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TCP/IP fundamentals

I have come across Developers and System Engineers who have trouble with networking time and again. The principle reason I have observed is a lack of thorough understanding of the underlying TCP/IP layer. Most engineers assume that if they know what is an IP Address, Subnet and DHCP they know networking. How wrong can they be?. This gets more complicated with the introduction of IPv6,  Security and Performance features newly introduced in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Till now the hurdle in solving this was availability of easily accessible and digestible materials on the subject. Today thanks to one of my fellow MVPs who pointed me to this resource from Microsoft – a free book on “TCP/IP Fundamentals for Windows“. It is available both for online viewing and downloadable as a PDF file. Don’t let the 559 page count scare you, the book is easily readable with some effort. I highly recommend downloading the PDF file and saving – it will be a worthy reference.

June 11th, 2008 | Category: Developer, Microsoft | 2 comments

HP Printers – Love & Hate

For years, I seem to have a love and hate experience with HP Printers especially with the accompanying software. With the centralized laser printers in my office things are normally OK, you give a print command it prints. The issues are only with the All In One Printers – should we be calling them super smart printers?.

I use dedicated HP All-In-One Printers (Photosmart 7288 and 6188) at my work and at my home. While I love the HP software for scanning, I am at loss on few other things. HP Add a Device

  • Why does the installation need to take so much for installing a simple scanner and printer software?.
  • Every time I turn on the PC why should the HP software keep checking for updates – is scanner and printer so cutting edge that you need daily updates for new technologies?
  • In Vista with UAC turned on, every time when it checks for updates it pops up the UAC elevated privileges dialog for the HPUpdate.exe program. My wife is always at loss on why this comes every time she logs in?.
  • Frequently the HP software looses the networked printer. It says “No supported device can be found”. May be it is users’ fault or some configuration changes that was done. The way to resolve it is to get your installation media (or downloaded driver file) and run the installation again. In the installation dialog you see “Add a device” option (see the image on right). When the application can’t find a device why can’t application (Solution Center or Photosmart essential) itself display an option to search for a network printer and add it instead of requiring a rerun of the installation. It is not available today.
  • When I rerun the installation today for this problem it displays the dialog shown below. I was puzzled for few minutes. Then pressing “OK” made it run fine. Why can’t the software first check whether the necessary files are found in the path (that it anyway seems to detect) then if the files are not found display this dialog.

HP All in One Series Installation Media Required

  • The last item I have is on Paper Jams. When a paper jam happens, the printer says clear the jam and press “OK”. But I am at loss on how to clear the paper jam – there is absolutely no instruction, and the space in the paper tray is so small that you can’t insert your fingers and pull the paper out. 
June 10th, 2008 | Category: Gadgets | 3 comments

Fuel Price Hike

After much deliberation and delay, Govt. Of India has increased the retail fuel prices – Rs.5 for Petrol, Rs.3 for Diesel and Rs.50 for Household LPG. Though delayed for long we need to praise the Prime Minister for finally biting the bullet – especially with all the political compulsions of coalition politics he has and for getting the powerful finance ministry to agree for deep tax and duty cuts.

On the other side, I am wondering why Government has to be involved in fixing the price of retail fuel. Other than Household LPG, the fuel price should be left to free market. Just like anything else the fuel price has to be determined purely on demand and supply economics. With Oil prices at record levels of $135 from levels of $30 before 4 years, retail price have to naturally increase. You cannot make Oil Marketing companies loss over Rs.200,000 Crores and make the common shareholders in those companies suffer (Disclaimer: As on date I have no investments in ONGC, IOC, BPCL or HPCL). It doesn’t make any sense to buy oil at ever increasing prices and keep selling it at loss, eventually sinking the Oil companies. Leaving it without a price increase the loss would have been ultimately burdened on the miniscule compliant Tax payers in India. Somehow political parties in India are of opinion that increase in taxes affects only the rich and any burden on them is allowed – if you keep doing that, there will be no investments by companies and eventually no new jobs.

There is other side to the need to increase the prices and that is Environment. India is consuming Oil at historic levels that definitely has significant green house effects. The logical answer according to me is to increase the fuel price even more so that people feel the pinch and start reducing their consumption; and government can use the increased income to build on war footing world-class mass transport facilities in all cities.

June 4th, 2008 | Category: Economy | 2 comments

Dr.Kalyanasundaram awarded Sura Award in Toronto

DR.KALYANASUNDARAM RECEIVING AWARD IN CANADA

I am glad to be doing this post. Our INFITT Chair Dr.Kalyanasundaram has been awarded the prestigious “Sundara Ramasamy Award for Tamil Information Technology” on 18th May, 2008, in a function held at the University of Toronto, from the Canadian Tamil’s initiative TAMIL LITERARY GARDEN. Sundara Ramasamy (Sura) award citation mentioned few of Dr.Kalyan’s numerous contributions in the area of Tamil fonts, development of font encoding standards such as TSCII, Project Madurai and INFITT. Pioneer Dr. K. Srinivasan of Montreal was the first recipient of this award last year.

It was one of several Awards given out that day. Well known Tamil writer and translator Lakshmi Holmström received the main “Lifetime Achievement Award for 2007″, also known as Iyal Virudhu. Prof. George Hart III of Univ. Califoria, Berkeley and Mr. Padmanabha Iyer of UK were earlier recipients of the “Iyal Viruthu” awards.

June 3rd, 2008 | Category: localization | One comment

A different Gate Latch

Common Aldrop Model (shown here in Brass) I was in Bangalore the other day, there I saw a different type of Aldrop used to lock the main gate in one of the house – don’t ask me why I noticed it!.

Normally the Aldrops (which are bolt latches with a provision for putting a padlock) will be vertical and you lift the handle and move it sideways (mostly right hand side to open) with the padlock in vertical orientation. This one that I saw was oriented differently – you lifted the latch up and down vertically with the padlock in horizontal (lying down) position. Thinking hard with my little brain I couldn’t figure out the advantage of this model – please post in the comments if you know the advantage.

DIFFERENT TYPE OF AN ALDROP (GATE LATCH)

While writing this post I had to find out the name of this device, I was wondering whether to call it Gate Latch or Bolt Latch or Gate Bolt. After few searches I found an item in Amazon with the name “Aldrop”, then after few more searches confirmed that this is how it is called in India.

June 1st, 2008 | Category: Miscellanous, Syndicate | 5 comments
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