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Support WikiPedia

It is the season of giving.. And who else can be more eligible than the WikiPedia Foundation. For those that use the Internet regularly, you know that WikiPedia has become an indispensable resource. This is collaboration and sharing in it’s purest sense. How many of your arguments end now with.. “I checked WikiPedia and I am correct” :).

I know that times are tough for many people, but if you do have the opportunity..take a minute to donate to the WikiPedia foundation. Click on the this link to go to the donation page .. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Now/en

They are aiming to raise $6MM and are up to $3.8MM now.

December 20, 2008 by Technology Uncategorized Web 0

Loose the shackles..

If you need to edit documents, create spreadsheets and presentations… and don’t want to spend $$$ for Microsoft Office, download the latest version of OpenOffice for free and give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I wrote a post earlier about using OpenOffice as a free PDF Editor.. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with OpenOffice.

Most of the people that use Microsoft Office, only use the basic functionality. As my old boss used to say, “95% of the people use 5% of the functionality in Office”. And switching to OpenOffice would be a breeze for then. OpenOffice is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac OS X.

Since OpenOffice 3.0 was released back in October, the software has been downloaded more than 10 million times. And we are close to hitting 20 million downloads..Here’s a live counter from the OpenOffice website

December 20, 2008 by Linux Mac Technology Uncategorized Windows 0

Makhna ve makhna

Last weekend, I attended my first concert by a fusion band named Funkadesi. They play a fusion of  Bhangra and Reggae. The band definitely knew how to keep the crowd entertained..  They also introduced another band “The Afromotive” as their opening act. I thought that this band had great talent. I rarely buy music.. but was so impressed by the talent of both the bands that I bought their CDs on the spot. I forgot to take my camera with me.. but this video kinds shows how fun the band was

And the best part of it? The percussionists did an improve of Boney M‘s “Rivers of Babylon” to close the concert. To say the least… I was stoked!! :-).

If you get a chance.. definitely check them out.

December 13, 2008 by Music Uncategorized 1

Stephen Colbert.. I envy you.

I thought long and hard before writing this post.. but finally thought,  the topic was too funny not to share it with others :-). Warning that this post contains sexual content and is NSFW..

I was browsing (I swear) through the channels on my TV, the other night, and came upon a program called “Katie Morgan’s Sex Tips” on HBO. And yes, it was purely coincidental :-).. So anyways, one of the viewers asks Katie about multiple orgasms. Katie brought a guest on the show by the name Marenna Lindberg to answer the question. Apparently this women can experience an orgasm in a few seconds!! Katie asks her to give a demo on screen and voila.. Marenna whips out a picture of Stephen Colbert.. yes, The Stephen Colbert 🙂 .. looks at the photo for a few seconds..closes her eyes and in a few seconds whimpers out an orgasm!!! I was literally rolling on the floor as I watching this :-). And Marenna attributes this to her diet and her crush on Stephen Colbert. She even wrote a book about it.. “The Orgasmic Diet”

So ladies.. start eating fish oil, stop drinking and smoking. Make the “not-so-better” side of you happy 🙂

December 13, 2008 by Fun Rantings Uncategorized 0

How does the iPod touch detect your location?

If you are the proud owner of an iPod touch, you would have noticed that the Google maps application on it identifies your current location with scary preciseness. Every wonder, how the touch manages to do that without a GPS or cellular receiver? Apparently, Apple uses a service from a company called Skyhook Wireless to do this. And how does Skyhook achieve this? They drive around in vehicles scanning for wi-fi signals and create a database that matches the SSID and MAC Address with the physical address. Put on your tin hats folks!! 🙂

Some interesting links

Apple’s use of Skyhook : http://www.skyhookwireless.com/inaction/apple.php

How Skyhook does it : http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/wps.php

December 2, 2008 by Mac Networking Rantings Technology Uncategorized 0

New land of opportunity for baseball..

Sri sent this link (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/11/24/pirates.indians.ap/index.html?cnn=yes#) from Sports Illustrated about a story of how the Pittsburgh Pirates signed up two 20 year old men from India as free agents to be part of their farm. These two guys never touched a baseball in their life!! Other than pitching at a reality show called “The Million Dollar Arm”.

Imagine.. it is the bottom of the ninth, The Pirates are leading by a run and the opposing team has all the bases loaded. 1 strike and 2 balls.. The manager calles in Patel as a closer.. the crowd goes crazy yelling “Patel.. Patel..Patel..” LOL :). Cannot wait to see that..

November 25, 2008 by Fun Sports Uncategorized 1

What next??

I ran across this report from BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7743312.stm) about some clerics in Malaysia issuing a fatwa against Yoga. Why?.. To quote the reason…Yoga would “destroy the faith of a Muslim”.

Excuse me?? Even though Yoga started out in India as an Hinduism practice, most know that Yoga is practiced today mostly as a stress reliever and workout. I just wonder, what goes through the minds of these so called enlightened gentlemen, when they come out with such ridiculous decisions.

P.S : This note has nothing to do about Islam or Hinduism. We have “enlightened” people like these in all walks of life. It is more about how we let crazy decisions like this divide us.

November 24, 2008 by Rantings Uncategorized 0

HOW TO : Recover deleted SSL certs from IIS

Here’s the situation.. you installed SSL cert on a website in IIS. You think you don’t need that site anymore and delete the site from IIS. The moment you delete it, you bite your tounge and remember that you are supposed to back up the SSL cert for future purposes.. But since the site has been deleted from IIS, you cannot export the key from the IIS manager!!.

Thx to Microsoft’s oversight (or potentially by design), you can still recover the certificate from the server.. Here’s how

  1. Open a MMC console by typing “mmc” in the Start –> Run prompt
  2. In the MMC console, click on File -> Add/Remove Snap-in
  3. In the “Add/Remove Snap-in” window, click on Add
  4. Choose the “certificate” snap-on and click on Add.
  5. Choose Computer Account in the certificate snap-on window and click on Next.
  6. Choose “Local Computer” (Note : If you want to recover from a remote computer, you can put in the UNC path. But you need to have admin rights on that machine) and click on Finish.
  7. Click on close and go back to the MMC console
  8. You will see all the certificates installed on the server
  9. Expand the “personal certificates” folder and you will see the SSL certificate from the website you deleted from IIS. Follow standard steps to export the certificate.
November 23, 2008 by HOWTO Technology Uncategorized Windows 5

Note to self : Audio conference providers

If you you are ever looking to deploy an audio conference solution, make sure you go with a solution that doesn’t have more than 7 digits as the conference passcode. The human brain is not capable of remembering anything longer without writing it down!! :-)..

November 23, 2008 by Rantings Uncategorized 0