Technish

Download any PDF.. literally!

2008-04-28T23:34:00.000-07:00

Sue me if I'm wrong with the title of this post. :)
I understand the feel of desperation when you know "that" something you need is available in a particular book, but you are not able to get it, simply becauseit costs $28.56 on Amazon!.
Well, going with the spirit of "Knowledge Is Free", I have come down as an angel in your life right now, who will enable you to download literally any book from the net!.

Type the following string in google search bar..

intitle:index.of?{extension} {search_string} [+ {search_string}]

Examples...

intitle:index.of?pdf ebooks Ruby

This will search and give results corresponding to all the hidden ebooks for Ruby Rails

intitle:index.of?mp3 U2 with or without you

will search the "with or without you" song by U2 .. you can just right-click and choose 'save-as' or 'save-link-as' to download the song for you're disposal. This way you can literally download any eBook/Song/Music videos ...
Happy Googling! Let the flames begin! etc.. Yawn.

2 sure ways to access GMail no matter which office you work in

2008-04-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

We, being in “huge” service companies, suffer a lot in terms of online freedom. I used to get very frustrated initially when I joined, since all the sites on which I used to hangout were blocked!. Patiently, I started cracking(without using proxies) case after case and now, I have workarounds for all my fave hangouts.

However, today I am going post 2 simple techniques to access GMail(read-only).

1) Use GMail’s inbuilt forwarding facility: This is the simplest thing to do, just use the forwarding feature of GMail to forward all your GMails to corporate mail ID. Just go to settings in GMail and check out the pic below.

Ofcourse this is not the best way to read your personal mail, since your sys-ads might just sneak into your personal mails, and some companies might take offence. Nevertheless its practical.

2) RSS your GMail: That’s right, you can publish your GMail and access it from your favorite RSS reader be it bloglines , newsgator etc etc!. You need to add a subscription as the following in your RSS reader

https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom

Thats about it! you will start receiving all your mails into your RSS news reader. However, the funniest thing about this technique is that, Google Reader itself doesn’t support https RSS feed yet. :) .

These are the basic 2 techniques which just cannot be blocked. There many other techniques to access the site, but they are specific to a company’s proxy.

For ex: One technique is, assuming you are behind a fire wall, you shouldn’t use your company proxy for SSL sites(change this in browser settings), so that, when you type “https://mail.google.com” you get direct access to GMail.

And then of course, there are sites like www.fuser.com which keep cropping up in this too-much-of-web 2.0 world, where in you can aggragate not just GMail, but many others too.

Happy work around-ing !

PS: do let me know if you have any more fool proof - work arounds

DTO pattern

2008-01-24T02:34:00.000-08:00

As my project demands me to learn Enterprise Java for a project on "SaaS (software as a service)", quite far from the Ruby or Rails, I happened to come across a pattern called "Data Transfer Object" or just "DTO".

Its but obvious that, in a decent remote app, we tend to make many remote method invocations. Say for example, for a particular employee, you want to getFirstName(), getLastName(), getAge(), getSalary() blah blah blah... many such calls act as network overhead and unnecessarily slows down the app waiting for the reply.

To solve this problem, DTO pattern is implemented. Here, when a client asks for a particular detail say firstName, he is not only sent that data, but also related info like lastName, age, salary etc through a serialized plain java object. The client grabs the object and keeps fetching required info from that object.

In the following figure(courtesy) , Album artist and singer, 2 different classes on the server side are clubbed together and sent to the client.

Now, lets take a look at the implementation of this pattern. I implemented this in Java using EJB(entity bean).

Entity bean code(server side)

@Entity
public class EmployeeEntity implements Serializable {
private Long id;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
.
.
.
//constructors go here
//setters and getters of the instances go here

//Below a DTO object is returned. 'TransferObject' is a simple serializable java object
public TransferObject getTransferObject() {
TransferObject to = new TransferObject();
to.setFirstName(this.firstName);
to.setLastName(this.lastName);
.
.
.
return to;
}
}

DTO class code(server side)

public class TransferObject implements java.io.Serializable {
private Long id;
private String firstName;
.
.
.

//Accessors/getters for the above instance variables as per the requirement should go here
}

Thats about it. Client receives the 'TransferObject' object and invokes getters on this object, just like any other java object. All the invocation so made are completely local.

I can't help but quote Martin Fowler in the end, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks.
"Patterns always have two parts: the how and the when. Not just do you need to know how to implement them, you also have to know when to use them and when to leave them alone."

Quit, if you hit a key - Part 2

2008-01-18T02:04:00.000-08:00

Oops.. I seem to have found a solution here for platform independent way of solving the previous post's problem. It goes like this..

'Essentially just do a nonblocking read and rescue the “resource not available” exceptions as they come. Just hit enter to kill the loop.'

i=0
loop do
begin
break if STDIN.read_nonblock(1000)
rescue Errno::EAGAIN
end
puts i
i += 1
end

Quit, if you hit a key

2008-01-17T20:24:00.000-08:00

The very first problem in my previous post seems difficult to solve!... and the link clearly tells its impossible to solve!. I am talking about this problem..

“Display series of numbers (1,2,3,4, 5….etc) in an infinite loop. The program should quit if someone hits a specific key (Say ESCAPE key).”

I happened to have a discussion in the Ruby mailing list, the conclusion was that, it can definitely be solved, what the author actually said in the link, was that it can't be solved without writing some platform specific code or threads.

Here is a possible solution as suggested in the mailing list which works on UNIX like OSs.

require "io/wait"

state = `stty -g`
begin
system "stty raw -echo cbreak isig"

1.upto(1.0/0.0) do |n|
puts n
exit if $stdin.ready? and $stdin.getc == 27
end

ensure
system "stty #{state}"
end

The reason, as it seems, is that all terminals are different and you are needing to interact with it on two levels at once (reading while writing). This is what introduces the need for the platform specific code.

15 exercises to learn a new programming language

2008-01-11T04:52:00.000-08:00

I have always found reading a particular book to learn a new programming language pretty boring. I have always thought, programming language books are only to be referred. As such, the best way learn a programming language would be implement a project, and learn on the fly.

In web development, the way to do it would be to implement 'Shopping Cart' application, it covers all the aspects of web development from databases to sessions!.

On the other hand, to learn a programming language alone(without getting fussy about UI), I feel, the following exercises are to be implemented to get the basics of the language right. Here they are(taken from here)..

“Display series of numbers (1,2,3,4, 5….etc) in an infinite loop. The program should quit if someone hits a specific key (Say ESCAPE key).”
“Fibonacci series, swapping two variables, finding maximum/minimum among a list of numbers.”
“Accepting series of numbers, strings from keyboard and sorting them ascending, descending order.”
“Reynolds number is calculated using formula (D*v*rho)/mu Where D = Diameter, V= velocity, rho = density mu = viscosity Write a program that will accept all values in appropriate units (Don’t worry about unit conversion) If number is <>
“Modify the above program such that it will ask for ‘Do you want to calculate again (y/n), if you say ‘y’, it’ll again ask the parameters. If ‘n’, it’ll exit. (Do while loop) While running the program give value mu = 0. See what happens. Does it give ‘DIVIDE BY ZERO’ error? Does it give ‘Segmentation fault..core dump?’. How to handle this situation. Is there something built in the language itself? (Exception Handling)”
“Scientific calculator supporting addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square-root, square, cube, sin, cos, tan, Factorial, inverse, modulus”
“Printing output in different formats (say rounding up to 5 decimal places, truncating after 4 decimal places, padding zeros to the right and left, right and left justification)(Input output operations)”
“Open a text file and convert it into HTML file. (File operations/Strings)”
“Time and Date : Get system time and convert it in different formats ‘DD-MON-YYYY’, ‘mm-dd-yyyy’, ‘dd/mm/yy’ etc.”
“Create files with date and time stamp appended to the name”
“Input is HTML table. Remove all tags and put data in a comma/tab separated file.”
“Extract uppercase words from a file, extract unique words.”
“Implement word wrapping feature (Observe how word wrap works in windows ‘notepad’).”
“Adding/removing items in the beginning, middle and end of the array.”
“Are these features supported by your language: Operator overloading, virtual functions, references, pointers etc.”

If you're learning Ruby, then this has possible solutions to all the above problems.

The Web-ful Way

2008-01-10T20:22:00.000-08:00

It was way back in August 2006.. my 6th semester exams were over, I had got recruited into Infosys(only on campus, eventually I happened to join Persistent Systems), I was looking for 'The Road Ahead', in true Bill Gates style. Yes, it was time for final year project, looking for the best possible project to work on, after all, I was tired of all the shit they fed me during my engineering course from the previous three years, learning stuff as stupid as 1978 model processor architectures!!

I consulted all the possible experts I knew at the time, took their inputs. I had decided to work in project which could be converted into an entrepreneurial venture eventually. At the time, I had misconceptions about web applications, thinking it was nothing more than web designing.. which any tom, dick and harry could do!. So practically speaking, I was zero in knowledge, all I could boast of was energy, enormous amounts, plus the interest to do something out of the way. With this as background, I started skimming the ideas, for some periods of time I was interested in my prof's(Mr. Ravindra Dastikop) idea of 'Vertical search in Indian education'(which has seen the light of the day here), then some how I dropped it for various reasons.

Meanwhile, I was getting idea for ventures everyday, I was kind of serious about 'social networking using Google Maps', held meetings with some industry leaders, drew the sketches of the possible look of the app, some how got circulated into the hands of a full time entrepreneur... got some backing from him. But later on realized that, its not really going to work at the consumer level for various reasons.

Finally, one idea stuck, named it 'Wikiratia'. As the name would describe it, the whole idea was, the user could mark any place on earth(we used Google maps APIs), say, his grocery shop and rate the place out of 5. Now, the average rating for say 40-50 people could not be wrong and hence you would get a true picture of how good the place is. So, once we get decent community for the site, we could start introducing new features like introducing social networking angle to it, where by, suppose a friend of mine rates a hotel as good, then, most probably it is good, even though there is only one rating to that hotel!.

Alright, so the idea is zeroed in on, but what about the implementation???. At the time, I didn't know any of the web languages(pretty daring ha!.. knew nothing about web but was researching so much about the idea!) like PHP, Perl, J2EE etc etc.

So, we consulted an industry leader and computer science expert Mr.Vinod Kulkarni. He asked one simple question which struck me "Normally, people use JSP/Struts or PHP/Perl, you can use one of these, else, do you have enough enthu to learn Ruby on Rails for this?". For me it didn't quite make a difference, since I knew nothing anyway, be it J2EE/PHP or Ruby. I decided to implement using Ruby, to experiment.

So, Ruby/Rails was learnt on the fly while implementing, gradually in a couple of months, with fair amount of struggle, we finished the project!.

We happened to finish the project ahead of schedule, and so happened to be free for most part of last semester. In search of gold, I applied for internship in Sun Microsystems, got through after a few round of interviews, started my work there within 10 days time. My work was related to Zetabyte filesystem Solaris OS, yup, not an ounce of web technology in it. I was so fed up of the work... that, when once in a while some web developers used to discuss AJAX and stuff, I used to just lean over and listen to them talk, thinking about my golden days of web development not long ago. Adding to the irony, the founder/developer of JRuby happened to visit Sun Microsystems, Bangalore to give a talk!!.

So, as scheduled I had to go back to the college for my internal assessments and come back duly. Incidentally, Persistent Systems was visiting my college for campus recruitment, as a 'dream' company(thats what they used to call for companies, for which anybody was allowed to attend even though you have already been recruited into one company). This was my chance to work on the web again!!!. Nope.. I didn't let it go! I was interviewed by Nandhin and one other guy(dont remember his name, and please, no hard feelings for remembering only the lady's name :) )(by the way, both are my colleagues here). I was very happy that day!.. I was ready to quit 'Sun', where I didn't enjoy at all!.

The very next day, I called my manager in 'Sun', gave him some shit reasons like 'principal is not allowing to leave the campus' etc etc to which he even told me to join after the college!!.. had a hard time convincing him. So, fully realizing that I would be getting half the pay of what I was offered at 'Sun', I joined 'Persistent Systems' on July 9th 2007.

The story doesn't end there. I was given Java training for 3 months. Now, after learning Java I realized the true simplicity of Ruby/Rails and its pace, hype and importance!. I thought that, I would never get a chance to work on Ruby/Rails again, much to my surprise, my first project in Persistent was completely based on Ruby!. Thanks to Akshar, my teammate, who introduced me to my current manager to work on RoR based project.

So far so good. Now lets see, where I go from here. As you can see, many unexpected things have been happening, hope things will change for the better!. What do I want?.. I just want to do some good work, get immersed completely in it. Hopefully, it will be some web related work. :)

To clear all web2.0 issues..

2007-03-05T05:57:00.000-08:00

Sun shines....!!

2007-02-26T03:59:00.000-08:00

Yes, thats right. The Sun really seems to be shining bright. I know its share price is currently $6.4, I know it has had a profit of only $126 m this fiscal, but the fact is, SUN SHINES!. Some really cool facts...
1)Guys are great!.. they are really friendly, my mentor Mr. Vallish actually took me around the whole floor to introduce me to nearly 30-40 ppl(now tell me where do you find this??).
2)I was a li'l apprehensive about the dress code, I asked one of my teammate about that, he said, "the only dress code in Sun is wear one". How cool is that?.
3)No timings. You can go anytime, come anytime, have coffee or play foozball(pardon the spelling) anytime as long as its really not completely "out of the way".
4)Cool infrastructure... really nice building and cafetaria.. with cool personalisations like, your work area can be named whatever you want!!.. like my friend's area here is named "Shantinagar", cuz his name is Shantanu!

Alright, I can really go on this way, but will stop at this point.
CRUX: "Sun Shines!". :)

An interesting problem

2007-01-24T20:38:00.000-08:00

Given a file of 4 billion, 32-bit integers, how to find an integer that appears at least twice?

One simple solution that I can think of quickly is:

Sort the integers in the file, using any of the efficient sorting techniques like Merge, Quick etc and then go on comparing adjacent integers to find duplicates.

But come to think of it, sorting a 16 GB file is not a feasible. I need to come up with something more efficient.

37signals presentaion on Ruby on Rails

2007-01-23T20:55:00.000-08:00

PC World's Top 10 Products of 2006

2007-01-23T08:39:00.000-08:00

Intel Core Duo Notebook/Desktop CPU
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Desktop CPU
Craigslist.org Web Classifieds
Apple iPod Nano Digital Audio Player
Seagate 160GB Portable Hard Drive Portable Hard Drive
Google Earth Satellite Imagery
Adobe Premiere Elements 2 Video Editor
Canon EOS 30D Digital SLR Camera
YouTube.com Video-Sharing Site
Apple Boot Camp Mac Dual-Booter

Interestingly, check out craigslist( classifieds site), rated at no. 3!!!... while expectedly, products like iPod Nano, YouTube, Google Earth are all featured in the top 10.

Ruby on Rails tutorials

2007-01-21T09:35:00.001-08:00

Here are few of the tutorials that I found useful.

OnLamp

4Days

Wiki

IBM's

Power source that turns physics on its head

2005-11-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

Power source that turns physics on its head
Alok Jha [The Guardian]
It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste.....

It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.

Dr Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation. Incidentally, according to the rules of quantum mechanics, the physics that governs the behaviour of atoms, the idea is theoretically impossible. “It’s not easy to convince physicists to change a theory that is accepted for 50">Power source that turns physics on its head - Deccan Herald - Internet Edition: "FUEL’S PARADISE?
Power source that turns physics on its head
From Alok Jha The Guardian
It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste.....

It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.

Dr Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation. Incidentally, according to the rules of quantum mechanics, the physics that governs the behaviour of atoms, the idea is theoretically impossible. “It’s not easy to convince physicists to change a theory that is accepted for 50"

PCWorld: The 100 Best Products of 2005

2005-10-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

All Products Listed by Ranking

Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
Google Gmail Web Mail
Apple Mac OS X Version 10.4 (Tiger) Operating System
Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router and Notebook Network Card Wireless Networking
Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW 24-Inch Wide-Screen LCD
Alienware Aurora 5500 Performance PC
Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive Portable Hard Drive
Skype VoIP Service
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT Digital SLR Camera
PalmOne Treo 650 PDA Phone
Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Antivirus Antivirus and Firewall Software
Mysoft Technology Maxthon Browser Plug-In
Rio Carbon Midcapacity MP3 Player
Webroot Window Washer 5.5 Utility
Maxtor H01R300 Shared Storage Drive Network Hard Drive
Google Search Engine
Netgear 54 Mbps Cable/DSL Wireless Travel Router Model WGR101 Travel Router
OnlyMyEmail Pro Spam Filter
Sony PlayStation Portable Handheld Gaming Device
NVidia GeForce 6600 GT Graphics Board
APC Back-UPS RS 800VA 120V Uninterruptible Power Supply
2BrightSparks SyncBackSE Utility
Moon Software Password Agent Password Manager
HP Officejet 7210 All-in-One Multifunction Printer
Winternals Software ERD Commander Data Recovery Software
Ubuntu Linux 5.04 Linux Distribution
Epson PictureMate Photo Printer
Mozilla Thunderbird E-Mail Program
Cloudmark Anti-Fraud Toolbar Browser Security Plug-In
Vonage VoIP Service
Cloudmark SafetyBar Spam Filter
Adobe Photoshop CS2 Image Editor
The New York Times on the Web Web Site
Apple ITunes Media Player
Seagate USB/FireWire Hard Drive External Hard Drive
Canon CanoScan 9950F Scanner
IRiver IFP-895 Flash-Based MP3 Player
Valve Half-Life 2 PC Game
Samsung HL-P5063W Rear-Projection TV
Tor Privacy Software
LG Flatron L1981Q 19-Inch LCD
Dell 3000cn Color Laser Printer
BlackBerry 7100t PDA Phone
Verbatim Store 'n' Go Pro USB Memory Key
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 SATA NCQ Internal Hard Drive
Compaq Presario V2000 All-Purpose Notebook
Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 Media Player
Canon Pixma IP4000R Inkjet/Photo Printer
Best Software Simply Accounting Accounting and Personal Finance
Orb Media Streaming Service
Flickr.com Photography Site
Dell Inspiron 6000 Desktop Replacement Notebook
DirecTV HD DVR HR10-250 HD Receiver and DVR
ACD Systems ACDSee 7 Photo Organizer
Dell UltraSharp 1704FPV 17-Inch LCD
Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom Digital Camera
Qnext Instant Messenger
IBM ThinkCentre A51p All-Purpose PC
SightSpeed Video Instant Messenger
Wikipedia Online Resource
Cerulean Studios Trillian 3.1 Instant Messenger
CMS 80GB USB 2.0 ABSplus Notebook Backup System Portable Hard Drive
Nikon Coolpix 7900 Digital Camera
Contour Design RollerMouse Pro Mouse
Adobe InDesign CS2 Desktop Publisher
Shuttle Computer XPC i8600b Small PC
IBM ThinkPad X41 Ultraportable Notebook
Adobe Premiere Elements Video Editor
Dell Axim X30 PDA
A9.com Search Engine
Toshiba RS-TX20 Digital Media Server DVD Recorder
Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 Burning Software
Plextor PX-716UF Rewritable DVD Drive
Casio Exilim EX-Z750 Digital Camera
Apple Mac Mini Small PC
Google Desktop Search Desktop Search Tool
Mitsubishi LT-3050 30-Inch LCD TV
Apple IPod Photo Large-Capacity MP3 Player
Dell 3300MP Projector
FileMaker Pro 7 Database
Sunbelt Software CounterSpy Anti-Spyware Software
Six Apart TypePad Blogging Tool
Acronis True Image 8 Backup Software
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Brother HL-5140 Monochrome Laser Printer
Apple ITunes Music Store Music Downloads
Internet Archive (Archive.org) Web Site
Opera 8 Web Browser
Copernic Desktop Search Desktop Search Software
Motorola Razr V3 Cell Phone
Delphi MyFi Satellite Radio
PDAapps VeriChat Standard Edition Mobile Instant Messaging
Sonos Digital Music System Streaming Media Device
EMC Dantz Retrospect Professional 7 Backup Software
Garmin StreetPilot C330 GPS Navigation Device
Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 Portable Speakers
Logitech Z-5500 Digital PC Speaker System
Antec P160 Desktop Case
Corel Painter IX Paint Program
Citrix Online GoToMyPC Personal Remote Access

The Google 2006 Anita Borg Scholarship

2005-09-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

Dr. Anita Borg (1949 - 2003) devoted her adult life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. Her combination of technical expertise and fearless vision continues to inspire and motivate countless women to become active participants and leaders in creating technology.

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to furthering Anita's vision, we are pleased to announce the 2006 Google Anita Borg Scholarship, through which we hope to encourage women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders.

Scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic background and demonstrated leadership. A group of female undergraduate and graduate student finalists will be chosen from the applicant pool. The scholarship recipients, selected from the finalists, will each receive a $10,000 scholarship for the 2006-2007 academic year.

All finalists will be invited to visit Google headquarters in Mountain View, California in April 2006 for a networking retreat in which they can meet and share their experiences. The retreat will include workshops with a series of speakers, panelists, breakout sessions and social activities.

Mobile Phone As Home Computer

2005-09-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Interesting proposal...

Ok, here come the answers... (albeit after a lot of googling & querying)

2005-09-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

1) Is UNIX open source?....
UNIX is never an open source(except openBSD). Never. Some can be downloaded freely, but only binary... you can never get the source.
refer link

2) How much should one pay to get any UNIX flavour(if its not open source)?..
You do have to pay for some UNIX flavours, while some are free.(like Sun Solaris, Free BSD)

3) If one has to pay for UNIX... how is it any different from WINDOWS?
When I asked how is UNIX different, I meant morally, not technically. Anyways, morally speaking UNIX is not much different.

4) Exactly how Linux is different from UNIX?... esp. since Linux is "UNIX type" OS.
Here my context was technical not moral, anyways, there are some minor technical differences, to which the peers say, right now I need not worry.

5) Since Linux is downloadable freely... How do companies like Redhat or Mandrake make money at all??
Visit this. RedHat makes money by "providing" support, its just impossible to "sell" any open source product. Its the support that they charge for.
refer link 1
refer link 2

I found this one link (click here), which could answer almost everything.

Fundamental questions...

2005-09-03T23:35:00.000-07:00

Hmmm.. looks like I have a few very silly fundamental questions.....
1) Is UNIX open source?....
2) How much should one pay to get any UNIX flavour(if its not open source)?..
3) If one has to pay for UNIX... how is it any different from WINDOWS?
4) Exactly how Linux is different from UNIX?... esp. since Linux is "UNIX type" OS.
5) Since Linux is downloadable freely... How do companies like Redhat or Mandrake make money at all??

More questions to come... I am a rookie... 'n moreover... I did google for a while.. but I couldnt find convincing answers on the web for such fundamental questions... may be novices have taken things for granted.. n are considering such questions are only for lesser mortals... may be true... but I just cant do without these questions. Well, as of now, I am on the look out for these questions..

Hacked site...

2005-08-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

Currently this particular really good site is hacked... check it out if you have not seen a hacked site before...

http://www.f1study.com/

This was a good source for ppl wishing to study in the US... Read the description here....

Good source for beginners..

2005-08-27T09:50:00.000-07:00

I have often found myself in the midst of chaos called "too much of info"... as in, Linux commands for example. there about 3300 commands... I as a beginner would never come to know which are essential n which are not(i.e if you refer official docs). Here is a link which resolved my problem... only the essential commands for me as a beginner...
http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/basic.shtml

Why not Linux !

2005-08-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

This is what I have observed from my friends...

" I dont want to switch to Linux majorly because.....

1. I cant play my fave MP3s in Linux
2. I have heard about mounting... seems pretty difficult. Too much of complication.
3. Too many complicated commands.
4. This one's a classic, "Not User friendly"
5. Accustomed to Windows... what is the need for change????
6. Complicated installation procedure. "

And so on ......

I want to address the issues one by one....

1. Ofcourse, you can play your MP3s here... you have 2 options
i) You can directly load the songs from your CDs into Linux.
ii) You can mount Windows partitions(yeah yeah I will come to the "how to".....)
Ok, all said and done... whats your WinAmp counterpart???... there is one player called "XMMS". Its exactly similar to Winamp.... there is absolutely no difference(well... almost). (Pssst... you can play your fave videos too.)

2. Hmmmm.. I thought mounting was complicated too... but its really not... its simply 5 minutes work. I will dedicate the next post purely for that. But then hey... Distros like Mandrake, PCQLinux come with windows partitions auto mounted. You dont have to worry about mounting at all. For quick reference ... click here

3. Well, yes I must admit... there are quite a few commands. Infact I am in the process of learning them. But its really not necessary for you to know all the commands... to start working you'd hardly need 10 commands.

4. A classic reason to escape this one... Not user friendly??... think again.. check out the x-Windows (counterpart of Windows desktop)... if you wish... you wont even need command line again. I say this with supreme confidence that x-Windows(Gnome or KDE) gives tough competition to Windows Desktop.

5. Well, do I need to name the benefits of Linux????... really!!. Come on now!!

6. Who ever told you that!!... Its infact simpler that Windows.... more importantly you dont have to lose out on Windows to install Linux(unlike the other way around)... Installation is very very user friendly. Just slide in the CD, and you will be guided like a baby!.

Ok... thats all for now.

The beginning....

2005-08-26T06:12:00.000-07:00

Update:
Over a period of time, my interests have changed to web and related technologies. Although my primary interest is computer science in general, which include the following topics.

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Hello all... I started this new blog to write my experiences with technology. Well, I thought I'd share my approach to learning things..Recently I've been introduced to "search".... right, so my primary interests are

1. Search
2. Linux
3. Algorithm design

Well... I am in the initial stages in all the above mentioned topics. So basically my posts here will be revolving around those topics, but then again, who knows, I might develop interest in some other topics too.
See you around then.