Gmail The Spy

The other day I was checking out an e-mail from one of my friend, and interestingly enough it had some so called ads on the side which were themed in a way or the other about the "IIT's" this was the first time I noticed that my mail too had an IIT theme, I was like awwww..., whats that.That was the moment I realized of reading something written as "better ads in Google", stay tuned, and the gmail blog which said of how the ads will be customized just for you. But here it was happening real-time and it felt a bit of awkward.
And that's the reason I received so many college ads in the year end seasons, and so many android ads whenever the talk was hot!

And the worse part, Gmail web-clips can be turned off (from settings-web-clips tab) but the ads on the right side of your mail are not so easily switch-off'able, though there are some greasy monkey scripts and some other hacks. I don't like it when I get ads of Android when I talk of android, and ads of "get cheap phones" when I was talking in a conversation or two about mobile phones. Yes, yes I know, no human is reading my mail behind it, but still its all like, while delivering my letter my postman says to me " Your aunt is a good personality, and a rich one too. *wink ;-)*", and I open up to find a letter from my aunt praising something!
I dint say its bad but at-least its awkward, its innovative, it new and its good.

GeeXboX My Favouraite Distro

Some one asked me for my favouraite Linux flavour (or what is also called distro), i thought and then said "GeeXboX", amazement at his face! Never heard of this one. I asked apart from office and other work what is our best entertainment work that you do on your computer.... I guess internet, videos audio, fb. And this distro does all of your audio, video and photographs part without even keeping all your graphics card, loads of widgets on all the time. And that malicious code eating on to your invaluable resources too cant work on this linux in the background. Best part - Being Linux its highly customizable, put your movies or audio in there which auto plays as cd is inserted, just get some of your audio/display drivers so that it works well, boot it from your USB key or just pop it in and bring snacks ad fall back on your Lazy-boy. Its minimalism attracts me so much. The first time I used it it was a mere 8 MB download, the latest stable is not too big mere 19 MB, comparable to your favouraite VLC!

GeeXboX

The Open Source Café

This is an unedited version of my talk to one of my friend:
" .......as a foot note let me tell you a kind of case study of reception of Linux in India ( if you don't get bored ). I was quite frequent one of th nearby cyber cafe, which made me quiet free to talk to the cyber cafe man! I one day asked him: why you use XP, whilst you have pretty good configs! (i was actually asking for the 7 thing) so we had a chat like what are the problems, virus and all. And that conversation lead me to many probable answers for "why not Linux"!<i mean cons with common man>. So in the end of it i figured it out that in the cybercafe at-least one or more person will be using internet, apart from the gaming thing in the cafe, as commonly one who came for gaming didn't surf and vice-versa, as this will also ease him on some computers' configurations. And i even proposed him to handle one computer's problems to me. Which meant any customer facing any problems on that computer will be my responsibility. So here began my research and experimenting time. I first of all listed out the problems of a lay user surfing internet which he will face on Linux, and found out that for and average customer there were no problems he can have. So here was a good news. First of all i installed Ubuntu and then worked out for the internet connection and codec thing with the help of a friend. And rest of it was done as i installed some basic software one needs. Rest was taken case by Ubuntu itself. Firefox was there, PDF reader, gimp, vlc, 7zip all went to desktop and what else was needed. (actually if i had worked out with mint it would have been a bit easier for the codec thing, or even Kubuntu). That was it and the special thing was that the over all user experience feedback was very good as most of the people were not even bothered, they didn't had any problems, they worked as usual, as almost all the soft-wares were already familiar specially the Firefox. Some users who wanted to work on their own soft-wares were shifted to the windows system. I even gave him a CD with boot'able "Geexbox" for users who came just for watching movies(why bother them, what else can be better than a 8 MiB full featured easy to use media player distro) Today even most of the daily life apps have gone online soo...
I told him that you can dual boot but that'll be cumbersome. And that was it. After some weeks of surveillance i left him(cyber cafe man) with his own armour and the bad thing he again swiched to Windblows, saying it was an over all mess for him, if someone asked him for help. Whatever this experience was great and rewarding. I learnt a lot from it. Thats it...."

vujà Dé vs Piracy

Piracy Concerns

 For decades altogether there has been a trade off between the so much familiar Windows and the uh! so Geeky Linux. I don't take sides or justify either of them, but the concern is that at most of the instants and over and over again we've chosen the cheaper, easily accessible and the unofficial over the ethical, proper and most importantly the Costlier. And I was amazed to find that in India people don't even know what they are doing, And yours sincerely doesn't even remember how many Ubuntu iso's he has burned and distributed thinking this may help, but the only product is: Why bother?, Whats the difference between that so tough to learn copy of yours and this one you I have! .Its not that this kind of piracy is just limited to India or it is due to poverty or any such thing this blog shows a live example where Bill Gates himself agreed of watching pirated movies on You-tube himself, amazing isn't it!! Interesting part of the Microsoft story: I saw shops hanging cardboard signs written on them "Windows 7 available", I checked my wrist watch and it said 20 OCT 2009, two days before the Windows official release date, I was like :-O.... Microsoft even said "we love Microsoft piracy on China" , because in exact words of one of my friend, software piracy helps windows:

Do you know why Wind-blows still survives and Linux is not considered (for many)... That's because piracy exists... If there will be a full on no piracy law... Win-blows' days will be over... And then Linux will be considered among the mainstream OSes.

Even big companies as Microsoft get laid before such large scale piracy problems, Microsoft has been seen providing free software to counteract piracy. Every one is affected with this kind of piracy, authors of books, soft-wares, photographs, its not limited, things are worse with intellectual property data theft.
There has been different approaches to stop piracy, keys, online activation, DRM, anything, everything, has been done, but as they say, "build a more idiot-proof system, and bigger better idiots will appear!"
I've seen many of my friends get frustrated of intellectual property theft. The most interesting part is that people are devising social methods to counteract these problems and amazingly they help! Some even made themselves believe that their e-books being pirated doesn't necessarily means they are losing money,it may even mean that they are getting more money out of their product. One of the authors even complained that some people asked him to mail them the PDF copy of his book and as he mailed them the other day his books were distributed all over the net! The situation is that Cory Doctrow and Roy Osherove provide the links to download their own books on the net for free!! There's also a software, which reminds us to be on the right side, every-time someone tries to pirate it.

Piracy Initiative. Courtesy:labnol.org

I've seen, almost all of the time there's one, at least one open source or freeware alternative (like LiVES, Avidemux, Virtualdub, GIMP and many more), and for all fields and most of the times open-source's have satisfied me more than enough (Stellarium, Celestia etc). But for most people, how does that make any differences. One comment from a friend about the concern:

Indian world is just hanging on this piracy thread, I mean the cyber-cafe's and all... No international music (most of them)... No unreleased movies and many things like exposure to Windows, Photoshop and many other soft-wares can be imagined without piracy.

Due to their deep concern Indian Govt. has started implementing the open-source (Linux) initiative, this brings hope to lives of people, this makes those thousands of coders work just for nothing, just for the sake of making this world a better open-source or at-least non-pirated place to live!
I wonder, do those coders out there sitting in the Microsoft and such other labs intentionally leave Loopholes!?, so that this continues. Is it a marketing strategy to let their soft-wares get publicized, I've never seen a Hackintos, at least not yet!
So we should be aware of this piracy and the privacy(at least read once, what you accept!!) thing and make people aware of its consequences and try to avoid the Piracy. Be aware, Use Genuine, at least think of it we have got ample options!!
 
Thank you, subham. Photograph courtesy: pirate bay, labnol.

Blog Smart

This is a new blog, never mind, don't let your eyes roll down to the stats counter. You can always learn something from everyone. So here are basic blogging tips (with real time application on myself ;-) to make you blog smart. Yes I am learning too.

1. First and foremost thing, the heading of your post must be explanatory, and attractive like use "Blog Smart" instead of "How To Blog", Don't fake it! Head and Tag your post sincerely.
2. I don't say don't copy or borrow, at least no one produces the knowledge. Do borrow but do it open, put a link out there and give credit to whom you borrowed it from.
3. Use Google to fullest. Yes you got it right, research before you blog. it has got two plus points first you may get some good points for your post, second you may altogether find a better post itself! So why work one more time just link the better one. If possible blog about something you find obscure to find you must have knowledge in that field and most importantly if you feel you can do it better then those out there, do it right away!
4. Don't at all hesitate suggesting your readers for better blogs thinking they may leave you, always provide them ways to get it better and move upstream. Believe me, it helps.
5. Don't advertise just as you are with your blog, it wont provide you enough anyway on the other hand you may lose your subscribers, focus on the quality of blogs.
6. Make your subscribers read you in all the ways possible, rss, mobile, email or any other way, let them share your words on fb or anywhere else.
7. Interact with your readers participate in comments and discussions, make the blog as down to ground as possible, if possible include screen shots and screen-casts for step by step work out!
8. My favouraite point, I found it somewhere while surfing " A useful blog post once a week is better than low-quality content published daily " !
9. Keeping in mind the above point maintain regularity don't disappoint your readers. 
10. Last point always keep the Blogger's Code Of Conduct in mind. 

Try to keep content of your blog insusceptible to  time, i mean if someone checks out your blog after a year or so of your posting, and still finds it precise and relevent, won't it be great! Always keep eyes open, learn from the blogs you read and MOVE ON MAN!

Happy B'day Rusty

Being on a bit of technical/scientific side, I too believe that there must be some mathematics about beauty like the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci Sequence to which even the nature, flowers seem to follow, I am also worried about Riemann hypothesis :-|. If you haven't heard this kind of comparison of mathematics and beauty, you're having it for the first time go stand in the corner for a while and Google before coming! So, there are some rules which are scientifically proven like attractive faces (facial proportions of beautiful people) have such and such a ratio (facial beauty and geometry) or if you keep on overlapping faces, the face you get with the greater number of overlaps the more attractive it'll be to the general public, or your blog is expected to be successful if the word count is between this and that(average word count is 100-249 words per post.), or if your writing skills are good or if your blog address character count is something fixed(we will talk about success in blogging in the next post).
So almost every thing in this world is defined with some mathematical set of rules or if its not yet, it is on the mind of our genius mathematicians, how to relate this or that event with mathematics/science.
Similar is Writing, you'll be successful if your writing is of a KIND and the circumstances are with you, I've seen novelists and writers to use great words which bind their readers with their charming effect, but there's one person who writes words as dust(in front of those great writers) but touches me and many more people like me with a simplistic approach! By chance if you are an Indian and even if you are slightly interested in written text or if you by chance just crossed the 10th grade from indian education system you know him already.
So I still wonder what drags me to his writing, from the very nursery up-to adolescence. His points of interest and articles are like what we see in our daily life, like a flower or just a lizard roaming around on his walls, his articles are so simplistic yet so powerful they attract the old and the young alike. He made me interested in reading, he was what I started my reading with, he drew my interest to books, and writing, he is like a teacher to me.
I wish him a Very Happy Birthday, may god bless him. May he keeps writing like this forever. To my teacher, my Hero, RUSKIN BOND!

Ruskin Bond with his Fans

Ruskin Bond is an Anglo Indian author based in Landour Mussoorie, He is popular between all ages of readers in India, he has received Sahitya Akademi Award and Padma Shri for his works. On 19th May 2011 he turns 77.

Blogger's Code Of Conduct

I see flame-wars going on the comment boxes, sometimes on face-book, sometimes over the email or text messages, so here I put a piece very important to Bloggers, and to general public as well.
The Blogger's Code of Conduct is a proposal by Tim O'Reilly for bloggers to enforce civility on their blogs by being civil themselves and moderating comments on their blog. The code was proposed due to threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra. The idea of the code was first reported by BBC News, who quoted O'Reilly saying, "I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of regulation it would come through self- regulation."O'Reilly and others came up with a list of seven proposed ideas:
1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.
I personally love these rules so much, after all they are so well said, so lets try to enforce them into our daily chores over here.

Forewords, just joking man!

Hey people, these days of increasing cyber crime and all prove out to be hard! There are fakers roaming around who try to steal your work and prove that they are the real authors of the content you created from deep down your heart with so dedication and faith. It's not surprising, you can see it in photographs, your piece of writing, a video you edited or simply a source code of some program which you thought to be your and published on the net or kept your strings loose. So the authors/artists have to adopt to this and publish things keeping in mind the consequences of what may happen in case of data theft of intellectual property! Similarly i here by declare that i am on the same path of "no one's genuine". So my articles may be influenced by the thoughts of my friends, relatives or even a girl walking by the road when some idea stiked me. So don't be amazed if you find some words, lines or even paragraphs to be borrowed from somewhere you've already seen. It'll be taken proper care so as not to hurt someone, infringe copyright, or steal someone's idea. Afterall no one's perfect, and to err is human to forgive divine.
So if you are having any of above problems or any other queries or simply some suggestions please feel free to drop me a line at :- "tripathisiddhant@gmail.com". :) And ya dont steal be fair!

What is TECHNETIUM

Watch out friends the blog's name is "technetium" while the address is "techtium". Actually the basic idea of having this name comes from the 43rd element of the periodic table named Technetium (Tc) with atomic weight 98, discovered in 1937 with electron structure as (Kr)4d5 5s2 which is a gas amidst almost all the solid transition metals! I particularly chose this name due to it's close analogy with the word technology.
In 1947 element 43 was named after a greek word, meaning artificial since it was the first element to be artificially produced. Technetium, atomic number (z) 43, is the lowest numbered element in the periodic table without any stable isotopes that is exclusively radioactive and most technologically active element on the face of earth. ;-) .
Since technetium is unstable, only minute traces occur naturally in earth's crust as a spontaneous fission product in uranium ore. So don't worry i am gonna provide you with lots of it despite of its lack in nature.
Almost two thirds of the world supply comes from two reactors, but the rest of it is with me (mind it, its rare). All major technetium 99 m producing reactors were built in the 1960's and are close to end of their life time. But mine has just started so i'll be the only producer for some coming days. :)

PRECAUTIONS: Technetium plays no natural biological role and is not normally found in human body, but i am gonna provide you with this so handle carefully and be cautious in use!