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Google Ads : Under Testing :) August 29, 2008

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Amusing/Funny Stuff, Random musings , 1 comment so far

While testing my mail server, by sending a mail to my GMail account, I noticed something peculiar at GMail. I sent a mail using Thunderbird to my GMail account, then checked the mail on the GMail’s web interface and found a rather amusing ad under the “sponsered links” section. Click on the image below for full size. The ad is marked with a red circle (ellipse? :) )

Apparently the Google engineers were (are) testing their ad engine or something related when I happen to view my “Test” mail with GMail’s web interface. The Mail I sent had the subject set to “Test” and the body contained just one word “Again”. Probably the subject line triggered their test ad to appear.

The URL displayed in the browser’s status bar is the link to the google’s test ad. Clicking on it takes you to a page at google.com throwing an error “This page does not exist”.

No big deal! I just found this to be amusing, that’s it :)

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x86 Emulator in Java - Cool! June 26, 2008

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Programming and software development, Random musings , add a comment

Before I write anything about it, here’s the link to the JPC project

http://www-jpc.physics.ox.ac.uk/index.html

It’s a nice feat these guys have achieved by creating an emulator for Intel x86 architecture in Java. I’m not sure how useful this project would be, but it’s a cool peice of software :) . Hats off to the JPC developers.

Some of the demos with DOS games are nice. Got nostalgic playing the old DOS games; Prince, mario, keen, invaders :)
What more, it can run Linux! .. I’m yet to try their Linux demo though, but the DOS one’s were very fast.

And to top it all, they have release the source code, I’ve just downloaded it and ‘am going to have a look at how they have done it. Meanwhile you can visit their demo pages and enjoy some of the good ol’ DOS games.

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Cyber Wars : Revision3 vs MediaDefender May 30, 2008

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Miscellaneous, Random musings , 1 comment so far

A popular Internet Television network named Revision3 was brought to knees by a cyber attack from a company named MediaDefender, offering services to prevent copyright infringement using P2P distribution method. You can read the complete story here: Revision3 CEO: Blackout caused by MediaDefender attack.

The story seems to be straight out from a Scifi movie. An interesting read, but what’s more interesting are the tactics used by MediaDefender to achieve their goal. The tactics used could well be described as Guerrilla Warfare.

One of their primary tactics is to contaminate the P2P networks with fake and broken files. They create multiple sources for these decoy files and rate them high, so that they show up at the top of a search result, in a P2P client. Other commonly used method is Denial Of Service (DoS) attack.

Apart from this, MediaDefender has been accused of creating multimedia sharing websites to lure people into uploading copyrighted content. MiiVi is(was?) one such website. MiiVi was advertised as a place where you could get full length movies for downloads. MediaDefender, initially denied its involvement with MiiVi, but a major E-Mail leak found MediaDefender guilty. Wikipedia entry for MediaDefender provides more evidence (facts/stories), linking MiiVi to the MediaDefender company.

As the ars technica news entry points out, P2P is also being heavily used for legitimate file sharing. To give an example many of the Linux Distros are available for download over bit-torrent. I once used P2P to transfer (to my project mate) big documents and source-code and related-files of my college project, when you could only send like 1~2 MB of files as e-mail attachment.

Apart from this, what happened to Revision3 could happened to any other business. So where are we heading towards? A supposedly legitimate business is attacking other legitimate business. Crackers/Terror outfits are already using MediaDefender like tactics to attack governments/organisations across the globe. Virtual warfare is gaining momentum. Interesting!

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Overcoming the fear of Python January 16, 2008

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Programming and software development, Random musings , 6comments

As all C, C++ and Perl devotees, I too looked upon Python with apprehension. Python? What? I asked. The very idea of white-spaces being part of syntax gave me jitters and I convulsed with disgust. Why Python? Perl can do it. OOP? Perl has it … errm .. Kind of.

After reading numerous articles about python by putting the search terms “I hate pyton“, “python will die” and the like, I started getting a grasp of differences and likeness between python and other languages. One thing more I learned was, never be judgmental about a programming language if you have not used it. So after traversing threads at various forums related to “Love Python” and “Hate Python” I started understanding the various mumbo-jubo related to python. And then the thought occured to me, let’s give it a try. I downloaded python on my Windows XP machine at home and Vim for windows. Then jumped right into coding a problem that was asked to me in an interview. It was a design problem actually, but nevertheless a design can be implemented :) .

Within minutes I was automatically indenting code as I used to with C,C++ or Perl (or other free form languages I had used, for that matter). So the frown over mandatory white-spaces soon turned into a smile. And by the time I could realize I was finished creating a four road junction traffic simulator. I did searched the net for some reference, but the best thing was I just looked at the example and understood what it was, no reading what the code does or will do. Other syntax came so naturally that I didn’t even had to look online. That is I guess the beauty of Python.

In around half an hour or so, I had a complete running program in Python, using classes, random number, lists and other subtle features. The code was so readable, I thought, do I need some of those comments I’ve put in there? Some were required. But most of the time the code was itself very much self-explanatory.

Later I booted my laptop (it has FC7 installed) and copied the code on my Lappy. Python comes bundled with FC7 so I straight-away executed the code. Wow! … Its faster than windows .. Ha ha … yes this is what I noticed. Then I tinkered a bit more with the code, optimizing some things and learning new stuff in the process. Overall I enjoyed my first step into Python, very much.

I’m not going to shun C,C++ or Perl for that matter. For quick one-liners Perl is still the best. My domain is embedded systems and Linux Kernel programming so C and C++ are essential. But this discovery about Python has really give me an option. Option to create large and manageable programs in less time. They say in the python community, You spend more time solving the problem as you code and less time worrying about the language and its syntax. I Agree!

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URL Kick Toolbar April 9, 2007

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Random musings , add a comment

I’m writing this, because of the sad state of morality, in this open source era.

Everybody likes being credited for their work, but unfortunately (or otherwise) the people at URL Kick (http://urlkick.com) choose not to credit Ensparc, my previous company, for the toolbar that was created by myself while at Ensparc.

My previous company got this work from Rent-A-Coder and this task was assigned to me. People at URL Kick at said at that time, that ‘Ensparc’ can place their name in the credit, about which we were very happy. (Any one would be, for getting credited).

We’ll that’s past now, poor people at Ensparc, couldn’t survive just on open source and Rent A Coder. Anyways, I’ve moved on to a new company, Intoto and ‘am enjoying every-bit of it here (too).

Coming back to URL Kick, the first thing everybody will ask is, how can I claim that the FireFox tool was created at Ensparc? Here come’s the proof:

1) I had named the toolbar Hit-IT earlier

2) Comments in the source code

Well how do you verify the above proofs and claims?

Download the toolbar from here http://urlkick.com/extensions/urlkick.xpi

Rename the file to urlkick.zip, open with your favourite Archive Manager and browse through all the scripts, specially javascript scripts (.js files). Also notice the file names!

Well, in the end, all I would like to say is that, I hold no grudges against the people at URL Kick, but would really like them to credit Ensparc for their hard work and for their happiness.

Thanks,

- xk0der

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How to pick a programming language June 19, 2006

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Random musings , add a comment

I happen to read this very interesting article by Tim Daneliuk

http://www.tundraware.com/Technology/How-To-Pick-A-Programming-Language/


I really don’t know if it will help anybody pick out the language of their choice, but the article makes a very good reading, specially if you like nerd humour.

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C# and .NET will die! June 8, 2006

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Random musings , 1 comment so far

Not yet, but slowly!

They may rise to a certain level before they die, but they will!

Clarification
Before I continue let me clarify that this post is not about whether C# or .NET is a good technology or not; .NET might be very good concept coming out of Microsoft’s closet, but again popularity and sustainability of a language is not governed by a language being the best in terms of syntax or it’s robust compiler or the object code it generates and the like.

Desktop
For the desktop we already have a plethora of languages available, so C# might eat into that share but wouldn’t be able to dominate that domain. VB6 is far better in terms of development time and ease of code writing that the new VB.NET and C# for creation of desktop applications. And now that Microsoft has announced that their new OS, Vista, will have support for legacy VB6 and COM objects, there is no point for these developers to switch to something entirely different from what they are used to.

Let’s face it, still the majority of desktop apps written in .NET use the interop mechanism to interface with COM objects. And that’s not going to change any soon. This means extra burden for the programmer, interop is more of a workaround than a feature. Most of my peers have this to say about interop wrappers “When I can write do_this( ); to do a thing, why write do_this( ); do_that( ); do_this_too( ); do_that_too( ); now_using_something_else_do_what_I_want( );” Not a pretty thing to look at too!

Web
After the prospects of desktop apps being bleak for C# and .NET, the other arena where C# might try to fight a losing battle is the web! The reason it will be a losing battle is that there are already many scripting languages available for server side scripting and development. The other fact that Unixes and Linux Boxes are now becoming the first choice for web servers makes it even more difficult for .NET to survive. At least I don’t see, that, in foreseeable future windows will release a .NET framework for *nix boxes. There have been some attempts by some people and groups to create a .NET framework for Linux, but they have all not been a hit to the extent required.

PHP, Python and even Perl are the choice of programmers for server-side development. C# does not provide any uniqueness that the programmers will love to adopt, at least not on the surface level.

The final words
All said, programmers do not want to learn a new language just for the sake of the language being new. The new language needs to have that something “special” in to attract the masses. C# and .NET family of languages lack this very basic essence. They are essentially camouflaged Java!

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xk0der ? January 16, 2005

Posted by xk0der (aka Amit Singh) in : Miscellaneous, Random musings , add a comment

what the heck is this xk0der ? well I got this name when I started a programming club named Xtreme K0ding, I found it kind of funky and hence have been using it at quite some places now! Well about this blog: Since many now have started a blog of their own, I said to myself let’s start my very own Web Log, hence this space. Anyway, I *hope* to put up some usefull stuff in here but notice the stress on the word ‘hope’ ;) That would be all in my inagural post
Signing off
- xk0der

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