My day of reckoning!!!

What else....The semester exams begins today...I had been thru a few sems but never blogged about it..fair enough...This time its a different story altogether and the exams start with a brain-crashing mathematics....

The peculiarity of this subject is well documented by any tiny-totter to a no-holds barred scientists...

Trying my luck today. Will post regarding how i managed.

My motto: Maths...dont bother about grades. Just sneak through

Illusive sense of security?

The recent brouhaha over SRK detention brings to notice an important issue which finds resonance across everybody. That issue being the effectiveness of intelligence gathering. What purpose does a multi-billion dollar security apparatus serve if they can't verify who SRK is?

The point is how do we trust these guys and what use do they make of all our legitimate information?
The phone-tapping, scans, frisks, bgc etc. Do they server any purpose?
The unwritten rule seems to be everybody inclusive of highly respected Dr. Abdul Kalam (never mind, he is a former president) and SRK (who is he? lol) is a suspect. I am sure they even take the pants down of Barack Hussein Obama when he boards air force one. No one is bigger then the law isnt it?

Most concerning, is the fact the US security apparatus seems to be paranoid post 9/11. Of course, we are all appalled and share the same grief. We know how it feels when we are attacked. our sufferings are well documented pre 9/11. We had our parliament attacked, blasts everywhere, our own centre of pride (mumbai) held at gun-point for 3 days. Yet, though with seething anger, we have gotten back to normal lives with lessons learnt. But still we are not paranoid. We dont detain every boat in the arabian sea. Nor do we block all humans from parliament..lol

Of course, the US guys seem a lot less hawkish now under a pragmatic president. But the fact is,every international traveller is shit-scared of entering US lest they be part of a detailed security procedure. Its like a short detention camp at every port of entry.

The US is too good a country to let these hawks ruin their free spirit, openness and the pursuit of happiness which is the corner stone of their declaration of independence. A couple of minutes on their history is ample proof and would assure is that they will bounce back and be the sun-shine country that everybody in the world wanted to migrate and call home.

At the same time, its a lesson to all of the other countries, that merely getting a illusionary procedure to harass its own citizens does not serve any purpose.

We all dread of any events of national importance becos we know we may be stopped for checks, ID's and what not. A national celebration turns into a nightmare for every reveller. I had it first-hand this independence day.

So wishing for common sense and pragmatism.

Cloud Computing ----very cloudy

Dusting off my clustering skills after a hiatus of two years (had worked on building a cluster for nutch back then), i am starting work on a eucalyptus (open.eucalyptus.com) cloud on rocks cluster...

The definition of cloud computing is one cloud but i would still like to re-emphasize the utility of a level of abstracion and isolation on various levels like memory,cpu etc etc (one more definition to the trash)

will keep posted on the happenings as i go along...

mailing list pun

Found a nice page with lots of intended pun on mailing list etiquettes...Its hilarious but quite importantly gets the message across...
http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html

w-meter tool released

we released a new tool developed at our lab to the open-source community. Have a look at w-meter.sourceforge.net The tool is meant to do conformance testing and performance evaluation of wi-fi products

have a look at w-meter.sourceforge.net

Jai Ho!!!

Now that the elections are over, i heaved a sigh of relief at the outcome...its a pity that people are relieved at the prospect of a secular and stable government...The electorate have time and again showed that they are the boss of the EVM.

If you look at the election agendas we had for the past few elections, it changed from roti,kapda makaan to nuclear deal, internal security, terrorism...fair enough..its a testimony of the times we live in but also scary as to what we have made our world to be,....

The trumpeters of "loh purush" syndrome actually are thinking that mere fear mongering among the electorate will get them votes...but again kudos to the indian electorate....

I am proud of the fact a non-corrupt, learned professor is leading the country....

Jai Ho!

philosophy rant!!!

There has been a bloodbath on ilugc regarding petty issues like one ignorant guy using a .ppt in an open source conf, one's choice of posting in other languages and other stuff...all the more, there has been lots of mails reminding eah other of mailing list guidelines, etiquettes, common sense etc.,

Hypocrisy to the MAX i would say...forget about all these artificial rules, what about the natural rules like respect for each other, courtesy, tolerance, humulity and so on...

Much has been criticised about NRCFOSS and how everything that it does is not helpful to FOSS cause and so on. Grow UP!!! with out NRCFOSS, ilugc would not have had the same kind of visibility in TN atleast. NRCFOSS at AU-KBC has been humble enough to let these giys run the show and there is no penny credit given for this simple fact...any LUG guy knows how much sponsorship money NRCFOSS has contributed and/or arranged to run your favourite fossconf show in the world..

NRCFOSS has also sponsored so many of these highly learned community members to participate in workshops and conferences organized by NRCFOSS. Yet these gentlemen speak of government money being waste..i dont know whether its waste in consumption or waste in expenditure.....

ALso with out a simple understanding of the objective of FOSS LAB server, people are crying out at the uselessness of the utility....paining to see iluustruous guys join the noise generator...

if only people dont forget analytical reasoning and common sense, we would live peacefully and have a good SNR ( Source code to Need Ratio)