Saturday, December 27, 2008

Question of type and character...

I have a soft corner for cursive fonts. But of the non-cursive types, I am not too sure what I like more, serifs or sans-serifs. :-(

In short, I like most types of types. :-)

But, type rendering on Linux still pisses me off. When will it become at least tolerably good? Being an armchair critic is much easier than trying to implement a good font interpreter all by myself, anyway. :-)

Friday, December 26, 2008

Small is beautiful...

May be.

But I do prefer my laptop to be at least 14.1". Watching videos on PDAs and mobile phones is not my cup of tea.

I wonder where all these convergence and miniaturization is taking us. Some people are buying into it (literally), and some people are making a bunch of money.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

More Norton WTF...

Uninstalled and re-installed Norton Internet Security. Now SystemWorks keeps flashing that no anti-virus is installed. If it can't even detect an installation of a product from the same vendor correctly, how on earth would it protect me from virus, and other more exotic stuff... I mean, WTF.

Selective un-installation does noes even work.

Money gone down the drain... :-(

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

A sense of security...

Often wonder how effective the anti-virus, anti-phishing, anti-malware tools really are. It is nothing short of blind faith that I have in the particular (Norton) products that I have.

Might as well switch completely to a Linux only environment. Too reluctant to get out, as things mostly "just works" on Windows XP, and more importantly about one tenth of the cost of the laptop was for the OEM version of Windows XP.

Have both Norton Internet Security 2009, and Norton Systemworks installed. I was able to register one of the products, while the other just refused to do so citing lack of connection to the internet.

Another quirk. If the Windows firewall is disabled, following the advice from one of the products, the other complains rather loudly about it, and will flash till both the firewalls are enabled, and slowing down my rather old laptop. A (false) sense of security, twice over. Wonderful integration, indeed.

The online account needed for the product registration allows only letters and numerals in the password. That really is something to be appreciated, coming from a company peddling computer security tools.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Problem is elsewhere...

....Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman. Greenspan says the world is facing “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” but, reports the New York Times, "his faith in derivatives remains unshaken." Greenspan believes that the problem is not with derivatives, but that the people using them got greedy, according to the Times.

This is quite a view. Is it a surprise to Alan Greenspan that the people on Wall Street -- said to be ruled only by the opposing instincts of greed and fear -- "got greedy?"


by Ralph Nader in a recent CounterPunch article.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

C++

C++ was my first programming language. Kind of liked it, mainly because it was the first one I learned. It was somewhat like diving into the deep end of the pool to learn swimming.

Used to think that I did have a decent understanding of the language. Not anymore. The language has evolved a lot, and am badly out of touch after becoming a full-time Java programmer. Not sure if I can continue to have it in my resume. Especially after realizing that I could not answer most of the questions in the GOTW.

Then a few interviews happened. Talked to some people who claimed to be very good at C++. Most of them were surprised to know that "struct"s can contain methods. Or why a copy constructor should take a reference.

That was a real confidence booster, personally.

Any openings for a born-again C++ programmer?

Haskell...

Trying to learn Haskell...

Don't know if anything useful can come out of this intellectual exercise. Many a year back I came across a comment in a piece of PERL code I was maintaining that it was much easier to accomplish the same thing in a functional language like Haskell. That piece of code is no longer maintained, but the urge to figure out for myself if the claim is valid still remains.

Learning Haskell on a Sunday evening. Hmmm...

Am not a geek, not even trying to appear like a geek. :-)

Economics...

Economics is an interesting field. Nobody seems to understand it, neither the practitioners nor the outsiders. And naturally I do not understand it either.

According to Scott Adams people with formal training in Economics or any of the related fields have a propensity to (over-)use the phrase "on the other hand", and they are also relatively immune to cognitive dissonance. Whatever that may be, economics is still very much like astrology.

Mind you, I am prone to cognitive dissonance myself :-)

Sometimes....

Sometimes I feel that I am a complete idiot...

But after a while I realize that I am not perfect yet, and "...some parts are still missing".

It should not deter me from trying, though.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Cloud computing...

Ted Dziuba notes that it is called cloud computing because "A Cloud Is Easier To Draw On A Whiteboard Than A Grid".

Interesting.

More on virtualization....

There are hardware, software and may be hybrid type of virtualization. The basic aim is more effective utilization of computer resources by running multiple operating systems, multiple instances of the same operating system or a combination of these two.

The key point is that multiple operating system instances are active simultaneously. the services offered by the different servers running on the different operating systems will have to accessed remotely. If the services are only accessible locally, then it is no better than a multi-boot system. So we need client machines, either thick or thin. Been down that road before.

There is no free lunch. And client-server is not inherently better than tightly integrated systems or vice-versa. If it were, only one would have survived.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Virtualization...

Methinks that virtualization is one of the biggest hypes ever. That's a hyperbole, I guess. Kind of sounds like the real thing. Great. Am getting there.

A wee bit more hyped than AJAX, probably.

That's for a start. Will come back to these.

Starting late...

Am a late starter, in almost everything...

Be it programming, foreign languages, blogging, sports, games, technology...

I am like that... and it is too late to change that in any meaningful way...

Be that as it may...

This is my personal space... No comments allowed...

Ceremonial first post ends thusly...