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Immediately after Tsunami I contributed a sum to Tamilnadu Chief Minister’s relief fund. I wanted to donate some for other affected countries; Though in my earlier posts, I have written posted URLs of NGO’s, I wanted to give only to official Government Funds (don’t know why, I just felt so!). Only today I got myself some time to do some search to find the site of “Central Bank of Sri Lanka Tsunami Fund” and donate. Their Credit Card payment didn’t work, so did “Wire Transfer” through my bankers. I also donated some money to WorldVision India, heard from my friends they do a decent job in helping the victims. I searched Google and MSN Search, but couldn’t find the official fund of Indonesian Government, if anyone knows the URL, please post it in the comments section below.
What are you waiting for?. If it is just sluggishness (like me), get over it, reach out to your hearts (and thru’ it to your pockets) and donate to your favourite fund.
After completing 1 year of blogging, I have taken a break longer than I wanted  . These things (breaks) have a course of their own – kind of the opposite to the “Positive Cycle” that BillG talks about in his book Road Ahead (BTW why is he not writing anymore, his last book came in 1999?). If you take a break for few days, it turns into weeks and then you never continue. Anyways, here I am back and have broken the curse – atleast that’s what I tried to communicate in the image below.
I have lots to blog, so expect posts more frequently for some-time now.
Happy First Anniversary to venkatarangan.com/blog
This blog entry marks the beginning of second year of my blogging. Last year, on the same day, around the same time (during pongal festival) I started this blog. At that time, I thought it to be my recent fad and that it will last only for next few weeks.
I see this blog only as recordings of my events, readings & happenings – but as I kept writing, I started to feel a sense of satisfaction. Also interesting for me was to look back few months, read a blog entry and recollect how I felt about something and compare it how I feel about it now. Though I never expected anyone else to read my blog, the handful of comments that I got during the year is certainly encouraging. Thank you.
தமிழ்நாட்டில் போன நூற்றாண்டில் வாழ்ந்த தலைச்சிறந்த இந்துமத சொற்போழிவாளர்களில், திருமுருக கிருபானந்த வாரியாருக்கு ஓரு தனியிடமுண்டு. அவரின் சொற்போழிவை நான் நேரில் கேட்டதில்லை, ஆனால் சிறுவயதில் தொலைக்காட்சியில் கேட்டதுண்டு. அவரின் எளிய நடை, அற்புதமாக பாடும் குரல் நினைவில் இருக்கிறது.
அவரின் ஒலிநாடாக்களை (Cassette) வாங்க ஆசையிருந்ததுண்டு - இந்த முறை நடக்கும் சென்னை புத்தகக் கண்காட்சியில் தான் அவரின் ஒரிரு ஒலிதட்டுக்களை (CD) வாங்கியுள்ளேன். “சிறுவர்களுக்கு அறிவுரை” என்ற ஒலிதட்டில், வாரியார் அவருக்கேயுரிய பாணியில் மிக அழகாக சொல்லுகிறார். அந்த ஒலிதட்டின் பின் அட்டையில் நான் படித்தது – வாரியாருக்காக www.variyarswamigal.com என்ற இணையதளம் இருக்கிறது, அதில் அவரின் எல்லா ஒலிநாடாக்கள்,ஒலிதட்டுக்கள் பற்றிய விவரங்களைக் காணலாமென்றும.
Today I was asked (should I say ordered) by wife to go to Naidu Hall after office and buy some dresses for my 18 month old son. Naidu Hall is one of the famous Textile/Readymade Garment store in Pondy Bazaar, Chennai. I dreaded the idea of shopping alone and that too now – when I will get absolutely no parking space.
Since it was festival times, Pondy Bazaar Main Road, had little carriage way free for vehicles to move, not because of too many vehicles but mainly due to haphazard parking. The Corporation permits only one row of parallel parking in the stretch in front of Naidu Hall, but it is common to see two rows of vehicles parked. Apart from this, there are couple of more rows – one by People walking on Roads (as FootPaths are occupied fully by hawkers) and the other by Autorickshaws.
I somehow managed to find a parking in a side-street some 100 feet away from the shop. Walked and got into the shop, it was overflowing with people. Somehow I managed to go to the section which had Boy Baby dresses and I was surprised to find only few people here. I managed to select few dresses that I liked. I thought to myself, so far so good, less than 10 minutes and I managed to shop, what would have taken if I had come with my wife, a minimum of 1 hour.
I went into Cash Counter to pay, there were two people in front of me paying and only one cashier inside the counter. I waited behind the person in front of me, suddenly couple of hands with bills and cash/credit card popped left and right of me towards the cashier. Absolutely no regard for Queue or Order. It was a classic demonstration of Darwin’s survival of fittest (fittest in this case being the one who could push his/her hands as far as closer to the cashier and maker her notice you), though I am sure Darwin didn’t mean this. Almost half-a-dozen people who came after me, managed to make their payments. I kept waiting; thankfully the cashier got two of her colleagues join her and so I was serviced. This same ordeal repeated itself in the collection counter – it was even more chaotic here. Finally after nearly 30-35 minutes of me entering Naidu Hall, I managed to come out, completing my assignment.
The reason for me to blog this was not what happened above, but what happened later. My wife and my mother both liked it, approved my purchase and said my selections were good. Oh’ god, I just couldn’t believe my ears… It was indeed worth the trouble.
If there is one tech bulletin that I don’t miss everyday, then that is reading “The Register” of UK. Though there are hundreds (if not thousands) of tech websites and newsletters, what really differentiates The Register, is its:
- Selection of news that it features
- No nonsense design of its daily email
- Writing style of stories – Straight, Crisp & to a large extend un-biased
In today’s bulletin Register talked about VMWare’s ACE Solution – which it describes as a Software in a Can. The idea seems to be that when you distribute an application, you bundle a managed OS along with it. Definitely Interesting!. I am going to download the eval and give it a Spin, will come back with notes on how it went.
After I posted the above, Sriram V has pointed out in his comments about Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit (VSMT) supporting similar (if not exact) features. Let me try that as well.
Today Microsoft announced grand plans of digitizing India’s vast geographical maps and survey information. For this it has signed an MOU with Government of India. This is good news, not because MS is involved , but because this might finally evolve into a website that will allow me to search and access quality maps for India. Everytime I see Mapquest or MapPoint or hundreds of other maps website for USA, I envy the US for having excellent maps including driving instructions readily available. In contrast, in India we don’t even have one single website providing comparable service.
The other news here that makes me feel happy is that, Microsoft Research Lab in India which will work on this, is headed by Microsoft’s P. Anandan, who is a native of Chennai (My Home Town) !
Microsoft has a dedicated website “Windows Server Feedback” for people to post their feedback about Windows 2000/2003 Servers and suggestions for upcoming releases.
Couple of months back I posted a suggestion for a feature in Windows Servers that will enable easy replication across Web servers – both web content and IIS/ASP.NET settings. Honestly I didn’t expect much and the feedback to be lying in some Microsoft Mailbox/Database Server dormant; it is going to be one among thousands of feedbacks. Yesterday I was surprised to receive an email from Windows Server Feedback Response Team acknowledging that the feedback was “interesting” and it is being sent to the Product Team. WOW!, I just hope the feedback will make it in the next release(s).
Open Source proponents, may say the above surprise is unnecessary if I am using an “Open Source” OS like Linux, where I can develop this feature myself and need not wait till the software giant does it. But my whole point is, I don’t want to re-invent the wheel, waste my time/resources in developing this feature. I want to simply buy it off-the-shelf; and focus on my core-business.
MS has posted a fix for this at KB 890175
Also available from Tools->Windows Update, option from IE.
I read yesterday about the recently discovered Security Problem (Command Execution Vulnerability) with IE and wanted to do a quick fix to protect my machine. Actually the problem is not with IE, but with an individual ActiveX control (Microsoft Help Control – hhctrl.ocx, found in C:\Windows\System32 folder) which allows any command to be executed.
So the first step, I did was to login to my PC as Administrator, then Run the command Regsvr32 /u c:\windows\system32\hhctrl.ocx. Though this protected me from the vulnerability, F1 key (help) in all applications in my PC didn’t work. So I reverted back by doing Regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\hhctrl.ocx.
Then I figured a simpler solution, I remembered that Windows XP SP2 (which I was running) has the option “Manage Add-ons” (which I have talked about earlier). I went to Secunia.com Vulnerability test page, did the left click on the link as wanted; the page happily complained that I had the vulnerability. I was expecting this – but what I was after was to get the hhctrl.ocx loaded. Once it was loaded by IE, I went to “Manage Add-ons” dialog in IE and disabled for good the hhctrl.ocx. I went back to the test page, this time it throwed a script error – no more vulnerability!. This setting affects only IE and so F1 is available in other applications as usual. Try this and post your comments below.
Remember, this is only a QFE and you should use it only till the time MS hasn’t released an official patch.
I have written about Spywares and tools to remove them couple of times in my earlier posts. Now the fight against Spyware seems to be getting decisive – Microsoft finally is wagging a full “War” against this threat. First came Windows XP SP2 with Security enhancements in base OS and in IE. Now MSFT has come out with a tool to detect & remove Spywares. This tool is the result of their acquisition of an Anti-Spyware company called “Giant” less than a month ago. You can download Microsoft Anti-Spyware (Beta) from here.
I downloaded and have installed it yesterday. My first impression seems to be favourable, that unlike other Anti-Spyware software it doesn’t complain (with big red marks) all the cookies as Spywares. Though there are privacy issues with Cookies, I feel many tools seem to blow it out-of-proportion and scare Normal users. Also it seems to have a simple User Interface that will make users comfortable. Let me see how it really scores in the long run it comes across Spywares and with compatibility to other applications and websites that I use.
Contrary to popular belief, Spywares don’t come only when you read an email or browse to a malicious website. Many of them now come piggybacking applications that we install – these are like Trojan Houses. Sometime back I downloaded and installed an IM Enhancement software called “MSN Messenger Plus”. During installation it seems to ask for permission to install some additional s/w thru’ an innocuous dialog. First time when I installed it I missed the option and I got left with a plethora of Spywares in my machine. It took couple of hours to figure out it was because of this. Even uninstalling didn’t remove everything; I had to “Windows System Restore” to restore the machine to the point before I installed the software to get rid of everything.
Thinking about this I realized that this incident could have happened to me on any Operating System – though Windows now happens to be the target for most of these attacks because of its popularity. This is because to install a software I needed to have higher privileges and when we do install a software with those privileges we should be aware of the risks as well of installing Software from unreliable sources. So in this direction, it is good to see Microsoft investing effort & money against Spywares, and lessons learned here are going to be useful to Computing Industry in the long run.
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