my name in Economic Times. :)

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Post-online-CAT-disaster-IIMs-plan-to-switch-to-Foss-/articleshow/5338309.cms

Just in case they remove that article, copying the contents here. :). Thanks to Abrar for calling me an expert.

Online CAT may use open source code post glitch

15 Dec 2009, 1235 hrs IST, Peerzada Abrar, ET Bureau

BANGALORE: The leading IIMs, still smarting under the recent fiasco over the online CAT debut, are creating their own firewall against similar disasters in
future. After an elaborate post-mortem of the recent disaster, many IIM officials are exploring the idea of using free and open source software (Foss), rather than going in for proprietary software, to prevent online common admission test disasters in future.

“Online exams can be easily conducted using Foss as it can not only reduce costs by over 50%, but it is also safe against virus and malware attacks,” said one of the IIM officials. Infact, US-based Prometric — which bagged the high-profile $40-million contract to organise the online CAT using proprietary software like Microsoft Windows, along with NIIT — has pinned the main reason for this year’s disaster on the virus attacks.

Despite installing several security measures, they were unable to circumvent the virus attacks, which impacted over 20,000 candidates. Unlike the open source software, proprietary software is not for free and has to be bought.

Experts like T Vignesh Prabhu, a hacker at ‘deeprootlinux’, which is dedicated to developing and supporting Foss, said virus attacks form the major concern of IIMs. “The only solution is to discard the virus-prone operating system you have been using and install Foss, such as GNU (a free software) and Linux-based operating systems,” he said.

Foss software, which grants users the right to study, change, and improve its design through its source code, is the most preferred option. He said, there is enough statistics to prove that GNU/Linux-based operating systems are less prone to virus attacks. The only other way is to keep fighting the viruses by installing the latest updates of various anti-virus softwares.“And, you have to keep your fingers crossed hoping that developers of anti-virus companies are just as fast as the virus-writers,” he added.

Officials at Prometric, which had used proprietary software this time, said many centres were affected by mainly two viruses — Conflicker and W32.NIMDA. IIM officials said this happened despite the fire-walls systems installed. They said the CAT computers were sourced and leased from local colleges in the cities where the examinations were held. They said most of the CAT computers got infected through the servers and other computers in various colleges through the local area network (which is a computer network covering a small physical area like a group of buildings). Also, the existing data on some of the 17,000-20,000 CAT work stations has not been deleted.

IIM officials said many of these 17,000-20,000 computers were prone to virus attacks as they may not have used the genuine proprietary software.

“I doubt whether Prometric really checked this. Many colleges may have used pirated software,” said one of the IIM officials. The Foss model is already working successfully in states like Kerala, where the state government’s IT@School provides IT-enabled education to 1.6 million students a year in the state using Foss. “We will use Foss to handle over four lakh admission application forms in a period of 10-15 days for two lakh 11th standard seats in government and government-aided institutions,” said IT@ School executive director K Anvar Sadath. He said the CAT exam can be run successfully on Foss without any virus threats.

Despite all these advantages, some IIM officials also said it will be difficult to conduct exams like CAT on Foss as it is not user-friendly and there is very less awareness about it.

Meanwhile, top IIM officials said they are determined to continue to hold the CAT exam according to the online format, and not go back to traditional paper-pencil one. “Online tests take place globally on a large scale. IT-enabled education is the way ahead,” IIMB director Pankaj Chandra told ET on Wednesday. He said they are reviewing student grievances and are coming up with new guidelines to screen those who deserve to be given a retest to ensure that only genuine candidates enter IIMs.

IIM officials said they were reviewing thousands of hours of video recording of the entire CAT 2009 exam to screen such candidates. Infact, European Union is one of the biggest supporters of Foss at present, having shifted all its public administration details to the Foss format.

Japan aims to switch some of its government computers to the free Linux operating system and reduce its dependence on Microsoft Windows. Japan saw the use of Linux as a way of lowering procurement costs and bolstering its defence against cyber-attacks. Like Germany, France and other European countries, Japan, South Korea and China long have been wary of leaving too many government computers and networks dependent on Windows. Many experts view Windows as too prone to computer viruses and hacking.

my day, 3rd dec 2009

got up at 11. went to bank and lodged complaints about my card transfer. while lodging complaint a guy shouts at the bank manager for causing him inconvinience for withdrawing money which was a pretty huge amount about 75k. then went to FOSS.IN and attended talk by debayan. It was a good one and at last I got to know properly what he was working on. Also got my hand on the OLPC laptop, which was very cute. Tried to use it for sometime. Interface was good and would like to get one of it myself someday but it seems that you just cannot buy one. Then went to the KDE Potd hoping to get a kde sweat shirt. Unfortunaetly couldnt get one. :(. Then left in middle of the daily keynote as I had to go to my old room and pay the monthly rent. Then had dinner with my old roomies. Then caught a bus to Shivajinagar to go back home. While reading the novel on the bus, one man apparently indian origin but a US returned( as I guess from his accent) advised me not to read novels while moving on bus as it harms the eyes. I asked him how else I could utilize my precious time while travelling. He couldnt suggest anything. However this has left me with thinking for an idea how to utilize thier time while travelling on bus. FM is not an answer as nowadays it is more crap than songs and it is not productive anyways. Now I am sitting in a cyber cafe. Came to apply in Cisco which I could only using IE 6 or 7. But the webpage is complete crap and it is hosted by merittrac. It does not even load in IE6 properly. Anyways I will have to try somewhere else I guess now. Now I think I will leave for my room. Hope to have fun tomorrow at FOSS.IN.

Interesting tweets.

A surprise awaits if you tweet with #treat or #trick from Twitter.com. C'mon, try! :)

How fast the news follows in the Internet era?

First a tweet from @ShashiTharoor about his speech on UN's relevance in a changing world. Then a tweet from @the_hindu about the speech and a link about the complete article. All this in just a span of half an hour. And I get to know about it sitting in my room in front of my computer. It is as if I can monitor the world just by sitting here. Twitter rocks.

Ganapathi blessed the South India with a great river

Coutsey: http://www.celextel.org/storiesandanecdotes/ganapathi.html

The marriage of Shiva and Parvathi was to be celebrated on mount Kailasa. All the people all over the world started traveling towards mount Kailasa. Due to the heavy burden on the northern side, the world started tilting towards the north. To correct this Lord Shiva requested sage Agsthya to go and live in the South of India. Agasthya obeyed the orders of Lord Shiva and reached the south. The entire south India was extremely dry at that time. Lord Shiva had sent some sacred waters of Ganga along with Agasthya, which Sage Agasthya was preserving very carefully in his pot. One day when was asleep, Ganapathi took the form of a crow and toppled Agasthya’s pot. From the Ganga started spreading in to a river. This river was called kaveri - She who was spread by a crow.

Why wedding ring should put on the fourth finger???

This is from a Chinese excerpt - really interesting.


Thumb represents parents
Second finger represents brothers & sisters
Center finger represents own self
Fourth finger represents your partner
Last finger represents your children

Follow the steps below:

¨ Firstly, show your palm, center finger bend and put together back to back

¨ Secondly, the rest 4 fingers tips to tips

Games begin, follow the arrangement below, 5 fingers but only 1 pair can split.




Try to open your thumb, the thumb represents parents, it can be open because all human does go thru sick and dead. Which are our parents will leave us one day.
Please close up your thumb and then open your second finger, the finger represent brothers and sisters, they do have their own family which is why they will leave us too.
Now close up your second finger, open up your little finger, this represents your children. Sooner or later they too will leave us for they got their own living to live.
Nevertheless, close up your little finger, try to open your fourth finger which we put our wedding ring; you will be surprised to find that it cannot be opened at all. Because it represents husband and wife, this whole life you will be attached to each other. Real love will stick together ever and forever....

my grievance at pgportal.gov.in

Courtesy: Debayan-It was actually his idea as to why Governments should waste so much of money for softwares which is required by each state.

Pooja-She introduced me to this portal.

I have registered my grievance in the Public Grievance Portal successfully and now waiting for their reply and action.

My registration number is MINIT/E/2009/00382

Following is my grievance description:

I feel sorry to see that the hard earned money of people which is collected as income tax by the Central and State Governments and which is also one of the biggest source of revenue is being wasted. Each and every IT Department of all 28 states spend money to build same softwares for their various work. Each state has a Income Tax Department which needs a software to regulate collection of Income Tax. Each state has a Agriculture Department which needs to keep record of all the cultivable land and the different grains being grown there. Each state has a Electricity Department which needs a software to regulate distribution of electricity to different cities and collection of electricity bill in different cities. Each department of the state needs a software to look after their mailing solutions so that each department has its own mail server. Each state has various government schools which all require softwares like operating system, office related softwares and various study softwares for students To sum it all, each of the 28 states of India spends huge money every year to get softwares for each department and maintain these softwares. That means, citizens of India pay 28 times for just one software that is built only once by the software company and resold to every state. This is highly illogical. A simple solution for this is to make all the State Governments to use Free and Open Source Softwares(FOSS). Each government will pay the software companies only to customize the software according to the state needs. This will cost them only 10% of what they are already paying. Since FOSS can be used and customized by any software company this will give a chance for small companies to enter the market and also lead to a very fair competitive market. I hope proper action will be taken to see that such huge amount of money is not wasted and using FOSS becomes compulsory practice in all government institution. Please solve this grievance which is not only mine but also of every Indian citizen as soon as possible.

logic and luck

Well I have been thinking about it a lot in my free time. I have come to some obvious conclusions. I should start thinking from here now onwards. First let me define what is logic and luck according to me.
By logic, I mean reasoning. 1+1=2 is logic. Earth rotates around Sun because of gravitational force is logic. We need to oxygen for digestion is logic. Logic can be explained. If it cannot be explained, then it is not logic.

By the same argument, what cannot be explained can be called as luck. Many times we say a person is born talented, that is luck. Why should someone get cancer, that is luck. Why should Earth be exactly at such a distace that all conditions favour for growth of organisms, that is luck.

So what is the relation between the two, logic and luck? The relation is the understanding of things around us. Hundreds of years ago, no one could explain the cause of lightning and they used to consider it as a way Rain God shows his anger. So it was luck then. But now lightning does not scare anybody. So it is logic now. Hence as time progresses, more and more things are understood by humans. This leads us to believe that some or the other day, humans will be able to solve all the mysteries of nature and hence nullify the concept of luck. Theoretically, yes this should be possible. After all that is what we have learned in maths. Any variable can be easily extended to infinity to get an ideal case. But now what is that ideal case equal to. Isnt that is what we call God. He can explains us everything that happens in this world. He has created everything here and he has designed everything so beautifully for us. So is it wrong in believing in him and having trust in him.

Let us see it from another point of view. When we are small, we believe in our parents and whatever they say. They are god for us then. But as we grow up and start gaining knowledge more than them, we dont believe in them any longer and keep searching for logic ourselves. In this juncture some believe in God but some believe themselves to be God. The latter happens because they think that since they have gained knowledge more than their earlier gods( their parents), they can reach the ideal situation of gaining infinite knowledge and hence can themselves become god. But what they forget is that they havent yet reached the ideal situation.

I had drifted away from my main point. I wrote this blog to mention what I think is the right equation for logic and luck.
Logic + Luck = Nature .
By nature, I mean everything. Everything that we see and we observe. I will call this equation of truth as this is what is truth. Infact a better way to put the equation would be
Logic + Luck = Truth .

Here I have not mentioned another important factor which is Love. This cannot be categorized either in logic or in luck. I need to figure where it will appear in the equation and I am sure that the equation will then be complete. :).

How can I learn English if it is this complicated?

Courtsey: http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammartips/grammar-tip-benefited.asp

Is it benefitted or benefited?

When adding -ing and -ed to verbs, we sometimes double the consonant beforehand. People are often confused with ‘benefitted/benefited’, ‘focussed/focused’ and ‘targetted/targeted’. This tip answers some of those queries.

The official requirements are that we ‘double a single consonant letter at the end of any base where the preceding vowel is spelled with a single letter and stressed’.

What does this mean in practice?
Examples:
word present participle past participle
bar barring barred
beg begging begged
occur occurring occurred
permit permitting permitted
patrol patrolling patrolled

It is true to say that there is usually no doubling when the preceding vowel is unstressed (‘enter’ becomes ‘entering/entered’; ‘visit’ becomes ‘visiting/visited’) or when the preceding vowel is written with two letters (‘tread’ becomes ‘treading/treaded’).
Benefit

Mistakes are often made with ‘benefit’. This happens because it is thought to be like ‘fit’, ‘fitted’ and ‘fitting’, but it is not, as the natural stress is not in the same place.

In fact, ‘benefit’ follows the standard rules exactly. It becomes just ‘benefiting/benefited’, because there is usually no doubling when the preceding vowel is unstressed.

Some words change their spelling to cope (they add a letter ‘k’).
word present participle past participle
panic panicking panicked
traffic trafficking trafficked
frolic frolicking frolicked
bivouac bivouacking bivouacked
What about ‘focus’?

This word can take either double or single s, with the single option being highly preferred.
word present participle past participle
focus focusing/focussing focused/focussed

Here’s an odd one to end:
American British English
parallel parallel
paralleling parallelling
paralleled parallelled
Example:

The vetting service from Future Perfect is unparallelled.

renaissance

Finally I have made my blog public again. Since I had made it private, I found no reasons to write a personal blog. Somehow I always feel that when I write a blog, it is followed by many people and they like reading it. Hope someday this will become true. :). Anyways let me update you with whats happened in my life recently.
Well I am no longer in college. Sadly my college days are over. My four years of vacation is over. It was a difficult time as I was going away from all my friends and more importantly the environment that I had become so accustomed to. However change is the rule of life.
And the change could not have been better. I have now joined a company started by one of our own seniors. It is more of fun then work. It is a very informal company and hence it could not have suited me better. Just yesterday Dabba was mentioning that it was the perfect extension after 4 years of vacation in Durgapur. What is more important to me is I have finally found programming and computer science interesting. Now I spend most of my time gaining more and more knowledge about linux and programming and it is fun. My mind always is filled with things that I am required to do and I am getting more and more confident about programming. So at present my life is going on the right track even after I wasted 4 years without getting any much knowledge. The only useful thing academically I had done during college was used linux. That was again thanks to Dabba. At present I work on perl and javascript. Please forgive me if i get any technical in this blog as nowadays I am more into it then think philosophically. But whenever I get any crazy idea or a feeling, I will mention it over here and keep most of the technical stuff to my other blog which I have started.

story of horseman and life

Long time ago, there was an Emperor who told his horseman that if he could ride on his horse and cover as much land area as he likes, then the Emperor would give him the area of land he has covered. Sure enough, the horseman quickly jumped onto his horse and rode as fast as possible to cover as much land area as he could. He kept on riding and riding, whipping the horse to go as fast as possible. When he was hungry, thirsty or tired, he did not stop because he wanted to cover as much area as possible. Came to a point when he had covered a substantial area and he was exhausted and was dying. Then he asked himself, "Why did I push myself so hard to cover so much land area? Now I am dying and I only need a very small area to bury myself." The above story is similar with the journey of our Life. We push very hard everyday to make more money, to gain power and recognition.

@courtsey http://www.blogger.com/profile/08088388208976304255

dimesnions of life, luck in particular

A point has no dimensions. A line has a single dimension. A square has 2 dimensions. A plane has three dimensions. More the dimensions, more the complexity of that entity. Life is such a complex entity. Imagine its number of dimensions. It might be countless but somehow the way in which nature runs, it makes me feel that it is not infinity. May be it is an enity with variable dimensions. Interesting. With life having so many features by itself, i am sure, it can be divided into smaller parts which have less dimensions and hence less complex. For example, How much a child is gonna weigh after about 5 years from now, can be decided by its food habits, daily habits and many more parameters. Again we might end up with having lots of parameters to play with but it is definitely less then the number of parameters on which life is dependent as a whole. Infact the parameters of life themselves are entities which have thier own parameters, which again are entities which have thier own parameters and so on. My present intentions are to concentrate on parameters that luck depend on. I have found 2 importent parameters. One is hard work. This one i got it from one of my favorite quote-harder u try, luckier u get. Second parameter is a more vague parameter. Or u can call it as an entity by itself. It is the fight between ur brain and ur conscience. U can lie to everybody in this world, sometimes even to urself. But u will realize it someday. What u do after that realization is the parameter that i am considering. will elaborate on it some other day. let me see if i can find more parameters to find the equations of luck.

the lost history of my college

http://naxalrevolution.blogspot.com/2006/07/life-and-struggle-in-regional.html Some how i cant believe that it is the history of my college.

a good day or a bad day

How wonderful it will be if we come to know how our day is going to be. Whether it will be a very successful day or a very irritating day. Well i think i have one small technique by which u can predict how your day is going to be. unfortunately i cant share it with anybody. However it is still in testing stage. will let u know whether it is true or not. i even think that technique extended can give you an idea of your month is going to be also. let me see. :)

story of the road, white line and bus tyre.

right from my childhood, i used to hear how different people used to disconver great facts just by a simple incident in natre that they observed during their daily life. For example, Newton discovered gravity just because an apple fell on his head. Thats why i always used to try to observe simple things while i used travel or when i was free and sitting idle, imagining that i would also discover something big. Yesterday when we were travelling by bus to Howrah, i was trying to observe the white line on the edge of the road which followed the road indefinitely. Even though, i always wanted to make a great scientifc discovery but what i observed was a solution to one of my personal problem. I have devised a story to explain my observation.
the 3 characters in my story are, the road, the white line and the bus tyre. Now since the bus tyre is regular on the road, it is a good friend of the road and constantly keeps in touch with it. Also since the white line is on the road also, it also has a good relationship with the road.

Once when the bus tyre was travelling on the road, it observes that wherever it goes on the road, the white line reaces there before it. The bus tyre increases its speed and goes very fast but it still finds that white line has also increases its speed. And how much ever fast it tries to travel, the speed of white line increases accordingly. Getting very frustrated, the bus tyre tries to remove white line from the road. It goes to the side of road and tries to cover the white line with dust and it succeeds to some extent. quite happy with this effort the bus tyre continues its journey but it gets shocked on seeing the white line again racing it. It gets so frustrated that it stops over the white line and starts rotating so fast by applying break that it makes a hole in the road and white line gets rubbed off. In this process, the tyre also is quite injured as it had to feel the pressure of rotating so fast. But it is happy with the result as it had managed to rub off the white line. So it again continues its journey. But it again is shocked as the white line was still racing it away. Frustrated, the bus tyre accepts its defeat.

After travelling for few more kilometers, the tyre observes that the road ahead was not good. It had many potholes as there was some construction work going on nearby. So the bus tyre decides to take a bypass route which would lead to the same road ahead by a different route. So it follows that route and it sees that there is no white line on this road. It feels very happy but since this road is not that same road, it is not very comfortable with this. However after some time, it again joins the road in which it was travelling earlier and feels very comfortable. But it observes that the white line is still racing it.

That is when it realized what a fool it was. It always envied the realtionship of the white line and the road as the white line always was there with the road but it couldnt be. The tyre realized the result of his earlier activities. In order to cover the white line, it had put dust over the road making the road look dirty. In order to rub off the white line it had created a hole on the road hurting not only itself but also the road. Also when the road was not good, it had easily changed its route forgetting its relaionship with the road but the white line had not left the road. the tyre felt very guilty that day.

meaning of "finger hug"--- this meaning is approved by international agencies.

tightly holding the finger by ur hand so that the person feels ver warm and comforted

shani dev - the planet or god responsible for bad luck

I was told this time by my aunty that my bad time thanks to Shani Dev will start in around 6 months and it will be there for around 7 years. This made me scary at start but then i started thinking about it. I came to following conclusion.
If my bad time should start, that should be because I had done something wrong in the past and thats why i will suffer for it. I am not talking about last birth's sins but things that i didnt do in this birth which i should have done. Like the way i wasted my engineering life without gaining any knowledge. I am sure, due to that reason i will suffer in future. However this also made me think that if my next r going to be very bad for me, then the time after that will be very good for me. Hence I came to the conclusion that what i will be doing during my bad time is actually right and that is what will bring good time for me.

P.S. writing blog in a haste, so the blog might not be very good.

Back to life....Prabhuji

one month ago, i had no clue as to what i was doing or what i am supposed to do. my life had just come to a standstill with no work to do at all. spent most of the time watching movies and series. But fifteen days with Nettech has changed everything completely. From a back bencher who tried to hide his face from professors so that he could sleep nicely during class, i became a guy who always wanted to get noticed in class by his questions and by his answers and sometimes by his jokes. From a person who used to take photocopies of notes from toppers of class during exams, i became a guy who maintained notes of every single point mentioned in class and my notes were referred to before the tests by others even though my handwriting is very bad. I dont know why i changed. It might be because for the first time in my engineering life, professors called me by name in class or might be because the subject was so interesting that i couldnt just ignore it or might be because since i had already very good knowledge in Linux, i had an advantage over all other classmates and i just wanted to continue. Whatever might be the reason, i am surely happy that i have changed. I just hope that i am able to make these changes permanent and not turn back into my older version now that i am back in college.