Google Query: 403 Access Denied

While surfing in NTU, don't be amazed if your favourite blog can't be accessed because it goes www.sexycoder.blogspot.com, and normal Google query instead of showing you the desired results, provides you with a 403 Forbidden : Access Denied.

In their bid to block access to porn sites, Centre for IT Services or CITS has recently installed a highly inefficient filter in the firewall. This simple word matching filter forbids access to the web page if the url contains any word remotely referring to porn. This includes disallowing a normal "sexy tshirt" query in Google as the url being accessed contains 'sexy'. It even disallowed me to access a paper on sorting algorithm because the url had an 'xxx' inside it. God forbid if tomorrow CITS decides to go one step fwd, and block access to webpages if their word search filter finds inappropriate words in it.

While spending millions of dollors on Microsoft products, why can't CITS buy a decent trustworthy filter to disallow access to porn, and not to words. Or if they are incapable of doing so, spend money on hiring hackers who can, and not A grade computer engg. graduates talking financial crap all the time.

little coo-coo sounds prior to..

Just realized that I spend 70% of my blog reading time on engadget, which is one of the arnd 40 feeds that I'm subscribed to.
Here is the most interesting post I've come across:

Thomas Ricker at engadget about Japanese RI-Man, a robot destined to care for elderly:

...[useless stuff before punchline]...
"This allows it to perform such delicate work as lifting perplexed patients into its arms where presumably it will whisper little “coo-coo” sounds prior to crushing its victim into a liquid fuel beverage – which of course all robots will do once they obtain consciousness, right?"

-from engadget

Now, do I need any more reason to love engadget!

Google Romance?!

Now applying advanced text mining algorithms to find the perfect match for you; Google is surely and quickly monopolizing entire computer world. Google products quickly recaped:

Internet: Google Search
Web presence (blogging): Blogspot
Online word processor: Writely
Photos: Picasa
Mail : Gmail
Chatting: Gmail Talk
Desktop: Google Desktop Search
Scheduler/Calendar: CL2
Multimedia: Google Video

What's missing is the release of an operating system by google, perceived to be a modified version of ubuntu -> Goobuntu!
And obviously a highly efficient file system for Goobuntu: GoogleFS

So, when are you releasing them Google?

Processors of future: Exponentially Dynamically

A share from a 20 min discussion with Prof. Tay Joc Cing today afternoon.

"I believe that by the end of this century, we won't need computers anymore for computation" -Tay

"Complex computations will be done by biological beings (read nano particles/molecular machines)" -Tay

"In this century, we're going to have such fast computers, where we don't have to worry about the slowness of the language we're going to use. The most complex problem for computers to process today is a problem with exponential space-time complexity. Our processor speeds are increasing linearly. We are progressing from 1GHz to 2GHz to 3, 4, and 5 GHz. So, the problem continues to be exponential. Consider a possibility of a processor whose speed can increase exponentially dynamically, it can solve a problem with exponential space-time complexity in linear time, which depending upon the problem would essentially be a constant.

Now, if each bio molecule can process fixed set of instructions, knowing that they grow exponentially and assuming that they can distribute the work to their offsprings, a biological molecular robot which can direct n such molecules to solve the problem, can become our first exponentially accelerating processor." -Manish

Cowon A2 source code released

Fascinated by portable multimedia players (PMP), I bought Cowon A2 early this month. I'd be doing a comparison analysis later, but, for now, the biggest news. A2 has released its entire source code under GPL. Though there is no documentation/notice regarding the code on company's site, it is speculated to be the code of its firmware 1.59, while latest stable release is 1.61. The code is huge taking 467MB on hdd(80 MB in compressed .tar.gz format), with little comments/documentation, but quite clean.

Now, is this release a goodwill sign to OS community, and going to expand to other iAudio products? I don't think so. To answer, the code release was never officially announced by the company, as the post here reveals. Such a big move like this surely needs announcement and publicity, telling and inviting hackers to submit patches using the available source code. Google Desktop Search SDK, Nokia 60 series' python support, flickr, and many others are examples when the respective companies willingly announced their open source motives to engage the Open Source community. But, cowon's muteness kind of seems to indicate that the decision to release the code may not be entirely the 'open source angel dawning on the company'. And as per GPL:

Section 2 b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

where 'Program' means the section of the code licensed under GPL.
And A2 is based upon GPLed Linux kernel 2.6.5. This section may be a reason enough for the company to release its whole code under GPL.

Whether willingly or not, this move has opened up the gates of this amazing player to hackers. Though A2 gets a lots of upgrades by its dedicated developer team, it won't be long before there will be a flood of patches from hackers worldwide, jumping mainstream making cowon a2 able to play 'anything you throw at it'.

For me, for now, I'm planning a quick hack to display my name on the screen :).

Prags draws Super Commando Dhruva

After having long forgotten about her old drawing skills, Pragyan took up her hobby back again recently. This is a sketch of my favourite comics character Super Commando Dhruva by her.

She just used pencil and eraser for this. Ah! How much I love pencil sketches!

M.A.N.I.S.H. C.Y.B.O.R.G.

----->>>>> LOOK ----->>>> LOOK

I hope you saw a change in the site. If not?!?!, you need to immediately redesign your _vision_ of life.

Thanks to Boing Boing for providing link to this cool website The Brunching Shuttlecocks. I got my own C.Y.B.O.R.G.ed name which presents itself on the blog now. How to post your cyborged name? Here are the steps:

1. Go to cyborg site -> insert your name -> choose your fav cyborg -> click on Submit.
2. Read, reread your name's definition. Call your friends to tell them what exactly your name means. Ctrl+C the html code provided.
3. Login to blogger -> Dashboard -> Edit Settings -> Template
4. Search for Begin #profile-container
5. Please _Replace_ <$BlogMemberProfile$> with the html code you had copied.
6. In the html code you just copied, replace href='..cyborg..' with profile link location. (mine is http://www.blogger.com/profile/11087998)
7. Click on Preview.
8. Whoa! Your inspirational message about yourself is gone! Dun worry! People wd be infinitely more interested in your cyborg image than your rambling about yourself.
9. Save the template -> Republish index.
10. Done! Enjoy!