To Panchgani

I was at Panchgani for the weekend. And I must say: what a weekend it was! How do you feel when wind is so strong that you almost get blown off, literally? Or what if you are thouroughly drenched and all you can see is beautiful cliffs. Or what if rain falls like needles into your face, not from top but horizontally, and sometimes even from below! That's Panchgani.

At one spot, called Table-top, we were on the top of a cliff and the rain was heavy. The weather was so foggy that visibility was limited to a few metres only. Off an on this would clear up so that we could see down the cliff. We were in the arms of nature, literally. Now, to reach the edge of the cliff was not a mean job. At least not as easy as we thought it would be. We walked and walked and walked while it poured and it poured and it poured and the wind blew and blew and blew and we shivered and shivered and shivered. The edge seemed like a mirage since it distanced itself every time. We finally made it, and it was a feat. One slip, and that would be the end of any of us. One step at the wrong place, and that would be the last step on earth! The feeling was exotic.

Near Panchgani is the place called Mahabaleshwar. Now, this place has a beautiful waterfall (actually, it has many, but all others are closed at this time of the year). Every now and then the fog would clear up so that we could see down till the brook forming out from where the water fell. The greenery was relaxing -- the mind was all cleared up, not taxing thoughts, nothing. We went till the source of the waterfall. Some of us paddled into it.

The next stop was Pratapgarh fort built by Shivaji. The severe weather rendered it interesting. The serpentine roads leading to the fort illustrated nature's face at its full glory. There were several small waterfalls along this road.

If only all weekends could be as refreshing as this.

Server Room Tragedy #9

The situation:
IIIT site has been inaccessible from outside IIIT for the last two days. Karteek Alahari mailed me from Oxford to inform this.

The tragedy:
The tragedy is not that the site is down for two days. The tragedy is that server room doesn't know that it's down.

Qs:
1. You mentioned about meeting the director. What happened?
Ans: Yes, some of us met the director yesterday. We have scheduled an at meeting after the convocation (convocation time is hectic).

My Home on Wikimapia

I am able to view my house on WikiMapia. In the iamge below, the rectangle showing "Prem-Villa" is my house. Since it is Patna, the neighbourhood is quite green yet. I always had a conviction that my house bisected the straight line joining Patna Jail with Patna Airport (both visible from my house). I was right.





Feels like I should change this post's title to: "My Home as I See It"

Server Room Tragedy #8

The situation, the tragedies:
IIIT changes ISP. Internet deteriorates, and is unpredictable (my opinion). The transition of public IP addresses weren't carried out smoothly -- misconfiguration. The research server managed to get itself listed into a number of DNS blacklists. Mails from the research server were being bounced back or treated as spam (I tested with gmail). The DNS configuration file serial ids were unchaged, confusing the DNS caches for our IPs all over the world. I fixed some of these.

IIIT is now dependent on a single ISP. Alternate mail routing is impaired. No round-the-clock incoming mails now if this ISP is down. The internet gateway server is removed. It's firewall had been placed with the intention of protecting the webservers of several research labs since they don't have firewalls of their own.

Paresh tells me that he's unable to use spamassassin for filtering spams. Some configuration files are inaccessible. He mailed the sysadmin staff a week ago and now has given up hopes for a response.

Visesh tells me that his mails to some universities had bounced. They treated IIIT mails as spams. He has switched to gmail now.


The cookie crumbles:
Things are not right. This is not how IIIT's system administration ought to function. I have three words to describe it -- cluelessness, damange-control and irresponsibility. If student sysadmins are unnecessary, why does Mr XYZ come running to me for every silly but critical problem? I can continue "helping" but what after 1 month when I'm gone? There has to be a solution before a major disaster breaks out.

I'm going to meet the director. I've sought an appointment. Others (particularly labcoms) are welcome to join me.

Qs:
1. When are you going to talk to the director?
Ans: As soon as I get the appointment.

2. What are you going to suggest to the director?
Ans: I think that the server room cannot function without a student sysadmins. Not having student sysadmins is suicidal. Repeat after me. Not having student sysadmins is suicidal.

3. Do you think you are crazy?
Ans: Yes. Do you think so too? :)

Frailty, thy name is Manmohan

"Frailty, thy name is woman," mused Shakespeare.

In the present context, Shakespeare would like to reconsider the phrase to something like the title of this post. Clearly, his Cambridge degree and Oxford doctorate could not evoke in him enough perseverance and will power. How else can the most educated prime minister in the history of India agree to life-changing decisions like 50% reservations, abandon disinvestments, office-of-profit bill, etc. All these when India's missile man is the president. Leave alone the constitution, how did the PM's conscience permit him these? As the only PM who could never make it to the Lok Sabha, is it difficult to see him as a puppet, intentionally planted to take orders from the real boss? Is India stupid? Maybe. Is the majority a fool? Definitely.

People, crowd, mass, the population just see the end-result, not the complete equation. One can blame terrorist organizations for the 7/11 Mumbai blasts. But does India have enough will power anyway to avert these? Is it impossible that the blasts were a signal from some disgruntled youths who wanted to make a point -- that no good can come from reservations? The PM may express solidarity by saluting the Mumbaikars for quick recovery from the blasts. But that's nearly not what a PM must be doing. While the intelligence tries to figure out the WHO for the blasts, the PM should think about the WHY for the blasts.

Someone would say -- "terrorists want to disunite India". What a shame! Why, in god's name, would they want to do that? What is the motivation? What'll they get? It's stupid to even think on these lines. They cannot be objective-less. They have to have a real RHS for the equation with 7/11 blasts as the LHS -- not something as placebo as "disunite" India. It just doesn't make sense. One doesn't get up one morning and start bombing just to disunite India. But if one's livelihood is snatched away -- yes. So, the real culprits are not the terrorists, but someone else, most of whom move about scott free. With ministers like these, who needs terrorists?

my news shoes

My first paper

My research paper titled "Scalable, Tiled Display Wall for Graphics using a Coordinated Cluster of PCs" made it as a poster paper to Pacific Graphics, 2006. The conference will be held on 11-13th October.

The paper discusses IIIT's efforts in building Tiled Display Walls using off-the-shelf inexpensive PCs. A 4x4 tiled display setup showing Fatehpur Sikri shown below.

Server Room Tragedy #7

The Situation:
If you have followed Tragedy #6, I mentioned about all students receiving over 20 mails from a virus-infected PC. Even if you didn't follow Tragedy #6, you must've noted those mails in your mailbox -- yeah, the ones where viruses write poems too.

This time, the same got repeated, with the faculty. All the faculty were greeted with not 20, but over 60 such mails.

The Tragedy:
The server room has already gotten through the situation. The nature, cause and solution is the same. Is it that difficult to learn at least from old mistakes?

--
Qs:
1). You are reporting a tragedy after a long time. What happened?
Ans: I'm not frequenting the server room these days.

Server Room Tragedy #6

The Situation:
Today students received numerous funny mails (seemingly) from a faculty account.

4 times -   [Students] Fw:
1 times -   [Students] Fwd: Crazy illegal Sex!
2 times -   [Students] Fwd: image.jpg
5 times -   [Students] Fwd: Photo
2 times -   [[Students] Fw: Funny :)
4 times -   [Students] Fw: Sexy
2 times -   [Students] Re:
1 time -    [Students] Word file

This series went on till the evening.

The Tragedy:
Mr Someone-in-the-server-room was supposed to properly install the virus & mail scanner which had been stopped in damage-control mode yesterday. By the evening, due to some reason, the imap service too had stopped working. Obliviious of the solution, Mr Somebody rebooted the students server and left for the day (the server hadn't booted back yet). Even after the server booted back, the imap service hadn't got back.

--
Qs
1. Hey, but imap on 200 is working now.
Ans: Yup, I switched it on. I myself use imap.

Google's Hiring Strategy

I found this reference to Google's hiring strategy. Google relies on the Lake Wobegon Strategy, which says only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees. An analysis of the simulation over time, using this strategy shows how good it is (the blue line). An alternative strategy (popular in the dot-com boom period) is to justify a hire by saying "this candidate is clearly better than at least one of our current employees." -- red line. The orange line corresponds to the no hiring manager strategy, in use by Google.

Server Room Tragedy #5

The tragedy:
Mail problem: Mails getting delayed.

This tragedy hasn't finished -- it's still ongoing. One fine day, Mr Someone installed MailScanner on 200, and didn't care to make sure that everything was ok. Turns out, it wasn't. Mails started getting delayed, first minutes, then hours. Mailscanner isn't processing the mails properly and they're getting delivered only when it times-out. Mr Someone has to solve the problem, with the help of the new server room staff. In damage-control mode, he came running to me. I relayed some of the processing to another server. Mailscanner is switched off right now until he fixes the problem (I'm not going to fix it). No spam-checks, virus checks till then.

Update:
My mails were getting delayed. So I corrected some probs just so that they get delivered on time. I've informed Mr Someone what else needs to be done. The rest of the fixing (virus checks, spam checks) remains.

++Update (June 9)
MailScanner's virus and spam check probs are fixed now. Oh, that's evident isn't it. You didn't get "Fw: Photo" kind of mails in the evening.

Bihar on a devel track

It has been six months since RJD was kicked out of power in Bihar and a new governement was sworn in. Nitish Kumar is the last hope of Bihar, they say. I had been to Patna for a fortnight this month. For a man facing the task not of mismanagement but of complete absence of governance, Nitish Kumar, I feel, has been quite successful. Phrases like "development", "investment", "production", which I did not hear about Bihar ever since I gained consciousness, are being discussed and debated. Yes, it cannot happen at the flick of a switch. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it'll take time before things really start getting visible. All that's required is a will, which sparks determination in more people. The rest, as they say, is details, and will follow.

I perceived a saner general environment in Patna. I could see highways being widened, made and repaired. Several of the hooligans who used to kill time on every other nukkar were missing. A long long way to go still, before people can recall that Nalanda University, once a seat of learning in India, was in Bihar.

Server Room Tragedy #4

The Situation:
It is common knowledge that the internet had been sulking for quite some time from the start of this summer vacation. Refer the graph. Note the unduly high upload rate beginning the month of May.

The Tragedy:
Even a slug-head should realize that an upload rate of 3 Mbps is preposterous for IIIT. When I returned back from my vacation, I noted problems with the firewall configuration at the proxy server, and fixed this. The net has gotten better now.

FAQ:
1. You have resigned. Why did you bother?
Ans: For the simple reason that I need the internet.

2. Are you going to raise all these tragedies with the CRC, or the Director?
Ans: Yes. But not yet. Let the cookie crubmle.

Server Room Tragedy #3

The Situation:
U K Visesh goes to the Server Room to get his IP unlisted from the IP Black list. He mentions his IP to a new guy there.

The Tragedy:
The new guy ponders for a while, then shakes his head, goes to the proxy server, and types: "unblock <IP>". But it instaneously results in a command not found. The new guy, entirely oblivious of it, replies -- Yup, done.

What the hell! This guy U K Visesh is in his fifth year at IIIT, and "command not found" is what is being shown to him. Too aghast to speak any further, Visesh silently returns back.

Server Room Tragedy #2

A few months ago:
We realized that the proxy server's primary hard-disk was going bad. It was reporting errors in several sectors. We knew it would go down very soon. The Server Room staff were duly informed and we also acquired another system as a backup. This system was setup as a fallback proxy server

A few days ago:
Mr XYZ, a server room staff, reinstalls the fallback proxy server with FC5. All the configuration settings are gone

A few hours ago:
Proxy goes down. You guessed it right -- the hard disk crashed. With cries of SOS, the two new staff members rushed to us. Then started the damage control again. The proxy server won't boot. Need FC2 1st CD. And I was nuts to expect the Server Room to have one. Had to burn one (dig a well when it's fire). But it won't solve the hard disk problem -- hard disk problems can be hard, remember!

Anyways, we looked at the fallback system -- it had a brand new FC5 installed, smiling shamelessly, unconfigured. With nothing else to do, we start configuring this system. It took a lot of time before the basic services got working and the internet came back (thank god the backup server hasn't been tampered with yet).

svn recovery

What do you do when you have a submission in a few hours, and your svn starts reporting something like:

svn: Unable to open an ra_local session to URL
svn: Unable to open repository 'file:///svn/gswall/trunk/Client'
svn: Berkeley DB error while opening environment for filesystem /svn/gswall/db:
DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
svn: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery

To make matters worse, you recollect that the last non-svn backup is a bit too old, and you start blaming yourself for keeping all the blank DVDs unused.
Well, luckily (and thank God for it) there is:

svnadmin recover /path/to/svn

This did something to the Berkeley DB, and the prob fixed. I was almost dead.

Server Room Tragedy: #1

Mon:
A TA informs the Server Room about a lab exam to be conducted on Wed morning. He asks for accounts for 100 students.

Tue:
Mr JP, the one who had been informed on Mon, forwarded, as is his custom, the work to one of the new staffs. He asked him to create the accounts MANUALLY. 100 accounts manually -- it took a whole day. He does it. But the TA is not informed. The TA was left to guess the system IP, the 100 user names, and the 100 passwords. Besides, the server room is clueless about the whether the teaching lab (the exam spot) is intact and working or not.

Wed: (Lab Exam day)
The TA inquires in the Server Room at 9:00. The exam was at 9:30. Only Mr Madhu is present (he wasn't there in this loop). Dr Anoop would be angry if things don't work out. Oblivious, he begins the damage-control mode, the only mode in which the Server Room ever works, whenever that is. A machine is handed over to the TA and he is asked then to create accounts, etc. Mr Madhu finds a script that was used earlier for this job, and the TA then creates the account, all accounts on the same system. Naturally, no quota, process limits, mem limits, etc were placed. The server froze several times during the exam.

Points worth nothing:
The server room, the place supposed to be the mecca of technical efficacy, creates 100 accounts manually. And the TA isn't even informed.
At the last moment, the TA is handed the server and is expected to feel at ease with it -- i.e. he is asked to manage the needful.

--
Expected Questions / FAQs

1. What's the hue-cry? What's your point?
Ans: Simple. The server room is not in a position to manage itself. Doing away with new student sysadmins is suicidal.

2. When do you expect the Server Room staff to get efficient?
Ans: Never

3. Why did you title this post as #1?
Ans: Things like this is just the beginning. More such exemplary activities happen every day. I'll post the next one as #2.

4. Such examples are called case-studies. I took SE, so I know.
Ans: I don't care what it is called. I took SE, but still I don't know, and happily so.

It rained and wow!

It rained yesterday evening, and wow what a rain it was -- relinquishing Hyderabad from the painful sun. If you were out at that time, you would have seen how quickly everything happened. I was. Not 5 minutes ago I was telling Visesh that if it continued thus, it was going to be a painfully hot summer, and as if God(?) was listening, he threw open the skies. Within 5 minutes, the stoic, suffocating air around was replaced with soothing, swift breeze. It was dark and powercut accompanied. At a point, we were standing in Gachibowli, waiting for auto, as it poured. We were drenched. The only light around was that from the intermittent lightning, but it was frequent.

By the time we reached the Hostel, the water accumulated in front of the OBH had made impossible the corssing without getting wetter. I think they should arrange for boats near the entrance. Oh, the times when rains meant paper-boats. I don't even remember the last time I made a paper-boat. We don't do much with paper these days anyway. Felt like dancing in the rain.

A Trip to Microsoft Campus

I just returned from a (casual/informal) trip to the Hyd M$ Campus. Thanks to Bothra for playing a wonderful host.

The look and feel was good. Excellent, in fact. Transparent glasses throughout. In the evening, you can actually see people working insde, from the side galleries. I wonder if that makes one conscious while working. I mean, sort out a couple of issues and you could be pictured all day long from satellites!

We (smr, parry, bansi & I) tried our hands at FuΒball (pronounced as fooz-ball) -- first time. FuΒball is nice. I like it. Can we have one in IIIT? They shouldn't be expensive, are they? But a lot of fun they are for sure. The game was exciting. We were on even until Parry made the winning move.

The chairs in the outside lounge appeared cute. Red petal-shaped ones, blue heart shaped ones. I expected the heart-shaped ones to be red, though.

The running water fountain in a setting of rocks outside the building was good. I like water bodies, so I was bound to like this.

Right to Disownment

Ever since birth, we have been carrying the load of the constitution of India. Heavy words like democracy, liberty, freedom, equality(??) are no more than crap-on-the-head. Just because I was born in part of the globe called India, it was assumed that I would be happy to comply with any and every law the founding fathers of the constitution chose to pen down. But this assumption is flawed. I don't want any of these heavy-weight words. Why should I pay taxes when I know that it will go to satiate the govt's whims and fancies. There should, therefore, be a way by which I can disown the govt, the constitution, and everything related. I propose the Right to Disownment.

Every citizen should have the right to disown the govt of that state. This frees him of any taxes, and also liberates the govt of any responsibility/obligation towards the individual. This balances the equation between the govt's performance and citizens' obligations.

• The govt be like any corporate entity -- merit-based. You perform, I subscribe to you. You don't perform, I disown you.
  
• I won't pay VAT, and the govt won't be obliged to resolve consumer-products related litigations for me.
• I won't pay road-tax, and the govt won't be obliged to make roads for me. I agree to pay a tax every time I use a maintained road.
• I won't pay the education cess, and the govt shouldn't feel obliged to provide education at the primary and other levels for me. The govt shouldn't bother to create reservations, etc for me. I would be more than happy.
• I won't pay the income tax, and I won't expect the govt to interfere with the finance of the country. Everyone would be content.

Google MV's pics

Follow this link to see some (supposedly spy) photos of Google's office at Mountain View, CA.

The sad MHRD

The Ministry of Human Resources of the Govt of India is a sad entity. While most of the limelight is nearly always taken by the other more-profilic ministries of Defence, Finance & Home, MHRD has lately tried all tantrums to exhibit its existence. What else can explain the sudden urge by MHRD to raise the reservation to unprecendented levels so that one in every two students is an undeserving one? Who wants it? I don't think even the OBC's like this. They'll forever be tagged as the one-who-did-not-deserve.

If the ruling goes by, I have a few more suggestions to make for the upliftment of the so-called backward classes (BC).

• 49.5% of the width of any and every road be reserved for BCs. No one else can traverse on them.
• 49.5% of all public toilets in India be reserved for BCs. They should be FREE (as in free beer) too.
• Out of every 100 times Arjun Singh's wife/daughter has sex, 49.5% of them should be with BC men.
• 49.5% of Arjun Singh's balls be castrated and donated to BCs.
  
• For every book which anyone buys, he should tear 49.5% pages and donate it to a BC guy.
• 49.5% of all land be donated to BCs.
• Everyone should donate 49.5% of his income to BC people.
• 49.5% of India's GDP be donated to BCs.
• 49.5% of oxygen in the atmosphere be reserved for BCs.
• 49.5% of all sea-beaches be reserved for BCs.
• .. and so on. 49.5% is the (magic) key figure.

Needless to say, the BCs should not be required any payment, merit, etc for the above favours.

Mr Arjun Singh, you are an unhappy wretch. The more I think of you, the more I love the pigs in my neighbourhood.

My fourth job offer

I got my 4th job offer on 16th. This time it's Google, Hyderabad. This concludes the Google honeymoon which started on Dec 6th last year and lasted for 101 days. The process involved 9 interviews (2 on phone, 5 in Bangalore and 2 in Hyderabad), numerous mails and a similar no of phone calls, and fetched me my first air-trip (to and fro Bangalore in Jet airways) and 2 Google T-shirts.

Interview 1 - Interview 8:
Algorithms algorithms algorithms algorithms.
Each interview involved 2-3 questions and would last for about 1 hr.

Interview 9:
It can't really be called an interview. The only question I was asked was the meaning of my name, which, for natural reasons, wasn't very difficult to answer. The rest of the time was spent in me asking questions while my interviewer stood near the board explaining me things. He explained me a lot of things related to Google, the policies, the interviewing process, etc. He explained me Google's 80-20 funda, by which a person is given 20% (i.e. 1 day per week) free time to work on anything. This one day gives a person the chance to develop something very useful and interesting. The end-product can be recommended in the review process (which takes place every 6 months) and might lead to promotion and other incentives. Many of Google's flagships product have emerged from this 20% time. Ex: Orkut, Adsense, Google News.

Some excerpts from Interview 9:
Me: This is my 9th interview. What does this mean?
Ans: Nothing. A person is interviewed till as long as the deciding committee feels that the candidate hasn't been tested in all aspects.

Me: Should I expect more interviews?
Ans: Not very likely. 9 interviews is kind of enough for a fresher. I had 13 interviews.

Me: How many people are there at Google, Hyderabad.
Ans: There are 300 people, but only 20 engineers. The rest are people in advertising, marketing, art, design, etc, etc, etc.

Me: What is SDE, SET, SQA, etc.
Ans: These are names given to positions. SDE -- Software Devel Engineer, SET -- Software Engineer in Test, SQA -- Software Quality Assurance. When a person joins Google, he's just assigned to one of these based on some heuristics during the interviewing process. The real allocation is done 6 months later. Google doesn't do the dirty kind of testing.. the ones like black-box testing, monkey testing -- these are outsourced.

In essence, the motive of the interview was to convince me that Hyderabad does exciting technical work contrary to the popular notion associated with the word test. He was successful.

Getting direct rendering on MSI Xtreme with ATI Radeon Xpress 200

Configuration:
MSI Xtreme motherboard x86_64, 512 MB RAM (with 64 M shared)
ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series integrated on-board graphics

Problem: DRI not enabled with ATI drivers on Linux. Actually, after installing the rpm available from ATI's site, glxgears' performance drops. What runs at 400 FPS with vesa drivers, runs at 200 FPS with ATI's drivers (fglrx).

Solution: The kernel module wasn't getting compiled properly. ATI released new drivers on 8th, March. But that wasn't enough. It required some tweaking.
I used to get a missing <asm/ioctl32.h> error. There's no <asm/ioctl32.h> on my Fedora Core 4 (FC4-x86_64)
Replacing all such occurences with <linux/ioctl32.h> works.

Essentially:

• cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod

• Replace all occurrences of <asm/ioctl32.h> with <linux/ioctl32.h>

• sh make.sh (this should succeed. It should at least make fglrx.ko)
• cd ..
• sh make_install.sh

Besides, I need the fglrx64 rpm installed. The rpm released on 8th March didn't work for me. This one did.
So, finally I have direct rendering (confirmed with: glxinfo | grep direct) on FC4-x86_64. glxgears reports 733 FPS.

R & D Showcase '06: Display Wall

The R & D Showcase ended; a lot of fanfare, but the industry was uninterested (stupid Bush!). If the activity observed in the academic building is any criteria, it was succesful -- never before had I seen such activity going on in the main building. So many people moving around systems, tables, posters, and other people.

Display Wall
The Display Wall was unprecedented this time. The 3x4 matrix utilized 12 systems. The combined setup with a 6.25 megapixel resolution, 8.704 GB RAM, 1 TB storage and 36.2 GHz of processing power was cooled in a separate room (#215). 11 of the 12 systems used had the same config as the ones in lab-5, and the ATI graphics drivers were unusable in Linux (shame shame ATI).

Sincere thanks to Parry and Tarun for installing Fedora on all the systems, SMR for helping throughout thereafter, and Vardhman for the pics.

Some common questions asked about Display Wall:
Q1: What are you doing apart from just cutting an image and displaying on those systems?
Ans: Those are not images. They are rendered from a 3D model. The model has 13 Million triangles, and is a bit too heavy for even the most serious graphics cards.

Q2: Why not use a projector instead?
Ans: A display wall is different from just projecting using a projector. Projecting a display merely increases the scale, not the resolution. And if you sit near to a projected display, you'll start observing blocks. However, in the case of the display wall, the combined resolution is far greater than that of a single system. You can of course replace each monitor with a projector, and the total resolution is herculean.

Q3: What's the front-end and back-end?
Ans: I don't know, and I don't care.

Google Google everywhere

Google did this. Google did that. Google started this service. Google started that. Google reintroduced this, and in style! Google has become the order of the day. If you read Slashdot, you'll realize that Google is not covered once every day, but about once every few hours. These people are as happening as their tools are awesome, as in too good to be true. With every product they come up with, it's closer to their objective of Organizing the world's information, in line their fundamental Do No Evil ideology. When I had been to Google's Bangalore office, a noteworthy point in a "Google's Truth" board hung on the cafetaria wall said: Success need not necessarily come through evil.

With so much attention focussed on a single organization, Google has raised the eyebrows of all the evildoers. All their efforts are directed to demolish this leviathon. Will the Google magic stay? Or it's just an ephemeral dream? In which case I'd rather not wake up. Therefore, I hope Google remains unvanquished with their "Do no Evil" ideology. Touchwood.

World vs. Blog World

There's a striking similarity in the ways the blogging society is evolving with the worldly society of yesteryears. Essentially, there's a lot of parallelism between worldly societies and blogging-societies -- both appear to have similar traits.

For instance, in a worldly society, some people talk while others listen. In the cyber society bloggers write while others read -- communication.
In a worldly society, people respond to talks, ask questions, volunteer comments. Likewise, in the cyber society, readers post comments to blogs, ask questions, volunteer suggestions, etc. People respond similarly in both worlds. Worldly society or cyber society, if taunted, one feels bad; if challenged, one feels charged; if accused, one feels hurt; if congratulated, one feels happy.

When the no of guests visiting you become large, one hires assistants (secretaries, PAs). Likewise, when the no of posts and comments becomes unmanageable, you resort to RSS feeds, and blogreaders.

Stepping further, in worldy societies, we have chaos when everyone starts shouting at the same time, mostly when their speech doesn't make sense. In the cyber society, a similar confusion results from a cluster of unconnected, senseless posts -- sum total 'zero'.

Therefore, when someone calls me unworldly, I don't exactly acquiesce. I'm worldly in my cyber-sense. I ain't social. I'm cyber-social. I'm blog-social. So what if I don't visit others' places, can't respond energetically while talking face to face? I visit others' blogs and can comment. That's cyber-expression. I'm cyber-worldly.

Sending mails with php

PHP has this mail() function to send mails. However, it's more than
plain vanilla to use it to send mails, esp if you don't have a fully
qualified domain name (FQDN), i.e. all systems on the LAN. Of course you
could use network/socket functions to connnect to the smtp port of your
mail server, but below I describe something simpler.

1. Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.cf to add your relay server:
You should have a line beginning with "DS"
Append to it your mail server.
DSmail.iiit.ac.in

2. Start sendmail

3. Use the mail() function, as is.

Note: Of course, this works only if the mail server allows you as a
relay host. i.e. your system must be trusted. All systems on the LAN,
generally, are.

Fed up with windows.. for the Nth time

Today, I got fed up with windows, for the N-th time again. I wished to
get the Volume License keys for WinServer 2003 (IIIT has a paid MSDN
subscription). I have the username/passwd and I know it's available on
their site. But all that I get after logging in to the msdn subscription
page are advertisements to their products, features-list, and junk. As
if we paid for the subscriptions just to view their ads. There's a pile
of junk CDs (of softwares, apps, everything from M$... all legal)
available in the server room. They gather dust.

I roamed around on their site, and I landed to all places except where I
could possibly find anything useful. Junk Junk Junk everywhere. And
their ads at other places. Going to a crack-page and getting a key
appears quicker. I fail to realize how people can tolerate such stuff
from M$ after all the money that they pay.

Movie: Home Delivery

I saw "Home Delivery". I feel shamefully sorry for that. If the director's old father was kidnapped, his mother was about to be hanged, his poor sister was about to be raped and his wife and children were about to be thrown into bubbling acid, the plight of the director forcing him to make such a "movie" can be understood. Not otherwise

The effort, a confused mixture of all possible genres, is comparable to a retard who discovers a box of colors for the first time and overturns each and every color on his first drawing.

(liftoff from my yesterday's diary entry)

When Indian Politicians start blogging

At some places, politicians have taken to blogging. Makes me imagine how it'd be if some of our Indian politicians take to blogging. Sure, some of them will have to be introduced to keyboards, and some will need to be taught to recognize ABCD.. but, oh, don't stray into details. Let's try to see through the mind's eye how it'd all be:

I'm sure AB Vajpayee would     leave lots         of white         space         between *sentences*             to compensate             for the                     temporal latency             in his speech. L K Advani would have tonnes of Hinduism-propaganda speeches on his blog, but he'd be careful enough to slip in praises for Jinnah, in one corner. The entire RSS *workforce* would get angry and bombard his blog with spam-ic comments, but he'll still continue to be at the top (it's adsense, you see). Sonia Gandhi would write in Italian, but we wouldn't have understood any of her anyway had she written in plain English. The rest of the Gandhi dynasty (Rahul, and siblings) will post flattering comments at their dear mummy's words of wisdom. Manmohan Singh would have his *own* blog (at the request of Sonia), but most of his posts would be symlinks to Sonia's. Yes, I know, he's intelligent. That's why I said *most*. The remaining rest would have some intelligible junk on economy, gathering flies, as the CPI would force him to keep them offline (the CPI don't blog -- they can't actually, it's a bit too revolutionary for them to digest). Who else.. ah... how can I forget Lalu! He'd have his blogpage on a Yadav's server, with free internet from a Muslim ISP. The wallpaper would be adorned with cowdung, and his posts would consist primarily of bullsh*t. The domain-name would be registered in the name of Rabri (yeah, for name-sake only). In cooperation with Congress, he'd enforce a 40% reservation for OBCs for posting comments on his blogpage.

There'd be some nice blogs too. Blogs of youngsters like Arun Jaitley, Chidambaram, Mahajan would make sense. Uma Bharti's blog would be in Saffron fonts but she'd be confused with supporting the posts of BJP or her esteemed Guruji. She'd keep switching between the two, until at one time the BJP kick her out permanently from their blog-circle.

In essence, our politicians will be a lot more interesting and little less pathetic, if they take to blogging. And not to mention, WE, the people of India, would have at least some say on their posts (thru comments, that is).

My phone too is being tapped

First it was Amar Singh who complained about his phone lines being tapped by Congress. Down south, Jayalalitha joined in support with similar grievances. Chandrababu Naidu too acquisced but insisted that he'd join the fray totally only when he had proof. L K Advani too had a gut-feeling that his phones were being tapped and that he suspected it was Congress. After so much attention-tapping, I thought I can also garner some share of the pie. I too have a gut feeling that my phone is being tapped -- so what if I don't have a phone! It doesn't really matter, does it? It's blame blame game; and I'd too like to blame it on Congress. Come CBI, get to action, start hunting for the culprit. :)

Bihar beckons

"Bihar Beckons" -- This was the title of a full-page advertisement in The Economic Times inviting investments in Bihar on the occasion of the Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas! Ever since I gained consciousness, this is the first time terms like investment, development, GDP, etc are beginning to be talked about my infamous home-place, Bihar. Nitish Kumar, the new chief minister, sure showed a lot of hope to re glorify the lost prestige of Bihar during this meet of over 1000 NRIs. If these efforts have their way, and I hope they do, Bihar too would be able to shrug off its 15 years of misrule and anarchy and march towards something better. Elsewhere I've even read that the chief minister has a scientific bent of mind, and he has plans to replace the cowsheds in the chief-minister's residence with a video-conferencing facility connected to all the district headquarters. Perhaps, Nitish should have a chat with Chandrababu Naidu over some of these things. Till then, a long way to go for Bihar.

My third job offer

I received my third job, this time from Nvidia, Pune. The interview, scheduled at 9:00 in the evening didn't start before 10:30, and that left me enough time to grab two episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. on a vacant PC I found near the interview spot. The interview began with one of my projects, video streaming to a (wireless) PDA and the interviewer delved into Multimedia-related questions (what factors affect the bitrate of a video stream, what's q-value, how does it affect the bandwidth requirement....). This was followed by a question that I did not answer in the written test (which I did solve then), and a simple question on probability -- that's it. 1:30 AM -- results out.

gdb generic error

I had gdb-ing my application to figure out the reason why it had been
misbehaving for long. It had been so long that gdb tried to console me
with: "Cannot find user-level thread for LWP 7912: generic error"
I didn't particularly like the "generic error" phrase. What was it
trying to say? Is it trying to console me by stating that this error is
a generice error -- as in, everyone gets it -- and that I need not get
so annoyed? As if to say, everyone has a bad day -- just that it's yours
too today!

gcc commentary

Gcc has some humorous commentary built into it. I tried the datatype "long", and then tried "long long" and just for fun tried "long long long" and here's what it says:
    error: ‘long long long’ is too long for GCC

Curiously enough, gcc doesn't remark similarly for "short short". I expected it to say: error: 'short short' is too short for GCC!

Interesting.

I eat shocks.. everyday

I'm eating shocks..literally. Electrostatic charge runs down by body and to the plate when I put forward my hand to pick it up after having finished my meal. I get a shock right after my meal, three times a day, everyday! I understand that there's something about electrostatic discharge which should be blamed, but it's kind of queer. If you are sitting with me on the mess table, you can almost hear the sparking sound while poor I get the shock (Paresh, Tarun, Ketan, Ranta, etc confirm this). I had heard about electrostatic discharge rendering electronic components useless and that you need to ground yourself before you touch things like the computer motherboard -- to avoid damaging the board. But here I am, without a single capacitor or transistor in my body, and I keep getting these shocks on a regular basis.

There are some strange observations about this phenomena:

1. This phenomenon started only after I returned back from home after my Diwali hols. I was perfectly okay before that. I used to wear the same clothes and eat and sit similarly. Did I burn a bit too many crackers in Diwali? Or do I have an evergreen Diwali with me now?
2. I get up 1-2 times before finishing my meal to load some more things from the counter. On these occassions, I don't get any shocks as I pick up my plate. It's only when I'm finished with my meal, my stomach is filled, and I get up finally, that I get these shocks. As a hit-and-try experiment, I once retired my meal without having filled my stomach, and lo..I did NOT get the shock. However natural this electrostatic discharge phenomenon be, how does it predict if my tummy is unfilled?

Well, untill I find explanations to the above, I'll keep getting shocks meal after meal, three times a day, everyday.

Being Bangalored ... interesting

A shamelessly direct lift-off from someone else's blog. The usage of Being Bangalored even figured in this week's India Today, and I decided I'd rather yield to the temptation. Here you go:

Strange but true. "Bangalored" is a verb which has been recently accrued in the english vocabulary. A person is said to be 'bangalored' if he lost his job because the work got outsourced to bangalore or any other city in India. "He got bangalored last week" is an example of its usage.

I ain't kidding people. Google it up I say. Lot of people in US got bangalored that it became an issue during the US presidential election. Thats exactly when this word was coined.

Dictionary defintion :
Bangalored adj. (said of a corporation, project, or employment) having been relocated to India; having lost business or employment due to such a relocation.

Here are some quick links to 'Bangalored'..hmm it feels really awkward to even pronounce it.
Click: A and B.

And guess what..one such similar verb is "Shanghaied" which means kidnapped. "Shanghaied" - this word even exists in Webster's dictionary. Try and see yourself. Shanghaied has been known since about 1870, at first in the sense of kidnapping a person to make up the crew numbers on a ship, but now more generally to be for ced into doing something against one's will. There is one more... 'Sodom' from the Bible.

Morality and the Constitution

I always used to wonder why the opposition starts demanding the ruling party(-y+ies) to own MORAL responsibility whenever they falter. I mean, why moral responsibility. Why not constitutional responsibility? Why not legal responsibility? Turns out, they can't. The government is not constitutionally/legally responsible for anything. I repeat. The government is not constitutionally/legally responsible for anything. There's not a single law (or even a suggestion) in the 395 odd articles of the Constitutional crap that can hold the government responsible for anything. The opposition, therefore, keeps blackmailing on moral grounds, for, it can't do anything better.

In other words, the government can do whatever it pleases. The Supreme Court, the highest court of appeal in India, will keep expressing discontent, but they can't do anything either. Their hands are tied. They are just supposed to interpret the constitution -- not act as per righteousness. In such a scenario, I feel that the government is actually very very moral whenever it does anything. What else, if not morality, stops it from modifying the constitution to make amendments that ensure that the same party keeps winning every time? What else, if not morality, stops them from framing laws making their rule permanent? Nothing. Pure morality. All strong words like sovereignty, democracy, liberty, et al, combined don't have enough power to stop this -- and yet, we have the government performing at least some degree (+ve or -ve).

G B Shaw mused:
Democracy is a device which ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

What recently happened in my home-state, Bihar, raised similar demands for moral ownership. A "constitutionally elected" assembly was dissolved because the governor did not deem the majority party deserving enough. That was on 23rd May. Four months later, the Supreme Court wakes up (why??) to announce that the governor was wrong. It was constitutionally wrong, but nothing can be undone. Who owns the constitutional responsibility in this case? Oh, I see -- The can-always-be-blamed Mr Nobody. The opposition, unfailingly, has again renewed its demands for the government to own moral responsibility! And the prime minister, it seems, has agreed that he cannot disown moral responsibility. Oh, how cute. I love you. Please go to hell (on your own money).

So hopeless is the nature of the holy constitution of the largest democracy of the world (yeah, it's India) that I wonder -- Isn't this collection of 395 articles no more than a huge and perfect crap-book? What's the use? I tried to reason out some possible uses of the bulky constitution.

• Use as Toilet paper

Given the bulk of the constitution, each member of the Lok Sabha can get one paper each for toilet-paper usage. Assuming that all the MPs go to the toilet daily (I doubt it, though), it won't last more than a few days, however. Besides, a majority of them won't like using toilet-paper. But those who would, perhaps they can use both the sides of the paper, one side each day.

• Use for literature study

I confess, I learned a whole set of new words when I first chanced with the constitution. The only knowledge I have of heavy-weight words like sovereign, secular, democratic, republic, fraternity are derived from my school civics book describing the constitution. Besides, the composition is enticingly poetic. I still remember:

"Article 32 confers upon the citizens of India the right to constitutional remedies. ...."

Ah, don't worry what this right is -- 'tis too impractical. This is the only place in my 22 years of life that I have seen the "confers upon" phrase being used, and I find it sweetly poetic. Perhaps the makers of the constitution mistook this exercise as an endeavor towards the Nobel Prize for Literature. They didn't get it -- and they died of shock. "We, the people of India, having solemnly ....." is another favorite and by-heart.

• Use as a flare

There still are several parts of the country that suffer from freezing cold. The pages of the constitution can burn for quite a while to provide some warmth. I'm told the pages are good, and hence, they should sustain fire for quite some time.

• Making Kites

This is a perfect usage. Use the pages as kites. Boring holes in the pages will give additional delight and attaching a tail would suit the page's content to a T.

That's it. No more practical uses of the crap called the Constitution of India. Sorry founding fathers. None that I can think of presently. And no -- it does not deserve the Literature Nobel, either!

Al Qaida's Hiring

It's true. Al Qaida's Hiring.

I had heard and read that the economy was going strong, that the bears were unable to hold back the bulls who had been raging the stock market with each passing day. But that the upbeat mood has tingled till Al Qaida too still trickles me. So, they've placed proper advertisements asking people to join their force.
Someone please take up the issue with our placement officer. Schedule a Pre Placement Bombing (akin to PPT) soon. :-)

Thy OS is thy religion

Imagine the Year 2015 AD: Barely 10 years from now

The world is casted based solely on one demarcation: your religion,
except that it's not actually Hinduism or Christianity, or Islam but
instead your OS. Your OS is your religion; it represents you, teaches
you, guides you and inspires you. There are great heroes to sing of --
they've done groundbreakingly significant work in the upliftment of your
OS (Linus, Jobs, Gates to name a few). The preamble of the crappy
Constitution of India is rewritten to include the term "equality of all
Operating Systems". To the phrase "equality in protection by law
irrespective of caste, creed, color, sex, sect" is appended "or
operating system".

There'll be some secular political parties, some pseudo-secular, and
some infamously communal (with deep religious attachment towards their
OS-es). There'll be communal wars in the name os OS-es.

And then there'll be some Nazis who won't tolerate any disgrace to their
religion -- either use their OS, or die! Takeovers follow when some
profilic superpowers try to spread their religious colonies throughout
the globe (or every other planets perhaps). Divide-and-rule based on
your OS still works. There is widespread anarchy in the name of one's OS.

Then there'll be a Mahatma. He'll be too lazy to attach himself to any
OS -- if you format his system and install your OS, he'll acquiescedly
offer his other PC as well (his forefathers used to offer the other
cheek when slapped on one). He'll be assassinated by a virus of the same OS.

Children's names rhyme with the OS internals -- Kernel Prasad, chmod R
Shastry, Insmod Pandey, Modprobe Chaurasia, Ipod Vidyadhar, Zotob Gates,
Bill Nimda, etc. Marital and funeral rituals are tied closely to the
nature of booting and crashing of your OS, respectively.

Whoosh! I'm waiting for 2015.

Halting the gears

It's general knowledge that glxgears can be used to get a quick peek of a graphics card's performance. glxgears is fill-limited, that is, the frames-per-second (FPS) depends on the size of the window. I describe here a small exercise with glxgears: Halting the gears.

Increasing the window size decreases the FPS. However, the perceived sense of rotation (clockwise or anti-clockwise) of the gears appears to switch as you increase the window size. That is, as you drag the corner of the window and make it larger, the gears will appear to be rotating clockwise and then at a point they'll apear to be moving anti-clockwise and then again they'll appear to moving clockwise at a point... and so on. This is akin to the rotation of a fan wherein you can sometimes feel the blades moving in a direction opposite to the blades' actual direction of motion. So, after making x no of rotations, if a point p on the periphery of a gear lands ahead of it's original place, the perceived sense of rotation is the same as its actual rotation direciton. However, if the point p falls short of its original place, the gear will be perceived as rotation in the opposite direction.

The Exercise: Drag the corner of the window to increase the size and bring it to the point such that the perceived sense of rotation of the gears is just about to change. At this juncture, it'll appear that the gears aren't even moving -- as if they're halted. It's a bit difficult to manouvre the size to a perfect standstill, but it's worth the pains!

Techies' In-expressive-ness

Techies are Inexpressive. Techies understand things, they analyze things, they reason out things, but they just aren't able to express it. They feel at a loss of words when contemplating description. For instance, if they are impressed, they have, in their gamut, precisely only the few words: cool, ulti-(mate), fundoo. Other more articulate and suiting adjectives remain foreign to them. Of these, the word "cool" is pretty vehemently abused. They have a bit too many numbers, equations, and logic going in the left lobe of their cerebrum to be able to attend to the artistic calls of the right lobe. Understanding things in terms of equations is OK but when it comes to several social aspects, equations simply falter. To answer in a more technical way, the descriptions of social interactions and understanding can be expressed only in very high degree equations, well beyond the impulses of the left-lobe. And I'm doubtful of even this.

With the breed of Geeks, the situation is even worse. Talk to them for a minute and you'll realize how inarticulate they can be. Ask a computer geek a doubt and he'll answer you back with a string of technical jargon, most of them obscure commands, and this array will be terminated by a broad grin (if you are lucky) emanating out from his bespectacled face. Needless to say, you didn't understand a thing and you are left with a similar doubt, only transformed a different and unfriendly space. Actually, they are not to be blamed too.

 -- PS: Exceptions are everywhere. I'm not referring to those. 

My short tryst with Death

First, a direct lift off from my yesterday night's diary entry:

Glass Cleaner is dying
One of my fishes, the one that used to spend most of its time stuck to the aquarium's glass walls, is dying right now. It had jumped out of the water and onto the floor, a shock for me when I returned back to the room. I put it back in water, but its fins are stuck. I can still see the to and fro movement of its lungs as it breathese, but the fins are still stuck. It cannot move its body. Though it seems to be trying hard for survival, gasping for breath, I don't think it can. By the time I'll be awake tomorrow morning, it'll be dead -- and I can't do anything about it! Oh! no. Even as I'm just writing this, it made a desperate attempt to move and has changed its place to the other corner of the aquarium. But why is it trying to reach the water surface? Please don't jump out again. Please don't die like this before me! I've covered the top of the aquarium now and put in some fod. The other two fishes are having their feed, whereas the subject of this writing is standing almost vertically on its tail, its body still appearing stiff. How painfully it must've writhed on the floor -- why did it jump out? Why does it want to change its silent life to a painful death? Why does it still want to jump out?

The smallest fish, a tiny body with a tiny mouth, is nowhere to be seen. Where did it go? Did it too jump out? I searched everywhere on the floor. I cannot find it. Instead, what I find is some flies and random insects sitting motionless. Oh! no, they too are dead. One is a more than usually large beetle, black and upside down -- its arrangement of legs are silent. Another is a black but grasshopper-like flying insect -- it can't move, its dead. There are innumerable other small flies, worms, ants too! What happened in my room -- did Yamaraj make a visit? And where must've the little fish jumped off?

I now look back at the aquarium, and find a black and white strip of body below some yellow stones. Oh! no, that must it be -- that is it. It's dead. I take it out of the water. Oh! my God, it's abdomen is eaten up -- it's completely hollow -- what happened? I cannot see what's inside and I throw it out.

But what exactly happened in my room? I remember well that everything was fine when I left it some 3 hours ago. Death, it seems, danced its way in my room. If I sleep, will I wake up? Has death left or ....?

Back to this blog:
I was scared like hell yesterday night. Luckily, when I woke up this morning, the glass cleaner fish is alive. It has survived. And so have I.

What's a "hi"?

Hi

I thought Hi was no more than a salutation. But seeing the overuse of this small word, I have reason to believe that it is being abused for varied purposes. You see it everywhere. A signification multitude of my mails have the subject "Hi", primarily used by someone who wanted to send me a mail but wasn't sure of the subject, but still didn't want to leave the subject line unfilled. I just got a mail which dealt with a sysadmin-related problem, but even this was greeted with a "Hi" in the subject line. The rest of the mail was entirely unrelated to the preamble of Hi. Don't people realize -- it's perfectly ok to leave the subject line blank instead of filling it up with the unnecessary Hi.

Looking at various other instances of Hi, every chat session invariably begins with a Hi. Actually, it's nice. Follows the KISS principle. Want to begin a letter, say Hi. Want to start a conversation, say Hi. Wish to start a speech, say Hi. Wish to write an invitation, say Hi. The problem is that it's not used as a salutation but as an opener, as if to get things in motion. We don't begin with a Hi because any other thing wouldn't suffice, but rather just to begin -- akin to clearing one's throat before a conversation. What would happen if everything began with a Hi? God would invent you and say -- Hi (instead of tathastu). The first thing you'd speak to a newborn would be -- Hi. Yamaraj would land at your doorstep and say -- Hi. Imagine every research paper beginning with a -- Hi. The morning newspaper starting with a Hi. The PM addressing the nation on 15th Aug and starting with a Hi. Often people look at you with awe and astonishment if you utter the name of one-who-must-not-be-named. But with the growth of Hi, people around you would be sent shuddering with astonishment if you _did_not_ begin anything with a Hi (one-that-must-be-named). Your examination paper question paper would start with a Hi. The answer-sheet will have a Hi already printed. Even then a student will append a Hi. A lawyer would drop the usual "Your Honor" salutation and begin his legal proceedings with the quintessential Hi. The judge, instead of saying "Objection sustained" would say -- "Hi, Objection sustained". The convict, standing before the jury would start with a Hi.

It gets even more painful. Even advertising isn't spared. Hutch is so confident about the applicability of Hi that they pay for gigantic billboards but use only a tiny corner of it to say -- Hi. Probably if Hutch had it's way, when you receive a phone-call, everything else would be proceeded by a machine-generated automatic Hi for bot the caller and the callee.

PS: Even this post begins with a Hi.

My theory on A$$holes

Here I describe my theory and speculations regarding the breed called A$$holes.

A$$holes: The breed of people who can't think. They perhaps have brains, but they just refuse to think. The idea of logic, brain, and the like is foreign to them. Invariably, they employ the power of speech as a substitute to the power of thought, which they never use.

A$$holicity: A$$holicity, or A$$holic content, of a population is defined as the ratio between the number of A$$holes and the size of the population. It can be expressed as a fraction or as a percentage. For example, if it's known that the A$$holic content of a population is 50% (or 1/2), it means that one out of every two person in that given population is an A$$hole.

A$$hology: The study of A$$holes. It's important because this helps in their identification. The farther you are from them, the better.

Postulates:

1. A$$holes are everywhere.
2. The A$$holicity of any given population is at least 1/3.

Theory: As a child I had known the story of a monkey and a bird. It was raining heavily. The bird was sitting happily in its nest, whereas the monkey was shivering in the rain. The bird felt pity and suggested to the monkey: "You are way stronger than I am. Why don't you build a home for yourself? Then you won't have to shiver like this." This monkey was an A$$hole. Needless to say, the logic didn't pierce into his top row. Instead, he attacked back and tore the nest of the bird itself.
That's how A$$holes are. It'll take all the power in nuclear forces before they accept reason.

George Bernard Shaw mused:
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I've made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week

It's bewildering to see how poorly used thought is.

Ayn Rand said:
If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

God didn't force thoughts upon us. He left humankind with this choice -- and this was the flaw -- how can someone make a choice without thinking?

Everyone is entitled to be stupid. But some people abuse the privilege. -- Anonymous

Returning to the A$$holic characterisics, they are omnipresent -- in the park, in the lawn, in the school, in the bus, everywhere. You can't get rid of them. But maintaining distance is crucial. Their content in any of these population will always be at least 1/3. There's no magic about this number. It's just the theoretical lower limit. The actual (practical) A$$holic content of a population can far exceed this. For instance, the A$$holicity of places like Parliament, Assembly, politically motivated meetings are in the tune of 98%. The rest 2% are passers-by.

Even if there are only 1/3rd A$$holes in the world, they'll collectively account for 2/3rd of the mess. Practical values shoot this messiness to over 80%. This fits the 20-80 rule that 20% of the people are responsible for 80% of the productive work done.

A$$holes are important, nevertheless. In times of depression or when you are feeling low, they serve as the lower reference-point of a depressed state. You'll automatically start feeling better. Whenever you are depressed, think of an A$$hole.

Conclusion: Never reason with an A$$hole.

Ufff.. the day today

What a pathetic day it was today. Things were going wrong with such
monotonic consequence that the even my PC gave up, just a day before I
have to give a demo to someone from Microsoft Research (sponsor for my
Display Wall project). It was wreckage. I was yet to complete the
preparations for tomorrow and here it was, my 1GB inferno lying
exhausted, uninterested in booting up despite all my pleadings. The HCL
guys were called up. I suspected an SMPS failure, as is generally the
religion in such outbreak; but the HCL guy declared that it was
something more serious -- the motherboard. It needed to be replaced. Now
started the wait for another guy from HCL service center who brought a
new motherboard. Things were settled not before 7:00 in the evening. I
had to settle with 512M RAM as this present motherboard supposedly isn't
supporting 1GB (needs some BIOS update, the HCL guy tells me).

And that was just one story. Today was the worst ever network failure in
the history of IIIT that has passed before my eyes. The central switch
in the server room broke down. Even rebooting the central switch, as is
infamously the norm in the server room, didn't work; it was hanging no
sooner it was booted. This ate up the whole day, and my lab (Room 227)
didn't get the network back even after all the others had got back their
life. Things improved only by 7:00.

The last two "No computers day" at the institute didn't leave me this
helpless but today I felt -- the PC doesn't work, the network doesn't
work, what the hell! what am I supposed to do?

Ufff.. the day today.

Making firefox real fast

Not for nothing is Firefox the coolest browser. A simple tweak and now all the sites open almost instantaneously. I don't have to see the status bar loading the page. Here's what I followed:

Open Firefox 1.0 and in the address bar type: about:config

1. Find browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs and double click on it so it = true
2. Find network.http.pipelining and double click on it so it = true
3. Find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests double click on it and change it from 4 to 100
4. Find network.http.proxy.pipelining double click on it and change it = true

That's it.

What do these changes do?
1. Then enables advanced tab options in your Tools/Options page
2. This enables option #3.
3. This makes FF use 8 threads to each page.. Bascially, if you thought FF was fast before, try it after this.
4. Use this if you are behind a proxy.
I'm sure tonnes of such tweaks can be done, especially with the myriad number of extensions available.
---
Courtesy: http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/59/42/

Using Google talk with GAIM

Kudos to Google for making sure that its newly launched talk service could be used with Gaim.
Google talk uses the standards compliant Jabber protocol. They will be the FIRST IM service to use the IETF messaging and presence standard. Thank you again, Google!

My Gaim settings are like: (they work at least here in IIIT)

My AC hates me

The AC hanging over my head in the lab hates me.

I had complained about it at least once in one of my blogs about how people keep oscillating it between high & low temperatures instead of just setting it to the desired temperature. And now methinks I have to face the consequences. The AC spills water. Not every time, though; only when you want to have water being showered on your head the least (Murphy's right, you see). It doesn't spare my PC's monitor too. As a workaround I've put a paper on the monitor to protect it but what about poor me? Should I sit in the lab with an umbrella? Even though it has been cleaned two times, yesterday itself being once, it hasn't stopped it's outpourings. I know there's a Rain God, Indra, whom people plead to in case of drought or drain. But is there a God for rain from ACs? I'm yet to hear about it. Who should I offer my prayers and offerings to?

I hope the AC doesn't get angrier. In case it does, it might start dropping other things as well, and then I might not be left to complain any more.

The ctrl-alt-delete test

Abstract: There are so many clues that mute devices can give about their owners. One such effective method is described here as an example.

Motivation: Given a PC, you have to make out whether the owner runs Windows or Linux on it. The system is switched off. No, you are not allowed to switch it on. In case, it's a dual boot system, find out if the user uses Windows more or Linux.

Background: Any regular computer user would know that the keys on the keyboard erode with use. With time, dust settles on the keys but they are consumed by the fingers which touch them. However, this consumption of dust away from the keyboard is not even. The keys which are used the most, look the shiniest. Therefore, the shininess of the keys give an idea of the relative frequency of keys-usage.

The ctrl-alt-delete test: Any windows user knows the importance of the Ctrl-Alt-Delete dose. It's needs to be injected every now and then, often out of wilderness. I argue that if the computer runs Windows, the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys will be the shiniest. Windows users spend most of their time with the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys. One might refute the claim, saying that the Space key could be shinier and it's used most often. No. Windows users hardly touch the keyboard except for this Ctrl-Alt-Delete medication. Interestingly, windows users instead use the mouse to bring up the start menu even though there's a full-fledged key on the keyboard dedicated just to this purpose (the windows key / super key).

Conclusion: The keys on the keyboard provide several clues about the user. Some of these are quite unexpected. Had Conan Doyle been alive, Sherlock Holmes would have found many uses of these in his investigations for the truth.

Future Work: Space bar, the longest key on the keyboard, can reveal a lot. For instance, if the space bar is eroded from the right, this means that the user is right handed. The relative shininess of the other keys also tend to let the cat out of the bag. The F & J keys can reveal if the user has to look at the keyboard while typing or is a touch-typist (can type without looking). The W, A, S, D keys reveal if the user is a gamer. So much so that the ASL (age-sex-location) keys will tell you if the user is an avid chatter! Many more of these promising arenas remain unexplored.

Microsoft promoting viruses?

As if the already existing windows wasn't vulnerable enough,, Microsoft keeps announcing about the vulnerabilities that it discovers in Windows and releases a patch to be applied for it's protection. If you don't follow verbatim the instructions issued from Godfather M$, hell breaks loose over you. This happened with the recent Zotob virus too. Here's how: In barely 3 days after the announcement of this vulnerability on Windows, proof of concept code demonstrating the exploit was available on the internet, and in two days hence the worms were in their hunting spree. However protective the intentions of Godfather M$ be, for people who did not heed to its warnings in a mere 5 days, they rendered their systems useless.

Or is it a strategy from M$ to stop illegal usage of Windows? The patches are available to legal users only. If it is so, then M$ is trying to cash in at the cost of some legal users too, who happened to be 5 days late in analyzing the situation!

Why TeX?

10 Good Reasons for using TeX

These are the reasons most often cited for using TeX, grouped into four areas: Output Quality, Superior Engineering, Freedom, and Popularity.

• Output Quality You write documents to be read and understood. Your first concern should be: how good is the output? Is it as readable and as useful as possible? Is it, even, beautiful?
  • 1) TeX has the best output. What you end with, the symbols on the page, is as useable, and beautiful, as a non-professional can produce.

    This is especially noticable for complex documents, such as ones with mathematics; see this sample (from Rogers's Recursive Functions). It also holds for documents that are complex in other ways: with many tables, or many cross references or hyper-links, or just with many pages.

    Even on simple documents TeX does a better job than a word processor. Compare these samples of plain text (from Herigel's Zen in the Art of Archery) done in Word and TeX. These are short and the typographic differences are subtle but even a non-expert may see that the TeX page looks "more right." The word processor's page has some lines with wide gaps between words and some lines with too many words stuffed in (contrast the second paragraph's second line with its third). TeX's output is more readable.

  • 2) TeX knows typesetting. As the plain text samples in the prior item illustrate, TeX's more even line spacings are a consequence of its more sophisticated algorithms for making paragraphs and for hyphenating.

    Another way that this expertise gives better output comes in setting technical material. TeX moves the task, as much as possible, into the software. For instance, it automatically classifies each mathematical symbol as a variable, or a relation, etc., and sets them with appropriate amounts of surrounding space. It also sizes superscripts, and many other things. The result is that, because your document follows the conventions of professional typesetting, your readers will know exactly what you mean. You almost never have to fret with the formulas. They just come out right.

  The quality of output is the best reason to use TeX.

• Superior Engineering Everyone has been frustrated with software that is slow, fat, buggy, or that undergoes frequent incompatible version changes. TeX will not give you those troubles; from a Computer Science standpoint, TeX is very impressive.
  • 3) TeX is fast. TeX ran quickly when it was developed in 1978 and so on today's machines it is very fast. It is easy on your computer's memory and disk space, too.
  • 4) TeX is stable. It is in wide use, with a long history. It has been tested by millions of users on demanding input. It will never eat your document. Never.

    But there is more here than just that the program is reliable. TeX's designer has frozen the central engine, the actual tex program. Documents that run today will still run in ten years, or fifty. So "stable" means more than that it actually works; it means that it will continue to work, forever.

  • 5) TeX is stable, but not rigid. A system locked into 1978's technology would today have gaps. That's why TeX is extendable, so that innovations can be added on, layered over the underlying engine.

    An example is the LaTeX macro package, which is the most popular way to use TeX today. It is a front end to the engine, affecting the way authors input their work. It adds conveniences such as automatic cross references, indexing, a table of contents, automatic numbering of chapters, sections, theorems, etc., in a variety of styles, and a straightforward but powerful way to make tables.

    LaTeX also adds a philosophy of encouraging authors to structure their document by meaning rather than by appearance. For instance, a LaTeX author might produce emphasized text by typing "it is \emph{hot} here" instead of specifying italics. This approach has two advantages. First, since it is a computer language command, it makes the type style, size, and spacing uniform throughout your document. Second, once the information is in the computer then you can do more with it. You can, for instance, distinguish between text that is italic because it is emphasized, and text that is italic because it is the name of a ship, perhaps by adding a command \ship{..} that saves the names of all ships for a separate index.

    And, LaTeX itself is extendable. There are thousands of "style files," which do everything from adapting the basics to the needs of the American Math Society, to making cross-references into hyper-references, all the way to allowing you to add epigraphs, the short quotations that sometimes decorate the start or end of a chapter.

    Just because LaTeX is the most popular macro package doesn't mean that it is the best one for you. Many others are available; see the the TeX Users Group's interest page.

    So TeX has been, and is being, developed and extended in many ways. (See also the nex two items.)

  • 6) The input is plain text. TeX's source files are portable to any computing platform. They are also easy to produce automatically, for example as output from a program. They are compact; all of the files for my 450 page textbook and 125 page answer supplement fit easily on one floppy. And, they integrate with other tools such as search utilities.

    Use of this type of input file stems from an overall mindset. TeX arose in the world of science and engineering where there is a tradition of cooperating closely with fellow workers. A binary input format, especially a proprietary one, is bad for cooperation: probably you have had to go through the trouble of upgrading a word processor version because coworkers upgraded and you could no longer read their files. With TeX systems that rarely happens -- the last time that a LaTeX release lost some backward compatibility was in 1995.

    There are even ways to run TeX directly from XML input, which many people think is the standard input format of the future. So, with the TeX formatting engine in the middle, the input front end may be adjusted to meet your needs, and changing times.

  • 7) The output can be anything. As with inputting, TeX's outputting step is separate from its typesetting. The TeX engine's results can be converted to a printer language such as PostScript, or to a web language such as PDF or HTML, or, probably, to whatever will appear in the future. And, the typesetting -- line breaks, etc. -- will be the same no matter where your output appears. (Did you know that word processing output depends on the printer's fonts, so if you email your work to someone with a different printer then the line and page breaks may come out differently?)

  Many people find that TeX's input language fits with how they think about their material. For instance, a scientist might describe a formula to a colleague over a telephone using TeX constructs.

• Freedom Most computer users have heard about Free and Open-Sourced software and know that, as with the GNU programs, Linux, Apache, Perl, etc., this style of development can yield software that is first class. TeX, along with associated materials such as index makers or style files, falls into this category.
  • 8) TeX is free. The source of the main tex engine is open (the Free Software Foundation uses it for their documents). All of the other main components are open, also.
  • 9) TeX runs anywhere. Whatever meets your platform -- Windows, Macintosh, a variety of Unix, or almost anything else -- you can get TeX, either freely distributed or in a commercial version.

  So although the core of TeX was written some time ago, it fits well with today's trends.

• Popularity Using the same system as many other people has advantages. You can get answers to your questions. Your problems might well have already been solved. And, because of this large user base, your system is sure to be around for years.
  • 10) TeX is the standard. Most scientists, especially academic scientists, know TeX. Research preprints, drafts of textbooks, and conference proceedings, all are regularly produced with TeX. As a result, many publishers of technical material are set up to work with it.

    Because it is the standard, TeX's support by other technical software is the best. For example, there are editing modes to make input convenient, such as AUCTeX for Emacs. Another example is that most computer algebra systems, such as Maple and Mathematica, will give output in TeX. And no doubt technical software developed in the future will support TeX, also.

    In addition, TeX is used by many people outside of the sciences, for all of the reasons given in this document. For instance, there is a way to produce beautiful critical edition texts.

  You wouldn't want to use a bad system simply because it is popular. TeX has earned its user base for sound reasons, some of them given above. Nonetheless, the existence of such a base is itself one reason to adopt a software package.

---
From: http://ctan.org/what_is_tex.html
Related: http://ctan.org/documents/whyTeX/whyTeX.pdf

Thanks to Parry for leading me to http://ctan.org/

What after bleeding?

To bring out the technical edge of a product, I used to hear it being termed as burning edge. But that was long long back. Then came the term cutting edge which referred to really out of the world capabilities for use by professionals. And now I hear bleeding edge. Such products (esp graphics cards) have fundoo amateurs and single-headed fanatics too as their audience. I wonder what edge the future would be on. What after bleeding edge? Rubbing edge? Wiping edge? or.. is it clotting edge?

The perils of Over-Expression

Over-Expression is a routinely occurring phenomenon in world order these days. Things are often over-stated. Communication, it turns out, takes place mostly in the superlative sense. For instance, if the mess food is bad, one might label it as intolerable even though it would have been quite agreeable a meal. Most advertisements promote their products as the best of its kind. Mediocrity is infamous. Average expression is unheard of, though average quality is not uncommon. As if the superlative band has expanded to gobble up the average band.

There are a number of factors which lead to such a world order:

• Strong feelings

This is the case in which things are over-stated without intention or deliberation. One might have a deep attachment with something which one sees getting damaged and therefore reacts voluptuously. One doesn't see the larger picture here. For instance, the recent MMS imbroglio in which a college student was caught selling (potentially) obscene stuff was a clear depiction of emotional outburst. Several people saw it as a misuse of technology. Some other stringent-minded people, however, viewed it as an attack on the women race -- as if this was the last straw and they had no choice but to demonstrate vehemently their outburst. World order becomes an exception for a while. Clearly, the entire scandal was over-advertised. Other significantly severe abuses of women's rights go unheard of while this one attains herculean proportions. Such narrow-minded syndrome needs a broader and beyond-the-sight therapy. There is more than meets the eye (or even emotions/hearts).

• Partially deaf reaction mechanism

Owing largely to insensitiveness to routine behavior, normal expression goes unheard. Unless a situation is expressed in leviathan proportions, it doesn't beat anything on the ear-drums of the people involved in the reaction mechanism. For instance, a stoic complaint made to the telephone department for a non-functional line would have large chances of going amiss. Same for a complaint for preparing a faulty electrical line. However, when the situation assumes titanic proportions (dharnas, bandhs, etc), the reaction mechanism springs to action in a whisker. Call it nature but the bottom line is that humans are surprisingly adaptable and react only when over-expressed (damage mode). Computers, however, don't work in this damage-control mode. They continue with the routine mode equally well even after millions and millions of repetitions. Perhaps, therefore, it'd do good to replace reaction mechanisms with automated (lifeless) controls.

A very commonly occurring example of all this is with the operation of the AC in my lab. Instead of keeping the temperature to an agreeable value, it's often kept intolerably low. This is when it's hot and the AC is just started. As expected, the room starts freezing in a while and then someone would just pop up and switch it off (instead of increasing the temperature to the agreeable value). And the room heats up again. Greedy desire of instantaneous results leads to this cycle being continued, even though in a long run it is far from optimal.

To remain or not to remain.. contemplations

For some time now I've been sitting over a decision which I need to make -- Should I quit my sysadminship? No, it's not about money. SysAdminship was never about money anyway. So what is it? And am I prepared for it? These are the questions I must answer.

True that I was filled with joy when Nayani asked me (circa March, 2004) whether I wished to become the sysadmin. My joy knew no bounds then. I was always fascinated to see the smart black servers through the server room's glass doors. I was just a DigLib maintainer then and I did have a few reasons of entering into the server room, albeit only occasionally. And then it happened. I was appointed as the sysadmin (along with smr). Likewise I bequeathed the technical air around myself, which is the characteristic of anyone on this responsibility, I presume. I had long undergone the changeover from Windows to Linux. A certain degree of pride naturally infused into me as I was permitted to open and enter into the server room whenever the need be. All the servers lay there before me, which I best describe as: waiting for being commanded by my fingers. Not surprisingly, my image too underwent a changeover. My nickname changed from Ajeeb to root. A signboard bearing "System Administrator" was hung on my door.

All this was as if my complete self was getting submerged into the being of a sysadmin. As if I was getting lost behind this tag. But the job was interesting, the power addictive, , the road challenging, and I continued to tread on it. To avoid myself getting pampered and lured into misdemeanor, I had vowed to myself never to encroach upon the privacy of any person -- I needed strong determination against this temptation and I have been successful satisfactorily. A number of major changes took place in the server room management and network infrastructure and my number of hours in #111 (Server Room) had gone up, and I kinda loved it. Being on this hot seat also chanelled a lot of queries from people to me, all of them technical, and it's always fun answering them.

But all this has been there for over an year now. Things have changed. Times have changed. I have changed. Power doesn't allure in the same way now; don't know if the lack of it would hurt, though. I've learnt a lot of things in this responsible position. But the cynosure of my contemplation is -- Shouldn't I move on? I mean, being a sysadmin was good, but that's not nearly the destination. There's a long long road waiting to be traversed. In some ways, I've just now embarked upon the journey. The sysadminship load constantly mitigates my independence. Of late, there have been a number of instances when I've been irresolutely frustrated and dissatisfied with the latency of the server room activities (most of them beyond my hands), but the net result tends to reflect my efficacy too. My numerology indicates that I'm a bit stubborn; I have trouble leaving a thing once acquired. But with seasoned thoughts I know I can achieve a changeover. Does quitting sysadminship give me this changeover?

Submerged with such notions I had asked PJN sir for an advice. I was equally inclined towards both sides and all I needed was a backing from him to push me further in that direction. According to him, however, the decision is all mine. There are so many strategic developments that I'd like to see undertaken in the server room; so innumerable ways in which the process should be improved. But should I continue to get myself involved? I must lessen my load, I agree, but should I quit altogether? Should I listen to my gut feeling and quit now to avoid tumbling down the rabbit-hole? I'm looking for answers. The decision is still under contemplation.

My_new_roll_no % 3 != 0.. still

It's hardly been 3 days after I posted about my joy when I realized that my new roll no was divisible by 3. But now, it's not. Today it was announced that my new roll no is: 200102005 instead. Now, this isn't divisible by 3. The numbers less than 200102005 which divide it are: 5, 43, 215, 930707, 4653535 and 40020401. But the good thing is that of these factors, 3 are prime and 3 are composite. Having 3 prime factors is not bad! And.... if you add 5 to my roll no, it becomes divisible by 3 again. :-) (5 because my dual degree is a 5 year programme and that *should* have a part to play in the calculations.)

Darwinism, the guiding principle for opensource and blogging

Little did Charles Darwin know about the idea of open source or blogging when he explained about "The Origin of the Species", but the same idea of "survival of the fittest" prevails here as well. That open source is analogous to letting a person choose what profession he wants to be in is the crux. This is because he'll perform the best in the profession he really wants to be, otherwise perish, giving way to better ones.

Accepting open source as a business model might seem foreign to most. "Why do something for free," one might argue. Well, you don't have to. No one forces you to blog. No one forces you to write and distribute open source. The crucial factor here is "force". You can do something best *only* if you truly love it. FULLSTOP. RedHat, supporting the Fedora project, is a gallant example of making money in symbiosis with OpenSource. And we've not even talked of the Google yet. Isn't it a working business model?

The threat of non-reliance on open source is a non-threat actually. Same for blogging. No one would read a blog which is poorly written or wrong. But something which many people do read *has* to be good. As humans, we communicate. One could ask, "Why speak for free?" I'd rather say, it's human to speak. It's just natural. Hearing is optional. And if there are many who hear me, it implies that I'm a good orator. So my speech will thrive only if I'm fit enough to speak -- survival of the fittest, or auto-perish of the frail. Parallely, to blog is natural. To try one's luck in working open source is natural.

Paul Graham has an excellent article on What business can learn from Open Source. Amateurs giving professionals a run for their money is natural. So what does that mean? -- there can be no professionalism? No. A person doesn't have to do one thing only. If I'm an employee, that doesn't mean that I don't talk, does it? But perhaps I'll be able to perform excellent in my amateur self -- or better still if my profession self and the amateur self are the same.

My_new_roll_no % 9 == 0

For the last 4 years, I had the roll no 200101049. Not that I'm superstitious or anything but this wasn't divisible by 3, and I didn't like it. Having switched to the Dual Degree Programme, my roll no has been changed to 200102049. This is divisible by 3, and, to add to my joy, divisible by 9 too! -- and I can't believe it even 27 divides it. Wow! I love my new roll no.

What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression

The Nonist has published (in PDF form) an interesting little pamphlet called What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression.

There is a growing epidemic in the cyberworld. a scourge which causes more suffering with each passing day. as blogging has exploded and, under the stewardship of the veterans, the form has matured more and more bloggers are finding themselves disillusioned, dissatisfied, taking long breaks, and in many cases simply closing up shop. this debilitating scourge ebbs and flows but there is hardly a blogger among us who has not felt it's dark touch. we're speaking, of course, about blog depression.

That's some deep, dark stuff. Nice! (Via zephoria.)

--   from: http://buzz.blogger.com