Patents and Nonsense!!!

The winter session of parliament is going to be stormy one. According to sources close to Sonia Gandhi, Congress is planning to amend the Patent law. Congress is working hard to build an all-party consensus regarding the proposed changes. Unlike Women’s reservation bill and Lokpal bill, Congress is committed to have this bill passed in Winter session. The deficiencies in Indian patent law were not uncovered in Apple v/s Samsung battle but they surfaced when Digvajaya Singh’s patent application was refused.

In March 2011, Digvijaya Singh filed a patent application, claiming that the ability to speak nonsense was his, and no one before him ever uttered nonsense. He went on to claim that everyone else is now copying him. After much deliberation and inspite of heavy pressure from PM and Sonia Gandhi the patent application was refused in Oct 2012. The chief of patient commission in her response clearly stated that humans have historically known to speak nonsense and there was no proof that Digvijaya was the first one to do so. Evidences submitted by Digvijaya Singh proves that he utters non-sense but there were no evidence submitted to prove that non-sense was not uttered before him.

The chief of patent commission has since taken the voluntary retirement at the old age of 33. Unconfirmed sources also say that she is seeking asylum in UK. Meanwhile, Congress core committee brainstormed for 3 days during the ongoing Nelam storm in Chennai. The committee decided that they will change the patent law and make exceptions for ruling party. MPs from ruling party will have special privilege to file 5 patents of their choice. An all-party meeting of has been called on Children’s day to ratify this proposal.

It has also been decided that Robert Vadra will be made the new chief of patent commission. Robert is the front runner as his speed of execution is unprecedented. The speed at which he closed his Facebook account and the speed at which he amassed his wealth are unparalleled.

Please keep on checking our website for further updates. There is also a risk that we may stop publishing after Digvijaya’s patent is approved. Digvijaya may charge $10,000 for 1 nonsense. This would be detrimental to our business as we may incur huge debt to Digvijaya in matter of days.

The NitroDesk Blog: Money for nothing..

The NitroDesk Blog: Money for nothing..

User Pain and prodct design

Whenever I boot my machine, it plays the welcome music. I muted my audio as I don't like it. Later, I started listening to songs, and plugged in my headset. At that point of time I didn't realize that Win 7 detected the headphones and unmuted my audio automatically. As I was listening to music, I was getting late for a call, so I unplugged the headset from my machine and plugged it into my phone. And that’s when it struck me... as soon as I removed the headset, the system muted itself. It restored the audio settings to the same point where it was before I inserted the headphone jack

This small experience highlights a very important point..... Someone thought about this and put it into the system...... small things does matter..... Things like these are taken for granted by people. This feature ensured that I didn’t get annoyed when my speakers started playing my music... a lot of time we love things that DON’T annoy us. We don’t realize it, but it’s a fact that we tend to like such things more. And it’s this fact that is at the root of the proverb, "books are men's best friends”.

A very big fact is that, people like to take things for granted. We tend to take a lot of things in life for granted. Almost all the essentials have been taken for granted by us. And when we find a product, whose features are very simple and can be taken for granted we start to want it. It’s like the GPS device. 10 years earlier people in the US didn’t have it, but still found their ways while driving to new areas. Today, this small device has been taken for granted. It’s always in the car. Earlier, these devices didn’t speak. And a lot of people used to get annoyed when they missed a turn as the traffic didn’t let them spot a turn or didn’t let them glance at the device in time. So what did a smart product designer do, (s)he added voice to it. The voice will direct you to take turns. And there you are; now you don’t have to look at the device at all. It keeps on telling you.

Not going any further, I would just say… when we think of the usability, we need to ensure that we are reducing user’s pain... and this is the key to a great product design

I am the story of "i"

Back in school, my maths teacher revealed 'i' to me. "i", he said,"is the square root of -1". For a moment, I thought, everything I learnt does not make sense anymore. I was lost. For past so many yrs they were teaching me that square roots of negative numbers did not exist, and now all of a sudden, they gave a shock called "i". I refused to accept it and study it. I left complex algebra. Went for my exams without studying it....

9 yrs later, I realize that, though I did not study about "i", and I refused to accept its existence, it was all around me, all the time. The relevance of imaginary roots is all over the world. It's in my profession, it's in my entertainment, and of late I realize, it's in my thought process. I m handicapped without "i". All this weird thoughts of mine are due to this "i". I make a living because, unknowingly, I endorsed "i". And these thoughts take me to the conclusion that I am nothing but a subset of "i"

Since I did not study "i", I don't know all the mathematics attached to it, apart from the fact that it's imaginary. So I set out to make my own theory of "i". Well, it's hard to formulate a theory of all these random thoughts of mine. So I decided, I will illustrate the existence of "i" in my thought process.

KR was the first person, who made me realize the existence of "i" in me. I had come up with a punch line for my skype status. It read, "there are facts, and there are beliefs, it's dangerous when you start assuming your beliefs as facts ". He walked up to me and told me that everything is based on beliefs. Coming from him, I gave it a thought. He was right. At the base of every scientific theory, there is an assumption, which was never proved, just like "i". Till some time after that I was thinking that the "i" inside me is laughing at me and telling me that, finally I accepted its existence. It's just now that I realize that I am in "i" and not the other way round

Finally, I realize that, though "i" does not exist, it has relevance. So every now and then, when I come across some wonderful thoughts, or read some wonderful book or see any other masterpiece of human imagination, I comprehend the power of "i". Till now, I believed in God, now I also believe in "i"

Debugging Tips in C#

One of the most time consuming thing in developer’s life is debugging. Here are few notes that can help when it comes to debugging. The first thing that one should understand is pdb files

Importance of pdb files

As per MSDN, “a program database (PDB) file holds debugging and project state information that allows incremental linking of a debug configuration of your program.” Please note that pdb files are not specific to C#, they are available for .Net languages as well

There are lots of things about the pdb files, but to keep it short, pdb files enables debugging of the code. Visual Studio uses the pdb files when you start debugging a program. The yellow highlighting of the code lines that we see when we are debugging is due to the information stored in the debug file.

Now let’s take a look at few common debugging related issues

My yellow highlighting does not match the code line in length

When you are debugging a complex application, which is build on one machine and is being debugged on a different machine, you might find that the yellow highlighting is not matching the code line’s length. This is due to the mismatch between the code files and the deployed binaries.

To fix this issues, rebuild the whole set of projects, using the code files which you intend to use for the purpose of debugging. Now redeploy the newly built binaries along with the pdbs to the deploy location. If it involves GACing, copy the pdbs to GAC as well. Open a new instance of CLR debugger or visual studio on the machine where the binaries were deployed and open the code files, which you used to compile the deployed build, in it. Now hook up the debugger and put the break points, you will see that the length of yellow highlight is equal to the code line length

How do I debug a windows service?

1. Open a new Debugger(CLR or studio).
2. Click on the Tools menu, and click on “Attach to Process” menu item
3. You will get a list of processes that are running on the local machine
4. Select the process that matches the name of your windows service and click on attach.

Note that this is a general way of debugging any running process. Also note that you cannot debug an application whose type is not managed

How do I Debug a Windows Service which always fails before starting?

A windows Service will not fail to initialize unless there are unhandled exceptions in one the following three places

1. Main function
2. Constructor
3. OnStart() method
   

What you can do is put a Debug.Assert(false); as the first line in your main function of the windows service and redeploy it. Now as you try and start the win service, you will get and empty Assert Window. Don’t dismiss it. Open up a debugger and hook up into the service. Put the break points at the suspect places and then dismiss the assert by ignoring it. The control will break at the breakpoint. Debug your service from here on

How do I debug an installer?

Debugging an installer is similar to debugging the windows service. Put the Debug.Assert where you want to start debugging and attach to the msiexec.exe process.

How do I debug an application hosted in IIS?

Hook up to aspnet_wp.exe in xp or w3wp.exe in Windows 2003 server. Haven’t taken a look at the process name under vista.

1-6-2007 – A canal story

I will remember this date not coz India won a series against SA, not cozI was stranded in a train for 3 hrs in single place and not even for Vinay and me falling in the canal, but I will remember it, coz I thought of bloging it for all these reasons :)

I was with my parents this weekend. Since the weather was really bleak, I decided to start early for baroda on. I boarded Saurashtra Express from Valsad at 5:00 pm from Valsad. The train was 5 hrs late. As I got a train immediately, I thought I was lucky. WRONG!!!

My train took 2 hrs to reach Surat!! 3 other trains were allowed to pass by. I was a bit angry with Lalu for that. I reached Surat at 7 and found Karnvati taking off. I ran and changed the train. I thought I was lucky. WONG AGAIN!!!!

10 minutes after we left Surat, Karnvati came to a stand still. 20 mins went by. I got a bit edgy and walked all the way till engine. I asked the driver, wats the matter. And he coldly told me that there is water in Bharuch Station and we cant go ahead till it clears. Phew!!! Day was looking really good

I waited till 10:00 pm and then thought it was wise to go to back to Surat. I got a lift till Surat Railway station. I also called up Vinay, he was gonna meet me at the station and take me to his home. He arrived few minutes after I reached Surat Station. I thought I was getting lucky!!! No need to say WRONG AGAIN :D

We had a coffee and sandwich at CCD, and we thought of taking a short cut to his home. Unfortunately it was a bad idea. We ended up on a road that we didn’t know!! Viany took a sharp u-turn. And before we could understand anything, we were in a canal. He thought there was road on the other side of the grass, and went straight over it. There was no road but a canal and now we were in it. Within few seconds water began to come into the car. I opened my door and got out. Immediately I was in waist high gushing water. I tried getting on my feet, but the canal floor was really slippery. With some struggle, I got on my feet. On the driver’s side even Vinay was struggling. We climbed out of the canal, and looked upon the car. It looked really bad. I wish I could say “WRONG AGAIN”. The only comforting fact was that the car was stuck and wont flow away with the current. Meanwhile somewhere in Ireland India beat SA first time in a one day series outside India. LUCKY

We tried to get help from passerby, but it was really difficult to get help at that time of the night. I called up Abhijeet, and he came with his friend Modi(not Narendra). We thought of gathering people and pulling the car ourselves but after taking a look at the car, we decided of not doing it. We waited for a big vehicle to come and ask help from it. Unfortunately nothing came. We finally decided of getting it out in the morning.

Next morning, we reached the site early and got a passing by tractor to help us. We pushed the car to a near-by garage and gave it for repairs. Lucily, there was no body damage, water cushioned the impact and car body was not even scratched. Even internal damage was really less. The estimate given by the mechanic was Rs 3000. that was very relieving. Finally I boarded a train from Surat and reached Baroda at 3:00 pm, 23 hours after I started from my home!!! Helluva journey !!!

For further details you may contact me or Vinay :)

World is changing

The pace at which the world around us changes is faster than one can comprehend. Now just take a look at the following site.

http://skillda.in

This site is all set to change the way online job portals work. These guys are in Beta and are not calling the site a job portal (yet). They are calling it a professional networking site. They let you add contacts, search job, post jobs, search for resumes, search for people. I have not taken a look at all the features yet

They have AI based search engine incorporated. So now when you are searching for a job, you don’t have to fill a form. You don’t have to select in a combobox, which city you are looking for job in, which technology you are looking for job in. Same for recruiters, they don’t have to fill up the big forms to search resume. There is a just a single text box. It gives you a feeling that you are using a Google like search engine

I guess the traditional job portals are gonna face some tough times ahead