Happy Birthday Blogger

Surprise! Surprise!! A new and refreshing template is a birthday gift from me to this blog site! This blog "Thus Spoke O.A.K." completed its First Anniversary on 24th of June. Being inspired by Khurshed "Bawa" Batliwala, I started writing blog post. From a long time, I was contemplating on changing the template. So here it is!!

!!! MANY MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY !!!

From now on there will be no comment box. And the comment box will be put up only after the viewership reaches 300 visits per day! Do not worry, I am keeping the track of viewers per day. If at all you feel like sending some comments, ideas, or even a complaint, then you are free to mail me on my gmail ID: omkar.blogosphere [at] gmail.com I have also removed lots of scripts and codes that used to make the page load very slow. Happy Bloggin' See Ya!!

Netbooks

How fast technology changes is what really amazes me. There were days when a B School grad would stroll in the campus garden with a laptop(Notebook) in her hand. But now a new device is making rounds. Move over notebooks, Netbooks have arrived. Net books are smaller version of laptops, primarily focused for the Internet surfing needs.

For those who spend most of their time on Internet, Netbook is a cool answer especially those who prefer mobility. The netbooks offer more or less the same features of a regular laptop. But there are small nips and cuts here and there in features. The all host communication devices, like Bluetooth, WiFi, USB, Broadband (Ethernet port), Modem. But netbooks primarily being made for online application are not heavy on hardware. They mostly host Intel mobile processors, which are made specially for mobile devices. Some netbooks have solid state drives. That means no hard disk with rotating platters! These are costly variants of netbook. And they have is the battery life option. They come with two battery capacities, 3 cell battery (Regular) and 6 cell battery (Extended Life). They also have varying screen size. They range from 7 inches to 10.2 inches. The keyboard size also varies accordingly. Most find it too difficult to type on the 7 inch width netbook. It tad too tiny for anyone's fingers. The mantra here is the wider the netbook the better it is!

Netbooks are manufactured and marketed prominent brands in computing world. They are Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, MSI, Lenovo, Samsung, to name a few!

Interesting Fact

It is found from a study conducted by NPD that 60% of netbook buyers do not take their netbooks out of their home.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbooks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_netbooks

O.A.K.

When the cute child said... Booo

There are movies made to make you laugh, to make you cry, and there are some to scare the hell out of you! Yes, they are famously called Horror Movies. These flicks operate on some fundamental base; Fear. Fear is one factor that is hidden somewhere in our subconscious mind. Like when the camera takes a shot at the background of the character. The character turns and something jumps at her. In such a jumpy situation, your heart leaps out of the mouth! Well, how does this camera panning make the heart leap out? We fear many things, from creepy crawly bugs to dark corners of room. Some people have fear or can say phobia of being trapped alive in a coffin buried underground. While I have seen some people being afraid of Peas. Yes, those cute li'll green peas! Harmless for you but may scare the **** out of others. But what drives such fear/phobia? Fear is nothing but past impressions on our mind. Psychology reluctantly believes in re-birth. In the past life if a person has died due to poisoned peas, then the last sight in front of him would be the dreadful peas. The horrific impact stays in the mind for a long time. The impact is such that it has a lingering effect even in the after life! Same happens when we watch a movie. The impressions made by the horror flick lingers on for god-knows-what length of time. I have some impressions too. Some of the Hollywood booo-chandi(In tamil it means ghosts) flicks that have impressed me are Ju-On (Grudge), 1408, Event Horizon, Exorcist, Poltergiest, The Shining. These films work on certain principle of scaring viewers. The best way to scare out people is the silence. Generally a scary movie has a spine chilling background score. But the background score where no background score can be heard, has a spine "freezing" effect. The silence seems natural instead of the spooky music. And the viewers are scared to death when the sound is back. Another trick from their book is to loneliness. People hate loneliness, especially when they are afraid. It is like hitting in the sore wound. In the movie, 1408, Mike Enslin (jhon Cusack) is left alone in the room. No other characters. Yet it spooks out the viewers! Asians seem to have a fetish for hairs. That can be seen in The Grudge! Where as the westerners have used the faith in god as leverage to spook people. The exorcist is a classic example. The Poltergiest was a good example of the para-normal activites! Fear arises when you know the dreadful problem but no aparent solution is available. But there is a difference between Terror and Horror. Horror is the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a deeply unpleasant occurrence. By contrast, terror is usually described as the feeling of dread and anticipation that precedes the horrifying experience. In other words, horror is more related to being shocked or scared (being horrified), while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful (being terrified). Now it is up to you to decide whether you want fearful impression or not!

The days of mobile are numbered!

Come June 30, 2009 will be the last day of using a phone with a phony IMEI No. With that the usability of the phone will also cease to exist. According to the technology calendar, year 2008 was the year of security lapse! A person could easily get a SIM card from a local retail outlet with a little cost of Rs. 15/- for a SIM and start using the phone in matter of few hours. No verification done! Pre or Post. That gave the Nov 26 attackers an added advantage. Simply with a fake ID cards, you have a fully functional cell phone with you. It seems, our country is keen on learning any lesson hard way. After the attacks, the national cellular operators have taken up the task of customer authenticity/ verification. The solution is not that simple. There are many people living in the city who come from remote villages. They buy prepaid cards as they are very convenient. No hassles of bills! Most of them live as tenants, or share a room with other colleagues. How shall such verification be done? The attackers take the advantage of this loop hole to plan attack. Phone Operators now-a-days do call and verify the details. But is it fool-proof? There are no physical verification of address except in case of MTNL Mumbai. The problem does not end here. With the flood of China made phones at utterly cheap rates, it is attracting the price conscious customers like a house flies to the sweets (or shit). But the bug here is, most china made phones have an illegal IMEI no. IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity No.) is a unique 15-digit code implanted in handsets when they are manufactured. It help security agencies track terror suspects and for locating the missing ones! Keeping national security in mind, DoT Dept of Telecommunications, in October 08 asked operators to discontinue the services to handsets that do not have IMEI no. or having a fake number. But the so called last date has been postponed three times and June 30, 2009 is finally decided to be the D-day. You can check the IMEI no. by typing *#06# from your handset keypad. To verify if the number is genuine, Just type a SMS "IMEI" (w/o quotes) followed by a space followed by 15 digit IMEI number and send it to 53232. You will get the SMS describing the legality of handset! Now what if the IMEI number is fake? Soon there will be 1600 Genuine IMEI Implant centers that will be opened across Indian cities. All you will need to do is carry a valid ID card, driving license or voter's card to such center and with Rs. 180/- plus tax and 30 minutes of time the IMEI number will be changed to a valid, legal, no-issues number. Check the number before the days of mobile get numbered! O.A.K.

A Single point

It is amazing about the way a profound knowledge points hits you. And trust me, it hits hard! But it does not come for those who just sit idle in its anticipation. Some work has to be done to "earn" it. A simple yet profound knowledge point(kp) hit me today during lunch. The KP that I always follow is Living in the present moment. Every time I remind myself this one point and relish every moment I live! Yesterday, a YES!+ Teacher, Ambarish was sharing a dialogue from a Bollywood film, Chandani chowk to china. It was something like this, "It is not the 1000 techniques which you know that bothers me. It is the one technique that you have practiced 1000 times that bothers me" On the similar line I realized a KP. It goes like this:

It is not the thousand knowledge points that one has learn't that matters. What matters is the single knowledge point that one has lived a thousand times!

I was super elated after realizing this! O.A.K.

Non Vegetarian Diet: A Statistical outlook

Ten Thousand year back, Human beings started living in groups. They knew that in group there was more security. Then, they started hunting in groups. They would have a leader under whose command they preyed on a wild animal. These people also belonged very much to nature. They did not kill more than necessary. Although they were not as advanced as we are, but still they knew that there is something called an ecosystem. Human greed or the never ending wants can trip the whole system in turn effecting their existence! They were also an observant lot. They soon found out that in every season, the plants around them underwent a seasonal transformation. In Autumn, leaves fall. In Winter, it's cold. In Spring, new foliage blooms. They also observed that the seeds sprout, giving birth to a new plant. That's how plantation started. So turning vegetarian was the coolest thing to do at that time. It was more of a sensible fad! But now when I look around me, I see people have taken up a flair to turn back into primitive apes! Actually, they are aping the ancient apes who preferred a carnivorous diet. There is no harm in living a vegetarian life style. But, the problem lies in how humans continue to procure meat to eat. In ancient days, those intelligent people used to "hunt". I Emphasize the word HUNT. They did not do animal farming. They did not breed the animals. The Breeding of animals, of course, started long back in human history. But not the way it was today. The shepherds took the animals to graze and there was enough land mass with verdant vegetation to feed those animals. But in today's world, area of the size of 5 football fields are cleared of natural forests for the sake of animal grazing. Livestock production uses about a third of the world’s arable land, and as land becomes scarce, expansion of livestock production encroaches into forest land and is causing mass deforestation. Here, I am still not considering the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are generated by the livestock. The title of the post is Vegetarian Economy. So lets take a look from the world economics angle! For that first lets do some math. F.Y.I. (For your information) A hen eats around 30 Kg of food grains in its life time! That hen is murdered by dipping it in boiling water head down and a recipe is planned out to turn it into a dish! If you make a chicken curry, it may serve 4 two times in a day; effectively serves 8. Lets say you make a soup, then it will serve12 to 16 servings! (assuming generous proportions of water has been used!). So 30 Kilos of food grains are effectively used to raise a chicken and it serves only 15. Let's say you skillfully make it twenty. For a vegetarian person who consumes legumes and food grains, the diet will be around 200 to 250 grams of food grains. Like 150 grams of rice, 50 grams wheat, 50 grams legumes. For ease of calculation we take 250 If we divide 30 Kilos i.e. 30,000 grams by 250 grams we get 120 hungry stomachs. So 30,000 grams of food grains feed 120 vegetarian people while it can effectively feed only 20. Let me take the liberty to exaggerate. Even if 1 chicken is turned in to a dish that serves 30 people, it is far less compared to vegetarian menu! It directly means that 30 Non Vegetarian people eat the food that could have made 120 vegetarians burp! That's absolute indecency. And people talk about uprooting the hunger crisis from this planet? That's crap. Or rather chicken crap!!! In terms of consumption, the non-vegetarian diet required 2.9 times more water, 2.5 more energy, 13 times more fertilizer and 1.4 times more pesticides than the vegetarian one. People in India, struggle for water at the public water taps. Water tankers are booked to supply water as municipal pipelines run dry! What do you think is the reason. Non Veg gang may blame the industries, but if the non vegetarians would just take up the vegan life. They may suddenly find their neighbourhood tanks filing up! Also, government like ours, believe in granting subsidy on the animal meat! The subsidy does not come free of cost. Somebody is taxed to give subsidy to others. Guess who pays for it? No prizes for guessing it right!!! I have heard/read people defend their carnivorous life style by stating that we humans are on the top of the food chain. But my question is; Does that give us license to exploit the planet and its resources with our insatiable greed? I believe that since we are on the top of food chain, it becomes our responsibility to take care of the planet and our down lines in the food chain, instead of blatant exploitation. Don't you think so?!? Source: http://astrology.yahoo.com/channel/health/is-a-vegetarian-diet-better-for-the-planet-455834/ http://www.jewishveg.com/schwartz/diplanet.html http://www.vegforlife.com

A brief history of Linux

Volumes of data have been written on Linux on the www. All you have to do is to search the net for keywords like, "Linux History", "Linux Story", "Linus Torvald" and there will be huge data on the requested query. Then what was the need to write this post! This post is written to make people aware of an operating system that is not owned by Microsoft or Apple Inc. The issues addressed in this post are related to Linux operating system; Firstly, what prompted Linus Torvald, the inventor of Linux kernel, to create this OS? Secondly, If Linux is free for distribution then why do only a minuscule percent of population use it? Thirdly, What will it take to make this OS really popular, in terms of usage? To answer all the Qs above, a brief story need to be told. First let me tell you something about UNIX. Before the invention of UNIX, Computers were meant for a single purpose. Computer systems didn't talk to each other in the early days of computing. Even the various computer lines made by the same company often needed interpreters. And forget any interoperability of systems by different vendors! In addition, operating systems very often performed only limited tasks, and only on the machines for which they were written. If a business upgraded to a bigger, more powerful computer, the old operating system probably wouldn't work on the new computer, and often the company's data had to be entered - again - into the new machine. So the scientists and engineers from Bell Labs and GE collaborated with the help of MIT to build a mainframe time sharing system called MULTICS (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) But over the period the efforts to build an economically viable system failed! So some alternative had to be found out. Ken Thompson came up with a brilliant idea while playing a game "Space Travel" on the comp. He tinkered with the codes and unknowingly created the kernel (Heart of any operating system) for Unix. This laid the foundation for UNIX. In 1985, Professor Andy Tanenbaum wrote a Unix like operating system from scratch, and named it MINIX. A Finnish student named Linus Torvald first came into contact with Unix like systems through his use of this MINIX at the university of Helsinki Finland in Computer Science .Linus Torvald wanted to upgrade MINIX and put in features and improvements, but Andrew Tanenbaum wanted Minix the way it was and so Linus decided write his own kernel. That's why Linus Torvald created a kernel of his own; "Linux".He released Linux on the Internet as an Open Source product and under his own license and then later in 1991 under the GPL (General Public License) . Another Engineer, Richard Stallman, started the FSF (Free Software Foundation) as a development effort to promote the use of Free Software. Stallman recognized the need to write a free and open source Unix-like operating system so that people could have a Unix system under a non-propriety non-restrictive commercial license. The FSF started a project called GNU to fulfill this aim. GNU stands for "GNU is not Unix" (a recursive acronym). By 1991, GNU had already amassed a compiler (GCC- GNU C Compiler), a C library, both very critical components of an operating system, and all associated generic Unix base programs. But, they were missing a kernel, which was going to be called the GNU HURD.The FSF naturally adopted the Linux kernel to complete the GNU system to produce what is known as the GNU/Linux operating system, which is the correct term for all distributions of Linux like Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux. Thus GNU Linux was born! Remember that Linux is just the Kernel or heart of Op. Sys. not the Op. Sys by it self! Now question #2, Why do a small percent of population uses GNU Linux? To probe this Q, let me make you aware of some facts! Did you know!

• That most of the Windows users never alter the settings/configurations of the system, except for changing wallpapers, screen savers, few peripherals and applications.

• Most PC users use their PC for defined work only. Eg., Gamers do not install office applications on their PC, generally.

• Most PC owners are not much interested in learning other operating systems (or at least having a look at Mac OS, GNU/Linux). They are very much contented with the system they have!

• Most PC users believe that you need to be a geek to tinker with codes, registry editor, jumper settings on motherboard etc etc. (Which is absolutely false!!!)

• Most PC users are unaware of the security issues with Windows. They prefer their "Crashed windows" rather than GNU?Linux or Mac OS. Some people still use Internet Explorer, very much oblivious of the potential threat looming on their desktop.

Although open source wants to replace Microsoft on the desktop, or at least make a serious dent in Microsoft's hegemony, to do that, the open source community must recognize that its primary goals: freedom of choice, freedom of source code, and freedom to alter applications, are not the goals of the average user! Most users of Microsoft products are content once they pay for the product. They are not bothered to change the codes (With Microsoft, that's impossible) even if they are given a chance! So when it comes to GNU/Linux, most people think that it's a geek's operating system and they cannot use it! That can be the valid reason as to why most people on the planet still prefer using Microsoft products and only few people are left using GNU/Linux. So if Linux has to be on every desktop, a strategic change would be needed! There are plenty of Linux Distributors like, Red Hat, SuSe, Vector, Mandrake, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix etc. etc. First of all, there needs to be a standardization in some aspects. So that if a person has to migrate from MS Windows to any of the linux distro, then the choice won't be difficult to make. As there will be some base standard. Also when Open source firmly believes in giving the end users freedom of choice to choose from a variety of Linux distro packs and customization of the system, it must also see to it that the interface of Linux is so easy to operate that there is no "freedom" of choice left but to continue using Linux! Linux can tie up with many computer training centers to teach the Linux operations. It's training must include setup of Linux on a new hard disk, Operation of the Root. Switching to the various GUI's like KDE, Gnome, ICEwm. Installing various application and adding peripherals, with their driver set. This can make a lots of people familiar with the Linux system. On the net, many people vouch that for starters, Ubuntu is the best Distro! That answers the final Question! I firmly believe that with a planned and strategic thinking, Linux will soon be seen on most desktops on the planet! And those who are thinking that why I am promoting Linux so much, well, I am a big fan of the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source! I am not at all a geek or tech nerd. But I would always love to customize the system I use! And more over, why pay and exorbitant amount to a company who gives you an operating system which you cannot customize it in the way you want? Moreover, the hassle does not end here! There are validation checks online, expiry of license over time period, calling off any technical and security support after few years and fines one has to pay for keeping any "pirated" copies. Trust me, you are free from all such headaches while using an open source op. sys.! So... When will you switch to Op. Sys. other than windows??? ;-) O.A.K.