Bug Vanquisher: Fun

Farewell IE

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:18:08 GMT

I finally decided to change system’s default browser from IE to FF. About time, it is.

DO NOT PROCEED

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:20:22 GMT

Feel free to click if you have 10 minutes!

"The thing inside"

If They Say So

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:19:28 GMT

It seems IE8 passed Acid2 test. Big deal! Really. It is over on IE blog and almost every Microsoft blogger is writing about it. The fact is falsely amplified because FF 2.x does not render that page correctly.

So, for the love of FF, I wrote this in the comments of that post.

[Update: Some 90 minutes later, I am writing this again for the love of FF. FF 3 beta 2 does sort of pass Acid2 test. And this is what appears in it]

Minus Zero Really Matters!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:30:02 GMT

Don't believe me? Have a look at this.

Read One, Get One Free

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:00:58 GMT

These two just inned from Microsoft, upon registering my express editions of VCS and VC++, but not in readable format.

It Had Nothing To Do With Pakistan

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 21:06:53 GMT

پیار تو ہونا ہی تھا

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:35:53 GMT

Living under emergency. :)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071103/ap_on_re_as/pakistan

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/11/03/pakistan.emergency/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7076670.stm

A Google Tragedy

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:32:18 GMT

When did this

happen?

باجی زندہ باد

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:30:52 GMT

او باجی جی! تسی گریٹ ہو

تم چھٹی والے دن نہ آئیں اور آج سب کی چھٹی کروائی

شکریہ

میرے ووٹ تمہارے نام

Playing with GSM Modems

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:14:49 GMT

Are you a guru of AT commands? I just started playing with them and feel myself completely at home around the AT stuff. I'll be assuming you are familiar with hyper terminal which I use to exercise total control over poor SIM card.

The play begins with you sending AT+CGMI to the modem. The modem will greet you with its name and hyper terminal chipping in with an 'OK'. Hyper terminal will chip in most of the time, so I'll skip those parts. In case of some error, you get a plain 'ERROR', 'NOT CONNECTED' or some other weird error essentially telling you that you are not welcome at the moment. Do take the time to check properly that device is connected, powered up, and has a SIM inside.

Next, tinker with device status by sending AT+CPAS. In reply, you will get a number if successful which should be 0 if the device is ready. Now, mention your intention of message store you wish to inspect/modify. The relevant command in AT+CMPS?. The return message upon success will look something like this: "SM",30,30,"SM",30,30,"SM",30,30 or "SM",0,30,"ME",25,25,"SM"30,30. To interpret this cryptic line, split across every string value. SM stands for SIM memory and ME for flash memory on the device/phone. Second number is the used storage and the third number is available storage. Going the next higher level, first triplet means the inbox location, second is the flash store (not always available) and the last one is the outbox location.

Lets set that location to SIM for everything. The appropriate command is AT+CPMS="SM","SM","SM". Now, the first operation you would like to perform is to finding out what's inside, won't you? This has one small (actually, really big) problem. You may execute AT+CMGL=<your wish> to find out all messages from inbox or outbox. <your wish> can have any of these values:

Wish	Interpretation
REC UNREAD	Retrieves all unread messages from inbox.
REC READ	Retrieves all read messages from inbox.
STO UNSENT	Retrieves all unsent messages from outbox.
STO SENT	Retrieves all sent messages from outbox.
ALL	Retrieves all messages from inbox regardless of their status.

The hugely small problem I mentioned earlier is that retrieving a message from inbox always marks it as read. It is a destructive read.

But that problem has a twisted solution, remember everything you got on REC UNREAD and mark them UNREAD again. Your DRAM is doing that all the time! You will need this command AT+WMSC=<NN>,"REC UNREAD". <NN> is the 1-based message index. This command can also mark a message READ by "REC READ", but that is redundant as you can do that already by merely viewing it.

You can have your revenge on anyone by sending SMS from hyper terminal. They will be astonished by your lowly quality of attack. Just remember this command:

AT+CMGS="<mortal enemy's number in international format>"<CR>
blah blah, <crtl-Z>

But that blah blah portion must be limited to less than about 150 characters. We are riding the backyard alley, things are really what they seem to be. It will not accept your bickering which exceeds 150 characters in length.

If you want to hide your track, you certainly need to delete some SMS. Enter AT+CMGD. This command takes a message index to delete at that position (AT+CMGD=2). or write it like this: AT+CMGD=1,<N>. <N> has the possible values of:

N	Interpretation
0	Message at location 1 is deleted. AT+CMGD always defaults to 0.
1	All READ messages are deleted.
2	All SENT messages are deleted.
3	All READ, SENT and UNSENT message are deleted.
4	All messages are deleted.

And of course, I have set the category to 'Fun' because I think it is fun doing this with hyper terminal instead of using some object library which issues AT commands behind the scenes without you being any the wiser, ever!

Of Paging and Buses

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:20:59 GMT

This bus has nothing to do with this bus or this. I was referring to this bus instead. So, you got up in the morning and walked to bus stop and hitched a ride to office/school/college in that public bus.

Given the messy time it is in morning, everyone very busy with themselves on the roads, people bustling here and there, buses full to bursting point, it is hard to find a seat in the bus. What means do you employ to gain hold of a seat? Pushing, feigning a sick health ( :-) ), asking someone to sit up and give you their seat, bullying as the last resort? Whatever means you use, you will surely benefit if you had read a little about how operating systems do paging.

Different algorithms used to paging have a variety of characteristics and performance guarantees associated with them. They can also help you make your decision about where to sit, what to do to grab a seat and certainly, what to avoid.

Perhaps the best is the one which replaces the page which won't be needed for the longest. Analogous to this, you should seek the passenger who will leave their seat the earliest, use whatever means to gain hold. This strategy suffers the same problem as that algorithm mentioned, you cannot know beforehand who is going to leave when, unless you employ heuristics. For example, you may consider standing near school/college students when their institute is nearing, they will leave in a hurry.
Then, the worst choice is FIFO. You cannot expect people to play fair and offer you a seat if they can do otherwise.
Try going for the least recent arrival, corresponding page replacement algorithm is LRU. The person who is sitting the longest is likely to get off in near future as compared to others.
Given your specific route, most people will tend to get on and off quite quickly or they may stick with you for a long time. Choose wisely. The person who get into the vehicle recently is likely to leave after a short time.
Pick a random seat and stand near them. Here again, you can use some heuristics. People usually start to look on the road pretty closely when they are about to get off the bus. You may want to choose such a passenger.
Consider assigning a certain likelihood to the nearby passengers. If they are busy reading, their stop is far from your comfort. If someone is talking non-stop, their stop is no where near their recognition of surroundings!
Don't go anywhere near old people and those visibly sick. They will have higher precedence than you when a seat needs to be filled. You will waste your time and chance which would be better utilized some place else.
[Update: 18/09/2007] Large groups of people tend to get off the bus near community places like shopping malls, something religious, hospitals [ :) ], schools, colleges etc. Spot such a group if some community place is on your path.
[Update: 07/11/2007] People do not actively seek vacant seats but instead tend to stay at one place. This call for spatial locality.
[Update: 07/11/2007] If you regularly take a route, you can remember people's faces and easily predict who gets off when. Hence, the temporal locality.

Man of the House

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:57:08 GMT

Just five minutes ago, I was man of the house. Everyone senior to me was off to some other chore than sit in office and command me. Meaning, I was my own team lead, an occupational hazard of being the junior most member of a development team. :(

However, this loneliness gave me total control over many aspects of the project and I had my say in everything. This lead to me discovering four obscure, esoteric, obnoxious bugs in code and state transitions.

Totally Cool

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:15:23 GMT

http://www.forumwales.com/fwblog/2007/08/13/animator-vs-animation/

How smart is your fridge?

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 08:40:17 GMT

You really think that it turns off the light when you close the door? Your car doors really lock themselves when you step out? Your laptop stays off/sleeps when you lower the lid?

Think again. You may put a camera inside your fridge to see if the light really goes out. If the fridge is smart, it will know there is an observer inside and turn the light off immediately. Your attempt, failed! Next time, try measuring the power consumption with open and closed door. Your fridge is really smart, it will detect the small voltage drop across the ammeter component and will turn the light off the instant door closes. Spoiled measurements. Ha Ha Ha!

Do you recheck your car doors when stepping outside? They may only lock themselves when you check them and not otherwise. How many times we just take it granted that the car is safe.

To cap it all, your wife will only not cheat on you when you are around to watch. Isn't that correct? You children will not date if they know you are near by.

Ever had the weird sensation of laptop battery dying out very quickly, even with the lid off? Only if you thought to catch the culprit next time, it won't happen when you are on the watch. Your laptop is no fool and knows you are vigilant.

How would you measure the distance between two locations? Of course, with a ruler. But what really guarantees that the scale is exactly that much long that it says. You may use some other device, but who says that device is accurate in the first place.

This is not like Schrodinger's cat at all. States collapse into one observable outcome when the box is opened. The cat is either dead or alive and does not go back to uncertain state when the box is again closed. Here, we want to measure the states without measuring.

In essence, it is not possible to verify a system from within that system. Some external component must be involved. But as soon as that component is involved, system boundary expands to include that component into the system.

Don't 'Not Leak Information'

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:05:48 GMT

A couple of days ago, I was watching Discovery Channel. They showed some program about UK military and Apache pilots, remember the exact details.

One point that particularly stood out was how those pilots were debriefed. All personal information and pointers linking them to be an Apache pilot were stripped away. I suppose this was to prevent the [potential, totally misunderstood] enemies from finding out the details of that helicopter, in case the mission was compromised.

Now, let us puddle together into the lakes of wild guesses. I may be as right as Israeli forces attacking Lebanon last year or as wrong as freedom fighters in Kashmir and Palestine. Consider the situation where only Apache pilots have no information. Easy targets to identify, capture a foreign solider (pilot) and if he/she has no personally identifiable item, you captured an Apache pilot.

Therefore, next time your commanding officer tells you to lose everything personal before going on a mission, point him/her to this page and this entry too. Never (ever!) lose everything you have, makes you an easy target to pick out from masses. A much better strategy is to go along the path of misinformation. Lose personals and gain it from your commanding officer.

Side note to intelligence agencies. You guys should keep a keen eye out for pilots not having any identification. Chances are high they are Britons and were flying Apache helicopters in your territory. He is your priceless source of information, don't let him escape.

Technorati tags: Computer Theory

Reading Mania

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:09:24 GMT

This post has been overdue for almost one week (actually, more than one week because that week ended yesterday).

Can you believe that I got my hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows somewhere around 10:05 PM on 26^th July, began reading it immediately, read till 4:30 AM in the morning, slept till 11:15 AM that day, woke up and got ready to finish the novel. Read on and read on from 11:45 AM, till finally at 7:30 PM on Friday I finish it.

This means I finished it entirely in about 14.25 hours. Such a marvelous reading speed. I always knew I read at lightening speed, but this is something beyond lightening. Never before had I finished any book this quickly. Was it due to the fact that I liked it so much or just because I am getting better? I don't know what is the case.

Another Weather Update

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:32:47 GMT

One day I'll ask someone

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:57:43 GMT

The day will come when I will be sitting across the desk, asking someone interview questions.

In preparation for those far, far-away, distant future days, here is a question I read yesterday.

"An array of 'n' items where each cell contains a number from the set [1,n-1] with every number in the set occurring at least once. Since, the set has n-1 members and the array is n item long, one number is duplicated. Give a linear time, constant space algorithm to search for this duplicate number."

And they made another prediction

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:46:13 GMT

Yesterday, I read in a newspaper that our meteorological department made another attempt of there abominable weather forecast. In reference to the highlighted portion near Oman.

The news release said yesterday about today's forecast (how could it not be forecast if it were written yesterday for today?): "We are to expect light rain and clouds in the lower parts of Sindh because of that storm".

What really happens with their forecasts is quite the reverse. We were "To expect light rains and clouds". Read it as, tomorrow will be hottest day of summer so far. Don't expect a single speck of clouds to hover. There might be some heavy rains and snowing in the northern parts of Pakistan and AJK.

The best explanation!

Tue, 29 May 2007 07:54:52 GMT

Why mirrors reverse left and right? Eric Lippert provides the best explanation I have seen so far.

"But why then do we all think of mirrors as reversing left and right, if in fact they reverse front-back? Psychologically, humans see a front-back-reversed human as a left-right reversed human. That image of a south-facing person smiling back at you is not an image of a human being at all. Their DNA spirals the wrong way. All their body fat is made out of indigestible Olestra. Their heart is on the wrong side of the body. If we could somehow create a real being who produced exactly that image, down to the front-back-reversed internal structure, there’s no way that they could produce viable offspring with a non-reversed human.

But none of these is apparent at a glance. Since humans have almost perfect left-right symmetry it is extremely easy to interpret an image of a back-front-reversed human as a left-right reversed human. After all, if you were trying to act to look like the person in the mirror, that’s what you’d do – simply reverse your left and right behaviour. You decide what is “slippable” and what isn’t. If you are trying to look like the image in the mirror looks, you’d ignore all that stuff about your DNA and internal organs and reverse left and right, because that happens to produce the image that looks most similar. If humans had different symmetries then mirrors would not appear to reverse left-right at all, because our psychology would be different."

I never thought about the internal asymmetries in us. :)

Couldn't resist! :)

Thu, 03 May 2007 08:00:43 GMT

Microsoft Windows Server Base Operating Systems Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

Microsoft® WinFX™ Software Development Kit for Microsoft® Pre-Release Windows Operating System Code-Named "Longhorn", Beta 1 Web Setup

But the last one went out.

The two horns of Longhorn

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 07:22:02 GMT

Just read this off Tim Sneath's blog.