Bits from ramprasad thoughts

Oz sucks!

2011-07-01T23:16:00.001+05:30

Oz media has to shut up instead of making harsh remarks about Dhoni and indian team..They need to learn how international media works... Track history of Oz seems to be on the negative side these days from racists attacks to harsh comments on India.. Oz is not mature to understand the recent contentious work done by their umpire.... Oz media... just _shut up_! ICC also seems to be more into these kind of works due to the blackjack people running it...After all it is the matter of india/WI country match...not between kids... Oz has to concentrate more on involving with international works and do some helpful actions rather than just keep itself outside of other internationals and not contributing....

UK gov needs to be senseful, thoughtful, innovative, and humane

2011-07-01T23:15:00.001+05:30

* It is humane to reward the workers as per their wish who build the nation
* It is insane to ask for best available professionals, get work done from them and throw them
* It is to be innovative on how to manage the immigrants
* It is foolish to act this way. If gov does not revoke this, then the immigrants might need to think about other and better available places to work and live
* It is quite immpossible for UK native nationals to work as indians

NB: No man's land it is on this planet to throw others

Bing.com isn't fair - As usual act from Microsoft

2009-06-01T21:56:00.021+05:30

Well, today i started reviewing the bing search developed from none other than Microsoft..yes the renamed version of live.com - $ mv live.com bing.com

It is really insane how microsoft provides it's services to the users by considering it's competitors into picture. I tell you, this is true for all of it's products. Am i, lying? No, i am not. Try yourself digging!

As i had noted last year (2008), the way live.com and search.yahoo.com use to provide the search results for the keyword - google, it is the similar unfair been intergrated now to bing.com too...

Well, try to search for google in bing.com and you see how microsoft is unfair for google..

http://www.bing.com/search?q=google

As you see from the screenshot, bing.com shows up only one result for google and provides an option for the users to get more results for google or not.

When the user clicks on "Search for other results containing google", bing.com shows up actual full search results for the keyword - google

As you can see here now -

The same thing is now done when you try to search for yahoo..LOL

http://www.bing.com/search?q=yahoo

But, when you try to search for other than google, yahoo, (i am not sure of other words, yet) keyword, then bing.com shows up full search results at one shot.

Won't you feel that bing.com and in general microsoft being an unfair player here? It is a big _YES_ Microsoft is trying to make users avoid or know less about google. This is not the way to market their products!

I think someone has to stop this...and they will in near future...i feel sick of these kiddish acts....

FYI, google is still _fair_ from the beginning - try

www.google.com/search?q=microsoft

GTalk web chat bug

2009-05-29T23:09:00.005+05:30

Ooops...bugs in Google core products...Anyway, i am an avid user of Google products. Keep encountering many bugs, unavailability of the system, etc..Have taken some screenshots till date..but never blogged about this..from now on i shall blog them as users create bug in bugzilla...;)

Here it goes my official Google bug announcement ;)

Bug Id - 1
Product - GTalk web chat
Platform - SuSE 11.0 GNU/Linux running Mozilla Firefox 3.0b5
Assigned To - GMail Team
Target Milestone - Current
Summary - GTalk web chat bug
Description - When i sent an chat message, the GTalk server threw me a message saying - "Palanisamy did not receive your chat." even tough the my freind was online. After this my friend was able to send me a corresponding chat message reply to me.

Here is the screen shot -

Happy bug fixing GTalk team!

Stay tuned for more strange stuff :)

Happy Googling!

Live and Yahoo! search sucks!

2009-01-23T14:14:00.014+05:30

I am again very happy to say that Live search really sucks and would like to say that it does not deserve to be one of the search engines at all. I know that Microsoft could not develop a decent search engine that would meet the Internet users standards.

I am surprised that how verizon chose Live search as their cellphones default search service. Immediately, two things strike me are -

1. Either verizon are dumb guys in chosing best service & providing and/or
2. Microsoft has bribed verizon

If i think more on this, yes, i have got it right that, both of the above are correct ;)

For e.g. - I have provided my website link www.ramprasadb.in to Live serach at http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx 15 days ago and still MSNBot hasn't gotten up and started to crawl at all. What has Microsoft written - MSNBot? Moreover, the search results aren't relevant at all. They played a game - when user tries to search the word `Google', they use to add a search button that user can search through live search service above the first google result, this shows how Microsoft as usual being unfair in computer business.

This being the scenario, how does one like Steve Ballmer gets convinced by his company's products, go and strike a deal with others. This seems funny.

I surprised to see that this is the same case in Yahoo! search too for AT&T and T-Mobile. I am not sure on how AT&T and T-Mobile agreed to have Yahoo! search as default search service on their cellphones.

These guys (Microsoft, Yahoo!, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) are just working to make more money rather than concentrating on technologies that enable usesr to use in full extent and fair manner.

Hey btw, how does users get convinced on the service that being provided by Live Search and Yahoo! Search? Lolz

There are better search engines available worldwide such as Google - which can be rated 10 out of 10 in terms of service standards met for internet users - from clean, simple, fast to the amount of internet content being indexed and managing it.

I am not endorsing or supporting Google here. I am user of internet since 1999 and being using search engines since then and developing them since 2004 or so and found Google as the only one which meet the standards - Fair, Quality, Technology, Clean, Simple and Wow. Till now could not find any other search service like Google, but found unfair little competition from others.

`whois domain.com' from Google?

2008-11-24T22:31:00.001+05:30

I sometimes keep checking whois info for random domain names. It's hard to find domain names info for certain reasons, such as

1. There is no specific website wherein i can get info on any domain names belonging to any TLD.

2. The info isn't fetched quite fast.

So, what if google provides a new search feature, say - whois info? e.g. whois google.com?

Yes, will that not be great? I recently suggested this idea to google as feedback - http://www.google.com/quality_form?q=whois

Hope, google provides this search feature :)

1 Peta Byte data sorted by Google in six hours and two minutes

2008-11-24T21:12:00.000+05:30

Google has announced that they were able to sort one petabyte of data in 6 hours and 2 minutes across 4,000 computers. According to the Google Blog, '... to put this amount in perspective, it is 12 times the amount of archived web data in the US Library of Congress as of May 2008. In comparison, consider that the aggregate size of data processed by all instances of MapReduce at Google was on average 20PB per day in January 2008.' The technology making this possible is MapReduce 'a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets.'

The ISS is now 10 Years old In Space

2008-11-19T10:27:00.000+05:30

On 20 November 1998, a Russian Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome for a historic mission: It was carrying the first module of the International Space Station ISS, named Zarya (Russian for 'dawn'). This cargo and control module, which weighs about 20 tonnes and is almost 13 meters long, provides electrical power, propulsion, flight path guidance and storage space. The launch of the module... heralded a new era in space exploration, as, for the first time ever, lasting cooperation in space was achieved between Russia, the US, Europe, Canada and Japan. Over the next ten years, many other modules were brought into orbit, and ISS developed into the largest human outpost in space. Since that time, the building blocks, transported by Russian launch vehicles or the US Space Shuttle, have expanded the ISS to the size of a soccer pitch and a current total mass of about 300 tons.

10 Million Images From Life Magazine's Archive hosted by G!

2008-11-19T10:25:00.000+05:30

Google announced that it was making available 10 million images from Life magazine's archives dating back to the 1750s. (Most of the news accounts covering this announcement refer to Life's "photos," and none mention that photography wasn't invented until early in the 19th century.) Only a small percentage of the images — including newly digitized images from photos and etchings — have even been published. The rest have been "sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints." At this point about 20% of Life's archive is online; the rest is promised within months.

More - http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Deep-Space Network Modeled On the Internet tested

2008-11-19T10:23:00.000+05:30

NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth. The store-and-forward protocol was designed by NASA in consultation with Vint Cerf. Here's a discussion from last July before the test began.

MS to ship Anti-Virus software as `Free'

2008-11-19T10:21:00.000+05:30

The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?

C becomes browser scripting language

2008-07-11T14:32:00.000+05:30

The toolchain includes lots of other details, such as a custom POSIX system call API and a C multimedia library that provides access to Flash. And there's some things that Petersen had to add to Tamarin, such as a native byte array that maps directly to RAM, thereby allowing the VM's "emulation" of memory to have only a minor overhead over the real thing. The end result is the ability to run a wide variety of existing C code in Flash at acceptable speeds. Petersen demonstrated a version of Quake running in a Flash app, as well as a C-based Nintendo emulator running Zelda; both were eminently playable, and included sound effects and music.

Google's browser sync

2008-07-11T14:27:00.000+05:30

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

Google's new social networking tool

2008-07-11T14:22:00.001+05:30

Google has launched a Windows-only, in-browser (you need to install a client first, though) 3D avatar world — Lively — that you can embed in websites and use to interact with other people. It's not as expansive as Second Life yet, but expect things to get better.

At first glance the website Lively.com is not appealing, it’s got a mediocre layout and if it wasn’t for the logo at the top left you wouldn’t even know it was owned and operated by Google. The page is blend with no much color or style. Nothing explains what Lively is; only a download link at the top seems important.

Seagate's latest Desktop HDD is about 1.5TB!

2008-07-11T14:21:00.000+05:30

Seagate announced three new consumer-level hard drives today, which it claims are the 'industry's first 1.5-terabyte desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives.' The company claims that it is able to greatly increase the areal density of its drive substrates by utilizing perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology that is capable of delivering more than triple the storage density of traditional longitudinal recording. Seagate's latest desktop-class hard drive, the Barracuda 7200.11, will be available in a 1.5TB capacity starting in August. The 3.5-inch drive is made up of four 375GB platters and has a 7,200-rpm rotational speed.

Top 10 worst uses of MS Windows

2008-07-11T14:14:00.000+05:30

1. To display a static green arrow over the open TSA security lanes at Detroit Metro.
2. Ticket scanner at Frankfurt airport
3. Gift certificate dispensing kiosk
4. Job application kiosk
5. Train engine controls
6. Building controls
7. Manufacturing controls
8. ATMs
9. SCADA Networks
10. Medical equipment

Go ahead and read them in detail.......

Wierd Google web search result message!

2008-05-10T13:20:00.002+05:30

Was just hacking google search features and the various URL fields that google system understands to service it's huge user base. The pretty field `num', tells the google system to get the specified `num' search results for a particular keyword query. `num' can be anywhere from 1 to 100. But when num=0 for any keywords (in this case `google'), Google throws a surprising message for the query - google.com/search?q=google&num=0 to the user as below -

--------------------------------------------------------
Your search - google - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.
--------------------------------------------------------

Here's the screenshot -

Does this message suits for the query - get _zero_ search result? Hey Google, this result is absolutely nothing to do with the way query is done to your web index. It should be somewhat clear, fair and positive to the user. It should say `You are trying to query a keyword for 0 result' which does not make any sense or something like that. Instead, mentioning `Your search - google - did not match any documents' is a strange and inappropriate message. Don't you think Google?

Happy Googling!

G.ho.st shakes Microsoft?

2007-05-07T15:37:00.000+05:30

Somehow, the fact that startup G.ho.st has its headquarters in Jerusalem is fitting. After all, it wasn't far from the ancient city that the biblical hero David squared off against Goliath. And, in a sense, that is the tiny company and its G.ho.st (Global Hosted Operating System), is intent on doing with the giant of the operating system business: Microsoft...

Yahoo Photos going out

2007-05-07T15:32:00.000+05:30

"Welcome to the new Yahoo! Photos!" That's the cheerful greeting atop the home page for Yahoo Photos, the online photo storage, sharing, and printing site maintained by the search-engine company. If a spate of online rumors is correct, however, the Yahoo Photos greeting will soon disappear, along with the service itself...

Mugshot: Social networking open source style

2007-05-07T15:30:00.000+05:30

Now that we have open source beer, open source cars, and open source photography, a social networking service run by Red Hat and based around open source software comes as no surprise. The name of the project is Mugshot, and the official definition describes it as "an open project to create live social experiences around entertainment." That may sound vague, but it's actually a useful service, and there are quite a few things you can do with it.

First of all, Mugshot provides a single entry point to popular social networking tools such as Flickr, Google Reader, Blogger, Digg, del.icio.us, Picasa, YouTube, and others. Your Mugshot account page allows you to easily add Web services for use with your Mugshot page; all you have to do is to provide your account information for each service. Your Mugshot user page then acts as a kind of aggregator that watches the configured services and provides notifications when they are updated. For example, if you specify the URL of your blog, Mugshot will automatically add the recent blog posts to your Mugshot page. Enable and configure your Flickr account, and Mugshot adds your photos to the Mugshot page and provides notifications when you add new photos. If you choose to enable the Digg and del.icio.us services, your Mugshot page will display the articles you dugg and recent bookmarks...

Steve Jobs is top-paid CEO

2007-05-07T15:27:00.000+05:30

Even though Jobs was paid a nominal one-dollar salary, the value of his stock options and other benefits made him the highest compensated CEO, the magazine said....

Make Web look better with Stylish

2007-05-07T15:23:00.000+05:30

Most Firefox users are familiar with the Greasemonkey extension, a powerful tool that lets you enhance your browsing experience by rewriting HTML pages and JavaScript on the client side. The Stylish extension gives you that same level of control over Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Unlike JavaScript, altering a page's CSS cannot change its functionality -- but it can greatly enrich its usability...

A GNU/Linux live CD for amateur radio

2007-05-07T15:19:00.000+05:30

Puppy Linux is a lightweight live Linux distribution that you can boot and run from a CD, USB stick, or DVD. One of its features is the ability to create specialized "pups" -- new versions of Puppy Linux geared toward a specific purpose. Digipup is one such example, with a focus on amateur radio...

7 Things System Administrators Forget to Do

2007-05-07T15:12:00.000+05:30

Out of the plethora of chores that we do each day, which ones make up the top seven activities of forgetful system administrators? To begin, you might ask yourselves if the answer is quantitative or qualitative. Let's think about it for a minute.

You could look at the number of times you forget something. If you did that, you might get a list of things like forgetting to set your alarm clock or showing up to work with unmatched socks. We need something scarier, like forgetting to turn off remote access through a VPN to an employee that just left the company.

In writing this article, I felt like the Simon Cowell of technologists, but in reverse. Out of many worthy candidates I could only pick seven, and Paula Abdul couldn't vote. Beside my own subjective view, I decided to consult other engineers. The men and women I consulted felt the criterion was obvious: administrators forget to do things that matter.

I could cite many reasons why they forget some critical tasks. Those reasons include doing jobs that normally take two or more people, having to provide break-fix services on hardware, covering for absentee help desk personnel or getting involved in pre-sale activities. Regardless, here is the compilation of the top seven things system administrators forget to do...

Tips for transitioning to a GNU/Linux distribution

2007-05-07T15:11:00.000+05:30

So, you've made the choice to try a GNU/Linux distribution or distro and have completed the installation. But now what? While doing some spring cleaning on my desk, I came across the notes from my last distro installation. Here are the key tips that made my last transition from Windows to GNU/Linux easier.

Be aware, GNU/Linux approaches many things differently than MS Windows: Different isn’t bad, really, it’s not. However, be realistic and expect a learning curve. Remember Windows is not programmed into our DNA, we all had to learn Windows somewhere along the way. A dash of persistence and patience may be necessary in transitioning to GNU/Linux.

A little preparation goes a long, long way: Organize and consolidate your music files, picture files, word documents, spreadsheets and other important data. Save your data to some type of external media for the transfer. You will also be creating a backup if something goes wrong along the way...