Jet Airways runs Linux!

On my way back to Hyderabad this morning, as I was taking my seat bleary-eyed, I glanced at the Jet Screen. That’s the tiny entertainment TV for the passenger’s viewing pleasure. Could not help but notice that those monitors were running on a centralized system, and that system was booting. The techie inside me wanted to probe further, so I kept my eyes glued to the screen … and voila … it runs Linux!! All the peripherals attached to it were also being detected … credit card reader installed … awesome. Sadly, I could not determine which distro of linux, I think embedded linux though, because it was using RedBoot. The reason why I am so thrilled is because that just goes to show the trust in the operating system.

MP3 Hunts

I am an mp3 whore. A song hoarder, and here’s a tip on how to do it.

Fact1: If you have been in the web hosting business, you should know that most web servers have directory listings, and most n00b users forget to switch them off. If the web server happens to be just a file server, then its highly likely that the directory listing is on.

Fact2: The listing is cached in Google’s index by the title of the page, which normally is Index of /blah blah blah.

Google for the keywords – “Index of /” + mp3 + <keywords of your song>

Eg- “Index of /” + mp3 + beatles + strawberry fields will lead you to at least one directory listing.

A word of caution though, there are advertisers and spammers out there who know this as well, so 80% of the links turn out to be dead ends, but perseverance and determination gets you there.

Suit Up!!

Its an expression that Barney, from How I met your Mother (one of my favorite sitcoms) often says. Was going through daily RSS, when I came across this … a jacket for geeks who cant make their own pick-up lines. A small printer is fitted into the jacket along with sensors near the arms and heart to detect that change in the heart rate :-).

And voila!! You can be a casanova as well. Here’s a video demo of that piece!!