Month: October 2006

Who am I

 What do you know, Vista finally has a whoami.exe – you do know the whoami from Unix/Linux, right? Type in “whoami” (without the quotes of course) in a command prompt to launch this. It shows you all the user and group information in addition to SID details, privileges access tokens, etc. Pretty cool and handy especially when trying to debug applications and security related issues.

Below is a screen-shot of the output of this dumped to a text file (click the image to see it in full size).

And yes, I do understand the irony about ÎÜñ|‹ø\/\/ñ and “who am I” Smile

Affect vs Effect

Yes, it is one of the simplest rules of grammar, but I still get confused – I call it Writers Block Wink. 

Technically my mother-tongue is Hindi, and I can speak the “street version” of it and while I can read it – you honestly don’t want me to. The fact that most fellow Indians around at that time are in splits and rolling on the floor might give you a clue. Well I am not particularly proud of that, the fact remains I suck at Hindi and no matter of dressing can fix that. On the flip side, my English is quite strong and for the most part I can read and write it just fine, some of my spellings and grammar sure can do with a refresher (hey but Word helps).

This grammar usage (or rather the lack of it) was highlighted by two things – one writing a book and two, Meenakshi actually starting to read this blog (more on that another day).

I did find these two sites which help people like me in helping find out the difference between Affect v Effect:

  1. Blue Book of Grammar
  2. Writing Tips

If you want to hone your Hindi skills then check out BBC Hindi.

Door Unlocker

I guess, Dheera did not like the faculty entering his dorm room at MIT, so he had to fix the situation I suppose. Wink.

If I ever get to own a house with a basement (which would be my “hang out” area), I am sure to get one of these. Writing the PS/2 keyb driver seems simple enough and the code unlock door code is straightforward as well (however, you might want to format it to make it readable). Sweet, I do need to make one of these.

(Can I see Meenakshi rolling her eyes?)

Fry's finally has a site – w00t!

Those who know me, know how much I love Fry’s electronics and is the single most thing I miss after moving to London! They finally have a website now! Although they have had the domain for a while they have not started using it till now. If you have not heard of Fry’s (where the heck have you been living dude), then read up more here.

Ah, I miss the those Fry’s Ads in the newspapers every week.

China's reproduction of disputed India/China Border

While this story is a few months old, I just came across it. Seems like China has accurate reproductions of the disputed Indo/China border down to scale – including accurate geographical features. Take a look below – the image on top is from China’s reproduction and while on the bottom is on Google earth.

In a Twist, Americans land jobs with Indian companies

Interesting story by the NYTimes on how American graduates are joining Indian companies and going to India for initial training before going back to their offices. They also talk a little about their experiences in a developing country and how some of the most basic things are different.

An Inconvenient Truth

It is quite unusual for me to blog about non-technical things (other than the usual crappy joke), but there are certain thing which have a profound affect on me and global warming is one of those. Maybe it is the fact that I have seen the shortages first hand while growing up in India (and back then things were better that now, and they are just going to get worse), or maybe I have seen such a huge cultural difference between the Europeans and the Americans (having lived both in California for many years and for a couple of years now in London), or maybe I am just getting old – I don’t know.

If you have not seen this movie by Al Gore called An Inconvenient Truth, then make sure you go and see it. It is a documentary on global warming with sound science behind it and cuts through the political hype. Simply put, is a hair raising experience. It is a must watch! (you can see the trailer here)

After you have seen it, then you don’t sit on your ass, but actually do something about it. Firstly, calculate your contribution to the Global Warming and then try and reduce it. It is not very difficult to do, and you can reduce the impact at home, work, while commuting, etc.

More Information: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Still cannot connect to a printer with Vista

I have a USB printer (an HP DeskJet) that shared on my home network via one of the desktops (which is running XP). I had the same problem in Vista RC1 and it still exists in RC2. Whenever I try and connect to this printer it takes a long time and eventually I get the error below. Any ideas what the resolution for this is? Note, I can connect to network printers at work – these are directly on the network and not shared via a Desktop.