Software Freedom Day!

Today is Software Freedom Day. Coincidentally today happens to be my birthday as well! :)

iPod Nano disassembled!

Google Hires Vint Cerf!

Google hires Vinton Cerf! Thats a cool hire! Wonder what all these high profile folks are doing out there in Google!
Update:
1) Vinton Cerf has posted a blog entry at Google blog!
2) SiliconBeat On Vint Cerf, Google, dark fiber and video

Thanks!!

Thanks for all those who wrote in and asked about the scarcity of posts over the last two weeks. Extremely sorry for not replying to mails from some of you as well. Will catch up with that soon. Its been an extremely busy period with lots happening on the career front as well as on the personal side. Will continue in this mode for some more time till things get settled down. Till then, expect only a occasional post or two.

CruiseControl - A continous build framework. Need to check this out soon!

• The Powerbook Prank. Extremely Hilarious.


• And someone has already posted a Google Talk Hack. A how-to on broadcasting using Google Talk.

Tuning Firefox!

FireTune helps you to optimize Firefox settings

Catching up..

• Microsoft Design Webpage


• Blogger adds Word verification for comments.


• Blogger also has a MS Word plug-in. So you can post directly from MS Word itself.


• Adobe starts blogging


• SlashFood. All about Food.


• A picture of the Googleplex from a B-24 Warcraft

Slow Blogging!

As you would have noticed, blogging is and will be slow for a few more days. In a house shifting-settling down mode.

Happy Independence day!

Symbian Worm!

There's a worm doing the rounds which affects Symbian Series 60 devices. Kiran reports that it has hit him thrice in a day. So if you have bluetooth enabled on your mobile, watch out!

IE7!

Got my hands on IE7 today. Should say that it is pretty good. In a typical browsing session for about an hour, i didn't miss Firefox at all! One nice(and surprising) thing was that the search bar in IE7 had Google as the default! And yes, you can also choose other search engines.

+ Tabs
+ Feed discovery.
+ Phishing Filter (Haven't checked whether this works!)

- Looks bland. May be i miss my fav Firefox themes! :)
- There is an addons page for IE, but it doesn't have the kind of cool extensions that makes Firefox effective!

Top 20 innovative Companies

Businessweek has a list of Top 20 innovative companies in the world. The list was compiled after a poll of 940 senior executives in 68 countries by the BCG.

A messenger idea!

Woudn't it be nice to have a single Yahoo! messenger window with the various chats arranged in tabs? That will atleast save some task bar space!

TI Completes 20 years in India

It's been 20 years since TI first set shop here in India. To commemorate this occasion, TI chairman Tom Engibous is here in India. Press coverage of Tom's visit is here, here, here, here and here.

Updated: Added the TI India 20 years of innovation logo! Pretty cool, isn't it?

Who the heck is interested in these kinds of studies?? No wonder there are just too many TOI bashers around!

Are Python and Perl obscure and strange languages? Atleast Novell seems to think so!

And now, Bush questions the theory of evolution.

Never knew there were so many procedures involved in eating food with your hand! :-)

Temptation Blocker!

A windows software that you can use to block programs that you do not want to access for a specific period of time. Basically it helps in resisting your temptation to use your mailer/browser/game when you could better be doing something productive! And it's free.

Can Google Stay Google?

A Fast Company Story.

How can Google keep its edge for the long run? What can it do to make sure it's still a hot company in 2010? How can a maturing organization with 3,000 people hold on to what made it a great startup?

The article strives to answer the above questions. Nice read!

Another funny patent!

Adding and removing white space from a document - Patent applied by Microsoft.

Gmail woes..

Srijith has a bad experience with Gmail and decides to switch to Yahoo! As he puts it

What I look for in an email account is reliability more than coolness.

Another Firefox vs IE story

This time in IE's favour. ComputerWeekly has an article which says Firefox had more flaws in 2005 so far than IE. As Firefox becomes more widespread, I expect such news stories to rise.

Video iPod rumours!

Looks like Apple will be going with the Sharp LH7A400 SOC initially for its Video iPod, with a future switch to a Intel XScale processor. My only doubt about this rumour is because Video iPod should be able to transfer huge amounts of content quickly, but the SOC's spec shows only a USB 2.0 Full speed Device, and no Firewire!

Bomb Hoax!

We had a anonymous bomb threat call at Bagmane Tech Park today. No, we didn't evacuate, but we had a huge posse of policemen with sniffer dogs searching the length and breadth of the tech park. Fortunately they didn't find anything. Wonder what satisfaction people get by making such anonymous hoax calls!

2005 IDEA design award winners. Browsing through all 158 products is sure to take lot of your time, but there are quite a few cute products!

A programmer's view of a baby. Joe Beda writes about his new baby, Anne.

Currently Reading...

The Code book by Simon Singh

Seminar on Recent Advances in Coding Theory

Seminar by Krishna R. Narayanan
Associate Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Texas A&M University, College Station

Title: Recent Advances in Coding Theory
Date: 25-7-2005 (Monday)
Time: 4.00 to 5.00 PM; Tea after the talk
VENUE: Auditorium, Texas Instruments India
Bagmane Tech Park, CV Raman Nagar, Bangalore

Prof. Krishna Narayanan is a well known expert in the area of coding theory. His research interests are in
-Modulation and coding (Turbo codes, Low density parity check codes) for wireless communications
-Iterative Processing - Iterative equalization, demodulation etc
-Equalization and coding for Magnetic recording and wireless communications
-Joint source-channel coding
-Hardware implementation of LDPC decoders

Prof. Narayanan will provide an overview of the recent advances in coding theory in this talk. The talk is open to all.

Sleeping in Airports!

The Budget Traveller's Guide to Sleeping in Airports. Singapore is the 2005 Golden Pillow Winner and Bombay is the 2005 Poopy Award Winner! Having been to both airports, i tend to agree! :)

Google China!

Google goes to China. Google opens up a R&D center in China which will be headed by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, who joins Google from Microsoft. [Microsoft has sued Google on this hire]

Links..

• A list of tech podcasts


• Flickr Architecture


• Thinking machine. Interesting looking chess game!


• Cryptographic Curiosities in Python.

Watch Tower!

Karnataka.com has a watch tower where they track stuff making news in Karnataka. The Bangalore International Airport watch and Bangalore Metro rail watch are very informative. If you need a one-stop information on what has caused these projects to slip so badly, then go read! Heights of red-tapism.

Visitor Browser stats!

Just had a look at my visitor stats and the browser stats showed this.
50.00% MSIE
40.00% Firefox
4.00% Safari
2.00% Konqueror
2.00% Mozilla
1.00% Opera
1.00% Galeon

I remember seeing almost 90% for IE almost a year back!

Weekend Links!

• BusinessWeek on blog search. Finding a blog in a Haystack.


• Google's MasterPlan. O'Reilly Radar has done a good job of compiling the list by browsing through google job postings! The comments are funny!


• In case you didn't know yet, Charles Simonyi's company Intentional Software has a nice blog!


• PeeGoals! Where the heck do people get these product ideas?(via)

HP to restructure?

HP may be announcing huge layoffs come Monday. Analysts are expecting more than 15000 people to be laid off! Oops. More here and here

Well said!

Varnam : Blair is following the Nut-War Terrorism Fighting Design Pattern in which even though we know there is a problem, we just wait till actual humans die

Today's Links [13 July 2005]

• Luxist.com - A weblog obsessively covering luxury products.


• PressDisplay - Displays Newspapers as in the print format. Has a few Indian newspapers as well.(via)


• The world's smallest mp3 player!

Today's Links [12-July-2005]

• Bjarne Stroustrup on the future of C++ (pdf)


• Wesner Moise has all the recently popular entrepreneurial posts linked to in one single post.


• All things automotive at Amazon Automotive Beta


• The Contiki Operating System


• Estimating Realistic Project Deadlines. I had learnt that Project Duration Formula in one of the PMP courses i took last year. Haven't yet tried out whether it works for my projects, though!


• What is/is not considered to be good OO programming

Corporate blogging in India

Even though blogging is popular in India, there is a noted scarcity of corporate weblogs. One would expect at least the IT sector to pitch in with some blogs that offer an industry perspective. Wouldn't it be interesting to have Nandan Nilekani or Azim Premji blogging? Or atleast some of the junior executives out there? It's not just in the Indian-owned companies that we see this huge absence, but also in the MNCs that have set shop here in India. Take Microsoft for example, where Scoble has been trying to get every possible product/test group to start blogging. Yet we do not see any groups blogging from the Microsoft India development center. Even Channel9 India is almost non-existent. There may be some Indian companies that encourage blogging and are supportive of it, but i haven't atleast heard of any. Have you?

BangaloreWALKS - Exploring Bangalore by foot.

Odeo is now open to all.

Getting CDROM Track Information using Python

First for some basic info. All CDROM discs(both Audio as well as data CDs) are organised as tracks. The CD tracks are numbered from 1 upto 99. The lead-out is considered as a track and is given a predefined number of 0xAA. The CD-Recordable FAQ is an excellent source of information on all these basics.

Now onto how to use Python for extracting all the track information from a CDROM on Win32. To access any device on your Windows machine from Python(and also to use most of the Win32 API calls), you need to install the Python Win32 extensions. ActiveState has excellent info on all the modules that constitute the Win32 extensions. All windows CDROM ioctls are defined in the Windows DDK, so you will want to install that as well.
The CDROM ioctl we are interested in is the IOCTL_CDROM_READ_TOC, which gives information on the Table of Contents(TOC) of the CD. For working with the CDROM device, we need to first obtain a handle for the CDROM device. This could be done using the CreateFile API.

#Assuming your cdrom drive is at E:
hdevice = win32file.CreateFile("\\\\.\\E:", GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, None, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, 0)

We can now issue the ioctl using the DeviceIoControl function in the win32file python module. The DeviceIoControl function expects the size of the output structure that's expected. For this IOCTL, the return value of this call is the entire TOC information as defined by the CDROM_TOC structure. The maximum size of this structure is 804 bytes. This is the space required for 100 tracks(Max 99 tracks + 1 Leadout). That's defined using MAXIMUM_CDROM_TOC_SIZE. Unfortunately the ioctl numbers are not published at the MSDN website, so you have to browse through the DDK include files for these values. The value for the IOCTL_CDROM_READ_TOC ioctl is 0x24000.

IOCTL_CDROM_READ_TOC = 0x24000
MAXIMUM_CDROM_TOC_SIZE = 804
data = win32file.DeviceIoControl(hdevice,IOCTL_CDROM_READ_TOC,"", MAXIMUM_CDROM_TOC_SIZE, None)

The CDROM_TOC structure, which is returned as a string can be easily unpacked using the python struct module. Even though most CDs will have less than 99 tracks, the structure data that is returned will always have 804 bytes. And when you are done unpacking, do not forget to close the device handle you obtained with a CloseHandle call.

win32file.CloseHandle(hdevice)

So using the code snippets above, we can get the various tracks in the CDROM, along with their start offset in the CDROM in the form of Minute-Second-Frame(MSF) information. Note that this will work for both Audio as well as Data CDs.

London bomb blasts!

I can't figure out what joy these crazy terrorists get by killing innocent civilians. My heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased.

Juniper acquires Peribit Networks

Is this the time for an Emergency?

Read Cho's interview with Rediff. He talks about the emergency days and also feels that the time is ripe for imposing Emergency.

Today, nobody is aware of his duties in this country. Laws are there to be broken. Rules are there to be violated. Regulations are there to be ignored. That's the present mood of the country.

Why is China advancing at a more rapid rate than us? It is the discipline, which is helping them. We are the most indisciplined of all democracies in the world. Those who were part of JP's movement against corruption are symbols of corruption now, like Laloo Prasad Yadav.

Is this the Anniyan Effect?

Today's Links

There is a recurring theme to today's links : Design simplicity.

• How To Write Unmaintainable Code.


• The Top 10 Elements of Good Software Design


• Is Design Dead? - Martin Fowler. Old but good article.


• What Makes Good Code Good?


• Insects and Entropy - A story on simplicity in design


• Top Designers' picks for home, office, and the road.


• Various Programmer fonts. Though i haven't found anything other than CourierNew appealing to me. And can this font really be used for reading code?


• The power of simplicity

Bill Swanson's '25 Unwritten Rules of Management'

1. Learn to say, "I don't know." If used when appropriate, it will be often.
2. It is easier to get into something than it is to get out of it.
3. If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
4. Look for what is missing. Many know how to improve what's there, but few can see what isn't there.
5. Viewgraph rule: When something appears on a viewgraph (an overhead transparency), assume the world knows about it, and deal with it accordingly.
6. Work for a boss with whom you are comfortable telling it like it is. Remember that you can't pick your relatives, but you can pick your boss.
7. Constantly review developments to make sure that the actual benefits are what they are supposed to be. Avoid Newton's Law.
8. However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best efforts.
9. Persistence or tenacity is the disposition to persevere in spite of difficulties, discouragement, or indifference. Don't be known as a good starter but a poor finisher.
10. In completing a project, don't wait for others; go after them, and make sure it gets done.
11. Confirm your instructions and the commitments of others in writing. Don't assume it will get done!
12. Don't be timid; speak up. Express yourself, and promote your ideas.
13. Practice shows that those who speak the most knowingly and confidently often end up with the assignment to get it done.
14. Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports.
15. Be extremely careful of the accuracy of your statements.
16. Don't overlook the fact that you are working for a boss.
* Keep him or her informed. Avoid surprises!
* Whatever the boss wants takes top priority.
17. Promises, schedules, and estimates are important instruments in a well-ordered business.
* You must make promises. Don't lean on the often-used phrase, "I can't estimate it because it depends upon many uncertain factors."
18. Never direct a complaint to the top. A serious offense is to "cc" a person's boss.
19. When dealing with outsiders, remember that you represent the company. Be careful of your commitments.
20. Cultivate the habit of "boiling matters down" to the simplest terms. An elevator speech is the best way.
21. Don't get excited in engineering emergencies. Keep your feet on the ground.
22. Cultivate the habit of making quick, clean-cut decisions.
23. When making decisions, the pros are much easier to deal with than the cons. Your boss wants to see the cons also.
24. Don't ever lose your sense of humor.
25. Have fun at what you do. It will reflect in your work. No one likes a grump except another grump.

Taken from http://www.ccgmedia.com/article_william_swanson.php

Seattle Bus Monster

Absolutely brilliant! An application of google maps which shows bus stops, paths and even current bus locations! Link

Cleaning a laptop screen

I have been looking around for the best way to clean my laptop screen. [i would like to get it to the way it was when i bought it! :)]. Using normal cloth or cotton leaves wipe marks on the screen. All i could find was this article on about.com. Any other practical ideas?

Update: Did some more googling and here is what i found. Jeremey has already blogged about this way back in 2003, and some of the comments over there are pretty good. Some comments are pretty hilarious too. There is some info over at cnet as well. Seems like the best method is to use the 3M Scotch Brite Cleaning Cloth for Electronics.

IEEE Bangalore Section Frontier Lecture Series 3-2005

Title: Model-Based Design and Testing - Perspectives for Automotive Embedded Systems Design
Speaker: Dr.Wolfgang Mueller, C-LAB, Paderborn University,Germany
Venue: Golden Jubilee Hall, ECE Dept, IISc

Date and Time: Thursday 30 June 2005 at 04.00 PM (coffee at >3.45 PM)

ALL ARE WELCOME (including non-IEEE members). There is NO registration Fee.

Abstract: Embedded software in automotive systems has reached a considerable complexity requiring new methods, languages, and tools. The presentation first reviews the current status of the Matlab/Simulink-based design flow for automotive software and tools for Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation.Thereafter, we give a brief overview of the AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System Architecture) initiative for a standard infrastructure and components as well as the IMMOS (Integrated Methodology for Model Based Development) Project for model based design and testing. In the context of the latter, we focus on an overview of the Classification Tree Method for Embedded Systems and corresponding tools from dSPACE and Razorcat.

Biography: Wolfgang Mueller received his diploma and doctoral degree from Paderborn University in 1989 and 1997, respectively. He is currently heading the group of Advanced Design Technologies at C-LAB, a joint R&D Institute of Siemens and Paderborn University.His current interests and activities focus on methodology,tools, and languages for the design of Embedded Systems and Systems-on-Chip. He published over 100 articles and most recently edited two books on SystemC and UML for SoC design. He is member of the DATE executive committee since its foundation in 1998 and cofounder of the UML-SoC workshop of the Design Automation Conference.

Eliminating Blind Spots!

Nissan is currently developing a system that will eliminate blind spots from around the vehicle with a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding area displayed on a central monitor. Pretty Cool, but you will have to wait till 2008 for a car to be fitted with this!

The CMMI Song

In case you have not yet heard the CMMI song(yeah, the SEI one), you can get it here. Lyrics also is available! :)

Links for 23-June-2005

• 10 Bad Project Warning Signs


• Evan on incorporating feedback into products


• Why most programmers are bad at designing user interfaces? Because it's hard.


• Another use of AJAX. A dictionary that starts giving results as soon as you start typing your query. (via)

Links

• Florida took baby from visiting Indian woman


• Jack Kilby is dead


• Kiran has posted the links to all the articles in Joel's new book


• How to network with your blog?

EtherFabric!

Level 5 Networks has announced EtherFabric™, which it claims to be Ethernet compatible, while allowing communication at a much higher speed. Performance numbers are here

The Ethernet currently in use was never designed for today’s high-performance environments, and as a result, the interconnects between systems have become one of the most significant limiters of overall data center performance, causing bottlenecks throughout. Other newly proposed networking technologies, such as iWarp and InfiniBand, lack compatibility with the existing network infrastructure, making them too disruptive and costly to implement. Unlike those solutions, the EtherFabric high-speed server interconnect products from Level 5 Networks maintain software and hardware compatibility with the existing environment while reducing the number of servers required by up to 50 percent.

Anniyan!

Watched Anniyan at Innovative Multiplex yesterday. Kudos to Shankar and Vikram for an excellent movie. Iam not going to spoil the fun those who haven't seen the movie, but here is the positives and negatives of the movie, so you can decide whether to watch or not.

+ Vikram's acting. Especially the climax!
+ Camera work dring fights/action sequences (Though a lot of it reminds of Matrix)
+ Vivek's Comedy (First half of the movie rocks!)
+ Art Direction

- Sadha.
- Script (Has too many logical flaws)

A must watch movie.

Is Code Talking the key to great Software?

A very nice article on software team dynamics.

Products can be shipped with good or bad communication, but the job is far easier and more exciting with a group of programmers that talk code. Whether it’s over cube walls, at the water cooler or to-and-from Starbucks – it plays into code that’s far better than one great programmer could create by himself/herself.

Code-Talking happens between developers and cannot be mandated by management. However, code-talking almost never happens in formal meeting environments. Code-Talking happens when no one is worried that sharing their code and ideas will be used against them in any way. Most importantly, code-talking only happens when developers value each others' opinions and experiences in an open environment.

Beyond the communication benefits, code-talking is one thing that can trigger passion in developers. I’ve found that many computer science Phds are natural code-talkers and contribute immensely to team communications – they tend to be highly motivated and view software development as the greatest job in the world.

BMTC Route information System!

Nice site which gives BMTC bus information by Destination and by Route Number.

Update: Fixed the link to reflect the new page.

Today's Links!

• NYTimes talks of a plan to connect rural India to the Internet


• Video of Steve Jobs speech at Stanford!


• GoogleGuide.com


• IBM DeveloperWorks article on Linux system development on an embedded device

Links!

• Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford


• Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak


• Rob Pike leaves Bell Labs to go work for Google


• Oko. Yet another development envionment and an Object Oriented language.

In the Hindu!

Ramya's column on Bloggers in yesterday's Hindu Sunday Magazine has my photo on it. :) Iam the one standing second from left in the first row.

Vacation time!

No blog updates as iam on vacation from tomorrow till the weekend.

Meanwhile, you can read Emily's account on dating an Apple Developer. :)

Book Tagging!

Prabhu tagged everyone reading his book tag post, so here goes my list. Disclaimer : More than 90% of my books are technical, and I read fiction only occasionally.

Total number of books I own:
~75

Last Book I Bought:
Linux Kernel Development

Last Book I read:
Angels and Demons

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me:
Alchemist - My most fav book!
Programming Pearls
Freedom at Midnight
The Art of Computer Programming - Knuth
The C Programming language - K&R

I am tagging:
Anyone reading this.

Sound Buzz

You can buy Indian film music online now. The store offers music in Windows Media Audio (.wma) files. Quoting from the site -

Soundbuzz is a digital music service provider and the only provider with a regional focus on the Asia-Pacific markets. Soundbuzz is a 'one-stop-shop' for the digital music media offering technology, creative, editorial and legal services to facilitate digital music commerce. Soundbuzz works with the world's leading digital rights management (DRM) technologies endorsed by the record labels that allows it to distribute its music safely and securely:
Soundbuzz works primarily with Microsoft Windows Media Rights Manager, the end-to-end digital rights management (DRM) system that offers content providers and retailers a flexible platform for the secure distribution of digital media files.

Individual songs cost as little as Rs 12

Athu Oru Kanaa Kaalam

Listening to songs from Athu Oru Kanaa Kaalam. Except "Kili Thattu", all other songs suck! What has happened to good old Ilayaraja?

Bangalore One

Government of Karnataka's one stop website for all services. You can pay bills, contact people in power, download government related forms, check train schedules and much much more. Nice set of links. (Thanks Pramod for the link)

No more "My"!

Ending a longstanding tradition, Microsoft Corp. plans to stop using the word "my" as the default prefix for such folders as "My Documents," "My Music," "My Pictures" and others along those lines. Starting in the next Windows version, due out next year, folders will be known simply as "Documents," "Music," and so on.

Good Riddance! I hated the "My" in those folder names so much, that i never ever used them! (Link)

Links!

• Google Hardware in 1999


• CELL : A new platform for digital entertainment (slides) (via)


• Yahoo Mindset is pretty interesting. The idea seems to have been borrowed from the MSN search sliders, but i feel that Yahoo! has really done a great job here with the customization of the search results. Go Try!


• Now a GreaseMonkey substitute for IE. We really live in interesting times! :)


• The Tao of programming. Cool!!


• All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

Web addiction!

Two days without any internet connectivity due to BSNL cable issues. No internet connectiviy meant no mails, no blogs. Really was a pathetic scenario, and also proved how much iam dependent on the world wide web in my day to day life. If this is not addiction, then what is?

A very interesting note!

I got this as a forward through email. This is supposed to be written by a Global IT Manager of an MNC in Bangalore. I can't vouch for the source, but the note is worth reading.

Every day for the last four months I have been hiring. I come to office each day, hassle my recruitment team, agencies and consultancies for resumes, perform interviews, negotiate salaries and make offers.
It's amazing to see how people negotiate for salaries and perks, no one asks anything anymore about what the job entails, what they can contribute, or how they can grow and realize their dreams here. It's about pay, and people are eagerly willing to display unbridled stupidity in managing their careers by focusing incessantly on money.
Heck, the time it takes to finalize an offer nowadays, I could send out an offer letter, go have several children, watch them grow, put them through school and then head back to office, the candidate is likely to have finished negotiating his pay and ready to join.
This is all fine and dandy; it's a hyper-inflationary job market. What's disturbing is the not-so-new trend of IT jobs flying out of India. I hear an 850-seater call center has decided to move out of India due to attrition and increasing costs. Hell, my own company has pushed out 100 jobs out of India into Eastern Europe, and I was part of that decision.
We need to wake up and smell the stink of the decay we are creating all around us in the IT job market.
Year-on-year end people here expect nothing less than 30 to 45% salary increases, where as the average salary hike in the US per year is 3% and Eastern Europe is 4%.
I could go on and on about the quality of the flotsam and jetsam that washes on to my desk in response to job ads, but we all know it. Sometimes it takes as many as 40+ interviews to close one position. Sad part? The bozos still think they are worth it.
At this rate IT India better ensure they have transferable skills, because in a couple of years from now they will not have jobs to feed their money-frenzied lifestyles.
Let's do justice to the lessons the dotcom tried to teach us, what goes up must come down.

More Catching up!

• The Web Application Leap - More on Ajax.


• Gates Casts Cold Eye on Google - WSJ


• Why smart people defend bad ideas - Excellent Essay


• Best Tech Schools in India - Results of the IDC-Dataquest-Nasscom survey (Registration required). As expected IITs take the top four slots. See the complete scorecard here


• This is how stupid people can be. Two StarWars fans were filming a mock duel when they poured fuel into two glass tubes and lit it. How innovative! Not surprisingly, they are in critical condition in a Essex hospital

Catching up!

• Adam Barr looks back at the "Information At Your Fingertips" speech given by Bill Gates in 1990, and does an interesting analysis of how much of it has become a reality today.


• Channel9 Video on Virtual Earth. Pretty nice.


• Put your candidate to work - Nice article on hiring based on instincts by Johanna Rothman


• Writing servers is easy, writing clients is hard


• Bridges, Software Engineering, and God

Slow blogging!

Blogging will be at a very slow pace for a week or two. My bloglines "to read" items have already reached a very huge number, and Gmail account has lots of mails waiting to be replied. :( Hope to atleast catch up with reading blogs soon!

Managed Code

Was generally browsing and wanted to figure out what Managed Code in the .NET environment was all about. Here are the links that I found interesting. In case you know of some good links that provide more info, please feel free to leave the links in the comments.

• What is managed code? - A simple, but good explanation.


• Managed Code too can have memory leaks.


• Memory Leaks in Managed code


• A first look at C++/CLI

First DLP Cinema at Satyam

Today at the Sathyam Cinema Multiplex in Chennai, India will enter the world of digital cinema or DLP Cinema^TM, with the premiere of the final part of the "Star Wars" saga - Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. For the uninitiated, DLP is a Texas Instruments Technology. Visit TI's site on DLP for more info.

Today's Catch!

• Alex Bosworth has compiled a list of Ajax Mistakes that developers often make.


• 5 (Fictional) Rules for Blogging at Google :)


• Don't call them bugs, Call them defects!


• Rajesh Jain on The ABC of blogs. Must Read!

Napster's Response To Yahoo? Sit And Stare, Dumbfounded.

When you can't even admit who your real competitors are, it certainly makes it difficult to respond when they cut your business model out from under you.

Adsense for Feeds

Aww. This sucks. Iam trying to figure how different these are from pop-up ads on websites. Now every browser in the planet has an option to block pop-ups. Wonder how long before RSS readers start providing an option to block the ads in RSS feeds as well.

Today's Catch

Primate programming Inc. Funny :)
Oreilly Radar on How to roll out an Open API. Interesting Read!
Proposition from an Indian ad-clicking syndicate! Never knew click-fraud was so well planned out!

Bangalore Bloggers Meet (15th May 2005)

We met up at Barista/Koshy's on St. Mark's Rd. We had a great time at both places. Nice to meet up with so many high enthu people! Here goes the list of folks who were present. Adel, Aditya, Ambarish, Anand, Arnab, Kiruba, Kishore, Madhu, Muthu, Prabhu, Rahul, Sam, Shubh, Sathish, Suman, Shyam, Venkat and of course, me. Really looking forward to meeting you folks more often! One interesting statistic was that out of the 17 or so bloggers who attended, around 11 were us Tamilians!

As i had forgotten to pick up my Canon, i had to settle with my cellphone for these pictures. So most photos are of not-so-great resolution! In case you want to look at slightly bigger photos, you can do so at my Flickr Page

   

   

   

   

   

Today's Catch!

• In case you are not yet RSS savvy, here is a list of 15 things you can do with RSS


• Here are two entries from the 2004 International Obfuscated Code contest. Amazing! (More here)


• Parsing C++


• So its official : IE7 will have tabs! Iam happy that they finally got it.


• From wikipedia : CodeSmell :)

Links

Long Tail vs. Bottom of Pyramid
Today's Hindu Sunday Magazine on The Train to Pakistan. Really Painful!
High-Dimensional Spaces Are Counterintuitive. Part One, Two
Blogs and social networks and wikis, oh my! - Interesting!

Notepad2

I have been using Notepad2 for a while now, and I really love it. I have never been a fan of bloated up and fancy IDEs, and so this should come as no big surprise. Notepad2 is very lightweight, has syntax highlighting for all languages I use, and has excellent keyboard shortcuts for most of the editing functionality. The only thing i miss sorely is the lack of tabs for editing multiple files at a time. Luckily Notepad2 is open source and is licensed under the GPL, and so i guess i can just add this missing tidbit. Let's see when i manage to find some time for this!

More Links!

• Why Are Startups Like Peacocks?


• Making Wrong Code Look Wrong - Joel scores yet again with another classic!


• In case you are looking for a career with Yahoo! India, Swaroop has a post on what they are looking for!


• Steve Ballmer's Speech at Stanford - Innovation with Impact [300kbps webcast]

Hiring is obsolete - Full essay

Links!

This chilli is so hot, you'd have to drink 250,000 gallons of water just to put out the fire

Folders That Now Seem So Yesterday May Be Very Handy Tomorrow - A viewpoint. But the author doesn't spell out why he feels folders may be very handy. So an argument which I can't buy!

Microsoft IP Ventures

Under this program startups can license technologies developed by Microsoft's research labs and product development teams. A few technology areas also have been mentioned.

Watts Humphrey Interview

BusinessWeek has published an interview with Watts Humphrey, in which he talks about why companies should be moving up to TSP/PSP from CMM. Watts Humphrey was in TI India during March 2005 when he gave a talk on these topics and other related topics.

Philips Semiconductor Business Re-org

Philips has reorganized its semiconductor business to get a market-focussed organization. The changes include the creation of an Automotive and Identification business unit. The other business units are Mobile and Personal, Home and Multi-Market semiconductors. So we are clearly seeing a renewed focus on automotive from the semiconductor companies. Nice.

Go break something

Scoble pointed to Dori Smith's utterances on Microsoft being boring. I liked the following statement in the blog post.

The fact of this business is that disruptive technologies happen, whether you like them to or not. If you create them yourself, you've got some control over how/when it happens. If you refuse to create them yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself when you become obsolete. It's the difference between good products and great products.

Still catching up!

Scott Granneman has posted a list of reviews for Firefox and Thunderbird books

Gates' sights set on automobiles with his gizmos

Might there be an SP3 before Longhorn?

Microsoft learns to crawl - The Story of MSN search!

Rajdeep Sardesai is no longer with NDTV !

75 Years of Innovation

TI has kicked off its 75th anniversary celebration with a website focussed on the company's history, innovative creations and evolution.

Quantum Cryptography for Video conferencing

Video conferencing gets quantum security - Scientists from Toshiba's Cambridge Research Laboratory unveiled an invention, which is capable of generating 100 quantum 'keys' every second. This is fast enough for every individual frame of video to be protected by its own encryption. "This makes the system highly secure," says Andrew Shields, who leads the Cambridge team. "It would take an enormous computational resource to crack this frame by frame."

Weird!

Opening my blog page in IE seems to come up with a dialog box similar to the one below. Iam not sure why IE doesn't think my blog home page is a html file. The second time you open the page, it seems to work fine. Weird!

Hectic..

As life has been a bit hectic both in and out of office, iam still trying to catch up with reading blogs, news, mail etc, etc etc... Expecting return to normalcy in a week or so.

Catching up...

Heather on Exactly what info should one include in the resume
Hiring is obsolete - Paul Graham
Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It... :) (via)

Webcast : Comparing Embedded Linux and Windows Embedded

There is a Microsoft webcast on May 3 on Choosing the Right Operating System for Your Embedded Device: Comparing Embedded Linux and Windows Embedded.

Start Time: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 10:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
End Time: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 11:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Indian Free Software Projects

Free Software Users' Group - Bangalore (FSUG) is hosting a directory of Indian free software projects. Please contribute with more project listings and help create an exhaustive list.