I bought my laptop in India. In India, I didn’t use my DVD drive to play movies much, because all the time when I wanted to watch a movie/song, I used to get the pirated avi/mp3 file. Now, recently I rented few DVDs and none worked. I tried everything, nothing worked. Even when I have been using Linux exclusively for more than 2 years now, I always have a feeling that if things are not working than its the Linux bug. So I cursed Ubuntu for having bugs. But I really wanted to watch movie, so I explored more, and found out it was the region code problem. Some non-social people started this concept of regions so that DVDs work only in a area, and wouldn’t work in other areas. Thankfully, you can change your region code 5 times. So, I change my region from India to US, and things are working now. This is really a ridiculous thing though. I was talking with a friend who is American and she said that she has problems watching international movies because the international DVDs they buy in US they are sometimes in different region code. Now, for people like me who love watching Hindi, English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and what not language movies, its a big trouble. Isn’t it funny that those who are paying money to buy these DVDs face this problem. And those who don’t (like I never bought a movie DVD, I always got the pirated avi files), its so easier. I mean, this is really stupid. The only people who you can restrict are the ones who are paying for it, not the ones who are downloading the pirated copies. I guess its just about putting too much restrictions for no reasons.

My the best memories of Cricket are of course that of Sachin’s. His batting is the only thing that makes me watch cricket. I can not also forget those awesome innings which Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly played together. No doubt most of the Indians enjoyed Saurabh Ganguly’s glory days. Then came the time when he slipped down in performance (and team spirit as well I believe). Anyways, it was his last inning 2 days back. A test match against Australia. His performance was good in first inning. But in second inning, he got out duck. Zero runs in last inning of his test cricket life. Surely a sad story. But then Bradman also got Duck in his last inning. Anyways, of course his fans and his rivals put that video of his last inning on youtube. Since I don’t watch TV, I turned to youtube to watch that final moments, but it so seems that BCCI has made google remove those videos. Why? Well, I don’t know. BCCI doesn’t even have the copyright on those videos. This is what youtube says about those videos “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Board of Control for Cricket in India”. No, I do not understand. First of all, BCCI doesn’t own any copyright on these videos. Second of all, even if they were afraid that people will insult Ganguly, where is the freedom of expression. Didn’t they insult Ganguly by kicking him out of team for sometime. And didn’t they insult him by making him play under a junior’s captaincy who once played under Ganguly’s captancy. And what about the fans? The fans who couldn’t watch his last inning. BCCI simply snatched the freedom of expression. And of course Google supported them.

Continuing my article about American Service, I am hereby going to show few observations. I know these views are biased, but still I want to show these views, because I am literally pissed right now. American economy can be clustered into 2 parts. 1 the very small scale economy, like the shops in downtowns. Second, the real big industries, like Walmart, AT&T etc. Small scale shops are run by *dumb* people. And Big scale shops are run by *crooks*. And those who are not in either category, are employees. Of course, exceptions are there to all these categories. I am going to emphasizes upon few points below:

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So, I needed to buy a mobile. Those who have seen me working know that mobile is an essential part of my life. Involvement in different things bring importance of connectivity. And anyways, a mobile gives pretty security to family people as well. Anyways, so since many of friends had AT&T, I thought of buying the same. AT&T seems to have biggest coverage as well, and rates weren’t bad either. So, I went to the AT&T shop. The store had iphones on display. I used them for few minutes. And believe me, I fell in love. Apple makes awesome products. So, I asked the guy if I can buy the iphone, not that I was about to buy but I wanted that option open. I know thats a sick idea but iphone really had a very nice impression on me. The guy was like, you can buy iphone only in first 4 months of your 2 year contract or the last 4 years. (I had to buy the 2 year contract for getting post paid). And I thought wow, why the last 4 months is in option. First 4 months make sense, but why last 4 months. I asked the same question to the guy at store. And he replied with full confidence and will pride that he knew the answer. He said that this is how the contract between Apple and AT&T is. And I was like, WTF, of course thats the contract, but why is it like this. And that guy didn’t have a clue. That guy is selling the product and he probably never cared and probably was never told by his manager why things are working that way. Seriously, where is the desire to understand things? This is what Einstein was indicating when he said “Its surprising that curiousity survived formal education”.

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My chacha (Ramesh) (father’ brother) owns a pharmaceutical company. Another chacha (Ravi) is good programmer and system analysist. Ravi chacha made a software for this company. The software was sort of ERP software and completed all major needs. He kept increasing functionalities to it, and it grew like anything. Finally Ravi chacha found it hard to keep it updated (the software was DOS based). So, we started looking for a proper commercial ERP solution for our needs. We bought a software, but it finally didn’t work out good. For that software we *bought* Windows Server 2008.

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There are 3 posts that I started writing and left incomplete. So, here is the tiny summary to everything: (more…)

Finally Bluehost guys didn’t listen to any logic. I sent them a complete list of all songs and their source and license. They still weren’t ready to listen. Of course I didn’t remove the songs. So, my site was pulled down. 1 day before the given deadline. I hope I didn’t loose any important email. The mailing list I made on my account are still working :x.

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So, yesterday I got a mail from bluehost saying that there are some copyrighted material on my site. I bought an account with bluehost in June/July 2007. I share it with some of my friends. One of them is bheekling who hates US copyright laws and the way they use it to exploit people. If you talk in favor of RIAA, he will probably kill you. . And he also prefers to play with these laws. … so anyways, when we bought the hosting space, we decided that we will not put any pirated material on the site. It so seems that initially we were in doubt that japanese animes are not copyrighted. But it so seems they are. Its not copyrighted in US though. So, US law can not make me remove them from my site. Anyways Bluehost guys said that I have the following thing on site, which I must remove. (they use the word “copy written material”. I have no idea what that means )

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Last week I went to Hyderabad to this “IIT Hire Meet” of Microsoft. It sort of sucked. They called all IIT students hired by Microsoft Indian Development Center. Yes, they had hired me as well. In December when placements started in IITK, Microsoft was the first CS company to hire students. I didn’t plan to sit for their first exam, but my friend woke me and asked me to take the test for the sake of practice. I did that. Though I was sure I wouldn’t get selected (considering that I had a bad fight (about Open Source community infringing some patents) with them just 1 months back when they came here for Microsoft Day, and the same HR lady came for placements as well.). Anyways Arun called me (otherwise I wasn’t very keen to know the result) and informed that I have cleared first round. The next round was just after 15 minutes and I didn’t have clothes and hadn’t had bath. That was a fun day. I was finally selected. I was 1 of the 4 selected from UG students. I then wanted to join Microsoft. I think it would have been cool to have an experience to see them working. And anyways since I am fan of some of their products it would have been cooler.

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For last few days, I have been talking to people (mainly IITK students) about different events we have in FOSSKriti. I found people pretty enthusiastic about different events. I am pointing out those events here:

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