End of Road for win 98

11 July 2006 will be marked as an important date in the history of Microsoft , as it is stopping the support for its most popular kid Windows 98.It means to its 70 million users it no longer fix bugs, provide telephone support and provide security patches.The product which was launched 8 years ago has been the beloved kid for Bill.Though its stopped selling it after the launch of Windows XP, it continued to provide support till today.Now Microsoft has decided to cross-mark it and it should have already alarmed its customers to upgrade to safer OS,XP.Most importan part of the support I feel will be security Patches from the Microsoft , because all other bugs should already have been fixed and customers may not worry about this.If the customers do not connect to WWW, which is primary door for the malicious programs to get in , they need not worry.Other versions that also come under this end of support as part of the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy are Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition,and Windows Me.However the documents and other content related to the self-service and bugs will be continue to be available in the microsoft website for few more years.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/hublist
Also alarmed the End of support for Windows XP Service Pack 1.
For this October 10 ,2006 has been set as the target date.All users using SP1 can upgrade tp SP2 for free.Here is the link for it http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx

For the complete story read here

Loksatta

It was Monday morning , I was very much excited when I saw that article on the front page of Eenadu.It says JayaPrakash Narayan lead Loksatta is soon going to start a Political Party. Some of the sentences in the article touched my heart. I got very much disturbed and excited. I am not very happy with the software job I am doing now. I used to believe I should not confine to these kinds of jobs like many. I strongly believe I should use all the knowledge I gained from my experiences and education serve my mother land. For this either I need huge money or I should be in politics. First doesn’t seem to possible in the near future. So the other go is Politics.

The words from the "Charcha Patram" politics are no longer confined to Big shots or criminal people, encouraged me. After 3 days of thinking I finally decided I should be join Loksatta.Today I called Chittoor Zilla Office located in Tirupathi.The voice on the other side promptly received me and I said I will come to the office on Saturday. Other details I got from the 2 minute brief talk with the person is, life term membership costs 20Rs and soon they are going to start branch offices in every place.
From the newspaper info I came to know, Party will be officially started on October 2nd.
My main point in joining the party is "Development should happen in a distributed manner"

My concern "Development should happen in a distributed manner":
We all know villages and towns occupy majority of the population in India. Everyone loves their Birth Places, and likes to lead their life there. But as we grow up we are forced to go to cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad to get a job. But how many of them like to live in those places leaving their homelands.
I observed many of me friends in Bangalore one day or other feel depressed for leaving their homelands. But most of them will not dare to think moving away from Bangalore and settling in home Places.They continue to lead their lives in the same mood.
Now coming to the villages, I observed in many villages, the only people living there are either old people (Who are deserted by their children) or Uneducated youth or people who rich from the grandfathers’ days. If this sort of trend continues many villages will soon wear desert attire.
What is the prime reason behind this...?
Are new jobs not getting created - No
is country not Developing - No
what else ....I feel Development is not happening in a distribute manner. It’s just confining to major cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. If
development happens uniformly, jobs will be created uniformly. Every place will have its own uniqueness which can be used to create employment.
For example coming to my home Town Chittoor, it is a drought area, for the past several years there was no rainfall. Still I believe there are few plus points to this place.
1) Its proximity to two major cities Chennai and Bangalore. We need to woo and attract small scale and medium scale industries to setup here by offering them some special packages.
2) There are several Temples in around Chittoor like Tirumala, Tirupathi, Kanipakam, Sholingar and Tiruttani which are already very famous. Also some more temples

like Mogili Eeswaralyam, NTR Jalasayam, Vepanjaeri, and Deer Park in Chittoor etc should be developed and the local govt/Muncipality should take the responsibility of popularizing them. Thinking how it will generate revenue and employment?
First it will increase the traffic, which will generate revenue to Bus, Auto and Taxi people.
Second Govt can take enough measures to open stalls near Temples or Tourist places where hand made goods or toys can be sold. The job of making these toys

can be given to women residing in some villages.
The local governments should work as a company or an organization for the development of the area by competing with other places.
One point to remember is today’s Bangalore or Hyderabad aren’t that big by birth, they have evolved aver a period of time. Likewise today’s Chittoor can grow to a big city if needed measures are taken. I am not blaming development is not happening or government is not taking enough measures to develop all the places uniformly. What I say is this development can happen at a faster pace. For this to happen the local bodies should also take initiatives to develop their place rather than depending too much on the centralized government.

The idea I expressed here may not be as effective as I have in my mind, but I believe, Distributed development should happen for this nation to become a developed country.
I request you all to express your concerns or comments , so that I can consolidate and take them before Loksatta whenver I get chance to meet them.

Links
1)LokSatta Website
2)LokSatta Blog
3)Charcha Patram (PDF)
4)JayaPrakash Narayan Blog

FootBall World Cup 2006 Germany

The biggest sport event of the year has started yesterday in Germany.For complete coverage from the official fifa site ,click here http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/

• Desktop SW : ibnlive.com , a news portal brings us an easy installable deskop SW that offers live scores, schedules, Team profiles , latest news etc.,Click here for details on how to install the application and use it.http://www.ibnlive.com/features/fifa/
• Mobile For those who want to see live updates of the on going football world cup in Germany on the go point your mobile browser to http://fifa.com.

More
1)For more list of sites you can visit on your mobile WAP Directory.
2)History of the Foot Ball Game

Mobile Phones Gallery

Are you planning to buy a mobile?.Confused at what amount you need to put ,which brand to buy ,features , price etc., Ok How about having a website that lists down all the models of mobile phones from all sort of brands with its approx price tag, features list etc.
Here comes a nice URL I have been following for few months that does exactly what we're expecting above.I found the site is updated consistently with the latest info of models , price etc.,
IndiaGSM
Note: Prices are given in Indian Rupees.

Votes Counting

Ping here : http://www.ibnlive.com/

MakemyTrip is hiring

Makemytrip is hiring now.Go through the following URL for more info :
makemyTrip

Ant Scripts

In this post I want to share few things about Ant Scripts.

Why do we need an Ant script
I feel the ultimate use of this scripting language is compiling/building a large collection of source files as a batch in a controlled manner.
What is an Ant Script An Ant script is an XML configuration file that calls out a target tree where various tasks get executed with the basic aim of building source files. Each buildfile contains one project and at least one (default) target. Targets contain task elements. Each task element of the buildfile can have an attribute and can later be referred to by the value supplied to this. The value has to be unique.
Target A Target holds a collection of tasks and may depend on other tasks. The dependency among the targets are specified using the depends attribute. Multiple targets can be specified using comma as separator. The flow of Ant project depends on the starting/First target that is called.
Commonly used targets are compile, test, clean etc.,
Example: Below one is a fine example that illustrates the flow and dependency among the targets.
target name="A"
target name="B" depends="A"
target name="C" depends="B"
target name="D" depends="C, B, A"
Suppose we call the target D first. The following holds good.

• A is the first target that is executed
• Order of execution is A->B->C and finally D.
• Each target is executed only once.
  

Task A Task does the work of the Ant script, such as running javac, java etc.
Each Ant build project mainly contains two segments .First one that property setting section that specifies the classpath, Base directory etc and the Second one actual targets.

Installing Ant
Check whether Ant installed on your machine by running the command “Ant” in the command prompt. If it outputs something like this you need install Ant.

1)Ant download is not a installable application.It includes a set of executables,library files etc that can be copied to any desired location.
2)Ant can be downloaded from the Apache website that regulates it. Below is the pointer to it. Ant Download.
3)Now extract all the files to a directory.I usually extract them to "c:\Ant" directory.
4)Make sure Java is installed on your machine.( Say the path is " C:\jdk1.3.1")
5)Now add these as part of the environment variables.To do it ,right click on the 'My Computer'.Navigate to 'Advanced Tab',Click 'Environment Variables' and try to add new.
6)Try to add the below two environment variables "ANT_HOME" and "JAVA_HOME".For assistance see the below pictures.

Now try to run the “Ant -v“at the command prompt. It should output the version.

Additional Plugin Jars
Ant doesn’t support certain tasks or attributes that are often needed in easy developing of build scripts. For example the task repeatedly executes a series of tasks that does compilation or execution. Ant doesn’t come with this support. So we need to add it to the library of jars in the ANT_HOME manually.
Here we need “ant-contrib-0.2.jar”. Here is the pointer to the jar file
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xmoon/struts-demo/WEB-INF/lib/ .
Note: The above jar doesn’t support trim attribute.

Basics of Ant Usage
By now assume Ant s properly installed and the Paths are set properly. Now lets see how it can be used.
Ant is usually executed at the command prompt. The following points demo the usage of Ant.
1) By just running the Ant at the command prompt, it assumes Build.xml as the default argument and tries to run the build.xml file located in the current directory.
i.e. Ant at command prompt is similar to “Ant Build.xml”

2) To run a user defined build file say build_abc.xml the ‘-buildfile’ option need to be used.
Ex: Ant -buildfile build_abc.xml

3) Now lets see how the targets inside the build file are called once we invoke the buildfile.The first target with which the execution to be started is usually said using the default attribute in the project definition tag.
Ex: - <project name="EnterpriseOne" default="dist" basedir=".">
In the above case default attribute says dist is the first target to be called by default. Ant will determine the flow among the targets based on the depends attribute specified in the dist target.

4) To call a specific target, the name of the target should be specified as an argument.
Ex:
1) “Ant execute” asks the Ant to start with target execute first.(This is for default build.xml)
2) “Ant –buildfile build_abc.xml execute”, means the target named execute is called first from the build_abc.xml.

More Info
Ant Resources
Ant Download

New Referrals in Google Adsense

Go and check your Adsense account, you should be able to see 1 or 2 new referral products added.You get cool $ too for that.