.NET From India

Game Consoles

I came across this Analyst prediction on the future of gaming consoles for the year .

Analyst Opinion - If you think about it, this will be a fascinating fourth quarter. Nintendo Wii, to pretty much the surprise of everyone, is the product to beat, Sony, the old champ, is on life support but getting a short term uplift, and last week even the Xbox Core unit (which has never sold well) sold very well.

From what I have seen the games in Wii look bad, but the cost and the interesting interface makes it very attractive. I would say Wii is priced exactly right for a impulse buy, especially during holiday season.

Anyway, I also read that last week the sales of Wii has come down drastically in Japan. But I think US and other countries, especially like India should be focus area for Nintendo now to boost sales and maybe somehow get atleast one really good game (a blockbuster like Halo maybe) out there..

New Malware Center

MS has a new Malware center with information on the latest tests and links to the latest update files for Defender and Forefront.

The main thing I like is a single place to get all of the malware/virus information. But once you go one level down the whole thing dries up. You click on a virus/malware and you suddenly find there is not much information in the encyclopedia. In all entries I saw the Prevention tab just has a few general security recommendations like using a firewall etc.

Good start, but a long way to go though..

Certification Tips

Came across a set of tips on taking Microsoft certifications at SQL Server Central.

Though it is aimed at the SQL Server exams, most of the tips are really common to any of the certifications. Just replace SQL Server with <your product of choice> :)

Link to Article: Certification Rumors and Tips

Interesting JS trick

My friend and co-MVP Sanjay Vyas actually pointed out this trick when we were chatting today morning. I am not sure where he got it from, but it is kind of cool.

The idea is to go to any site (say www.microsoft.com) in IE (have not tried it with FF or Opera though), and then type the following script in the address bar:

 

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200;x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i<DIL;i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute';DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5;DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void ( 0 )

And also try just keeping the focus on the addressbar and click enter multiple times.

Presentation Bloopers

A fellow MVP pointed out to a new article on MS UK site on the Top Ten Worst Presentation Moments. I was really in a conference room, just waiting for a meeting to start when I read it and I almost laughed out loud.

Though it it funny, it also gives a few pointers to how even with the best preparation, real life can be so unmanagable..;)

PC vs Mac - Parody

Apple has series of Ads now airing in the US that kind of makes fun of the PC and shows Mac as being cool. You can watch the Get the Mac Ads on the Apple site.

While browsing one my friends (Manoj Agarwal) blog, I came upon this parody of one of the ads (the Virus Ad).

Chinese Translation by Notepad??

This has been one of the hack/bug in Notepad and is creating a lot of discussions in the technical community and blogosphere. A link to discussion on this was posted to the internal MVP list by a fellow MVP and I found it quite interesting.

For those who are not familiar with this bug try the following:

1. Open Notepad and type a sentence like this “this app can fails” or any 4-3-3-5 character based sentence. (People are having fun with all kind of sentences here)
2. Save this to a files somewhere
3. Open up this file again.

If you have support for Far-Eastern languages installed, then you will get something like this “扡摣愠换愠换愠换敤”. Of course the string will be different based on what you enter, but still it is not in English for sure..:)

This is actually due to the way Notepad handles encoding and if you want more information, Kaplan has a post on why this happens. Raymond also has a post on the basic problem that results in this.

Posted from Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2

.NET in your Robot?

One of my fellow MVPs actually pointed me to new Robotics Studio launched by Microsoft. The press release talks about backing from LEGO and a few other robotics hardware vendors.

The nice thing seems to be that this allows you to use .NET to code for robots and thus extend your .NET skills to another area that has been C/C++/Assembly only for a long time. This is of course currently a CTP version. There are no indications on the actual time when this actually goes gold.

(Published from Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2)

Job Losses due to Outsourcing

I have often expressed the view on the impact of Outsourcing on job losses has been grossly over-hyped. Looks like a recent study by American Sentinel University also arrives at the same conclusion. The majority of the job losses are due to the downtrend in the technology industry and that just happened to coincide with a sudden rise of outsourcing.

Information week covers this survey in more detail in an article titled Study: Offshoring Impact On U.S. Jobs Overblown.

 

The study, titled "Offshoring of Information-Technology Jobs: Myths and Realities," finds that IT positions requiring advanced degrees and business knowledge are growing at a pace on par with the boom years experienced in the 1990s.

Once the current economic expansion took hold, however, we found that the 2000 to 2002 job losses had little, if anything, to do with jobs moving overseas. Software engineers in particular saw a phenomenal turnaround in job fortunes, swinging from 4 percent decline to 25 percent growth.

Published from Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2

Jack PC

 

An interesting small PC running Win CE from a UK company. This is made up for just two circuit boards and runs and AMD RISC processor with 5 watts of power. Though off the head I am not sure of uses for this, since it has wireless capabilities, I assume this would find quite a bit of use in environments where you need computers, but there is not much space to put a desktop anywhere.

Published from Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2

Are you using SPL?

I was reading thru some of the newsletters that I get and I come up against this piece of code

The Infamous Hello World Program.

Romeo, a young man with a remarkable patience.
Juliet, a likewise young woman of remarkable grace.
Ophelia, a remarkable woman much in dispute with Hamlet.
Hamlet, the flatterer of Andersen Insulting A/S.

Act I: Hamlet's insults and flattery.

Scene I: The insulting of Romeo.

[Enter Hamlet and Romeo]

Hamlet:
You lying stupid fatherless big smelly half-witted coward!
You are as stupid as the difference between a handsome rich brave
hero and thyself! Speak your mind!

You are as brave as the sum of your fat little stuffed misused dusty
old rotten codpiece and a beautiful fair warm peaceful sunny summer's
day. You are as healthy as the difference between the sum of the
sweetest reddest rose and my father and yourself! Speak your mind!

You are as cowardly as the sum of yourself and the difference
between a big mighty proud kingdom and a horse. Speak your mind.

Speak your mind!

[Exit Romeo]

Scene II: The praising of Juliet.

[Enter Juliet]

Hamlet:
Thou art as sweet as the sum of the sum of Romeo and his horse and his
black cat! Speak thy mind!

[Exit Juliet]

Scene III: The praising of Ophelia.

[Enter Ophelia]

Hamlet:
Thou art as lovely as the product of a large rural town and my amazing
bottomless embroidered purse. Speak thy mind!

Thou art as loving as the product of the bluest clearest sweetest sky
and the sum of a squirrel and a white horse. Thou art as beautiful as
the difference between Juliet and thyself. Speak thy mind!

[Exeunt Ophelia and Hamlet]

Act II: Behind Hamlet's back.

Scene I: Romeo and Juliet's conversation.

[Enter Romeo and Juliet]

Romeo:
Speak your mind. You are as worried as the sum of yourself and the
difference between my small smooth hamster and my nose. Speak your
mind!

Juliet:
Speak YOUR mind! You are as bad as Hamlet! You are as small as the
difference between the square of the difference between my little pony
and your big hairy hound and the cube of your sorry little
codpiece. Speak your mind!

[Exit Romeo]

Scene II: Juliet and Ophelia's conversation.

[Enter Ophelia]

Juliet:
Thou art as good as the quotient between Romeo and the sum of a small
furry animal and a leech. Speak your mind!

Ophelia:
Thou art as disgusting as the quotient between Romeo and twice the
difference between a mistletoe and an oozing infected blister! Speak
your mind!

[Exeunt]

Yes, that is supposed to be executable code, but not in any language about which you will be picking up a book on in your neighbourhood tech book stall :)

This is in what is called SPL or Shakespeare Programming Language. They even have a translator to convert spl code to C.

My first thought when I saw this was to think, this is the perfect languge to take revenge on the C/C++/C# programmers who said that VB code was too descriptive for them. (most prob they got tired typing all thos ;s :))

Outsourcing Job Losses - Hype??

A recent ACM Report says that the perception of people in IT losing thier jobs due to outsourcing is not really true.

Study Plays Down Export of Computer Jobs

The problem actually boils down to perception and thus fewer students are now majoring in computers in the US now due to this. This may become the actual threat in the years to come.

Yet the view that job opportunities in computing are dwindling fast is both common and potentially damaging to America's competitive prowess, according to David A. Patterson, president of the Association for Computing Machinery.

He pointed to the declining interest in computer science as a major among American college students, based on a survey last year of the intentions of students entering college. The results suggested that only 1 in 75 students would major in computer science, compared with 1 in 30 in 2000.

"The perception among high school students and their parents is that the game is over — that all computing jobs are going overseas," observed Mr. Patterson, who is a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "It's an extraordinarily widely held misperception."

I have seen this phenomenon in India too. During the tech boom, almost every student wanted to be in computers. Then the bust came and a batch or two were left with no campus placements, as companies froze hiring to handle the bust. After the bust for two to three years, computers were at the lower end of preferred courses. Now with the stabilization in the IT sector, students are slowly trooping back to computer specializations.

Most Innovative country in Europe

This article in Infoworld talks about a study that looks at technology exports, R & D funds etc for various countries in the EU.

Interesting to find Malta makes the most money via technology exports...:-)

Hyderabad - Will it escape the Rapid Growth Problem

I went to Hyderabad yesterday to attend the VS launch there. Spent a few hours with my friend Ajay, who works for Microsoft, at the IDC before going to the launch. I could get some time to spend with Sriram and Aarthi, two people who help run the Chennai and Coimbatore Student Chapters. Both of them now work at MS Hyderabad. I was able to dazzle them showing a demo of VB Refactor support, with the help of Jani (MS DPE). (And if someone from DevExpress does read this blog, guys you rock with Refactor)

Hyderabad also had a rapid growth due to IT in the last few years, similar to Bangalore. Though Hyderabad is a more recent entrant into the IT industry attraction fray. Since I had just visited and suffered the unrestricted growth of Bangalore a few days back, it was easy to compare Hyderabad with Bangalore.

At first looks both seem to have small Airports that are bursting at the seams and having difficulties handling the sudden spurt in passenger traffic.

Hyderabad also seem to have narrow roads, with slow traffic, though not as bad as Bangalore. But one heartening factor was that I was seeing a lot of road expansion work going on. So looks like the local government is learning from Bangalores mistakes and taking the pains to make sure that they do not repeat them.

Hmm.. Lets see how it is after another 2-3 years. Though one thing to keep in mind is that Hyderabad seems to have cooled off as the hottest IT destination after the change of government 2 years back.

More on Outsourcing

Some interesting articles on outsourcing, how to go about and problems you may face and solutions.

Gartner: Stop outsourcing now

Gartner analyst Linda Cohen started off her presentation at Symposium ITxpo with a command for the audience of 6,000 attendees: "You have to stop outsourcing now." She said that the chaos created by compulsive outsourcing is making it harder to produce results. Her point is that too many companies have taken outsourcing to an extreme, heading offshore because it's faddish, juggling

---

Giving The Devil His Due Diligence

Enterprises and software developers under pressure to cut costs are increasingly outsourcing projects to other countries where labor is less costly and subject matter expertise is abundant.

Price per man-hour is only one consideration, however. Poor contract drafting, insufficient due diligence and a lack of project management can cause projects to exceed budgets. Worse, companies may lose control of their intellectual property assets. To minimize such problems, software developers should do more critical thinking up front with the help of legal experts who understand the ramifications of agreements and the language within them. In addition, projects should be managed carefully so that small issues do not balloon into major issues.

---

North American Developers Must Innovate to Keep Jobs

If you were going to buy a new truck, and you went to your local dealer, received a price quote and then went to a dealer 50 miles away from your home and found another dealer that would offer you the exact same truck for $5,000 less, which would you buy? Surely you should support your local dealer. But you also want to get the best price you can. Most of us would choose to buy the truck from the dealer farther away and save $5,000.

Would you name your son Google??

Well, Walid Elias Kai did.

This just in: Walid Elias Kai, a Ph.D. in search engine marketing, is, it must be said, an avid fan of our company. Dr. Kai, who is Lebanese, and his Swedish wife Carol live in Kalmar, Sweden, where their son was born on September 12. His name? Oliver Google Kai.

Read the full post.

Indian IT - Will it fail??

An interesting article on Indian IT industry and the outsourcing debate.

Windows Mobile Display

So the question in my previous post got 1 attempted answer, which is almost correct..:-)

It is actually a display for Windows Mobile created by putting together quite a few(could be hudred or so, but I did not count) individual Pocket PCs to create an integrated Dispaly.. Very Cool..

Here is a close up shot of the same..

Guess what this is!!

I took these photos at the Microsoft Museum when I was in Redmond recently. Carefull scrutiny will surely reveal what these are, else you get your answers tomorrow.. :)

One of the photos is a little blurred, but I suppose you can still make out what it is quite easily.

Google & Sun - Just Noise??

An interesting article on the last press conference about the collaboration between Google and Sun.

GOOGLE PR MACHINE MARCHES ON

When it comes to the press, Google has it made in the shade. While our last two presidents, George and Bill, had to scrap for a single bit of good press (Fox News and Al Franken notably excepted), Google just rakes in the raves. And with every tiny step it takes, the mindless press declares that Eric Schmidt has Bill Gates in the ropes and is pummeling wildly.

This week Google announced a deal to distribute Sun's Java Virtual Machine and to help distribute OpenOffice, the open source productivity suite. Somehow this is a revolution, and Windows and Office are suddenly toast.

Get real, people. Sun will give a Java contract to anyone with a ballpoint pen, and OpenOffice, is, well, open source. Where is the breakthrough in making it available, or even building on top of it? Google didn't write it -- all it's doing is glomming on to something built long ago.

The deal was big on fuzz and small on details, but Sun did agree to offer the Google toolbar as part of the Java runtime. For this you call a press conference?

How Microsoft can 'kill' Google

An interesting article in the Register

How Microsoft can 'kill' Google

Opera goes Free

Well, the only paid browser out there goes free and ad-free..

Opera announced today that it was going to remove Ads and the license fee. Opera had a free version, which had Ads and you need to pay a license fee to remove Ads.

I have downloaded Opera and this is the first time I am trying Opera a go. It feels quite responsive and gives me tabbed browsing.(I have got used to tabbed browsing since I run IE7 at home and I find FireFox not as responsive).

But I do like IE7s way of just clicking a new tab and using it. Opera has a new tab button that I need to click and the tabs do not look as good as the IE one.

But the great advantage is that Opera runs on Win 2K, while IE 7 runs only in XP and above. With XP and Vista at home, I run IE 7, but at office I use Win 2K. So now I can run Opera at work..:-)

FireFox feeling the heat?

With all that hype of no security problems in FireFox, the recent spate of security issues have kind of poured cold water over the hype..

A recent zdnet blog post actually goes on to say that the number of security problems in Firefox over the last few months are a lot more than IEs over the same period.

So as Firefox becomes more popular, the more attractive it becomes for the hacker and the more the problems..

Java gets its Champions

I have been suprised that a vibrant community like the Java one, does not seem to have the equivalent of a MVP program and how Sun does not seem to be interested in encouraging its community leaders.

Looks like the Java community is going to get its MVP equivalent. It is called Java Champions.

A good Random number generator can save you money

Well it could have saved quite a bit of money for CBS, if they had done it right.

A very interesting story, Press Your Luck.

How the Brain Sees??

An Optical Illusion where a series of colored dots become a single colored dot due to how the human brain sees. There are quite a few interesting illusions on the site. Check it out...

(Via Galatic Patrol)

Some bad UI

I have been using MS Antispyware for quite sometime now and I am quite satisfied with it. But I do hate
the interface they have when they have a new version on the server. The Autoupdater has a on-top window with a disabled Cancel button.

So once you click the OK button to start the download, you cannot cancel the download, nor can you continue working as this huge window is hiding most of the screen.

Indian Stock Quotes

I am thinking of writing a personal portfolio manager application and so started searching for some kind of a stock quote service. I am unable to find any free web service or programmer friendly stock quote service for the indian stock market. Anyone have come across a decent one? I am ok with a delayed quote.

Or do I have to resort to screen scraping?? :-(

GMail in 1995??

I was just researching some domain names, checking whois records. An very interesting thing that I found out was that, the domain gmail.com was created on 13-aug-1995 while the domain google.com seems to have been created only on 15-Sep-1997!!!

MVP Asia Summit

I have been spending the last few days in Singapore attending the MVP Asia summit. It has been wonderful meeting all the Indian and Asian MVPs agian after quite some time now. Looks like Longhorn Beta 1 is just around the corner. But I still am skeptical about the selling point for this. With Avalon and Indigo avbl in XP and 2003, who would go out and buy a copy of LH. Yes, the 3D interface Desktop Manager etc, will be available only on LH, but is that enough for people to want to upgrade? As of now I am skeptical...

Genesis of Languages

Two interesting blog posts on origins and evolution of human languages, looking at two different theories on the same. One that argues that only humans have the ability to create language, while the other that argues that the basic needs to create an language is available in most animals.

Building Gab: Part One
Building Gab: Part Two

If I had $1500 to blow away

I would stay at an underwater hotel.

The world's first underwater hotel is coming up at Bahamas and a days stay is gonna cost you approx USD1500.

Read more about Poseidon, which is the name of this resort.

If I remember right, Poseidon is the greek god of sea. [Who said, playing Age of Mythology does not have its uses..:-)] So they have got the name right, though it is also the name of a well known UML tool.

Eipca Awards

Naveen, a fellow MVP forwarded a link to an Italia Telecom ad, which had won an Epica award in 2004. A cool ad and the site has clips of all the winners in different categories.

Check out - TELECOM ITALIA S.P.A. "GANDHI"

and the main site Epica Awards

A machine that can learn a game

A computer that learns to play a 'scissors, paper, stone' by observing and mimicking human players could lead to machines that automatically learn how to spot an intruder or perform vital maintenance work, say UK researchers

Machine learns games 'like a human'

How we learn to use the phone :-)

Sarah Allen points to Dave's post on Can there be affordance or convention in the 2D world, digital world? Very interesting read.

I suppose some of the rules of using the computer will slowly become learning via passive exhibition as we see more and more computers at home. So as the next generation grows up, they grow up looking at thier parents use computers.

This is Funny..:-)

Just read this on Bharath Ganesh's Blog, about Google's Translation.. Absolutely hilarious...

Historic Relationship between India and China

An interesting essay by Amartya Sen on the relationship between India and China from a historic perspective.

The intellectual links between China and India, stretching over two thousand years, have had far-reaching effects on the history of both countries, yet they are hardly remembered today. What little notice they get tends to come from writers interested in religious history, particularly the history of Buddhism, which began its spread from India to China in the first century.

(via Anil Dash)

How did you lose your data?

I was just catching up with some older mails and found this very interesting and humorous:

What's your most interesting data loss story? Hopefully it doesn't compare to any of these, the OnTrack data recovery top ten list of Data Disasters.

Polled from the most bizarre stories of the data recovery company in 2004.

Data Defrost - One man brought in a hard drive in a wet plastic bag. He said he had read on the Internet that if you place a broken drive in the freezer it would fix it. So he tried that method and asked the recovery engineers not to laugh.

Reckless Recycling - One man tidied up his computer folders and inadvertently deleted the ones he meant to keep. He then cleaned up his system, emptied the recycle bin and defragged the hard drive before realizing his error. He now triple-checks files before deleting them for good.

Rowdy Relatives - A man suddenly found his laptop would only boot up to the 'blue screen of death,' putting his data at risk. A week later, his nephew admitted that he used its screen as a punching bag to relieve his frustrations with the slow computer. The man sent his nephew back to live with his parents.

Digital Disaster at 19,000 Feet - The Polish explorer, Krystof Wielicki, dropped his digital camera when climbing the Himalayas on his latest expedition, smashing it to smithereens and damaging the memory card in the process.

Gone in a Flash - One medical company worker completed 1,200 customer billing entries - a process that took several days - when lightning struck the transformer outside the building. Everything was gone, including all the bills she had just prepared.

Baby Blues - One couple had hundreds of pictures of their baby's first three months on their computer. When a virus struck their PC, the computer manufacturer advised them to reload the operating system but they forgot to save the data.

Construction Calamity - During the construction of a large office building, a steel beam fell on a laptop computer containing the building plans, crushing the laptop.

Toilet Trauma - One man became so mad with his malfunctioning laptop computer, he threw it into the toilet and flushed a couple of times.

Road Kill - A woman placed her laptop on top of her car while she got in. She forgot about the laptop, which slid off the back of her car, and she then reversed straight over it and reported hearing a 'crunch.'

Runway Wreckage - A laptop computer was run over by an airplane. Even Ontrack's recovery engineers don't understand how it happened, but that was the customer's explanation.

- from SQLCentral

Why Projects Fail?

Well that was always a million dollar question. Almost like analyzing why a particular film failed. An new report on this, seems to point to a few common reasons for failure:

Changing Priorities
Management commitment and
the no. 1 issue Project Management

But the piece that really made me happy was:

Perhaps ironic is that among companies typically adopting technologies early, there is a lower project failure rate than among companies that take a more cautious approach by waiting until after the majority has adopted such technologies.

I have always been a proponent of early adoption of technology. Yep, it can be hard and also pose technical difficulties, but will result in better utilization of new technologies to reap business benefits.

More information can be found in the SD Times article, Study Reveals Why Most Projects Fail

What is it to be an MVP?

Tameem AKA Teucer, an MVP from India, is on Channel 9 talking about what is so great about being an MVP...

Tammem is now back in Chennai and I am gonna have dinner with him tonight.

Want a free XBOX??

Well you will have to write a component review to win that.

Mike talks about a contest they are running at xtras, where you get a chance to win an XBox for writing reviews for a particular set of components.

Earn your Halo 2 Contest

Star Wars Episode III

Looks like Star Wars Episode III will be called Revenge of the Sith

Lucas Arts releases official title for the third Episode, called Revenge of the Sith.

The new movie is set for release in May 2005, will show the link of the prequels with the original "Star Wars" trilogy by telling the story how Luke Skywalker's father, Anakin, went from a nice guy to the super villain Darth Vader. The Sith is the evil sect that corrupts Anakin (played by Hayden Christensen).

2GB Email space for msn.com

Looks like MS is offering 2 GB storage space for new @msn.com email ids. There is no info on whether this will affect older hotmail accounts.

My hotmail account still has a 2MB limit though.

Command Line based Web Site

Got this link from Vivek. A experiment in command line based blog...

Interesting, but I personally find it too much of an hassle to try to read a few posts...

Matrix Quotes

Found this interesting site, which contains some of the famous matrix quotes and the entire transcript of the Architect scene...

Juggling the version numbers

John Topley posts on the confusion created by the odd version numbering logic used by Marketeers, like Java 5 and Oracle 10g.

Hilarious

A wonderfully hilarious post on bursting bouncing ball. Whether the author is valid in blaming Taiwan or not, it is still hilarious...

Ebay comes to India

Looks like Ebay is about to step into India. It has announced the purchase of Baazee, India's biggest e-auction company for around $50 million.

Gmailto

More and more tools are appearing for Gmail...

Vasanth points to a GMailto tool, that will allow you to set gmail as the default mail client.

Written in VB...:-)

Spiderman in Dhothi

Sanjay, IMed me with a new avatar of Spiderman that is going to make an appearance in India.

Evocative Presentations

Found an interesting post on Evocative Presentations in the Beyond Bullets blog.

Very interesting..

.NET Community vs. Java Community

There has been a lot of debate on how the two communities work. This has generated as much heat as the Open vs closed source discussion.

Ted Neward adds an interesting new dimension to how things work. And being an old time VB developer I do agree a lot with him.

Via Totzkeeeeee's Blog

Venus Transit on the Web

You can watch the Venus transit on the web here.

Solar Eclipse of a different kind

Sun gets eclipsed by Venus tomorrow!

"During the transit, the orbits of Venus and the earth, which tilt at different angles, around the sun will line up exactly. It occurs four times in every 243 years. There are two December transits, eight years apart, and then 121.5 years later there are two June transits, also eight years apart. After another 105.5 years the cycle begins again."

Weather permitting, the phenomenon should be visible from your city (at least here in India!). Venus will appear as a thick black on the face of Sun. The same precautions that you exercise for observing a "regular" eclipse should be exercised here as well!

Happy Viewing!

Toxic Dust

Not only does working on your computer affecting your eyes, it may even be poisoning you.

Is the dust on your computer toxic?

Another cool thing about Gmail

I am not sure if it was there all along (and I missed it) or they added it now, when you log into gmail they have this check box, which says "Dont ask for my password for the next 2 weeks". Instead of the normal remember password button, this seems to make more sense and also make sure that I dont forget my password...:-)

Linux is Hilarious??

Well here is a picture from a good friend.

Proves that Other people too seems to think the same thing about Linux as me..;-)

Orkut Error Message

This was an error message I got when working with Orkut today. Shows that it is not an 100% professional thingy and people working on it do have a nice sense of humour..:-)

Hacker vs. Hacker

An interesting story (Hackers hacked by hacker) on a Hacker group being hacked...:-)

via Michael Howard's Blog

New Security Hole

Another Security hole has been found, but this time in the Mac OS X. This security hole could potentially allow hackers to access a user's files—and even delete them.

eweek report: New Security Hole Found in OS X

(via @blake)

Open Source the solution to Outsourcing??

That seems to be the idea behind this LinuxWorld article.

Open Source, Not Outsource