INDIA and US

First of all, congratulations to USA for completing 10 years without any further attack after the terror attack on 9/11 of 2001. You have shown what are the measures to be taken against terrorism in order to curb it. People and politicians didn't call it just another "Black Tuesday". Politicians didn't give statements on televisions saying they condemn this attack strongly. What the then President, George Bush, said was this:

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. 

I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance.

This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

At the same time, In India, we hear such statements as "We strongly condemn this cowardly act", "Government is announcing Rs. 2 lakhs each for the killed", "We will find the culprits soon and take strong actions against them" from the responsible people in the top. Also, we find the ministers telling "No terrorist group has claimed the responsibility of the attacks". Arrey morons! Why do you wait for them to come and surrender? Can't you put all your intelligence agencies and police forces on full swing and find them? 

And we hear the opposition parties blaming the government telling "This government is useless". Aren't you the part of the Parliament which is responsible to make laws? Is it not your responsibility to make   sure that the government does what is in the best interest of the people? Opposition party leaders, open your your eyes.. Don't confuse "watch-dog of Constitution", the explanation of the Opposition party, as "barking-dogs".

The list of terror attacks that have taken place itself is frightening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_India

Shame on the Indian government for having given these many opportunities to the terrorist organisations to attack Indian places time and again. During the recent movement against corruption, all politicians unanimously said Parliament was supreme. But, isn't it a disgrace to leave the person responsible for the attacks on the Parliament for almost 10 years without capital punishment? The US hunted down Osama bin Laden around the Earth and killed him. India is feeding that moron Afzal Guru on public's money. And shame on us, the people of India, for getting used to such conditions. If two or three persons are killed in some attacks, we call it minor attack. 

Ask anyone in US when was the terror attack, and he will tell it was 9/11. But ask the same question to anyone in India and you won't get any day. We can't list out 12/3, 25/8, 11/7, 13/12, 26/11, 13/2, 29/10, 7/9 and so on. And we don't remember most of them. We are used to it. We call the attack days as Black Friday, Black Wednesday etc.  In fact, we have all days blacked out! We have Black Sundays to Black Saturdays.

I can just hope that we, the people of India, awake and be aware of what should be done instead of just playing the blame-game. The future of the country is in the government's hands, and the future of the government is in our hands.

Solution for Orkut worm Bom Sabado!

Today orkut users were flooded with scraps telling Bom Sabado!. Unlike other malware, this doesn't need you to click a link. Just by opening Orkut profile of the affected user, you will be affected. So I suggest you not to use orkut till this problm is fixed. However, if you are already affected, you can get rid of this using the following steps. (This is applicable only for Firefox users. If you are using any other browser, see below):

• Download AdBlock Plus add-on for Firefox and install it.
• Restart the browser to enable AdBlock.
• You will see a red icon with ABP on the right hand side of the search box in Firefox.
  
  
• Click on that, and select Preferences.
• Click Add Filter and enter *tptools.org/*.

Now you can safely open orkut.

You may have to remove yourself from the communities added by the worm, such as saadzin, meu miguxinho, O vírus que contagia, Eu tenho um grande AMOR, Juizo eu TENHO, só não USO!, Dino ♥ etc.

Note: The "Old Orkut" users are not affected by this worm, and are safe.

If you are not using Firefox, then you can follow the following steps:

Update: The website tptools.org is down now. Orkut is beautiful, again :-)


If you have a browser other than firefox, or to ensure that site won't get accessed by any other way, you can edit hosts file and adding the following lines:

127.0.0.1 tptools.org
127.0.0.1 www.tptools.org

hosts file is found in:

• C:\Windows\ - Windows 95, 98, Me
• C:\WinNT\system32\drivers\etc\ - Windows NT, 2000, XP Pro
• C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\etc\ - Windows XP Home, Vista, 7
• /etc/ - Linux

Human Brain and the CPU

When I was going through some of my old mails, I came across a self-sent mail. I had written it one year back as a comment to an article written by my friend Suri about the multitasking ability of the human brain. But due to some reason, I had not posted it. Here is a modified version of that comment:

Brain in all essence, acts as the central processing unit (CPU) of the body. It can perform calculations, control various organs of the body, process the inputs from different organs. However, the question is, can it handle multiple tasks at the same time?

Read more »

Devote to vote!

I had never been as busy in my life so far, as I am now. Work has occupied me so much that I can't even follow my favourite blogs regularly. Coming to the tidings,

1. marriages are happening,
2. recession is at its peek, and
   
3. Karmayuddh has started.

This year has been a period of marriages. A few of my classmates had got married in 2007. Interestingly, 2008 didn't witness any of my classmates tying the knot. Now, 2009 has already seen many marriages, with more to come. I wish the very best to all of them in their married lives.

I need not tell anything about recession. We are hearing about cost cutting and firing all around. Many of my friends have lost jobs due to economic slowdown for none of their faults. But life isn't cool always. We've to learn lessons from every part of our lives and move on.

Karmayuddh that I mentioned refers to two events. One being the Indian Premier League Twenty-20 cricket series and the other, and more important, being the Lok-Sabha General Elections.

We shall not abstain and shall make sure that only elite candidates lead our constituencies. After all, it is not a bad idea to spend one day in five years to decide the future of the nation, and hence ourselves.

Happy Voting!

People and their Priorities

I recently started another blog, exclusively dedicated to technology and computer related topics. It is TechnoTweak.com. If you have liked the technology related stuff I've written here in this blog, you are welcome to take a look onto my new blog and also subscribe to TechoTweak feeds.

I had no intention of writing this post till I received this comment from Shubha. When I contemplated on that sentence, I found it very true. She has nicely put all my thoughts in one simple sentence. People change when their priorities change.

A few days ago, I watched Dasvidaniya in which the protagonist changes drastically when he gets diagnosed with stomach cancer. He completely changes his attitude. He keeps a list of things to be done before he dies, and eventually achieves them. A fine example to show that the people change when their priorities change, and these priorities change when something in their life changes.

I have seen some of my friends staying invisible while chatting. When asked about it, a common reason I get is that they are busy and don't want to be disturbed by some people. Crap & cowardice! It defeats the very purpose of chatting. When work is of utmost priority, one can put the busy status. But putting busy status on and chatting freely is a no-no. If used unnecessarily, it becomes another instance of the Tola-bantale-tola (For non-Kannada readers: It's the same tale in which a shepherd shouts about the arrival of a tiger when there wasn't any, just to make fun of the villagers and eventually becomes prey to a tiger because no villager come to rescue him when there was a real tiger) and people keep pinging you even when you have put busy status because, by then, they would have known how busy you would be.

If a person is pinging you when you are busy, ask him to ping later. Even then, if that person is adament and stupid enough to bug you and you are so keen on avoiding that person permanently, there is an option for that: block. Block the person who bugs you and he will never see you online. Invisibility cloak is good for Harry Potter, not for we muggles.

Coming back to the main point about priorities, ask yourself a question: do priorities in life change abruptly? Generally, according to me, no. Even if they do, such priority works are of short duration, which don't have any long term effects. So, is it really worth and necessity to change ourselves for the sake of those small parts of life?

Share your thoughts on this and also your opinions about the new blog TechnoTweak.

Random thoughts... about 2008

I have seen people who write in their Orkut profiles, "I'm cool" or "I'm hot". I've even seen some guy who has written both. I am neither hot guy, nor cool. My body temperature remains normal at 37°C, unless I'm sick. And I am still trying to understand the meaning of hot and cool. Guys (and girls, if there are any), help me out here!

When I stay alone, I think. Not that I don't when I'm with others, but I believe solitude is the time when I get time to introspect, think about myself. It's the time when I laugh at myself for my foolishness. It's the time when I realize my mistakes. It's the time I repent for my mischievous behaviours and misdeeds.

People change. Not because Barack Obama has asked for it, but they change for a reason. They change when they grow. They change when they get good marks in classes. They change when they get awards. They change when they get good jobs. People change when they get new friends. And they change, abruptly, when they get girlfriends. They change when they marry. Amidst all these changes, people remain friends.

About two and a half years back I, along with Suri, started blogging. Then, it was just like a collection of some interesting and funny mails which I was getting. After a couple of posts, I found it useless and I stopped blogging. But Suri was very serious about it. He was literally going through all sorts of websites, from Technorati to hit-counters, from problogger to pre-blogger. Every night (yes, not day. Courtesy: BSNL Sancharnet) we used to chat hours together. That's the time people started calling me Goobe (owl). I still wonder how Suri escaped from that title. He used to talk about blogging, blogging and blogging. Eventually he was able to pull me into it. So I restarted blogging in 2007, wishing everyone a happy new year. I started writing posts at the rate of one per day. Suri read it. After continuing it for two weeks, I started showing my laziness and procrastination. The frequency of my posts started decreasing.

In spite of all this, my blog has more than 75 feed readers and has recently crossed 50000 hits. Not an award-winning achievement, but I think it is quite decent for a blogger like me, who posts once in three months. I thank all my readers, friends and those who have supported and backed me during times, good and bad.

2008 has been a year when I started working as an engineer (well, although I joined in 2007, we just had training), something which I dreamt right from my childhood. Apart from that, this year has been a year of ups & downs, just like every other year. I'm sure 2009 will also be like that. But we have forget the bad, cherish the good, and move on.

I wish you a very happy new year.

Code for Factorial, without Recursion

After having been declared to be an impregnable procrastinator by all my close-circle friends, after being connoted to update it by those who I didn't even know were reading my blog and after being told "Enough is enough, now update it buddy" by a few friends, I am in the same situation as the Indian government after the Mumbai attacks. I have no other go than updating it, at least for the sake of hushing them up till the next terror attack near my house. So here I go...

As you might already be knowing, I prefer calling programming an art to calling it a process. That's the reason I enjoy it.

Coming to the point, my friend cum colleague was trying to write a program for generating Pascal Triangle. I decided to play along and wrote a code. In the process, I wrote a function to calculate factorial for a number in an unusual way, without recursion.

Generally an incremental loop is used from 2 to N. But I used decrementing loop and here is the outcome (Code written in C programming language):

unsigned int fact(unsigned int n)
{

unsigned int f=n;

while(n---2)

f*=n;

return f;

}

Main thing I wanted to convey in this code is the while loop, which uses the unusual "--" & "-" operator pair.

It works similar to this loop:

for(f=n;n>=2;n--)

f=f*n;

Not a great piece of code, but I found it to be a little interesting. Hence the post.