Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

October 17, 2006

Microsoft Restricts Vista Transfers

Filed under: Computer Related,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 12:09 PM

As some of you know Vista is supposed to come out next year and its going to require a big upgrade for most of the users. Now in a move to alienate even more of its customers MS has changed its licensing terms, limiting the number of times that Windows Vista can be transfered to, to ONE. Thats right One, Uno. In the older versions of windows if you bought a new computer you could install your old version of windows on it provided you uninstalled it from the old computer. With the new licensing you can only do it once so if you upgrade your computer more than once you need a new Vista license.

Hows that for utter stupidity. It is supposed to restrict piracy but the only thing its going to do is annoy regular users. A lot of people upgrade their computers a lot and if MS thinks it can force people to buy a new license every time they upgrade its sadly mistaken. Its going to be a pain for everyone involved and the only people it won’t affect are the software pirates as the pirated version will probably have this check disabled.

I know I transfered my windows XP license from my original 350 Mhz system to a 1.1 ghz system to another system before it got its final home in the machine its on now (All the older systems are now running Linux).

If I had vista I would have had to spend additional money to install an OS that I have a license for on a system that I am going to be using. You know what, I think I will stick with Linux and XP for now. I wasn’t planning to upgrade anyways but with news like this I have even less incentive to try it out.

Original Article: Microsoft Restricts Vista Transfers

Update: Some more thoughts on the new MS Licensing: Lxer.com

– Suramya

October 14, 2006

Burmese food tastes awesome

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:58 PM

Last night I went out to dinner with friends to the Burmese place in New York called Village Mingala It was a lot of fun and the food was great.

The restaurant was recommended by Meghna and she was worried that she would be blamed if no one liked the food but she need not have worried as the food was good. Vinit, Surabhi, Meghna, Madhur, Aarti, Vivek, Pranav, Sandeep, Gaurav and myself all dug into the food and we all ate a lot The best part was that the place was pretty cheap too.

The only down side of this place is that they don’t have any good deserts… They only had three dishes for deserts so we went to another place to get desert. We got kheer and Gulab Jamun’s and took them home to enjoy them while watching this hindi movie called Don (No its not the new one, This one was the original one…) We watched it on our projector so for a while our living room looked like a cinema. (Actually it still does, ’cause we found the arrangement to be more efficient so we left it as such)

In case you are wondering about all the restaurants I am writing about then its just that we are on this quest to try every kind of cuisine in the world, and so far we have tried: Indian (Duh..), Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Italian, Cuban, French, American, Egyptian and Turkish. I have probably missed some others we have tried but… I will post about my experiences with each kind as and when I try them…

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

– Suramya

PS: If you know any good places to try any particular cuisine let me know so I can try it out.

October 13, 2006

Microsoft Vista feature presentation on a Mac

Filed under: Funny News,Tech Related — Suramya @ 12:31 PM

Somebody took the audio from a Microsoft Vista “we’re so brilliant, we’ve invented all this new stuff” shill session and overlaid it on a video of themselves doing it all on their OS/X desktop.

Pretty amusing stuff. The best part is that I can do most of it on my Linux box as well.

Check it out at: Here

Thanks to Ben Okopnik for the link.

– Suramya

October 12, 2006

Signs to show that you are getting old

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:09 PM

Signs to know when you are getting old:

1. Most of your batchmates are either married or about to be married/engaged.
2. Some of your batchmates have already had kids or are expecting
3. You don’t find it strange when you see an invitation to an event that includes the line “Also bring your significant other”
4. You start to get pressure from everyone that its about time you married/engaged
5. You actually answer when someone calls you mama or chacha

– Suramya

October 9, 2006

Interesting Advertisement

Filed under: My Life — Tags: , — Suramya @ 9:20 PM

Saw this on the 49th street subway station in NYC:

scratchAndWin.jpg

Its one of the more interesting advertisements I have seen in the City.

– Suramya

October 6, 2006

Dinner in New York

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 6:17 PM

Went out for dinner in New York yesterday with Surabhi, Vinit, Vivek, Meghna, Aarti and Madhur at this great restaurant called Cafe Habana located in Soho. Its a small place and If you go by the looks alone you will most likely walk away to eat at some of the better looking places around it, but that would be a big mistake as the food here is awesome and the service is really good. Too many times I have eaten at a place where the food is great but the waiters looked and acted like they were in a funeral. In contrast the waitress over here were friendly, cheerful and helpful.

The place is really busy so expect a wait when you show up. On weekdays its not that bad, though on weekends however the wait is a lot longer. One thing to keep in mind is that the larger your group is the longer your wait is, so don’t show up with a group of 15. The max I would take to this place would by 8 -9 people, any more than that would be a bit difficult so fit in quickly.

The corn over here is to die for and the rest of the food is also very good and filling. They play some really nice upbeat music so the atmosphere is very lively. The best part is that the place is not that expensive either.

If you are ever in the area check it out. You won’t regret it.

– Suramya

October 5, 2006

LibraryThing: Catalog your books online

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 11:52 PM

Found this interesting service that allows you to catalog your books online. Then based on the books in your library it connects people with the same books and comes up with suggestions for what to read next. It gives you the ability to include your books in your blog, and create feeds etc.

The only downside is that its free service only allows you to catalog upto 200 books, to catalog more books you need to pay a $10 for a year price.

Check it out :LibraryThing

– Suramya

October 4, 2006

Bought I Dream of Jeannie DVD today

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:46 PM

Today I bought the Second Season of I dream of Jeannie on DVD. I love the show and have been looking for it for a long time. Unfortunately they don’t seem to have released the rest of the seasons yet (Season 3 onwards). They should. Its a great show, a bit silly at times and still good for laughs.

I first watched this show in India where it had been translated in hindi. Surprisingly the translation was pretty good and the voice over wasn’t bad, unlike bewitched or some of the other shows where the voice overs were horrible. But I think I like the english version better as some of the jokes didn’t translate that well.

Well I am off to enjoy I Dream of Jeannie now… Will post more later.

– Suramya

October 3, 2006

Dying with your Passwords

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 12:50 PM

Interesting post about problems that can be caused when a person dies without sharing their passwords. I have posted about this earlier over here

The main issue I have with sharing passwords is privacy, do I really want people to be able to access my data when I am dead?

Lets say I share my password with someone with instructions to only use it when I am dead, how can I be sure that one they they won’t get bored and start going through my emails/documents… Before you say anything, yes I have a low opinion of everyones honesty (including mine). I wouldn’t want to be the one that someone decides to share a password with.

Another issue is that I change my passwords constantly and at any given time I have ~ 5-6 (Probably more) different passwords in use. I have a hard time memorizing them so I expect others will have a harder time and since no one wants to memorize anymore useless data they will probably write it down somewhere. Now if their system gets compromised my data is also at risk because they wrote the passwords down which is not cool.

One of the solutions people suggested was to use a dead mans switch. Basically in that case if you don’t do something for X no of days your info/password is sent to someone. Its an interesting idea but the problem with this approach is that; what if I don’t log on to the system for X days because I got busy or forgot or was on vacation. It would still send out the data to everyone because I didn’t log on. I guess in the future we can have a device that can monitor a person’s heart beat or brainwaves and then when all activity stops it opens up the information but for now we are stuck with a manual process.

When I am dead people can feel free to go through my documents and most of my computer files. The stuff I don’t mind sharing is already unencrypted but the stuff thats encrypted has been encrypted for a reason. If I wanted to share it, it would have been unencrypted. The same goes for my email. I can think of no reason why someone would want to go through my emails when I am dead and no I don’t think I will get murdered with the one clue to identify the killer in my email.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you have a dead mans switch or something that will open your data to everyone when you die? If so why? If not, are you planning to?

Source: Schneier on Security: Dying with your Passwords

– Suramya

October 1, 2006

2 years and counting

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

Well, its 1st Oct again and its been 2 years that I have been maintaining this blog. Over the past two years I have realized the following things:

* Blogs are a good way for people who you don’t regularly interact with a way to keep up with whats going on in your life. You have no idea how many people told me that they regularly visit my blog to keep up with my life..

* Blogs allow you to present your thoughts to the public and have a good discussion on topics that you feel strongly about.

* Blogs are like a online archive of your life, a few years down the line you can come back and revisit old memories.

* Good Blogs are hard to maintain. 🙂 Yup its true, so many times I think about posting something but then decide that its not good enough or I don’t have enough time to make a good post. People who post regularly on their blogs have a great amount of dedication.

If you have been following the blog from the beginning you will probably have noticed that in the beginning I had a post almost every day then it sort of tapered down and recently I haven’t been posting at all. Its all to do with inspiration and time/desire/energy to post. I think I got tired of maintaining a blog, but now I think I will resume again. Lets see…

And if you actually read all that then thanks for being a dedicated reader and for visiting my site.

– Suramya

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