Real Life Funny Bloopers...courtesy:Engineering students!

Anybody will agree if quoted that anyone can get an engineering degree in India. The following corroborates the statement quoted.....

• An engineering fresher wants to buy a N95 80 GB Mobile with an iphone in it.
• The aforementioned also claims to not like sony ipods!
• Another student majoring in computer science is apparently puzzled if the cds/dvds can't be burned and the hardware doesn't matter because as the person claims, Nero is already installed. What's it got to do with the hardware?
• An excerpt from a conversation that transpired between two engineering students majoring in computer science...

        person 1: Hey! I don't have bluetooth yaar. My network service provider is Airtel.

        person 2: Oh! is it? I wonder if Vodafone gives Bluetooth 'cause even i don't appear to have one!

• Another computer science major was found baffled while pressing the floppy drive button as no tray emerged to take the floppy inside.
• After nearing the end of engineering, couple of computer science majors (again!!) think it's perfectly harmless to double click a flash drive obviously infested with viruses.
• A professor who is from the IT field, ejects the flash drive by simply clicking immediately on the safely remove hardware icon in such a way that not a single dialog box, warning, confirmation, nothing pops up and pulls it out immediately.
• A computer science major stated during viva that variables are not used in a program when asked.

Keep watching this space for more...

Technorati Tags: bloopers,engineering,funny stuff

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Today is one of those dark days where all I feel like doing is sitting and cry so that whatever is pent up inside just ebbs away with flowing tears. Of course, they say stuff like every cloud has a silver lining but what if the silver is tarnishing fast and furiously? It's often easy to say that failure is the stepping sense of success but it's so hard to be at the receiving end of it and so hard to be alright. Deviating from that, I absolutely hate going to college. The moment I enter the building, a feeling of impending doom sets in. Apart from everything else that can go wrong, I'm tired of getting on the wrong side of the people. I just wish I would be left on my own sans any conditions. When you need a shoulder, you never have one, other than that you've all unnecessary nonsensical interruptions from every third person you get. Well! if they can't make things better, atleast don't make it worse for someone.

It's hard to lose a friend's hope and dreams to something that you cannot help and watch their lives crumbling around it. It's even harder to talk to them... I mean like, what do you say really "Failure is the stepping stone to success! Don't worry" OR "It's ok, I can understand your state of mind"??? Well!No! It's not ok and you really can't understand what its like to fail miserably. But then again, it's a matter or perspective about what is really "success" and "failure". 1000 ways to make an experiment work out might not be failure but successfully coming to the right thing after 999 different approaches. The strength of character needed to deal with failure should be very great. So it is when you want to stand up for something or assert something which the rest of them would never do even if they want to and them condemn you for it. And the way our society is, the 'failure' is even harder to manage!

This is just a random string of thoughts and rather a consternation of feelings when you feel like you're lost and you don't know where to go anymore or what to do really? When everything seems fuzzy...career...future...friends...life actually! and this the best outlet, writing it down this way. Like I said, one never has a shoulder when one needs and I hate to be dependent on one. When you give someone the power of understanding you and consoling you effectively, the same thing turns into a weapon to hurt you...and I'd resolved long back that I would never ever give anyone the power to hurt me but you can't live life like that....isolated and aloof..because it's not happy..Lastly whoever said life was fair....it never is! If everyone truly got what they deserved, the world would've been a nicer place to live in..

Au revoir...

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IS LINUX DERIVED FROM MULTICS???

"Unlike MS Windows, MAC, Linux, Unix which trace their lineage back to MULTICS, Singularity is different."

This statement from my post Microsoft's Singularity clearly means that the contemporary OSes of today clearly trace their lineage back to MULTICS. However, a classmate of mine begs to differ on the account of this statement and further adds that all OSes now are derived from Unix and that Linux is neither based on MULTICS nor it is an OS at all. This post will critically analyze all of that. Lets begin with MULTICS.

MULTICS operating system is also known as " Father of Unix and all modern OSes". It was a time sharing system and introduced large number of concepts such as dynamic linking and hierarchical file system. It also supported symbolic links between directories and was the first to introduce the now-followed standard of per-process stacks per kernel. It was extremely powerful and apparently Unix was it's simple successor. Initial planning and development for MULTICS started in 1964 and was actually a cooperative project led by MIT along with General Electric and Bell Labs. Bell Labs dropped out in 1969 and in 1970 GE's computer business including MULTICS was taken over by Honeywell. When Bell Labs pulled out of it, some of the people who had worked on it there went on to create the Unix system. Superficial influence of MULTICS on Unix is evident in many areas, including the naming of commands.  "Unix" (originally "Unics") is itself a hack on "MULTICS". The U in UNIX is rumored to stand for "Uniplexed" as opposed to the "Multiplexed" of MULTICS as if the designers were rejecting the complex MULTICS and had created a simple Unix as opposed to it.

Thus around 1969-1970, Unix was developed with Kenneth Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others working on it at the AT&T Bell Laboratory.

MINIX is another Unix like operating system with a microkernel architecture. It was developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes. In fact it's name stands for Minimal Unix. This MINIX greatly influenced the design decisions Linux in it's early days.

Now moving over to Linux, it is a Unix like OS family which uses the Linux Kernel. Utilities and the libraries are provided by the GNU Operating System. The term Linux can have different meanings. Strictly speaking, Linux is only the kernel of a Linux Distribution. On the other hand, Linux in common use refers to any distribution using Linux kernel. Now, this Linux kernel developed, with Torvalds working on a non commercial replacement for MINIX. This greatly influenced the design decisions of Linux kernel in the early phases. However, there were design deviations. For instance, MINIX had a microkernel design whereas Linux kernel was monolithic in architecture. Early Linux kernel development was also done on a MINIX host system. As a result, it also inherited features of MINIX such as disk file system format. So, Linux basically mimics the form and function of the Unix-like OS family but it is not derived from the license source code.

There's an on-line biography in which Linus Torvalds' quoted as saying:

It's partly due to MINIX: Linux was just my working name for the thing, and as I wrote it to replace MINIX on my system, the result is what it is... Linus' MINIX became Linux.

I originally intended it to be called freax (although buggix was one contender after I got fed up with some of the more persistent bugs :) and I think the kernel makefiles up to version 0.11 had something to that effect ("Makefile for the freax kernel" in a comment). But arl called the Linux directory at nic.funet.fi pub/OS/Linux, and the name stuck. Maybe just as well: freax doesn't sound too good either (freax is obviously free + freak + the obligatory -x).

Thus even though the later Linux kernels (from release 2 onwards) were not based on MINIX, the original development started with MINIX. So is Linux MINIX? No. But, did it start from MINIX? Yes. And is it Unix? Obviously. Hence, one can clearly infer that Linux Kernel traces it's lineage back to MINIX and MINIX itself is Unix like operating system. And since, MULTICS is clearly the father of Unix, Linux does trace its lineage back to MULTICS.

• All OSes today are based on Unix: False.                                                                                               They are based on MULTICS or rather they have taken after MULTICS as it was the OS which was built from the scratch.
• Linux is not based on MULTICS: False.    Clearly, nobody is stating that the source code was copied or something but early design and architecture of its kernel which has led to what it is today can be clearly traced back to MULTICS from the aforementioned analysis. The Linux kernel was not conceived 'originally' after all.
• Linux is not an OS at all: True. The statement in bold italics will clearly support this.

Further, the moral of the story is that even if two things appear similar and their design is similar to some extent it doesn't been that the lines of source code has been copied or something.

Technorati Tags: multics,linux,unix,minix

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Stop wasting that paper!

This has been bugging me since a real long time but it finally manifested into an outburst today when my 10 year old sister started using fresh clean A4 sheets for her 'artwork' as if there's no tomorrow! Seeing paper get wasted irritates me to no end! It just gets on my nerves! The kind of I-feel-like-I-want-to-do-something-to-make-it-stop feeling! The only other thing that irks me as much is someone scratching on the blackboard. It just drives me mad!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel like wringing whatever I get hold of then!

So, why save paper??? For starters, the pulp and paper industry is the third largest consumer of energy and uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry. In 2005, out of 245,000,000 tons of waste 34.2% was paper according to the EPA. That is over 83,300,000 tons of paper that is wasted every year.

 

On your mark...get set..and

• Print only if its necessary.
• Use duplex printing option so that you print on both sides of the paper.
• Choose a printer friendly option while taking a printout of some web related article.
• Use the header to put the title and delete footer or reduce it's size so that you can fit in more content in one page.
• Print only necessary parts of documents rather than the entire thing.
• Do not throw away bad output of a printer or a copier machine. Keep them aside, you can always use them for something.
• Use technology and avoid the paper as far as possible. For instance, E-mails, Electronic file systems.
• Always use both the sides of a sheet even when you're writing something.
• For circulation in any organization, scan documents and email or upload them to a server accessible by all.
• For changing notices put up on notice boards, take an already pinned notice (which you want to remove anyway) and print on the blank side and put it up next time.
• You can neatly cut out unused tiny portions of the documents and use them as post-it notes.

There's no extent to how much you can utilize. It all depends upon your imagination! Of course, if you have a local recycling center, you can recycle all the waste you want else you can also sell your cartload of paper waste to manufacturing units that recycle paper.

P.S: Our college can lets us do our project reports by printing on both sides of the paper. Imagine the paper and money saved! Like it's a big deal if we print it both sides. It's easy to store it too!

P.P.S: Also in the professional business world, i don't understand why we can't print on both sides of the paper, for instance, resume, paper to be presented at a conference, a report and stuff like that.

We need to wake up and act fast by taking small steps at a time to save our planet. Let us all begin by using paper judiciously and save the trees!

Technorati Tags: save trees,wasting paper,go green,recycle

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