Category: Tech and Culture

Our culture is largely defined by the technological innovations we share with other humans.

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Tech and Culture Travel

Bird’s Eye View on Windows Live Local

I am a fan of using Yahoo! Rarely do I ever check any other maps/local information website for my trip planning. Since the Windows Live Writer software uses Windows Live for its maps, I thought about giving it a try, and was truly amazed. Although, I did not spend a lot of time playing around, I was impressed by the interface, and how similar it is to a regular desktop application. In addition, the following capabilties have made me think about switching to Windows Live Local:

  1. Bird’s Eye View: This is phenomenal! Not only can I view satellite images, but MicroSoft has now made it possible to view oblique pictures of any covered location. These pictures are very high quality, and have a resolution of about a couple dozen yards! They’re still working on getting major cities covered. For example, Raleigh, NC still isn’t covered, while I was able to view pictures of my apartment in the Minneapolis suburbs.
  2. Call a business: This is still a beta feature, but basically when you search for a business, you get a link to call them for free. All this does is calls them and forward the call to your phone. So, basically, you hear a ring on your phone, and when you lift it, you’re connected to the business without dialling a number! I think there’s lots of scope for exploitation here as the feature takes in any number you provide.

All in all, I am throughly impressed. And, yet again, good going, Microsoft!

Categories
Economy India Life and Personal Tech and Culture

Definition of an Entrepreneur

Spotted on slashdot, the definition of an Entrepreneur:

Entreprenuer, n.: A high-rolling risk taker who would rather be a spectacular failure than a dismal success.

Categories
Economy India Tech and Culture

12 startups to launch now

Business 2.0 magazine has an article on the 12 best startup ideas for the present times. The ones I really like/find interesting are:

The first  idea is pretty interesting seeing the global demand for combustible energy resources. Also, Argentina serves as a central location for distribution to all the energy dependant economies.

The second idea is controversial in my opinion. Sure, the growing economy, coupled with added disposable incomes has made the Indian youth yearn for more expensive tastes, I doubt there’s a very big market for imported wines. Indian culture is different from western culture in that sense, and no matter how much Indians try to mimic the West, there’ll always be subtle differences. Consumption of alcohol isn’t favorable culturally, biologically, and even environmentally!

Categories
Economy India Life and Personal Politics Tech and Culture

Textbook prices

Everyone knows what I am going to talk about. Do we really need to spend hundreds of dollars on textbooks we’d really not use after the semester is done with? This isn’t just an American issue. Textbooks, even in India, are pretty expensive, especially at the higher education level.

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Life and Personal Tech and Culture

Take the Pew/Internet Bloggers Survey

The folks at the Pew Internet & American Life Project have created an online survey for bloggers about their blogging habits. If you’re a blogger reading this post, I strongly urge you to participate in it. There are about a couple dozen questions, and it would take about 10 minutes of your time.

Some of the questions from the survey that I would like to see statistics for are:

  1. Do you make money from your blog?
  2. Do you research the facts before posting something?
  3. Do you blog specifically to educate others?
  4. Is your blog an exercise in literary skills?
  5. Do you use a different name/identity while blogging?

Link: http://www.pewinternet.org/

Categories
Tech and Culture

Developing games made easy !

I can’t believe I used to be one among the Microsoft-hating sheep sometime ago. Micro-soft has come a long long way since those days of noncompetitive practices. Windows has evolved into a secure and reliable operating system with a consistently improving user interface.

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Tech and Culture

JBoss and mySQL

While JBoss is an enterprise strength application server, it probably has the worst documentation I have ever seen for an open source project. I have spent more hours debugging and troubleshooting simple issues than actually getting my idea to work before the launch. The online forums haven’t been worth talking about, either.

For instance, I just discovered that the truncation errors I was getting on the server launchtime were actually due to JBoss not fully supporting mySQL5. The workaround is actually as follows:

MySQL 5 can run in strict mode, which causes errors to be thrown instead of warnings when data truncation occurs (see mysql bug 14048).

Errors may look similar to this:

11:16:36,520 ERROR JDBCExceptionReporter? Data truncation: Data too long for column 'jbp_viewrealemail' at row 1

While MySQL 5 is not yet supported, there is a way to prevent the error from being thrown during the installation of the portal:

  1. If you have MySQL 5 installed already and running in strict mode, edit the my.ini (or my.cfg) file of MySQL and remove the “STRICT_TRANS_TABLES” part from the line: sql-mode=STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,
    NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION
  2. Add “jdbcCompliantTruncation=false” in your datasource descriptor file (*-ds.xml) under the deploy directory. Your connection URL should look like: <connection-url>jdbc:mysql://your-host-name:3306/jbossportal?
    useServerPrepStmts=false&jdbcCompliantTruncation=false</connection-url>

This should prevent any further data truncation related errors during the portal installation.

Now that that is resolved, I need to figure out why the source tree of the JBoss Portal server doesn’t include the directory structure exactly as described in the “documentation”.

I love Enterprise Java too much to switch to .NET right now, but I hope I am able to get things running!

Categories
Tech and Culture

Windows Live Writer

Just installed the beta version of Windows Live Writer, the Blog tool from Microsoft. I have one word to use – “Phenomenal”. The software learned the layout of my blog on its own, and I can create posts in a truly WYSIWYG manner. It even displays the same fonts and text colors that I see on my blog!

The best part is the capability to work with images while making a post, rather than resizing and uploading them before making the actual post. The API is also available for free to add custom functionality.

Once again, good going, Microsoft!

Categories
Tech and Culture

The Source of all comment spam

I hate spam. Everyone does. As if email wasn’t good enough, spammers have also been trying to exploit my blog ever since I started blogging. Luckily, I have a very good Bayesian spam filter called Akismet in place, that filters out all comment spam from my blog. The best part is that I don’t have to use annoying “CAPTCHA” tests like images to distinguish valid comments from spam.

Anyway, since I was taking a break, I decided to analyze where all the spam was coming from. I looked up the IP address ranges of spammers (a day’s worth), and found them to be allocated by the RIPE NCC, that handles the Regional Internet Registry for ISPs and companies located in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia.

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Categories
Life and Personal Tech and Culture

The era of OTC genetic testing

As the June 16th edition of the Wall Street Journal so succintly put it, “Genes, not experience, explain why the lives of some take a bad turn”. We are what our genes define us as. There is no going against our genetic code. Genetically engineered customized medications are going to revolutionize the coming decades just as the Internet of the present day.

What we miss while showing appreciation for the Internet is that it is more a victory of data mining than pure computer networking. It’s the actual applications that make the Internet so important in our lives. The power of the Internet comes from software that enables personalization and targetted addressal of the user’s demands.

Since the DNA plays such an important role in determining the course our life would take in the future, it is getting all the more desirable to try to decipher it as soon as possible. Technology, with its incarnations like sequencing, data-mining, and storage has actually made it possible to figure out our future scientifically!

Research has shown that a lot of cancers are genetic in nature, and can be effectively treated if diagnosed by their genetic precursors before the actual onset. Getting DNA diagnosed isn’t hard, atleast for known genes, but there are issues of privacy. Most people are not comfortable making their genetic identity known to others, even if for pure research purposes. Without adequate laws in place, there is nothing stopping this information to be made available to strangers. Like someone has said, you can change your credit card numbers, but it’s impossible to change your DNA.

In order to alleviate these concerns, a lot of companies have sprung up that sell kits for genetic testing over the Internet. Anyone with a credit card can now check themselves for susceptibility towards certain cancers in the privacy of their own homes by ordering an easy to use kit. These kits test for the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, or any of hundreds of other mutations in the DNA, all without getting a physician or a health plan involved. These two commonly tested mutations indicate a predisposition to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Once the genetic risk is identified, there are strategies that could be put in place to mitigate the possible onset of these cancers.

So, what does the future look like when it comes to genetic prognosis of diseases? In my opinion, it looks phenomenal! And, the credit goes to research in computer science as much as that to biological sciences.