The Last Day in US

Hello Friends,

Again this experience is exclusively to all of you. Only one change, usually i write about my first, this time its LAST. Today is 16 APR and 1:14 AM while i am writing about my whole journey. For those who don't have enough patience, please move next to your work. First of all this blog is only possible due to SWATI CHAUHAN... Thanks swati... i surprise someone like these boring Experiences.... anyways good news for me... :)

The first day i put my first step after Immegirations and Custom's. We ( i and one of my collegue Navin) reached to a public telephone booth and diled a number for calling CAB(SUPER SHUTTLE). once Neeraj sir gave me a coin of Quater Doller(1/4 doller) to me as a memory. so i used that coin to call the shuttle.. As soon as i finished my call and hang on the phone, a series of coins came down... Aiila..... one quater doller converted in to aproximately 14 quater doller..... he he he... i thought this is great welcome from OBAMA's nation....

Welcome to "Country Of Un-certainty". Oops a new name of "America". great... but its a fact, you never know whats next. When you go to office it's Sunny and 25C temp, suddenly after 3 hr its raining with a great wind chill. Soon you have a great snow storm and you are stuck to your hotel or place for at least two days.

Everything is white, sky, ground, tree's, cars, even people. ;).. suddenly sun start's shining and now you can not came out because of great brightness... he he he...... though its good if its your first ever snow fall, as mine, but soon you will get frustrated, if you have loop of this kind. But anyways, it looks great to have a nice snow.

So lets talk about some good features....

The workculture is totally different from India, i would say.. far far better than India. they came to office 10 PM n leave sharp upto 6PM. U will not see a single person in the office after 6 or 6-30.

WORKING FROM HOME is one of the best feature of their culture. Noone stops you to do so, you can... but one thing they consider... the deadlines.... they never bother about what you are doing now, they only bother about are you doing expectedly or not?

There are few things i really like about US. Nice cultured people.... but its very very odd for we like indians... reason many many more:

1. They will say sorry for like anything. for example: i was roaming in a shopping complex, suddenly handkerchief of a lady fall down to the ground n surprisingly she said sorry to me. Now you can imagine, how often they said sorry each other.

2. Every next person you will meet, he/she will greet you saying.. "hey, how are you doing?" n very promptly you should respond accordingly.... "i am doing good... how about you????"... he he he this is really really good one....

3. They care their pets more than their family members. I didn't have the copy of one of the headlines of the news paper... headline was "A fireman saves CAT from a burning house" and under this headline news contains a details says "Fireman also saves 2 old woman from fire"... thats really really funny moment for me at least.... its a heaven place for pets....

4. Respect for road walker's. All the vehicle's will stop making 10-20 meter's gap between you and the vehicle and they will offer you very gently to go and cross the road... Highways are Exception's..... How sweet, don't even think of it in India... There will be a great GAM i guess.... he he he

5. On the Indira Gandhi airport we have free Wifi facility from Bharti Airtel... on Doha Airport they have free WiFi accessible to all, but in the country of Un-Certainity... no free internet access... charges 5$ for 24 hours @ Airport.... SHOCKED... i was shocked... we reached to airport 3 hours before sheduled time and i thought i will complete this blog from airport... but i think OBAMA don't like my blogs..... :) As i said you canot predict... whats is next.....

So my first weekend was very very light from work point of view. i got a chance to go neuyork. Frankly speaking i was not at all excited to go there. but though i want to go there just to compare, why people go there? Its basically divided in to three parts: DownTown, Middle Town and UpTown. and further each devided in streets.

WalMart, Apna Big Bazaar, a place where you can go everyday. because

1. near to my hotel.

2. Time ka pata nahin chalta hai.

3. if lucky, u can get some good deal also. ;)

Here one more place, BEST BUY. He he ... but most of the time its never a best place to buy anything. but though if you are very very lucky, u can get some good deals. But if you want to spend some good time, go to JC Penney. A place like, The Great India Place, of Noida n even bigger. but though don't expect too much.

They have a well structured Society to live in. they have lots of space where they can build anything... of coarse they have DOLLER power to beat anything.... But being so many great things, i don't want to go back again.... Reason i don't know... but fact is this only.... they have policies now that not favours indians.... they think we are vanishing American jobs but the fact is its just like we don't have any choice other than to work for US otherwise at least i am happy to leave my place for An American if they want..... Anyways..... this overall trip was great.... the only problem was... i am not good cook... so i think my roommate face some problem from my side. Other than that.... i am happy to share this all to you friends. And keen to know about your priceless comments......

Trip US

Oscar Winner for Best Sond A. R. Rahman. Jai Ho

Many Congratulation.

Oscar Winner for Best Score A. R. Rahman.

Many Congratulation.

"This is not all About SLUM and DOG"

Hey All,

I just watched a award winning movie “Slum Dog Millionarie”. The movie was nice and worth watching. It is just like, sit on your chair at hall and want to stay there till the movie finished. We know, all is well if the end is well. “Happy Ending”.

Obviously music was superb. you simply fall in love with the song “Jai Ho” and it will let your feet stepping. Actually here nothing special, “FROM gr8 Rahman”, because he is known for this kind of music, but what makes it gr8 is Oskar. He has not yet won Oscar, but nomination is even like everything for us. I have already said, “We proud to be an Indian, because we are not true Indian.” If they think that this song can give Rahman a nomination to OSCAR, go n listen the song, “Khalbali -RBD” or “Dil Se- “Dil se”". He can even now get a Oscar for his Music.

The point that came to my mind after watching the movie was, why this movie’s name was “SLUM DOG Millionarie”? What the hell this DOG means? And what is most dis-gusting, an indian movie is not even released in INDIA. We are watching a Hindi Dubed version of this movie???? Isn’t it sound very ODD??? For me it is, because we deserve appreciation, we are not begging for it.

But anyways like all news channel’s, i must say, “This is a great movie”. Times of India, Rediff and all those critics rated this movie as 4.5. Why???? because it’s been nominated for OSCAR. and if they didn’t, question will be on them. Everyone came out from cinema hall and said, movie was great. Why???? because it is nominated for OSCAR and got 4 academy award. This is a spirit of true indian. Follow the way Majority is. Because this is the only way we all can survive, even like “Kumari CHANDA bahan-ji“.

If it not true, rate “RDB” or “Taare Jameen Par” now??? It is even better than “Slum ___ Millionaire”. But on docs it is not, because it shows our culture. And they like DOGS.

So my last word’s to Director “Danny Boyle”, India is not all about Slum and Dog. Though we like Millionaire.

“JAI HO”

Your priceless comments are most Welcome.

TouchPad Problem Solved in Fedora

After days and weeks of googling, i somehow found solution to run TouchPad in Fedora Core 9. Though Fedora Core 10* has these related fixes in it, But if you are having less than Core 10, get relax, enter:

i8042.noMux=1

in your grub or lilo configuration as a grub option. And enjoy the ride of TouchPad.( I tried it on my Dell XPS1530).

Cheers.......

I Proud to be an Indian

So we are just waiting for the day to celebrate our republic day... The day we remember for our Sole, our constitution, our integrity, our Patriotism and we feel proud, to be Indian.

Be very honest, are we really feeling it or the date 26 Jan or 15 Aug force us to remind our old days of British Govern and let us fell to proud this nation? Do we really feel proud to be a part of this country? I feel it from the my sole, and i will never let it down.. but the way we carry our whole day schedule, are we really doing anything for the sake of India? The answer is NO, followed by a Question: What we can do???? This whole system is crap... all n all n all...

I just read in a survey, in our Best medical Institution, AIIMS, It takes Rs 1.7 crore to produce a single MBBS doctor at AIIMS. This is the finding of a first-of-its- kind study submitted by AIIMS’ department of hospital administration to the dean recently.

"What’s worse, as an earlier study by the Media Study Group found,over 53% of students who pass out as doctors from AIIMS leave India to work abroad. Of the 2,129 students who passed out in the first 42 batches of the MBBS program at AIIMS — from its inception in 1956 to 1997 — the study team tracked down 1,477 doctors. Of them, 780 or 52.81% were found to be working abroad."

These are the highly skilled person for INDIA, but they are not serving for us. We can easily have a reason for it, Opportunity and Value System. They can count faults in our system like counting by a 2nd standard boy. And not only AIIMS, IIM people are also giving tough fight to their AIIMS brothers. But though we feel like a TRUE Indian. Right?

Many of us might not be agree, because either you are not in AIIMS or IIM or any other big Institution, not have guts to get into them. Yes, because we can not go to US or ABROAD, lets stay here and Say,

"Yes, I proud to be an INDIAN."

Secure your IM conversation with Pidgin

Hey All,

We all know security is a major consern on internet now a days. Because we people use IM very frequently, it is mandatory to make our conversation safe and secure.

Yes, there is a way to truly secure IM conversations between two people. This can be done using Open Source and free software on every major operating system (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux) and every major IM network (Yahoo, MSN, AIM etc.). Now people may ask “Why encrypt if you have nothing to hide?”. Why is it a felony for postal workers to open mail, since its all innocent, right? Why are you worried? It’s called privacy. For no other reason then I don’t want Microsoft indexing my chat conversation and trying to sell me sneakers on a sidebar because I typed the word “Shoes”. Its nobody’s business except mine, end of story.

Lets go over a couple of things first. When you IM a person it does not go directly from you to them. It goes from you, to a server run by the IM providor, and then relayed to your friend. There are multiple security issues here. First, the obvious fact that by default nothing is encrypted anywhere between the three systems in use. Second, your IM conversation is stored temporarily or PERMANENTLY on the IM providers server. While Google offers you the option to save your chat transcripts or go “off-the-record” (don’t confuse this with the OTR application I mention later) I choose not to trust any IM provider.
Now, you might be thinking “Yahoo chat offers me encryption so why not use their built in functionality?”. Well, if you don’t want random people on the internet sniffing your traffic this may be good enough for you. However, if you want to make sure NOBODY (including the chat providors) can see your IM conversation then you need to use a technology/program that uses their network but is not controlled by them, therefore giving you freedom and a much higher level of security.

The programs I recommend are as follows.

Mac OSX - Adium
Windows and Linux - Pidgin

These two programs are Multi-Chat clients, you can use this one program to chat on many networks at the same time and even have multiple accounts on the same network all connected at the same time. This may not seem valuable unless you have a personal account, school account and then a business account. This becomes invaluable.

Pidgin is actually the basis for Adium, as both use the same core libraries but Adium is simply prettied up for Mac. The security feature at the core of this is called OTR - Off The Record. From the OTR website

“Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging allows you to have private conversations over instant messaging by providing:

Encryption

No one else can read your instant messages.

Authentication

You are assured the correspondent is who you think it is.

Deniability

The messages you send do not have digital signatures that are checkable by a third party. Anyone can forge messages after a conversation to make them look like they came from you. However, during a conversation, your correspondent is assured the messages he sees are authentic and unmodified.

Perfect forward secrecy

If you lose control of your private keys, no previous conversation is compromised.”

So lets go over what OTR offers you, authenticaion, super strong encryption (256-bit AES) and a way to authenticate people. Now, the encryption basically works in the background, you don’t have to select anything etc, it uses the best by default. For this to work, two people must both be using OTR complient programs. So, you can have a person using Adium and another using Pidgin on two different operating systems. It does not matter at all. So lets say Tim and Bob are trying this out.

Tim starts a conversation with Bob and they both see a popup asking if they want to secure the session. Both of their chat clients realized they were talking to another OTR capable application. Then Tim’s application asks a weird question, it asks “Are you sure this is Bob?”. This is called authentication. The first time you create a secure session with a user, you both exchange credentials. What Tim is being asked, is if its valid. this will make more sense in a moment. So the application tells Tim, “I know you want a secure connection with this guy but you never had one before”. Tim says, I know Joe and this is him. Joe does the same thing. From now on, it will not ask you to verify eachother because the credentials being passed at the beginning will always be the same.

What happens if Joe is on a new computer and wants a secure connection with Tim? Joe tries to chat with Tim and Tim receives a message saying “Ummmm, Joe wants a secure chat, but Joe is showing us different credentials. What to do?” Tim either tells the system yes this is Joe, or no its an impostor.

This can get MUCH more detailed but we want this for general use , so non-techies can have a secure chat. When this is setup then every chat between you two will be encrypted. Just make sure your preferences are set to try and always initiate a secure chat between clients that are capable. Also, ensure the secure icon is showing a locked or secured state. This is a visual indicator that everything is okay.

Note: Pidgin users must install OTR separately.

I hope this helps, feedback is welcome as always.