Honey Zone

A Happy Indian Cricket Fan

2011-12-27T19:23:00.000+05:30

Never have I been so happy during India's 1st away test match as I am today.

Every time India tours to the bouncier faster pitches or pitches with lateral movement, previews of the tour are full of how strong Indian batting is and how Indian bowlers need to deliver or injury issues to bowlers etc. This time isnt too different till the preview.

However, once the tour starts, bowlers have held their heads high and delivered more often than not, ignoring the tours which had more injuries than bowlers. And the mighty batting has let the team down on a lot of occasions. Not to forget the tag of bad starters as well. With all that reputations and numbers to show for, batting has crumbled, some times from a position of strength or after being in a position to save the match - take Oval test for example.

However this time its been different, 214/3 - I would take that on 1st test match of any tour. Just keep going tomorrow.

Me in a World Series Hockey Promo video

2011-12-05T18:40:00.000+05:30

Infosys 3.0

2011-06-01T22:05:00.000+05:30

Read about Infosys starting a software products startup.

What thrills me most about this is the fact that eventually they realized how important, though risky, it is to have something which can bring in recurring income.

Hopefully, this would bring the culture of products in IT in India and hopefully, some big ones beyond business solutions.. may be a middleware or a big time Operating System someday.

April 2 - Most forgettable day of my life

2011-04-05T00:04:00.000+05:30

There are certain questions which hide more than they reveal, they seem to have obvious answers unless you have experienced otherwise

e.g. What would be the happiest day for an Indian Cricket Team fan?

I always thought it'd be the greatest day of my life when India wins the cricket world cup and wished for it to happen before Sachin retires, possibly like a billion other Indian Cricket Fans. It just seemed obvious that there could be nothing that could ever stop me from enjoying that day.

However, when I heard the cheers and screams and chanting of "Indiaaa... India" this Saturday, it wasnt all that pleasurable, it was hurting to say the least. Never have I felt irritated with these sounds ever in my life... I can still remember crying myself to bed after India lost to Sri Lanka in '96 semis and breaking my bed on India winning Calcutta test against Aussies in '01 and many other instances when I brought down the house. This certainly wasnt one of them.

This was a realization that an Indian Cricket Fan, who had planned to name his son on this day after one of the champions of the team if India were to win, also happens to be a human who after losing his son, couldnt enjoy the moment he had waited for all his life.

You would always be in our fondest memories.

Well Done, Bowlers !!!

2010-12-29T17:16:00.000+05:30

Surprise Surprise !!!

A reminder of the Great Indian Traditions from last 15 odd years, when the Indian Cricket Team went out to foreign tours with Strong Indian Batting being something to watch out for. And, the lesser know bowlers came out the heroes...

Just as it happened today or over the last 3 days @ Durban. Zak and team bowls India to a series levelling win.

Hurrey !!!!

They're back, party time

2010-12-15T12:47:00.002+05:30

Nine years and plenty of titles later, the boys are back to try and create history together again.
It seems a little late to create history though, considering their age and fitness, however, the fact that we'd get to see them together again is worth anyways.

Really Excited!!

Outstanding Indian Hockey

2010-11-22T17:25:00.000+05:30

Its barely been 40 days since we celebrated the Silver medal in CWG and Indian Hockey team is making us proud once again.. winning all games in the group stages so far including beating Pakistan once again this year... thats what... thrice this year, though the games are getting closer match by match... doesnt matter. We Won !!!

Good Luck Guys for the semis and finals... make us proud.. looking forward to a Gold Medal and Olympics place now. Chak De !!!

Independence Day - Again

2010-08-15T14:04:00.000+05:30

Here comes I-Day again, the day I moved to this blog 4 years back. The day I remind myself every year the reason I am born, the reason I am.
For the first time in years on this day, the feeling of accomplishment has replaced the feeling of guilt. Atleast a start to something in lines with the long term goals I have set myself the day I graduated.

Hope to see my I-Day trend continuing.

Dont steal data casually !!!

2010-08-13T18:55:00.002+05:30

Its pretty common amongst Indian IT professionals to take out pieces of code or data they find valuable and take it away; something they consider their "owned" brainchild which it isnt..

Watch out geeks for any such consequences as in this link.

P vs NP solved - or is it?

2010-08-11T15:49:00.001+05:30

Just read a news item about a American scientist of Indian origin has submitted a paper on solving P vs NP. Here's the link

Learnings

2010-07-05T20:29:00.003+05:30

This isnt something I am preaching, its just something to remind myself -

Never step into customer's territory, dont tell him how his business could do better.
Just be precise whether what he wants can or cannot be done, dont get into better approaches or alternatives unless asked for.
Learn to keep quiet.
Learn to talk only when talked to.
Learn to hold your opinions and your facial expressions.

You should do well !!!

J2EE: Too many open files

2010-05-18T16:58:00.002+05:30

Now this thing is eating my head since yesterday, and I have done all i could to stop it from coming up again on my server.

The issue is with Checkpoint production server where the following error keeps popping up twice a day and the server is literally held up till you restart it -

May 18, 2010 3:03:34 PM org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint acceptSocket
SEVERE: Endpoint ServerSocket[addr=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0,port=0,localport=19638]
ignored exception: java.net.SocketException: Too many open filesjava.net.SocketException: Too many open files
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketAccept(Native Method)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.accept(PlainSocketImpl.java:384)
at java.net.ServerSocket.implAccept(ServerSocket.java:453)
Having Googled enough, we reviewed all the jars for reloading itself through out the application, reviewed the whole code for closing all File streams blah blah blah. Nothing worked.

Finally, working on getting all the open files in a shell file passing a process id to lsof and releasing the thread.

Good Luck Sania

2010-04-01T17:14:00.002+05:30

I fell for Sania when I first saw her sometime in 2003 when I was just out of college. And its been that way since. She has given us so much to smile about and be proud of and inspite of being an under-achiever based on the expectation set by her form during 2004-06, she has done more than any of Indian women ever did in Tennis. She deserves a lot of credit for that.

Now that she is looking forward to the best thing in her personal life, not only she's being frowned upon for wrong reasons but also being subjected to judgements about her patriotism and people seem more concerned about which country would she play for than whether she would continue playing or how her life's gonna be. I mean, cmon, so many NRIs excel and we take credit of their being of Indian origin. We could easily do that even if Sania were to play for Pakistan instead of India. Then, why frown? Moreover, could you question if Sonia Gandhi's heart goes out to anything in Italy as much as when something going on in India... of course you couldnt. And people tweeting about Sania being a loser should try and pickup a Tennis racquet and try and make it halfway to what Sania has achieved.

I say, you go ahead and marry the guy you have found to be perfect for you and to hell with the jerks trying to spoil your day. Not that you wont be breaking a lot of hearts (like mine :( ), but that was always gonna happen, right ??

Good Luck Sania !!!!

What a week for my Punto

2010-03-17T16:01:00.000+05:30

It all began with a broken front wind shield and a trip to the service center and after a week, Punto's still there, courtesy the sweetest uncle driving his HR-26 AJ 0861 right into my Punto's right doors. Yup, thats right.
I just got it back on Saturday after the new glass (and a nice car wash) and it just seemed like the right idea to pickup Keema Kalegi when your wife's away and 9 days of pure veg meals are to follow. Little did I know that amidst a street jam, another guy was gonna ram into my dearest car and flee... I did catch him, and the guy seem to accept his fault after a bit of denial and agreed to pay the damages which was obviously before he took a U-Turn next day morning.
Anyways.. she's back in the garage getting her cosmetic done and here I am, walking around the town and missing my dine outs.

BTW I still went ahead and got Keema Kalegi that night.

Fir dil do hockey ko...

2010-02-28T23:40:00.000+05:30

My day started with a ruined plan of celebrating Holi with family courtesy Dera baba followers going bizarre and having nothing to do... and a sold out India-Pakistan Hockey World Cup. Hoping against hope I decided to go for the match anyways and without any friends or family along, I arrived at Mjr. Dhyanchand Stadium and stood looking at the queue of fans entering the venue.

The tickets were available in black for double the actual price, however, destiny had something else figured out for me. And thanks to amazing group of cops @ duty outside the venue and my patience to stick outside the venue and wait for a spare ticket, the cops gave me one of the seized tickets from the blackies as a reward for my patience.

Enter the arena, the atmostsphere was a lot more amazing than anything I have experienced in a cricket match in India.. which was overwhelming however, understandable given the duration of the game being only a couple of hours. For all the 4 goals scored by India, it was real pleasure watching it from the best possible place - behind the Pak goal post. There is no better place to watch a penalty corner. Better run up the stands for the rest of the game. In hockey, you feel so much more than just a spectator like you do in a cricket match. The arene being smaller helps the cause of course.
Cometh any countdown... for the beginning of a game, towards the half time, esp the end of the game countdown, hearing the echo of the whole crowd counting it (ofcourse only when the home team is winning) makes the moment of victory so special and realizing that sharing a win with thousands is making it all the more special.

Couldnt have been a more perfect ending to this day.

Just India

2010-02-23T13:57:00.003+05:30

Dont you ever get sick of being ever-so-critical of Indian political system, the administration in general.. I do listening to all that.. here's my response.. actually the Judiciary system's response to those who believe that rich and powerful carry govt and administration in their pockets. This story is about Haldiram's owner facing justice in a case against a tea stall owner.
Read more... and enjoy !!!

The French Burqa

2010-01-27T08:14:00.002+05:30

Its outrageous that a developed secular country like France is moving to ban Burqa in their country. Irrespective of being a religious or a social clothing, a woman deserves the right to decide for herself what she prefers to wear, even if its her burqa.
A govt cant possibly decide if I am gonna wear sunglasses on a rainy day or not OR whether or not I can take out an umbrella on a sunny day.
France - get a clue !!!

Everyone wants some sunshine

2010-01-11T13:49:00.002+05:30

Now, this is how Aamir magic works, nostalgia plus some audiences' character identification.
The 3 Idiots Phenomenon has become so big that anywhere you look, you could find a piece of it.. esp the song "Give me some Sunshine.." seems to be the and online status or Dialer/Caller/Hello Tune of every 2nd person.

Now, that everyone's decided to grow up once again due to their compromised childhood.. I'd rather stay old and enjoy some alone adulthood !!!

JSP 2.0 - Quote not escaped

2010-01-10T00:41:00.002+05:30

Encountered a weird problem today, a running application on Linux/Tomcat 5.5 starting crashing at various places after re deployment without much code issues.
Issue came up in all the JSP pages which had request.getParameter call within value attribute of any tag. Logs showed the following JasperException

Attribute value request.getParameter("XXX") is quoted with " which must be escaped when used within the value

Simple fix, append the following to JAVA_OPTS variable in catalina.sh

-Dorg.apache.jasper.compiler.Parser.STRICT_QUOTE_ESCAPING=false

Works !!!

Public Administration in India

2010-01-09T00:26:00.002+05:30

Public administration has been a matter of promises and more promises with total lack of delivering any of them. Living in Gurgaon, you so get used to power cuts and the simple expectation of 24 hrs power in a Singapore seems too much to ask. And during one of these cuts, with nothing else to do but surf on a battery and data card driven laptop, I happen to stumble on the a news from 6 yrs back, thought you guys might wanna take a look.

THE HINDU NEWS FROM OCT 30, 2004

Thank you Sreesanth

2009-11-28T21:03:00.000+05:30

It was a pleasant surprise for me to see Sreesanth back in the team after a long while and a flurry of controversies which almost had me thinking... thats it for him.

Not only he came back... he made it count... Man of the Match.. winning the match against SL.

Thanks Sree.... we missed you.... keep up your attitude.. your enthu is what drives you. Kudos!!

I shook Chetan Sharma's hand

2009-11-22T11:57:00.002+05:30

I first hooked up to cricket when I learnt that India was playing England in a WC semis in '87 WC. India lost that game (I didnt understand how and why) however, it was heartbreaking for everyone around me and a little for me too. About the time I started loving the game of cricket and became a regular follower I saw a game, again Ind Vs Eng.. however this time around I saw India beat England courtsey a hundred by Chetan Sharma's 100 and a partnership with Sidhu chasing a big score.. (must have been more than 220 being 20 years ago) and that was the time I developed a soft corner for Chetan Sharma.. and didnt happen to see him for long in the team before he finally retired a little after 1992 WC ( I think).

Yesterday, while taking my wife out shopping in a mall in Gurgaon, I caught a sight of the same Chetan Sharma.. and it was more than just thrill to me... I couldnt find a pen or a piece of paper to get his autograph as I walked upto him and he could well have made out my nervousness. He was very humble and polite as I told him how excited I was to see him in person. He gave me an autograph and even SHOOK MY HAND. It was amazing... truly.

This will go down as one of my most memorable moments in life.

Going Grande with Punto

2009-11-12T23:25:00.002+05:30

After 2 weeks of visiting various car showrooms, multiple test drives of 10 cars and negotiations, I have finally booked a Fiat Grande Punto for my driving pleasure. It should be delivered to me early next week so within a week's time I will be driving a Pearl White Punto (would have loved to mention a red one instead however, I do have a wife so...). Slightly nervous with the mixed reviews and dropping sales figures recently, however, I let my instinct take control over this one... a little too much, might I add, considering I went into the showroom today to actually book a Tata Manza and ended up flipping a coin to decide between the two cars.

Whats done is done. Lets wait for the car and hope for a great time together.

Search People

2009-09-28T04:12:00.003+05:30

Its 4 AM in the morning, I have just spent 3 hours searching for an old friend online with name and what not. Just wishing there was a search by name and DOB or something that would help us reach or search people better.
Google.. got something ?

Match Review : Champions Trophy - Ind Vs Pak

2009-09-27T15:22:00.005+05:30

What started as a pretty good effort by Indian bowling holding Pak at 134/3 in 30 overs turned into 300 score and eventually a loss by 54 runs. Who do you blame - bowlers for throwing away after doing the hard work or middle order batsman to screw up rather comfortable positions in the chase. Actually none. Every captain, however good, has a learning curve during which he is bound to make a decision which turn out bad, which make him a better captain eventually, given that he learns from it. I think thats what happened with Dhoni and I truly believe he is sensible enough to take out the learnings. Here's a list of things I think could have been thought differently -

In the 1st innings, people will usually blame captains for not being aggressive after a big parternship, however, they dont have a foresight of that either. I guess after the Pak batsman started giving signs of agression after the 30th over, the field setting and the bowling changes could have been more appropriate, especially the field. Eg. moving fine third man wide as soon as four went there was a wrong move, you can usually figure that batsman can always cut wide and thats where the ball would travel faster. Anyways... the finish of the innings was fine.
If India has to play 3 fast bowlers, atleast one should be equipped to bowl at the death as India ends up bowling too many part timers overs and even one full time bowler not doing well on the day impacts the whole plan big time.
Gambhir was doing a fantastic job, however, Dravid seems out of sorts and desperately needs to find his form back. Out of 27 ball difference between his runs and balls, if he would have taken 10 more singles, India would have been much better position in the chase inspite of losing the top order.
Dhoni needs to realize that, given the lack of experience in the middle order, he has to stay back to finish the chases and cannot leave it to the likes of Pathan and Raina and Pathan should bat above Dhoni is a chase. Pathan is wonderful to finish when setting a score, however, its a huge risk leaving a chase to him. Raina is developing as a good No. 5 for the team, so I guess Dhoni has to stick to No. 6 for a chase (effectively coming when last 80 odd runs are needed) and put Pathan at 7 which would give him experiencing the chasing with Dhoni as well.

As I said, its a learning curve and really hope Dhoni takes out some good learnings from this game which show up in the Aus game

Conserve Energy - tips

2009-09-19T23:47:00.004+05:30

Its good to see energy conservation catching up with people a bit these days. Its something which is comfortably resisted in routine life of a middle class Indian like me. I personally face a lot resistence in my house with everyone finding me nagging on petty things like leave a tap dripping or a light on in the stairway etc. I keep naggin 'em anyway. Here are a few tips you could probably use to make your contribution to energy conservation.

Electricity

Use lower wattage bulbs and devices, wherever possible. E.g. if you can do with a 40W bulb, avoid putting a 60W. Similarly, use lower wattage CFLs.
Put small instant geysers if the usage is not too high for hot water. Also, instead of getting extremely hot water and mixing cold water to make it lukewarm, why not heat it to that point only.
When using A/C in your house, dont keep it extremely lower temperatures like 18 or 20. Rather put it on 24 or 22, once reaching the temperate, the A/C would be standing by for a while. Also, try using A/C in short spells to maintain a cool temperature along with saving some electricity bills.
Never leave TV, music players, mobile chargers power turned on when you are not using them.
Turn off monitors if you are not using a computer and need to computer running.
Dont use artificial lights if natural light is available and suffices the needs.
When working late in office, dont keep the lights other than on top of your workstation turned on.

I would also have liked to reduced the amount of electricity consumed in shopping malls and advertising hoardings if possible, however, thats still out of my hand.

Water

Dont leave any taps running or dripping.
Get periodical sanitory and plumbing checkups to ensure there is no leakages anywhere in your house's system.
If possible, try and reduce the number of times we flush :) and get waterless flushes for offices and houses.
Use bucket and wipes for car washes instead of high pressure water pipes.
A lot of water is wasted because of laundary not done with right water levels and too few clothes in one go.
Respect water in public places, whether drinking water or otherwise.

Fuel

Use public transport if available and feasible. This is the best option to save a lot of fuel.
Try driving in economy speed zone of your vehice, however hard to resist may high speeds be.
Keep your vehicle in good health and tyre pressure in check which could save upto 1o per cent of fuel wastage.
Dont leave your car ignition on unneccessarily, eg. when re-fuelling your vehicle, when waiting on a traffic light, stepping out for a minute, when stuck in a traffic jam which is stationary (you would know if you are an Asian).
In slow moving traffic (bumper to bumper kind), turn off your head lights if can be done away with for a while, the sound of your engine itself would tell you the difference.
Cook with covered vessels as much as possible.

Of course, car pooling and walking for short distance is always suggested for conserving fuel as well. Hope to see a greener tomorrow.

My Budget

2009-07-05T14:35:00.002+05:30

Got this oppurtunity to create my on budget on this site done by Sify and ICICI Prudential so I went to create a budget of my dreams. Here's the link

Pick your candidate

2009-04-05T11:50:00.002+05:30

Here's a new way to compare the electorial candidates and pick who's worth managing our nation. Google's all new In Quotes is a new google products which lets you view and compare views over different issues of any 2 selected politicians... the views or quotes are their printed quotes over a period of time so its not just marketing punchlines u hear, its all of their done deals in your plate to look at.

Moreover, its a lot of fun this way. Try it !!!

Hurt feel bad

2009-03-28T10:44:00.000+05:30

BREAKING NEWS !!!!
After all the hungama over IPL dates, commerce takes precedence over passion and Indian Premier League moves to SA. Of course, they are holding everything as per the INDIAN TV viewer, the timings, the presentation, the team names buy hey... guess what.. its all AWAY games dude. There IS NO home game.... I mean..... I wanted to watch Delhi daredevils playing 8 games in Firoz Shah Kotla and walk out of a winning match driving down to CP for a drink afterwards.
Werent we trying to build our own city sport culture around our metros....

What the heck... its a sport man.. if u can postpone it due to busy schedules for a few months... cancel it.. its no bigger than the elections anyways.

Wondering if Lalit Modi would have been interested in moving this thing to US next year.

Well.. what can we say.. money talks.

Polls 2009 Forecast

2009-03-26T10:37:00.000+05:30

So, its around last week of May, the weather is getting chillier, airs windier and sun's been behind clouds most part of the day. IPL Teams are now travelling to Windies to play IPL3 over a week before they travel to England for the T20 World Cup.... kinda a last moment tournament planned after the grand commercial success of IPL2 in SA.
The 2009 polls are over and the results are just out.... and what a turnout... 520 million voters ACTUALLY cast their votes this time around. Here are the results -
Congress 11 seats
BJP 12 seats
Others 27 seats
Rest of around 400 seats are all voted against all of the contestents.. Wow a re-election!!! The people didnt find any candidate worthy of running their nation.

Well... what do I say.... a dreamer after all !!

India under Seige

2008-11-29T23:42:00.004+05:30

Gunshots !!! Blasts !!! Sliding down from copters !!! Innocent killings !!! These were scenes out of Hollywood movies... there were traces of Die Hard but there wasnt any Bruce Willis... there were traces of The Seige but no Denzel Washington coz this is real life. But it all did seem so unreal. Taj burning for 3 days, the biggest cops of the city dead - 3 of them. Spending all this while listening to news readers, jouralists like Barkha Dutt who spent the whole time on the scene, the political leaders, the soldiers, the public and the victims themselves, I kept thinking hard and kept analyzing everybody's point of view on what needs to be done to handle the terror or where do we go wrong.

Everyone had their own view points, here are a few -

Elect government responsibly.
Respect the security forces and dont take them for granted.
Take security.

Introduction to Hacking - Javascript Injections and Social Engineering

2008-09-03T19:32:00.001+05:30

One of the very commonly used techniques for hacking, when it comes to web sites, is Javascript injections. Javascript Injections are a technique in which, using javascript, we change the content of a page without having to navigate away from it or saving it offline. The most popular example you would find online would be of altering the admin email address which is stored in a hidden field in the page.

When to use it
I had a situation once where I was filling in a registration form, after it was filled, they showed a confirmation page with all the values that I had filled in as read only labels and on submit, the same information was used to register me. There was this corporate email address field which was validated for not inputting any of the popular public email sites' domains and I was really apprehensive to give away my satyam id. Thats when I used this technique where i had input my satyam id on the form, and using javascript injection, altered it on the confirmation page to my personal id. So, basically this technique is very handy in lot of situations like this and others.

How is it done
Internet Explorer address bar acts as a shell or a command line for you. So, just view the source of the page, figure out the field you would like to alter and issue the command -

javascript:void(document.form[0].fieldname=value)

This thing works simple as this. To view the cookie stored by the site or to set its values use -

javascript:alert(document.cookie)

I guess this should be enough to show you the way.

Social Engineering
This is an less mentioned commonly used hacking technique. The funda is simple, if you know a person, you know his password. Its a simple discipline which tells you the human behaviour patterns. Eg. people keep passwords which they can easily remember, in office they would keep passwords which would be somewhat relevant to the organization name or the project and at home they would use their personal favorites for the same. Other than the passwords, other information related to a target machine or network or Problem turns out to be really helpful. In one of the hacking stories I read, our guy wanted to get through a university web site. He somehow managed to get through the router and the firewall on the way into the network and managed to get to the database server. Now, he needed the password to get into the database for the sa account (popular default account in SQL Server). So, the dude called up the university webmaster, just to take a chance and told him that he was calling from Microsoft and needed to know the version of SQL server they were using and whether or not they need a certain patch. The webmaster told him to hold on for a second, logged into the database and told him the version. Dude just said thanks and hung up, thought for a minute and entered a couple of passwords which worked. Guess what could have given him the password ? He just listened to the keystrokes carefully and figured out a pattern which told him that the password could be admin followed by a 3 digit number, as it was. So, sometimes, when you need a password, just ask for it :) and thats social engineering.

Hacking History - A popular basic virus

2008-08-26T19:35:00.000+05:30

I know I will be disappointing a lot of people who might have been looking forward to learning How to hack into a network ? or How to crack a software ? or How to break into a popular website ? I assure all those that its not exactly what you would find here. However, the stuff you would find here would be definitely be a lot more fun and relevant to achieving something that can be way beyond stupid things like these. Keep the faith.

Hacking is an art and just like any other art, it has its history, and it has the generations of artists who have struck fame in hacking. Therefore, I really find it neccessary and obligatory to share the history of hacking (as much as I am aware of) with the interested.

Terms other than hacking which attract attention immediately are virus, trojon, worm, cracking etc. Virus are surely one of the most fascinating topics. The following are the detail of a very basic virus which is also the smallest known MS-DOS virus to me, the virus we are talking about is Tiny Virus.

Name: Tiny
Aliases: 163 COM Virus, Tiny 163 Virus, Kennedy-163
Discovery: June, 1990
Symptoms: COMMAND.COM & .COM file growth
Details of what it does:
Infected .COM files will increase in length by 163 bytes.
Infected files will also always end with this hex string: '2A2E434F4D00'.

This virus currently does nothing but replicate.

The first time a file infected with this virus is executed,
the virus will attempt to infect the first .COM file in the
current directory. On bootable diskettes, this file will normally
be COMMAND.COM. After the first .COM file is infected, each time
an infected program is executed another .COM file will attempt to
be infected. Files are infected only if their original length is
greater than approximately 1K bytes.

This is one of the first viruses I read about and it really fascinated me. I saw the code of this virus and its fantastic to see how simple logic and make it so easy for any good programmer to trick an operating system into doing something its not meant to do.

Thats why I said, hacking is an art. The beginning hackers were the best of the lot programmers who thrived for developing the most elegant solution for any problem which was most resource friendly as well. Its the competition amongst themselves that brings out the best out of them and has brought technology to where it is today. If someone has contributed to securing networks, its hackers coz they are the guys who not only look for loopholes and create exploits but also tell us where the loopholes lie and how exactly they managed to exploit it.

Hail the hacker spirit !!!!!!!!

PS - Dont worry guys, you would get a bit of what you are looking for in coming posts. Just that I am find it hard to priortize what to publish first.

Random Thoughts

2008-08-18T17:03:00.001+05:30

Heard earth is moving closer to sun all the time and would finally collapse in it. If thats the case, Venus must be moving closer to the position that Earth was in a few million or billion years back and may be able to support life pretty soon.. i mean a few thousand years. How about we immigrate to Venus, then.

We think space is endless, is it really ? No one is really sure. May be its a huge ball with a thick shell and vacuum inside, obviously with all the galaxies and stars that we see. But then, whats beyond or outside that ball.

huuuuuuummmm. I am getting weird.

The Capital Road Culture

2008-08-18T16:24:00.002+05:30

Knowing your way around in Delhi is a matter of prestige. People actually call you from distances to ask you ways and you might be in the busiest of the meetings or in the middle of some very sweet moments of a date but you would just get out of whatever you are in middle of and proudly route the caller to his/her destination. And this prestige is attached to a lot of guys (and no women that I know of). So, this is one of the things that form part of Delhi's daily life.

Just like any other metro in India, Delhi has its own share of traffic problems, specially for people travelling to/from Gurgaon or Yamuna paar. Its really interesting to observe human behaviour on roads. It seems to say more about a city's basic nature alongwith the atmostsphere in public places of a city than any other thing like city's annual events or whatever. I was watching a show on Discovery Travel & Living last night which said if you enter a restaurant in a city in England - you would hear people laughing, Germany - you would hear people talking, Italy - you would hear people shouting, Spain - you would see people watching soccer. The point is the behaviours are specific to countries or cities as they are correlated to the culture of the city - the way people there live their lives and spend their days.

I have spent time in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi but I am out and out Delhi specialist without a doubt. I love the life here and wouldnt trade it for any other city in India (well, may be Pondicherry if there was a Punjabi Dhaba there). Talking about road behaviour in Delhi, I was driving my sister to her college yesterday morning which is around 30 km away from my place and across the river Yamuna and got stuck in this huge traffic on the way back (listening to Aerosmith & Berlin) when this guy in a car right in front of mine got out of his car, tucked in this shirt at different places to hide his belly, stood up on the divider and looked on to find out if there was any bottleneck due to any accident or anything else. Not that I doubt the good sight of a 40-something gentleman, but cmon dude, how are u supposed to see an event 3 miles away through all this traffic inbetween. Anyways, guy got down from the divider notting as if he just saw the traffic standing still for another couple of hours and starting taking off his shirt to beat the heat, and in the meantime, a dozen others had gotton out of their cars and were already on top of that damn divider look onto the same scene that our dude just concluded was hopeless. Each one of them was trying to stand the tallest on the divider and get a better view of nothing apparantly. Or may be not each one, this guy was actually looking elsewhere, ohh there he goes.. he actually was looking for a panwala, and got a welcome break to get a smoke... hmm interesting.

Not long before the traffic opened up and we started moving, and our dude was right alongside me looking desperately to move ahead of the cars around. You know how it is when you are in a bumper-to-bumper traffic and moving ahead of each car gives u a bit of satisfaction, how it feels when your lane is moving faster than the ones around. So, this guy was all proud and satisfied when suddenly his lane stopped dead and the other lane moved all across his face to a mile ahead. I remember the look on this face, he was completely frustated and desperately trying to find a way to fit in the next lane doing which he ended up bumping into another car.

Thats how people in Delhi are on road, competitive and in a hurry. When in a car, they crib the bikers getting into their lanes, and when on a bike, they crib the cars splashing water onto them. Bus drivers are even more competitive, they gotta beat the other buses on the same route to get that sweet spot on the bus stop, one bus stop after another. They wouldnt mind driving crazily to the other side of the road to get that extra mph and henceforth, the blocking sweet spot at the next busstop.

But, the biggest story of these all is the one about parking spot. Oh yes, its of utmost importance. Whether its outside your house, or office, or in a market parking. Not sure if you would have heard of a similar rule anywhere else, but in most parts of Delhi, a tenants cannot park his car in front of his house but has to park is elsewhere - may be in the backstreet or some other place, the front parking in most residential colonies are reserved for the house owners... interesting, aint it ? Not just that, parking spots outside office (on the service road) are strictly reserved for the cars belonging to the people working in that office (who might never show up). So, people reach office early just to claim one of those limited parking spots outside their office with an added advantage of avoiding traffic. Now, there are place around offices and houses, which are so to say the unclaimed parking spots. We have one such spot. Its a blue building couple of offices away which isnt occupied and has a capacity to park 4 cars. Now, you can make out from the smile on someone's face in office that he got the blue building parking spot today and its like a game we play everyday. Those spots have become more important than parking the car in office parking nowadays. And, a gentleman in our office, if needed to go out for some work in the middle of the day, would take an auto to travel rather than taking his own car out just to hold on to that spot till the end of the day.

Thats how road culture in Delhi is... sounds fascinating ?

The Capital Cuisine

2008-08-08T12:03:00.001+05:30

I have written a bit about the culture of my city earlier. This time I would be discussing the places and things to eat in Delhi - some of which are Delhi's speciality. Delhi has restaurants and eating joints for all kind of cuisines, from Punjabi to South Indian, Rajesthani, Chinese, Italian, Nagapuri, Bengali, Gujrati.. all kinds. But the places and food I am discussing are Delhi's very own.

Kachori Sabji - This Kachori with Aloo Sabji (Potato curry) can be eaten in and around almost all the commercial places in Delhi, its more like a heavy snack and is really popular, especially amongst people who work in the field in these commercial places all day long.

Kulfi Faluda - This is one of Delhi's favorite desserts. One of the good places to have it would be Roshan Di Kulfi in Karol Bagh.

Aloo Chat - These are hot fried pieces of potatoes served with lots of spices and chutneys all around the city and people love it.

Chhole Bhature - Although these are popular in most parts of Northern India but in Delhi is like a first choice alternative breakfast if you are planning to not cook at home on a weekend. You can see long queues waiting for getting their parcels of Chholle Bhature at every other corner of the street.

Chholle Kulche, Central Mkt - This guy sits under a tree in Central Market, Lajpat Nagar and is out of stock in no time every single day. Never had Chholle Kulche this tasty anywhere else in the world.

Some of the popular old places in Delhi to eat out are...

Kake Da Dhaba, CP - A very small dhaba in the outer circle of Cannaught Place is damn popular for its non-veg preparations. They still serve in those small while plates in the very traditional Dhaba style. The food is so tasty that you really cant help licking your fingers. And the prices are absolutely reasonable considering you are eating in a place bang in the most expensive commercial surroudings of the capital.

Pandara Road - A popular place to eat all kind of Paranthas 24 hours a day. Again, in the center of the city and a hub for late night freaks to catch a bite.

Chandni Chowk & Fatehpuri - These places are more known for shopping than meals. Also known as "Purani Dilli", these places, which by the way are quite next to each other, offer great snacks and meals for a typical north indian food lover now being popularized as "Purani Dilli Ke Chatkare". This ranges from snacks like Aloo Chat, Tikki, Dahi Bhhalle to sweets like Jalebi and beverages like flavored milk shakes and faluda especially with those huge glasses in which they are served. The taste of all this stuff is so authentic to Purani Dilli that people visit these places from miles away just to have a few snacks. Also, you can find amazing meals at dhabas which serve bread as big as you can think of. Dont bother ordering more than one. This is also the home of the much popular HALDIRAMS. A TIP though for visiters, to avoid crowded markets and enjoy just the snacks, visit on a Sunday.

Dhabas in Mayapuri Industrial Area - These are small eating joints which are not very popular being in Industrial area. However, amongst the businessmen and salesmen who travel to this part of the city and have eaten in any of these dhabas, they are very popular for their Amritsari Naans and the way the are served. For me, they surely form part of Delhi's culture and cuisine.

Rajma Rice, NP - Nehru Place is one of the busiest commercial places in Delhi and is a IT hub as well. It has a no. of small eating joints which offer fast mails like Rajma Rice, Daal Rice, Chicken Curry Rice etc which are (not really hygenic but) very tasty and served within a minute with the green Pudina Chutney... yummmm.

Caventers & Wengers, CP - Caventers is a fantastic place in Inner Circle, CP to grab a quick bite and a flavored milk shake which is very filling by the way. And just around the corner is Wenger's which is an amazing bakery with their unique varities of candies, pastries, cookies, jellies and what not.

Haldirams - For the localites, its one of the coolest places to take your family out for dinner. Its fun, their variety drives you crazy and you end up ordering a bit of a lot of things. Located in various locations like Mathura Road, Lajpat Nagar etc, its a damn popular for its hygenic snacks, thalis and sundaes.

Moolchand Flyover - This is a place which is very popular for its paranthas as well just like Pandara road. It used to be open late nights, however, nowadays, it closes down by midnight or so :(. The best part of this place is the masala mirchi they put on the paranthas. Egg parantha here is one of my personal favorites.

Khan Chacha, Khan Market - You surely cant get better non-veg snacks or rolls anywhere else. Put your calory concious mind at home while visiting this place. This is a small place which is so popular that I gets its publicity from word of mouth over radio as well.

UPSC, India Gate - Near India gate, outside UPSC office, you would find this place where you can have the most spicy chats you would ever have eaten and its a hot place amongst Delhi University students. (Atleast the ones I have been around with)

I guess I am, more or less, done with this list. I would really recommend any of you visiting Delhi to drop down at these places and get a taste of real Capital (take me along if you want).

PS - I have specifically kept out all the popular restaurants in Delhi out of this list. Although there are a couple of mentions of restaurants but they really form part of Delhi's culture so much that it was hard to keep them out.

Introduction to Hacking Funda - Beyond Technology

2008-08-02T19:22:00.001+05:30

disclaimer - None of the stuff in this blog or in the leading series is meant to be used for any illicit purposes and is meant to grow technically and ethically and contribute to the technical community and help do our job better.

What is hacking ? Its not just breaking into an organization's network and take away confidential information. Its not just defaming a website. Its not just stealing credit card info. Its not just cracking a software which was meant to be used only if licenced. Actually, its nothing to do with these things. Most of the people reading this already would have heard and known of Ethical Hacking and I guess would understand it to an extent as well...

The first known hackers where the guys who provided railways with a communication network from the unused telephone instruments and other stuff. Hackers were the guys who were the best of the lot, the ones who found new innovative ways to get the job done. These guys started from a point in technology where they didnt have the luxury of resources that we have today, in terms of hardware, in terms of references and help material, in terms of technological options. Within the limited and constrained environment, they developed some of the best masterpieces. Internet is one of the gifts of hackers to the community.

Most of the teenagers making their names by breaking into some big networks or cracking a software are merely using exploits available on the internet and using them as guided to accomplish their tasks. There is a complete lack of originality and innovativeness in doing this. This doesnt even require basic troubleshooting skills, trust me. The real hacker is the guy who got into the minute details of the bug he figured existed in an Operating System, devised a way to exploit it and get through it and use it for accomplishing something else on the OS, wrote the exploit and published it, while informing the OS vendor of the bug and possible exploit... thus, helping them fix it as well. Thats a real hacker and he not only deserves respect but also deserves not to be confused with the guy who just used to exploit and cracked through a popular website.

What say guys ?

Lookout for this space for more on hacking, their lingo, some simple techniques of hacking (can be used for making better applications) and may be a bit more.

Introduction to Hacking - SQL Injections

2008-07-22T19:12:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer - All the post of this series are meant to discuss the basics behind the art of hacking and not to provide exploits, irrespective of the fact whether I am aware of any or not. Assure you that the stuff provided is surely more than sufficient for any intelligent person to come up with a good hack.

SQL Injections, this is one of a well known techniques to bypass authentication where there is a backend database involved.

Idea behind it - On a normal login page, username and password entered by the user are stored in a database and when anyone tries to login, a query is fired on the database to check if the credentials entered are correct or not. The query fired would be something like this

SELECT * FROM USER_TABLE WHERE USERNAME='WAT_I_ENTERED' AND PASSWORD='WHAT_I_DONT_KNOW'

Now, in most of the cases, developers just take input on the page and concatenate it in a query which is then fired on the database. If the query returns any results, its a valid user who is then proceeded to the next page; if it doesnt, the user is thrown out back to the login page, typically. In a situation like this, its not very difficult for anyone to login to the site even without knowing a password. All it requires is some basic knowledge of writing SQL queries. You can tailor your input to malform the SQL query being fired on the database and help yourself get in.

How its done - The first step would be to check if the site we are trying to get into is a suitable candidate for SQL Injection i.e. there is a database behind and the query being fired is being built using concatinating the inputs in a static string as shown above. To check this, all that needs to be done is input a single quote (') in any of the fields and a possible valid value in the other one. What a quote does it, it malforms the SQL and the application would get error from the database when the query is not well formed. If you see an error page, or application error msg in any of the corners of the page, you are on. If you dont see any of this stuff and get back to the login page which is not showing any error anywhere as well, dont get disheartened, you still have a chance - it really depends on the error handling of the application what you see.

Once this is done, we need to tailor the input values we would need to input to get through the login. This would require inputting something that would not only, when concatenated to the query string, form a valid SQL Query but also return some result. So, basically I am targetting to fire something like this to the database.

SELECT * FROM USER_TABLE WHERE USERNAME='' OR 1=1 --' AND PASSWORD='ANYTHING'

SELECT * FROM USER_TABLE WHERE USERNAME='WAT_I_ENTERED' AND PASSWORD='' OR 1=1 --'

As is obvious from the above queries, in one example I have entered ' OR 1=1 -- as username and 'ANYTHING' as a password which wouldnt matter as it gets commented in the query and in the second example, when I knew a valid username, I entered a valid username and password as ' or 1=1 --. Now both these queries would return the whole table in the result set and would surely take me through the login hassle. Simple, aint it.

Why we talking this - The objective of discussing this is to make all the developers aware of the possible consequencies of un-elegent programming. Usage of concatenation of strings to form an SQL Query is one of the bad programming techniques and SQL Injects are one of the possible techniques used to exploit it. How we can prevent SQL Injections is by using parameterized queries as far as possible, which prevents us from SQL Injections because then, any tailored input would act as a parameter for a database column in the query and would NOT be able to malform the query in any form.

Keep coding !!!!!!!!

Technical Helpdesk

2008-07-19T19:28:00.001+05:30

Ok... the funniest of the things happened last evening. We are currently in a process of integrating a renouned Payment Gateway with our site and they have provided an API for it. We have been having compatibility issues of their API with our IBM JRE being used in our project.

Now, I was driving back home and I got a call from this bank guy to ask me about the issues we are facing with the integration. He said he was calling from the technical helpdesk. Confident that he was, without even listening me out, he went on to talk about how this was a simple thing and should have been accomplished within a couple of days and stuff. I asked him if he was aware the version of java their API is compatible with and he said "Ahh. Dont worry about that, we are compatible with all versions of java... 2000, XP, even 2003. If you are facing any issues, just restart your IIS and it would work.". Turned out, he was a sales guy from the bank. :)

PS - Actually got hold of the development team of the Payment Gateway today, and, ironically, they gave in when realized that we are on IBM JRE.

Fantastic morning - More about Capital Culture

2008-07-17T16:15:00.000+05:30

I dearly missed blogging since morning, but I couldnt help, entered office after 2 PM after a really eventful and funny day.

I was driving back from Ghaziabad, a suburb trans yamuna, after dropping my sister and while driving up on a flyover in a packed traffic my car broke down and showed no intentions of starting up. I popped the hood and realized that either the battery is dead or the carbon on top is preventing the circuit while I was waiting in the middle of the road for the Car Helpline guy. In the meanwhile, the traffic started to suffer and I started getting reactions, all kinds - "Kya Hua ??", "Did it broke down ??", swears, "Why dont you move it to the side ??" and what not.

Just when I was about to get annoyed and lose it on one of the jerks, I realized I was stuck in one of the most beatiful sights in Delhi. The only place in Delhi from where you can see 5 miles (may be a lot more) of empty space, the river, a really beautiful highway, a cloudy morning with nice breeze and no sun... all in all an amazing view which I could never have got otherwise on this high speed highway. I moved to the back of my car, started directing vehicle to clean up the mess a bit and soon enough, the traffic was back in full swing and I was fully enjoying my stranded traffic policeman job with the great surroundings.

And now came a gentleman, who got off his bus, to ask me if he could help which was a surprising gesture considering the nearest bus stop was another 2 miles before he could get another bus and he hardly knew of how to fix the thing at all. He did help me move my car to the side and then, I helped him hitchcock a bike and ride off.

Finally, when I got the Car Helpline guy, who got the car working again and I got the battery replaced from a nearby dealer and got in the car to drive back to office and exactly then, it started raining cats and dogs. Thats what I call perfect timing.. which became all the more perfect when it stopped as soon as I got off the car in front of my office.

The funniest part was that due to the climate and the fun I was having while I was stranded, I never felt annoyed or tired or irritated and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Hmm.. looking forward to getting stranded like that again, of course, without spending the ridiculous amount again.

Intro to hacking - Essentials

2008-07-12T19:18:00.000+05:30

* Just couldnt sleep thinking that I might be leaving a few souls disappointed with my previous post, so just had to write this one.

A hacker is anyone who has to skills of a hacker and understands the spirit. Skills of a hacker include the following, in my opinion -

Atleast one programming language or scripting language.
Knowledge of HTML and Javascript.
Basic database skills and PL/SQL.
Basics of Operating System and networks.
Very good troubleshooting skills and logical thinking.
Ability to quick-read and understand code patterns.
Social Engineering

Some of these things are neccessary, however, traits like troubleshooting and recognizing code patterns is something one can learn over a period. Anything beyond this would make it easier for the guy to accomplish whatever he wants to just by providing more options. Knowing atleast one high level programming language thoroughly and one scripting language is a real must as is knowledge of Operating systems and HTML.

Just to give you a small example of how things work while hacking and you can use one of these skills to accomplish a task. Imagine a website which required a password to get through, which of course you dont have. There are multiple ways to find out the password - ask the site admin(dont laugh guys, its A way and is really an option) OR find out the way authentication would be done by the site and figure out a way to crack it. In a hypothetical situation, suppose the site admin has server side scripting to authenticate his password from some encrypted source to which you have no access to, however, there is a forget password button which sends an email to the site admin with the password in it. Now, in most of the static sites, there is not backend database to store info so most of the information is stored within the web content, either in files other than the pages being served or in the pages as hidden fields which can easily be looked up by viewing source for a web page.

In such a case, we use Java Script Injections. Java Script injections is a technique by which using the browser's address bar, we issue java script commands to the browser to dynamically change values of the web page form including the ones which are hidden or read only. So, you know what to do.

Now, this teaches us a few important lessons as a hacker and as a developer -

All hacks are in some way exploiting a loophole left by one of the developers or admins.
There is a lot of logical thinking involved in trying to figure out what all are the possible hacks that could be used for a certain target. And of course, common sense.
Address bar of Internet Explorer is a powerful tool.
Its not a good idea to leave important information in any form in the HTML at all.

Think the hacking way, understand the hacking spirit and you would develop application that would defy security threats.

:) If you thought you just learnt a big trick on how to get into a site without authenticate, you are mistaken. This isnt something that would work on most of the sites you land on. It would take a lot more thinking and application than this to use Java Script injection to really accomplish anything at all.

Growing Old

2008-06-18T17:06:00.000+05:30

We were sipping our post lunch coffee outside and saw this old chap, whose son has just dropped him off, trying to cross to road on this busy red light. Barely able to walk, the old man somehow managed to cross through one side of the road when my colleague said..

K - I never wanna be like that. Would rather die at 40 something.
Me - Never wannabe that helpless or..
K - That old. Period. Die young.
Me - I guess it not that bad, I would travel when I retire.. across the world.
K - Drop some flowers on my grave in the Antarctica, will u ?
Me - I'd rather bury u in Iraq... hehehe..
K - Whatever, crust is.... no point growing old...
Me - There is so much to do and you got time for it all..
K - Cut it(Not exactly wat he said). Lets get back to pretending to work.

End of conversation. Wondering if he was just scared to grow old. I guess its the sickness, slow death and helplessness that scares him. Dont know but I am really looking forward to the time when I retire and start my 2nd innings.

And thats how I become a complete IT Professional

2008-06-01T16:53:00.000+05:30

For the whole of last 2 years, I reach office at 10 and home at 6 (dont tell my RM). Work's been great, timelines been met and weekends been fun. My sister on the other hand, leave home before I get up and reaches home around 8. Its because of this very reason that she perceives that either IT Professional are the most idle people in the world or I am not an IT Pro material.

Today, at last, she would accept me as an regular IT Pro coz I am still in office at 9, for a change. (Damn !!!! I am gonna screw up these bank guys big time... how the f#!k can it take 3 hours to send a simple mail.). Positive thing is that I am gonna be accepted as the labor that I am at my home today.. Yeppie !!!!!!!

The Charm of Blogging

2008-05-21T16:38:00.000+05:30

What can you do on a Sunday afternoon ? Visit a friend in the neighborhood, go out for a movie, shopping, clean up your house or laze around in your hall watching TV or listening to music. The last thing that I would like to do is sit back home and think of my Second Life. Anyways, I was just planning out the rest of the day for me, and I just an urge to write or to blog. As I said, last thing I would do on a Sunday, but if you gotta urge, you just gotta do it. So, here I am.

What fascinates me most about blogging is its conversational style. Dont know about others, but when I am blogging, I feel as if I am in the middle of a never ending conversation that I am really enjoying. Interestingly, I have never figured out who is on the other end of this conversation. But, I guess that helps. When you know who you are talking to, you tend to filter information a bit as you know what would the other person relate to and what not. That definitely drives the conversation when you are talking to a real person. But in a conversation that I am talking about, the other end is essentially a listener (actually, a reader) so I dont have to worry about the things he/she might not like. It feels like I am walking through a lush green park with someone on a nice evening, wind blowing across my face (and an ice cream in my hand), the smell of grass right after a rain (I can smell it as its raining here right now). Its the most amazing feeling one can go through when you are enjoying the small miraulous things that nature has provided you and something as virtual as blogging providing you a similar feeling (may be the rain right now is helping it).. its just amazing.

Another cool thing about blogging is the way its done. Blogging triggers your thoughts. It makes you think (and work doesnt). Its like right a short story. In my opinion, the art of story telling is far ahead of any other kind of writing coz you dont get a lot of space to say what you have to say and articulating your way to a reader's imagination and building those characters in his/her mind with those limited words is an art. I havent done either but I guess, writing a novel would be a lot easier than writing a short story. And its quite similar with blogging as well, although, it provides you would a lot more liberties than short story writing. Its fun to learn so much from the way people write in their blogs. It really reflects on their personalities, their cultures and their senses. I have learnt a lot about humans from different parts of the world just by reading their blogs or their comments on other blogs. But I guess, I am not even half way through to knowing any of the cultures enough. But I would love to explore it. I like to say that I am an explorer, in the real world and in my Second Life, I love to explore you places, new people, new theories in a quest of exploring myself.

And, blogging surely helps !!!

Rachel's Best

2008-05-07T22:50:00.000+05:30

Just a few of Rachel's best that I could remember -

This is the one about poker and stuff between Ross and Rachel when she shuffles the deck of cards. Ross: Your money's mine Green.
Rachel: Your fly's open Gellar!!
Joey: But it is odd how a women's purse looks good on me, a man.
Rachel: Exactly! Unisex!
Joey: Maybe you need sex. I had sex a couple days ago.
Rachel: No! No, Joey! U-N-I-sex.
Joey: Well, I ain't gonna say no to that
Rachel: "Ya know I really thought I had hit rock bottom, but today it's like there's rock bottom, then 50 feet of crap then me."
This is the one where everyone talks about how Rachel's picky about gifts Rachel: Thank you for my beautiful earrings, they're perfect. I love you.
Ross: Oh, now you can exchange them if you want, okay?
Rachel:: Now I love you even more.
Phoebe's vegeterian instincts VS Rachel's matter of taste shows up Phoebe: You guys, you really should get rid of those animals. They shouldn't be living in an apartment.
Rachel: Yeah, especially not with all of these knives and cookbooks around.
The one when Rachel is a new mom and Monika is sleeping the baby and Rachel goes "Aah Honey !! They said when she is sleeping, I should be sleeping".

Well I guess Chandler would make a huge list though.

Significance of Server's Resource configuration

2008-04-22T19:40:00.000+05:30

First a question, if your web application or portal are not performing as you expect it to, what would be the first thing to target ? In most of the cases, the action would be to review and optimize the database queries, looking for memory leaks and ensuring resource cleanup. One thing that normally comes last into mind is the resource configuration parameters and other server configurations. How often do you see a server configuration and resource parameters altered from their default values while setting up a server for production environment? Besides only a few organizations, especially in banking and financial domains, most of the organizations dont pay enough attention to this aspect.

I came across several instances when after a lot of effort of optimizing the application, the real problem came out only in the configuration of the server or the resource like data source etc. I am citing a couple of those instances here without mentioning the project and customer details (not sure if thats allowed here and is surely not ethical).

This one time, what we now call as The 9 PM to Midnight problem, we spent several nights trying all kind of stuff. The issue was that every night from 9 PM till midnight, our applications' performance degraded a lot. Now, we were having a clustered environment which included 12 clones for the portal and 12 clones for the services backing up the portal and other channels. The performance hit was more apparant on channels other than the portal. We digged into our applications which take most of the load on the services side, as we thought they could have been the culprits if they were not managing their resources well. After complete profiling, optimizing and minimal logging, 3 applications were launched into production the very next night but no resolution. What bothered us most was why does the problem happen dot at 9. The next step was to rollback all the changes rolled out 2 weeks preceding the problem - still no go. We made it a point to sit in office at 9 PM, and observe every single thing around the enviroment, which could affect the performance. We even observed the http connections open on the servers, which amazing shot up big time right after 9 - from 120 to 2300 per node (each of our nodes contains 3 clones each). We thought lets look into http logs to see what are the kind of requests we are getting and it turned out that there were a whole lot of http connect requests (not GET or POST as expected). We suspected this might be hacker attempt to crash our server or something (we were stupid enuff to think that our website was that popular and hack favorite). Anyways, turns out that wasnt the case. After spending a few more nights, we troubleshooted a lot of other aspect and came across the real picture. We had 20 database servers and 20 replicas. All the retreival was done from replica databases and updates were done in production db. Now, the replicas were down from 9 to 12 for synchronization with production databases and we had a failover in place to go to production in case the replica databases were down. The issue was that the data source time out was set to default which was 300 seconds on the services server, therefore, it took 5 mins for the application to NOT get a connection from replica and then, look for a production db connection and hence, the issue.

Now what bothered us a lot was the HTTP connection count during this period rising drastically when never showed up after the timeout was fixed. That was because the HTTP server had a retrial mechanism which would resend the request to another clone in case it didnt receive the response within a timeout period which in this case was only 15 seconds. Interesting, isnt it. Thats how to HTTP connections rose exponentially. Also, in the HTTP server configuration file httpd.conf, there is a property called KeepAlive which was set to On which means that after sending a response to a request, the http connection for that client would be kept open for another timeout period to save overhead time to serve another request from the same client. This property is extremely important in case of a web server where the same browser would ask for another page soon enough, however, in case of a services server, this property would only contribute to the number of utilized connections and reaching the max no. of the support connections.

Hmmm.. by now I have written so much I dont even remember where I started from (Well actually I started riting this at home around 8 PM and got a call from my PM in the middle to drop down to office to handle an emergency situation which got resolved mins back and I am finishing it right now around 2:30 AM). Back to the point, dont u think it would be a good idea to tune your servers and resources to the project's requirements right at the time of setting up of the server. I guess that should form an important part of knowing a server - how to configure it for what situation.

Well, enough for this time... Good Nite

F.R.I.E.N.D.S - Quiz Time

2008-04-10T22:45:00.000+05:30

Think you know your Friends? Think again...

Which Friend appeared as Eve's unwilling, handcuffed love slave on "Larroquette"?
What was the name of Monica's and Ross' childhood dog?
(a) Spot.
(b) Julio.
(c) Chichi.
Which of Joey's sisters has a restraining order on them?
What's the name of the softball team that the Friends finally beat?
(a) Hasidic Jewelers.
(b) Central Perk Sluggers.
(c) New York Wenus.
Where did the Rembrandts shoot their video for the "Friends" theme song "I'll Be There For You"?
How much did Rachel's parents spend on her wedding to Barry?
Which Friend got bit by a peacock at the zoo?
Ross sees a framed picture of Carol and Susan with their friend Tanya. Which celebrity does he mistake Tanya for?
(a) k.d. lang.
(b) Huey Lewis.
(c) Florence Henderson.
What was the name of Chandler's roommate before Joey?
(a) Angela.
(b) Kip.
(c) Brad.
How old was Chandler when his parents divorced?
How did Ross end up majoring in paleontology in college?
(a) On a dare.
(b) Based on an aptitude test.
(c) Carol was majoring in paleontology.
What does Rachel call Chandler when he's smug?
(a) Sarcastic Boy.
(b) Smirky.
(c) Kicky.
The Friends live in what part of New York?
(a) Brooklyn.
(b) Tribeca.
(c) Greenwich Village.
What is Ross' "nickname" for Paolo?
Matthew Perry played Tracy Gold's boyfriend on "Growing Pains." What was his character's name?
(a) Sandy.
(b) Ben.
(c) Robin.
Who is the only cast member who doesn't smoke?
On what sitcom did Matthew Perry make his TV debut?
(a) "Boys Will Be Boys."
(b) "Second Chance."
(c) "Charles In Charge."
Which female Friend was hired and then fired to play Roz on the pilot for "Frazier"?
After co-hosting the "1995 MTV Movie Awards," which celebrity was Courteney Cox linked with (who ended up guest starring on the show during the second season)?
(a) Chris Isaak.
(b) Val Kilmer.
(c) Jim Carrey.
Ugly Naked Guy has a pair of gravity boots.
True. False.
Joey takes classes at NYU.
True. False.

Look into comments for answers.....

F.R.I.E.N.D.S - Chandler Rocks

2008-03-10T22:39:00.000+05:30

Well.. I cant say enough how much I love FRIENDS and I find it unfair to the guys not writing about them all that much. Chandler is surely the funniest of the lot and I'm sure we could write endlessly about the thing he's said. Herez some of his moments that are at top of my mind right now -

The one in which Joey's preaching his parents, both the guys are sleeping on the couch and Chandler tells Joey "... and one day you would find the right woman for you and you'd say.. No thanks, I'm married".
The one in which Rachel and Chandler get the cheese cake and he goes "Apparantly, we dont pay for food anymore."
Chandler about Donald Duck "You know what's weird? Donald Duck never wore pants. But whenever he's getting out of the shower, he always put a towel around his waist. I mean, what is that about?"
The one in which they have thanks giving with Rachel's sister, to Ross "But you should know this, if I die, you dont get Joey"
The one where Chandler kisses Joey's sister and he cant remember which one.
The one where Joey wants to know if he'd pass for 19 "Well, on a scale from one to ten, ten being the dumbest, you are definitely nineteen."
The one where Joey and Chandler tell Ross about how he should clear the trail "...if you absolutely have to tell her the truth, at least wait until the timing's right. And that's what deathbeds are for."
The one where Phoebe and Chandler are faking watching a game to avoid helping Monika out "It's been a while since we've yelled something... Maybe we should.." and Phebes goes yelling at the refree.
The one where Monika, Chandler and Ross start spitting secrets and Ross goes "Chandler entered a vanilla icecream look-alike contest and WON" and Chandler goes "Ross came third and cried"
The one where Ross is all messed up with the break thing "You say that one more time, I'm gonna break up with u."
" I can handle this. "Handle" is my middle name. Actually, "handle" is the middle of my first name."
And the best one that I remember is the one where he is asked if he knows about chicks at all "Fowl? No. Women?... No."

Enough for a day !!!

A lesson on Pattern Classification

2008-02-08T20:35:00.000+05:30

The best part of living in Delhi is the huge no. of events that keep happening across the various astonishing places of the city. Its not just the events and the various art forms you come across. Its the people you meet and every time you visit one of these events, you get another perspective to life. At times I feel I have to stop attending events for a while merely because my mind wanders from one thought to another and I end up in such a self-contradictory confused state that I spend sleepless nights watching meaningless movies to divert my mind.

I visited the Book Fair on Saturday and was looking through Wiley Publications' books, I just picked up a book on Pattern Classification and sat their looking at it when a charming looking lady, in her high 30's may be, interrupted my reading and said - "You are learning from the wrong source. Get your sources right, you get the right information". While I was still wondering what made her talk to me, she continued - "You seem to be a Computer Science student or professional is it? Its not all in the books boy, its out there. Come along..." she said and took the book from my hand and placed it on the table in front of me. She was charming so I didnt really bother giving a second thought whether or not to go along and I started walking with her to the tea counter outside the hall and I sat on the bench outside listening to what she had to say though still wondering on the same thing.

She continued in her confident and impressive voice "Look, more than 70 percent of the visitors to this Book Fair are between 16 and 30, mostly in groups or couples and 90 per cent of them are walking out of the Fair without buying a single book, may be just carrying a catalogue from one of the book sellers to avail the discount when they go to buy their syllabus books the next semester. On the other hand, the rest of the 30 per cent who are less than 15 or more than 30 are the serious readers, not to mention the lone wanderers like you (pointing to me) who visit a Book Fair to actually buy something to read.". By this time, I was getting anxious to interrupt her whether she even had a point. Although I was flattered by her putting me in the category of serious readers. At this point, she related this to the real point "You see, the regular publications realize this point and do not go out spending on buying the hot spots in the Book Fair, which are thus occupied by the text book sellers who are targetting the students. Now, before you read anything on Pattern Classfication, its of utmost significance that you understand the phenomenon of patterns beforehand. Coz if you do not recognize patterns - whether its in the society or in numbers or in knitting, you would never be able to apply pattern classification anywhere. So, just go out and study patterns then spend any money of applying it in Computer Science. Hope you get my point.". I still wasnt sure why would someone go out of way to prevent me from buying a book I was so thrilled to find in the first place. "There...". and she handed me a book named The Wonderful world of Mathematics by Margaret Matthias. "Read this first. By the way, we met in 2002 IT Fair when you visited my counter of EDI and asked me for a loan. Remember now ? ". Aaahhh. She was right. She actually remembered our discussion on sponsoring entrepreneurs.

It surprising how an impression you leave on people last so long. While walking out of Pragati Maidan, this was the only think I could think of. Nonetheless, it was an enriching experience for me made better by the charm of the lady.

Looking forward to seeing her in another such Fair !!!!

The Capital Culture

2008-01-18T16:22:00.000+05:30

The thing I enjoy most about a weekend is that I am in the city that I love so very much. Its not just the fact that its our capital, its everything about it that drives me crazy - the people, the places I visit, the streets, the cuisine. Everything.

Delhi has its own cuisine and the people who have been here long enough would know exactly where to find the best food of Delhi's own cuisine. I love going out specifically to eat out in a place that I have been visiting since forever. Early morning today, I went to drop off my sister to her office in CP and just when I was about to turn back home, it struck my mind that it was a perfect oppurtunity and time of day to get my favorite milk shake in the whole world. Its a little place called Keventers in the inner circle (those who have never been to CP should know that its a circular huge commercial place with a park in the center and an underground street market in the basement as well). I reached the place at around 9 and the guy sitting out there told me how the place opens at 10 and 8 every alternate week and this was a 10'oclock week. I decided to spend an hour there with the street hawkers waiting for the shop to open and get my drink. As usual, I got along well with the people on the street which included a panwala, a paniwala (these are the guys in Delhi who sell glasses of water and lemonade on the streets), a parking guy, a shoemaker and a couple of other guys who essentially looked small time street workers. The parking guy even let me off the parking charges for my car. :) Finally, a middle aged flamboyant man with less no. of buttons on his shirt than the no. of gold rings he was wearing drove in and threw a set of keys to one of the street guys who pointed back to him and told me, "He owns this place". And I got my flavored milk shake. Heaven !!!

The ability to say NO

2007-11-11T16:41:00.000+05:30

You might spend lifetime try to change something and everyone around telling you how you need to work on it but life has its own way of teaching - wierd but effective. I had a hard time saying NO to anything... to my manager for work (for a really loong time), to my mother for shopping, to my friend for a movie and to a lot of people around me for hell lot of stuff... I just cant... I mean COULDNT say No.

Recently, on my trip to Bangalore, I learnt the skill. I went to Bangalore with a lot of expectation of learning and fun... the learning part was good but the fun part didnt take off really well. I realized that a few of my friends had stuff that took priorities which was acceptible, sorta !! Then, there were the ones who had taken time off their schedules and life to make it a nice trip for me. They even planned a weekend away from the city for me (which by the way went fantastic) and then the moment of learning happened.

Just when we were getting into our fun filled weekend mode, I got THE call from the friend who had great plans for the weekend ahead and intended to spend it with me, leaving me with no option but to say NO.. and just then I realized, it was probably the very first time I outrightly said No to a friend for something. Wow.. it felt great. And I felt all the more connected to the people I was with. A lesson learnt in a moment without even having to put in any effort... a lesson for life !!!

By the way... the weekend went great - the pic is from Gagan Chukki

Back to college - the other side

2007-11-08T16:50:00.001+05:30

I recently got invited to my institute to attend the new batch's induction program and share my experiences of the institute and industry with them.

Realizing I was the only alumni invited when I reached there, I was a bit scared (and thrilled). However, it turned out fine and I was well greeted by my teachers and the current students and was made to sit in the fine company of our Principal Director, the Head Of Dept and the university's Computer Science dept's Head of Dept aka NSG (apparantly they also invited this guy who I never made peace during any of my practicals) on the front row couch (Yea... I made it to THE couch).

The whole thing started and NSG started off a presentation on the future of IT to give the new kids something to look forward to, which went on for over an hour (or so it seemed) and I cant think of a IT jargon that he might have missed out on. End of session was followed by a whole lot of confused faces across the hall instead of an appreciation for such learning experience which it was supposed to be (BUT it wasnt for most of us). This was followed by a few other sessions of motivational and publicity speeches (and some nice snacks from the canteen) by some of the other guests.

During this, one of my teachers started a conversation with me how the new batches were different from the our initial batches of the institute and she was of the strong view that the breed of new generation was solely responsible for the whole phenomenon as they were more resistent to teacher-student personal relations and were using classrooms for just getting pointers to the subject which they can later search for on the internet and the brainstorming inside the classroom was... say out of fashion. She also mentioned they bunked a lot less classes they we used to (poor chaps, missing out on all the fun). While talking more about this, I realized how the headcount in the institute has gone from 250 to 2500 and how the utilization of teachers per day has gone from 2 - 3 hrs a day to 5 hours a day. Which means the time for a teacher to interact with a student has gone down considerably. Also, due the no. of students shooting up like this, I guess the personal touch would have been lost as well. Not to mention the students now have more resources to their disposal with everything on the internet accessible whenever and wherever they want. But I still wasnt able to understand how the bunking could possibly get reduced.. I mean thats just plain simple human nature, aint it? We had all kinds of fines and punishments which could never prevent us from doing it, not to mention the passing the Power Of Attorney to another mate to sign in for me in a class. I guess thats just a change in generation.

I feel the newer generations are less outgoing, less outdoors, less sporty, more geeky and more virtual. Thats added to their being more IN the classes a lot more. The first thing we used to think of when planning to bunk a class was to play in a ground near the institute or to watch a live game. I dont remember BUNKing a class to play a computer game or to chat or to check my emails.

Anyways, I realized how much the teachers miss the old-school teacher-student relationship which was lot more personal and respectful. Would have been the first time when I judged any of my teachers as humans and not teachers - they look totally different, they ARE totally different.

PS - I dont know how many times I would have lost way from where I started on this post, however, I am not going back and editing it :)

Learning Vs Learning

2007-10-29T22:28:00.000+05:30

When I was growing up (I still am..) there were a lot things that used to bother me in school. There was absolutely nothing I would take or learn without being absolutely sure of it. They even went on to say that I'm from Venus coz when I was 14, I insisted how everything that WE had learnt was required for life on a planet existing on Venus inspite of which there was no life (known to us) on the planet, which according to me meant either of the two -

We were missing out on a critical neccessity for life to exist.
There is life on Venus, unknown to us.

As it turned out, I was the only one who had as much inclination towards Venus when everyone else was busy learning their own set of stuff.

And thats how I became the Venus species. And this wasnt the only thing, there was always a fuss about something or the other... like the revolution that broke out on me insisting on not paying for some kids' fair tickets being sold in the school, or the thing about the value of pie... which was just TAKEN by others and I would need an explanations of what Pie is and why is it part of so many formulas and how do we figure out its value in the first place... and I actually conducted a few experiments to find out its value..... realizing that I needed a lot better equipment and a lot more accuracy than that to be able to do that.

All these stories lead to one thing, my teachers telling me just to gulp what was being served, or to take it OFFLINE which apparantly never happens. And that where I got the real lesson, if you wish to know or understand something and dont have anyone to guide you through it, you have to find a way yourself to do that... whether its a book or an experiment or anything. The good part it that now when I get all these questions when attending any training or any such session, I just jot it down thinking.. 'Hmmm, I could just google it later'.

I wonder why is it that all teachers insist on students not analyzing the subject being taught beyond the stuff being covered there. I also remember the fact that most of my batches would take down EXACT answers to most questions that could arise from any chapter being taught and any other or any twisted questions in the examination from that chapter were just considered as Out Of Syllabus. And that wasnt enough, something that never struck me was how everyone prepared for mathematics. The whole idea of finishing all the exercises of a certain book and the other one was not something I really related to. I mean, get a grip, if you read or understand the fundamentals thoroughly, you are just good to go. Atleast that how I thought it works.

Anyways, my way of learning as turned out just fine for me till now, I dont know about the rest... they have done fairly well in their careers though I am not sure what they think about their learnings from the school. Really feel the need for a overhauling in the way education is approached in our schools.

May be I should consider a career there.... and going back to school in a different role, may be... hmmmm

The Smart Metro kids

2007-10-28T13:42:00.000+05:30

I went out for dinner with my old roomie and his family earlier today. His boy, who is 2 or 3, was supposed to be really adorable and naughty. I hadnt seen his kid in a long time and he has been telling me over phone all this while how the boy has been driving everyone nuts with his cute little things. When we met, the topic drifted to the boy and my bhabhi was really disappointed in the way my friend handled his son. I thought it must be better than what she was portraying it to be, being a mother. As the time went on, I realized the kid was actually really spoilt and cared least about anyone or anything. To him, talking ill was fun and a matter of getting attention which he ofcourse did.

This reminded me of a cousin of mine who was always naughty and loved by everyone for his funny bone and sweetness, however, nobody ever complained of him being off the limit. The prime reason for this was he knew when to make fun of something and when not to do it. He understood his limits as well coz I remember him getting a slap at a very early age whenever he tried to cross any boundaries. Not just that, I never remember him enjoy annoying anyone... he was always the kind who would love to make people laugh and not laugh at them. Kids today, probably, act funny for the heck of it, whether or not they are actually funny. Its more an act of attention than anything else.

Even earlier kids were upto something for getting attention but they never had as much ideas as kids today to. Its because of the kinda exposure these kids are getting - on TV, in their family. Its not funny when a 5 year niece asks me whether I was going out for a date as I was looking sexier than ever, its tragic. Whats even more tragic is the laugh this would attract from the family members which encourages the kid and convinces her that she isnt doing anything off limit or beyond her age.

I remember how many times I got beaten up (still do actually) by my maternal aunt for being naughty or being lazy or just because I met her after a long time and my mom actually laughing it off. And I dont think mothers today let anyone touch their kids even if they are caught guilty. Just think about the teacher-student relation row that was going around in Delhi schools recently. I still firmly believe that teachers should have enough rights to put kids back on track by tougher means, obvoiusly not electricuting them or cutting their tongues off but a slap or a scale on the palm is not all that bad if that makes the kid stick to the right thing - even if thats becoz of fear only.

Kids today spend so much time in front of TV sets and playing games within their house that when, occasionally, they fall on the ground, they act injured like an international cricketer.. coz thats what they see all the time. For kids in a village or the outgoing sporty types, I dont think getting a scratch or two in a day is that big a deal. I feel one of us used to fall off the bicycle everyday coz of the competitiveness when we were racing around in the streets.

I aint no parent yet, but I guess parenting has to be a lot more responsible than its being considered by the parents now atleast of the kids that I am talking about. Remember the dialogue of Susan Sarandon in Step Mom "Do you know how it feels to do it when you know that every little decision you make would impact the person you son or daughter would grow up to be".

Hope to be a fine parent one day... and a proud one too.

Where are India's Newtons and Einsteins

2007-10-28T13:41:00.001+05:30

Proud as I am of the APJ Abdul Kalam, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Homi Bhaba, JC Bose, Vikram Sarabhai and a few others, however, I still feel that we have not produced as many innovators as we could have considering the average IQ of Indians and the rich knowledgebase that we carry (especially in medical science).

In my point of view, innovators develop a lot out of the education system of any country and in our country the best brains have more incentives to be attracted to the industry than to the education system. How often have you seen the thinkers of your batch pursuing careers in teaching and not going in for attractive abroad pay packages ? Even the professors of most university departments that I have come across (dont know about the IITs which could well be completely different) are pretty much interested in making tution money and spending time in trying to make good public relations to help them grow, get the desired transfers etc etc etc. I just remember one physics professor of mine who wrote a whitepaper on electronics and got it published too, however, he too spent most of his time taking tutions.

I guess the whole story behind this is the approach towards education in our society. Tutions shouldnt be meant for making money, it should be meant for help for students who have trouble following whats being taught. However, if the students are screened before being admitted to a particular program for interest, there wouldnt be much requirement of help if the professors choose a planned and professional approach to teaching in the departments itself. Also, its upto the education system to ensure that the professors prefer to teach in the classrooms than in their houses in the after hours, therefore, they really need to paid well... and in my point of view, paid at par with the industry. Thats how it would become a real career for the people who have enough potential to be the next Newton or the next APJ.

Imagine India where names of our university departments would be taken in the same breath as MITs or Cambridge. And the next generation gadgets, technology and science branches would come from our country and spread across world after that. Where we wouldnt be fighting to become a nuclear power nations like a bunch of others who already are and we wont be struggling to acquire the latest technology aircraft from european country BUT we would be making the next generation submarines, the next generation detection systems and the west would be fighting to acquire the status of a Ganesh Power. Thats the India I wish to breath in ...

AMEN !!!!!

The Evolution of Horoscopes

2007-10-28T13:39:00.000+05:30

Need a twist in the tale.... put in a horoscope mismatch.... love still prevails... kill the spouse.... he/she is freaking still alive..... marry him/her to someone else with matching horoscope.. the freak comes back to the ex yet again... regular soap on TV. Everyone curses it and still they watch it. Women who criticize moms watching it all day, themselves watching it sooner than later (atleast after they get married :) ).

And influenced by all these soaps and partially due to the emergence of computer softwares, horoscopes have caught up. I remember 6 years back when I was running a cyber cafe for a friend and we had customers paying anywhere between 200 to 1000 bucks for getting their detailed horoscopic report (janam patri) and obscene amount of money to get the match making reports. We were one of the few cyber cafes that had a software for that purpose and the color printout on those religious gloss paper worked like a charm. Now with that kinda info available online, and soaps helping the fever to catch up even more, people are becoming more than ever conscious of the possible effects of stars in their lives and literally living their lives according to them.

My mom is out looking for a girl for me nowadays, and everytime she gets a profile, she would call up a pandit, give her out all details and wait for a callback about the match-making while she does the same thing on the software she has and see if both are consistent. Not that she was always a great believer in this stuff, just that with the soaps the awareness about this sh** has increased so much that its almost a fashion now more than anything else. "Hey, you've got 32 gunn matching with this girl, however, this particular star is contradicting... may be you will live apart most of your life... lets not consider this girl". Well... may be after a few years, I actually might just prefer living apart most of the time :)

And not just match making.. Ekta Kapoor has brought in so many whole new concepts of family functions.... from a series of pre and post marital functions to new born function series. And, the fashion has caught up equally well in the society... atleast for sure in Punjabis... we are having rituals I never seen my whole life.. coz one Gujrati family follows some tradition in one god damn soap.

Lets see what reality shows bring on now !!!

The Indian Kid who rocked... or did he

2007-10-14T19:00:00.000+05:30

I faintly remember a news from last year (or the previous) when there was this Indian teen who built an Operating System claimed to be a step ahead of Windows that time and one of the Indian IT companies (HCL I guess) came forward to take up the detailed study, and promotion thereon, of that OS. It became an instant news, exciting everyone in the industry and witnessed lots of people from the community and the media going all out praising for the innovative minds of Indian genius. And the news died its death, as did the OS I guess. I tried to google on the subject and found the following link http://hindustan.net/discus/messages/60/13420.html

Turns out it was hoax that took off like anything on internet and in the media. A question that comes up in my mind often is why the hell our Indian companies stay away from hard code innovation and selling serials. I knew the answer, the dollar game. Exactly why when I see dollar value dropping, it brings a smile to my face each day. I know the way forward, and the best part is most of the top managements of Indians companies does as well. We are not so far away from the point when Rupee will stand stronger than every and our companies would device better ways to survive than to cash in on the dollar-rupee ratio. Perhaps, that would lead to innovations and also to recognition of REAL QUALITY labor.

Not that the services industry would or should meet its end in any of the cases, however, the product industry or the other businesses surrounding it would stand equally taller. I see a lot of MNCs closing down their development centers in India as well, however, only a few. There would still be some continuing because the quality of the Indian IT Professional would improve for sure.

Looking forward to a hoax turning into a reality when, not a Ramlal Bhagat, but for sure a Raju or a Murty would challenge Gates.

Guys.. lets start thinking of the names just in case we are the one destined to come up with the next big thing - an OS, a compiler, a DB, a middleware suite.

Domain Names and Brands - Lack of understanding

2007-10-14T18:58:00.000+05:30

I got atleast 10 people showing me the site http://www.airtel.com/ and laughing off how Vodafone has taken over Airtel site.... and I pity everyone who's thinking something like this without understanding what actually is behind all this.

First the domain name airtel.com doesnt belong to Bharti Tele Ventures Ltd, the Airtel service provider that we know in India. They have their site up at http://www.airtel.in/ or at http://www.airtelworld.com/

Second, if your organization's name is India, doesnt imply that you would surely get http://www.india.com/ domain available.. if its taken u might try and negotiate to buy the domain from the existing owner but thats about it.

Also, Airtel is a brand patented by Bharti only in India (to begin with) and can be used by any other organization anywhere else in the world and Vodafone has it in Spain.... so they got the site's domain name registered long before our Airtel did.

Airtel and Vodafone might seem competitive in India.. they are actually working as a joint venture in Jersey which I imagine is somewhere in UK.

So I would really recommend all the forward freaks to get their facts straight before fwd junk and occupying valuable bandwidth.

2007-10-13T00:02:00.000+05:30

Imagine a poll across the country on ways of resolving the Kashmir problem। I would expect more than 80 per cent to turn up saying they would like to see Kashmir as a part of our own country and the rest of the 20 percent would care less what goes on in Kashmir. However, its immaterial. This is the issue thats running the business of politics and defence in three countries. Not that I have anything against the defence... if at all its the portion of society I respect the most. But the issue has been alive for 60 years coz its not all that simple.

The Mountain Shield
Himalayas are one of the youngest mountain range in the world, it stands tall from Kashmir to the north-east of India and acts a shield of protection for not only India but also for China and Pakistan. This is the single most important reasons for India and Pakistan to want it so bad. Having Kashmir as an undisputed part of itself would ensure India a huge security from a large part of their land borders. The terrain not only restricts army attack options but also, as was apparant in Kargil, gives and edge to the ones sitting on top. Besides, it would also act as a wall to setup infrastructure to spy or plan air attacks on a no. of neighbours. Imagine India having to protect only Punjab and Rajesthan borders against Pakistan as most of the other borders of India would look after themselves.

Paradise on earth
Kashmir is surely one of the most beautiful place across the world. Imagine the obscene amount of money that can be made from a good tourism from this state. I can pretty much guarantee that if the Kashmir issue and terrorism around get resolved today, the tourism in Kashmir would be on full swing within 3 months time, thats how attractive Kashmir would be to travellers around the world.

The Big Egos
Most of the political issues have clear solutions within a few years of the issue being born, however, the political egos of the nations and the politicians running the governments prevent the issue to die off. It a part of their agendas for next 4 elections, a little step towards the portrayed resolutions would be used in the election campaigns as the biggest leadership legends of all times and strength of character. And the bull shit doesnt stop here, the issue is provided enough oxygen to stay lit by various means to satisfy egos of the ruling few or of the masses.

Real Ownership
In my point of view, the fortunes of Kashmir should lie in the hands of the real owners of the valley - the Kashmiris, the ones who have their roots in the place and it really really belongs to them. I have had interactions with a few Kashmiris youngsters who have had to run away from their beloved valley because of the amount of stress they were under from the terror lots and consequently from the army. Imagine a scenario when some of your childhood neighbor visits you and asks you to fight for your independent nation (which you are apparantly not sure was ever independent or whether it should or should not be in the first place) and be a martyr and then you have to explain yourself to the armed forces and convince them that you havent been involved in any of the terror activities in your own neighborhood. Living in the peaceful parts of the country that we do, its almost impossible for us to even imagine something like that in our lives. I truly believe that the Kashmiris should be put in the hot seat (under a UN controlled election may be) to decide whether want to stick to one of the countries or exist independently.

Kashmir Vs Tibet
Consider the Tibet situation, being an outsider, most of the Indians that I come across feel for the Tibet and the Dalai Lama. Not quite the same way about Kashmir though, the mass ego comes into picture. Wouldnt you like to see a peaceful Kashmiri community to live and prosper with peaceful relations with their neighbours. (expecting more No's than Yes's on this) In the global environment that is to come in near future, I believe national boundaries would be as material as they are today. Knowing a Kazakistan culture would be similar to understand a Tamil guy for a north Indian or vice versa. We would soon be living in a world where a single global visa and work permit would allow you to travel or work anywhere in the world. Visa to a country would include conditions to restrict working in the cities with high population density or ensuring setting up business in the countryside... who knows. Think beyond your own short term national interest and mass ego and decide for yourself what you would think would be the best for the people who live their lives in their beloved valley everyday amongst all the stress and pain.

As I said, the Kashmir problem might seem a really complex and high significance in the first sight, however, getting another perspective to the story might make it a lot simpler for all the parties involved. But this revolution has to start from the masses.. from us.

Digital Signature

2007-09-22T19:37:00.000+05:30

With eReturns being filled this year, a concept which took a lot of air was digital signatures. Although this is something thats been around for a long while and is heard about now and then but during this eReturn period it really took off and everyone has now his or her idea of what digital signatures are and what are they meant for. Getting one of these from the agencies can cost you anywhere between Rs. 400 to Rs. 1200 for a year. What a DS does is exactly what your signatures do on a bank cheque, affirms the authenticity of the document.

Anyways, this isnt exactly what I wanted to discuss (or may be it was, dont remember). There is another concept of Digital Signatures as well, only amongst developers though. Heard a conversation between two of my friends one day while we were driving into the city after a adventure trip -

Dude (to Gal) - I guess its been more than an year since we last met, what have you been doing recently ?
Gal (serious disinterest) - Yaa, I guess so. I been on a project with this mobile phone company, making components of their UI.
Dude - Sounds great, how do you find it.. is it challenging ?
Gal - I dont know... actually not much. Its pretty much like anything else. Just had a release last Friday.
Dude - Hmmm. And did you sign it ?
Gal - Sign what ?
Dude - Cmon, you know stuff. You always sign a software that you make.
Gal (getting interested now) - I'm lost...
Dude - You really are. Its like... you always leave a tweak in the software that you make, like a signature or a trademark. Get it?
Gal - Why?
Dude - You just do. Its like.. every gun has its bullet marks, everyone has finger prints... just the same way, you always sign your project.
Gal - Like what.
Dude - Could be anything, just leave a mark, a tweak which noone by you know of, and soon enough people would recognize you work by your signatures.
Gal - Hmmm. Would think of something next time. Hey, why dont we get together for a movie or something afterwards.

Dude did get lucky with the signature stuff to get a date for sure. Its like a norm, whenever developers get experienced and confident, most of them start leaving tweaks in their products in their own special ways. One of the guys I know had a specific pattern of logging in his code and you could just make out from the logs who would have written the code without his name appearing anywhere in the logs at all. Another dude I know, would always keep a funny swear word somewhere in this response encrypted or otherwise, not to be noticed by a common user. Another female friend of mine would leave a cat face in the code comments. Also, a lot people put in action to administer their server tasks within their user applications. Thats what I call digital signatures.

Whats your signature ??

Movie Review - Freedomland

2007-09-10T23:00:00.000+05:30

Last night, surfing TV channels for a movie, I came across a movie "Freedomland" casting Samuel L Jackson and Julianne Moore. The cast was attractive so I started watching it.

The backdrop of the movie is twin suburbs with slight racial tension underneath. The movie surrounds a white woman who has a missing 4 year old son which, she claims, has been abducted by a black guy in her stolen car. As expected, the racial tension increases in the towns and the council handling the case, a black man portrayed by S. L. Jackson, takes the onus of investigating the case after he has a gut feeling that he hasnt been told the whole story. He pulls in a group for searching for the boy and as the story unfolds, it just becomes harder and harder to get away from the movie. All in all a fantastic movie (I didnt wanna give away the end)

Julianne Moore's performance during the whole movie was amazing and Samuel L. Jackson was his usual class as well. The way this movie has handled the subject of racial issues is truly commendable. All in all a movie worth watching !!!

A show for the Gypsy's

2007-09-02T12:00:00.000+05:30

I happened to visit a music show in the city for the Gypsyies. There is an organization called NOW (Nomads of the World) which organized a music workshop over the last week for world peace. The important thing though, was the participants which included some nomads from Rajesthan, school kids from the city and a composer from Italy whose first name is Andrea (coz I dont remember his full name :) ).

Now, the schools kids composed, during the workshop, a song on world peace which they performed with an amazing zeal and passion which can be seen only at that age of innocence. This was followed by a series of Jugalbandi between the Italian composer and the Rajesthani nomads which was kicked off by Andrea singing the Gayatri Mantra. The jugalbandi was not always enticing, however, what was fantastic to see was, the people who didnt even have a verbal communication channel and used a translater at all times off the stage, had an amazing chemistry on stage during the performance and how they took to each other's culture with such respect. I dont think the Italian understood what the lyrics of the song sung by nomads for Meera really meant but he sung it with the same passion as the nomads did and the same stood true for Andrea's compositions being performed in tandom with the nomads. The special part was to see chemistry between Andrea and Rakesh, an 8 year old nomad who rose to the occasion and never lost control of his instrument during the dance steps that he never looked like stopping. He was just in a zone where he just couldnt see or hear anyone but for the music he was so lost in. Both the people never had to share a word, but change in the tempo or scale in one's performance would immediately reflect in other's right after an eye contact. It was so amazing to see.

Truly one of the best and most teaching experiences of my whole life.

Feedback Technique

2007-08-17T17:01:00.000+05:30

Dude told a story about the teacher who asked all the students in a class to write down the names of all of their classmates and the nicest thing about them. She (yaa alright only a woman would do stuff like that) compiled the lists from each kid and distributed all of their their respective feedbacks. All of them came back smiling next day to school (weird kids) and had a common feeling that they never thought they were appreciated by so many people around. So, a story with a bit of a lesson - a lesson taken well by the dude.

Dude - Why dont we try this in our project team ?
Me - You crazy, what do u expect ?
Dude - Well, I dont know, may be a bit of mutual appreciation and some fun activity doing this.
Me - You gonna end up with stuff that ll turn u crazy.
Dude - Like ?
Me - So, here is a sample of the overall feedback you gonna end of up with...

TMs about Proj. Mgr - Great Guy, where does he sit anyways ?
TMs about Leads - How did they manage to grow that far ?
Leads about TMs - Fresh out of college stuff, remember how mature we used to be ? Some of them in my team are bright though.
Leads about each other - Well, not all of us can be good at work so some of us have to be a**lickers.
Proj. Mgr about the team - This is one of the best teams with most synergy that I have ever worked with.

Me - And if thats not enough you gonna spend the rest of your time in the project listening to people telling you time and time again how you were the one who came up with the brilliant idea of screwing up the little team spirit that we managed to pretend.
Dude - You know something, I just found a perfect job for you.
Me - And that would be ?
Dude - You could be a perfect Seperation HR.
Me - Never heard of a position like that before.
Dude - Custom made for you buddy. Who else could ensure sinking a running ship better.
Me - You know you suck, right?
Dude - Likewise.

Lost Credibility of TV Media

2007-08-02T17:04:00.000+05:30

News Channels really seem to have lost it completely. They are broadcasting anything and everything as BREAKING NEWS, is something we all know, but all the information being broadcasted is not alwasy credible is something I realized first hand today.

Its rained all night and early morning in Delhi today (and started again now, by the way) and certain areas had traffic jam in the peak hours in the morning due to water logging. Now, I live in Lajpat Nagar and travel 6 miles to my office in Okhla which on a normal day can be a 40 mins journey due to the traffic congestion in Okhla on a daily basis. Today I reached office in 12 mins flat. No traffic anywhere on the way, no water logging anywhere on the way and no rain during the morning hours as well. Mostly, I believe, due the traffic being stuck in the other parts of the city and not reaching the industrial area, which is more like a destination during morning, at all.

As soon as I reach office, dad called to check on me coz he just saw a news channel broadcasting a BREAKING NEWS that Lajpat Nagar (did I mention, I live here) was suffering from the rains and people having to walk through knee deep waters to get out of their houses. Apparantly, I have to pick up two more colleagues before I come to office and they live in different parts of the Lajpat only and I get a view of most of it before I reach office in the morning. And I hardly came across any water logging through the area or anywhere on the way to office, for that matter.

Its amazing how bluntly these guys manage to lie their way to better TRPs and we go on buying their far from fact news items.

Funny !!!!

PS - Surely there is water logging in Delhi causing traffic jams, especially in part of Ring Road, however, the broadcasted news items are far from reality.

A lot can happen over a coffee

2007-07-25T16:56:00.000+05:30

This is the punchline for a popular coffee shop chain.

We were just having a cup of coffee (actually ice tea) and since, there were a lot of house flies around, the topic came automatically to how to get rid of them quicky. Ideas poured in, from high speed blowers on the entrances to the repellers to a fantastic technique - get a gun and shoot them all. All being engineers, it just had to come down to optimizing resources so, we thought.. How about using a single bullet, Rajni style, along with, not one but, a bunch of knives forming a binary tree in the air so that the single bullet fired would get cut into halves time and again until suffices the no. of pieces of bullets required to kill all the flies.

Conclusively, we are ready with an algorithm to accomplish cleaning up all the house flies from our premises with a single bullet and with minimum execution time figured out. Just waiting for the flies to be back into the right position they were in when the algo was devised. :)

PS - I know this sucks.

Honey's Day Out

2007-07-23T21:18:00.000+05:30

It was a fun since the moment I got up. Esp as I knew I was getting together (just like every month) with three of my childhood friends and some of our siblings. As we went through our routine conversations on how someone has grown fat and someone has been looking weird, we planned for a movie and a lunch afterwards in this mall called Pacific which is "Trans Yamuna". After the fun, we were window shopping (and apparantly shopping) and I suddenly realized that its been 4 months since I last visited a mall last... which is amazing considering that all this time I spent in a metropolitan with more than a couple of malls in the vicinity of my residence.

As soon as I told my friends about this fact, they all discounted this saying "Its not possible man, one couldnt possibly do that living in Delhi unless you just didnt step out of your house the whole time or were really stuck in office" and none of that was true for me. So, I popped a question to all of them - "How many times in the last 6 months have you guys visited our school, playing ground, college, our regular hangouts like CP & Old Delhi, our favorite eating joint etc & all the places we used to regularly go out ?". And just as I expected, none of them had seen our school or college or the eating joint outside the college for years though a couple of them had visited CP a couple of times in last few months on the way to some other destination but not in the same way as we did during the our college days.

This made me wonder how our lifestyles have changed over time. How the fun of eating a Hot Jalebi in Purrani Dilli and playing football in the lawns of India Gate were replaced by watching a movie in a multiplex and a half-hearted lunch in a food court.

Is it just the age and change in time OR are we failing to understand the actual pleasures of life ?

Topic of the Week - Next big thing in Consumer Electronics

2007-07-17T19:43:00.002+05:30

Hmm... we have seen the TVs, cell phones, music players, CD/DVD players, cameras in the market in the last few years. What next ?

First of all, when I am talking about all this, this is specifically targetted for Indian market. Period.

We have had lot of propagation over convergence but not much of it is visible in Indian market till now. Lets see we do have cell phones which are bluetooth enabled, however, the most guys use the bluetooth for is for connecting to their bluetooth earpiece. Would love to see someone with a bluetooth stereo in his car connected to the cell phone, and taking call in his car on something as simple as honking, without having to talking on his cellphone speaker, mind u. How about a concept when you SMS your home phone which triggers your microwave to heat your food for 3 mins and your washing machine to go another round of washing and drying just when you are about to reach home.
Convergence for me is the next big thing for Indian Consumer Electronics.

Tips and Tricks

2007-07-16T19:40:00.000+05:30

Following are just a few tips and tricks around java technologies -

When writing JDBC code, use PreparedStatement inspite of Statement as far as possible coz of more than one reasons. Its not only precompiled (which means if you are using the same object to fire the query multiple times on the db, its compiles only once and makes execution faster) but also it safeguards you from SQL Injections. To avoid SQL Injections, always used a parameterized query instead of concatenating the parameters to the query string.
When writing database queries, always prefer joins to in queries. They are more efficient and respond quicker. Also, when firing a SELECT query on IBM DB2, always suffix WITH UR to the query to prevent any locks on the database.
Whenever invoking a static method, invoke it on the class wherever possible and not on object.
When designing an application and stuck in deciding where to put a certain method, always go by noun and verb theory (thats what I call it), entities are nouns and operations are verbs. Eg. Accountants transfer salaries, therefore, the operation or method trasferSalary() should be declared in Accountant class. If all the classes dont represent entities, which typically would be the case, then, just see what all data would be involved and which class should have access to it and who all would that class be exposed to and whose responsibility this operation is.
Avoid using replace method in String class, it has a probability of failing you at some point. Use StringBuffer class instead.
To get a formatted Date object, use SimpleDateFormat class instead of playing around with the Date string.
Always have a null check before invoking an operation on an object whenever you are not sure if the object would be available.
Catching all exceptions where they occur is not always the best way, for example, if there is an operation doesnt return anything, takes a value object and updates a row in the database, if there is an exception occuring due to the value object not being consistent shouldnt be handled in this method but should be thrown back to the calling method.
When comparing a String object to a String literal for equalness, always use STRING_LITERAL.equals(STRING_OBJ), saves you from a Null check and gives you the same result anyways.
When computing some value from the data coming from the same row of a database query, prefer computing it in the query itself if a db function is available. Normally, database functions are more efficient than computing in the code later.

Will be back with more now and then.

Side Effects

2007-07-12T21:04:00.000+05:30

Ever seen a quick fix turning out to create a chaotic situation, thats called Story of a Side Effect. Happens a lot in maintainence projects when you are looking for a quick fix, inspite of reviews and testing rounds, you still manage to introduce new bugs.

One of the famous side effects that we all laugh about in my current project was a really interesting one. I was working on a web based reporting tool and the project was very data intrinsic and performance and accuracy of reports were of the utmost importance, so, I was really concerned about the testing team looking into the accuracy of the reports in all scenarios and all the testing team was coming back to me with were cosmetic bugs which was really annoying at that stage (especially when I so hated working with HTML and Javascript). Anyways, one of the testers reported a bug regarding the submit button on the user page not being title case and the bug was raised a show stopper to make sure that it was fixed and not overlooked by the otherwise UI ignorant developer, in their words. One of the team members went ahead and altered the jsp page to make it title case and turns out, the whole applications went bizarre. No reports got generated, no errors on the standard output or standard error, to everyone's surprise a blank frame came up everytime the request was submitted to generate a report. Apparantly, it was due to a check in the Action class which was meant to handle request from multiple entry points and used the submit action to decide which entry point was the request coming from and thereon generate the report on the web page or on the filesystem and so the side effect of a cosmetic fix. Whenever we sit for lunch and discuss any bugs, this one really comes up and the tester surely mentions how these developers hate TitleCase.

I really feel for a team to prevent any side effects to creep in, testing done by testing team can never be enough. Their skills can make them look for bugs in other scenarios of the same module, however, only a developer exactly knows whether or not there is a shared code between modules and changing anything in one module can lead to affecting what all other modules. On the other hand, due to the mindset of a developers, they only test the code on the same patterns that they wrote it on (dont think many would be able to understand this sentence). The best way to capture side effect, therefore, is to have the developer point out the parts of applications to the testing team that the testing team should surely test thoroughly to get the best out of both skills.

PS - May be I have left some related point untouched in this blog, do make sure to point out that side effect to me.

National Growth

2006-08-15T17:08:00.000+05:30

Onus of National Growth

I was just going through my normal routine of surfing channels 1 in the morning when I came across this debate on BBC about the Millennium Target 2015 which was to do with who is accountable for the international drive for improving world economy by getting rid of poverty - a drive initiated by UN with a 10-year target.

The drive targets to remove poverty, improve literacy, education, health and governance across all member countries. The debate went around to a point where a question was raised whom to blame if targets aren't met and who should stand accountable for meeting the goals of this or for that matter any other targets or goals which are of global social and economic significance. The audience attending the debate voted for the following in the same order -

Governances of poor nations.
Governances of rich nations.
Private sectors
UN

Somehow, I feel they missed a trick which was apparently raised in the middle of the debate by a guest whose first name was Salil. The problem he brought to notice was the ignorance of the trailing communities about their rights. This is something I totally agree to and I guess the panel missed out on a very important party to this issue whose accountability I couldnâ€™t ignore â€“ myself being a part of it.

When I look at the current development in my own country, India, I figure that there is surely a segment of population who are doing fairly well then they were ever before. Just to cite an example, it would have been a dream for a 20-something 6 to 8 years ago to write the same thoughts on his notebook. Yes, due to the revolutionary industrial growth take has taken place in India in the last decade or so, the middle class has gone to another level and has now access to the amenities and technologies that only the upper class had been privileged to and this is the segment of population who needs to realize their social responsibilities beyond paying taxes.

The emphasis of this segment seems to be, indeed, is towards making bigger money every year and taking their own life from comfortable to luxurious. However, the point that we people miss out on is that our lives begin on our priorities and finish on our aspirations and desires and we just donâ€™t go anywhere beyond it. Itâ€™s nothing wrong with dreaming big and aspiring to ride the allexpensive bikes and other stuff you always desired of but we also need to understand that being in the comfort zone segment of society, we also carry a social responsibility to contribute to the governance of the society, the nation we live in.

The people in the developing nations, from poor to rich, either donâ€™t bother spending their thoughts on the governance of the nation they live or just crib about it blaming the governance and bureaucrats for being corrupt and not capable enough to run the state. None of us, ever, tries to put ourselves in the same shoes. I agree to an extent that corruption does exist in our nations. The primary reason for this is that necessities take a big priority over other things for the people of the developing and underdeveloped countries, money being a big part of it and because the governing authorities come from the same population, therefore, the priorities are inherited. There has been corruption in all public departments in these nations; however, I disagree to the notion that all the governing authorities are doing is getting involved in such deeds. We have had a few ruling party changes over the last decade and a half, however, all these governments, despite being equally involved in making their own future financially secure, have been much more visionary than any of the earlier governments. This has been a big reason for the progress we have seen in the stock market and the betterment we have seen in the life styles of the middle income group. The government has opened their arms for the foreign companies to invest in India and has re-considered few of their policies to make it attractive and easier for not only the multinationals but also the companies growing within the country. This move from the recent governments has been highly appreciable.

Coming back to the comfort zone segment, these people can contribute the most to the betterment of the society and, eventually, to the goals of the developing nations to get over the basic issues in more ways than one. This segment would be the best ambassador of any social regimes that have to take place. These are the people that have become trend setters in the society now instead of the all-so-rich celebrities. Just checking on the conversations that happen about the idols in society today, more examples are cited about the guys who are doing well in their careers in the industry or business than the earlier examples of the rich dudes and the celebrities who are making merry. This has been a good change for the society as a whole, no offence meant to the celebrities. Being the trend setters and the idols in the society, these people hold the power to put the rest of the masses to the path they want to and that is where there role comes in i.e. to set the masses on the track of economic and social growth by setting an example for it. This involves being a lot more conscious about the career decisions we make and not letting the personal (financial or otherwise) benefits drive our decisions, hence, setting good examples for all the segments in society as well as the younger generations. Another thing this segment can do is to help out governance in making the trailing segments of the society aware of the issues we have and the rights they have. They must know what they are entitled to from the governance and the society and who can they hold accountable for any violations. This would lead to a society that would be governed by the people and would also make sure, in future, that the right people are elected to govern the state. For this awareness to happen, it has to start from the young people who are in the segment who is doing well or what I call as the Comfort Zone segment and it would surely be spread across.

The eventual accountability still lies with the state governance â€“ the leaders of the nations and the authorities at all levels. As I mentioned earlier, although the recent governments have been visionary to an extent but they have not learnt from the past experiences and are starting to get more and more stagnant in their vision and policies â€“ whether or not they are aware of this. Just a few years ago, we had a slump in the sector thatâ€™s been one of the success reasons for our nation in the last decade or so â€“ the IT sector. We did come out of it well but we might have missed a lesson here. Why did this happen, and what are the chances that it might happen again? And is it as much threat to the developed countries as it is to us? The answer lies, in my opinion, in a simple observation that I made. Its quite apparent that IT in India has a big dependency of the service sector i.e. the projects we get from other industrial sectors and the funny thing is that the service companies in India have concentrated more on export i.e. providing these services to the foreign clients than the ample opportunities that lie within the nation partly because of the nationâ€™s policies which encourage export as well. So, in case of a similar slump as we had earlier in which case we might see a number of projects pulled back from India and pushed in some other countryâ€™s economy because of the cost factor or a change in foreign policies of India or other countries. This is not something that depends solely on the business competition we face but a lot of other factors as well. This would surely affect the business in our nation but would that kind of slump occur in western nations. I donâ€™t think so. If we look at IT sector in west, itâ€™s apparent that there are a number of businesses which are involved in work other than providing business solutions and services. Now, a business in which you are selling products is a lot less prone to such slumps than the services sector â€“ as far as IT is concerned. Any such slump wonâ€™t bring down Microsoft unless all computers in the world deny working with Windows. This is something which either is not being envisioned by our governing authorities or they havenâ€™t come up with a plan for this. So, my opinion is that the governance needs to be a little bit more farsighted and ready for the worst case scenarios. Continuing on their role towards the industry, governance should be encouraging ideas and business plans in any sector both in small scale and large. In fact, having a channel of communication from the public to the minds of the government would be a great idea. This could be just an email address or a public forum closely monitored by the authorities. This would make it easier for the brains of the industry to put forward their ideas and suggestions to the governance and can build good synergy between the governance and the industry.

Other than industry, the governance also needs to work on the betterment of the processes for various social drives like literacy or education, health awareness, other awareness programmes and providing amenities to all sectors. We do have processes for these in place but due to the diversity and size of our nation, most of the effort is spent on dividing the funds for the issues than to execute them. Agriculture is definitely in the thick of things in India and there are existing policies at central and state level to provide amenities to the sector. However, if education is promoted in rural India along with awareness of better agricultural techniques, we have the caliber of having a much richer and prosperous rural India. We have had a literacy drive for a while which has definitely improved on the primary education in almost all corners of the country. We need to make sure that more of the primary educated kids go through to high school and college which would make them more aware of the social, national and international issues and provide them a better foundation to improve the production in the agricultural sector as well as the small scale industries related to it. To make sure that this actually gets executed, the governance needs to get along with the Comfort Zone segment to take this spirit across to all parts of the nation and implement it.

Concluding, the accountability of achieving social and national goals of becoming a developed country, getting rid of issues like poverty, providing amenities like medical facilities lies in the hands of all level of governance, however, its requires an active participation from all the segments of the society to be lead by the youngsters like us by setting good examples and helping society make sure that all segment of society as taken along on the road of progress.