It received a welcome warmer than hot chocolate on a cold winter night. IT columnists still haven’t grown tired of singing its praises, and the public brain is like an empty cave that echoes the general noise.

The main reason for this, many of us feel uncomfortably in the back of our heads, is the low bar set by its predecessor – Windows Vista.
When Vista was released, everybody got their undies in a bunch. They wrote the OS off faster than the metaphorical one legged man in a butt kicking contest.

Microsoft pleaded hard, but were shouted back at like the evil little meanies we all know them to be.
Their theory?
The OS is not as bad as the popular opinion makes it out to be.
Since there’s no point fighting popular opinion, they needed, instead, to come up with a replacement, and soon. There was too much at stake – it was all or nothing.

So they did a small experiment they called the “Mojave experiment”.
The premise – give everyday users computers loaded with an alleged new version of Windows – codename “Mojave”, and get their opinion of this OS as compared to Windows Vista.

The average pre-demo score for Windows Vista was 4.4.
The average post-demo score for the new operating system codenamed Windows “Mojave” was 8.5.
Infact, 94% of respondents rated the “new operating system” codenamed Windows “Mojave” higher than they initially rated Windows Vista before the demo – not a single one of them rated “Mojave” lower.
Now comes the fun part – Windows Mojave was actually Windows Vista – the only difference, for the users that took part in the experiment, was the name.

With the success of this small scale experiment under their belt, Microsoft decided to go big – by releasing Windows 7.

Apart from a revamped Windows Exporer, there really isn’t much difference between Windows 7 and Vista. Windows 7 is fully compatible with drivers written for Windows Vista and heck, they even have the same major version number for the underlying kernel! (Windows Vista was build 6.0, Windows 7 is build 6.1 … not 7.0)
What was released as Windows 7 might as well have been a major(?) service pack for Windows Vista. Windows XP Service Pack 2, anyone? But, honestly, would that be good enough for a public that has already formed an opinion? No Sir-ee Bob!

Let’s admit it, Microsoft have proved their point – they were right about Windows Vista all along – the only real problem with Windows Vista was that of public perception.
They didn’t waste anymore of their time and effort trying to reason with the mob mentality.

They yielded – they buried Vista before everyone’s eyes, secretly exhumed it and gave it an alias.

“We know Windows Vista was a bad product and all, but here’s one that’s much better – it’s called Windows Mojave Windows 7”

I’m going to talk about the one that worked the best for me – the one using symbolic links.

I had on my hands multiple blogs each with different owner/author and different databases.

All I had to do was -

1. put all standard wordpress files into a directory above the level that the individual blogs were located – these files will now be shared by all blogs (make sure the path’s accessible to php for includes)
2. remove all standard files/folders (except wp-config.php) from each of the individual blog’s docroot
3. in each individual blog’s doc root, create symlinks pointing to all standard files & folders within the shared wordpress directory.
4. add to the each individual wp-config.php the following line -

   define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/');

5. in the shared wp-load.php, change -

   define( 'ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/' );

   to read -

   define( 'ABSPATH', $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . '/');

the directory structure of each individual blog’s docroot looks like so -

If you wish to share a few plugins and themes, but keep a few different plugins/themes on different blogs, this can be done in the same way.
In each blog’s doc root, don’t create a symlink to the whole shared wp-content. Rather symlink the individual plugin or themes folders instead.
like so -

It may be a good idea to have all plugins/themes inside the shared wp-content instead of in individual blog’s wp-content, and symlink them back into individual blogs as required. This makes updating the plugins etc. easier. (I share all-in-one-seo-pack and google-sitemap-generator across multiple blogs)

Now to update wordpress (for all the blogs), just extract the new wordpress files overwriting the shared wordpress directory!
The shared plugins can be updated across the board in the same way !

This blog is now running with this hack, leave a comment if you notice something not working correctly. (I tested and found comments to be working fine )

p.s. – The shared wordpress files are owned by root and are not writable by individual blog, and security is maintained by suexec’d php.
This might mean that plugin installation/update might now work from within the wp-admin area’s UI. You’ll have to do it from command line.

Dropbear is a lightweight SSH server and client . It implements SSH2 protocol, just like OpenSSH, but without all the bells and whistles. So much so that it doesn’t even come bundled with SFTP capability.
But we can use the SFTP server that comes bundled with OpenSSH to work with Dropbear.
Let’s begin -

It’s always a good idea to update & upgrade your installation first -

:~# apt-get update
:~# apt-get upgrade

First we need to install OpenSSH, if you don’t already have it (only to use its SFTP server with dropbear) -

:~# apt-get install openssh-server

Now let’s install Dropbear -

:~# apt-get install dropbear

Dropbear gets installed, but it is disabled by default. To enable it, edit /etc/default/dropbear and -

modify the line -

NO_START=1

to read -

NO_START=0

You can optionally change the listening port (22 by default) by editing the DROPBEAR_PORT variable in the same file. It’s recommended that you do this, for enhanced security. Remember to also change the port number that you connect to in your SSH/SFTP client.

Now that we’ve enabled Dropbear, we need to disable OpenSSH.

:~# mv /etc/rc2.d/S16ssh /etc/rc2.d/K16ssh

finally -

:~# /etc/init.d/ssh stop
:~# /etc/init.d/dropbear start

Now, without closing your existing SSH connection, open a new SSH session and make sure your SSH client can connect and show you the username/password prompt. If it doesn’t work and you logout your current connection – you’ll be left without access to your server.
Once you’re sure it all works, you can logout and login again to end all OpenSSH processes, and let Dropbear takeover SSH responsibilities.
If you check your resource usage, before and after, you should be able to notice the difference now
Also, since we haven’t uninstalled OpenSSH, Dropbear will be able to serve SFTP with the OpenSSH’s SFTP server. This is located at /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server , and symlinked as /usr/lib/sftp-server.
If you want, you can also backup the sftp-server binary, remove openssh-server package and put the binary back at /usr/lib/sftp-server – and dropbear will still be able to serve SFTP with it.

Now that Dropbear is up and running, let’s setup private/public key pair based passwordless authentication for the root user – it’s convenient and just as secure (if not more so).

Let’s generate a key pair for SSH use -

:~# ssh-keygen

the default paths are good for use with Dropbear.
Don’t enter a passphrase if you don’t want to have to enter it everytime you login to SSH or do SFTP.

Now we must authorise the generated public key for SSH use -

:~# cat /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

and copy the private key to your local machine.

*hint* At this point, you can use SFTP to copy this file

It is now safe to delete the generated key pair -

:~# rm /root/.ssh/id_rsa
:~# rm /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Now you can point your SSH/SFTP client to use the private key to allow password-less login.

If, like me, you’re using PuTTY (or WinSCP) – you’ll need to convert the private key to PuTTY compatible .ppk format.
To do this, download PuTTYGen.
Once you run PuTTYGen, select “Conversions” -> “Import key” and import the private key file.
Next, click “Save private key” and save the converted private key in PuTTY’s own format.
This converted private key can now be used with PuTTY client (Connection -> SSH -> Auth -> “Private key file for authentication”), and with WinSCP for passwordless login to SFTP.

Lastly, we need to disable password login for root in Dropbear. To do this, edit the file /etc/default/dropbear and -
edit the line -

DROPBEAR_EXTRA_ARGS=""

to read -

DROPBEAR_EXTRA_ARGS="-g"

and then

:~# /etc/init.d/dropbear restart

And we’re all done !

A lightweight replacement SSH server with SFTP and passwordless logins for root !
All with the usual ease of Debian and apt.

p.s. – You can use these switches in dropbear configuration -

• Disallow root logins -

  DROPBEAR_EXTRA_ARGS="-w"
  
  

• Disable password logins -

  DROPBEAR_EXTRA_ARGS="-s"
  
  

• Disable password logins for root -

  DROPBEAR_EXTRA_ARGS="-g"
  
  

• or any combination thereof, like -

  DROPBEAR_EXTRA_ARGS="-w -s"

Deeply concerned by the way natural food was killing their kids, hundreds of good looking mothers march upto the said “Department of Nutrition” … they want blood … er, answers !
Scared out of his wits, the guy with a stethoscope around his neck (evidently, a doctor) reveals the sensational findings of a research “carried out over a period of three years on hundreds of kids” – kids who drank Complan grew twice as fast as those who didn’t.

You heard it here first folks ! Why, you ask ?
I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of government conspiracy. “They” don’t want us to know about the findings of a “research” that conclusively proves that regular food is just not good enough for modern kids. The outing of this “research” would mean the end of all naturally grown food, and by extension, the end of all involved in the sham of a business called farming.

What the advertisement doesn’t tell us is about the protocols used in the alleged “research”.
Were the children from the two groups (A – those who consumed Complan, and B – those who didn’t) equal in all other respects ?
I’ll bet the groups were divided based on the children’s existing diets. Here is the pitfall -

Group A – kid drinks Complan regularly -> kid is probably from a well-to-do family -> kid probably has a better overall diet, notwithstanding his Complan intake.
Group B – kid doesn’t drink Complan -> kid is probably from a poor family -> kid is probably malnourished anyway.

Honestly, which well-to-do family doesn’t get their kids some health drink or the other ?

Anyway, just like the helicopter moms in the TV ad, I’m utterly outraged at the way mother nature has failed to provide us with sustenance.
Thanks to health drinks, today’s kids can have proper nutrition – provided it’s the right brand …

From what I know of these two applications, I can think of the following (not thoroughly tested) ways of synchronizing your mailboxes in Thunderbird and Outlook Express :

Outlook Express to Thunderbird
If you have Outlook express and Thunderbird on different machines – Copy the Outlook Express mailbox files to the machine with Thunderbird at the corresponding path.

These files are located at – C:\Documents and Settings\<yourprofilename>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{some-random-16-char-guid-here}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

Now from within Thunderbird » Import » Mail » Outlook Express.

You may have to create an identical folder structure in the Outlook express of the machine that runs Thudnerbird.

Thunderbird to Outlook Express

Download and install SmartSave Thunderbird Extension – an extension that lets you export multiple mails in one go.

Right Click » Export (the folders/messages that you want to sync into Outlook express).

A bunch of .eml files will be created.
If you have Outlook express and Thunderbird on different machines, copy these files to the machine with Outlook Express.

Select all and drag these files into the corresponding folder inside Outlook express.

That is, the files from Thunderbird’s inbox into Outlook Express’ inbox; those from Thunderbird’s sentbox into Outlook Express’ sentbox and so on. (There’s no compulsion, but it doesn’t make much sense otherwise …)

If you find that the above doesn’t work for you or know of a better way of doing the same – let me know (you know where to leave a message)

To capture good quality video without sacrificing a huge amount of disk space, we must compress it before storing it onto the disk.
One popular codec for compressing video is the DivX codec.
It’s compatible with almost all video editing/capturing software.
DivX homepage
Download DivX

For video editing/capturing, I recommend VirtualDub.
Virtual dub allows editing/converting/capturing video files with a variety of professional features.
VirtualDub homepage
Download VirtualDub

First, you’ll need to install both these software.To begin Video capture, fire up VirtualDub, and select “Capture AVI” from the File menu.

Next We need to set the Video Capture source :

All “Video for Windows” (VFW) compatible video devices connected to your computer should be available here.Thus you can capture video from sources like webcams, TV tuners, camcorders … basically almost any device that works with a computer.

Next we set the location to save the created video file :

Now to set up video compression :

You can also optionally configure advanced compression settings for the selected codec at this point (Select “Configure” at this dialogbox).

If you have your devices’s audio output connected to your computer’s line-in input, you may also want to configure audio compression at this point :

That’s it !
Just hit “F5″ to start video capture, hit “Esc” to stop it.

Also note that if the device is not recognized by VirtualDub or doesn’t work with it for some reason, you can probably still capture compressed video using the software that came with your device.
Just look around for a option to set the compression codec for capture, and select DivX.

So I burned the mammoth 3GB Vista DVD image onto a rewritable disk (you didn’t think I’d commit a regular DVD for that stuff, did you?)
And onto the installation process.

First annoyance came when Vista refused to install on a FAT32 partition.
The exact reason behind that will become later on, but for now let’s just say they have a “good enough” reason for insisting on NTFS.

There were no customization options offered during the installation, and after about half and hour Vista was sitting pretty occupying a good 8.5GB of harddisk prime estate.
Of which, around 1.5GB was the pagefile and another 1.5GB is hiberfil.sys (dedicated for the hibernation feature).

Next, Vista wouldn’t recognise my LAN card.
And since the card manufacturer’s site no longer exists, I had to rip out the driver files from my XP installation.
I must give it to the Vista developers … for all the code re-write they have put into Vista, all my XP specific drivers still work like a charm on Vista.

And then there is the “user access control” feature.
Windows has always been criticised for letting users easily mess up their system, unlike certain other “secure” operating systems where any major system operation requires reentering the root password.
So they put the same into Vista … any system wide change now has to go through a number of warnings and prompts.
Naturally, the next thing I did was to turn off user access control.

But admittedly, this is good thinking on the part of Vista developers.
The average joe will be wary enough of messing up his system, while the ones who really know what they are doing will simply disable this feature.

Next I took a peek into the task manager. 700MB RAM usage right off the boot !
Now don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty decent system that I threw Vista upon and 700MB is not really a big deal, but this somehow wouldn’t let me sleep peacefully in the night.
So I took up trimming Vista next.
Search indexing service was using around 100MB. I suspect this service might use lesser or more varying from case to case.
Another good concept, and let me tell you, it does make for some lightning fast searches. But I know exactly what I put on my PC and know exactly where I put it, thank you very much.

TrustedInstaller service was using another 90MB or so.
Which brings us to the reason behind the choice of NTFS.
Even the administrator doesn’t have the ownership of the system files, but this service called TrustedInstaller has full permissions on them.
Thus, any change made to system files has to be through this service. Again, this way the Vista developers intend to prevent users from messing up their own systems.
And yet again, a power user who knows his way around things can easily take ownership and full control of everything, while average joe is unable to directly mess with the system files

After disabling thw above two and many other useless services like TabletPC related, Diagnostics related, Media center related, backup/restore related and update related services … Vista boots up using under 250MB memory.

(note : The task manager itself is using around 8 MB out of the usage shown here)
And that with Aero Glass – the desktop windows manager service (DWM) enabled and running!
Stopping the DWM and Themes service bring the memory usage down to around 150MB!

But the Aero Glass looks so good that I’m willing to dedicate a 100MB of memory to have it running.
Just look at these neat looking Windows screenshots :

So the drama began with the usual political correctness …

This beauty contest has got absolutely nothing to do with physical beauty, it’s all about brains …

These women are not here to be commoditized, they are being judged on their mental faculty …

blah blah blah …

To this date, my ribs hurt from rolling so hard on the floor.

No wonder then that next on agenda was a brain-storming session on beauty tips and products … selflessly sponsored by a popular cosmetics company.
The contestants won such prizes as a year’s worth of supply of mentally stimulating face-washes and appointments for further brain-storming at elite beauty parlors.

We join the contest after a short, completely social-service oriented, commercial break … for a photo shoot of the contestants.
They’re all there, making titillating poses to the camera, looking like over-polished Barbie dolls. All in all, a gathering of the most select intellectuals if I ever saw one.

Then the contestants were interviewed one by one, and this turned out to be an endless torrent of thoughts of sheer genius:

I guess the best thing about me is that I’m very confident …

She “guessed” that she was “very confident” … go rack your brains over that!

I think the quality that I have and contestants don’t, is my humbleness …

She’s so “humble”, she couldn’t help but boast about it.
I told you we were dealing with some pretty nasty complicated intellectual stuff here.

I don’t know about the others, but I’m here to win …

My roomie’s natural reaction to this brain-liquefier – “Well I know about the others – they’re here for the buffet”

And before we all dismiss this as just another beauty contest … let me remind you that they did play a game of Sudoku.
That it didn’t count towards their final evaluation (which invariably was all about the contestants walking around in expensive dresses and heavy makeup) is completely irrelevant.

One of the least good looking girls ended up winning the contest.
I guess it wasn’t about physical beauty after all!

A typical soap episode starts with a recap, which takes around 5 minutes and covers the last episode’s story in more detail than they did it during the actual run of that episode.
Then they take a commercial break. Then two ladies come on screen looking at each other menacingly and the camera man shows off his skill by zooming in and out at their faces, while the music troop plays dramatic drum rolls until … the next commecial break.
Again the same scene appears, this time incredible amounts of tears flowing from the ladies’ eyes. (their makeup remains intact, by the way).
And before you can say “this is so freaking boring” (when you’re high on marijuana to the point of time-dilation, and then say it really slowly), it’s over.
Phew … that was a lot of storyline for one episode.
Heck, I’ve seen a soap where a family spent the whole episode wondering who’d sent them that mysterious parcel … I hear they didn’t open that parcel until 2-3 episodes later.

Just incase you missed any of the blindingly furious action, there’s always a repeat telecast soon. Or you can always watch any other soap, and pretty much find the same story.

There are also reality shows and talent hunts.
Which usually mean telephone/mobile operators making loads of money and people doing disgusting things just to be on TV.
For example, eating squishy bugs, jumping off cliffs while their pants are on fire or even trying to sing !
“please please please vote for me please please please” … amazing ! what talent !
(My roommate digs all of those though … you can get an idea of what I have to put up with)

You’ll also find film awards ceremonies on almost half the channels.
Which involves self-inflicted “celebrities” pretending to be cool and imporant.
There will also be few such “stars” dancing like frogs on the stage, and a couple of anchors cracking the worst of the jokes.

Cartoons ?
They seem to be all Japanese these days.
If you are juvenile by the standards of a kindergarten kid and like to make a great fuss about spinning tops or cards or imaginary animals … you’ll probably like them.
But by it’s very definition, a cartoon is supposed to be funny.
Maybe the licensing fees are lower for these Japanese animation films.

The sports channels have all hired retired/expelled cricketers to discuss Saurav Ganguly, and I’m not going to even mention all the music/devotional/fashion channels due to the obvious obsecene nature of their nonsense programs.

That leaves me with the discovery channel, and you know what ?
They’re running a women’s day special …

I’m going back to playing some game on my computer.

As I was going through the blog-replies to the satirical articles on that site, I noticed something very striking …
religious zeal, fanaticism !

Tormented rival browser fans spitting venom all over the place :

internet explorer suck

Microsoft f**king sucks, just look at all the god damn BLOATWARE! One example, in my opinion, is Internet Explorer. It is so f**king slow, it takes forever to download programs! Don’t get me started on outlook express, I got more worms from my mailbox than I have from random downloads! So I say once again, F**K YOU!

THIS SITE WAS MADE BY SOME 12 YEAR OLD LOSERS WHO ARE SO FAR UP BILL GATES A**, IT’S NOT EVEN FUNNY. THEY CAN GO F**K THEMSELVES. GET FIREFOX. – [followed by several big "spread firefox" banners]

LOL, I bet this site was written* by a bunch of hackers, fed-up of people having a secure browser which they can’t hack.

* sorry, typo, “copied”

trust me! Firefox is much better

GET A LIFE A**HOLE!

f**k you

IE, doesn’t even suppor right PNG images, please, HOW LAME IS THAT? Neither it does RSS, and suxs with CSS! HAHAHA, Firefox supports a way better all standards. So… Don’t mess with the Fox!

So there … just a little sample which represents the general mood – “You do anything but profess allegiance to my religion, you deserve to die” … the satire all lost on them.

Some blame IE for slow program downloads. Others connect IE with computer naivety. Most just plain abuse IE users.
No one seems to care about the fact that it was Firefox fans that created the spoof site in the first place.

I don’t see IE users doing the same at the FireFox fansite.
The IE users I’ve seen can have a peaceful discussion on a forum. Can we say the same about FF users ? Heck No … they have the “word of God” that must be spread at all costs …
Dare to state that you use IE – on a public forum ? Try it and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ve seen sites that detect visitor’s browser and prohibit IE users from entering ! (usually with a derogratory message like “Get a life and a real browser” … at the same time providing a spreadfirefox.com affiliate link)

Missionaries, Intolerance, Rioting, Professing.
Sounds uncannily similar to religion …