FedEx keeps tryst with destiny, but Roddick wins hearts

Update: This article says it all - Andy's loss of the second set was about all that separated today's winner from the runner up. And like one of the commenters on that page said, Andy didn't deserve to lose. At all.

The Federer Express was on course today to notch up yet another Grand Slam win. With this victory, he becomes the only player in tennis history (in the Open era) to win fifteen Grand Slam singles titles. This win was, alas, not his best though.

This match should be Andy Roddick's finest ever performance at Wimbledon, a match he was simply unlucky to lose since he was the better player for almost the entire match, except during the second set, when Federer held his nerves to come back from four set points down to clinch it eventually. If anybody bothered to ask who deserved to win this match on the basis of superior tennis played, the answer would be, undoubtedly, Andy Roddick. A-Rod not only maintained an unbelievably high percentage of first serves, but his shot-making was also tremendously high-percentage, high-quality, and consistent.

In the end, I was feeling sad for Andy Roddick, and was wondering how cruel sport could be. Today, what separated the runner up from his opponent was merely a matter of a few shots towards the end of the match. As is often said, winners are not necessarily the ones who perform the best; they're often those with a greater belief in their own ability to win. In his acceptance speech, Federer himself acknowledged that he was merely the luckier man today, and that Andy played "unbelievable" tennis.

Quick Windows Tips - 4

If you're like most Windows users, you have a document on your computer called My Documents that's usually located under C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\ (or C:\Users, if you are a Vista user - in either case, I'm assuming that your default Windows partition is C:\). Long-time Windows users might have spotted this ages ago. What is less apparent, however, is the fact that you can have control over where "My Documents" is physically located on your hard disk, not only to the disk partition where you'd like it to be, but right down to the exact folder under which you want it. But first, an important consideration: why would you want to change this?

Plenty of reasons, but one of the most important ones is protection of data by moving it away from the Windows partition. The Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) is not so very uncommon (see this link if you don't believe me), and many a user has gnashed his teeth in anger at having to reinstall Windows to overcome many a mysterious problem that will prove to be intractable. And, as you might know from a previous unfortunate experience, when you reinstall Windows, many system folders, like your desktop, the My Documents folder, and others, get overwritten, munching away your precious files and folders.

Besides this, there are other reasons why you might want to do this. In versions of Windows prior to Vista, you cannot resize your partitions without using specialised partition manager programs. This may mean that you might run out of disk space on your Windows partition, with data loss as a potential risk in the case of some unforeseen failure. Degraded performance would be another reason: if your data is located on the Windows partition, chances are that file fragmentation is heavy, increasing the seek / access times for certain files. So, any which way you look at it, moving your personal data to a different partition is a pretty useful idea.

Before you start, ensure that you have a disk partition that's big enough to hold your current data, and any future additions. A simple rule of thumb is to determine the current size your data folder, and ensure that the partition that should now hold your data be twice as big.

Open Windows Explorer by pressing Win+E. Navigate to the partition that you have decided should contain your data files. Create a new folder, call it something like "<your name>'s documents" or something similar. Now, open the Start Menu, right-click the "My Documents" menu option, and select Properties. Move to the "Location" tab, and click the "Move" button. Navigate to the folder created in the first step above and click the "Select folder" button. Now, click "Ok" on the Properties dialog that you opened earlier, and click "Yes" on the confirmation dialog. Once Windows copies all the files and folders (may take a lot of time depending on how much data you have stored), you're done. You can verify this by checking whether your folders and files are visible under the new folder you created in Windows Explorer. Another way to check this would be to right-click on "My Documents", selecting Properties, and seeing the target folder under the "Location" tab - it should point to your new folder.

Congratulations, you just took the first step towards data protection from a corrupt Windows installation!

Quick Windows Tip - 3

If you're not a Windows user (some say "sufferer" is more apt), chances are that you may find the rest of this post irrelevant to you. However, for deriving sheer sadistic pleasure, you may wish to read on. On the other hand, long-time Windows users who would like to make their life a wee bit easier may find this tip a useful one.

Do you find that you constantly keep accessing programs residing on the System Tray? If so, you might have noticed that some of the programs that you like to access often are hidden by Windows (by default; constant tinkerers with Windows settings who have long since nailed this might get an inkling of what I'm about to spout in all my wisdom, so I say to them, "Sssshhh; this post is not meant for you people either, so go away and read some other posts").

A simple solution to make those hidden progams visible is at hand: right-click an empty area on the Taskbar, and select Properties. The "Hide inactive icons" option would be checked by default, so uncheck it. That's it! You will now see all of your system tray icons at once instead of having to click on the left- or right-pointing arrows alternately.

Quick Windows Tip - 2

Want to quickly access the currently logged in user's account properties? In Windows Vista (or XP), open the Start menu, and click on your account's picture at the top right hand (or left hand) corner. The account properties window opens up with the properties (log in picture option) of the currently logged in user.

(His) Star is on the rise again

Roger Federer, my favourite tennis player, recently completed a career Grand Slam by winning the French Open this year. Though some consider the achievement to be not quite so great since he did it in the absence of Nadal (who was eliminated earlier in the tournament), I consider his victory a tribute and a testament to his superb and unmatched consistency in Grand Slams. In all, the Swiss master has now won 14 Slams, a feat that places him firmly on the path to tennis immortality. He needs just one more Grand Slam title to edge past Pete Sampras, the tennis great whose record he has equalled in record time (six years) since his first major win.

Just ponder these facts: among the thousands of professional tennis players, very few - about 128 players, to be precise - qualify for the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament, with the top-ranked 32 players getting a direct entry. Out of these 128 players, two players reach the finals at the end of nearly two weeks of intense competition against different players over six rounds, each of which is a knock-out match. That is to say, if you have just one off day and the opponent plays his best, you're likely to be thrown out of the tournament unceremoniously. And yet, Federer has reached the semi-finals of every Grand Slam he has played since Wimbledon 2004, a record 20 times! He has also reached the finals of 15 of the last 16 Slams (stats source), and his only losses in those finals have come against Nadal. None of the other top players of this generation, or any generation for that matter, have such a phenomenal record in the Slams.

With no offence to Nadal, one of the most gracious players on tour currently, if Federer won the French Open without having to beat Nadal, then that's Nadal's problem, not Federer's. Federer just did what he has become so adept at doing - reaching a Grand Slam semifinal - and put himself in line for another victory. Nobody in recent memory - or even distant memory, really - has had such a consistent run in the majors, and has racked up as many Slams (14) in such quick time (five years). So remarkable has his run been that it comes as a shock to everyone if Federer fails to reach the semifinals of any tournament.

Enough said: Federer may or may not be the greatest player of all time (that debate is raging in many discussion forums), but there can be no disputing the fact he's the most consistent player of any generation. Ever. Go Fed, get yourself another Wimbledon title! It's yours for the taking!

Quick GMail Tip

Do you use GMail? What? You've never heard of it? Don't give me any more lame excuses to not do so, go on over to http://mail.google.com, and create your own account now. I mean, NOW!

For those of you veteran GMail users, the benefits of this webmail service are quite obvious: it's fast, it's got terrific spam filters (I'd swear it's the best I've ever seen in a webmail service), the conversation view of emails is an example of superb innovation that the Google guys have become known for and, this tops the list, you can even use the service to read and compose emails when you're offline (though you have to go online again to send mail)! Yes, Google's got the offline Gears too, so all you have to do is click on the link (if you use Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox), and install Google Gears (if you use the first-named of the browsers, you don't need to: it comes pre-installed).

Then, head on over to this excellent tutorial to learn how to create your own Labels. This new feature now comes with colour-coding too, so if you've set up filters and labels, you can tell at a glance whether your new emails require your immediate attention. That's what I call helpful.

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Quick Windows Tip - 1

Have you often wondered why you couldn't select a bunch of files / folders and then send them to a different destination with just a click or two? I have, and have never failed to find a registry trick that can do it, whatever version of Windows I was on. On Windows 95 through 2000, there was PowerToys, and on Windows XP and Vista, there is an equivalent technique which is, alas, not as user-friendly. Nevertheless, here it is (you may also click on the Related Article link at the bottom of this post, or on the title above).

It is tweaks like these that make Windows sometimes indispensable for the average user. Of course, Unix / Linux geeks have always enjoyed the ability to do much, much more with a few lines of well-written shell scripts - that is more a testimony to the maturity of those Operating Systems, in my humble opinion, than to any inadequacy of Windows.

Anyway, have fun with the registry tweak!

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Free Software

And I mean "free as in freedom, not price". Yes, I'm talking about Richard M Stallman's (abbreviated to RMS) Free Software Foundation and its philosophy. The guy's ideology is far-reaching and inspiring. The following are excerpts from an interview.

JA: What if your job requires you to use non-free software?

Richard Stallman: I would quit that job. Would you participate in something anti-social just because somebody pays you to? What if the job involves hitting people on the head in the street and taking their wallets? What if it involves spreading the word that Democrats should vote on Wednesday instead of Tuesday? Some people seriously claim that you can't criticize what someone does if it is part of their job. From my point of view, the fact that somebody is being paid to do something wrong is not an excuse.

JA: Do you consider it proper for people who are trying to only use free software to utilize...

Richard Stallman: To connect to a server that's running non-free software?

I don't feel I need to refuse to connect to a server that is running non-free software. For that matter, I won't refuse to type on a computer that's running non-free software. If I were visiting your house for a little and you had a Windows machine, I would use it if it were important for me to use it. I wouldn't be willing to have Windows on my computer, and you shouldn't have it on yours, but I can't change that by refusing to touch the machine.

If you connect to a server that runs non-free software, you're not the one whose freedom is harmed. It's the server operator who has lost freedom to the restrictions on the software he runs. This is unfortunate, and I hope that he switches to free software; we're working to bring that about. But I don't feel you have to boycott his site until he switches. He isn't making you use the non-free software.

Cogent and brilliant arguments. You can read the complete article in the link below.

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Moving passages

A couple of paragraphs that I came across in Arthur Hailey's "Final Diagnosis".

[An obstetrician reflects on the little ones in a hospital's nursery:] These, he thought, were the normal, healthy animals who had won, for the moment, their battle for existence and in a few days more would go outward and onward into the waiting world. Their destinations were the home, the school, the strife of living, the competition for fame and possessions. Among these were some who would taste success and suffer failure; who, barring casualty, would enjoy youth, accept middle age, and grow old sadly. These were those for whom more powerful and glossier automobiles would be designed, in whose service aircraft would wing faster and farther, whose every whim and appetite would be wooed by others of their kind with wares to market. These were some who would face the unknown future, most with misgiving, many bravely, a few craven. Some here, perhaps, might breach the barriers of outer space; others with the gift of tonues might move their fellow men to anger or despair. Most, within twenty years, would fulfil their physical maturity, obeying, but never understanding, the same primeval craving to copulate which had sown their seed and brought them, mewling, puking, here. But for now these were the victors - the born and urgent. Their first and gratest barrier was down, the other battles yet to come.

[One of the protagonists eyes his son who was born prematurely and who has been kept in an incubator.] Once more het let his eyes stray back to the tiny figure. For the first time the thought occurred to him: This is my son, my own, a part of my life. Suddenly, he was consumed by a sense of overwhelming love for this fragile morself, fighting his lonely battle inside the warm little box below. He had an absurd impulse to shout through the glass: You're not alone, son; I've come to help. He wanted to run to the incubator and say: These are my hands; take them for your strength. Here are my lungs; use them and let me breathe for you. Only don't give up, son; don't give up! There's so much ahead, so much we can do together - if only you'll live! Listen to me, and hold on!This is your father and I love you.

Nice Translator is ... good

This is what I call an innovative product: a translator that not only helps you translate phrases into multiple languages, but also auto-detects the source language. Go on, play with it!

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Windows 7 - First Impressions

Fast! That's the first word that comes to mind after using Windows 7 for just a few minutes. The OS feels snappy, and things are noticeably quicker. The user interface also seems somewhat, um, smoother.

After trying the whole of yesterday to download the public beta of the latest version of Windows (a first for Microsoft), I finally managed to see something other than the "Due to high volume, blah blah blah" excuse for the absence of the all-important download link at night. And it made sense for me in a weird way too, since my broadband service provider had some server trouble yesterday, and connections were crawling in the afternoon (4 or 5 kB/sec); so, there was no way initiating a download in the afternoon would have been of much use. In contrast, the download kicked off at nearly 220 kB/sec in the night! I started the download and went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that the download was done, and that my faithful Opera had maintained an average speed of 213 kB/sec. Not bad at all!

I set about installing Win 7 after duly burning the huge ISO to a DVD (yes, the ISO is about 2.5 GB). Installation was relatively painless, and after the initial questions, went about doing its job without bothering me (I took the time to finish my housekeeping chores). After about half an hour or so (I didn't really notice the clock), it was done. One small glitch though: the DVD didn't eject after the installation was complete, and so, had I not been there, another installation would have started.

Setup wasn't finished entirely, however; the initial boot took some time "setting up the computer for the first time" routine that we're all so used to now. To its credit, however, it didn't ask me too many questions, and the questions that it did ask were relevant to me. Like, what did I want the user name to be, which network did I want to connect to, and so on. I was happy to notice that it had managed to install all the necessary device drivers without my intervention at all. All in all, a tremendous improvement from the days of that trusty software steed, Windows XP.

I went about installing my usual bevy of programs and utilities, Opera being the first in the list, of course. I did notice one peculiar thing though: I installed Startup Monitor (a program that runs in the background and alerts you when some program is trying to put itself in the list of programs that Windows starts after a reboot), and yet, it failed to notify me when Adobe installed its user rights-trampling "Acrobat speedup" to run after reboot (it was a Registry entry). Hmmm, curious, and seems to indicate that something in the startup routine has changed in Win 7.

This one blew away Win XP. I'm talking about USB device recognition. It seemed to me that no sooner had I popped in my Flash drive than Windows had installed the drivers for it, and the device was available to me in, like, two seconds! It's all the more amazing when you consider that a. it was a fresh Windows installation and, b. this was the very first USB device that I'd popped into Win 7. Awesome, and this is the right way to go! Note that I haven't transferred anything to and from the USB drive yet, and my future posts would cover it.

One more thing: programs seem to start noticeably faster. There are these icons on the task bar that have replaced the Quick Launch paradigm. In fact, confirming this view is the absence of Quick Launch in the Toolbars menu in the task bar's context menu. Clicking on the Windows Explorer icon opened up Explorer almost instantaneously. Likewise for other programs. Score!

That's it for now, folks. I'll start commenting on the other improvements that I can notice. All without scientific testing, of course :-)

You've slipped, Google

Oh, how the mighty slip (even if they don't fall)!

:-P Hype aside, I was taking Google Chrome out for a spin by pointing it to Gmail, and here's what hit me.

Did you notice the missing images on the page, including the Google Mail logo? I was somewhat amused to see the message, "Some of the elements on this page came from an unverified source and were not displayed." Google's browser couldn't verify the authenticity of the images that were being served from their own servers? I wonder what it was that it couldn't verify. Quite ironical, isn't it?

Of course, it's a rather trivial error - some of the images on the page were coming from an http server rather than the https server that the page itself was being served from, as the image below confirmed.

Google Talk Desktop Client - Security Lapse

As I exploited a rare server lapse in my office's network settings, the thought of logging in to GTalk crossed my mind, and I gave in to the temptation. Along came another thought - that of sniffing at the HTTP packets leaving my machine, and I fired up my copy of HTTP Analyzer to do the same. What I found out was not very reassuring.

This is the scene: you have a Google Talk desktop client which you use to log on to Google's chat service. You type in your username and password, and click on sign-in. You wait a few moments, and find yourself signed in. All nice and fine. What you wouldn't know is that, unlike your GMail account, login to which happens through a secure sockets layer (SSL) in addition to client-side encryption, the GTalk client sends your login credentials in clear-text, or the HTTP equivalent of clear text, HTML-encoded text. Of course, as any programmer knows, this is trivial to decode. All you need is a scientific calculator which can do hex and / or a quick Javascript program.

I looked through the Google Talk website for a place to report this security hole and, to my chagrin, couldn't find any. I looked at various Google Groups to see if they have a place where I could report this finding, but I couldn't locate any. A Google search turned up only this: http://www.nta-monitor.com/posts/2005/08/googletalk.html, which is very closely related to my finding. In fact, I was appalled that such a closely related problem had been left unattended for more than three years!

Should you be worried?

No, not unless you surf the Net from an unreliable or unknown cyber cafe / browsing center. If you're logging on from home, then you should be worried only if you're the victim of a man-in-the-middle attack (not very likely, realistically speaking). In that case, your Google Account password would be up for grabs, and it would be time for you to either switch to the GTalk client in GMail, or the Talk gadget, or in the worst case, a new Google ID.

If you're a Google employee reading this post, and would like more information, you can reach me through my blog. However, my guess is that your colleagues would be able to give you more extensive inside information :-)

The secret of how I am going to be a genius

I'd like to be remembered as a genius, or at least someone with an exceptional intellect (it's another matter that I may not possess one). So, it stands to reason that I have to achieve something in my lifetime that will give people a reason to think so about me. Of late, however, I'm more and more vulnerable to the charms of Morpheus, who insists on giving me company no matter where I am, what I am doing, but his presence is not utterly devoid of advantages.

I have observed this rather strange phenomenon: when I am doze off while reading something, my mind seems to continue to read the sentence that I nodded off at, but with a difference: it supplies its own words, different from that in the text, so much so that the striking difference and the ill-logic sometimes jars me awake! I believe that this is going to lead me to a stupendous discovery one day.

At least, I like to think so; how else can I explain away sleeping in the office, right at my desk? ;-)

Not just in India

When disaster strikes, it is usually very painful for the victims. When it's caused by forces of nature that we are often powerless against, the situation becomes even more poignant. Hurricane Katarina received a lot of coverage due to the immense swath of destruction that it left in its wake, and rightfully so. Such coverage normally results in some good coming out of it - more people become aware of the damage to human life and property, and that usually results in more people becoming willing to help those in need.

When these things happen in developing countries, say India, there's a phenomenal amount of press coverage on how badly things have been managed, how the city / district was totally unprepared, how the poor have, as can only be expected, borne the brunt of the damage, how life will never be the same for the displaced and affected victims, and so on and so forth. It's another story, and one that isn't known as widely, that such disasters cause havoc even in developed countries like the US of A. Apparently, according to this article, New Orleans has not exactly bounced back from the depths of despair as readily as we'd like to think. Much of the city seems to resemble a ghost town, and even three years after the hurricane and the resultant floods struck the city, life can hardly be described as having returned to normal.

Having said all that, hope still lurks amidst gloom and painful memories, as it always does when human enterprise undertaken with intelligence is tinged with compassion and benevolence.

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