Aakash's Blog

Number Systems I

2007-08-31T13:39:00.000+05:30

To me numbers are just some entity that need to be represented. The way we chose to represent them is in base 10 also known as decimal number system, Where we have 10 symbols 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9 and we use them to represent any number we want to represent.

Eg: number twelve is represented as (1*10 + 2) or 12
and number hundred and twenty three is represented as (100*1 + 10*2 + 3) or 123

Similarly negative numbers can be represented.

Now the first question is "Why use 10 as the base to represent numbers?"
The answer is fairly simple, we have 10 fingers. If we had only 6 fingers we could have had a base 6 number system too.

And we would have counted as 0,1,2,3,4,5,10,11,12,13,14,15,20 and so on.

The next question is "Why do we use 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9 to represent numbers"
The answer is just because we can. Yes there is no reason to say 1 should represent one and so on. It could have been any symbol for that matter.

Lets say 'A' represents that '0' as we know it
Lets say 'B' represents that '1' as we know it
Lets say 'C' represents that '2' as we know it
Lets say 'D' represents that '3' as we know it
Lets say 'E' represents that '4' as we know it
Lets say 'F' represents that '5' as we know it
Lets say 'G' represents that '6' as we know it
Lets say 'H' represents that '7' as we know it
Lets say 'I' represents that '8' as we know it
Lets say 'J' represents that '9' as we know it

and we use a base BA (10) number system then the number 123 would be BCD.

Confusing, yes a little but not so much if you know how number systems work.

Enough to ponder about in this post. I am going to cover more topics like :

* Negative base number systems.
* How to represent any number in any base number system (except 0 base number system)

Back after a long time

2007-08-27T23:49:00.000+05:30

I am back after quite some time.
I was very busy over the last two months.

* Been to Ladakh, Delhi (twice) and Chennai.
* Released a product.
* Got hooked onto Flickr. (http://www.flickr.com)

and many more things, which will reveal themselves over time.

I made it to the explore page of flickr with this amazing picture that I took at Pangong lake in Ladakh:

Hope you enjoy it.. I hope to find some time for blogging again.

I like to Moo

2007-06-18T16:32:00.000+05:30

Video: crazzee cow

Been there done that

2007-06-10T12:29:00.000+05:30

Displaying the states I have been to in India (marked in yellow).

Thanks Sumeet! Get your own map at here

Temporary disposable email ids

2007-05-29T09:26:00.000+05:30

Do you hate it when you give out your personal email id to signup for some site and then receive tons of spam mail :(
If yes here is a site which will help you get rid of spam.

How does it do it?
Easy. It assigns you a new email id every time you visit. As long as you are on the site it also keeps displaying the emails you receive on your temporary id. So that you can finish your signing up responsibilities. To check the email later you could go to the address http://www.mintemail.com/USERNAME

replace USERNAME with the temporary name that the site had given you.

Try sending an email to joshua896@mintemail.com and then check the mail out at http://www.mintemail.com/joshua896

The only issue is that I could not find a way of deleting the mail, because there are enough lame sites out their which send you password with the confirmation mail. Really sad if someone knows your temp id and is able to login to the site you have registered to.

So here is a thumb rule, For any site that you will use very often use your original email id and for any site that you do not plan to use more than one or two times use the temp email id (Also do not use your regular password for the site, to be on the safer side)

Camera shipped from Mars

2007-05-28T17:29:00.000+05:30

CASIO EX-Z75SR Silver 7.2 MP Digital Camera 1/2.5" CCD 2.6" 115K LCD 3X Optical Zoom 4X Digital Zoom - Retail

is being sold of newegg.com for $189.99

Not bad eh..

Wait till you see how much it costs to ship it.

"3 Business Day Shipping $99,999.00"

Where are they shipping it from? Mars?

Or are they teleporting it to my place?

Funny Dilbert comic strip

2007-05-28T15:44:00.000+05:30

Source : www.dilbert.com

Television you can bend

2007-05-25T15:47:00.000+05:30

WARNING : Do not try this at home. I can assure you, you cannot bend your TV (yet)

Sony has come up with a new digital display so thin that you can bend it with your bare hands. They intend to come up with one that can be rolled up like paper. Waiting eagerly for the day when I can say goodbye to the projector screens and projectors in meeting rooms. I can pull down the rolled up Digital screen in front of the white board in meeting rooms and connect my laptop directly to it. Sweet :)

Check out the Article

Voice

2007-05-24T13:32:00.000+05:30

My song of the day

Top 200 H1B employers for 2006

2007-05-18T15:53:00.000+05:30


Rank    Number  Company
        of visa
1       4908    INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED 
2       4002    WIPRO LIMITED       
3       3117    MICROSOFT CORPORATION 
4       3046    TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED 
5       2880    SATYAM COMPUTER SERVICES LTD 
6       2226    COGNIZANT TECH SOLUTIONS U S CORP 
7       1391    PATNI COMPUTER SYSTEMS INC 
8       1130    IBM CORPORATION     
9       1022    ORACLE USA INC      
10      947     LARSEN & TOUBRO INFOTECH LIMITED 
11      910     HCL AMERICA INC     
12      890     DELOITTE & TOUCHE LLP 
13      828     CISCO SYSTEMS(CSCO) INC 
14      828     INTEL CORP          
15      817     I-FLEX SOLUTIONS INC 
16      774     ERNST & YOUNG LLP   
17      770     TECH MAHINDRA AMERICAS INC 
18      760     MOTOROLA INC        
19      751     MPHASIS CORPORATION 
20      665     DELOITTE CONSULTING LLP 
21      645     LANCESOFT INC       
22      642     NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS 
23      637     ACCENTURE LLP       
24      632     JPMORGAN CHASE & CO 
25      611     POLARIS SOFTWARE LAB INDIA LTD 
26      611     COVANSYS CORPORATION 
27      591     PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS LLP 
28      533     QUALCOMM INCORPORATED 
29      529     GOLDMAN SACHS & CO  
30      476     KPMG LLP            
31      475     MARLABS INC         
32      437     UNIV OF MICHIGAN    
33      434     UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO 
34      432     UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
35      432     THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV MED INSTS 
36      416     SYNTEL CONSULTING INC 
37      413     CITIGROUP GLOBAL MARKETS INC 
38      413     BEARINGPOINT INC    
39      404     UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 
40      386     KEANE INC           
41      382     HTC GLOBAL SERVICES INC 
42      378     IGATE MASTECH INC AN IGATE COMPANY 
43      362     HEXAWARE TECHNOLOGIES INC 
44      362     CAPITAL ONE SERVICES INC 
45      355     COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
46      352     LEHMAN BROTHERS INC 
47      347     YAHOO INC           
48      339     US TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES LLC 
49      336     INTELLIGROUP INC    
50      333     HEWLETT PACKARD CO  
51      330     RAPIDIGM INC        
52      329     MERRILL LYNCH & CO INC 
53      328     GOOGLE INC          
54      322     CITIBANK N A        
55      322     DIS NATIONAL INSTS OF HEALTH DHHS 
56      316     YALE UNIVERSITY     
57      314     NOKIA INC           
58      313     TEXAS INSTRUMENTS(TXN) INC 
59      309     CAPGEMINI U S LLC   
60      308     HARVARD UNIVERSITY  
61      305     EMC CORPORATION     
62      303     SUN MICROSYSTEMS(SUNW) INC 
63      301     RITE AID CORPORATION 
64      298     BLOOMBERG           
65      292     GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 
66      289     AMGEN INC           
67      286     MCKINSEY & COMPANY INC US 
68      285     MORGAN STANLEY      
69      279     STANFORD UNIVERSITY 
70      278     WASHINGTON UNIV IN ST LOUIS 
71      276     VERIZON DATA SVCS INC 
72      276     NYC-HHC HARLEM HOSPITAL CENTER 
73      275     UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH 
74      273     INDIANA UNIVERSITY  
75      271     OHIO STATE UNIV     
76      269     EVEREST CONSULTING GROUP INC 
77      269     UNIV OF MINNESOTA   
78      268     AMTEX SYSTEMS INC   
79      268     UW MADISON          
80      262     STATE UNIV OF NY AT STONY BROOK 
81      262     AMAZON GLOBAL RESOURCES INC 
82      256     CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION 
83      255     DALLAS INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT 
84      254     UNIV OF CA DAVIS    
85      251     NORTHWESTERN UNIV   
86      250     SYNTEL INC          
87      247     UNIV OF MISSOURI COLUMBIA 
88      247     GLOBALCYNEX INC     
89      246     KANBAY INCORPORATED 
90      242     AMERICAN SOLUTIONS INC 
91      240     UNIV OF FLORIDA INTL CENTER 
92      239     UCLA                
93      238     DUKE UNIV UNIV MED CTR & AFFIL INS 
94      236     MOUNT SINAI MEDICAL CENTER 
95      236     BANK OF AMERICA N A 
96      234     SOFTWARE RESEARCH GROUP INC 
97      234     BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE 
98      232     MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL 
99      232     CIBER INC           
100     230     VERINON TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS LTD 
101     226     EVEREST BUSINESS SOLUTIONS INC 
102     224     VOLT TECHNICAL RESOURCES LLC 
103     223     OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY 
104     222     COMPUNNEL SOFTWARE GROUP INC 
105     221     US TECH SOLUTIONS INC 
106     220     SYMANTEC CORP       
107     218     JSMN INTERNATIONAL INC 
108     216     UBS AG              
109     213     CVS PHARMACY        
110     213     THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY 
111     213     UNIV OF WASHINGTON  
112     212     NORTEL NETWORKS(NT) INC 
113     211     UNIV OF CA SAN FRANCISCO 
114     210     UNIVERSITY OF MA MEDICAL SCHOOL 
115     209     SPRINT UNITED MANAGEMENT COMPANY 
116     209     HOUSTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRIC 
117     208     PURDUE UNIV         
118     207     GLOBAL CONSULTANTS INC 
119     207     EMORY UNIVERSITY    
120     207     UT HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER 
121     207     UNIV OF COLORADO    
122     205     VANDERBILT UNIV     
123     205     OBJECTWIN TECHNOLOGY INC 
124     204     DIASPARK INC        
125     203     HSBC BANK USA N A   
126     203     EBUSINESS APPLICATION SOLUTIONS 
127     203     BROADCOM CORP       
128     203     PRINCE GEORGES COUNTY PUBLIC SCHS 
129     202     MICRON TECHNOLOGY(MU) INC 
130     198     COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS INC 
131     198     TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY 
132     195     APPLIED MATERIALS(AMAT) INC 
133     194     SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY CORP 
134     194     UNIV OF IOWA        
135     194     IBM GLOBAL SVCS IGS INDIA PVT LTD 
136     194     DELOITTE TAX LLP    
137     193     CUMMINS INC         
138     191     ITECH US INC        
139     189     COMPUWARE CORPORATION 
140     186     INTL STUDENTS AND SCHOLARS OFFICE 
141     185     UNIVERSITY OF CA SAN DIEGO 
142     184     WALGREEN CO         
143     184     HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE 
144     183     USC                 
145     182     VISION SYSTEMS GROUP INC 
146     180     T MOBILE USA INC    
147     178     MULTIVISION INC     
148     177     EDS ELECTRONIC DATA SYSTEMS(EDS) 
149     175     MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECH 
150     174     CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 
151     173     CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIV 
152     173     UNC CHAPEL HILL     
153     172     THE UNIV OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM 
154     170     DEUTSCHE BANK AG    
155     170     CATERPILLAR INC     
156     169     HALLMARK GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES INC 
157     169     CYBERTHINK INC      
158     167     CORPORATE COMPUTER SERVICES INC 
159     167     ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES(AMD) INC 
160     166     MEGASOFT CONSULTANTS INC 
161     165     ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS INC 
162     163     FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR INC 
163     163     UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER AT 
164     161     FIRST TEK TECHNOLOGIES INC 
165     161     MICHIGAN STATE UNIV 
166     160     RESEARCH FDN OF THE STATE UNIV OF 
167     160     COMSYS SERVICES LLC 
168     160     VIRGINIA TECH       
169     160     JUNIPER NETWORKS(JNPR) INC 
170     158     THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 
171     157     IOWA STATE UNIV     
172     157     UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
173     157     FEDEX CORPORATE SVCS INC 
174     156     CREDIT SUISSE FIRST BOSTON LLC 
175     156     BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB COMPANY 
176     156     VERIZON SERVICES CORP 
177     155     EBAY INC            
178     154     AJILON LLC D B A AJILON CONSULTING 
179     153     GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION 
180     152     CAMO TECHNOLOGIES INC 
181     151     MARVELL SEMICONDUCTOR INC 
182     150     CMC AMERICAS INC    
183     149     THE UNIV OF TEXAS M D ANDERSON CAN 
184     149     NVIDIA CORPORATION  
185     147     AT&T SERVICES INC   
186     146     WEILL MED COLLEGE OF CORNELL UNIV 
187     146     AXIOM SYSTEMS INC   
188     146     WAYNE STATE UNIV    
189     146     MAYO CLINIC ROCHESTER 
190     146     NC STATE UNIV       
191     146     GENENTECH INC       
192     145     MAKRO TECHNOLOGIES INC 
193     144     SVAM INTERNATIONAL INC 
194     143     MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER 
195     143     NUTECH INFORMATION SYSTEMS 
196     143     XPEDITE TECHNOLOGIES INC 
197     143     AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING INC 
198     142     LOUISIANA STATE UNIV 
199     141     FANNIE MAE          
200     141     MINDTREE CONSULTING PVT LTD

Source: Information Week

Disclaimer: The information shown on the blog is as shown the the source webpage and I do not take any responsibility of the accuracy of the information.

It happens only in India

2007-05-17T12:04:00.000+05:30

What would you do in this situation? You are traveling in a train in Bihar, India. All of a sudden the train comes to a halt. After some time the driver comes up to all the passengers and asks them to push the train to get it started. So what would you do?

Answer: Obviously you would have to push the train.

See this article by Reuters about what happened in Patna, Bihar, India.

4 for 17 (well almost 5)

2007-05-07T17:55:00.000+05:30

We (Yahoo!) had a cricket match with Microsoft yesterday. We scored 175 runs in 25 overs and got them all out for 104. My contribution was taking 4 wickets (two caught and two bowled) for 17 runs only in 5 overs, a catch and one run out. Infact I almost had 5 wickets. I got a Microsoft player LBW in my second over (the umpire gave him out) but we knew that it was an inside edge onto the pads and that he should not have been given out. So we called him back. I lost my 5th wicket there but then sportsmanship should be a part of the game.

My grandfather : Raghubir Singh Mandhar

2007-05-02T13:15:00.000+05:30

Ever wondered how different your life would be if your ancestors had done something differently?

Well I am glad that my grandfather did what he did.

My great grandfather "Kundan Singh" (the only son of his father) passed away a couple of months before his only child "Raghubir Singh Mandhar" (my grandfather) was born in Arainpura, Haryana. And at the tender age of five my grandfather lost his mother too. Orphaned with no immediate family he could have decided to do whatever he wanted with his life as there was no one to question him. But he decided to study. The distant relatives taking care of him were not even willing to pay his tution fees. When another person from our villiage (who happened to be a peon in Karnal, Haryana) heard about this boy who wanted to study but did not have any resources offered to keep the child with him in Karnal and pay for his tution. My grandfather agreed and decided to go to Karnal and study. After completing his 10th and doing some extra courses he was appointed as an Agriculture inspector in Haryana.

It is only because of his decision to study that he could afford education for his kids. My dad did his Engineering in Agricultural Engineering from Punjab Agricultural University and then MTech (Masters) from IIT, Delhi. All my uncles and aunts are either doctors, engineers or teachers.

It is because of that decision made by an orphan kid in a remote village in Haryana that I am writing this blog and you are reading it. I just cant believe that a five year old kid would chose education over games and fun.

I just can't thank him enough for the decision.

New look

2007-03-29T16:25:00.000+05:30

Indian Startups

2007-03-16T15:45:00.000+05:30

startups.in lists a set of indian startups.
So does this link

Go India!

Hiring at a Mall

2007-03-13T10:59:00.000+05:30

This is a pic taken on 11th March 2007 at the Forum Mall in Bangalore. Surprisingly Google had a stall for recruitement at the mall.

I am sure people would be thinking
<sarcasm>
"Well.. Since today is a Sunday. Let me go to the mall to catch some movies and buy some stuff, While I am at it let me also apply to Google. What a perfect day!".
</sarcasm>

(Click on the image for a larger image)

What is next? Hiring at Aiports, Railway Stations, Bus Stops, Hospitals, Food World?

Microsoft Live Image Search

2007-03-09T19:59:00.000+05:30

One feature that I like about Microsoft's live image search is the pagination or lack of it.
No more scrolling down to the end of the page and hitting next buttons.

All you need to do to see more results is scroll down. As long as there is an image that matches the search term you keep getting results. All on the same page. Looks uber cool.

Look for yourself the search results for "India"

Click here to try it out on a new page.

Small World

2007-03-09T17:02:00.000+05:30

This is the conversation I had with my mom today on the phone.

Me: So what were you up to today mom?

Mom: Nothing much actually. You remember your grandma told me that one of my friends moved to Bangalore to live with her son?

Me: Which one?

Mom: The one who was our neighbour when we lived in Kurali. They are also our distant relatives.
(Then she explained some complex relation but I understood that my mom's aunt and my mom's friend are sister in law)

Me: Oh yes. I remember.

Mom: Her name is Krishna. I called her today and was talking to her for a long time. Her son studied from IIT and then was in USA for a long time and has now come back to India and is settled in Bangalore.

Me: Oh good. Whats his name? What does he do ?

Mom: His name is Bobby. (Thats Mr. Anurag Dod's nick name) He is the CEO and founder of a company called Guruji

Me: Oh Oh... (Flashback of all my blog posts finding issues with Guruji)

Mom: Do you know the company?

Me: Yes I do.

Mom: Doesnt guruji do the same work as Yahoo!

Me: Who told you that?

Mom: His mom did when I told her you work at Yahoo!

Me: Ok.

Mom: We are planning to meet up some day.

Me: Great!

Isn't the world such a small place. Just one of the few sites I try fiddling around and keep reporting issues with is owned by my Mother's friend's son.

Ports on guruji.com

2007-03-08T13:52:00.000+05:30

Poking around the net I come across this on guruji.
A list of open ports on guruji.com and the services they are running
Check these : gnutella, edonkey, gnutella2, bittorent-tracker, fasttrack

PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
25/tcp filtered smtp
80/tcp open http
111/tcp open rpcbind
135/tcp filtered msrpc
137/tcp filtered netbios-ns
138/tcp filtered netbios-dgm
139/tcp filtered netbios-ssn
445/tcp filtered microsoft-ds
1214/tcp filtered fasttrack
4662/tcp filtered edonkey
4672/tcp filtered rfa
6346/tcp filtered gnutella
6347/tcp filtered gnutella2
6881/tcp filtered bittorent-tracker

Are they trying to index all the p2p networks too or is some employee using the free office bandwidth ??? :P

Guruji yet again...

2007-03-08T00:06:00.000+05:30

After all the guruji bashing I have done on my blog. I decided to do some more :D

Ok, now what would you do if you want to find out the accounts on guruji's server.

Try out the URL of the type http://guruji.com/~user
which tries accessing the home directory of a user called "user". The user does not exist. Fair enough.

It is safe to assume that there would be a root account on the machine so try out http://guruji.com/~root

See the difference?

The first URL gives you a 404 Not found error.

Not Found
The requested URL /~dummy was not found on this server.
Apache/1.3.31 Server at tw-s220.terrawiz.com Port 80

where as the root gives you a 403 forbidden error.

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /~root on this server.
Apache/1.3.31 Server at tw-s220.terrawiz.com Port 80

So if you have the patience to try out user names and see if they exist on the machine, go ahead.

Disclaimer: this blog post is for educational purposes only.

Artistic photo

2007-03-02T10:42:00.000+05:30

Pics Taken by "Harish JP" with a "Nikon D50" with a 3 second exposure

Check out his stream on flickr

Y! Bai is getting married

2007-03-02T09:14:00.000+05:30

Our Bai (aka maid) at Yahoo! is getting married on 6th April 2007. And now we know why bai was so happy the other day.

And if you are wondering why we call her bai, check out this snap

Finally I uploaded some snaps

2007-02-25T09:52:00.000+05:30

Phew... after almost 2 years I finally found time and the patience to upload my snaps from the Taiwan and Thailand tour.

You can check out the photos here

Some sample snaps shown below:

Plumber of the internet

2007-02-09T13:21:00.000+05:30

Yahoo! launched Yahoo! pipes yesterday. An amazing site by Yahoo! What it basically does is allows users to create mash ups in no time. For a novice a mashup is a custom application made quickly using one or more services.

This site tries to model the pipe philosophy of unix. You can take the output of one program and pass it on to another.

Here is a simple pipe I made to convert my blog to french.

Try it out and make your own pipes. It is very easy. http://pipes.yahoo.com

Oh.. did I mention the site has a kick ass gui..

Flesh meets art

2007-02-06T10:02:00.000+05:30

Remember the whiteboard guy. Well last week he came to life :).. Check it out.

Very creative work by Subbu.

Revisiting Guruji

2007-02-01T17:14:00.000+05:30

Sigh!!! I reported like so many bugs and vulnerabilities in www.guruji.com in my post Unsafe Guruji. Never heard back from them, but I was kind of happy to see that they fixed some issues.

They plugged the obvious XSS vulnerabilities (haven't tried the unobvious vulnerabilities).

But what sucks is this.
Try giving an empty search string to guruji on the first page. They have a javascript to check if the string is empty and throw a popup "Please Enter a Valid query".

This is what the JavaScript code looks like.

function check() {
if (document.form.q.value == "")
{
alert("Please Enter A Valid Query");
return false;
}
else
{
return true;
}

Now try putting in a space and sending the query. It throws up some random word in the text box and the result asks you to enter a valid query.
I saw "maulanaazaad","hll,lux advertising strategy","jenifer lopez" pop up. I was bamboozled why this was happening and then cracked it, all the site was doing was putting in the last search query in the text box. Not just your last query, the last query of anyone who searched on guruji.
So if you want to see what others are searching on guruji, enter a space in the box and keep pressing the search button. If you get a page where the text box is empty then it is because no one entered a valid search and your blank search is being shown in the text box.

Do these guys have testing folks or what.. Mark my words, test user input on frontend and backend, javascript alone is not a solution to all problems and if you use javascripts be consistent. I say this because on the landing page of the search you can still enter empty queries.

I am not going to send this post to them (like they care anyways), you guys and go have fun checking out what others are searching for.

You can do that by clicking here

Yahoo! emoticons concert

2007-02-01T13:20:00.000+05:30

I would let the emoticons speak here.

No one is left behind

2007-02-01T09:43:00.000+05:30

This is the result of what happens when a Software Engineer has a white board, a marker, some free time and an empty seat in the cubicle.

Subbu , (a Yahoo!) drew this. You can find it on Bluesmoon's blog too.

Well what is even better is what happened next. We had a fire safety drill in our office yesterday and guess what in true army fashion, Yahoo!s made sure no man is left behind. :)

Nawaab of Kandivili

2007-01-29T12:10:00.000+05:30

Aditya aka Karmayogi has been hereby rechristened as the "Nawaab of Kandivili". Look for yourself.

The nawab of Kandivili.

PS: The nawab is a brahmin of telugu origin and his traditional wear should have looked something like

But cant question him coz he is the nawab.

Wishing Naveen and Smita a very happy married life

2007-01-29T12:04:00.000+05:30

I would not write much in this post. I would just like to wish Naveen and Smita (without an h) a very happy married life. I know I know what you guys are thinking how can you have the words "happy" and "married life" in the same sentence unless it is an oxymoron, but also note the presence of the word "wish" in the sentence, so no harm wishing :P.. Just kidding.. Happy married life dude...

Given below are a couple of snaps of the happily married couple.

Online Hindi radio

2007-01-22T10:14:00.000+05:30

Found this link about a online Hindi radio on some blog. Thought of sharing it with you all.

mms://69.26.220.46/RadioSuno

Use media player if you are on windows and mplayer on linux (make sure you have win32 codecs if you are trying it out on linux)

What is happening to my Bangalore :(

2007-01-22T09:43:00.000+05:30

From the past two weekends I have had relatives coming home (Which is a rare occurance as we live atleast 2000kms from our nearest relatives). First it was my cousin Vishal Rana from Milwaukee, USA and then my Aunt Promila Kanwar from Palampur,India. As a result I have been going out a lot with them and have noticed that my beloved Bangalore has changed for the worse. It is not the same Bangalore I adored for so many years. Here are a list of incidents other than the Blinding Headlights incident.

Restaurant Hunting

Getting a reservation at a restaurant is like getting a job during an economic slowdown. All decent restaurants are completely booked during weekends. I wanted to take my Aunt out to Copper Chimney, which is a restaurant with good food and a great view.

I always sit outside on the table in the corner, to soak in the sights and sounds of Bangalore. The view is really good and I wanted to spend some time there with my family. The restaurant was completely booked for Friday so I made a reservation at 8:15 PM on Saturday. When I reached there I was shocked to learn that our table was given to someone else. I checked with the staff and the manager. They said we had the table and these guys had the adjacent table. They didnt like the table so they moved here. What the bloody F***, how stupid can you get. I booked a day in advance and they gave the table away to someone else. And I asked them to ask the folks there (they still had not even placed their order) to move as we had the reservation. The morons who were sitting there refused to move even after realizing that we had a reservation. This really pissed me off.
I dont completely blame the morons sitting on our table. A part of the blame is also with Copper Chimney, They should have placed a reservation plate on the table and asked them not to move over to our table as it was reserved. I was so pissed off that I decided not to take another table there and made a last minute reservation at Sikandar, a restaurant close by with much better food than Copper Chimney but a view that is not as good as Copper Chimney.

It is not like these restaurants are cheap, the meal costs around 400 Rupees per person. But the place being upscale doesn't mean that the people visiting them would behave in the same manner. I feel it was very cheap by the people who refused to move knowing that my Aunt came to bangalore after 6 years and would be moving the next day. Had it been Bangalore 15 years ago the people would have given up their reservation to let us sit if they knew that my Aunt would be leaving the next day. And clearly it was unprofessional behaviour from the restaurant staff. They do not care as much about their customers because they know that they are always booked and one unhappy customer can not make a big difference. But I think otherwise.

Lift Ettiquete

We were waiting for the lift on the 5th floor(the topmost floor) in Bangalore Central to take us to the ground floor (coz we now had a reservation at Sikandar @ garuda mall). After waiting for what looked like a million years the lift comes to the 5th floor. The lift is jam packed and just one person gets off the lift. The thought that came across my mind was "Isn't this the top floor? Why aren't people getting off the lift?". But as soon as I saw some shopping carts in the lift I realized what just happened. These folks were going to the parking and just to be sure that they get space in the lift got into the lift going up to the last floor. Then they ride all the way down to the parking. Does this make sense? Shouldnt they just board the lift going down and go to the parking. There were seven people waiting on the top floor but could not get into the lift because these guys (who thought they were really smart) jam packed the lift with their shopping carts. Man!!!!!!!!!!!! Where are the lift ettiquettes ? (Not sure if there is any such thing.) Ok, thenwhere is the common sense and courtesy?
Ok. I see what you are thinking. Why am I making such a big fuss over the lift issue. Maybe this was the straw that broke the Camel's back. There have been many many instances where I have ignored the wrong doings of people. A sick one was people almost throwing their children inside the bus from the windows to grab seats for them (Sick Sick Sick). Well getting back to the point, I think it is getting pointless to try and fix what Bangalore is turning into. From a society of courteous people to a wild jungle with selfish people.

Traffic

Look what the traffic in Bangalore is like nowadays. It is not uncommon to see mile long traffic jams. On one hand you have huge cars and SUVs and just one person in driving them, on the other hand you have overcrowded buses with people literally hanging out of buses. We also have lots of dare devil bikes who ride on the road, footpath and sometimes even jump over medians. Roadrage is a common occurance nowadays with people abusing others for the most trivial reasons. People fighting for parking spaces is also a common sight. Thank god I started taking a cab to work, I feel so realxed while working now. Before I used to be tense and angry when I came to work because of the way other people drive their vehicles. I had a very bad accident because of someone else thinking that the road is a circus ring and was cutting in and out of the traffic at will (What a jerk). Even today while coming to the office our cab had to stop on the left and we had the indicator on. There was this guy who was trying to overtake us from the left (which is the wrong side to overtake in India) and nearly hit us. I asked our driver to slow down and take evasive action so as to not side swipe him, and the jerk gives us a stare and still overtakes from the left. It was almost like him saying "Don't you know, my dad owns this road. I can overtake when, where and how I want!".

Last weekend's violence

Bangalore turned violent last weekend. (The first time I have seen Bangalore getting violent in 24 years). On Friday people were protesting the way Saddam Hussein was executed and there was some violence then. Also yesterday there was a procession which was stoned by some anti social elements trying to spark of communal riots. And we all know what happens when riots stop, everyone tries to settle their score. Everyone has a personal vendetta. The politicians need political milage, the unsocial elements get paid for creating nuisance, the poor and jobless vandalize to get what they cant afford. What is the end result, smashed up vehicles, burnt autos and buses and loss of property and life. There was a curfew imposed in parts of Bangalore yesterday night and the worst thing was the story our cab driver told us today. He had a duty at an exhibition of Machines and Industrial tools yesterday. Delegates from over 25 countries had come to the exhibition. On the way back a cab left just before his cab with some foreign delegates. This cab was caught by the mob. They threatened to kill the driver and burn the cab if he did not cooperate with them. They pulled out the foreign delegates and started hitting them. The mob said "These guys are Americans and Americans hanged Saddam". The delegates ran for their lives and got into an auto rickshaw and escaped(Thank god atleast some auto drivers are courteous to save the lives of people). (The first and only racist attack I have heard of in Bangalore)
(NOTE: I just heard this story from my cab driver and cannot verify the source and whether or not it actually happened)

My parting remarks. Is this the brand Bangalore that we want to project in the world. I dont think so. This is not the Bangalore that I lived in for the good part of my life. This seems like an alien land to me nowadays. People in Bangalore were always so polite and courteous, I still remember the tree canopies covering roads, the courteous and law abiding people, a place which was heaven for retired people. I really miss the old Bangalore and doubt I will ever get it back.

Blinding headlights

2007-01-19T13:50:00.000+05:30

There are many things I like about Bangalore and then there are few things I dislike about Bangalore. This one is probably on the top of the dislikes list. People in Bangalore (especially on the highways and badly lit parts of Bangalore) love driving with their headlights on highbeam.

The other day I was returning from Nandi hill and was blinded everytime a car or a SUV or a truck passed by me on the opposite direction. If the blinding wasnt bad enough, the roads are also not good either. There were speed breakers on the highway (Grr..) and there was no sign before them, nor were they painted black and white. If you are lucky (saracasm) enough, you would be blinded just before the speed breaker that you cannot see from a distance and take off in the air for a few seconds. If you are really really lucky (more sarcasm) your bike would land on some sand dropped by a truck carrying sand and you will definitely skid.

Atleast in the olden days in Bangalore, there was a rule to cover the top half of the headlight with a black sticker so that you didnt blind oncoming traffic. But now, nobody cares. I am sure there is a law against driving with highbeams in the city but who cares. I know this is a way to control India's population (yet another sarcasrtic remark) by blinding people and causing accidents, but don't think this is the best way.

So if you are in Bangalore or anywhere else in the world reading this blog, please show some concern towards human life and avoid high beams. If you have to use it on a highway please do use it put then put it on low beam when you see oncoming traffic.

Too much coding leaves no time for blogging

2007-01-17T23:23:00.000+05:30

The last few days have been very hectic. I have written and unit tested around 2000 to 2500 lines of code, not to mention the additional code that I copy pasted from the old source base (with some modifications of course). It has been loads of fun as I have been breaking my head to see how can I build a compatibility layer on the new product to be compatible with the old one.

On a slightly unrelated topic, We have these cool signs like "Warning: High Intensity Hacking! Follow hack day protocol while entering the cubicle" put up in our cubicles during hack day. Since most of the folks I know in Yahoo! also blog, I am thinking of putting up signs like

to remind us to take a break from work once in a while.

Jaya itni khush kyun hai? (Why is Jaya so happy)

2007-01-11T13:51:00.000+05:30

Jaya looks so happy in this pic. To find out why she is so happy click on the photo :)

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed during the making of this blog post

Partners in crime: Srivani and Harish

Twisted pigeon hole problem

2007-01-11T11:05:00.000+05:30

A new twist to the pigeon hole problem or is it the dalmations on the farm problem :)

If Microsoft implemented vim

2007-01-09T18:28:00.000+05:30

Click on the image to find out :)

Source: Karthik U

Congrats Niniane Wang :o

2007-01-09T13:04:00.000+05:30

Niniane Wang's blog has always made for a very interesting read. Niniane works at Google and before that she worked at Microsoft.

Today I was checking out the top 100 companies to work for list for USA at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2007/full_list/

Google tops the list and Yahoo! comes 44th. So I decided to read why Google tops the list.
So now you ask me why is this blog post called "Congrats Niniane Wang". Well the answer can be found on the 9th page of "the perks of being a googler"
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/fortune/0701/gallery.Google_perks/9.html

Wow!!! and congrats Niniane for getting a million dollars founder award..

I just mean wow :)

Niniane's webpage is here

onyomo

2007-01-09T09:52:00.000+05:30

Want to find ATMs, Restaurants, Cinemas, Lounges/Bars etc in Bangalore/Delhi/Mumbai/Chennai.
Try out www.onyomo.com

This is just a FYI and not a recommendation. Havent played around enough with it to recommend it.
But searching for restaurants in RT Nagar did show some pretty good results.

Yahoo! messenger for Vista

2007-01-09T09:44:00.000+05:30

If Yahoo! messenger wasnt already cool enough, try this out.
Below shown is a snapshot of Yahoo! messenger for vista.

Also check out the Flash Demo

The official site announcing messenger for vista can be found here

and the yahoo! messenger blog is here

Indian Shaolin Monk

2007-01-08T10:48:00.000+05:30

My friend Sudheendra is in Shanghai, China nowadays. He has gone there on some official work from HP. He just tried out this new look (See above).

And this is how he looked before(See below)

So I just said that he looks like a Shaolin monk and that is when he shared this funny incident with me. Sudheendra and his Chinese friend were walking back towards the subway station , with Sudheendra just a few steps behind his friend. Just then a hawker starts bugging his Chinese friend to buy a fake Rolex. As Sudheendra walks up to them, the hawker's friend tells him something and they run away. Sudheendra's friend told him that the hawkers thought Sudheendra was a Shaolin monk and would kick their butt and that is why they ran away...

Yay!! for our Indian Shaolin Monk :)

Yahoo! showcase pic

2007-01-05T12:54:00.000+05:30

A pic from Yahoo! showcase.
We won second place in the showcase event and here is a snap of our team with David Filo (Founder of Yahoo!) (You can see him in the center wearing an orange t-shirt)

We also have Venkat(CEO of Yahoo! India SDC) at the left most corner of the pic.

Wanted to upload this pic for a long time but just found it today..

Intro to the Hyderabad trip gang

2007-01-03T14:37:00.000+05:30

Image leeched from Karma Yogi's blog.

Above is a pic from my Hyderabad trip.
This snap was taken at Golconda fort in Hyderabad.

Let me introduce you to the crowd:
(From left to right)
1) Giridhar KN (Our host in Hyderabad, works at Microsoft)
2) Aditya Desaraju aka Karma Yogi (He works at HP and is a part time driver of the shuttle service from Mallleswaram, Bangalore to Hi-tech city, Hyderabad)
3) Naveen (He works at HP too and puts some gentle snake spin at times)
4) Karthik aka Kokky aka Wesley Snipes (He also works at HP and is known as Wesley Snipes because he puts a lot of blade (in simple terms he is not honest all the time, which he again proved in Hyderabad) )
5) Arjun Karande (He works at Amazon in Hyderabad and had participated with me in ICPC contests in Roorkee and Bombay)
6) Aakash Mandhar aka CodeCzar aka me (Lookie at me popularizing Yahoo! hack day.)

Photographer:
Karthik U aka UK did a good job taking this photo. PS: He no longer left alligns the photo..

Saddam's execution

2007-01-03T10:27:00.000+05:30

Saddam Hussein was executed on 30th December 2006 at an unknown location. He was executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity that he did at Dujail.

I am not saying whether or not he should have been assasinated and was the process just or not. I just want to analyze why was "30th December" chosen as the day for his execution.

Here are the reasons I feel might be behind choosing 30th December as the date for assasination:

1) They didnt want him to see the New year : Lamest reason that comes to my mind.

2) He was executed around New Year so that people dont get a chance to protest. Most of the folks in India and USA were busy planning for the new year's eve and could not care less about what is happening around the world. Also since it was a weekend and people were on a long christmas break they could not discuss it with their colleagues, and around new years you have many other things to discuss. Another example was the Indian news channel "Aaj tak" which spent so much time showing some non sense about who was the best actor, actress, car, bike etc... that they did not even focus on the Madrid airport bombing. The same goes for other new Channels. I know it is end of the year but we still want to see news, not some popularity contest.

3) Saddam would become famous in the Islamic world as he was executed on the day of "Eid ul-Adha" aka "Bakrid", which is a Muslim festival of sacrifice. And if Saddam is deemed as a martyr the counter attacks from the Islamic world would be subdued. They already knew he would be executed, atleast the Americans chose a good day to execute him as he can be considered as the sacrifice to god. As far as Americans are concerned they got their man, as far as the affected people are considered they got their revenge and as far as Saddam supporters are concerned he was a sacrifice for god.

4) Saddam hussein was turning 70 in April 2007. His lawyers were considering taking the case to internation court of law. And according to the law people aged 70 and above cannot be given death sentences. So had the case gone there and had the case dragged on for atleast 4 months he would have escaped death and got a life sentence instead.

Do let me know if you think of any other reasons why 30th December was chosen as the day for his assasination..

Happy New Year

2007-01-03T10:05:00.000+05:30

For the first time in 5 years I did not spend the New Years with my friends.
This time I spent the New Year at home with my folks. We ordered Pizzas and spent time watching TV. Not too interesting right, But it was fun in it's own way.

I woke up before 6AM on 1st Jan 2007 as my dad had a 7:30 AM flight to catch to New Delhi.
Me, my Mom and my dog drove him down to the airport. The rest of the day I spent relaxing and sleeping and watching TV, as I was not feeling too well.

PS: This is more of a fill in post as I did not want to start new year blogging with Saddam's execution.

Kurukshetra was a flop show

2006-12-31T18:19:00.000+05:30

The Kurukshetra online programming contest (FLOP SHOW) was supposed to start at 2PM today, but due to mysterious circumstances was rescheduled to begin at 2:30 PM. At 2:30 they again postponed it to start at 3PM. And guess what the site goes down at 3PM. Somehow I managed to get the questions and also solved one, but then since the site is down I was not able to submit it and that really put me off.

Guys!!! was this supposed to be a joke. Maybe someone just thought of playing a practical joke on us geeks. Well they better not be playing a prank because if they are, then as Russel Peter's father says "Somebody is gonna get a hurt real bad!!"...

Bottomline. If you cannot take the load, dont host the contest. No point preparing the questions if your site goes down during the contest..

My good deed for the year 2006

2006-12-30T23:52:00.000+05:30

On 30th December at 10:50 PM as I am sitting in my room in front of the TV and reading "Introduction to Algorithms", I hear a LOUD crashing sound in front of my house and rush downstairs to check out what happened. I see a stranger was lying down on the ground holding his left leg and besides him in the drain standing upright was a motorcyle. I went up to the man and asked him if he is ok. On enquiring he told me that his name was "Sarvanan", he is a "Tile worker" (the ones who lay tiles) and that he was riding under the influence of alcohol. He lost control and ended up crashing in the drain.

At this moment enters my neighbor "Seshadri" (who just returned from USA after completing his MS and was going back in a couple of days to start his PhD). I hadn't met him in over 2 years, so we meet look at each other say "Hi" and get to work taking the bike out of the ditch. The right side of the bike was completely totalled and after looking around we realized that the right side of the bike crashed into an electric pole before the bike ended up in the drain.

We asked him if he had a mobile phone (aka cell phone) so that he could call some relatives or friends. He said that he had given his mobile phone to his friend (What a bad time to give your mobile phone to your friend). He finally gave us a diary which had a couple of numbers. We dialled those numbers but no one at 11PM was lifting their phone. Finally someone lifted the phone and they did not know who Sarvanan was and we wasted like 5 minutes asking him if he knew who this guy was and if he could come over to take this guy home.

In the mean while another neighbor of ours kept asking the injured person whether he was driving fast and why was he driving fast, and I kept thinking "Hello... Can we do the root cause analysis later. We have an injured person here."
(With crimes on rise in cities and news channels showing us all the gory images of crime and deception we didnt know if we could trust this guy, but he looked hurt so we decided to help him)

For a moment we thought of calling the cops but then we didnt want the poor person to get into any more trouble than he already is in. He said that his friends lived in a one room shelter nearby, so we decided to drop him there and that they would take care of him. So I took out my car and we drove him to the place. The place was in a side road where the car could not enter to we carried him on our shoulders (like the injured soccer player who has too much pride to be stretchered of is carried). We started walking towards the room and he was telling me that he is married and if his boss finds out that he was drunk he might fire him or he would not be paid for some days. Definitely a sad story and for sure he was worried what would happpen to his family. So I just looked back at him and said, shouldn't you have thought about this when you were drunk and were riding a bike. But I guess he was too psyched out to understand what I said to him. But later he would realize it.

Finally we reached his room and started banging on the door. After 5 minutes of banging the door, his friends woke up and opened the door. Seshadri explained the situation to them in Tamil. We asked one of them to come with us to see where the bike is and also take its keys.

Finally at 12AM on 31st December 2006 the ordeal was over. Hope Sarvanan recovers soon and that next time he thinks a million times before he drinks and rides.

I am feeling good about helping out a person who needed help. It is a nice feeling, but I dont want you guys to fall in a ditch for me to have this nice feeling. Drive safe!!

PS: I almost forgot Harishh JP (my partner in crime for SQL injection attack on trendio and my partner in Kurukshetra) also met with an bike accident day before yesterday. He bruised his hands and legs. Wishing him too a speedy recovery!!

Yet another PS: Sadam was hanged today. Why was he hanged in such a hurry? My comments on it, COMING SOON!!!

Kurukshetra

2006-12-30T16:05:00.000+05:30

Kurukshetra is an online programming contest. Got to hear about it yesterday on the Yahoo!'s internal mailing list.

Played around the site.
There are 3 test problems given. I already got 2 solutions accepted. Yay!
The solution for the 3rd problem ( Reconstructing Permutations ) is working but gave me time limit exceeded. Need to fix it up to make it more efficient.

It is good fun...

The main contest is tomorow. It starts at 2PM and ends at 8PM.
So there is a day of hacking/coding ahead for me. I plan to team up with Harish for the event.
There is place for one more person on the team. Anyone interested??

May be I will discuss the problems and how to solve them (Only the approach, no solutions for you folks ) in the upcoming posts.

Semi Non Chalant pose at Golconda

2006-12-29T12:14:00.000+05:30

Ok.. For anyone who has seens Friends Season 10, remembers Joey's non chalant pose.
We got Naveen (A full time member of Ashtam) by chance giving a semi non-chalant pose at Golconda Fort in Hyderbad.

I know I know Joey's pose is much better but anyways look at the similarities.. The hands on hips, the head tilted to the left.

Joey	Naveen

Click on images to see full screen images.

PS: Naveen did not know about me planning this blog post and supplied me with Joey's non chalant pic.. Also this pose was given by chance and he had no intentions to look like Joey :)

Comments welcome...

Jaspal Bhatti

2006-12-29T11:00:00.000+05:30

Jaspal Bhatti is one of my favourite comedians. He has acted in shows like Ulta Pulta, Flop show etc.. And during our campus visit to Punjab Enginnering College, Chandigarh in Novemeber we ran into him at the hotel's restaurant. Here is the snap to prove it :)

(Click to see full screen image)

People in the pic (Left to right): Amitava Ghosh , Prasanna, Jaspal Bhatti , Me (The blogger) , Badi Kumar (First spotted Mr. Bhatti).

Photographer: Syam (aka Uncle Sam)

Missing from frame: Vishnu (HR)

Easiest 5 vadas I ever earned

2006-12-28T11:47:00.000+05:30

I had been to Hyderabad for the weekend to meet a friend of mine (Girishar) working in Microsoft.
On the way back I got into a discussion with my another friend (Karthik U) about latitudes and longitudes. He asked us what is the line passing through the Earth with 0 latitude called. I said "The equator". He said "No, thats the line having 0 longitude". Then I said that "the latitudes are the lines running parallel to the equator and the lines perpendicular to the equator are called longitudes". He did not agree so we decided to bet 5 vadas at veena stores (Veena stores is a world famous in Malleswaram, Bangalore hotel which sells the most amazing vadas).

And no prizes to guess who was right :D

Information about latitudes and longitudes can be found here

Hoping to get my vadas soon.... :)

Latitude:

Longitude:

Vada:

Dog Food

2006-12-24T22:39:00.000+05:30

Microsoft calls the process of releasing a beta and getting feedback on it as "Dog fooding".The beta is called dog food. So what does that make the people who consume the beta? ........ You bad bad people.. What were you thinking, they are called beta customers :)

Well then what do they call the bugs found in Dog food?

Gizmos.com

2006-12-22T08:59:00.000+05:30

Found this new site.. Really cool. They made animated heads and let you make avatas,gags out of them..

Really cool. Must try... www.gizmoz.com

Here is one of the videos they have on the site.

open Yahoo! hack day

2006-12-20T17:59:00.000+05:30

One of the presentations at the open Yahoo! hack day held in Sunnyvale

Very funny prank on telemarketers

2006-12-20T17:22:00.001+05:30

www.trendio.com

2006-12-16T15:57:00.000+05:30

I really like playing this game www.trendio.com
It was good fun till the site got redesigned and I lost all the virtual money I made on the site. They also ajaxified the site and added lots of other things making it real heavy.

Yesterday myself and a friend Harish JP were talking about ow much we missed playing the site and decided to check out if the vulnerabilities were actually an issue with the site.

Pretty soon we hit this loophole..

You can try it out yourself:
1) Log in to the site
2) Check out the link
http://www.trendio.com/word.php?language=en&wordid=1246 or id = 1279
3) It shows you a word which costs 0.01$. Then go ahead and buy as many shares as you want of that word, on the page.
4) Come back to your portfolio and check that the word magically turns into the "Earthquake" word, which has a value of 63$

So the bottom line is for every dollar you put in buying the word you get 6300 dollars.

I tried it out, made a billion (virtual) dollars and here is the rank list from today morning.

PS: I am informing Jensen the creator of this site about this issue so it might not be around too long. I hope he sends me the geek T-Shirt :)

If you are not a technical guy I would suggest not to read what is written below coz you might want to pull your hair out..

Now here is why this happens and how to fix it:
The site uses PHP and MYSQL as the backend.

He receives the data from the form as a GET request which is visible to the user in the address bar of his browser.
(NOTE: This is a mistake. You should always use POST method. Dont let the user know more than he needs to know)

The GET request looks like http://trendio.com/word.php?language=en&wordid=1 in the browser for the Earthquake word.

Now that I know the request he sends and what variables need to be set, I play around with it.

I change it to
http://trendio.com/word.php?language=en&wordid=1'
NOTE: There is a single quote at the end of the wordid

The MYSQL database expects the data in wordid to be a number but it recieves a string so it throws out the error.

"Error: Unable to perform query: SELECT method, word, lastquot, variation, categoryID FROM words_en where id=1' :You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''' at line 1 "

This query gives me the structure of the database and I know what query is being generated.
(NOTE: The error generated by the mysql_ php functions should not be displayed to the user. Use a @ in front of the mysql_ functions to supress the error messages from being displayed and handle the error elegantly in the code)

Also the wordid should have been checked using the isint() function in PHP.
Eg:
if(isint(_GET['word_id']))
{
$result=@mysql_query("select blah from blah where blah limit blah");
// Do something
}
else
{
print an error message
}

This check would have solved most of the issues.

So just few small checks can make sure that the SQL injection attacks are avoided.

Also when you take inputs from users parse it to remove HTML tags..
If I put in a comment like
<script src="http://blah/blah.js" />
and it is not parsed would not be shown but executed on the other users browsers who open the page to read the comments. Use the strip_tags function in PHP to strip out the unwanted HTML code from being submitted.

Hope you find this blog post useful.

Jensen,
hopefully you would fix trendio (PS: Kindly restore my 46 million $ I had with the old trendio. While you are it, can we get back to the old interface also.) (PS: Can I get a Geek T shirt for pointing out the bugs with trendio ??? )

Final PS: I am willing to help you fix the bugs provided you give me access to the code.

SQL injection >:)

2006-12-15T20:30:00.000+05:30

Why is the wen so broken. www.guruji.com a few days ago and now another site (to be revealed in the next blog post)..

This site had a SQL injection vulnerability along with XSS.

People please make sure that your site is not vulnerable to SQL injection attacks and XSS. Here is a list of don't for your website:
1) Dont use GET method to post forms.
2) Dont stick in the input provided by users into the sql. Check for SQL injection attacks.
3) Dont throw up the SQL in the browser if MYSQL query fails. Use @ before the mysql_ function to supress the query.
4) Dont store and reflect the data passed by user as it is.. Parse it and remove or escape special characters.

More information later...

Working at Yahoo

2006-12-15T17:27:00.000+05:30

Working in a chillaxed (Chilled + Relaxed) mode at office...

Dig through the earth

2006-12-14T16:49:00.000+05:30

Made this dig through the Earth hack in the last 5 minutes just to show how cool the Yahoo! maps look.

This is what the page does. Click on any point on the Earth and the app tells you where you would land up if you were to dig through the Earth from that point right through the core of the Earth. You can try it here.

Hack day

2006-12-14T15:41:00.000+05:30

Hacking can be so tough.. After being sleepless for around 40 hours and hacking on an online implementation of a variant of the RISK game I got to sleep yesterday night.
Being sleepless is one thing, getting your brains rattled by technology when you are sleepless is a totally different ball game.

Here I narrate some horrors we faced while programming the game. All started well as I started coding and testing the backend for our application on my pretty looking FreeBSD 6 box (shown in the previous post). Harish JP (Another sleepless dude) was doing the frontend using Yahoo! maps and JS on his machine..

Soon we started hitting issues,
1) The internal package that we were using to validate the user was not giving us the name of the users. After breaking our heads for half an our we realized that the package depends on the version of PHP. So it was like on PHP 4 use the variable name ".user" and on PHP5 use the variable name "_USER". If that was bad enoughm, we had worse things coming our way.

2) Somewhere in the middle we decided to move our code to Yahoo's apache server. All of a sudden SAJAX started cribing. A quick look at the logs indicated that SAJAX was not getting $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] variable in PHP. After a little digging around and looking at the output of phpinfo() we realized that the variable was not just called $REQUEST_URI .

3) SAJAX was not handling complex objects like arrays of arrays too well. It was opening up the arrays and concatenating all the values into a single array. Not what we wanted so Harish hacked into SAJAX and fixed it to handle such objects. He also put in JSON encoding from another package into JSON.

3) It is a pain debugging JavaScript. SAJAX was working fine but for one case where it just never worked. After painful debugging of an hour we figured out that for this particular object SAJAX needed a set of paranthesis around the JSON encoding and eval( '(' + json + ')') ; did the trick for us...

4) Another issue we faced was swithcing between languages. The way you define functions in Javascript and PHP is very similar but the way you define and use variables is not. So often we got confused between what file we are changing and wrote PHP code like ($nattack > $ndefend) instead of (nattack > ndefend) and vice versa.

5) We also found many limitations in Yahoo! maps. Yahoo! maps are great, believe me but they would have been slightly better with a richer set of API. But I guess there is always a tradeoff, because if someone uses a website with the Yahoo! maps JS included in it. The entire JS would be downloaded on the users machine, which is an overhead and that is what limits the number of functions in Yahoo! maps. (Atleast thats what I think)

After a zillion more issues .. (Note.. hardly any with the logic of the game or the game itself) we were able to complete the game and present it for 2 minutes to fellow Yahoos..

Well 36 hours of hacking... Was it worth it even though we did not win any price. Yeah!!!! We learnt so much about JavaScript, Yahoo! maps, PHP and MYSQL.

And I have new found respect for people working with JavaScript. It can be quite intimidating at times but the language rocks.

New look and feel of my desktop

2006-11-29T11:56:00.000+05:30

I was bored by the look and feel of my KDE desktop. Decided to make it more MAC like..

Installed and configured baghira and kxdocker on my FreeBSD 6 machine at office.
The new look and feel of my desktop rocks, and this is how it looks now..

If you want to make your KDE look this good look at the tutorial by Arnaud here

Installing it on FreeBSD was a pain but I finally got it working.. Should be easier on Linux.

Let me know what you think of my new desktop. I really love the translucency and the kxdocker bar on the bottom..

Unsafe Guruji :)

2006-11-23T11:08:00.000+05:30

How safe is the Web? Well not tooo safe.. If you read what I have to say here..

A new search engine site called www.guruji.com just launched (previously terrawiz.com) and there are supposed to give really fast results pertaining to India and Indian sites. So I decided to give this website a try, and here are my observations...

Site:
http://www.guruji.com

The site did give me fast search results but there is a long way to go for the site.

Regarding relevance of results:
I searched for Terrawiz on the site. The initial few results were relevant but then I start getting results like www.jntu.net, http://www.desisoundz.com/index.php?pid=2 etc.. which have nothing to do with Terrawiz, and even on searching the page you cannot find the word Terrawiz anywhere on the page.
Here is why this happens. The above mentioned sites and few others display what browser you are using. The browser that is being used by the person browsing the site is sent by your browser to the website as a UserAgent string. The UserAgent string for the bot which is used by Guruji is (+http://www.terrawiz.com/bot.html)].

So the end result is that the pages that guruji receives back has this string displayed on the page and it happily stores the entire page with the UserAgent string. But when you click on the link and visit the site, It does not display "Terrawiz" but the UserAgent of your browser. i.e; Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari etc.. depending on what browser you use..

Try it yourself : Search Terrawiz on guruji.com

Guruji.com should be filtering the results to remove the bot string from the page, or give that page low priority.

If this was not enough, the site has many open loop holes for cross side scripting.
The simplest one is on the site try searching for
<script>alert("Simple XSS Test");</script>

The above shown is a javascript, to display a message box with contents "Simple XSS Test"

On clicking search you would get a message box on the next page saying "Simple XSS Test".

Given is a link below so you can test it yourself..
Test it yourself

The reason this happens is because the site does not seem to have a input filtering and shows the input as it is on the result page. So I do not get any result but my javascript runs.

Or we could try a nice interesting HTML XSS .

Try searching for:
<img src="http://www.schwimmerlegal.com/smiley.jpg">

Test it yourself

One more fun one to change the background color

Test it yourself

What the company should do here is
a) Strip all HTML tags (optional)
b) Escape the characters that are provided (Must)

There are other exploits also which can affect a website but the general purpose of this blog was to show some one of the common mistakes that is done during web development. I am sure there are millions of such mistakes and millions of other mistakes too. So basically our web is completely broken, but as long as you pass the website what it expects everything works fine.

I am also sending a mail to the folks at www.guruji.com telling them about the vulnerability.
Lets see what comes out of it. If they respond back I will let you all know..

Santa Joke

2006-11-09T17:07:00.000+05:30

Santa and Banta are fictional characters who are the main characters of most of the jokes which need the main character to be dumb. To make it simple, they are the Indian equivalents of what a blonde is in the blonde jokes.

Ok, so here is the joke

Interviewer: How does an electric motor run?
Santa: Dhhuuuurrrrrrrrrr.....
Inteviewer shouts: Stop it.
Santa: Dhhuurrrr dhup dhup dhup...

Code Czar is in the house!!!

2006-11-09T16:22:00.000+05:30

Somethings in life make you feel special. To me it has been my name, I do not know of any other person in this world named "Aakash Deep Mandhar".

To be doubly sure I googled on Yahoo! and yahooed on Google and just found results relating to moi!!

Because of my unique name I have been lucky in getting the user names I want. But my lucky streak came to an end today. I tried registering this blog as mandhar.blogspot.com but the name was already taken... (A first for me).. So I decided to give myself a new nick name "CODE CZAR" which means the "King of Code". So why dont you all welcome the Code Czar to www.bloggers.com