Entries from Raj Shekhar

Devdas Bhagat has a nice observation about the "value of the network". The question he was answering is in italics

Seen from this perspective, the value of the network probably would be between n to the power 1.414 (square root of 2) and 1.732 (square root of 3).

I would say that it does grow a bit faster than that. Also, as people learn to use the network better, they create value that the original designers of the network never dreamt of. That act of creation drives up the value of the network even more.

This is a work in progress

My email sig prouldy proclaims that I am a "DBA, programmer and slacker". Most people assume that I am a Slackware user (I am not, I prefer Ubuntu ). In worst case, some assume I am a lazy bum.

Slackers are not lazy. A good slacker knows how to do just the optimum amount of work. This is a hard line to draw. For example, if I have to replace some text in a file, I will use a sed one-liner to do the replacement, rather than using a text editor to do a search-and-replace. The first time I do this, I will take more time than the guy using a text editor, since I will have to read the manual and do a bit of fiddling around. However, the sed method is more sclable - when the time comes for replacing text in 5 files, I will have to just modify my one-line script. However, most people who will see me reading the manual and fiddling with the one liner the first time will definately think - "This guy is wasting his time". Being a slacker is the reason why I put up my website. I noticed that on the mailing list and IRC there are some questions that are asked more than the others. So I started documenting my answers in my Wiki. Next time someone asked the same question, I had to point out a single webpage instead of typing in a whole (gasp!) email

Some people think that being a slacker means "doing the least possible in the workplace". I think a true slacker applies slacker-techniques to all parts of his life.

When I started my website (on Geocities), one of my first thougths was - What good will it be (beyond helping my ego) ? There are already so many webpages out there and I possibly cannot say something that others have not said before . I now realize that differences in ideas and opinions matter a lot. When I am looking for a review, I want to hear the good sides as well as the bad sides of the product (book/piece of hardware). I think I am an (almost) normal human being. So, if I want to see ten different opinions about something before investing money into it, I assume others do that too. In a world where companies are always in the run to create a positive image about themselves, it is good to see a page which is not afraid to pull off the ugly mask. If I want to listen different opinion, maybe it would be a good idea to put up my opinion up there too. Maybe someone else will find it useful.

My article on Pmwiki has been published today in Linuxgazette.

it is a bad thing to have a life which does not extend beyond office and books.

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A virus spreading message that I got in my email
" The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment. "

Thanks to egrep for linguists for giving this nice and clear example of using egrep.

There are different ways to match both star and stars within a single search pattern. The most straightforward way might be to tell egrep to look for either the string star or the string stars with the help of a disjunction, expressed with the vertical bar, |. This time the search pattern has to be quoted in order for the program to know where the search pattern starts and ends

    $ egrep -w 'star|stars' sonnets.txt
    Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
    And constant stars in them I read such art
    Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.
    Let those who are in favour with their stars,
    Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,

from Tao of security blog, I came across this

One of the details that emerged from Curt's monitoring of the Invita Security network involved a password used by Alexey Ivanov. When accessing one of his drop sites, Alexey's FTP password was www.pidor.com (Internet Archive available). Think of what an unwary analyst might do with that information. Only someone who is monitoring Alexey's actions might know about www.pidor.com. Say that unwary analyst decides to visit www.pidor.com to learn more about the site. If Alexey or a friend is monitoring Web accesses to www.pidor.com, they could learn that they are being monitored. This case demonstrates how important it is for analysts to not "touch" remote or foreign sites involved in intrusions. You may tip your hand to the attacker and ruin an investigation or recovery effort.