Amazing
Switched to 1Mbps Airtel Unlimited DSL
Apr 19th
When BSNL came up with the 2Mbps and 1Mbps plan, most of my friends who had Airtel 256Kbps line, jumped on to the BSNL bandwagon. I didn’t, for the simple reason that BSNL came with a data transfer limit! That is, only the first 1.25GB or so is free every month and after that you pay per MB. Ridiculous! Since I have had some bad experiences earlier with my 512Kbps/1.5GB-limit Airtel plan, I decided to stay away from all these and stick to my good old 256Kbps *unlimited*. Soon after that, Airtel upgraded me to 512Kbps unlimited, which I took with out much thinking. Now, after 1 year, Airtel offered (again!) to upgrade me to 1Mbps unlimited!!
The total amount comes to 2,222INR/month. Only today the 1Mbps plan got activated. Look at the following picture to see my new 1Mbps in action, downloading MinGW at 128KBps 
Worth every penny (or paisa…whatever!!)
Cascade Virus: Down the memory lane.
Mar 24th
I have always been fascinated with computer virii. My first exposure to computer virii was back in 1994, when my 360KB floppy disk got infected by STONED. The hype around virii was so much and I was so misinformed, I kept that infected disk in the jacket, away from all other diskettes I owned for 2 weeks!! No, I am not kidding.
Gokul, (owner of Port Bit Systems/Trichy, who was my first computer teacher) looked like a hero to me, when he could magically clean the infection by running a command line DOS McAfee. Man,those days were cool! Later when I started learning x86 assembly and DOS internals, I got fully absorbed in to the wonder world of DOS virii. (I still have the first DOS anti-virus program I wrote – "(C) Brain" remover – somewhere in my old HDD). "Computer Viruses: Prevention, detection and cure" by Rajneesh Kapur was my first viruses book; An excellent one! This is out of print now, can’t even find it in the original publishers site.
One virus I fondly remember to this day, is the famous (!?) CASCADE virus (a.k.a Raindrop/17xx). This virus was a non-overwriting, resident COM infector. When triggered it made the characters in the screen fall in to a nice heap at the bottom. (Remember, we were in the command line mode then!). It was kind of cool to see this cascading action.
Cascade was the first virus to use encryption. The virus consisted of two parts – the virus body and an encryption routine. The latter encrypted the body of the virus so that it appeared different in every infected file. After loading the file, control was transferred to the decryption routine which decoded the virus body and transferred control to it. Unlike future polymorphic viruses, Cascade encoded only the body of the virus. The size of the infected file was used as the decryption key. Since the decryption routine remained unchanged, antivirus programs detected the virus with ease.
If you have never seen the virus in action, look at the screen shots below:
2008 Top 20 Billionaires: What do they do with so much money?
Mar 8th
Warren Buffett overtook Bill Gates and that Mexican fellow to become the world’s richest person. His net worth is at $62 billion USD.
Pop quiz: Do you know how many zeroes are there in a billion??
Will Web 2.0 bubble burst? Richterscales says YES!
Feb 1st
Is the Web 2.0 bubble going to burst soon?
Great song. Even if you don’t necessarily agree with RichterScales‘ viewpoint, you need to admit it is funny. Click here to get the MP3 of this song.
Crazy online sites & Einstein!
Jan 4th
Every mundane task of our daily lives has its presence in Internet nowadays. Online stores for all those super malls, movie review sites for the reviews in our morning news papers, online magazines of nearly every print magazine out there, the list goes on and on. This is good, in the sense, any one can come up with a good idea or try to emulate the real world task solution in the online world to earn; Talk about entrepreneurship possibilities!
One crazy online-ification of a common real world activity is the bunch of confession sites that have popped up in the recent years. These sites carry thousands and thousands of confessions (petty ones to the really sick ones, sometimes with lurid descriptions) by real people. The idea of providing an online space for public confession sounds like a good idea. But, the problem starts when you start reading others confessions, because 90% of them are related to carnal activities or activities that create an yuck feeling deep down in your stomach. The lurid descriptions can rival Playboy or Hustler anytime!
These sites offer the confessions categorized in to a neat list of containers. For example, look the left pane in one site:
How nice of the site owners to provide us with a “Top rated” and “Most read” lists 
I guess, the top rated list items are determined by the number of “I like it” clicks by the readers, but the question is why would anyone read another person’s confession and say “I like it“? Do they like the confession content or the fact that the other person was bold enough to come online and confess?? These sites just cater to the voyeuristic basic instinct in each one of us.
One other effective online idea is the cyber begging. I am not referring to those sites setup for collecting donations for some natural calamity or something, but these are for covering personal expenditures. Some interesting links:
- Yahoo directory has a section under “Societies and Culture” for E-Pan handling
- Tom Locke sent a snail mail to 100 companies asking for some freebies. Results are listed in his site.
According to Wired, this trend of e-pan handling is dwindling, which may be true. But, that’s what people said about spam too.
Bottomline: you don’t have to be an Einstein to make a quick buck in the internet!
Google Street View: See US streets in 3D
Jun 5th
You probably have already bumped in to the all-new Google Street View feature provided by Google Maps. This is one of the most amazing features I have seen, it allows you to view a real photo of any street (provided Google has a camera there), have a virtual walk through, zoom in and have a clear look at the sign boards and more, all in a glorious 360degree view!! Mind boggling. Currently it supports only San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami. Hopefully Google expands this to India soon (hmm, I know I am being too optimistic….may be we need to ask for an Amazon.in first!).
Another feature, still in beta, is Mapplets. These are technically small Google gadgets that can provide a specific functionality based on the Google Maps API. For example, Google currently has a mapplet for real estate search that pin points in the map the houses that match your search criteria.
When I checked this morning, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of sites built around Google Street View. These sites offer interesting links and placemarks that everyone needs to see in Google StreetView. I have listed some below:
- Urban Street Sightings : This Blog captures the best urban snapshots.
- Streetviewr: Lots of cool positions from Google Streetview.
- Laudontech Streetview: Contains lots of interesting people, places and sightings on Google Street View.
- Davidsterry Streetview Links: Streetview pictures are sorted by votes.
- Streetview Sightings: Another blog for streetview sightings.
- Crazy Street View : Crazy pictures from Google Street View.
- Streetview Spotting : Streetview locations arranged into categories.
- Streetview Fun : Another blog.
- Boing Boing also hosts some of the best streetview articles, pictures and videos
BTW, don’t forget to check out the top 15 Google Streetview sightings.
Bruce Lee – The “lost” interview
May 29th
I grew up watching Bruce Lee / Bruce Lee inspired movies, I simply love his way of fighting and the legend surrounding him, who doesn’t BTW? I saw this video (a real gem!) in my full-to-the-brink Google Reader inbox today and watched it immediately…A great one! This is the complete interview with Bruce Lee by Pierre Barton:
I loved the way the man behind the legend came through as a normal, fun loving person on screen. He was so expressive in this interview that you can’t help liking him, just a look in to that piercing eyes and the charisma he oozes on screen will make you his fan, I bet! I wish he had lived longer (or allowed to live longer!).
I was actually surprised by how casual (artificial?!) Bruce Lee spoke! With all those “you better believe it maannn” & “You better be careful, babee”, he sounded more like those rappers than an oriental fellow…I like his voice, goes very well with his image…BTW, did you know he didn’t like being called a “Super Star”
Click “Play” to watch the full video.
Amazing human talents!
Apr 12th
It is a well known fact that the humans don’t make use of their brains’Â full cognitive abilities. The geniuses are set apart just by the extra neural circuits they have, I guess. Still, when you come across somebody who exhibits an extraordinary talent for something, say, maths or GK, your jaw hits the ground, right? Watch these videos. These show some of the amazing things out there in the world!
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The boy with the incredible brain
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This is the story of Daniel Tammet, a person of extraordinary mental abilities. He can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and learn a language in a week. This part of the documentary is pretty amazing, especially, as the language he learnt in a week, Icelandic, is supposed to be pretty tough to master. On the way, the documentary captures him meeting other brilliant minds, like Kim Peek.
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Stephen Wiltshire: The Human Camera
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Stephen has the ability to draw complex things like a city layout, as seen from the helicopter, just after seeing them once. Mind you, this is not just a block diagram we are talking about, Stephen has the ability to draw everything….I mean, *everything* down to the number of windows in each building!
One common thing among these persons is all of them have Savant Syndrome. They have extraordinary mental abilites, but undeveloped social skills. They not necessarily show a high IQ quotient (like in Kim’s case), but have abilities that normal humans cannot even dream of! The video below shows the story of real Rainman, Kim Peek:
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Kim Peek – The Real Rainman
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