DotGNU Portable .NET 0.6.6 has been released! I’m really curious as to whether DotGNU or Mono is more mature/better/usable?? If you have any experiences with both, please feel free to add your comments.

Python’s a blast! – This one’s too funny. Highly recommended for geeks!

There’s another blog with the same name as ‘Dynamically Typed’ This is not fair. I had originally thought of this name. I repeat, I chose this name originally and independently!!

It is supposed to be a pun that it is really dynamically typed and also programmers will understand statically typed vs dynamically typed languages….

So, you want to decide your favorite scripting language? – I already had chosen mine – Python. The scores confirm this! -

Python scores: 4905
Perl scores: 3395
Ruby scores: 3750
JavaScript scores: 3285

Yesterday was the last official day of our college (B.E.) lives…I’m feelin’ kinda sad. I wrote the following poem dedicated to all my classmates and friends:

> >

Never Same Again

I don’t know how these past few years flew, But one thing is true, And I say this with a lot of pain. Things are never gonna be the same again.

I’m gonna miss rushing to class at 8.15, And trying to eat in class without being seen. I’m gonna miss talking to you friends everyday, And the jokes and the pranks that we did play.

I’m gonna miss hanging out with you guys, especially the treats, So many of us sitting around in the seats, Talking away to glory, And each telling many a story.

I’m gonna miss the fun when we were trekking, With so many dark tunnels and even the bridges creaking, I’m gonna miss the dancing at the campfire, I’m gonna miss crossing the river (which was like a quagmire).

I’m also gonna miss the lecturers, Who more than often bored us But we still had so much fun with them in class, We never could realize how the time did pass.

I’m gonna miss sitting in the OAT Making fun of each other and laughing so loudly. I’m gonna miss that carefree life As Bryan Adam says it cuts like a knife, but no, it doesn’t feel so right.

I may not be a good poet but I had this much to say, Let us not forget each other after today. I wish this college life never ends, Life is so great with all of you, my friends.

• g2swaroop

Many readers have been askin’ for a PDF version of the book, so here it is!

As always, check python.g2swaroop.net for the latest versions.

Fedora Core 2 has been released! I can’t wait to get my hands on it – Kernel 2.6, KDE 3.2.2, GNOME 2.6, GIMP 2.0, k3b, ALSA, GCC 3.4 and much much more.

Some cool screenshots and it is already a superhit!

If you have already got your hands on a copy, please do tell me.

Here’s an excerpt from ‘The Prometheus Deception’ by Robert Ludlum:

"Inside the cargo bay of the green forest-service truck, Elena quickly assembled her tools. Her laptop was now connected to the optical repeater by means of a twenty-foot cable that ran undetectably under the truck, concealed by dirt and leaves, and right to the junction box. She had a tap in place, at first just listening and watching, not transmitting anything. She had come prepared with loads of software, both commercial and specially written for the occasion. She did what was called a ’stealth scan’ to fingerprint the system, see what sort of intrusion-detection software was present; and she inserted a prewritten script designed to overload the system with an unexpectedly large quantity of data – create a buffer overflow. Then she ran a network packet sniffer to map out the systems on the security network, to find out what kind of network traffic was being sent and received, what the basic organization looked like.

"Within the space of a few seconds, she ‘owned the box,’ as the hackers liked to say. Though she was no hacker, she had long ago made it a point to learn the hacker’s trade, just a good field operative would learn the burglar’s methods, the safecracker’s techniques.

"The training had paid off. She was in."

Hmmm… Gotta study for the CNS – Cryptography and Network Security exam coming up soon!

Yesterday, I was lucky to get to watch a demo of Mrinal & Gang’s COMRADE Robot at Yahoo! They have been working on this since a long time and they were sponsored by Yahoo! during this semester as a project, under the guidance of Kalyan.

Oh, and how is the robot, you ask? It’s simply stupendous, brilliant, mind-blowing, breathtaking, … !!! Please apply all other synonyms as well! I was just numb for 45 minutes just amazed at it – the whole works – the hardware, the mechanical stuff, the software written for it.

When shown a path using a black ribbon tape, it can follow the path and move! It can even avoid obstacles using SONAR. They are now working on a module to generate maps on what COMRADE currently sees, it’ll be something like one of those virtual reality pics we all are crazy about. There is so much more in their TODO list.

Hats off to Mrinal, Jnaneshwar, Sharad and Avishek. Keep up the great work, guys!

(I took two snaps in my mobile phone camera. Hoping to put them up as soon as I get a data cable…)

In this article by S. Gurumurthy, he clearly points out how Sonia Gandhi has been living in India for 17 years and never lived as an Indian. It makes you stop and wonder, is this the only person we could find to look after our country, a country with one billion people?