Arbit Scratchpad

What actually caused so many deaths - it was not night time; People could swim; People can cling or run from the waves; - was it so rapid or I have no idea about the force of water - fishermen etc can atleast swim; yet such horriying numbers of dead and missing. Death toll is already 80,000 plus overall - 15,000 in India itself. They were swept and drowned ? Data, List of organisations working, Donations etc: DETAILS OF QUAKE/TSUNAMI (Wikipedia) REPORTS (Rediff) HELP HELPLINES ORGANISATIONS WORKING DISSCUSSIONS (Slashdot) WORLD ACTION (CNN) GOOGLE BLOG

Artwork, Dec 25 2004 Quantum Physics and Advaita Philosophy propound the very same concepts. The fact that matter, mind and soul are one and the same - the Prakriti and Purusha -the wave-particle duality ... That state of God or Brahman attainable only through intense meditation to reach Nirvikalpa Samadhi, when the individual soul merges with the supreme soul - the soul of all souls.

The Software Engineer Mouse on Gimp, circa 2004. � Shamit Bagchi I did this some time back, dabbling with GIMP on Linux. I gave it the name 'Surreal' first, then changed it to the above name. Can you guess the meaning of the painting ... MODERN ART -> YUCK !

I had heard a lot about her, had thought and knew of her as a great component of the Carnatic form of Indian classical music. A singer said to be beyond comparison. I had not heard too many of her renditions; only had a vague remeberance that I had watched a movie some ten years back in which she had played the lead role and also sung all the songs. I love to hear Indian classical music whenever I can, Bhimsen Joshi, or instrmental like Chaurasia, Zakhir Hussain, Ravi Shankar etc. But it was only after her recent demise that I kept readng glowing tributes to the legendary singer who came across as a humble and brilliant performer. Then the day after her demise or two days later Doordarshan telecasted the movie Meera; in which she plays the role of Meera - an intro is shown where Sarojini Naidu is praising the effort and characterisation of Meera by MS Subbulakshmi . The movie actually portrays the life of Meera, the unparalleled devotee of Krishna. MS plays the role with aplomb and com...

I am still reading One Hundred Years of Solitude � a marvelous book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; it is a tale of one family as it proliferates, generation after generation. With its myriad characters, each with very similar Spanish names based in an imaginary South American town of Macondo. I got a whiff of some form of writing apart from that of Magic Realism that Marquez is acclaimed for. I would call it the concept of Repeated Negatives � wherein you emphasize and portray the negative behaviours and activities of people and how they become, from good, harmless men and women to direction less, mean, overambitious, egoistic, scheming and morally hollow tyrants. These negative qualities are repeated again and again in great detail and glowing prose, so as to actually in effect cause a definite dislike towards such characters. Apart from this the novel also shows in very mature storytelling, how people suffer from solitude,or loneliness even though they have or do everything in excess a...

I had enumerated the following as motivating factors in a job: Good work - challenging stuff ... Good friendly people - not challenged with an ego complex ... Good infrstructure maybe Good work ethics and mature software practices Creative assignments - strong team work and focus Good food too may be (all the discussion started with this ! - See last post) Further answering the other questions posed: What is challenging stuff?? Work that makes you think - has twists and turns - rather than just converting requirements into code. Including the brainstorming sessions in a group and design strategies. You are not just assigned something and thats all ... Not brainlessly and repeatedly doing something again and again - eg: lots of GUIs What is creative work? Creative would be something that is innovative in its own way - may be new ways of doing things. Learning/discovering/inventing on the job and through mentors about new techniques, new mechanisms, ...

Bug 269962 - Viewed Pages not visible/do not open in 'Work Offline' mode I put it up on Bugzilla As I had mentioned I get an error message when I try to open a fully loaded and viewed page later after I have closed the browser ... and started it again in the next session or after restarting the PC. (This is not with just dynamically generated pages) IF YOU TOO ARE FACING THE SAME PROBLEM - GO VOTE FOR THE BUG - AS ITS STILL MARKED AS AN UNCONFIRMED BUG ... UPDATE : THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO HAPPEN FOR ALL PAGES Currently listening to : 'Bam Bhole' by Sunidhi Chauhan Currently Reading : The Lords of the Rings - JRR Tolkien POLITICS : The First refuge of Scoundrels - TJS George One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The turn of events is ominous - the head of the Kanchi Mutt Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati's arrest smacks of political motives - Jayalalitha's handling the case is stupid, malafide and plain insulting ... A senior pontiff of a religious community (read Hindu) and venerated by millions cannot be humiliated in such a lousy fashion. The seer was neither informed in advance, nor his statement taken at his arrest and he was kept in a jail even though Laloo can be kept in VIP luxury. The sequence of events can take a disastrous turn if the communal overtones this event signifies are not handled. An Iteresting quote by someone : The claim by Jayendra Saraswathi that he will not get justice if he is sent to police custody is a slur on the Kanchi Mutt, and undermines the spirituality which it is supposed to purvey. For, the Junior Acharya who returned to the Mutt on November 16, appealed to all devotees to offer special prayers from November 17. "They cou...

As reported in my previous post - this is what I get when I try to open a viewed page later; after I have closed the browser ... and started it again in the next session or after restarting the PC. 

The browser is too good - tabbed browsing, ads blocked, RSS feeds, integrated search toolbar, skinnable, extensions, much more secure (observed those HTTPS URL highlight when you open GMail) and rock solid stable ... Thats FireFox 1.0 PR (yet to use the final release) for you. However why do pages that I have viewed a few days back not visible after a few days - Any setting that any of you are aware of ? Conjectures - Once you close the browser or the OS does it erase the cache on opening next time and where is the cache kept ? Please tell me - I have completely shifted to FireFox from the crashy IE 6.0 - However this thing is nagging me ...

...It is not Death but the beginning or start of a new journey towards the Ultimate Goal Grieve not ... Its a new chance !

The very nature of human mind is to think of reaching greater heights - but a certain thing becomes the object of defining this success. It is essentially learning, wisdom and knowledge in abstract terms. In material terms either name or fame or money - the lucre plays an important role in this world today - it is something that everyone needs how much ever you deny its need. It is something that should be used and not be run behind - I was reading and both Swami Vivekananda and Buddha say - make money and use it as any other thing but do not get obsessed with it - it should not become a blind illusion. Swami Vivekananda in his writings mentions - work hard, earn the money lawfully and as much as you want, but never remain attached to it - be ready to give up your money and riches at any time. This thought was running in my mind, a lump in my throat and these words are like a vomiting �?? in fact that mind dump ... Both the abstract and material aspect that I mention above give us stre...

Mobile Phone - Nokia 2300 Went for the Nokia 2300 - simple basic features with FM Radio - I dont think a mobile is meant to be a video or image capture device - go for a handycam/digicam instead. Colour display also is nothing great to shell out double the price - I want a phone to speak and keep in touch, not view images or play games in.

Ma in all her glory ...  

Ma Chandi, Shakti, Shanti, Durga - Namastasyay Namastasyay Namastasyay Namo Namaha ! 

Karthik - the globe trotting god ... 

Ganesh - the elephant god of success (siddhi) and wisdom (buddhi) ! 

Lakshmi - the goddess of wealth ! 

The Sandhi puja - the moment of victory of Ma Durga over the demon Mahishasura. 

In bright daylight 

Saraswati - The goddess of learning ... 

Some photographs of our Jayamahal Durga Puja conducted this year. Courtesy my friend Rick Banerjee (with a Canon digicam ...) 

Hello is great ... Also another tool - Picasa to create a better, more organized viewing and editing experience for digital photo files. This is what I got on the Picasa download site : Warning: fopen(/named_cache/campaigns/default/child/102004): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/tomahawk/picasa_www/includes/lib/_misc.php on line 65 Warning: fopen(/named_cache/campaigns/default/102004): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/tomahawk/picasa_www/includes/lib/_misc.php on line 65 Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/tomahawk/picasa_www/includes/lib/_misc.php:65) in /home/tomahawk/picasa_www/includes/common.php on line 58

Durga Puja Ends  The festival of the victory of good over evil and the victory of Goddess Durga over the tyranny of Mahishasura - Durga Puja got over with Vijaya Dashami yesterday with the immersion of the idols in Ulsoor lake among revelry and dancing and shouts of "Bolo bolo Durga Ma ki Jai" . 4-5 days of great merriment and fasting till afternoons and pujas and cultural programs and community food and festival ... I came back home yesterday - This time it was the 50th year celebrations of our puja - 'The Jayamahal Sarbajanin Durga Samiti' - and the clay-based idols of the Goddess Durga and others - Ganesh, Saraswati, Lakshmi and Karthik in all white colours - were just too good with all the intricate Sola work and traditional decorations ... About 3 lakh bengalis reside in Bangalore today and about 20 pujas are conducted all over the city. We friends went out on the last day and saw four of the other pujas being conducted in town. If I catch hold of some ...

Well I have decided to shift to LiveJournal - BLOGMIND - SHAMIT Go Thither ...

Alter Ego ...

The mind has an array of thoughts all hidden in the ups and downs of the brain matter ready to course through the nerves and rise and cause some action or make us realize something. Things can get contradictory at times - the environment plays the role of a catalyst. The company or situation you are in can make you react - positive feedback or stimuli or thoughts of a positive or agreeable nature result in pleasure and those that are on direct conflict causes resistance or displeasure or disgust. Something that you hate for long, for sudden reasons because of certain positive developments may cause signals of positive to emanate from that. This can you leave you confused as to your current opinion towards that object or thing; especially if it plays a important role in your life. 'Take it as it comes' is something that every human tries to escape from. As I observe if someone or a group is doing something to maintain your individuality you try to do something different - unique...

This is a test for blogging from email ! EBooks : http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp?CurrentPage=1 (Need to download 'Of Human Bondage' by Maugham on the page below ... ) http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp?CurrentPage=3&cachecommand=bypass

Security - Global Perspectives Thoughts about hoaxes on blogs ... Someone claiming he is someplace in the world but not exactly from there. Lets say I claim I am in Calcutta whereas I am blogging away from Bangalore. Or for that matter claiming anything - once he becomes a regular read/reliable source Can you detect from Yahoo Messenger? May be based on the IP address ... In a Telephone conversation this can be done using Caller ID. That way mobiles are much more transparent nothing can be hidden ! Whats this quad band phone ? Anyone ? Google with its Blogger, GMail, Orkut, Google searches etc can be a deadly combination in terms of gathering personal information if you think about it. But they have claimed not to be "Evil" - what if the US of A government is able to arm twist them. From the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 reviews that I read the contacts that they have � and from the books we find these guys (CIA, FBI etc) are capable of doing anything ... And what with M...

Blogs - Merits & Demerits I had a friend who said that all these blog/personal websites etc is 'bakwaas' (stupid/waste in Hindi, the national language of India) and a waste of both time and money. I doubt he knew what a blog is, he had just seen my blog and made a comment, however the point he raised is debatable. Was he practical? He used to work with me and has gone on to find a job at one of the best companies and is successful - wheres as I am not exactly so in my opinion. So is that true ? What do you say ? Even the person who introduced me to blogs never started one, probably he is too busy to start off on whims - probably it does your image some damage when you blog in public ? Just because someone blogs should I blog too ? What do you see as the merits and demerits of blogs as a medium ? Too intrusive or personal a medium; just a fad/whim? Or a storehouse of information, invaluable thoughts and knowledge sharing ?

What? A Blog? - Blog what ? - What a blog ? Exactly two years, since I started blogging. Started in September 2002 (Go read the Archives). Started off with Blogger(TM) - the pioneers in blogging software 'PUSH BUTTON PUBLISHING', and I have stayed put - even after Rediff, LiveJournal etc etc came in. It has steadily added lots of features and is improving rapidly, especially the recent launch after Google took over Blogger, a year back. Its been a nice way to tell all, in whatever way you want - wash the dirty laundry in public ? That is the description, in the crudest of ways. It lets you keep up the contact, with people from far and wide and also the near yet far. Writing skills may (or may not) improve. A language is a medium by which we communicate our innermost thoughts to another person. What are all those thoughts worth if they do not spread and tickle, provoke, or illumine others into thinking or doing. Thoughts are the very triggers for action ! For all knowl...

I have 3 G M a i l invites pending. Do tell me if you want one ... Google's Bangalore R&D Centre seems to be in hiring mode: http://www.google.com/jobs/sw-bangalore.html

The Belur Math and The Dakshineshwar Temple The post that I had promised earlier, after those crazy posts in the mean time. During my recent visit to Kolkata, I had been to the Belur Math - the place where The Ramakrishna Mission was established by Swami Vivekananda when he placed the ashes of his master Sri Ramakrishna, and laid the foundation for a temple for it. The temple has a beautiful and pleasant dark sandstone colour. The interiors when I went in was filled with devotees and the evening bhajans/kirtans were being sung. As soon as I entered it, I was in some other world. The temple is like any other Ramakrishna Math with an idol made of marble of Sri Ramakrishna seated in Samadhi, and Sarada Devi's photo in the left side inside a little room. The kirtans were so soul stirring that I just sat there in rapture for a while as this melodious song was being sung by a large group of monks; as if the whole of the temple was vibrating in consonance with positive ene...

Dissection (v.): cut apart so as to show the internal structure. The little boy slept on - unaware of what was happening outside [He was dreaming - some suspect he was retarded] [Sound moral ground, hypochondriac, mental placebo, confusion abound] His father thought he would never know he slapped his wife and held a axe to finish her off and threw her so she vanished in the cold of the night [ Allegory Act 1] The tender yet submissive mother and the fiery form yet to form. [Moronic stand of the Nth status for monolithic solitude - Himalayas flash again and again] He wanted to get rich nothing else - come what may [Disruptive thoughts for disruptive ideas to get famous] As I write this I can still hear those ghastly shouts emanating from that house in the darkness. Blood curdling shrieks as they were that would awake the cruelest demons and devils from their deepest slumber [Highly volatile dump of the mind] [World power domination Iraqi interim administration] The TV bla...

Thinking of switch from Desktop to Laptop Planning to sell off my PC - It was a HP Pavilion which cost me a whopping amount of about 65K (INR) when I bought it back then in Jan 2000. With an Intel Pentium III 450 MHz processor with MMX technology 100 MHz FSB Chipset Intel 440BX/100, 192 MB RAM, 40 GB Seagate HDD, along with an nVidia Riva TNT graphics card with 8MB VRAM. Further details here : HP Pavilion PC Model 8505 (AP) - Product Specifications One of my colleagues suggested putting an ad on FreeAds, I am planning how much to specify as the selling price (Negotiable though). Any idea guys. Would 15-20K be appropriate. Or sell the parts separately ? I am thinking of a laptop next - any idaes what would be a good deal ? I recently saw a IBM ThinkPad model for about something like 55K (INR) - Intel Celeron Mobile 2.2 GHz, 256MB DDR SDRAM, Combo drive etc etc ... Or should I go for an AMD processor based system ? Guys suggest something. I would not like to ...

WikiWikiWeb This is just great - Books and data and loads of information for free - that you can modify, add to and edit. Heard of Wiki ? (A wiki (pronounced "wicky", "weeky" or "wi-key") is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that gives users the ability to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by other users.) Here are some amazing things : Wikipedia - An open-content encyclopedia Wikibooks - Free textbooks and manuals Wikisource - Free source documents Here are some samples : Data Encryption Standard - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Fractal - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Theology - From WikiBooks (The portion on Hindu Theology/Philosophy was added by Shamit Bagchi - neat right ?) It says at the Wikibooks submission site : Please note that all contributions to Wikibooks are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License (see Wikibooks:C...

Back from Kolkata Was home by 11 am today, it was a refreshing three weeks ... Had a good time with cousins - visiting them and they coming over - I have plenty of cousins. One of them got married recently. It was a grand family reunion of sorts and getogethers, food and music flowed unhindered; Bengali culture - I am amazed to find everyone grows up to become talented singers and players of musical instruments - it runs in their veins I guess. Also visited quite a few places of interest this time: The Victoria Memorial - Storehouse of British paraphernalia and details of old Calcutta its history and growth and the luminaries it produced. The paintings on display are amazing depicting the vivid perspectives of the British on various places, events and aspects of India. Its strange that after so many years I have managed to visit this Calcutta landmark with parents and cousins. The monument is imposing in white marble and the intricate frescoes on the walls and color tinte...

Good News ... ! Finally some good news - Ill be chugging off to Calcutta tomorrow; I'll be there for the next 3 weeks at my grandfather's place. So hope to keep you updated from The City of Joy ! Its more than 2 years since I have been to Calcutta last.   Some respite this will be ... 

HIDDEN THOUGHTS, DESIRES, DIRECT CONFLICT AND IDEALS Well basically a signature on one of my colleague's mails :'Dont forget you are unique just as everyone one else is ...' makes me ponder over quite a few things. As I realise I have often and often compared myself to the next guy or a couple of guys and felt happy or miserable based on that analysis. Let me be frank here. To some extent even aping or imitating behaviour and mannerisms.Often my cribs were utter nonsense on the lines of - he can ride a bike I cant ... ; he seems to be aware of all the places in Bangalore and I dont know most ... Kiddish no ? A psychological anxiety - I maintained these thoughts in the subconcious even though always acted as if I did not care and as a result did not try to develop those very skills or percieved skills that I thought I lacked. Maybe not very simple thought processes I agree, cant help it. I am basically trying to break free and develop a unique stamp/seal...

[ Futurama Redefined ::: Me and my future ] Future Rama - All loaded with stealth stun weapons and the muscular super-ape in toe. I wanted to be a writer, a scientist, a paleobiologist, a history scholar, anything; but ended up being a software engineer. SOFTWARE ENGINEER : (n.) someone who surfs the net at work and checks mail every hour and earns cash for this. Software engineer = tension (says who ?) - not here where I work. Dont get the tension up to your head - its so cool out here (where is the AC remote). As I blogged about the disgust at life, work and stuff - it all seems so foolish now. Why am I wasting precious bandwidth(says who, see what happened to the tech savvy AP Kar and Vajpayee governments). Tried to boil my blood, instead should have tried to convert my extra flab (loads of it) onto more important things probably brain matter and turned as slim as that Barbie doll my little cousin back in Calcutta has - hey shes going to faint of anorexia. Just...

LINUX KERNEL 2.6.3 AND OTHER STORIES   Well I just built the Linux kernel 2.6.3 and installed it - first time it booted it gave some errors but no problems - it did not have vfat support enabled. However the speed is much better and mouse motion is fluid.  So again I built it - this next time it gave a kernel panic while booting up - something about not being able to read the file format - I had missed out mkinitrd (or make install ) left it at make modules_install ...   The .config file need to be generated and its tedious through make menuconfig - you may miss out many options. Instead this is good idea : cp /boot/config-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl .config   (for FEDORA CORE 1 that I am using)   The 1st build is still working but its not reading the CD-ROM drive (block device), floppy drive and no vfat reading support as I mentioned.   Check this site out - http://stopdesign.com/  - A famous web designer ...

Just started reading The Rainmaker by JOHN GRISHAM. Its about a lawyer just getting out of law school and literally penniless, as he starts his career with a millionaire lady and a leaukemia victim fighting against a insurance firm, as his first clients ...

BLOGMIND DUMP - Blog Self Censor :: Deleted last post - was too gross for sensible readers - Amitav Ghosh's next novel is out - 'The Hungry Tide' - based in the Sundarbans (should be good !). - Currently reading : Selections from Swami Vivekananda's Complete Works. - Expect less - Motto of life 'Simple living High thinking' - Indians are loosing this simple concept mentioned above and hence all the miseries. - The spiritual development in East has been emphasized and respect/affection for fellow humans is more Poverty and Purity being the essentials. - The material aspect has caught on like a bug from the western outlook - which is totally artificial and deadly delusive. - Indulge yours senses more and the more yours senses will ask for - much much more. Eg : Get a CTV; then a Flat TV, Then with combo drive/DVD , then HDTV then what not ... - Spiritual comfort/development >> Intellectual >> Physical ... (LEGEND : >> = greater t...

TRAVEL : PUNE AND BACK Back from Pune on some project related work. Weather was not very unpleasant though it is summer. Last day we (two of us) got drenched while coming back. Travel to and fro was in the Volvo bus; because it was planned at one days notice. I will never take that mode of travel again. Its costly and yet a pain.

Conflict - Call it The Paradox of Life ... The question of who is the greater - one who renounces everything or one who struggles through the worldly affairs bearing all the pain as a result of attachments. I feel taking up either with total sincerity is a tough proposition - the mind tends to waver at times in times of crisis and mental anxiety. There are three levels of satisfaction and comfort that are possible - One is physical comfort and satisfaction of the senses - The next is intellectual comfort and satisfaction (for the mind) - and the third is spiritual contemplation and growth ... Now depending on the person, one of the above holds sway and either the Sattvic, Rajasic or Tamasic tendencies take precedence and mould the nature of man. For a person it may so happen that a job/work/profession satisfies all physical needs but not the intellectual, thus causing a mental agony and misery that he is not using the intellect and letting it rust ... But spiritual ...

The Sound Demon (not daemon) on Linux I was playing a bengali song on my PC - the rich silky voice of Lopamudra Mitra on XMMS ... I had built and installed MPlayer some days back. I thought of just starting a video simultaneously. As soon I did the following : mplayer /win1/movies/The\ Matrix/Part1.DAT Once or twice the video screen came up and then disappeared failing on some count or the other All the codecs are in place and mplayer install was successful and yet it does not work. Then the screen came up and remained blank - it neither played video nor audio. But the XMMS output changed to a strange voice of some man (remember it was playing a female voice a few minutes back) Then I stopped mplayer and again started and the audio output became even more morphed like the voice of some ghost. I closed and restarted XMMS but the audio remains like an old ghost/demon - thus came the audio ghost into my system. CAN YOU DECIPHER THE FOLLOWING OUTPUT OF MPlayer : Most ...

WHO AM I - WHERE ARE WE ? There are a few things that hinder the progress of an individual, a relation, a group, a community, a religion and even a nation. Ego - The all powerful yet tremendously deceptive 'I' ... USA for the collective 'I' and its blatant racism and human atrocities Arrogance - The BJP's fall this hustings is one great example. Selfishness/Isolation - The frog in a well attitude - as I realize everyday of my monotonous, routine life ... Languor - getting lazy to take on something head on - postponing things indefinitely. Attitude - Very difficult to keep up the right attitude all the time - the wrong attiude can trigger a downfall. Jealousy/Narrowmindedness - Can harm your interaction with people and always make you crave for more. And as usual the other aspects of Anger, Desire ... are the catalysts on the path to doom. The areas are greying out becoming all very mixed up - people care only for money. Those who have it can crea...

U-TURN PUTS MANMOHAN IN HOT-SEAT. Manmohan Singh, the erudite Oxford-educated economist who started the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 is the prime minister designate. Great news for the country as a whole. Sonia's gesture to opt out of PM's post is appreciable at best. Though rumours are Kalam may have had adviced or inquired about her dual nationality status though the prez office is denying it. Also the fear of assassinations etc. Shows the lady is no less shrewd (may have been advised well by her aides) - she has prepared Congress for the next polls and also tried to settle some old wounds - remember Operation Bluestar - and the slaughter of Sikhs by the congress party after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Anyway Sushma Swaraj's gimmicks were in bad taste. Vajpayee has decided to opt out of Leader of opposition post - he is the cornerstone of BJP's popularity - will his move push the party into oblivion ? Where does this leave the BJP ?...

THE GREAT INDIAN SHAME The election results have been ominous for the nation and the kind of coalition that is expected to come in is as someone put it 'a bunch of contradictions' - the left parties and congress coming together just to share power - power corrupts - absolute power corrupts absolutely. Imagine the kind of powers we are investing into the hands of a foreigner who refused to become an Indian for the first 17 years of her stay in India prefering to instead stay an italian. The following excerpts are from S Gurumurthy's article that appeared in Times of India : �"What is wrong if she is the Prime Minister," is an argument that comes not from the ordinary people of India, but from the educated Indian. This comes from the Chidambarams and from the Rajdeeep Sardesais of this country; this comes from editorial writers sitting in cities. So let us analyse this issue with all its implications for a country like India, which has an unbroken civilis...

iTunes I have been trying iTunes 4.2 for the past week or so - its going to replace Winamp on my dektop no doubts; the music quality is great and also the slick and enhanced looks, features - Winamp looks too flashy/artificial and is a definite memory hog in front of iTunes - iTunes 4.5 was released by Apple yesterday ... Go check out the new features for yourself !

PATCHED VERSION The XWeb web server for Linux systems that had been found to have some serious vulnerability. Updates has been uploaded to FRESHMEAT and my Geocities site ... http://freshmeat.net/projects/httpwebserver/ & http://in.geocities.com/shamit_bagchi - Directory traversal bug - cgi-bin access flaw - URL identification errors; have been fixed. Donato Ferrante (http://www.autistici.org/fdonato/) had pointed out the directory traversal flaw. The Merits of Open Source Development Framework come to the fore ... This is when you understand how exciting and useful the open source community is - to actually try out and find errors themselves and inform the general public - thanks Donato Ferrante for making me feel an integral part of the open source community - the vulnerability has got published in many many places that you cannot even imagine - even in US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin SB04-091 March 31, 2004 Its only because of this that I have u...