Uncategorized

Protesting SOPA and PIPA

Unless you are living under a rock or outside the US :).. you probably heard about the crazy legislation that the US congress and senates are proposing to help protect content creators (AKA Hollywood) from privacy. While I personally don’t have any issues with giving protection to content creators, it should not be at the cost of freedom for the rest of the world. Go to http://americancensorship.org/ to get more information about why this proposed legislation are bad.

Today (1/18/2012) has been designated as “Protest SOPA/PIPA day” by the technology world. I believe in the old adage, put your money where your mouth is :).. so I checked on the top 25 US sites (according to Alexa) to see how many of them are supporting this protest in a visible manner. Only 4 out of the 25 sites, put visible content on their websites regarding the protest. I think Google’s message was the most effective, where they did not reduce the functionality of the website, but provided a lot of visibility to the protest. I know which companies I am going to support/use moving forward :). I was very happy to see that three of the sites that I use on a regular basis (google, amazon and wikipedia) are supporting this protest. Here are screenshots of the protest from the the  4 sites that are in the top 25 visited sites in the US

Google.com

Amazon.com

Wikipedia.Org

WordPress.com

Screenshots of some other sites that I visit on a regular basis and are supporting the protest

Boingboing.net

Wired.com

Arstechnica.com

Reddit.com

DuckDuckGo.com

January 18, 2012 by Politics Technology Uncategorized Web 0

G+ or Blog

I started using Google Plus from last November and I should say that, even though I am a big proponent of keeping control over your digital avatar, it has been very easy to make (give) quick updates on Google plus than on this blog. Plus my friends and family don’t have to specially come to this site to get updates. They get the G+ updates as part of their regular email and/or when they log into their G+ stream. It is less work on everyones part.

That is one of the reasons, I believe G+ will be one of the first real contenders to Facebook. Even though Facebook boasts of more than 800 million users, it is still a “seperate” site that folks have to log into unlike Google plus, which is fast becoming part of the regular Google experience. Esp with the tweaks that Google made last week with incorporating G+ data into the search results, the line between  a Google search and using Google Plus gets blurrier.

So the question (for me) is not if it is Facebook or G+.. but if it is the blog or G+..

 

January 15, 2012 by Rantings Technology Uncategorized 3

Virat Kudithipudi

New year… new addition to the family :).

Virat Kudithipudi, was born on 1/9/2012 at 22:22.

We went through a lot at the end of the pregnancy. First Jhanvi got shingles and then I contracted chickenpox from her. At one point, I didn’t even know if I would be able to be at his delivery. But thankfully everything worked out and I was cured by the time, Virat decided to arrive on planet earth. When the pediatrician checked him the day after his birth and announced that he was perfectly “healthy”, I chocked up. I understand you better now mom :)..

BTW.. if you didn’t get chickenpox as a kid.. run to the drugstore and get vaccinated for it. You don’t want to go through what I went 🙂

Welcome to the world kiddo..

Virat Kudithipudi

Collection of pictures of the first few days..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kudithipudi/collections/72157628830321025/

January 15, 2012 by Family Uncategorized 5

Goodbye 2011 and Welcome 2012

 

Happy New Year!!

Wishing all of you and your families a healthy and loving 2012. If there is one thing I learnt in 2011, it is that if you are healthy rest of the things in life will follow.

I haven’t posted any updates on my 2011 resolutions in the last few months. So here is a final recap

  • Lose the gut
    • I really didn’t accomplish the goal of losing the gut. But I gained some good habits (eating breakfast, eating consistently throughout the day, keeping track of my weight)
    • I have collected some interesting data as part of tracking my weight through the year. Plan to do some analysis on it later on.
    • Final chart of my weight in 2011
  • Increase traffic to Kudithipudi.org
    • I wrote a bit more in 2011 than in 2010, but not as much as needed.
    • Snapshot of 2011 traffic compared to 2010. As you can see, the traffic has increased nearly 80%.. 
  • CISSP Certification
    • Didn’t attempt this at all.
    • Wanted to do this in the last quarter, but things got a bit hectic :).
  • Take a Vacation
    • Successfully went on a vacation to India.

Overall, 50% of the goals were accomplished. As they say, the glass is half full :). Not bad.

And yes, I am going back to my old habit of not making resolutions :).

January 2, 2012 by Resolutions Uncategorized 0

HOW TO : Modify iptables rules

Quick how to for my personal records. iptables is an open source firewall (and it does a lot more) included with most linux distributions.

Steps to add new rule to existing configuration

  • Check the list of rules and their corresponding sequence

[code]sudo iptables -vL –line-numbers [/code]

  • Add the new rule at the required location/sequence

[code] sudo iptables -I INPUT LINE_NUMBER RULE [/code]

Example :

[code]iptables -I INPUT 8 -s X.X.X.X/24 -p tcp -m state –state NEW -m tcp –dport 3128 -j ACCEPT[/code]

  • Save the configuration

[code] sudo serivce iptables save [/code]

Thx to Sijis for helping with the commands.

December 12, 2011 by HOWTO Linux Networking security Uncategorized 0

HOW TO : Fix Jboss startup script for CentOS

Quick note for myself on fixing the default startup script provided by Jboss to work on CentOS. Thx to Shankar to finding the solution.

The default startup script (/$JBOSS_HOME/bin/jboss_init_redhat.sh) that Jboss provides does not work properly in CentOS. The start option works fine, but when you try to stop Jboss, it gives you a “No JBossas is currently running” message and quits.

Here’s a quick way to fix it. Edit the jboss_init_redhat.sh file and replace

[code]JBOSSSCRIPT=$(echo $JBOSSSH | awk ‘{print $1}’ | sed ‘s/\//\\\//g’) [/code]

with

[code]JBOSSSCRIPT=$(echo $JBOSSSH | awk ‘{print $1}’)[/code]

November 28, 2011 by HOWTO Linux Technology Uncategorized 1

HOW TO : Move your life into the cloud – Part 2

Following up on my previous post (https://kudithipudi.org/2011/11/13/how-to-move-your-life-into-the-cloud/) on the journey to using online services to maintain your productivity, here are some services that I use on a regular basis

BOOKMARKING :

  • SERVICE : Every switched your computer and were frustrated of having to remember and bookmark all the links you saved up on your old computer? I use delicious, to save me from this frustration. Delicious is the grand daddy of online bookmarking services and even though there are several competing services with more social networking capabilities, delicious works well for me. It allows you to store all of your bookmarks in an easily accessible URL (for example, all my bookmarks are at http://delicious.com/kudithipudi) and annotate them with tags
  • COST : free
  • OTHER CHOICES : pinboard, StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks (being discontinued from Dec 2011), Firefox Sync, EverNote
November 28, 2011 by Technology Uncategorized 0

Introducing the Indian Samurai

Have you ever seen an Indian Samurai? No, I don’t think so :). I have been fascinated by Samurai ever since I was a kid. So I asked my friend, Buffy (awesome artist) to create a personal profile of me in Samurai attire :). And what do you get? An Indian Samurai :). Moving forward, this is going to become my profile on all online services (other than LinkedIn, because I like my job 🙂 ). Everyone can put up a picture, but very few can put up their own personalized icon :).

Want to get your own personalized profile icon? Send a note to Buffy at http://www.handmadebybuffy.com/. You won’t regret it.

November 21, 2011 by Fun Uncategorized 0