Our School's Team
It's competiton time now and also it's the time to compile our school's scattered team. And with this post, I'm publishing the rough draft of those who can be considered.
Quiz
- Uma Damle
- Siddharth Razdan
- Prashanth Kanduri
- Tarun Gahlot
Gaming
- Sanchit Gulati
- Tarun Gahlot
Programming
- Siddharth Razdan
Digital Graphics
- Uma Damle
- Siddharth Razdan
- Prashanth Kanduri
- Tarun Gahlot
Crossword
- Uma Damle
- Siddharth Razdan
- Prashanth Kanduri
- Tarun Gahlot
Agreed upon the fact that this list contains nothing more than 4 repeated names, but seriously, when I was preparing this list, I couldn't think of anyone! Nominations and suggestions are heartily welcomed.
Regards
(Siddharth Razdan)
MIMANSA results
MIMANSA, the annual computer fest of St. Mary's School, Safdarjang Enclave was on today i.e. 28th July 2006 and here's how our school fared -
Crossword & LOGO programming - No Position
Movie Designing - No Position
Programming in C++ - 2nd Position
I know this isn't a very impressive result but is fine to start with. One thing that this fest pushed me most is to compile our scattered school's team to be sent to other school's competitions. Expect a post on this topic soon.
Notes
- St. Mary's school's fest was OK, not very good.
- Only three fields of participation were there i.e. Programming, Movie Designing & Crossword.
- Even in these three fields, only C++ programming was open for seniors(9th - 12th).
- St. Mary's school itself claimed the first prize in Movie making and Crossword. Huh.
- They(St. Mary's) school rejected the first position in Movie Making and settled for the 2nd place as they were the host school.
- Most of the C++ problems that I faced today were copied from somewhere or the other.
- More than 15 schools participated.
- D.P.S. Vasant Kunj went out with the rolling trophy.
Regards
(Siddharth Razdan)
Indian Government Censors Us
Several Internet news sites are reporting that the Indian government has sent notices to ISPs to ask them to block several websites, including all blogs on BlogSpot/Blogger.
I can confirm that I cannot access these websites, including DynamiX notes, through my ISP, Airtel Broadband. I contacted technical support, and was told that it was a technical problem, that the Airtel server had blocked blogger.com, and that the problem would be resolved by 1300 on July 18th. I must confess that I fail to see how blocking an entire domain can be a "technical problem." DNS queries for the concerned websites work, and return correct IP addresses, but actually connecting to those IPs fails because no ACK packets are received from the remote site in response to the SYN packet.
Several bloggers have started a Google group in order to discuss this censorship and find ways around it. A wiki wiki is available to share information. Predictably, there is nothing on any of the mainstream news channels about this.
Now on to the important stuff: bypassing this blockage. The simplest solution is to use www.pkblogs.com to read the blog, though this doesn't allow you to post to it. However, I have heard that some ISPs are blocking this website too, though I cannot confirm. Another suggestion in the same vein is to use the Coral Content Distribution Network to access the blog, by appending .nyud.net:8080 to the end of the hostname of the website. For example, this blog can be accessed at http://dynamixnotes.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8080/.
The best solution I can come up with to post on the blog is to use Tor, the onion router. This is how I'm posting this message now, having determined to not sleep until I had done so.
If you are using Ubuntu, or have an Ubuntu Live CD handy, it's as easy as installing the "tor" package (sudo apt-get install tor) and setting Firefox to use localhost:9050 as a SOCKS proxy server. If you are using Windows, your easiest option probably is to use Torpark, a "variant of Portable Firefox with Tor built in" according to Wikipedia. It's as simple as downloading a file and running it.
Keep in mind that the above Tor instructions may not guarantee your privacy, but will at least allow you to access the blocked websites, albeit a bit slowly. I don't really care, as I see nothing immoral in accessing Blogger that I may want to hide from the authorities. In fact, let it serve as a lesson to the government that "the Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it." The only way that they can censor the Internet is to block all access to it. Meanwhile, they are inconveniencing honest users while accomplishing absolutely nothing against those who would put the Internet to nefarious ends.
Update: Posting to blogs is not blocked, only reading them. You can still access the blogger.com site, just not individual blogs, at least on Airtel.
Microsoft has STOPPED support for Win 98
That's the worst thing of using any closed source software. Support (does anyone require for win98?) and security updates can be stopped anytime by the company, leaving many helpless. Though it doesn't matter much to those using pirated stuff, those using licensed copies are the ones most hit. They are forced to buy the new versions, if they want to continue use of the closed source software and use genuine copies as well.
About Microsoft, the news is here, there and everywhere over the net.
Gmail Sync
GmailSync is your one stop solution for data backup. It's free, reliable and uses google technology (Gmail). With support to sub-directories and uploading files to your gmail account this service is a definite good addition to your downloads list. Imagine 2.7 gb of free space over the net with smtp. Further 99 invites, which means 2.7 X 99 = 267.3 gb of free web space with gmail security.
The download and installation process is simple and quick. You can also sync your GmailSync with your windows task scheduler so as to automate regular backups.
Scrap Me
Orkut a very famous social networking site has an option called scrapbook. Now for those people who scrap many times a minute, here is a hack:
If you are using firefox, Install this script (addon) and it will allow you to scrap back just in one click rather than the traditional 2 step + 1 click scrapping. This not only saves time, but also helps you keep things contextual.
*note- I'm availble on Orkut*
Please don't die...
This is a poor attempt from my side to save this blog being declared "DEAD". What happened? Is everybody sooooo busy? Right at the beginning of the session?
