It is unimaginable that one of the worlds most propserous economy anf the golden state does not have money to refund taxes.
It is also amazing that if we don't pay taxes on time we get hammered with late fees etc but the state is able to keep our moeny :-(

Read more @ http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/30/news/economy/california_budget_crisis/index.htm

posted at: 17:02 | category: /politics | permanent link to this entry

A new CD version of Knoppix is released.It features screen reader and very fast parallel bootup.Though I really am waiting for the DVD version because it has a lot of software.
More details @ http://knopper.net/

posted at: 05:37 | category: /linux | permanent link to this entry

I'm a big fan of reducing the Saturday delivery.Especially with the reduced amount of snail mails . So my big support to this . More details @ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/28/national/w115921S52.DTL

posted at: 04:21 | category: /opinions | permanent link to this entry

Now that one of the biggest Cable company of US, Comcast has started having bandwidth caps starting Oct 1, it is just a matter of time before rest of the Broadband providers jump on this and start having caps.
Here are some of the things which you can do to reduce your usage of bandwidth

• Disk Cache :Increase the cache of Firefox to about 100-200 MB or more.This way less stuff is downloaded especially pictures etc.To do this in Firefox Click on Tools-->Options-->Advanced-->Network and then under the offline storage section specify the desired size in "Use up to".
• Enable SSL caching : By default on firefox SSL caching is disabled for security reasons .But if you are on your personal computer and feel comfortable, you can enable SSL caching by setting the parameter "browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl" to "true" by typing about:config in the location bar of firefox and then searching for that parameter.
• Disable Pre-fetch : Firefox has an in-build feature where in it will try to pre-fetch links on the page which you are visting with the assumption that you might click on it.This does give the user the impression of faster load time when a link is clicked on that page but this comes at a cost of unnecessary bandwidth usage.
  Type in about:config in the URL bar and then find the keyword "network.prefetch-next" and toggle it to "false" by right-clicking it.

posted at: 01:39 | category: /broadband | permanent link to this entry

There was a good deal on black friday for this netbook which just weighs 2.13 lb s.
I bought it and it has Linux pre-installed :-) .
I  bought this primarily for my mom in India so that she can voice chat with my family and watch us on webcam.
This is a very decent computer for that purpose .It is very light-weight and packs all the needed hardware like Wi-Fi/Webcam etc on such a small form factor.

Pros

• Very light weight
• Nice shiny/glossy screen
• Does what it says :-).
• Good quality parts.
• Wi-Fi works out of the box(major boon for Linux users)

Cons

• Very difficult to Upgrade memory or Hard drive.No way to do it without voiding the warranty.
• SSD on this is extremely slow.
• Cant use it for a lot of typing on the smaller keyboard

Overall, I like this laptop.

posted at: 18:39 | category: /reviews | permanent link to this entry

A few months ago I  bought this router when there was an ongoing deal for refurbs.More details about the deaal @ http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/865548?highlight_key=y&keyword1=WNR834B&lastpage=1
My main reason for buying this router was so that I could put open source firmware DD-wrt on it.Now that I have it for couple of months , Im overall happy with it.
Putting DD-WRT on it was very easy and it did unclock quite a few new features which the stock firmware lacked.Overall the router with DD-WRT is quite stable considering that I do a lot of legal bittorrenting .
I have to admit that I really could not get the QOS working on this correctly.Overall the symptoms were that for anything that I put with the Bulk priority in it it would just use 1/10th of the badnwidth when all the other bandwidth was available.So I feel maybe there is a bug somewhere or maybe something is wrong with my configuration.For the timebeing I don't use QOS on this router.

posted at: 18:32 | category: /reviews | permanent link to this entry

Cars seem to be the most disconnected from computers and I always had the urge to connect my laptop to my car to see what it is doing and also to see if  I could get any meaningful information out of it.Starting from 1996 in all cars there is a mandatory port called the OBD-II which allows you to read the code generated by your car.
There are two ways to communicate via this port

1. Via a handheld scanner which can only spit out the codes.
2. Connecting via a USB cable to a computer and then analysing the data.

If you are looking for option 1> then there is a hot deal currently going on @ http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/895940/ , you can get this scanner and clearer for $23.90.Keep in mind the latest new model cars cannot use this because they need a newer technology called CAN reader.

I have chosen to go with option 2> and have bought a USB cable interface from ebay , you can search for "CAN-BUS OBD OBDII Code Scanner Reader  USB" and there are many available in $20-30 range including shipping.This reader is CAN compliant and will work with the latest car models  also.

The next time when  you get an "Engine Check" light on , on your car you don't have to fork out about $65 per engine check at your car maintenance shop.I'm amazed by how much they rip us off for such a trivial task which can be done by us.

posted at: 18:21 | category: /general | permanent link to this entry

I was looking for an open source alternative for mapping software and/or sites like maps.google.com or maps.yahoo.com and there I came across a user edited wikipedia like site http://www.openstreetmap.org/
. It currently has users all around the world and it is amazing how there is a lot of software around it to modify these maps online.
I did my share of modifying maps for locations around my apartment and filled in a lot of nodes/tags for locations around my apartment.
I used JOSM to edit the maps.
At this point it lacks the polish and content compared to Google maps/Yahoo maps etc and I would not recommend it for reliable directions etc.Give it a year or 2 and I'm fairly certain it will become as authoritative/popular and rich in content like Wikipedia.
Apart from that I'm still waiting for Roadnav to integrate tightly with OpenStreetMap.Once it is done it would be fun to use it.
Also please feel free to modify the maps and make it better.
There is a new routing service available , which operates on OSM data , it is called http://openrouteservice.org/.Unfortunately it seems at this time they don't have directions for US.

posted at: 15:47 | category: /pleaforaction | permanent link to this entry

This is great news .I personally feel that each and every state should have this law and each and every car should have this device.
I'm surprised that in the list of states for this law California does not have such a law.
Read more about it @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090102/ap_on_re_us/dui_legislation_ignition_locks

posted at: 01:13 | category: /general | permanent link to this entry