The Unofficial Statement » technology

How to change the default location of the My Documents Folder?

admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:25:07 +0000

I thought about it at times, but never explored how to do it and agreed to Microsoft. Seems it is quit simple. Here it goes – just one right click and selecting a location and you are done.

Change location of My Documents folder

Enjoy Google and Wolfram Alpha together

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:32:00 +0000

Now, one can enjoy the coverage and ranking of google with the preciseness of Wolfram Alpha at the same time, for the queries that Wolfram Alpha answers very well.

All one has to do is to download this excellent firefox add on available here.

The addon, throws the same search to Wolfram Alpha as well in addition to google and shows results from the former only when it has to show something.

Take care with the addon since it is still experimental, which means that the add on could be in alpha, beta or pre production and not tested on the field much.

Wolfram Alpha disappoints

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:26:00 +0000

Had a first look at Wolfram Alpha and got disappointed. The search engine which had so much of euphoria built around it did not deliver to my expectations. Here are the results of the test drive.

Search 1:Number of internet users in India.

Wolfram gives a number (80m) which seems higher than the number that we had in 2007 (and mentions that the relevant year for this number is 2007. We should be close to 80m this year. There is no way to find out if this was active users or ever users. However, the data is close to the real number that we know of through various studies in India.

Search 2: Mobile users in India

As important as the number of internet users and as actively tracked by digital media enthusiasts as the internet population. This one was a big put off. Wolfram Alpha could not understand what to do with the query, even after trying various versions (cell phone users, count/number of mobile users etc.)

OK, may be Wolfram isn’t tracking India as actively, I moved on to a search for AIDS patients in the US.

Search 3: Number of aids patients in USA

Wolfram Alpha was as clueless as for the mobile users in India.

This, when I have not tried anything which is not non -computational. I think Wolfram Alpha is still prealpha and has been released prematurely. There is a long way to go before it can win my trust and may be yours too.

Move over microfinance, microtelecom is here

admin — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:45:00 +0000

Have you heard of microtelecom? I hadn’t till upto 15 minutes ago.

Microtelecom is all about optimization of telecom infrastructure for a very specific application: serving low-income, hard-to-reach communities in rural areas. As with all industries and all early movers, the company pioneering the concept has gone ahead and coined this term.

But what a wonderful idea it is. Lack of power infrastructure and availability and the cost of running telecom networks on low density markets have been touted as the impediments of growth of mobile user base in rural areas. And VNL, claims to solve both of these through its WorldGSM technology – solar power based towers, consuming less than 100 W of power (compared to the current systems which take 3000 W to run).

An entire WorldGSM base station packs into two carts and can be transported over rough terrain in something as simple as a bullock cart. It is self-deploying and requires near-zero maintenance. Also, it can be assembled and activated by non-engineers.

Quippo telecom, which manages about 18K towers in India is doing trails of WorldGSM in rural areas in India.

Can’t wait to see a revolution ushering in rural areas in the country post deployment of this technology

Information Technology Act (Cyberlaws) 2000 Simplified – Part 2

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:10:00 +0000

Continued from part 1 …

Regulation of Certifying Authorities

Central government may appoint a controller of certifying authorities, and also deputy controllers and assistant controllers
Lays down the functions of the controllers, especially certifying the public keys of the certifying authorities themselves and the form and content of the digitial signature certificate and the keys
Lays down procedure for grant, rejection, renewal, display, surrender and suspension of license to issue Digital Security Certificates
Grants the controller or anyone authorized by him, the power to investigate contravention

Digital Signature Certificates

Process of application, grant and rejection of a digital signature
Allows for different fees to be applicable for different class of applications, not exceeding 25 thousand rupees
Talks about when can a certifying authority revoke/suspend a digital signature

Duties of subscribers

Use of the digital signature means acceptance of the same
The subscriber certifies to all who depend on the digital signature that he is the right party to use the signature and has the private key, etc.
Safekeeping of the private key and informing the certifying authority in case the private key has been compromised
Hacking, access without permission, causing denial of service etc. is punishable upto the maximum extent of 1 crore Rupees
The act lays down as to who can be an adjudicating officer for cases involving contravention to any provisions of the act and the factors that need to be taken into account by the adjudicating officer

The Cyber Regulations Appelate Tribunal

Authorises the central government to establish one or more appelate tribunals for matters related to the act which will be called cyber appelate tribunals. The central govt. also to specific the matters to which this CAT will exercise jurisdiction
The tribunal to have only one person, to be known as the Presiding Officer, whose term will be 5 years or age of 65, whichever is earlier.
A person shall not be qualified for appointment as the Presiding Officer of a Cyber Appellate Tribunal unless he- (a) is, or has been, or is qualified to be, a Judge of a High Court; or (b) is, or has been, a member of the Indian Legal Service and is holding or has held a post in Grade I of that Service for at least three years.
Most other sections here talk about the position, powers of the tribunal, resignation of members, recovery of penalty etc

Offences (under the Information Technology Act)

Tampering with computer source documents knowingly and/or intentionally (3 years imprisonment or 2 lakh fine or both)
Hacking a computer system (penalty same as above)
Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form (publishes, transmits or causes to be published) – information which is lascivious or appeals to pririent interest (5 lac and/or 1 year imprisonment on first conviction, 10 years and/or 2 lac second conviction)
The controller can direct any agency of the government to intercept and/decrypt any information on a computer/passed through a computer network in the interest of the sovereignty of the country, cordial relations with neighbours, and to prevent incitement to the commission of a cognizable offence.
Misrepresentation or hiding facts from certifying authority for getting a license/digital signature (2 years imprisonment/1 lakh/both)
Other cases of offece and their penalties

Network service providers not to be liable in certain cases

Network services providers will not be liable if any of the cyber crimes is committed on/through/using theoir network provided they can demonstrate that the contravention was committed without his knowledge or he had exercised due deligence to prevent such contraventions from happening

Miscellaneous

Among other things in this chapter, the most important is that if a company is found to commit a contravention of the act, then all employees who were in charge for the conduct of business at that time could be liable unless they demonstrate that the contravention was committed without their knowledge or they had exercises due deligence to prevent such incidents from happenning

Information Technology Act (Cyberlaws) 2000 Simplified – Part 1

admin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:49:00 +0000

Part 1 of my attempt to put the Indian Information Technology Act of 2000 in simple words, without legalese

Digital Signature

Recognizes digital signature and approves that electronic records can be authenticated with digital signatures. Also empowers the government to decide and modify rules around digital signatures

Electronic Governance

Allows for exisitng laws to recognize electronic documents at par with hard copies and digital signatures with actual, without such recognition be enforced upon the government/its bodies
Allows for bodies owned and/or controlled by the government to recognize filings/payments in electronic format for the purposes to grant a license/permit/approval/sanction etc
Puts publication of laws and bye laws in the electronic Gazatte of the government at par with the official gazette

Attribution, Acknowledgement and Dispatch of Electronic records

Lays down criteria to attribute an electronic record/communication to an originator
Defines what constitutes an acknowedgement to an electronic communication, and when or when not, the communication becomes binding
Defines the Time and place of dispatch and receipt of electronic communication

Secure Electronic Records and secure digital signatures

The government can prescribe a ’security procedure’ for digital records having regard to the commercial circumstances at the time when the procedure has to be prescribed
An electronic record will be called a secure electronic record till verification if a security procedure has been applied to it
Lays down conditions when digital signatures will be deemed as secure

Regulation of certifying authorities
(continued in Part 2)

Safely Remove Hardware?

admin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:41:00 +0000

Lack of patience has often resulted in all of us, at one time or the other, just yanking off the USB drive fom the port of our laptops, without due respect to “Safely Remove Hardware” feature that Windows provides. So, how unsafe is unsafe hardware removal really? Devices use the USB port for 2 main reasons:-

Power

Many USB devices (and certainly all flash/pen drives) draw power from the USB port itself for their functioning. Yanking off a device without using safely remove feature could affect both the device and the port, but the chances are very very minimal.

Data Transfer

Certain operating systems do delayed writes to devices to optimize writing. If this is the case with the operating system in question, there is a risk of data getting corrputed if the device is pulled out abruptly. Writes could continue even after the operating system signals that the writing is over. If the light on your device is blinking, it means that it is in use and should not be pulled out.

An out of date article on Microsoft’s website mentions that Windows XP refined its caching policy for removable storage as of Windows XP Beta 2. For consumer-oriented removable storage (USB, Flash, Zip, and so on), write caching is now disabled by default. What it means to the end user is slower writes, but no data corruption when the device is pulled out by surprise. So, the bottom line remains that if you are on an updated Windows XP, you can pull out the device without risk of data corruption. Keep enjoying your habits

Experiments with im bot programming

admin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:33:00 +0000

All of today, I was trying to explore more on programming an im bot for gTalk. Most of the things work out of the box, if you are using a library for xmpp, like smack, with the exception of file transfer. I did end up spending a considerable time on trying to send a file from an im bot to a user on gTalk.

It seems that file transfer between gTalk client (the one by google) and smack does not work, even though the gTalk server supports it. This is because the gTalk client uses the jingle specification for voice streaming, video streaming, and file-sharing sessions. Google uses and promotes, libjingle, a c++ library to achieve the same.

That said, file transfer on google talk servers can still work if one uses a third party client, like spark. There are many more freely available clients that one can use.

Smack, the xmpp library from ignitedrealtime.org does seem to support jingle in some form or the other, but the same is not well documented and I could not find enough samples to make it work with google. It seems that there are some differences between google and ignited realtime’s implementation of jingle specifications as well.

I have the scaffoldings ready now, and will share them on this blog soon.

Business Applications on instant messaging (im bots for business)

admin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:33:00 +0000

Have been thinking through on the scope of creating business applications powered by instant messaging. The roots are few years old. In 2002, I created a suite of enterprise applications on a jabber powered server.

For few years in between, there was limited or low activity on the world of gtalk/yahoo bots; I recall a certain yahoo bot by the name mama_pendse which was hot in early 2000 in India.

Very recently, there has been increased activity around this, with naukri.com launching the beta of its job search on gtalk and cleartrip also launching train search on gtalk just a few days later.

The benefit is clear for a job portal – many companies do not allow access to job sites. By using the messenger route, they are able to get access a new set of users. For cleartrup though, it looks more like a novelty/marketing strategy than an immediate business problem that they might have solved.

All of this makes me think if we are ready to host business applications on IM just yet. For one, all the data gets piped through google, but google anyway knows what I ate in the morning, so thats not as much an issue. The risk however could be, how much data these organizations are ready to share with google (A colleague wants google analytics to be removed from one of our companies portals for the same reason). Google already knows their ad spends and marketing directions through adwords, their web site usage and stickiness through analytics and now user’s perception of the site as well through searchwiki.

The other important aspect would be the scalability of these applications. I hear from sources that yahoo and google have a limit to the number of contacts one can add on the messenger. That does not seem to be a big problem since these bots are avoiding roster manipulation in xmpp entirely. When you add a naukri job search bot, see that the bot remains invited and you are not added to the bot’s friend list. However, you can still interact with the bot.

As more and more people use the job search bot for example, the pipe between google and the bot will get choked, resulting in companies using a series of such bots; jobsearch1, jobsearch 2 …. etc.

Three, google (unlike yahoo in the past), is promoting the use of its servers and publicizing the use of its platform for messaging applications. It would not be far enough that google will start sending advertisements (chat ads) along with the bot messages, opening a yet another revenue stream for them.