Posts

Thanks to Murty for pointing out this tale of a buffalo that simply refuses to be milked without its daily dose of BBC! And it’s not quite the British broadcaster that the animal is addicted to but khaini - a form of chewing tobacco that is popularly called " buddhi bardhak choorn “, or BBC, in Jharkhand. For its owner Mangra Munda, a resident of Lohardagga district, the addiction has turned into a headache. For along with fodder, he has to shell out plenty of tobacco. His buffalo demands the chewing tobacco six times a day and makes life difficult if it doesn’t get adequate amounts. ...

 Dell has done it again. The company has just released a 24" LCD monitor for your computer at an amazing price. While most other comparable monitors cross $2k - their’s costs only $1200! The monitor also includes 4 usb ports and a 6-in-1 card reader supporting CompactFlash (type I and II), SD/mini-SD card, Sony Memory Stick / MS Pro, Smart Media and Hitachi Microdrive. The display also offers a load of connectivity options, including VGA, DVI, composite, component, and S-video connections. It also has integrated picture-in-picture (PiP) that works with any pair of inputs. The PiP lets you display a small window in one corner (user-selectable) or side-by-side windows. The addition of component inputs is welcome and makes the unit suitable as a small HDTV monitor. But the DVI input does not support HDCP content protection, so you can’t use it with HDTV sources that require HDCP. Since this is primarily a desktop PC monitor, it also lacks HDMI connections. The on-screen display (OSD), is in color (the first time I have seen one). You can read up the full review (including pictures) here .

Watch this space as I add my drool factors here - things that mostly I probably don’t need - but would love to get my hands on. Meenakshi, if you are reading, think of this as the wish-list for the presents. :o). As they say boys with toys after all!! This is not to be confused with the .food category.

One of my colleagues, Jim Tallant, encountered a problem with Win2k Server, running in an Application Center environment, where very high CPU cycles threatened to bring down the server farm. All servers in the farm showed high CPU utilization (60 to 70%) whereas they normally run in the 15 to 20% range. We determined that this high CPU consumption was caused by excess time spent in the .Net memory garbage collection routine. The statistic “% Time in GC” on these servers was in the range of 40 to 60%. ...

Process Explorer 9.0 was released a few days ago. The new features in it are: System information dialog has per-CPU graph option with hyperthreaded and NUMA processor information A Users menu duplicates the functionality of Task Manager’s Users tab, showing Terminal Services session information and supporting logoff, disconnect, and sending messages On XP SP2 and higher the TCP/IP tab displays the thread stack at the time an endpoint was opened The tray icon context menu includes the shutdown menu Search engine option to use Google or MSN Search Object address column is available for the handle view Image signatures can be checked on-demand in the process properties dialog Process explorer is digitally signed with Sysinternals’ Verisign Class 3 signing certificate ...

Seattle Times has a story from the RSA Conference , where surprisingly they find Windows is more secure than Linux. No, this is not a study done by Microsoft. They compared Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Enterprise Server 3 running databases, scripting engines and Web servers (Microsoft’s on one, the open source Apache on the other). Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk — the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued. On average, the Windows setup had just over 30 days of risk versus 71 days for the Red Hat setup, their study found. “That’s a very surprising statistic, and I must say the first time I saw this statistic I thought you messed with my database,” Ford said to Thompson. Their presentation started jokingly, with Ford reeling off Windows jabs and praising the virtues of freely shared software that’s developed collaboratively over the Internet. But they concluded with statistics showing that the Windows setup had a clear advantage over the Linux alternative. ...

Google competitor A9 has Company > Yellow Pages on A9.com a nifty new thing where you can see street-level photos along with the Yellow Pages on Amazon.com. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street. The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. The cities currently covered are: ...

And about time I guess too. MS has finally announced that they are going to learn from Firefox and start working on v7.0 of IE with a beta shipping this summer. With the recent Longhorn announcement also shipping around then, lots of stuff happening.

Ah, some excellent gems…

If I had know of this a couple of days ago, life would have been much easier as I was trying to get TurboTax from the US from Kumud. Most e-mail providers impose limits on the size of message that you can send or receive. If you have trouble sending large files to certain people, or want to avoid clogged mail arteries or the risk of reaching an overstuffed mailbox that will bounce your message back, there is a free and easy alternative called YouSendIt that works every time - and you can send files up to 1GB in size. All you need to do is type in the destination address, select the file you want to send, and (optionally) type in your e-mail address and an accompanying message. It’s a Web-based service: the recipient gets an e-mail with a download link that’s good for seven days. Now, the only thing I want to try is, if the browser times-out when trying to upload huge attachments. ...

If you ever are in a situation where you need to identify production code issues or perf. issues, etc. (and who has not been there), then I would recommend checking out AppSight Black Box - a “kick-ass” product that I had an opportunity to play with sometime last year. They have solutions covering both .NET and J2EE and is very very impressive - I just want to know how the heck do they do it. You have to see it in person to believe it - and I have grilled these guys extensively using some real code, so if the demo looks to good to be true, well it is true! Here is the excerpt from their site which really does not do them justice: ...

I think I just found my business case for a Bike! :). Meenakshi (my wife remember), is dead against me getting one, but if I think I bought this helmet first, then I have to get a bike to match the helmet…. :). Now lets just hope she is not reading this…

If you recall I had recently posted about the release of Enterprise Lib. My colleague, Hisham Baz has a post on how to get started with the Ent. Lib . If you are new to it and want to know more about it, that is a good place to start. ...

Indigo is now out in the open and you should see a lot of flurry about it soon. This is cool. I have had a chance to look at bits and pieces of it in the past and could not talk much about it due to NDA, but that hopefully can change soon. [Listening to: Track 03 - New Artist (38) - New Title (38) (05:05)] ...

Got this via Megha. This actually is not new, I remember many years ago in India some inventor-dude doing the same thing and driving around to Nirulas (slurp, smack, drool).

Thanks to Noni for pointing this out to me. You can get the history of all (I think) languages all the way from the 50’s to today - quite interesting. [Listening to: BabyBaby - - (06:55)]

Megha, send this to me and it is quite funny; not sure of the original author though. To the citizens of the United States of America: In the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. ...

Phew! I was in Seattle this week for training - part of new employee orientation and now am on my way back home for a few hours and then I get back on a plane and haul ass to Delhi. I am at the airport right now, on a red eye (I hate those, since I cannot sleep when I am travelling). Home sweet home… err… I should probably say… Home messy home… ...

Microsoft released the Enterprise Library based on ACA.NET which our engineering guys here at Avanade, work their butts off! Enterprise Library features new and updated versions of application blocks that were previously available as stand-alone application blocks. All Enterprise Library application blocks have been updated with a particular focus on consistency, extensibility, ease of use, and integration. ...

Karan ponders on the Mac Mini and all I got to say is, man, that machine looks good! I almost bought one at Frys… err that is before the common sense kicked in (for not atleast). What do you think?

Google, today launched a new Video search service called Google Video . You can search for programs using Titles, particular channel, find out show locations in your area, etc. Check out all the features here .

Based on billions of searches conducted by Google users around the world, the 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year’s major events and trends giving you this aggregate look at what people wanted to know more about this year. Check it out . [Listening to: 04 dupatta (bhangra mix ) - - (05:04)] ...

Recently at work a someone was playing around with AD, and could not get impersonation working in ASP.NET - even hardcoding the userid/pwd did help, and all the time he got an Access is Denied error. After searching high, low, etc. he did find this issue. Interestingly I have never seen this, because well one, I have been working on Windows 2003 Server for the last few months, and two more importantly, my dev box, has not been a Domain Controller! (Why you would want one is another story). ...

This is what I have been told: Overall, you scored 95% which means 5% scored higher (more nerdy), and 95% scored lower (less nerdy). What does this mean? Your nerdiness is: All hail the monstrous nerd. You are by far the SUPREME NERD GOD!!! Bah! I know people more nerdy than I am! ...