Nirenjan’s Space

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!!!

I’ve finally managed to get my Wireless card (WPA1 TKIP for the technically inclined) setup in Ubuntu Linux. The only problem that I’m facing now is that Firefox is not loading certain websites, like this one. On the other hand, Konquerer is working pretty much fine, although I prefer Firefox…

It so happened that my portable hard disk got infected with this script worm for Windows. The worm itself is, in my not so humble opinion, relatively harmless. The worm itself is not really dangerous, just a real pain in the neck. Double clicking on drives will not open the drives. Instead, you will have to right-click on the drive and select open. You will see an Autoplay option when you right click the drive.

The worm is just a simple VBScript file, which when run, copies itself to the Windows folder as well as to the root folder of all available drives. In addition, it creates a file autorun.inf that causes the script to be executed whenever the drive icon is double-clicked.

Removing the worm isn’t really that hard. However, you need to be patient as if you even double click one drive accidentally, you’ll have to redo the entire procedure from start. The steps to remove the worm are as follows. It might also help to reboot into Safe Mode and login as an administrator.

1. Go to the task manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete or Ctrl+Shift+Esc
2. Go to the processes tab and stop all wscript.exe processes.
3. Open Windows Explorer and go to Tools > Folder Options.
4. In Folder Options, uncheck the following options:
   1. Hide extensions for known file types
   2. Hide protected operating system files

   Also ensure that Show hidden files and folders option is selected and press apply.

5. Go to the registry editor by typing regedit in the Run window
6. Go to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
7. There should be a key called MS32DLL or something to that effect. The value for that should be C:\Windows\MS32DLL.dll.vbs. This file name can change depending on what your Windows path is and what variant of the worm you have. However, the different versions of the worm that I have seen all install themselves in the registry and this will help you in removing the worm. Anyway, note the name and check that there is a file with the same name in the root of C:.
8. Delete this file as well as autorun.inf from your C: drive as well as all other drives. Be careful not to double click on any drive to go to it as you’ll have to start deleting the files from the beginning.
9. Delete the file from your Windows folder.
10. Delete the offending key from the registry.
11. Some variants, maybe even all, modify the title bar of Internet Explorer to show the title of the web page, followed by the text “Hacked by Godzilla” or “Hacked by Moozilla” or something else, again depending on the variant. This isn’t really a problem, but if you want the original text back, go to the registry entry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main. The key to be modified here is WindowTitle (I think). IE7 doesn’t seem to have an entry here, so I’m not too sure about the actual key text. Anyway, just change it to whatever you want, the default is “Microsoft Internet Explorer”
12. Restart the computer and check all drives to make sure that the Autoplay entry is no longer there on the right-click menu.
13. Congratulations. You have deleted your first worm.

Update: This worm and a host of other malware are now being created specifically to infect systems using removable media, typically USB flash disks. Inserting these disks usually causes Windows to execute the autorun scripts, if any. The autorun function can be bypassed by holding down the Shift key while inserting the disk. The Shift key needs to be held down for a few seconds until Windows can recognize the drive and add it to the list of drives in My Computer. This simple step should curtail the spread of such malware.

From /.: MySpace and GoDaddy shut down security site

From the article, apparently, a bunch of MySpace usernames and passwords were archived on Seclists.org. This information was already available on several sites and seclists.org simply mirrored the information. 1 page out of 250,000. So MySpace contacted GoDaddy directly and they suspended the domain.

WTF??? This stinks of dictatorship… I repeat what several others have already said, follow these 3 steps in order.

1. Contact the site owner and inform him/her of the offending content.
2. If that fails, then contact the hosting provider.
3. If that also fails, then, and only then, contact the registrar to suspend the domain.

So, taking this to the extreme, somebody posts a link to something interesting (I’ll let your imagination define ’something interesting’), which is a problem to somebody else. So this somebody else contacts GoDaddy and tells them to pull the plug on my website. Man, I’m glad I transferred away from GoDaddy (for a different purpose).

The new KBC is out, with Shah Rukh Khan hosting the show. The very first show of this season, telecast on Monday, the 22nd of January, had the audience in splits as SRK kept cracking jokes. One interesting feature is the way SRK keeps joking with the contestant, something which I never noticed when Amitabh Bachchan was the host. This show looks like it’s going to break all records…

It’s been quite a while since BSNL brought out their 2 Mbps broadband service, and it looks good… however, there is one major drawback that I’ve noticed and it’s not with the service, it’s with the modem that they have provided.

I have a Huawei modem (WA1003A, I think…) which has Wi-Fi capability (supposedly). My home network is primarily wired with my laptop on wireless. That’s where the problem arises - the wireless functionality of this modem is totally hopeless. The only saving grace is that the wired part functions without any trouble.

Thankfully, I have a NetGEAR wireless router which I bought about a year ago to use when the old modem was around (that didn’t have wireless). Reconfigure the router, wire it to the LAN, and Hey, presto! Wireless capability is upto maximum.

So, here goes, my latest gadget acquisition…

Nokia HS-26W Bluetooth Headset to be used in conjunction with my old toy - Nokia 6681.

Nothing great by way of features, but then again, a headset is a headset, not a toy. Anyway, the voice quality is pretty good, although it does get a bit cumbersome wearing the set for a long while - tends to press my ear a bit.

Thanks to Sandhya, my blog has finally been bitten by the tagging bug. So now, I’m ‘it’. I am supposed to list down 10 things that define my style…
Read the rest of this entry »

These guys are getting smarter, or so they want us to think. Till a few weeks back, they wanted your help to transfer some money out of the country because of some illegal activities by some company. Now, they want you to transfer the money so that it goes to charity because the holder is not likely to live that long.

Now, seriously, GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!

One, this guy from Tunisia, has been able to scrounge up $ 33 million in just 14 years. Two, his sick wife is likely to die within the next 6 months and so wants me (a trustworthy honest individual, as described in the mail) to distribute the money to charity, with 30% as my commission.

Why do I find this mail a little hard to believe?

It’s not everyday that you get to shake hands and chat with a former first president of a country. Yes, I shook hands and chatted with Kenneth Kaunda.

Yes, yes, I know. You want photos. Here you go…

That Four Letter Word (yeah, that’s the name of the movie!), written and directed by Sudhish Kamath, is a new style of film. The story, yeah, pretty much the same old one… boy meets girl, falls in love, fear of losing her if he proposes, blah blah blah… but the way TFLW takes you through the story is completely new. The movie is a refreshing change from the usual “professionally done” flicks.

Sudhish has finally realized his dream of making his own movie, and it has taken him seven years to come to this stage. This movie is all about chasing your dreams. Shot on a shoestring budget, the movie is moderately paced throughout, with a few comic scenes here and there, and no chance of you getting bored. This is a youth film, made by the young, for the young.

My verdict? Definitely a must see.