Thursday, July 31, 2003

Still not installed. Its taking the whole damn day!
The installation died in between installs. Probably the CD, so I am trying with another one.
But its going real slow. I have a lot of moving to do today!

P.S. It was the damn CD. I should check a CD for scratches before I start installing!!!!
Ok, tired of Windows 98. Cant take this crappy OS. Of it goes!
Experts anxious over possible Net attack

Wow! This seems serious. I had a meeting about this yesterday.

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer

An RSS (Rich Site Summary) feed is an XML file used to describe the contents of your website. As your website content changes, your RSS feed changes. Other computer systems, known as 'aggregators' or 'harvesters', read your RSS feed everyt once in a while. If you have provided new information, the aggregator takes that information and sends it to readers around the world. Thus information about your site's contents is 'syndicated', that is, rebroadcast to a much larger audience.

I've been a little busy these past few days. What with the Shifting apartments, and cleaning up the old apartment. Also, at work I took half the day of, yesterday, because I had to get ready for the shifting, and do some packing and stuff. And the whole of the University goes into a panic because of the Windows RPC exploit. Apparently this was a real severe risk since a bunch of computers had been compromised already. Anyway, yesterday was hell.

Sunday, July 27, 2003

Its painful working on the laptop. Linux was way faster than this. Windows 98 is painfully slow. Application load times are huge, and switching between windows is a pain. Oh, if only I had a little more cash, I could buy a new laptop. I need one so badly.
The problem I've been having with my server
make mrproper
make xconfig
make dep
make bzImage
install kernel in lilo
reboot...

@ 8 on a Sunday morning!
Defending your site against Spam

Friday, July 25, 2003

System Administrators Appreciation day
IBM vs. Pixar

IBM plans to take on Monsters, Inc. The company better known for banking systems is about to announce a partnership with Threshold Digital Research Labs, a budding Santa Monica, Calif., computer-animation company run by Larry Kasanoff, who produced the movie Terminator 2.
I installed Windows 98 on my laptop. I was kinda down yesterday, and bored. And got frustrated with no sound working in Slackware. So of came slackware. Did'nt feel like configuring packages on Redhat, and did'nt feel like experimenting to see if Windows 2000 would work on this old old machine. So I installed Windows 98. I use it for email and browsing, and chatting. So what the heck. Cant do much programming on it anyways!
We got our first copy right infringement notice today, from the MPAA. Apparently somebody in our lab was offering a part of the movie Chicage on the gnutella network. They want his account disabled, and the user to be penalized according to the rules at the University. The good thing is that he is a Visiting student. Scary shit though!

Its a good thing, I have lost interest in television and movies. I havent start a P2P app in months! And never at work!
Actually its not worth the effort. My friends do enough downloading for me!

Thursday, July 24, 2003

Robotic Nation

In 2055 the nation hit a big milestone -- over half of the American workforce was unemployed, and the number was still rising. Nearly every "normal" job that had been filled by a human being in 2001 was filled by a robot instead. At restaurants, robots did all the cooking, cleaning and order taking. At construction sites, robots did everything -- Robots poured the concrete, laid brick, built the home's frame, put in the windows and doors, sided the house, roofed it, plumbed it, wired it, hung the drywall, painted it, etc. At the airport, robots flew the planes, sold the tickets, moved the luggage, handled security, kept the building clean and managed air traffic control. At the hospital robots cared for the patients, cooked and delivered the food, cleaned everything and handled many of the administrative tasks. At the mall, stores were stocked, cleaned and clerked by robots. At the amusement park, hundreds of robots ran the rides, cleaned the park and sold the concessions. On the roads, robots drove all the cars and trucks. Companies like Fedex, UPS and the post office had huge numbers of robots instead of people sorting packages, driving trucks and making deliveries

Personally I think this is possible. But I dont think it will be that bad. It could lead to an economy as seen in star trek.
In a way, open source is a start towards that. Could you say fifteen years ago, that thousands of developers around the world get together, through the internet, and create software, that would be given away for free. Could you say that this software would power hundreds of enterprise servers, that run critical business infrastructure? Thousands and Thousands of man hours have been spent on open source software. It is continously getting better at a steady rate, despite the economic climate. Whats to stop it? Other than stupid laws. And those laws only affect people in the states. Now there are programmers all over the world contributing to the open source cause.

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

16:34:41 up 7 days, 7:07, 1 user, load average: 0.54, 0.16, 0.05

Slackware 9.0, P166 Mhz laptop Latitude LM
.NET Framework 1.1 Redistributable

Is the .Net Redistributable some thing like JRE (Java Runtime Environment).
Another thing I am tired of is the Linux vs. Windows debate. What Bullshit?!?
Just use whatever the hell you are comfortable. If you have no problem using proprietary, controlled software, use it. We dont seem to have a problem using proprietary hardware!
I have a bunch of computers to work on at work. They are all used computers, and each one has some problem or the other. Nothing ever works in the first go. The computer keeps rebooting, during installation. Its a pain!
Nothing interesting to write on. The computer industry has the same old shit. Computer magazines have turned to being product brochures. PC Magazine for example. Actually a product brochure for house hold devices. How boring!

Slashdot seems to have the same old shit about rights and all that stuff, and none of that geeky stuff that too me to it.

Various software that keeps coming out is simply software that is being improved incrementally, but nothing ground breaking. That means that there is nothing new to write about. I'm bored!

Monday, July 21, 2003

Want Kazaa on Linux?
Read this
Get rid of the 'file' concept for sourcecode!
FireBird is amazing. I wonder when they are going to release the next version.
I wonder what other people have been experiencing with gigabit cards and there servers. I dont know why the server keeps crashing when I put in a giga bit card. Bad.

At least we will be able to find out if the network card is at fault or whether it is something else. How? We replace the network card with another brand. Intel probably.

Friday, July 18, 2003

QNX Momentics

A free OS download.
Why are some women so stubborn?
I've switched back to amsn for the time being. Gaim kept crashing on me. Ayttm does not have all the features that I need. Amsn is the client that comes closest to MSN messenger from Microsoft, and provides most of the features that I need from the program. So Amsn it is for now. If the next version of GAIM is more stable I will consider using it. But for now, I will stick with Amsn.
I'm thinking, would'nt a gaim plugin to post to blogger be cool. Hmm... looks like an interesting project to me!
Messenger 6.0 is out!

Eb-lite is a messenger for Linux!

Gaim is my current messenger for Linux!

Ayttm is the messenger I am going to try right now!

Amsn is a messenger that I used before Gaim!
Is Adobe Targeting Microsoft's InfoPath?

But whereas Adobe's plans for a PDF/XML Form designer (the product has yet to be named) are geared toward a broad reach scenario in which an organization publishes a form which could then be downloaded by an end-user anywhere, filled in and submitted back to the publisher, Moore said InfoPath is aimed squarely at the knowledge worker and small group collaboration.

I wish I could get my hands on some beta of these software or something. These are new applications, and I would certainly love to have a look at them. See what they do? Maybe write a KDE app to mimic thier functionality :)
I just tried OpenOffice.org v1.1 RC1. The main improvement in my opinion is the GTK2 anti aliased fonts. They just rock. I might actually start using a word processor now, instead of using a text editor like VI, or Emacs. AbiWord that came with Slackware 9.0 does not seem to have the font support. RC1 is a bit slow, so I dont know.
RSS 2.0 News

The first bit of news. On Monday, July 15, UserLand Software transferred its copyright in the RSS 2.0 spec to Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. This addresses one of the major concerns about RSS 2.0, that it was being published by one of the competitors in the RSS space. That no longer is true.
Sobig.a and the Spam You Received Today

Sobig.e - Evolution of the Worm

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Hey!!! I just lost my last post! What the HELL!!!
The first time I tried the slackware distribution was when I first came to college. I was a freshmen, and I learnt that freshmen did not have access to the linux/Unix labs. I went to the Advisor all in a huff asking her how I could get into those labs. She said I would, in two years time. But now now. I was really pissed. The only lab I had access to was the Windows lab, running Windows 98!!! I was angry. I went to the slackware site, and found something called ZipSlack. Downloaded it, installed it, and rebooted one of the lab computers, and booted of a zip disk. Boy was it fun, sitting in the lab till 1am (Lab closing time) playing with slackware. It was fun trying to figure out how it all worked.

My very first distribution of Linux was something called Monkey Linux. It took me a month to download those six main disks, sitting on a 14.4 kbps connection in Karachi Pakistan, on a 386SX with 2 MB ram, and 200 MB hard disk. Oh the good old days!
My new distribution of choice, Slackware, turns 10!

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

AutoCatalytic Software

Software development can be viewed as the production and processing of text files. From operating systems to compilers to web pages almost all of software development either begins or ends with text files. The source code for the compiler is a text file. The HTML of the web page you are currently viewing is a text file. The CGI script that served it up is a text file. If you view OSS from the persepective of the text-files that make it up then OSS is about text files that can act on other text files. For example, the source code for a compiler is compiled into a new version of the compiler which then is used to compile Perl which is then used to process CGI scripts for an Apache web server to serve up custom HTML pages that interface to the CVS server for the source code for the complier.
Security: Attacks Exposed

How serious a particular attack type is depends on two things: how the attack is carried out, and what damage is done to the compromised system. An attacker being able to run code on his machine is probably the most serious kind of attack for a home user. For an e-commerce company, a denial of service (DoS) attack or information leakage may be of more immediate concern. Each vulnerability that can lead to compromise can be traced to a particular category, or class, of attack.The properties of each class give you a rough feel for how serious an attack in that class is, as well as how hard it is to defend against. In this article, we explain each of the attack classes in detail, including what kinds of damage they can cause the victim, as well as what the attacker can gain by using them.
Today I tried out:
xfce
fvwm2
fvwm95

And I am back to using WindowMaker. I really cant find a replacement for WindowMaker. Why do I want one?
Because I am bored of WindowMaker.
KDE and GNOME are really slow on my old old laptop.

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

We cleaned up our lab today. I had no idea we had so much floor space. The lab seems empty now that all the empty computer casings and dead monitors are gone!
Halo Original or Sequel

Dont know, and dont care. I've spent hours and hours, playing multiplayer Halo with my friends. I dont play games usually. But it is a totally different experience having two/three Xboxes hooked together, and 8/12 people shooting the hell out of each other in real time. My friend borrowed two projectors from work, hooked them up in two separate rooms, and a third X box on a TV. 12 people at one time. It was amazing.

But now we're all bored of Halo, and we cant wait for Halo 2 to come out.
Nice article on using enscript to print documents quickly.

Outputting Text
Developments in the File System (PDF)

I'm surprised that I cant cut and paste text from postscript files in either gv or ggv. There has to be a way, I guess I just gotta figure it out.
New release candidate for OpenOffice.org v1.1 is out.

Kazaa Derivatives Offer RIAA-Blocking Features


Two derivatives of the popular Kazaa peer-to-peer filesharing service now actively attempt to block scans by the RIAA (news - web sites) and other agencies, escalating the P2P war to a new level.
Busy day... registering for courses and stuff.

Monday, July 14, 2003

Reliable Messaging

So, given the well worn nature of the path I am on, how come that here in 2003 we have HTTPR[4], WS-Reliability[5], WS-ReliableMessaging[6], EBMS[7] and a host of other mutually repugnant 'standards' for solving the well understood problem of reliable messaging?

It is clearly not a situation that can be easily explained away on scientific innovation grounds. This is no longer a scientific problem. Indeed, the scientists no longer find the problem interesting, it is a solved* problem. So what are the technologists up to with their plethora of competing 'standards'?


The problem is, that each of these companies are working against each other. The problem is that unlike in most other industries, products in the software industry have more requirements for interaction among themselves, than most other industries (I'm probably wrong, but thats what it looks to me sitting here in my University Lab, trying to get an old Windows 98 computer to print to a Networked Printer over Samba). This more interaction breeds more misunderstandings and competitiveness than any other space.

And yes, I'm bored! I cant believe we still have to work with Windows 98!!!!
Writing for the web
Turned on Anti-aliased fonts in KDE and the web pages look heavenly in Konqueror.
The debate over the fact that Dave Winer edits his pubished posts, and takes back what he says is stupid. I edit my posts all the time. Every body can change their mind, or write something in a hurry which they decide later that is'nt right. We are human beings and make mistakes. And it is our blog. Since when did we lose the right to edit whatever we say!

And the way Dave writes his blog is different from the way most of us write it. At least that is what I have gathered. He edits just one post, all day through, like an essay. Its his way of blogging. Who the hell are all these people questioning what he says or does on his blog. Stupid.
Is RSS Stuck?

It's stuck because the RSS community is controlled by a small number of mail list flamers. A few people put themselves in the middle on the mail lists and express their opinions over and over, and ridicule those who differ, often attacking on a personal level. This has rendered the mail lists ineffective. Even new lists, even when they're moderated, descend into flames within days, chasing away people who want to get work done, and forcing those who remain to defend themselves. There are just a handful of people doing this, but they use flames as a filibuster, and it works. At times they coordinate, when one leaves, the next one takes over. I've watched their IRC chat channels where they plan these work-stopping activities.


I used to really like reading what Dave Winer wrote. I respected him because he made some great software, and what he wrote was sometimes controvertial but something I could live with. That has all changed over the past few days, as the debate of RSS has gone from bad to worse. Its not all completely his fault. But it has reduced the respect I had for him. He keeps turning the situation worse with each posting.
Browser Wars II

Amazing article on Slashdot. Everyone should read.

Some links I will read later, that the article referred to:
CSS Hints for Internet Explorer 5 (Mac)
Browser compatibility

This strategy might give Apple a little support in its own battle with Microsoft. I feel we owe it something for giving us Safari and for being very open for suggestions from the web development community. In the long run such exchanges of gallantry might lead to an alliance.

Well, the engine that Safari seems to be based on, is KHTML. That was developed for the KDE desktop environment on Linux. The browser itself is named Konqueror. I thought some credit should be given here!

I became part of the internet when netscape was king. I saw Internet Explorer pop up on the scene, as a very small contender, and become ruler. It took a very short time for it to do this. In just the same way, Safari did the same to Internet Explorer. So... this story is now old. There is no end to it. It seems from the article that Mozilla is set to take the spotlight away from Internet Explorer and reign King again. For a while. The only problem is that Mozilla has been ready for a year. I dont know what is going to happen to it, in the next few years. What kind of condition is it going to be in by next year? Is it going to suffer the rot that Netscape and Internet Explorer both suffered, or are suffering from? Opera is a good browser, but for me it has never been an alternative.

On Linux the browser wars includes these contenders, Mozilla, Konqueror and Opera. Opera is closed source, and Mozilla/Konqueror are not. Most distros have Mozilla and Konqueror included. Not Opera. Hence in a sense Mozilla/Konqueror take the top two spots. Konqueror had a slight advantgae of speed, but now with Mozilla FireBird will be lost. And Mozilla has more support. But I have great hopes in Konqueror. The speed with which it became a viable alternative is fascinating. I have great hopes for that Browser. I used to call it Internet Explorer for Linux.

Sunday, July 13, 2003

Ongoing: Whats a Sharecropper

What it comes down to is this: if you want to develop software, you can build for the Web and/or Unix and/or OSS platforms; or alternatively, you can be a sharecropper.

Whats a ShareCropper?
A farmer who works a farm owned by someone else. The owner provides the land, seed, and tools exchange for part of the crops and goods produced on the farm.
It�s a lousy position to be in, because you�re never going to make much, and if the land�s owner finds something better to do with the land, you�re history.


Browser of the Future

Don't try to re-invent the browser, please.
Its held up so far, its been online for about 2 hours.
We are now stress testing the server with the new network card. Lets see!
I am upgrading the server as you read. So far its going pretty smoothly.

Saturday, July 12, 2003

Here is some interesting weekend reading...

Sex every four days is enough for Indians

The art of love
I'm gonna be doing some upgrades from home.
Upgrading Redhat 8.0 ==> 9.0
Upgrading/Downgrading Windows XP ==> Windows 2000 Server

Various other small upgrades.

Friday, July 11, 2003

Endangering Laptops!
<Quote›
Who is George Doughty? No one most of us know, but someone we can sympathize with. He is a bar owner who lives in Lafayette, Colorado. He was arrested on charges of felony menacing, reckless endangerment, and the prohibited use of weapons. Why? He shot his computer. As the story goes, he emerged from his on-site office and announced that he was going to shoot his computer. Half an hour later, he returned with a Dell laptop, set it on the floor, asked two customers to cover their ears, and said notebook took four bullets.
</Quote›
I've felt like that on occasion!
<Quote›
Shortly after I graduated from college, I married a wonderful woman on the same level of computer literacy as the hypothetical student mentioned above. It has been quite the learning experience for the both of us. When it comes to the computer, we look at the beige box in the living room, but we see different things. I see a machine which I work with for both work and play and that I love to learn new things about. She sees a beige box which allows her to print parent newsletters and grade averages for school. She sees the computer as the means to an end. I see it both as such and also as an end unto itself. For both of us, in any event, it is a tool.
</Quote›

I think most women, those within the computer field as well, look at the computer as just a replacement for a pen & paper, or a calculator. As a guy, for me, its also a toy, and a hobby.
Chip details leak out of Intel

Prescott, the next big desktop chip from Intel, is slated to come out at 3.4GHz, while Dothan, an energy-efficient chip for slim notebooks, will have a server-size cache and is expected to debut at 1.8GHz, according to computer industry sources.

I say we will be at 5 Ghz by the end of 2004. Amazing.
Security: Understanding Firewalls

There are literally hundreds of firewall products available, and there are different theories from different security experts on how firewalls should be used to secure your network. This article will explore the operation of a generic firewall in detail, outline the important features you need in a firewall, and discuss how firewalls should be deployed in networks of any size.

Its hard explaining to normal average computer users why they should be installing firewalls on thier home computers. Even people who are moderately aware of how computers and the internet work. I help a lot of people setup computers. Heck, I have friends all the way in Pakistan messaging me about problems that they are having with thier computers. And I live in the US. They look at you with the look that says, "Who would wanna hack my computer?". Sometimes installing Zonealarm and showing them the amount of people that try to connect to their computer through Zone Alarm popups help. However, with the article in the post below, it should be easier to explain to someone why they should be installing Firewall software on thier home computers.
Hackers Hijack PC's for Sex Sites

This is a cool way of earning money. Damn, you dont need any hardware or anything. You can be hosting sites of other peoples computers, storing files on thier hard drives. Its what you get for using Windows, and not having a proper firewall.
Ok, I now have the system configured just the way it was before the crash yesterday. I have more hard drive space now, and updated software. Not a bad deal.

I'm having a new problem at work. I have a new 3Com 996B Gigabit network card. We are moving over to gig lines. I put in these cards, and the server works for a while and then crashes. I have another system setup with the same card, and Redhat 7.3 and it works fine. Even under a load test similar to what the server goes through. I have a feeling that the network card and the hardware in the server are not getting along. But I dont know how to test this, since I cant take the server down, and I dont have a machine that has similar hardware.

Another problem is Windows computers printing to the network printer, have to go through our Samba server. One of those computers seems to be sending a zero byte file to the printer which seems to jam the queue, and stops the printing. Have no idea where the file comes from, and have to go and manually delete the file. Its irritating. Have to figure out whats happening here.

Rank Owner Job Files Total Size
1st blocked 391 blocked.Gj8QVT 1645893 bytes
0 bytes
0 bytes

status: busy; source: LPR
Finally have slackware installed and configured on the laptop.

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Weird things happening today. My laptop just died. Kinda.
I was reading up on this new gigabit network card we just bought, and I happened to press this little tab on the laptop buy mistake. It sent it into stand by mode. I got it out of stand by mode, but it threw me out of X, and complained about the font server not finding relevant fonts. I rebooted. It could not open modules.dep file. So I rebooted, this time running fsck. It found a bunch of inodes that were disconnected, which I told it to fix. But now when it reboots the modules directory is empty and I cant get on the Network.

Oh well, I was going to install Slackware anyways.
QT 3.0.2 is taking up about 101MB half compiled on my laptop. That is huge!
Anachronox: The Movie

Its Slashdotted. Try to download the movie later.

Games Invade Hollywood's Turf

The article is from Slashdot.

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

I did'nt even know you could download packages that are created for Slackware. Slackware even has its own package management tool pkgtools.
Just finished installing Slackware 9.0 on my home computer. I'm surprised at how easy it was to get the system up and running. The installation program is still text based, and a lot harder to use than Redhat, or any of the other more popular distributions, but it was'nt that bad. No need to configure sound, or network, it was all done on its own. Its amazing. I'm really having fun. And the software is all up to date and properly installed and everything.

I guess the actual fun starts now, as I start to costumize it. There are no easy wizards and configuration programs that one can use. Other than the ones that come with KDE or GNOME. Meaning that most of the system configuration has to be done by editing configuration files and such.

Also, all the stuff that I installed came on just one CD, and it seems to have most of what I need. I'm thinking of removing RedHat from the laptop and installing slack on it. I'll do it when I am more comfortable with Slackware as my main distro.
Very little blogging today. Will be assembling computers all day!
Fonts in RedHat 7.3 Suck! I dont know how I used to live with this!

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

What is XSLT?
JCoverage

Tools to check your java code.
Securing Linux
Tonight Windows 2000 comes of as the secondary OS, and I install either Slackware, or FreeBSD in its place.

Looking securely at TCP/IP
Compiling QT 3.2.0 on my laptop. I better find another machine to use for today.
Pipelining to connect IT infrastructure
Active intermediaries can halt the finger-pointing

I'm thinking of becoming a plumber. Plumbing for businesses, that is. Through Web services.
The code for the editor in GTK needs to be improved. For some reason if you write long paragraphs, the editor starts to become slower, flickering and stuff, with the text showing up slower. I think the problem is with the editor widget in GTK because I've seen this happen in Gaim, and all versions of Mozilla on Linux. It is kind of irritating. It removes the fun out of writing.
People argue that open source only copies from the commercial world. They site Linux and OpenOffice.org as examples. Well, the commercial world it seems only buys technologies from the independant developers who are actually the ones who come up with ideas. The big companies spend a whole lot on Research and Development to come up with ideas. Though in the software market, they only do it, if they have competition. For instance, take Microsoft over the years. In my eyes, everything Microsoft has done has been done to specifically answer the threat of competitors. When Linux started making a buzz, Microsoft started making Windows more stable. Since the Linux people used to say that Linux is stable, does'nt crash and so on, Microsoft came up with Windows XP. Which is a much more stable OS than the older Windows.

Now, people are saying that Linux has all that the business people need on the desktop. The Linux desktop has become easier to use, some say even better than Windows. OpenOffice.org is almost as good as Office, though in some places it might lack. Gnumeric and Excel. AbiWord and Word. Microsoft suddenly has more competition. So again, suddenly there is this flurry of announcements on the work being done on Longhorn, the new version of Windows, which will have that brand spanking new file system based on a database. Suddenly the next version of Internet Explorer will not be released in a stand alone versiion, and people are going to have to upgrade to the next version of Windows to get the new web browser. Office 11 now will support XML, which everybody should be moving to. Office 11 suddenly has a new tool, InfoPath. The be all and end all of XML design tools. Or something like that. Ha. At least they are trying. At least they dont sit on thier butts, watch competitors take business away, and bitch and moan, like Sun.

On the other hand, I've been using Free software since 1997. I've seen a steady increase in the quality and quantity of Free software, and I see no reason for this to go away. If a Free software comes out, I know I will have to wait for it to get better. Because people will continue to work on it, and slowly but steadily it will gain in popularity, and with that, it will gain stability and ease of use. I've seen it happen over and over again. I have seen people open companies based on this software, and build services (Ximian, the Kompany, Redhat, Suse and so on). Free software is the way to go.
.Net: 3 years of the 'Vision' Thing

3 years is too short a time for something as big as .Net to catch on. .Net is a long term strategy. A strategy that will make the operating system irrelevant. Or so I think.

And Microsoft can afford to take its time. The only raw material that goes into making software is the time and manpower. Nothing else. But for Microsoft Office and Windows are products that bring in residual income. They are still reaping in money from thier older products, and will continue to do so for a while. That is why they can afford to spend time on technologies like .Net, and Office 11's InfoPath. Its not like they are a normal company that have to continue to make products to earn money. Though I think they made a mistake of not starting out with these technologies sooner. For a while when they had no competition they just sat on thier butts and did barely anything.

Now that they have Linux, OpenOffice.org, Apple, and a whole bunch of other companies as competitors, they are suddenly realizing that they have to come up with products that will fight these competitive products. Hence, Longhorn with the new file system. A stable Windows (XP). Tablet PC. Office 11. XML documents. Emphasis on security.

One thing I dont understand. .Net was supposed to compete with Java. Well, Sun provides users with the JRE, java runtime environment, which is a simple download and install. On the other hand, I havent found a way that I could download a runtime environment for .Net so that I could run .Net apps. Why is that? Why is the runtime environment only bundled with the whole SDK (software development kit). I have a laptop. 2 gig hard drive. Only want to use it for one task. That task requires a .Net app. What do I do? Do I have to download the whole SDK? Something worth doing research about. As things stand, it seems that .Net was only meant to be running on enterprise network servers. Thats not such a good idea, because it seems to me like .Net is a lot more than that.
Simple Geek

I ran across the blog above. Its a developer working on Microsoft Longhorn. I kinda noticed that most of the developers at MS who have blogs, tend to have long posts! Why is that?

Monday, July 07, 2003

How do I sign out?
Hmm... this is the first time that I have seen the new blogger interface from internet explorer. Interesting!
I'm blogging from a brand spanking new Dell Inspiron 5100. This machine is amazing. Man, I wonder when I will be able to afford one of my own.
He and she: What's the real difference?

IMAGINE, FOR A SECOND, that no byline is attached to this article. Judging by the words alone, can you figure out if I am a man or a woman?

Moshe Koppel can. This summer, a group of computer scientists-including Koppel, a professor at Israeli's Bar-Ilan University-are publishing two papers in which they describe the successful results of a gender-detection experiment. The scholars have developed a computer algorithm that can examine an anonymous text and determine, with accuracy rates of better than 80 percent, whether the author is male or female. For centuries, linguists and cultural pundits have argued heatedly about whether men and women communicate differently. But Koppel's group is the first to create an actual prediction machine.
Blogs in the workspace

For several years Mr. Tang viewed this daily surge of e-mail messages as an unpleasant but necessary part of his job managing a team of eight engineers. Then, a few months ago, he began using an alternative to e-mail, a Web log.
How do people find the time to play games like Star Wars Galaxies?!!
Piracy and peer-to-peer

Everyone, including file swappers, should have the ability to communicate freely without someone looking over their shoulders. Free communication is essential to free thought, which is essential to democracy.
Free Network monitoring software

For Windows.
Meaning of my name Adnan

Saturday, July 05, 2003

I'm running out of disk space on Windows XP partition. Dont even need Windows XP. I dont know why I have it installed. I dont get any work done with no hard drive space. Its just software taking up space for absolutely no reason!

I need a replacement OS. I think I will try and install FreeBSD.
Software licenses don't work

Ian Murdock, the guy who started Debian, and now runs a company called Progeny (Linux Systems Inc.) is right on track with this. Instead of seeing Linux as a product, he sees Linux as a set of commodity software components he can put together for different purposes.

Ok good. That new interface I saw was meant for KHTML/Konqueror/Safari I guess. The Mozilla/Firebird interface is much better. I think I am going to stick with using Mozilla Firebird.
Wow! You can now secureFTP to your local server. I have been waiting for this feature for a long time.

I wish you could have the blog on your own computer, and have it on blogspot, for the days when your roommate disconnects your home computer.
Listening to my server


The first server I connected to the Internet sat on the floor of my office, close enough so I could hear -- and feel -- its response to heavy load. It seems weird to admit that I relied on those sensory cues, but I've talked to enough system administrators to know I'm not alone. The sounds of a working machine enable the pattern recognition engine in your brain to create a baseline -- and to detect deviations from it -- in ways that are effortless, automatic, and incredibly efficient.
Hmm... There is a new interface here on blogger. I wonder if this is because I am using the konqueror web browser, or because they are changing the interface again.

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

To get a bash shell to re-read the init script without restarting bash, just type:

source filename
Introduction to Managed C++

Intro to Managed C++, Part 2: Mixing Managed and Unmanaged Code
Effective Interop with Managed C++
At Microsoft's Mercy
The Future of Mozilla Application Development

Its amazing the stuff that one can accomplish in Mozilla/Firebird. Its a complete application development framework. The most impressive thing for me is how easy it is to download and install applications into Firebird. Its so easy, even a monkey could do it. And that makes a big difference. After having to learn about all the problems that one can face trying to install stuff on Linux, this is a welcome relief.

Tuesday, July 01, 2003

The television is a device that you turn on, sit in front of, and use to let your mind wander idly as you are entertained to story after story about nothing. Thats what television is. And people have been living this life for years now. The internet is changing that. As people start to spend more time online, they are turning away from a medium that worked only one way. The media conglomerates had complete control over their media. But now, with the interactive medium people are actually thinking. They are reading, they are making opinions, and now blogs will give them an outlet to voice their opinions and thoughts. The media executives are going to lose it. That is why the RIAA and the MPAA are so rattled, I assume.

Converting the personal computer to the home entertainment center is the smartest thing those in power could do. It would limit the kind of stuff that people read and write on the web. It would limit free thought and enterprise. It would bring back the power that a select few have had. It will stop people from thinking. Thats what they want.

I was just thinking of how the web has changed over the years. I first came online January of 1997. In Pakistan. I was running a 386. The internet was so much more fun then. It was an Academic Internet. No advertisements, no pop-ups, nothing. Just gobs of information online. I was very interested in computers. I had no problems finding sites that would teach me more and more about computers. I spent days on end, hooked, reading and learning. The people were nice. They were all out to have the kind of fun I liked.

Now look at the internet. Now that every Tom, Dick and Harry is online the internet has been brought down to nothing but a vast magazine, covering all aspects. The only problem is that there dozens of advertisements all over the place. You have to pay and sign up for anything and everything. And the problem is that even when you do pay and get in to some site that promised to have the kind of information or data you might be looking for, its actually a sham. Its nothing like what you were expecting.

The internet has become a real boring magazine filled with advertisements. Thank God for Blogs!
I like green!
Forgot my laptop at home. Cant get any work done!
Trying out Mozilla 1.4. It bothers me that Alt-D does'nt take me to the address bar, like it does in FireBird. I dont like using the Mouse!
Los Alamos Clears Fraud Suspect

Los Alamos National Laboratory equipment buyer Lillian Anaya thought she was ordering $30,000 worth of transducers. But she dialed a number that had been changed from an industrial equipment dealer to an auto parts shop, and wound up buying a Mustang with government money instead.

This is too funny! :)
Harry Potter vs. The Hulk/RIAA/MPAA

The New York Times has a piece up that wants to turn a discussion of Harry Potter and the Hulk into a commentary on the file sharing controversy. While the thread of the author's reasoning kinda jumps around a lot, the basic point seems to be a contrasting of an original work, the initial popularity of which had a lot to do with grass roots hype (Harry Potter), and the (as the author contends) non-original works of the major studios and lables, driven as they are by top-down hype (represented by The Hulk, though the movie seems to be targeted more for its status as a summer blockbuster that happens to be competing with the Harry Potter launch than anything else). Basically, the author suggests that the phenomenon of young teens and pre-teens lining up at midnight to buy an 800+ page book shows that this demographic, painted as media pirates with short attention spans in need of some lawyering, are merely victims of industries that provide low-grade entertainment for too much money.
Architecture of the World Wide Web

A Safer System for Home PC's Feels Like Jail to Some Critics


But by entwining PC software and data in an impenetrable layer of encryption, critics argue, the companies may be destroying the very openness that has been at the heart of computing in the three decades since the PC was introduced. There are simpler, less intrusive ways to prevent illicit file swapping over the Internet, they say, than girding software in so much armor that new types of programs from upstart companies may have trouble working with it.
Copying troubles a hiccup for Linux festival

When questioned by the Herald on Friday, Software Images chief executive Allan Morton said his company's wariness of Linux was due to legal action between SCO and Linux over intellectual property issues.

This is crazy!!!

Mozilla and hypocrisy

Right, but what about the experiences that Mozilla chooses to default for users like switching to  Yahoo and making that the default upon ...