Linux, The Anti Virus? :P

Well I switched on my PC after a four day break in which I had gone to Chennai. And I am welcomed by this pop up box. A virus. Great!

I was actually a little happy that something like this happened because it proved that avast! was doing something to protect my pc( I had long doubted if it did anything at all). Mr.avast! showed the same trojan was present in all my drives. I clicked delete and for a full five seconds everything seemed fine. Then the pop up came. Again. Same trojan, same place. The trojan refused to get deleted. Well guess avast! is not exactly the best anti-virus around.

I thought I would delete it personally but the file wasn't visible. Of course. It wasn't a hidden file too. Well after trying to solve this using Autorun Eater, Spyware Terminator both of which are in my PC and being too lazy to find a better anti-virus, I began to wonder if it was time to format my PC. Then I remembered something. Linux.

I have a distro of Linux (TOSS) in my PC. Now TOSS and Windows are two different OS and have their own way of handling files. So I went into TOSS and into my C Drive. And there it was, the trojan sitting pretty. It had even created a text file of size 1.5 GB! After a few seconds hesitation, I shift+deleted the trojan from all the drives and any other suspicious files. Restart. Windows started without much fuss. No trouble from trojans. avast! went back to do it's job(which am still not sure about).

Though the method to get rid of the trojan seemed crude, it did work and my PC has been running well so far. Linux ftw i guess :)

New Year Resolutions :)

I will no longer spend long hours gaming,

Rather I will concentrate more on studying;

I will not waste my time in vetti websites,

And find a physical activity like flying kites;

I will no longer think lazyness is good for me,

And accept the fact that hardwork is the key;

I will take notes in all the classes I attend,

And not be playing hollywood with my friend;

I will no longer cut classes for no reason,

And consider bunking an act of treason;

Importantly, tomorrow when I see this thing,

I shall not burst out laughing.

Happy New Year Ppl :)

Love?

When my eyes to her was drawn,

I knew not what i was feeling,

All other thoughts were gone,

For she was my only first love.

I was with her for five long years,

But never once did she know this;

Away from her now, I am in tears,

For she was my only first love.

To me she will forever appear a star,

Ever beautiful and beyond my reach,

Her memories will now only be a scar,

For she was my only first love.

I know she will one day go her own way,

'Cos she is as pretty and free as a dove;

Someday someone is gonna take her away,

For she was my only lost love.

P.S : The poem is about my first crush exaggerated for poetic reasons :D

Pirates Of The Silicon Valley

Now I found this movie in my friend's pc. Another pirate movie.I wonder if its better than the Depp movie. This was my first reaction to the movie's name :) Then my friend said it was movie about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. That got my interest and I watched it that night.

The movie opens with 'Steve Jobs' saying

"I don't want you to think of this as just a film - some process of converting electrons and magnetic impulses into shapes and figures and sounds - no. Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or a poet. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing. That's how you have to think of this."

Next we are shown Steve Jobs (with beard, moustache and all) and Bill Gates (with a big geeky glass) during their college days. The movie goes on to show how their lives begin to cross each other and how they deal with it. The transition of both of them from geeks to buisnessman is also worth mentioning here. The movie also shows how Apple and Microsoft came into existence and their first big breaks.

Both 'Steve Jobs' and 'Bill Gates' give a good performance and are convincing in their roles. The scenes where both of them interact are quite entertaining. The other main catch in the movie is the real story behind Apple's main GUI design, DOS and later Windows. The icing on the cake is of course the dialogues which are at some places quite brilliant. Some of the real good ones are

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates : Good artists copy, great artists steal.

Businessman: Steve - it is Steve, right? You say this gadget of yours is for ordinary people. What on earth would ordinary people want with computers? :D :D :D

Bill Gates: Success is a menace. It fools smart people into thinking they can't lose.

and of course the best of all...

Steve Jobs: We're better than you are! We have better stuff.

Bill Gates: You don't get it, Steve. That doesn't matter!

I don't wanna say anything more lest I spoil everything. But I'll tell you this. If you are an aspiring businessman or a Computer freak, this is definitely worth watching.

Noetics?

9:58 pm. Sunday the 27th,2009.

He was busy reading The Lost Symbol. It had been long time since he had been so engrossed in a book. It told him a fascinating idea about the power of the mind. "Like matter, the thoughts in a brain also contain mass. This 'particle' if focussed correctly could be used to alter physical matter..."

His concentration was suddenly broken when out of no where two loud speakers started singing loudly and rather annoyingly. He tried his best to ignore it. "Thus if the mind is trained well and made to focus on a particular thought, it can be used to affect the outcome of an event. While this may seem like advanced magic it.." Darn loud speakers, he thought. What the f*** did they ever actually accomplish. "..has already been mentioned in the ancient literatures itself. One only needed to see the Vedas or the Bible or any other similar text. They say the same..".Arr how I wish they shut the loudspeakers.And just like that, the loudspeakers started malfunctioning and was forcibly switched off.

"Our fore fathers have always believed that the mind held supernatural po..".Wait a minute. Did I just shut the loudspeakers using my mind. Did that happen because a lot of minds in my area thought the same?.Maybe I do possess super powers,his heart said. You need to get some sleep, said his intellect.

Note : To know about noetic science, read The Lost Symbol or see theintentionexperiment.com

See C

Well having attended a few C debugging contests, I found C can get very interesting even at the very basic levels. Here is a few questions that are worth understanding if you got any interest in C :)

*)First is the simple printf statement. Consider

int i=5;

printf("%d,%d", i, ++i);

If you guessed output as 5,6 - sorry.

Thing is printf first evaluates all the expression from RIGHT TO LEFT before printing the actual values. So actual answer would 6,6.

*)Now the comma operator. They always asked questions involving this. I didn't even know what it meant till I saw this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_operator

*)The playing with increment/decrement operator. Consider

i=5;

j=i+++++i;

If you split the second line as j= (i++) + (++i) and calculated the appropriate value, then congrats, you made the same mistake as me :)

Seems it actually gets divided into (i++) ++ (+i) so it becomes an invalid expression.

*)Problem is to print "Hello World" without a single semi colon in the program :D

Now I thought of macros,recursion,function calls blah blah blah but as always the answer was one hell of a simple solution.

Just put the printf statement in the if condition or for/while condition thing and job done :)

*)The mother of all C questions :D

int a,i=5;

int *b=&i; //Creating pointer to i

a = i/*b;

What is value of a?

If the answer 1 popped up in your mind (after all we divided a value by same value), ha ha ha! Compile,run and see :D

Naming Convention

It always makes me wonder how people can mess a name as simple as mine. Let me tell you what I mean.

My EDC mam thought my name was Sai Shankar.

HOD thought it was Shankar.

EDC Lab mam thought it was Sai Saravanan.

So did the other sec boys for sometime. :D

Apple lab mam thought it was Sarvesh Gautham/Sai Vignesh.

uP sir thought it was Sowmya Narayan.

OS mam thinks(still :D) it is Sai Krishna.

I even had a boy from the other sec come to me and ask earnestly "Dei unnoda unmayana per ennada?" Lol!

Note : My real name is Sai Santhosh :)