The Story of My Experiments with Linux-II

So, finally I found an almost perfect Linux laptop. I admit I had my doubts initially before buying this machine, but when I finally decided to take the plunge, it turned out to be worth it. A Dell Inspiron 3437. It is almost perfect as it does not feature an Intel WiFi card. The rig comes with an Nvidia GeForce 720m. I would have much rather preferred a 740m, but then in India, this is as close to perfection as it can be.

 

What the laptops does have is:

 

• Core i5 4200- U
• 4 GB Ram DDR3 clocked at 1600 Mhz
• and 4-5 hours of battery life.

This is pretty much awesome I think.

Now, Dell has a history of ruining Windows OS with their own bloatware. I thought maybe Linux would escape unscathed. On the contrary it was even worse. They had not only bloated it, but ruined it!

How?

Well, with the proprietary OEM drivers for WiFi. The driver registered with the kernel as a module. So, as soon as I pulled a kernel upgrade, wham! The WiFi stopped working as the previously installed module was not compatible with the current kernel. And, that was the end of the story.

I obviously, had to reformat the whole laptop, but this time to my satisfaction. Moreover, instead of the buggy Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, this time I installed Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander. I can’t ever recall a LTS version I have hated more than 12.04. Everything will break down eventually if you are using 12.04. Stuff works so much more smoothly in 13.10. Moreover, 13.10 contains updated builds of almost every package. If you are not using these, you are literally left out. To say 12.04 wasn’t properly planned or was overly ambitious and presumptuous would be a gross understatement. I almost considered switching from Ubuntu to maybe Linux Mint or Debian-unstable.

Now, that I am using 13.10, I am loving it. As of now, I am running a MySQL server and a self-programmed Web Crawler on my machine since this past week. Needless to say, the machine response is pretty much awesome. The CPU usage is hardly 5 per cent.

I do have a plan to push the CPU usage to 100% by using a brute force decryption tool. But that is a story reserved for some another day.

PS: I still hate Unity, but have learned to admire it for its ability to not break even when hell cometh over. I still wish to try Xfce though, but then, since, I am using my Linux machine as a development platform, my willingness to experiment has diminished in favour of stability. I need my machine to be available. I still have my fun, and a couple of scripts up my sleeve, which I will share soon.

The Freedom of Offensive Choices

 

I like my freedom of choice. I may not use it. But I like the notion of knowing that you are free to do what you choose to do and when you choose to do it. I like the idea of a world without borders. Internet censorship, restricting services, blocking certain resources simply because a particular organization or the government in your country thinks that this material is offensive.

SO FUCKING WHAT?

I will decide if it’s offensive, and if it is offensive, I would like to remind you that there’s a nice close button on the application browser for you to close. Better still, don’t like what you see? Then you don’t have to open it to see it’s still there. You have a choice. I like having that choice. What I don’t like is a bunch of hypocrites deciding for me.

The best way to circumvent any firewall is to use the Tor network. It’s an online open source network which uses chained proxy settings and routes packets in an unconventional manner, which makes it impossible for a firewall to guess the destination of the packet. Moreover, unlike OpenVPN the settings are localised and not system wide. The downside is that only one application can use the proxy at a time. Which means you can either use it for surfing or for downloading torrents (or some other application). But not both at the same time.

Setting up the Tor network for web browsing is the easiest part. Using the Tor proxy to download torrents is a tricky one.

Setting up Tor

1) Download the Tor browser bundle from the project homepage and extract.

2) Start the Tor browser

3) The Tor browser will establish the connection and open an instance of the Tor browser which is nothing but a portable version of Firefox.

4) In case, your network restricts how Tor connects, you will need to add Tor bridges. Please refer to the Tor project homepage to see how to add bridges or simply Google it.

5) Now before you can start using Tor proxy, you need to configure a few options. Open the settings from the Vidalia control panel.

6) Now, change your settings to these.

7) Your Tor proxy is ready!

Using Tor proxy for watching videos and web surfing!

In the Tor browser, you can’t really watch videos on YouTube. So if you need to do that you will need to configure the desktop version of Firefox browser to use your tor proxy.

Socks host : 127.0.0.1  

Port: 9050

Using Tor proxy to download torrents!

If you want to download torrents through Tor proxy, you will need to make the following changes.

If your Firewall blocks UDP trackers then you need to disable UDP trackers and add http trackers to your torrents. Block UDP trackers through this setting.

You are now done, and can download torrents on almost all networks through this tutorial.

Please let me know if these settings don’t work for you, or if you encounter any problems. I also welcome your views and suggestions for more ingenious methods to bypass network firewalls.

Disclaimer: It’s illegal to download copyright stuff through torrents. Some organizations make it illegal to bypass firewalls that they have set. It has been proven through research that downloading torrents through Tor networks does not guarantee you anonymity. User discretion is advised. Don’t get caught!       

Nokia IndiBlogger Meet: Your Wish Is My App

To describe myself as brand loyal would be an overstatement, as I will switch loyalties the second a brand disappoints me. When it comes to Nokia, I have never been disappointed. Over the years I have owned three mobile phones- Nokia 6275 CDMA, Nokia E63 and currently using Nokia Lumia 720. So, it was a nice to hear that Nokia collaborated with IndiBlogger again for the second season for Your Wish Is My App program- an initiative to find the most creative and the best ideas from none other than but the people who use these phones. This program is in sync with Nokia’s very own ideology of “Connecting People” and I find it refreshing that a brand cares so much. The most successful businesses in the world have always been about people.

IndiBlogger had organised the meet at the Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi. It’s a really nice place, and the venue couldn’t have been better. The food, the drinks, and the ambience were no less than awesome. The evening was hosted by Rajiv Makhni, Vikas Khanna and Vishal Gondol.

 

The evening started with Kartik introducing a masked man posing as everybody including Ms. Poonam, who later on addressed us and introduced us to the YWMA program. Mr. P Balaji, MD@ Nokia then gave us real insights into the philosophy behind the program, and how user perception of mobile has transformed over the decade.

 

There were a lot of engaging activities which had everyone picking their brains for ideas. The friendly banter between the hosts Rajiv Makhni and Vikas Khanna over food related applications were no less entertaining. They had everyone in splits.

My app idea: Augmented Reality- Connecting People

Nokia recently introduced a concept of Augmented Reality. The technology is really simple, you simply open an app such as Nokia City Lens and look around through that app as if you were taking a photograph, but what you really see is hotspots around you- places of interest for dining, exploring, cafes, maybe some museum, an art exhibition etc.

I was thinking, why not use the same technology for doing what Nokia does best? Connecting People!

This augmented reality lens can be used to find and chat with other people, people can make their profiles and share some information such as their interests, a status update on this public profile they wish to share with other people, and this way they could communicate and meet new people, make new friends! People can now never complain about not knowing other people when you go to someplace different.

This app can also be used in more than one way, for instance, people all over the world often share cabs at airports. One could simply integrate it as a feature into the app, all you would have to do is look through the app and find the person who wants to go to the same destination as yours. And voila!

This idea is really unique and good as it underlines the core philosophy of Nokia- the people. It connects them, and there’s some real synergy between what’s being said and done at Nokia.

This is my entry for IndiBlogger and Nokia Your Wish Is My App program, and I really do hope that this idea is converted into an app.

So, till the next IndiBlogger meet when we all come together, I part with HURR HURR!

Windows never ceases to Amaze!

These past few days I have been working towards my scholarly paper which hopefully will culminate into a thesis. The problem at hand requires me to implement a system. I will not talk anything about the system itself, but rather the programming part. Programming furiously, I had designed a system ground up after reading a paper on the same. It was a tough task, more so on the GNU C++ compiler, which is rather strict in adherence to some technical specifications- more specifically the ways I could call an object constructor and initialise the object.

It was a little irritating at first, but I like programming and it only required a minor change in my style. Plus I really had no other option than to oblige. Majbuuri ka naam Mahatma Gandhi.

While compiling the program, though it seldom happens with me, but this time it happened big. The dreaded word “Segmentation Fault” appeared on the gnome-terminal. Now, since I was using an older version of Linux the debugger plugins simply won’t install. Attaching the gdb manually is a little too mundane for me, plus the extra code I would have to write would only have bloated the program and given more headaches. What to do?

At time like this when faith in Linux is shaken, I always look towards Saint Bill Gates. Windows to the rescue!

Now the funny part happens, I fired up Orwell Dev C++, and put all the critical variables in the watch stack. But every time I compiled and ran my program, somehow the IDE would crash every time, without any sufficient explanation.  There had to be one. I double checked by writing a dummy “Hello World” program, the compiler install was intact. There had to be another reason.

And then one of those Eureka moment happened, when realisation dawns upon you.

Windows have a feature of DEP (Dynamic Execution Prevention), which when translated into English means, whenever a program tries to access memory locations other than its own, the Windows OS shuts down the program as a potential malware which could cause harm. Due to Segmentation Fault, my program was accessing memory locations which were out of bounds, hence the sudden IDE crash.

Sometimes I forget how amazing Windows OS is. But moments like these remind me why it’s still the most popular. Speaking of Windows, I recently and finally acquired Windows Phone 8. A proper review of my phone Lumia 720 shall soon follow. But in one word it is simply beautiful.

So early morning today surfing through the tech updates, I came across two interesting things:

• The share of the Windows phone in the market has grown by 52% with the introduction of Windows Phone 8.
• There seems to be a growing consensus amongst people who matter and influence the industry that Nokia should consider introducing Android phones.

For the former, I would say that this success is not for Windows phone themselves, but can also be attributed to Nokia, as being privileged partners of Microsoft they have built and designed phones which are beautiful really in every detail. Other manufacturers, mainly HTC and Samsung haven’t made much progress, Samsung in particular. Samsung is in fact trying to stall Windows 8, for its own sale largely depends on the success of Android. Consider the factors, two years ago nobody even knew about Android, and Samsung’s own BADA OS had foreseeably crashed which coincided with its launch. Most people at that point considered Samsung phones in the same line today as to what the masses count the Chinese Alternative. But with Android, Samsung emerged victorious, for the first time their sloppy engineering team could concentrate only on the UI and some minor kernel tweaking, instead of building a flawed OS ground up.

Secondly, and more importantly, what is even more fascinating is the Samsung’s product cycle which also functions as a marketing strategy.

• Build a product.
• Package it with either the latest, or one generation older Android OS and make it upgradeable to the latest. (Can’t actually blame them for the latter as by the time these phones hit the market they sometimes lag behind because Google got ahead of them)
• Now to stop code fragmentation as mandated and regulated by Google, mind you this exercise is not voluntary; Samsung has to deliver upgrades for 18 months. Often these updates are slow in coming, and by the time these updates come in; the update is in itself obsolete. And Google is still getting further and further in the race.
• Announce a new product with almost the same specification, and the cycle repeats.

The inherent flaw in this cycle, is that by announcing new designs by the end of every month from pocket standard issues to the giant slates which are supposed to be portable phones but I really wonder how will they will ever fit into my pockets, the market is flooded by so many phones, that a user feels he has the power of choice. But what an average user fails to realise is that there is no standardisation of hardware designs and with it the cost margins. Talking to a friend recently who was searching for a phone, the most difficult task was narrowing down the choices, because they all looked the same. The reviews are no help either. For the uninitiated, they can be the worst nightmare. As the experience of the Android OS is different with every manufacturer and depends on the kind of hardware it is packed with. This in turn has flooded the market with locally manufactured units, which in majority are substandard and lacking even in the minimum hardware, and there aren’t any hard specifications for the hardware. The cheap phones are laggy and sometimes buggy to the point where the camera doesn’t work, the screen is unresponsive etc. And when it comes to Samsung, the occasional trickle of updates stop because by the time the support team got together to deliver the updates for every handset, the 18 months were up.

Consider the case of Windows Phone. Microsoft laid down hard specifications with regards to minimum hardware. This not only ensures that the Windows experience stays constant irrespective of the manufacturer and that updates are compatible throughout but in turn also solves the problem of code fragmentation. Problem solved. A seemingly huge problem which should never have existed in the first place has been solved just like that.

I have rambled on and on. My point being, that instead of building more phones and distributing resources to small teams, maybe manufacturers should start concentrating their resources and make phones for a price band- High end exciting, high end partially exciting, high-mid end, mid end, and low end. This strategy seems to be working in the case of Nokia Lumia (920, 820, 720, 620, 520), now if you re-read the previous sentence again, and it makes more sense. The result of this strategy would be that existing phones would be supported for a longer time, vastly reduce the cost of designing and producing new phones & setting up exclusive support teams for discrete models. However following this strategy is very hard for Android manufacturers as it will lead to admission of liability, when clearly their market relies on the hype of a model refresh every 6 months.

For those who crave stability there’s always Apple and Microsoft to the rescue.

This is now I come to the second point, if Nokia were to ever consider Android. Against the general opinion, I believe it will fail.

 

Disclaimer: I have bashed Samsung long enough, and I admit no liability. If you feel offended, or your business has been affected by this post, I feel honoured and complimented. This post is not open to debate. Any legal action is subject to my personal jurisdiction only, and in that case you lose the motion, and hence the trial.

Why does Samsung SUCK?

“Value for money”, a sentiment which resonates strongly with my beliefs, that when you buy some product or service, it must be worth it. The recent events and my tussle with Samsung India, has led me to believe otherwise. Whenever I set out to buy any electronics, I always read not just the specification and the data sheet, but the consumer manual, and the manufacturer’s terms & conditions as well.

So what happened?

I or more precisely, my Father bought a Samsung Primos S5610. It was barely 2 days, when the phone developed a snag, due to which the screen blacked out. Since, the Samsung consumer policy- dictates product replacement within a window of 4 days only, we went to the service centre immediately.

Point of interest: Most manufacturers offer replacement policy of 30 days, 15 days or at the very least 7 days. But Samsung beats them all with its 4 day policy.

So, I return to the service centre, and after waiting for half an hour, we get to the service engineer- the ultra smartass dude who seemed to have invented the telephone. And then he drops the bombshell, the phone can’t be serviced, as warranty is void. Why? Because, the defect was apparently due to liquid damage.

Point of interest: Samsung declares warranty void on its mobile phones if there’s any water damage, which though a little harsh, is actually fair, considering people actually flush their mobiles and then take it back to get it serviced. Urgh!

He then proceeds to show us where the damage was done, pointing to a small corner of the phone motherboard where it was blacked out. Not only this, he also points out that liquid had entered through the small crevice where the camera key was situated. See a picture of the mobile below:

Point of interest: The motherboard had blacked out at the area which was almost opposite to the camera key. Water could actually not even reach that part, as the damaged area was too constricted.

Nothing would convince the jackass that it was a manufacturing defect. And so he proceeded to his next scam, where he tells me that it would take 3000 INR to repair a mobile which cost me 5000 in first place itself. Not only that, the repair will have no warranty of any sort, and if the mobile undergoes any damage during the repair itself, the service centre will have no liability.

I quietly collected my mobile, after I had declined his offer and made up my mind to go to another service centre. And I was in for a surprise; the world is full of bozos, who really are drunk on stupidity. My little experiment had the same result again, and boy, they are consistent! I do actually give them that credit.

Returning home totally exhausted, I looked up the Samsung mobile website again, this time the “Contact Us” web page. I find  “Contact the CEO”, though it was totally pointless and I had little hope of being heard, I anyway wrote them an email detailing the events.

I got a return call from his office next day itself, but there is no end to stupidity. These guys had contacted the service centre, and tried to explain me that the warranty is void. And all this, when I had actually complained not just about the mobile, but the incompetency of the service engineer itself, but they conveniently skipped that part.

Almost 10 emails, and an equal number of telephone calls, and a dozen threats of lawsuits. The guy caved. But he would still not replace my mobile, and only agreed to full repair and warranty intact. And though this was a violation of their own terms,  I compromised and settled, as I had had enough of the phone calls.

I went to the service centre again, the same jackass greets me and repairs the mobile. Yet, this time he actually lets slip out, that Samsung’s 4 day replacement policy is a farce, and they never replace any mobile, unless it’s beyond repair.