Upgrade from Vista to XP !!

I honestly don't like to make my blog one of those Microsoft bashing portals for the fact that I admire what they did to the Zune; but sometimes I stumble on stuff that is so hilariously fascinating that they definitely are worth blogging. I must admit though, that I am a bit biased towards Open Source. :)

Ok. so here it goes...
This article published on the microsoft website details the advantages of XP as a superior and secure operating system (which I would agree to an extent), and then got this article (via Wired) on the same microsoft website px that gives system administrators (or related business development owners) reasons that justify the upgrade to Vista. Of the many stupid reasons mentioned there, are also the ones related to security and maintenance costs, the same ones mentioned in support of XP. Now which do I believe...!!

On the other side of the Window, the one where the frustrated Vista user is dwelling, comes rejoice where Microsoft is silently providing the possibility of downgrade (or upgrade to be precise) from Vista to XP. OEM vendors will provide XP installation media for a minimal sum (in the whereabouts of USD 10) to users who have purchased their hardware which came pre loaded with Vista :D

One of the funniest ad's ive come across

*no thanks!!*

back in school we devised a foot board for the Windows m/c. Just a simple combination on three keys "Ctrl" + "Alt" + "Del"

hibernating in blogosphere

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Ubuntu'd and luvin it

More experiments with Ubuntu are up on Gadget7 and you can check it out here

For sheer expandability and customization, im totally addicted to this OS. This is fun :)

Microsoft ZunePhone, the all new ...err!!

dogs sniff out cancer

As i signed outa my y! today i was struck by news which said that dogs can sniff out cancer. Now this was interesting, and a little digging around took me here

"The anatomical structures used by dogs and humans for detecting and processing odour information are not the same. Detection thresholds of dogs are many times higher than for humans. The biggest anatomical difference is the number of sensory receptor cells (Moulton et al., 1960), which is best illustrated by a comparison of the size of the scent organs. In humans, the scent organs are approximately 5 square centimetres in surface area, whereas for dogs they are 75-150 square centimetres. The cerebral cortex processes information from the olfactory sense. In dogs, about 33 per cent of the entire cortex is used for this task, whereas in humans it is only 5 per cent"

Image Source

So now that they sense cancer, how are we going to know, how do we communicate with them or vice versa? Apparently, research has proved that dogs can be trained to sniff out bladder cancer from urine. There have also been claims that a dog actually sniffed his owners' breast cancer when he started sniffing, snuffling and becoming agitated when he sat on his owners lap, which drove his owner suspicious and got a scan with a positive indication of cancer.

So the next time your dog starts acting funny around you, remember its trying to tell you something that could just save your life.
There will come a time when the nurse would say "Now the dog will see you" ;)
It also gets me wondering where the name LABrador was coined from ... hmm..

yet another battery recall

After Dell, Sony and Apple its now Nokia's turn. Nokia has today announced a battery recall program for the BL-5C batteries manufactured between December 2005 and November 2006, after incidents of an overheating battery during its charging. Though Nokia claims that there have been no reports of serious injuries or property damage, it would be a good idea to replace yours if it is defective.

To know if your phone battery is one of the 46 million batteries that are part of the product advisory, check out this

Lucky guys get to replace their dying batteries ;)
I was not so lucky myself.

gadget7

from this day onwards, my tech posts with *less casual* writing style will go on gadget7

all work and less play drives kiran varghese to start off such things. and am saying that in a positive, productive and industrious sence. :)

Rough tide leads to pleasant discovery

The last month was a period of experiments with my computer, starting with the fact that I was running on a ‘going to break’ HDD and the DST short test was failing repeatedly. So before anything, I backed up all my data (which also includes my windows partition) after running openSUSE in recovery mode; and trust me it was quite a breeze, reinforcing my crush on Linux. Later that day I called DELL support and they promptly shipped me a replacement hard drive one working day later, but the OEM OS that id also asked them to ship was going to take a few days longer as the package which includes WinXP, device drivers, sonic, win backup and a few others were flying in from Netherlands. Nevertheless I was happy with their prompt and ‘no questions asked’ service, afterall I guess ive already paid them quite a sum when I took the 3 yr complete care support for my inspiron 6400.

A few months before this day I had installed the vista transformation pack just to see what the hype was all about. Must say, I was impressed by the freshness it gave to the aeging, yet stable XP. So I decided to head to the nearest and dearest electronics shop to get the Vista Home Premium. I like the way it installed, M$soft finaly decided to keep it simple and voila!! I also have my disk management utility inbuilt right into the installer, and without second thought retained 20gigs of free space for Linux. Two weeks passed and I liked the way vista felt, till I realized that I need more memory for what started to seem like a dying computer. I think I can quite easily point the finger at vista that required ~500 MB just to boot and get running. I ‘tried’ installing Halo for vista, and not to my surprise it didn’t quite go on well. You already get the picture, don’t you? Nevertheless 2Gigs of memory is on its way..

A jobless Sunday afternoon, and what more could I do when I find the ubuntu feisty fawn media lying around, 10GB of free space and a geeky mind. No prizes for guessing right, im now happily ubutun’d with a fresh and functional desktop. And here is a trailer of what could be done with Ubuntu and Beryl



Tell me that you still aren’t impresses by just the eye candy, and then here is more from a functionality pov. The ubuntu installation is done with a couple of user inputs that loads off a Live CD making life much easier, then comes the best part, the apt-get application is used to install any application from the command prompt, all u need to know is the name of the application and a simple `apt-get app_name` will look for the application online, download it, resolve dependencies and install the app. Ive got two words, “luvin it”

Next adventure would be tweaking and compiling the G15 drivers to get my Logitech Z10 working, and then Vmware to get virtual servers running. More later …

Live free, or die.
Linux!!

The Triangle: More to it than a polygon with three sides.

The triangle is indeed fascinating for the fact that it is so simple a figure to have inexhaustible properties and theorems associated with it. Leaving the world of geometry behind, the triangle still has many mysteries and tales to tell.

The first thing that would come to my mind is the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
"It is the greatest modern mystery of our supposedly well understood world: a region of the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the disappearance of ships and planes continue to defy explanation"

A complete paradigm shift into the field of Management and Organisational Behavior will lead us to what I would consider one of psychology’s best theorys’ proposed by Abraham Maslow, “Maslow's hierarchy of needs”; and is something which im more interested at this point of time. Wikipedia has a whole lot of information relating to this, the crux of the matter being: people have needs starting from the lower level deficiency needs to growth needs which they realize with time until they reach a level of self relisation/actulisation.

Image Source: http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/16

Maslow's hierarchy of needs would apply to induviduals, but there probably could exist (or coexist!!) another triangle that could represent organizational structure, the apex being the chief, and the base of the triangle being the naïve new entrants to the organization. The employees at the base are the ones who have physiological and safety needs, they probably would want to first attain a state of financial stability and responsibility, slightly sidelining the other ambitious desires and needs. Progressions up the organization however fast or slow paced it might be, would take the individual to a state where his safety needs are satiated and then would arise the previously sidelined growth needs, till superiority is attained.

The best of the organizations’ would have a common goal and its employees would work towards the same in which case these two triangles shoud coexist. This could probably also justify the base for my comparison between the triangles of an individual’s needs and an organization’s structure.

As the organization grows in terms of manpower, maintaining the linearity of the leaning sides of the triangle would be a challenge for reasons more than one that needs to be addressed. Probably with time I might be able to figure out factors that influence the linearity of the leaning sides’ or probably end up justifying that a bulge in the organisational structure is the only profitably feasible way. The bottomline is however the fact that both the employees’ needs and the organizations’ goals are to be satisfied and that is what makes a successful organization and also a great one to work for.

There are already a couple of new thoughts in my mind right now, but ill put them here later, till then, its black, white and everything in between.

And then Norway happened: In Cod we believe

I'm beginning to wonder whether there is some force influencing my travel that tend to make all the planning and associated logistics start and flow right into place just a week before the real thing happens. But i must admit that i loved the way how a random take while flicking pages over this good Lonely Planet guide took us to a spectacular island in Northern Norway surrounded by mountains, fjords and islands in all directions. Tromso, is connected by picturesque roads to numerous villages with fishing being the major occupation of the yesteryears from where they coined the phrase, “In Cod we believe”. (Yes, Mr.RamantheB there was no typo there ;))

We flew in to Rovaniemi, the capital of the province of Lapland, to get closer to Santa “who really lives deep in Finnish Lapland in Korvatunturi (Ear Mountain)”, which i discovered here. But we had the privilege of meeting him at the Santa Claus village and official post office in Rovaniemmi, which made it easier for us to get started on the real adventure we were about to embark on and crossing the arctic circle and into what quite easily could be termed as “paradise land”.

To admit, i was quite nervous about the whole thing as i self assigned myself to be the one behind the wheel for this ~1500 Km drive across international borders spanning three days, considering the fact that this was my first drive over 100 kms in videsi land.
But nevertheless i always had the itch for adventure and exploration, and there i was taking delivery of our car that delivered in excess of 150 horses that empowered us to maintain an average speed in the whereabouts of early three digit figures for most of the trip. First destination was the western Finnish bordering city of Pello when we were cutting through what 'at this point of time' i would call boring lakes and countryside for the fact that what lay ahead of us was awe aspiring splendour for which two eyes were just not enough to admire.

The drive trough the snow peaked mountains, crystal clear and serene lakes alongside plush green meadows after the Finnish border, along Sweden and into Norway just took our breath away, the feeling which might be justified by the phrase, “The Journey is the Destination”
At this point i sign off leaving you to do all the imagination. Ah silly me, how can i forget to mention the whale safari where we cruised to the edge of the continental reef in the Baltic sea in search of sperm whales, seals and sea eagles.

work (un)culture!!

Lets pick some lines from few techies' jabberwocky conversation.
“Man!! Im simply too busy for nethin right now”
“Im slogging my arse off”
“Ive got no time to do that, all i can think of is that harsh deadline”

Mr. Techie is working hard towards meeting a unrealistic deadline; sweat and toil, and finally with a heroic effort the target is achieved with all might and valor. Victory!! one might say. Accolades flow in from all directions and further motivate Mr. Techie to stretch. Now, people around Mr. Techie realize the magnitude of effort he put into this war against time, not to mention his unique ability to stretch, and motivate him to keep up the good work done. He is now considered an integral member in the team and soon becomes a stimulant inspiration for the new techie to follow suit.

The vicious glorious cycle is thriving.
All this, at the expense of what?

Merriam Webster defines “culture” as “enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training. acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills”

Now its up to *you* to define “unculture”.

Frozen

You try to walk outa your den precariously,
You try to shield yourself,
You try to fight it off.
You try, just try and never succeed.



Its time to feel it, time to feel something that has fascinated us whenever we used to see those romantic bollywood songs with scantily dressed actors who rock and roll amidst white landscapes and snow peaked mountains.

Welcome to reality folks. Its that time of the year when you prepare to leave the cozy warmth of your home and clad yourself with numerous layers of clothing in your desperate attempt to keep your privates from getting frozen. Its that time of the year that comes after partial Polar Night (when the sun is almost below the horizon and a lingering dusk will be pretty much the best thing that can happen). Its that time of the year when you see the Midnight Sun ( the opposite phenomenon to Polar Night. A phenomenon that occurs in latitudes north of the Arctic Circle where the sun is visible at the local midnight as a result of the tilt in the Earth's axis w.r.t the ecliptic). Its that time of the year when your planning/estimation/forecasting skills are tested to its very limits while you precisely plan your bus connection to office and back.

Yes, its winter, -18 degrees centigrade, and in contradiction to what you might be thinking, “Im Enjoying It, enjoying every bit of it”. The kids, all protectively covered and playing with their sledges and shovels, building snowmen who can whether the winter. The people hurrying home to have that hot cup of chocolate. The heavy machines that clear inches of snow off the road and walkways and spread grime for grip. The pure white expanses wonderfully spoilt by those tree barks in contrast coloring. These scenes will remain fresh in my mind for many years to come. Or at least till the snow melts ;D