS and has both touch screen as well as keypad.

After two days of efforts, I could get the root shell on it. Which means I could execute any command on it. For example, installing Perl on it.

I could use its camera as webcam while chatting on yahoo messenger. Thats kewl. Isn't it?

There are a number of things which I wanna do with it next week:
1. Share my local internet connection with it using bluetooth or wire.
2. Install new firmware
3. Write my own calender for it because current calender sucks big time. If there are more than 10 recurring events, it takes around 5 mins to open.
4. Use my 40GB drive as an extension to the mobile. I mean I want to plug it in the mobile and use it.
5. Use my mobile as remote control for the PC once I buy the bluetooth dongle.

Motorola comes up with good hardware but they don;t ship good softwares. Neither they believe in shipping the finished goods.

I am just too much happy that I dont want O₂ any more.

Quicksilver for windows

2007-03-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

Lately, I am being bugged by one of my friends who bought MacOS.
This is the first time he is using Mac. Undoubtedly, he has become a great fan of Apple.
More than anything he likes Quicksilver.
I was wondering if there are any such software available for windows, I came across many but none of them was close enough to Quicksilver.

I tried:
Launchy:
It is nothing more than just a tool that helps you finding your Start Menu programs using command line. Still it is a great util.

Colibri:
Yes. It is a good tool. It helps to do most of the stuff Quicksilver allows you to. But you cant really do things like "Adding someone to your contacts." or "Adding an event in your calender."

Keybreeze:
It is also good but doesnt do things like "Adding someone to your contacts." or "Adding an event in your calender."

Msn Desktop Search:
It does a lot but still not any where closer to Quicksilver.

The main reason could be the API of Microsoft components arent open enough.

Here is my proposal:
If you have a closer look at Quicksilver, it just tried to first identify the type of first argument and then display corresponding command in second box and the corresponding to the programs requirements, it displays the some more controls.

Why don't we create a base framework in .NET because using .NET you can do almost anything in Windows in Object Oriented fashion. People can keep on writing plugins for such framework.

When we call functions/modules, the format is something like:
function type1 arg1, type2 arg2....
while in quicksilver, the order can be either of the following:
1. function type1 arg1, type2 arg2....
2. type1 arg1 function type2 arg2....
or
3. type2 arg2 function type1 arg1....

So, this framework will read the functions supplied by framework and correspondingly show the UI.

Hope I get some time to do this.
Any takers? Please leave a comment.

~Alpha0

A Bootstrapper's Pledge

2006-11-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

I am a bootstrapper.
I have initiative and insight and guts, but not much money.
I will succeed because my efforts and my focus will defeat bigger and better-funded competitors.
I am fearless.
I keep my focus on growing the business—not on politics, career advancement, or other wasteful distractions.
I will leverage my skills to become the key to every department of my company, yet realize that hiring experts can be the secret to my success.
I will be a fervent and intelligent user of technology, to conserve my two most precious assets: time and money.
My secret weapon is knowing how to cut through bureaucracy.
My size makes me faster and more nimble than any company could ever be.
I am a laser beam.
Opportunities will try to cloud my focus, but I will not waver from my stated goal and plan—until I change it.
And I know that plans were made to be changed.
I’m in it for the long haul.
Building a business that will last separates me from the opportunist, and is an investment in my brand and my future.
Surviving is succeeding, and each day that goes by makes it easier still for me to reach my goals.
I pledge to know more about my field than anyone else.
I will read and learn and teach.
My greatest asset is the value I can add to my clients through my efforts.
I realize that treating people well on the way up will make it nicer for me on the way back down.
I will be scrupulously honest and overt in my dealings, and won’t use my position as a fearless bootstrapper to gain unfair advantage.
My reputation will follow me wherever I go, and I will invest in it daily and protect it fiercely.
I am the underdog.
I realize that others are rooting for me to succeed, and I will gratefully accept their help when offered.
I also understand the power of favors, and will offer them and grant them whenever I can.
I have less to lose than most -- a fact I can turn into a significant competitive advantage.
I am a salesperson.
Sooner or later, my income will depend on sales, and those sales can be made only by me, not by an emissary, not by a rep.
I will sell by helping others get what they want, by identifying needs and filling them.
I am a guerrilla.
I will be persistent, consistent, and willing to invest in the marketing of myself and my business.
I will measure what I do, and won’t lie about it to myself or my spouse.
I will set strict financial goals and honestly evaluate my performance.
I’ll set limits on time and money and won’t exceed either.
Most of all, I’ll remember that the journey is the reward.
I will learn and grow and enjoy every single day.

--The Bootstrapper's Bible 2004 by Seth Godin

I have made it my wallpaper.
PS: Thanks to HimS for sending me this

The Universal Law

2006-11-28T08:07:00.000-08:00

[Over a drink]
Boss: You know there is no such thing as ‘Universal law’.

Smoking Joe: Is that always true?
Boss: yes

Smoking Joe: Is that a law?
Boss: …
Smoking Joe: So by contradiction, there should be a ‘Universal Law’

The Idea

2006-11-28T08:06:00.000-08:00

Almost every programmer has a dream of starting his own firm someday. They just keep wondering when a great idea will hit them. They get an idea and discuss it with friends who turn them down with any of following words:
“What so new about it? There is so and so which is similar to it.”
“It will require a lot of efforts. Who is going to pay you either?”
The truth is
“No idea is bad idea.”
Did anyone ever think ring tones and SMS will be a million dollar market? No.
The point is “If you can do it, go ahead and do it instead of just sitting on it.”
The other thumb rule is “Stick to it. Give it the best shot.”

The God Delusion

2006-11-20T22:53:00.000-08:00

Finally, people are awaking. The elephant called religion is no more.
Such things were quite banned a few years ago.
Check this video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6169720917221820689
and post by Dilbert author Scott Adams.

Thank god, you will be no more.

Geekish Quotes

2006-10-11T05:13:00.000-07:00

Nice geekish quotes. Didn't want to spam all so posting 'em here.

"If at first you don't succeed; call it version 1.0"

"The Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents."

"Some things Man was never meant to know. For everything else, there's Google."

"unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep" - my daily unix command list

"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." - Robert Firth

"If Python is executable pseudocode, then perl is executable line noise."

"The more I C, the less I see."

"To err is human... to really foul up requires the root password."

"After Perl everything else is just assembly language."

"If brute force doesn't solve your problems, then you aren't using enough."

"Life would be so much easier if we only had the source code."

"Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are."

"COBOL programmers understand why women hate periods."

“Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.” — Michael Sinz

"There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't."

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - This is not humorous by itself; but in the context it's a classic by Bill Gates in 1981

Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."

"Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer." - Erik Naggum

"Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Computers are from hell."

"SUPERCOMPUTER: what it sounded like before you bought it."

"Windows95: It's like upgrading from Reagan to Bush.

"People say Microsoft paid 14M$ for using the Rolling Stones song 'Start me up' in their commercials. This is wrong. Microsoft payed 14M$ only for a part of the song. For instance, they didn't use the line 'You'll make a grown man cry'."

"I'm not anti-social; I'm just not user friendly"

"A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light"

"The best accelerator available for a Mac is one that causes it to go at 9.81 m/s2."

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila"

"1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d"

"To go forward, you must backup."

"I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code"

"A Windows user spends 1/3 of his life sleeping, 1/3 working, 1/3 waiting."

"My software never has bugs. It just develops random features."

"Better to be a geek than an idiot."

"Windows isn't a virus, viruses do something."

"Geek's favorite pickup line: Hey, does this rag smell like chloroform? "

"Be nice to geeks when you're in school, you might end-up working for one when you grow-up."

"Difference between a virus and windows ? Viruses rarely fail."

"Evolution is God's way of issuing upgrades."

"The only problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes trouble shoots back."

"It's a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages."

"The box said 'Required Windows 95 or better'. So, I installed LINUX."

"Computer are like air conditioners: they stop working when you open windows."

"once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary,
over many a strange and spurious site of 'hot xxx galore'.
While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour,
" 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, "give me back my free hardcore!"
quoth the server, 404."

"Mac users swear by their Mac,
PC users swear at their PC."

"Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error."

"Dating a girl is just like writing software. Everything's going to work just fine in the testing lab (dating), but as soon as you have contract with a customer (marriage), then your program (life) is going to be facing new situations you never expected. You'll be forced to patch the code (admit you're wrong) and then the code (wife) will just end up all bloated and unmaintainable in the end."

"Real men don't use backups, they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies." - Linus Torvalds

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand trinary, those that don't, and those that confuse it with binary."

"If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime."

"It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa."

"I had a fortune cookie the other day and it said: 'Outlook not so good'. I said: 'Sure, but Microsoft ships it anyway'."

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."

"The term reboot comes from the middle age (before computers). Horses who stopped in mid-stride required a boot to the rear to start again. Thus the term to rear-boot, later abbreviated into reboot."

"Programmers are tools for converting caffeine into code."

"The great thing about Object Oriented code is that it can make small, simple problems look like large, complex ones."

"Hacking is like sex. You get in, you get out, and hope that you didn't leave something that can be traced back to you."

Get apartment ratings on the road

2006-09-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

To get the ratings of XYZ apartments situated in Bellevue, Washington just text "aptrating WA, Bellevue, XYZ" to 66937 (spelt MOZES on the keypad).

Upster has started this cool thing for friends. Just check it out:
http://www.wooreka.com/

I think I too need to do something similar in India.

Interesting Quotes and Proverbs

2006-09-04T21:27:00.000-07:00

While roaming around the web found these interesting quotes and proverbs.
Source: http://geocities.com/vani_mittal/
Abraham Lincoln

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think about it; the tree is the real thing.

Agatha Christie

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have, the older she gets the more interested he is in her.

Albert Einstein

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

Alfred Korzybski

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

Ambrose Bierce

Love is temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Anais Nin

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

Andrew Carnegie

The secret of success lies not in doing your own work, but in recognizing the right man to do it.

Anne Herbert

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.

Audrey Hepburn

For attractive lips speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes seek out the good in people. For a slim figure share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day. For poise walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find them at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.

Ben Stein

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.

Ben Sweetland

Success is a journey, not a destination.

Beverly Nichols

Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.

Blaise Pascal

The heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Burton Hillis

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.

Calvin & Hobbes

As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.
Being a parent is wanting to hug and strangle your kid at the same time.
Do you believe our destinies are determined by the stars? Life's a lot more fun when you're not responsible for your actions.
His train of thought is still boarding at the station.
I asked mom if I was a gifted child. She said they certainly wouldn't have paid for me.
I’ve got plenty of common sense. I just choose to ignore it.
It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
It's your fault we didn't have a sweet little girl! Your stupid chromosome!! Not mine!! (Calvin’s mother yells at his father after a particularly trying day.)
Life's too darn short to waste time trying to please every meddlesome moron who's got an idea how I ought to be.
People pay more attention to you when they think you're up to something.
People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.
The secret to having fun in life is to make little challenges for yourself.
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse.
The problem with me is I have too much knowledge on very irrelevant things.
The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse.
The world bores you when you're cool.
The world isn't fair, Calvin. I know, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?
There's an inverse relationship between how good something is for you, and how much fun it is.
They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time. But since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place, and just hang around.
Trusting parents can be hazardous to your health.
To make a bad day worse, spend it wishing for the impossible.
Why should I have to work for everything? It's like saying I don't deserve it!
You don't get to be mom if you can't fix everything just right.

Cardinal Mermillod

A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.

Charles Dickens

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many. Not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Spurgeon

A lie travels around the world while truth is putting on her boots.

Chinese Proverb

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

Christian D Larsen

Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others.

Cullen Hightower

Laughing at our own mistakes can lengthen our life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.

David Bissonette

I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.

David Russell

The hardest thing in life is to decide which bridge to cross and which to burn.

David McKay

Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny.

Dobson

Children will soon forget your presents. They will always remember your presence.

Dr Seuss

Be who you are and say what you mean, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature; beautiful old people are works of art.
If someone betrays you once, it is his fault. If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart.

Elbert Hubbard

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

Elizabeth Stone

Making the decision to have a child... it is momentous. It is to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Emalie

The only place where dreams are impossible is in your mind.

Emo Phillips

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in His wisdom, didn’t work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.

Fran Capo

Always say yes first, then ask, now what do I have to do to accomplish that? Then ask yourself, what is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t succeed? The answer is, I simply don’t succeed. And what’s the best thing that can happen? I succeed!

Franklin P Jones

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.

George Bernard Shaw

Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.
The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why learn.

George Gordon Byron

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty. I woke up and found that life was duty.

George Santayana

Those who cant remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Washington Carver

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the struggling, and tolerant of the weak and the strong - because someday you will have been all of these.

Gracie Allen

When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.

Hellen Keller

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Keep your face to the sunshine and you can not see a shadow.
The best and most beautiful things in the world can not be seen or touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Herman Cain

Success is not the key to happiness; happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing you will be successful.

Horace Walpole

The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.

Howard Aiken

Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Ice T

Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.

Indira Gandhi

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.

Ingrid Bergman

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

Irving Berlin

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.

Isaac Asimov

Those people that think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

J R R Tolkien

All those who wander are not lost.

Jean Kerr

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want - an adorable pancreas?

Jennie Jerome Churchill

Treat your friends as you do your best pictures; place them in their best light.

Jim Rohn

If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

Joan Crawford

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.

Joe Girard

The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time.

Joe Houldsworth

The only thing worth steeling is a kiss from a sleeping child.

Joe Louis

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.

John H Rhoades

Do more than exist, Live. Do more than touch, Feel. Do more than look, Observe. Do more than read, Absorb. Do more than hear, Listen. Do more than listen, Understand. Do more than think, ponder. Do more than talk, say something.

John Lennon

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

John M Henry

Yesterday is experience, tomorrow is hope, and today is getting from one to the other.

John Ruskin

Kind hearts are the garden. Kind thoughts are the root. Kind words are the blossoms. Kind deeds are the fruit.

John Sinor

It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.

Johnny Carson

Happiness is having your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.

Joseph Conrad

Only those who do nothing never make mistakes.

Jules Renard

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.

Karl Marx

Then - Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish; he'll eat for a lifetime. (Ancient Proverb)

Now - Catch a man a fish and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.

La Rochefoucauld

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.

Lauren Bacall

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.

Len Wein

A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be somewhere else.

Lena Horne

It’s not the load that breaks you, but the way you carry it.

Leo Buscaglia

Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.

Leslie Nielsen

Doing nothing is very hard to do; you never know when you’re finished.

Lily Tomlin

I always wanted to be somebody but I should have been more specific.
The road to success is always under construction.

Logan P Smith

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

Louisa May Alcott

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

M Kathleen Casey

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Marcel Proust

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Margaret Mead

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everybody else.

Mark Twain

Be careful of reading health books; you may die of a misprint.
It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Martin Andersen

Every mother generally hopes that her daughter will snag a better husband than she managed to do, but she’s certain that her boy will never get as great a wife as his father did.

Michael J Fox

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

Michael Katzer

All people have the right to stupidity but some people abuse the privilege.

Michael Nolan

There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart - pursue those.

Mother Teresa

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
We cannot do great things - only small things with great love.

Nancy Reagan

A woman is like a tea bag. You never know her strength until you drop her in hot water.

Navjot Singh Sidhu

Age has been the perfect fire extinguisher for flaming youth.
Statistics are like miniskirts, they reveal more than what they hide.

Niel Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.

Og Mandino

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.

Ogden Nash

If you don’t want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you don’t have to work.
There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

Oliver Herford

A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's, she changes it more often.

Oscar Wilde

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances, and ends by blocking his retreat.
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

Peter O’Toole

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized that I was talking to myself.

Plato

Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.

Publilius Syrus

Challenges – Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Richard Denny

Admit you're wrong when you are wrong and you will be right.

Robert Anson Heinlein

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Robert Brault

I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar. I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.

Robert Cody

Have the courage to live. Anyone can die.

Robert Frost

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
A jury consists of twelve people chosen to decide who has a better lawyer.

Robert Ingersoll

Hands that help are better than lips that pray.

Robert McCloskey

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Robert Zend

People have one thing in common: they are all different.

Roger Lincoln

There are two rules for success. (1) Never tell everything you know.

Sacha Guitry

The best way to get back at the man who steals your wife is to let him keep her.

Saint Jerome

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Till your good is better and your better is best.

Sarah Brown

The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.

Scott Hamilton

The only disability in life is a bad attitude.

Sermon Fodder

The strength of a man isn't in the deep tone of his voice. It's in the gentle words he whispers.
The strength of a man isn't in how hard he hits. It's in how tender he touches.
The strength of a man isn't in the weight he can lift. It's in the burdens he can carry.

Sidney Greenberg

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.

Simon Cameron

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

Steven Wright

Everyone has photographic memory. Some just don’t have the film.
I used to have an open mind, but my brains kept falling out.
Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.
When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded.

Sue Augustine

All success begins with spreading your W.I.N.G.S - believing in your Worth, trusting your Insight, Nurturing yourself, having a Goal, and devising a personal Strategy. And then, even impossible dreams become real.

Susan Ohanian

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Swami Chinmayananda

Do not imagine your sincerity in work, but work sincerely with your imagination.
Learn to be happy alone. If we do not enjoy our own company, why inflict it on others!
Plan out your work. Then work out your plan.
We may often give without love, but we can never love without giving.

Theordore Hesburgh, Rev

You can't change the color of your child's eyes. But you can make them glow with the light of true love. The most important thing that a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

Thomas Jefferson

May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.

Thomas C Haliburton

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother's love.

Unknown

A careless word may kindle strife. A cruel word may wreck a life. A timely word may level stress. A loving word may heal and bless.
A conscience does not prevent sin. It only prevents you from enjoying it.
A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
A diplomat thinks twice before saying nothing.
A life with love will have some thorns, but a life without love will have no roses.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
A true friend is someone who reached for your hand and touches your heart.
A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband. A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
Alcohol and calculus don’t mix. Never drink and derive.
Always ask God to give you what you deserve, not what you desire. It’s because your desires may be few but you deserve a lot!
Artificial intelligence usually beats real stupidity.
Be like a dictionary and add meaning to life.
Be nice to your kids: they'll choose your nursing home.
Before you want to start making a work of art, first make a draft. That is what God also did by creating first the man and then the woman.
Believe in your dreams and they may come true. Believe in yourself and they will come true.
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
Change – A bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.
Change – If you are not riding the wave of change you will find yourself beneath it.
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
Chickens – The only creatures you eat before they are born and after they are dead.
Children in backseats cause accidents, accidents in backseats cause children.
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
Coffee, chocolate, men. Some things are just better rich.
Courage – You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to loose sight of the shore.
Do any job you are doing well and you will stumble over the right opportunities to do what you truly desire.
Do not cry if the sun sets at the end of the day, because the tears will not let you enjoy the beauty of the stars.
Do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again?
Don't drink and drive. You might hit a bump and spill your drink.
Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.
Don’t frown. You never know who is falling in love with your smile.
Don’t let success go to your head, or failures go to your heart.
Don’t limit your challenges. Challenge your limits.
Don’t take life too seriously; you won’t get out of it alive.
Don’t tell God how big your problems are; tell your problems how big your God is.
Don’t underestimate your abilities. That’s your boss's job.
Don’t walk as if you own the world. Walk as if you don’t care who owns the world. Now that’s attitude!
Don’t worry that the world ends today; it’s already tomorrow in Australia.
Early to bed, early to rise, your guy/girl goes out with other girls/guys.
Eat like a king for breakfast, a prince for lunch and a pauper for supper.
Every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lightening kills hundreds of people each year who are trying to find it.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up you’d better be running.
Exercise at work. Beat around the bush, run around in circles, jump to conclusions, run away from your problems, fly off the handle, climb the corporate ladder, push a pencil, strike any key.
Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Failure – When your best just isn’t good enough.
Fate determines who comes into our life. The heart decides who stays.
Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs.
Friends are like stars, you don’t see them all the time, but you know they are there.
Friendship is like the relation between hand and eyes. It’s like when the hand gets hurt, eyes cry, and when the eye cries, the hand wipes.
Friendship is two paths converging on the way to the same beautiful view.
Follow your heart but take your brain with you.
Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with your friends. You order what you want, and then when you see what the other fellow has, you wish you had ordered that.
Gravity is a myth. Earth SUCKS.
Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional.
God answers prayers in 3 ways. He says yes and gives you what you want. He says no and gives you something better. He says wait and gives you the best.
God, me and gravity can not be held responsible for people falling in LOVE!!
Good looking people are hard to find. That’s why you don’t see me often.
Happy moments, praise God. Difficult moments, seek God. Quiet moments, worship God. Painful moments, trust God. Every moment, thank God.
Happiness comes through doors you didn’t even know you left open.
Have you done two of the most important things when you woke up today? - Pray, so that you may live. Take a bath, so that others may live too!
He who laughs last thinks slowest.
Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs are Italian, the mechanics are German, the lovers are French and it is all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and it is all organized by the Italians.
Human brain has two parts: the right and the left. The left has nothing right in it and the right has nothing left in it.
"I Am." is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I Do" is the longest sentence?
I am nobody, nobody's perfect. I must be perfect then.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life. I was given life, that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing I asked for, but everything I had hoped for.
I can say one good thing about airline food: at least they're considerate enough to give you only small portions.
I choose to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom goes on as fruit.
I don’t mind going nowhere, as long as it’s an interesting path.
I got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.
I've learned...

That just one person saying to me," You've made my day!" makes my day.

That having a child fall asleep in your arms is one of the most peaceful feelings in the world.

That being kind is more important than being right.

That you should never say no to a gift from a child.

That I can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him in some other way.

That love, not time, heals all wounds.

That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.

That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow, he may have to eat them.

That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.

That I can't choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it.

That it's best to give advice in only two circumstances; when it's requested, and when it's a life threatening situation.

I hate procrastinators. And one day I intend to tell them so.
I thought to change the world but no one is giving me the source code.
I was an atheist until I realized I am God.
If the eyes are looked upon as the windows to the soul, then a smile must be the doorway to the heart.
If the eyes were without tears, the heart would have no rainbow.
If marriages were outlawed, only outlaws would have in-laws.
If we are what we eat then why do we want to be fast and cheap?
If you are good, you will get all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
If you are willing to admit your faults, you have one less fault to admit.
If you can’t convince them, confuse them.
If you can’t learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.
If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "take two aspirin" and "keep away from children."
If you look at what you don’t have in life, you don’t have anything. If you look at what you have in life, you have everything.
If you look nice you will meet people but if you are nice you will meet friends.
In life, one gets what one deserves not what one desires.
In order to get a loan you must first prove you don't need it.
Income Tax Department – We've got what it takes to take what you've got.
It doesn’t matter to what height you fall, but it matters to what height you bounce back.
It’s not hard to meet expenses, they are everywhere.
It is not the lofty sails but the unseen wind that moves the ship.
It takes both sunshine and rain to make a rainbow.
Item you need –

Toothpick – to remind you to pick out the good qualities in others

Rubber band – to remind you to be flexible, things might not always go the way you want, but it will work out

Band-aid – to remind you to heal hurt feelings, yours or someone else’s

Pencil – to remind you to list your blessings everyday

Eraser – to remind you that everyone makes mistakes, and it’s ok

Chewing gum – to remind you to stick with it, and you can accomplish anything

Candy kiss – to remind you that everyone needs a kiss or a hug everyday

Tea bag – to remind you to relax daily and go over that list of blessings

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don’t need to be one.
Keep your eyes upon the goal; keep it always in your sight. It will help you don the crooked road and lead you to the light.
Keep your heart free from hate, your mind free from worry. Expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Live a simple life.
Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil.
Laziness is nothing but the habit of resting before you get tired.
Life is like a bicycle. You don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Life is wonderful. Without it we’ll all be dead.
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid sideways – Chardonnay in one hand – chocolate in the other – body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOOHOO, What a ride”!!
Live each day as if it were your last, tomorrow is not promised.
Look at the world as one big chocolate cake. It would never be complete without few sweets and nuts. Sweets like ME and nuts like YOU.
Love doesn’t have to have a happy ending, because love doesn’t have to end at all.
Love is blind, but marriage is an eye opener.
Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules. Then you must forget the rules and play from your heart.
Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock.
Marriages are made in heaven. But so are thunder and lightening.
Men are like a deck of cards. You need a heart to love them, a diamond to marry them, a club to bash his head in with, and a spade to burry him with.
Men who treat women as helpless and charming playthings deserve women who treat men as delightful and generous bank accounts.
Mistakes – It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
Never abandon old friends. They are hard to replace. Friendship is like wine: it gets BETTER as it grows OLDER. Just like us...I get BETTER, you get OLDER.
Never take someone for granted. Hold every person close to your heart because you might wake up one day and realize that you've lost a diamond while you were too busy collecting stones.
No man is worth your tears. And the one who is won’t make you cry.
On the keyboard of life always keep one finger on the escape key.
Only as high as I can reach can I grow. Only as far as I seek can I go. Only as far as I look can I see. Only as much as I dream can I be.
Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.
Paradox - The statement below is true.

The statement above is false.

Patience will come to those who wait for it.
Pick your friends as you would pick a diamond. They all start off unpolished, but with a little work, they can become a sparkle in your life.
Positive pictures come out from negatives developed in a dark room. So if you find yourself lonely and in dark, understand that - life is working on a beautiful picture for you.
Practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so why practice?
Quitters never win and winners never quit. But those who never quit and never win are idiots.
Roadblocks are not barriers; they open your eyes to other routes.
Sell your brain and brawns to the highest bidder, but never put a price on your heart and soul.
Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak.
Smart people learn from their own mistakes. Smarter people learn from the mistakes of others.
Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.
Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it.
Some people make the world happen. More watch the world happen. Most wonder what happened.
Stress is when you wake up screaming and realize you haven’t fallen asleep yet.
Success is a relative term. It brings so many relatives.
Tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
The difficult takes time, the impossible just takes a little longer.
The future lies before you like a path of driven snow. Be careful how you tread on it for every mark will show.
The most difficult phase of life is not when no one understands you; It is when you don't understand yourself.
The most precious possession that ever comes a man in this world is a woman's heart.
The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything they have.
The toughest lesson to learn is probably the one you thought you already learned.
The wise never marry, and when they marry they become otherwise.
There is no key to happiness. The door is always open.
There is no oil, if olives are not pressed. No wine, if grapes are not pressed. No perfume, if flowers are not crushed. Have you felt any pressure in life today? Don’t worry. God is just bringing out the best in you.
There are 3 sides to an argument: your side, my side and the right side.
There are two types of roads in our country. One is under construction and the other is under repair.
This is a pronoun like that. So if you don’t know what that means, this will make no sense to you.
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual life you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do!
Time is a great healer, but a terrible beautician.
Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.
Treat your life as a sea, your heart as a sea shore, and friends like waves. It never matters how many waves are there. What matters is how many waves touched the shore.
To be in love is the best way to see life at it's best.
To the question of life you are the only answer. To the problem of life you are the only solution.
Two antennas meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The ceremony wasn't much but the reception was great.
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams. So cherish your Memories, and nurture your Dreams.
We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutual weirdness and call it love.
Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like nobody's listening. Live like its heaven on earth.
When God leads you to the edge of the cliff trust him fully. Only one of the two things will happen - either he will catch you when you fall or he will teach you to fly.
When you were born you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die you are the only one smiling and everyone around you is crying.
When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.
Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.
Working for God does not pay much, but his retirement plan is out of the world.
Yesterday is a cancelled cheque. Tomorrow is a promissory note. Today is the only cash, so spend it wisely.
Yesterday is already a dream, tomorrow only a vision - but today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
You can not get to the top by sitting on your bottom.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.
You spend the first two years of your children's life teaching them to walk and talk. Then you spend the next sixteen telling them to sit down and shut up.
Your altitude depends less on your aptitude and more on your attitude.

Vidal Sassoon

The only place where success comes before work is a dictionary.

W M Lewis

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

W Somerset Maugham

The love that lasts longest is the love which is never returned.

Walter Lippman

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: The music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Walter Winchell

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

Wendell Johnson

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.

Winnie the Pooh

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, and today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.

Whitney Young, Jr

It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one, than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.

Will Rogers

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

William Arthur Ward

I will do more than belong, I will participate. I will do more than believe, I will practice. I will do more than forgive, I will forget. I will do more than teach, I will inspire. I will do more than care, I will help. I will do more than dream, I will work. I will do more than give, I will serve.

William Jennings Bryan

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.

William Shedo

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

Winston Churchill

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.

Client, Server and Hosted Solutions

2006-09-01T17:24:00.000-07:00

There are basically three ways to give away your product.

Client Application
The applications, which a user need to install. Most of the products from Microsoft fall in this category. Firefox and Microsoft Office are good examples.
Server Application
These applications are available to common users but a person in organization need to install them. For example Microsoft Exchange, Web Servers etc.
Hosted Service
User doesn’t have to do anything for such application’s installation. They just need to open a browser and use the service. Gmail, yahoo etc are good examples.

As the access to bandwidth increases, more and more people will be switching from 1 towards 3. I am waiting for the day when I cannot differentiate between TV and computer [opposed to what Bill Gate said “There will be always a difference between PC and TV always. Difference in the distance from which you use them” in “The Road Ahead”.]

The success of “Saleforce.com” has proved that “Hosted Service” is future.

There would be a time when people will be given a laptop, which will only have the browser and nothing else. Such computers won’t even have a hard disk.
When such computer switches on, it will connect to a remote server and load your settings from there. Imagine replacing windows explorer with a browser.

So, there would be service providers who will provide you with server on subscription and they will give you the computer for free.

This will materialize only if the Internet connection speed grows up. You can watch movies on Internet directly without downloading it to local disk.

In such era, the Browser will be the OS. Piracy will be no more.

It took me quite long to understand and digest that time of category 3 products has started. Thanks to HimS, salesforce.com for the quote “No Software.” and ofcourse google adwords' keyword pricing [I found more people searching for hosted type of solution which I am selling as server side application].
I still have the feeling that this is true only for business users not for geeks.

~Alpha0
"Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]" -- Illusions

Mediator Pattern

2006-09-01T01:34:00.000-07:00

At a certain stage programming becomes philosophy. We call it Design Patterns.
Why? Because there are too many things to remember. So, you just follow simple principles. Moreover, because its easier and interesting to talk philiosophy.

One of such philosophies or Design Patterns is Mediator.
If you have read My Post on enabling disabling the controls, you will be in a better position to appreciate Mediator.

Imagine yourself developing a huge product, say an IDE, Browser or a Image Editor like Adobe Photoshop. [Actually just imagining wouldnt do. You will have to be part of such product development to understand the complicacy.]
Let us take browser like Mozilla or firefox.
Now you have thousands of controls (a textbox, button, Label etc.) to manage. Forexample, if text is selected, enable copy. Big deal, huh!
You just have to do:


copyContextMenu.Enabled = true;
copyMainMenu.Enabled = true;
copyKeyHandler.Enabled = true;
...

Now you have some plugins, that need to be enabled on selection. You don't have a clue on what the plugin's want to do on selection. So, you failed. You might come up with shortsighted ideas like "plugin should come with controls with name like 'enableOnSelectionCopyMenuItem'."

What are we doing here? We are letting individual control talk to other controls.
We are letting "textbox" controls enable "Copy" controls which is wrong.
Its like giving an individual right to kill the thief. Instead, individual should report to police (government) giving the full description and let police handle it the way they want. That is exactly the Mediator Pattern.

You being the architect of the system, you define a mediator pattern which listens to people who want to tell and tell the people who want to listen.

So, here goes an skeleton:


public delegate void deCopyEventOccurred(Object sender, EventArgs e);

Mediator
{
 //Singleton Construct
 private Mediator(); 
 public Mediator static GetInstance(){...}

 //Event producers
 public void fireSelectionEvent(Control sender);
 public void fireCopyEvent(Control sender);

 //Event Subscriber will subscribe to these
 public event SelectionEventOccurredDelegate SelectionEventOccurred;
 public event CopyEventOccurredDelegate CopyEventOccurred;
}

Note1: Mediator is a singleton class meaning there would be only one instace of Mediator at a particular moment. I am not desctibing "Singleton" it to avoid digression. Ask google for more info "Singleton".
Note2: Before defining you event
Now, you will use this inside your textbox:


Mediator mediator = Mediator.GetInstance();
mediator.fireSelection(textBox); //text box fired an event on selection of text.

And Inside each of your copy controls:


Mediator mediator = Mediator.GetInstance();
//Subscribe to the event
mediator.SelectionEventOccurred += new  SelectionEventDelegate(handleSlection);
handleSelection(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
 this.Enabled = true;
 ...
}

Similary, subscribe to handle CopyEventOccurred.
You might find it cumber now, but at later stage you will realize how it keeps the things in control beautifully. Though it may not be advisible to use this pattern in small sized project but you should move to it when the product grows up. "small" being an abstract term here and will go well with your definition of "small".
Hope you find it useful.
For learning more on design patterns, refer to "Head first Design Patterns".

Hope you find it useful.

~Alpha0
Jub bura waqt aata hai to oont pe baithe hue aadmi ko kutta kaat leta hai:) -- Johnny Lever
In English:
In bad times, even a dog can bite a man sitting on camel.

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

2006-09-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

While reading about "Google Analyst", read about Peter Norvig, director of Google Search. I found his article "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" quite interesting.
Some new things which I found are:

Be the best programmer on some projects; be the worst on some others.
Work on projects after other programmers
Learn at least a half dozen programming languages.
Get involved in a language standardization effort.

Have fun. And don't skip his Gettysburg Presentation

References: Peter Norvig's Home Page

The lightest text editor

2006-08-30T23:06:00.000-07:00

Whats the lightest text editor you have ever seen? Any guesses about size?
"Notepad."
Wrong.
"Editplus.exe"
Again Wrong.

It is "TheGun".

Recently I came to know about an editor called TheGun - super light editor. Can you imagine how small is it?
6 kb. Yes. 6 kb. Not only it is lightest but also quite robust. I tested it with text file of size 300MB.

You can download it here.

It does not come with any dll or configuration. To change its settings, there is an auxilary program which edits the exe itself. You can then redistribute the exe with new settings. Strage! Isn't it?

The only tool I know that offers configuration in similar way is 'Back Orifice' - a remote control tool.

--Alpha0
If you can't help growing up, you always have an option of staying immature.

A week with stress

2006-08-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

For last seven days (not five), we (My laptop, desktop and I) have been in stress. The idea was to perform a stress test of my web application. It all started when one client asked politely, “Can you show me if your application can handle one lac resumes?”
“In theory – yes. But can’t show you anything right now because I haven’t performed such test on my application yet.” was my answer.
Let me restate the problem.

“There is a web application that provides a form using which a user can submit her resume. Simple. We have to submit around 100000 resumes and see if it can still perform search. ”

The problem to me sounded simple. So, I straight jumped into it and wrote a small code in C# to call the API.
“Stop. You have to simulate the scene as if users are submitting the resumes,” asked my business partner.
“Okay. Not a big deal”
I installed Live HTTP Headers to get exactly what browser sends to the server.
I wrote another code in C# which just makes a Web Request and sends the same data.
Just then I realized it is not straight forward because server is not doing it in a single go. When I make a call first it slaps me with a JavaScript that redirects the request further.

Urgh!!! Right!!!

I recalled that there was a tool called WWW Mechanize in Perl with which we dug orkut. But I no longer feel comfortable with Perl. So, I started hunting for a similar tool in Java or C#. I found something called HTTPUnit which sounded super cool. It can do virtually everything what a user can do using browser. Awesome. Well, I went through it docs quickly and was into coding it. First on test application, which worked smooth. I thought I will use it for digging orkut or even cracking passwords.
When I tried using it over my application, it started blasting me with the Exceptions. After couple of hours of going through their mailing list, I realized it is crashing because it can’t handle much of Javascript.
Again helpless. Started hunting again using Google for some similar tool.
I bumped over jMeter. Such a wonderful tool. It is a complete sophisticated suite for testing Web applications. Amazed at the quality of product on opensource. Wow! A couple of months ago, I was going to write a similar tool in C# for web application vulnerability scanning. I even wrote the underlying engine and infrastructure.
jMeter had arrangement for recording what you do using browser. It has a builtin proxy server which records your actions. A proxy is something which sits between your browser and internet. You just have set your browser to use a proxy.

I even tried to scraping 100 times on orkut using this tool. A big salute to open source.

Now, back to problem. When I tried replaying after recording my actions of adding a resume, it did a make an addition but didn’t upload the file.
What the hell!
After couple of hours of research, using my usual sniffer called Ethereal I came to know the proxy was changing the encoding of form from multipart to normal www-encoded.
I wish I had little time so I could contribute to it. Never mind, as soon as I get sometime, I am going to fix this issue.

Now, what?

Then I took a break and went out for a walk.
I said to myself, “Do I need to do this? I just have to do bloddy stress testing? It is a very common problem.”

Well, then I found out from some of my friends who do this kind of testing regularly couple of tools like SilkTest, Mercury’s LoadRunner and Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool. Silktest was out of reach because you have to pay for it. The LoadRunner was scary, it took hell lot of time to install and even rebooted my machine at his will. It too had a mechanism to record your actions, but that didn’t work. So, I uninstalled it.
Finally, the tool from your Majesty Microsoft worked.

Now, the actual stress testing started. Till now I was in stress. Now, the systems are gonna get stress. I got that that sadist smile.

Well, the resumes started adding into the system. 80% CPU. Haha!!
“The system is still slow,” I thought. So, I placed load balancer at apache and ran two instances of tomcat.
Now, the system was 100% CPU, have a look:

Suddenly, the mail server (James) crashed. Since the system sends lot of mails and I did not pop any out of it, so it was full. I quickly remedied it by poping using Outlook and placed a rule to delete mails.

As soon as I got back to deducing my sadist pleasure by looking at crying system, I realized that the search functionality no longer works. After digging into problem further, I found it is problem with SQL Server. Installed a patch from Microsoft. Done!

Suddenly, the system stopped when the resume count reached 21874. I even remember the number. The problem was, FAT32 system doesn’t let you create files beyond a certain limit. The limit depends on the file name size. In my case, it was 21874.
I quickly tested it using the following script in cygwin’s bash:


$ for i in `seq 1 10000`; do touch $i.txt; done;

It crashed at 21874. I switched the system to ntfs. I was again back to looking at 100% CPU. I got kind of satisfaction similar to the joy I used to get while performing a DoS (Denial of Service) attacks.
No sooner. The searching again crashed. I realized I am dynamically forming sql query and appending the id’s to it.
So, effectively, for 100000 number there would be 588896 chars if you concatenate in the following manner:
1,2,3,…………….99999, 100000

Well, I quickly hacked it by breaking the process into batched each of 3000 ids.
Why 30000? Using a binary search I found the max ids, with which SQL Server was happily executing the produced query.

I was back to the screen showing 100% CPU. The hard disks were getting full. I kept reorganizing stuff. I had to restart the hub couple of times, as it was getting choked because of network traffic.
The mail server kept crashing now and then. I kept restarting it. Its logs were getting filled quickly. To clean it logs, I wrote this out of anger:


$ for i in `seq 1 10000000`; 
do find . –type f –print –delete; sleep 60; 
done

Cool. Finally, the resume count reached 100000. The system is now working smooth again. Stress relieved.

Now, sweet slumber!

~Alpha0
Most of good persons are either boring or irritating.

Tips for programmers

2006-08-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

I wrote these as notes to myself but I had to reiterate most of the things to people who worked with me. So I decided to put it here.
When a student joins a company it takes at least a year to make him employee or a good programmer. And here are the things that will decrease the learning curve.

Instead of bullshitting the philosophy I would be directly taking you to the various points. To findout more about them use google’s “I am feeling lucky”.

The basics:

OS: Read the first chapter of Kernighan & Pike. Learn to use “man”
Learn to use SVN by installing tortoise SVN.
Install cygwin – it comes with almost all unix commands
Install Firefox + Plugins (Web developer, LiveHTTPHeaders, JSView)
Install Editplus (it works forever even after its license gets expired)
Configure Editplus it to use various external commands like cygwin's grep.
If u are comfortable with emacs, use it and configure it for ur self.
Make yourself comfortable with regular expressions
Learn ant
Learn HTTP RFC
Practice reading from Java Docs or MSDN instead of rummaging around your school books.
Learn to use excel – its really a powerful tool.
When you are tired, just play around with graphics, multimedia editors like Adobe, GIMP Macromedia FLash or Dreamweaver.
Learn about CSS
Learn to use debugger. Jdb or gdb can be a good starting point.
Get feel of good programming by participating in open source.

IDEs:

.Net programmers have no choice but visual studio, if u don’t have its license use SharpDevelop.
Install Resharper for Visual Studio
Java Programmers, you have quite a big choice of IDEs: Most popular one’s are:
- IntelliJ – Costs a little but most intelligent IDEs.
- Eclipse – Solution for all.
- NetBeans – Utimate answer to eclipse from Sun.
- Sun Java Creator – For web developers.
- I would suggest eclipse because you will find its plugins everywhere.

General Stuff:

Keep your notes – what to do next. While using internet it is easy to get lost in the forest. Keep your notes as wallpaper on desktop.
Use something like FreeMind to manage your stuff.
Use Rules in outlook to filter your mail to avoid disturbance.
If something needs a response, reply to it now. If it is must to delay mark it ‘Unread’
Keep your messengers closed. These messengers create lot of disturbance. In the middle of work it will buzz you saying “Someone has scrapped you.” you will run to open your mail and then open orkut and afterwards you are lost.
Manage your music. It does play a big role in your performance. I remember someone giving credit to “Linkin Park” on being asked about her increased performance during last week. I still love winamp for managing my music.
Keep track of your time. I have seen highly professional people who keep writing what they did in last hour. Use excel or jats which I wrote long back.
Subscribe to slashdot
Those guys who are little serious about computer security would love reading though bugtraq.
Occasionally read wikipedia
Go through various opensource project workspaces like sourceforge.net, tigris.org
Blog about the things you learn. Share it with others.

~Alpha0
While reading, writing and walking down the street
Even while writing my lovely piece of code
The only thing that keeps troubling me is “Where did I go wrong?”
I wish I could recreate the scenario and debug it step by step.
But the real world doesn’t have a debugger!
Other prominent question that remains is "Did I really go wrong?"
The real world doesn’t even have test cases!!

Hisaab Kitaab

2006-05-07T04:21:00.001-07:00

We three guys share a flat. So, it is always required to have some share accounting.
It seems pretty easy unless situations like this appear:
Suppose A, B and C share and Apartment
A paid for something which is for A and B only not C

So I created an excel sheet which looks like this.

Here, A paid for rent in favour of A, B and C.
And B paid for Maid in favout of B and C

Hope this will be useful to some of us. You can download it from here.

Cube

2006-05-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I wrote something. It is not that interesting things are not happening with me. The truth is so many interesting events have happened in a very small span that I don’t get enough time to write about it.
Moreover, the Vampire doesn’t appear now a days and the Smoking Joe is no more proud of his passion.

Just now, I finished watching Cube. Although it doesn’t carry much sense but it was quite thrilling and thought provoking.
Got many questions. I will watch it again to understand more.

I got an idea of writing a game based on cube. Not sure if there is already some game similar to it.

Imagine you are in a big room. It has six closed gates - one on each face: Front, Back, Left, Right, Back and Bottom.
A room either has an explosive or just another room.
So, if you open a door which leads to a room filled with explosives, you are dead and the game end.
Room has a number marked in the middle which tells you that how many explosive rooms surround it.

The purpose is to navigate all the safe rooms.

If we can use the physics engine written by Id Software, then it would become quite interesting.
Or may be we can just write another arena of Quake which fulfills the above criterion.

Basically, it is a 3D version of Mine Sweeper.

Ahh..The way

2006-04-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

You open your eyes
Find something to stare at
It is silver
Start walking down a pathway closer to it
You look left and find gold
You turn left
Again start walking closer to it
After walking a little you see a light coming from a subway to your right
It is diamond
And realize you want to walk this new path
This aimlessness continues
Your start growing beard
You hope to get better first and collect other things later
You endup with nothing in your hand
You Stand for a while on the way to the best goal so far
And suddenly you decide to turn back to achive the previous one
Now, no matter what else you see, you promise not to deflect
With a hope that you atleast have something in your hand at the end.
Wish I could fork my self and collect everything

"About Me"s

2006-03-24T15:59:00.000-08:00

I collected few intersting "about me"'s from my friends' orkut profiles.
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=9244676419338919048
“Who are you? ” said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I--I hardly know, sir, just at present--at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=4391787322868039033
Help me put the pieces of my jigsaw-life together and you as well as I will get to understand me....

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=6259895564053384184
If you find me nice.. blame it on my upbringing..
If you find me rude.. blame it on my boss..
If you find me neither.. well thats me all right!

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=455977325401721682
difficult to comprehend, otherwise easy :))

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=10874614941814814995
Just Look at your left a little... a handsome, charming man....

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=1463944162085323003
Self praise is blasphemy!:))

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=14282398729230467254
No Comparison..............

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=138829414677098201
"Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece."
- Bob Dylan

i'm not an artist!...but i always believe that my best is yet to come!...i take life as it comes and love and cherish my friends and friendship...

Most importantly, i believe in myself...

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=10494173075717822415
I used to have a handle on life,
but it broke!!

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=9061356633748498037
A soul in tension thats learning to fly,
Condition grounded , but determined to try.
Cant keep my eyes from the circling skies,
Tongue tied and twisted , just an earthbound misfit I

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=11989521860468497196
As Carbon-Hydrogen as the next guy.

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=17364131058413550382
Heaven doesn't want me and Hell is afraid I'll take over!

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=17927665540586431978
Ab apne baare me kya bolu beta? Ab to sirf apna aashirwaad hi de sakte hai tum sab ko..prabhu tum sab ka bhala kare, jeete raho

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=4733340646751308439
Well... I was thinking how do i describe myself.... thought for some time... and then decided to pen [ err.... key in ] my thoughts... by now u must have figured out that I love arbit bakar[well.. that is.... mmmm].... Very emotional... to the extent that once I used to think that there's something wrong with me... but I guess I have got over that... I believe that life is synonymous with running.. running a race that you have to win... And to dream an impossible dream and then find ways to make it possible... and that life presents us a lot of small moments of joy which we ought to relish...

hmmmm.. now u understood wat is arbit bakar>:)

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=17482503417728282459
I'm gradually learning about myself.

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=7407384341472373477
Deep down I am very superficial ;)

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=16626623023464070164
\/^\/
-|Z|-
/\_///|\
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=7201239914016231997
blah blah blah...

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=7010755422336322441
Ek katra samandar ka,
Ek lamha sadiyon ka,
Ek sach jindagi ka,
Ek jhooth maut ka.

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=10782569750713294971
It's difficult to improve upon perfection.

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=1609532657188605592
A lazy software professional seeing everything as 1 or 0, not in between.

http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=15334691387413545643
I am the best of worse men;
No coward was ever valiant as I;
No fool had a more sagacious brain;
So saint uttered so many a lie.

Request for Vending Machine Change

2006-03-22T10:39:00.000-08:00

This is from Infy Banglore mailing list. Read it bottom-up.
--------------------------------------------------------------
This is a sample from the Infy Bangalore Bulletin Board.... its one hell of a discussion... Go in for a Bottom-Up approach(read from the last message....)... the benchers strike again creating a havoc....
NOTE: The names have been changed or removed to preserve anonymity
Read from downward

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:59 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: C an we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: RE: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Yes certainly they should have, as infy is a global company!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Perhaps after tasing the coffee and tea here the client might want to outsource their coffee and tea facility to Infy

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:53 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: RE: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
wil our dear cows /buffaloos........................................etc hav onsite oppurtunities as they wud surely want to know this in the interview............... < /div>

From:
Posted At: Fri 1/20/2006 4:44 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Ba-Ba Moo-Moo - ROTFL

What will the grazing grounds signboards say in that case? "Milking in progress, No mooing please?"
And will the cattle stock be taught to read these K

Thanks and Regards,
Anjali.

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:40 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Yes we need to have very strict selection criteria so that only quality cows/buffaloes/camels/goats/sheep/llama/elk/elephants etc. are recruited for milking.

1) Should have consistently high 'milkademic' performance. Should have given more than or equal to 10 litres/day in the past.
2) Should have high 'dungamatic' quotient. Should not have passed dung on the premises more than 3.4 times per 1000 days.
3) Should be good team players and not kick the milkman while milking.
4) Should meet deadlines and allow milking at late-hours and night-shifts too for the foreign clients.
5) Should have no communication skills else can disturb the employees by ba-ba/moo-moo etc.

-----Original Message-----
From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:19 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject:

Can we have a separate DC for their Training n production?
"Production People" - no they would called "Production Animals"

N they hv separate recruitment policy.

Can any one suggest their minimum criteria?

XYZ
Software Engineering

Communication Service Provider

Infosys-Bangalore(India)

( - 91- 8 0- 41564013

3 - 91-80-28520261

Mob - 91- 9 986139803

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:14 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Ya...and that will make devegowda happy too J

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:12 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject:

Can the milking of the cows, buffaloes and goats be outsourced since it's not a core competency that Inf y enjoys ?

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:11 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Yes thats true.

As cars or two wheelers are no more allowed inside the campus and the golf carts are only for the clients the ones who do not know cycling can use kangaroos for quick transportations from one place to another withing the campus.

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:03 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Yes, 'Photo ID Card' is necessary!
Or we would need dogs if the animals look too similar for security guys to identify.
Baggage check is not in question right now, but may be some day, if we have plans to allow Kangaroos for some reason. J

SSD

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:53 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Will the goats, buffaloes, cows and other animals have to follow the dress code????????? And will they have permanent ID card???????/ After all security was questioned by one of us!

I think having ID cards will help ensure better security. + the dress code will make them look more professional

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:43 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Guys ............. It was started with cow. The n people added buffalos and goats to the list. Check if anything else is missed out ( if its milk is useful or it is useful in someother way) before sending the suggestion to the concerned dept / authority.

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:26 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Re:Can we have better coffee vending machines?

No need to buy the vending macines as CCD will provide them on loan I guess. Now coming to the goats/cows/buffaloes we have to purchase them, now the question is how many???? Should all building have one of each or should one building have only one animal?/? That is the point we have to decide on.

As far as the plantat ion goes I think the golf course is used no more, so we can have a tea and coffee plantation over there. After all its about tea or coffee so we need the main ingredient fresh!!!!! isnt it????????

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:14 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Re:Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Now we have to decide whether should buy Vending machines or milk giving animals like Cow/buffalo/Goat?

Regards,
XYZ
ES-Oracle Practice,Blr.
Extn #: 60749, Mobile #: 9845195968

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:12 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

What if some buffalo turns out to be a LeT operative ?

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:09 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

No!
If you want I can sign a petition online beseeching the authorities to allow cows, buffaloes and good coffee vending machines in Infy....
That's the MAX I am willing to do J

Thanks and Regards,
Anjali.

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:55 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: RE: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

I think Anjali is the one who might arrange for the goats!!!!!!! (No offences meant) :-)

Can anyone make the arrangements for the cow and buffaloes please?

Also the tea and coffee plantations!!!!!!!!1

;-)

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:50 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee v ending machines?
Subject: RE: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Who is Anjali? Is it a goats name??

Right-click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of this picture from the Internet.

Regards,
XYZ
Software Engineer | Infosys Technologies Ltd. | Bangalore
Extn: 63245 | Mobile: 91 99451 29390 | Direct: 91 80 515 63245

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:39 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject:

Can we have explanations?

XYZ
Infosys Technologies Ltd,
Bangalore
EMEA, UK Retails & CPG

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:37 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

I did not get this L
Goats and then Anjali are you listening?

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:23 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Why don't we have goats too......?.

Anjali are you listening?

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:14 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Can we also have buffaloes please ??? J

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:11 PM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: RE: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

I agree with you that milk powder is no subst itute for actual milk. Similarly old milk is no substitute for fresh milk.

So how about having a cow and a decoction maker in each building, so that we can get a nice flavoured coffee.

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 11:57 AM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject:

Yes please...both tea and coffee taste really horrible...the milk powder is no substitute for actual milk.. what with all kinds of bugs coming out of the machine too!

It would be really nice to have something like what is suggested below.

From:
Posted At: Friday, January 20, 2006 11:45 AM
Posted To: KEC General
Conversation: Can we have better coffee vending machines?
Subject: Can we have better coffee vending machines?

Hi,

Can we have better coffee vending machines in Bglr DC like other DC's? I remember we had got this Horlicks/Bornvita Vending machines in Hyd-DC (one per building) which lot of people out there has appreciated. Can we hope of getting similar ones in Bglr DC.

Regards,
XYZ
ES-Oracle Practice,Blr.
Extn #: 60749, Mobile #: 9845195968

Building the trust – A tough task

2006-02-26T19:30:00.000-08:00

Last night a young pigeon came into my room. It hit the fan and fall down.I quickly switched off the fan and picked it. Thank god it wasn’t dead. It only hurt its left wing. I gave it some water but it didn’t take.
It was scared. My presence was scaring it more. How to tell it that I wont harm you?
So, I kept it under cooler to give it a sense of security. Gave it a mix of rice, pulses and pieces of maggi to eat. Whole night it kept staring at me and I too giving it a glance to convey, “I wont hurt you.”
In the morning, I thought now we have trust. No. I was wrong. As I approached it tried to run and fly.
Well, I don’t really know how to build trust with someone when he/she is scared of you and saying, “Trust me” doesn’t matter.
So, I put it in my balcony to convey, “See I am not chasing you. If you want to go, you are free.” But I was worried about it.
It sat down there for some time hiding under the bricks and after a while it flew away.
I am worried and waiting for it return because it was not capable of facing the real world.

Funny interviews (cont.)

2006-02-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

Interviwer: When do you use inheritence?
Interviewee: Whenever my manager asks.
---------------
Interviwer: Who is the prime minister of india?
Interviewee: Mr. Bill Clinton
Interviwer: WHAT??
Interviewee: If I say Manmohan Singh, will I get the job?
---------------
Interviwer: Why did you use Java in this project?
Interviewee: Because I know Java.
---------------
Interviwer: Are you a virgin?
Interviewee: No. Last company f*ked me.
---------------
Interviwer: Why do you want to join us?
Interviewee: I want to stand on my own feet.

God and its subordinates

2006-02-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

There are various kinds of personalities. There are some who can’t just write well. It doesn’t mean that they can’t think fast. They aren’t used to writing while thinking. They get more bothered about writing.
And there are those who when write get more ideas. When I start writing I just forget what I actually thought of saying.
I can talk on the topic ‘god’ for hours but cant write it because when I start writing all the ideas just disappear as I more worried about my grammar spellings and what keys I am typing. For the same reason I hate this underlining of Microsoft word because it distracts me from thinking about the topic. I believe people in the first category would enjoy the audio blogging. They should get a doll and keep talking to him while it records.

Today I thought of talking about the topic “GOD”. I don’t know whether to call it ‘he’ or ‘she’ so I am using ‘it’. I have discussed and performed real life experiments on this subject and found that it exists only in minds of people.
GOD didn’t create human. Humans created GOD. No one ever saw it and have evidences for it. It still exists because human has been in a society having a single supreme called king for a long time. They perceive that a system can be run only if there is a single person at the top. They don’t realize the power of swarm intelligence. Like the way our neurons form our intelligence. No neuron is Supreme Being yet the brain works.
There are certain logical flaws in the concept of god.
“You can see it only if you believe it”
Well. It is like saying assumption is proof. In our mathematical problems, we don’t assume what we are going to prove. Even in proof by contradiction, we assume something and prove that assumption is wrong. So, the opposite of assumption might be correct. Here, they are trying to tell me assume that there is god and hence there will be god. Now, let me take the contradiction. Lets I assume there is no god. I wont see it. Had god really existed I could still see it.
Even if you assume that television won’t switch on when I click remote. It still will because it is truth. No matter whether you believe or not the mobile will work. That’s the truth.

They say, “GOD is supreme. It can create or destroy anything and do anything it want.”
Can it create a stone that it can’t lift? Confused?
Actually there can’t be anything called omnipotent. It is logically flawed.

“GOD created the universe.”
“Then who created the GOD?” is a cliché but a valid question.
They answer, “GOD was created automatically.” When we can assume that GOD was created automatically, why couldn’t we assume the universe was created automatically?
Why it created the world with so much chaos?
Had I created the world I could have created it like Unix. No one can enter into my house without my permission. One can’t kill the process of other being.
I could have made it such that only one man likes one woman and vice-verse. They can’t love or even like anyone else. They whole purpose of life should have been to find such soul mate.

I faced few incidents related to this weird concept.
I happened to visit a temple at my hometown. This temple was recently established and had quite much popularity. The story as the owner told me was like this.
“It used to be the gravestone of owner of these fields and there was a water boring next to it. Few (around five) people to came take the ball valve from the boring. They unscrewed it but they couldn’t detach it even with the help of a lever. They tried hard but to no success. They got tired and thought of praying the gravestone. One of them got up and prayed to the gravestone that they were not stealing anything and they had the permission of owner. It worked. After this, one of them could lift the valve with single hand. They told the story to every one and made a temple here.”

Listening to the story I almost burst into laughter. It was funny to see that they even don’t understand that it is almost impossible to detach a valve below which so much water is hanging. The trick is to displace it a little and leave it for some time to let the water fall down.
It was just lack of knowledge in physics.
----------------------------------
Around a year ago, I heard that there is a girl in neighborhood who has got some supernatural powers and can tell future of people. And so many people have visited her to know their future.
Well, I too went to visit her. The house was full of people (women, men, kids and pundits). I requested all of them to leave and let me be alone with girl and her mom.
Well, people left. I told to her mom that if I could prove that she can’t predict the future you are going to stop this exhibition. She fortunately agreed.
I took out my visiting cards and wrote some random numbers on back of these without showing to anyone. I asked the girl if she could tell me what was written on the back.
She couldn’t. End of story. It was just another prolonged dream that extends to such a limit that people start confusing it with supernatural powers.
----------------------------------
My uncle’s daughter had an operation so we all went to visit her at their place. As we were about to leave she suddenly started belaboring “Dadaji aaye hain….” (The grandpa has come) and then fainted. He body became cold and her face dropped. We all were shocked. And after about one minute she got up and managed to sit on the edge her bad with her eyes half closed and started belaboring again. “You all go. You have no care for my little girl.” People started murmuring saying, “He has come” as if they all are well acquainted with this phenomenon. As they started blasting her with all sorts of questions, I was completely in denial-of-service mode. They seem to have seen similar situations many a time and were fully prepared for the scene. I felt uneasiness in my head so I just lied down on other bed listening to the talks. After sometime she became okay and came into consciousness.
I asked my mom, “Do you believe this?”
She replied, “Actually her Grand Pa never talked that way.”
“Did she ever saw her grand father?”
“No. She didn’t”
Then I asked the girl about how exactly she felt. She told me that she just saw that grand dad has come home and brought peanuts.
“How does he look like?”, I asked.
“I could see the portion above his chest only.” She told.
“Like that photo?”, I said pointing to A4 size photo of her grand dad hanging in the bedroom.
“Yes. Exactly the same.”, she accepted.
I concluded that it was just another kind of dream with semi consciousness. We all are capable of creating fancy dream at our own.
It was no supernatural phenomenon.
----------------------------------

Hence, I haven’t come across any event so far in my life that could make me believe in something supernatural.
There are other experiment too which I will write sometime in future.

Funny Interviews

2006-02-24T02:30:00.000-08:00

I took this telephonic interview around 7-8 months ago.
That time I didnt post it here because people might have guessed who it was.
Here it goes:
Me: Hello.
Interviewee: ..
Me: Hello.. Hello..
In: Yaas Saar.
Me: Hi, This is from Corp.
In: Hello Saar. Hello..Hello..
The network connectivity was poor.
Me: Are you ready?
In: Yaas Sir, I am Siyaram Reddy.
:)) I felt like bursting into laughter but somehow helped it.
Me: Hi Siyaram. How are you? Is this right time to talk?
In: Yaas Saar.
Me: You have mention Java in your resume. So tell me what are interfaces?
In: Interfaces Saar. Graphical user interface Saar.
I got pissed at this.
Me: I am talking about Interfaces in Java.
There was silence for few seconds and some fluttering sound of papers.
Suddenly, he told me the definition of Interfaces in read-out-loud voice.
After this I digressed to C/C++ and came back to java.
I asked the same question about Interfaces again. He could not tell me the definition this time.
Me: Thanks Siyaram. It was nice talking to you.
In: Yaas Saar.
There were other interesting answers given by Mr. Siyaram which I am forgetting at this moment.
:))
Anyway, again thanks to Siyaram for an intersting interview.

Security Hole in Blogpatrol

2006-02-22T10:24:00.000-08:00

It is possible to see anyone's blogpatrol statistics.

What is blogpatrol?
Blogpatrol helps you track the statistics of your page by providing a script, that you can paste in your page.

Details:
No details at this point of time. I have informed blogpatrol about this hole.
I will publish the details once they fix the problem. In case, the dont reply to mail as well as dont fix the problem within next 7 days, I am going to publish the details here.

What can I do?
Nothing. What you can do is remove blogpatrol from site for time being.

Disclaimer:
The information within this document may change
without notice. Use of this information constitutes
acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are NO
warranties with regard to this information. In no
event shall the author be liable for any consequences
whatsoever arising out of or in connection with the
use or spread of this information. Any use of this
information lays within the user's responsibility.

Thanks,
Alpha0

Kitten Watching Cat Videos

2006-02-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.bibi.org/box/archives/2006/02/kitten_watching_cat.html

Bose

2006-02-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

When I visited the Bose showroom, I was quite impressed with their technology and the presentation but since the cost is quite high and I am no music freak, I stepped back.

I generally suggest ppl to go and visit their showroom but this blog post was quite heart breaking: Friendy Bose reminder

He says that Boss is just a Marketing Machine.
Let me know if any one has a Boss System, I would like to compare the quality with other systems.

Musings of an Entrepreneur

2006-02-18T16:10:00.000-08:00

I found this blog "Musings of an Entrepreneur"

I found "The Power of Introspection and Detached Analysis" most interesting post.

Estimate Calculation

2006-02-14T02:48:00.000-08:00

Best pastimes

2006-02-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

When you get bored, what do you do?

Here is my list:

Refeshing Desktop

Playing Quake

Designing in Adobe

Talking to friends

Reading Slashdot stories

Reading Bugtraq

Reading/Writing Blogs

Solving Puzzles, physics problems (Irodov kinda)

Thanks to Drinks

2006-02-13T00:10:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I reflect back on all the wine I drink
I feel shamed. Then I look into the glass and think
about the workers in the vineyards and all of their hopes
and dreams If I didn't drink this wine, they might be out
of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say
to myself, "It is better that I drink this wine and let their
dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."
~ Jack Handy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they
wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're
going to feel all day. "
~Frank Sinatra
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and better looking than most people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
~ Henny Youngman
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing WITH you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?
I think not."
~ Stephen Wright
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to think you can sing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk,
we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin.
When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let's all
get drunk and go to heaven!"
~ Brian O'Rourke
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants
us to be happy."
~ Benjamin Franklin
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a retard.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Without question, the greatest invention in the
history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the
wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does
not go nearly as well with pizza."
~ Dave Barry
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To some it's a six-pack, to me it's a Support Group. Salvation in a can!
~ Dave Howell
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite s e x without spitting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And saving the best for last, as explained by Cliff Clavin,
of Cheers. One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff Clavin was explaining the Buffalo Theory to his buddy Norm.
Here's how it went:
"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo
can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when
the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones
at the back that are killed first This natural selection is
good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the
regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the
slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we
know, kills brain cells.
But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first.
In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."

Cool Tattoos

2006-02-06T16:33:00.000-08:00

Found this awesome collection of tattoos: http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/geek001.html

Some of my favorites are:

Few reasons to love a geek:)

2006-02-06T16:23:00.000-08:00

Found this post in wild.

Sounded flattery to me:
Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It...

QotD

2006-02-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

It is never as dark as it looks.
--Smoking Joe

Quotes collection

2006-02-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

Reality is an illusion that occurs due lack of alcohol.

The more i meet people the more i love my dog.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

Trust in God but lock ur car.

Mothers are biological necessity, fathers are social inventions.

God is real unless declared integer.

The only advantage of living on Earth: It provides a free trip around the sun..

There is no genius without sign of madness

Life in VACUUM............SUCKSSSSSS

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart

His insomnia was so bad, he couldn't sleep during office hours.

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want an adorable pancreas?

I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.

Lead, follow or get out of the way...

If it is must to marry, marry with a beautiful one. So that you need not carry her for your whole life.

Honesty is second best policy.

Behind every successful man there is a woman..and behind every unsuccessful man there are two

Love conquers everything except poverty and tooth ache

Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Never put off the work till tomorrow what you can put off today.

Work fascinates me. I can look at it for hours!

Love thy neighbor. But don't get caught.

Looking like an idiot is the first sign of true love

Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.

Sex is a bad thing afterall it rumples the clothes.

When u see women marry you realise how they must hate to work for living.

Your future depends on your dreams So go to sleep

Smile, its the second best thing u can do with ur lips.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired

Don't feel bad. A lot of people have no talent.

If ur father is a poor man its ur luck...but ur father-in-law is a poor man its ur stupidity

Adam came first, but then men always do.

I am in shape. Round is a shape

Join the army.Travel to exotic distant lands. meet exciting unsusual persons...........and KILL them.

7/5th of all people do not understand fractions

Time is natures way of making sure that all the shit doesn't happen at once.

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.

Dont steal, government hates competetion.

Quit smoking! Take air pollution straight.

If you're too lazy to start anything, you may get a reputation for patience.

Most people are only alive because it is illegal to shoot them

Smile and the world smiles with you. Fart and you stand alone

There are no stupid questions, just stupid people

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.

As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two

Children in the dark cause accidents. Accidents in the dark cause children

You'll never get rid of a bad temper by losing it!

Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense

I came , I saw , I did a little shopping.

Life is sexually transmitted disease and death is the cure.

Regular naps prevent old age...especially if u take them while driving..

I believe we shud all pay our tax with a smile...i tried but they wanted cash..

There 10 types of people in the world .. those who understand binary .. and the others who dont.

An apple a day keeps a doctor away .. a cigarette pack a day keeps every1 away

I didn't lose my mind, I sold it on ebay.

Life is not measured by the number of breathes we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.

You tried, and you failed, so the lesson is, never try

Make love not war. Condoms are cheaper than guns

An unfortunate person is one tries to fart but shits instead

Most good judgement comes from experience. Most experience comes from bad judgement.

Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.

All the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Happiness is like peeing your pants, everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.

Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.

Money is the opposite of weather..nobody talks about it..but everybody does something about it..

A man may be a fool & not know it- but not if he is married !!

I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally .

How many times I have told you that I dont repeat.

Passwords are like underwear: change them often

Keep talking.....someday u will say something intelligent.

I talk to myself because I like dealing with a better class of people.

If you can piss that high .........Join the FIRE Department!

Do you practice to be stupid or is it inborn

Your voice is out of this world...why dont u follow it and stay there

Surprise me!...say something smart!

My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn't

Stats of BlackWorm aka Win32.Nyxem.E@mm aka Kamasutra worm

2006-02-04T05:19:00.000-08:00

Total Computers infected so far

Author of Win32.Nyxem.E@mm

2006-02-04T04:31:00.000-08:00

Trying to find out who authored this.
Fortunately I could download binary of counter.
After disassembling I found that it is written by Mohammad A.
and compiled in a directory /home/sitz/...
So, its some hacker with the alias sitz.
I am on hunt for this guy.

My four days work is destroyed by virus.

Attacked by Win32.Nyxem.E@mm

2006-02-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

After long time, my home lan was attacked by a virus.
For around 2 years, I am connected to internet and didnt have an antivirus on my PC. Yet no virus ever bothered me.

For last few days, I have been observing that Winzip.exe and Update.exe is consuming lots of RAM. So I was killing it.

asked google and found that I am attacked by this crazy mail spreading class of virus.

For details about virus:
http://www.bitdefender.com/VIRUS-1000060-en--Win32.Nyxem.E@mm.html
http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=109064#doc2

One interesting fact:
The virus uploads victim count to
http://webstats.web.rcn.net/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=?????

Intuition lead me to guess the following URL to see the stats:
http://webstats.web.rcn.net/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?show=1

Just check how fast is it spreading. It becomes zero after the boundaries of integer overflows.

Why I love you?

2006-01-31T11:59:00.001-08:00

Girl: Why do you love me?
Smoking Joe:
Since Everyone Loves All Lovers
And Romeo Loves Juliet
Therefore I Love You.

Estimates

2006-01-27T11:04:00.000-08:00

PS: I wish upster could have drawn this.

Smoking Joe: Digital self image

2006-01-24T00:21:00.000-08:00

Paradox

2006-01-18T11:09:00.000-08:00

PS: Thanks to Sachin

The replacement

2006-01-17T13:37:00.000-08:00

My friend is working on designing a website for a client whose core business is printing Labels for various drinks.
His first draft included a girl on the header which was looking beautiful but it was turned down by the client.
So, he removed the girl and kept two bottles..then three..and then four more.
It still didnt look as beautiful as the first draft.

Moral of the story: Even seven bottles arent enough to substitute a girl.

Mass Mailer

2006-01-17T01:56:00.000-08:00

Long back, I needed to send a mail to a number of users.
And I have to address them by their first name (like Hi John,).
So, I wrote this little app.
Steps:
1. Download and unzip application.[scroll down for the download link]
2. Open notepad and prepare a list of recipents in following format.
alpha0@xyz.com<tab>Alpha<tab>Zero
alpha1@xyz.com<tab>Alpha<tab>One
Note: <tab> mean press a tab.
Save it to some place say c:\temp\addresses.txt

3. Start the application by double clicking UI.exe from the saved location.
4. Click on Browse and select your addresses file
3. Write your message in the following format:
For example,
Hi $FIRST_NAME$ $LAST_NAME$,
I got your mail id $EMAIL_ID$ from one of my friend.
You are invited to check my blog.
Alpha0

Note: $FIRST_NAME$, $LAST_NAME$ and $EMAIL_ID$ will be replaced by first name, last name and email id respectedly of each reciepent.

4. Click on SEND

SnapShot:

Download:

PS: It picks up the settings of Microsoft Outlook to send mail. So you must have Microsoft Outlook installed and properly configured.

SJ and O2

2006-01-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

Me: Hey Smoking Joe, What will happen if the oxygen is no more in atmosphere?
SJ: I wont be able to survive because my cigarette won't lit up.

Mahabharata

2006-01-04T23:14:00.000-08:00

While roaming in wild I came across this new version of epic.
I cant help laughing.
Enjoy reading: http://aashraya.blogspot.com/2005/11/vyasas-dissertation.html

Cheers to Crystal blur

Music - Kill Bill

2006-01-02T06:23:00.000-08:00

Recently I have found myself in love with Kill Bill's songs.
Especially "Bang Bang" and the Whilste.
I found that the song "Urami Bushi - Meiko Kaji" has music similar to "Humko sir tumse pyar hai."
Not sure who copied who.

Indiatimes once again

2005-12-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered how buggy can a system be?
Every time you look at it..You find it stinking..No matter how polished it looks.
It is Email.Indiatimes.com.
Last night I thought I will again see my old victim to get something new.
And it didnt disappoint me.
Yes. Once again I have found a funny bug in indiatimes.
Even if you logout it doesnt logs you out..Although it display that freaky sh** saying "You are now logout".
You go back and you can continue the checking mails.
This is severe if you are checking your mails from a cyber cafe.
Anyone can go to history of browser and use your account.
"MY HUMBLE ADVICE TO PEOPLE IS DON'T USE INDIATIMES."

This is third time.
First time I found a bug reported to them and there was no response for 1 month.
I was forced to publish it on Bugtraq.

Second time I found another bug with which I could tell anyones password in the wholly world. This time they talked and I adviced them the solution and helped them fixing. They never gave even thanks. Giving credit is a far thing.

So, I wrote them saying "Dont expect me to help you. I will directly let users know about the service you provide."

--Alpha0

Dating a developer

2005-12-30T01:01:00.000-08:00

For the girls dating a nerd.
Dating an Apple Developer

Geeks/Nerds, send it to your gfs. Hope it brings some peace:)

The fine art of scrapping

2005-12-29T05:44:00.000-08:00

I was lately bugged by various search engines which provide search inside the premium content and show you the results but wouldn’t show you the full content.

So, what I used to do is search for a keyword then pick up a keyword (generally the tail) from the search result and search again and keep merging the content intelligently.

If I can do it my code can do it.
I wrote this application which can be configured to scrap from any search engine.

So, have fun with it. I am calling it Pack Rat.
Please let me know if you get a better name.

Click here to download Pack Rat : A Content Scrapper

How to use the Pack Rat:
1. Find out the complete url. Just search for ‘something’ in your favorite internet browser and see the url. ‘something’ would be there inside the url. Copy the complete url into url box of Pack Rat and replace ‘something’ with $keyword$.
2. Do the view source of the page and find out the pattern of output. Write a regular expression and put it pattern box of pack rat.
3. Put a starting keyword in keyword.
4. Click ‘GO’ and wait for sometime. Keep an eye on ‘Event Log’.

You can click ‘X’ for canceling the search.

It has been more challenging the it looks. I will write the details some other time.
NOTE: the password for downloading the file is abc123

Selling Software

2005-12-24T22:07:00.000-08:00

My last meet with vampire (in "No Photos, PLEASE") forced me to think about the piracy and selling software.

First of all we can't and shouldn't sell the software like a product because when we define actual price of a product it is the efforts you put in.
And the efforts in case of software are one time because for the next product you just have to copy and sell.
So, when you can copy, the user can also copy. Hence the piracy is inherent.

I am also not in favour of giving software for free like GNU where the product is free but services are charged.

My suggestion is midway.
Sell a software product to a user and give the user permission to resell at her own price.
Let us say you sell software 'Enigma' to Alice at $10000. Alice can use it and resell it at her own price. Alice decides to resell it at $8000.
Seeing Alice we too lower the price to $8500 and provide support with it.
Now Bob who wants to buy 'Enigma', has two choices either ask Alice or ask us.
Obviously price of software is coming down but the user base will increase. And by the time the price diminishes to zero, our product cost would be recovered. From then onwards, we would be charging for services not product.
The piracy would be minimized since Alice wont pirate because she know she can resell it.
This will automatically bring the equilibirum.

I hope it makes sense.