Archives of all entries
This is an archive of my old blog
My current blog is http://blogs.applibase.net/pramod
Wednesday, May 19
Life
I just noticed today that the version of Postfix that ships with RedHat-9.0 is called "postfix-1.1.11-11"..just a coincidence?
Monday, May 17
Sci/Tech
I had a peep into TeX today, and I wish I'd tried it much earlier! No more project reports to be done :(
A Super Short guide to TeX
1. In a text editor, write this:
\documentstyle{report}
\begin{document}
\author{Pramod}
\title{Test Report}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents
\newpage
\chapter{Introduction}
\section{Beginning}
\begin{itemize}
\item{First, u have to}
\item{Then u should}
\end{itemize}
This is first chapter
\chapter{Details}
This is second chapter
\end{document}
2. Save the file as try.tex
3. At the shell, run pdflatex try.tex
4. xpdf try.pdf
Saturday, Mar 13
Sci/Tech
The IP and OSI Models are being re-examined.
The packet network paradigm probably needs to change.
OSI was designed for a static infrastructure. With the growth of wireless devices, what we need is a model with "dynamic scalability".
Wednesday, Mar 03
Sci/Tech
The UNIX world and Windows are coming closer together. While Linux is acquiring cute GUIs with much fanfare, another revolution is silently happening. Microsoft is putting loads of powerful command line (yeah!) utilities onto Windows.
Windows XP, 2000 and 2003 are chockful of them. Cool ones are diskperf, at, and shutdown. Here's a long list of commands.
Sci/Tech
Did you know that Google has a special feature to search all Microsoft related sites? Just go to Google Microsoft. The XP type logo is cute!
Sunday, Feb 29
Sci/Tech
Joel Spolsky..Back to Basics. It's nice to see top notch developers talk about bits and bytes. Especially when all you hear from this is .NET and XML.
Saturday, Feb 28
Life
Whew...An entry after a looong break. Lots of changes in life. And blogging will reduce drastically. I think.
Added an RSS feed to my site. Thanks for bearing with me! And expect a few bugs as I'm still learning this RSS thing.
Sci/Tech
Creating a shared library(DLL) in Linux using GNU libtool
Try this. It's easy, and fun
1. mkdir libs
2. Create a header file "mylib.h" containing the prototypes and #defines for the functions in your library
3. Write the corresponding "mylib.c". Don't forget to include "mylib.h"
Use the following libtool commands to compile and install your library
4. libtool gcc -c mylib.c
This creates mylib.lo, mylib.o and a .libs directory
5. libtool gcc -o libmylib.la mylib.lo -rpath absolute path to "libs" directory created in (1)
This creates a libtool archive (.la) file, which is a plain text file.
6. libtool install -c libmylib.la libs
Copies the .la file to "libs" and creates suitable .so with symbolic links
7. Write a small program "foo.c" which includes "mylib.h" and invokes a function defined in "mylib.c"
8. Compile the program with:
gcc foo.c -L path to "libs" -lmylib
9. At shell prompt, export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=path to "libs"
10. Type ./a.out ..Your program should run!
For more info see "info libtool"
Monday, Feb 02
Sci/Tech
Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++ is simply superb, esp. if you want to learn C++ in a clear, concise manner. And there's enough under-the-hood stuff:
It can be helpful to see the assembly-language code generated by a virtual function call, so you can see that late-binding is indeed taking place. Here's the output from one compiler for the call
i.adjust(1);
inside the function f(Instrument& i):
push 1
push si
mov bx, word ptr [si]
call word ptr [bx+4]
add sp, 4
The arguments of a C++ function call, like a C function call, are pushed on the stack from right to left (this order is required to support C's variable argument lists), so the argument 1 is pushed on the stack first. At this point in the function, the register si (part of the Intel X86 processor architecture) contains the address of i. This is also pushed on the stack because it is the starting address of the object of interest. Remember that the starting address corresponds to the value of this, and this is quietly pushed on the stack as an argument before every member function call, so the member function knows which particular object it is working on. So you'll always see one more than the number of arguments pushed on the stack before a member function call (except for static member functions, which have no this).
Now the actual virtual function call must be performed. First, the VPTR must be produced, so the VTABLE can be found. For this compiler the VPTR is inserted at the beginning of the object, so the contents of this correspond to the VPTR. The line:
mov bx, word ptr [si]
fetches the word that si (that is, this) points to, which is the VPTR. It places the VPTR into the register bx.
The VPTR contained in bx points to the starting address of the VTABLE, but the function pointer to call isn't at location zero of the VTABLE, but instead at location two (because it's the third function in the list). For this memory model each function pointer is two bytes long, so the compiler adds four to the VPTR to calculate where the address of the proper function is. Note that this is a constant value, established at compile time, so the only thing that matters is that the function pointer at location number two is the one for adjust( ). Fortunately, the compiler takes care of all the bookkeeping for you and ensures that all the function pointers in all the VTABLEs of a particular class hierarchy occur in the same order, regardless of the order that you may override them in derived classes.
Once the address of the proper function pointer in the VTABLE is calculated, that function is called. So the address is fetched and called all at once in the statement:
call word ptr [bx+4]
Finally, the stack pointer is moved back up to clean off the arguments that were pushed before the call. In C and C++ assembly code you'll often see the caller clean off the arguments but this may vary depending on processors and compiler implementations.
Wednesday, Jan 28
Sci/Tech
I got the MyDoom worm today in 2 of my mail ids. Hehe..downloaded the attachments and checked them out..on Linux of course. Amazing how much u can achieve in 24K of Windows code! The news says it launches Notepad and shows random strings. Did a strings and grep on that exe..and sure enough, found "notepad %s", and "abcdefghijlkmn" !!
Mood: amused
Tuesday, Jan 27
Sci/Tech
Anything Joel Spolsky writes immediately makes news. And so it was with this article on writing good Resumes. Very hard-hitting.
Learn where spaces go in relation to other punctuation. Attention, the entire population of India: whenever you have a comma, there is always exactly one space and it's always after the comma and never before it.
Very true!
Sci/Tech
From KernelTrap, a discussion on C++ in the Linux kernel.
"In fact, in Linux we did try C++ once already, back in 1992. It sucks. Trust me - writing kernel code in C++ is a BLOODY STUPID IDEA.
Linus Torvalds
Sci/Tech
Developer Workstation HOWTO, from an IIT Bombay alumnus. He prefers zsh ("it's the ultimate shell") to bash, favourite browsers are Opera/Lynx. Interesting.
Sunday, Jan 25
Language
A blog entry about languages with inflections, as opposed to those without. Discussed in true techie style:
It's like speaking in reverse Polish notation.
I think English is less demanding for the listener than German. When reading something like "the to-its-winter-home-flying goose", you have to push all modifiers on the stack and then pop them off it when you finally get to "goose".
In English, you can't have too complicated adjectives in front of a noun, so your stack won't overflow
Sci/Tech
RMS is in India..this is the right time to read a chapter from an online O'Reilly book. Extremely inspiring.
Wednesday, Jan 21
Life
I've been getting some negative feedback about the way I write online and the tone of my comments (in people's journals). A sample of the things that have been said:
You are quite ruthless in verbalising your opinions, are you not? I have seen it for a long time, now.
The language has been consistently and system-widely rude and arrogant.
Anyone who's reading this has also felt the same? Please comment.
Sunday, Jan 11
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
The Real History of GUI. An in-depth, masterly article. Spans everything from XEROX Parc to Mac to Win 3.1 and Ivan Sutherland and Douglas Engelbart. Somewhat long..save and read offline.
Saturday, Jan 10
Life
I just turned 22. Strangely, I'm not feeling anything about it! Or am I not allowing myself to??
Update - 8:20 p.m.
My friends surprised me with a wonderful party in the evening, right at my house!
My thanks to Rohit, Bharath, Jayashree and Preethi :) .. u four really made my day! And I guess it's really very easy to fool me? :))
Update 2 - 11:25 p.m.
Late in the evening, I cut yet another surprise birthday cake!! ..this time courtesy my bro and his..fiance (yeah!).
Absolutely unforgettable birthday!!
Wednesday, Jan 07
Life
Change is the essence of the world. Everything changes. And our views should change, too.
Change is growth. The more you resist change, the less you tend to grow.
I'm happy I've realized this :). Change is sweeter if it follows a long period of sameness, for you can then recognize the sameness for what it is - stagnancy.
Sci/Tech
Sunday, Jan 04
Sci/Tech
Long time no blog...mainly 'cos I somehow didn't feel like writing anything, and there's nothing worse than a boring blog.
That new sm56 driver never worked for RH 9. I didn't try it personally, but a couple of my friends did. Anyway, PCQLinux 7.1 worked like a charm :) The Net on Linux is worth the downgrade ;)
Life
Project Hunt is on for 8th sem ..not much luck so far. let's see.
Life
How does one cure oneself on any addiction?..Seek out bigger addicts of course! Usually that makes you go "Omigod I dont want to be like that!"
This worked for my nascent Internet addiction. Snapped in the bud! The real world is much more fun!
Tuesday, Dec 23
Sci/Tech
Motorola sm56 internal modem drivers available for Linux (RedHat 7.3, 8.0 and 9.0) from Motorola's official site!!!
COOL!
Saturday, Dec 20
Life
OK, it's official now. I got the score card of the GRE exams, which I took up a month ago:
Quantitative Aptitude: 800
Verbal Reasoning: 700
Analytical Writing: 5.5
Life
Me just got back from half an hour of reading Shivaram Karanth (Yeah, it's going to snow in Bangalore this winter). Very interesting views on education. Being a great teacher and communicator, he thoroughly deplores our primary and secondary education system, saying it kills all the interest and enthusiasm of students. He strongly advocates the 2 language formula (local and English; he hates Hindi imposed as national language) and bemoans the fact that even a 10th Standard pass out can't express himself articulately in any language.
Thursday, Dec 18
Life
The Deccan Herald started sporting a new look from today. To spare you all the silly details, I'll say it's just mimicking the Times of India. Eh, what a role model to follow! Thank God, we still have The Hindu. So now I am thinking of dumping DH for some Kannada daily..let me see.
Life
This is the worst introduction I've seen in any news item..a very short piece, about some dance performance in Bangalore.
DOES THE word `If' mean anything to you?
Yes, it is a celebrated poem by Rudyard Kipling. But it's also the most commonly used word on the planet.
And we're not just referring to the English word here.
In its many "avatars", `if' gets used almost every minute by someone, somewhere in the world.
In Hindi, for example, we say "kaash". And "Kaash", by the way, is also the name of a fusion dance performance that will be held here on December 22 at the Chowdiah Memorial Hall.
The event...
Wasn't that horrible?
Life
Hilarious cartoon. Topical, given we are celebrating 100 years of man-made aircrafts.
The Hindu Cartoon -Dec 18,2003
Wednesday, Dec 17
Sci/Tech
My mind is reeling with the Stream hierarchy of Java..aftermath of preparing for Java sessionals. what a complex maze it is! But the more I read about it, I'm getting convinced that it's much better than C++'s crude attempts to define I/O for the language. As Stroustrup put it recently in an interview, C++ is crying for good libraries to be written..I'd bet an overhaul of ios and its subclasses is overdue. with more scope for network I/O and object serialization.
But there's one nagging doubt..ESR says in his The Art of Unix Programming that UNIX has thrived on low abstraction levels and bare wrappers. Java is the exact opposite.
Sunday, Dec 14
Life
Life
I'm in the midst of reading this. I'm not telling too much - It's a set of (prospective) fathers talking away. Go see.
Sci/Tech
Livejournal has stopped its strict requirements to create accounts. You can just sign up for it like any other service now. Create an account if you want to blog with the best. My id is pramodbiligiri.
Saturday, Dec 13
Life
Did an install of Windows 98 on our old computer today..Not as easy as I thought..And God help DOS FDISK.
In the process, I had to take out my old and reliable RedHat 6.2. Absolutely rock steady distro based on a great kernel. Served us well for close to 5 years..no reinstall or crashing crap.
Sci/Tech
Google is hiring in Bangalore. They say it's a quality conscious move and not a cost cutting venture.
Tuesday, Dec 09
Sci/Tech
I've heard of the saying "The medium is the message"..But how about "The function is in the calling"? Wondering what I'm talking about?..Check this.
India
Sunday, Dec 07
Sci/Tech
Yahoo proposes new, radical measures to fight spam.
India
The much hyped assembly elections in India just got over. But was the media fair in its coverage? Not at all. I read Missing Mizoram and realized what breeds terrorists.
Saturday, Dec 06
Sci/Tech
Nice website on Java. Will be helpful for our project.
Life
Friday, Dec 05
Sci/Tech
Debugging configure scripts. Some bare essentials of configure scripts, though the examples were not practical. Essential reading for Linux developers, unfortunately.
Thursday, Dec 04
Sci/Tech
Linux Bangalore/2003 is finally over! An unforgettable experience. I'd never imagined I'd spend close to half an hour discussing computer programming and our approach to it, with Miguel De Icaza and Nat Friedman! Those guys are so approachable! And we learnt more about .NET and XML Web Services from their one hour demo-presentation than all those posh Microsoft seminars.
Hats off to the organizers..they couldn't have done a better job. All around.
Tuesday, Dec 02
Life
My first day at Linux Bangalore/2003. Great fun. I've never seen so many geeks in one place!
It was so nice of Naba Kumar, the developer of the Anjuta C/C++ IDE to include all the software I had suggested in the CDs he's distributing. And Harold Welte, the maintainer of Netfilter/Iptables gave an amazing talk.
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
Some Vi tips for developers. With a title like that, how could I resist? :)
It was quite good, till I came to:
Turn the first letter of all words to uppercase
:%s/\<./\u&/g
Sci/Tech
Monday, Dec 01
Sci/Tech
For years we've been stuck with Internet Explorer as the horrible browser on Windows. And newer versions of Netscape and Opera have had buggy JavaScript implementations or lack of plugins. But not anymore. With the coming of age of Mozilla Firebird, we have all the coolest features (tabbed browsing, blocking pop ups, advanced java/javascript configuration, mouse gestures) in one small Open Source package (6.0MB). IE, RIP!
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
Microsoft's next generation operating system Longhorn already being pirated!!
Sci/Tech
A brief glimpse of the experience of a US developer in an Indian software workplace. Quite interesting. He's amazed that tea is served to your desk!
Sunday, Nov 30
Sci/Tech
I happened to see a FreeBSD system a couple of days ago and this piqued my curiosity. So I went off to read The FreeBSD FAQ. Excellent example of how an FAQ ought to be.
Some excerpts:
What is FreeBSD?
FreeBSD is a UN*X-like operating system for the i386, IA-64, PC-98, Alpha/AXP, and UltraSPARC platforms
What is the goal of the FreeBSD Project?
To provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached.
Does the FreeBSD license have any restrictions?
For the simply curious, the license can be summarized like this:
Do not claim that you wrote this. Do not sue us if it breaks.
Now that doesn't mean there was no technical information on that page..It was just well interspersed with suitable material for newbies.
Sci/Tech
Here's a record of Ashwin's experience installing Red Hat Linux 9. Shows the common problems encountered and how to solve them...yeah, connecting to the net, playing sound, changing monitor resolution etc.
Sci/Tech
Thursday, Nov 27
Sci/Tech
A Partition magic clone for Linux. QtParted. Looks interesting. Will be a great help if it's good.
Sci/Tech
Going through an enormous amount of code written by others is not fun. But we all have to do it sometimes. This article on Code Spelunking looks interesting.
Life
I just realized that I'd been using the computer for over an hour and there was no shell window open! More proof that Linux desktops can be newbie friendly.
Monday, Nov 24
Sci/Tech
Too often a software developer designs two classes in place of one. Or uses quicksort with an input of 10 numbers. The end result might work, but this kind of attitude can be a burden when dealing with really difficult problems. And he may just give up in despair. Well, James Gosling puts it in a much better way in this interview.
In the computer science academic world, it was generally considered that an internet link just wasn't of any value unless it could handle resource moving and renaming and issues like that.
In some sense, the brilliant thing that Tim Berners-Lee did was simply to say, "I don't care." For 20 years people had been failing to solve these problems in any large-scale way. Berners-Lee decided to just do the simple obvious thing that solves the problem he needed, namely, getting ahold of a resource. And that's actually an easy problem...
Life
Say no to Indo-Pak cricket. In a column titled "Against the Grain". This passage stood out:
I was in Kolkata in March this year, on the night India beat Pakistan in the World Cup. I was spending the night in a hotel on the borders of a ramshackle part of Park Circus, which was heavily populated by poor Muslims. As I made my way back to my hotel when the game in South Africa was coming to a close, the hawkers on the pavement were scooping up their wares as if a cyclone was going to hit the city soon. I foolishly asked one of them why the sudden rush to close shop. The look of anger was enough to make me cringe with shame....
Life
The workings of the corporate world provide a great way to study human psychology and sociology. Add humour to that, and you get great studies by people like Parkinson. Somewhat on the same lines, is this article explaining what really happens at company Board meetings. A hilarious take.
Sunday, Nov 23
Sci/Tech
Man Arrested Over 'Spam Rage'. This Silicon Valley programmer got so frustrated by a spamming company that he threatened to do some major physical damage.
Sci/Tech
When you combine excellent journalistic abilities with an interesting technical topic, you can get an impeccable overview of the topic. Anand Parthasarthy does it regularly in the Hindu, and today a political journalist totally outdid himself with The Free Software Option.
Life
Let's face it. Most blogs are boring. I did this, did that, saw this, ate that..spoke to blah blah..so on. And that was how this one was going..till this popped out of nowhere...Today, I had lunch with Richard Stallman...
I almost choked.
Friday, Nov 21
Sci/Tech
Interview with Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Sheer class.
You've been famously cool about Linux.
Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally. For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth...
I find Windows of absolutely no technical interest.
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
Spread the word..Linux Bangalore 2003 is very near..Dec 2, 3 and 4. A great collection of talks and seminars, including some leading lights of the Open Source World. A huge reduction in entry fee if you register online at the earliest. And of course, there's lunch, T-shirts and rock shows :) ...I hope to make it this time.
More details at Linux Bangalore 2003.
Thursday, Nov 20
Life
Sorry for the loong break..I was down with internals. Though I think I won't be updating so frequently from now on.
Life
Life
Absolutely hilarious quotes from George Bush. Here's many more of them!
Sci/Tech
New Language Features for Ease of Development in the Java 2. I particularly liked the parts about autoboxing and typesafe enum. Even static imports is a good idea..avoids some horrendous interface definitions I've seen in our Java textbook.
Autoboxing/unboxing - Eliminates the drudgery of manual conversion between primitive types (such as int) and wrapper types (such as Integer).
Static import - Lets you avoid qualifying static members with class names, without the shortcomings of the Constant Interface antipattern
And I thought all the advantages of typesafe enums deserve to be highlighted:
They provide compile-time type safety--int enums don't provide any type safety at all.
They provide a proper name space for the enumerated type--with int enums you have to prefix the constants to get any semblance of a name space.
They're robust--int enums are compiled into clients, and you have to recompile clients if you add, remove, or reorder constants.
Printed values are informative--if you print an int enum you just see a number.
Because they're objects, you can put them in collections.
Because they're essentially classes, you can add arbitrary fields and methods.
Sunday, Nov 09
Sci/Tech
Why is that developers believe that security problems are entirely the domain of admins? Can programmers do more than avoid buffer overflows? Here's some tips on Application Security. Examples in Java.
Sci/Tech
An attempt to hack the Linux kernel. Literally. The offending piece of code:
if ((options == (__WCLONE|__WALL)) && (current->uid = 0))
retval = -EINVAL;
Note the current->uid=0, instead of ==0. That would give root access.
Sci/Tech
The first release of Fedora is out.
Main features:
Graphical booting, NTPL, Prelinking enabled by default, security improvements in bind, sendmail and postfix.
Some interesting new packages:
epiphany - GNOME Web browser based on the Mozilla rendering engine
boost - Peer-reviewed portable C++ libraries
devhelp - API document browser
dovecot - IMAP/POP3 mail server
Some Packages removed:
LPRng - CUPS is default printing solution
galeon - Replaced by epiphany (Galeon 1.2.x series no longer maintained)
Kernel Stuff:
The Fedora Core 1 kernel includes new Exec-shield functionality. Exec-shield is a security-enhancing modification to the Linux kernel that makes large parts of specially-marked programs - including their stack - not executable. This can reduce the potential damage of some security holes. For some related stuff, see Read but dont execute mode
The Fedora Core 1 kernel now makes it possible to prevent the loading of kernel modules. This can be useful for system administrators wanting to ensure that only a strictly-controlled set of modules are loaded.
All details at Fedora Release Notes
World
An interview with Noam Chomsky, an intellectual giant.
Thursday, Nov 06
Life
My brother's back in town, so my access to the computer is effectively halved :(
Expect updates to drastically decrease.
Life
Deepak makes a mention of our visit to IT.com here. Too bad my mind went blank and we never got beyond banal pleasantries.
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
I'm still playing around with Network Programming. Just found this page with some promising links. That person has an extraordinary set of bookmarks. I must thank Rohit for pointing towards this site.
Sci/Tech
Just found this article and discussion on coding standards, esp. the Hungarian Notation. If you don't know what it is, there's a very funny introduction right there. But it actually got me thinking about strongly and weakly typed languages, dynamic typing, polymorphism and such. Worth a read (Warning: long. save and read offline).
Sci/Tech
More on Charles Simonyi, the inventor of Hungarian Notation. He was the chief software architect of MS Word and Excel, and a pioneer in WYSIWYG editors. Now his passion is Intentional Programming:
Simonyi is attempting to solve one of the most fundamental problems of software development, typically expressed as "making the code look like the design."
Programming today is the opposite of diamond mining," he claims. "In diamond mining you dig up a lot of dirt to find a small bit of value. With programming you start with the value, the real intention, and bury it in a bunch of dirt."'
Tuesday, Nov 04
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
A chapter from User Interface Design for Programmers. Mainly deals with:
Every time you provide an option, you're asking the user to make a decision..
Has some memorable quotes about a Windows Help Dialog:
"...is unequivocally the most moronic "wizard" dialog in the history of the Windows operating system. This dialog is so stupid that it deserves some kind of award. A whole new category of award..."
Monday, Nov 03
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
If you like reading blogs, and value your time at the same time (an oxymoron?), try Bloglines. A web based RSS Aggregator. One of the few applications that are better off web based than on your PC. Free and easy to use!
Sci/Tech
One of the much hyped "innovations" of Microsoft is XAML, to create applications, not just user interfaces, using markup languages: a pro for XAML, and here's a con, which also forays briefly into Java.
Life
Sunday, Nov 02
Sci/Tech
Life/Tech
English
An interesting article about X. (Not X Windows!). Why does XXX have all the meanings it does?
Life/Tech
Saturday, Nov 01
Sci/Tech
Reading about Computer Networks. netstat, tcpdump, and iptraf are extremely useful tools to understand the internals of TCP/IP.
Sci/Tech
Of late, there have been concerns about the security and privacy issues involved in blogging. Can your employer fire you because of something you wrote on your blog? Can potential employers look at your homepage/blog before the interview? The rate at which the Internet keeps raising such questions is amazing!
Sci/Tech
Life
Thursday, Oct 30
Sci/Tech
gcov. Basically profiles how/whether each line of your source code is being executed. Works well with gcc. Comes installed by default. I might take a more detailed look once coding for our projects starts.
Sci/Tech
Wiki is another community oriented Internet phenomenon that is acquiring momentum. Just browse to a webpage, *edit* it(!), and lo, you've changed the geography of the web! More at Wiki Design Principles and of course, an Artima interview with the inventor. By the way, he's the same guy who came up with CRC cards...remember OOSD?
Sci/Tech
Did you know that Bangalore has a .NET Users Group? And they organise periodic meets with talks from developers? *And* there's no entry free! The next meet is Friday, 31 October! See this. Just to pique your interest further, the last meet was about Longhorn, with a demo! Here is a really good FAQ about Longhorn.
Wednesday, Oct 29
Sci/Tech
It is impossible for anyone to learn the C language in its entirety. Even after using it for more than 2 years, we are frequently lost in its unfathomable depths. What started off as a deceptively simple query on the Programming List of the BLUG led me to a wonderful set of C FAQs.
By the way, the BLUG Programming List is surprisingly high quality, and it really pays off to just lurk over there. Another question, about server side socket programming with threads, led to one more site with Networking info.
Sci/Tech
The hype about Longhorn has been the greatest I've seen for any software. But a look at the material coming out of the PDC at LA seems to indicate that MS is really coming out with a high quality, innovative product. Apart from using XML related filesystem and communication technologies, Longhorn also sees Windows making huge strides in UI. See this. There's also Longhorn Blogs for periodic info. And I just got my hands on Bill Gates' speech at the conference.
Life
This is what happens when you think too much tech. Hilarious.
Tuesday, Oct 28
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
Computer Science is not a simple field anymore! A short span of 50 years or so has seen more technological changes than anyone can fully comprehend. And to be specific, gone are the days of the good old char*.
How is the string representation evolving? Why did some people never take to null-terminated strings? Where do Java, XML Parsers, the Perl language and lists fit in all this? A bird's eye view here.
Sci/Tech
Monday, Oct 27
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
Life
You are 41% geek
You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.
Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com
Sunday, Oct 26
Sci/Tech
A good history of the X Window System. Somewhat technical, but not totally. Just the way I like it :)
Sci/Tech
This Slashdot story is of great interest to me, about the new GTK File Selector!
Cricket/Tech
Just watched a fascinating National Geographic documentary on the Science of Cricket. There are some "sports scientists" in UK who put electrodes on all parts of a batsman's body and study the "biomechanics" of his batting. Following the batsman's eyes from the helmet-mounted camera was quite exciting. (Imagine if that experiment were to be conducted on Tendulkar!!) And so was the sneak peek into the Master Craftsman of the Slazenger bat factory. Did you know that winter willow is best suited to absorb shocks? For more info, see National Geographic.
Life
An acerbic take on Cookery shows on TV by an exasperated viewer. Has more khaara than necessary :)
Saturday, Oct 25
India
How many of us know about the Pakistan that's beyond the front benchers of Islamic terrorists/radicals? What are the feelings and aspirations of the Pakistan middle class/intelligentsia, our counterparts? We hardly bother to find out, but still make sweeping judgments of the country. To find out all this and more, see this brilliant article by a renowned Pakistani journalist. I honestly believe he's one of the best thinkers/writers around today. Some quotes if you are still deciding whether to read it:
"If normalization serves Indian interests alone, and shortchanges us, then we should be against normalization. If belligerence serves us better, bellicosity should be the permanent motto inscribed on our national banner."
On how Pakistan should respond to India's latest peace initiative.."The easiest thing in the world is to nitpick or say no..All the more so for two countries which have not only fed on intransigence but turned it into a subcontinental speciality, the babu's passion for red tape turned into an immutable principle of foreign policy."
India
The fact that our President is visiting Bulgaria means nothing to all of us, of course. But real journalism consists of conveying a sense of importance of an event, not just recording it for posterity. This article does a good job of it:
"Bulgaria has a population of just over seven million who are at home, and a large force of 3.5 million who are working abroad. Many families, like in India, survive because of the money their relatives send back home."
"India has now suddenly realised that Bulgaria is unexplored territory. And that its decision to open doors to all and everyone for a song could have been capitalised by India."
"Bulgaria has now pointed out to the Indian delegation that Bollywood could be encouraged to shoot its movies here. It is cheaper than Switzerland, is a picturesque country, and has the facilities that movie makers would require."
Life
Friday, Oct 24
Sci/Tech
We all know how our mailboxes get clogged with huge attachments, even though the files are something important that we ourselves requested for, and haven't gotten around to downloading. But when we are sending stuff, there's no way but to fill someone's inbox. Not everyone can run their own ftp servers, or even host a website! So is there a way out of this problem?..There appears to be..by using Tokens. Haven't tried it personally, but the idea seems interesting. Not too sure of the business model though.
Sci/Tech
Online shopping is hardly a significant issue in India. And online book shopping? Hohoho. But the dynamics of such a venture can still be of interest in a general sense. For example, what facilities can an online bookstore provide that cannot be matched by your favourite bookshop? Easier searching and access to reviews come to mind. But Amazon.com has taken this a step further: You can search for words and phrases in the entire body of the book! And read all the relevant pages online before you decide to buy it. Of course there are measures to prevent misuse of this provision. And can you believe that they had to scan hundreds of books using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) when introducing this feature?!
Sci/Tech
If you'd ever believed that Windows XP offers the ultimate user experience, think again! Apple Macs are probably years ahead. And the just released newest version of Mac OS looks all set to keep it that way. See this review. The screenshots look alluring. And trust Apple to introduce one more revolutionary UI feature: Expose.
Thursday, Oct 23
Sci/Tech
Microsoft Office 2003 is out! The main features include better integration of all the applications (using XML), two new applications - OneNotes and InfoPath - and a much improved Outlook (snapshot). The Outlook revamp seems most enticing to the home/single user, with a better layout, effective spam filtering and mail management features. But the rest can appeal only to Groupware users, who need documents to work across applications. There's also something called Self Destructive Documents, which delete themselves after a timeframe! Detailed review at PCWorld.
Sci/Tech
The Net is a confluence of a great many minds, and therefore, of ideas. It's no surprise that the same idea may be expressed by two wholly unrelated people at the same time. This blog entry about Download Accelerators happened around the same time that we had finally settled upon it as the topic for our networking project. And I got some useful information.
Sci/Tech
Another supposedly great site about Web design and standards: A List Apart. Haven't evaluated it thoroughly yet.
Life
Took part in a well organised CS and IS fest at BMS today. We maxed the prelims of the Online Treasure Hunt, but made a hilarious mess of things in the finals :)) . The enthusiasm of the organisers was infectious.
Life
Life
Tuesday, Oct 21
Sci/Tech
I'm putting this up for my future reference, and all small time Java programmers and newbies (this includes me): Store objects using the Preferences API. If your data can be expressed as simple objects, the API can be useful storage.
Sci/Tech
Life
There are few things in life as satisfying as a good book, a walk, a long chat or getting a program to work. Add music to that. The pleasures of the Internet pale in comparison.
Monday, Oct 20
Sci/Tech
Technological breakthroughs are at times a result of outrageous imagination. It surely takes a creative genius to dream up Java (and a creative plagiarist to dress up .NET?). But there are hundreds of ideas that have fallen by the wayside..here's one exciting idea in the nascent stage: It is technically possible to run some Windows drivers on foreign operating systems. And no, Wine and VmLinux are something entirely different.
Sci/Tech
There's often a strange interplay between technology and politics. Technology, esp. of the military kind, is driven by politics (..or is it the other way around?). But there can be other surprising ways in which concerns of nation states decide the course of technological developments. Try this for a sample.."A senior Microsoft executive told a federal court that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed."
Sci/Tech
The Linux hype is at fever pitch. But how is Linus like? This beautifully written article tries to find out. Half-article, half-interview, actually. (Warning: More than 5 pages long. Better save and read offline)
Sci/Tech
There are bloggers. And there are bloggers. The former just dress up the most mundane thoughts. The latter regularly reveal precious gems in a disarming way. Raymond Chen is surely the second kind. Sit back and read this. Another example of how much thought has gone into the Windows UI.
Sci/Tech
I thought of putting this up a while back. But somehow felt it was too intense, not short and snappy. Anyway, this review on Slashdot changed my mind. A classy book on everything about Unix, by one of the open source gods. Eric Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming. Available free online.
Saturday, Oct 18
Sci/Tech
Writing real world applications is a lot different from learning algorithms and data structures, or even software engineering. One of the least studied concepts in programming is error handling, with hardly any formal course covering it in sufficient detail. So when I came upon this analytical article on Exceptions and status code returns, I plunged into it. Totally worth the time. I wish I'd read it while doing my text editor though..I'd run into some of the problems that he shows how to avoid.
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
Sometimes jargon needs to be understood..not just bandied about..so here's some topical jargon clearly explained: The Worm FAQ.
Sci/Tech
Right now I'm trying to add a Comments feature to this blog, within the limited functionality provided by Geocities. Since there's no CGI support, I'm looking at JavaScript. But did you know that some blogs use sites like HaloScan that provide free hosting of comments?? I dunno how to make use of it though!
Life
A friend in the US remarked a couple of days ago that over there, sexuality is a frame of mind, not an instinct anymore. I thought that was too far-fetched, till I read this. The Church is going through torrid times!
The article brings up another aspect of religion that has always bothered me: "..many church leaders privately admitted was distracting attention from the more serious issues of poverty and disease that the church should be addressing."
Shouldn't the church/religious organisations be concerned with spiritual upliftment and philosophy, than social issues?
Friday, Oct 17
Life
Internal assessments going on in college, so couldn't put in an appearance here :(
Sci/Tech
I've begun to feel that projects which are part of the curriculum tend to get you too steeped in software design processes, that you begin to lose touch with the creative and human side of programming. I could clearly understand that while putting up this website.
What started out as vanilla HTML spread out over a couple of text files, has now evolved into a few Perl scripts, driving a back end XML document. The separation of data and presentation is well on its way!! :)
I'm using XML::XPath module of Perl (available here). I strongly recommend XPath for anyone processing XML documents, and this module for perl hackers.
Three cheers to evolutionary prototyping!
Sci/Tech
I've been looking at web design and related issues lately, and true to my style, I've discovered a blog devoted entirely to webpage development and associated issues! Very readable, trust me!
Sci/Tech
Let me just finish off this topic with this last link from About.com. Contains a list of articles on how to develop better webpages, attract more traffic etc. About.com is a quality source of info, as far as I know.
Life
Tuesday, Oct 14
Sci/Tech
Try this link first, a normal Google query about the latest Mac OS: OS X Panther discussions. And check out the first couple of results.
If you have been following my entries for the last couple of days, you'll know that Google results have been highly influenced by the cross linking in blogs, which is not always an indicator of a site's popularity. The software that powers most interlinked blogs today is called Moveable Type. And the feature of interest is TrackBack. But before you go reading those highly tech pages, there's a gentle intro in this blog entry.
Life
India
The identity crisis of second generation Indians in Western countries in only too well known, but would you ever become like this girl who won a cookery contest?: "Jyoti's proud uncle and aunt told Deccan Herald,"There is no need for you to mention Kutch, we are proper British." "
The funniest part is this: "... is hugely popular with white British audiences, but the stars, Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar, are known within the Indian community as 'coconuts' ( brown on the outside but white inside). "
Sci/Tech
How would you like to see the integration of filesystems, web search algorithms, XML and RDBMS? Yeah! there's a pattern behind all their functionalities, and this could begin to be reflected in the next Windows filesystem: Microsoft unpacks details of Longhorn storage. Don't be put off just because it's Microsoft! A no-nonsense tech article, from the old school.
Life
Regular readers of his blog, or mine, mighty have already seen this, but for the others, please check it out. A hilarious take on family trips of typical South Indian families. And if u are of one of those endangered species who can read and understand Kannada, there's much more!
Life
I try to avoid putting up smart alec quotes as they are all around you in mail forwards. But this one's good: "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."
Monday, Oct 13
Sci/Tech
This pushed its way into here. After all, which computer user can resist reading about the arrangment of letters on the keyboard?
Sci/Tech
Just finished reading a reasonably good interview with Bjarne Stroustrup. Not as technical as I expected, coming from Artima.
But some quotes still stand out:
"If you want callbacks, don't use just plain C functions. Get libc++.."
"An integer shouldn't be part of a class hierarchy.. It costs you to put it there." Java..ahem..
"I particularly dislike classes with a lot of get and set functions. That is often an indication that it shouldn't have been a class in the first place. It's just a data structure."
"What is it that makes the object a valid object?..."
"Given efficient element access a find function for searching in a vector is best provided as a non-member"
Sci/Tech
While I'm at it, let me add another note about Java/C++/C#. To be more precise, about virtual functions. It's actually from an interview with the lead architect of C#, but reads well on its own. This issue cropped up in our Java lab last week.
World
All's not well where James Bond works! MI6 is in deep trouble. "Horrors of horrors, even the name of the secret service chief, traditionally identified only as `C', is no longer a secret and, for the first time, ordinary Britons heard Sir Richard Dearlove's voice.."
Life
There's this person who entertains you with his sleight-of-hand, while you wait for your pizza to arrive at Pizza Hut. Nothing too remarkable about that...but till you read this.."He holds a master's degree in journalism and an MBA to boot" !!! I almost fainted.
Sunday, Oct 12
Sci/Tech
Google is not resting on its laurels. Though its innovative PageRank technology has been severely affected by the cross linking in blogs, it still is a pioneer in search technologies. But even I was surprised by Google Labs. Their commitment to technical excellence is so deep! Hehe..played around with Google Sets for a while.
Life
Regular readers of his blog, or mine, mighty have already seen this, but for the others, please check it out. A hilarious take on family trips of typical South Indian families. And if u are of one of those endangered species who can read and understand Kannada, there's much more!
Sci/Tech
Somehow, Microsoft seems to be figuring a lot in my blog/site. But I'm very particular to put up only objective technical material and not zealous rants. So if you are wondering what's coming in MS's new OS, you can read this.
Life
Came upon another blog today. This site is very much like mine in conception, but of course light years better in implementation. And it helps that this person passed through IIT, IIM and London Business School :)
Life
Just to assure you that this is not going to be chockful of tech links, here's a really good take on some eccentric research attempts:"The learned professor, an acoustics expert, was doing research to disprove the myth that a duck's quack had no echo. "..."Research has shown that the Greek Gods were not as handsome as they were made out to be".
Saturday, Oct 11
Sci/Tech
I almost didn't put up anything today..till i saw this. Yet another post on kernel, but a totally new aspect!
Sci/Tech
Sci/Tech
We've been studying Java for a month now, as part of university syllabus. Having had some experience in C++, I'm constantly filled with lots of doubts about every new Java feature I encounter. I'll put up my queries soon, if anyone's interested enough. But for now, here's a proposal for more readable Java. Includes collection iterators and generics (Java version of templates). Any Perl or C++ coders, please do read.
Sci/Tech
Continuing on the same note, anyone who has the need and time to learn about the C++ object model, without undue pedantry, can try this. Absolute cracker of a document, with stunning insights for the uninitiated.
Friday, Oct 10
Sci/Tech
Just checked out some of the XML and CSS stuff my friend Rohit is trying out. It's absolutely cool. Anyone planning to start their own sites should surely look at these. But the icing to the cake is probably XSLT. Dunno how they compare with Perl/PHP though.
Sci/Tech
A small note, explaining how the Linux kernel is getting ready to handle more devices. Interesting more for the way changes are implemented in Linux, than the technical content itself.
Sci/Tech
We all detest ads no end. But not this one? :). For further proof that IBM is pumping money into Linux, see this. But why do they come up with such strange URLs? What's this all-pervasive naming problem at IBM?..DB2, MVS, OS/2..so on?
Sci/Tech
Many developers who work at Microsoft have taken to blogging in a big way! And thank God they are not doling out PR stuff! See this for an example.
Cricket
We've all had our share of reading those boring sports articles, full of hyperbole. But I still dare to recommend some reflections. The writer is not your usual run-of-the-mill drone.
Wednesday, Oct 08
Sci/Tech
This came in just now..and my only reaction on reading it was ..what??!! Link
Sci/Tech
A very small and succinct blog entry about RSA and Primality testing.
Sci/Tech
The world has a strange way of moving ahead before you know what's happened. It's almost always the case that we perceive events when they are in their mid course, and end up with half-baked knowledge. Very rarely does the mass media provide suitable background for events..This is an exception. Short and insightful.
Sci/Tech
Hashing in Ancient India!! Another neat blog entry. Need I say more?
Sci/Tech
Tuesday, Oct 07
Sci/Tech
Close on the heels of www.free2host.net, I came across www.oneandone.com. It sounds too good to be true! Lots of free space, with a free promotional offer. From a well funded US company. So I went ahead and filled out some data..only to realise it was open only to residents of US and Canada! But, as someone said, "On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog"..So I tried to give an American address..hehe..how difficult is this?:
Address: Beverly Hills
Zip Code: 90210
City: Los Angeles
Hm..but somehow I made a mistake in one of the fields, and the form kept throwing up some error every time I posted. After a few tries I gave up in disgust.
Sci/Tech
How would you like to check your Yahoo! Mail offline?? without paying any 1104 of course!
Well, check out yahoopops. I checked out the homepage, forums and the FAQ, seems like an application which works. But then I pressed the downloads page for RedHat-8.0 and above..poof, 5.6MB! Too lazy to do this late in the night! Some other day :)
Sci/Tech
The next time you whip up a GUI or rest assured that there's VB, Qt and Glade, remind yourself of this. Maybe the best things in life are free, or cheap, at least!
India
How much influence can a corporate giant wield over the lives of people who live in the vicinity of one of its installations? That too, in an alien country? What is more important..political muscle, or deep pockets? I was pondering these questions after I read this. Reminded me of the insidious growth of the East India Company.
Monday, Oct 06
Life
Another sem, another round of pretty unpredictable VTU results. Joy for many, trauma for some. When will this farce end?? For the record, I got 72% in my 6th sem exams. And our university just doesn't know how to use the Net to make life easier :(
Sci/Tech
If you are reading this, I'm really surprised. If I'm writing this, that's also against all odds. Before u decide I'm raving mad..see this
Sci/Tech
First it was IT, then medical transcription, then all kinds of Business Processes. The latest jobs to be outsourced to our country are surprisingly, business research and market analysis!..."Indian talent will play major role in preparing background research for senior US securities analysts"..a small report
World/Tech
Yesterday, I stumbled upon this really amazing..mm..let's call it movement. It is so amazing that u just have to take a look at it! I won't say anything more. This is the link.
Sunday, Oct 05
Sci/Tech
I've been looking around for free webhosts that provide CGI support. And a kind techie informed me about www.free2host.net. It's free, with PHP/MySQL support, but I think they demand too much from u..u _have_ to comment on topics, submit code, write tutorials etc. to hang about there! I'm not sure if I can do all that for a long period. In their case, the road to hell is paved with good intentions!:)
Sci/Tech
Have u ever wondered why Linux boots up the way it does?..The informative startup messages are useful, but why should it be so difficult to configure the startup? How many of u really like ntsysv? And its KDE equivalent? Is it really necessary to learn all this runlevel stuff? And the most annoying part, why does it differ from one distribution to another?
Most importantly, is the bootup fast? Can it be speeded up without other compromises?
Sci/Tech
On a related note, many lusers would just wish that this paper becomes a reality!! But then again, what makes u think that the people at Microsoft didn't think of it 10 years ago?
Friday, Oct 03
Sci/Tech
There's more to A4 and A3 than u imagined!..a small piece..got me thinking about technical specifications.
Sci/Tech
Symantec has released a comprehensive virus report (freely downloadable at http://www.symantec.com/presscenter).."It also demolishes one popular misconception: that Linux-based computers are safe from viruses. Not so, finds Symantec: the company has detected some Linux viruses and says the open system software will be increasingly targeted in the months to come"..."the main tool in this high tech battle is a theory of mathematics called "Probability Inference" first formulated in 1760 by an English preacher called Thomas Bayes."...the funda behind Bayesian spam filters, i think.
Sci/Tech
A small select list of great software, recommended by a techie I admire..."I make it a point to install almost all of them in machines I control"
Sci/Tech
The .NET for Linux/Unix Project (Mono) seems to be going on surprisingly well..despite my earlier cynicism. See this blog entry.."Congratulations to Miguel and all the Mono developers on the release of Mono 0.28..Working with Miguel and his team was a really positive experience". And the announcement on the Mono website.
Sci/Tech
A Sanskrit institute in Melkote strives to adapt the language to IT. The institute is working towards Natural Language Processing in Indian Languages. "Sanskrit is one of the most logical and scientific languages. We can teach the computer to execute what we speak into Sanskrit," explains Prof Thathachar as he clicks the mouse to demonstrate his 'Sanskrit-Speaking Computer'... The library at the institute has books on Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy along with computer magazines like Chip, PC Quest and Data Quest, among others.
India
It is said that journalism is the first draft of history..this report shows why..a small bit of reportage during Karnataka state's formation..."(The Chief Minister) deprecated the tendency on the part of some people to lose their heads over linguistic patriotism and warned them "that it will ruin our country." " ...has anything changed?
India
Protesting for social causes...read this for sheer entertainment value!
Link
Thursday, Oct 02
Sci/Tech
How PC sizes are going down...somewhat dry article.
India
"saraswati vandana' made mandatory at nbt book fairs"...this made me think.what is indian culture?..is there even such a thing?
India
"China it appears never ceases to quench the appetite of the European Union countries for more trade and investment...many European firms are outsourcing their auditing, company performance analyses and equity evaluation work to Indian firms as India has an added advantage of English language and growing proficiency in areas of information technology. China is miles away in these sectors but is fast catching up, according to analysts".
Link
India
World
Classical Indian corruption..in France!
Link
World
How Iran is dealing with modern/western influences...some lessons here for us.."The ground reality is that one generation has authority while another (constituting the overwhelming majority) has demands. These have to be reconciled.".."There is a realisation that the internal and the external are intertwined and must move together in some measure.".."Society, it is asserted, is in a transition and searching for ways to reconcile tradition and modernity, God and Man."