Avatar

Crap.

Google, China and Evil

I heard of Google -- China fiasco few days back and was waiting for details to emerge before writing this.

This is Google's official statement. (Summary: Someone from China cracked into Google and accessed 'Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.' So, Google, which had been censoring its search results in China, will not do so any more. Further 'We[Google] recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.')

The very first line states 'we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis.' and yet Google had never before done even a small degree of complaining. It means only one thing: that Google thinks this attack was executed by the Chinese government agencies themselves. This surprises very small number of people. Definitely not me. (And not after this.)

But then why is Google statement's tone similar to that of someone being cheated? That's because Google has done many many things to appease China from filtering content to showing Arunachal pradesh to be a part of china(Go to .com or .cn to see it. .co.in shows it in India) and after all that if this has happened, I guess Google has a right to feel cheated. But that does not justify Google's humorous claims of doing this for protecting free speech. where was Google's righteousness till now?

I don't believe this 'I'm doing this for free speech' thing. This is either a publicity stunt or arm twisting of China in a negotiation.

Following quote by Nat Torkington(see this article) is interesting:

... Is there another deal ("let us into your telco market and we won't shame you publicly with the hacking evidence we gathered that links your foreign department directly with cyberspying, we'll just say your machines were gateways for Russians") that's the real focus?

So much for not being evil.

Dell Sucks

Dell is using a shipment (aka courier) service whose staff don't know where Chromepet is. My bad time, I'm living in chromepet. And using a Dell laptop. :-(

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!!
Here is a wallpaper: (click to go to deviantart and download)

Via lifehacker.

Software Freedom Day

It's on tommorrow.

 As usual I'm doing a demo in multimedia in the SFD celebrations in Chennai.(Birla Planetarium). All are welcome.

My Lab

Well, actually not my lab. The lab for which I am the Sysadmin. The lab has 14 systems that dual boot to Windows XP and GNU/Linux, and a central server that runs on only GNU/Linux. Most of my plans for the lab are implemented by now.

These are the improvements in the lab compared to last year, i.e. after I took over.

• The server system itself. It facilitates
1. Faster software installation on all systems. [Via apt-cacher]
2. Web Caching.
3. One stop monitoring of error and other logs on all systems.
4. Automated maintenance of all other systems. [using custom shell scripts, Cron and OpenSSH.]
   
• Improved security in WinXP.
1. Uses Software Restriction Policies to protect against viruses coming through removable disks. [99.9% effective. Not a single virus in past two months of operation.]
2. Anti-virus which is updated daily and fully functional.

And lots more(on next post. :p).. I'm happy except for few kinks, which i hope to iron out soon.

Love and Pi

Love is like pi – natural, irrational, and very important.

Lisa Hoffman

:P
Got from here.

Inauguration of Computer Society

The Inauguration of Computer Society of my college was a great success. The inaugural address was delivered by Prof. P Sriram. He is the founding member of ILUGC(Indian Linux Users Group Chennai) and presently the Head of the dept. of Aerospace Engineering at IIT Madras.

Full Photo album cam be viewed here.

I Got a Laptop

All new Studio 1555. It is different from older studio 15 laptops in that it has HDMI port update, improved BIOS etc. Things which Dell removed were Touch sensitive buttons, hard drive activity light etc. I'm irritated by the absence of any indication of hard drive activity. :(

Will update on the software side soon. One thing though: I completely wiped the hard disk clean and installed GNU/Linux. Bye bye to vista. :)

PS: Since I got a system on my own now, should be able to update my blog regularly. :-)

Lab Complete

The UG lab is officially open from today. My long time dream of becoming a system administrator is fulfilled. :-)

All the systems have a dual boot GNU/Linux and Windows XP. I thought of dispensing with windows altogether, but other people are not yet comfortable with using Linux in entirety.

The Latest Comedy by The Hindu

Here.

Update:
An explanation of what might have actually happened:

...today, international conferences are attended by Iran's President, not the Supreme Leader. So the person whom Mr Natwar Singh met at the NAM summit was probably the President, who at the time was Ali Khamenei. Perhaps his 1982 anecdote also refers to Ayatollah Khamenei (who was the president throughout the 1980s). He was not the supreme leader then, but he was an important man;
...

Library

I was reading this essay and it had the following note:

1. The library is a large building filled with books and journals. It functions sort of like Google, but deeper.

Ha..;-)