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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Handling Smarties e.g. Hackers in Your Surroundings

Being part of a forum meant of people deeply interested in hacking, I happened to observe a number of behavior patterns that distinguish hackers from rest of us. Rather, I should say, that differ smarties from rest of the people.
A few of them were, using (almost incomprehensible to rest) slang phrases for virtually everything, writing everything so technically complex that leaves you bare-handed, and a rage to have achieved something out of the box. Not to be taken otherwise, the veterans out there typically tend to give direct solutions to problem rather than making friends with people for getting nothing in return. However, sometimes the style of direct replies leave the rest off guard. My suggestion is to not let oneself feel offended, rather try to gain trust not by acting warm, by showing off your skills, by helping the rest the way you received help. This is a kind of behaviour one needs to learn before getting across those smarties. The ways of learning, in the first place, requires you to know, how and when to put yourself forth asking questions. You should learn, How To Ask Questions The Smart Way before you collect courage to kick-ass those self-proclaimed geniuses.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Google Finance: the latest buzz from Google

Google now penetrates into an area till now touched by various companies at local levels most prominently. That area is finance and portfolio management. The best part again like all the other google products is their reliance on "Majesty Of Simplicity."

As default options you can view daily statistics of growth and decline of various international market indexes viz. Nasdaq, Dow, S&P 500, NYSE on the Google Finance Page. They have not refrained from displaying presumably their favourite feature i.e. news and headlines but now limited to financial domain only. These headlines keep on getting updated with the global business news fed from all the leading newslines across all over the world.
You can even use Google Finance for your book keeping needs, I mean for portfolio management, seems a little trivial to me, but again the majesty of simplicity.

Google finance keeps you updated about all the news it assumes required, for the stocks you've added in your portfolio. It displays statistics chart, financial stats at the moment, Company Facts, Company Summary, and Management Details related to your selected stocks. It also displays the blogs, data about other related companies and more relevant links related to the stocks of your choice.

Another very interesting tool by google, falling perfectly inline with their leading trail of products. Just check it out...

Monday, March 20, 2006

Mumbai, Home to Helpless Talents

History has witnessed an everlasting trail of people coming to Mumbai in hopes of a bright future, falling perfectly inline with what Mumbai has been always known for. As always enticing outsiders, Mumbai is viewed as a place where people come hungry but don't sleep hungry.
Continueing along the similar lines, I recently met many of the similar people coming from remote areas of U.P., Bihar, Haryana, A.P., Tamilnadu, and virtually all states in India.
The typical categories of jobs these people were found doing were:
  • Rickshaw & Taxi Driving(Most of the rickshaw and taxi drivers in Mumbai are U.P. and Bihar people)
  • Paanwalas
  • Doodhwalas
  • Security Guards
.... and many more.
To my surprize, many of these guys came Mumbai in hopes of seeing their talents flourish, but with no penny in pockets. I don't know whether to call it unfortunate or lucky, they started earning their livelihoods fearing the slappings of time and feeling hunger. The jobs that gave them their first bucks of living were unfortunately not as they were supposed to be; they were not utilizing their talented sides. Yes, the talented sides of them were really bright but covered by mist of helplessness, hunger. One of the security guards at my office had been a draftsman a long ago and the man at coffee machine is an aspirant for becoming a graphic designer. His drawings of cartoons and memory-based sketches really display a nice treat to eyes and aesthetic senses.

How to help them meet their goals, is something which requires a great thought from everyone well-to-do.
As they say, "a good live cannot blossom in an environment of want and poverty."

Saturday, February 25, 2006

...Shall goodwill ever be secure?

"From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me –
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring...
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars."

Taken from a chinese author's collection, the poem really picks me to the state where I need to realize if the goodwill ever be secure.

An employer emplyed a person with a high I.Q. level, but desperate to get a job. Employer traded on his desperation of unemployment. Both being committed to each others' needs kept working together living a harmonious relationship. Despite their employer-employee relationship (Master-Slave in worse words), they played, enjoyed, had picnics, and worked together towards the money-making of employer.
The employee one day decided to get seperated as he was now better off than ever and had now learned how one can get what he deserves. Although not feeling so happy at the thought, he decided to depart
gracefully from his employer. He was getting employment from many others with far higher prospects of flying high. He now wanted to live up to his expectations from himself.
Employer on the other hand was stunned to have this news heard and tried to placate him verbally and monetarily as well. The employer was also in a way better financial condition than ever, by now. Fearing that the employee would now certainly leave his employment, he says, "Dude, do you really think you can quit without my consent? No, You can't! I've signature of yours on a paper, which says that you cannot quit within this particular tenure on any condition or any cost."
Now the ball is in employee's court. He finds himself dumbfounded to remember his days of need, because of which he signed that document without giving a serious thought. He has to decide, what to do now. Should he murder his relationship with his employer and sacrifice his certificate of that employment & experience, or he should follow what his employer says, killing his own ambitions and sacrificing these new opportunities just to keep sanctity of his relations and papers?

Friends, ball is in fact in your court now...send your comments please.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Don't Fake It Here, It's Your Job

How many of you have faked the smallest (yes, considering it forgivable) details in your resume. Oh, don't feel offended, I just knew that it's a bitter reality that many of us do without thinking it a thing that may deserve a thought. If seen in a Cause-and-Effect scenario, at the Cause level, there are several things that might or might not really result into desirable or undesirable effects. In the hopes of good result and thinking our employers chucking the minute lies in our profiles, we falsify very small and very few things like:
  • Marks in qualification (% or CGPA)

  • Date of Joining at previous organization

  • Projects undertaken

  • Functional and technical expertise (in some cases)

  • Total experience (Usually increased to multiples of a year as in, 10-11 months of experience written as one year)

  • Cause of resignation at previous employer(s)

  • Names of previous employer(s)

  • Reason to join the company (that's one of the most compromised truths)

Now what at the effect level?

That level doesn't feature ever at all many times, backing us up with a false sense of security while performing this kind of misdeeds. But what if this really springs before the people who have hired you? Just think, and let me cite some examples if you felt fainted doing it.
A project manager was shown the way to door coming back happily completing a successful onsite assignments at one of the giant MNC among financial securities firms. Reason was, among his huge experience he had mentioned a local-level small company which never existed on earth. Alas, all this expertise was blamed for virtually no reason at all.
A senior IT consultant was kicked out three months after joining one of the largest software companies when it was known that the B.E. marks he wrote in his resume were not exactly what he secured.

There are several examples before us and many behind the scene (behind the scene, because these bad experiences are not made highlights to keep people at ease with the employer.) In this age of cut-throat competition and easy availability of information you never know when are you going to get exposed. Many firms have started performing a strong and strict background check paying big bucks to third parties (such as detective agencies.) List of such third parties which provide risk consultation in hiring decisions can be found at: http://www.bestbackgroundchecks.com/employment.html

Mind you, if there is something similar in your mind, beware! Otherwise you can also make your company lose your CTC to some verifying trash.
Morons getting intelligent, Thanks Google!
New Role Of Google, the Big B to Morons

Google has well evolved as the Big B to the community of cyber morons after the dissemination of this immensely useful phrase, Google It You Moron (http://googleityoumoron.com.) It's pure fun having heard this phrase every now and then among the colleagues and many of the guys asking silly questions. This phrase is indeed becoming a favorite saying of individuals who consider themselves smarter or just want to tease people asking stupid questions.
As a result, I am witnessing many morons getting smarter and a bit more cautious while asking questions, regardless of the quality of the questions.

Moron as an acknowledgement to their new-found respite, owe thanks to Google, the Big B. At the same time, Google should also pay equal thanks to the creator of site and founder of the phrase, Google It You Moron. This simple phrase must have directed a great deal traffic to google.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Computers hate infinity, I should not...

Whatever seems impossible to perpetrate is flagged as , undefined, by a computer but the same is what humans have always made their jacks. I am referring to Swami Dayananda's comment, "IMPossible, means I M (am) Possible."

What makes us think the infinity the undefined way, a focus to our main goal mitigated by the myriad of our short-term goals. No doubts that these short-term goals are also very important for us to get to the situation of feeling big at small achievements and make the course of life normal. However, this myriad of short-term goals should not be entrapping enough to not let us focus on our main goal.

I was finding myself dumbfounded pondering over the differences between set of my principles and practices during recent days. I took two days of complete leisure for letting my thought process go unceased and finally, I ended up writing and making a clear vision of my principles and to visualize the junction where my practices (owing to my social and person needs) meet my principles. This two-day phenomenon of pondering involved an improvised and self-contrived session of finding and resolving the guilt arising due to inefficiency of mine during previous days. I realized the sources of guilts as a few professional setbacks, few flawed relationships and few inabilities to achieve my short-term goals. As the way out, I allowed myself a very short and strict time limit for finding reasons and surprisingly I got reasons for my these guilts in most of the cases, and for the unresolved, I chose to chuck them up.

This was my way of waving a good-bye to self-originated frustration and self-motivation. As a result of which,
"I don't hate infinity unlike computers. "

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Attention Geeks, Bitwise 06 Announced!

Technical freaks, an alarm for you from IIT Kharagpur. Bitwise 06, the annual online programming contest, which has become a grownup among its global counterparts leaving behind age of its infancy merely a few years back.

Bitwise poses a set of virtual problems that are emulated real by the creative themes, the creators of these problems contrive. These virtual problems are supposed to be first reduced to some intelligible software problems and that’s where your programming brains should start working. The objective is not only to have programmatic solutions to these problems; solutions must appear as if they are real work of real brains. They need to be optimized for time and space complexity of algorithms giving rise to them.
As a set convention, Bitwise is held on the second Sunday of month of February each year, and this year 12 February is the date for online trial of your gray cells.
As for the rules, you are provided a limited time span (limited but not less) of around 12 hours on the day of trial, during which you can post up to 10 unique solutions to each problem. The most recent solution to a particular problem will be deemed the final solution to that problem from your side.
For further information, visit:
Bitwise 06 Home
Get informed and enticed, enroll, download the problems, and take a deep breath. Start working out the old problems.
Perhaps you're gonna become the one who gets ranked among the top 50 and among the ones who get their skills explored and exposed to outside world... and who knows who in this material world is looking for a geek like you!

Sunday, January 01, 2006

CAT 2005 results from IIMs OUT!

"With end of hopes for many,
Bringing a season to the eyes called, rainy,
While Cheers blasting in the eves
all lush and rustles in the winter leaves..."

... CAT has unveiled its both sides to the test-takers, the IIM aspirants,
making many faces glooming with high hopes zooming while many others sobbing, feeling CAT's fobbing... finally.

Three IIMs, IIM Lucknow, IIM Ahmedabad, and IIM Calcutta today declared the results for CAT 2005 exam, which you can check at the following URLs:


Hold your heart, and click all of the links one after another....

My best wishes with you!