The great NITC blunder!!!

Click on the image to view it in actual size.

I'm an alumni of this Institution that i regard in very high esteem. But they sure need better professionals people to develop the website for them. See the error screen i got at my alumni site - My advice to students/professionals making a website : The first thing you need to ensure before going into production/public is a good excpetion handling mechanism by which you always show a proper error.html rather than throwing the entire exception stack trace to the users. See how fatal it can get....

The politics of Kerala Minorities - "The fundamental right of minorities to exploit the majority"

This is a topic on which i had lots of personal opinion, but dint want to comment in public until the recent events that happened in kerala, my native state in relation to professional course admissions. There has been a fight between the managements of private colleges and the government regarding the fee structure and the seats to be given in government quota. I agree that in a perfectly capitalist country, all the seats should belong to the management and deciding on the fee structure should solely vest with the managements. But thats not the case here. What we are dealing with are institutions started by "Minority" communities of kerala. They get lots of tax and other benefits from the government and surely the benefits eat into the tax payers money and result in these institutions earning super normal profits. So why do we give concessions to these institutions? As far i know we should be giving those concessions iff they do something for our society. Now lets see, what can they do for our society. All these so called Managements had once applied for an NOC (No Objection certificate ) from the goverment. At that point, our honourable chief minister had given NOCs to private managements based on one condition : Half of the seats will be in merit quota and those students will be paying the fees specified by the government.(at that time when all these people signed on that agreement, the govt fees was close to only Rs.6000 or less per semester) All these Christian priests , other minority managements signed the agreement without raising any objections. At that time they were all thinking they can get any fees of their liking from 50% of the students. Nobody had ever consulted the legal side of such an agreement.

Soon after an year problems started popping up. People approached courts for matters related to this and the famous court orders started coming out which prohibited collecting different fees from different students in the same institution(though i still don't know how NRI quotas got legal sanction). Then started the committees for deciding fee structure and soon managements broke loose. They were not allowed to collect high fees from 50% students!!!! so they started thinking why should they give seats to govt when they are deprived of their "minority right" to exploit the majorities and minorities alike.

Why did we reach such a situation. Is this problem similar to the OBC quota problem we witnessed in a national scale? In my opinion, yes they are similar. The root cause of the problem is caste/religion based privileges. Now lets evaluate the situation kin kerala. the population census of kerala (census 2001)src : http://www.ecostatkerala.org/pdf/statplan/popln1.html

All Religions Total 31841374
Hindus Total 17883449 56.1%
Muslims Total 7863842 24.6%
Christians Total 6057427 19.02%
Sikhs Total 2762 ---too less to calculate---
Buddhists Total 2027 ---too less to calculate---
Jains Total 4528 ---too less to calculate---

Look at those figures, and i should say even those figures are misleading(as the list of "Hindus" include all those communities which were discriminated on the basis of caste for ages, so a good %of the Hindus do fall under the current "minority" status : SC/ST, OBC)

Now, in the wake of that how can you consider a community which constitutes 25% or 20% population as minority??Now let us see what is the UN definition for a minority : the % they give is 10. The real minorities of kerala are the jains, buddhists, sikhs and others. But do they have even a single Educational Institution under them? A majority of the educational institutions (college/school) are run by the christian managements. The other communities like Muslims,ezhava and nairs do have their institutions, but they are far less in number compared to christian institutions.

Personally i studied in a Christian management school and i know i did pay donation to get admission there, paid pretty high fees but there is one thing, the quality of education was good. Two weeks back when i was in kerala, i happened to watch a debate in Asianet TV. There was a Christian priest (who is also a management head), a muslim college head and a left political party leader. In that debate the priest argued that no Christian institutions take donations from students. Now, i personally know a lot of people who have already got admissions in Mar baselius college of engg through the backdoor, paying huge amounts as donation and they even started classes defying all court and govt authorities. (They have their affiliation cancelled, but i'm sure their money power can win it back). The christian religious heads in kerala have made this a religious issue now, calling from action in the house of God, the churches under them.

Where are we heading to as a community which boasts of the highest literacy rate in India? Swami Vivekananda was perfectly right in calling this state of kerala a "Mental Asylum". So whats the solution to all thsese problems here?

Now look at what Firoz Bakht Ahmed has to say : http://www.ecostatkerala.org/pdf/statplan/popln1.html

"The need of the hour is to follow the UN definition of minority to begin with and remove those groups in each state where they exceed 10 percent.

If minority status is to be granted, it should not be on the basis of language or religion but as per the UN charter that states that reservations should be made fore the disadvantaged and the have-nots who actually should be treated as minorities."

I agree 100% to the above statement. Also i would like to stress on "disadvantaged and the have-nots" are the people with the right for any privileges or reservations. Its not the wealthy Christian management who huge amounts in foreign funds or the wealthy Gulf money flowing into kerala or the liquor mafia money that need to get all the minority privileges specified in our constitution. Lets honor the greatness of the people who wrote our constitution by not letting these money power centres to manipulate their sacred work. Vande mataram.

Politics ruling Cricket, and ICL a welcome change in Indian Cricket

I like any other average cricket fan in India is perplexed by all the politics thats ruling Indian cricket. My belief was that cricket was a game and we play it out of passion for the game. But, in India its one of the most monopolistic markets. The monopoly who is ruling that is BCCI, which in turn is headed by politicians. They make millions in profit and still, the Indian domestic cricketers never used to enough money to lead even a middle class life in India. All the money awaits you if you make the cut to the national team and then you get all those advertisers run behind you. Following the legendary foot steps of Kerry Packer's World series cricket, Subhash Chandra(and his company) came forward with the idea of ICL-Indian Cricket League. Our very own BCCI who thinks the pot of honey is theirs suddenly jumps into action.(like a bear threatened with an intruder trying to steal its honey) Threatens all cricketers first that they are not going to ever play for India if they join ICL, got all the other cricket boards to follow suit (other hapless boards are minnows before the money power of BCCI and they have no option but to stand with BCCI). Even after all this drama kapil came up with an awesome list of players signed up for ICL!!! That was the deadliest blow to the ego of BCCI.

Now see what they does. Just like any monopoly in a market slashing prices heavily on a new competitor entering the market, BCCI announces 7-13 times increase in money paid at domestic level!!!! This shows the amount of super normal profits these dirty politicians and officials were holding onto themselves. This shows why a dirty battle between pawar and dalmiya took place. This shows much rightful money of the players were snatched away by BCCi. This explains the dreadful state of Indian cricket over the years, poor ground qualities, poor facilities for the paying spectators/avid indian cricket fans. Look at how these shameless creatures now getting ready to pay more to their players.

For all this we should than ICL and the people behind that. They didnt do it as a community service, but they just as Adam smith's theory of Invisible Hand, they have indirectly brought a fortune in the lives of every young budding cricketer in India. For that i salute them and hope every Indian cricket fan will support this "Liberalization" in the monopolistic Cricket market. Hopefully, these private players will soon improve the ground facilities to match global standards as these people make money by spending money. Not like BCCI or any lethargic government public sector company that tries to feed upon public's money. Personally i believe this is the beginning of a new era in Indian Cricket.

Revisiting the world of Wireless Sensor Networks

Today i felt like revisiting my past for a while. Surfed about what all are the latest in the field of Wireless sensor Networks (something i had left behind two years ago). I was so surprised to find so many people having started doing more research in this field. Two years back, it was more or less limited to a few universities like Berkeley. More and more applications too have evolved over the last two years. I found an interesting home page hosted by Archana here


Links to sensor networks based applications (Archana had compiled the following list):

1. Traffic Pulse Technology

2. Distributed Surveillance Sensor Network


3. Cougar: The Sensor Network is the Database

4. Eyes - Energy Efficient Sensor Netowrks

5. Reactive Sensor Networks

6. Smart Buildings Admit Their Faults


7. Smart Sensor Networks



Archana's home page goes on to give a very good compilation of the latest papers in this field.

This was my little effort on this field two years back: K-RTP: A Reliable Transport Layer Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Back after a long time....

Grueling two weeks...4 exams on two subjects, that tool proper studies after two long years. Its over now and i'm free again for a short while though....

Microsoft busted for piracy!!!

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Deepz0ne

Microsoft have been bust yet again. They have been using a cracked version of Sound Forge to create files that are inside the Windows Tour folder.

These files have been made with Sound Forge 4.5 (The cracked version) first cracked by a cracker called "Deepz0ne".

Deepz0ne was one of the founders of the cracking group "Radium" and cracked the first ever Sound Forge 4.5, for illegal, pirate use.

It seems that Microsoft have got the pirate copy, and just made the files on that.

The wav files created out of the pirated software can be found at
"C:\Windows\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav".

Just open those wav files in some text editor(like notepad) and scroll to the end.
You'll find the following text : 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5

Wat does bill have to say about this??? especially with so much work done against piracy in vista.

Tuxowulf - A great tale long told...........

Stumbled upon this here.

Tuxowulf is the earliest extant poem in modern European language. It was composed in England four centuries before the Norman Conquest. As a social document, this great epic poem is invaluable--reflecting a feudal, newly Christian world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory and death. As a work of art it is quite unique. Tuxowulf rings with a beauty, power, and artistry that have kept it alive for more than twelve centuries.

The noble simplicity of Tuxowulf's anonymous Linux-Using singer is recaptured once more in this new translation:


Prologue

Hear me! We've heard of Open-Source heroes,
Ancient hackers and the code they wrote
For themselves, swinging mighty mice!

How Gates made slaves and soldiers from every
Land, crowds of captives he'd beaten
Into terror; he'd created Windows 3.1 alone,
An abandoned child, but changed his own fate,
Lived to be rich and much hated. He ruled
Lands on all sides: wherever the sea
Would take them his soldiers sailed, returned
With tribute and obedience. There was a
Terrible King! And he gave them more than his
Knife, conceived a son for the faithful,
A new leader.

They had lived before his coming; miserable
Under the Dark King. But now the Lord
Of all their systems cursed them with an
New OS, Windows 95, whose fame soon
Spread throughout the world.

Gates' child was the thorn of hackers;
His father's warriors were wound round his heart
With golden rings, bound to their prince
Through product registration. So young men build
The future, creating nagware and commercial
Demos in peace, protected in war; so programmers
Earn their living, and wealth is shaped with a
Keyboard.

When his time was come, the Dark King was cast,
Down, still strong but called to the Lord's hands.
His comrades carried him down to the shore,
Bore him as their leader had asked, their
Lord and companion, while words could move his
Tongue.

Gates' reign had been long; he'd ruled them
All. There in the harbor was a ring-prowed
Fighting ship, its timbers icy, waiting.
And there they brought the wretched body
Of their OS-giving lord, and laid him near
The mast. Next to that corpse they heaped
Up treasures, jeweled mice, golden keyboards
And speakers, monitors carried from the ends
Of the earth: no ship had every sailed so
Brightly fitted, no king sent fourth with
Such wealth. Forced to set him adrift,
Floating as far as the tide might run, they
Refused to give him less from their hoards
Of gold than those who'd shipped him away,
An orphan and a beggar, to cross the waves
Alone.

High up over his head they flew his shining
Banner, then gladly let the water
Pull at the ship, watched it slowly sliding
To where neither rulers, nor heroes,
Nor anyone can say whose hands
Opened to take that motionless cargo.
1

Then Torvalds was king in that server,
Ruling as long as his rival, and more loved,
A famous lord of men. And Linus, taking the
Throne, led the hackers to such glory that
Comrades and kinsmen swore by his sword, and
Young men swelled his armies.

And he thought of greatness and resolved to
Hold a convention that would hold his mighty
Band and reach higher towards Heaven than
Anything that had ever been known to the sons
Of men. And in that convention, he'd divide the
Spoils of their victories, to old and young
What they'd earned.

The work was ordered, the timbers tied and shaped
By the hosts that Torvalds ruled. It was quickly
Ready, that most beautiful of conventions, built
As he'd wanted, and then he whose word was obeyed
All over the earth named it Linux World.
His boast come true, he commanded a banquet,
Opened out his treasure-full hands.

A powerful monster, living down
In the darkness, growled in pain, impatient
As day after day the music rang
Loud in that convention, the harp's rejoicing
Call and the poet's clear songs, sung
Of the ancient beginnings of us all, recalling
The Almighty making the processor, shaping
These beautiful simms marked off by circuits,
Then proudly setting the power supply and
The floppy drive to glow across the land and light it;
The corners of the Earth were made lovely with a 100Mhz Bus
And cooling fan, made quick with life,
With each of the directories who now move on its
Hard disk. As now system administrators sang
Of their pleasure: so Torvalds' men lived happily
In his convention, Till the monster stirred,
That demon, that fiend, NTendel, who haunted the
Moors, the wild marshes, and made his home in hell
Not hell but earth. He was spawned in that slime,
Conceived by a pair of those monsters born
Of Cain, murderous creatures banished
By ANSI, punished forever for the crime of
Abel's death. ANSI drove those demons out,
And their exile was bitter,
Shut away from men; they split
Into a thousand forms of evil -- segfaults
And memory leaks, sigsegvs, gpfs, crashes,
Exceptions, and page faults,
A brood forever opposing the User's Will,
And again and again defeated.
2

Then, when darkness had dropped, NTendel
Went up to Linux World, wondering what the hackers
Would do in hat convention when their drinking was done.
He found them sprawled in sleep, suspecting
Nothing, their dreams undisturbed. The monster's
Thoughts were as quick as his greed or his claws:
He slipped through the door and there in the silence
Snatched up thirty men, smashed them
Unknowing in their beds and ran out with their bodies,
The blood dripping behind him, back
To his lair, delighted with the night's slaughter.

At daybreak, with the sun's first light, they saw
How well he had worked, ad in that gray morning
Broke their long feast with tears and laments
For the dead. Torvalds, their lord, sat joyless
In Linux World, a mighty prince mourning
The fate of his lost friends and companions,
Knowing by its tracks that some demon had torn
His followers apart. He wept, fearing
The beginning might not be the end. And that night
Ntendel came again, so set
On murder that no crime could ever be enough,
No savage assault quench his lust
For evil. Then each programmer, hacker, and sysadmin
Tried to escape him, searched for rest in different
Beds, as far from Linux World as they could find,
Seeing how NTendel hunted when they slept.
Distance was safety; the only survivors
Were those who fled him. Hate had triumphed.

So NTendel ruled, fought with the righteous,
One against many, and won; so Linux World
Stood empty, and stayed deserted for years,
Twelve winters of grief for Torvalds, king
Of the Linux Users, sorrow heaped at his door
By hell-forged hands. His misery leaped the seas,
Was told and sung in all
Men's ears: how NTendel's hatred began,
How the monster relished his savage war
On the Linux Users, keeping the bloody feud
Alive, seeking no peace, offering
No truce, accepting no settlement, no price
In gold or land, and paying the hackers
For one crime only with another. No one
Waited for reparation from his plundering claws:
That shadow of death hunted in the darkness,
Stalked Torvalds' warriors, old and young,
Lying in waiting, hidden
In mist, invisibly following them from the edge
Of the marsh, always there, unseen.

So mankind's enemy continued his crimes,
Killing as often as he could, coming
Alone, blood thirsty and horrible. Though he lived
In Linux World, when the night hid him, he never
Dared to touch king Torvalds' glorious
Throne, protected by God--God
Whose love NTendel could not know.

But Torvalds' heart was bent. The best and most
Innovative of his council debated remedies,
Sat in secret sessions, talking of back-ends
And wondering what the bravest hackers could do.
And sometimes they sacrificed to the old stone gods,
Made heathen vows, hoping for apple's
Support, the Devil's guidance in driving their
Affliction off.

3

So the living sorrow of Torvalds' followers
Simmered, bitter and fresh, and no wisdom or
Strength (or rational thought) could break it:
That agony hung on king and people alike,
Harsh and unending, violent and cruel, and Evil.

And in his far off home of Antarctica, Tuxowulf,
the strongest of the Penguins--greater
And stronger than anyone anywhere in this world--
Heard how NTendel filled nights with horror
And quickly commanded an ice burg fitted out,
Proclaiming that he'd go to that famous king,
Would sail across the sea to Torvalds,
Now when help was needed. So Tuxowulf chose the
Mightiest penguins he could find, The bravest
And best of them, fourteen in all, and led them down
To their berg.

Then they sailed, set their iceberg out on the
Waves, under the cliffs, ready for what came as they
Wound through the currents.

And the wind hurried them over the waves,
The iceberg foamed through the sea like a bird
Until, in the time they had known it would take,
Standing in the round-curled prow they could see
Sparkling hills, high and green,
Jutting up over the shore, and rejoicing
In those rock-steep cliffs they quietly ended
Their voyage. Jumping to the ground, the
Penguins pushed their iceberg to the sand
And tied it in place.

High on a wall, a Linux User was making his
Patrol, and saw the travelers crossing to the shore,
Their shields raised and shining. He came riding
Down, Torvalds' lieutenant, spurring his horse,
Needing to know why they'd landed, these penguins
In armor. Shaking his heavy spear in their faces
He spoke:

"Whose soldiers are you,
You who've been carried in your deep-keeled iceberg
Across the sea-road to this country of mine?
Listen! I've stood on these cliffs longer
Than you know, keeping our coast free of
Maccies, raiders sneaking ashore from
Their ships, seeking our lives and our gold.
None have ever come more openly--
And yet you've offered no password, no user name from
My prince, no file-permissions from my people for
Your landing Here. Nor have I ever seen
Out of all creatures on earth, one greater
Than has come with you; no commoner carries
Such weapons, unless his appearance and his beauty
Are both lies. You! Tell me your name, and your father's;
No spies go further into Linux User's soil
Than you've come already. Strangers, from
Wherever it was you've sailed, tell it,
And tell it quickly, the quicker the better,
I say, for us all. Speak, say
Exactly who you are, and from where, and why."

4

Their leader answered him, Tuxowulf unlocking
Words from deep in his breast:
"We are penguins, followers of the user-friendly
Comic strip. My father was a famous hacker, known
Far and wide as a leader of men. His life lasted
Many winters; Wise men all over the earth surely
Remember him still. And we have come seeking
Your prince, Torvalds, protector of his people,
Only in friendship: instruct us,
Watchman, help us with your words!
Our errand is a great one, our business with the glorious
King of the Linux Users no secret; there's nothing
Dark about our coming. You know (if we've heard the truth,
And then been told honestly) that your country
Is cursed with some strange, vicious creature
That hunts only at night and that no one
Has seen. It's said, watchman, that he has slaughtered
Your people, brought terror to the darkness. Perhaps
Torvalds can hunt, here in my heart,
For some way to drive this devil out.
If anything will ever end the evils
Afflicting your wise and famous lord. Here he can
Cool his burning sorrow, or else he may see
His suffering go on forever,
For as long as Linux World towers high on your hills."

And the watchman heard his words and
Was glad, and lead him to his
King. And Torvalds, creator of Linux, asked:
"Who are these strange penguins in armor, who you have
Brought here, now, to my hall?"

5

And Tuxowulf, standing on that prince's own hearth,
Helmeted, the silvered metal of his email shirt gleaming
With a smith's high art, greeted the Linux User's
Great Lord:
"Hail, Linus! The days of my youth have been filled
With glory. Now NTendel's name has echoed in our land:
Sailors have brought us stories of Linux World, the
Best of hacker conferences, deserted and useless when the
Moon hangs in the skies the sun had lit,
Light and life fleeing together.
My people have said, the wisest, most knowing
And the best of them, that my duty was to go to the
Linux Users' great king. They have seen my strength
For themselves, have watched me rise from the darkness
Of war, dripping with my enemies' blood. I drove
Five great giants into chains, chased All of that race
From the earth. I swam in the blackness of night,
Hunting monsters out of the ocean, and killing them
One by one; death was my errand and the fate they had
Earned. Now NTendel and I are called
Together, and I've come. Grant me, then,
Lord and protector of this noble place,
A single request! I have come so far,
Oh sheltered of warriors and your people's loved
Friend, that this one favor you should not refuse me--
That I, alone and with the help of my men,
May purge all evil from this hall. I have heard,
Too, that the monster's scorn of men
Is so great that he needs no weapons and fears none.
Nor will I. My lord might think less of me if I
Let my sword go where my feet were afraid to, if I
Hid behind some broad linded shield: My flippers
alone shall fight for me, struggle for life
Against the monster. God must decide
Who will be given death's cold grip.
NTendel's plan, I think, will be
What it has been before, to invade the hall
And gorge his belly with our bodies.
If he can, if he can.
And I think, if my time will have come
There'll be nothing to mourn over, no corpse to prepare
For its grave: Grendel will carry our bloody
Flesh to the moors, crunch on our bones
And smear torn scraps of our skin on the walls
Of his den. No, I expect no Linux Users
Will fret about sewing our shrouds, if he wins.
And if death does take me, send the Electronic
Mail of my armor to Antarctica, return the
Inheritance I have. Fate will unwind as it must!"

6

Torvalds replied, protector of the Linux Users:
"Tuxowulf, you've come to us in friendship, but my heart
Grows heavy when I try to tell you what NTendel has
Brought us, the damage he's done, here in this hall.
You see for yourself how much smaller our ranks have become,
And can guess what we've lost to his terror.
But to table, Tuxowulf, a banquet in your honor:
Let us toast your victories, and talk of the future."

Then Torvalds' men gave places to the
Penguins, yielded branches to the brave visitors
And led them to the feast. The keeper of the
Mountain Dew came carrying out the flask,
And they shared that bright sweetness.
Linux Users and visiting Penguins
Celebrated as one, drank and rejoiced.

7

UnBerst spoke, PC-Week's son,
Who sat at Torvalds' feet, spoke harshly and sharp
(Vexed by Tuxowulf's adventure, By their
Visitors' courage, and angry that anyone in
Antarctica or anywhere on earth had ever
Acquired glory and fame greater than his own):
"You're Tuxowulf, are you? The same boastful
Fool who lost a typing match with Mozilla,
Both of you daring and young and proud, exploring
The deepest seas, risking your lives for no reason
But the danger? All older and wiser Penguins warned
You not to, but no one could check such pride.
"You've been lucky in your battles, Tuxowulf,
But I think your luck may change if you challenge NTendel,
Staying a whole night through in this convention,
Waiting where the fiercest of demons can find you."

And Tuxowulf answered:
"Ah, UnBerst my friend, your face is hot with ale,
And your tongue has tried to tell us of Mozilla's doings.
But the truth is simple: no penguin types in the sea
As I can, no strength is a match for mine.
As youngsters, Mozilla and I had boasted--
We were both too young to know better--that we'd
Risk our lives far out at sea, and so
We did. Each of us carried a keyboard, prepared
For whales or the swift sharp teeth and beaks of
Needle fish. He could never leave me behind, type
Faster across the waves than I could, and I
Had chosen to remain close to his side, until
We were separated in a storm.
"Then who sleep deep in the sea were stirred into life--
And the hammered links of my email shirt,
These shining bits of metal
Woven across my breast, saved me from death.
A monster seized me, drew me swiftly toward
The bottom, swimming with its claws tight into my flesh.
But fate let me find it's three-finger salute, hack myself
Free; I fought that beast's last battle,
Left it floating shutdown in the sea."

8

And Torvalds, gray-haired and brave, sat happily
Listening, the famous programmer sure
At last, that NTendel could be killed; he believed
In Tuxowulf's bold strength and the firmness of his
Spirit. There was the sound of laughter, and then
The cheerful clanking of pop cans, and pleasant words.

Then Torvalds left that hall, the Linux User's great
Protector, followed by his court.

And Tuxowulf stripped off his email shirt, his helmet,
His keyboard hammered from the hardest iron, and handed
All of his weapons and armor to a servant, Ordered
his war-gear guarded until morning.
And then, standing beside his bed, he exclaimed:
"NTendel is no braver, no stronger than I am! I could
kill him with my sword; I shall not, easy as it would be.
This fiend is a bold and famous fighter, but his claws
And teeth scratching at my shield, his clumsy fists
Beating at my keyboard, would be helpless.
I will meet him with my hands empty!"

Then the Penguins' great chief dropped his head to
His pillow, and around him, as ready as they could be, lay
The penguins who had crossed the sea at his side,
Each one sure he was lost to the home he loved,
To the friends he had left behind where they had been raised.
Each thought of the Linux Users murdered by NTendel in a hall
Where penguins and not Linux Users now slept.

But Tuxowulf lay wakeful,
Watching, waiting, eager to meet
His enemy, and angry at the thought of his coming.

9

Out from the marsh, from the foot of misty
Hills and bogs, bearing God's hatred,
NTendel came, hoping to kill
Anyone he could trap on this trip to Linux World.
He moved quickly through the cloudy night,
Up from his swamp land, sliding silently and
Occasionally rebooting.
Toward that gold-shining convention.

He had visited Torvalds' home before, knew the way--
But never, before nor after that night,
Found Linux World defended so firmly, his reception
So harsh. He journeyed, forever joyless,
Straight to the door, then snapped it open,
Tore its iron fasteners with a touch,
And rushed angrily over the threshold.
He strode quickly across the inlaid
Floor, snarling and fierce: his eyes
Gleamed in the darkness, burned with a gruesome
Light. Then he stopped, seeing the hall
Crowded with sleeping penguins, stuffed
With rows of young warriors resting together.
And his heart laughed, he relished the sight,
Intended to tear the life from those bodies
By morning; the monster's mind was hot
With the thought of food and the feasting his belly
Would soon know.

But Fate, that night, intended
NTendel to gnaw the broken bones
Of his last supper. Penguin eyes were
Watching his evil steps,
Waiting to see his swift, hard claws.
NTendel snatched at the first Penguin
He came to, ripped him apart, cut
His body to bits with powerful jaws,
Drank the blood from his veins and bolted
Him down, flippers and feet; death
And NTendel's great teeth came together,
Snapping life shut.

Then he stepped to another still body,
Clutched at Tuxowulf with his claws,
Grasped at a strong-hearted wakeful sleeper--
And was instantly seized himself, claws
Bent back as Tuxowulf leaned up on one flipper.

That shepherd of evil, guardian of crime,
Knew at once that nowhere on earth
Hat he met a man whose hands were harder;
His mind was flooded with fear--but nothing
Could take his talons and himself from that tight,
Hard grip. Tuxowulf had the strength of flipper
That only his typing speed of 371 wpm could
Create. NTendel's one thought was to run from
Tuxowulf, flee back to his marsh and crash there:
This was a different Linux World than the hall
He had emptied.

10

But Tuxowulf remembered his final
Boast and, standing erect, stopped
The monster's fight, fastened those claws
In his flipper till they cracked, clutched
NTendel closer. The infamous killer fought
FOr his freedom, wanting no flesh but retreat,
Desiring nothing but escape; his claws
Had been caught, he was trapped. This trip to Linux
World was a miserable journey for the writhing
Monster!

The high hall rang, its roof boards swayed,
And Linux Users shook with horror. Down the aisles
The battle swept, angry and wild. Linux World
Trembled, wonderfully built to withstand the blows,
And struggling great bodies beating at its beautiful
Walls; Its benches rattled, fell to the floor,
Gold covered keyboards grated as NTendel and
Tuxowulf battled across them.
Torvalds' wise men had fashioned Linux World
To stand forever; only fire, they had planned,
Could shatter what such skill had put together,
Swallow in hot flames such splendor of ivory and
Iron and wood.

Suddenly, the sounds changed, the Linux Users started
In new terror, cowering in their beds as the terrible
Screams of the Almighty's enemy sang
In the darkness, the horrible shrieks of pain
And defeat, the tears torn out of NTendel's taut
Throat, hell's captive caught in the arms
Of him who of all men and penguins on earth
Was the strongest.

11

That mighty protector of Linux Users meant to
Hold the monster till its life leaped out,
Knowing the fiend was of no use to
Anyone in Finland. All of Tuxowulf's
Band had jumped from their beds, ancestral
Keyboards raised and ready, determined
To protect their prince if they could. Their
Courage was great but all wasted: they could hack
At NTendel from every side, trying to open a path
For his evil soul, but their attack could not
Hurt him, for none could understand how
His systems worked, could make sense of that
Terrible OS he ran. None could get through
Those Invalid Exceptions and Page Faults.

And yet his time had come, his days were over,
His death near; down to hell he would go,
Swept groaning and helpless
To the waiting hands of still worse fiends.
Now he discovered--once the afflictor of men,
Tormentor of their days--what it meant
To feud with Almighty God: NTendel saw
That his strength was deserting him, his claws
Bound fast, Tuxowulf tearing at his hands.
The monster's hatred rose higher,
But his power was gone. He twisted in pain,
And the bleeding sinews deep in his shoulder snapped,
Muscle and bone split
And broke. The battle was over, Tuxowulf
Had been granted new glory: NTendel escaped,
But wounded as he was could flee to his den,
His miserable hole at the bottom of the marsh,
Only to die, to wait for the end of all his days.

And after that bloody combat, the Linux Users
Laughed with delight. He who had come to them from
Across the sea, bold and strong-minded,
Had driven affliction off, purged Linux World
Clean. He was happy, now, with that night's
Fierce work; the Linux Users had been served
As he boasted he'd serve them;
Tuxowulf, A prince of the Penguins, had killed
NTendel, ended the grief, the sorrow, the suffering
Forced on Torvalds' people
By a blood thirsty fiend. No Linux User
Doubted the victory, for the proof, hanging
High from the rafters where Tuxowulf had hung it,
Was the monster's arm, claw and shoulder and all.

12

And then, in the morning, crowds surrounded
Linux world. Programmers, hackers, and sysadmins
Coming to that hall from faraway lands,
Princes and leaders of men hurrying to behold
The monster's great staggering tracks.
They gaped with no sense
Of sorrow. felt no regret for his suffering,

Torvalds stood at the top of the stairway
And stared at NTendel's great claw,
Swinging high from that gold-shined roof.
Then he cried:
"Let God be thanked! NTendel's terrible
Anger hung over our heads too long,
Dropping down misery; but the Almighty makes
Miracles when He pleases, wonder after wonder,
And this world rests in His hands.
"I had given up hope, exhausted prayer,
Expected nothing but misfortune forever.
Linux World was empty,
Bloody; the wisest and the best of our people
Despaired as deeply, found hope no easier,
Knew nothing, no way to end this unequal
War of men and devils,
Programmers and monstrous fiends.
"One penguin found it, Came to Finland with
The Lord's help, Did what none of the Linux Users
Could do.
"Tuxowulf, best of penguins,
Let me take you to my heart, make you my son too,
And love you: preserve this passionate peace
Between us. And become our mascot!
Glory is yours now, forever and ever,
Your courage has earned it, and your
Strength. May God be as good to you forever
As he has been to you here!"

13

Tuxowulf spoke:
"We crossed the sea to come here; it is time to return,
To go back to our beloved home, Antarctica. Finland
Was a gracious host; you welcomed us warmly.
Anything I can do, here on this earth,
To earn your love, oh great king, anything
More that I have done, battles I can fight
In your honor, summon me. I will came as I came
Once before."

Then Torvalds' gave the penguin prince a dozen
New gifts, hardware, software, and mountain dew alike,
Prayed for his safety, commanded him to seek his people,
Yet not to delay too long in visiting Torvalds
Once more.

And Tuxowulf left him, left Linux World,
Walked across the green in his golden armor,
Exulting in the treasures heaped high in his arms.
His iceberg was at anchor; he had it ready to sail.
And so Torvalds' rich treasures would leave him,
Travel far from that perfect king, without fault
Or blame, eager to play Quake II which Torvalds
Had given him.

As his iceberg left, the Linux Users celebrated,
Gave thanks to God for their savior. And erected a
Monument at Linux World, designed with Gimp, and
Made it their mascot. And Linux World stretched
Closer to God than any other convention, and
Programmers, hackers, and sysadmins traded ideas
And programs, software they'd written for each
Other, scripts for this and that,
Over a can of Mountain Dew, forever pure.

One heated debate on the scope of a Web Application Developer's work, web2.0 and what not

Yesterday wasn't quite a normal day for me. Lots of crazy and strange things happened out of nowhere yesterday. In between those things was a pretty much uncalled for debate on the scope of Web application developer's work scope with one of my old time buddies. I some how hate people who try to debate on things that they know very little about but pretend to know a lot. I have met lots of characters in my life who wants to be treated as GODs, and trust me, i have no problem if they are indeed gods of something. But i hate those people who in some way tries to project themselves as gods before people who know them very well. These guys will surely pass on as gods before the ignorant, hapless people around them. They will be worshiped as the undisputed kings by this circle of people around them. But, if i happen to be at the receiving end of one of these gods, i show a tendency to fight day and out to prove them mortal.

Lets come to the point, this is a story that happened in the great MulberryLand. There was this poor goldsmith who used to make jewelery for the Royal family of MulberryLand. There was no other person in the entire MulberryLand who could make jewelry as beautiful as our goldsmith. The jewelery that he made were so beautiful that the royal family used to send many gifts to the man with the golden arm. So pretty soon, the poor goldsmith started growing rich. He bought a new house, furnitures and also a beautiful bride. Life was settling in and he continued to be the first preference of the royal family when it came to jewelry.

One fine morning, our mrs.goldsmith goes to her husband and asks for a gift. What she asked him for was a golden necklace. The man who makes the most beautiful jewelry in the whole kingdom said, "No dear, how can i make jewelry for you. I'm the royal goldsmith. It'll be an utter waste of my talent and technology if i ever made a cheap jewelry for you."

So the royal goldsmith's wife is disappointed. She is a very beautiful woman, but no jewelry, not even a drop of gold on her.

Now lets see, where do i come into the story. I told our goldsmith to beautify his wife using the great talent and technology that he has. This got me into one hell of a debate. and this is the culminating comment i got "its a waste of a technology like .... for spicing up your ......."

The first blank stands for the technology that he works on, more precisely Flex. The second stands for his new wife, say the new website that hes creating.

The challenge that i put forward was to show to the world how a flex based site can make your own website look pretty instead of having a boring html template that you have borrowed from somewhere. The goldsmith told, hes a "Web Application Developer and not a Web designer", the Royal goldsmith. I tried to explain to him what is the scope of work of goldsmith. But all in vain, he comes up with all those points to prove that i'm pretty much outdated in latest technology and that my view point is aging. He said, i'm looking at a web developer from the web 1.0 perspective and that my dear buddy has already entered the magical world of web2.0.

Now let me tell you what i think a web application developer is. He is the one who develops an end-to-end web application (however complex it is, as he might be required to write all those beans and what not depending on the complexity of the application) that finally gets deployed in an application/web server. When you are having a personal website and hosting space on the net, i feel i have lots and lots of stuff i want to share with the visitors of my site. The technical opensource stuff i do, the tutorials i have written, photos and what not. If i were working with a technology like flex ( i used to work with a bit of ajax while working on my mobile research site as part of my Trilogy University project ), i'll try to use my technology to showcase how easily and nicely perhaps i can arrange all the information/resources on my site. I can also provide some free services like rss feeds and even polls there. Okay, incase you don't want to do all these stuff like me. Atleast get your site to look good, eyecatching. And certainly, theres nothing thats so catchy on a webpage than flash stuff. Whether it be annoying ads, or cool games flash was supposed to be the "next generation stuff" on the net. If i feel that my technology is not useful for me when i'm building a website, i'll rather not try to sell/advocate that this is the best technology to use when someone else is building their site. I will never advocate that this is the "NEXT GENERATION WEB UI". I'll just say, heres a technology that you "might" find useful. If you look at the websites of Ajax frameworks, almost all of them have made their entire site using their framework. Isn't it the way to go. Even the product that i'm working on (called, Versata) is used extensively inside my company for developing internal applications. So the use of your product starts from you, your home and not someone else's home. Like gmail being the official mail client for google guys.

Whats this web2.0?(from wiki)

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived second generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and it has since become widely adopted.

Though the term suggests a new version of the Web, it does not refer to an update to Internet or World Wide Web technical standards, but to changes in the ways those standards are used. According to Tim O'Reilly "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.".

Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee have questioned whether the term is meaningful, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have been present since the creation of the World Wide Web.

Ceratinly, i dont see web2.0 changing the definition of the scope of work of a web application developer. Perhaps, let me wind up by quoting Mark Cuban* on web 2.0 : "There's nothing new there."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/category?blogid=19&cat=650&o=50

*Cuban has gotten a lot of attention lately for calling whoever bought YouTube -- that would be Google, which acquired the San Bruno online video company for $1.65 billion last week -- a moron.

Complexity of Programming languages!!!

I came across this set of cartoons at http://www.jeffpalm.com/fox/index.html

Just sharing it across with you all...

With Scheme would he have done better?

Blaise Pascal --A man with a million contributions

Pascal : In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name. His contributions on probability and discrete mathematics have helped me add quite a lot of marks in my kitty during my 4 yrs of CS engineering ;)
Today, while i was watching a quizz show called Grand Master in one of the malayalam channels, 'Asianet'. The quizz master asked a question which none of the teams were able to answer. Let me get the question for you : Wich famous person quoted the following : "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
The quote really got my attention because i felt i completely agreed with it, whoever quoted it. Then came the answer from the quizz master : Its from "Blaise Pascal".
Wow, i couldn't believe it. So, as usual i opened my lappy, and googled it.
I did find some interesting things on the life of Pascal which i had never tried to know even after having heard his name from my 5th grade.

"For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed."
Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72

Microsoft and DRM (Digital-Rights Management)

This topic has come to the limelight with pretty hot debates once Vista has been released. Lets just see what all this controversy is about.

Windows Vista includes content protection infrastructure specifically designed to help ensure that protected commercial audiovisual content, such as newly released HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, can be enjoyed on Windows Vista PCs. In many cases this content has policies associated with its use that must be enforced by playback devices. The policies associated with such content are applicable to all types of devices including Windows Vista PCs, computers running non-Windows operating systems, and standalone consumer electronics devices such as DVD players. If the policies required protections that Windows Vista couldn't support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs. Clearly that isn't a good scenario for consumers who are looking to enjoy great next generation content experiences on their PCs.

What is all the fuss about this and how does this affect the common end users :
from http://www.coofercat.com/node/1081

Vista is all about 'premium content'. This is music or video that's copyrighted by one of the major music or movie companies. Basically, if any such content is being played, Vista goes into a sort of 'protected mode'. When this is happening, your computer becomes very careful not to 'leak' this protected content. That means that any devices on your machine that can play this content (eg. your video card, sound card etc) have to work in a special way. The idea is (for example) that your video card will send coded signals to your monitor, so that you couldn't plug in some sort of recorder and simply scoop up the signal and record it. The problem is, not all monitors/TVs can handle these coded signals. If yours doesn't then Vista will reduce the quality of the output so that it's not worth recording. Incidentally, you don't get a choice, it just happens.

Futher than that, if you're listening to a CD, then your monitor may go fuzzy at the same time! Just because one thing is handling protected content, the other may become crippled as well!

As if that's not enough, some devices can simply become disabled, either during premium content playback, or at some arbitrary time in the future as decided by Microsoft. Basically, if a device (or it's associated driver software) are found to be leaking content sometime in the future, then Microsoft can stop it working when you next update your computer. Given Microsoft's history in this area, it's pretty much required to update your computer say, once a month at the moment, so you're almost certainly going to *have* to get your leaky device disabled reasonably soon after MS decide to disable it. They'll disable things until some fix can be found, provided one can be found. Maybe the hardware/driver in question is so old the vendor doesn't want to fix the problem, or maybe it just can't be fixed.

This is horrible: You update your computer to protect yourself from viruses and such like, and instead your graphics card stops working! If it's one built onto the motherboard, perhaps on a laptop, then well, you're screwed - go and buy a whole new machine, as it's almost certainly not worth trying to fix it.

So to summarise these few points (yes, there are more I haven't even mentioned!):

1) All Vista compatible hardware will be more expensive than it otherwise would be. This is because hardware vendors have to comply with very strict rules, and have to add extra hardware features to their products to make them work with Vista. This all requires extra testing, which aside from costing more takes more time.

2) When playing premium content, your computer's performance may degrade. That is, the video or sound quality in particular may degrade, but also raw system performance may also degrade as your computer works to protect that premium content as it moves around inside your computer.

3) Whatever your computer is doing today, it may not do it tomorrow. If you're unlucky enough to have some hardware which later is found to be unfriendly to the content industry, it may just aribtrarily stop working. It's not because of a hardware failure per-se, and you may not even know how, or want to copy premium content, but Windows will refuse to use your device. If you're really lucky, an update may come along in the future, if not, you may well end up buying a new computer (oh, and your old one probably won't fetch much on Ebay either!).

I don't think Vista sounds like a good deal for end-users. Microsoft look set to do quite well out of it, provided we all lap it up like we're supposed to.

Update 14th Feb, 2007: A little looking around brings more to light about Vista's hardware requirements. Reghardware started me on this trail, but arstechnica have a slightly more inclusive article along the same lines.

To me, these articles say very loudly: Don't buy a Vista PC until AT LEAST June 1st, 2007, and preferably June 1st, 2008. Only then does the hardware you buy fully reach maturity, and so will be optimal for running Vista. Before that, you'll always have hardware that doesn't do everything Vista wants. Given what we know about Vista and it's use of hardware, I'd say anything less than optimal hardware is an incredible risk to take. Annecdotally, by June 2008 it's also likely that there'll be a Service Pack or two out, so the major problems with Vista will have been fixed.

So by Vista if you must, but wait until June 1st, 2008 to do it.

Explanation from the Vista blog :

Associating usage policies with commercial content is not new to Windows Vista, or to the industry. In fact, much of the functionality discussed in the paper has been part of previous versions of Windows, and hasn’t resulted in significant consumer problems – as evidenced by the widespread consumer use of digital media in Windows XP. For example:

* Standard definition DVD playback has required selective use of Macrovision ACP on analog television outputs since it was introduced in the 1990s. DVD playback on and in Windows has always supported this.
* The ability to restrict audio outputs (e.g., S/PDIF) for certain types of content has been available since Windows Millennium Edition (ME) and has been available in all subsequent versions of Windows.
* The Certified Output Protection Protocol (COPP) was released over 2 years ago for Windows XP, and provides applications with the ability to detect output types and enable certain protections on video outputs such as HDCP, CGMS-A, and Macrovision ACP.

It's important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC. For example, if a user were viewing medical imagery concurrently with playback of video which required image constraint, only the commercial video would be constrained -- not the medical image or other things on the user's desktop. Similarly, if someone was listening to commercial audio content while viewing medical imagery, none of the video protection mechanisms would be activated and the displayed images would again be unaffected.

Contrary to claims made in the paper, the content protection mechanisms do not make Windows Vista PCs less reliable than they would be otherwise -- if anything they will have the opposite effect, for example because they will lead to better driver quality control.

The paper implies that Microsoft decides which protections should be active at any given time. This is not the case. The content protection infrastructure in Windows Vista provides a range of à la carte options that allows applications playing back protected content to properly enable the protections required by the policies established for such content by the content owner or service provider. In this way, the PC functions the same as any other consumer electronics device.


Aren't there already output content protection features in Windows XP?

Yes. Output content protections are not new requirements for commercial content. The CSS content protection system for DVD-video discs requires output protections such as Macrovision ACP and limiting the resolution on component video outputs to standard definition. Windows XP has supported these requirements for some time.

They provide a set of 20 questions and answers as well.

An excerpt from the article "Microsoft Buffeted By Criticism Over Vista DRM"
By Alexander Wolfe , TechWeb Technology News

From Microsoft's perspective, its attempt to comply with a DRM scheme developed by the consumer electronics industry is getting unfairly blown up into a nefarious plan that's far from reality. "Articles saying that you will need new monitors with Windows Vista to play any DRMed content are not correct," said Ken Birge, a spokesman for Microsoft. "Any DRM content that's out there today, you'll be able to play with any existing monitor using Vista."

However, Birge confirms that new monitors will be required to support full playback of high-definition DVDs. "Next-generation DVDs will require HDCP for playback," Birge said. "So that requires HDCP protection all the way out to monitor. As PCs become more of a home entertainment device, consumers are going to expect to play back next-generation DVDs. In order to do that, Microsoft has to require this HDCP support all the way out to the monitor. It's very much following suit to what the consumer electronics industry has already done."

Indeed, Birge pointed out that many high-definition monitors made for the consumer electronics market already comply with HDCP, though most computer monitors have yet to do so. The next-generation DVDs will play on old-style monitors, he said, but in a degraded performance mode. "If you have a Windows Vista machine, and you have your legacy monitor, and you were to pop [in] one of these next-generation DVDs and try to play it back, it wouldn't not play," Birge said. "What it will do is down-sample to something around [standard] DVD quality; you won't get the high-definition experience."

At least one Microsoft watcher sees the company as caught between a rock and a hard place on the DRM issue. "Microsoft is trying to serve two masters, and that's not always an easy task," said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research, "Master one is Hollywood and the content providers, who want their stuff protected. Master two is the consumer, who wants to be able to get at everything easily. And Microsoft's kind of caught in the middle. There are a lot of [DRM] mechanisms being proposed and implemented and Microsoft is just hedging its bets here. If [HDCP] really reaches a mass market, then Windows Vista will be able to support it."



so, whats the catch here, one should/not buy Vista until this problem is cleared by all hardware vendors that you depend on? Or else end up paying for Vista and low performance of your hardware?

Programmers are brain surgeons

In the last post, i forgot to tell you how i reached that post, it was actually from this blog entry....checkout this one as well

http://blog.saush.com/?p=157

I sent out a mail recently to some managers in my company (before you start rolling your eyes, I’m a manager too) about project scheduling, something which I’ve been very frustrated about for a long while. In that mail I quoted something from the book “The Art of Project Management” by Scott Berkun — “Programmers should be trusted. If your brain surgeon told you the operation you need takes five hours, would you pressure him to do it in three?”.

Craig was quite amused at this quote, asking if I compared myself with a brain surgeon. While it was friendly banter, I thought that this was one of the problems with the software industry. Maybe it is the naming/association with the construction industry where architects design the building, engineers oversees the construction and anyone doing the actual work is considered menial laborers. Maybe it is the thousands working ’software factories’ for outsourcing body-shoppers. Maybe it’s the large software projects that suck up thousands upon thousands of man-days with huge teams of programmers that gave rise to the myth that only large teams of programmers can produce software of any significance.

Whatever it is.

I believe programmers are not given enough respect that we deserve....

Read the rest at the actual blog

32 Reasons Why Geeks are Severely Underpaid!!!

I came across this interesting article on why geeks are underpaid (compared to say, sales people). Read it at http://www.negotiations.com/articles/geeks-earning-more/

You're good at what you do, maybe you're an ace. So are you being paid what you're worth? See how many of the 32 Salary Negotiation Rules you're using.

Why are sales professionals still rewarded with the biggest pay packets?
Are sales professionals better qualified or smarter than IT professionals? No, there's no such thing as a sales degree. Do they work longer or harder? Of course not. So why then is IT not the best paid profession?

Two main reasons:

1._Sales brings home the bacon. So measuring their success is easy, and their impact on profit is immediate. Technology's profit impact is neither immediate nor easy to measure. Geeks can't do much about this - sorry. 2._Salespeople negotiate every day. So they either negotiate well, or they have skinny kids, and change career paths. Every year 1 in 3 leave the sales professional - a much higher churn than the IT industry. Geeks can't afford not to play catchup here. The good news is that learning to negotiate well is not nearly as difficult as mastering a programming language.
We've watched salespeople out manoeuvre and out negotiate geeks in the opening hours of our training courses. In response we've put together this comprehensive IT salary negotiation article to help geeks close the gap.

We start with 32 essentials. We suggest that you mark your diary to review this article when looking for your next position, raise or annual review. For those interested in a bright long term career trajectory and the bigger cheques this brings, answer the questions and complete the exercises outlined in our "4 foundations steps" towards the end. Finally, to assist you in your preparation, download our Salary Negotiation Checklist (M$ Excel). Time to put your starting salary, salary increment, or pay raise under the negotiation microscope.

The author then goes on to talk about 32 IT Salary Negotiation Rules :)

Exchangeable image file format

I happened to have a talk with my rommie about having some "meta tags" inside images/videos to enable faster searching in the net. I did disagree with him over the concept of just having some meta tags inside images to describe them, as he pointed out, it is(was) being used in html pages for better searching of pages. Then today, i came across this information on a standard file format used by digital camera manufacturers to embed information on images captured by their devices.

Exchangeable image file format

Exchangeable image file format (official abbreviation Exif, not EXIF) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras. It was created by the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA). The specification uses the existing JPEG, TIFF Rev. 6.0, and RIFF WAVE file formats, with the addition of specific metadata tags. It is not supported in JPEG 2000 or PNG.

Version 2.1 of the specification is dated June 12, 1998 and version 2.2 is dated April 2002.

The Exif tag structure is taken from that of TIFF files. There is a large overlap between the tags defined in the TIFF, Exif, TIFF/EP and DCF standards.

The metadata tags defined in the Exif standard cover a broad spectrum including:

* Date and time information. Digital cameras will record the current date and time and save this in the metadata.
* Camera settings. This includes static information such as the camera model and make, and information that varies with each image such as orientation, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, metering mode, and film speed information.
* A thumbnail for previewing the picture on the camera's LCD screen, in file managers or photo manipulation software.
* Descriptions and copyright information. Again this is something which is most often done when post-processing the images, as only high-end camera models let the user choose a text for these fields. (Although this feature is becoming more and more apparent even in lower end compact digital cameras).

Editing EXIF-fields

Tools

The Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is the chief Free Software image manipulation program which can handle EXIF data via an EXIF viewer plugin.

There are also several command line tools that are for example helpful for batch editing EXIF meta data like jhead and ExifTool (Perl script), that can display and edit XMP, IPTC and EXIF and other metadata.

ExifTool runs on OS X, but requires a Perl interpreter (such as ActivePerl) to run on Windows.

Mapivi (open source) is a picture manager which is able to add, edit, search and remove image meta information as EXIF and IPTC.

Gimp, Mapivi and jhead are also available for Mac OSX and Windows.

Linux/Unix users

Many free software image programs like the digital camera management program DigiKam and the general purpose image viewer Gwenview (both KDE based) can handle EXIF as well.

MacOSX users

Apple's iPhoto can be used to edit title, date, time and keywords. The camera information can also be viewed.

JetPhoto can be used to add GPS data to a photoalbum. JetPhoto uses timestamp information to correlate tracking data from a GPS device with the timestamps on the photo. JetPhoto is freeware so there is no charge but it does not appear to be open source. Keywords, and titles can be edited but no other information.

Reveal can be used to view and edit EXIF summary and exposure data.

Windows users

Programs XnView (free for non-commercial use), Picasa (freeware) and IrfanView, (free of charge for private use) are able to edit IPTC fields such as captions, keywords, etc., but unluckily can only view most of EXIF fields. Else Exifer (postcardware) Konvertor (shareware) is capable as well editing and modifying the EXIF header.

For more information on this,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXIF
see, no wonder why people call me a wiki fan :)

Ajax Vs Flash.....a one day debate

The Ajax View :

How is Ajax better?

Searchability ....for God sake why do u want to use binary files in ur site ;)

Generally web pages are more visible to search engines than Flash pages. Search engine referrals can make a large difference to the traffic that your web-site generates. It is possible to extract the text of a Flash app for search engine indexing. In addition Google and other search engine manufacturers can index .swf files natively. However despite these measures .swf files tend to be less visible to search engines.

Openness

Although the swf format is a published format and there is a significant open source community there appears to be no such thing as an open source Flash player as a result of Macromedia's licencing programme. Developers with a bias towards more open systems and corporations that do not wish to depend on a third party or potential competitor may wish to avoid use of Flash.

Cost

The cost of the Flash development environment can be an issue. $700 may be a significant investment for smaller design shops. Corporations with bureaucratic purchasing departments (if that's not a tautology) may have issue with any price other than $0. At $0 tools can come in under the radar.

There are cheaper alternatives to flash like Swish and free alternatives like Lazlo, however these options may not allow the full power of Flash.

Accessibility

Ajax applications default to following the font and colour settings of their environment were as Flash applications use developer specified settings. This can make it harder for disabled users. In addition environment provided helps like screen readers, acceleration keys and so on may not be available to users of Flash applications. A fully accessible site can be created using Ajax.

Security

Web applications without Flash are often trusted more than their Flash cousins for several reasons.

• Flash is most commonly used in visually distracting advertisements
• It is used as way around pop-up blockers
• It can be used to create immortal cookies.

Ref : http://getahead.ltd.uk/dwr/ajax/ajax-flash-compared

As a result many users use Flash blockers to control their web experience or approach Flash websites with an initial negative bias.

I do agree that flash does provide very rich UI (at very high bandwidth consumption though), but take a look at this site :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cyo/cyo-state-manager.html/002-3238204-3493664?ie=UTF8&sequenceStep=step1&pipelineID=cyor&sequenceID=sequence1

Also note,

" India broadband penetration is very low. Despite efforts to roll out the infrastructure, urban India has only a 3 per cent adoption rate among its top three socio-economic classes (SECs)," the report said, pegging South Korea, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Sweden and metropolitan China in the high broadband penetration category.

It said despite the perception that the US was an across-the-board technology leader, only 39 per cent of Americans have broadband. The report placed the US in a second tier along with the UK, France, and Australia.

"In Western Europe, 21 per cent of German and Italian consumers have broadband access, with Spain close behind at 19 per cent. Eastern European investor-darling Poland trails behind with a 12 per cent adoption rate, reflective of its developing nation status," the report said.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/05/05/stories/2006050504340900.htm

So see, this is not a full "broadband" world :) and atleast 97 % indian cutomers have to "whine" on seeing a full flash website.

You might also want to check out what the "ad blockers" in the market do.

Do checkout this article from adobe devnet forum of JD :
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/jd_forum/jd023.html

What is Flash really good for? Banners and ads – it provides far more useful features then the traditional gif animation. Online games? Flash technology – the Flash videos - for video blogs.

The Flex View : (Harish and Raghu)

I am not an Ajax hater, and I also approve of many points raised in here against the SWF format. But my 2 paises on the arguments:

Searchability: Agree – Flash has some distance to cover here.

The Cost angle: Disagree

It’s like saying choosing Maruti 800 is a better option to buying Mercedes-Benz because:

· Argument 1: Maruti 800 is also a car, it also runs on roads and costs lesser.

· Argument 2: Mercedes-Benz is also a car, but godamn, it costs more.

Conclusion – Maruti 800 is better (bah!)

The cost argument is as absurd as this one. Want better usability, invest more. The market works that way always. If you don’t have investment potential, you will have to compromise on the user experience, If you don’t want binary in your site, you can type the “sad- excuse” fine print like yahoo beta application whose layout looks like a psunami hit coastline in mozilla / firefox 1.0 J Ajax is like taking cycle rikshaw for transport against a Limousine (Read Flex.) Both are modes of transport, but…

Ajax is cool – as long as it is blue text on white background (courtesy GMAIL) (It is a irradical argument, but just in the same tone of your forward J)

Now – a small proof for How better Flex is over any off the shelf Ajax framework:

See this (http://examples.adobe.com/flex2/inproduct/sdk/flexstore/flexstore.html) and this(http://www.backbase.com/RUI/shop.html)

Cost of Flex SDK – 0$
Cost of Flex Builder (Based on eclipse) - $499
Cost of Flex Charting (yeah, we mean full fledged, kickass charts) - $300

Total - $799

Backbase Ajax:

$8,583.25 – without maintainance

$ 10,299.90 – with maintainance

(remember , all this for some javascript libraries!)

Oh sure, we are saving a lot of money, unfortunately for you, Flex is cheaper, Much much cheaper.
(For the free Ajax frameworks, God help the developers to write the components!)

Now, Flex 2.0 SDK costs 0$ too – just for your information.

Addendum: Swish is a small text animation generator and NOT a replacement for Flash. It beats me as to how a mere text animator can be a replacement to an un challenged animation monster like Flash. Open lazlo is good, but is dead if flash player decides to screw it.

Accessibility: Disagree

ALL flex components are accessible. Detractors are encouraged to read the Flex documentation before alleging.

Security: Neutral

There are security shortcomings in flash security model, but one noteworthy thing is the advances that flash player has had in tightening its security model from player 5.0 to player 9.0. Flash player 9.0 is definitely a very secure plugin.

• Saying “Flash is most commonly used in visually distracting advertisements” sounds like saying “Batteries are used in making time bomb remote controls”. I fail to understand how it is a short coming of Flash as a platform.
• It can be used to create immoral cookies – So can javascript, so whats the big deal?

Bandwidth problem:

Refer to the maruti – Mercedes example. J

On a serious note, All of us agree we must develop applications which define the future. There are several concepts like incremental loading in flash which makes a flash application work faster then legacy apps. Lack of knowledge of developers on this concept cannot be blamed on the technology itself. I am sure you will agree. J

What is Flash really good for? - Well, everything that HTML, Javascript, Ajax and other assorted technologies cannot achieve and dream to achieve. Also, remember, there is nothing that you cannot do in flex that Ajax can do. (Okay can’t search - but other than that, literally EVERYTHING is possible. Now if you say searching is a BIG shortcoming, its like saying I would not buy a bike because it requires fuel, so my bicycle is betterJ)

Last but not the least, Flex is NOT a competitor for AJAX, rather these two technologies vastly compliment each other. Adobe’s Flex- AJAX Bridge is a great example. Also see how these technologies has their strengths and how companies leverage both in applications like yahoo finance and Google finance where the charting part is completely flash player based.