How do they teach about Internet at college

I’ve been using college Internet for the last couple of months and I realised how it helps us understand and exploit the net better!!
Lets take it one at a time…

Banning YouTube: It took me a lot of troubles to find out how to still have access to it. [Its one of the sites that changed the way we look at Internet. why ban it?! ]

FaceBook Banned: Who doesn’t know how to access it through proxy!!

Access restriction to orkut: You gotta be kidding me.. after some googling, one can open it easily!!

now coming to the title of the post, I’m grateful to our college authorities for banning all those sites; it provided me with ample opportunities to discover Internet better so as to exploit it to the fullest!!

NOTE: If you happen to be one of those guys who restrict the sites for access, try googling other ways to access the same and ban that too.

My Stand on this: Access restriction is not the solution. The use of a specific site should be left to the users’ discretion.

The Idea: Try banning Google. It leads to every other thing!!

Google Reads Your Mails?!!

I still like Gmail for its features and convenience but when it comes to security and privacy issues, there are major concerns…

It reads all your mails!!! In order to generate ad-based revenues, they scan the text of all incoming messages and place targeted ads, which can be seen at the right sidebar of the mail screen!!

In response to the criticism of privacy advocates, they respond by saying “we’re nice, trust us” or point to the company’s mission statement of “do no evil.” Is this the price we should pay for using some free web service?? are we ready to put our privacy at stake for 6 GB free space!!

If this doesn’t scare you, consider the company’s confused retention policy: “Google has not set specific, finite limits on how long it will retain user account, email, and transactional data. And Google has not set clear written policies about its data sharing between business units.”

Google’s cookie is an index for all your searches, and sits alongside an Orkut cookie that tells Google exactly who you are. The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the services. How about this, “Google has all our data even after we delete it from our mailbox or even after we terminate our account!!” They might create large repositories of personal data that could possibly be shared inappropriately.

Here is how Google puts it

Google processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America and in other countries. In some cases, we process personal information on a server outside your own country. We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.

HERE is the letter sent by privacy groups to Google’s cofounders which says,

1. First, Google must suspend its implementation of scanning the full text of emails for determining ad placement.

2. Second, Google must clarify its information retention and data correlation policy amongst its business units, partners, and affiliates. This means that Google must set clear data retention and deletion dates and establish detailed written policies about data sharing and correlation amongst its business units and partners.

So, the next time when you the services of Google, Think before you act!!

Google

Yeah.. The word that touches our lives everyday!! Much of what I know today is the contribution of Google. Apart from the search engine; Gmail has lots and lots of features… Some of them which I use and like the most is:

• If you’ve got Gmail, You’ll never need to open any of your other mails: It will fetch all other mails to the Gmail account!! Just go to Settings–>Accounts–>Get mail from other accounts

• I REPEAT (If you’ve got Gmail, You’ll never need to open any of your other mails): You can use gmail to send mails using any of your email ids (yahoo, msn etc..)

• Invisible in Gtalk: Everyone (whoever uses it) is aware of the invisible feature (recently introduced) in Gtalk.

and Finally, Never worry if someone’s got the (dot) at the wrong place in the mail id.. i.e. if you send mail to larry.page@gmail.com or larrypage@gmail.com (or any other combination), it gets delivered to the intended recipient. Gmail doesn’t care about the little . dot

The more I Learn, The Less I seem to Know

When I started off with HTML a few years ago [std 10], I knew it’s not even the tip of the iceberg. After more than 6 years [cut-to engineering final semester], I still feel the same!! The irony here is, I learnt a lot in those years…

Having said that, I feel at any point of time, there are lots more to learn than what you currently know…

I delved into the rather unknown (for me) world of Linux a couple of weeks ago and now I’ve become a great fan of it!! I deleted most of the songs and videos from my computer (I’m happy I did,) to install Fedora Core 8 on my 40 GB hard-disk , and the experience of using the same added a different dimension to my thoughts.

The user interface, for which “Windows” is much more popular, seemed so trivial vis-a-vis the power of command line!! [Suddenly I sound like a developer.. ] I don’t intend to make any comparisons, but the work I’ve been doing since last month would have been much more difficult and costly, had it not been under Linux platform…

There are unexplored things awaiting, but for the time being, “I’m loving it!!”

Beauty of Technology

One of our Lecturers always say (when he see no one is in the mood to listen to the class) “try to see the beauty of it.. you’ll find it interesting then (pun intended)” Ya I do find some of those beautiful… If you know what Convolution Code is, you know how beautiful it is… in terms of its concept, application, implications etc..

Technology is Awesome and there lies the beauty… It integrates the world, touches everyone’s lives and makes things look obvious (by hiding the complexities)

Do you know what goes behind the making of video chat possible, while using msn??? NO, we just use it… Isn’t it very obvious to google things (how many of us know how does the page ranking works!!)… now thats beautiful… Technology is an enabler for the real life needs…

I read about the 3-D telepresence wherein the 3D image of a person can be generated and we feel like the person is really there in front of us (refer the img below, guess who is real and who is not)… Did it solve a problem??

Technology has become part and parcel of our lives, we can’t imagine a world without cell phones or Internet… For those, who know what goes behind the scenes, its a passion and for those who are not directly associated with it, why take so much of trouble, just use it and enjoy (Let’s keep life simpler!!)

Who Needs Certificates?

My friend recently told me that he wanted to do a sun certified java course because the company he is going to join works on Java… I said more to myself than him, its not the certificates, but the knowledge, that runs the company… don’t you agree??!!

Do certificates really show credentials? or those with certifications perform better than those without it… I certainly disagree… I know people with no formal education about computers and they actually know more than a computer science graduate… In my view, the projects you’ve worked on, the learning that comes from failures and the actual experience counts for a lot more than some test.

I coundn’t agree more to what Mr. DeMarco has to say

Though the rationale for certification is always societal good, the real objective is different: siezure of power. Certification is not something we implement for the benefit of the society but for the benefit of the certifiers. It is heady stuff be be able to decide which of your fellow human beings should be allowed to work and which should not. Those who hope for a share of that heady stuff are the core of the camp that favors certification.

Well I don’t know what the company requires, but certainly I don’t believe in certifications; there is no substitute for the real work you’ve done. I don’t say, the certificates are worthless, what I want to say is as long as you know the things and you’ve got the experience to support that, certificates don’t get in the way.