Sunday, December 28, 2008

Linux can't cure a stupid and it's not a medicine for stupidity

These were the words, i saw in one of the start up company, written on white board with some marker. I did talk to the person who wrote it.

Long story short :  

It was a start up company and the products on mac platform (Xserves). They got venture funding and was hiring best for making the best. The person controlling engineering was a Solaris fan and he was from a big company. 

As there is enough money the first plan was t make the product carrier grade and so first step is to port from mac to Solaris. The major problem was network guys were much comfortable with the disk imaging and back and restore procedures. Any way, they ordered a lot of Solaris machines and started porting. 

Porting on the way and they hired next engineering top person. He was from a big company and he said that the big company makes products in Linux and CTO was a fan of the "big company" decided to switch products to Linux. 

The company ordered a lot new machines and now again new installs , porting and no revenue ...  

This was the time the writing came to board.  
By this time one of the competitor went on some product related issues and the company was forced to withdraw all the products. Here we go .. 

The start up we were talking, run out of money and left with all the hardware and software they brought. No money for a future R&D for a product and not a new business plan. Tried hard with lot new block diagrams and plans from some hired talent to get more money in and failed.

Finally the start up got closed.  

Lets be back to 2 points :  

Skills you need for a start up is not that of a big organization.

Hire selectively if you need to survive.

In big organizations, i have met a lot people who don't have the skills to survive in a start up.  

Start up is a sort of lottery, lot are just surviving. Think how many times you got the bumper prize. Plans may be nice and mostly it's by somebody who don't have much idea but guts to start a business. it's not all about business, it has more things. Experience is also not the only thing to successes. This is for individuals, do you really have the drive to take you there ?

So think multiple times, if you want to switch to a start up career .I have a lot friends who started and then back to big business and have some people who still stick to the initial/revised plan and making small steps towards the future. There is a difference between process and innovation.


© yankandpaste®

Sunday, December 21, 2008

The Resoures Era 2.0

We had Resources era where people were looking for resources, then it came Industrial era and the came computer era( yes it was only 30+ years and ended with bill gates and official end 2010 ) and now we back to resources era.

Whatz special about this era this time ?

In first era 1.0 people traveled for more trade routes, discovery of countries, invasions and extraction of resources etc. Now we are almost run out of resources

Oil we have but we cant afford, we need cheap and its not clean air technology.so we need clear alternatives ( we need renewable energy and all our out next gen utilities should be using the electricity ). So we need more ways to produce, store electricity and should be affordable.

Second, we cant eat electricity as of now. We need more food. We have more people and less land, so we need to make more food from less. Another potential area for next gen.


Health, Last day i was watching a movie on clones. The theme was like, when you take insurance policy, they will take a sample and make a clone of you. Once you need any organ or something else, they use the clones one ( saying you won a lottery move them to an island and kill them ). To be true i fear this movie is going to be true in this era.


Lets see what all this era offers but as first ones, yes battery technologies are hot now, now computer is a normal thing and its no longer the high pay job.Its a skill every one need to make your work better.


Lets be back to manufacturing and research. Make more resources.

As i was reading the land is mars is good for asparagus, We can expect an era where asparagus is made in mars and space shuttles running back and forth for transportation.


© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Next Big word for USA

In west, the words yoga, karma, guru etc has found own place. I love to say the next big word which is going to be the life style for west is "Swadeshi movement"

Why ? USA started with industries and then they lost the track. For more profits they outsourced the quality jobs and only sales and some other minimum pay jobs remained.

The industries said they are getting profits.People who got profits brought land and land owners got money and all the real-estate eco system got the money. They never cared that all the quality jobs are vanishing. Now they are understanding that there is no customers who can afford the services/products and there is no market.

Why ? Because quality jobs vanished and now all get minimum pay jobs and they cannot afford.

Do this has any relation with next big word ? yep lets see whatz swadeshi movement

wikipedia says :

Mahatma Gandhi described Swadeshi as "a call to the consumer to be aware of the violence he is causing by supporting those industries that result in poverty and harm to workers and to humans and other creatures."

Gandhi recognised that alienation and exploitation often occur when production and consumption are divorced from their social and cultural context, and that local enterprise is a way to avoid these problems. "Swadeshi is that spirit in us which requires us to serve our immediate neighbours before others, and to use things produced in our neighbourhood in preference to those more remote. So doing, we serve humanity to the best of our capacity. We cannot serve humanity by neglecting our neighbours


Now USA has to make things and not import. Have to shift business back to US and not say we outsourced fabrication or other stuff.

Lets look for more "Made in USA" and let people support the move by spending on local products.


© yankandpaste®

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The New Chevy Volt concept - OPEN VOLT

It looks the 25b TARP money is not coming to big 3 American Auto makers. So lets looks for an alternative idea for Chevy Volt program. The reason is once GM goes bankrupt, they cant come up with it. If they are able then i am not sure how good it will be.

Alternatives ? OPEN VOLT - Thatz a nice thought

Lets follow Linux model combined with IETF model (hybrid).

TARP/Other funding money goes to NASA or some good agency ( NASA because it can use space technology for use of men and VOLT for space exploration) . All Specifications and designs come from Central agency for the platform. Its like Linux kernel. Then any vehicle manufacturer can make Volt ( like Toyota Volt v 1.2 , Honda Volt 6 , Hyundai Volt ABC etc ). They have to follow the OPEN VOLT specifications and they can design there own body according to aerodynamics . Same with Interior etc where the specs will not be tight on and allow creativity ( this is like distributions in Linux ).


All good practices will be taken back to Central agency and will be done like IETF drafts or Jabber XEPs or Java JSRs. It will go through review and tests and the ones which qualifies comes out as specifications and gets into new version of OPEN VOLT specifications - something like RFC. As this is a proved model in computers ( the IETF and RFC ) , we can use the same concepts for OPEN VOLT.

So when we buy a VOLT get the list of specifications it follows and we have the freedom to choose vendor on core components - ex: battery, Generator, Electric Engine etc - and Specifics (non core specifications parts) from my distributor ( ex: Honda , Toyota etc ).

Put your votes on the OPEN VOLT !!
Lets write open letter to Obama as this idea is going to be saving our future and no distributor ask for money in future.

© yankandpaste®

Globalization and economic crisis

A video forwarded by a friend, Make sense in some aspects.

Its a good watch for Americans and mostly western people.



NB: Please note the english used is Tamglish ( tamil - english )so clarification please let me know :-)
© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Bubbles ( kumilakal )

Was going through a presentation, Bit small one ( not sure on the author but it was rotating by email )

Preface :

This is a small story. In starting you may be bit confused but once you go till end of the story, everything will be fine.

Lets start reading.

In a small island ( not iceland ) there are 3 inhabitants.

Kunjumoosa
Kunjunni
and Kochutresya

Kunjunni and Kochutresya doesn't own any land but both have a dollar each in hand.
kunjumoosa does not have any money, but island is owned by him.

Kunjunni got a desire to buy the island. He gave a dollar and brought the island

Balance sheet :

Kunjunni has a dollar valued island
Kunjumoosa has a dollar
Kochutresya has a dollar

Total Value in island : 3 dollar

Seeing this, kochutresya also want to buy the island.But she was sure she cant get that for a dollar. She borrowed a dollar from kunjimoosa and brought the island for $2.


Balance sheet :

Kunjunni has two dollar valued island
Kunjumoosa has a dollar to get from Kochutresya.
Kochutresya has two dollar valued island but she got a debt of a dollar.So she has a dollar net value.

Total value in island : 4 dollar

Kunjumoosa felt sad on the land sale because he felt it was too worthy and its going up. So he decided to buy back.

He took loan of two dollar from Kunjunni and brought the island for three dollar. Two dollar cash and one dollar as credit of the one dollar she loaned before.

Balance sheet :

Kunjunni has two dollar value - which is loaned to kunjimoosa
kunjumoosa has three dollar valued island.
Kochutresya has two dollars.

The bubble went big and big. Every one happy and every in profit.


Days passed, Kujunni started thinking again .. do real estate rise this much ? do i get the money back ?


Kunjumoosa and kochutresya also started thinking - d this land cost this much ?

Kunjunni asked the money back. Kunjumoosa tried to sell.
The market for land went down.now its back to a dollar.

Konjumoosa because bankrupt and gave away the land to kunjunni and declared chap: 11.

Balance sheet :

Kunjunni has dollar valued land.
kunjumoosa - 0 dollar.
Kochutresya has two dollars


Total value in island : 3 dollar


End of story.

Tailpiece:

Nobody knows when the bubble bursts. The person with cash at time of bust gets it. So don't worry if bank doesn't give you a loan. They want to secure cash in hand for now.

Management fundus will say kunjimoosa to sell the island divided etc but we want to make story simple so no side lines added.

special thanks : Gopakumar

© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Gods own county - Terrorists rules

Kerala local news : Local people ( more criminals ) are getting recruited and trained for becoming terrorists in Kashmir. The news got importance when 2 of them got killed in an attack.

The Local police, Govt and Political parties started working ( yes, Political parties just try to blame each other )

The next is only my view and only my view and i am not expecting somebody to read but i am expressing my opinion using freedom for expression of opinion.

This time when i was in India,I had a talk to most friends on the bomb blasts etc.

One of the Opinions i herd : There is a feeling in Muslim community that they are targeted globally and this feeling get oil when they go as group and it get worse and results in attacks.

Another one : They should understand they live in India and work for India. They are killing innocents.

Another one : There are 3 truths : my truth, your truth and the truth.

and goes on.

My View :

I think politicians in Kerala did helped these organizations to grow just thinking of vote banks because they get Muslim votes as bulk.For them this is wake up call to work for nation and think above Vote banks.

I think a minority in Muslims may be doing all the bad things. Let me ask, what kind of reputation was there for normal swamis when Santhosh Madhavan case was going ? a lot asrams were attacked. Did they killed people ? or took the sufferings ?

Do u think this wont happen with Muslims now ? and if they react same violence, its going to be loss for Muslims more because the belief of normal people get more strength.

I know Muslims of India are of Indian orgin and they are even given more reservations than normal Hindus. Think of what happens in middle east and how non-Muslims are treated there. In India i am sure no Muslim get the same treatment like treatment of a non Muslim in a Muslim country.


I believe This is time for INDIAN MUSLIMS or i call them HINDU MUSLIMS ( where Hindu is that ahimsa culture ) tell or protest publicly against the minority who creates this problems.

They should share the same feelings of the mother who said " WE DON'T WANT THE DEAD BODY OF THE SON WHO WORKED AGAINST THE NATION "

NB: I feel Biharis and Mumbains also should share the same above feeling and the govt should declare Raj Thackeray (who tries to create split in Indians and make his party or presence - old divide and rule policy )as terrorist as the same standards they do against all the terrorists.





© yankandpaste®

Monday, October 27, 2008

GM Volt and Next killing time of Electric car

I am big fan of GM VOLT. I love it than Prius or other ones. Reason : Its all electric ( new generation begins here )

Now every body want to say they are in EV business. But back to numbers :

Gas price back to $2 Gallon, GM almost near bankrupt - Do you think they will try to sell the Hybrids and the same old mantras ? or really they deliver Volt ?

Another : Do volt going to be another North American car - yes i mean on Quality which suffer very heavily with the Asian ones. Built Quality, Durability ...

I know a lot who already had American cars and now they don't want to be part of this bandwagon. They all shifted to the other side. Now its GM duty to get those back and it cant be done saying we have quality.

Lets see how volt can bring them back ) I hear 2008 Malibu is lot better than old still they are miles away from Prius and Civics. Lest see How GM will close this gap.I am sure its not only price point

GM VOLT : http://gm-volt.com/
: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt
: http://www.gm.ca/gm/english/corporate/green-by-design/vehicles/electric


© yankandpaste®

Why Impressive india and why not ?

Lot questions on why impressive in India

Impressive:
===========

Mobile rates (phones and call rates )
It was very easy to get a connection - just 2 IDs and connection is mine ( total spending $10 with around $8 call time, free incoming and outgoing ( including on roaming at 4 cents per minute ) ??

Impressive ? In Canada, I got a fat bill (airtime charges ) from Koodo when i am back and used it for calling a toll free number.

Living standard ( special kudos to IT guys ) - IT people having US pay and Indian expenses - wow Royal Life !!.

Cars - The cars standards were impressive : Tata made a lot way -- Maruti still doing great and Swift which looked great compared to North American model. I believe North Americans should see that model and cry on how Suzuki/GM treats them.

Buildings
- 4 yrs back when i was leaving India, there was some big buildings - this time they looked old and new buildings -- Great !!

TV : get 250 channels for $10 ( set top box free ). I pay big for less channels in Canada

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Back from India Trip

Post less month due to India trip after 3.5 years. Completely out of Internet and computers.

Some impressive and not impressive feelings :

Not impressive :
==============

Airports (low hygienic)
Roads
Driving
Dust ( Bangalore)
Power ( Current /Electricity )

Impressive:
===========

Mobile rates (phones and call rates )
Living standard ( special kudos to IT guys )
Cars - ( looked lot better -specially i like swift )
Buildings
New entrepreneurs - special kudos to some people who left big pay cheques and working for some mission - i was really impressed
Drinks - Liquor
New shops


I remember only this much as of now, writing to make habit of writing back
© yankandpaste®

Friday, August 29, 2008

Olympics, India and the Mobile phone advertisement

I was watching the television advertisement ( i think it tata some stuff ). The theme is a girl sitting, the dialog comes "sky high ambitions , with a bit of practise ... "This time she is running near a train then she gets a mobile phone call to come to Delhi and she is selected for some thing and she gets to a bullock cart and goes.


This exactly shows the India attitude. Big ambition, less practice and going to be on track against people have only one ambition and a lot practise ( hard work ).


Finally i was reading some interview with Abhinav Bhindra " I went with my own money for Olympics ". This says for all the practise he took his own money. The second thing is " There is no magic , you need to practice from now to get a medal in 2016.

Do this mobile advertisement explains whatz wrong in India back. Ohh ya we have controversies over the dress to wear on march past.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Engines ....

My new car opened a bit new world i never looked in. It is a 5 cylinder engine. Wow it was new for me. The neighbour (who is on his 80s and was an auto mechanic ) told some stories in 5 cylinder engines and it ignite me to read more.

3 Cylinder
4 Cylinder
5 Cylinder
6 Cylinder
8 Cylinder

and goes on. ..

another dimensions :

Inline
V
Rotary
Flat
Radial

and goes on


Have a look on wikepeida, Its interesting read.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_engine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_configuration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocating_engines

© yankandpaste®

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Small Car Mania

Every auto maker is trying to for small cars ( GM , Ford, Toyota, Honda ) because it has a more demand.

The reality is this demand is not going to be for a long term. But adds a new dimension for the auto making challenge (Big car with more economy ). I am sure a person who used big cars or SUVs never like to go for a small car or he wont be satisfied with a small car in a long term.

I have a neighbour who is using Toyota Yaris for last 2 years. Now she want a bit more bigger car because of the needs. Another friend of mine is also looking for a big car because he got two kids in home.

Yes, Big car solve the economy problem in a different way for work: Car pools. If car is taking 4 for work , its better in a SUV or a big car where every one is comfort ( even 2 people in big car equates 1 person in small car )

Lets wait and see till new fuel economic big vehicles hit the road.


© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Car Buying on Auction

I brought another car on auction from http://wwiw.auctionvancouver.com/

This is the 3rd car i buy/sell through the same. Do i do it again ? depends but mostly i will go for a private sale or a new car.

Why ?
First car i brought : Pontiac grand AM 2000 SE - $3500 for a 186k km run car
total pay after tax and other fees : 4500+. Now brakes and other tuneups another $1000.


Total spending : $5500. Only maintenance expenses and no problems

Second car : sold old 198x Honda : Sold for $150, in hand after fees $49;

Third car : 1998 Volvo S70 ( i fall in love in first sight but had no idea on price ). Brought for $4000. after fees etc $5000, now in tune ups and breaks, $1000 ( its not with me yet ).

Total $6000, i searched in craigslists : price starts from $4500 to $6000. I am sure they are negotiable.

End result : Its better if you can get car below $3000 than normal buy else :-(.



© yankandpaste®

Maemo DIABLO SDK install on ubuntu 8.04

I am not going through the full install but only through the problems


Before install
edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add below

'vm.vdso_enabled = 0
vm.mmap_min_addr = 4096'

now run 'sysctl -p' as root

start the maemo-scratchbox-install_4.1.sh

Once the install is successful you will get the below term output

==============================


Installation was successful!
----------------------------

You now have Scratchbox 1.0.8 'apophis' release installed.

Scratchbox cannot be run as user root. Instead, use your normal login
user account. Add additional scratchbox users and sandboxes with the
following command (outside scratchbox with root permissions):

# /scratchbox/sbin/sbox_adduser USER yes

Running this command will create sandbox environment for that user and
add user to the 'sbox' scratchbox user group.
You will need to start a new login terminal after being added to the
'sbox' group for group membership to be effective.

Login to scratchbox session using the following command (as user):

$ /scratchbox/login

==============================

Now add the user :

sudo /scratchbox/sbin/sbox_adduser username yes

close the terminal, start new terminal, issue "sudo chmod -R +rx /scratchbox" and " chmod +s /scrachbox/sbin"

some times you need a restart ( better to restart ). In my case i went to another problem ( solution was " chmod 777 /tmp" ).

Now back and run "bash maemo-sdk-install_4.1.sh"
If things go good, You will see a "Happy hacking! " message at the end.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Paying for the Rich - A Carbon Tax story

Finally i am understanding - we live for the rich to take advantage of us.

Everybody say - Lets go green.
The Question is How much green ?
Now i see every where selling has a green or a Hybrid word associated to it.

Lets come back: As my background , I have a kid who is going to be 2 yr old.To save some money from income,we decided not to send kid to daycare ( yep we need to give half of my wife income to daycare to take care of baby and day care work from 7-5 and we work from 9-6 ).For this we make a bit hard decision of working in shifts ( my wife works at night and i work at day ).

Her job is 30 kms away from the place we live ( yes we looked for jobs near, as we don't have degrees from here ( her degree is accredited to equivalent to Masters in Canada but Canadian employers never give a chance for her to attend interview. So she got option from an Australia based company). I drop her at night and go and pick her in the morning. I own a Pontiac grand AM which gives me 9.8 kmpl. We use car for transport as night its not safe for her to take public transit.Apart from this i take public transit and because of these tax additions there was a fare increase recently.

Now Carbon tax :

Gasoline: 2.41 cents per litre in 2008, rising to 7.24 cents per litre by 2012
Natural gas: 49.88 cents per GJ in 2008, rising to 149.64 cents per GJ by 2012



It added around 20 cents per day to my gas bill ( as of now ). As the gas prices were sky rocking, it has null effect, still it did its job of taking money out of me.

Canada is a cold county (kool place ) and everybody uses Gasoline/Natural gas in winter.Winter is yet to come, let me see how much more i have to pay.I am sure its going to hit me hard in winter from all places. Yes i think it was a smart move to introduce it in summer with giving a $ 100 incentive to hand.

Fine , I pay and money is gone out of me. Now the second part starts

Where this tax money goes ?

Last day i was watching a TV - a news special saying Trucks go green :- Introduction of Hybrid Trucks. Wow green!! . I started listening. Some sales people talk - We are committed to go green. I felt again WOW!!.

Me more listening.

The truck owner association president :- "We are committed to go green and we expect Gov to divert funds from carbon tax to aid buying more Green trucks"

Wow!!, What a nice way of taking my hard earned money as his business investment.

Am i a Fool ? or do we need these systems to help or overkill us ?

© yankandpaste®

Paying for the Rich - An ICBC story

Finally i am understanding - we live for the rich to take advantage of us.

Let me tell the full story

I was driving last day and my car skid and hit side of the road. I was not on high speeds or my car was not bad. But i think i was a bit fast for the climate ( it was drizzling and road became slippery ). I travel the same way for last 3 yrs and never had any problems.Why it slipped on that day ? I am not sure because i travelled on same road 8.5 hrs before. lets be back to story.

So car skid and hit the concrete barrier. Fortunately nobody got injured (yes i had my 2 year old boy in the car ) but the car got some repairs, I reported the incident to police and some towing company towed the car to ICBC.


Now the real story :
Dialed ICBC - The first made the claim and asked options. Then real understanding started. If i make a claim even its $100 its going to have subsequent insurance increase of 55% next year 45% second year and 35% third year and 4th year it will be back to my current rate. This means around $5000 extra to my budget over 3 years. I brought the car for $3500 2 years back.This means ICBC write off my car is going to give me $3500 max.


Afer i heard all maths from icbc i dialed one of my friend for a second
opanion and he revealed his story which finally end up in not claiming and fixing car himself.

Now i started thinking, what about rich ? They own cars of $35000+, a skid means $10000 min. They also pay the same insurance extra as me if they claim ( so extra $4000 ) and $6000 for free.

From where this money comes ? From mine and your insurance. Finally we pay insurance for


For making ICBC profit full
For giving free money to Rich ( last 3 yrs i paid more that $7000 as insurance to ICBC and now i have to write off my car which adds another $2000 ( after my own use deduction )


Time to think - Do we really need these systems ??


ICBC ? http://www.icbc.com/

Expect another article on Carbon tax, This is another way the working class pay for rich to remodel/expand their business.
© yankandpaste®

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Twinkle, Twinkle Little star in malayalam

My translation :


Malayakam :

ചിമ്മും ചിമ്മും നക്ഷത്രം
നീ എന്തൊരു അതിശയം
മേലേ മേലേ മാനത്ത്‌
മിന്നി നടക്കും രത്നം പോല്‍

In Manglish :
Chimmum chimmum nakshatram
Nee enthoru athishayam
Maala maala manathil
Minni nadakum ratnam pool



© yankandpaste®

Complexity theory

Last day was talking a friend ( he is am immigrant from Iran ) about howz his friends etc. From him i got this complexity theory

In the place we have friends whom we have a lot to talk in common. Once we immigrate or go away from them , for first years we will dial back a lot talk to them etc. Later the frequency of communication goes less , and less and less. This time you will be building your roots ( a circle of complexities ) here and your friends will building there own roots. After some time you guys may find that there is less/ Nothing to talk because your complexities are different from your friends.


Once again :- what you share common with a friend who studied in school where you were very close with him/her and how much time you can talk now and what subjects ?



© yankandpaste®

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Osx/Mac : Hostname change

To set hostname for a machine on OSx use :

sudo scutil --set HostName servername.example.com

then reboot the machine


© yankandpaste®

Sunday, June 15, 2008

My TV runs linux ( KDL40V3000 )

Wodering am i talking wrong ?

No, was looking in the spec, it said it uses linux kernel, busy box.
Look at : www.sony.com/linux

came in and its shows me KDL40V3000 uses

GPL:

linux-kernel-20070219.tgz (26 MB)
busybox_R2.1.1.tgz (720 KB)

LGPL

hhl-target-glibc-2.2.3-n12.5.src.rpm (19 MB)

Wow, that was mindblowing, TV runs is linux term with sony application. Now i am sure some body is going to get more far than i wrote :-

like putting mythtv inside with plugins so real stuff happens without an extra PC near to it .


© yankandpaste®

Thursday, May 29, 2008

THE STORY OF INDIA

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer
building its house and laying up supplies for the
winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and
laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter,
the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no
food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

Indian Version:
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer
building its house and laying up supplies for the
winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant's a fool and
laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter,
the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be
warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the
shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in
his comfortable home with a table filled with food.The
World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this
be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the
Ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with
other Grasshoppers demanding that
Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during
winter . Human Rights group and Koffi Annan criticize
the Indian Government for not upholding the
fundamental rights of the Grasshopper. The Internet is
flooded with online petitions seeking support to the
Grasshopper (many promise Heaven & Everlasting Peace
for prompt support as against the wrath of God for
non-compliance) .

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for
'Bengal Bandh' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a
Judicial Enquiry. CPM in Kerala immediately passes a
law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so
as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and
Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to grasshoppers
on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the
'Grasshopper Rath'.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the '
Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act'
[POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the
winter. Arjun Singh makes 'Special Reservation ' for
Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in
Government Services.

The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and
having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes,it's
home is confiscated by the Government and handed over
to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice'.
Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice '.
CPM calls it the ' Revolutionary Resurgence of the
Downtrodden '
Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN
General Assembly.

Many years later...
The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a
multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley, 100s
of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite
reservation somewhere in India,
.
..AND
As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and
feeding the grasshoppers,

India is still a developing country.




© yankandpaste® from an email forward i got last day

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Disabling port protection for ports below 1024

Try running a program which binds to ports less than 1024 as non root user. The possible thing you are going to say back is you need to be root to do so.

Its just a belief.

Issue the below command depending on your operating system and try again ( issue as root )

freebsd :


sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh=0


Solaris:


/usr/sbin/usermod -K defaultpriv=basic,net_privaddr


now execute the program which binds to ports below 1024, run as normal user - and check :-). The above command take off the reservations on the ports below 1024.


© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

A Year happened

Its an year passed, after we started the yankandpaste. Last year we want to make sure we can post things for an year ( make a habit). Thatz not for this year.

This year we will focus on in depth stuff than news. Yes the posts will be less in number - even i don't get wondered if there is only 12 posts for an year or a post per month but we will cover in depth.

The second focus is to introduce the new companies started by friends, This is to give an intro about the new areas friends are working.

Let us work on something in depth :-)

© yankandpaste®

Thursday, May 1, 2008

64 Core processors with Linux development tools


Was going through TILE64™ PROCESSOR FAMILY from Tilera Corp.

A 64 core architecture. I got impressed by reading because i think this is one way to future. everybody like to be back to RISC architecture and the RISC models getting more attention.

Read more on this :http://www.tilera.com/products/processors.php


© yankandpaste®

Open screen project

Adobes open screen Project is on with following objectives

* Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
* Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
* Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
* Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free


don't you feel excited ? FLV and flash specs for free, means its going to be native implementation on different devices,

Read more at :
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/


© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

$1/Gallon Ethonol

Biofuels on its way, Finally it looks biotechnology is finding it way to new world.

read : http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23

The new tech industry is taking its start
© yankandpaste®

Microsoft New Avtar : Open Protocols

From Web :
In order to foster innovation and interoperability, Microsoft is making available the protocols in Windows Vista (including the .NET framework), Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. These protocols are used by any other Microsoft product to communicate with the aforementioned products.

The release of the protocol specifications and patent licenses enable and encourage a vibrant development community. The result will be smarter, interoperable products that can be released in coordination with Microsoft product releases.

want to read more ??

www.microsoft.com/protocols

It looks good, MMS, RDesktop,SMB and a lot more ....

microsoft also on "All non core be open source ' policy

© yankandpaste®

N810 for WiMax

Nokia offically announced the N810 for wimax network last week, yep i didnt get much time to post last week :-(

news :http://www.internettablettalk.com/2008/03/28/the-nokia-n810-wimax-edition/

© yankandpaste®

Monday, April 14, 2008

Yet another "all non core stuff be Open source" example from Cisco (AXP)

The new mantra "all non core stuff be Open source" is working faster or gaining more importance. This gives a "Green Image" to the company ( we are not against open source message - lets coin its as Green image ) + advantage of open source.

Cisco is the last in the game with Cisco AXP

from FAQ :

Q. What does AXP stand for?
A. Application eXtension Platform.

Q. What is AXP?
A. AXP is a Linux blade that runs in the Cisco integrated services router and allows third-party applications to be tightly integrated with the router using APIs. AXP provides an application hosting infrastructure that affords Cisco integrated services router customers the opportunity to run all or portions of their branch applications on an integrated services router service module. The AXP will also be available to commercial application vendors and customers as a new platform capable of running their applications inside of an integrated services router, rather than on a traditional standalone server. AXP provides a powerful platform to create complete solutions with the integrated services router.

Q. Can anyone develop an application and install it on AXP?
A. Developers need to engage through the AXP Development Partner Program.

Q. Are any prepackaged application solutions available for sale?
A. The AXP go to market includes both platform sales (AXP sold as open platform) as well as solution sales (AXP sold as part of larger solution ecosystem). Cisco is building solution practices around primary markets such as payment systems, workforce management, and unified communications. Most of these solution sales will be reference sells, whereas a small number of them will be sold with third-party applications on the Cisco price list. In any case, there a number of prepackaged, validated solutions will be cultivated and marketed as part of the overall AXP go to market.

Q. What operating systems can run on AXP?
A. Today, Linux is the only supported OS

More info : http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9701/index.html
© yankandpaste®

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Movie Rental Service API

Was searching for a Movie rental site SDK. May be like Itunes SDK or a Netflix SDX or a amazon unbox SDK or a Blockbuster SDK.

Why we need it ? Its better to have because i was thinking of buying a PS3. I am not interested in gaming - then for what ? i thought i will load Linux and then use it as a PVR using mythtv or so. But movies ? how its going to work ?

Option 1) These people giving client for yellow dog linux or ubuntu or give source to compile
Option 2) Service SDK so that people can build there own clients and use the services. Can opt the apple model of application development like get certified clients.

Lets wait and see, I am sure less people going to walk to a rental store and rent a movie.



© yankandpaste®

8 core 3Ghz, 2x Blue ray Drive PC - $399

8 core 3Ghz CPU,
2x Blue Ray Drive

The system has Bluetooth 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 and HDMI 1.3a built in on all models. Wi-Fi networking is also built-in.

Supported OS: Linux

Wondering i am putting advertisement for a PC ?

NOoooooooooo, Its PS3. Yep Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3 for details, Its impressive.

Still do i buy it ? nooooooooooo till it comes with a wii style remote i think i will not buy it.

© yankandpaste®

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Wifi vs WiMax ??

Wifi or Wimax ??

Australian wireless carrier Buzz Broadband has shuttered its WiMAX network, describing the technology as a "disaster" that has "failed miserably".

Other side ??

Intel Wi-Fi Provides 6 Mbps Over 100 km

read more :

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/26/wimax_failure/

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20432/

© yankandpaste®

Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Home Market - My view on Vancovuer

Last few days, was browsing through mls.ca for home listings and was talking to realtors, private sellers and some friends who own houses.

The people who brought houses some year back are trying to sell and get profit.

The new people who brought houses are really struggling on the payment.I am strongly expecting the housing crash to affect Vancouver too. Reason : more people take loans through consultant, the job of consultant is to get a big money,so lot people have taken more than they can afford.They all expect the money to go up and get more money out of it.

If a home has income of 60k /annum he gets 5k per annum, in a normal scene without tax, 5 k to hand and 2.5 k for mortgage. But the fact is total money is not coming to hand, there is taxes, and then people wont consider other expenses related to home while buying (heat and hydro ). They are going very up than expected. If one person of home goes sick ? full budget to more loans.



The high pay jobs are information based and they are shifting to places where there is low pay. Now how people can expect they will get paid high for providing services to the low pay people.

Finally these people who brought houses for high money expecting somebody will buy for more money is going to end up as losers.

The finance guy was saying : "If you need i can arrange more money ". I felt he is saying "my commission is based on how much you take".

The realtor was saying " For buying a house: buy a house and them wait than waiting to buy a house" . I felt its this way, " i wanna get my money, so buy now".

What i decided is wait, and not to pay a 250k worth house 500k because somebody is saying prices are high. As there is no more high pay job opportunities no point in saying prices are up.

The fun part is last day ( march 28 - spring ) was snowing in Vancouver )
© yankandpaste®

Is the chip war back on?

2 cores, 4 cores ? 3 cores next 6 cores

Happens, Thatz how chips works. AMD came up with a 3 core chip at a lower price than quad core.

read : http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000251


and Intel planning for a 6 core chip.

parallelism in OS may be a very great stuff for some time.

© yankandpaste®

TCL PCAP (tcap ) lib makefile for mac

$ cat Makefile
all: tcap.so

tcap.so: tcap.c pcaputil.c
gcc -O2 -Wall -pedantic -g -c -I/usr/local/include/tcl8.3/
tcap.c
gcc -O2 -Wall -g -c pcaputil.c
gcc -dynamiclib -g tcap.o pcaputil.o -lpcap -ltcl -o tcap.so

install: tcap.so
mkdir -p /System/Library/Tcl/tcap
cp pkgIndex.tcl /System/Library/Tcl/tcap/pkgIndex.tcl
cp tcap.so /System/Library/Tcl/tcap/tcap.so

clean:
rm -f *.core *.o *.so
$


© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Google Summer of Code 2008 is on

The Google summer code is on, check the link : http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ for more details.

Lot lot open code ..., lets see how much translates to useful code.

© yankandpaste®

HTC names Google phone 'Dream'

The mobile phone High Tech Computer (HTC) has been developing to run on the Android software from Google will be called "Dream," and it will have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad, a person close to the situation said Thursday.

HTC may become the first handset maker in the world to put out a mobile phone developed around Android, but it faces stiff competition from Samsung, a separate source said. Samsung has stepped up its effort to put out a Google phone, the person said.


HTC's Google handset is just over 5 inches long and 3 inches wide, with a keypad underneath the screen that either slides out or swivels out. The aim of the keypad is for easy e-mail, note-taking, and writing Web addresses. Internet navigational controls are situated below the screen on the handset.

The handset will likely hit the market near the end of this year, the person said.

The company officially remained mum on the handset. "We cannot comment on this product," said Maggie Cheng, an HTC representative.

Last November, HTC became the first company to admit to developing a mobile phone based on Android, although Samsung, Motorola, and other handset developers are part of the group dedicated to furthering the software, the Open Handset Alliance.

Android, an open source software platform that includes an OS, is designed to take advantage of Internet services for mobility. The software could become a potent new rival to Windows Mobile and other handset operating systems. At the launch ceremony, Google announced that over 30 companies had joined the Open Handset Alliance.

from :http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/20/HTC-names-Google-phone-Dream_1.html

© yankandpaste®

Monday, March 17, 2008

100-year-old model for electric car coming back

To promote itself, Detroit Electric--a new joint venture between Zap and China's Youngman Automotive Group--plan to release a limited number of cars based around the Detroit Electric, an electric car produced by the Anderson Electric Car Co. in the early part of the 20th century.

details : http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9894597-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

© yankandpaste®

Child like intelligence created in Second Life

Do you really think we are in a second life ?

Hindu philosophy says all around you is maya. The news is man is able to create intelligence in the virtual world called second like. so the creature in second life thinks like a 4 yr old person.

read details at :

http://itnews.com.au/News/72057,childlike-intelligence-created-in-second-life.aspx

I think we too are. there are 4-5 virtual worlds created initially and somebody was doing experiments. Then they tested the server to server communication and that how we have whites, Blacks, Asians , South Asians etc etc happened.


© yankandpaste®

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Open AIM 2.0

I was a big fan of AOL chat while in 1999 time, later i don't know why , i left.

Some days before, found an interesting article on AOL's new Open AIM .

read more on http://dev.aol.com/aim.

AOL published its protocol and inviting developers.

Now my question is where all a developer need to concentrate - XMPP, SIMPLE, AIM or some more as they get published.

A simple 2.0 dilemma :-)

© yankandpaste®

Iphone SDK

writing 2 days late. March 6 the Apple announce the Iphone/Ipod Touch SDK. This is a great move when we look on the direction of the Mobile industry.

Every body trying to do the "Non Core stuff is Open".

Now we have 3+ SDKs for Mobile apart from the J2ME

You can find more details at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/.

The best part is money associated with it. There is an iFund associated with the applications. Apply with business plans and get 100M as fund.






© yankandpaste®

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

2 escalators :Simple life, Its just choice

Was walking from skytrain station to work, there are 2 escalators in front of me, I came to one and found its not working, still lot people walking on it as 2 raws. Switched to the second one which is working, stood on the raw which doesn't walk, the walking raw was almost null and i found later one guy walking up on that raw.

Was wondering life is also like this :

Lot people walks on the stagnant one - and they reach up
Lot people are stagnant but they reach up because the system is moving.
Some people who walks on the moving system so they reach up in half time than rest.

Which one is good ?

I don't know, i felt all has its advantages

The walking on stagnant on says : When going gets tough the tough gets going and they are healthy because of walk.

The stagnant people : They enjoy the free moments on laziness still moves (look at me and my thoughts at that time )

The walking people on working system : They reach to half time so they can do more things in the time others reach that level


Simple life, Its just choice.

NB: escalator: a power-driven set of stairs arranged like an endless belt that ascend or descend continuously

© yankandpaste®

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Apple Mac - a love starts

Last weeks, i got chance to work with Apple Mac computers, started with Min mac, then a G5 PPC to iMac PPC and now on a iMac Intel core dual.

Initial days i was not happy ( even my for locking the screen was not there, but after discovering the hot corner - yep its really impressive now for me - No crash, No slow down nothing, the system works great. Now i really started thinking of buying one.

very good quality :-), Finally i came to know that Apple OS is open source :
From a free Book :

The Mac OS X architecture comprises nine components :

Darwin— The open source core operating system. Darwin includes a full BSD implementation (more on that later in the chapter).

QuickTime— Apple's award-winning multimedia technologies are built in to the graphics foundation of Mac OS X.

OpenGL— OpenGL is the SGI-created industry standard for 3D graphics. Although OpenGL is heavily challenged by Direct3D on the Microsoft platform, even Microsoft grudgingly supports the standard.

Quartz— Apple's new 2D imaging framework and window server based on the PDF format. Quartz breaks new ground in handling the onscreen interface.

Classic— The Classic environment (originally called Blue Box in the Rhapsody implementation) enables existing Mac OS applications to run under Mac OS X.

Carbon— An API (application programming interface) to ease the transition to Mac OS X for traditional Mac programmers. This is based on the original Mac OS API, and can be used to create programs that run on Mac OS 8/9 as well as Mac OS X.

Cocoa— Cocoa (originally called Yellow Box in Rhapsody) is the robust modern API that enables applications to be built from scratch in a fraction of the time it would take traditionally.

Java— For the first time ever, the Mac OS is a player in the Java development and deployment arena. Java 2SE v1.3 is a first-class citizen and distributed with each copy of Mac OS X.

Aqua— Aqua uses the Quartz imaging engine to create the most astounding user interface available on any platform. Applications written in Cocoa, Carbon, or Java can access the capabilities of the Aqua GUI.

Kool stuff to go.

Some body was whispering an IPhone SDK is set to go next week or so.

© yankandpaste®

Sunday, February 24, 2008

What to do when Perl modules aren't in their normal locations

Simple Program way :

use lib '< pathtomodule >';
use < modulename >;

© yankandpaste®

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Voip became one of the web apps

From voip gadgets blog - A company called Innivative Systems of Communications launched flash based voip services SDK and server.

web : http://www.innosystems.ru/

From web:

Products

Zingaya Media Server

ZMS is a platform which allows to create SIP-based VoIP services. Such services can work right in web-browser via Adobe Flash technology.

System’s main feature is that end users don’t have to download any specific software. Due to Adobe’s research data more than 90% of Internet users have Adobe Flash Player installed.

ZMS opportunities:


ZMS works via HTTP through port 80 so it has no problems with NAT and firewalls
SIP 2.0 compatibility allows to use ZMS for interference with contemporary IP-telephony systems: softphones, IP PBX (Asterisk for example), call-centers, SIP proxy servers. It gives an opportunity (for VoIP operators) to create convenient services which allow users to make calls directly from web page without downloading any specific software

ZMS works with VoIP codecs G.711 and G.729

Integration with existent infrastructure at database level allows companies to implement ZMS-based solutions quickly and easily
Horizontal scalability, large-user-number systems building opportunity
Windows and Linux compatibility

Convenient API for client applications development in FlexBuilder 2/3, Flash CS3
ZMS allows to make own non-VoIP apps for Java-based server

Client apps are cross-platform due to Adobe Flash technology which is accessible at Windows, MacOS, Linux and works with most of contemporary browsers


Looks another 2.0 Voip.
© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Nokia and Google - The next Team

Why ? Read headlines "Nokia and Google to Offer Google Search to Nokia Customers Worldwide". I know what you are going to ask - " You read about Google's Android vs Nokia " So do they compete ?

I believe most people may think so but look close :

Nokia took Trolltech ( the home of QT and KDE ). Google is a customer of QT. now Google is a customer of Nokia.

Second : Google's core is search and not Linux or Android.
Nokia's core is handsets not Maemo.

Android is only a platform for Google to reach Mobile.
Maemo is a platform for handset.
Once Nokia helps Google for more reach then why struggle with Android or Maemo ?

The new strategy is "all non core stuff be Open source".

WOW now, we have Android = Maemo = Linux.
Google happy because search reach, Nokia Happy because they can sell more handsets and

Linux - Android or Maemo does this make difference ? its all Linux man (not core stuff for their revenue stream - look at strategy ).

So expect now more with Nokia Google Team !!

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Yahoo board to spurn $44B Microsoft bid

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc.'s board will reject Microsoft Corp.'s $44.6 billion takeover bid after concluding the unsolicited offer undervalues the slumping Internet pioneer, a person familiar with the situation said Saturday.
ADVERTISEMENT

The decision could provoke a showdown between two of the world's most prominent technology companies with Internet search leader Google Inc. looming in the background. Leery of Microsoft expanding its turf on the Internet, Google already has offered to help Yahoo avert a takeover and urged antitrust regulators to take a hard look at the proposed deal.

details ? check news.yahoo.com :-)

© yankandpaste®

Friday, February 8, 2008

The 2.0

Its time of 2.0s

Web 2.0, Voice 2.0 Video 2.0 Telco 2.0 Business 2.0

BT is trying to be Telco 2.0. Have a look on

http://web21c.bt.com/

New SDK for Web21C Web Services.Create services for the Telco 2.0. Lot talks on integrating with social networks and second life. The last expectation is by 2011, this should make above $1 Billion :-)

© yankandpaste®

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

How to discover growth stocks

Growth stock hunters believe that there are no excess returns to be gained from investing in the tried and true 'blue chip' stocks representative of a mainstream stock index such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S & P 500. The big profits in the stock market rest in ferreting out the next growth stocks, the next Cisco.

For example, Cisco Systems, Inc., now the leading supplier of high-performance internetworking products for linking computer system networks, traded at $4-1/2 per share shortly after going public in 1990 (adjusted for 2-for-1 stock splits in both 1991 and 1992. At the time, Cisco Systems generated less than $30 million in annual revenues. In 1992, the innovative company looks to reach $325 million in revenues and earn around $1.25 per share.

Alert emerging growth investors who discovered Cisco Systems in its formative years and had the conviction to see its tremendous prospects, despite huge competitors such as IBM and NEC Corpora­tion, earned substantially higher returns than the market averages. From a low of $4-1/2 per share in 1990, the market price of Cisco Systems stock had already soared to $52 per share in 1992.

Growth stocks and their subset, emerging growth stocks, are well-managed companies operating in industries where earnings and dividends are expected to grow faster than inflation and the overall economy. They are expected to maintain their exceptional growth momentum through economic retractions as well as during economic prosperity.

Typically, growth stocks are not located in the traditional well-known sectors but in new and upcoming fields, such as computers, telecommunications, health care, and biotechnology.

Major characteristics of growth stocks include:

Higher price/earnings ratios than the market average,

Substantial potential for above-average, long-term price appreciation,

Price volatility, and

Conservation of capital to fuel growth, therefore little or no dividend payouts in the early years.


For the smaller, emerging growth stocks, price volatility can be even more pronounced due to small capitalization, which makes their shares less liquid; there may be a shortage of available financial and operational information by which to properly judge the company's merits or prospects; investor sentiment swings for large versus small company investments can cause the market price of emerging growth stocks to drop substantially despite rising revenues and earnings and the typical pattern of earnings gains interruptions due to high research and development and expansion expenses can cause investors to flee the stock.

James W. Broadfoot III in his book, Investing in Emerging Growth Stocks: Making Money With Tomorrow's Blue Chips spelt out how to understand emerging growth stock investing and learn how to pick the right emerging growth stocks for above average returns.

Obviously, the higher returns associated with emerging growth investments also carry with them a higher degree of risk. That's why Broadfoot stressed that investors planning to enter this brand of in­vesting must have a stomach for risk, financial staying power since emerging growth stocks go through cycles of poor performance, and the ability to make a sufficient commitment of time and effort.

Emerging growth stock, screening standards set forth by Broadfoot include the following:

Avoid companies with two down earning years in the past five

Choose companies with a minimum average 20 per cent revenue and earnings growth

Avoid any firm with return on average equity below 13 per cent

Avoid firms with debt in excess of 30 percent of total capital.

If the firm passes the above tests, consider the growth prospects of the industry (including the degree of industry fragmentation), the level of competition, and the quality of management.


Broadfoot warned about stumbling blocks to the company's success and higher stock prices. A lack of visibility, lengthening sales cycles, and new product dependence can each work to short-circuit the company's potential. In addition, too rapid a growth can wreak havoc with financial and operational controls, causing the company to stumble.

As a warning, Broadfoot said that when emerging growth companies run into trouble, such as a significant earnings shortfall, sell as fast as possible and ask questions later.

Finally, be patient. Emerging growth investing profits don't occur overnight. When you do hit upon a winner, ride it for all its worth; you need the exceptional gains from your growth stock winners to make up for the mistakes that come with the emerging growth investing territory.

Excerpt from 100 World Famous Stock Market Techniques by Richard J. Maturi.



© yankandpaste®

Friday, February 1, 2008

Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion For Yahoo

The news is everywhere this morning about Microsoft's $44.6B offer to buy Yahoo. The offer represents $31 a share, a 62% premium over Thursday's closing price; and Yahoo's stock price has been rising in after-hours trading. Microsoft has been making overtures to Yahoo since 2006, according to the CNet article, including a buyout offer last February that was rebuffed. Mediapost.com has some perspective on the deal from the point of view of ads and eyeballs. Such an acquisition, which would be Microsoft's largest by far — it bought Aquantive last year for $6 billion — would need approval by US and EU authorities. A European Commission spokesman declined to comment.


The link : http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/01/1353211
© yankandpaste®

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Compile hello.c in steps

How ?

hello.c
=======

#include

int
main (void)
{
printf ("Hello, world!\n");
return 0;
}


one way to do : "gcc hello.c "

Lets do it step by step :

cpp hello.c > hello.i

hello.i will have all macros expanded.

gcc -Wall -S hello.i

check for hello.s - yep its assembly language code

as hello.s -o hello.o

Now Object file time, created object file using -o option

now ld time but LD need to have a lot options so lets go for

gcc hello.o

this links and create a.out

run a.out and see "Hello, world!".

too long ?? k just use --save-temps options in gcc, all temp files will be saved

'gcc --save-temps hello.c' and do an ls after :-)

tools for help:

file : identifies the file type and some of its characteristics
nm : shows symbol table
ldd : shows list of shared libraries an executable needs

© yankandpaste®

Thursday, January 24, 2008

DID NASA FIND LIFE ON MARS?


A Photos by NASA's Spirit Rover in late 2007 shows a human-like figure is visible sitting on the rocks.

Wondering why they look like a human and not any other animal :-). But lot of debates going on. Lets finally prove its an illusion or a rock.

According to Hindu mythology, there are 14 worlds. We may find life at least in one of them.



© yankandpaste®

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Cheap hydrogen - escape from fossil

Remembering a talk with my father about airplanes. He was saying in some ancient Hindu books talks about some 14 series of planes and he was talking the book says some kind of plane which uses water and some metal for use as fuel.

The new discovery of cheap hydrogen production says its going to be a water and sunlight + some metal

read : http://www.nanoptek.com/

lets wait and see how its going to be

© yankandpaste®

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Time to buy a Apple tv ?

Was wondering, Is it time to buy Apple TV ?

$2.99 for old movies and $3.99 for new movies.

k let me calculate :

Cost of Apple Tv : $299
Cost of internet : $50 / month
Cost of movie : $15 /month

How much I pay with netflix and i am sure they have good movie collection.

K fine, I understood its high tech, so comes with a cost ( mostly hidden) once i combine more services the cost will be less ). Do i have any other use with Apple Tv ? as a gaming console or so ?

noo, So i cant use.

May be i expect Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo to do movie online business or netflix to start online movie business with one of these people so that i can use my gaming box for movie also, I love to buy one on those than Apple tv or Apple should come up with a gaming console.

© yankandpaste®

Sun has announced a £1bn MySQL deal

Sun is making waves in open source.

with open office : http://www.openoffice.org/
with open sparc : http://www.opensparc.net/
with open solaris: http://opensolaris.org/os/

and now MYSQL ( yep i didn't forget Java )

This is what happens if a person with vision is driving. Hats off to Jonathan Schwartz !!. Running his company and making contributions to world in a different model.


© yankandpaste®

Monday, January 14, 2008

How to recognise a good programmer

How do you recognise good programmers if you’re a business guy?

It’s not as easy as it sounds. CV experience is only of limited use here, because great programmers don’t always have the “official” experience to demonstrate that they’re great. In fact, a lot of that CV experience can be misleading. Yet there are a number of subtle cues that you can get, even from the CV, to figure out whether someone’s a great programmer.

I consider myself to be a pretty good programmer. At the same time, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the business side of the fence, filtering technical CVs for projects, interviewing people, etc. Thanks to this, I think I have a bit of experience in recognising good programmers, and I want to share it in this article, in the hope that it may help other “business guys” to recognise good programmers. And, who knows, perhaps some programmers who have the potential to be good but haven’t really exploited this can also read this and realise what they need to do to become good (although, as I’ll argue, that’s definitely not accessible to all programmers!).


In his article The 18 mistakes that kill startups, Paul Graham makes the following point:

“… what killed most of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, it was bad programmers. A lot of those companies were started by business guys who thought the way startups worked was that you had some clever idea and then hired programmers to implement it. That’s actually much harder than it sounds—almost impossibly hard in fact—because business guys can’t tell which are the good programmers. They don’t even get a shot at the best ones, because no one really good wants a job implementing the vision of a business guy.

In practice what happens is that the business guys choose people they think are good programmers (it says here on his resume that he’s a Microsoft Certified Developer) but who aren’t. Then they’re mystified to find that their startup lumbers along like a World War II bomber while their competitors scream past like jet fighters. This kind of startup is in the same position as a big company, but without the advantages.

So how do you pick good programmers if you’re not a programmer? I don’t think there’s an answer. I was about to say you’d have to find a good programmer to help you hire people. But if you can’t recognize good programmers, how would you even do that?”

I disagree with Mr Graham on this one. I think there are a number of very strong indicators of a “good programmer” (and, conversely, strong indicators of a “not-so-good programmer”) that even a business guy can recognise. I’ll summarise some key indicators and counter-indicators in a list at the end of the article.

#1 : Passion
In my corporate experience, I met a kind of technical guy I’d never met before: the career programmer. This is a person who’s doing IT because they think it’s a good career. They don’t do any programming in their spare time. They’re shocked when they find out I have a LAN and 3 computers at home. They just do it at work. They don’t learn new stuff unless sent on a training program (or motivated by the need to get a job that requires that technology). They do “programming” as a day job. They don’t really want to talk about it outside of work. When they do, they talk with a distinctive lack of enthusiasm. Basically, they lack passion.

I believe that good developers are always passionate about programming. Good developers would do some programming even if they weren’t being paid for it. Good programmers will have a tendency to talk your ear off about some technical detail of what they’re working on (but while clearly believing, sincerely, that what they’re talking about is really worth talking about). Some people might see that as maladapted social skills (which it is), but if you want to recognise a good developer, this passion for what they’re doing at the expense of social smoothness is a very strong indicator. Can you get this guy to excitedly chat up a technology that he’s using, for a whole half hour, without losing steam? Then you might be onto a winner.

#2 : Self-teaching and love of learning
Programming is the ultimate moving target. Not a year goes by without some new technology robbing an old, established standard blind and changing half the development universe. This is not to say that all good programmers pick up these changes and ride the bleeding edge. However, there’s a class of programmers that will never, ever pick up a new technology unless forced to, because they don’t like learning new stuff. These programmers will typically have learnt programming at university, and expect to get by on whatever skills they picked up there, plus whatever courses their company is willing to send them on.

If you’re thinking of hiring someone as a programmer, and he ever utters the words “I can work with that, just send me on a training course for a week and I’ll be good at it”, don’t hire that guy. A good programmer doesn’t need a training course to learn a new technology. In fact, the great programmer will be the one talking your ear off about a new technology that you haven’t even heard of, explaining to you why you must use it in your business, even if none of your staff knows how to use it. Even if it’s a technology he doesn’t know how to use yet.

#3 : Intelligence
Some business people assume that lack of social tact and lack of intelligence are the same. Actually, intelligence has several facets, and emotional/social intelligence is only one of them. Good programmers aren’t dumb. Ever. In fact, good programmers are usually amongst the smartest people you know. Many of them will actually have pretty good social skills too. The cliché of the programmer who’s incapable of having a conversation is just that - a cliché. I’ve been to a few meetings of the London Ruby User Group and I can say that with only a very few exceptions, most people there are smart, talkative, sociable, have varied interests, etc. You wouldn’t look at them chattering away in the pub and think “what a bunch of geeks!” - at least until you approach a group and realise they’re talking about the best way to design a RESTful application with a heavy UI frontend.

This doesn’t mean that they’ll all feel comfortable in every social context. But it does mean that if the context is comfortable and non-threatening enough, you’ll be able to have as great a conversation with them as you would with the most “socially enabled” people (perhaps better, since most good programmers I know like their conversation to revolve around actually useful topics, rather than just inane banter).

Don’t ever hire a dumb person thinking they’re a good developer. They’re not. If you can’t have a great conversation with them in a relaxed social context, they’re very likely not a good programmer. On the other hand, anyone who’s clearly very smart at the very least has a strong potential to be a good or great programmer.

#4 : Hidden experience
This is correlated with the “Passion” point, but it is such a strong indicator that I’d like to emphasise it with its own point.

I started programming when I was about 9, on a Commodore 64. I then migrated onto the PC, did some Pascal. When I was 14 I wrote a raycasting engine in C and Assembler, spent a large amount of time playing with cool graphic effects that you could get your computer to do by messing directly with the video card. This was what I call my “coccoon stage”. When I entered that stage, I was a mediocre programmer, and lacked the confidence to do anything really complicated. When I finished it, I had gained that confidence. I knew that I could code pretty much anything so long as I put my mind to it.

Has that ever appeared on my CV? Nope.

I strongly believe that most good programmers will have a hidden iceberg or two like this that doesn’t appear on their CV or profile. Something they think isn’t really relevant, because it’s not “proper experience”, but which actually represents an awesome accomplishment. A good question to ask a potential “good programmer” in an interview would be “can you tell me about a personal project - even or especially one that’s completely irrelevant - that you did in your spare time, and that’s not on your CV?” If they can’t (unless their CV is 20 pages long), they’re probably not a good programmer. Even a programmer with an exhaustive CV will have some significant projects that are missing from there.

#5 : Variety of technologies
This one’s pretty simple. Because of the love of learning and toying with new technologies that comes with the package of being a “good programmer”, it’s inevitable that any “good programmer” over the age of 22 will be fluent in a dozen different technologies. They can’t help it. Learning a new technology is one of the most fun things a programmer with any passion can do. So they’ll do it all the time, and accumulate a portfolio of things they’ve “played around with”. They may not be experts at all of them, but all decent programmers will be fluent in a large inventory of unrelated technologies.

That “unrelated” bit is the subtle twist. Every half-decent java programmer will be able to list a set of technologies like “Java, J2EE, Ant, XML, SQL, Hibernate, Spring, Struts, EJB, Shell scripting”, etc.. But those are all part of the same technology stack, all directly related to each other. This is possibly hard to recognise for non-programmers, but it is possible to tell whether their technology stack is varied by talking to them about it, and asking them how the different technologies they know relate to each other. Over-specialisation in a single technology stack is an indicator of a not-so-good programmer.

Finally, if some of those technologies are at the bleeding edge, that’s a good positive indicator. For instance, today (November 2007), knowledge of Merb, Flex, RSpec, HAML, UJS, and many others… Please note that these are fairly closely related technologies, so in a couple of years, someone who knows all these will be equivalent to someone familiar with the Java stack listed in the previous paragraph.

Update: As a clarification to this point, there’s in fact two indicators here: variety and bleeding edge. Those are separate indicators. A good variety of technologies across a period of time is a positive indicator, whether or not the technologies are bleeding edge. And bleeding edge technologies are a positive indicator, whether or not there’s a variety of them.

#6 : Formal qualifications
This is more a of non-indicator than a counter-indicator. The key point to outline here is that formal qualifications don’t mean squat when you’re trying to recognise a good programmer. Many good programmers will have a degree in Computer Science. Many won’t. Certifications, like MCSE or SCJP or the like, don’t mean anything either. These are designed to be accessible and desirable to all. The only thing they indicate is a certain level of knowledge of a technology. They’re safeguards that allow technology recruitment people in large corporations to know “ok, this guy knows java, he’s got a certification to prove it” without having to interview them.

If you’re hiring for a small business, or you need really smart developers for a crack team that will implement agile development in your enterprise, you should disregard most formal qualifications as noise. They really don’t tell you very much about whether the programmer is good. Similarly, disregard age. Some programmers are awesome at 18. Others are awesome at 40. You can’t base your decisions about programmer quality on age (though you might decide to hire people around a certain age to have a better fit in the company; please do note that age discrimination is illegal in most countries!).

As a final note to this, in my experience most average or poor programmers start programming at university, for their Computer Science course. Most good programmers started programming long before, and the degree was just a natural continuation of their hobby. If your potential programmer didn’t do any programming before university, and all his experience starts when she got her first job, she’s probably not a good programmer.


From :http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

© yankandpaste®

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Tata writes its name in History

$2500 car - is that the only reason for Tata name to be written in History.

read more :

Tata top bidder for Jaguar, Land Rover .

So Jaguar and Land Rover going to in Tata stable.

Is that enough ? nooo, tata makes smart moves on next gen technology. MDI web says "The agreement between Tata Motors and MDI envisages Tata’s supporting further development and refinement of the technology, and its application and licensing for India. "

- About MDI ( the air car company )
MDI is a small, family-controlled company located at Carros, near Nice (Southern France) where Mr. Guy Negre and Mr. Cyril Nègre, together with their technical team, have developed a new engine technology with the purpose of economising energy and respect severe ecological requirements – at competitive costs.

What this means - Tata is all set to be future GM or Toyota



© yankandpaste®

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Comcast introduces open-cable platform

Why its interesting for me ?

I believe the next big stuff for some years is going to be IP - Video - TV stuff.
The IP broadcasting is going to fly from here. Open standards make the game more fair.

I imagine a new level of TV channels who directly broadcast the content over IP on a subscription basis and people watching them in Home TV using IP STB.

May be google kind of web companies will come with a channel search page so that we will browse and choose the program.

What happens to cable/Telco companies ?


They are going to be pipe providers, they will provide data pipe to home. Rest all - what to watch, from where to watch etc the customer decides :-)

Going to be hot ?
Big pipe technologies - Wimax, fiber etc
HD video technologies - Full HD codecs - smarter/faster
Open standards so that every one can have a TV broadcast.
IP STB devices with open interfaces.

why it will take years ? Its a paradigm shift, cable - telcos - tv channels will show change resistance because of the money they already put in these.

© yankandpaste®

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Voip ? Telecom Startups ?

A yank and paste from gigaom , I liked it.


Take This Job And Shove It — Why I Retired From Telecom
Guest Column, Monday, December 24, 2007 at 12:13 PM PT Comments (18)
Written by Brian McConnell

I have been designing phone services and starting phone companies for about 15 years, since I was in college. But I recently retired from telecom, concluding after all this time that it is not a good industry for entrepreneurs, especially those who don’t have access to vast amounts of capital or who don’t want to take on institutional financing.

There was a brief period in the mid-to-late 1990s when garage-based phone companies really were possible. The last remnants of Ma Bell had been deregulated, and there was an explosion of new technologies (VoIP, new switch architectures, the web as a distribution channel, etc). Big companies were disoriented by this, and had little clue as to how to deal with the rapid change. As a result, there were lots of big and small opportunities for startups to exploit new and rapidly growing niches.

Most of the profitable niches in telecom are now gone. Home phone service, long distance, small business phone service, conference calling, mobile — all have become low-margin commodity markets dominated by established companies. The capital costs of prototyping new phone services have declined, but not nearly as much as retail pricing, and hence, the margins are near zero. The liquidity and exit opportunities for small telecom companies are also not good. You either need massive amounts of capital, or you need to be bought by a phone company (the stereotypes about phone companies exist for a reason). There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare.

Mobile should be a huge opportunity for developers, but unless and until the carriers open their platforms and create something like Ad Sense for developers, it’s a rotten business to be in. The mobile operators micromanage application developers, and they do not share revenue freely. They often charge for network access when they should be rewarding you for stimulating usage.

The industry is currently clogged with VoIP services whose main offering is cheap phone service, because as a commodity product the only thing that matters is the price. Services like Jaxtr and Jahjah may get a lot of hype locally, but I don’t see how what they’re doing is all that different from what all those prepaid card vendors have been doing for years. The prices seem about the same, and the prepaid cards work from any phone.

Where does this leave today’s better-known telecom startups? Unfortunately, some combination of distribution problems and consumer apathy will kill most of them. Ooma is a good example. They make an appliance that allows you to make free calls by rerouting calls between their hubs over the Internet.

It sounds neat, but most consumers don’t spend enough time on the phone to make it worth using. For the majority of users, phone service is “cheap enough,” and once a product reaches that threshold, convenience outweighs price – which is the main reason mobile operators can charge a premium for essentially the same product. I think it’s only a matter of time before companies like Metro PCS set the norm with flat-rate pricing for mobile. But then where does that leave VoIP?

There are a few standouts that I think will find success, but these are mostly platform companies that are doing serious R&D. In VoIP, Gizmo is a favorite. I don’t think the economics of Gizmo as a service by itself are great, but they have been steadily developing a broad platform that enables standards-based VoIP on almost any device — not a trivial task. Someone will eventually buy them for their service plus this technology base.

When I compare telecom to the web, the big difference I see is that the web is both a destination and a distribution channel. This really makes it a unique medium. Telephone services, on the other hand, are products that are only loosely coupled to the web, if it all. A cool web site attracts users because it is clever or interesting. A phone service, at the end of the day, is just a dial tone. I think Skype was a hit because it was really a clever instant messaging client that happened to allow free/cheap phone calls. There were many VoIP services before Skype — Delta Three, Net2Phone and Dialpad, to name just a few.

What’s the message in all of this for entrepreneurs? Telecom seems like a great industry. After all, billions of people use cell phones. The problem is that there is nothing like the web for mobile, and by that I mean the entire set of standards and business practices that have grown around it. It’s hard to see this changing significantly in the near future. It’s also important to learn from history. If you’re building a phone product, spend some time on the former site for PhoneZone, the first company I started in California before selling it to Helio Direct in 1999. Some of my favorite products from that time, such as the Internet PhoneJACK (the first low-cost VoIP peripheral) and the Jetstream FrontDesk (great SoHo phone system), are also all long gone.

This is why I decided to quit telecom and focus on completely different projects. I am spending the next several years working on the Worldwide Lexicon, which aims to do for translation what Wikipedia did for encyclopedias. It may or may not turn out to be a good business, but it’s an interesting project, and it’s something new, whereas if I stayed in telecom, I’d be spending the next several years designing more bad IVR systems for banks and airlines.

No thanks.

Orginal link :http://gigaom.com/2007/12/24/take-this-job-and-shove-it-why-i-retired-from-telecom/
© yankandpaste®

Worst of 2007: VoIP

Copyright 2008 by Virgo Publishing.
http://www.newtelephony.com/
By: Kelly M. Teal
Posted on: 12/28/2007

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VoIP clearly has moved into the mainstream, but 2007 marked a year of high-profile stumbles that appear to signal the end of standalone IP telephony.

Vonage Holdings Corp.’s tribulations seemed to make headlines more than any other tech company in 2007. The pro-vider in March lost a patent suit to Verizon Communications Inc. and, in September, another to Sprint Nextel Corp. In mid-October, Vonage announced it also was being sued by AT&T Inc. for patent infringement. Through it all, Vonage stock plummeted to its lowest point, the balance sheets still don’t show a profit and CEO Michael Snyder resigned. Given all of that, not to mention the millions Vonage must pay Verizon and Sprint, there’s much conjecture about the future of Vonage. Will a rival buy the company? Will Vonage close up shop? Or will it keep swimming against the tide?

Those questions have yet to be answered. But one thing is clear about 2007: with all incumbent mergers cleared and cable MSOs ramping their VoIP offerings, it was the perfect time for the big guys to fend off standalone VoIP companies such as Vonage, says Infonetics Research analyst Stéphane Téral.

Increasing pressure from larger carriers appears to be one reason why SunRocket Inc. unexpectedly ceased opera-tions in July. The second-largest consumer VoIP provider also had a flawed business plan that worked against it in an age of bundling. The firm bet on a combination of low usage and a rapidly decreasing cost of termination services while pro-moting discounted prepaid annual subscriptions, says Téral. “If you do this, you need to bring in short-term cash at the risk of recurring revenue. And, in addition, you need a very low operating cost structure, which they did not have because SunRocket required users to have SunRocket hardware to access their network,” he says. That added burdensome over-head to SunRocket’s operations. Despite the signs, nearly everyone seemed caught off guard by SunRocket’s sudden closure last summer, another apparent victim of a VoIP gold rush gone sour.

Then, just this fall, there came news that online auction giant eBay Inc. has been unable to make good on its $2.6 bil-lion purchase of Skype Ltd. As a result, the promise of monetizing a free VoIP service looks less likely. That’s not surpris-ing, given that eBay’s logic went against basic Economics and Business 101 principles, Téral says. Skype started as a freebie and “when you start that way, it is impossible or at best extremely difficult to turn free users into paying users.” The real goal was to buy Skype’s large user base “to tap into as a new engine to increase eBay’s user base,” he says. “As it turns out, it did not really work that way.”

If eBay is going to keep Skype, it needs to figure out how to make money off Skype’s 220 million users and get the technology better integrated into auction operations, says Sally Cohen, an IP analyst for Forrester Research Inc. eBay originally wanted to allow users to call one another on the P2P network — potential buyers could ask questions of auc-tioneers, rather than waiting for e-mail responses. That assimilation hasn’t fully materialized.

eBay is trying to remedy its missteps. In October, Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis left their ex-ecutive posts at Skype; this was somewhat expected given that the two had made no secret of their desire to focus on their new Internet TV project, Joost. Now the industry rumor mill says Skype could go mobile, although that presents new challenges of its own (for example, why would users pay extra to connect to a free service when they already pay for cell minutes?).

Turning Skype around will be a struggle. eBay reported a third-quarter 2007 net loss of $936.6 million, or 69 cents per share, due mostly to a $900 million write-down in Skype’s value. That marked eBay’s first quarterly loss since 1999.

Overall, 2007 set the stage for big changes in the VoIP industry. VoIP is no longer an adventure, an opportunity for startups, says Téral. “It’s a serious telephony business taken over by giant telcos. … You can’t stay pure-play forever.”




© yankandpaste®