Yet, it’s never too late to thank anyone. (Adapted from V for Vendetta: It’s never too late to apologize)

Akismet has shown how we do not always require captchas to curb bot-generated random spam. But it is not ideal for big websites, mainly because

• Its a program after all. There’s every chance that it can make mistakes. 
• Genuine comments suppressed by Akismet are not that bad for a website. But spam comments for enlarging body parts, which pass through Akismet and shine with a glow right below an article don’t look good at all.
• There’s that tiny increase on server load everytime a comment has to be analyzed by Akismet. And if this hardly-visited and never-linked blog (as of today) has fought with 1000 spam comments, we all can imagine what the battle will be for a website which gets “slashdotted” or “dugg” every few seconds.

• Captchas are irritating.
• Captchas are irritating.
• Captchas are irritating.

That’s three good reasons right there, the last one being most important . While I have enough server power, I will try to minimise the hassle of looking through bleak bent text with a mashed grid or circles or airspray.

Long story short, after having spent a few minutes on his PC, I found out that IE was hanging the moment it started. His PC maintenance guy had come and tried to reconfigure the Internet connection (heh), which didn’t help much. (The fact that a browser ought to hang on the OS from the same company should have seemed absurd, but somehow we are all used to it, mostly due to virus attacks and corruption.)

But why would a perfectly working IE hang all of a sudden? I got another bit of info from the user: “It asked me to upgrade to version 7. It is not working ever since I upgraded”. Sad. MS doesn’t test its upgrades enough! Useless! Thankfulle, before I could post my rant online, I googled and found a quick solution: Uninstall Yahoo! Companion and all shall be fine. And indeed it worked! Perfect answer… and boy did I get showered with praises for starting up good old IE with fewer toolbars!

For no fault of its own, IE was screwed and broken due to the upgrade. Oh, but there is a fault in it… the upgrade itself!

The sad thing here is that IE either doesn’t have any idea about what applications are plugged-in (or coaxed in) to it, or that it doesn’t care about them during the upgrade. Either ways, it is the user who suffers.

FF covers addons a lot more by checking their versions and the compatibility after each upgrade. That said, a foolproof “Go back to the previous version” ought to be present for all major upgrades which are not critical, simply because there may be a functionality dear to the user (and a don’t care for the dev) which might stop working in the new version. Edit: Even if the update is critical or security related, why not let the user choose whether he needs a secure app or a working one?

The other way out is to have a package manager like Debian’s ‘apt’ tool to handle all upgrades and report clashes to the user. But that’s a distant dream on Windows with everyone having their own installers.

I hate automatic updates & installs. (I have also written earlier about Acrobat Reader’s need to download and install “Critical Security” updates every few weeks from the Internet. There ought not to be those many security vulnerabilities in a document reader.) But all kinds of applications today are coming up with internet updates. While this does allow you to provide your latest and greatest piece of code to the user, you might just end up breaking something because of incompatibilities with other software.

Adhering to the policy of oldversion.com: “Because Newer Is Not Always Better”, I try to keep my software tuned for manual updates. Reduces the trouble, as well as the bandwidth consumption (required specially for limited-download connections). Yet, it does no harm to remember that software one develops will not be the only process running on any machine. Let’s have some consideration for others.

Its safe to assume that not all developers will be using these features for mainstream websites unless our very dear IE supports them. So we still have time to see these beauties in action. But we have a lot of gray area for what happens when these are used together. The implementations are still juggling with these questions.

For example, what happens when opacity of a box is 50% and a drop-shadow attribute is used for the box? Or, what happens when a shadow drops on a box which is having less opacity? Should the shadow have rounded corners for a box with rounded corners? How should a shadow with bigger fade (black to transparent area) render on a shadow with smaller fade?

These are just some tricky “beginner” questions with no straight answers. Fortunately the community is pretty enthusiastic about rendering these effects with markup. Lot of such issues and fundamentals have been discussed.

In an image editor you can manipulate the effect rendered depending on which operation you perform first. This is not really clear for CSS, and with browser implementations which can vary, it might be a bit of a hassle for us to have consistent cross-browser CSS3 markup ready to use.

Upto Version 2.x

Version 3.x

It was indeed very irritating to decide whether I want to remember the password or not for some xyz website where I had just one minute of quick work to be done. Good UI always deserves applause. After all, for most users, the UI is the Application. Thanks FF!

The focus on usability has increased considerably in the past decade. Firefox, Ubuntu, Wordpress are all great examples of powerful software or systems which strive for ease of use. There is little surprise that they emerge as clear winners or strong contenders for pole position in their respective domains.

Some of the lesser known apps which provide awesome features are the Portable Apps Suite and my favourite virtualizer, Sun VirtualBox. I’ll yak a bit on the benefits of Portable Apps in this post, and cover VirtualBox later.

In one way, Portable Apps is a platform that should never have been required, let alone developed. But here we stand, with all our major desktop software for Windows machines - depending somehow, somewhere, on the Windows registry.

<off-topic> <!-- Warning: Geeky matter -->

Dependency on the registry isn’t required for all apps. Most should be able to manage configurations using a simple flat file akin to what *nix apps use. Efficient read of config property is not an issue at all; one can just load the config file and  store the contents in a map. But some developers anyway proceed to use the registry in order to hide the configuration from the user. Included in these are all those great apps which require a registration key or something of that nature to function. This key or identification, unique to the user, is stored in some obscure corner of the registry, so that the (regular) user cannot tamper with those.

</off-topic> <!-- -->

So back on line. To many of the users who were content with the Windows-IE-Office-Y!Messenger installations and need no more than that, the scenario above made little difference. But as increasing number of people found themselves using more than one (sometimes-malfunctioning, virus-infected) Windows PC, it became necessary to install and maintain all required software on multiple machines.

Enter Portable Apps. While this suite doesn’t provide any sort of portability between OSes (Windows, *nix, mac), it does give a very neat and clean platform for those who would like to develop applications running directly from a flash drive or external disk. Basically this means that the apps ought not to refer to Windows registry for state information or configuration. Many subsequently altered their code and came up with portable versions of their apps. The Open Source Software devs were some of the first to cover this ground, since none had any intention of locking the user with registration keys or the sort. Thanks to them, we have a humongous list of free portable software (some free as in freedom ). Better still, we have the most-used software already included with the portable apps suite. All this, with a very neat menu providing a list of all apps “installed” (basically just copied to a proper directory) in the external drive, and all documents stored.

For anyone with a flash drive of more than 256MB, this is a must-have. Not just for people regularly working on multiple machines, but also for those who visit relatives and would like to show them the new video on their flash drive, but can’t, because the Windows Media Player on their PC simply doesn’t work

My list of awesome portable apps:

• ClamWin antivirus
• Mozilla Firefox (always )
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• OpenOffice suite
• Pidgin
• DOSBox (good emulator those old DOS games)
• Sumatra PDF
• TrueCrypt
• GIMP
• VLC Media Player
• Notepad++
• uTorrent
• Skype
• IrfanView
• 7zip
• ImgBurn
• Winamp
• Filezilla

So this post is certainly not another review or “five things you didn’t know” or “seventeen things you should know” about Chrome. In fact, all this while, I’ve been reading about it more than I’ve been using it. And all around I see people looking at the browser with a raised eyebrow. Well, that’s expected, of course. We are not Apple fans to run amok crying “oooh I love iPhone”. But still, the general tone does seem a bit negative.

First there was the License clause. Stupid, but not really evil. God, how many people were scared to death by that. As if Google wanted to take everyone’s blogs and use them in some great-evil-conspiracy. Lame.

Then there’s this security flaw which allows the carpet bomb attack. With that we have the already cliched “Google’s Tarnished Chrome” headlines. We all saw this coming.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in for open information and the likes. I thank all the folks out there who are going through every possible option of Chrome to make my life a lot easier when I use it. But it just seems as if everyone was expecting a rock sturdy browser with amazing out-of-the-world features and a memory consumption of 100kbs. Its just a beta guys!!!

More importantly, I do not find anyone sparing a few good words for the bold steps taken by Google towards ensuring a great user experience, even with long usage of the browser. An all new Javascript engine! Separate sandboxed process for each tab! An actual useful homepage!

I understand that the comic (press release) already explains that quite a bit, but still. Few are writing about what separates Chrome from Firefox or IE. Most articles are rather finding content in speculating which way the market will move and which browser will claim most developer attention.

One wonders what FireFox was doing all along. I suddenly felt as if I was just using an open source IE replacement all this while, and not any awesome piece of software. After reading about Chrome, it took me a few moments to remember what FireFox was good for. Yet, since FF remains the ultimate in terms of being a simple, extensible, cross platform, open source browser, I still stick by it (more so because I use Firebug and FlashBlock extensions very heavily)

All in all, I have a feeling that Google Chrome brings in a lot of goodies (and promises of a good deal more). I don’t care if the developer community “splits” between FF and Google. I don’t care if there is one more browser I need to take care of for my apps (as long as it works well with most scripts, as it does now). I believe Chrome brings a good piece of code to the community along with some important questions which maybe FireFox and IE teams need to chew upon.

ICICI bank’s website ensures security in several significant areas, where HDFC bank’s portal lags behind with a simple username-password authentication which although necessary, is not sufficient in my opinion. To justify my stand, I’ll run you through some simple scenarios.

Login

We’ll start with a simple one: You are out of town/not on computer/far from any ATM or branch. You need your friend to check up your bank balance. Now, ICICI bank has got 2 passwords. One for logging in and checking the account status and the other for performing any transaction through the account. Thus you can conveniently provide the login credentials to your friend and get details from him without letting him make any mischief through your account.

The multi-password scenario also means that anyone wanting to get into your account and siphon your savings requires more than just the initial login-password combination. We’ll get back to that shortly.

Payments

So lets move on to payments. Assume you are making a funds transfer to someone’s account. Your friend is sitting right beside you the whole time, probably having an eye on the keyboard.

The ICICI funds transfer requires you to login, then provide the transaction-specific password (2nd level of security) and in addition, some digits on the back of your debit card. This “some digits” security feature is really good, because the position of numbers requested changes for every transaction.

The security explained above is known as Multifactor Authentication (in this case, two-factor authentication). This means that the transaction can be completed only if the user inputs something

• He knows (passwords), and
• He has (digits on rear side of debit card)

Although one may argue that all this information can be retrieved easily by holding the account owner at gunpoint, the security for transaction against “stolen” information is increased considerably.

Add Payee

Again, lets assume that someone has been able to sneak into your account, and probably believes that your account deserves a few lakh rupees less. The only way to transfer funds into another account in ICICI is by the following process

1. Add a new “Payee”
2. Receive a notification about the new payee on your cell phone along with a confirmation code
3. Enter confirmation code on the website
4. Confirm payee
5. Transfer funds
6. Enter password and digits behind debit card for transaction authentication

The fun part here is point #2. No one can confirm a payee without having direct access to your mobile phone. In case the attacker attempts to change the mobile number associated with the host’s account, no new payee can be confirmed for the next 36 hours through the new mobile number. To confirm the payee anyway, one needs to call the customer care and provide them with full details, answer their verification questions and only then have the payee confirmed.

In all the three scenarios mentioned above, ICICI strives for the security of user accounts while all that HDFC does is rely on the same old single user-password authentication.

System Security: Verdict

ICICI Bank : 4 / 5

HDFC Bank : 2 / 5 (well atleast the username-password is present )

Update: While creating this post, chat with a friend brought up some interesting points in favor of HDFC bank

• Adding a beneficiary account through HDFC (equivalent to Payee account in ICICI) website takes 24 hours. You get an sms from HDFC Bank mentioning the “Add Beneficiary” action, in which case you can remove that account. This can be done with phone banking.
• Even if someone wants to change your mobile number, you will get a confirmation sms in which case you can notify bank immediately. You probably need to fill a form to activate mobile service and it can’t be altered online.

Although the points do bring up the security rating of HDFC bank to 2.5/5, it still so happens that HDFC bank survives in many situations by being a semi-automated system wherein half the stuff is done by submitting applications to banks (mobile number change, enabling third-party transfer, etc). ICICI bank manages to host their complete system online, yet achieves a fine balance in terms of security.

Thanks to Nishi and Visky for info and tweaks to the post

You have well stopped your services and the assurance of best services has evaporated. Your last service was 1 week ago, and the result was that my Internet speed remained below 200kbps while I pay for 512 KBPS.

I am regularly checking my internet connectivity speed at websites provided by your customer care (speedtest.net, speakeasy.net, TI Web speed meter)

As I write this email (at 2:15am), I am getting 152kbps download speed and 6kbps upload speed.

6kbps? Really? Broadband?

My impression of your broadband service has tempted me to write a lengthy article, citing these mails between us as well. I intend to replicate this article across blogs and forums. However, prior to publishing the same, I’d like to be fair and give you 3 more days to resolve my issue.

Looking forward to your response.

Swapnil Pathare
———

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

We have been trying to call you on 07-Aug-08 to understand the complaint given by you.

Since we were unable to contact you we have registered a complaint on your behalf regarding the slow browsing concern of your account. Our team will contact you to do the needful at the earliest.

Your complaint number is: 6640238.

We request you to kindly provide your alternate contact number and convenient time for us to for further assistance.

Mujeeb,

On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 5:58 PM, customer service wrote:

We would like to inform you that your concern regarding Slow Browsing has been forwarded to the team with the complaint no 6640238. Our executives are working on your issue on high priority basis. We will get back to you with the feedback at the earliest.

We will be delighted to assist you.

Warm Regards,

Arun Kumar,

From: Swapnil Pathare
Sent: Friday, 08, August, 2008 4:32 PM
To: customer service
Subject: Re: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: Issues in internet connectivity

Here are the details of speed test

Dear Mr. Pathare,

We would like to take an opportunity to apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.

We have already registered your concern regarding connectivity with complain number 6640238. Our team is working on priority and the needful will be done at the earliest.

Looking forward for your co-operation and support to serve you better.

From: Swapnil Pathare
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 4:28 PM
To: customer service
Cc: nodalofficer
Subject: Re: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: Issues in internet connectivity

CC: Nodal officer, South 3: Priya Kumar

Hi,

This is further to my complaint regarding slow internet connection every since I have installed tata indicom broadband at my residnence. I have opted for 512 kbps plan and you are currently giving me 150 kbps of speed, at max. Ur support engineers had come to my residence to take a look at the matter.

I had just checked Internet connectivity and found it had started, prior to the engineers arriving at my place. However, I mentioned to them that till both issues (intermittent disconnection and low bandwidth) are resolved, I will not sign their sheet.

The engineer stressed that all consumers in BTM, bangalore area are facing this problem, due to server issues. I do not see any notice issued by Tata Indicom for the same, neither do I see an alert on your website.

However, the “Problem” faced by consumers in BTM area is that they get 250kbps while they have opted for the 384/512 kbps plan. I explained further that my bandwidth has never crossed even 150kbps till date. The engineer expressed that even his back-end engineer (with whom he communicated on mobile) was not able to do anything about this situation. The engineer further tried to perform a speed test, but the internet connectivity is currently so poor that the speed test didn’t even load properly. Since I had mentioned I will not sign the sheet without resolution of problem or without them giving me in writing the number of days required for resolution,

It has been a good 15 days of bad connectivity with Tata Indicom Broadband and I’m sure you guys will not give a single thought to this when you bill me for next month.

I would like to know in writing what is the server issue faced by you people for BTM area, and why is it that my internet is so slow inspite of wireless connectivity (CIDR = 20) being so good with base station.

Swapnil Pathare
———

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 7:11 PM, customer service wrote:

Please refer to the tele phonic discussion you had with Ms. Deepthi on 11-Aug-08. As per your verbal confirmation the connectivity concern you had has been resolved.

However if the problem persists once again please do write back to us for further assistance.

We have registered a complaint on your behalf regarding the Down time Credit concern. Our team will contact you to do the needful at the earliest.

Your complaint number is: 6687258.

Swetha Dasika,

Customizing your GMail box with cool skins. Easier than ever. Thank God (and Mozilla) for GreaseMonkey

Thanks to Nishi for the link.

Code for Python (Write to file)

f=open('scratch','wb')
for i in xrange(1000000):
f.write(str(i))
f.close()

Code for Java (Write to file)

File f = new File("scratch");
PrintWriter ps = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter
(new FileOutputStream(f)));
for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
ps.print(String.valueOf(i));
}
ps.close();

Discounting the mandatory include statements for java.io, class name, try catch block for any and all I/O operations, we are still left with around 4 classes to be used for 1 write operation to a file.

So the question newbie posts in a forum is: I am writing to a file, but I’m not sure whether I should use BufferedOutputStream or BufferedWriter

The reply generally holds this: If you are inserting chars, use a Writer, else use the Stream

This is fairly accurate, but for a slightly deeper understanding let us break down the modules

Streams transfer bytes. Period.

So when you want to transfer any binary data, you use streams. You open the file, wrap it with FileInputStream, take out the data and process it. When you save it back, you make use of the FileOutputStream. Similar classes to be used for transferring though other streams.

In case you would like to use some text-friendly methods for your ascii text, you need chars or a char[] array. To get this, you convert bytes to chars while reading (and similarly chars to bytes while writing), with a simple wrapper, which happens to be InputStreamReader for reading and OutputStreamWriter for writing.

To have data formatting conversion done by Java, wrap the Writer objects in a PrintWriter

To increase performance, you wrap the objects in a buffer. Java uses internally allocated memory space to provide efficient read/write operations. The working of the buffer is transparent to the programmer, except for few methods like flush()

(Any) OutputStream => (wrap in) BufferedOutputStream

(Any) InputStream => (wrap in) BufferedInputStream

(Any) Writer => (wrap in) BufferedWriter

(Any) Reader => (wrap in) BufferedReader

The Buffer classes also provide some friendly methods: readLine() in BufferedReader and write(String, int, int) in BufferedWriter. These are more of a convenience which can be coded anyway in 2-3 lines. In case your app can’t afford to wait for the buffer to get full before transmitting or receiving data, it is always better to avoid using Buffers than to use and flush() them throughout your program.