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WASTED

So a couple of days ago Nullsoft, makers of WinAMP, quietly released yet another incarnation of P2P software. From News.com’s story on the WASTE drama…

“The features of Waste are similar to those of file-swapping services such as Kazaa and the defunct Napster, but the difference is that only small networks of people (up to 50, according to the Web site) can use it. The software also offers encryption and authentication to prevent non-invitees from accessing the private networks.”

It turns out that AOL has decided to pull the WASTE source from the Nullsoft servers, since they are technically AOL servers due to a lot of complicated reasons like litigation by the RIAA or the MPAA. Whatever reasons they have is their problem but I don’t think WASTE should disappear because like Gnutella was the next step beyond Napster I feel WASTE is the next step beyond Gnutella.

I haven’t read into the full licensing details but from what I understand WASTE was released under the GNU/GPL so I do my part to propagate the revolution…

Waste Source (zip, win32 binary)

{1 Olivia,...,9 Olivia}

I’m home. I can’t say enough about that. As I’ve told many of you, I was never designed for Texas, its just not the kind of place where Keyurs can stay for too long. I’m home though and for now thats all that matters.

The drive from Charlotte to Jersey was thankfully uneventful save for mummy forgetting her purse at my uncle’s house in Raleigh and the relentlessly thick traffic outside of DC that I cut through like angry soap cuts through leftover grease. I also realized that the engine on a 2002 Ford Windstar is far superior to that in a 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan. It should be noted though that neither vehicle will respond to repeated verbal requests for “Turbo Boost” or “Super Pursuit Mode”. The Windstar does have a ceiling mounted video screen on which Devin Miles never appeared, I’m assuming he was busy handling the Foundation’s other important matters. Lastly the drive from Charlotte to Jersey was accomplished entirely under the confinement of pants. The parental unit doesn’t fully appreciate the joy of long pantless drives.

In other news MS paid AOL TW $750 million and speculation on the death of Netscape and thus the death of Mozilla. I don’t have the figures, but I don’t think AOL TW are going to throw away or let languish what is a lucrative investment that they’ve nurtured for the past five years. Mozilla is now the open source browser base on the net. Furthermore MS and AOL TW are not allies regardless of what any press release says and AOL TW is not going to make itself solely dependent on their largest rival’s flagship internet platform. The thought of the two companies integrating their IM solutions is highly intriguing, but I’m just steeling myself for the day when IMing becomes a pay-to-play service.

Also since Firebird 0.6 was released many have been heralding it as if it were the anti-pants revolution itself. People get over yourselves, its not that great. Yes its definitely beating a path in the right direction of doing more with less, but it still hasn’t reached Mozilla’s level of UI functionality. I don’t condone Mozilla’s UI incompetency but at the same time I don’t appreciate Firebird’s half baked attempt at UI competency either. Mozilla does a lot of thing half right, whereas Firebird does a few things half right. My biggest gripes with Firebird are the lack of profile management, no improvement over Mozilla on plugin hell, defaults that are unclear and still no installer. Using Firebird leaves you feeling like you’re using incomplete work and in fact thats what it is so I’m going to shutup and give them time to hit atleast 0.8 before I really start scrutinizing, until them I’m happyily sticking to my Mozilla 1.4b nightlies.

Lastly this update is being posted entirely via a dial-up connection. It is very very painful. I have been using broadband exclusively for the past 5 years save the Christmas breaks and now to stoop to this is just raw pain. Thankfully on Monday I’ll be getting plugged in via Optimum Online which thankfully services my area unlike Verizon DSL. Optimum Online is faster than the TW RoadRunner I was using which is super sweet. With a modem your online activity becomes totally one dimensioanl, you can only do one thing at a time and even that very slowly. Having used tabbed browsing for quite a while as well makes the lack of broadband even more painful. I cannot wait to get my machine back online and with it the One Stop Keyur Music Shop!, more updates to photos.keyurp.com and other exciting adventures.

Lastly as great as it is to be home its really super annoying to have to again get used to mummy checking up on me if I’m quiet for more than five minutes. Some habits die hard, even for a mother.

Almost forgot…it was really sad to see the Mavericks fall, but its a great consolation to see the Devils mopping up. Come on Giguere where you at man?!

NJ or bust

Shutting down shop in Charlotte and tearfully saying goodbye to all near future hopes of broadband. I head out with the parental unit, who just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, tomorrow morning in the minivan. We have a stop in Raliegh to visit some relatives and then onto dirty Jersey.

Next stop…

Jersey!!!

you'll be missed Sunanda

« Sunanda Ghoshal - April 18, 1981-May 20th, 2003 »

So here I am. The G told me about Sunanda on the 21st. I was, maybe still am, scared and a little confused. I can’t really figure out what to think, but the idea of her finding peace in the life after is a recurring theme.

I wonder sometime if in the afterlife we are empowered with odd powers while we’re given time to tie up loose ends in this world. I would want to have the power to destroy belt buckles and pant waist buttons just to start. With these powers I could actually fight the battle at a whole another level.

The matters of life and death are a conundrum and I think it’s better left that way. However, the matters of Mac vs. PC should be discussed till we’re all blue in the face. Reading John Gruber’s Daringfireball, as I do everyday, I came across the interview he gave at waferbaby.com. John as hes so good at doing really tore into one of the core precepts of the Mac vs. PC arguments. Heres a sample…

“they will say, “what can a mac do that a wintel computer can’t?” and the truth is they do the same things, it’s just that the mac does them better. maybe only slightly better, but better nonetheless. the pc industry, however, is all about feature checklists. whoever has the most features wins; if you offer the same features, whoever is cheaper wins. and so if you compare macs and pcs that way, there seems to be no logical reason to decide to use a mac.

but that’s like saying that just because you can’t taste the difference between a $15 bottle of wine and a $50 bottle of wine, that there isn’t any difference. i mean, they offer the same features — grape flavor and the pleasant effects of alcohol. so why pay more?

the same is true of almost anything. if you couldn’t tell the difference between a $400 bicycle and a $1,000 bicycle, would you assume there was no difference? of course not — you’d assume the differences were subtle, but appreciable by serious cyclists.”

This is a really the core of it. 99% of the people who don’t use Macs have either never used a good Mac to do something that they do everyday with their PCs or they simply tried to find a tool they have on their PC, didn’t find it and quit out of frustration. I have seen people do both of these things firsthand and its really frustrating. Its one thing if people really use the Macs and then tell me that the difference isn’t worth the cost but I really hate it when people don’t even give it a half baked chance and quickly run off to play the lambs to Microsoft’s Mary. Its even worse when people try to squirm their way out of explaining that they have really used a Mac.

The whole Mozilla vs. IE argument is rather similar but the lines aren’t nearly as blurry on that battlefield. I’ll get into it one of these days once Ram and I get our project finished.

I also had to address some of the comments people left on my driving story…particularly this gem Mr. Steve left for me…

“Yeah, especially if the AC has a “anti-ball freeze” setting. Due to space constraints, I’d imagine it would be an international symbol with a frozen scrotum (perhaps with icicles attached) overlayed by a cancel symbol.”

This is just beautiful imagery right here. Scrotal temperature is not a laughing matter people. I just wish people would grow up and address this matter with the concern it rightly deserves. Sadly though the 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan had no such innovation in the AC department.

The Old Man asked, “Did a cop stop you and ask why you had no pants on?” Thankfully I had no such experiences. As much as I support the cause, I don’t think I would have been prepared to preach the gospel on the spot to an officer of the law.

My name is Keyur...

…and I have a problem.

Declaring an emergency here. I can hold out for a while but I can’t deal with this alone. Don’t let me drive alone anymore. I’m a horrible driver. I do things that I shouldn’t.

Okay enough making fun of Dan. He was serious I am being silly. So yesterday evening at 11:30pm EST I finally pulled into my relative’s place in Atlanta. Started at 8:30a CST, so in 14 hours I covered approximately 950 miles (1529 kms), averaging a decent 68 mph (109 kph).

The driving was easy, except in MS where there were sporadic torrential downpours killing my speed and visibility. The van was fun, although the automatic transmission got raged on atleast a dozen times because of sheer stupidity, but I am thankful for it otherwise I’d be far more tired now. Stupid alignment, I had to keep the steering wheel in a mild left turn position to go straight. Keeping the wheel straight caused me to make hard right turns at highway speed. Thankfully I figured this out on I35 just past Parmer. I hit a high speed of 103 mph (166 kph) on I20 East somewhere along the GA/AL border. That was fun, but I’m sure I shot my mileage and made the engine cry.

Now I’m nestled comfortably at my foi’s (dad’s sister) place in the suburbia of Charlotte. Altogether I drove the van for 1258 miles (2025 kms) in less than two days.

While driving alone I came to realize a few things:

• think like a truck driver and highway politics make more sense


• if you’re going to speed, don’t do it alone


• funnyons are good, but not good for you


• driving sans pants is awesome, gives AC a whole new meaning


• driving sans shoes is awesome, gives accelerator control a whole new meaning


• the whole 1 car length for every 10 mph speed is the real deal, believe it


• memories are a funny thing, they can lift you over the tallest obstacles in life or they can drag you through the filth of your existence


• cruise control never means you can let go of the steering wheel


• imagining you are Michael Knight driving KITT makes any drive that much more interesting


• vocally requesting “Turbo Boost” or “Super Pursuit Mode” in a 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan does absolutely nothing and being in said Caravan, the words “Yo! Devin!” lose all meaning

Quoteses:
“Its funny how your entire life fits in the back of a van.” - Said K.
“Salaam” - Sheelpi K.

you guys

So with this update my outpost in Austin goes dark. I know that in our circle of friends we don’t get sappy so pardon me boys, it has to be said. I love you guys. All of you.

It was because of you guys that I managed to exist in Texas, and not just exist but thrive. These past 5 years of my life have become probably my most important years. I have learned so much, yet I feel so humbled because I stand in the company of people who thoroughly supercede me as a human being and that just makes me want to work that much harder to make it where all of you are intellectually and maturity wise.

Even though Texas never grew on me, I can’t say I will be able to avoid it because of you fools. I must and I will come back. I am so glad the Old Man prodded me enough to get the forums working because I know that through those I will always be in touch with you guys one way or another.

I wish I could be wise enough to have choice words for each of you but sadly I am neither eloquent nor do I have the clarity of thought with this heavy heart.

Know that all of you have an open door wherever it is I call my home. I hope some of you will be able to make it to India so that we may meet in Bombay. Otherwise there is always Jersey. I hope more of you can make it up to my part of the dirty jersey so I can show you how its really done!

Not sure what more to say, I’m just rambling now. I will fucking miss all of you more than I care to acknowledge but I take comfort in our memories and this fancy electronic sea which makes it easier to float messages in bottles.

Remember to hate pants, use Mozilla (soon to be Firebird), love all aminals, always write clean code, share your thoughts more openly, and always check the forums.

As always.…Your pantless friend,
Keyur

In closing a most appropriate song:

You’ve Got a Friend in Me
— Randy Newman

You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me
When the road looks rough ahead
And you’re miles and miles
From your nice warm bed
You just remember what your old pal said
Boy, you’ve got a friend in me
Yeah, you’ve got a friend in me

Boy, and as the years go by
Our friendship will never die
You’re gonna see it’s our destiny
You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me

Quoteses:
“It went down the wrong tube.” - Juan R.
“God that chick was ugly!” - Gautam P.
“This is a post-shower note. The shower was not able to best me, I have emerged triumphant over its arsenal.” - The Old Man

heavy duty

When I donated blood last semester I also signed up to be a bone marrow donour. About an hour ago I got a call from the Austin Blood and Tissue center. It turns out there is a wee girl of 2 years who matches my “type” and is in need of marrow. I told the lady who called me that I’m in the midst of a move and she said she’ll transfer my file to the East Orange Blood and Tissue center in Jersey.

She also asked me all sorts of questions about yellow jaundice and anesthesia and Africa and sex with men and homologous blood transfers and cancer and AIDS and how tall I am and how much I weigh and all sorts of other stuff to make sure that I was healthy enough for this little girl. Since this request for marrow isn’t “urgent” the process will take some time but more than likely I’ll have to give more blood for testing when I get back to NJ and then after that the decision will be made if they will grab some of my marrow.

This is so cool. Finally someone other than me needs my marrow. I hope I have enough, just to be sure I’m gonna go concentrate on making more marrow. I also hope they do this all before I fly out for India.

to the core

Quite a delay between entries, yes indeed. I have these bursts of thoughts where I have to let it all out and after I let it out I have to build up the thoughts again and sort through the garbage and then let it all out again.

Its really coming down to the wire. Sunday morning I ship out. Thats it. Probably won’t be back in Austin until atleast next spring if not later. Just have to do it, more I think harder it gets.

Today while I was at work my friend Ketan stopped by and we were just discussing the whole concept of graduation and what it means to each of us and a thought dawned on me that has me rather intrigued. I believe the education model in use today is fully outdated. People born post late 1970s have been raised in a society where the concept of attention changed from paying attention to the whole world around you to paying attention to only what really is worth paying attention to. This happened primarily due to the tidal wave of media. Television, radio, print information, and later on the internet. Everywhere in life my attention is always being sought by one thing or another. Its almost impossible to go through life without having your attention sought after.

Our education systems on the other hand are still catering to people who are from a world where attention was to be freely given away to whomever and whatever. This doesn’t make any sense to me. How can we raise children in a world where we have to teach them to give their attention to only what interests them yet send them off to school with the opposing message that they should pay attention to everything regardless of how interesting or not it is to them. Is this just another one of those hypocrisies that we just accept and move on with or something genuine to be addressed in updating the education model? My weak mind is too feeble to comprehend the ramafications.

Okay time to continue the packing. If I can take care of my clothes today I’ll be in pretty decent shape. Tomorrow I take on books and kitchenware. Come Thursday morning I should be atleast 80% packed and my room should be pretty bare. Wish me luck.

As a side note I got a shitty hair cut today by a large woman whose name is Mo. I wish my haircuts could be as cool and interesting as the Old Man’s.

Quoteses:
“Love is cheap, I want alcohol!” - Sumita C.
“Is my ass wet?!” - Parker D.
“Of course he finds it useless. He doesn’t want any of our music. Hes stupid!” - The Captain

Linkses:
Ads in the news
Cheney pockets $1 million from Iraq oil deal
Umm secret government
DRM is your fluffy friend
Lets get ready now, Microsoft is going to fuck all of us
Find joy, go meatless!

how do i live without you?

Apparetly a ton of you clicking on the "tune into Keyur" link in the "Last 5 songs" section. This morning as I write this I've got a listener from the National Technical University of Athens from a Telecom lab in the ECE department. Yesterday when I was mixing up Western and Eastern music in a chaotic playlist I had listeners from Canada, Sweden, UK, India, and four from Singapore. Thats just cool. Anyway to all my listeners, WORD UP! Of course all of you can make requests. Just use the email or AIM links in the "about a keyur" section on your right. I still have to figure out what to do when I'm playing MP3s that only have ID3v2 tags, because as of now that only displays a simple dash instead of the actual song title.

«§»

That John Gruber is at it again with an unintended yet masterful discource on the whole application centric v. task centric UI models. Heres a small tidbit of the goodness John dispenses:

"So the Mac paradigm enforces a three-level hierarchy: you’ve got the system, which runs applications, which display windows. The Windows paradigm tries to eliminate the middleman, presenting a system, which displays windows — i.e. the idea is not that your windows belong to applications, but that they belong to the Windows system itself. The problem with this is that it’s an illusion, in that Windows is still very much an application-centric system. It just doesn’t look like it. When it comes right down to it, Windows is almost every bit as application-centric as the Mac, but the Windows human interface attempts to disguise this, ostensibly to make things simpler."

Hearing my frustrations put into well thought out coherent sentences like this is as good as getting free money. If nothing else its a rather illuminating read into one of the most common frustrations computer users face. As if all of that isn't good enough, John quotes MPT, 'nuff said. Ram I hope after reading this you get some insight into why I'm forced to use X-Mouse (focus follows mouse) on windows.

«§»

So I've been trying to get a few of friends to stop using Hotmail now. There are a lot of good reasons to not use Hotmail. My family is definitely not ready to listen just yet, and some friends have bottomles bags of excuses. These types of security problems are just the tip of the iceberg. I had 8 "password reset" emails in my hotmail account inbox. That means either one or more people tried to reset my hotmail password and thankfully failed. For the record I have a hotmail account only so that I can use MSN messenger to chat with some people who use it exclusively. I just don't understand why people put up with a measly 2MB of space, infinite spam, ads out the wazoo a web interface thats busier than Times Square, and no easy way to check mail with any programs other than Outlook. I guess people just tend to stick with whatever they've made themselves get used to. Just terrible. For all my readers using Hotmail for their email needs, please stop, just don't do it. Email me and I'll give you a ton of free email options that are way better than Hotmail.

«§»

As is habit I was was checking out my server logs and caught a very interesting visitor: 131.107.163.50 - [18:15 05/07/03] - MicrosoftPrototypeCrawler (please report obnoxious behavior to newbiecrawler@hotmail.com)

I checked out the forums at Webmaster World and apparently this is a valid bot adhering to standard crawlers conventions and there have been replies from MS employees stating to be from the Microsoft Universal Agent group. This is most interesting. I wonder how this is going to play out in the search engine world. It can't be all bad, because Google has been the unchallenged champion for some time now, maybe some real competition will really kick things into overdrive and bring some truly innovative search features to the market beyond just finding relevant material.

«§»

I've been meaning to write about DRM for some time now, but it always happens that I've already got something else to written and I push off the DRM thoughts to another day. Not today. For those of you unfamiliar with DRM, its a way for the content creator (musician, software company, e-book publishers, etc.) to control how you the user can use their content. According to Steve Ballmer's executive email on DRM, "rights management technologies enable a content owner to stipulate a set of rules, or policy rights, that govern how the content may be used, by whom, for how long, etc."

This wouldn't be too scary but you see in order to really control how content is used once it gets to the user there have to be hardware and software blocks in order to make it happen, because any pure software solution can and will be circumvented. For example if a song file has DRM but the computer its being played on doesn't have hardware DRM then you could just record the song from the digital output port and make a perfect digital copy sans the DRM that you can then distribute the song freely.

Microsoft has been quietly building a hardware and software DRM solution that was originally called Palladium but recently had its name changed to Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSC). This type of system is designed from the ground up to give the user only rights the content publisher chooses. Whats seriously troubling to me is that this allows companies like Sony, Universal and Microsoft to tell you exactly how you can and cannot use your computer, not just the software on it, but the actual computer itself. For example you can only use speakers "approved" my Microsoft that work with a PC "approved" by Microsoft to listen to songs you buy from your convenient online music store.

The worst part of all this is how Microsoft Marketing and Public Relations is doing a remarkable job getting the idea out there that DRM is somehow supposed to make the life of the cosumer easier and freer. Recently Bill Gates was quoted saying, "We're building a security system that people can use or not use as they please. We are not telling anyone what they have to do or not do with their computers or with their content." This is utterly misleading. Users who have DRM enabled computers cannot opt out of using it, its there, its like trying to opt out of using a monitor. You can't really do that without really jumping through some hoops. DRM isn't desinged to protect you the consumer its designed from the ground up to protect the content publisher. If anything DRM is going to further limit the way you can use your own computer and the way the use of your computer is limited is fully up to the the company that designed the DRM scheme in use. More than likely than it will be Microsoft, considering they already have more than 90% penetration in the cosumer desktop market.

Clearly its fair for content publishers to get paid for their work and not have thier rights taken away completely, but what about the user? There is something intrinsically "Big Brotherish" about having a computer tell you what can and cannot do to data that you have purchased. A clearer analogy to this whole DRM concept would be if you bought a car which didn't let you drive to the part of a city because of the percentage of people there who commit a crime. Once you have purchased something, especially something as multifaceted as a computer, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with it. People who submit to draconian DRM schemes are essentially admitting, "I'm a computer criminal and cannot control myself so I have Microsoft controlling what I can and cannot do."

A lot of you are going to think that I'm humping Apple's leg again, but they are the only company so far that have managed to balance the interest of the copyright holders and the users. Apple's DRM allows users to copy music they've purchased to 3 other machines, burn unlimited audio CDs (one playlist can only be burned 10 times without changes), you can copy the music to an iPod and you can even stream music from the machine that holds the music to whatever machine you happen to be using. This is way better than anything else that has been even remotely considered on the PC side of the things.

In an ideal world we would have a solution that protects our rights as consumers and the rights of the artists creating the content we enjoy and still manages to not revolve around the products and services of one company be it Apple, Microsoft or anyone else. Lets see what the future has in store for us. As always, hope for the best, but expect the worst.

How you doing Linux?

Linkses:
Why IT won't let you customize your PC
Long arm of Longhorn
Why some file sharing networks get sued and die and others survive

so far from where i want to be

bird belly

I always feel like I have so much to say when I'm away from my computer working on other things and then when I finally sit down to right all my insipiration just vanishes, "like a fart in the wind."

For some reason I just feel so tired. Not physically tired but just emotionally and psychologically drained, as if I shook hands with Rogue when she wasn't wearing her gloves. I tried sleeping it off but thats not really helping. Tomorrow I'm gonna try a special relaxation technique I've conjured up all by myself. I'll give that a go and see how much it helps. I just need some deep deep sleep. The sort of sleep I got that time at Sonia's party when I started putting on my shoes and just crashed.

The parental unit is back in the country. Glad they have arrived back from their trip safe and sound. Something about them seems different. They seem so fragile. I almost want to go update all my "emergency contact" sheets, because I don't think either of my parents should be the first people contacted should I do something stupid. Dollyfoi (dad's younger sister) would seem like the ultimate Rock of Gibraltar type people in case of emergencies.

I'm going to try yet again to sleep off my funk.

Thats all the time I have people. Thank you and good night!

Quoteses:
"If only tears could be transmitted through this quack of a communication medium." - Akash K.

Linkses:
More balls than I'll have in all my lifetimes
Polling CNN readers is a good waste of a poll script and CGI resources

mysterious pandas watching me

So today at work I decided to play with the iTunes Music Store some more. Beyond what I had already done. It was the most thrilling 15 minutes of "window shoppin" I've ever had. I did a couple of searches for artists (Coltrane, Sheila Chandra, 2Pac) whose album collections I would love to legally own. It was so ridiculously easy and the price is just is just at the point where an impulse buy won't hurt your wallet that much. Of course in large numbers the wallet pain factor would go through the roof. I was so close to buying a couple of Coltrane albums that it was nerve-wracking.
I was held back though and my purchases were firmly in check. The whole 128kbps quality level is just not working for me. A majority of the mp3 music I have now is at or above 192kbps with CD rips at 224kbps or above and most "Live" CDs at 320kbps. I don't care what Jobs or Apple's marketing tells me, I am not going to buy the idea that 128kbps AAC audio sounds like the original CD. I know its better than 128kbps mp3, but a CD? I don't think so. Apple is pretty deceptive in their marteking because on the main iTunes Music Store page they work so hard to sell the AAC compression and they state, "In fact the sound was so good that audiophiles who beta tested the iTunes Music Store were astonished to learn they were listening to 128 kbps sound files." I want to know what these so called "audiophiles" thought they were listening to instead because I bet a lot of them guessed they were listening to a higher bitrate compressed version instead. I highly doubt that any self-respecting audiophile would mix up 128kbps AAC and actual CD quality.
So yea this whole quality situation is just not working. I have a feeling that I might cave but atleast not for the foreseeable future. The other problem I had was the total lack of some artists. For example I couldn't find a single mention anywhere of the Notorious B.I.G.. I tried variations of Biggie's name but no dice. Thats insane! One of the biggest names in Hip-Hop just missing. Not cool Zeus, not cool.
However Apple has presented me with what amounts to a "Discount Crack!" window inside every MacOS X box. If they just upped the quality I have $50 burning a hole in my pocket and thats just for this month.

While continuing the trend of not working at work I took the What Monty Python character are you? quiz. My result:

Quoteses:
"I want to check the Oprah message boards to see if someone calls her a bitch." - Cassi B.

Linkses:
Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies
Halliburton: All In The Family
Unused audio commentary by Zinn and Chomsky for LOTR:FOTR Platinum DVD. Part two.
Mena Trott kicks ass
Sun goes up, pants go up. Sun goes down, pants go down.
Saddam had gay butt sex?!