Hello World!

Just to say, that I am once again connected to all of you, courtesy Airtel :)

Back

So my 20 month stay in foreign land is about to be over. It was a pleasant experience. I had wonderful view of the Europe subcontinent, beauty of which is so difficult to summarize in few words.

People, are the next best thing. The general courtesy, smiling faces on the streets, sense of driving on busy roads were all new experiences for me. The methodical system and the discipline to obey the rules are qualities so worth imbibing. Basic honesty in daily life too is so evident on the streets.

At work, I learned and experienced interesting ways of getting work done. Earlier I always had the notion that you needed a "Super-man/woman" to hold the project together. That myth is now blown away. Given the right amount of freedom, every member of the team works honestly towards the goals. The commercial aspects of a project should be put in the "product-backlog" in descending order of prioritization. There is a limit (physical and mental) to which a team can work in terms of number of hours, and that should be honored if quality is to be maintained.

Now, it's time to go back to my 'Karm-bhoomi'. That is the place where my duties and responsibilities lie. I am waiting eagerly for my return and to resume my life there.

Happy New Year 2011 and all that

Wishing everyone happy and prosperous new year and all that.

So, last year I fared miserably on my average on number of posts per year on this blog. I will try my best to make it up this year. Last year like the one previous to it, just came and went by. I did not even realize the "swishing sound" that it made!

This year seems to be one like the previous two again. I am set to change my geographies later this month, and hope it goes as planned.

See you all in next few days (if not months!)

Stuxnet

I have been reading about the Stuxnet virus for sometime now. It seems to be a very dangerous virus, with many of the first of it's kind features. This virus attacks SCADA systems. It installs code into the PLC and has the capability of hiding itself from detection. It then can cause the control systems to operate erratically and cause subtle but substantial damage.

Jeffrey Carr in his blog here, claims that INSAT-4B was probably brought down by Stuxnet. ISRO has claimed that Stuxnet could not have "killed" the satellite as it is not built around the PLC which the virus is programmed to attack and that it has it's own custom code to program Siemen's devices.

Obviously, the most talked about attack is the target of the nuclear reactors in Iran, the extent of the damage is yet to be fully known. It is rumored that this virus is so sophisticated that it is not possible to have been created without "state-support".

Maybe we are headed towards the first "cyber-warefare" of our times.

More information about the virus:
Symantec
Wikipedia

Google App Engine works

This weekend I set to add some more features to one of my existing Google App Engine application, Our countdown app. I wanted it to send reminder emails once the events near their due date. (Something like Google Calendar).

Now I could have done it the easier way, and have a cronjob executing every day to check for the dates and send the mails. But I found that the appengine has a neat service called the "Task Queue". One can schedule tasks in this queue, and then set up a "web-hook", which the appengine would invoke as and when it finds appropriate. This is much more neat and scalable for an enterprise application. (In my case, I have only 2 mails to configure :-), but I am happy to know that my design will scale under heady load). Among other features of the Task Queue, one can configure the rate at which the tasks can be executed and also the HTTP request type (GET or POST).

Next would be to once again enable the map application part on the page, and make it mobile (GPS enabled) devices aware. This is possible since the Google geolocation APIs support the detection of the iPhone and Android devices on the client side. Shall post the update, once that's done.

Timing of disclosure

The timing of disclosure is very important. Things when disclosed at one time may result in a totally different situation, than when disclosed at a later time. Strange are the ways of life!

On the other front, have started to explore a bit on the iPod/iPhone devices. I find Apple restricting a lot. The fact it runs on Darwin and that people have made great progress outside of Apple world, should provoke Apple to a more "open" environment. Of course, I have already "jailbroken" my wife's new iPod Touch and experiencing the new world of Cydia. I have backed up my 4.0 SHSH blobs on Cydia as well as grabbed then from the iPod, using tinyumbrella.

With the release of iOS 4.0.2, Apple released the patch for the "PDF hole" stopping the famous jailbreakme method, but I rather installed the "PDF Patch" released by Saurik. I hear that the jailbreakme team released their full source demonstrating the use of the PDF patch, after Apple released the fix in iOS 4.0.2. Way to go!

अच्छा है... (All is well)

Sometimes we so casually respond to the equally casual question, "How are you?" with "Ya.. I am (we) (are all) fine".

We may be keeping a poor health, or facing a critical problem but we hide it from people. There could be various reasons for hiding it, probably from the near and dear ones, so that they do not worry too much.