Cyril Maithily Gupta's Blog

Google just launched something that can potentially have a strong impact on the way search works, it can turn search into an even bigger cesspool, or if the community participates, and it’s used properly, then it can refine search.

The concept is simple. Google now lets you mark up results for a search. So if you were searching for ‘Hindi Blogs’ and you see Blogvani, you can give it a push up in your results, signifying that this was the right result for the search. You can also add public comments, so if you’ve got anything to tell other search users, you can do so.

Google says that voting feature is valid for your search result only, but I have a nagging feeling that says Google is going to use the votes to modify its search algorithm, and if not now, then later the votes are going to affect the order of search results on public search too. I think Google is going to spend a little while to gauge the public response and find out if it’s spammer proof.

This is an interesting new development in search, and it’s a feature to keep an eye on for the longer run. If it’s successful, and Google indeed uses it to affect public search result, then we might be entering a new age in search where the community is able to filter out bad search results.

So, is Google going to turn into a mammoth version of DIGG now?

If you’ve got an independent server, self hosted and maintained by you, then there are strong chances that you will run into this baby sooner or later. One fine morning when you wake up, you’ll find that all your websites give you a ‘Server Unavailable’ message when you switch it on. Below you’ll find the typical reason why this happened, and how to fix it.

What happened
IIS is not servicing HTTP requests any longer. Any request for any webpage that comes to IIS is bounced back, with this error.

Why did it happen
In most cases the reason is the auto-protection feature of IIS. IIS has a ‘Rapid Fail Protection’ system that shuts down if there are too many errors in a set timeframe. Typically this is around 5 errors a minute, or so. So if there are errors on any page in any of your websites and it’s being accessed by users too quickly, it will shut down the IIS due to Rapid Fail Protection.

This provision is to guard against any fault that could balloon into problems that can affect the entire system. But isn’t it ironic that to protect your system from shutting down due to faults, IIS shuts down!

What the!!!

How can you fix it

In a number of ways.

1. Make sure every page in all of your websites is error free.

2. Increase the tolerance level.

3. Do away with Rapid Fail Protection!

I recommend the third way. Rapid Fail Protection is a pest, nothing less. Here’s how you can get rid of it.

Run IIS
Right click on the node ‘Application Pools’ in your left sidebar.
Click on the tab ‘Health’
Remove the check on ‘Enable Rapid Fail Protection’

Hope that helps some people.

I believe in the bright future of SAS, but only if the web based software start working more like Applications, without the time lag, and postbacks associated with legacy web applications.

That’s now possible thanks to faster Internet connections, and of course AJAX, and I think Javascript is going to be a very important part of my skillset in the future. But I am not satisfied with the maturity of Javascript as a development platform. It reminds me too much of the VB3 days where everything just happened. Javascript is almost like a pseudo development language. We need something like Silverlight or WPF in the mainstream. A technology that’s web enabled and that supports mature languages like C#, C++.

Now coming to the gripe in the headline. What irks me most about Javascript debugging is the way the entire script block stops working when there’s a single syntax error in any of the code lines. Talking about that, why don’t they make an IDE that warns me if there’s a problem in my Javascript syntax.

And yeah, I seriously want something like option explicit in my javascript code.

Update:

Durlabh told me about JSLint and a Visual Studio Add-in it. I tried it out, and yes, it does hurt feelings, but it also helps you write better Javascript code and save a lot of time that you’d have to spent Firebugging it otherwise.

Thanks!

I have been a Linux user for all of 12 hours now. Kubuntu has a very nice interface, but does not come with as many tools pre-installed as Windows, don’t let that worry you though, there are free tools available for almost everything you want to do, and they are very accessible.

Software Range
Last night I described a tool called Aptitude that lists all the applications in Ubuntu database that can be installed on the OS. That tool was Console based, but there’s an IDE based tool which is just as good. It’s called Adept. Using Adept you can see the list of software that available to you. To install any program, just click on ‘Install’ button and then ‘Accept Changes’. Kubuntu will download the product, install it, and the icon just shows up in your Shortcut menu. Isn’t that wonderful? Why doesn’t Windows have something like that?

Browsing
Konquerer is a terrible browser. It’s got a very slow rendering engine, and I don’t think it has enough support for javascript either. It didn’t support keyboard shortcuts on google reader and I had to shuffle through posts with the mouse. The saving grace is, it looks stunning.

Security
I hate the paranoid, UAC style password verification that Kubuntu puts you through every time you want to do something substantial. There should be an option to disable the buffoonery right next to the dialog that asks you for the password.

Installation
Installing Kubuntu was a piece of cake. I’ve had so much pain with Vista. It takes hours. Kubuntu is smaller, took a lot less time, and I like what I see as much as I like Vista (I like Vista?).

Development Tools
I’ve already installed MonoDevelop and its running perfectly. Gtk has a different commandset for everything, and learning it will take some time. Documentation is sparse, but I am sure I will run into the right repositories if I look.

This post is being written using Linux OS. I am on Kubuntu, and the browser that I am using right now is Konquerer. It’s not a bad browser, but I want to install Firefox. Apparently Linux has something really interesting called Aptitude. It’s a list of all the apps that are available for linux in the open domain. You just have to select the application, and it will be installed. I am trying to learn how this works. Aptitude has a DOS style interface, so it’s not really a very helpful program.

If you’re asking what the hell am I doing in Linux… The answer is, I am here to check out a very interesting product — Mono. I want to see how MONO compares to Microsoft’s implementation of C#, and I want to have a look at the MonoDevelop IDE. The promise of run-anywhere code sounds appealing, and maybe there could be some tiny apps I could write on Mono that would be useful on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I am not really sure at this juncture. All I am doing is experimenting.

My installation of Kubuntu is alongside Windows Vista. Installation was easier than I expected. I downloaded a product called Wubi. This installs Linux on a virtual disk on your Windows machine, and adds an option to the startup menu. It works wonderfully. I am running KDE ver. 4.1

It seems MonoDevelop is easier to run on GNOME, but now that I have installed KDE on this machine, I will attempt to make it work here.

Walking around the corner bazaar I noticed something rather surprising at the magazine-stall – New Scientist. It was the inaugural issue, the very first. What a surprise seeing my old favorite science magazine being sold in India. I and New Scientist go back a long way. This was my favorite journal when I was 15. I would steal off to the British Library of Bhopal (now shut down because nobody came to read anymore) every week and search through the magazine bin for issues I hadn’t read yet. Those guys would let me issue 4 books, but only 2 magazines. By the time the week was over, I would have finished all of them.

I read all the of the issues of New Scientist I could find at BCL. When I came to Delhi, taking the time to visit a library became a distant dream, so I started buying the poor Indian cousin – Science Reporter. Back in those days Science Reporter was Rs. 5 a copy, but the articles were more academic than interesting, and the puzzles were (and still are) pretty inane. They were talking about bird-seed, and chimney soot while I hungered for astro-physics of the variety found in New Scientist. Science Reporter was good, but not fulfilling.

And now New Scientist is here in India, and I can buy every issue they print. Science is fascinating for me as ever, but I must spend more time reading about professional matters (programming), more than the things I love. I hope I will clamor for New Scientist the way I used to.

Maybe when I am old and wasted,
When I am tired, my glory is dead and nobody wants me anymore.
Maybe then I will pause, I will look back and notice,
All things I could have done but didn’t.

Maybe then I will have a little pang of regret,
But at least I don’t have any now.

I think that’s what counts.
Sorry, I just have to rush around.
(from an old poem I wrote such a long time ago, that it seems like a former lifetime)

The change is here.

Congratulations to the American people for voting for liberty, justice and equality.

Some days ago I reported on Forge of God by Greg Bear and that I was very impressed with it. I had another book from Bear in my collection that I had neglected to read till now – Darwin’s Children.

This book is not an easy read. It’s one of the most complex science books I’ve read, and requires a broad-based, multi-discipline knowledge of science. If you don’t appreciate science for the sake of science, don’t pick this book up. For those who’ve studied science for the merit of knowledge, this book provides breakthrough insights in medicine, anthropology and biology.

Yes, I found Drawin’s children more educational than entertaining. The story is indeed there, and present strongly. But the book is truly about the concepts and theories that Bear has evolved about diseases, viruses and human evolution. He explains in great detail how viruses work, and how they affect the human evolution, not only now, but ever since life began.

It makes me think that hard SF writers are really scientists who are too lazy to do all the hard-work on making concrete theories. So instead they write a novel, and present their theories very casually. If the theories stand the test of time and science, they are recognized. Just like Arthur C. Clarke’s rules, and other theories that he described in his books.

Darwin’s children is set in the aftermath of a disease called Shiver, caused by a virus called SHEVA. This virus has modified the genes of the people it struck to cause a different path of evolution for the children. The SHEVA children have special abilities and vulnerabilities. Very different from human beings. A global case of xenophobia causes the death of many SHEVA children and the rest are locked up. Eventually, the world comes to its senses thanks to a lot of factors and the SHEVA children are made a part of human society just like they should.

The funny thing is that I read another book on similar concept from F M Busby. The book was called ‘New Breed of Man’. Compared to Bear’s attempt, that book was very unpolished, not explaining things scientifically enough and sometimes not even caring about science. But the concept was strikingly similar. The cause of the mutation was a vaccine developed to battle a new breed of HIV virus.

Interesting.

If Brian Herbert would have been in India and had written crap, people would have picked it up and worshipped it everyday. That’s the power of legacy that Indians believe in. Why else would we continue keeping a single family in power right since independence. I am talking about the Nehru family.

Now coming to the topic of Brian Herbert. He’s the son of Frank Herbert. The famous writer of the Dune trilogy. Born to a dad like that, one would naturally expect big things. Would one? No, it’s a sin to measure a son by his father’s deeds.

Brian Herbert is a fine writer. Sidney’s comet is funny, and at times even striking, but it’s definitely not Dune because Brian Herbert is not Frank Herbert. Why does the publisher print on the cover then ‘By Brian Herbert, Son of Frank Herbert, the author of Dune.’ That’s no introduction for a self-respecting author. If Brian Herbert deserves a place on the shelves, he deserves it for his own merit.

Now about the book. Sidney’s Comet deserves accolades for the attempt itself. Not many authors have even dared to write humorous science fiction. And the only writer who has pulled it off successfully is probably Douglas Adams, for hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. And even he couldn’t match himself in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

That said, Sydney’s comet tries to be comic, but fails. It’s striking in pieces, but really, who reads novels in pieces? The concept is quite striking, specially Uncle Rosy, the living messiah who keeps a strict tab on his world. Reminds you of Paul Mau’d Dib? Leave expectations out of the door when you walk into this novel. Uncle Rosy is delightful, and fascinating. Not only for his vision, and his gullibility, but also for his pathos, and sense of humor.

Sidney’s Comet would have been a much better read if it didn’t feature Sidney Malloy, the protagonist. Only if the book was about Uncle Rosy. The reader wants to learn his history, and his vision much more than Sidney Malloy’s activities. That book would have been excellent, and Brian Herbert should write it.

That said, Sydney’s comet is readable. It’s not a failure. It’s interesting, and one is interested enough to read it to the end. If I blink out Frank Herbert’s name on the back cover, I appreciate it even more.

Just hoping the next book from Brian Herbert just says, ‘By Brian Herbert’.