Another blog

Why pay monthly cable modem rental ?

2009-11-20T05:04:02Z

So the other day my cable modem which I bought couple of years ago died.
So in emergency I had to go to the local comcast store to get a cable modem and they happily rented me.
I also came to know that the Comcast charges $5 monthly rental for it.And boy I said to myself what a ripoff ?
I'm surprised to see that people actually pay $5 per month to comcast for cable modem rental.That is $60 per year.
Anyways I immediately ordered a new cable modem for about $25 shipped from newegg.I bought the LINKSYS CM100-RM

Yahoo messenger timesout on 30 min for toll free numbers

2009-11-15T16:43:52Z

So I have been bitten by the softphone bug .In any case I have become a very heavy user of VOIP for all my conference calls(trust me I have lot of calls for my job).
So I used Yahoo messenger for a couple of months as the toll free(800 numbers) with various other VOIP providers were very flaky.
Call quality for calls with yahoo messenger is excellent .
The only problem I have found with yahoo messenger for toll free numbers is that after every 30 mins the calls get disconnected.
I have the yahoo messenger ver 9.0 so i don't knowi if they have fixed this issue in 10.0 or this forced 30 mins disconnect is as designed maybe due to secutiry issue.

CS50-USB/CS60-USB Wireless Office Headset System on Debian Linux

2009-11-15T16:38:44Z

So I recently got the CS50-USB Wireless Office Headset System to use with my various softphones for VOIP communications.
And obviousously I wanted to use it with my Linux machines.
My main goal was to use it with Ekiga for making VOIP calls with Gizmo5(will soon move away from gizmo5 because it was acquired last week by google and i prefer not to use another monopoly named google).
So while ekiga was running I connected the USB headset and ekiga was smart enough to detect that a new headset was connected and whether I wanted to use that as my default device.I selected yes.
Then I tried to make a call and got error messages from Ekiga that it could not open the device "Plantronics CS50/CS60-USB Headset (PTLIB/ALSA)" and suggested that there might be a permission issue to open the device or I might have to plug/unplug again.
To rule out all those possibilities I used root to launch ekiga and also reconnected the headset but i continued to get the same error message from Ekiga.
So after playing with it for a few hours i finally figured out what the problem was.
So the issue is that Ekiga detects and uses the following parameters under Edit->Preferences->Audio->Devices
Output Device : Plantronics CS50/CS60-USB Headset (PTLIB/ALSA)
Input Device : Plantronics CS50/CS60-USB Headset (PTLIB/ALSA)

But with those devices I could never make it work.
So I changed the above devices to the following and voila everything was working perfectly.

Output Device : CS50/CS60-USB Headset (PTLIB/ALSA)
Input Device : CS50/CS60-USB Headset (PTLIB/ALSA)

Resizing sidux-rw file of sidux for Persistent filesystem

2009-11-15T16:18:34Z

If you are using sidux on a USB stick in persistent mode and have ran out of disk space on sidux-rw file(file where all your changes are stored by sidux) and you want to increase the filesize without data loss then you can do the following.

Disclaimer : Please have backups of everything .I cannot be held responsible for any data loss.Use this information at your own risk.
The sidux-rw file is located on your usb drive or any other medium in the following folder <USB drive>/sidux/sidux-rw
The file itself is really a sparse file which contains an ext2 partition in it.

So essentially what we will do is resize the ext2 partition.Typically you would need to increase the size of the contactiner partition but in this case there is no parent parition because this is a sparse file , all we need to do is just resize the ext2 partition by using a few tools.
So you will need to boot into any Linux distro like sidux .But please ensure that the file sidux-rw is not mounted as the resize will fail and you might end up loosing data .
Now we need to ensure the filesystem itself is healtthy.We need to check that without which resize2fs will not work.
Navigate to the folder which has the sidux-rw file and issue the following command as root
# e2fsck -f sidux-rw

You will need to fix all the recommendations by e2fsck.
After doing that you will be ready to resize your filesystem.
So now issue the following command as root to resize your sidux-rw file to say for example 512M
#resize2fs sidux-rw 512M

Please note that this instructions are for increasing the size only.I have not tried reducing the size of the file.Also note that the filesystem has to be ext2.

Criticism over California law that allows repeat DUI offenders to get

2009-11-10T14:59:48Z

licenses
"A Burlingame man with eight DUIs still had a valid driver's license when he got his ninth in January because he apparently never hurt or killed anyone and many of his previous convictions were outside a 10-year cutoff period used by the Department of Motor Vehicles to assess drivers, a department official explained Monday."

California , isnt this amazing , that we are waiting for people to get killed after which we revoke their license.And how lame is the argument .

"

However, Joshua Dale of the California DUI Lawyers Association said people who get multiple DUIs need treatment. These people are alcoholics, he said, and the small number who repeatedly reoffend will not be stopped by the loss of the driving privileges.

"If they are going to drive (while intoxicated), they are going to drive without a license," he said of multiple offenders.

"

Isn't the job of the lawmakers to make it difficult (if not impossible) to disallow this from happening ?
Read the full article @ http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_13749459

My Friends

2009-11-05T02:09:05Z

Over the last couple of years there has been a good amount of websites popping up called social networks like Linkedin,Facebook etc .All these are fabulous sites the only problem I see with them is that they are islands and your data is really locked in it.So I prefer , a distributed social networking like FOAF(Fried-of-a-Friend) or microformats like XFN to represent my social relationships where there is no central authority controlling the data and locking it.
So essentially I have listed my friends in the list below and the publicly available information about them.The list is in the order of ascending first names.
N.B. If you want to get yourself removed from the list below , please send me an email and I will remove you immediately.I respect your privacy and hence I have just pieced together your public information ONLY.

Pay as you Drive Car Insurance

2009-11-03T02:12:20Z

I'm very excited that California is considering allowing Pay as you Drive Insurance .I strongly believe in consumption based metering :-)
Progressive Insurance has offered this in a few states, You can get more details @ http://www.progressive.com/myrate/
So the concept is that you have a GPS based device which records your speed/location/miles driven/time driven etc.

From my point of view there are 2 benefits.

Lower cost for infrequent drivers
It will force us to drive less and help the environment

My only biggest concern at this point is the privacy issues around it.I don't have a problem with they tracking speed etc because it will force us to not to speed etc but I thing recording the locations of where you are going and when you are going etc is too intrusive.
My hope is that Progressive respects our privacy and I'm pretty sure this concept will take off.Without the privacy issue addressed I feel that this will fail.
You can read more @ the paper http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/07_payd_bordoffnoel.aspx

Free Edutainment games for Kids

2009-10-31T18:02:53Z

There are quite a few free Edutainment games for kids for K-12.Some of them are

These games are not only free as in Price but they are Free Software which meand everyone has access to source code of these games and we can learn /read the code and modify it .

IPKall a free incoming Phone number for your SIP/VOIP Phone

2009-10-11T20:07:08Z

A lto of companies like Yahoo/GizmoProject charge you anywhere between $3-5 monthly for have a PSTN incoming number for your VOIP/SIP-Phone.
IPKall provides a free number based in Washitngton.I have been using them for a couple a months and till now I have not seen much problems.

Santa Clara County launches phone alert system for emergencies

2009-10-03T03:07:43Z

An alert system , alerts their registrants about any calamity or emergency in your area by calling your cellphone number.Santa Clara county has finally launched this system.Most of the landlines are already registered in their system.
But they are missing cellphones and email addresses of residents.I would highly recommend Santa Clara county residents to enroll in this system.
You can read more about it @ http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_13447993?nclick_check=1 and to register your number please go to http://www.alertscc.com/