Binary Bits

After moving to this new place, I have started using Sub-Urban Trains to reach other parts of the city.
One of the major problem is that to get the ticket you have to wait in a long queue and takes almost 10 minutes to get your ticket.

Since this is a mjor problem across lot of stations, Indian Railways has come up with Smart Card based Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM) to issue the train tickets.
When you buy a smart card it has an initial card value of Rs.100/- and ticket value of of Rs. 50/- + Rs.2/- as bonus. This smart card can be re-charged in multiples of 50s upto a maximum of Rs. 500/-.
Once re-charged the smart card is valid for 6 months within which you have to re-charge.

Also the Rs. 50/- which is a non-ticket value is actually an inital deposit which will be re-funded when you surrender the smart card.

Obtaining a ticket is very easy. The following steps explain them.
1. Place the smart card in ATVM's smart card slot.
2. Select the destination.
3. If needed select the return ticket too.
4. Print the ticket.

The return ticket is valid till next day midnight !
It's so simple !

Received a mail with joke about a couple. Thought of posting here.

Sudha was about to leave office after finishing her work. She got a call from her husband Karthi,

Sudha: "Hello, yes Karthi".
Karthi: "Sudha, can you open my gmail and get a print out of the mail from that US consultant I forgot to take it in my office"
Sudha: "Yes, I can, I need your password"
Karthi: "jeni22091980"
Sudha: "Ok fine"

She takes the print out and logs out. Some thought struck her mind now.
JENI happens to be his college mate. Hmmm...

She decides not to discuss this with Karthi. She simply opens her mail box and changes the password from "mohan143" to "karthiSudha " and leaves for home!
MORAL OF THE STORY: Change your password! NOW!

Recently GAS prices have gone up in India and related to that I received some mails with pictures and thought of posting them here.

Last week I had a chance to go to an autowala's house while bringing back a pack full of grocery items from Spencer.
Since he had to pick up an item from his home which was on the way to my home he asked me to wait in the auto and he goes inside his house.
Then he comes back and requests me to give 5 mins and hence requests me to come inside his house, with a hesitation I step in. To my surprise his house was looking way better than mine. As far as I know in the Hall he had the following things.

1. 29" LCD TV
2. Split A/C
3. Fully automatic washing machine near the entrance of their bathroom
4. 2 door refrigerator
5. His 6 year old daughter is doing LKG in a good convent school.

I thought to my self may be this is his relative's house and he is living with them.
Once he came back we left his house and while returning he asked me a question that because of his A/C he is receiving hefty electricity bill and how he can reduce that. After giving him some tips I started asking him some questions (Controlling curiosity sometime is kinda difficult) and after his responses I came to know about his life.

1. All the electronic items I saw, he bought all of them. Some by installment and some by direct cash purchase.
2. He is married and didn't get any dowry.
3. He doesn't have any brothers or sisters.
4. Not in touch with his relatives.
5. Has a small 300sqft house at his hometown and fetching him 1500 bucks a month as income through rent.

Then how is he able to live such a costly life paying almost 1500 to 2500 bucks as electricity bill ?

Simple.... he earns 1500 bucks a day and 2500 to 3000 bucks in weekend.
No Income tax.
A fee for his auto permit and something, which is very less.

Then I thought to my self.... daarn I get a good dose from my foreign clients, work in a single cube for 12 to 16 hours, pay hefty income tax, and take home some money with half happiness.

This guy doesn't pay any hefty tax, comes out of the house at 7 in the morning and goes back home by 8 in the evening, if he wishes he will take a person to his destination else reject that guy/gal, sits almost idle for 40% of the time and drive only 60% of the time, no pressures, no daarn clients and he enjoy life better than me !

In one way I was happy that he is leading a good life. But in another way he drinks our money with high hire rates and enjoys his life.

Thank fully, for almost a year I stopped using autos and use only local buses or local share autos.
But with the share auto hire prices increasing without any proper reason, I guess I am left with one choice of using only buses.

Oh I forgot to mention, his auto has a pioneer MP3 CD player and pioneer speakers !!

Thanks to Engadget and SeattlePi I just came to know how Bill Gates (the Co-Founder of Microsoft) is frustrated about his company's product.
The following is the mail send by Bill Gates to Jim Allchin (a former executive responsible for Windows & SQL) regarding his frustrations to download and install 'Moviemaker' and 'Digital Plus pack' posted at SeattlePi

Mail from Bill Gates To Jim Allchin on Subject 'Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame'

I am quite disappointed al how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management
groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download Moviemake and buy the Digital Plus pack r so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a
download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second
delay I got it to come up

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Doouments and Settings\billg\My
Documents\My Pictures seem clear,

They are not filtered by the system I can in on and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in moviemaker. Nothing. I typed in movie maker.
Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of
incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download
moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. Now just once
but multiple times where t get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead lust to get 6 things that are labeled in the
SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine
was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night - why should I reboot at that
time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all
since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why
should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder?. So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them
is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 1o download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the
instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft
Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2,
Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The
registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more
information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like
Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out
most of what I typed

I try tryping the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my program list garbage and being scared and seeing that
Microsoft com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a
low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root
certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

So that's the mail about Gate's frustration, interesting isnt't ?