A sneek peek

Thats the first preview of India Force Linux Desktop. Stay Tuned…

Slowly walking out…

 

 

Hi everyone.

Whether you have come here by chance, hunting for something you need, or maybe Google/Yahoo! guided you here, or someone recommend you to visit this tiny blog, I want to thank you for visiting.

I think the time is coming, slowly but surely and I am honestly losing my motivation to write. I think I should stop this blog. I met many wonderful people througout these 2 years. I am thankful to them for all the support they gave me. This decision isent going to be very easy for me, but sometimes we have to make a tough mind and act accordingly.  

 Live life the way it should be. In your day to day interactions, you will come across many experiences, many people. Some of them give you moments to cherish about, some you may like to forget. Whatever the case might be, one mantra to make your life little more better. Be yourself, dont hide. Just believe in destiny, dont care what it says. Just believe in destiny. Love and trust atleast one person and make sure you both stay togather. Learn to forgive the people who mange to hurt you. Many of them do it unknowingly. Just identfy them. And importantly – People around you are like mirrors. They reflect to you what you actually are. If you are one of those actors loving to decieve people, automatically, the people closer to you are the same. If you are a kind hearted person, you will always have company of those people who need you most and you will also have collegues similar to you. 

I could write more, but let some things be secret. You know it. 

PS – If I regain my motivation, I defiantely will be back…but again, no gurantees. 

 

Till then, 

Adeos.

Harshad Joshi.

8 terrorists arrested in Pune

8 dangerous terrorists of Indian Mujahiddin are arrested from Pune today. They used to  hack Wifi connections and use the connection to send threatening emails to Police and government. Its notable that each of them were well educated, the head honcho Mohmmad Mansur Asgar Pirbhai,aged 31 used to work @ Yahoo! one of the most prestigious companies of India on a salary of Rs 19 lakh . Shame on Yahoo! for employing such a terrorist. (Yahoo! India has agreed to share Pirbhoys information to police, still is this the HR policy of Yahoo, shit….)

First, the Samajwadi Party, Congress and that old man Javed Akhtar  wailed in favour of Azamgarh based terrorists claiming that they indulged into terrorist activities becasue they didnt had education, jobs etc. Now look at this Mansur Pirbhoy. Educated, having a well secure job and future, still he manages to do terrorist acts, plant bombs, send hate mails, and what else..I was startled to read that this son of a swine Pirbhoy didnt had a hint of remorse for what he did, or what he wanted to do.  He was stone cold during interrogations. Should we riddle their bodies with metal in public, just to show what is the fate of being a terrorist?? Meanwhile, Maya Sharma, the widow of Delhi Police martyr, Mohan Chand Sharma has come back strongly at the son of a bitch Amar Singh when he made derrogatory comments againsts the Late Sharma. WTH is Amar Singh?? Why dosent someone rip off his bulging eyes?? Except for Amitabh Bacchan, I think no one would like Amar Singh.. 

Meanwhile here are few tips

1. If any muslim coms to stay in your building, area, inform the police.

2. If your company has employeed muslim people, check their activities, their mails, their surfing habbits etc.

3. Dont trust what the muslim religious authorities say, muslims *are* terrorists. The Imam of Jama Masjid, Delhi is the biggest terrorist..dont trust the terrorists..

Happy Birthday Google..

Google completes its 10 years, 28 September 1998 – 28 September 2008..

 

Starting from what was called  as ‘Dont be Evil’, Google today is the world’s largest database holding tonnes of secrets about people, their habbits, their thinking, their culture et al..

In the first 10 years, Google has introduced several user oriented web softwares that helped them remorph the IT industry..Initially, Google began its life as a simple web search engine no one could had imagined to be what is perheps an integral part of their computing experience. There are other players in this market, like MSN, Ask, the recent Cuil, but Google has outcasted them and I dont think there would be anything much left for anyone to try as far as Web search is concerned.

 

Long live Google, and dont forget, the privacy bomb’s ticking..

Google unveils Chrome, the browser (spyware) we were waiting for

Google finally unveiled Chrome, the beta edition of its web browser. Long ago, Google has predicted – ‘The browser is the platform’, keeping it in mind, it released Gogle Gears, now the Chrome. The tab button stikingly resembeles like he Yahoo toolbar, did anyone note that?? Of course, the Yahoo toolbar adds the tab functionality to older IE editions. Cold this be the next big application that will spy on people from now? I remember writing a link on how Google has exploited privacy and security of users..Wow…Is this the biggest spyware we have ever seen?? A note to Paranoids – I cant say for gurantee that Google Chrome is the official spying tool released by Google, but given its past and privacy pundits worried over Google tracking its users habits, trends etc…but in that case, I can safely say – Orkut is the biggest spyware. Enter Orkut, and you will find all fizzy stuff ranging from click trackers, url trackers, content crawlers, etc.

I suggest – take a break..Stay away from the web for some time, maintain a random click pattern that will make Google;s life difficult. Install this wonderful tool, Tor

Q. What is Tor?

A. Tor is a software project that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Good luck. However, I am amazed how well this wannabe Google Spyware has found its way in news, media, blogs..did this thing really needed so much attention?? Mozilla’s doing a fine job against Microsoft, the browser war isent the same one it was in 1997…Joke..! Like Apple iPhone, Google Chrome has lived its hype, and I think its one of the most successful webmedia marketting campaign we have seen recently., after the dramatic Apple iPhone..

2 years ago, I remember downloading an IE based slim browser, it was called Browzar. The site’s still alive, except that it didnt get a grand attention Chrome’s getting.. I think it hasent come out of its beta stage even after 2 years later I downloaded it. Browzar claims to be a paranoid web surfers friend..but as its based on IE, I wont assume anything..Wow, the date matches exactly…Take a look @ this article I had written lonng time back describing Browzar.;)

Psst..want to see Chrome crashing?? Try this link…

Tips for Safe Chatting

Don’t chat about things that could enable a stranger to locate you. That includes your last name, the name of your school or workplace, the city you live in, and where you hang out.

Protect your info. Don’t put identifiable information in your user profile, including photos. What’s uploaded to the Internet can be downloaded and shared by everyone. Avoid posting photos that allow people to identify you, especially sexually suggestive images. Before uploading a photo, think about how you’d feel if it were seen by a parent, friend, or future employer.

Never meet with someone you encounter in a chat room unless you already know who they are.

What is the greatest achievement of one’s life??

Best Answer – Chosen by Voters

The sense of achievement is different for various people
Example
1. For a mother – To hear the first word from her child
2. For a father – The feeling of becoming a ‘father’
3. For a Old person – When his great grand sons hugs him and says “How are you?”
4. For a artist – The joy and thril in creating a master peice
5. For 99% of us – Getting money, marry good looking girl we always like, keep mom and dad happy, bring up a child, help him to grow, expect good from him, and so on…..

We can go for many pages, but I am feeling sleepy right now.

Good night

Before I sleep, a little prayer towards God.

Oh God….
Thank thee for the wonderful things that you gave me today.
Thank thee for yet another beautiful day.
Thank thee for showing me the right direction
Thank thee for the beautiful moon and stars in the limitless sky..
Thank thee for the first tones of Freedom…

Bless me and my friends at Yahoo! Answers today.
Help them to get the right solution to their answers
Protect the Good…
Help me to avoid the Bad…
Good night God..
Tommorow will be the light..
A dream of dolphin…

(Isent there too much of thee?

May you achieve whatever you desire in life, provided its going to be useful to mankind.
Then, you might tell whats the greatest achievement of ones life..
HariOm tatsat..

Good night..

• 2 years ago

Source(s):

http://harshad.wordpress.com

The original source is – http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006021105416

At that time, I was hooked on to Yahoo! Answers, but now it seemingly looks boring..Now found a new toy – Twitter..

Sonali Kulkarni – the new face in Indian modelling field

I saw her first at Zee Marathi Awards 2008. I searched Google/Yahoo/Flickr, but all that I got was Sonali Kulkarni, the arts film actress. Finally, after much search and much wait, I got hold of her pic. Next time someone searches for Sonali Kulkarni images, this picture should be displayed in the results. Lets see…Its good to know that she hails from Pune.Umm…thats cool.

Hey Sonali, you rock. I wish you good luck for the future.

How to write a kludgy news crawler in Python and challenge Google News to its limits

A kludge (or, alternatively, kluge) is a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem or difficulty. In engineering, a kludge is a workaround, typically using unrelated parts cobbled together. Especially in computer programs, a kludge is often used to fix an unanticipated problem in an earlier kludge; this is essentially a kind of cruft.

I was searching data on my old disk and I found some interesting code I had written(rather abandoned) an year and half ago. At that time, I was very fascinated by the concept of Google News, which scanned and gathered news from almost 450 sources and mash up them together on one single page.  Mnay sources, one destination. Needless to say, Google created a smash hit product.Life appeared easy, all of sudden.

Given my nature, it wasent surprising  that I desired to write the next Google News Killer app. It began at night…around 10:30 to be precise. I was determined to finish the program in a nights time. Python was my original (and only) choice that seemed suitable for me to create the next biig thing. Googling around I found that a module feedparser.py makes parsing RSS feeds easy(so to say). However, there was a problem – At that time, I had no clue of what XML meant. That was only the beginning. Later, I also discovered that I had extremely limited knowledge of HTML..Then I realized that my Python basics were giving me plenty of surprises…

Bah..it looked so bad, here I was trying to write a good program, and there were tonnes of difficulties in first path itself. However, determination took over desperation, and after tweaking and pondering for well over 46 minutes, I was able to produce an extremely kludgy , extremely basic, extremely primitive Google News Killer – Wow…..the feeling was so good.  Imagine – writing something out of scratch, and that too without any help(ok, I took help from Mark Pilgrims feedparser.py and python.org) I chose to call it News Crawler.

Get the python file by clicking the link - check-news Dont forget to rename it the file to check-news.py and also, make sure that identions are proper.

Now something about the code.

1. As I said earlier – the code is extremely dumb, extremely kludgy, extremely primitive, extremly basic and theres lot of shoddiness in there. Dont laugh at it even if it appears funny.

2. The code has heard nothing of security, and is meant to run under controlled environment.

3. It dosent make use of any SQL database backend, but is wise enough to store the RSS feeds on HDD before dissecting them,and extracting useful content.

4. It expects that the XML files are in Unicode format. Some rouge sites make use of shabby encoding, which raises an exception in the program.

5. I havent added any exception handling, just laziness, nothing more.

6. For reference, I have shown how we can incorporate Slashdot and Reddit feeds on single page. You can add in your favourite feed.

ToDo

1. Make use of a good HTML templeting system.

2. Solve the problem of unicode.

3. Add error checking and improve its utility by making use of Pythons object oriented features.

4. Add a SQL backend system for storing the parsed RSS data. To be honest, its the toughest job to do.

5. Post up a nice powerpoint presentation describing the system.

5. PS – I will definately not do anything of above unless someone seriously decides to fund me.

After a long time I am back to programming world, I got so busy with other things that I had to abandon my dream project, but who knows, someday it may come true.. 

The New Age dilemma

• S: (n) dilemma, quandary (state of uncertainty or perplexity especially as requiring a choice between equally unfavorable options)

I have discovered a new ego bruising experience. If you are a single individual, and having lot of virtual girl friends on social networking tools like Orkut, then you might have noticed that whenever the girls status changes to ‘commited’ there is something, a sort of silent tiing that goes across the mind..It isent exactly pain or unhappiness, its something mix of surprise, shock, bruised ego and just like that…

No actual reason why this happens, but fair enough, so many times I have preached to people – Digital Social Networks esp Orkut are a fun, playway mirror of our daily lives, but the real problem arises when we start relating those tools with our real life and begin attaching our emotions and expectations to our virtual meetings. A timepass turns trouble for some. Should Orkut/Facebook/Myspace be avoided? Or is it the beginning of a new age desperation? Boy…this things tough to comprehend…Web 2.0 has binded people togather on a common platform but no ones ever thinking of the trouble that is following us..Wake up…Welcome to the new age dilemma.

Good Grief

This heartbreak hangover has continued for fairly long time, I mean its more then a week I havent been able to pick my spirits up. In one point of view, everything appears as a dead end, especially in this fast globalized ultramodern age, with so much technology and gadgets around, who would bother to wait and listen? Its such a fast paced world. Friendship made and broken in seconds, split seconds without batting an eyelid, On the other hand, the mind, the frenziness of emotions and feelings tell an otherwise story. Whom to really care for? Inspite of technology, the communication and understanding gap still prevails between people. This comes to notice specifically when one apologizes to a girl by making use of email/sms/chat combo. Even a guy advised me to meet her and sort it out. Boy, I had that courage and might, then probably I wouldent even have these bad feelings get into my way. This is Karma, we attach our emotions with so many people really without knowing the consequence of what will happen in future. Some blokes I know are pretty calculated individuals, they do not allow emotions to get in their way, call it a professional approach of sort.

This incident taught me many things.

1. No matter how much rich your dad is, a gurl will first look at you and your capabilities. Atleast the one who analyses you for a long time dosent get impressed by the prizes you won, she looks at the job and the yearly package. No other impression ever works..

2. Surrounded by technology, we might get a feel of being a technocrat or whatever, but primitive feelings like emotions, rage, jealousy still exist. By no means we can avoid it. The forms and definations of ego might have changed, but it still continues to hurt as hell.

3. Love hurts. In every age Love hurts. It has hurted me a lot. I dont know if I am mature enough to understand its true meaning, but the seen consequence makes me wonder – I am freaky enough to be loved?I am an equally loved and hated guy, I remember most of those occasions when I was hated..

Gosh darn those status lines on my Gtalk – Love and Hate are one and all, sacrifice soon turns to revenge..

A girl may not find these lines romantic enough, especially when shes commited to someone else. She will take it as an ominous sign of flirting, and bang, thats the end of all relations..no amount of apologies work, meeting is impossible, no truce…no peace, direct attack…what else??

4. If you have been hurt before in relations, its wisdom to avoid complications in first place itself. If any jilted lover is reading this, I would advise – Avoid relations that do not exist. Example – A fragile relation that occured during a meeting over in social networking tools like MySpace, Orkut, FaceBook etc. These relations are never serious, they do not have any name, Modern pundits call it cyber relations, I dont have any good name for it. I mean its crazy concept to even think of attaching a name and emotions to a thing that exists in electronic world. Its true that sentimental fools like me are fond of attaching their feelings to the most ridiculous and insignificant things that exist in this world, its difficult at times. Here, every occasional hi, hello is a symbol of friendship, and every relation is apparantly a permanant one. Madness in all respect….I am a mad person who has got a provan track record of being in madly with love with girls I know I would never get to see, to touch, to talk and so on…This is my flaw, and I seriously need to get over it. My ex girl friend said that she avoided me because I did not had a ‘pure’ friendship with her. If I know that saying hello to her in wee hours of morning can spell as disaster I am suffering from, I would have avoided it. I am going to avoid it all togather throughout my life. Never send a girl an sms that can spoil your party. Controversies are never comfortable…

5. Even if sacrifice may turn to revenge, you may not see the face who would say ‘I love you, I will kill you, but I will love you forever’ (Sobs…Sobs…..Tears…Sniff) I didnt Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…….

I will update this if my girl replies back to me, else think this as the end of this post (and my spoilt relation as well ) Hey Girl, dont mind, I will still continue loving you..Pure love knows no limits      (Sic..Snifff…)

320 GB of terrorism – Exploring a terrorists hard disk

Appearances are deceiving. A meek looking and soft spoken individual turned out be an ace terrorist in the making, can one believe this fact easily? Nope..

Todays paper had a news that explored the 320 GB ‘terrorist’ hard disk. The detailed stats are,

1. The disk contained well over 12000 files,

2. 5000 e-mails,

3. Videos of Osama bin Laden(the head honcho of a well known terrorist firm)

4. Jehadi messages with phone numbers

5. Car bomb design !!!

Incredible, there was no mention of if illegal mp3 files, p0rn videos, pirated software was present, nor the computer brand or OS..Pondering over that, a new concept stuck my mind..Google and major search engines can impress people by marking terrorist sites as ‘Caution : This site contents are not meant for cultured and civilized people‘, this warning will prevent people from visiting those sites, as it is Google maintains a list of spam and malware web pages, it will add a more feature to its popular search engine..Watch this incredible image for more details

So, next time you want to befriend someone, please ask them for their hard disk for a detailed analysis, persistent storage sometimes can answer forbidden questions.

Gmail gets into trademark troubles

Looks as if trouble is always in air for Google’s Gmail. First it was the privacy question, then it was the spam and now, its a legal problem, that could well rip Google off Gmail. I think Gmail spells ‘trouble’.

The company that recently won the rights to the GMail trademark in the UK has taken its case Stateside. And if Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) is successful claiming its stake to GMail in the US as well, your @gmail.com address could change to @googlemail.com instead.

Late last month, IIIR filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel Google’s ownership of the GMail trademark, alleging the company had improperly acquired their application for it in 2004.

IIIR launched their GMail product in the US in 2002. The “G” stood for “Graphiti,” a combination of “graphics with integrated text intelligence.” A subscription service offered through the their website, it was intended to allow stock brokers to incorporate IIIR’s equity and currency data for investment banks.

Police planning to ban Orkut in India

According to media reports, the Pune police is in full swing to ban Orkut, the Google owned digital social networking tool following its controversial communities and its probable role in anti social activities.

To a certain extent, I feel that there is a ‘real’ need in maintaining Orkut. Given its liberal policies, a madman can create real mess on Orkut by creating hate topics, insultive discussions and also spoil images of well known personalities. Its sort of a free ground for cheap and unconstructive publicity. And after the recent blasts, things are turning pretty hot.

But is banning a solution to this problem?

Nope. Given Googles brand influence, I dont think it will be practically possible. Even if the police dont succumb to the influence of any media, there still will be a wide disarray among the ‘anti-social’ elements in the society. Only China is the state which officially monitors Google content. So much so the my blog – The First Tones of Freedom cannot be viewed on any Chinese ISP, sole reason being the word – Freedom, I preach about the importance of Freedom and Liberty in life..

Anyway – A middle path should be adopted and Orkut should make use of a better ‘Report as Bogus’ system. I mean its ridiculous the way things are handled as of now. Things will be clear in a few days.

1 year of blogging

Gosh..Its my blogs 1st birthday today. Happy birthday little blog.

Google Co-op Search Engine

I think I am a little late on this topic,but anyway…

This is my new Google Co-op Search Engine over here.

Feel free to experiment, but note that it dosent index thousand/million/billion pages. However, it does incorporate nice links and good content for technology/food/linux/Web 2.0 fans and users. And following Googles method, its currently in beta.

Direct link to Semantic Space – http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=004747769890504554559%3Anckzlkyfnc0

There is one Rollyo also, but I think that its less technical.

Broadband in India and abroad.

If by any chance you have encountered this image on some other site for more then 40 seconds, then you know that you are not using Broadband to access that particular site.

Broadband is often called high-speed Internet, because it usually has a high rate of data. In general, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s (0.256 Mbit/s) or more is considered broadband Internet. The International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector (ITU-T) recommendation I.113 has defined broadband as a transmission capacity that is faster than primary rate ISDN, at 1.5 to 2 Mbit/s. The FCC definition of broadband is 200 kbit/s (0.2 Mbit/s) in one direction, and advanced broadband is at least 200 kbit/s in both directions. The OECD has defined broadband as 256 kbit/s in at least one direction and this bit rate is the most common baseline that is marketed as “broadband” around the world. There is no specific bitrate defined by the industry, however, and “broadband” can mean lower-bitrate transmission methods. Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use this to their advantage in marketing lower-bitrate connections as broadband.

In practice, the advertised bandwidth is not always reliably available to the customer; ISPs often allow a greater number of subscribers than their backbone connection can handle, under the assumption that most users will not be using their full connection capacity very frequently. This aggregation strategy works more often than not, so users can typically burst to their full bandwidth most of the time; however, peer-to-peer file sharing systems, often requiring extended durations of high bandwidth, stress these assumptions, and can cause major problems for ISPs who have excessively overbooked their capacity. As takeup for these introductory products increases, telcos are starting to offer higher bit rate services. For existing connections, this most of the time simply involves reconfiguring the existing equipment at each end of the connection.

As the bandwidth delivered to end-users increases, the market expects that video on demand services streamed over the Internet will become more popular, though at the present time such services generally require specialised networks. The data rates on most broadband services still do not suffice to provide good quality video, as MPEG-2 quality video requires about 6 Mbit/s for good results. Adequate video for some purposes becomes possible at lower data rates, with rates of 768 kbit/s and 384 kbit/s used for some video conferencing applications. The MPEG-4 format delivers high-quality video at 2 Mbit/s, at the high end of cable modem and ADSL performance.

India has created a mobile revolution, but now, we are waiting for yet another broadband revolution that will help in faster communication and easy sharing of information at a rapid speed. As time progresses, we will definately feel the need of fast internet access due to following reasons.

1. The paradigm change from ‘fixed’ desktop apps to ‘live’ and usable ‘online widgets. Many sites like Google and Yahoo! have got various useful services and widgets that can be utilized efficiently only on a relatively fast net access. Most importantly, these apps are available at a cost of 0 rs. Money saved is money earned.

2. Conventional media services have proven inefficient and unsufficient to reach the masses, only radios have succeded, but the time taken to do so is very slow and a radio service has got very few VAS. To reach more people at a time and enable to them to have a multiple way of communication is another advantage of broadband. We see that todays media is only a ‘one-way’ information transfer system. You can listen, but you cannot ‘talk’

3. Financial institutes like banks, stock markets, etc will recieve a boost and will enchance their capability.

4. Broadband will also help to spread education and at the same time, will help in reducing the digital divide and economical rift between the various levels of society.

Its very brief, but I think that all readers of this blog will agree that India needs more broadband services as compared with abroad.

Google Code Search

It really seems that Google is on fire. It has definately taken search engine’s utility to a new level. Google Labs has got a new beta tool in its arsenal – ‘Google Code Search‘.

Developed by Russ Cox Google Code crawler gives programmers a single place to search publicly accessible source code. It includes:

• Support for precise searches using regular expressions
• Restricts by language, license, or filename with advanced operators
• A search index that includes billions of lines of code

Code Search crawls and indexes publicly hosted archives (.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar, and .zip) and CVS and Subversion repositories, making them searchable in one place. Results are also accessible via a GData feed, which people will use to create plugins for their favorite editors and IDEs.

A nice tool. Shows Google’s innovation and an old habit to create probable issues. Frankly, this tool is a boon for those programmers. Helps to locate variables, comments, refrences all at one place. Infact, it was due to this tool, that I came to know about specific virus called as Tchernobyl/SpaceFiller. Infact the most surprising thing was that I found this refrence in a code snippet from the Mplayer software. (For n00bs – Mplayer is a popular audio/video software natively available under GNU/Linux systems, and has the ability to play almost every media format).

So many times I went through Mplayer source code, but it was honestly impossible to find this thing.
Its stunning..but only for the right audience.

Google criticizers can raise following points.

1. An easy way for script kiddies to find a virus code rather easily. More access means more convinience to find code and create(or rather steal) malware and cause nuisance.

2. Google may have unknowingly crawled proprietery source code, not intended to be released to the common public.

3. What about the cache?

The answers loom large ahead of us, but it will apparently become more clear after some days. Till then..Enjoy Google..

1st cheque from Yahoo!

Today, I received the Yahoo! cheque. It feels great to see the first monetory gain from Yahoo!. Actually, I was expecting my first $ cheque from Google, but sadely we didnt have a mutual agreement on the conditions and terms, so I had to say say NO to Google. As a part of this, there is no sign of Google on any of my official blogs.

May this be one of the many I have to receive from Yahoo!