Arbit Scratchpad

September 30, 2002 Red Hat Releases Red Hat Linux 8.0 THATS TODAY FEATURES STORY

I watched the war classic The Longest Day with a big cast and plenty of war-time action. This is a movie about D-Day (06 June 1944) when the allied (British and American) forces invade France starting from Normandy, Omaha and other beaches - the biggest challenge to the Germans in the World War II. The large scale war scenes are well crafted being very authentic and the mass attack sequences are scintillating. The movie displays the allied strategy with paratroppers landing helped by French resistance groups as diversionary tactics and how the Germans are tricked into thinking it as a small scale commando effort. And then the beaches are invaded by troops from about a whopping 5000 allied warships. The stone wall is blasted using Bangalore torpedo charges. Too much emotion is not mixed up with the realistic depiction of that phase of the war. It ends with a poignant scene when an injured allied soldier mentions, "He is dead(pointing to a German soldier), I am crippled and you (t...

ISSUES ON MAY BE - THEOLOGY IN GENERAL THIS IS WHAT ONE OF MY FRIENDS ABHINAVA CHAUDURI (shaon) HAD WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO ONE OF MY ARTICLES IN THIS BLOG I PRESENT THE CONTENTS OF HIS MAIL VERBATIM - OF COURSE MY WAY OF SEEING THINGS COMES AFTER THAT. Why do Humans Kill Humans? Good question,it seems you are a little confused. let me help you out a) Money :- Because money has become the soul need of 20th century civilization b) Power :- It comes with money, but in this ever growing population of the world,it is hard enough for some one to reach the top, and so he will try stay at the top as long as possible. And others will try to depose him. c) Religion :- Now, Now a very interesting point to be raised in the lieu of recent events. Well, lets take India as an Case Study. c1. From about the 6th and 7th century hardcore caste systems were in place- caused deprivation of basic amenities to a lot of people - hence violates all basic human r...

Famous Blog Search Engines Daypop AND blogdex - By an MIT student Daypop and Blogdex both offer Billboard-style lists of the top fresh links in the weblog community. Their popular links are often called memes. Whats the BLOGOSPHERE ?

Windows Media Player 9 (beta) released Download the beta player here 2.8 GHz PENTIUM OUT - reaching 3.0 GHz soon I guess - A protoype of about 6.0 Ghz was displayed at The Intel Developer Forum - Fall 2002 recently. Here you'll find info on blogging and other microcontent news ie the new form of journalism - compact content updated regularly. The recent articles in this site below talk of a blogger's mentality ... Read more at www.microcontentnews.com Also another good blog - find more blog links here. www.evhead.com Try these too http://www.ojr.org/ojr/technology/ http://www.microcontentnews.com/resources/ MY LATEST DEFINITION OF BLOGS An amalgam of ideas, thoughts and pointers to interesting niches on the web. AM I SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME ON THE NET PERKING UP BLOGS ? Happens Initially due to overexcitement I guess . . .

Why do humans kill humans? All the hue and cry from the National Human Rights Commission seems to have died down this time - no response even after two days of the massacre - mad mindless bloodbath. Where is the so-called pseudo-secular front? I am referring to the recent gruesome violence perpetrated by the foreign-trained armed terrorists at the sprawling magnificent temple(though not famous for me; I had not heard about it till this carnage - shows my ignorance) - The Swaminarayan Temple made entirely of sandstone at Akshardham in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Not a word of sympathy from the secularists - since the victims were from the 'majority community' and in India they are always treated in the same manner whether Godhara, Kashmir or otherwise; the media also adds to these partisan views. The reaction should be the same and condemned, when humans lose lives in such dastardly and deplorable acts. True the clashes after Godhara in Gujarat were tragic and equally inhuman; ...

Of the 3 movies I watched recently (past and this week) - Schindler's List(1993), The Lord of the Rings(2001) and Vertical Limit(2000); the first two are each around 180 minutes long. ( I seem to watch the movies a bit too late) Schindler's List had the second CD spoilt so I watched the 1st and 3rd CDs - seems like a very realistic portrayal of Nazi Germany. The depiction is very objective and Spielberg just presents the facts as a chronicler not in anyway mixing it up with his ideas or views etc. Cant say much more because I missed the important part where the story develops. The Lord of the RingsTHE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - a big movie based on the novel by JRR Tolkien. I liked the starting but then midway it seems to stretch a lot which at times makes it monotonous - though effects in a hall would be profound. A richly computer animated film, as Frodo Baggins(Elija Wood) travels across from the Shire to Mordor - but does not quite reach it - made by a Newzealand based...

My fully refurbished site/homepages at : http://in.geocities.com/shamit_bagchi/ A noiseless front page is what I was aiming at, which has been achieved to a large extent. Other pages to modularize the site has been added - of course frames still exist; I find the concept of frames useful to provide navigational ease. I have an extreme inner urge to not reduce my website status to an Orphan Annie !!!

SOME O'REILLY LINKS XML Chapter from O'REILLY'S latest book on Java http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava2/chapter/ch23.html [Almost everything to start you off on XML and parsing features in Java - Introductory to more details] O'REILLY'S Open Books http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ [Their free online books available here] O'REILLY'S FEATURED WEBLOGS http://www.oreillynet.com/weblogs/ JAVA - Top Ten Tips and Tricks http://java.oreilly.com/news/learningjava_0500.html [By Jonathan Knudsen] [O'Reilly's Website is at: http://ora.com]

LINUX NOTES To View programs that start at the time of booting on Linux ntsysv To mount Windows partition in a dirctory under Linux mount -t vfat /dev/'win-partition' /'directory' eg: mount -t vfat /dev/hda3 /win OR mount -t msdos /dev/hda3 /win When files are corrupted in Linux at bootup type: fsck /dev/'linux partition' eg: fsck /dev/hda2 If Linux does not boot properly boot using F1 on LILO and then type linux single rmtree - to delete directory like deltree on DOS

Is this our ultimate state of computing "nirvana." I some times think . . . Sitting in front of a piece of cantankerous machinery is an awfully dumb way to spend most of the day. as Charles Cooper puts it Whom do we blame for our current computing state? The early industry was basically handed blueprints by Microsoft and IBM some 20 years ago. Then it was left up to those who followed to figure out how to make the best of what was a pretty ungainly attempt at human-computer symbiosis. Of course the Macintosh user interface and the personal digital assistant are some sops, but we're still a world away from where we should--or could--be. The first company that figures out how to free us from our collective computing straitjacket will strike financial gold.

LINKS : CNET'S TECHNOLOGY PORTAL http://www.news.com Old Hindi Music: http://www.70mmbollywood.com/musicmania/mmsea.cfm SOURCE CODE : http://www.codeproject.com/

1) From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2251386.stm New 'moon' found around Earth An amateur astronomer may have found another moon of the Earth. Experts say it may have only just arrived. Much uncertainty surrounds the mysterious object, designated J002E3. It could be a passing chunk of rock captured by the Earth's gravity, or it could be a discarded rocket casing coming back to our region of space. It was discovered by Bill Yeung, from his observatory in Arizona, US, and reported as a passing Near-Earth Object. It was soon realised, however, that far from passing us, it was in fact in a 50-day orbit around the Earth. Earth's new 'moon' is space junk - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2253385.stm Earth's second one is called Cruithne. It was discovered in 1986 and it takes a convoluted horseshoe path around our planet as it is tossed about by the Earth's and the Moon's gravity. MORE AT: http://burtlebu...

Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace which I read a few months back is a great classic involving several generations. In this novel of epic proportions ; the protagonist Rajkumar grows up from a a poor young boy to an old man as the locales in the novel shift from Burma to several parts of India and America in between and running through many other South-East Asian nations - Thailand, Singapore etc from the 19th century till after the WW-II finally ending in the 1990s. Its largely a family saga and this family tree does branch out at a furious pace. The language nurtured by Ghosh's style is very mellow and subtle; yet it never ever got me bored. And even though the book is well researched out and voluminous - about 550 odd pages; the narrative flows without confusing the reader too much unlike Ghosh's Calcutta Chromosome which ends to leave the reader in a tizzy - the only other book of his that I have read till now. The complex British Raj scenario extending from Burma to...

Bought AGATHA CHRISTIE's ' Curtain : Poirot's Last Case ' from Sapna's - Nice wry humour and interesting beginning with a crippled arthitritis ridden Hercule Poirot on a wheel chair . . .

So blogs are I guess an introvert's best way out to say what he feels and preserve for eternity; unless of course there is a blog server crash or a WTC like thing; today being the anniversary of that shocking event - an event stranger than fiction or any sci-fi/action movie I have ever seen. A good link on blogs : http://www.msnbc.com/news/795156.asp A team blog is what I am trying to create but its yet to come up - disinterested extroverts I guess . . . The Howrah-Delhi Rajdhani train accident was real gruesome on 10th Sep - about 150 killed. SAD Results yet to come for 8th sem; gotta wait till then.

Finally I got the much awaited Linux drivers for my Rockwell HCF modem from an initiative by Conexant(nee Rockwell) and Mark Boucher from Homepage of the Linux drivers for Conexant modem chipsets project! http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/ But my dream of surfing using Linux remains unfulfilled... This is what happened: I installed the drivers on Red Hat Linux 7.1 and rebooted. On getting into KDE a deafening high frequency sound started blaring out of the speakers - I had installed both the Riptide and Conexant HCF drivers - so probably the error lay with the sound card settings . Then using Kmix & Xmix I reduced the sound and volume levels And then tried to log in using Kppp after getting my ISP's Primary DSN but after dialling and the connecting sound Nothing at all - this was after I made the dialling mode as pulse from tone.. The sound just became a constant monotone after that I got other messages and warnings like "This facility is not ava...

BE 8th Sem exams got over GREAT RELIEF Waiting for Michael Crichton's release of Prey in November 2002 Heard Shaan's Tanha Dil today on Radio City FM 91 Great Song; Liked it a lot . . .

My first message - Here I am This is me . . .