BSNL Benchmark

After some days of downloading this is the statistics I got. Not bad I did say.


That is roughly 32.7 KBps Download Rate, which is what BSNL is promising for the 750 UL Plan that I got :).

A Small World, It Is

I hate databases it was about to make less of a difference whether I was learning it for GATE or for the sake of just passing an exam in Semester 7 (oh! boy that was real hard thing), I still remember the pain in the ass as well as the fact that I passed because I just got moderation in the subject. 40 / 100 Call myself lucky, the horrors of writing that exam again was just a bit too much for me to handle.

What goes around comes around is what they say, Even in work I faced the dreaded databases. After 1.5 years of tinkering I finally felt I had seen all things in Databases, but NO!!! when I joined the GATE Coaching they were back to haunt me and last Sunday was filled with old memories of Databases once again. And the boy next to me asked how did you manage databases in your course, I said I slept through most of it and all this is mostly new to me.

He also asked me if we use these concepts in IT industry I said that it depends on what kind of a project you are put it and if you are in Data Warehousing then you can expect a lot of these concepts to be put in there. He told me he had to explain a lot of these concepts to his brother who was working in another IT Company. Then I asked him the same question about how was Databases taken for him and he said that they had a good teacher and she was able to explain things to them very clearly and he was able grasp a lot of concept. I said that is good, then I asked him what does your teacher do now?

He pointed me to the Girl sitting across my left (Please Refer Picture) and told me that she was his teacher.

I was kind of speechless. But then again it is a small, small world or Was it Ironic?

Trying out NetBSD

As a part of the NetBSD Adventures here is a screenshot from the VirtualPC in my computer.

I guess the GUI doesn't look that attractive, it is sort of primitive, did not install gnome or KDE.

The Complete Picture

I have been going for GATE coaching class here. I passed out of engineering couple of years back and I should have done this then. Instead I went for a job and got out of touch with computer science for quite sometime now. I feel my chances for getting through are pretty slim but then I thought of getting in touch with my old subjects. I miss them actually.

Once in a Physics, the professor was explaining the derivation of the Schrodinger Equation on a 3 Dimesional Plane and when we resolved the partial differentials they had imaginary parts. So I asked him (which might have been a foolish and naive question) why do we need an imaginary part when we have real part? Since we can only estimate real quatities and not the imaginary ones, He polietly explained to me that with real part our analysis will only be partially complete and one may not get a complete picture. He stated an analogy that we initially we studied only whole numbers, but then later we studied rational numbers and realized that number can have a fractional part and that helps in making a clearer picture. And this is something of similar nature.

It has been sometime since I took the seat of a student, coming from a corporate environment, it felt pretty different to be sitting in a bench and desk with a professor standing in front explaining Algorithms and Data Structures. But things sounded different, rather than sitting at one end and listening to "Which is most efficient algorithm for a given problem?", I had seen and been exposed to situations where just questions require practical answers.

So this was the problem stated. Let us assume there is a problem and there are 2 algorithms that can get the job done. The performance of the algorithm is as follows for increasing input for processing.

Quantity	Time in Seconds for A	Time in Seconds for B
10	10	12
50	12	15
100	15	16
1000	18	18
10000	20	19
20000	23	21

Of course the case if purely hypothetical, after drawing this table on the board he asked us which algorithm is better performing and which will you choose for solving the problem. The natural choice by most people was B. I said it will depending on your usage and input. Now he explained that we always go for the better performing algorithm in such a scenario and we drop the other other algorithm. So B was the choice. I opposed saying that it need not be true always and there are exceptions to this rule and stated the famous "grep" utility as the basis of my argument.

Now grep is a very interesting tool. As strange as it sounds, the name comes from a command used in the old Unix editor called "ed", the command was "g//p", It means do a "global" search for the mentioned "regular expression" and "print" out the lines that meet the criteria, it was so handy that it spawned into a utility called "grep", now grep has 3 forms the normal grep, extended regular expression grep (egrep) and fixed string grep (fgrep), now all the 3 utility does the same job of searching files for specific patterns and then printing them out in standard output unless other wise stated. So why do we need 3 different utilities? Isn't one going to suffice our need? Let us take the example of egrep VS fgrep , in egrep the searching time becomes independent on the regular expression given, there is an initial over head for execution but this is compensated by the independence of time on execution. And in fgrep, the seaching time becomes independent on the amount of input files to be seached for regardless of the fixed string this number of files could very well out run the capacity of egrep but fgrep accomplises this by avoiding the usage of regular expressions.

Now I am not claiming that these algorithms are radically different there may be slight modifications when you compare them to make them efficient for the purpose they were build. And in the example we are discussing we need to use algorithm A for smaller inputs and algorithm B for bigger inputs.

I do not know if I stand correct or wrong, but this did give me a complete picture of the problem at hand :)

Amor fati

Sometimes when I sit alone and think, I look back at life, mine and of others. I ask myself how do I know what is right from wrong? Why do things happen the way they happen? The suffering, the losses, Is it for the greater good?

By assuming that everything that happens is for the greater good, that everything is pre-destined, I will be disowning my beliefs in Science and Logic. But then even Science and Logic cannot explain everything thing, may be there is a next level of enlightenment that one needs to reach.

The past may be gone, but what if I conducted a post-mortem analysis. Those little choices insignificant at that point in time, could it ripple itself into the future causing destruction of one's self?

Everybody has a fair share of happiness and suffering in their life I agree, but are they actually leading a life they are wanting to live or Is it just that they are leading a life that others want them to lead? People are restricted to think in terms of others want them to do, at least that is what is happening around here. They are just puppets of who is controlled by a collective intelligence called society. There is only one thing the collective intelligence dictates is to do sacrifice your freedom in thought and creativity and desires and become a bot hence be assimilated into the intelligence and be a part of a system for the "greater good." The collective intelligence is only capable on 4 basic functionality eat, sleep, excrete and reproduce. Hence forcing all individuals to abandon their free will. There are those who have broken the bonds, freed themselves from this collective intelligence's grip over them. Some have gone to follow their dreams then there are others who were not that successful.

What is the definition of success here assimilation or self realization? It is a subjective term that varies.

I sit back and look through the glimpses of my life and ask what if I did it this way? I do not regret my actions but what if the possibilities are infinite. I enjoy these glimpses, they remind me of what I have become today. But does it make me love of my fate? I do not believe in fate as in a pre-destined set of events that we are going through, so I guess that question does not come here.

Are we as human beings pre-programmed in genes to do things that they do? Or is it an act by choice by the realization of the existence of one's self?