The year of the Fox
The death knell has been sounded for Microsoft's Internet Explorer as Mozilla's Firefox takes it head-on straight into the arena.
Confused??
Well, for those who are let me put it straight. Microsoft's IE had more or less a monopoly when it came to browsers. Most people preferred IE for its ease of use and simplicity. But when the simplicity gets a bit too far, changes have to be made. Enter Mozilla's Firefox browser. In recent news it has already crossed 12 million downloads and now has a 5% share in the browser preferences and growing bigtime!! Trust me, that is a lot.
Its been like 5-6 years since IE's features have been updated. They have dished out the same old crap now and then with minor cosmetic improvements. And to top it all, Internet Explorer is extremely vulnerable to security breaches.
Firefox on the other hand is extremely fast when it comes to page loading times. Absolutely secure browsing due to the absence of the tight Microsoft-like integration. I for one would give an out and out suggestion to everyone. Switch to Firefox. Now!
The MMS Incident
There has been a lot of hue and cry over the DPS RKPuram MMS that had been circulated over the net. A lot of dust has been raised over the reputation of a premier institute, IIT Kharagpur. Well, I as a student of IIT Kgp, have been in the situation and know what exactly happened.
About one month back, this particular MMS clip was introduced on the institute LAN and everyone started downloading it. At the same time I happened to talk to a few friends from other institutes and even they said that they had already come across the clip. So pointing a finger at one particular institute is not fair.
Now the other side is that one particular guy from first year MTech was auctioning this clip on Bazee.com. That was probably an immoral thing to do. But the steps taken by the Indian authorities are really drastic and to say the least, stupid.
How in heavens name could they arrest a CEO of the company that seems to have millions of products on auction. Can the CEO sit and scan each item on auction? The administration needs to do a reality check on what they have been upto. There are no concrete IT Laws that the country can abide by. The state of the Indian administration, when it comes to dealing with such issues, is apalling. I was enraged when I read the newspapers about the arrest of the CEO of Bazee.com
People need to think about one thing. Theres infinite porn available on the internet and things like these happen on a daily basis in the rest of the world. Maybe a different approach is required to clamp these down. Colleges have started banning the use of cellphones and cellphones with cameras. What purpose will it serve? It will only encourage better and stealth technology.
I for one believe that a mountain is being made out of a mole hill here. It would be good if all speculations were laid to rest and things worked pragmatically rather than the imbecile way in which the authorities are working.
Daaru Trip
"The feeling of having finished the very first gruelling MBA exam was absolutely amazing. And we were all flying in seventh heaven. Home beckoned once again, but the itinerary said it wasnt before 7th. So off we went to Chandipur.
Chandipur is a beach about 180 kms from Kharagpur. Its basically a three-state journey. Kharagpur being in Bengal and Chandipur in Orissa, Jharkhand comes along the way. And we cursed Jharkhand and its government to the limit for the extremely crappy road. And still we call it a national highway (NH).
We had hired a Tata Sumo for the two days. Before starting the journey we decided to pick up a few pints of beer to be gulped along the way. And then it was beer all along. And NH has one plus point. Every few kms theres one liquor shop
Its strange how people stick to the Indian Standard Time here because the evening falls much earlier than you would normally expect. At about 6:00 pm its usually pitch dark in these parts.
I listen to my words but
They fall far below
I let my music take me where
My heart wants to go
The cool winter wind was slapping against the face as I heard the soft strains of ""Wind of my Soul"" from the Almost Famous Soundtrack. The NH passes through a dense 5 km. forest and there's a particular code before entering that particular stretch. The border police let the vehicles line up in lots of about 20-25. And then they are allowed to enter it. As we led the entire motorcade, the road ahead was dark and quiet. All you have is the pair of your headlights and its pitch dark otherwise. Lined up with grotesque old trees, it draws an eerie picture. Quite an amazing experience.
We reached at about 11:00 pm and the night was still young. We checked into our hotel, arranged for the night's stock of beer and cigarettes and off we were to the beach. Y'know its really something sitting under the moonlight, drinking cold beer and talking about things you never had the time for.
We were up till 4:00 AM drinking beer and having a blast sitting in the chilly silver sand. We trotted back to the hotel, while one of us had almost passed out (no it wasn't me 
) And well, we went back only to finish off the rest of the beer that was left
At 6:00 AM, we went to see the beautiful sunrise. For the first time I was watching the sun rise from the sea. And the night before I argued that I had seen the sunrise from the Juhu Beach (which is in Bombay, he he
All in all it was one hell of a trip and now I'm glad that I couldn't get my tickets earlier than 6th