Why shouldn't Flash be used on web pages?

  At the beginning of the article I should tell you I hate Flash. Any time I (mistakenly) visit any website which uses Flash it makes me go WTF, why couldn't this moron do this thing in a better way. I know there are a lot of people who love to see Flash and go oooh this is so pretty, but I would ask them do you think Flash is all that good? I'll tell you why I think using Flash is a 'bad' thing to do.
  First a little bit about the history of the WWW. WWW came into being in the early 1990s and the reason of its existence was the fact that we had collected a lot of information but now in the 'information age' there was increasing need to share the information regardless of physical difficulties of transfer.The internet was the solution to this. Hypertext was chosen as the language to transmit the information over this medium 'internet'. Although other protocols were in existence before hypertext none of them was really effective in 'easy' sharing of the information. Hypertext led to creation of easily accessible webpages thus marking the birth of 'WWW'. Right from its start WWW showed tremendous growth and today it is the most popular aspect of the internet(Many people can't differentiate between internet and WWW). Here are some of the things that helped making the WWW so successful:

• As soon as the basic outline of the WWW was complete, CERN made the source code for its software publicly available.
• The system requirements for running a WWW server are minimal, so even administrators with limited funds had a chance to become information providers.
• Because of the intuitive nature of hypertext, many inexperienced computer users were able to connect to the network.
• The simplicity of the HyperText Markup Language, used for creating interactive documents, allowed inexperienced users to contribute to the expanding database of documents on the Web.
• The open standard allowed users of different operating systems to access WWW in a similar way using a variety of media to present it

  In short we can say that the web grew at such a pace because it was easy to provide content and it was easy to get content. A large part of it is because it was based on an open standard. But soon the browsers started implementing their own 'enhancements' to HTML(HyperText Markup Language). This led to more difficult web programming. The content was no longer separate from presentation which was perhaps the basis of The Web. New standards had to be created to accomodate the new browser functionality. The breakthrough in this was CSS(Cascading Style Sheets), if properly used this effectively separates the content from presentation i.e now the content is html and presentation is the css which can be in a separate file or within <style> tags. But complete support for standards remains a dream for the web programmers. The browsers(especially the most popular browser in the world) are not fully standards compliant. This makes the job of the web programmer really tough and often you find out that different browsers render web pages differently.   You might be thinking where does Flash fit into this. You are correct, it doesn't. Flash is a proprietary format which means that Adobe is free to change it at its will. I do not support proprietary formats in the least because they aren't standards. You need permission from the provider of the format to use it. What if Adobe fell off the face of earth tomorrow? All the work done in Flash is a waste because no one knows what lies beneath the hood. I am at the mercy of Adobe for

• Creating content
• Viewing content

  Suppose I create an operating system 'Perfect OS' which is the best OS ever created and has the best performance among all OSs but the users of Perfect OS would not be able to able to view the content in Flash unless the Adobe people got down and wrote a plugin for the browser which the Perfect OS uses.You might argue that it is very unlikey that would happen because Adobe *will* get down to provide support for your OS. Do you know that there isn't a Flash plugin for x86_64 architecture for any browser on Linux. Of course Flash does not work on non graphical environments(lynx,links,elinks,w3m etc.).
  A primary feature of The Web is that it is accessible to everyone. With Flash the webpage becomes inaccessible for anyone using CLI or people who use screen readers due to vision problems.A lawsuit is going on in the US about such an accessibility issue which was filed by National Federation of the Blind against Target(an online store). I do not know a single web developer who does not want to have the widest user base. So why use Flash?
   Flash is not accessible to everybody. Flash plugin might be free but it is not free as in both meanings of the world. 'Free as in free speech' and 'Free as in free beer'. Flash plugin is free in the sense of the latter. There are a lot of people like me who choose not to install Flash because I do not want to corrupt my 100% open source installation.
  Another reason for popularity of The Web is the ease by which you can provide content to the whole world. When you use Flash you have to spend a lot of money to get the development tools which might get outdated any time Adobe desires. This is contrary to rapid development as it gets dependent on a particular entity for development.
  Think if Flash got really really popular and most popular websites start using it.This would mean every web browser has to have a Flash plugin. Now suppose A produces browser X which is better than browser Y produced by B(like more standards compliant,has better UI,is faster etc). Now lets say that A is a competitor to Adobe in some other field. Adobe wants to kill A, what it does is it does not support browser X(I am not implying Adobe would do that, its just something that might happen with a monopoly. We all know monopoply cannot be broken even with lawsuites). This automatically makes browser Y the better choice. Don't you think that's anti competitive?
  One other thing I got against Flash is that its damn annoying. Waiting five minutes until it can do its loading and then play some animations which you cannot skip and then come to content minutes later and by that time you have lost interest in the whole thing. I haven't used slow internet connections for a long time, I can't even imagine the plight of people waiting for Flash sites to load on dial-up.
  Ok I get the point that it is very easy to create interactive sites in Flash but at what cost? I understand you can murder all standards and usability features for your Flash animation but please try to follow these guidelines so that your website may be bearable for 'anti-Flash' people.

• Do not design the main page of your site in Flash.
• Do not make Flash a part of the UI of the site, so if a user doesn't have Flash support (s)he still can access the website.
• For pages relying heavily on Flash please add something like (requires Flash) on the page they are linked from.
• Try to make the Flash animations machine readable, so that something like a screen reader can use it.

  Proprietary formats are much more sinister than proprietary applications. They inhibit growth and promote monopoly. It is high time all of us (not only the open-source zealots) realized this and made a positive contribution towards development especially realting to computer technology.

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Conversing intelligetly online

The internet today isn't an alternate source of communication anymore, infact it is THE communication medium for communication whether its chatting on yahoo to your friend about the movie on sunday or making a Million Dollar deal with an industry hotshot. Although no one would have thought it 10 years back but internet is an integral part of life. Conversations over the internet whether real time or not have one major difference from communication in real life, the only thing that gets over to the other side are words(Video and voice over internet may change this but its a long way off).But sadly most of the people I've met do not seem to realize the fact that the way you use your words make a deep impression on the person you are conversing to. Just as your expressions and posture are important when you converse in real life, the way you write something in an online conversation may make you gain or loose the respect of the other person. You have got to to get your listner to take you seriously and respect you to have a meaningful conversation. Unfortunately online conversations have become quite a nightmare for me where new 'slang' is invented everyday to just look 'cool' or save a few microseconds of time. To be respected you need to follow some basic stuff which can be though of good manners on the internet. Here are some things you should definately follow in conversations over the internet. Do not use all CAPS it is the web equivalent of shouting and should only be used when you really want to emphasize something. Even in that case do not capitalize more than one or two words in the sentance. Use proper capitalization. It just takes very little effort to press the shift key for a tiny fraction of time while you type the first word of your sentence."How are you?" looks much better than "how are you" in my opinion. Use proper punctuation. Always end your sentences with a period '.' or '?' if you are asking a question. Using commas in appropriate places can be a real relief for the reader. Compare "Thank you for the dinner last night, it was great." to "thank you for dinner last night it was great" and you would know what I mean. Do not repeat alphabets to represent your excitement. I see a lot of people using "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii how are you" to represent their excitement on meeting a friend. I would ask wouldn't "Hi! how are you?" suffice? Use simple smilies and don't overuse them. "Hi :)" this shows all your emotions, you definately don't need to resort to something like "hiiiii :)))))))))" which is plain stupid. Don't overuse abbreviations. Using abbreviations like RTFM or IMHO is ok if you don't overuse them but using "u r" for "you are" or "c" for "see" is an overkill and sometimes the reader might have trouble understanding you. Don't use numbers in place of alphabets like '3' for 'E' or '1' for 'I'. IMO this is the single most irritating thing on the internet and has even earned itself a name, '1337' speak or 'leet' speak for those unaware. But the most common misuse of freedom of online conversations is cutting short words. I do not understand what purpose it serves. How much time would it take to type "Regards" instead of "regds" or does saving the time required to hit one key to make "gud", "good" give you any major benefit? Practicing what I mentioned does not take a lot of effort and no skill whatsoever, but the advantages you gain are huge in the form of respect from the people who read you.

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Python script for fetching your orkut scraps

Google's social networking site orkut has become really popular especially in India and its popularity isn't showing any sign of stopping. I will tell you that I hate orkut and the only reason Im using it is because a lot of friends use it. Its just like the time I'd downloaded 3 different IMs until I found gaim. The reasons I hate orkut are:

1. The interface is really buggy and inconsistent
2. Most people on orkut are really lame
3. It does not have any public API
4. No RSS
5. It does not support elinks

Enough of my rant, I basically use orkut to read scraps and I don't like to login and navigate to scraps and then read it. So I wrote this script which fetches my last ten scraps.

This script does no error checking and is at best just a hack. But it can be really useful(especially in office).

Here's the script : http://www.osix.net:80/modules/folder/index.php?tid=12868&action=vf
Enjoy! . Do tell me if it doesn't seem to work or you like it.I might work on it sometime when Im free.

Update: I've added proxy support for the script, if you need proxy support here's the script: http://www.osix.net:80/modules/folder/index.php?tid=12903&action=vf

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Defining Nothingness

Im usually not very philosophical but there are some things which although scientific in nature cannot be described without being philosophical. One such thing is the inability of the human mind to grasp the simplest thing in the universe. Something that simply has nothing to be understood about. Something that has no property. Im talking about nothing. Its rather strange that we have to associate nothing with something in order to understand it. Some people associate nothing with the dark, some associate with a closed room with 'nothing' inside it. But what we don't realize or ignore is that nothing is not something. We cannot see nothing we cannot smell nothing. Nothing is at the end of the universe which again brings in a lot of imaginative stuff. What comes at the end of the universe? Almost everyone agrees universe is finite but what is beyond that ? If we travelled to the end of the universe what would we see? Even if we don't see anything it doesn't mean its nothing because we are aware of its existence and that's a fact about nothing that it doesn't exist or its existence can't be proved. So that brings me to what I would call the ultimate question, does 'nothing' exist? Maybe its things like that which make us human, the fact that we simply cannot grasp something that isn't around us. We are not machines that would assign nothing=NULL, which although is value zero in its registers but for all purposes serves as nothing. Maybe I should leave it that, the more I think about nothingness the more nothingness I destroy.

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Microsoft and piracy

This post is about my thoughts on Microsoft's policy 'against' piracy especially in Third world countries. I can bet M$ wouldn't want you to believe a word of it. Everyday we hear/see plenty of slogans here and there about putting an end to digital piracy but then I would like to ask(this question applies to people in third world countries) how many original CDs of M$ Windows have you seen and how many people you know who have got into trouble for using pirated software . The answer to both questions would be quite low, much lesser than what 'anti piracy' dictates.

  First a word about M$'s policy in developed countries. In those countries mostly people do not assemble thier computers and they don't mind paying extra if all software comes pre-installed on it. This is where M$ cashes in. It has contracts with all the major hardware producers to bundle windows with thier hardware. Believe me its very difficult to get a computer without windows installed on it in the US or UK or any other developed nation. When a user has already paid a lot of money for a software that came with thier computer why would he/she remove it? Secondly the piracy in these nations is not very rampant and M$ keeps strong tabs on it too.
 But the situation is vastly diffrent in the Third World countries like India. If a person was asked to pay a huge amount of money to have S/W pre installed on his/her computer they would plainly refuse. If no other option is available they might not even buy a computer. But their are two solutions available Pirated software or Linux. If piracy wasn't an option it would lead to a huge number of people using free software which doesn't help M$ in any way.
  Not only do M$ lose money but they lose user base which might lead to free software coming to the attention of H/W and S/W makers and more importantly the industries. But what the biggest loss to M$ would be is loss of manpower. Microsoft employes a huge amount of Indians if the number of people using M$ platfom dwindled it would really hit M$'s work force. What this would also do is that since the quality of M$ trained manpower would drop, the big corporations might decide to move to a solution which is more popular with the work force.
 So would it really benefit M$ if it tried to curb piracy. I don't think so. What do you think?

Disclaimer: Everything above is my personnel opinion and is in no way an attempt to defame M$. Its almost 5 am and Im sleepy so pardon me for any mistakes/typos in the post.

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For the first time Im 'against' open source

Its morning, I crawl into my office and open my email. There's an email with 'urgent' in the subject line and its from my boss.Hmm what could this possibly be. I read the mail what it basically said was to uninstall MS Office, Visual Studio,Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash, Winzip etc from all systems and install oo.org . Im a little puzzled and also quite pissed off because it has to be done by tomorrow. Type rest of the post here Although one might say we are only promoting open source by this method but I tend to disagree.We are basically forcing everyone to switch over to oo without any formal training. What this would result in is unhappiness of the users and them getting a wrong idea of open source as inferior software. Later in the day I was about to learn what had caused this. It was a letter from the BSA to our MD 'an educational letter'. This meant our office could be raided anytime and since no licensing fees had been paid for a lot of software we were in quite a lot of danger. Im thinking to myself how often do I wish that this company had a planned IT developement but then again its only three more months. But for the fact Ive to oversee that this 'change' goes on smoothly Im not the least bothered. Some part of me even hopes that they are charged with piracy but then again who cares.

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Major Network outage

Its a bad bad start to the day. I go into the office, connect to all the
servers I need and check my mail everything seems normal until I try to
connect to orkut. No connection, Im a little pissed. I open the relevent
server tab on mrxvt and ping google.com, no response. I ping the default
gateway for the machine no response still. I rush into the server room and
immediately check the router all the lights are blinking as they are
supposed to Link, DSL and ethernet. I check the ethernet cable on the
server, seems allright. As a last try I restart the router. No nothing
works. Why did the fastest connection in the office had to go down. As I
am thinking I would have to settle for a 256kbps connection I get another
shock. The connection on the proxy server isn't working. Now what? Last
option the unused 128kbps failover connection . I get it connected and
change the settings as soon as I ping my heart sinks its not working as
well the only connection alive in the office is the Tata connection to the
mail server. Then it dawns upon me that there's a problem with the Airtel
connections and since the problem is with Airtel's connection to internet
and not my connection to Airtel the router do not show any sign of a
problem.
I call up Airtel their response: "Sir the Airtel network is down and its
not a problem with your connection.". I ask how long it will take to be
up? "Sir it might take 30 minutes or maybe an hour" I hear that as Our
network has got badly fucked up and it might take half a day to be
repaired. Everything I have learned and experienced about redundancy and
failover connections has come to a nought. I'd love to know what caused
this outage. But perhaps sadly I never will.

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Setup shorewall with two interfaces

One of the most basic things whenever you setup a network is allow access from an externel network and then secure it. Both these tasks are easily achieved by using a firewall. A popular choice of firewall is shorewall, in this article I will show you how to configure a simple network two interface network. You allow all traffic from the internal network to the external network but block all traffic except ICMP and http from the external network. So without further delay lets get started.

First you have to install shorewall to this:
yum install shorewall (Fedora/Redhat)
apt-get install shorewall (Ubuntu/Debian)

Now you should have a /etc/shorewall directory and in it there is shorewall.conf file. This is the first file you edit. Im only going to list the lines you'll have to change in the shorewall.conf file:

#Change this from No to Yes
STARTUP_ENABLED=Yes

#Name of firewall zone, if you don't set it you'll have to configure it in zones file
#Set this to fw
FW=fw

#Enable IP Forwarding
#Set this to On
IP_FORWARDING=On

That is all you have to change in the shorewall.conf, You don't need to change other default values.

Now edit/create /etc/shorewall/zones file
You specify one zone net which is the external zone and one zone loc which is for your local network

net ipv4
loc ipv4

Now that you have specified the zones its time to bind them to their interfaces. Lets suppose eth1 is connected to the external network and eth0 is connected to the local network.Time to edit/create /etc/shorewall/interfaces

loc eth0 detect tcpflags
net eth1 detect routefilter,tcpflags,nosmurfs

What you have done in this is bind eth0 to zone loc and told the firewall to detect the broadcast address and check for bad tcp flags. The other thing you have done is bind eth1 to zone net, autodetect broadcast address and check for bad tcp flags+ disable source routing+ check for broadcast source packets.

Upto now you have done these things :
Setup three zones fw(the firewall zone i.e the machine firewall is running on),loc(the local network) and net(the external zone). You have also bound these zones to specific interfaces and enabled IP forwarding.

For sharing an internet connection between multiple computers using a single external IP linux does something called IP masquerading. What it basically means is when you send your packets to the external network the firewall changes the source IP to your external IP and keeps track of who sent the packet to whom. When the host you have sent the packet to replies the firewall recieves the packet and changes the destination address to your IP and sends the packet to you. Sounds tough? To setup IP masquerading for your loc zone(eth0) to access the net zone(eth1) create/edit /etc/shorewall/masq like this:

eth1 eth0

Maybe it isn't so complicated afterall. Now you almost have a fully functional but for one thing You don't have any policy/rule for packet filtering! What are you waiting for create a default policy now. Just create/edit /etc/shorewall/policy .This file is the basic firewall policy. What it means that when a packet does not meet any firewall rule(which we setup later) then it is routed according to the policy.

#SOURCE DEST ACTION LOGGING
$FW net ACCEPT
$FW loc ACCEPT
net all DROP info
# The FOLLOWING POLICY MUST BE LAST
all all REJECT info

The file is read from top to bottom as soon as a packet matches a given rule it is routed accordingly. In this file what we have done is :

• Allow all traffic from the firewall to external network.
• Allow all traffic from the firewall to local network.
• Drop all traffic from external network to anywhere and log it as info message in syslog.
• Reject all traffic that doesn't meet any rule.

Don't worry if you don't see this working completely, we have to configure the rules which is followed before the default policy. Create/edit /etc/rules like this :

#ACTION SOURCE DEST PROTO PORT
ACCEPT net $FW tcp 80
ACCEPT loc all all
ACCEPT net $FW icmp

Our basic rules are very simple:

• Allow only tcp traffic from the external network at port 80(http) to the firewall.
• Allow all traffic from the local network to anywhere
• Allow ICMP traffic from the external network to the firewall

Now our configuration is complete but for a small step. Edit the file /etc/default/shorewall and change this line

#Change this from 0 to 1
startup=1

Now our configuration of shorewall is complete. Its time to start it:

/etc/init.d/shorewall start

If all goes well then our firewall should be up and running. What we have configured is a very basic setup. For more features and logging facilities I suggest you look into /usr/share/doc/shorewall. The documentation is excellent and the examples are very descriptive. Now go and have fun with your secure network.

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Backups made easy!

Has it ever happened to you that you were working on some file after hours of work you save your file and go to sleep. A week later you need the file and you get some error while opening it or the file simply isn't there. Now you wish you had backed it up but alas! its gone for good. This is where backups come in. Regular backups can be a real life saver no matter whether your data is worth 1 Re. or 100000000 Rs. If you are on linux you have many ways of backup and millions of tools for backup. Backup Stratergy When the first time you backup its a full backup then subsequent backups can be incremental i.e you only change files that have changed since the last backup. The tool I have chosen is rsync because its fast, reliable and available on most linux distros.The backup method can be any of these:

• SSH (Backup using rsync over SSH)
• SAMBA (Backup to a windows machine)
• NFS (Backup to an NFS export)
• LOCAL (Backup to a local mounted volume)

The script I've created requires a small configuration step after which you can put it in crontab and relieve yourself of backup troubles. Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash

#Configuration part

#The backup method SSH,NFS,SAMBA or LOCAL
#In case of SSH you would have to set up the authentication keys
#to automate the process
METHOD=

#Path of the directory to be saved
DIRTOSAVE=

#Include hidden files i.e files/dirs beginning with '.' Give option Y/N
HIDDEN=

#Remote machine, needs to be given for SAMBA,NFS or SSH
REMOTE=

#Share path, the share name or the path on the remote machine
#Has to start with a / its not needed for SSH or LOCAL
SHARE=

#The backup dir, has to start with /, for NFS or SAMBA it is
#relative to SHARE, for LOCAL or NFS the path is absoloute
BACKUPDIR=

#Username and Password, has to be given for SAMBA, only username is required for
#SSH, the password you'll have to enter manually or setup ssh keys

USR=
PWD=

#End Configuration

#DO not edit below this


if [ $HIDDEN = 'N' ] ; then
EXCLUDE="--exclude=\".\""
else
EXCLUDE=""
fi

if [ $METHOD = 'LOCAL' ]; then
rsync -ru $EXCLUDE $DIRTOSAVE $BACKUPDIR

elif [ $METHOD = 'SSH' ]; then
rsync -ru $EXCLUDE $DIRTOSAVE $USR@$REMOTE:$BACKUPDIR

elif [ $METHOD = 'SAMBA' ]; then
mount -t smbfs //$REMOTE$SHARE /mnt -o username=$USR,password=$PWD
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
echo "Could not mount remote share"
exit 1
fi
rsync -ru $EXCLUDE $DIRTOSAVE /mnt$BACKUPDIR
umount /mnt

elif [ $METHOD = 'NFS' ]; then
mount $REMOTE:$SHARE /mnt
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
echo "Could not mount remote share"
exit 1
fi
rsync -ru $EXCLUDE $DIRTOSAVE /mnt$BACKUPDIR
umount /mnt
fi

The crontab entry for this should look something like this if it is supposed to run every sunday night at 1 AM and the file is located at /root/backup.sh
0 0 * * 0 /root/backup.sh

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Xnest: way too cool

If you are using linux you would know what X is. Well if you don't I suggest you google for xorg and xfree86. Now coming to Xnest, Xnest is both an X client and a server. So what it basically does is create a window on your desktop which acts as an X server to which other applications can connect. What's the use of this one might ask. Well its utility is only limited to imagination. You might run different window managers in different windows on your desktop. This means you can simultaneously run kde and gnome if you can't choose between the two. You can even nest WMs one inside the other.Like this example in which Xnest is running inside fluxbox which is running inside Xnest which is inside fluxbox which is inside Xnest.... Click image to view it in full size. The other use is you can view desktops of other machines without running a vnc server.Here's an example where Im viewing the desktops of three different machines on my system. Click image to view it in full size. Now that you are excited here's how you use this tool, first you need this package xorg-x11-Xnest (I assume you are using xorg not xfree86, there's a different package for xfree86). To start Xnest on your local display and make it the server on display :1 run the following command:

Xnest -ac -geometry 400x300 :1
The geometry option specifies the size of Xnest window, default is 3/4th of the screen. To test if its working use this command:
xterm -display localhost:1
An xterm window should be inside the Xnest window. Well it hasn't been that exciting so far. Now for some fun:
gnome-session --display=localhost:1
You would be running gnome inside another WM. This gets even more exciting. SSH to any other machine and use this command:
gnome-session --display=your-ip:1
Now you have a remote gnome session inside a window. You can run different window managers this way. I leave the rest to your imagination

Update: The site hosting the pics is down so until I find a new web host the page will be broken.

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PHP after a long long time

Ever since I had started writing this blog I had one major problem with it; The lack of control. Numerous times I thought I would write my own blog engine and put it up on my shell but two factors stopped me: 1.Lack of time. 2.Reliability of my shell provider. Then I thought I could atleast enhance my blog with my own code and link it from here. One more problem: I hadn't used PHP for 2 years now. But anyway after about 3-4 hours I was able to get this stats page working with complete logging. How is it? I know its too plain for all you eye candy lovers. For a moment I thought about making it more 'attractive' but decided against it. If anybody needs the code and info on how to do it just leave a comment. P.S: You need to have access to a webserver with PHP for it to work. After some requests I've created a howto on creating the stats thing, here's it: Counter howto One thing I forgot to mention in the article read your log.txt for goodies.I repeat I do not accept any responsibility for the usability/stability of the code.

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Kind of neat I would say

I had been avoiding this for so long now. Daily I would login to my computer and have to open connections to the proxy,ltsp server and the test server. Then open a root terminal. Open firefox and another firefox instance which was by forwarding of X from the test server to Xnest. Reason for forwarding was simple, my connection to interet was through the proxy which was monitored. I was free to do anything with the test server connection(play with my blog/slashdot). Here's how I did it

1. Added myself to sudoers list(passwordless of course)
2. Created my id_dsa.pub and put it in authorized_keys in .ssh folder of the servers I wanted to login to, this was done to allow passwordless login.
3. Created an account on the test server, this I did so that a casual observer will not notice any change in firefox settings etc.
4. Edited my .xsession file to do the stuff automatically. Here's my .xsession file:

#start mrxvt with 5 terminals, one with shell of proxy, then ltsp, then testserver #then a local root shell and finally a normal shell. I also hid the scrollbar and #changed default colors and set lines in memory to 200 mrxvt -sb -sl 200 -fg GREEN -bg BLACK -tnum 5 -vt0.e "ssh root@proxy" \ -vt1.e "ssh root@ltsp" -vt2.e "ssh root@test" -vt3.e "sudo bash" & #local firefox window firefox & #Start Xnest on display 0 and make it the server on localhost:1 sudo Xnest -ac :1 & #Start fluxbox WM inside Xnest fluxbox -display :1 & #Forward firefox from testserver to my machine ssh test "firefox --display=192.168.2.213:1" & #Finally start my local window manager exec fluxbox

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Learning CSS the hard way

I was getting kind of bored today and didn't really have anything to post so what I decided to do was edit my blog's template. The only problem was I have little HTML/CSS knowledge. My HTML knowledge is limited to form tag which I needed to pass to PHP scripts. But I decided it was the time to learn something new so I got down to editing it little by little. The end result : Im a little more satisfied now especially since I got the content thing wider than before(which took a lot of effort btw until I figured out the outer wrapper width should be greater than main wrapper+sidebar wrapper).Anyways what do you think. I'll be working on this template in the next few days so stick around.

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Disappointing digital fortress

Last night I stayed up till 4 even though I had slept 6 hours in two days because I was reading this book by Dan Brown -"Digital Fortress". The reviews of this book were amazing but reading it was quite disappointing, for non geeks the book would be a great read but for me every few minutes I would go like "Dude this is crap". Dan Brown didn't seem to have researched the topic of crypto quite well. The most disappointing part was the climax. The puzzle that had to be solved to stop the 'virus' took 60 pages and I had got the answer after reading the first few and the rest of the pages I went through wondering how stupid does Dan Brown imagine his readers to be. There were a lot of holes in the story too which Im too lazy to discuss here. Bottomline : A waste of 7-8 hours.

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Lyrics that haunt me

This is a long.. post Matchbox Twenty - Unwell All day staring at the ceiling Making friends with shadows on my wall All night hearing voices telling me That I should get some sleep Because tomorrow might be good for something Hold on Feeling like I'm headed for a breakdown And I don't know why But I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell I know right now you can't tell But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see A different side of me I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired I know right now you don't care But soon enough you're gonna think of me And how I used to be...me I'm talking to myself in public Dodging glances on the train And I know, I know they've all been talking about me I can hear them whisper And it makes me think there must be something wrong with me Out of all the hours thinking Somehow I've lost my mind Lithium - Nirvana I'm so happy 'cause today I've found my friends ... They're in my head I'm so ugly, but that's okay, 'cause so are you ... We've broken our mirrors Sunday morning is everyday for all I care ... And I'm not scared Light my candles, in a daze 'Cause I've found god Hey, hey hey Coming back to life - Pink Floyd Where were you when I was burned and broken While the days slipped by from my window watching Where were you when I was hurt and helpless Because the things you say and the things you do surround me While you were hanging yourself on someone else's words Dying to believe in what you heard I was staring straight into the shining sun Lake of fire - Nirvana Where do bad folks go when they die? They don't go to heaven where the angels fly They go down to the lake of fire and fry Won't see them again 'till the fourth of July Now the people cry and the people moan And they look for a dry place to call their home And try to find some place to rest their bones While the angels and the devils try to make them their own When Im Gone - 3 Doors Down There's another world inside of me That you may never see There're secrets in this life That I can't hide Somewhere in this darkness There's a light that I can't find Maybe it's too far away... Or maybe I'm just blind... Maybe I'm just blind... Drift and Die - Puddle of Mudd Ignorance spreads lies How much will money buy Well I'll take my time As I drift and die I guess that's enough for now, there are many more songs I can't get out of my head but the last few feeks its been the above ones.

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Stuff that pisses me off!

Kind of People I hate due to their internet habits:

1.The 1337 speak kind. When someone says to me H3110
instead of Hello it makes me wannt to kill.

2.People fucking up English by using self invented words
and no punctuation and never using proper capitalization
which save a few micro seconds of time.
An example: hw r u i tried 2 call u yestday bt u were busy
I mean is it really so time consuming to use 'clueful-english'?

The difference between using proper capitalization and
punctuation and not using it is as simple as
I helped my uncle Jack, off a horse.
i helped my uncle jack off a horse
(Taken from bash)

3.People using stupid punctuation to express excitement.
Example: hi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wouldn't hi! suffice?

4.People who leave public away messages on IRC. I think you
would agree with me on this. Its so irritating when you are
having an interesting convo and an idiot pops a message
Shithead is away(Reason: Emptying my bowels).
Its only a good thing that it earns an auto +b in most of
the channels Im in.

5.People who before asking questions start begging like "Please
help me", "I need help". We know you are asking because you need
help crying aloud only makes you look like an idiot.

6.People who ask questions before RTFM(Reading the fucking
Manual) or googling. This attitude sickens me.

Well this is not all but 98% of the stuff that pisses me off.

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My choices with software

OS Server: Debian OS Desktop: Ubuntu Browser: Tough choice b/w konqueror and firefox, konqueror would win by miles if all pages rendered on it correctly Mail client: kmail Programming language: Python Text editor: nano (Most people would regard this lame but I haven't got the patience to learn vi :() Ftp server: vsftpd Mail server: postfix Desktop: fluxbox without doubt Terminal emulator: mrxvt;provides all the features of the bigger terminals like gnome's and kde's but yet is very small and incredibly fast. IRC client: irssi IM: gaim;there isn't much choice anyway File manager: konqueror Audio player: xmms Video player: mplayer If you think I've forgotten some useful software, its because I don't use them or I find thier choice trivial.

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Im back

The last few days were hell, I went through a hard time with cold and fever, the good news is I've recovered and feel as good as new. The downside to recovery was a lot of pending work at office so I was quite busy, have a few spare moments now which Im using to surf some of my favourite websites,check out mail messages and other stuff. Talking about websites Im giving a list of my favouite sites(which I can think of right now) take a look through them,they sure as hell are interesting.
*slashdot.org This is the ultimate geek site and one can get quite addicted easily.
*bash.orgAbsoloutely the greatest collection of web humour. Things hardly get funnier than those quotes.
*osix.netI would regard this is site as one that got me hooked to programming have been a regular member there ever since. I just wish I could solve the last level arghh.
*mathschallange.netAs you might have guessed I love solving these kind of puzzles. Even after having solved one puzzle in more than an year Im still No.1 in India yay!
*google.comHasn't somedoy yet mentioned to you STFG(Search the fucking google), I think this is going to become more important than RTFM(Read the fuckin manual) in *nix history because it simply is the best search engine out there.
*And of course this magical web page The magic site

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Our future: A dark possibility

Date: 12 Aug 2020

Bob comes into his house, he looks very worried. He rushes to his
computer. He pulls out a drive and inserts a new one. He switches
on his internet connection and types something. Instantly there appears a
welcome message on the screen "Welcome to windows 2020". On
the next screen he is shown all details about himself and asked to verify
them(All his details came from his IP address). He looks at
the disk in his hand which had a version of linux but since it contained a
cryptography software it was illegal to use it as were all
other Operating Systems except win.
He is interrupted by a phone call. Its from John's wife . Bad news
John's been arrested. Bob learns that John had given the new
record of Pretty Bitches to one of his friends to listen. Bob was quite
shocked he knew John could be an idiot sometimes but this was
too much. He assures John's wife that he would try to pull some strings.
But inside he knew John was in deep trouble. He wondered why he
lent the record. As soon as the record was inserted in the player APA(Anti
Piracy Agency) was informed because the costemer ID on the
album and the player did not match which led to John and his friend's
arrest. He tries to get hold of some people from the record
company to see if they could make a settlement with John.
Thinking of John he recalls the day he was arrested for using PGP in an
email. Any form of cryptography was illegal except skipjack
which could be decrypted by the goverment when they desired. Every form of
communication was intercepted by the goverment which had
developed special AI programs to sense any dangerous messages or any other
illegal content even in voice conversation. DRM(Digital
Rights Management) ruled the lives of people.You could buy nothing without
it bieng enforced.
He is reminded that he has to get rid of his linux disk. He takes it and
throws it into the fireplace.That's the only place where
the law agencies wouldn't get any evidence. Near the fireplace he sees his
picture with his friends from 2006 standing in front of the
University library of course now libraries are a thing of the past.
Libraries had to be closed down since they led to sharing of
copyrighted material which wasn't in the best interest of the authors. The
last time he had been to a library was 2014. Oh good old
days.
Sometimes Bob thought was it worth living, you have no privacy now every
choice you make is decided by someone else. It was even
impossible to say anything against it too. What happened to the free
speech stuff? But now he had got used to it. Time changes a lot of
stuff.

Think this is a joke? I hope it turns out to be but the fact is we are
progressing in that direction. Read these articles you would get
a little idea of what I mean.
Digital rights Management
How NSA was built into windows

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My reasons for hating Windows

A lot of GNU/Linux users share these feelings and everyone reasons for hating windows are similar here are mine: 1. I hate M$ it is a monopoly who have maintained their monopoly by using the worst tactics possible. They have bought out/destroyed every single competitor. Remember netscape even US courts ruled against M$ but it doesn't stop M$'s practices The so called Get the facts campaign. 2.Use of proprietary formats, when you are using M$ products you are locked into forced use of those products if someday M$ disappears all your work will too. 3.Restarting the computer everytime I do anything. Even for something as simple as changing the IP I have to restart. 4.Security, well need I say anything. 5.No control of our own computer. When you buy a copy of windows basically you have given every right to M$ and you have to play by thier rules whether you like it or not. 6.Lack of quality software. It may seem surprising but uite a large portion of windows software is badly written and bug ridden. MSIE is the first thing that comes to mind. Some things I don't hate about windows: 1. Its not free: well nothing in this world is free and since they developed the whole thing themselves I don't see why they shouldn't charge for thier software. Its a privilege we have of using a system like like Linux(Its estimated cost of development would be around $1.1 billion if developed by proprietary means and that was in year 2000) 2. Its proprietary: I don't have a problem with proprietary software as long as it plays nice and follows standards.

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Haha spam wins rather need for anti spam wins

I was really grumpy about my boss not wanting to set up a spam filter (see my last post) but something happened to change his thinking. Our main mail server's connection failed(The one which is spam filtered) and we had to change our MX record to the old one and retrieve it with POP(98.9%spam). He had setup thunderbird to do it. I go into the server room and almost faint 83000+ mails in the inbox, at the same time Im chuckling to myself. I go over to my boss and ask him to take a look he was almost in tears(Oh the most satisfying feeling). Can you do something about it? I answer you mean kmail and spamassassin? He says 'anything'. I set about doing the job it turns out that actually thunderbird had mistaken the number of emails(maybe because of the large mbox size and the fact we hadn't compacted it). Whatever I launch kmail and sort the emails by date turns out there were actually only around 6000 emails the rest were old mail which wasn't properly handled by thunderbird. Since our new ubuntu server was doing nothing(except downloading stuff for me and a socks proxy muahahah) I decided to install kmail and spamassassin on this server and reduce the load on the other server. But I hit one problem ubuntu doesn't have kde so I had to add kubuntu repos to apt sources.list and update it. Now Iam sitting here waiting for apt-get install kmail to finish. I decide why not test spamassasain I copy the mbox of trash and legitimate mails to my work machine(both are huge so a lot of test material). This was the result of the test(It doesn't include all of spamassassin tests though since I was behind a firewall and had to use a proxy to access internet which I don't think is configurable in spamassassin): Speed: A little slow but acceptable False positives: 2/923 False negatives: 100+ out of 33024 mails (Since a lot of checks couldn't be done, also it should get better with ham/spam training) Still its a lot of improvement if on average we get 2000 mails/day it should work quite well. Well I hope so.

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Spam arghh

The place I am working has an old email account that is hosted somewhere else and we download the mail using POP, problem is we get 4000 emails daily and out of that around 3900 is SPAM.My boss deletes all the junk manually. I suggest to him these ways of reducing spam: Me: Sir, why don't we remove all the text email addresses from the website and put pictures instead so that spam bots won't read email. Him: We already are in most spammers database it would only be a waste of time editing the website. Duhh!! Me: Sir, why don't we forward all mail to gmail and setup a forward there to give us clean filtered mail here. Him: We might run into legal issues. I agree but still?? Me: Sir why don't we use our new mailserver setup(which is using spamassasin) to filter this too. Him: It has too much load. Duhh!! Me: Sir why don't we download mail on another machine with kmail and use spamassasin filtering(kmail has a wizard for spamassassin compatibility) and then forward it? Him: It isn't that important to devote resources for this. Duhhhhhhh! Its moments like this I want to bang my head against the wall. Iam thinking who made you the network admin? I don't know how many network admins like him are running rather wasting our time by not even employing proper spam filters even in cases where its the easiest to do.

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My life atm

I am a student of computer science engineering and at the moment I am in Delhi doing my six months training as a system/network coadmin. Quite a BOFH I am but the job description's more like the PFY although I don't have pimples and I am much more sinister. My job keeps me busy from 8 am to 8 pm this includes 3 hours of travelling. I know it sucks. When I started it was great, so much stuff I had never seen but now its daily the same old routine. Hey its not so bad one would think I have sundays but for the fact they are much more boring. On the positive side I got access to tons of computing power powerful servers with gigs and gigs of RAM. Mostly this blog's gonna be about my experiences here and some more stuff.

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