Aug 30, 2004

Problems with XP SP2 and AMD ?

Geek News Central Revealing Links & Useful Technical Information

Great. This might explain why SP2RC2 SCREWED UP my laptop!

"In an article posted in the Knowledge Base section of its Web site, Microsoft says that Service Pack 2 may not work with computers running Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit microprocessors. The Redmond, Washington-based company said earlier that owners of such PCs may want to bypass the update completely, but has now come up with a workaround. "

However, the ZDNET article goes on to say that AMD thinks only one application causes this problem with SP2 and I don't have it. In any case I guess I'll be delaying installing anything related to SP2 on either laptop or desktop. Everything's working fine enough...

The Internet is 35

CNN.com - The Internet at 35: Still evolving - Aug 29, 2004

Says CNN: "Thirty-five years after computer scientists at UCLA linked two bulky computers using a 15-foot gray cable, testing a new way to exchange data over networks, what would ultimately become the Internet remains a work in progress."

It's been a long time ;)

GmailFS - Gmail Filesystem

GmailFS - Gmail Filesystem

"GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium."

'GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename. This means that you can use all your favourite unix command line tools to operate on files stored on Gmail (e.g. cp, ls, mv, rm, ln, grep etc. etc.)."

Hmm... word fail me.

Aug 26, 2004

SillySearches

Phoenyx.net has a list of silly searches that led websurfers to that site. Must read this one! Especially since the webmaster has put up comments on each of them...

Aug 24, 2004

Reiser4 is released.

Check this page for "Reasons why Reiser4 is great for you"...

Quote:

"Reiser4 is the fastest filesystem, and here are the benchmarks.

Reiser4 is an atomic filesystem, which means that your filesystem operations either entirely occur, or they entirely don't, and they don't corrupt due to half occuring. We do this without significant performance losses, because we invented algorithms to do it without copying the data twice.

Reiser4 uses dancing trees, which obsolete the balanced tree algorithms used in databases (see farther down). This makes Reiser4 more space efficient than other filesystems because we squish small files together rather than wasting space due to block alignment like they do. It also means that Reiser4 scales better than any other filesystem. Do you want a million files in a directory, and want to create them fast? No problem.

Reiser4 is based on plugins, which means that it will attract many outside contributors, and you'll be able to upgrade to their innovations without reformatting your disk. If you like to code, you'll really like plugins....

Reiser4 is architected for military grade security. You'll find it is easy to audit the code, and that assertions guard the entrance to every function."

Aug 23, 2004

Intel slashes 560 P4 by 35%.

Grrr.... I wouldn't complain if prices dropped gradually over the years (or months). This really puts me off buying new hardware (not that I have any plans for it right now). Sayeth the article: "The price of the 3.40GHz Extreme Edition with 2MB of Gallatin L3 cache, stays stable at $999." Hm... The 560 is the new name for the P4 Prescott 3.6 GHz 800MHz FSB, which is now available for just over $400.

Aug 20, 2004

AnandTech

The ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 is being reviewed by AnandTech! Just when I thought I was at the cutting edge (well, almost) with a Mobility Radeon 9600... Quoting from the article "The MR9800 actually supports all the features of the Radeon X800, as it is simply a cut down version of the chip with some enhanced power management features." And it has 256MB onboard RAM... sigh.

I'd like to see how much better it fares against the 9600...

Visitors!

I've been checking my visitor statistics and I see people being directed here from search engines - many of them seem to be searching for information on the eMachines M6805 or on widescreen panels. If you are one of them, please do leave a comment on this page and I shall help if I can!

Aug 19, 2004

Hotmail to offer 2GB in September

The Inquirer says that Hotmail may offer 2GB of storage space in September. Attachment size limit will be 20MB. GMail has really put the cat amongst the pigeons!

Smallest flying robot

Epson has developed the world's smallest and lightest micro-flying robot. It has Bluetooth wireless control. The website has a video of the robot flying.

The last Alpha

Infoworld has an article about the last of the Alpha processors.

Aug 18, 2004

IE Address Bar Spoofing

Secunia - Internet Explorer Address Bar Spoofing Test Popup

More problems with Internet Explorer... Test to see if your browser is vulnerable to the "Internet Explorer Address Bar Spoofing Vulnerability" on the Secunia site. This link has the details about this vulnerability, which they have categorized as 'moderately critical'.

Aug 17, 2004

Site Meter - Counter and Statistics Tracker

Added a free counter to this page: Site Meter - Counter and Statistics Tracker

Punishments meted out in our schools

Akash:

  • Standing out of the class (English Maam)

  • Murga bano (Social Studies Sir) murga in princi office (vice prince)
  • Spreading the arms with bricks on both palms and then bending around the knees (PT Sir)

  • Do the assignment 25 Times (Maths Sir)

  • Extra Homework (Hindi Maam)

  • Standing on the desk

  • Standing in front of the assembly with ur hands stretched up

  • Kneeling down in front of the whole school

  • Impositions

  • Sitting in between two (studious) girls // this one was the worst

  • 10 Laps of the Playfield

  • Sit on the ground in front of the black board.

  • No games period for 2 weeks.

  • Ref. Alok below: Being hit on the knuckles with a ruler. (This is generally a convent school punishment)

  • Saying sorry in front of the school during the assembly.

  • Being made to sit with kids from 2 classes junior to you.

  • Being made to sit alone and answer the Unit test (believe me that hurts)

  • Biggest Dhamki :: "Call your parents tomorrow"

Indrajit:

  • Detention. Bringing two tiffins and doing your homework after school. So when you reach home, you can hit the playgrounds straight away!!

Alok:

  • Probably a unique one: being made to sit on top of the class cupboard and being threatened about not being allowed to go home. (I or II std)

  • Suspension from school for a week. (Principal's decision)

  • Being hit on the knuckles with a ruler. (almost everyone who taught me in school)

  • Having a duster thrown at you (most people in the class would manage to catch it though) (Physics Sir?)

  • Being sent to the principal's office and being lectured on what was not expected from me. again, almost everyone who taught me in school)

  • Having the teacher run out of the class in tears, and then having a horde of other teachers coming and lecturing the class on behaviour. (one pathetic Maths teacher)

  • Bigger dhamki than what Akash mentions above: "I'm coming to see your parents today evening." - Principal. He didn't actually come to my home because I convinced him it wasn't my fault...

  • No library access for a week.

  • No computer lab access for a week. (a week seems to be the least count for such types of punishment)

  • Notes in the diary for parents to sign.

Surbhi:

  • Come and sit on the front desk.

  • Read out the lesson loudly in front of the whole class

  • On the right hand corner of the blackboard your name is mentioned in as the BLACK-STARS of the class. These students were the most notorious and their names went to the principal every week. Hmmm to few it was a honor to set their name right in front of everyone !!


Cassini-Huygens: 2 new moons for Saturn!

Cassini-Huygens - News-Press Releases-2004


"With eyes sharper than any that have peered at Saturn before, the Cassini spacecraft has uncovered two moons, which may be the smallest bodies so far seen around the ringed planet."

Aug 9, 2004

Heiner's SHELLdorado

Heiner's SHELLdorado: UNIX shell scripting resource

Tips and tricks, scripts, links, articles...

Aug 5, 2004

Notebook Forums

Notebook Forums - powered by vBulletin

Requires you to be registered with them for posting or viewing attachments, but you can browse thru the posts without registering or logging in. It doesn't accept free webmail ids for the registration though - rejected my gmail as well as eml email ids.

Another drop in the blog ocean?

A drop in the blog ocean: Veera has started blogging! Again.

Aug 2, 2004

APOD: 2000 November 27 - Earth at Night

Astronomy Picture of the Day site atAPOD: 2000 November 27 - Earth at Night

A composite picture of the planet as seen at night.