My Ideas/Thoughts/Experiences

It was just by sheer luck that I came to know that SBI ATM’s are using Windows, to power it on. Woh!. I went to an SBI ATM to check my balance wherein I found that all the touchscreen utilities etc. are being loaded by Windows XP. Mostly the machine consisted of 2 partitions, C and D, In D there you had the files/bank details (did not opened any one of them) while the C drive had the configuration files. It worked like a normal touch screen PC, restarting, powering it off etc. One of my colleague then called up the helpline number that was printed just beside it to have the ATM checked.

Well, today I had a good experience to see that India is really progressing. I went to my nearby shop to get to have a puff, when a distributor came, took out a hand held electronic gadget and ask the shopkeeper what things he would like to stock for consumers like us. The shopkeep gave a list of items to which, the vendor inputed in the device. Since I wanted to know, what was he exactly doing, I en quired about the device, to which he gave a small smile saying that, he is noting down the items that the shopkeeper was requesting and sending it to their main head office via GPS.

Woh!. When I checked the device, I could see the codes of the various items being instantaneously downloaded from their server. The user would just have to select the product code with the quantity. Cool hah! I was very happy to note that not only does it save paper, but also reduces delivery time bringing better efficiency. Moreover the best part of it was to see that technology is now being getting spread to the masses. It is just a matter of time, when electronic gadgets will fill up the masses and people will be using those technologies.

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Yes/No?

Prostitution is known to be the world’s oldest profession/trade. There has been issues raised for legalizing this profession but little minimum has been actually done to legalize it.

If prostitution were made legal what could we gain,

1. Reduce victimization of prostitutes as well as the criminal activities that are associated with it.
2. Control STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Disease) through regular checkups.
3. Get prostitutes off the street and put them in a better environment.
4. Put our cops in fighting crimes rather in this social elements.
5. Get young women away from drugs in in order to turn them into prostitutes.
6. Eliminate a significant source of income for organized crime.
7. Put this multi-million dollar business on the tax rolls, and earn some revenue.

Your inputs …

Mininova is going LEGAL. I wanted to download some movies and went to my favorite torrent website and to my utter surprise, Mininova does not serve movie torrents now. It has gone legal distributing contents only. No more movie torrents now.

This can be found at http://mnstat.com/images/blog/index.html

Necessity for new states?

Yes/No?

They have there own pros and cons. But what I would like to ask is whether there is actually a need for it or it is just from a politcal prespective of view to create a new cabinet. Where did the creation of new state come from? Will the formation solve the issues, if ‘yes’, how? Is the goverment not upto mark, if ‘yes’, why? What do you require it? …

Questions, questions and questions. Some of which you will have answer to, while the others, you will have to think or look at your representative face for the answer.

Question: Why do you require it?

Answer: Normal wordings from a common person, “The government is not doing anything for us. They treat us very rudely (step-motherly treatment). We are getting less benefits as compared to other counter parts and are being treated as minors etc. “. Well, is that the reality?

As a lay man, you are totally unaware of what is going on in politics, nor will you try to figure it out. Why make our hands dirty. You are fed into a notion that the government is not doing anything for you, by the local politicians. Have anyone asked their representatives, how much money has been allocated for the development? 99% of the people will say `NO`. Reason – A lay man would not like to lay his hands in dirty politics. And the rest 1% would be presented with the picture that the government is not committing funds nor making any efforts for the development of the region. Is that true?

When you read the reality, the picture is somewhat different. First – You need to have good presenters who can present the ground situation to the government, what are the requirements, needs, expectation etc. of a common man. Second – You should project the overall financial requirements for meeting those. Third – You should have the ability to spend the budgeted allocation for the uplift of the society. Most of the funds allocated for the development of a region is not properly utilized or it goes to the hands of people who does the not utilize. The government pays once, twice but the the third time it will think before paying since the allocated funds are not being utilized. This rosy situation of funds not being utilized will not be presented to the common man, instead the wordings would be that, the government has not allocated funds for the development. As my friend says, “When you say a lie again and again, it takes the shape of truth”.

Question: Will the formation of new state solve the issues?

Answer: The most obvious answer from the common man, “Yes, it will solve all our problems. We will have our own set of rules, our own voice etc .”

Oh, in that case every layout should ask for it’s independence. It would be good. But in reality, that is not the case. What are the chances that tomorrow from the same state there will be more demands, more violence, more bitterness. The resources that you spend for maintaining it is much more than that is actually required when you are united. Every new state that is being formed will have their own rules, own things to guard to, have their own financial commitments. From where will all these come?

A very fine example could be your own house. Once you were united, staying with your uncle’s/aunt’s, harvesting the same paddy and living happily. Then came the concept of nuclear family, and you are left with a cosmetic smile on you face and now you have half of the harvested paddy. Tomorrow again, the same will happen and you are left with one fourth of the original and so on and so forth. And as time passes by, you own nothing. Is the same going to happen?

The more nuclear you become, the more the risk’s are to defend/save. The resources also multiply in folds though the quality will not be good. Development will also suffer. So better think.

I am not being biased towards the government but some issues should be dealt smoothly taking into considerations of it’s pros and cons, the effect/after effects that it will happen in the society after the change. And the more important, people should be aware what will happen. Stop pulling the uneducated masses for your vote banks, Mr. Politics. Humanity pays a huge price.

United you stand divide you fall.

Well, the blog was down for almost 3 days. Reasons? My own mistake of deleting the database, without taking a backup. Stupidity of me. The reason was to move the blog from the current machine to another faster machine along with an upgrade of Wordpress. After struggling for 3 days, getting the remote backup, looking at Google cache pages, I was finally able to get the blog working. Being a sysadmin, I should have taken care of backup, which I did not do.

Well the other good part was of the things I learnt, while trying to recover the database. Normally, when you configure MySql in Ubuntu/Debian, you are not provided with the option of creating binary logs. Binary logging will record in a binary file all SQL transactions executed and attempted on the server. By using the `mysqlbinlog` utility, the contents of the binary log file can be extracted so that the SQL statements may easily be rerun. To enable binary logging, add the following line to your server’s options file `my.cnf`.

log-bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log

After making the entry above to your options file, you will need to restart the MySQL server for it to take effect.

Though I have personally not tested it out in a production server, I have tried using it on my laptop and what I notice from the log file is that it notes down each and every database transaction.

prasanta@ophiophagus:/tmp$ sudo mysqlbinlog /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.000002 > /tmp/mysql.sql

This will create a mysqlsql text file which you can edit it manually.

I hope that this will help some person like myself in the future.

Just checked gmail. Seems that chatenabled.gmail.com is down since 20.15 hrs today. The gmail team has put up notice in red saying the same. Hope it is up soon to be able to get in touch with all friends …

Marriage in India, is considered to be one of the most auspicious occasion and is an one tome event in one’s life. As human race progresses, marriages have also undergone some considerable amount of change in them as well to cope up with the changes. This is not a comparative study but just some views about the changes that has been brought up.

Past:

People used to get married young and would marry for economic reasons. They used to get married wo married who they were told to marry. They had children right away, and lots of children. They stayed in their marriages even if they were unhappy, abused or felt unfulfilled. People used to get married to solve the disputes between two tribes/clans etc. also. There are incidents also wherein a guys goes out and captures a women.

Matchmaker also had an important role to play in this period. People used to rely to them for arranging marriages.

Present:

Today, more and more couples are waiting until they are in their 30’s to marry. They often don’t marry due to economic reasons. They marry someone they love. They postpone having children, and they limit the number of children they do have. If the marriage doesn’t work out, they have no guilt in getting a divorce.

Future:

There will be fewer people getting married. There will be less social stigma with couples who want to live in non-traditional arrangements. Same-sex marriage will be accepted in more countries.

Courtesy:
http://about.com

A small incident which I thought I should write about, to let others also know about it.

I needed to get some vegetables so was my friend. And as such we went to the market to get those. We checked the price of some items with the local shops and later went to the supermarket to check the same for better pricing. We got Chili and Potato. The displayed price of Chili and Potato was Rs. 16.50 each. We happily got the items, as the price was on the lower side as compared to the outside market. Bill was generated and after paying we started to move out, but suddenly my friend had a look into the bill and just for his curiosity went to check the displayed price. To our utter dismay, there was the price difference. The supermarket charged Rs. 19.00 and Rs. 18.90 respectively for those items. It seemed that we were cheated. When inquired, we were given a blunt reply saying that the prices are valid only the next day. We had to argue with the staff to get the correct price for those items.

On the other day, we went to another supermarket to get some stuff. We got the stuff, but the free items that were listed in the packs were not given to us. Had to have an argue again to get it. Doesn’t it make sense that the person’s billing it, should have accounted for the free items listed.

What I felt is that, as the number of supermarket grows along with it’s consumer base, the profit that they make with small difference in the price increase per quantity is very much. And in this fast life where there is very less time for all this, very few people check whether they are paying the price of the item as displayed. Maybe since the number of items that we brought were less and hence we were able to find the price difference of the items. But as the quantity grows you tend to loose the displayed price of each item and we take into granted that the supermarket has charged for what we have brought and as per the price. I think it is time to open one’s eyes and as the popular add goes “Jago Ghrahak Jago”.

This would seem silly to many people but the real fact is supermarket’s are minting money from our ignorance.

This is from one of the forwarded mails which I had received from Mr. Venkat.

In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?

Why does night fall but never break and day break but never fall?

Why is it that when we transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it’s called cargo?

Why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists?

In what other language do thay call the third hand on the clock the second hand?

Why is it called a TV set when you get only one?

Why – in our crazy language – can your nose run and your feet smell?

Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane:

If olive oil is made of olives, what do they make baby oil from?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume?

A writer is someone who writes, and a stinger is something that stings.

But fingers don’t fing and grocers don’t groce.

If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn’t the plural of booth be beeth?

If the teacher taught, why isn’t it also true that the preacher praught?

If harmless actions are the opposite of harmful actions, why are shameless and shameful behavior the same?

English is a language in which you can turn a light on and you can turn a light off and you can turn a light out, but you can’t turn a light in;

In which the sun comes up and goes down, but prices go up and come down.

In which your nose can simultaneously burn up and burn down and your car can slow up and slow down, in which you can fill in a form by filling out a form and in which your alarm clock goes off by going on.

English is a crazy language. What is it that when the sun or the moon or the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible?; and why when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I shall end it?