Shantibhushan Naik

Tag: 2

  • India Trip 2009 – Photos

    Some photos from our recent stay in India.

    Will be sharing a few videos as well !

  • Happy New Year 2010

    A warm Happy New Year 2010 to all of you !

    Happy New Year 2010 to all of you !
    Happy New Year 2010 to all of you !

    —
    Amrita, Nicolas
    Elena, Shantibhushan

  • Tired of teaching how to think

    Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story:

    “Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

    I read the examination question: “Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.”

    The student had answered: “Take the barometer to the top of the building,attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.”

    The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics.

    At the end of five minutes, he hadn’t written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: “Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch.

    Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building.”

    At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague’s office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.

    “Well,” said the student, “there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building.”

    “Fine,” I said, “and others?”

    “Yes,” said the student, “there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and his will give you the height of the building in barometer units.”

    “A very direct method.”

    “Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building.

    From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated.”

    “On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession”.

    “Finally,” he concluded, “probably the best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent’s door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: ‘Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer.”

    At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.

    The name of the student was…

    Neils Bohr

    The Nobel Prize winner in Physics 1922

  • How to manually uninstall Symantec Endpoint Protection client from Windows 2000, XP and 2003, 32-bit Editions

    Much recently to my dismay, I figured out that I cannot remove Symantec’s Endpoint Protection from my own laptop without administrator password. I do not own this password, and I do not want anybody other than me permitting me what to uninstall. Hence I went ahead for manual uninstall according to these instructions (from Symantec’s own site) below-

    How to manually uninstall Symantec Endpoint Protection client from Windows 2000, XP and 2003, 32-bit Editions.

    The instructions are crisp and clear. I could manually uninstall following each step of those instructions, but there is one big trouble. The instructions talk to removing over 100’s of registry keys, values which I believe is sheer impossible manually. Why didn’t Symantec simply provide a small tool which has all those instructions bundled in a simple click-n-go fashion?

    I have tried to create a small registry file which can automate the removal of registry entries Uninstall Registry entries for Symantec Endpoint Protection
    For all other manual deletion of files, it would be great to write a small AutoIt script compiled to an exe. Maybe sometime later…

  • SSH : Forwarded connection refused by server: Administratively prohibited [open failed]

    Change localhost to 127.0.0.1 and it should work. 🙂

    If that doesn’t solve it, problem might be in sshd_config or authorized_keys2 – Metawerx Wiki: SSHTunnelTroubleshooting.

  • Solr replication

    1)On solr.master:
+Edit scripts.conf:
solr_hostname=localhost
solr_port=8983
rsyncd_port=18983
+Enable and start rsync:
rsyncd-enable; rsyncd-start
+Run snapshooter:
snapshooter
After running this, you should be able to see a new folder named snapshot.*
in data/index folder.
You can can solrconfig.xml to trigger snapshooter after a commit or
optimise.

2) On slave:
+Edit scripts.conf:
solr_hostname=solr.master
solr_port=8986
rsyncd_port=18986
data_dir=
webapp_name=solr
master_host=localhost
master_data_dir=$MASTER_SOLR_HOME/data/
master_status_dir=$MASTER_SOLR_HOME/logs/clients/
+Run snappuller:
snappuller -P 18983
+Run snapinstaller:
snapinstaller

You should setup crontab to run snappuller and snapinstaller periodically.

    Re: Solr replication.

  • 郵便番号データダウンロード – 日本郵便

    Comes handy in case you want to generate lots of sample Japanese data.

    Around 120000 rows of postal data, with kanjis, hiragana, katakana present for each address.

    郵便番号データダウンロード – 日本郵便.

  • vim Settings in the File You’re Editing

    Vim scans the first and last few lines of the file for modelines, if the modeline option is on (which it is, by default). If it finds any it will apply those settings as if you had typed them in manually using :set in command mode.

    #!/bin/sh
# vim:ts=2:sw=2:expandtab

    Übergibson: Embedding vim Settings in the File You’re Editing.

  • Dell 5150c not noisy any longer

    My desktop, a Dell Dimension 5150c, purchased about 3-4 years ago, was annoyingly noisy for a while. Last time when I changed the PSU, I thought the annoyance would go away. But it didn’t. The CPU fan, San Ace 80, was the main culprit. At sometimes (which was almost everytime) it used to power the CPU fan so loud, that to listen to music or watch a video, we had to pump up the volume to almost twice than usually should be.
    Today I took up in my mind to replace it, and switched to a Kama-Flex.
    Superbly quiet, about 2500 rpm, and cooling efficiency nothing comparable to the older one.
    Was worth the try!

  • FOUND!!!

    Shevati mala have hote te milale!
    http://www.in.com/music/track-hari-om-pranav-omkar-shiva-192793.html

    Mazha lahaan pani radio war aikaycho.