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June 2008 - Posts
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In the Forbes Asia June 16, 2008 issue I came across these interesting facts about
Adobe (the makers of Photoshop and Flash).
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According to Adobe, Flash Player is the most widely available software on Earth (Is
it?)
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For every 1000 users of free Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader, there is
a Web Programmer or Graphic Designer behind creating the content
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80% of Creative Professionals or 2.6 Million people use Adobe's Creative Suite
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Adobe has 1 Million developers using its products compared 4 Million Software developers
using Microsoft .NET Tools
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According to Taxman in India, from 1st June 2008 (after this year Union Budget was
passed) a licensed software like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office is both a Service
and a Product. While world over taxes are being simplified, streamlined and modernized
keeping pace to technology - in India our Finance Ministry has proven its fondness
for complicating existing laws and getting into legal word tangles. This is in spite
of record tax collections in the last few years, this year TDS (with holding tax)
collection were up by a whopping 60% from last year.
While change of classification of software may seem insignificant it has real impact
on the tax that a consumer/business is charged while buying a software package. Earlier
all Packaged Software/License were treated as a sale of product and charged VAT @
4% to 12% (varied by state). Now all software are treated as a services as well. It
is not reclassified from Product to Service but classified to be both - strange
is India's tax laws!. The industry
is suffering for the last few weeks with all major dealers and distributors waiting
for some clarity from government as this change will result in a tax of 24%
on licensed (legal) software, which is absurd. In India Service Tax is Central
(Federal) subject, VAT is State subject - so both don't want to clarify this situation.
This week I couldn't buy a software that I needed because of this issue. My regular
dealer refused to give me a quotation for few products that I wanted because of this
legal mess. He said in his 25 years of being in the business this is the first time
he has stopped billing for over 3 weeks. What is even more strange is that none of
the software industry bodies are vocally raising this issue to the government - may
be they feel the government has no ears to serious issues like these, they are busy
listening to the daily threats from the left parties :-)
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The other day I wanted to password protect a word document before emailing it for
privacy. I came across 3 different features in Word that are related to security and
it is confusing at first. It took me sometime and few web search to figure them out.
Though the below features can be accessed from the Ribbon they are spread over different
places. It is much easier to access them from one place - which is the Office Button
on the Left Hand Top corner, then selecting the "Prepare" option as shown below.
1. Digital Signature: This requires you buying a Digital (SSL) certificate
from a Third Party costing around USD 90 per year before you can do anything useful.
Signing with this gives it legal validity in countries that support it. Any changes
made to the document after the signing, breaks the signature. This way it validates
the integrity of a document (as long the signature is present, the document hasn't
been tampered). It doesn't offer any significant privacy benefits.
2. Restrict Permission: This uses the Microsoft IRM (Information
Rights Management) service. Using this with a Windows Live ID (Free) or a IRM Server
running in your company, you can assign permissions and access level to the document.
With the Windows Live ID feature, the recipients need not be in your corporate network,
it will as long as they have a Hotmail ID (Live ID).
3. Encrypt Document: This is a simple password protect feature. Assign
a password and then only people with the password can open the document.
All the above three features are present in Excel and PowerPoint 2007 as well.
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The other day on the Internet I saw the above photos of the next version of One Laptop
Per Child Program. What struck me very interesting was the absence of Keyboard (hence
absence of mechanical failures) and the ability for two children to share it at the
same time - very valuable in developing countries and for play. You have a touch-screen
that works as a keyboard - hopefully doing Non-English language with this Virtual
Keyboard will be supported and native.
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The original blog post from which I took the above chart is from
here. It talks about how any one at any age with learning and practice can become
an Expert. A nice piece to read and think about.
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In the last two to three quarters we are seeing a huge surge in SharePoint projects
and as a result the demand of SharePoint developers is sky rocketing. Initially we
were thinking this to be a local (India) phenomena but when I talk to many of my contacts
in the industry worldwide and check
out articles in the Internet, it turns out to be a worldwide phenomena.
Below are some random resources on SharePoint that might be useful for developers:
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One of the compelling reasons I tell customers and friends for upgrading from Windows
XP to Windows Vista is the extremely easy to use yet powerful backup feature. All
it takes is three clicks to backup your entire computer to a removable USB storage
or DVDs. You can backup a partition or folders to another partition. And the entire
backup procedure for few hundred gigabytes of files takes less than an hour the first
time itself, after that the incremental backup get done in minutes. The best part
is that the backup is stored in VHD (Virtual PC format) format, which is a fully documented
and free to use file specification. This means even if Microsoft restore utility is
unable to open the VHD file, some 3rd party utility may be able to open it. I have
been using the backup feature for nearly a year and I am very pleased with it. Recently
when I had trouble with Windows in my Home PC, I restored my backup that was taken
few months back - the entire restore process worked flawlessly and my Windows installation
was good as new. 
Today before I did a routine backup of my Home PC, I wanted to clear some space in
the external USB drive. I deleted all the previous backup files in the drive. Then
I ran the complete back up. Unfortunately after several minutes the backup utility
failed with the following strange error.
The backup did not complete successfully. An error occurred.
The following information might help you resolve the error:
The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002)
I tried doing Vista Disk cleanup, no use. Doing few Internet
searches with the error number 0x80070002 I found a forum post
that talked to clean up registry keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList that pointed to orphan profile paths. I checked
that, in my case all the profiles had correct paths. So that was not the problem.
Then one of the forum post talked about running Chkdsk on the drives,
I did that. Rebooted the machine. Tried the backup again, this time it went smoothly.
Now my love is back for the Vista Backup tool. I just wish Microsoft wrote the backup
utility a little bit more tolerant or instructive error messages for handling these
occasions.
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 Though
I purchased this DVD a year ago (at a steep price @ Rs.499) I didn't get the
time to watch it till now. Today being a Sunday and free from any work luckily I had
the time to watch the movie "An
Inconvenient Truth" made by Former Vice President Al Gore. I didn't know
Al Gore was such a powerful speaker, he was amazing on stage - I have noted down few presentation
tips from his speech. He seems to have come out as a more powerful person after
his dramatic hair-splitting loss of the US
Presidency to George W Bush in 2000.
The movie is brief and runs only for about 90 minutes and it is completely on a presentation
given by Al Gore with clippings in between. Since enough has been said about this
movie and global warming, all I will say - this is a very compelling movie for
the cause of reducing our effects on environment. I pledge to start doing my
small baby steps on this from today.
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The hugely anticipated release of Kamal Hasan's mega budget movie - Dasavathaaram got
released yesterday after many delays. Apart from the inherent delays due to the complexity
of producing the movie, there were many court cases against the movie and the producer
V.Ravichandran had to even change his film production company's name from OSCAR to
AASCAR due to a legal notice from Hollywood (Economic Times news yesterday) in the
last few days.
Kamal stars in 10 roles in the movie. The movie(details
here) is released in almost all theatres in the city (and in the state) and in
all the shows. Adding to this Government has also allowed few extra shows at 9AM,
etc. , even then when I checked with few theatres I was told the movie is full for
next 15 days. Luckily my wife got two tickets for today (second day of the movie)
11:25AM show at INOX City Centre. Show started 10-15 late as the earlier show got
delayed as the movie is a long one nearly 3 hours with only a brief 5 minutes intermission.
There was a huge queue to even get into the theatres :-)
The story line of the movie is very simple and nothing exceptional - just a routine
action chase film. The first half of the movie was boring and very long, the intermission
came only after 2 hours. Kamal has done the story, screenplay and dialogue, so in
his signature style he has inserted few atheist touches - the 13th Century "Nambi"
story possibly hurting a bit of religious sentiments. The second half was more interesting,
especially where he brings along all the characters into the single climax moment.
Lot of hard work seems to have gone into making of the movie - in the direction, acting,
makeup, stunts, planning, etc. which has to appreciated greatly. Tamil movie industry
has been elevated few steps with this movie - no doubts on that. The story and music
could have been better.
The ten roles he dons are:
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Rangaraja Nambi - 13th Century Vaishnavaite
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Govind Ramasamy -the "Hero", a scientist
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Christian Fletcher - Villain (Ex-CIA Agent)
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Balaram Naidu - The funny CBI officer with nice Telugu Accent
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George Bush - American President
(surprising why Kamal wanted to do this role, compared to other roles not very impressive)
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Avtar Singh - A Punjabi singer
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Shinghen Narahasi - Japan Marshal arts master (Impressive fighting scenes)
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Krishnaveni - Iyengar Great grandmother (Excellent in the makeup)
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Vincent Poovaraagan - Social Activist (nice black skin makeup)
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Kalifullah Khan - The 7 Feet Tall Role (An antitode to the Aboorva Sagatharagal shorter
Kamal)
Movie is all about Kamal, with only two other characters having some role - Asin and
Baskar. Kamal has roped in Jayaprada for a role in a Tamil Movie that too a song after
a long time.
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I came across this brilliant site called "Geonames.org"
- a Geographical database for download free of charge containing
over eight million geographical names. The site allows you to search for any city
or place or postal code and the best part is all of this is also available through
a number of webservices and a daily database
export. This can be useful while you are developing a website and have to get
input of a city or determine a place in a transaction.
Check out these examples:
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Chennai
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600017 (Postal
Code in India)
GeoNames was founded by Marc Wick. Marc is a self-employed software engineer living
in Switzerland. Thanks to Marc Wick & the other volunteers of the site.
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I have come across Developers and System Engineers who have trouble with networking
time and again. The principle reason I have observed is a lack of thorough understanding
of the underlying TCP/IP layer. Most engineers assume that if they know what is an
IP Address, Subnet and DHCP they know networking. How wrong can they be?. This gets
more complicated with the introduction of IPv6, Security and Performance features
newly introduced in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
Till now the hurdle in solving this was availability of easily accessible and digestible
materials on the subject. Today thanks to one of my fellow MVPs who pointed me to
this resource from Microsoft - a free book on "TCP/IP
Fundamentals for Windows". It is available both for online
viewing and downloadable as a PDF
file. Don't let the 559 page count scare you, the book is easily readable with
some effort. I highly recommend downloading the PDF file and saving - it will be a
worthy reference.
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For years, I seem to have a love and hate experience with HP Printers especially with
the accompanying software. With the centralized laser printers in my office things
are normally OK, you give a print command it prints. The issues are only with the
All In One Printers - should we be calling them super smart printers?.
I use dedicated HP All-In-One Printers (Photosmart 7288 and 6188) at my work and at
my home. While I love the HP software for scanning, I am at loss on few other things. 
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Why does the installation need to take so much for installing a simple scanner and
printer software?.
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Every time I turn on the PC why should the HP software keep checking for updates -
is scanner and printer so cutting edge that you need daily updates for new technologies?
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In Vista with UAC turned on, every time when it checks for updates it pops up the
UAC elevated privileges dialog for the HPUpdate.exe program. My wife is always at
loss on why this comes every time she logs in?.
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Frequently the HP software looses the networked printer. It says "No supported device
can be found". May be it is users' fault or some configuration changes that was done.
The way to resolve it is to get your installation media (or downloaded driver file)
and run the installation again. In the installation dialog you see "Add a device"
option (see the image on right). When the application can't find a device why can't
application (Solution Center or Photosmart essential) itself display an option to
search for a network printer and add it instead of requiring a rerun of the installation.
It is not available today.
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When I rerun the installation today for this problem it displays the dialog shown
below. I was puzzled for few minutes. Then pressing "OK" made it run fine. Why can't
the software first check whether the necessary files are found in the path (that it
anyway seems to detect) then if the files are not found display this dialog.
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The last item I have is on Paper Jams. When a paper jam happens, the printer says
clear the jam and press "OK". But I am at loss on how to clear the paper jam - there
is absolutely no instruction, and the space in the paper tray is so small that you
can't insert your fingers and pull the paper out.
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After much deliberation and delay, Govt. Of India has increased the retail fuel prices
- Rs.5 for Petrol, Rs.3 for Diesel and Rs.50 for Household LPG. Though delayed for
long we need to praise the Prime Minister for finally biting the bullet - especially
with all the political compulsions of coalition politics he has and for getting the
powerful finance ministry to agree for deep tax and duty cuts.
On the other side, I am wondering why Government has to be involved in fixing the
price of retail fuel. Other than Household LPG, the fuel price should be left to free
market. Just like anything else the fuel price has to be determined purely on demand
and supply economics. With Oil prices at record levels of $135 from levels of $30
before 4 years, retail price have to naturally increase. You cannot make Oil Marketing
companies loss over Rs.200,000 Crores and make the common shareholders in those companies
suffer (Disclaimer: As on date I have no investments in ONGC, IOC, BPCL or HPCL).
It doesn't make any sense to buy oil at ever increasing prices and keep selling it
at loss, eventually sinking the Oil companies. Leaving it without a price increase
the loss would have been ultimately burdened on the miniscule compliant Tax payers
in India. Somehow political parties in India are of opinion that increase in taxes
affects only the rich and any burden on them is allowed - if you keep doing that,
there will be no investments by companies and eventually no new jobs.
There is other side to the need to increase the prices and that is Environment. India
is consuming Oil at historic levels that definitely has significant green house effects.
The logical answer according to me is to increase the fuel price even more so that
people feel the pinch and start reducing their consumption; and government can use
the increased income to build on war footing world-class mass transport facilities
in all cities.
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I am glad to be doing this post. Our INFITT Chair
Dr.Kalyanasundaram has been awarded the prestigious "Sundara Ramasamy Award for Tamil
Information Technology" on 18th May, 2008, in a function held at the University of
Toronto, from the Canadian Tamil's initiative TAMIL LITERARY GARDEN. Sundara Ramasamy
(Sura) award citation mentioned few of Dr.Kalyan's numerous contributions in the area
of Tamil fonts, development of font encoding standards such as TSCII, Project Madurai
and INFITT. Pioneer Dr. K. Srinivasan of Montreal was the first recipient of this
award last year.
It was one of several Awards given out that day. Well known Tamil writer and translator
Lakshmi Holmström received the main "Lifetime Achievement Award for 2007", also known
as Iyal Virudhu. Prof. George Hart III of Univ. Califoria, Berkeley and Mr. Padmanabha
Iyer of UK were earlier recipients of the "Iyal Viruthu" awards.
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 I
was in Bangalore the other day, there I saw a different type of Aldrop used to lock
the main gate in one of the house - don't ask me why I noticed it!.
Normally the Aldrops (which are bolt latches with a provision for putting a padlock)
will be vertical and you lift the handle and move it sideways (mostly right hand side
to open) with the padlock in vertical orientation. This one that I saw was oriented
differently - you lifted the latch up and down vertically with the padlock in horizontal
(lying down) position. Thinking hard with my little brain I couldn't figure out the
advantage of this model - please post in the comments if you know the advantage.
While writing this post I had to find out the name of this device, I was wondering
whether to call it Gate Latch or Bolt Latch or Gate Bolt. After few searches I found
an item in Amazon with the name "Aldrop", then after few more searches confirmed
that this is how it is called in India.
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