Original post that made Linux

Linux began with this post to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix, in August, 1991,
written by a Finnish college student:

Hello everybody out there using minix-
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be
big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

That student, of course, was Linus Torvalds and the “hobby” of which he wrote grew to
what is known today as Linux. Version 1.0 of the kernel was released on March 14,
1994.
(Taken from the book : “Linux programming unleashed”)

Topics: Softwares, Uncategorized

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The Controversy Over IPL CheerLeaders - Grow Up India

	There is an unprecedented outrage in India over the IPL Cheerleaders. The outrage has been created by both the players and politicians. Shahid afridi said that the skimpily dressed cheerleaders are distracting the batsmen. Afridi went on to say that cricket does not need cheerleders as cricket is an entertainment itself. Fair point there.
Next Rahul Dravid said that IPL cricket should be called bikini cricket because of the cheerleaders present in IPL.
On the political front the moral brigade are saying that the cheerleaders are against our culture. The issue was first discussed in the assmebly of maharastra and then in bengal. However right now it looks more like talk only. I doubt if any substantial action shall be taken against the cheerleaders despite claims to the contrary.
While we claim to be more respectful to the women folk, our actions speak otherwise. The cheerleaders who have performed all over the world feel thretened by the nature and magnitude of the comments people pass here. Recently, in a match played in Jaipur, the spectators passed some lewd comments on cheerleaders. A cheerleader from Uzbekistan told a national newspaper, “Wherever we go, we do expect people to pass lewd remarks, but I’m shocked by the nature and magnitude of the comments people pass here. Be it a 70 year old man or a 15 year old boy, they all ogle us and make amorous advances. I feel very threatened. We are here to entertain them, to add a bit of glamour to the game, but we are living in constant fear.”

May be it is time that we learnt to behave in a more mature manner and accept that we live in an age where there is no dearth of sources of vulgar content for anyone who may want to watch it. Be it internet or simple porn videos, even school kids have access to them. And politicians will do well to remeber that the voters have already realized this. So no amount of hard talk will not result in any gain in the vote bank.

Topics: News

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15 most useful gmail proxy sites

Companies are increasingly blocking the access to popular sites like gmail. Following is a list of proxies that you can use to access gmail at workplace, incase gmail is banned at your office.

Proxies that I have been using for long
http://polysolve.com/
http://www.yoyahoo.com
http://www.myglite.com

Proxies that I found out through research

http://www.browseprox.com I like this proxy for gmail a lot as this does not have many pop-up advertisements. However it has lots of contextual advertisements.

http://www.browser9.com

http://btunnel.com I am a little skeptic about using this proxy as the advertisements on the site look like those on malware proxies.

http://bypassgenie.com/ Looks like a good proxy website for accessing gmail. However the site was not working while I was trying to access it.

http://www.filtersneak.com I find this a little more trust worthy as it warns you about not supporting https protocol.

Topics: Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tools

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Geekcode

While playing around with the synaptic package manager on my Debian I came across this thing called geekcode. It was developed by Robert Hayden in 1993. The official geekcode website is at http://www.geekcode.com. It’s a code used by geeks to depict their personal profile. It tells about ones preferences, physical structure, relationship status, etc.
Some geeks also used it as their signature.
A nice thing to know if you are a geek.
If you want to make your geekcode just install the geekcode program on your system and run it. You will understand what to do if you are geek enough.

BTW below is my geekcode

—–BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK—–
Version: 3.12
GAT d- s:+ a– C+++ UL++ P+ L+++ E– W+++ N+ o+ K w–
O++ M- V- PS+ PE+ Y+ PGP- t+ 5 X R- tv– b+ DI++ D+
G++ e++ h* !r y
——END GEEK CODE BLOCK——

Topics: Coding, Humour, Softwares, Uncategorized

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keep a track of some famous startup and venture capital blogs with alltop

My friend Yathindran came across these links which keep a track of latest postings on some of the famous blogs related to startups and venture capital.
For startup news checkout
http://startups.alltop.com/
and for venture capital news checkout
http://venturecapital.alltop.com/

Even if you are not interested in this stuff, do give it a shot. You will sure find something of interest.

Topics: Entrepreneurship, Resources, VC

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Ranking of U.S universities for graduation in Computer science

If you are planning to do M.S in the U.S in a field of Computer science, i am sure you must be looking for a ranking of Universities (in Computer science) in the U.S .
Here is a link to a “U.S News” page which provides these rankings.

Hope it helps you.

Topics: Uncategorized

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India centric Social News Sites

Social Media Marketing seems to be the in-thing. Here are a couple of india centric social news sites that we use to promote binaryday.

http://www.indianpad.com
http://www.newscola.com/
http://www.humsurfer.com/

Topics: Uncategorized

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Takeaway from Barcamp Bangalore-1 (Twitter is hot in India)

I have learned a lot in the last 2 days at Barcamp Bangalore. The most shocking revelation was the fact that twitter is hot in India. I have been aware of the popularity of twitter in US. However somehow I have been 100% confident that people in India do not use twitter that much.

Just in case you have not heard of the service, twitter is a service that allows you to register and create your channel. Then you can send a message from your cell phone or IM or web to that channel. Your friends can subscribe to the channel and will get the updates from you.

I was absolutely surprised by the percentage of people using twitter at Barcamp Bangalore. I have already created a twitter account. Planning to impress my peers with my coolness

I have been researching about twitter for quite sometime now. I have found loads of impressive stuff about it. Here are some of the more interesting stuff about twitter.

Blog on the go Publish an event as soon as you hear about it. No need to wait till you start your laptop and manage to write an insightful lengthy post. You can always follow up your twitter post with a detailed post later on.

Twitter can save lives Just imagine you are stuck somewhere or you are in some trouble. Send a sms to twitter and 100s of people can get your message.

Group Chat It is a great way for a group of people to stay in touch with each other.

Topics: Entrepreneurship, barcampbangalore6

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Kamasutra, dating and Palmistry sessions in Barcamp bangalore - Have we lost the way?

I am back from my first Barcamp. I had flown from Mumbai to attend the barcamp at bangalore and obviously I had high expectations. I was not disappointed at all as I met some fantabulous people. (I heard of that word for the first time from aditi).

However I was really disappointed to see a lot of sessions on trivial issues like Kamasutra, dating and Palmistry happening at the Barcamp. I totally agree with Mohan that these sessions lead to a degeneration of the idea of Barcamp. Many people were of the view that they allowed people to get a break from the serious sessions. Entrepreneurs are like soldiers. One mistake and you are dead. And barcamps are for entrepreneurs, what military exercises are for soldiers. And the last time I checked there were no entertainment sessions in the middle of military exercise.

The organizers have done a great job. But I request them to take note of the fact that these sessions are trivializing the concept of barcamp and I hope they will something to solve this problem.

Topics: Entrepreneurship

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Back from the world of aliens - Barcamp bangalore

Many a times I feel like an alien in the normal world. I am sure it will be the same for most of other entrepreneurs as well. Hardly anyone understands our thought process. However at Barcamp Bangalore I realized that, I am not the only alien around. There is a world of aliens. The last 2 days at Barcamp bangalore was simply awesome. Talking to the people there, some entrepreneurs and many aspiring entrepreneurs, it felt like entrepreneurship is the normal way of life.

I have hardly ever met so many awesome people in 2 days even during my IIM Days. I shall be writing detailed posts about many of these startups in the coming days. But here is a short description of some of the people who simply amazed me by their courage to put everything at stake to follow the idea that they believe in.

Prateek dayal of Muziboo.com, Aashish Solanki of Yulop.com, Rakesh Rajan of lifeblob and Akash srivastava and Mohan.

Topics: Entrepreneurship

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Kolkata Bangalore match Scorecard

Inspite of the disappointing start to IPL yesterday, I have decided to cover the IPL series on this blog. Following is the final scorecard of the match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Bangalore Royal Challengers.

Scoreboard

Kolkata Knight Riders:

Sourav Ganguly c Kallis b Khan 10

Brendan McCullum not out 158

Ricky Ponting c Kumar b Kallis 20

David Hussey c White b Noffke 12

Mohammed Hafeez not out 5

Extras: (b 4, lb 4, w 9) 17

Total: (for 3 wickets in 20 overs) 222

Bowling:
Praveen Kumar 4 0 38 0 (1w)

Zaheer Khan 4 0 38 1

Ashley Noffke 4 0 40 1 (1w)

Jacques Kallis 4 0 48 1 (1w)

Sunil Joshi 3 0 26 0

Cameron White 1 0 24 0 (1w)

Bangalore Royal Challengers:

Rahul Dravid b Sharma 2

Wasim Jaffer c Ponting b Dinda 6

Virat Kohli b Dinda 1

Jacques Kallis c Kartik b Agarkar 8

Cameron White c Saha b Agarkar 6

Mark Boucher c Kartik b Ganguly 7

Balachandra Akhil c Ponting b Agarkar 0

Ashley Noffke run out (Agarkar/Saha) 9

Praveen Kumar not out 18

Zaheer Khan b Ganguly 3

Sunil Joshi c McCullum b Shukla 3

Extras: (lb 8, w 11) 19

Total: (all out in 15.1 overs) 82

Bowling:

Ashok Dinda 3 0 9 2 (2w)

Ishant Sharma 3 0 7 1 (1w)

Ajit Agarkar 4 0 25 3 (4w)

Sourav Ganguly 4 0 21 2 (1w)

Laxmi Ratan Shukla 1.1 0 12 1

Topics: News

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Disappointing start of IPL - Extras the highest scorer for royal challengers

There was just too much of excitement before the first match of IPL between Knight Riders and Royal Challengers. Unfortunately the match was more boring than a five day test match :(. The only saving grace of the match was 158 off 73 balls by Brendon McCullum.

The second innings was a really sad one. The royal challengers looked lost right from the word go, loosing wickets at regular intervals. You can imagine the situation from the fact that Extras was the highest scorer of the challengers innings. Praveen Kumar was the only challenger to reach double digit score.

Topics: Uncategorized

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Entrepreneurship and not being understood

When I talk about entrepreneurship and leaving my job to start something new, nobody seems to understand me. Everyone keeps wondering why the hell I want to leave a secure job and bright future to run after a stupid idea. Hence I could tatally relate to the following para on a blog

“…no matter what your age or experience, entrepreneurship involves such things as obsession, compulsion, creative surges, and a roller coster of emotional highs and lows. All of this can make you appear mad, whether or not it’s true.

The life of an entrepreneur does not resemble normal behavior by most people’s standards. This may explain why many of your friends give you a blank stare when you tell them you’re starting a company, or why you get the sense that family members are talking about you behind your back. Go easy on them. Few of us are fated to be entrepreneurs, or even to understand why anyone else would want to subject himself to all of the risks and hard work. It’s difficult for many people to appreciate the appeal of entrepreneurship versus the perception of stability and a regular paycheck that comes with a “real job.” The best suggestion is to swallow your pride and concentrate on building your new venture. Ultimately, there is nothing more convincing than success.”

Topics: Entrepreneurship

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How to mount windows drives in Linux

When you dual boot your system to Windows and Linux, it is important that you can view your data stored on Windows drives in Linux and vice-versa. Unfortunately Windows doesn’t recognize Linux partitions (ext2 and ext3) but it’s pretty easy to access your windows drives from Linux. But there is one thing to keep in mind… it’s pretty easy if your windows file system is FAT32. In case it is NTFS, you may have to get Linux plugin for recognizing NTFS for some distros.
First of all, how to recognize the windows drives…
Each separate disk is identified as hda, hdb, hdc, etc. in order if it is a PATA (IDE) drive (your CD drive or if you have a pretty old hard disk) and as sda, sdb, sdc, etc. if it is a SATA disk. For each disk the partitions are identified as sda1, sda2, etc. For eg. if you have a SATA disk and your Windows has three partitions, C: , D: , and E: then these will be represented in Linux as follows:

C: as /dev/sda1
D: as /dev/sda2
E: as /dev/sda3

if you have a CD drive it will be represented as /dev/hda1

Now for mounting …

Say you have a folder called /mnt/d_drive from where you want to access the contents of your D: then just give the command
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/d_drive
that’s it . Now open the folder /mnt/d_drive and you will be able to access everything on your d drive.
But this will mount your drive only for current session. If you want to permanently mount the drive you need to edit the text file /etc/fstab. Just open the file in a text editor and add a line like

/dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2 vfat rw,user,noauto 0 0

Make entries for as many partitions as you want to mount permanently. Save the file and restart your session.
Done.

Topics: Uncategorized

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Get Angel Investment for your startup (Mumbai Angels,India

The toughest part in a startup is building the prototype of your idea to prove that it works. You will need angel investment to keep the startup going at this phase. If you have a great idea, and you will like to get some early stage funding, then you should try your luck with mumbai angels

By their own admission, they are focused on seed stage and early stage companies with strong teams, defensible technologies or services and well defined product to market plans.

Mumbai angels has many members with prior Silicon Valley experience. So you can expect some really useful advice and handholding as well. More importantly they invest in indivdual capacity and not as a fund.

Topics: Entrepreneurship, Resources, VC

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