Cyril Maithily Gupta's Blog

  Knol is this ‘hot’ new venture from Google.com. The same guys who also brought us that incredible search engine that we all so love and use. Knol’s supposed to be a take on Knowledge, a unit of knowledge if you please. At least that’s what the guys at Google think it is. It’s supposed to be the wikipedia "killer". The secret weapon that will take eyeballs away from wikipedia and stick ‘em right where Google wants ‘em.

No matter what Google calls Knoll, and no matter what Google wants it to be, right now the only thing that Knol stands for, is NULL. In CAPITAL letters.

I heard about Knol a few months ago, and when the public beta was launched I expected it to be simple, responsive, effective, and useful, like most products from Google. But this website seems like it was made by Microsoft! It sticks, doesn’t and for most parts is TOTALLY useless.

Knull content
If you go to the Knol frontpage, you will find a lot of articles on medicine. It seems Google’s out to cure a sick world, but that’s not what I was looking for. I found no catigorisation, and no way to reach the freshly submitted articles. Don’t even ask me about the search, almost everything I fed in was MISSING from Knol. In fact I looked for terms from the article I had submitted in the morning, and found nothing. Is this the famous Google search technology, or have they really started recruiting monkeys to filter search results?

Knull policy
Reports on Knol suggest that Google doesn’t plan to edit, or whet the articles submitted to Knol, but judging from the reports that I got from other submitters, the article don’t show up on Knol immediately. Is there some kind of sand-box, or verification going on? If yes then why isn’t the user informed?

The world is U-S-A (Knull Globe)
Google’s got pretty big, and one would like to think that they’re finally ready to go global. You know like Pepsi, Coke and Heinz, but not the folks at Google.com. The world for them is the USA, and nobody else is supposed to submit an article to Knol. When you try to do a name verification, you will be taken to a page which lists only one country: USA. The others simply don’t exist! What the!? Am I in some sort of virtual reality place called India that Google isn’t aware of? Or, how hard is it to put a note that says, "Name verification is only available for USA at the moment."

Knull Future!
That’s what Knol has plenty of. A great big amount of NO future. Not if there are some changes fast. Why did the header keep saying Sign in when I was already signed in? Why isn’t there any kind of organized directory or reference? Why aren’t there tags? Why isn’t there a way to show article popularity (Since Knol will have multiple articles on the same topic). Why isn’t there a way to see other articles on the same topic? Why hasn’t Google fired the guy who took Knol live so prematurely, and so crappily?

History of programming frameworks

In the beginning of time (for programmers), all of the software had to be custom written by the same team. Right from the interface, to the background logic, to tests, and the code to handle user input. Everything was custom coded. There were no common grounds on which two different teams could build their projects.

As it is evident, this is a pretty inefficient way to write code, and building large projects is terribly-terribly hard. As the complexity of computer software grew, computer scientists realized things could not be allowed to remain the way they were.

The programming languages that were subsequently developed were higher level, and had ready made libraries, which held functions that a programmer could call to perform routine tasks like printing data on the monitor, drawing a line, basic math, etc. A programmer could even construct libraries of his own, and connect them to several projects, or even sell them to other programmers.

In higher level languages like C++ this trend was a much encouraged trend. Hundreds of libraries cropped up that let you do everything from handling input devices, to drawing complex interfaces, and calculating complex mathematical functions. They were called libraries, and sometimes when they became more complex, frameworks.

After Windows became the most popular operating system. Microsoft released a set of ready-made libraries they called the MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes), which made windows based software development easier in C++ by giving the programmer quick access to many interface elements, and required functions. The MFC was the most popular framework for years.

Birth of the .Net (Dot Net) Framework

The .Net framework is the result of the natural progression of framework design. The earlier libraries and even MFC suffered from several shortcomings that sometimes created problems instead of solving them for programmers. They were hated as much they were loved (It’s true for even dotnet I guess).
When Sun Micrososystems announced the release of Java, it was given a wonderful response by the programming community, because it solved many of those problems. The most appealing feature was portability, or the run-anywhere power that Java offered. This created a sudden burst in the demand for Java programmers and it became the hottest thing in programming.

An interesting feature of Java was its large framework, which let the programmers get rid of a lot of routine coding.
Another important thing that Java did, was show Microsoft what their available tools lacked, and what could be done to make things better for programmers. Microsoft then sanctioned the creation of a new programming platform that would solve many of the programmer’s problems, and help its retain its position as the leading development platform. The result was .Net framework.

What is .Net Framework & How does it work

The .Net framework is a set of readymade programming functions that a programmer can use to perform many common and vital functions. It also has a comprehensive set of interface elements, that the programmer can use to design the application (software) that he/she is making.

The .Net framework supports the development of both Windows applications (through WinForms), and Web Applications/Websites (through ASP.Net).
The .Net framework is really huge, and is being constantly expanded by Microsoft’s programmers to bring newer, and newer functionality to the programmer. Like C++ library set, the .Net framework is divided into groups (called namespaces), which hold related functions and classes. You can ‘use’ a namespace in your project and get access to all the classes and functions found in that namespace.

The .Net framework is not limited to one programming language. Many programming languages support the .Net framework, and can call the functions from it. The most popular languages that support the .Net framework are C# (pronounced C.Sharp. Created along with .Net framework), and VB.Net. Many non-Microsoft programming languages too have emerged for the .Net Framework.

At the moment the .Net framework supports only Microsoft Windows and its main job is to hide the complexity of Windows programming by exposing it through a easier-to-use, and more logical classes. It stands over the Windows API, and many features in .Net framework make use of the Windows API internally to give you the functionality you need. There are people who want .Net Framework for other operating systems, and Mono is one such project that aims to port .Net Framework to Linux.

For the Internet .Net framework allows the creation of rich dynamic websites through ASP.Net. ASP.Net supports C# and VB.Net programming languages and works on Windows Server. Many popular commercial websites have been created using ASP.Net, an example is Orkut, a popular social website.

If you are running a program that makes the use of .Net, you can only run it if you have .Net framework installed on your PC. If you’ve bought a new computer, or use a newer version of the operating system, the .Net framework will be pre-installed. If you have an older machine or OS, you might need to download and install it. Look on Google.com.

Is Non-vegetarianism destroying our planet? There are experts who think so, and have got evidence to cite.

Not only is non-vegetarianism cruel and brutal, it’s also against the interest of the planet. Simply because earth does not have the resources to feed a non-vegetarian world. According to this article rearing meat animals causes as much as 18% of all global warming. That’s a very high number, and surely a reduction in this is necessary.

Feeding a meat animal till it becomes ready for slaughter takes about 100 times as much food as it would to feed a human being directly. This is inefficient use of already scarce resources, and by being vegetarian you can help feed more people.

Waste animal products are ejected directly into rivers, and waste-pits releasing potent disease causing pollutants into the environment. Rotting flesh from the animal waste helps poisonous bacteria to thrive.

Read the article to know why even Einstein believed that it is important to be a vegetarian.

Server management is a pretty demanding job. You really can’t afford to be an amateur at this job. The reason is: the websites hosted on the server must be up at all times, at all costs. It’s a question of company’s image, reliability, and of course profitability. No one can afford downtime on the server, specially not if you’ve got 10-12 important websites hosted.

That’s why a server admin has to be on the lookout always. He must make sure the server is in peak condition at all times, remove everything that’s eating up performance, and keep an hawk’s eye on early signs of trouble, cause when trouble starts the effect is domino like and everything seems to pretty much crash down at the same time.

I’ve been handling a Windows 2003 server pretty actively from around a year. My server’s got Plesk control panel, which is pretty decent, but I am learning that more and more admin problems have to be sorted out through IIS, and at system level. Plesk can only help set up mailboxes, new accounts, and DNS information.

Since I’ve no background on managing servers, the journey has been tough and educational. Here’s one of the most important lessons I picked up.

"The event viewer is the best friend you got."

Windows server has this nifty application, the event viewer which lists all the notable events that have occurred on the server while you were away. The events are divided into 1. Information, 2. Warnings, 3. Errors. While you can afford to leave Information pretty much alone, it’s the warnings and the errors you must keep a sharp eye on.

The Event Viewer keeps  a record of all runtime errors that occur on the server in your ASP.Net code, and gives you the page address, output of the stack, and the error message. These errors are recorded as warnings. By keeping a track of these warnings, you can detect where your users are running into problems, and  you can use this information to remove problems from your code. Make it a point to visit the warnings every couple of days so that you can make things easier for your users, and for your yourself.

If you host third-party websites that are causing warnings. It is a good idea to inform those website administrators. One important lesson is that IIS has a failsafe mechanism which will cause IIS to shut-down if it sees an excessive number of errors in a certain time period. You can calibrate these settings, or disable this feature, but it’s for the safety of your server and you should ideally have it enabled. It’s better to remove the error, then disable error-detection anyway.

The third type of event is the error, which has got a red danger icon. Errors record things which failed on the server. Some of these errors can cause IIS to stop working, while others can be ignored. Keep a watch on the errors, cause many errors are a sure sign of coming problems and you should ready a backup plan. If you feel the server is going to fail, immediately back up all your websites and database. Regular backups is your most important job as a server admin.

Here’s how you reach the Event Viewer on your Windows 2003 server.

Start Menu –> Programs –> Administrative Tools –> Event Viewer