EXORCISM

“It's time for you all to say your last prayer.” a terrorist, whose face was covered in a black mask,

pointing his AK47 to kids, who were abducted in their school. After waiting for a the signal from

his mates for the last 4 hours, he finally decided to go with the protocol. A kid, 4 inch taller than AK47, sat on his knees, joined his hands and started his innocent prayer. “O lord, I thank you for gifting me a great day today. Thank you for a giving me tasty food prepared by my mom. Thank you for giving me good friends and teachers.” Terrorist interrupted his prayer “Enough!! Shut up now!!”. “I am not finished yet.” , the kid replied innocently holding his tie with his tiny little fingers. Terrorist hit him with rear wooden stock of AK47. The kid fainted down and fell on the floor with his nose badly bleeding. Fear started reflecting on innocent faces. The other kid, 4 inch taller than the previous one, tried to overcome his fear and sat down on his knees and started praying. “Thank you lord for blessing me with mom and dad. Thank....” . “Shut up you!! Do you want to lie on the floor bleeding too??” the terrorist shouted with all the anger he had. But the kid continued with his prayer. “Thank you for giving me mother who woke me up with love in every morning.” Terrorist lifted his gun to kill the kid. Immediately, the other kid, standing 10 feet away from him, in the corner of the class, started saying his prayer. “Thank you for blessing me with a dad who works all day and brings me my favorite sweets every night.” . The Terrorist, completely agitated, rushed towards him. But then, the other kid, 15 feet away, standing diagonally opposite corner, completely scared, started his prayer. “Thank you for blessing me with a friend who shares his video game with me.” The Terrorist, now restlessly ran towards him. But then, a boy, elder to the other one starts, “Thank you blessing me with mom who cooks food for me even when her hands are burned. Thank you for blessing me with dad who makes sure that I don't fall down and get hurt while learning bicycle. ” Every prayer was becoming more stronger than before. Completely confused terrorist, now started firing his AK47 in air shouting “If you don't stop I will shoot you”. He ran out of the bullet in his gun. His AK47 bullets failed to kill the strength of the kids and there prayers. All he could hear was innocent prayers of 67 innocent kids at a time.“Thank you lord for helping learn table of 2..... Thank you lord ... Thank you lord....”. and then he threw his gun towards a kid, started slapping the kids one by one, with his rough hand. He lifted a kid and threw him away. He kept shouting “Stop it!! OR I will kill you.” . Though extremely terrified, nothing could stop the innocent prayers of those kids. After few minutes his angry voice faded into request “Please stop!! Stop for the Gods sake”. But the sound of “Thank you lord ” continued. “No No!! please stop!!” , Terrorist helplessly shouted and started running towards the closed door to escape.

But while running away, he slipped over the blood of a kid who fainted down. He stopped and kept staring at the blood. He could not move and stood like statue. Innocent voices of prayers still kept pitching his ears. Tears started rolling down his eyes. He sat down beside this kid and started crying.

All the students surrounded him. A 5 yr. old innocent girl slowly approached him, took his mask off from his face, wiped his tears running down his eyes. “Don't worry. It's all OK now. You can pray with us.” And all the students continued in one voice “Thank you lord...”

Inflation in "HAPPINESS"!!

I have a small bowl kept on my TV table, which is always filled with Rs. 1 and Rs. 2 coins. Neither collecting coins is my hobby nor they are my savings. But still they have their own value. Afterall, growing up in a typical middles class family, where you dont have a concept called pocket money, makes your early life very interesting and teach about value of money in various ways.

When I think about value, specifically value of money, I remember my childhood. 15-18 yrs ago, Rs. 1 and Rs 2. could buy many things for me that would give me happiness. I remember my maternal grandmas place where we could rent a cycle for an hour in Rs. 1. We used to share it with our cousins, take rides turn by turn. In fact I learned cycle with that Rs. 1. That one hour used to be celebrations for us. We used to buy ber (jujube) candy and powder, 4 orange candies, and 2 ponga pandits (i hope you remember this :) ) in Rs. 1. And it used to be so tasty that we wanted to have it every day, infact every hour. But like I mentioned earlier that there was no concept of pocket money for us, we have to have lot of patience to enjoy all this.

We used to buy a small toy in Rs. 1. That toy used to be a small truck. Guess what?? We would also have options with various colours and types of trucks to buy. Having such options in Rs. 1?? WOW!! We used to tie a thread to the toy and then roll it over the flower. We used to fill it with mud and transport it from one place to another. We used to this whole day. Normally, life of this toy used to be not more than an hour. But we used to make sure it was intact atleast for 2 days. Usually tiny little plastic wheels used to be common malfunctioning parts. But we used to have maintainance and repairing experts with us in those days. That was all fun in Rs. 1.

A somosa, in our school canteen, used to cost Rs. 4. I still remember those school days, when 8-9 friends used to contribute 50 paise or Rs. 1 and share 2 samosas. We used to make sure that no one is deprived of a byte of that tasty samosa. A vendor outside our school used to sell boiled ber (jujube) and flavoured ice candy for Rs. 2. Such tasty items were never daily stuffs for us. But having them in a week would give us trmendous satisfaction, which used to last at least for a week.

Do you remember a bubble gum named “Big fun”? Yes. Chewing that for at least 10 mins. used to be really fun. But the bigger fun was collecting a sticker inside the wrapper of this bubble gum. This sticker would have crickters name printed with runs/wickets scored. If one had all stickers with them that could count 100 runs or 10 wickets in total, then he used to be eligible for a small gift. I don't remember any of my friends receiving a gift but there used to be heavy competitions amongst us to collect as many runs as possible. I used to be overjoyed if I had 6 or 4 runs scored and disappointed when 0 runs or OUT scored. We actually bought emotions in Rs. 1 and had fun with them. And the time came where Big fun brand itself had tough competition with Big Bubble. Brand changed, competition changed. This haaped to us as well. Now we had competitions of, I-can-make-big-bubble-by-chewing-gum instead of I-scored-maximum-runs-from-chewing-gum. Big fun was out of the market in an year. I damm care about how much businness such companies had done selling a bubble gum. All I care about how much I enjoyed Rs. 1.

The biggest part of happiess were Kites. Variety of Kites in Rs. 1 were the most tempting part of fun those days. Although making them to fly in sky would cost around Rs. 50, but that was like one time investment. Mostly we used to share or borrow other accessories from freinds. Some of them were hand made by us, specially a thread that connects the kite to a roll, called “Manja”.

That was also the era of marbles. Buying marbles for Rs. 1 and practicing the art of winning them used to give us fame those days. There used to be very few who were experts playing marbles and have huge collections marbles. Those guys were most respected, achieved red carpet status, and supposed to be richest person ever born on this earth, when it came to marbles.

And now we are leaving in a completely different era. Now, the candies and chocloates, which were the parts of happiness and satisfactions few years before, are now exchanged as a part of change. Today, for us, the value of Rs. 1 is just the part of the change. Sometimes we do not even bother to take the Rs.1 change from the shopkeeper. Neither the shopkeeper is willing to give one even if he has one. Today, we try to find Rs. 1 in news papers and news channels. We are eager to know the price of Rs. 1 vs $1. But, it hardly gives us satisfaction or happiness. And most importantly, you would hardly find any thing in Rs. 100 that would gives you happiness and satisfaction.

We all understand that there is lot of economics and mathematics behind this Rs. 1 and Rs. 2. They are vanishing or at least becomming rare. Rs. 10 and 100 are now todays Rs.1 and 2. Today, we buy luxourious cars and home with lakhs of rupees. But the point here is “Happinness” hiding behind small things. Today, when we own our hard earned money, we are more concern of paying EMI's. Does this really give us the happiness and satisfactions that we used to have years before? OR is it that, now we find happiness in things which cost much more? Today, I have a bowl full of Rs. 1 coin and salary account with some thousands of ruppees. And I believe everyone of us would have the same. But, do we really have the amount of happiness and satisfaction that we used to have years before?

Our country has seen lot of variations in economy these years. So did happened to the value of Rs. 1. But, did the value of happiness also varied drastically? I wonder if the value of happiness has increased.

LONG WAY TO SHORTCUT

We all are looking for shortcuts in some way or the other for something or the other. In fact we are always looking for shortcuts at least on our PC. For us, everything should happen with clicks-clicks & clicks. And you will surely appreciate the fact that in the world of computers, anything which does not happen with clicks is equivalent to long frustrating way.

Ubuntu 11.04, is a beautiful OS with charming UI. But, creating shortcuts on desktop is not as simple as it is in Windows. Terminal is like oxygen to Linux users. If they don't find it easily, you can see all the symptoms of perpetual death on their faces. It's like, they are trying to find oxygen in the air.

And you will not find terminal on the desktop of Ubuntu 11.04 readily.

So, here is the long cut to create shortcut of terminal in Ubuntu 11.04.

1. Open up the terminal (From Dash board  -> Application  :) )
2. Make sure that the required stuffs are present on your machine.
    apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-panel
3. gnome-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop
     This will open an UI where you can specify the name of your application and the path of it's executable. (/bin/sh for terminal)
4. You have oxygen ready. (Shortcut).

WHATS IN A NAME

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“Getting married or falling in love does not mean that your better half or lover is the best in this world and now you won't be attracted to opposite sex. (Rather, you may have a wife and you are also dating your girl friend. :P) ” I think, this is also true when it comes to technology. Well, I am talking about Windows and Linux. These 2 names are so unconsciously loved by their users that they start abusing their competitors OS unknowingly. Many people have started debating on blogs about which OS is liked more, Windows or Linux? If it's only about liking them then, no one can like Linux and Windows more than there fathers (Bill and Linus). I use both Windows and Linux to some extent and I am not aware of everything in these 2 OS. But, few people questioned me about the comfort level while using these OS. I usually asked them “Whom do you like more, Krishna of Mahabharata or Krishna of Shri Krishna ?”. Even though we knew that Swapnil Joshi was not bad in Shri Krishna but we still imagine Krishna as Nitish Bharadwaj. (I have not talked about Mac OS. It is like Hritik Roshan playing Krishna's role. Full of style and glamour. :)). Sometimes, choices works on first come first serve basis. But at the end it's matter of choice.

I do like Linux and Windows both but since I work in Linux, I have little affection to it (kindly refer to my first line of this article.). I maintain my relationship with my wife and girl friend using Virtual Box. This tool helps me bluffing my wife (Windows) to date my GF (Linux). (My dear married friends, your life is like these OS and so please do not try this Vbox in your real life for it may have strong chances of your life getting crashed. :))

While personally interacting with many Linux users, I have realized few names in Linux that scare users or make them think that Linux is not user friendly. After reading few articles I understood that Linux was not developed keeping general user in mind. It was a result of experiments and test from hard core techies. But, Linux nowadays have changed a lot. Ubuntu is a good example.

The words that scared me the most are “Thallophyta” and “Pteridophyta”. These are the two words from my 8^th std. Science-II subject. Have a look at the word “Zygote”. The name itself gives an idea that something strange is going to happen (and in reality it is “you”). I am still wondering how to pronounce “Welwitschiaceae”. (See, even my auto dictionary on laptop is not able to recognize this word. It is suggesting me some name with 'c' as replacement :)) . It is one of the family of plants. I am also thankful to these words for making me realize to stay away from botany/zoology and their mothers and sisters. The names in their family have such amazing combinations of alphabets from A-Z that, when they are pronounced, sounds like these alphabets never existed in those names. These words will make you feel that your efforts to learn A-Z are in vain. I wonder if Shakespeare was studying botany when he said “What's in a name”. Huge spellings always annoyed me. But, when I used Linux for the first time, I was annoyed of small words.

“etc” is the word in English which represents the set of words that are not worth presenting. In Linux, it is important directory which contains configuration files and scripts for most of the stuffs running in Linux. User can hardly get any thing from the name of this directory.

“proc” is something which itself seems to be incomplete after pronouncing. Roughly speaking, it is something that is responsible to communicate between OS and applications.

“mount/unmount” in no way gives user any idea of what to do. They are like verbs in Linux. They mean you to take some action like “Attach/Detach”.

“sda/hda” are the words which scares the masters of Linux. Messing with them may result into Culpable Homicide not amounting to murder (unintentional murder of your OS by you :) ). They represent devices on your machine. (Like “sda1” may be the first partition of your SCSI device or hard disk.)

“usr” actually put user in dilemma (They wonder if it is spelling mistake). It is a directory that can be used by user. It also contains few more directories that is used by OS.

“/” and “root” are routes to difficulty for user. “/” is also called “root” directory which consist of all the other directories, which is different then “root” directory for “root” user (like “admin” user in Windows). :)

“sbin” makes user to think about dustbin. It actually consist of system binaries.

Windows has something contrast to this. It has names with at least 2 words. Like “My Documents”, “My Computer”, “My Pictures”, “Documents and Settings”, “Program Files” etc. ( :) remember etc??). Windows like to put “My” everywhere (even if it's not their's :P). I have observed how OS impacts on the habits of user. I asked one of my friend who use Windows to save some files which were very important. He created a folder with name ”Important Files for training” on Windows. I asked same thing to my friend who use linux, he ended up with “Imp_files_trng” on Linux. I did not realize the passion until I saw Linux guy trying find command line option for opening MS Visual Studio and Windows guy trying to find UI option for ping operation on Linux and then abusing each others GF(OS). I feel that if you replace or remove Windows and Linux from their computers they may start crying. I wonder if they start naming their babies as “Ubuntu”, “Fedora”, “Windows XP Service Pack 3”.

It is possible to drill a mountain with a nail and hammer, but then, you should be aware of what your doing. I believe that every single thing in this world is useless and useful in it's own way. It depends on the user who use it. “What's in a name”, anyways.

SIZE DOES MATTER

Among the very first things that we have learned in our school days while using computer is, to create new file. Our instructors used to tell us how to do that by right clicking the mouse button. And our excitement used to reach peak to fill that file with garbage.

But, over the time we used to wonder why there are two sizes for single file. If you are not aware of the reason behind this then keep reading.

Let's do simple exercise.
1. Right click mouse button and create some text file anywhere on your machine.
2. Add "abcd" to this file and save it.
3. Now, right click again and check the properties. You will find two infirmation related to size.

Size : 4 bytes
Size on disk: 4K (4,096 bytes) (This may vary depending on your computer settings which we will discuss later.)

The first size value that you see is obvious one. It's the total size of the characters you typed in your file. The second size i.e.  Size on disk is creating the thrill.

Now let's understand the reason.

Everyone might have taken some quantity of grains to flour mill at least once in a life time. (If not, then hats off to your wife or mother :) ). Well, let's say you are preparing for some event in your house and your mother or your wife has containers filled with 1Kg  of Pigeon pea & 4 Kg  of wheat for you to take it for grinding. Let's assume that both the containers can carry maximum 5 Kg of the quantity. So, here
1 Kg  & 4 Kg are the value of Size and 5 Kg is the value of Size on disk .

Putting the above paragraph in techical terms, replace Mother/Wife with OS, container with file and ingredients in container with contents in the file. Every OS has to manage the memory in the system. So, it creates fixed sized page. So, everytime you create some new file you are actually allocating a page. On my lappy, a page has size of 4 KB. And that's what we see as "Size on disk". This obviously means that if the contents of the file goes above 4KB (4096 bytes), OS is going to allocate another page for you. Thus you see two sizes. You may have page size of 1 KB.

DOOR TO WINDOWS

GRUB VERSION.........................
......................................................
grub>

Friends, if you have 2 OS installed on your system (Windows & Linux) and you ended up with the above message with no way to jump through the Windows, then something may have gone wrong with Linux. The reason is the absence of the configuration files required by the bootloader GRUB.

So, nothing to worry about. Assuming that windows partition is still intact and untouched on your machine, we will go straight away to the solution:

1. grub> rootnoverify (hdx,y) - where x is your hard disk and y is the partition number on that hard disk.
       NOTE: If you are not aware of  x and y, type hd and press TAB twice. You will see the list of the devices on your PC. (x & y begins from 0. So your 1 is actually your 0).

     e.g rootnoverify (hd0,1) ------  I have only 1 hard disk and windows is on partition no. 2

2. grub> makeactive

3. grub> chainloader +1

4. grub> boot

Bit of explanation for enthusiast and friends who are new to Linux:

First of all GRUB is a bootloader. Dhan ta Dhan!!!! Bootloader?????
Well bootloader is the second thing that runs on you machine after power ON. Wondering whats the first one?? That's BIOS.

Why bootloader??
As the name suggest that it's job is to load. It gets aware of what and where the stuffs are stored. It is the one which gives you multiple OS boot option and loads the one which is selected.

1. rootnoverify is a command that will give address of our OS to bootloader and will not send anyone to verify this :).

2. makeactive is a command that will tell bootloader that "This is it.This is the place where all information is loaded."

3. chainloader +1 will allow bootloader to transfer the control to the new OS or bootloader.

4. boot is the command which will do the final assault.

And your Door to Windows is open. :)

NOTE: If you will face this problem you won't be able to look at this blog unless you have another system with working internet :). So, kindly note these steps.

SD CARD ON ANDROID VIRTUAL MACHINE

Popularity of Android is increasing day by day. I was mesmerized by the look and feel of Android.
So, I wanted to wash my hands with Android. After installing Android on virtual machine I tried to access SD card which I found inaccessible.:(   hhhmmmm....

So, after some time I realized that the partition for SD card was not created at all.

Why do we need SD card by the way??
Well, you can download applications, music and videos on this memory. You can also install your own application using this memory.

Here are few steps for installing Android and mounting SD card on it.
1. Get your virtual box.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

2. And android OS image.
http://virtualboximages.com/Android+OS+2.6.29+x86+Virtual+Appliance

3. Follow these steps.
http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto

4. Have fun with Android.