Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

November 9, 2006

Thinkature – Real-time collaboration for the web

Filed under: Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:24 PM

I like the concept of realtime collaboration over the web and I have used a couple of tools for this earlier but didn’t find any that I really liked. Until now. I really like Thinkature as its pretty easy to use and intuitive.

Thinkature has a couple of features that I really like:

  • Its free. (Duh..)
  • It doesn’t use Flash. (I am not a fan of flash, I know it lets you do stuff that you couldn’t do without it but I still don’t like it.)
  • The interface is simple and clutter free.

The parts I am not a big fan of are:

  • Its a visual collaborative tool, You cant use it to collaborate on coding or development. Though you can use it for designing presentations and flow charts.
  • There doesn’t seem to be any official privacy policy (That I could find…) on the site. Who owns the content I create on the site? Do I still maintain ownership?

    I have emailed their support about it, lets see what they say,

  • They don’t have any export/import feature (Though it looks like they are working on it.)

Over all a good tool. Check it out over here: Thinkature – Real-time collaboration for the web

Thanks to OpenDotDotDot for the link.

– Suramya

November 8, 2006

Michael Crook vs EFF lawsuit

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:24 PM

Michael Crook is an all round idiot who doesn’t have the brain cells God gave to an amoeba. In case you don’t know who he is here’s a brief history:

1. He is the webmaster for: forsakethetroops.info which is now no longer up. On this site he basically argued that military personnel are worthless, idiots, overpaid, and that he is glad when they are killed.

2. He is also the webmaster for http://www.denytheholocaust.com/ where he claims that the Holocaust never happened.

3. He posted fake sex add’s on Craig’s List. Then got the personal details from the people who responded and posted them on his site. Then he actually contacted the co-workers/spouses/CEO’s of those people and basically ruined their lives. Ok, the guys shouldn’t have been cheating on their wives but what gave this idiot the right to post their personal info and contact their boss?

Oh and he said and I quote “I stand firm in my hatred for children, jews, and members of the military.” and he also doesn’t like clubbing probably because unless a girl is completely wasted she would take one look at him and run away screaming…

So how does all the above translate to a lawsuit?

As you have probably realized by now this guy is not the sharpest tool in the shed and a lot of people don’t like him. So this guy (Jeff Diehl) had posted an article about him in September where they made fun of him. To emphasize who they were talking about they used a still from a Fox TV interview (Which BTW falls under the ‘Fair Use’ portion of the copyright law) and made fun of him.

I guess he didn’t like what they were saying so he stooped to underhand tactics and sent the ISP hosting http://www.10zenmonkeys.com a DMCA take-down notice. So Jeff’s ISP shutdown his site (They had to under the “safe harbor” provision otherwise they become liable for it) but this really upset Jeff so he moved the site to another ISP (Laughing Squid) which was run by a friend of his. Now Michael thought that since it was easy to shutdown a site he did it again and sent another notice to Laughing Squid’s upstream provider. This really really pissed off Jeff and Laughing Squid’s owner so they contacted EFF who registered a lawsuit against him which I completely support.

NEways I am too lazy to type the rest of the story so you can get all the details over here, here and here

Now here’s my view of the entire stunt. This guy was probably dropped on his head multiple times as a kid, was rejected by all the girls (And Guys) he met, was thrown out of clubs, rejected from the Army so he decided to decry everyone and say he didn’t want to join anyways (The grapes are sour, and I didn’t want them anyways).

Most of his stuff I can ignore, his misuse of the copyright act got him sued. If he doesn’t believe the holocaust thats his problem. There are people who still believe that the earth is flat. What I found really offensive that he took photos of solders dying and made fun of them. What kind of a person does that? Ok, I don’t really support the war on Iraq but that doesn’t mean that the people fighting it should die. Oh and he also sent death wishes on a card to a solder injured in the line of duty .

He actually said:

“Our underlying problem is this: the military is a lifestyle these morons chose. What idiot risks their life for a country? It’s what they chose. Hopefully, they knew in their hearts this is abusing taxpayers’ money, and they enlisted anyway. So…Forsake our Troops! Let ’em die in combat– we don’t need their ilk in this country!”

There’s a lot more where this came from. I don’t think I am going to post any more. Read his blog/website if you have the stomach for it. I am not posting a link to it here because I don’t want to increase his website ratings, so just search for michael crook on Google.

I come from an Air Force Family. (Not the US but the Indian Air Force.) and A lot of my friends are in the Indian Air Force and the Indian Army, some are also in the US army and Air Force . I know what kind of guts it takes to go out somewhere where you know that the next step you take might be your last one. I have heard enough stories and seen the devastation a fighter pilots family faces when their loved ones don’t come back home (Kargil war, India). What give him the right to make fun of people who are willing to die for their country and something they believe in?

If I ever met this guy in person I would have a hard time restraining myself from beating the crap out of him.

I am not the only one pissed at him, Tucker Max actually invited him for a debate and his writeup is really good. Check it out.

In conclusion, the guy is a moron. He is a waste of oxygen and I wish he would crawl back into the hole he came from.

– Suramya

Interesting response to Vista’s licensing change

Filed under: Computer Related,Humor — Suramya @ 3:08 PM

Thats one way of looking at it:

uf009708.gif

– Suramya

November 5, 2006

Watched ‘The Prestige’ yesterday

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

Went and watched ‘The Prestige’ yesterday with Vinit, Me, Pranav, Vivek and Akhil. Originally I didn’t want to go for a movie but I am glad I did as the movie was amazing. For a change the movie actually had a plot and the actors could act. It wasn’t all about the special effects and CGI.

We originally wanted to watch the 11:15 pm show but since it was sold out we ended up watching the 12:30 am show. It was worth the wait. Once the movie was done we were all feeling a bit restless and didn’t want to take the train so we walked from 42nd street to 23rd street at 3 am. It was fun, a bit cold but fun. No, we haven’t gone completely nuts. It was just that we were talking, plus since for a change we didn’t have any girls in our group who would complain about being made to walk in heels we decided to enjoy it.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

November 4, 2006

Got a new camera

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 8:03 PM

Got a new camera today 🙂
Yay!! Now I can take photographs anywhere and anytime. I got the Sony cyber shot T5, Its a 5.1 megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom and a lot of other features that I haven’t fully explored yet.

Now I don’t have to wait for other people to send me the snaps from events/parties that I took photos on, so you will probably see faster updates to the photogallery.

Thanks for the gift Surabhi. And thanks Vinit for finding this camera and driving at 10 am on Saturday to get it.

– Suramya

November 3, 2006

Candidate says bulletproof books could save lives in school shootings

Filed under: Funny News,News/Articles — Suramya @ 3:46 PM

You have got to be freaking kidding me…

A retired veteran and candidate for Oklahoma State School Superintendent says he wants to make schools safer by creating bulletproof textbooks.

Bill Crozier says the books could give students and teachers a fighting chance if there’s a shooting at their school.

Thanks to Schneier on Security for the link.

Original Article: WBIR.COM – Candidate says bulletproof books could save lives in school shootings

– Suramya

Find out when Windows XP box was rebooted/shutdown

Filed under: Computer Tips — Suramya @ 12:02 PM

The event manager in Windows XP allows you to find out when a system was rebooted or shut down. To run the Event Viewer follow these steps:

1. Click on Start -> Control Panel
2. Double click on the Administrative Tools
3. Click on System in the left pane. Resize the window so you can see the Event column in the right-hand pane.

Once you have the window open look for an entry of 6009 in the Event column. This shows when the PC was shut down or restarted. A start-up will be logged by a number of events, mostly with the code 7035, 7036 and 26, corresponding to various services and checks.

Source: Check a computer’s event history

– Suramya

Indian version of the Thriller Video

Filed under: Funny News,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 6:03 AM

Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any worse… I found this:

Indian version of Thriller

This is a pure rip off of the famous Thriller video by Michael Jackson in some south Indian movie. Thankfully the music sounds different but the dance looks the same, and it has the same ugly red jacket.

I don’t mind when some one copies a little bit of a song, or creates a parody of something, but this is just plain ridicules. A couple of years ago it wasn’t so evident when Hindi movies copied something from an english movie, but now with the increasing globalization its increasingly easier for people to identify what movie a particular concept was stolen from…

The sad part is that its not just Indian movie makers who do this, they are just the most ballant in creating the ripoffs and its not like we have a shortage of filmmakers with original idea’s in India, its just that some people find it easier to copy than to create original ideas…

– Suramya

November 2, 2006

Celebrated Anu’s birthday

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 12:02 AM

Yesterday (1st Nov) was Anu’s birthday so Anu, Amit, Myself, Vinit, Sandeep, Vivek and Pranav celebrated it with a quite dinner at Olive Garden. The food was as usual pretty good but the service was really slow. It took them over 40 mins after we placed the order to get the food. Thankfully they brought the appetizers a lot sooner so we didn’t starve.

Here’s a photo I took of the birthday girl during the dinner (Took it using my camera phone so its not the best quality…).

Anu_Birthday_01Nov2006.jpg
Anu and Amit at Olive Garden on Anu’s Birthday

And no I wasn’t brave enough to ask her how old she was… All in all it was a good fun night. A big contrast from yesterday but still fun.

– Suramya

November 1, 2006

Celebrated Halloween and Vivek’s Birthday in NYC

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 5:20 AM

Oct 31 was Halloween (Also known as Samahain) and it was also Vivek’s birthday. So we (About 14 of us) decided to get together to celebrate both. We all got together at our place and took the Path train to New York to watch the annual New York Halloween parade. It was a lot of fun, everyone was dressed up in a costume and looked cool: Vinit was a Mafia boss, Reema was a cat, Aarti dressed up as the Pink Panther, Jyoti was dressed as the Devil and it was fun. Some of the costumes we saw were pretty amazing, people had spent a lot of time, energy and money on them and it showed. The best part was that everyone was having a good time.

After watching the parade for about 1 1/2 hours we decided to get something to eat as we all were starving and needed food. So we called and made a reservation at Uno Chicago Grill. We were about 2 blocks from the place so we were walking to it when we found out that the streets had been closed off for the parade and we had to walk all the way over to 11th street (from 4th street, to get to 6th street) and then walk back. Vivek managed to sneak across the barrier and waited for us to get there which took a while as we were busy admiring the costumes we could see.

The food was good but the company was better and we spent a lot of time just talking and enjoying the food. Yes I took a lot of photos and will post them soon.

Now its time for me to catch some sleep. Will post more later.

Update (3rd Nov 2006): Uploaded the Halloween photos to the Photo gallery.

– Suramya

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