Comic : Donald Knuth

Amazing… Found this here

India disputed in Google Maps!

Recently I found something very shocking in Google Maps. As you all must be aware of, Google Maps Application is not the same for all the countries. There’s a different version of it for USA, for India, for China and for other countries in which Google has a center. By default you’re shown the Google Maps for the country you reside in. But what no one knew till now is that Google is showing different maps specifically of India in different versions of Google Maps!

In case of India, it shows Arunachal Pradesh and full Jammu & Kashmir as states of India, well within the Indian border line. That’s allright. Here’s the link : http://maps.google.co.in. Zoom in and you’ll see something like this :

But in case of USA, it shows the entire J&K and Arunachal Pradesh as Disputed Regions i.e. not belonging to either India or China. Here’s the link : http://maps.google.com. Open the link and search for India and zoom in. What you’ll see is :

Moreover, in case of China, it shows a major part of J&K and the entire Arunachal Pradesh as a part of China, within the border line of China. Now that is something very daring! Goto http://ditu.google.com and Don’t Panic!

I can only say, what the hell is this ? I think it is not safe for Google to play with such politically sensitive issues. I don’t know whether our country politicians are aware of it. I agree there is a political dispute over these regions but there should be a global consensus built upon it to agree to a common conclusion atleast for the time being. Recently, it was in News that China is issuing VISAs differently to citizens of J&K and not like the ones being issued to Indians from other states. Such moves by China are only aggravating the tensions between the two nuclear powers. Although, even India doesn’t hold a clean chit for it allowed Dalai Lama to visit Arunachal Pradesh just before the elections despite strong protest from across the border. If these trends continue, I fear the relationship between India-China will soon become like that of India-Pakistan. China won’t lose much, but India cannot survive with enemity with both of its major neighbours.

But I doubt personally that Google did this intentionally. May be even Google is used as a pawn in this complex maze of international political chess, played by USA, China and India. If the Chinese government forces, Google will have no option but to adapt to the maps provided by Chinese government or else face a ban (which google can’t afford in China) and same is the case with Indian Government and US Government. After all, Google is just a profit-minded software company! It certainely has no interest in world politics and It only does whats best in its own interest. If someone is responsible, its the governments.

Dr. Wave of Google

Summary in my own terms : Google Wave is an online collaboration media. Actually, its like a conference chat application, the only difference is that “chats” are now called “waves” and can also have videos,docs,pics,gadgets, etc.. and of course, google wave has the most interactive web-based platform I’ve ever seen.  You can have real time multimedia conferencing using wave, where others will see/hear exactly the same thing as you. Well to be frank, I don’t find something very new in google wave, because other applications do exists for the same purpose (though not web-based, and some are not even free like Cisco’s). Anyways, wave is still under development and I only hope more features are added to it with time.

By the way, I have 8 invites of Wave, anyone wants ??? 🙂

6 things to know about NIT Trichy

1. NIT Trichy is considered among the top 15 engineering institutes of India, and the best among all the NITs.
As an experienced student of NIT Trichy, I believe the credibility of the above statement depends on how you “judge” the NITs. If your judgement is purely based on placements and packages, then I can assure with no doubt that NIT Trichy is not just the best among all NITs but also better than a few IITs. However, if you also take into account student facilities, mess food, internet access and faculty profiles, then I myself doubt it.

2. Students have a much greater role to play here than any other college.
Its true, students of NIT Trichy are not just mere college-going children, but they are involved in extra and co-curricular works, projects and clubs of far greater significance. While the computing clubs like Delta Force are the sole incharge of the college website & LAN, the enterpreneurship club ECELL have made their presence felt across the globe with their flagship annual event Ventura. Besides these, there are leisure clubs like Karate, Photography, Movie Making, Dance Troupe, Music Troupe, etc. Other technical clubs include GLUG-T (Linux & FOSS) and Sun Club (JAVA & Open Source Apps).

3. An abundant number of events for the students to keep them busy for the entire year.
NIT Trichy can boast of a huge number of quality student events that take place annually. It ranges widely from the fresher’s parties organized by the student clubs to various kinds of campus games and contests, along with the academic classes on java, linux, matlab, c++, web,etc by the technical clubs. Moreover, the college’s main events like Pragyan, Festember and NITT Fest are entirely managed by the students with literally no intervention from the authorities.

4. The prestigious Bachelor of Survival degree (B.Surv).
Every student of NIT Trichy not only gets a B.Tech degree but also a B.Surv degree (though he doesn’t get a certificate for that). By survival in NIT Trichy, I mean surviving the extremities the authorities push the students into. With exams next morning and power being cut-off from your hostels, with horrible quality of mess food, with drinking water problems and just 10 kbps internet access, if you’re still able to complete your B.Tech in 4 years, then you truly are worthy of a B.Surv.

5. NIT Trichy is a haven for Computer Science and VLSI students.
As far as VLSI is concerned, NIT Trichy is considered as the “best” in the country. The faculty of the ECE Department are especially dedicated towards VLSI and have a number of modern laboratories for that purpose. OCTAGON, the largest computing centre is full of high-end computers and its 24×7 availability along with a huge library and elibrary has turned it into a driving factor for the students to get interested in computing.

6. Quality food is abundant, but be ready to empty your pockets.
Forget the mess for one day and you have a number of places as alternatives. I’ve never seen so many food locations in any institute of the country. Inside the campus you have a bakery, a restaurant, an icecream parlour, another bakery-cum-restaurant-cum-icecream parlour, a milk shake shop, a juice corner, 2 nescafes, 1 bru and 1 lipton stalls. Just outside the campus you have 3 dhabas, a proper restaurant and a number of small food stalls.

To be continued … For further readings on NIT Trichy, click here.

NewFolder .exe Virus

Here’s a useful tool I recently discovered for all you poor guys who have been troubled by the naughty NewFolder .exe Virus. What is a NewFolder .exe virus ? Well, as the name says it appears as NewFolder .exe in your folder. As soon as it lands in a folder, it scans the folder for subfolders recursively, and inside every folder it finds, it will create a copy of itself with the same name as the folder name. Writing this virus is just as easy as removing it. But in this short article, I’ll talk about how to destroy the virus not create.

I assume everyone must have had an encounter with this virus once in his lifetime. Removing this virus can be very irritating, even if you are a linux user. Ofcourse, when you’re in Linux , all you have to do is go to each of the folder, select the virus and simply delete it. But imagine what’ll happen when the virus has already spread across your hard drive or prendrive, spanning thousands of folders and made so many copied of itself.

Obviously you’re not going to go by this naive approach again. If you’re good at shell, writing a script isn’t a big deal. But if you’re even better in Linux Basics, then you should know that just 1 line of code is enough to remove this virus completely from your drive. All you have to do is to search & destroy the virus recursively.

Searching : How to search ? Well there are 2 ways. Way 1 is to check the name of the folder and then scan the folder for a file named .exe. If its there, then its the virus. Implementing this way will definitely take you more than 1 line of code. The simpler way to do is to forget about the folder and just search for all file names which matches the pattern ” * .exe ” (quotes for clarity). The important point to be noted here is that this virus, while creating the copy of itself, always adds a space before the “.exe” file extension. No other windows file generally have a space before .exe extension (unless you created it yourself).

Destroying : Just redirect the output of the search code to a “rm” command.

Just go to the directory in which the virus exists and execute the following code :

NOTE : There is a SPACE between “*\” and “.exe” (quotes for clarity).

find -name “*\ .exe” -exec rm -rf {} \;

PS : This code will find and delete all the file names with an extension of exe and a space before .exe in the filename. So make sure you don’t have any of your personal files with this kind of name pattern. Just make sure that there’s no space before the .exe extension in the file name. If you’re not sure, I’d recommend you take a backup before executing this code.

Ubuntu vs Fedora ?

Given a choice what will you chose, Ubuntu or Fedora ? Its one of the most arguable question among Linux Users. In this article, I try to talk about what I feel would be the best choice.

For those who have no idea about the title of this article – Ubuntu and Fedora, both are Operating Systems based on Open Source Linux Kernel. They are totally free of cost and belongs to a category called “FOSS” (Free and Open Source Software). Google for more.

I have been a frequent user of both Ubuntu and Fedora. While my laptop Dell Inspirton 1525 has both Ubuntu 9.04 Ultimate Edition 2.3 and Windows Vista Home Premium, I rarely use Windows. The only 2 things I open windows for are Microsoft Word and Gaming, because I feel that Sun’s OpenOffice is still too far behind the MS Word 2007 in terms of looks and user-friendliness and the Linux based Gaming is still in its infancy. Earlier I used to go to Windows for other needs as well like running HD Movies, using my Reliance/Tata Indicom Wireless Datacards, using Adobe PDF Reader, etc. but as soon as I grabbed the Ultimate Edition 2.3 , I almost forgot I had windows installed too!

According to my experience, Ubuntu is better than Fedora for normal desktop users. Ubuntu is officially a “home-based desktop operating system”, that is supposed to be user-friendly and provide all features that a desktop user requires like multimedia, networking, utility tools, office tools, etc. So in any case, if you’re a newuser on Linux, you should pick a flavour of Ubuntu. I’d recommend Ultimate Edition 2.3, which I am currently using. It has already got preinstalled all the softwares you’d ever need in your PC, except for games ofcourse. Even more, its looks are comparable with Windows and is more stable and user-friendly than other flavours. Besides, you can also pick among Linux Mint, Ubuntu 9.04, and others, but I don’t think anyone of them can beat Ultimate Edition in terms of preinstalled applications. Ubuntu flavours  in general, are simple, easy to use and user-friendly.

On the other hand, Fedora was actually a “sand-box” operating system when released, meant it was supposed to be for testing and experimenting Linux Softwares. It was never supposed to be for normal home based desktop users. Its meant for those who have advanced knowledge of Linux and can tweak fedora to their needs. However, with time it has incorporated lots of features meant for normal users which has made it the most widely linux OS used second only to Ubuntu.

When comparing security, both Fedora and Ubuntu provide you the same protection. Infact, any Linux based OS will give you security far better than that provided by Windows. I also include viruses, spamwares, adwares, etc while talking about security. Linux OS basically renders them non-executable in the first place, so no question arises of removing them.

All in all, I can summarize as follows :

If you’re a newcomer to Linux, use Ultimate Edition 2.3. You can also try Linux Mint, which has got even better GUI features but software-wise its little below Ultimate Edition.

For advanced users, who are ready to start off with the most stable Linux OS, just install Ubuntu 9.04 also known as “Jaunty Jackalope”. Ultimate Edition 2.3 uses Ubuntu 9.04 at its base, so I suggest its better than any other flavour. However, if you chose to install Ubuntu 9.04, you’d have to install every software, codecs you need by yourself. This may look to you as a negative point, yes it is if you don’t have a net connection, but otherwise, installing applications in Linux is as fast and simple as cutting a cake! Seriously, all you need to do is to open terminal and type the following command :
In Ubuntu :

sudo apt-get install packagename

In Fedora :

sudo yum install packagename

Thats all you have to do! Terminal will automatically download the software form the net and install it on your PC without you having to interfere in between. But you should know just one thing – the “package name”. Finding the exact package name will cose you less than 10 seconds in google.

In Ultimate Edition 2.3, you have got more than enough softwares than you’d actually need. There’s no point of having so many softwares ofcourse. I actually use less than 30% of the softwares available in Ultimate Edition.

Finally, for office users, Fedora should be the first choice. I am not sure why Fedora is best for office system, because personally I don’t find anything in Fedora that I can’t do better in Ubuntu. But still, people have their reasons to support Fedora over Ubuntu. No one has any concrete point but critics always say! Make your own choice and best of luck!

Still not sure, Click Here for answers!

NIT Trichy Local Area Network

Here’s a network map of NITT I prepared myself. I was long wishing to know the campus network in detail and so today I finally took the job to create it myself. Using the only tool I had for network scanning – NMAP (or “network mapper”) I was able to extract some of the basic information about the servers of my college along with their IP addresses, DNS names and their Operating System. I even got their MAC addresses and open ports, a great tool nmap is indeed!
To start with, unlike other colleges in the country, my college doesn’t provide NET Access in the computer labs except 1 which has just 99 systems. The Big OCTAGON or the Central Computing Center with lots of labs and workstations, has no net access for common students. Fortunately, Delta Force Members are allowed to access internet from one of the labs of Octagon called “Sun Lab”, named after Sun Microsystems , whose one of the employees and also the alumni of NITT donated 3 Sun Workstations and a number of Sun Terminals connected with those workstations forming a cluster. Although none of those terminal are currently online but there are around 6-7 computers running Linux and also including one Apple Mac, reserved only for Delta Members.

So coming back to the college LAN, the OCTAGON has got a pretty cool server room which centrally has all the servers of the campus which are connected to the LAN. The OCTAGON is provided an 8 Gbps internet access through the Software Technology Park based in Hyderabad. As per my knowledge, there are 7 servers which have direct internet access through the octagon. These includes the Webmail (The Mail Server of NITT), NITT ( The Server in which NITT Website is hosted), Pragyan (The server reserved for hosting Pragyan and Festember Events website), TP (Training and Placement), ConnectNIT ( A project of connecting all the NITs in the country in a special network and enabling collaborative projects and events) and RECAL (stands for “Regional Engineering College Alumni”, the server which host its website). Beside these there is one more server with IP 10.0.0.11 which doesn’t host anything but is used as a Proxy Server for accessing internet for those who have access, which includes Delta Members and Spider Members and may be others who need.

Delta has access to internet through 3 servers namely – NITT, Pragyan and 10.0.0.11. However only Core Members (that includes me) have access to NITT, which is always online. NITT and Pragyan comes under the direct control of Delta as they are responsible for the NITT Mail Website and Pragyan Website. Besides these Delta also hosts other servers (or actually computers turned servers) which are based on a local subnet of delta. They are used for some services like Codelabs (Programmer’s Corner of Delta), Dalal Street (An online stock exchange game hosted every year on Pragyan), GLUG-T( GNU Linux Users Group of Trichy of which I am a member too), and other multipurpose computers. In reality each of the computer delta owns can be instantly turned into a makeshift server and can host anything from Pragyan to Festember website to a heavy online application like Dalal Street. Delta provides most of the LAN Services to the students of NITT including a compendium of E-Books and Cool Softwares, besides providing access to Wikipedia, Times of India, Topcoder and SPOJ ( We are working on it ). Also some big projects are going inside Delta right now including a cool new template for the NITT Website and an iDelta portal similar to iGoogle.

Overriding Inline Font Using CSS

Recently I discovered something very cool in CSS while working on the new template of my college website. My college website uses the Pragyan CMS v2, which was written from scratch by the members of Delta Force ( or the Central Webteam of NITT ). Our college is one among those few institutions in the world which uses a home developed CMS for its website, all others use the free CMS like Mambo, Joomla, Drupal, etc. Now that is something which makes you proud of being in Delta, but not to forget every good things comes with some sacrifices. In this case, the Pragyan CMS uses a WYSIWYG editor that enables anyone anywhere in the world to change the content of each and every page of my website if he has the necessary permissions. The main problem which I faced because of this was while designing the template of the faculty pages. Every faculty of my college has been given permissions to edit the content of his webpage in the college website. Ofcourse this sounds reasonable, but the problem is that not all faculty members has a good sense of professional looking website designing. So they end up using odd colours, underlining, changing the text height and weight and font in order to make it more attractive. This is surely not acceptable in a professional website as all the pages needs to be uniform in styling as well as in content. So I pondered upon how to tackle this problem and wow! I got the solution.

What faculty members, or infact any user with permissions who uses the WYSIWYG editor for modifying the contents of the website, controls is the source code of that particular page while I control the main CSS stylesheet. So all I needed to ensure that even if they put tags like <font> and inline styling attributes like style=””, they shouldn’t work! And yes there is a way to do it. All you need to do is to make sure that your CSS settings override the inline stylings. This can be done by putting the !important tag next to the CSS attribute which you want to be permanent.

In cases like defining CSS for font and span tags where you dont want any specific pre-defined attribute to be used always, all you can do is to use the inherit option in place of the value of the attribute. This will make sure that whenever these tags are used inline in the HTML code, there styling is overridden by whatever styling there parent has. So even if you put a <font> tag inside the <h1> tag, then no matter what you specify in the font tag, the styling will always be done according to the CSS of the h1 tag. Ofcourse since you are also overridding the inline styling you also need to put the !important tag. Hence overall the code becomes :

font, span

{

	font-family : inherit !important;

	color       : inherit !important;

	text-weigth : inherit !important;

	font-size   : inherit !important;

	text-decortation : inherit !important;

	

}

and to make sure that your CSS styles for h1,h2,h3,a,p,etc cannot be changed by inline styling, just use !important. For e.g.

h1

{

	font-family : calibri, arial, verdana !important;

	color       : #000000 !important;

	text-weigth : normal !important;

	font-size   : 1em !important;

	text-decortation : none !important;

}

Now this will make sure that all the beautiful inline stylings done by faculty and staff members with no sense of webdesigning gets overriden. This is surely going to make some of them bang their heads as they wont be able to know why there tags aren’t working ! 🙂