Another Nice Holiday week!

Parent finally came to Hyderabad on 25th Morning. I was working that night for finishing the VTK project but couldn't do much. Also didn't sleep much. The train was delayed as usual and finally arriving at around 9:50 so we left are around 9AM after breakfast.

25th March
From the station we went straight to Hotel Dwarka, Lakdi Ka Pool. We were already late enuf to go to Ramoji, so I postponed the plan for the next day. We started off for Runway 9 but the driver took us somewhere else and we have to come back and visit GolKunda in the afternoon which was not great but ok. We went to Charminar and the Bangles market nearby. I have decided to buy my GF(when ever I have one) and also Didi and Mummi some real good stuff from here. Then we went to IMAX theatre for the night show, were late by some 5 minutes but didn't miss much. I mostly slept during the movie but others seemed to have enjoyed it (objective attained).
I came back in the night with my bro to see the mails and see if ppl were planning to play Holi in the evening, they didn't so I slept at around 3AM ...

26th March.
and then we went back to the Hotel next morning at around 8:30 AM. Ppl were getting ready so were not late. We moved for the breakfast and then moved to Ramoji Film City. The journey was usual till Ramoji Film city, Where the we have to get down from the jeep for the Ramoji bus. The guide gave an interesting commentry on the locations( Some I remember are: This is some park, where the colors of the flowers change according to the colors of the saree of the Heroine, but since no one wears sarees' nowadays there are no flowers ;-). This is bulland darwarja but will break even if you punch it, It takes only 5 minutes to go from Bombay to Delhi coz you can go by foot too. ) The bus left us at some place at 1:30PM, from where we were supposed to reach Eureka at 3PM.

So we decided to go to the park like places. Enjoyed rain dance for some time(1 hr I thing). I didn't think it would have been so much fun, but it was.

My Brother and Me at Rain Dance in RFC


Then we went to some bhoot bhangla kind of place. enjoyed some rides specially the hoping ones. We were back to Eureka at 3:00 PM when we took another bus and had a tour around the gardens. The tour was over at around 3:30PM and we went to enjoy some final Rides that big giant wheel mod and the tora-tora thing. Both were fun. The Giant wheel stuff was much more fun than fear I had initially. I remember about our Familys' Excel world trip when I was in 6th standard and couldn't enjoy some rides because of age.

Cute Little Diksha, My Uncles Daugther


After Ramoji we decided to go to Runway 9. We were finally able to reach R9 at around 7PM and then me and Rishab had 4 Laps, Didi took some shoots and Rishab enjoyed sketting for some time. That was the end of the day. We left for Bangalore afting coming back to hotel.

27th March.
We reached hotel The Club. The hotel looked just mediacre with regards to the facility infact there was no lift and the swiming pool was charged separately 50/- an hour. Anyways we left for roaming Bangalore at around 12:00 noon.

Me and My brother at Science Museum Bangalore.



My brother posing with Missiles at Science museam.




Then we spent to some Jain temple, followed by the National Science Mueseum followed by ISCon temple and then came back to Hotel. The night was spent in the hotel itself.

28th March.
We left around 10AM this morning to Mysore. Had lots of Nariyal Pani on the way. In Mysore we went to the great palace of Raja KrishnaRaja Wadeyar( IIRC).

Photograph in the Fort


The palace is simply superb and has lots of stuff to be seen. After spending 2-3 hrs here, we left for enjoying the Vrindaban Garden.

Vrindhavan Garden(VG) Mysore


Four of us KIDS! at VG


The garden is said to be one of the best in the World and I would agree to it. The Light and Sound show named Dancing Fountain was one of the main attractions. We left from the garden at around 8:30PM. To drive to our main destination in the tour, Srigavan vela. where we reached at around 10:30 PM. Got the room for the night and then went out for Dinner. By 11:30 PM we were back to room and ready to sleep.

Boating, Vrindhavan Garden Mysore




29th March
Early morning at around 6:00 AM Papa woke us woke for going to the temple. The special thing about the temple is the 57 Feet tall statue of Shri Bahubali Ji, at the top of a mountain. After a long time we were climbing on a mountain so it was really tiring. Me, Rishab and Papa did the Jal Abhishek at the temple (which was surpizingly short in respect to time spent). Then we went to other series of 14 temples on the other moutain. (probably called Vindyagiri). Already tired I was not very fast and also uninterested in doing the vandana well, Mummi took me along and we finished the Vandanas properly. After this temple it was time for lunch which we had at Jain Math. No offence but the food was not good. I remember the conversation on ppl siting in front of us.
Boy: I need food with Papad.
Parent: Please bring atleast one plate of food for him.
The Person brought the food, but there was no Papad. The child started crying.
Another girl: Mammi where is the Sabji
Anti: It's there itself.
Another girl: But where is it? I can't see it.

Basically they served us two curry kind of things, one was visibly clear to be a Dal but other was strangely said to be sabji (of palak), thought it looked like another Dal. After the food Me, Rishab and Dhiksha repeatedly made comments about the food in the car, which Mammi opposed. We left back for Bangalore, spent some time in the evening in some Mall where we bought some clothes. The food ordered at Food World sucked as Didi found the bread bun was infected (Horrible). At around 11:00 PM we were on our way back to Hyderabad.

30th March
Reached Hyderabad, in the morning around 9:10 AM. We came to IIIT to see if there was any class of BS. I was particulary interested in attending this last class of my B.Tech., but there was no class. So my father met Prof PJN and we left back to Dwarka hotel. After refreshing ourselves we left for Salarjun Museum. Which is really a great museum and surely worth more than one visit. The European posters are really great peice of painting. and the Chinese and other porcelain works also astonishing. After leaving the museum at around 3:30PM we went to NTR garden, the garden is definitely not much but a hype. It was over in less than an hour. We went to Birla Mandir, then to our Jain temple at Aagapura and finally to Big Bazar. After some shopping it was already 8 PM and we rushed to the hotel and dinner and finally checked out at 9:00 PM. reaching station at 9:20 or so. Rishab's stomach was aching and I felt too bad, seeing him in pain while leaving. My sister also got angry with us in the afternoon at NTR when we neglected her request for some photograph. I appologised and she was ok now. But Rishabh's problem didn't get solved until we reached the station and finally I couldn't offer him Mango shake on the Road( I promised him unlimited amount of it earlier). On station when he got better we came back from platform2 to platform1 to buy some packed juices. Talked with my father for some time on what I plan to do now. Talking to sir, business plans, job plans. My Father gave a very long and thoughtful oeice of advice and left the decision on me citing examples of success on either ways.

As usual the farewell was painful. And so this great week was over. After coming back to hostel I found the farewell was running on. It was pretty much over when I came back but fortunately I was nominated for best Tutor award (Though I knew I was not gonna make it). Thanks to the Juniors for that honour.

Indian Railways Getting Better

I just wondered if such a system was running, typed in Google search and Found yes it is. Basically you can see how late the train is running currenlty and when it is scheduled to arrive, much better than dialing that 131 number all the time.
http://www.trainenquiry.com/

What could be better is to make is more updated. I am seeing this as 2:33 AM and the last updat time is shown to be 6:57 AM yesterday. This is not much relevant and satisfactory but at least they are working towards this.

You Know You're Addicted to Coding When...

-- Edited that more definitely happens to me--
/* flicked from the original at http://www.blogthings.com/Coding.html */
/* My source was http://mindwarrior.blogspot.com/ */

You laugh at movies that show programmers at work. {Hackers} {but swordfish was def. diff}

You get withdrawal symptoms if you're away from a computer for more than 3 hours

Whenever somebody asks you to do something, you try to think of a way to write a program that would help you.

When you take a break from programming, and program.

You are the only one who knows what the difference is between a coder and a programmer.

You watch a tv sitcom and think "I could write an algorithm that writes the scripts for these things"

You sit stuck at traffic lights and work out a more efficient algorithm for them, based on road orientation, sensor placement, time of year, time of day, weather and local sporting events, in your head.

The people you respect most you have never physically seen or spoken to, but you always bow to their knowledge.

You walk outside and wonder why the sun doesn't make a lens-flare in your eye....

You end each line you type with ";", even plain english ones;

You code your own support software for the digital camera you just bought

Console opens on startup.

You know the following sequence by heart: 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768 65536 131072

When you can say with a great level of confidance that you have written more lines of code than english.

You wake up in the middle of the night with the solution to your coding problem.

You get drunk\high\otherwise intoxicated just for a different coding experience.

Sunshine genuinely hurts your eyes.

You actually feel like crap from getting 8 hours of sleep, that just so unnatural

You can't help but squeeze math and research topics in while sweet-talking to a girl [in fact to any one].

When you die you want "Hello world" carved into your headstone

You keep old computers around and boot them up every once in awhile for the nostalgia.

You would like to have an Aibo to see if you can run Linux on it.

You look at your old code and cringe

You got a D in Computer Programming class because you where coding a plasma effect instead of a "Hello World!" program

You go to slashdot whenever possible to see if something new has come up

When someone asks you your favorite color, you give the RGB code.

No one else can ever use your computer, as it is tweaked so much only you know how to use it.

The first time you use another person's computer it takes you less than 30 seconds to completely disable all useless programs from running at boot and uninstalling all the ad-ware the fools had on the system.

I am a Wizard

Got this link from Poorna Shashank, I felt the analysis works quite well if non 100% good, you might like to try it too..

My Inner Hero - Wizard!





There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.



How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

I don't know what to do.

My parents are arriving here on 25 Morning. Previously We had planned to spend 25/26 here in Hyd and then go to nearby places and coming back by 30 when they have reservation back to home. But now that "Salarjang Mueseum" is closed on 25/26 probably we will leave from here on 25 night itself. I am not able to decide what to say to Papa because they are coming on my own request, but I want to spend the last holi of our BTech with my friends to badly. I don't know what to do.

Life is so strange

When I read posts of my batchmates I feel Life is so strange. Some of them keep writing about nostalgic feelins associated with leaving from Campus, and here I on the other side, wonder whether staying here for 1 more year was a good decision in the first place.

Past one year has been the one bringing all-round-experience and all kinds of thoughts in the mind. It was perhaps the first time when I was working alone on some project (I mean responsible alone), previously I had experience of being a major contributor in some project, being 50-50% responsible and being a minor contributor too. Taking the responsibility alone is an altogether different matter. I realized how important it is to have a team in almost any project. I felt lack of some one to discuss and suggest things, of course meeting proj guide sir was an option but that was only for getting suggestions, whenever I had some problem I myself had to find out the way. I had wondered previously what is the use of project partners which only share the credit but not the work, but I feel having a project partner is quite important and making him work is easier than working alone.

Next was the experience of What research is meant to be, I remember how excited I was during the April of last year regarding doing some R&D work, I don't remember the exact reason for the motivation, but the spirits were quite high. Infact I sat for CA internship on the grant that they will get us to do some R&D work. I was expecting a clear understanding of what-to-do-in-future after doing the internship for a month, when I will have to make a decision for MSbR or placements. But on the contrary even after 2 months of internship I was quite confused. I Was not happy with the kind of work done by us in CA (Not that it was simple or hard. It was not much challenging and interesting, though It took time), and that contributed as a major reason for my joining MSbR. I remember how Bapu too had some convincing arguments about doing PG here itself. [I am not gonna suggest any thing regarding that here]. Finally I took MSBR. As the time progressed I got quite bored with the project I was doing and this started taking my interest away from MS. By the Mid of semester 8, I have got interested in Coding, and also in contributing to some Open-Source project, I have had plans for making software/utils from I-don't-know-when, but they were building up as I was peeking in to some mailing lists etc. Now I feel the interest in them has gone too high. Also the plans to do something-of-my-own have always existed, as I got more and more dissatisfied with the available services/solutions etc and thought of making them better. So I stand confused as what to do.
Amal once discussed with me that he is also not interested in MSbR, I felt better that someone was in same position as I was, but now there is lot of difference, He has got in to Trilogy, India and I have no backup. The bigger issue is that even now I am not sure what to choose. I am just waiting for my Parents to come here and have a long discussion regarding the future options from here. I may just endup being here or may do something else, still not dicided.

The biggest thing I realized from all this is that lot of freedom and choice may some time lead to confussions. The good thing is that I never feel bad about whatever is happening though It might have led to tension in mind. I feel that all this just adds to my experience, I am not on the point where I will repent not having done something( I have tried the options). And more funny thing is that I have been enjoying my life along with work for path 4-5 months almost as much as someone can do. If now on I have to work hard for some reason I feel ready for that.

KRT Wire | 03/21/2005 | A preview peek at PlayStation Portable

KRT Wire | 03/21/2005 | A preview peek at PlayStation Portable: "A preview peek at PlayStation Portable
This is surely gonna be a big hit at least close to IMAC if not IPOD.

Knight Ridder Newspapers

(KRT) - THE GIZMO: Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable), $249."

KICKING THE TIRES: While serving multiple masters, the premiere PSP is a surprisingly tidy and lightweight (10 ounces) affair, only slightly bigger than a folded Nintendo DS or an iPod.

Future versions may be even smaller, more feature-laden or energy efficient. "What you're seeing now is just the first in a family of PSP products," said a company source.

While it's a washout in bright sunlight, indoors the PSP's high-resolution 4.3-inch color widescreen does a great job of showing off movies and the first-ever, 16x9 formatted video games. Both types of entertainment arrive on Sony's new compact, high-capacity (1.8 GB) Universal Media Disc, films at $19.95 and up, most games, $40 to $50.

MULTI-MEDIA MARVEL? A Memory Stick Duo flash storage card working with a USB 2.0 connector, an IR port and Wi-Fi 802.11b really make PSP interesting.

First connect the PSP to a PC or Mac, or move into a wireless LAN or Wi-Fi hot zone. Stuff in a larger-capacity Memory Stick Duo (at least a 512MB stick can be accommodated). The PSP can now download and store all sorts of content.

With the Wi-Fi connectivity, you also can play wirelessly with up to 16 teammates in head-to-head competition (if the software supports it).

Some Interesting Stats...

I thanks all the visitors to my website for giving me this opportunity to analyse the visits. The appreciation also stands for statcounter, freshmeat and all others who have given link to my project page.

Here are some interesting stats.
1) Country wise hits: [keeps track of last 100 only]




2) Browser-wise hits, I am rather surprized to see that firefox is really popular at least amoung developers. Safari too seems doing very well, along with Opera.



3) OS Wise. [My applogies to all GNU/Linux Lovers, (Even I am one) that Statcounter ignores us. But the number of Linux hits is a]
Will post this link later (Flicker seems fucked up, not able to get URL)

4) Resolution Wise. Strange it show 640x480 too popular.

I got to the top...

Finally My blog comes top in Google search, A search on give me top result"Vardhman Jain", The achivement is visible if you search for "vardhman" rather. There are a lot of Vardhman and most of them are netizens or have a presence on net.



So the only way to defeat them was to show my presence on net more them ;-). When I was looking for a gmail invite last year. I just sent a mail to vardhman.jain @ gmail to see if that ID is gone and it was. Finally I got vardhman @ gmail.com thanks to that person for not taking this one.

The strange thing is that most of the time I was able to get a login with name vardhman, probably those with name Vardhman Jain don't register in too many free or techincal websites ;-)

After making my own software for uploading photos, I have started regular photoupload at flickr, Today it seems they are slashdoted.(see my prev post about yahoo buying flickr). There website is taking too long to open.

Here is the link to my photogallery at flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vardhman/

"Yahoo buys Flickr"

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters: "Yahoo buys Flickr"

Now Google is gonna have some stiff competition in blogging. The reason is that Google's Hello SUCKS. It is a crappy software which needs a client installation that works only for Windows/Mac OSX and there is no Webservices based API for developers to talk to it using their programs. ON the other hand Flickr has a great set of functionalities accessible by XMLRPC which make it very easy for developers to talk to it. Host of third party tools are available in all Langauges and all OSes.

Yahoo seems to have taken a big leap forward by buying out Flickr. Now Google has to do something to make Hello better or lose grounds of PhotoBlogging.

daltonlp.com

daltonlp.com
A Comment from above link. This is exactly my lines of though on Google Vs Microsoft. The whole artcle is a good read do read it once.
----------

"For instance, Microsoft is working on a new version of IE. MS will need to test their browser against Gmail and Google maps — arguably the most complex websites in existence — and God help them if their new browser breaks those sites. For anyone who has spent hours testing code against IE, this is delicious irony, sweet and savory."

It's a typical Microsoft tactic to purposely break competitors' software, antitrust suit or no antitrust suit. They did it to Lotus 1-2-3; they did it to PC-DOS; they did it to WordPerfect. I'm not sure why Google would be any different. The biggest advantage I can see for Google is that because their software is web-based, it can be fixed very quickly which might not make it worth the risk of being slapped with another antitrust suit.

QT Based Flickr Photo Uploader

[Update 29/05/05] A new version for this software is released. check this post.
This is the first public release of the QT based photo uploader developed by me. I am releasing binaries only currently. The code needs lots of cleanup. Probably I will release it in second version of this software.[Update 21/03/2005 8:20AM IST: The Code is also available for download. Happy Hacking.]

The homepage for the time being is http://students.iiit.ac.in/~vardhman/flickr/

As usual feedbacks and suggestions are must to improve upon. So please take ur time to suggest feature that make it easier and more useful for you.
[Update 20/03/2005 8:33PM IST: The Title of the post is change to make it more generic]

A nightout and the whole next day spoilt

We met to start our VTK project yesterday, but the discussion were taken over by GRE and universities stuff, Pelu and Jagga making plans to make it into some big univ. The discussion went on for long and at 3 AM we finally set for our VTK project. Jagga insisted that we worked till 6 AM. So we worked till 6 and then I left for my room. After taking breakfast I slept at around 8:30AM and I am waking up Now. Shit! I spoilt the whole day. Missed the Ethics class and also its assignment.

And oops Ramneek now tells me that todays class they screened the movie on abortion. Shit man! I am real losser today.

First Photo Posted...Using MY OWN Flickr Uploader...

The software is coming up well. Many issues got fixed today and yesterday. One of the most important and Pending bug is it crashing on a second upload request, some thing to do with buffers. Currently it only accomplises task of uploading a photo to flickr. The photoid etc are not used for fetching more information currently, but that is a major requirement.

For the time being I post the screenshot of what is coming up.
This is the first not test Image uploaded using my app.


Application Screenshot:


Currently this is outputed at console:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<uploader>
<status>ok</status>
<photoid>6728914</photoid>
</uploader>

Suggestions and feedback is welcome.

Posting multipart/form-data using QHttp.

I am no QT expert to write articles on it, but just that I would like other to be save off troubles that I have had. If you find any flaws/corrections please write a comment here, I will update it ASAP.

After lots of struggle I finally got it working, Thanks to Rocky and Nirnimesh for their time and discussions. What follows is mostly generic but example is based on Content-Type of multipart/form-data. The same applies to application/x-www-form-urlencoded too.
Problem in sending Request
Problem in getting Response



I was initially using this NON Working code segment:

> QByteArray payload;
> QDataStream data_stream(payload, IO_WriteOnly | IO_Raw);
>
> data_stream << "--7d44e178b0434"<
> data_stream << "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"email\" "<
> data_stream <<>
> data_stream << "abs@bbc.com"<
>
> data_stream << "--7d44e178b0434"<
> data_stream << "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"password\"
> "<
> data_stream <<>
> data_stream << "mypassword"<
>
> data_stream << "--7d44e178b0434"<
> data_stream << "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"photo\";
> filename=\""<text()<
> <"\""<
> data_stream << "Content-Type: image/jpeg"<
> data_stream << "Content-Length: "<<
>
> data_stream <<>
> cout<<"Filename as it is sent is "<text()<
> int i=0;
> char *s=new char[1024];
> while(file.readBlock(s,1023)){
> data_stream.writeRawBytes(s,1023);
> }
> file.close();
>
> data_stream << "--7d44e178b0434--"<
> header.setValue("Keep-Alive","300");
> header.setValue("Connection","keep-alive");
> header.setContentLength(payload.size());
> cout<<"Payload size is "<
>
> this_buffer = new QBuffer();
> req_id=_http_client->request(header, payload,0);

I was not able to figure out the problem for long time, but when I used ethereal everything became clear, There was difference between the packets sent by me and the browser for the request. Ethereal showed the first few lines i.e before the file content were not written as expected:

^M
--5728459211650640751785373418^M
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="email"^M
^M
dfgfdgfdg^M

but were written in something like.
^@^@^@^@^P--5728459211650640751785373418^@^@^@^@^C^M
^@^@^@^@.Content-Disposition: form-data; name="email" ^@^@^@^@^C^M
^@^@^@^@^C^M
^@^@^@^@^[dfgfdgfdg^@^@^@^@^C^M
^@^@^@^@^P--5728459211650640751785373418^@^@^@^@^C^M

Now I realized that there was some problem with formatting of data sent to DataStream using "<<", We realized that using writeRawBytes solves all the problem. So here is the WORKING code sequence after correction.

QString boundary="7d44e178b0434";
QString endline="\r\n";
QString start_delim="--"+boundary+endline;
QString cont_disp_str="Content-Disposition: form-data; ";

QString email_str = start_delim + cont_disp_str + "name=" + "\"email\""+endline+endline+"vardhman.jain..."+endline;

data_stream.writeRawBytes(email_str.data(),email_str.length());

QString password_str = start_delim + cont_disp_str + "name=" + "\"password\""+endline+endline+"vardhman.jain..."+endline;
data_stream.writeRawBytes(password_str.data(),password_str.length());

QString path=le_filename->text();

QString only_filename = path.section( '/', -1 );

QString photo_str = start_delim + cont_disp_str + "name=" + "\"photo\""+"; filename="+"\""+only_filename+"\""
+endline+"Content-Type: image/jpeg"+endline+endline;
data_stream.writeRawBytes(photo_str.data(),photo_str.length());


long int i=0;
char *s=new char[file.size()+2];
while((i=file.readBlock(s,file.size()))){//I know it is not good to do so, but just to speed up.
data_stream.writeRawBytes(s,i);

}
file.close();

QString stop_delim=endline+"--"+boundary+"--"+endline;
//data_stream << "--7d44e178b0434--"<
data_stream.writeRawBytes(stop_delim.data(),stop_delim.length());
req_id=_http_client->request(header, payload,0);

Solution to some other problems you might face are:
1) If you get 400 Invalid Request Format
i)Check that the line POST 'filename' has a filename which is relative to / I mean / is very important. Either give it a full URL or the filename relative to WWW Document root starting with /
ii) Check the presence of "\r\n" at the end of each line.
iii)Use ethereal to debug the packet content in details.
(To be completed over time)

Following links have been of some use to me.
http://www.mime-rpc.com/examples.html
Info about Multipart/Form-data format.

Problems in READING response
I don't know what problem can occur here, but some ppl have posted there doubts regarding the same, so I put the code that works for me.

void postData::readyRead( const QHttpResponseHeader & resp){
cout<<"Number of bytes readable"<<_http_client->bytesAvailable()<<>
long temp;
QByteArray ba;
ba=_http_client->readAll();
QString temp1=ba;
cout<< "Bytes read"<<>
}

This is connected to the slot readyRead as follows:

connect(_http_client, SIGNAL(readyRead(const QHttpResponseHeader&)), this,
SLOT(readyRead(const QHttpResponseHeader&)));

End Semesters Approaching...

Deadlines are approaching. This VTK course is over we just need to finish the project.
From: Sandeep Chandna
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Final Project Demo


The final project deadline is sometime around 25th March so try to finish
it in time. It is a hard deadline because the grades will come soon after
the final demo.

Sandeep.



Have done nothing substantial till now. In Buidling sciences too project needs to be done asap, Sandeep and Ranjith are in don't care state. Jagmohan seems to care a little, don't know what Nir's and Arjun's plans are, I am pretty sure we are gonna get screwd up badly. Ethics assignments deadline is gone, I hope he will accept late submission this time too.
I am waiting for Parents to come here to make some big decissions with their approval. Until then I am mostly non chalant, doing some small QT programming which till now has not yield any success but only errors. The ppl at qt-interest mailing list haven't been much helpful either, reading others post in the archive regarding QHttp, I feel that QHttp basically sucks...No further comments until I am able to find a way around it. Also I have started playing some comp games again, spending around 1-2 hrs daily. And Yes GYM is also a new timepass for the morning slot.
With parents coming I am planning to finish up things ASAP so that I can spent the week easily. Current plans are to take them to Salarjung, Ramoji, Tank Mund, Runway line, IMAX and Probably bowling zone near Big Bazaar.

After trying so hard something show up...

This is what I have achieved after almost 2 days. Not giving up of course.
[vardhman@room myclient ]$./myclient
data; name="email"

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.

---

Apache/2.0.47 (Fedora) Server at 172.16.22.51 Port 80

Learnings in the project Part 1 : QT learnings

QCANVAS
The most important learning was perhaps QCanvas/QScrollview/QCanvasView

It you are looking for having a GUI in which you can put various items(including image as i did), QCanvas might be good for you. Look in to the
code for the learning how to use it.


QPROCESS
I used QProcess for the first time in this project. I would say its a wonderfull Class and if you use plan to use system call in ur QT programs
you should give QProcess a try.

QProcess basically allows calling any process(a program) from within a QT program. Assume that you wanted to call a program as a system call you
might do it like



QString qstr="./executable arg1 arg2 arg3";
char *temp=new char [100];

strcpy(temp,qstr.toLatin1()));
system(temp);


of course conversion to char will not be required if you use sprintf etc. Now doing the same using QProcess will be achieved as follow:


QProcess *qproc=new QProcess(this);
qproc->AddArguments("./executable");
qproc->AddArguments("arg1");
qproc->AddArguments("arg2");
qproc->AddArguments("arg3");

qproc->start();


Now the question in ur mind is why use QProcess? when system is available, Here are the reasons
1) QProcess will actually fork the process and not hang when called as system will do.
2) QProcess allows you setting 'slots' to handle the 'signals' callbacks send over event triggers of the QProcess object. The important ones
are QProcess::processExited,QProcess::readyReadStdout/readyReadStderr etc.
3) QProcess allows you interaction with the program by allowing you to write to the stdin and reading stdout, this functionality is provided
by slots like QProcess::writeToStdin.
4) You can kill the program in between using kill, or tryTerminate function calls.
5) you can keep updating the GUI while the sytem call is being processesed.

Now there are some things that I used specially for my program.
1) I wanted to wait till the process exited before doing the further processing. For this If I just run a simple while loop while process `isRunning` the GUI will freeze, so on someones' suggestion in the qt-interest mailing list I added this qApp->processEvents to my code.

while(proc->isRunning()){
qApp->processEvents();
...
}

2) I needed to start a program "gnome-obex-server" and then kill it later both on call of some functions so I simply, used the tryTerminate and
kill function with a QTimer:

proc->tryTerminate();
QTimer::singleShot(3000,proc,SLOT(kill()));


QTimer
This is another wonderful thing I came to know during this GUI development. Basically QTimer allows timely/repeatitive calls of functions.
I used QTimer to write a function to regularly check if some new files are added to the $HOME where gnome-obex-server stores the files sent
over bluetooth.

timerBt = new QTimer( this );
connect( timerBt, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(timerDone()) );
timerBt->start( 30000, FALSE );


And my timerDone function had a code like this:

void MyObjectWindow::timerDone(){
bool insert=false;
int count=0;
QDir d1("/home/vardhman");
QStringList lst = d1.entryList( "*.jpg" );
for ( QStringList::Iterator it = lst.begin(); it != lst.end() &&count<5 insert =" true;" st="d1.absPath()+" i="0;i<" l="strlen(st.latin1());" insert="false;">

[Can refer to the complete code here].

Nice discussion at dinner...

Openhouse just got over so I am sleeping a lot, Also devoting some time researching some new application development project. I have been much interested in Firefox plugin so much that I have crashed at least three firefox profiles ;-) still nothing working. But now I have time to crash more profiles I will surely make something work...

In the evening I had dinner with some girls from my batch, thanks to PR we can have dinner together ;-), but as usual the mess food sucked in quality. specially after eating in PR for some time you can't bear eating in the mess. We had quite a lot of discussion, should be interesting to jot down. From girls we had Kartika, Manjusha and Deepika. Kartika strangely asked if my Mother tongue is Hindi? I didn't think I could be something else, of course I have just learnt Telgu and English? of course it isn't any ones' mother tongue in India, may be she thought some thing else.. Then some said how many ppl have learnt Telugu in our batch, we remembered that Piyush gave a try and that Dixit is learning ;-)

We discussed how we have been changing, Manjusha described how she felt so bad when coming to IIIT from home. I described my experience of going to hostel for the first time in standard 6th, that I never cried and only remembered parents when I was in trouble(Well I didn't think God was a better respondent). How I now miss being with my bro. Then I and Deepika remembered some of our CA internship experiences. For the first time she complained us not asking her for joining us at lunch. How can I convince her that we really wanted her to join us, oh don't make any wrong sense of it. Then we discussed how we used to eat so many sweets that all the sections in our plates will contain traces of sweet when we would be leaving our plates... Compared to TCS where I never dared to go back and take extra food as no one did that. In CA perhaps the number gave us confidence to go not once but many times... Kartika questioned if I think a lot kya(her typical way of asking, put a kya at the end of a meaningful sentence. ;-)) ? Of course the answer was yes. Of late I have been thinking that I should try to stop thinking so much on so many things, but stupid mind has got a bad habit of thinking whenever Idle. She related the presence of the white hair to this extra thinking and pointed out that they don't think so much so they have all their hair black, I noticed they were correct... Then we came to discussion of B'day of classmates, I tried my level best to remember as many B'day but couldn't remember Deepika's b'day, and was not accurate on Manjusha's. (Bad really bad). I know it offends any one to tell that you don't remember their B'days, but as with mobile phone number I am now relying on softwares in my computer to remember b'days so pardone me. ( realizes how badly I need a smartphone).

The we discussed about good movies, Life is beautiful. I recommended Beautiful mind to them and we dispersed... Such kind of discussion are really great, and I look forward for more of them....

The Beautiful Mind: A Wonderful film.

Rating 10/10.

Really a wonderful movie. Story is about the challenging life of Nobel Laurette John Nash.
The scene of John Nash being honoured by prof. at Princton is I feel the best scene in the movie. Screen shot for that..


And here is the concluding dialog of the great movie.
"Its only in myterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found, I am only here because of you..." -- John Nash at Novel Price ceremony.

The Final Night b4 Openhouse.

I recall that I often asked ppl how they can control their sleep so much that they don't sleep whole night. Now I realize you can do so easily when you are required to do it. I was awake the whole night before OpenHouse doing some adjustments in the GUI/program.

I am Amal decided to work for 2 hrs initially at around 1:00 AM. Then around 3 AM amal declared his work over, I was not shocked, One thing I always long to have is the kind of accountability some ppl like Amal can keep in advance. I normally fail to do so, spending lots of time doing something which could have been done in lesser time. Basically efficiency sucks in me too. Gotta improve it!!! Amal left the lab at around 4 AM aksing me to wake him up at 8:AM, I had already planned to stay awake and improve the code, I did that. Around 5 AM I realized that I was getting a segfault in very unexpected place. (I couldn't debug that error until I went for breakfast at 7 AM.) Finally at around 9:45AM I was able to solve the problem by making the system totally synchronus. (Details in my project blog post).

Nights before Open House

Couldn't miss mentioning this, I was not on proper night sleep for quite some time, basically making things work before Openhouse is here. Yesterday night I had some success so I came and slept at 4:00 AM with a aim of waking up at 7:30, I was quite relaxed so I slept till 8:30 AM. I felt so great, sleeping for 4:30 hrs in the night.

One More Tension gone...

Finally Our Project Management grades came. I got B, good enuf. considering what we have done in that course. My SGPA for last sem has come down to 7 now, with two grades undeclared. At max I think it will be around 7.5 or so. This should be the lowest one till now. (I have more things to remember about last sem but that will be done later).

Its quite amazing that it was this last sem only when I thought of making a good GPA. Until that I just allowed whatever grades came. Things don't happen the way we want them to happen ... This doesn't mean we stop wanting things and working hard for them.

The current sem is going quite cool till now, I haven't had much work at any moment of time, some hardwork is required now just as openhouse in near. After openhouse I plan to have some relaxation, more so with Family members coming here, I plan to go to some place like Ooti(I don't know the spelling correctly.) at least going to Bangalore is being thought over now...

So Linux Users Group IIIT Have their own shirt now.

After lots of delays finally the shirts have come. The response have been great and I think we will overshoot the expected demands. Cool I think we are making Linux popular ;-) [By hook or by Crook]

I have taken the "Geek By Nature" design for my younger bro, the other one won't make once sense to him, even this one might not but it has a big TUX image as the back that should compensate.

This also brought the chance for me too see some Girl Geeks of our campus as even Girls ordered some shirts despite the shirt design ( We didn't think they would be interested so didn't care much about that while designing).

Still some time to post some images of ppl wearing those shirts in action. We will hopefully have a crowded LUG meeting this time.

A VC: Analysis Paralysis

A VC: Analysis Paralysis: "Because I believe that Teddy Roosevelt (one of my favorite Presidents) had it right when he said:"

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Thanks to Tarun's Comment on Ranta's post for this enlightening thought.

Reading blogs is addictive!!!

Have been clicking the next blog links for some times in past few days. It is a great way of timepass and also knowing how others think (not about you, but about life etc). I got these two interesting blog links till now.

www.lenny.cc
(most post are interesting).
Kim's Notebook: "Kim's Notebook"
(Not interesting in general but some posts are cool like this one. http://ktimes.blogspot.com/2005/02/tips-for-guys.html)

Enterprise Linux IT (Linux Enterprise Servers): NewsFactor Network - Development - Linux Reality Outstrips Linux Myth

Nice article. Complete article here


One of the things that gives Linux its power in the public mind is that comparisons have historically been to Microsoft's Windows brand products, not to other versions of Unix. On all reasonable measures of performance, stability, and technical accessibility, Linux is well ahead of the latest Microsoft products and so shines in such comparisons. It is not, however, remotely a leading edge system in the same class with the BSD family of Unix products and Sun's Solaris.


Enterprise Linux IT (Linux Enterprise Servers): NewsFactor Network - Development - Linux Reality Outstrips Linux Myth: "A Sun Ray user interrupted at work can, for example, pull her java card from the machine she is working on, cross the country to another office, plug the card into a machine there, and continue typing where she left off."

for example, sells a fully equipped Linux PC for US$796 including a 15-inch LCD and lots of free software to meet the needs of office professionals, systems developers and Web service providers. In contrast, the comparable Dell Latest News about Dell Computer $799 2400 combines what amounts to the same hardware with only a basic Microsoft operating system license and no applications. Adding Microsoft Office costs $399 more. A code development system adds $529; even just extending the OS license to the office release adds $70 -- and all of this stuff has free equivalents that are as good or better under Linux.

In effect, what they're finding is that an open-source package like the OpenOffice.org suite doesn't have all the features claimed by Microsoft's Office Professional. But it doesn't lose files, there's no cost beyond downloading and setup, no upgrade pressure and few restrictions on exchanging files with other systems -- including Microsoft's.

Strange Link

http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?blog=http://vardhman.blogspot.com%2F
If someone reads and understand what this is please explain me.

No Patents Please :::::

Patents are a devious tool to harm developing countries' development.
Not only will patents harm software; but will also lead to rise in
prices of medicines. [Read further for more info]

What you can do ?

a) Post this on your blog/website too if you have one
b) Email this to as many people as you know
c) Email to the Editor of various magazines, newspapers that we
don't want patents
d) Email to the President of India and any political party in
India who has an email

Why are patents bad ?

Below are some medicines whose cost are given as follows (In India
in Rupees) [In US in Rupees]
SYPROFLOCSACIN (29 Rupees) (2353 Rupees)
DYCHLOPHYNAC (4 Rupees) [675 Rupees]
These are just two examples. Wondering why medicines are SO cheap
in India? This is because India had a big pharmaceutical industry.
They can produce drugs at a fraction of the cost at what Merck wants
to sell them for. Infact the drug prices are way lower in India than
in Pakistan next door because
India happened to develop its own pharmaceutical industry.

The American Corporations don't like that .They want more children
to die in India. They want more profit; which means more children die
in India. They want to make sure that India doesn't produce
drugs costing less than the American counterparts. Now this is
done in two ways under GATT. One way is to increase the length of
patents. The other is to change their character from Process Patent
to Product Patent.

The thing that made American prices higher is now put up as an
Ordinance in India. It is being considered in next Session of our
Parliament.

So we need to ACT now before it is too late, before we will need to
burn our pocket before even buying a tablet of Disprin or the like.
Please follow the actions as mentioned above to spread this fact among
as many people, so that this Bill is not passed.

Maybe, the legislature will listen… But let us try our best.
--
_______________________

Ankit Malik
http://scribbler.tk

Participated in topcoder Beta test, It was great to get 234/250 points in a problem. I should be learning to code faster, the contest looks very interesting and educating to me. The one good thing about it is the challenge round, where you can challenge some ones' submission by seeing his code. I tried it too, lost 25 points :( for wrong attempt.

Met Prasad in the night, he showed his Motorola A768 Linux Smartphone, the phone is a cool one and should be a great buy for any body (barring the price ), only thing not good was the camera resolution. but some things that are great are, touch screen, Linux, SSH (prasad logged in to 200 and checked mail in pine in front of us). We talked about Network boot server which might be a good experience or setup for the long term.

Shirts didn't come today also, I don't know any reason for the delay, but even I am sick of these postponements now.

The showcase demo project is also crawling, basically I don't have much interest in its demo. Also it is not very promising in its current state, I don't know where things are heading too. PJN sir reminded me about the demo pending next week. Tomorrow we have lots of lecture on this Excitement of Research (ExOR), I will attend them and try to get excited about research myself and also volunteer.

Movie Review: Page 3

Rating 9/10
Its a must watch movie. A movie which shows life of various ppl from various angles.
It revolves around the life of a Journalist (named Madhavi), her social circle and the Rich celebrities which are refered in the title itself by "page 3". Shows that side of society which we normally think of being a glamourous one. It shows how indifferent these ppl are to the society and how hollow is the life of just drinking, smoking and partying with almost no values to Family relations and the society.

It shows how people have to make choices in the life and how they feel so great for it for some time and then regret later. I liked some dialogues from the movie too, they are:

"First Try to be a good cultural Indian and then try to be "best""
spoken by the Police officer to a partying girl.
"we have to be in the system to change the system."
spoken by the journalist name Vinayaka, to the Madhavi.

Flickr: Photographs URL

Flickr: Your Account: "http://www.flickr.com/photos/vardhman/"

Outrage at Gates' knighthood

A funny article with some strong comments, don't read if you are M$ fan.
exceprts...

Perhaps she should have sent him to the Tower instead: Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, as software engineer Chris Rankin pointed out: "Bill Gates' business practices have violated antitrust laws in both Europe and the US. This is not something for which he should be honoured in any shape or form." An anonymous reader added "Bill Gates should be imprisoned for Microsoft's business practices, not knighted."

No, tell us what you really mean… "Microsoft has done more than any other company to hold back the development of IT solutions the world over," said Matt Webber. "They have clearly shown with their Internet Explorer software that their aim is to extinguish competition, then drip-feed product updates from their monopoly to the world charging them for the privilege every time. And how did they extinguish competition? By the use of illegal business practices."

and a good one...
Wait a minute though, we did get one positive comment. We were deeply honoured to receive a Talkback comment from a Mr George W. Bush: "Well done the Queen, Well done Bill. Long live the Empire and all who sail in her." However, it is possible that this grammatically correct message did not come from the real President Bush.

News from slashdot...stuff that matters..

Sun has released a live cd for the project looking glass. I tried the software one month ago and it was very primilinary stages and a live CD so soon. They must be working at awesome speed. Open Source really Rocks. Try it here https://lg3d-livecd.dev.java.net/.

I am downloading the iso too.

In other news, Adobe enters opensource, opensource.adobe.com, I appreciate the step and hope that they will soon have cross platform product to be used to by Linux Lovers too.

Nothing so great...

Did some improvement to the correspondence algorithm to reject bad cases. I would write a big blog one day about the whole project, just praying God to get it is finished asap. Yesterday only PJN sir asked me to think of possibilities of Szeliski's implementation and also the demo.

In other areas, we had a LUG meeting yesterday night(?), not a great response but yes some ppl did turn up. The shirts will come by Friday(latest as anounced by Satvik in the meet). Ppl including me are desperately waiting for the shirt(s),

Got some photographs of felicity, picnic and Gupta's B'day. Will upload them soon. Some of them really make my Camera memorable.

I saw the stats of my blog thru the site www.statcounter.com the site it a great one and its tools along with its facilities of logs are really awesome, do try it if you are looking for a free good stat counter.

Tried and failed again at making a firefox extention work. My browser crashed running it in safe mode now. Going to firefox channel on irc.mozilla.org day before yesterday proved usefull as the image of M$ antispyware showing firefox as a spy I got from that increase the number of hits to my page a lots.(as shown by Statcounter's log).

InsideGoogle: Google And Microsoft: Neighbors

InsideGoogle: Google And Microsoft: Neighbors



Google And Microsoft: Neighbors

Greg Linden lets us know
that Google is opening a new office in Kirkland, Washington, right near
Microsoft, intending to steal some MS talent. I'm just trying to
picture in my head a really bad sitcom where two neighbors who run
opposing tech companies try to get along at home while waging war on
the job.

:: Reviews : First Look At Solaris 10

:: Reviews : First Look At Solaris 10:

Sun Microsystems has recently released Solaris 10. It is currently free, as in beer, and most of it is promised to be released under an OSI approved license in the second quarter of 2005.

Excerpts from the article which is very infomative. Full article read is suggested.
DTrace
One of the main new features in Solaris 10 is DTrace, a dynamic instrumentation system. DTrace consists of a
scripting language, named D (not to be confused with the fledgling D Programming Language), and loadable kernel modules named “providers.” When called upon, these “providers” track and report system information. DTrace has several
features that separate it from other similar systems:

• It is dynamic. DTrace has no effect on system performance when not in use. Only those providers that are needed by a particular command are loaded and used. This means if you want to collect data on the scheduler, DTrace will not be collecting data on the IO system as well. This greatly improves performance over those systems that collect a huge
  amount of unneeded data.
  
• It can instrument both the kernel-level and user-level.
  
• It is safe. DTrace will not allow you to damage the system through its use. Some may find the idea of anything being “totally safe” rather amusing. However, this appears to be true. Time will tell if it holds up, but for the moment I
  have no evidence to the contrary.
  
• It is adaptable. DTrace really is more a scripting language then it is a tool like truss or top. This has its downside and upside. The disadvantage is that it is not a small thing to learn. Most will probably never use DTrace
  directly, but instead use programs written in D. There are already some of these and there will eventually be many more. The advantage to this is that its not limited like top or truss. Supposedly the test of a well-designed program is that people use it for things the author never thought of. DTrace passes this test with flying colors.

DTrace will inevitably be compared to similar systems. These include The Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT) and Dprobes. These systems may grow into something equivalent to DTrace, but at the moment they are not even close. LTT is not dynamic and has only around 45 points of instrumentation to avoid a large performance penalty. Comparing that to Dtrace:

# DTrace -l | wc -l
36110

Dprobes is much more advanced, but has problems as well. It is dynamic, but lacks some of the advanced
features of the D language and is not safe. You can definitely bring down a machine with a badly written Dprobes script. It also supposedly performs poorly on multiple CPUs.


One interesting DTrace script I found is seeksize.d. This script tracks the offset value of seek requests to the discs, per
process. I have never been able to see this information before and it is really quite interesting, although somewhat shocking. The script was written by Brendan Gregg, who has produced many DTrace scripts that review system information from shell use to socket statistics. [http://users.tpg.com.au/adsln4yb/dtrace.html]

Zones

If you have used FreeBSD Jails, Solaris Zones are going to sound very familiar. They are based on the same
basic concept. Both can be considered somewhat like a heavy-duty chroot. Each Zone or Jail is a virtual OS, complete with IP address, separate configuration and even a separate package DB (zones can also share a DB). Now, this may seem like exactly what UserModeLinux or Xen do, but it isn't. The difference is that all the Zones/Jails share one
kernel.


In Xen or UML, the sub-machines are full OS's, kernel and all. They run on vm-like layer over the actual kernel. The advantage to this is security; it is very difficult to break out of a virtual server setup in this way. The disadvantage is speed; running all these different kernels has a large performance hit. This is why FreeBSD Jails were thought of in the first place and Sun has gone that direction with Zones.


It is theoretically possible to break out of a Jail or Zone. In fact, there have been security vulnerabilities in the past that allow
processes to do just that. It is of course up to the System Administrator to balance these issues. Personally, I would rather be
able to run a large number of Jails/Zones and take the minimal security risk.

Service Management Framework

SMF (The Service Management Framework)
is Solaris 10's replacement for the aged sysV init. I have mixed feelings about SMF. It is definitely a step forward, but it adds a
level of complexity that was not there before. The idea behind it is fairly simple and SMF can be logically split into several parts:

• Startups scripts. These are very like the normal scripts you see in every UNIX implementation
  
• XML manifests. This is where things get different. Every service has an XML file that holds
  information about the service. What other services does it depend on? What services does it not depend on, but are recommended? All these relationships and more are stored in the manifests.
  
• svcs. The svcs command is one of the main interfaces to SMF. It can tell you what services are
  started, which are stopped and even what services failed to start and why. For example, if service A depends on service B and you have stopped service B, svcs might tell you that service A has failed
  because service B is stopped.
• svcadm. This is the administrative tool for SMF. You can add, delete, stop and start services here.
  
• init. The init systems works a bit differently on Solaris 10 because of all this. If a service fails to start or crashes, it will be restarted. Also, if you stop a service that another service depends on, that service will also be stopped. Likewise, if you start a service that depends on several others, they will all be started. Also, the dependency system allows
  init to start multiple services in parallel.

My concern about SMF is that its not as transparent as a system like rc.d on NetBSD/FreeBSD or even the old sysV init. It is still fairly easy to understand, but there is a level of “magic” that wasn't there before. Maybe my concerns are baseless? I don't know. It will be interesting to watch how users react to the new system.


Along with new features, there have been improvements made to the general OS, many having to do with speed. Solaris has been given the nickname “Slowlaris” in the past. With Solaris 10, Sun has worked hard to make that name no longer applicable.

Conclusion.

Solaris 10 is a rather amazing OS. I learn quickly, but I was hard pressed to even tap the surface of Solaris. It is very fast, has new features that are revolutionary and old features that are not very well known, but deserve to be. Its hardware support could, and I think will, be improved, some software will be difficult to compile and it can be difficult to use at times when coming from other NIX. However, any relatively knowledgeable user should give it a shot. You may be impressed.

Don't get Frustu over LUG shirt.

I am not able to respond well to all ppl asking me for the arrival of the shirts. What can I say? I was only involved in collecting the money and now ppl are behaving as if I was ordering the shirt and responsible for the delay.

I realize they must be waiting eagerly for the shirts, even I am doing so. Kirtisinha is the person to be contacted for any issues regarding deliverly of the shirts etc. As of now he has told me that shirts will come by this Wednessday(March 2).

my previous post regarding the same is here.

Parents are coming here probably.

After almost 4 years my father will be coming back to Hyderabad, along with my Mummi, didi and Rishab (younger bro), who are coming for the first time. Until last year my plans were to get them here directly on my convocation day, but things have changed. My convocation is already postponed by a year, and also my parents realized that I was needing some moral boostup etc, may be missing them a lot. As of now the schedule is around 15 March.

I plan to enjoy those 2-3 days to completion. I will try to see no class comes in between. Taking them to good places in Hyderabad, showing all kind of comp games to my bro. One movie in IMAX is sure, probably it should be a 3D one. On the way back they will have to carry lots of CDs ;-)

As soon as this project gets over...

I want to finish this current project ASAP. I have to first of all start my thesis work. Secondly many other things are lining up. I wish to become regular in blogging to the extent of 1/2 hr daily. 1 and 1/2 hr to some good technical book like The Unix Operating system by Michael Bach. Another 1 hr for some other liesure activity like Novel reading or something.

I also plan to cover up some good movies/serials I have missed.

Another good movie: My Sassy Girl

Having heard so much in praise of this movie, I decided to give it a try being frustated with results not coming in the project.

The movie is funny from the starting and has lots of messages to be given to the viewer and delivers them with great smoothness.

My Rating 10/10 (couldn't find anything imperfect)

Linux based music device is here.

"MP3tunes, Michael Robertson's new music venture, has released a snazzy linux music appliance called MP3beamer. The $399 box
auto-rips CDs and imports MP3s and then connects to iTunes, Java
devices, media receivers, web devices even WinCE units with handy
feature to "sync" songs from server to remote machine for offline
playback not just streaming - see screenshots.

Of course not a replacement for ipods, it is just a replacement for Windows Media Edition or something like that.

I would still go for an IPOD.