December | 2007 | A Glimpse of GNU/Linux

Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi

By admin December 24, 2007 Uncategorized No Comments

The famous Hindi Serial of Ekta Kapoor – Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi has the same old hindi meaning : Because the Mother-in-Law was once a Daughter-in Law, too.

But for the new techies, the Saas stands for Software as a Service ,Software as a service (SaaS) is a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops a web-native software application and hosts and operates (either independently or through a third-party) the application for use by its customers over the Internet. Customers do not pay for owning the software itself but rather for using it.. For example ,

As a term, SaaS is generally associated with business software and is typically thought of as a low-cost way for businesses to obtain the same benefits of commercially licensed, internally operated software without the associated complexity and high initial cost. Consumer-oriented web-native software is generally known as Web 2.0 and not as SaaS.

So , what abt Bahu ???
I don’t know..

mail depicting the history of “UTF-8″

By admin December 18, 2007 Uncategorized 1 Comment

This mail from Rob pike shows how UTF-8 came into existence .

Subject: UTF-8 history
From: "Rob 'Commander' Pike" <r (at) google.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 22:32:32 -0700 (Thu 06:32 BST)
To: mkuhn (at) acm.org, henry (at) spsystems.net
Cc: ken (at) entrisphere.com
Looking around at some UTF-8 background, I see the same incorrect story being repeated over and over.  The incorrect version is:
1. IBM designed UTF-8.
2. Plan 9 implemented it.
That's not true.  UTF-8 was designed, in front of my eyes, on a placemat in a New Jersey diner one night in September or so 1992.
What happened was this.  We had used the original UTF from ISO 10646 to make Plan 9 support 16-bit characters, but we hated it.  We were
close to shipping the system when, late one afternoon, I received a call from some folks, I think at IBM - I remember them being in Austin
- who were in an X/Open committee meeting.  They wanted Ken and me to vet their FSS/UTF design.  We understood why they were introducing a
new design, and Ken and I suddenly realized there was an opportunity to use our experience to design a really good standard and get the
X/Open guys to push it out.  We suggested this and the deal was, if we could do it fast, OK.  So we went to dinner, Ken figured out the
bit-packing, and when we came back to the lab after dinner we called the X/Open guys and explained our scheme.  We mailed them an outline
of our spec, and they replied saying that it was better than theirs (I don't believe I ever actually saw their proposal; I know I don't
remember it) and how fast could we implement it?  I think this was a Wednesday night and we promised a complete running system by Monday,
which I think was when their big vote was. So that night Ken wrote packing and unpacking code and I started tearing into the C and graphics libraries.  The next day all the code
was done and we started converting the text files on the system itself.  By Friday some time Plan 9 was running, and only running,
what would be called UTF-8.  We called X/Open and the rest, as they say, is slightly rewritten history.
Why didn't we just use their FSS/UTF?  As I remember, it was because in that first phone call I sang out a list of desiderata for any such
encoding, and FSS/UTF was lacking at least one - the ability to synchronize a byte stream picked up mid-run, with less that one character being consumed before synchronization.  Becuase that was
lacking, we felt free - and were given freedom - to roll our own. I think the "IBM designed it, Plan 9 implemented it" story originates
in RFC2279.  At the time, we were so happy UTF-8 was catching on we didn't say anything about the bungled history.  Neither of us is at
the Labs any more, but I bet there's an e-mail thread in the archive there that would support our story and I might be able to get someone to dig it out.
So, full kudos to the X/Open and IBM folks for making the opportunity happen and for pushing it forward,
but Ken designed it with me cheering him on, whatever the history books say.
-rob
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 18:44:05 -0700
From: "Rob `Commander' Pike" <r@google.com>

NTP client in Python

By admin December 3, 2007 Uncategorized 2 Comments

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a protocol for synchronizing the sytem clocks of computers over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. NTP uses UDP port 123 as its transport layer. To test it, start ntp server : /etc/init.d/ntpd start then issue the command:
nmap -sU localhost . You can see ntp listening on port 123 (UDP)

The python program for an NTP client is :

###########################################################
#                    Simple NTP Program                                                                         #
#                    By Maxin B. John (www.linuxify.net)                                             #
#   Simple NTP Client program with command line option                                 #
###########################################################
from socket import *
import struct
import sys
import time
from optparse import OptionParser

Server = ”
parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option(“-s”,”–server”,dest=”server”,help=”NTP server to contact, default 0.fedora.pool.ntp.org”)
(options,args) = parser.parse_args()

# Checking for NTP server parameter
if options.server == None:
Server = ’0.fedora.pool.ntp.org’
else:
Server= options.server

EPOCH = 2208988800L
client = socket( AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM )
data = ‘\x1b’ + 47 * ‘\0′
try:
    client.sendto( data, ( Server, 123 ))
    data, address = client.recvfrom( 1024 )

    if data:
        print ‘Response received from:’, address
        t = struct.unpack( ‘!12I’, data )[10]
        t -= EPOCH
        print ‘\tTime=%s’ % time.ctime(t)
except gaierror:
    print “Network error “
except error:
    print “Error!”

The output of this program is : python ntp.py

Response received from: (’60.243.230.33′, 123)
Time=Mon Dec 3 16:32:58 2007

Now keep your time accurate with Python .