shantanoo

You can find it over http://www.dhoomketu.net.in/node/9

Was going through some news article on Indonesia quake and stumbled upon following link:

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/suhasinihaidar/218/15704/pakistan-needs-our-help-on-terror-not-the-other-way-around.html

Reminded me of an english proverb learnt during school days:

God help those who help themselves.

Friend send me following link. Worth spending time reading it.

http://www.maayboli.com/hitguj/messages/75/112483.html?1152632912

After a long long long time, I decided to clear up my gmail's trash. All this time never looked at it thinking that after some time, e-mails in trash are automatically deleted. But it was a shock to see 15000+ e-mails over there. gmail displays following message.

(messages that have been in Trash more than 30 days will be automatically deleted)

when you select Trash. But still e-mails are not delete. I have e-mails dated 18 Feb 2005. And all these e-mails are residing on google's storage. Time to delete!!!

After a long time thought updating the journal. Reservation issue is quite hot right now. So thought that I should put my few thoughts.

Somesh sent me the following photos.










I don't know the original source of the photos. If anyone knows with whom the copyrights are, please let me know so that I can ask for the permission for putting it over here.

Medical students are fighting against the reservation policy. But till date, not a single political party came up their opinions regarding reservations. Every political party is silent. All of them are supporting the reservation policy.

On one hand we are opening our markets under WTO policies, and on the other hand we are forcing reservations.

While STFW about 'uniform civil code in India' got following

From Uniform Civil code on Wikipedia. (Worth reading the whole article)

Uniform civil code is a term originating from the concept of a civil law code. It envisages administering the same set of secular civil laws to govern different people belonging to different religions and regions. This supersedes the right of citizens to subject themselves different personal laws based on their religion or ethnicity. The common areas covered by a civil code include:

* personal status
* rights related to acquisition and admintration of property
* marriage, divorce and adoption


Usage of this term is prevalent in India where the Constitution of India lays down the administration of a uniform civil code for its citizens as a Directive Principle, but has not been implemented till now. The secular Uniform Civil Code is opposed by Muslims, Christians and parties like the Indian National Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) . These are also referred to as "secularists". Those in favour of a secular Uniform Civil Code are the Bharatiya Janata Party , the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. These are also referred to as "Communalists". Thus, in India, there exists a peculiar situation where the opponents of a secular law are called "Secularists" while those in favour of a secular law are termed "communalists" or even "fascists".

From Rediff news,
Do we need the Uniform Civil Code?
SC favours introduction of Uniform Civil Code
which were published in July 2003.


After watching 'Rang de basanti' many people thought that they will do something. But how many of us have really taken it seriously? 30 minutes after the we finished watching movie we are back to square one. Upto certain extend, I am also included in that we.

...


I tried to put few of my thoughts. Not the opinions. :). '...' are intentional for the comments.

BTW, all standard disclaimer(s) are applicable whereever required and/or necessary.

While I was writing this, someone sent me Devil's Advocate: Arjun Singh. Worth reading :).

Yesterday with no particular reason, I thought of upgrading the drupal installation on dhoomketu. Did not have much time to go through the upgradations notes, so without thinking much directly upgraded it. And in the new version, directory listing was not allowed. Needed to access some directly, so uninstalled drupal thinking that it will not touch database unless I do it manually. And before I could understand whats going on, everything was lost. :((. Lost the howto regarding 'Enabling देवनागरी support on *nix'. Will take some time to write it again unless I get the cached version from someone. Maybe google ;).

Today came across this article about Microsoft Antivirus. Its really confusing for me why Microsoft is launching Antivirus Software for its own OS. If they already know the loop-holes, bugs ... why it is not fixed in the OS itself? Or is it not possible for them to understand their own code? ;)

Disclaimer: Above thoughts/opinions are my own and they don't have any relation to my employer..... etc. ;)

Compile Firefox 1.5 with pango support and installed few extension. One of them is this one and testing it right now. Gave me a warning that some features will be disabled.

Today bought Sony brand NiMH rechargeable batteries (Qty. 4) along with the charger. From a reputed shop. Fotofast. Due to office was not able to check till evening. Found out one of the cell to be faulty. Went back to Fotofast and they denied replacing it. Don't know why. No proper reason given. AFAIK, batteries cannot be repaired. So check with the 'Sony Exclusive Showroom'. They say we don't know anything. You must go to service center. Also Sony India don't have this product listed on their site. Really confused about the way these people work. Outside India they immediately replace the faulty product. And in India they don't know what replacement is. Will be visiting Fotofast and Sony's service center [for repairing batteries ;)] on thursday (positively).

sunson suggested to use gnupod for the iPod Shuffle. Millon thanks to him for pointing me to it. It just worked and works :).
Earlier I tried gtkpod which did not work for me and I am still not able to get it working. The other nice thing I obeserved about gnupod is it does not modifies the name of the songs stored on iPod. On the other hand iTunes rename the files to random name. Thus you cannot copy the specific song unless you know the exact name if you use iTunes. Thus I can continue using FreeBSD.

Got iPod shuffle. Really nice gadget. And very much useful while you drive in traffic and try to find road while you drive through potholes. ;). But till now can't find out the iTunes for FreeBSD. Neither any other program which can sync iPod Shuffle. :((.

From 0800 HRS, 25 Jul 2005 its raining over here. Collector's office issued an alert. Dam's doors have been opened. Was thrown out of the office yesterday because of it.

Remembered the song:

येरे येरे पावसा,
तुला देतो पैसा,...

Last weekend saw 'Bunty aur Babli'. And after quite long time saw a movie which outperformed my expectations. Was worser than I expected. Keep all things which help you think, get tickets in !balcony and then you will enjoy the movie. Was surprised to hear that its making good business. Well I am not going to draw any conclusion(s) ;)

Wasted ~2 nights installing FreeBSD and then SuSE to find out the xorg 6.8 has major issue(s) with the native 'nv' drivers :((. And at last installed knoppix which had XFree. Till the bug is fixed, I must stay away from xorg. :D

Got some time to kill. So decided to do TP. So did the following :)


Dreams


?? Which Angel Or Demon Are You ??
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================================
US group labels RSS, Osho cult ‘terror’ outfits
By Mohua Chatterjee/TNN

New Delhi: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is furious with an American think-tank for declaring it a terrorist organisation and lumping it with a whole host of hardcore jehadi organisations as well as secessionist outfits.
The Sangh leadership has written to the Terrorism Research Centre, protesting against the terrorist tag, but is yet to get a response.
The solace to the RSS, however, comes from an interesting inclusion — the fact that followers of the Osho cult have also been put on the list. It is the first time that Oshoites, known for their controversial views, have been accused of terrorism.
The reasons for the resentment are not far to seek, for others on the list virtually make up the who’s who of the terror club. The 38 short-listed to give the Sangh company include jehadi biggies like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Hizbul Mujahideen, who were declared ‘foreign terrorist organisations’ by the US.
================================

ROFLOL. US Groups need to update their information, and do something sensible.

Apollo


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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As the subject suggests, thats what I got feedback from one of my friend. :((.

NOTE: Homepage is the page which is being read.