Movie: Kung Fu Hustle

It has been a long time since I wrote anything here. I guess I have realized that it takes effort to write something here regularly. That too when you do it just for the heck of it.

Recently I had seen the movie, “Kung Fu Hustle” and I liked it. If you haven’t seen the movie go ahead and have a look. It has got some good special effects and good action scenes too. I liked the first half of the movie better than the second half because I liked the three kung fu masters.

This movie has got a rating of about 7.8 out of 10 at Internet Movie Database. So I am not alone in liking this movie.

The best action I liked in this movie is the first fight, by which the three kung fu masters are introduced. Ofcourse you might like a different portion of the movie. Enough said.

Retort to “Linux: A European Threat To Our Computers”

I came across this article. I am responding to only two paragraphs, which I found to be most offending and misleading.

“Like most things that are worth owning, Computers are an American invention. Look at any modern computer and you will see that the whole thing is the product of American brilliance.”

Computers are not an American invention. America cannot take complete credit for computers. There are so many people, who are not Americans, but have contributed significantly for what has now become digital computers. For example, Charles Babbage is British. Americans have definitely contributed, but they are not the sole owners of computer technology. It has come from many other places.

Not everything that is worth owning is from America. Bicycle is an European invention. The internal combustion engine (which is the technology behind motor vehicles) is not from America. Go and check that history for yourself.

“If you see a company using Linux, it may be that they have not paid for this software. Report them to the Business Software Alliance who have the legal authority to inspect any company’s computers for illegal programs like Linux.”

GNU/Linux operating system is used by so many American companies, I don’t know where to start. Infact, GNU/Linux operating system is used all over the world. It is used here in India too. It is used in my home and my office too. It is used by my friends at their homes too. There is nothing illegal about it. I own my computer and I can run any software I want on it. Business Software Alliance or any other such organisation have no legal authority in US or anywhere else.

The original article is full of misleading information.

Transferability of Copyright

I have been perusing the Indian Copyright Office website at

http://www.copyright.gov.in

In that website copyright is talked about as some sort of author’s special rights. If that is the real purpose of the copyright act, then why does it allow the transfer of copyright from one person (or organisation) to another?

Does it make sense to ask for an amendment to make the copyright non-transferable? IANAL, hence this question. Any thoughts on this?
Some of the +ve effects of such clause would be,

• The authors would always be in control. The publishers can license the work from the authors. As far as I can see, in the current copyright system, only the publishers own most of the copyright and not the authors. This non-transferable copyright will set the copyright system in the correct course.
• If the author dies, the copyrighted work gets to public domain. Or inherited by his/her family. This will avoid copyrights for extending for a ridiculously long period of time (when it is not inherited.)
• No author can be forced or pressurized to transfer copyright. For example, if you want us to publish your paper you have to transfer the copyright to us. (http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html).

All your comments are welcome. Thank you.

Online Banking: ICICI Bank Supports Firefox Web Browser

A couple of days back, when I was doing online banking with ICICI Bank, I noticed that they have added support for the Firefox web browser. This is what they say in the front page of their website.

Best viewed with Internet Explorer Ver 5.5 and Ver 6 or Netscape Ver 7.3 and Ver 8 or Firefox Ver 1.5 with a resolution of 800×600

I really appreciate ICICI Bank for supporting the Firefox web browser. The reason is that now their website will work smoothly with all the platforms on which Firefox is available. That is really much more customer friendly than only MSIE websites.
But the next question is, is this the right way to do it? What about other browsers like Mozilla, Galeon, Opera, Safari, Konqueror and the various versions of them? And why Firefox 1.4 is not supported?

What I believe is that a web application cannot keep track of (or should not keep track of) which browsers it will work with. Web application developers should simply stick with the standard set by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and make sure that it works with all the standards compliant web browsers. That way they can just say that “This website is best viewed with any W3C standards compliant web browser.”

Maybe someday ICICI Bank will support the Any Browser Campaign. But one thing that I can say for sure is that ICICI Bank’s website is much more usable on GNU/Linux than other banks like HSBC. I have used both websites, so I can tell.

Obtaining A Copy Of Constitution Of India

The Constitution Of India is a written document, that establishes the principles based on which India is to be governed. I have read the preamble of our constitution and it sets certain lofty ideals for all of us to follow. This got me interested and I wanted to read the whole document. Towards this end I was looking to obtain a copy of Constitution of India in a book form.

I visited the Government of India official website for the constitution to check how to obtain a copy. My first observation was that we will not be able to download a copy of the constitution as a single document. If you want to have a complete local copy, you will have to download many small HTML pages. This is very inconvenient.

Another fact is that only HTML formats are available. Check this against the number of formats in which you can obtain the GNU Emacs Manual. Why cannot we have the Constitution of India available in various formats?

And the CD containing the Constitution of India costs a little more than INR 500/-. Check this information here

CD-ROM on Constitution of India

A CD on Constitution of India has been released on 21st December,1999 by Hon’ble Minister of Law, Justice and Company Affairs. This CD is available at a nominal charge of Rs. 515.00 and can be ordered from NIC Services Inc. The details can be had from : The Executive Director, NICSI, First Floor, A-Block, CGO Complex, New Delhi – 110 003. E-Mail : nicsi@hub.nic.in

Why would a digital copy of our constitution cost so much? If they charge that much for a hard copy (book form) of the Indian Constitution I can understand? But why is the soft copy so costly?

Finally, there is no mention of a printed edition of Constitution of India. Is it out of print? Infact, this is one more reason why a single downloadable copy of our constitution, that is printer friendly, must be available for all of us.

I am mailing this small piece to Legal Informatics Division, who maintains the above official site. Let me see what they have to say. If you are interested enough, then you can also mail them at the above address.

ICICIdirect.com: Unfair System Requirements

I have an account with ICICIdirect.com website for doing online trading. But many times their website doesn’t work smoothly with web browsers available in the GNU/Linux operating system. Whenever I find out such glitches, I report it to their customer service. Most of the time I would be getting some canned response asking me to “upgrade” my system to meet their minimum system requirements. And what is their minimum system requirement? From their website (check the above screenshot),

Minimum Browser Requirement: You must have Internet Explorer 5.5 & above or Netscape Communicator 4.7 & above.

I have many times asked their support team to look into the AnyBrowser campaign, but so far nothing has happened. Their front page still displays the above minimum system requirements.

Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.

That was said by Tim Berners Lee more than a decade ago!

I always use GNU/Linux operating system. And I would like to see ICICIdirect.com work smoothly with the browsers of my favourite operating system. Towards that end, I keep sending them feedback regarding this issue. If you were inconvenienced by ICICIdirect.com because of their unfair minimum system requirements, please send their customer support an e-mail saying so. If enough people complain, I am sure ICICIdirect.com will respond. In the past I always found them to be responsive to customer complaints and requests.

Preliminary Interview for GNU/Linux System Programming Candidates

As part of my job, I have to take interviews to fill in positions in my own team. One of the skill set that we expect in the prospective candidate is GNU/Linux system programming. Instead of right away launching into the nuts and bolts of the system, I prefer to have an initial set of questions to gauge the level of experience the user has with the system. Here is a small subset of the questions that I tend to ask often to the candidates. I have also provided the rationale for asking those questions.

What are the books that you have read about GNU/Linux operating system? What online resources do you use to keep yourself upto date with the various developments in your profession?

Rationale: I always believe that knowledge is there in the books. If someone is claiming to be knowledgeable in a particular topic then he must have read atleast one book in that particular topic. If the candidate have read more books it shows how much interest he has in that topic. Also proper utilisation of online resources would be a definite plus for a candidate. A person who spends time reading newsgroups and mailing lists of a particular topic would definitely keep learning new stuff all the time.

Name a few utilities of GNU/Linux operating system that you commonly use.

Rationale: This question will definitely help you to know how much experience the candidate really has with the operating system. If he can name more than 10 utilities without having to think hard, then he has used the system sufficiently. If any of the tools that the candidate mentions is of any particular interest to you then you can spend a few minutes discussing about it. Just to test the waters.

What are the IPC mechanisms available in the GNU/Linux operating system?

Rationale: Any person who is serious about programming in GNU/Linux operating system must be aware of the various IPC mechanisms available. At the minimum he better know about pipes, shared memory and sockets. Mention of memory mapped files can be considered a plus (I say that because many candidates seems to not know about it.) And this question can carry significant weightage depending on the kind of project for which the candidate is being evaluated. Depending on the project requirement a few more questions on selected IPC mechanisms can be considered.

You must be aware of programming errors like memory leaks, free memory reads (FMR) and free memory writes (FMW). What tools would you use to detect such errors in your program?

Rationale: The question tries to find out how much debugging experience the candidate has. Infact, the above question can be generalised into asking about the various debugging tools the candidate have used. Any mention of tools like valgrind, electric fence or others is a definite plus. Many times memory related errors in programs are hard to find using the debuggers alone.

How do you send signals to other processes? How do you catch or handle the signals? Can you handle all the signals?

Rationale: The relevance of this question can depend on your project. But even otherwise, a small discussion about signals can reveal a lot about the candidates programming practices. For example, the knowledge of basic signal handling (think SIGINT) to do proper cleanup before exiting the program is a good practice. Also if the candidate knows about signals that cannot be caught and if he can discuss about why it was designed that way, then he is definitely above average.

Many more questions touching upon debuggers, visual debuggers (DDD), documentation system, editors, source browsers, build system and shell programming can help to assess the ability of a candidate to fit into the role of a GNU/Linux system programmer. Ofcourse, there might be other requirements for the project, like knowledge of some particular domain. The above is just a few sample questions to show how one can go about screening all those prospective candidates.

One should always remember to assess the candidate against the project requirement. There is no point in testing the ability of the candidate in a certain skill, when that skill is not required for the project for which he is being interviewed.

Rainbow Season Begins

Me too.

When I first thought about blogging, the question that I had to answer
myself was “Why would I do that?”. Its a question that delayed me for
more than 4 to 5 months. I know that most of the people on this
planet don’t give a dime as to what I have got to write here. And the
remaining few people might not like what I write or the way I write.
So why bother to write at all?

I like to write. I always did. It pleases me to see my thoughts and
ideas put into a cohesive prose that is good to read. Other than that
single reason, the pleasure of writing, I am not expecting anything
else. So I’ll keep writing something all the time. I have no clear
or specific goals for this blog.

Ofcourse, what fun is it to write without anyone else to read? Will I
be writing if I know for sure that no one will be reading it? But
then I do expect that someone will read what I write. And I will
write on topics which interests the kind of people I would like to
read my blog. More simply, I will write for myself first and then for
others too.

And what about this name? Missing Rainbow. Why would I want to call
it that? There is a reason for it. I did spend considerable amount
of time thinking about it. And I’ll write about it in my next post.

And all your comments on my language and grammar are greatly
appreciated.