Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

January 5, 2012

A new file-sharing religion Kopimism is recognized

Filed under: Humor,Interesting Sites,News/Articles — Suramya @ 9:53 PM

When I first saw this I thought it was a joke and that maybe I have had too many cold meds in too short a time period. However it looks like the newly founded religion ‘Kopimism’ is real and its central tenet; the right to file-share has been formally recognised by the Swedish government. The Church of Kopimism claims that “kopyacting” – sharing information through copying – is akin to a religious service.

This is quite interesting and funny at the same time. Most governments in the world allow religious freedom so if that same right is given to Kopimism, then the war on piracy would grind to an abrupt halt because continuing would open a large can of worms.

The Swedish government agency Kammarkollegiet finally registered the Church of Kopimism as a religious organisation shortly before Christmas, the group said.

“We had to apply three times,” said Gustav Nipe, chairman of the organisation.

The church, which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V (shortcuts for copy and paste) as sacred symbols, does not directly promote illegal file sharing, focusing instead on the open distribution of knowledge to all.

It was founded by 19-year-old philosophy student and leader Isak Gerson. He hopes that file-sharing will now be given religious protection.

“For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore copying is central for the organisation and its members,” he said in a statement.

Before you get all offended and upset, remember we already have a church of the flying spaghetti monster.

Thanks to BBC News for the initial news. If you want to learn more visit Kopimism’s Official website.

– Suramya

January 3, 2012

Random Thoughts

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:10 PM

This is going to be a completely random posting of various thoughts/idea’s as I have a cold and can’t think straight:

* All sites should have an RSS feed, or some API that allows you to pull data off them for building on top of them. Was trying to get release dates for some of my favorite author’s works and found out that most sites with this info don’t have feeds that I can subscribe to.

* You know you are old, when you are talking to someone about a TV series that you watched as a kid and they tell you that they weren’t even born when the show was running. This happened to me a couple of days ago at work while talking to a few of my juniors.

* Moving webhosting requires way too much thought. Or I guess I am just weird that way. Going to move the site to a new hosting provider around the middle of this month. Still debating if I want to move the domain hosting as well or not.

* Wonder if there are any online grocery shopping places in Bangalore?

* New year resolution: Will be more in touch with friends this year.

That’s it. Can’t think more, so going to crash. Will write more later.

– Suramya

Working without Free diskspace in Linux

Filed under: Computer Tips,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 5:52 AM

On linux machines you can fill your root partition to 100% utilization and the system would still continue to function giving you a chance to free up space without downtime, but on Windows machines the same is not possible and if you have managed to fill your C:\ to 100% then the system will go down (Know this for sure for Windows versions up to Vista, not sure about Win7) hard. This is something that has puzzled me a lot over the years but didn’t know how it worked, but now I finally have an explanation:

When you format a partition in Linux , 5% of the total space gets reserved for privileged processes, by default. This is done so that system processes continue to function correctly ,if the filesystem gets full. This is useful for your ‘root’ partition.

The really interesting part is that you can configure this to reduce the percentage of the reserved space using the tune2fs command. e.g. if you wanted to reduce the reserved space for /dev/sda1 to 1% of the total space then issue the following command as root:

tune2fs -m 1  /dev/sda1

Source: Flossstuff’s Blog

Enjoy.

– Suramya

January 2, 2012

Referrals as a business model

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 8:49 PM

Most companies have a referral program where employes can refer their acquaintances for positions in the company. The idea behind the program is simple, smart people have smart friends and you have a higher chance of finding a qualified person through a referral than a cold interview.

I got the following email today which turns the entire concept on its head and tries to convince you to game the system:

As a qualified professional in a reputed firm you are probably on the lookout for good candidates to refer. I’d like to introduce Round One – an innovative new platform that connects you to job seekers so you can refer those you choose:

Once you sign up you can:

  • Receive profiles of candidates interested in your company via email, who you can unofficially interview over the phone
  • Earn incentives from Round One for each candidate you speak with
  • Refer candidates you choose, via your firms referral program and earn your company’s referral bonus

The third point makes is really clear what their selling point is: make money by referring candidates to your company. But instead of referring people you personally know are qualified for the position, you will be referring people you have talked to a couple of times on the phone and have know idea about. In essence you are acting like a head hunter but instead of being upfront about it you are gaming the company.

I am sure that this practice would be discouraged in most companies and if a person is caught doing this they would face some action. Actually I would hope that this would be the case because this offer is dishonest and sneaky. If you really want to spend time headhunting you should start/join a headhunter company.

What do you folks think? Is this a smart idea, or just underhandedness and not something to be encouraged?

– Suramya

January 1, 2012

New year – New position

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:57 PM

A New Year means a new beginning, so its fitting that I start the new year with a bit of good news: Effective Jan 1 2012, I have been promoted to Vice President, Technology in Goldman Sachs. A very big thanks to everyone who has supported, guided or just plain tolerated me this past year.

Cheers! 🙂

– Suramya

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress