Ramblings on a scale not so grand

On web spam

2011-01-24T02:27:00.001-08:00

The flavour of the season seems to be how spam is overwhelming Google Search results (Atwood, TechCrunch, RWW). The concern being that Google results now overwhelmingly contains a lot of spam sites, content farms etc., which do not contribute to the results, but exists solely to generate ad revenues. In fact there was even insinuations that Google does not penalise sites that displays google ads.

Google has come out categorically saying that they do not do so.

One misconception that we’ve seen in the last few weeks is the idea that Google doesn’t take as strong action on spammy content in our index if those sites are serving Google ads. To be crystal clear:

* Google absolutely takes action on sites that violate our quality guidelines regardless of whether they have ads powered by Google;
* Displaying Google ads does not help a site’s rankings in Google; and
* Buying Google ads does not increase a site’s rankings in Google’s search results.

These principles have always applied, but it’s important to affirm they still hold true.

Google chrome already supports an extension to report webspam. I am sure Google can extend it to show it on all search results. And if they are afraid of rouge clicks, they already have technology in place to identify those (which they use in google ads). This is an opportunity for Google to live up to its motto of "Don't be Evil".

Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth - Preview Links

2011-01-10T18:27:00.000-08:00

This is real cool stuff. Evolution explained in the simplest of terms and as interesting as possible.

Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth (Hill and Wang, 2011) is a graphic introduction to evolution written by Jay Hosler and illustrated by Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon. In the book, the intrepid scientist Bloort 183 is explaining the evolution of life on a strange alien planet — the earth — to King Floorsh 727 and his heir Prince Floorsh 418. It is written in an easy to understand and enjoyable way.

Here are two excerpts.

1. from NCSE (National Center for Science Education) - Extinction
2. from Scientific American - On standing erect

ScrabbleSolver.net domain name changed

2011-01-09T18:02:00.000-08:00

To all interested,

The domain name scrabblesolver.net has been changed to wordsolver.net. ~~Copyright issue with scrabble, it seems.~~ The team there has done this voluntarily.

To asterix fans

2011-01-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

To all the Asterix fans out there, you can download every asterix comics from the asterix folder in esnips, created by Gopal Piyush.

Job Offer from Videocon - New Job Scam/Spam

2010-12-10T17:22:00.000-08:00

I got a mail yesterday purportedly from Videocon offering me a job in New Delhi. It said that they have shortlisted my resume for a position open in Videocon. Below is the mail in its complete form.

from Caroline Hultgren
sender time Sent at 21:45 (GMT+05:00). Current time there: 06:16.
reply-to videocon.electronics@hotmail.com
to
date 10 December 2010 21:45
subject REF: "VIDEOCON" DIRECT RECRUITMENTS OFFER.
mailed-by student.ki.se

Dear Applicant,

REF: "VIDEOCON" DIRECT RECRUITMENTS OFFER.

Your Resume has been selected for our new plant. The Company selected
62 candidates list for IT,Administration,Production, marketing and
general service Departments, It is our pleasure to inform you that your
Resume was selected as one of the 62 candidates shortlisted for the
interview. The Company VIDEOCON is a brand name in Electronics
manufacturing business in India, The Company is recruiting the
candidates for our new plants in Delhi.

Your interview will be held at The Company Corporate office in New
Delhi on (14th of December at 12.30 PM), You will be pleased to know
that The 62 candidates selected 55 candidates will be giving
appointment, Meaning that your Application can progress to final stage.
You will have come to The Company corporate office in New Delhi. Your
offer letter with Air Ticket will be sent to you by courier before date
of interview. The Company can offer you a salary with benefits for this
post 35, 000/- to 2, 00, 000/- P.M. + (HRA + D.A + Conveyance and other
Company benefits. The designation and Job Location will be fix by
Company HRD. At time of final process. You have to come with photo-
copies of all required documents.

REQUIRED DOCUMENTS BY THE COMPANY HRD.
==============================
========
1) Photo-copies of Qualification Documents.
2) Photo-copies of Experience Certificates (If any)
3) Photo-copies of Address Proof
4) Two Passport Size Photograph.

You have to deposit the (Cash) as an initial amount in favor of Company
HRD. Department. for Rs. 11,500/- ( Eleven thousand Five hundred India
Rupees ) through any [STATE BANK OF INDIA] Branch from your Home City
to Company Senior HRD. Account NO, which well be send to you upon your
response. This is a refundable interview security. Your offer letter
with Air tickets will be sent to your Home Address by courier after
receiving the confirmation of interview security deposited in STATE
BANK OF INDIA. This Company will pay all the expenditure to you at the
time of face-to-face meeting with you in Company. The Job profile,
salary offer, and date -time of interview will be mention in your offer
letter. Your offer letter will dispatch very shortly after receiving
your confirmation of cash deposited in STATE BANK OF INDIA.

We wish you the best of luck for the subsequent and remaining stage.
The last date of security deposited in bank 8th of December 2010 You
have to give the information after deposited the security amount in
bank to The Company HRD - direct recruitment via email. Your Letter
with supporting document will be dispatch same time by courier to your
postal address after receipt of security deposited confirmation in
bank. The interview process and arrangement expenditure will be paid by
VIDEOCON. Lodging, traveling and local conveyance actual will be paid
by VIDEOCON as per bills. The candidate has to deposit the initial
refundable security as mentioned by HRD.

NB: You are advice to reconfirm your mailing address and phone number
in your reply. 11,300/- ( Eleven thousand three hundred rupees ) will
be the refundable amount, as 200 rupees will be deducted as bank
charges for funds deposit. and if you are been selected or not, still
the amount will be refunded to you, as the amount is just to prove that
you will be coming for the interview in order for us not to run at lost
after sending you the airticket and you don't show up on the day of
interview.

(( FOR FREE AND FAIR INTEVIEW, THERE WILL BE NO TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION
WITH ANY CANDIDATE UNTIL THE DAY OF INTERVIEW, THESE ARE THE POLICY
FROM THE BOARD OF DIRECTIVES AND CHIEF OF EMPLOYMENT ASIA REGION ))

Wishing you the best of lucks

Regards
MRS. SUMAN KHAN -(Executive - HRD)
Videocon Electronics India Ltd.
H.O. - 174, Videocon House,
G.K. Part – 1, Greater Kailash.
E-mail Address: videocon.electronics@hotmail.com

I wonder how many people still fall such tricks. But the math is scary. We can safely assume that they send such mails to at least 50,000 people. Even if only 0.5% fall for this, they walk away with Rs 25,00,000 which is a huge. Their investment is virtually null, considering how they don't even spend effort on their English.
I can visualize three or four guys sitting around a computer in an internet cafe, typing the mail in what they assume to be Queens English with a list of emails they got from somewhere. Scarier still, I can also see another guy reading this email and going, " Hey, I got a job offer. They must be serious about my chances, why else would they send me an air ticket? Even if I don't get selected, I get to visit Delhi for free."

So to anybody who stumbles on this site searching for "Videocon Job offer", this is clearly fake. Following are the giveaways, in case you haven't noticed.

Bad grammar
Mail is coming from a hotmail account. Will any company use a public email provider?
They have not provided a telephone number
The fact that this is too good to be true.

Justifying murderers

2010-04-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Nothing to say today other than Khap Panjayat merits more bytes than Modi Tharoor IPL Gate.

Seriously, how can any sane person, forget responsible, behave something like this.

Jokes as a commentary of Society

2010-04-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

An old joke on how you can find a malayali anywhere in the world - when Armstrong landed on the moon, a Raman Nair welcomed him to his tea shop there.

The new version is when Armstrong landed on the moon, what he heard was "This is Prashanth Raguvansham, for Asianet News, along with camera man Saji".

A telling commentary on the reach of news channel nowadays.

Obama wins Nobel Peace prize in 11 days

2009-10-09T04:34:00.000-07:00

This is for my "You can't make up such stuff" files.

Obama wins Nobel Peace prize for 2009. This has to be the joke of the century.

Inaguration Day: Jan 20th. Deadline for Nobel Peace Prize Nominations: Feb 1st. The Winner? President Obama in 11 days in Office! Huh?

Seriously, what were the guys smoking?

FSJ on Chrome OS

2009-07-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

With all the excitement surrounding the Chrome OS, how it is going to topple Windows, this article from Fake Steve Jobs came as a breath of fresh air.

Twitter Feed

2009-07-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Sample post testing twitterfeed.

Disabling reply all function in outlook

2009-06-01T23:33:00.000-07:00

How to disable Reply All in Outlook.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToEasilyDisableReplyToAllAndForwardInOutlook.aspx

Warning: works only on outlook. Have no effect on other mail clients.

Sharing an eclipse external tool between different eclipse installations.

2009-05-12T00:38:00.000-07:00

To share an eclipse external tool with other users, you just need to send across the .launch file.

Copy this .launch file to new user's

[eclipse-workspace]\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.debug.core\.launches location and restart the eclipse.

The tool will be saved as another configuration in the external tools configuration. You can add this to favourites via Run àExternal Tools à Organize Favorites àAdd

Escape characters in a batch script.

2009-05-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

Two simple rules (but i learned it the hard way) to escape characters when using batch command.

From a command line, always escape special characters using a caret in front of the special character. Special Characters in a batch script are \ & | > < ^ and %.

When you are in a batch file, % character has to be escaped using another % E.g. echo %%SYSTEMDRIVE%% to print %SYSTEMDRIVE% using a btach script.

i.e. echo ^%SYSTEMDRIVE^% from commandline and

echo %%SYSTEMDRIVE%% from a batch script.

Hope someone, somewhere finds this useful.

This is the guy who helped me. Thanks mate.

Googles April fool 2009

2009-04-01T00:15:00.000-07:00

This is googles April fool joke for the year. Everyone was waiting for what they had in store this year.

And here is another one. Google chrome in 3D.

Also take a look here for their past jokes.

Undersea volcanic eruption

2009-03-20T00:34:00.000-07:00

A picture is worth a thousand words. Then this photo set of 12 pictures is worth 12,000 words. Seriously, have a look.

Pictures of an undersea volcanic explosion near Tonga.

A new common enemy.

2009-03-16T00:41:00.000-07:00

Q. How do we know that the world is doing alright?

A. When all cricket bloggers has something common to hate other than terrorism.

Yes, that is right, all cricket lovers, rejoice. You have got someone else to hate as much as the Lahore terrorists and Mark Nicholas.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Kiki and Sassy, sponsored by CA.

What have they done till now?

JRod hates them (link), Miss Field think they are going to destroy cricket (link) and Patrick Kidd does not like them (link).

JRod's story has 37 comments as of now, Miss Field has 39. Cannot remember an issue on which so many had so much to say.

Yes, I too think their blog is a waste of internet space, but it is great to have someone to cuss instead of some bloody terrorists.

Nothing better to do today

2009-03-13T00:41:00.001-07:00

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
...

From Auguries of Innocence by William Blake

Read the rest at wikisource

Too much design could also be bad

2009-03-05T04:51:00.000-08:00

The DailyWTF (Worse than failure) is a site I regularly follow. It is an evergrowing compilation of programming faux pas and horror stories. It is a gold mine of what not to do for all developers (of all types).

This article hit a chord. It is something most experience everyday. the boredom of monotonous work, the yearning for something exciting... go on, read it.

Software development is a unique profession in that we can use our skills both on the job and for our hobby. And unlike accountants, who generally don’t rush home to balance the family budget, many of us actually do tinker with code for fun.

“Programmers… often take refuge in an understandable, but disastrous, inclination towards complexity and ingenuity in their work. Forbidden to design anything larger than a program, they respond by making that program intricate enough to challenge their professional skill.”

This line sums it up very nicely, why we should bear with this unexciting stuff.

I’m sure that many aspiring lawyers would jump at the chance for an exciting jury trial, but would just as quickly give it up if it was in his client’s best interest to settle. While architects dream of opportunities like Fallingwater, if the design calls for a large warehouse with loading docks, then that’s all the blueprints will reflect. And if our employer needs software to manage voucher payments, then they should get exactly that, not a “plug-in based system with extensible, run-time parsed UI templates,” or whatever else we tricked ourselves in believing was necessary.

Well, rockstar may be too bold, I am okay being a good singer.

At the end of the day, the best programmers are not the ones who create the most beautifully-elegant, exceedingly-innovative code. The true rockstars can deliver software before deadlines, under budget, and that does exactly what the business needs.

How they were wrong

2009-03-03T03:15:00.000-08:00

Dominic Cork said on Feb 24th.

My simple message to teams is 'play cricket in Pakistan'
I had a nice feeling in Karachi and said this before when I came for the one-day matches last month. I have a great time as a commentator. It is a fantastic experience with top class hospitality and arrangements,
I, as a cricketer, would hope that the ICC get together with Australia, England and South Africa and try and entice people to come back to Pakistan,

On March 3rd, he said

I won't be coming back here while I'm still living. I don't think international teams should come back to this country, whether it's 10 or 20 years.

Am waiting for JRods' post. This is what he said earlier this week.

Miandad on terrorism

2009-03-02T22:53:00.000-08:00

"It’s terrible and really sad. It looks like a well-thought and planned assault. Sri Lanka and Pakistan have always helped each other. They have never said no to tour Pakistan and have always helped us in troubled situations. The foreign teams were already not coming and this [incident] is going to affect Pakistan cricket in the future. This is not to say that cricket will stop. The world will have to stay united and fight terrorism. I hope they just don’t say they won’t tour Pakistan. If we do that we will only support the terrorists’ cause."

- Javed Miandad.

May be he should be speaking to a certain relative of his.

End of Pakistan cricket?

2009-03-02T22:48:00.000-08:00

Is this the final nail in the coffin of international cricket IN Pakistan?

" A lot of concerns we raised during the Champions Trophy have unfortunately come home to roost. The notion of sporting teams being a protected species was held by many, but it was not a view that we shared, unfortunately." - Reg Dickason, the security expert hired by England and Australia

"I won't be coming back here while I'm still living. I don't think international teams should come back to this country, whether it's 10 or 20 years." - Dominick Cork

---
Update
---

Read Kamran Abbasi for a great piece on the ramifications of this attack on Srilankan cricketers would have on Pakistan cricket.

It is a sad day if cricket suffers in Pakistan due to this. It would be a great loss to international cricket community if there is not going to be another Zaheer Abbas, another Imran Khan or another Wasim Akram from that cricketing nation. I doubt they could produce perpetually 18 Shahid Afridi or the last gem from that diamond mine, Akthar.

What is sadder is that this happens when another team, West Indies, seems to be on the rise.

Pakistan cricket, we will miss you. (Hope I am forced to eat these words very soon.)

Jacob Oram catch

2009-02-28T23:35:00.000-08:00

Everybody seems to be doing this nowadays. Think coaches will start to include this in the drill. remember how underarm throwing became a part of the coaching drill.

Gmail down today

2009-02-24T04:55:00.000-08:00

After the issue with google search earlier this month, its now gmail's turn. When I first faced the issue, I thought it must be my connectivity. But feels good to know, I did not miss out on a global catastrophe this time.

Anyway, great to know they are working on it. Hope they will let us know what happened, just a FYI.

Runs galore

2009-02-24T03:32:00.000-08:00

Everybody is getting runs in Karachi..

Poor Mahela, get a double hundred in his last series as captain. Get trumped by Younis getting a triple in his first series as captain.

Now that draw seems to be the only outcome of this match, methinks Younis might go for a 400 hundred tomorrow. If he does, you heard it first here on the net.

As an aside, Can you imagine what would happen if Bryce McGain was here.

Mental disintegration does not work... so lets try something else

2009-02-24T00:32:00.001-08:00

Where and When, What (will happen) and now Who and Why. Now only thing remaining is How.

Anticipatory bail... Read Mark Richardson's piece here

To paraphrase, the pitches will be friendly to Indians because

1. NZ public want to see the fabulous Indian batsmen in glory one last time.
2. NZ board want to let India win, because then Indians will visit more often and that translates to more money.

Seriously, Mark, what are you smoking?

Its like, if Indians win, it is because we let them. If they lose..., wait, he does not even mention such a scenario. So he is already resigned to the fact that that NZ cannot win this time.

I cannot think of another series that started with such pessimism. May be after mental disintegration, this must be the new thing on the block, Mental Integration.

Mourning the rise of reading

2009-02-19T23:38:00.000-08:00

Kindle is the new way of reading books. It lets you carry a whole library (1500+ books) in the digital format and read it at your leisure.

But then there are some people who mourn the death of printed words.

...for everything we gain with a Kindle—convenience, selection, immediacy—we’re losing something too. The printed word—physically printed, on paper, in a book—might be heavy, clumsy or out of date, but it also provides a level of permanence and privacy that no digital device will ever be able to match.

There is no satisfying some people.

Some thoughts...

10 years ago, people were worried about the death of reading. Now that reading is coming back, they are worried about death of printed books. Is it human nature that they need something to be worried about all the time?

When printing was invented, was there similar mourning about the death of written word and when writing was invented, about spoken word...

Return of the arrogance

2009-02-19T21:00:00.000-08:00

Daren Powell after beating England with a draw at Antigua

"It's a bigger wound they have now because looking at the position, if I was the fielding side, I would think I would win the game, especially with me and Fidel there batting. But we batted brilliantly and saved the game. England will feel bad now."

Oh Powell, its okay if you stick in the knife, but do not twist it.

But then this seems to me to be something King Viv would have said, so times must be changing for Windies cricket.

And why am I happy about that? Oh, Windies, I missed you. Welcome back!!!

PZ is not completely correct this time

2009-02-16T20:39:00.000-08:00

PZ has an article about measles getting eliminated in Australia. (Read it here). But he just cannot resist bagging someone. So he has a go at Mata Amritanandamayi. He says "a Hindu spiritualist" (may be that name was too big for him :))

Anyway, I think he missed a trick here. He is blaming Mata Amritanandamayi for the increase in measles cases in Australia and reason for that, she is a ~~Hindu~~ spiritual leader.

Maybe PZ did not know this,
1. she never evangelizes.
2. she never claims that her hugs have magical/mystical qualities. Its just expressing compassion.
2. she never speaks for a religion.
3. she runs a super specialty hospital in Kerala, India
4. She runs schools and colleges in India where the fees are heavily subsidized.
5. She rebuilt several villages that were devastated by 2004 tsunami.

A simple search would have thrown up the links(homepage, wikipedia, link1, link2, link3)

This seems to be a highly responsible behaviour. Wonder why PZ did not highlight that.

Amma's website hails the Australian tour as a success, but also warns that five children who saw her in Perth now have the highly contagious disease.

"As a precaution we have been asked by the department of health to make their measles information sheet available on our website," the Amma site says.

And finally, PZ, one more question...

If all those folks had congregated at a rock concert instead of at a "spiritualist", would you have cared to mention it in the blog.

P.S. I am not an "Amma Follower" and I do agree with PZ a lot of times, when he shows up the creationists/god followers etc. But, I think he should have considered the fact that she is doing a lot lot more good to the world.

The Hindu does it again.

2009-02-15T20:32:00.001-08:00

Hindu is going great guns with punctuation marks. After the universally acclaimed use of exclamation mark, it is now the turn of quotes.

Top story for the day is

‘Remand’ for 6 terror suspects in Pakistan

The editors at Hindu does know how to express the sentiments.

Adam voges catch

2009-02-15T05:01:00.000-08:00

The best quick thinking from Adam Voges. This is simply brilliant. You will see this on internet for a long long time.

It was great thinking from Adam Voges to throw it up and catch it when he thought he is gooing to fall over. These are the catches that will win matches.

P.S. This took hardly 30 minutes to appear on the net. Makes you wonder about the power of internet and speed of information dissemination now. And almost instantaneously, it appeared on google. More power to google.

Dhoni to jump

2009-02-13T04:35:00.000-08:00

Auckland mayor wants Dhoni to bungee jump when India tours.

David Gower would have been interested.

Closing browser without warning

2009-02-13T01:58:00.000-08:00

If you call the window.close() function from a browser window, you will get a warning message saying "The page is trying to close the window". To avoid this use the following code.

< a href="javascript:window.opener='x';window.close();">Close< /a>

The window.close() function checks window.opener. If it is empty, it assumes that it is trying to close a parent window and shows the warning.

Dhanushkodi

2009-02-12T04:55:00.000-08:00

I have always wanted to travel to Dhanushkodi. Have heard it is a real ghost town. I plan to go there soon. Till then sites like these will have to do. Lucky guy.

Sounds familiar?

2009-02-12T04:38:00.000-08:00

Peter Roebok in cricinfo about Australian cricket team of 1970s.

They were an independent-minded collection, whose rise reflected the changing mood as a nation belatedly prepared to assert itself.

.

The same thing is said about the new Indian cricket team. How come cricket teams reflect the national mood.

Everything is upside down in Pakistan

2009-02-12T02:45:00.000-08:00

First they said they will try people for crimes against India in India.

It makes sense after reading this.

Karachi police have registered a case against three unidentified women who allegedly abducted a man and raped him over four consecutive
days, and later throwing him near Qayyumabad River in an unconscious state.

Meanwhile, in another bizarre case in Karachi, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) police on Monday arrested four robbers, including a police constable, on charges of looting passengers and seized weapons, motorcycle and car from their possession.

Rest of the story here.

Cheating at quiz

2009-02-10T01:58:00.000-08:00

There is a quiz going on at Line and Length. It is a 51 special. I thought I will use Google to crack it.

The goal I set myself was, I should be able to view the answer in the search result page itself, or the first two results maximum. I was able to crack 10 of 11. The search queries for each questions are

1. australia west indies port of spain 51

2. england "7/" debut in 1946 (confirmed in cricinfo)

3. australia fast bowler 0-100 debut

4. west indies cricket died kingston age 42

5. england cricket player list

6. england west indies antigua 1986

7. england sydney 1995 51

8. 9-51 zimbabwe 2002

9. 8-51 5-20 pakistan 1974

10. == cricinfo statsguru query ==
View: overall figures
Start of match date: between 1 Jan 1951 and 31 Dec 1951
Ordered by: runs scored (descending)

11. 1951 County Championship

This shows the power of google more than anything else. Also explains why Google is miles ahead of other search engines (yahoo, live etc.) and why it is called start page of the internet.

An explanation, finally

2009-02-09T04:18:00.000-08:00

From New Scientist

One of its[Einsteen's general theory of relativity] predictions is that a clock will tick faster by 1 second in 10¹⁸ for every centimetre it is raised in Earth's gravitational field. GPS already takes into account such effects, which (assuming you spend most of your life upright) cause your scalp to age a few nanoseconds a year more than the soles of your feet. (Italics mine)

This explains why I become more stupid as I grow older.
Or what happened to Andrew Symonds.
And I think, Jayasurya might be sleeping heads down.

Cricket understatement of the year

2009-02-09T02:11:00.001-08:00

From Ian O'Brien's blog

There was a change at the top of the Australian order with Warner missing out and Haddin opening; what a week for him.

what a week, first keeper to get a batsmen bowled, shunned by IPL and now opening...

A real honeymoon WTF

2009-02-08T22:49:00.000-08:00

Found this on a hotel website. Do people really go for a honeymoon that way nowadays?

!

2009-02-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

Never thought there would be a day with a headline like this.

Australia wins!

That exclamation mark is the height of journalism and depth of Australian falling. It expresses the fall of Australian cricket better than anything else.

Surely, an exclamation mark is worth 1000 words.

Ricky is back

2009-02-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

Ricky Ponting is coming back. Australia looks like India and Pakistan of old.

"Ricky has today made a strong appeal to be allowed to play given that this is a 'decider' game," Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors, said. "Given the circumstance, we have made an on-balance decision to support his request and we will continue to monitor his workload closely.

Just shows how much faith the selectors have in Australian bench strength. What happened to their gold mine of cricketers?

"It should be noted that selectors were pleased with Clarke's leadership and batting form in Melbourne, where he was Man of the Match, but this decision will bolster our batting. We also understand Ricky's desire to lead from the front."

Oh yeah...

Happy

2009-02-06T03:19:00.000-08:00

India has 9 straight wins.
Australia has 5 straight losses.

And India is ranked second in ODI.

To be in Aussie Dressing room

2009-02-06T00:50:00.000-08:00

Ricky Ponting & Brett Lee, Micheal Clarke & Simon Katich, Andrew Symonds & Andrew Symonds. It must be interesting in Australian dressing room.

Everybody is supporting Haddin though, both Ponting and Clarke

Haddin at IPL

2009-02-05T22:23:00.000-08:00

No takers for Haddin at IPL. I wonder why? He is the only keeper who can dismiss a batsman bowled.

Learning for the day

2009-02-05T08:18:00.000-08:00

1. Java does not allow direct access to File. Have to use input streams to modify a file. (Thanks, Biju)

2. String.replace() creates a new String. It does not modify the existing String. (Of course, String is immutable. But, took me two hours to think of it today.)

Third time (also) unlucky

2009-02-03T04:52:00.000-08:00

1.6 Fernando to Tendulkar, OUT, Tendulkar's gone! lbw, nips in towards the batsmen, pitched up by Fernando, hits the batsman on front of leg stump, that looked to be sliding down, another not-too-great decision ends Tendulkar's innings
SR Tendulkar lbw b Fernando 7 (12b 0x4 1x6) SR: 58.33

From cricinfo commentary.

Lightning strikes third time for Tendulkar.

HaddinT*

2009-02-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

Mr. Ponting, If you want to see the replays, they are on the youtube. In case, your integrity does not allow you to visit youtube, here it is.

Does that make you 100% certain. Or, should one be 150,000% certain?

*Saw this while browsing and it stuck. Forgot where I found it. Will acknowledge when I recollect.

To be a student again

2009-02-02T00:49:00.000-08:00

No comments needed for this one.

This site may harm your computer, says google

2009-02-01T23:18:00.000-08:00

Apparently google had a bad day.

Evidently, they flagged the url "/" as a bad site. This meant that all sites were flagged as badware. Could be a regular expression thing.

But relieved to know even bigwigs make such silly mistakes. Reminds me of the time someone gave all permissions on / on a server in my office.

And read this for a blame game of sorts.

Haddin, Vettori and Ponting

2009-02-01T21:33:00.000-08:00

Ponting spoke before he had seen a replay but challenged Vettori to be sure of his Haddin criticism. "It's a bit much, he's basically claiming [Haddin's] a cheat, isn't he? That's a bit strong unless they're 100% certain.

Does this mean if they are 100% certain then it is ok. No, Mr. Ponting, if they are 100% certain, Haddin should be kicked out of the game.

A post bagging america

2009-01-26T23:03:00.002-08:00

According to Brittanica

Bangladesh banned plastic bags in 2002.

Ireland has a steep tax on plastics.

Taiwan merchants have to charge for plastic bags.

France and Italy has a program that will end use of plastic bags by 2010.

China has banned all plastic bags below .25 microns.

Bombay banned all plastic bags in 2001.

My own Kerala banned all plastic bags below 30 microns last year.

USA is not doing anything beacuse "jobs will disappear if plastic bags are banned." The lobbyists are arguing aginst paper bags saying that they cost more and that they take as much time as plastic to disintegrate. Paper bags might cost more, but in the long run, I would say they are cheaper considering their recycle use and value. And as for disintegration time, I am inclined to disbelieve them.

Get rich quick

2009-01-25T20:50:00.000-08:00

The new get rich schemes are the reality shows. Slumdog Millionaire and Makante Achan (Malayalam). But the first one to make use of this theme was another malayalam movie, One Man Show, starring Jayaram.

Well... Kerala thinks today, what world thinks tomorrow.

Most number of satisfied employees

2009-01-23T06:56:00.000-08:00

Continuing from my previous rambling about employee satisfaction in Google and elsewhere...,

Q. Which company has the most number of satisfied employees?
A. Satyam - They have 13000 happy employees, as only satisfied employee is an imaginary employee.

Why googlers (and others) quit

2009-01-23T04:20:00.001-08:00

Google is good to the world, but not to its employees. Atleast, former employees think so. But then there is a reason they are former, I guess.

their gripes - low pay, disappearing fringe benefits, jerks for managers... hey sounds similar. Am I also working for Google?

Tolstoy would have said "Unhappy employees are all alike, happy employee is happy in his own way."

Honey, I shrunk the internet

2009-01-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

Just read a post at Brittanica.

People use internet to access any information. Internet (users) uses google to search for that and google returns wikipedia entries for the searches.

So, information=internet=google=wikipedia???

Initializing CachedRowSetImpl

2009-01-22T04:31:00.000-08:00

For some crazy reason, com.sun.rowset.CachedRowSetImpl does not get initialized properly.

java.lang.NullPointerException

at com.sun.rowset.JdbcRowSetResourceBundle.(JdbcRowSetResourceBundle.java:102)

at com.sun.rowset.JdbcRowSetResourceBundle.getJdbcRowSetResourceBundle(JdbcRowSetResourceBundle.java:119)

at com.sun.rowset.CachedRowSetImpl.(CachedRowSetImpl.java:336)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlRowSetResultSetExtractor.newCachedRowSet(SqlRowSetResultSetExtractor.java:83)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlRowSetResultSetExtractor.createSqlRowSet(SqlRowSetResultSetExtractor.java:65)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlRowSetResultSetExtractor.extractData(SqlRowSetResultSetExtractor.java:49)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate$1.doInPreparedStatement(JdbcTemplate.java:598)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.execute(JdbcTemplate.java:536)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.query(JdbcTemplate.java:586)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.query(JdbcTemplate.java:615)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.query(JdbcTemplate.java:623)

at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.queryForRowSet(JdbcTemplate.java:729)

...

at fuse.Filesystem3ToFuseFSAdapter.getdir(Filesystem3ToFuseFSAdapter.java:122)

Did a one time construction on application startp and lo, all the subsequent instantiations worked..

try {
new CachedRowSetImpl();
} catch (Exception e) {
/* Do Nothing... or something */
}

Apparently, first time it could not load the properties and for subsequent calls, it falls back to default automatically.

Strange are the ways of Java...