Monthly Archive for January, 2006

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Are you a Pro*titute or a Programmer?

Are you a Pro*titute or a Programmer?

1. You work very odd hours.

2. You are paid a lot of money to keep your client happy.

3. You are paid well, but your pimp gets most of the money.

4. You spend a majority of your time in an air-conditioned room.

5. You charge by the hour but your time can be extended for the right price.

6. You are not proud of what you do.

7. Creating fantasies for your clients is rewarded.

8. It’s difficult to have a family.

9. You have no job satisfaction.

11. You are embarrassed to tell people what you do for a living.

12. People ask you, “What do you do?” and you can’t explain it.

13. Your family hardly recognizes you at reunions (at least the reunions you attend.)

14. Your friends have distanced themselves from you and you’re left hanging with other “professionals.”

15. Your client pays for your hotel room plus your hourly rate.

16. Your client always wants to know how much you charge and what they get for the money.

20. When you leave to go see a client, you look great, but return looking like hell (compare your appearance on Monday AM to Friday PM)

21. You are rated on your “performance” in an excruciating ordeal.

22. Even though you get paid the big bucks, it’s the client who walks away smiling.

23. The client always thinks your “cut” of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you.

24. When you deduct your “take” from your billing rate, you constantly wonder if you could get a better deal with another pimp.

25. Everyday you wake up and tell yourself, “I’m not going to be doing this stuff the rest of my life.”

Nostalgia

This is good reading to get nostalgic……..especially for those who are in their thirties & forties now……..

When gulli-danda and kanche (marbles) were more popular than cricket…
When we always had friends to play aais-paais (I Spy),chhepan-chhepai and pitthoo anytime…
When we desperately waited for ‘yeh jo hai jindagi’
When chitrahaar, vikram-baitaal, dada daadi ki kahaniyaan were so fulfilling…
When there was just one TV in every five houses and
When bisleris were not sold in the trains and we were
worrying if papas will get back into the train in time or not when they were getting down at stations to fill up the water bottle…
When we were going to bed by 9.00pm sharp except for the ‘yeh jo hai jindagi’ day…
When Holis &! Diwalis meant mostly hand-made pakwaans
and sweets and moms seeking our help while preparing them…
When Maths teachers were not worried of our mummys and papas while slapping/beating us…
When we were exchanging comics and stamps and chacha-chaudaris and billus were our heroes…
When we were in nanihaals every summer and loved flying kites and plucking and eating unripe mangoes and leechis…
When one movie every Sunday evening on television was more than asked for and ‘ek do teen chaar’ and ‘Rajni’inspired us …
When 50 paisa meant at least 10 toffees…
When left over pages of the last year’s notebooks were used for rough work or even fair work…
When ‘chelpark’ and ‘natraaj’ were encouraged against’Reynolds and family’…
When the first rain meant getting drenched and playing in water and mud and making ‘kaagaj ki kishtis’…
When there were no phones to tell friends that we will be at their homes at six in the evening…
When our parents always had 15 paise blue colored ‘antardesis’ and 5 paise machli wale stamps at home…
When we were not seeing patakhes on Diwalis and gulaals on Holis as air and noise polluting or allergic agents…
The list can be endless…on the serious note I would like to summarise with …
When we were using our hearts more than our brains,!even for scientifically brainy activities like ‘thinking’ and ‘deciding’…
When we were crying and laughing more often, more openly and more sincerely…
When we were enjoying our present more than worrying about our future…
When being emotional was not synonymous to being weak…
When sharing worries and happinesses didnt mean getting vulnerable to the listener…
When blacks and whites were the favourite colors instead of greys…
When journeys also were important and not just the destinations…
When life was a passenger’s sleeper giving enough time and opportunity to enjoy the sceneries from its open and transparent glass windows instead of some superfast’s second ac with its curtained,closed and dark windows…

I really miss .. do u?

Google Unveils The Google Pack

Google Pack
Google yesterday announced the release of Google Pack, a ‘free collection of essential software’. Along with Google’s own programs, such as Google Toolbar and Google Earth, Google Pack contains Firefox, Adobe Reader, a six month subscription to Norton Antivirus, and Trillian as well as other apps. Any respectable /. user should have most of this suite installed already (excluding a few things), but it will be nice to make it all widely available to the general public.
Slashdot | Google Unveils The Google Pack

Microsoft’s FAT Patents Upheld

After a nearly two year long battle, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has decided that Microsoft%u2019s two patents on the FAT file system are in fact valid. Last October the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected two Microsoft patents over the popularly used FAT file format. This came after a re-examination of Microsoft’s patents sought by the Public Patent Foundation. The Public Patent Foundation argued that others had done similar file format work before Microsoft’s patent, and that awarding Microsoft this patent would only hurt the computer community.

Now that the re-examination is over, the Patent Office has concluded that Microsoft’s FAT file system is in fact novel. This decision now means that the two FAT file system patents Microsoft submitted can become patentable. While this is in fact very good news for Microsoft, others in the computer industry are not so pleased with this decision. Who could blame them? After all last October Microsoft published an outlined version of its FAT file system license, with prices ranging from cameras to standard televisions.

The FAT file system is used not only on versions of the Windows operating system, but also on removable flash memory cards, Linux/Unix products, and is a common file system used to transfer data with Windows. The Public Patent Foundation is sure to fight back, but with the patent almost handed to Microsoft they may already be out of time.

More Information

Is Google DRM crippling culture as great as it seems?

Anyone the least bit concerned about DRM (digital rights management) technology would likely have been put off by Google co-founder Larry Page’s ho-hum approach to revealing the company’s new proprietary media locks. And with good reason. “We have our own DRM that we’re using,” Page said, during a keynote at CES. “We’ll be open to other things, but (creating our own) seemed like the easier thing to do.”

Google’s DRM will make its first appearance as part of a new video downloading service. Page revealed that customers will be able to buy TV shows from CBS, NBA basketball games and a host of other content with Google serving as the delivery broker for the video. This move mimics other technology companies – most notably Apple – which have struck deals with large media houses to send video over the web for a fee. Along with the service, Google has also released its own, slick video player. None of this is bad or surprising when examined from Google’s perspective. The ad broker has every right to push on with new businesses and use its might, prestige and hype to secure prominent partnerships with the likes of CBS. And, heck, if Apple and Microsoft can create DRM systems, then why can’t Google?

Full Story

Photo Album :(

I tried to upgrade to latest coppermine which offers a huge number of new features but the results were not good. I was not able to login to the new upgraded version. Worse, I didnt have any backup of the old database or files. I uploaded the files of one of the older version available on internet and I am able to use my album again though the index page shows some errors. But I am still attracted towards the newere version of Coppermine and hence I would be going for a fresh install. Lets see what happens :)

Microsoft Update Windows Vista Homepage

After a brief demo at the on-going CES conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft have launched a re-vamped version of the website for Windows Vista.

The slick new look makes a break from the often bland Microsoft product pages, and moves towards the Glass theme expected in Vista. Perhaps of most significance is that the pages underlying code is put together with more ‘modern’ html code (div tags, for example, rather than tables). Also of note is the RSS feed, added, no doubt, after cajoling from a certain Microsoft blogger.

The website hosts a fairly detailed break down of some of the major features announced to date, and also some less well publicised ones; Windows Calendar, for example, is covered on their ‘for the home’ page.

It’s launch marks the start of what will be one of Microsoft’s most important years. Windows Vista, expected in the latter half of this year, has much riding on a successful launch and quick adoption.

View: Vista homepage

Intel releases new logo

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Intel Corp. said on Thursday it will scrap its 37-year-old logo as part of a major rebranding that will emphasise the chipmaker’s shift away from its core PC business into consumer products.

The original Intel logo featuring a lowered “e” will be replaced with one showing an oval swirl surrounding the company’s name.

The phrase “Leap ahead” will supplant “Intel inside,” which helped bring the company into the public awareness during the PC boom of the 1990s. [...]

Source

Intel New Logo

Trojan Emits Bogus, Risqué Google AdSense Ads

A Trojan horse program is churning out bogus Google ads promoting products Google eschews – gambling, cheap Viagra, girlie photos and adult dating. The ads, being targeted at small publishers, are identical to Google AdSense ads except that referral graphic buttons are being converted to text, apparently due to a bug in the Trojan, according to the publisher who reportedly discovered the Trojan. That publisher, Raoul Bangera, told Techshout.com that the non-contextual and risqué content of the ads are what set them apart from regular AdSense ads.

“Contrary to the normal Google ads, which have some correlation to the content on the Web page, these malicious ads had no content that was remotely similar to the pages to which they had been attached,” Techshout quotes Bangera as saying. “Most of the ads were about gambling or adult content, which are banned categories in Google AdSense, clearly indicating a suspicious origin.” According to Techshout, when users click on the fake AdSense ads, they boot the user to three successive sites. The user is eventually dumped onto a page with a slew of ads and links to more ads.

View: The full story
News source: eWeek