Chillout Lounge

Sri Lankan internet sunk

Internet users in Sri Lanka have been cut off due to a problem with their under-water connection. An Indian ship, the 'State of Nagaland', dropped anchor and in doing so inadvertently sliced through the fibre optic cable.

Or so Sri Lankan Telecom (SLT) would have you believe. They assert, in a court documents, that the ship was the only one in the area, and that this kind of damage doesn't happen through natural causes - the cable was cut ~6 miles off shore. The Telco claims that about 3/4 million users are without service, as well as Sri Lankan government sites. Also having issues is .lk domain names, which number roughly 2,000. Currently, SLT are using a satellite connection to provide limited connectivity.

The ship is currently being held by court, under a request for $5 million worth of damages from SLT. SLT hope to have services restored within the next few days.

read more at http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/08/24/errant_anchor_blamed_for_knocking_island_nation_offline.html


posted by Logu Krishnan : 10:41 AM

Rob Caron's Blog on my Blog

Yesterday while I was trying to understand the Bi-directional traceability matrix, karthik [sir ;-)] popped up and said "Did you Look this ?".... Bob Caron has blogged about my Blog on VSTS @ Tech Ed at http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2004/08/15/214905.aspx



not sure how he happened to read this...'ve been thinking i only have 2-3 readers[!] for my blog !! :-)

posted by Logu Krishnan : 2:58 AM

Tech-Ed 2004 Experiences

Yet another episode of TechEd concluded Friday [Aug 13]. This Year TechEd had 2 Days Full of Technical sessions and 1 Day Hands-On Lab Sessions.

Keynote was given by Keith Rowe, Product Unit Manager for Visual Studio Team System @ Microsoft, Redmond. He was discussing the entire aspects of software professional world, and gave a prelude to VSTS. Sriram Krishnan – Student Champ from Chennai gave a demo on VS Express editions. And key note moved on for IT Pro’s.

This Year Technical Track Topics made more sense, as the much awaited Whidbey and Yukon has their beta releases on our hands. Almost all the tracks were surrounded on these technology.

Keith Rowe, talked about VSTS. VSTS is a life-cycle tools platform, which we are really missing in the Microsoft World, this is a very great effort and somehow caught my immediate attention. Believe me this is not yet another Marketing Product, but this is a much matured attempt to solve today’s software development needs. If you are an infrastructure architect/ technical architect/ Project Manager/Lead’s you will understand the real need of this project. VSTS is just Wow!
Atlast Project Manager’s has a technical tool to work on ;-) To my knowledge no other IDE developed so far [call it **lipse…!! whatever] does not grade anywhere near to Whidbey now…

Gaurav Khanna spelunk'ed on CLR 2.0 :-) That was a very interesting session, and was a very technical talk. Both Gaurav and CLR were impressive.

Other tracks were surrounded by VB.NET,ASP.NET, ADO.NET handled by Praveen Srivatsa, Anand M , Vinod kumar and Govind Kanshi.

Praveen Srivatsa's session on SQL CLR was interesting; he is a very interesting person, with good skills inherent. He also has a knack of answering the crowd. Usually no second question would popup.

Anand M, I don’t have to write much about him, he can talk about anything, and we’ve seen him on CNUG Sessions :-)

There were also some matured tracks like “Secure Coding Practices” by Venkatrangan, RD-MSDN. But somehow I felt that much of the crowd did not understand the real intricacy which he was trying to explain, at one point I heard voices asking for code samples, but they did not understand that he was not talking about not only CODE, instead he is trying to get the grounds cleared up or he was trying to set the basics clear. This was one of the interesting session, without demos/marketing jargons, but more of sharing the brains.

And Sanjay Shetty – Indian Mobile Guru, talked on Mobility Programming on asp.net that was another interesting session.

And also there were some session which really tested my patience!!


There were also Chalk-Talk Sessions…. And the last day was hands on lab.

Apart from all these technical tracks, Abhishek – MVP Lead had some interesting plans for Microsoft Community Stall. We had announced for a Match-Making contest, which was fun and we awarded watches for the chosen ones. And we also tattooed the participants. On these stall I happened to meet some interesting guys, had a brief talk with them. I was little amazed when 2 guys voluntarily introduced themselves with their biz cards, they were from Sri Lanka… they have landed in Chennai, exclusively to attend Tech-Ed and Meet people. That was great. Also Had some technical chats with some guys.Also happened to meet fellow MVP’s. overall it was fun at the community stall, Anyway that was the theme…

We also met Shiela Gulati, she heads the community evangelism team [She was introduced as Deepak Gulati’s MOM to me !! by Naresh hehehe… he was kidding….] she was shooting the whole session and captured some funny moments. She was an interesting lady to chat with. And she also announced they are planning special training for MVP’s. That was great news.

Overall, this year TechEd was pretty interesting, without much mess. While I was observing the crowd’s response/feedback to TechEd, Some were satisfied, some thought new gyan’s were preached, some enjoyed attending the show and the sense of being there, some thought Microsoft took their money to market their products, some thought tracks were not very technical… hmm… Is it possible to satisfy whole of this crowd of 500-600 ??? Something to think about ?

posted by Logu Krishnan : 9:42 PM

Microsoft TechEd 2004 – Chennai

Another Episode of TechEd at Chennai starts Tomorrow.
This year TechEd looks very promising, with interesting 2 day's technical sessions, chalk-talk session and a one day Hands-on Lab on various tracks. Interesting speakers have queued up this year… [hmm… Raj Chaudhri is missing in the list :-)]. Moreover the session topics are good when compared to last year.

Gaurav has posted about the TechEd@Bangalore Lot’s of interesting minds have honoured this year teched, Somasegar a.k.a "Soma", Corporate VP for Developer Division, Redmond has given the keynote. And also we have product team members from Microsoft, It would be really interesting to meet all these guys. Hope they are here in Chennai too…

Also Anand.M is speaking at this year TechEd.

This year, I’m also available at the Microsoft Community stall. Hope to meet some interesting people this year.

BTW If you have not read my last year TechEd 2003 comments and Rants, you can read it here… http://loguk.blogspot.com/2003/10/my-tech-ed-2003-experiencevc-windows.html

I Shall Try Blogging Interesting moments of TechEd...

See You There……


posted by Logu Krishnan : 4:32 AM

Mono 1.0 : First Look

Today there was a new project discussion that was very interesting… MONO was one of the proposed potential candidate in the technology list?!!! The application has to be run on RedHat Linux, and talk to a remote SQL Server DB and also required WebDAV built on top of DASL and Catacomb. DASL and catacomb are extensions to WebDAV. Thought this is the right time to get some grips on Mono… Downloaded Mono 1.0 Build 1

Here are my first impressions,

1. A Slick 13.5 MB Mono 1.0 framework comprising of C# 1.0 compiler, ECMA CLI Runtime Engine, IKVM Java Runtime Engine.

2. Class Libraries implementing .NET 1.1 Profile

3. GTK# 1.0 toolkit

4. Mono Libraries and GNOME Libraries


some interesting libraries are Mono.Math, Mono.Posix, Mono.Security, Glade

5. VB Runtime [although vb.net development is not fully encouraged, C# is the preferred language as of now]

The Package Installed with no hassles


After installation, you need to add Mono installation path to the %PATH% Environment variable, setupmonopath.bat is included along with the package, alternatively I would suggest to add the path info under “Environment Variables” of your System Properties

MONO .NET applications are claimed as 100% .NET application
A '100% .NET application' is one that only uses the APIs defined under the System namespace and does not use P/Invoke. These applications would in theory run unmodified on Windows, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, MacOS X and others.” !!

Some interesting facts worth mentioning are
<Quote>
• An advanced native-code compilation engine: Both just-in-time compilation (JIT) and pre-compilation of CIL bytecodes into native code are supported.
• A foundation for code optimization: The new code generator in Mono builds on the experience of our first JIT engine, and enables us to implement various advanced compiler optimization tricks. With an SSA-framework, plenty of new optimizations are possible. The current list of optimizations are: Peephole postpass, Branch optimizations, Inline method calls, Constant folding, Constant propagation, Copy propagation, Dead code elimination, Linear scan global reg allocation, Conditional moves, Emit per-domain code, Instruction scheduling, Intrinsic method implementations, Tail recursion and tail calls, Loop related optimizations, Fast x86 FP compares, Leaf procedures optimizations
• A self-hosting C# compiler written in C#, which is clean, easy to maintain.
•Focus on the .NET Framework: we are tracking down the .NET Framework API definition, as we believe it is the API people will be most familiar with.
•A multi-platform runtime engine: both a JIT engine and an interpreter exist. The JIT engine runs currently on x86, PowerPC, S390 and Sparc systems, while the interpreter works on x86, SPARC, StrongARM, s390 and PowerPC systems.
The JIT engine is being ported to amd64 systems at this time.
• Supports Linux, BSD, MacOS, Windows and Solaris at this point.
• The JIT engine is written using a portable instruction selector which not only generates good code but is also the foundation to re-target the JIT engine to other systems.
• Full support for remoting in the runtime.
• The C# compiler, the JIT engine and the class libraries are mature enough that the whole system has been self-hosting since April 2002. This means that we develop Mono completely with itself at this point.
By forcing ourselves to use our own code to develop our tools, we bug fix problems rapidly, and the system is overall more robust and tested than if we did not.
• Our class libraries are licensed under the terms of the MIT X11 license which is a very liberal license as opposed to the GNU GPL with exceptions, this means that Mono can be used in places where the GPL with exceptions is not permissible.
• Mono has a complete Web Services stack: we implement ASP.NET web servers and web clients as well as implementing the Remoting-based SOAP infrastructure.
• Remoting implementation: Mono has a complete remoting infrastructure that is used in our own codebase to provide added functionality and performance to our ASP.NET engine and more.
• Mono has a complete C# 1.0 implementation and has been stress tested a lot more than Portable.NET's compiler.
• Mono's C# compiler has strong error handling and has closer adherence to the specification with support for definite assignment (required to generate verifiable IL code) and CLS conformance c hecking.
• Mono's C# compiler is written in C# which is easier for new developers to come in and improve, fix and tune. The Mono C# compiler in C# is faster than their C-based compiler.
• Preview of C# 2.0: a work in progress for a 2.0 implementation of our compiler is available (iterators, generics and anonymous methods are available in our "preview" compiler).
• Mono has a complete Reflection and Reflection.Emit: these are important for advanced applications, compilers and dynamic code generation.
• Mono has a complete managed XML stack: XML, XPath, XML Serializer, XML Schema handling are fully functional, feature complete and tuned for performance.
• Mono has a complete cryptography stack: we implement the 1.0 and 1.1 APIs as well as using our fully managed stack to implement the SSL/TLS transports.
• Extensive database support: Mono ships with database provides for Firebird, IBM DB2, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Lite, MySQL, PostgresSQL, Ole DB and ODBC.
• Mono includes full LDAP support.
</Quote>

Read more at FAQ – www.go-mono.org

somehow, still I have some issues to try it on a live production environment... :-)
shall post more....


posted by Logu Krishnan : 12:51 PM

Transformations in Life… Marriage…

These days… Life is moving in a very fast pace… too many events… too many people… and too many things are happening in parallel. Couple of day’s back my sis got engaged for marriage :-) I’ve heard people saying “Girl’s grow fast”!! I’ve always laughed at that, but today it sounds very true…. She has been always my pet… I still remember the day she stepped into her KG Classes…. After being exhausted by one hour of crying, somehow my mom and I managed to leave her hall, and I was on the same school, and was the third hall from her KG Hall. I went back to my class, after about half an hour something disrupted me and I turned towards window [I always prefer window/corner seats]… I saw this little girl peeping thro’ the window with big puffed red eyes…. with a pathetic face… Gosh! I was shocked… somehow she had sneaked out of her class unknowingly to her teacher and while moving out she should have seen me at the window and stopped there… no other options I had to take her to my house… she started accepting her school almost only after 2-3 weeks…with much of protest…. days passed on… she was one of the brightest in the class. Since we were at CBSE School, she started programming from her 6th grade, while she was at her 8th grade… one day she asked me “what is Fibonacci series ?” I explained it to her, she started writing flow chart, and wrote her first C Program… in a snap… I was little impressed with that near to perfect program… she had good logical and analytical skills. Sometimes, I take time to understand certain strategy games, but she would learn it in a moment :-) and she is the only girl who always targets my wallet and credit card till date… she would almost drain my pocket and drain the cards till the credit limits :-) whenever she gets a chance.

Hmm… days passed by… Pre KG, School, College… Her First Love… and here… she is getting married to her first love with almost no opposition... She was hyper-nervous when she told me first about her Love couple of months back… she also said, she will marry him only If I agree… [ssshhh… what a pack of lie :-)] couldn’t do anything but laugh…. Slowly I had to talk with my parents regarding this and things hanged on for a month… and everyone was cool at both ends, but both families believed in this so-called astrology. After analyzing the horoscopes, our family astrologer announced both the horoscoped matched in 9 points out of 10. Everyone was relaxed after that… and official talks… and now, marriage on next month…. Yesterday I booked the marriage hall owned by my close friend-school mate…. I still remember me playing football inside their marriage hall those days :-) and on the green bed ground outside the hall…

Phew… things are now settled… but after being together for 20-25 years, suddenly somebody appears out of the blue and claims her for himself… that somehow disrupted me… call it possessive or what ever….!!

But what would happen to all of her knowledge and other skills, they would be rarely used… she would become a full time house wife sometime from now… and then… ???

Looks like Indian women does not have much choice, except for professionals like software engineers or doctors… and some specialized industries…. Should we blame it on culture ??? Society ??? Ourselves ??? !!!


posted by Logu Krishnan : 12:49 PM

PAN - Microsoft - The Human Body as a Computer BUS

Recently, Anu (A Good & intelligent friend of mine) posted about PAN in Scape.NET. This was quite impressive. Read at: http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2876950

To Quote from the article
<quote>Microsoft suggests using the body to generate power for the network, too. A “kinetic power converter” in the wearer's shoe or wristwatch would produce electricity in the same way that an old-fashioned self-winding watch extracted energy from its owner's normal movements.
At the moment, übergeeks who want to create a so-called personal area network (PAN) have to link their personal electronic devices—mobile phones, pagers, personal data assistants (PDAs) and so on—using infra-red or radio signals. What Microsoft is proposing is to use the skin's own conductive properties to transmit the data needed to create such a network. And the firm does not stop at people. A “wide variety of living animals”, it says</quote>

<quote>It all sounds very revolutionary, but Microsoft is not (as is often the case with the firm's “innovations”) actually the pioneer in the field. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory and IBM jointly developed the idea of using the human body as a personal network nearly a decade ago. The first prototype PAN, which was demonstrated at the Comdex trade show in 1996</quote>



So, What should we call this ?



posted by Logu Krishnan : 10:35 AM

TROY – The Movie & the Trojan-Horse

Friday night I watched the latest movie flick, TROY directed by Wolfgang Petersen at Satyam, The Whole movie is about the war between the Greece and Troy. In the later half of the movie, the Greeks would use a war tactic to attack Troy sheepishly. The war tactic is “Wooden HORSE”. The Trojan's[citizens of Troy] carried the wooden horse crafted by Odyssey[Greek's Master Craft man] would be carried into the country lead by the Troy king himself and welcomed by countrymen with much fanfare. Later in the night the Soldiers hidden inside the horse would get out sneakily out of the horse and open the impregnable high doors of the TROY Arena, through which the Greek Soldiers would enter the TROY and would burn the whole of TROY. I’ve read about ancient Trojan War, Trojan Horse stories, This is the first time I’m viewing it in action.

Though Modern day Trojan viruses are named after this War-Tactic, but today’s Trojans are far more intelligent, but this is exactly how a Trojan works, the Trojan sneaks into the system knowingly, and would open the doors/back-doors for others to attack. Watch TROY if you need a demonstration :-)


posted by Logu Krishnan : 9:54 AM