girl + linux/tech + floyd/rock/metal... + football/F1... = Anomaly

this post has genesis in the last.fm shout i received yesterday -
"u r full of anomalies.....first of all Pink Floyd is ur fav band and second u use amarok"

hmm...well this is not the first time 'm receiving such a comment, have received a fair amount of them in recent years...'n my reactions to them also have evolved over time, from initial outright denial to slow acceptance of the fact...

I would like to think there are more of my species 'n that the lesser numbers is 'coz the general male:female ratio is already so high... :) yeah i know guys out there are already saying wishful thinking...eh? :)
Well recently became a member of linuxchix, which is involved in increasing the number of girls using linux...so as an answer to one of the following shouts -
"well god should make more girls like you", i can say atleast one issue is getting addressed... :)

But as far as music is concerned 'm really not sure... :( Ofcourse i can go on 'n on abt the beauty of floydian music, but if the person doesn't like it, you can't do much about it can you...? 'coz myself have come across many guys who still listen to insipid boy/girl bands, overly commercialized, fed to masses hip-hop artists...so i don't think this can be generalized into a girls/guys thing....in a different vein, i think only a real connoisseur can appreciate the great stuff, so for other normal ppl, pink floyd will be just 'We don't need no education'....

'n sports...hmm...well honestly haven't come across many guys who follow football/tennis/F1, i think it would be fair to say cricket is pretty universally folllowed in India (i know, world famous in india types :D) regardless of asl...while trying to think of how to get women into sports, i was reminded of this sexist fark comment i had come across long time back..."Women learn to talk football so they can develop relationships with the dreamboats that populate sports bars"... :D he he...maybe thts ur solution...your propoganda may go something like imagine all da shy,good-looking,nerdy guys you can meet...darn tht previous sentence didn't come off well...infact it sounds down right crappy... :P Neways again remembered this brilliant write up i had read sometime back - The Nerd Handbook... i think you can pretty much base your stuff on that... :)

'n yea forgot 'Gaming'...that is the last frontier....as one of my friend remarked the other day - 'If only you gamed, you would be one of us!" But sadly i don't think i will ever cross it, somehow can't imagine myself sitting in front of comp and twiddling at buttons...infact when wii first came out, i thought now here's something i can start gaming with....well 'm still waiting to lay my hands on one... :(

Well on a serious note, don't think these can be generalized as a guy/girl thing...'coz among many of my male colleagues 'm the biggest tech/sports/music freak...
I feel generalizations most often give an exaggerated picture of how the things are...TOI is a classic example for this... take a topic , generalize on the extreme end to sensationalize ofcourse, there's no fun in medians is thr? and go on debating on it. Sometimes i wonder are they dumbing(i know thrz no such word) us down...or are we already so dumb?

Off topic - today just came across the new google talk gadget, you can emebed in your sites/blogs, allowing the visitors to directly chat with you, similar to meebo...but thn yea this is Google! :D :P Already embedded it in this blog but sadly it seems therez no chat log, i.e the chat session doesn't come in the gmail chat section...atleast not as yet... :)

Fat Free

This post is about an amusing incident that happened couple of hours ago. On my way back from work, i stopped over at foodworld to buy some essentials viz. Maggi 'n some chocs ( yep! they r quintessential for me :) )
Well so, I was at the billing counter when i saw this man in front of me with a big pack of Kellogs Chocos. Usually one can reasonably identify the crowd which buys such stuff, but this person nowhere looked like he belonged to one of them. It was the typical 'Blink' moment. For people who haven't read the book 'Blink', well it essentially means that your subconscious processes and arrives at conclusions much before your conscious mind kicks in. Well so in my case, my subconscious mind had already arrived at the conclusion that somehow the person and kellogs didn't fit. So one thought went like "Not bad, If people like them are buying Kellogs!" before it was rudely interrupted by another "Shame on you puthali, Don't prejudice based on appearances, appearances don't maketh the man". And so I silently stood, awaiting my turn. When the person suddenly asks the billing lady for 'Fat Free' which was written on the carton. I was about to laugh when the billing lady, whom i thought would clear the poor chap's misconception, called out to another girl in telugu: "This guy wants some fat free, check it out". Somehow tht laughter vanished and i just stood thr speechless...

Now while writing this, i was wondering how wonderful weird this place has become due to globalization 'n everything. Some english words, have just become an inseparable part of people's lives, even of those who don't know english. So, here was this billing girl, who knew only telugu and then there was the kannadiga, both of knew what 'Free'(an english word) meant in the sense of 'free soap, free battery...' but not 'Fat free' :) Well one can't blame them also, 'm here reminded of the famous Big B's dialogue from Namak Halaal, 'n 'm gonna promptly end this post with that :)

"You see sir, I can talk English, I can walk English, I can laugh English,
because English is a very funny language."

0096 2251 2110 8105

It all began with this sequence of numbers - "0096 2251 2110 8105". Now very few people will get it, 'n among that who would probably see this blogpost is '0' . So what is this number sequence anyway? It befuddled many my friends when i put this up as my status message on gtalk. Some responses i got -
A: Is this your old credit card number? but in ulta? :)
B: whr are you? (yea i don't know, which country can possibly have such number :) )
C: whats with that 0096 code?

D: you started drinking?
E: is that you credit card number?

Whereas a simple google would have given one the answer. The first result in google would tell you that it is the last line of 'Even Less' song by Porcupine Tree. Though it is people 's tendency to disbelieve even when something is in front of their eyes. :)

So yes, what's the significance of those numbers? If you proceeded after the first line you would have come across this -

It's the same number (0096 2251 2110 8105) as an E05 recording on the Conet Project discs (track 3, disc 1) by Irdial, all of which you can download for free here: http://irdial.hyperreal.org/"

But it was actually the second result which made me want to dig deep. Now me too had never heard of something like E05 recording or Conet Project. So imagine my surprise when i stumble on this wonderful world of Shortwave Numbers Stations - http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm
Seems like its straight out of some Ludlum's spy thriller. :)

The website says the TCP is currently out of stock, but you can access some of the recordings at
the Internet Archive. In case you didn't know abt Internet Archive before, check it out, it is one brilliant concept!

Now 'm just waiting to catch some shows on this. 'n yes do get and listen to 'Stupid Dream' by Porcupine Tree.

Uber Cool Light-Weight Nerd

when you have nothing else to write abt, you can always depend on above stuff to keep the blog alive :)

btw, 'Uber Cool Light-Weight Nerd', now thts a nice name, think it pretty much got-it right ;)

Windows Users Caused Skype Outage!!!

Skype has finally explained the reasons behind the 36+ hour outage of their popular P2P VOIP service last week: Windows Users.

According to Skype the outage was caused by “a massive restart of our user’s computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine software update” which The Register points out was Microsoft’s monthly patch Tuesday. Patch Tuesday is the time of the month Windows users receive security updates that often result in widespread reboots by Thursday.

Skype said that whilst their peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, the event “revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly.”


Windows Users Caused Skype Outage

This was too good not to blog! :)

Podcast/Vodcast - best thing since sliced bread?

today on my way back home, was watching series of vodcasts(Video podcast for the uninitiated) i had downloaded...'n dint realize when my one-hr journey got over! Its an amazing way to pass time...'n it needn't go waste...you have podcasts/vodcasts in almost any category you can think of! So if you are the kind of person who likes learning new languages, all you have to do is subscribe 'n you are on your way...'n if you digg NG or Discovery, you can subscribe to their informative vodcasts as well...
iTunes website does a neat job of listing the top podcasts/vodcasts...

well Novell used to have NOA, when Ted was there...hmm wonder if its still happening...

Anyways here's da list of my top podcasts/vodcasts -
BestOfYouTube ( Must have!!!)
National Geographic Video Shorts
Flight of Conchords (nice comedy series by HBO...'n u get few entire episodes for free download!)
The Classic Tales Podcast
Discovery Channel Video Podcasts
Learn Spanish With Coffee Break Spanish
Ask a Ninja - iPod
Pandora Podcast Series

'n ofcourse you have ur Techie 'n Sports sections...

what do u know...'m a Rocker girl! :D

You are a Rocker Girl!

If you don't have musical talent, you've got a talent for picking out great CD's. Music rules your life - and you've got the best MP3 collection of anyone you know. Many guys find you intimidating, but a select few think you're the catch of a lifetime. Start hanging out in more used record stores, and you'll find love with a fellow rocker!

What Kind of Girl Are You?

Frustration!

This is such an awesome thing i came across, probably u need a new word for this, frustration just doesn't cut it...
its a tad lengthy though, ard 24 min, so guess it defines new limit of tolerance/patience under xtreme frustration... :)
anyways it may also probably be used as a material for crash course in expletives 'n their usage...:D
so you would probably like to use head phones, in case you are at work...but again WTF go play it loud 'n have some fun... :D

yahoo pipes

i couldn't not blog abt this... :) It is such an amazing li'l thing, 'n more surprising thing is that it is from yahoo camp! Well anyone wo knows me, knows that i am a bonafide Google girl...'n have a real low opinion abt yahoo...but when i came across this 'pipes' from yahoo, my view points took a serious damage.

"Yahoo!'s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It's a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output." You can read the entire article here.

'n a friend of mine in yahoo, forwarded me this link. Yahoo! Our City looks like another good service. Google can't take it easy anymore, lest it becomes like the story of 'The Hare & The Tortoise'.

Celebrity Patents

The following 18 patents are all by celebrities not usually known for being inventors. You can follow the link to the actual patents to learn more about each one.
1. Eddie Van Halen, Musician.Patent #4,656,917 — Musical instrument supportEddie Van Halen patent

Ironic Sans: Celebrity Patents

Good one.

pls: Trying out the just select, right-click 'n blog this option in Flock....'n am i impressed!

technorati tags:music, google, misc

Apple. DRM, Rand...

This article is long over-due….it all started when I ‘n madcap were discussing about apple, DRM…’n I asked him…how do you think Ayn Rand’s philo will fit into all this….? ‘N the Q got redirected to me…’n due to lack of time? Said‘ll blog about it sometime…. ‘N having nothing better to do, coz of being sent home early due to ppl staging protestations in front of office, here I am inking my thoughts on the subject… 

Disclaimer…

Let me clarify, this post is just to air my views or rather my lack of views, coz ‘m still not sure where I stand on this… ‘n coz I keep seeing this, thought will put in here also, though doubt if this topic is that controversial, anyways here it is –the views are mine alone ‘n not subscribed by my employer :D And all the said things below are based on what li’l knowledge I possess, so if some things are wrong then it is due to non possession of facts rather than any intentional over-looking… 

Ok, let me begin with what started it all…iPod. Now I must confess ‘m a big-time apple fan but in this post I will try to be as un-biased as possible….  It started off with my confusion o’er what mp3 player to buy. Well I had always loved the apple’s click-wheel interface ’n the oh so classy look of ipods but they did have a major draw-back that they dint have any kinda radio support( which was a major major reqmt for me) ’n dint support that many file formats either. But even with these draw-backs I was considering iPod. At this time was asking everyone I knew about other alternatives ’n that’s where madcap came in- ’n he being my total opp. i.e. apple hater… , started off on a tirade against it. His major gripe was the ‘DRM’ of-course, well even ‘m against it but it dint bother me much coz me never plan to buy music off iTunes ’n neither am I rich enough to possess more than one player, so the Q of playing the bought music on other players doesn’t arise at all. :P Probably ‘m being selfish ‘n looking at only my needs, but if ‘m buying the player for myself, then it should follow that I should buy something which suits my needs…rite? ;)

A li’l history…

Anyways his take was ‘apple’ is evil, coz of the DRM, ‘n all that customers who bought the music have no where to go but stick to apple. I totally empathize with the ppl, it’s one sick situation to be in. But let’s start off from beginning….When iPod was launched, did any one ever (cud have) imagine (d) such a situation…? A song for 99c was such a brilliant move that it was instantly lapped up by ppl as well as by the music industry which was then fighting the ‘napster’ ‘n such p2p sharing. It was like, to quote Godfather – “I’m gonna make you an offer, you can’t refuse” ‘n to top that it was perfectly “legal” too….: D The record companies never imagined that iPod would become so bloody popular, I doubt even if Jobs himself imagined it would grow this much…  So now you have ‘Universal’ music wanting a chunk of the cut, coz it considers all music on iPod as stolen!!!

Btw here’s a nice script of a hypothetical conversation b/n Jobs ‘n Doug Morris.

DRM…

Btw why did it take so long for any decent competition to arise for iPod? 2 yrs back I doubt if any one wanted to use any player other than iPod, but that was then. ’N the fact is that now ppl don’t want DRM, they want to pay only once for their music ‘n be able to play it on iPod, zune or any player. So why it is that apple is still sticking to DRM? ‘Coz IMHO it doesn’t need it to lock customers using it, coz iPod is such a gr8 prod by itself that ppl will use it anyway. Probably that explains why there has not been a major customer cry o’er this ‘coz ppl don’t want to use anything else…?  But then as madcap was saying all these big-players ‘apple’, ‘M$’, ‘sony’… can all come up with a DRM standard which allows inter-operability. :D So then is DRM to prevent/disabuse P2P? If so, it’s a total failure coz as long as you have DRM you will get hacks to circumvent it…

Then is ‘Music Tax’ the way to go, like Peter Jenner says? ‘M not sure but what ‘m sure of is that DRM is defi not the way to go….

Artists, Record Labels, free music….

Free music…well rather music for free…are you really depriving an artist’s lively-hood when you d/w a song illegally off the net? When you d/w a metallica song, is it that they will lose one rupee, oh I mean one dollar from their millions? So you see it is really a bad thing to do…

It’s a different matter that new artists/bands don’t mind their music being distributed freely on the net, coz that’s how they will get popular but as soon as they start getting popular and get signed by record labels, there goes your free stuff…

Now record labels are painted across as the evil ppl, which is not entirely wrong considering that not much of the proceeds go to the artists who deserve it. But in this dog-eat-dog world, no one is free of blame: artists sign enormous multi-million dollar deals for a record whether they deserve it or not is another matter altogether. ‘n the consumer, of course if he is get something for free, will he pay for it else where?

Pls: On one hand you have artists like developers of ‘South Park’ whose sole aim of creating is so that people should watch their shows…’n then you have comedy central whose aim is to milk as much money as possible from the viewers…

How much greedy is greedy? Where do you stop? ‘N should you stop at all?...

Well guess this is the crux ethical Q involved in all the above.

All companies start off small; they develop one revolutionary product on top of which they start growing. So you had M$ beginning with MS-DOS, then Windows ‘n then came the Office ‘n IE. Now this is where the things got murkier. You had Netscape a pioneer in the browser ‘n Word Perfect but M$ started shipping IE ‘n Office integrated with windows. A gr8 business strategy some would say, but ethical? But then some ask what is ethics in business?

‘N then you have some companies piling upon patents on patents, which hinders the very purpose of ‘patent’. Patent concept was developed to foster innovation, but with all the patent filing by big conglomerates one never knows when one may use an idea unknowingly, which is already patented ‘n the big corporation comes knocking on your door for royalties.

Free s/w Vs Proprietary….it can be one entirely diff post altogether but for samplers -  if I want to make money off what I code is it a bad thing? ‘Coz if you release the source, any normal intelligent person can compile it himself ‘n use it for free. It seems ppl have no problem with making money but it’s only when one starts to make too much off it they start having problem. They expect you to start allowing others to compete with your own product. This was where I thought of Ayn Rand. Remember ‘Atlas shrugged’ ‘n Hank Rearden's companies? No one should make you feel guilty of being rich when others are poor, when you have earned it. But in what way you earn it is what matters. ‘N in today’s competitive business environment there’s no way you can live without stepping on someone’s toes. So you have company like ‘Google’ with motto – ‘Don't be evil’ getting increasingly into danger areas where it’s being accused of wrong-doing.

Having said so much ‘m still no where near the answer for the above question.

‘Haves’ ‘n ‘Have-nots’ ‘n ‘Doers’ ‘n ‘Non-Doers’…who is black….who is white? But ‘As it always is - there’s only grey….’

pls: tried to post this frm Google docs as the blogger keeps telling me to....but da darn thing doesnt work! hope google stops advertising stuff which dont work...

Wii-llenium?

Quite a nice-term actually to describe the Wii wave sweeping o'er da world...Well 'm no gaming freak...actually hardly no da 'ABC' of gaming.... :) but now this is one which i just cant wait to try....it looks like pure-joy... :)
You can check out this site. for more info....Look out for the video with da girl-boxing... :)

'n this is so funny... :)

time-line

well just now stumbled upon this great site, while searching for a good time-line software.

It all began when i stumbled on this sometime back. Somehow the idea seemed to remain in that mind of mine...so searched for it again yesterday. But again the complexity just to get it to work overwhelmed me.

'n today realized tht i hadn't dugg the link, which meant finding it will be tough in case i need to refer to it in future. So off i went again to the site, 'n strangely went to the bottom of the comment section, where in i found this gem. :) Though granularity of the time-line needs a lot to be desired, it makes up for it in its simplicity 'n easy-to-use interface. Perfect for lazy ppl like me. :)
so it may be some time before i spend some time figuring out 'n setting up this, as now i have a great alternative. :)

its funny how so many new 'n innovative ideas people come up with, like 'YouTube' which has been named the 'Best Invention of The Year' by the Time magazine. :)

My Dosha ... :D

Your Dosha is Pitta

You have a quick mind, a gift for persuasion, and a sharp sense of humor. You have both the drive and people skills to be a very successful leader. Argumentative and a bit stubborn, you have been known to be a little too set in your ways. But while you may be biased toward your own point of view, you are always honest, fair, and ethical. With friends: You are outgoing and open to anyone who might want to talk to you In love: You are picky but passionate To achieve more balance: Be less judgmental of those around you, and take cool walks in the moonlight.

What's Your Dosha?

NAM 3.0

i.e. Novell Access Manager 3 for you, the product 'm working on or rather a very tiny part of it... :D

http://www.novell.com/podcast/Detailpage.jsp?id=103

'n now that's the podcast, explaining all about it...
Listen to the part where Lee talks about SSL VPN, now that's wht 'm working on... ;)

'n just some more info on NAM 3 :
Novell Access Manager 3.0 represents the next generation of access management and federated identity solutions. It introduces new “in-the-flow” technologies and SSLVPN functionality that broaden its access-management capabilities. It supports a broad range of platforms and directory services. Novell Access Manager provides an advanced solution to secure your infrastructure, prevent information theft and protects the privacy of people inside and outside the organization. Novell Access Manager3.0 lets you separate security from individual applications and Web servers, enabling single-point, policy-based authentication management and access privileges throughout the Net. Novell Access Manager 3.0 also includes identity-based Web security services and provides users with secure authentication and access to portals, Web-based content.

Using Novell Access Manager organizations can simplify security management, control the use of digital assets across the extended enterprise and get more from investments in eBusiness applications.

Or you can check this out -
http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1155

'n yeah i know....'m blatantly marketing? for a lack of better word.... :D