Moment of Inertia [ Hiran ]

Hypocrisy in Sanskrit

Sampoorna kumbho na karoti shabdam
ardho ghato ghoshamupaiti noonam
Vidvan kuleeno na karoti garvam
gunairviheenaaha bahu jalpayanti

It is straight forward. One with complete knowledge will not make noise (or speak foolishly) and will not show pride in his ability. One with incomplete knowledge of who has no good qualities, will speak foolishly, and a lot.

In English language, it is like:

Empty vessels make the most noise.

I heard this in `Sree Guruvayurappan` serial in Surya TV. I like the serial and, try hard not to miss it.

Retirement @ 60

Everyone retires from his job at some age. The compulsion if brought at age of 55, 58 and 60 in some cases.

After the eventful week, of witnessing, heavy rains in Chennai, terrorist attack in Mumbai, and the statements made by our respected politicians, I was wondering, they too are government servants, then why don't they retire at some age. As far as the age is concerned, 60 can be the maximum, as is, in most of the government services.

The free software movement - hypocrisy

Recently, I came to now about tie-up between VTU with Microsoft, to develop curriculum, help in student's project and help in research and development.

Immediately, the FSF enthusiasts raised alarm and came up with the open letter. Well, I got this information from my Guru's blog.

Seriously, I was upset at the contents of the letter. It though seemed like a desperate move by the fsf enthusiasts, it seemed as it came out of a retaliation towards imposing of some rule. It looked like typical political behavior.

On why, I mentioned it as hypocrisy:

• The statement "We have recently witnessed the devastation caused in the global economic domain and its effect on the Indian economy by following the principle of complete integration into the global economy and the lack of protection of interests of India's needs. ", has nothing to do with free knowledge dissemination. The recent crisis was seen because of un-regulated financial engineering in the US of A. No economy can survive alone without global integration. No economy can be monopolistic in this age. A simple example is, if all the BPO, in India close down, though it will increase unemployment in India, it will create more crisis in the developed countries, because, the cheap service that the Indian BPO industry provides, cannot be obtained in the developed countries. We are lucky, that the BPO industry has generated employment opportunities. The day, the BPO service becomes expensive, this corporates in India, themselves may outsource the BPO services to other developing countries where the service would be cheaper. Hence, economy cannot survive without global integration. Further, SEBI and RBI are powerful enough, to protect India from inconsistencies in the global economy.
• "India needs to become intellectually self-reliant and this is possible only when we start identifying local problems and create solutions for these local problem statements", to this, please explain the scope of the local problems. The scope is not restricted to curriculum in Universities. I bet. But, the scope definitely includes, what the educational system imparts in the growth of a student from school to university.
• On the statement: "Intellectual self-reliance, which is an essential step towards economic self-reliance, can be achieved by ensuring that our education is not a subject to market forces.", I again emphasize that, `Intellectual self-reliance' does not guarantee `Economic self-reliance'. Economy of a country can never be decoupled with the economies of other countries. What will happen, if there are no `knowledge consumers' and only producers?
• The statement: "What sort of technology ensures the uniform development of society? Technology that conforms to the concepts of Free Knowledge and free (or open) standards and which is non-proprietary would qualify. ", if one sees the number of branches that the linux kernel has spun off, in the last 5 years, one would never resort to fsf, because there are too many branches to integrate and universalize the development.
• "We want our students to be free to explore technology, learn from it and then apply this knowledge to develop India's economy. " As easy as said. I repeat, "if there are no knowledge consumers to the knowledge that we produce, how will the economy survive."
• The term `vendor lock-in` and `the economy'. The simple rule is that the economy is driven by business. Business is driven by customers. To ensure that business runs seamlessly, the corporate will do a analysis on what to use, which vendor to use etc. To be frank, the mindset of people is such that, people believe the support to be implicit, from the vendor, whose product is being used to drive the business. Now, since the vendor is bound by an SLA (Service Level Agreement), he is bound to provide the support for his products. Specifically, will Linus Torvalds or any of his employees, provide support for `Linux', without effecting the business. Microsoft has employed people to provide that support.
• The statement: Companies that are able to develop useful proprietary technologies in-house are rewarded with a valuable asset: they can either use it exclusively or profit from the sale of licensing of their technology to other parties... It is as if, companies that come out with products that use `free software' do not make money, by making those products.
• Further the statement: This technology is contradictory to the concepts of Free Knowledge. Globally, it has been proved in the majority of cases that proprietary technolgy is not in the best interest of society. Till now, it was addressing the `economy', `self-reliance', `global crisis'.

My point is this, if the FSF enthusiasts believe that free software is what will benefit `The Indian Economy', and we will become `knowledge producers' etc, then they should allow students, to explore both the `closed standards' and the `open standards'. If Microsoft ties up with VTU, FSF enthusiasts should tie-up with VTU in imparting knowledge on `Free Software' and `Open Standards'. Point blank, a tie-up not on advertising the negative effects of `close standards' and `proprietary software', but for imparting knowledge on positive effects of `open standards' and `free software'. If students believe that knowledge has to be free, then the student will definitely end up believing in `Free software', the way each of the enthusiasts did. Let the student have the option and let him/her choose it. In true sense, it is not necessary that `free thinking' comes only by using `open standards' or `free software'. Unless he or she is exposed to `closed standards', how will one know the benefits of `open standards'.

The only thing that I like about the letter was proposing `mutually beneficial tie-ups'. This is what should have been emphasized in the letter.

If people are always kept in `the light', and never exposed to `the dark', they will never appreciate `the light'.

Microsoft's cloud computing solution

A heavy-weight new entrant has appeared across the computing firmament: At its annual Professional Developers’ Conference (PDC2008), in Los Angeles, last month, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, announced the company’s own offering in the growing list of products and services tapping into what is being called cloud computing.

Read more in this article, published in technology section of `The Hindu', paper.

Well, I am not new to cloud computing. I have been using AWS (Amazon Web Services) for more than 8 months, and I am simply amazed by it. You don't have to maintain physical servers. The hassles of upgrading hardware, managing internet/network connections are nullified. 2 servers for databases, 2 servers for backend applications and 2 server for web applications. But how much load can you handle with this setup. How will you address the issue of adding more servers, which require office space?

There are more issues in maintaining physical servers, data centers, which server administrators can understand. If all these are solved with a simple ssh access and pay as you use, it makes life easier.

People have already started using cloud computing, and with Microsoft's entry into this domain, the power of cloud computing will spread more rapidly now.

Rockstar Developer

Govi and I are ROCKSTAR developers at INXS.

Well, this happened last week, amidst too many things. TD Ameritrade, made it public, about our Blackberry Application for Ameritrade users. See the details for their `pr' release here. I was responsible for integrating our platform's back-end with TD Ameritrade, and Govi was responsible for the Blackberry client application.

Liverpool Does it again!!!

Yeah, Liverpool did it again. This season has been amazing for Liverpool. Before yesterday's match, they had come from behind in their last 3 consecutive games. In their previous game with Manchester City, Kuyt scored the winner during the injury time. and they came from behind, once, in the second half. Barizilian forward Robinho, shined for Manchester City in that match, but he alone couldn't do much.

p>In yesterday's match against Wigan Athletic, Liverpool, came from behind twice and then scored the winner. Before, I describe Liverpool's brilliance, I should mention about the talented Amr Zaki, Wigan's forward, who scored 2 goals, one facilitated by bad defending from Liverpool and the other a well executed scissors cut. That goal was exceptionally executed.

Now Liverpool, which plays a attacking game, could not keep quiet, which probably Wigan's players knew and they succumbed to it. The first goal was from Kuyt, which came when Liverpool was down by a goal. The other was by Riera, when Wigan were reduced to 10 players. This one was well executed and there was a definite plan, in the passing and the formation of the line of pass to confuse Wigan's defenders. Now the third one was by Kuyt again. A nice cross, and Kuyt jumped for a scissors cut, which though didn't have the grace of the one from Zaki, but still got the same result, facilitate by the cross bar also. There you go. The scoreline was 3-2 and Wigan down to 10 men.

I watched the game for Torres, but he didn't play yesterday's game. Still, what a game it was. But, I hope, they don't have to come back again.

SHA256 and Message Digest

I am writing an application, which requires, some data to be hashed using SHA-256 algorithm. I knew that, it is supported by openssl, and hence was searching for the library functions. I tried several searches specific to sha256 and openssl, but didn't come up with anything concrete. Then I tried, simple sha and openssl search and I got `SHA1_*' series of functions, which is not what I wanted. Then, I got an idea to search for `SHA256_*' set of functions, and I got it.

Next, I tried for the man pages, in my system, which I got for SHA1_* functions, but not for SHA256_init. I could have used the searched links directly, but I was afraid to come across an example, and I didn't want to loose the opportunity to discover use of the library. When, I didn't get the man pages, I was a bit upset, on why it was not available, and was thinking, if there was any other way to do it. Then, I realized, why not look into the header files for the function prototypes. And bingo. I got it, tried out the example and there I am with the output. Not really, I first got the binary output, which I then converted to hex.

Here is my example code:

#include <iostream>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <openssl/sha.h>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
        unsigned char digest[SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH] = {'\0'};
        string data = "1yard2mop";
        SHA256_CTX c;
        SHA256_Init(&c);
        SHA256_Update(&c, data.c_str(), data.length());
        SHA256_Final(digest, &c);
        for(size_t i=0;i < SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH;i++)
                printf("%x", digest[i]);
        cout << endl;
        return 0;
}

In the end, I was laughing at myself on the whole `discovery part'.

Current music: Thozhiya En Kadhaliya

Remains of a chair

I had earlier posted about, how I am responsible for breaking chairs in my office. Well, few days back, I was again bang on target. Well the chair was already broken, which I realized, when I sat on it. When Kumaresan, sat on it, it broke into pieces, making a loud noise. Well, since I was sitting on it earlier, I became the culprit.

the chair broke in an unrepairable condition. Look at these.

May the chair rest in peace.

Reading Binary Data in Ruby

Reading binary data is not that easy in Ruby. The `Pragmatic Programmers - Programming Ruby` guide, has documented `pack', `unpack' methods for `String' class, with which we can convert data (integer, float etc.) into binary format and vice-versa. But the problem was, everytime, I will have to refer the documentation, and see, things into details. In C/C++, assigning the data to a type specific pointer variable, and accessing the value, will do (which is so easy). In Java, they have made it more easier. `DataInputStream' class, defines specific methods for that.

Well, that was my inspiration. Moreover, referring the documentation for unpacking a binary stream, was like looking into logarithms. I came up with this.

Not a good piece of code, but it works, and is gone in production.

free page cache and dentries

I am using a large instance of EC2 (2 Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 270, 7.5GB RAM), which is up since June 29th and showing availability of only 500MB of memory, in `top'. I had known the mathematics behind the RAM usage, that shows up in `top', but could not recollect.

Then, I thought that, since it had something to do with memory, why not look up `/proc/' entries. That's when I looked up the man page for `proc'. On detailed reading, I remembered the mathematics.

The used memory constitute of the `kernel buffers' and the `page cache'. See the output of `free'. Now my EC2 instance was showing almost 7GB memory used, out of which 5.5 GB was cached.

Now, I ran a small command on the shell:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Now, writing `3' to `/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches', clears the pagecache and dentries. To learn more, read manual page for `proc'.

When the cache was cleared, I had 6.5 GB of memory available. Usually, the cache is cleared by the Kernel, only on demand. So, if I run a program, which simply tries to use huge amount of memory, the Kernel, will clear the cache and make it available for the program to use.