My corporate IT (Exchange Server) enforces security policy on all mobile devices that connect to it. So my phone is locked by a PIN. When I connect the Windows Mobile Phone (HTC S710) to PC, Vista displays a dialog box (like the one below). This dialog box certainly has useful information that needs my attention, but I am irritated on the fact it doesn't have a minimize/close button. Absolutely no way to get rid of the window other than keying the PIN in the device or disconnecting the device.

I feel this to be a classic case of bad user interface design.

Y.Gee.Mahendra's UAA has released a new tamil play (drama) called "சுதேசி ஐயர்" (Sudeshi Iyer). The first show happened yesterday in Bharat Kalachar and today there was shows in Rani Seethai Hall. Seeing the banner near Duraiswamy subway yesterday, I went for the third show of the play today with my family. It was advertised as "சிரிப்போ சிரிப்பு, புதுமையோ புதுமை”, but my expectation was limited due to previous experiences with plays.

Fortunately, it turned out to be true, the play was certainly hilarious and enjoyable. Worth seeing. The story was not much, a 70 year old Swadeshi type Father wants to teach his family the illness of deteriorating value system in the materialistic world now. He takes them in a time machine to 1945 and the family gets to experience the world and value system in 1945, gets to see Mahatma Gandhi and they realize their mistakes. All this is told in a very hilarious and filled with jokes. My 4-1/2 year old son and my 75 year dad both enjoyed the play, that I guess speaks for wide audience satisfied by the play.

The first motorized vehicle I learned driving (after learning Bicycle) was my father's Bajaj Scooter with Gear. This was a Vespa style scooter with engine on one side and gears on the left hand steering bar. The trick to learn in riding one of these is that you should keep only your left feet on ground whenever you are stopping as the right feet is needed all the time near the brake (the brake is near right feet). This should have been 15 years before and I was driving it for just few years before I moved to other vehicles. This is one of the most dangerous two wheelers on the planet, as even in medium speeds it is impossible to control it from skidding especially because of the engine (and hence the weight) on one side.

So why I am writing about this here?. I became nostalgic about this today, when I rode my Uncle's scooter (it was the same Bajaj Chetak model that my father had) for a short distance from my home to a restaurant to have my breakfast. I was left marvelling at how our human brain works - for almost 10 years I have never rode a geared scooter (for that matter hardly I drive a two wheeler nowadays) and when I got on to one today it was easy. Instantly I remembered how to operate one and I was up and running. If only computers and software applications worked like this (human being) we all would be better off...

One thing I hate about buying Electronics (Computer accessories as well) and Compact Discs (VCDs, DVDs) is the chore of cutting open the plastic packaging without hurting your fingers or the product. I just don't understand why the manufacturers want to put so much plastic on the covers with the idea of hurting you. If the idea is to protect (RFID tagging) from stealing and to have a frame for hanging/displaying then I am sure there are better ways. Ways that are environmentally friendly, more than environment friendly to the poor consumer who paid money. This is true especially for CDs that you buy from a Music chain (In India Music World, Landmark, etc.) where apart from the manufacturer cover the chains put RFID in a layer, then a layer of plastic to protect the RFID and so on., finally you end up having to cut open 3 layers before you can reach to the music. Similar pain for Electronic items, say a Mouse/Mobile Charger, etc. where you need a steady and 200 pound fingers to cut that thick layer of plastic before reaching to the product.  I guess the idea is to make it difficult for you to reach to the product, so that you cannot use it. Obviously a product still in the box, won't go bad and you won't call for support. Smart idea of electronics companies to save money especially with their margins dwindling all the time.

The next packaging item I hate is the sharp (metal) pins used in Shirts (Menswear). I can understand the idea is to have the shirt folds stay in place, so that the shirts while in the shelf have a nice look. Here again you have safer ways to do it like Paper Clips (Gem Clips). Apart from being dangerous to remove without hurting your fingers they in some cases damage the very shirt they are meant to enhance the appearance. Also these pins could be hazardous in countries like India where dump yards are often visited by Cattle's looking for food and scavengers looking for reusable items that could be sold.   

Finally, the packaging item I hate the most because I have to deal with it everyday is the Stapler Pins used in envelopes by courier companies. I am not sure whether anywhere else in the world, courier companies stapler the routing receipt with the envelopes they carry. Removing these Stapler Pins even by using the back of Stapler machine is tricky and most times you end up damaging the cheque or the document that is inside the envelope. Can't they paste it instead?.

I was invited to do a presentation to students at my alma mater (SVCE, Pennalur). The occasion was a day long event today organized by ECE department's Alumni Association & IEEE Chapter. I decided against a technical topic for fear of boring the students, instead I made a talk on "Entrepreneurship for Engineers". Following what "George Bernard Shaw" said "I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation", I started by quoting myself  “There has never been a better time in Indian History for becoming an Entrepreneur”.

I tried my best to make the session very lively and at the end when I counted only few heads where sleeping out of nearly 100 students in the hall. And in the 90 minutes I heard no "Boos" or "Whistles" which itself I think was an achievement in itself. Download - Entrepreneurship for Engineers v2.0.pdf (292.67 KB)

In the evening I presented one more session. This time it was at Vishwak for our weekly Friday sessions organized by our team members as a forum to share knowledge and best practices. Here again I went against a technical topic as I didn't have the time in advance to prepare on any of the latest or upcoming topics, and if I presented on any of the existing technologies then my team knows more than me . The topic I talked was on "Presentation Skills" on which I have earlier posted a detailed 7 page post here and as a way of demonstration I did the talk without any presentation aids (No PowerPoint and no Projector).

Read the earlier part of this project here where I talked about the Digital Conversion of VCD/DVD and sharing in XBox.

After all the Proof of Concept, I decided it was time to go full time Digital. Bought new hardware for my house. One was a high-end desktop where I plan to do the conversions and regular PC usage. The second was for server role, where I had two 500GB HDD Mirrored for storing all my Digital Media files and sharing them. I then converted few dozen of VCD and DVDs into Nero AVC (MPEG4) format with the new desktop in few days.

I tried in the server machine, first Windows Home Server but that didn't the driver for Mirroring H/W that I had), then Windows Server 2003 but that didn't support installation of Zune Client Software, after that thought Windows XP SP2 will be the best but that didn't allow Zune sharing to be visible in XBOX whatever I tried. So I had to resort to Windows Vista SP1. Installed Media Center Extension that went through smoothly but my main requirement was to have Zune Network Sharing working so that all my Photos, Music & Videos are available for playback at my XBOX 360. These two articles have step by step instructions needed for a normal setup:

• How to configure the Zune software to share content from your Zune collection to an Xbox 360 console on a home network
• Listen to Music, View Pictures, and Watch Videos on your Xbox 360 Console

I had bought Norton 360 that contains Antivirus, Firewall and Antispyware. The firewall configuration was pathetic in Norton 360 so I switched it off and turned to Vista's default firewall. I installed and easily got SQUEEZEBox music sharing working. Zune Network Sharing was a big hurdle to cross, what ever I tried the videos and photos were not visible from XBOX. After several hours of trying I figured out the way to make it work.

1. Create a new user exclusive to run Zune Client Software, call it say "ZuneUser" make it administrator in Vista
2. Switch off User Access Control (UAC), this was the biggest problem cause
3. Reset all security settings for the drive/folders where you have your media files (Give Read/Execute for ZuneUser)
4. Go to Zune Client Software, configure your monitoring folders for media
5. Enable Network Sharing, give it a name and tick Music, Video & Photos
6. Go to Services Applet, replace the user account for the Zune Network Sharing (ZuneNSS) service from Network Service to ZuneUser.
7. Restart the ZuneNSS service
8. Give some time for monitoring job to pickup files
9. Go to XBOX 360 and look for your media files and play them

I was looking for long on how to enable Hibernation option in Vista, as the sleep doesn't work in my laptop all the time. After spending lot of time in navigating through the confusing menus of Vista and Windows Help, I turned to Google, got the answer in the second search link.

Here it is:

1. Click Start, All Programs, and then right click on "Command Prompt".
2. From the context menu click on "Run as administrator".
3. If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.
4. In the command prompt window, type "powercfg –h on" (without the quotes).
5. Close the Command Prompt window.

Does a city need so many FM Radio Stations all playing the same music?. In Chennai there are currently 8 major FM Stations:

1. All Indian Radio Rainbow
2. Suryan FM (Sun TV Group)
3. Radio Mirchi (Times Group)
4. Big FM (ADAG Group)
5. Aahaa FM (Kumudam Group)
6. Radio One (Mid-Day)
7. Hello FM (Malaimalar Group)
8. Radio City

The license issued by government prohibits them (other than AIR) from broadcasting NEWS, but that doesn't mean they can't play different music. All the above 8 channels (again exception being AIR) play only latest Tamil Film Albums. Each of them have few slots for other types of music but even that is miniscule compared to their overall Tamil Film programming.

Though I don't listen to Hindi or Telugu film music, I am wondering who will cater to those diaspora living in Chennai or for that matter Tamilians who are interested in Hindi Music. All the channels are same, with similar sounding RJs blabbering, SMS Polls, talk shows, etc. in between the same music collections. Why is there no niche stations playing different genre of music - say one for old Tamil songs, Carnatic Music, Western classical, Hindustani, Hindi Film Music and the likes.

If you have an idea why this is not happening, I am interested in reading your comments.

I don't know whether any other country in the world (just kidding, it is not as if I am an expert on Budgets around the world just felt good saying it) has its budget strewn in such mystery and secrecy like the Indian Budget. In today's Globalized world the role of a central budget has diminished over the years which certainly is good. In my view a Central (a.k.a. Federal for those of you who are from USA) Budget should be more of a report card recording the performance of the government spend in the last 12 months and the outlook for next 12 months. The way Indian Budget has become over the years and is expected to function by common people, as the platform for all ministries and the entire governments policy announcements. This has made the Finance Ministry the nodal point and hence the single biggest bottleneck of every government departments functions. If you ask what is the alternative, it is to let each ministry on a regular basis announce its plan for next 12 months after consultation with respective industry bodies. This can be much like the way the commerce ministry does its EXIM policy but with more teeth and power to each ministry to do its job better than what it is today.

Anyway coming back to the topic, I read this good pictorial workflow of how the Indian Budget process happens in LiveMint. It has some surprises like the key people in budget preparation are locked in the basement of North Block for the last 7 days and the only people allowed to see from outside world is the Finance Minister!. Good Read.

After I moved to Windows Vista about a year back, I hardly had to worry about Firewall settings. Though initially I found the UI of Vista Firewall Settings different and a little hard to understand, I soon realized its power and flexibility. Most of the time I found the firewall in Vista to automatically configure itself for many of the applications I installed including Zune, Zune Network Sharing, XBOX Media Extender and others.

Last week I evaluated K7 Computing Total Internet Security and found it to be the most light-weight and fast in its class. Its Firewall interface was simple and effective with almost all the time it popped up a dialog (user configurable) for any new application so that I could set the access the way I wanted. Since I had no complaints with Vista Firewall, I decided to just go with K7 Antivirus (Rs.690) alone for my laptop. Compared to Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition I had before in my laptop on a Vista x84, I found K7 Antivirus to be less resource hungry and overall I found the machine to more snappier.

For my home PC, I went with Norton 360 (bought it locally in India from a dealer) after studying in their website how Symantec have slimmed the whole product in terms of resources. I installed it in Home Server (Windows XP 32bit with 500GB Mirrored HDD, 2GB RAM, AMD 64) and in my Home PC (Intel Quad Core 2.4Ghz, 8GB RAM, 160 GB, 500GB HDD, Dell 20" Monitor). I found NAV 360 to take very little resources and snappier. But I have been having trouble with its firewall to open ports for Zune Network Sharing and few other applications. I wished NAV 360 had a database of known applications and their firewall settings. I found the lack of an option to backup your firewall rules and restoring it a serious limitation. It didn't have a Zone preset as well - meaning for every rule you have to define your local subnet and range.

In the end, I will recommend Vista Out-of-box firewall plus either K7 Antivirus or Norton Antivirus 2008/NAV 360 AV Module alone.