Tag: tech

Dual booting Linux with Windows

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

There would be probably zillion other pages on the blue nothing with similar instructions. Yes. But nothing beats doing these things yourselves … blundering through some and still coming out on tops and saying … whew!! I did it!! (ofcourse a little help from Google doesnt go unappreciated)

A lot of users go about the right way installing a dual boot system.

  1. Take backup of your existing data
  2. They will plan and create partitions
  3. They will first install Windows (WinXP in my case) on one drive
  4. They will then install Linux (Ubuntu here)
  5. Then relax, and configure both the OSes as per their desires

This is the simpler version of doing it. Its the real man’s way … a no-nonsense approach to getting things done.

And now there is my way. I have been using this laptop for about 8 months now … running it on Ubuntu. So after roughly about 8 months, I have a 5Gb home folder, some customized applications, some handy scripts, an up-to-date system … and with what internet speeds are in India, I do not wish to re-update my system again. So I decided, that I will try to rescue the Linux after losing my master boot record (MBR). So this is what I did –

  1. Installed WinXP on my 8GB FAT32 partition
  2. Put in an Ubuntu LiveCD and booted through it to Gutsy Gibbon
  3. Started grub and wrote that on the MBR. Now the windows was gone … sigh!
    1. For more detailed instructions, please visit Recovering Ubuntu after installing Windows
  4. Started my actual Linux (whew!) and edited the grub configuration file
  5. Made a manual entry for windows in this and booted
    1. This is not easy as it sounds
    2. You need to know on which partition of your hard drive was windows installed (for me it was /dev/hda4) … the grub entry which corresponds to this is (hd0,3) … keep that in mind (minus 1)
  6. This was the exact entry

title Windoze XP
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1

It works!

Why did I install Windows again? … to play games :-)

Microsoft to open up?

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Microsoft has started to take the power of the development community seriously. In a press conference yesterday, they have put a very verbose official release regarding increasing the interoperability of all the high volume MS products by releasing and maintaining documentation of their APIs on their site. As quoted from Steve Ballmer,

For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.

Read the complete release here.

The products whose APIs would be released are Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products.

Can we have someone look into the revenue of these products as well?

Translated, will now have to buy a license and become a registered member of MSDN to understand the APIs for the “high volume products”.

Addendum
RedHat was not so much impressed with this release, read more of it here.

Firefox reaches 500 m :-)

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Its my favorite browser. My only browser for that matter (yes, I sometimes do use Konqueror) and only use the more ubiquitous IE but only to go to Mozilla site and download the latest release of Firefox.

Its great to know that all of us have contributed to the magic number. 500,000,000. There’s hope to this world after all :-)

Read more about the milestone here.

One more example of how the user and customer opinion and feedback was taken into account while developing the product. It sometimes becomes very difficult to choose between the two dictums Customer is always right and To thine own be true. Many a times people have to make those hard choices in order to keep a business running. So what if the product is slightly flawed … the customers wont complain, because they do not have any other obvious choice. Yes I am talking about you-know-who-who-bundles-their-browsers-with-their-operating-systems. Try uninstalling IE from WinXPSP2 and you will know what I am talking about.

Well, now they do. And they know about it!! Power to the people!!

N3tH@c|<

Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

The mountain giant picked up a boulder and heaved it towards me. My female orc wizard ducked and narrowly missed the hulk of rock. I decided to take my Wand of striking and kill both the giant and the killer bee buzzing behind him in a single strike. The giant absorbed the magic and moved on to pick up the boulder for another shot. I smote off the killer bee with a couple of blows with my trusted +4 magic staff and turned to face the giant. The goliath had managed to pick up the boulder, now was the time … I took out another wand of magic missile and let go its fury at him. No effect. I would have to kill this one by hand-to-hand. No matter. The staff was up for the challenge and my mithril coat was unharmed. A fast flurry of blows was exchanged the giant lay bested at my feet.

No, this is not a dream. Its one of my favorite games, NetHack!! This is a single player game released in around late 1980’s … the development of this game has been completely on the net … and its a hack and slash game … hence net + hack = nethack :-)

Everytime I play the game, theres something new that happens. The maps are different, the characters are many to play with … and the game decides to behave differently on a full moon day!!

Just one more example of how a product has developed in a decentralized fashion over an open interactive medium (IRC and Usenets) to result in a customer oriented product.

Creating a personal blog

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment
Blogger logo

So, a lot of us like to blog, and of course would it not be super cool if we had our own blog url and all the jazz effects at of course a minimal of a cost.

Well, now we can. And even the most basic of a computer user can go ahead and have his personal url blog … here’s how you do it.

  1. Go to a domains seller. I bought mine from Aalphanet. Needless to say, you will have to register first.
  2. Search for an available domain eg- kidakaka.com
  3. If available, go for the kill, purchase it. A .com comes for somewhere around Rs. 450.00 per annum, a .in comes at half the price.
  4. Once that is done, buy the Manage Domain rights for your domain. This costs an additional Rs. 45.00 per year.
  5. Now start a blog on the blogger platform
  6. In the Settings->Publishing->Advanced settings, go to the your own domain name, and provide the same.
  7. The complete instructions are given here, but this is what you do simply –
    1. Enter you domain name in the Advanced tab
    2. In your Manage DNS section of domain dashboard, make a CNAME entry for your domain to point to ghs.google.com
  8. It should take an hour and two and Voila!!

The blog now is hosted on the blogger platform, but the url is yours. A customized personal blog for less than Rs. 500.00 a year.

Business World

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Theres a section of Business World which is Quick take, the question of the next week’s issue was posted to me via through a friend.

The Indian IT industry has several set backs –

  1. Lack real technology work – with around 60% of the work lying in the AMC and Testing (Support) bracket, there is dearth of scope for your average Indian techie to get their digits (pun intended) dirty in some concrete techie work.
  2. Project orientation – Most of the biggies in the Indian IT industry are service oriented, and more concerned with projects for foriegn customers. Their business orientation is towards projects, so much so that the entire organization bases its financials upon projects and their profitability. It may seem as a sweeping statement, but think about it, projects for the same client cumulate into an account. Accounts cumulate into a Geography. How this is bad is that there is no focus on IT products in the market.
  3. PPP of economies – How can one sustain themselves on pure projects alone? Esp. those that are based on a foreign economy. The moment the domestic economy starts doing better than the foreign economy (read those of the clients), the cost of the project rises (either for the firm or for the client). To remain competitive vis-a-vis other foriegn IT vendors, the indian firm will have to drop rates, losing profitability.
  4. Attrition – With an average attrition of around 15%, the costs of a project are constantly going up. Whenever a resource switches to a new firm, he gets a pay hike. A pay hike translates into more costs for the same resource. More costs without increasing revenues results in reduction of profitability.

That was my answer, I was a little surprised to learn that theres such a small amount of people who agree with me. No matter, it will be a good thing for India if I am wrong ;-).