Shane Warne retires

Shane Warne announced his retirement from international cricket recently. Surely, the game will be a lot poorer without him. Warne had single-handedly revived the art of leg spin bowling. No man had such command over a cricket ball as Warne. Before Warne, no one could comprehend that a cricket ball could behave in manners as shown by Warne. All the best in your future Warnie!

Below is a small video where Warne describes his greatest wickets.

Man vs Machine

Last week, the human world chess champion lost a six game match to a computer "Deep Fritz". This is the second time that a reigning world chess champion has lost to a machine. The last time it was Garry Kasparov (he lost to Deep Blue), this time it is Vladimir Kramnik. But last time when Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, the machine was a super computer with custom hardware for calculation. This time it was a much lowly workstation(4 processor Intel) machine. In addition, Kramnik had full access to the final version of the program a month in advance! During the game, Kramnik could also see the opening book used by Fritz, which literally ensured he never came out bad out of the opening. Yet he lost by a margin 4-2.

Let us do a more qualitative analysis of the games and come out with a score.

• Game 1, Kramnik outplayed the machine and looked to have a winning ending. So 1-0! Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 2, Kramnik again outplayed the machine, got a very good position, but the game was always a draw. Kramnik missed a mate in 1 and lost. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 0-1.
• Game 3, Kramnik defends a difficult position against the machine, the game was a difficult draw for Kramnik. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 4, same story as game 3. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 5, an eaqual game with chances for both sides. The draw was a logical result. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 6, Kramnik is outplayed by Fritz. Nothing more to say about the game. So 0-1. Actual result 0-1.

So qualitatively, the match was drawn. But if we proceed a bit further into this superficial analysis, Kramnik played an open sicilian in the last game. This is akin to chess suicide against a computer. He played this since his blunder in Game 2, cost him a point and he had to win the last game. Kudos to Kramnik, for playing this way for atleast a chance, than playing a quiet Petroff. If Kramnik were leading the match going into the last game, he would have definitely settled for a quiet queenless ending, with a draw being the most probable result.

So is the window of oppurtunity for a human to beat a computer closed? Is this the end of human computer matches. I don't think it is. This match has been a great success in terms of a scientific experiment. We should certainly have more such matches, preferably with a diverse set of human players with different playing styles. Maybe, the machine needs to be handicapped a bit in future. This can be a bit embarassing for the human GM's, but this is the reality. With the way hardware, and chess software are progressing, humans will not be able to win a single game against the machine. Some form of handicaps are required to make the matches more interesting, and to give the human player a chance!

More on XGL + Compiz

I've been experimenting with xgl and compiz the last couple of days. My take on this whole deal - Microsoft should be worried! With xgl and compiz not only can we get all the fancy Aero stuff, but even more. There are already so many effects plugins and 'cgwd' themes, that by the time Vista is released 'Aero Glass' might look ordinary. To add to that, xgl works on most current and legacy video cards. You don't need any Directx9 or LDDM to get all these fancy graphics. In short, one can get all of Vista's Aero stuff and more without investing on new hardware! From my own experience, I couldn't get Aero Glass to work on my home PC due to lack of LDDM driver for my graphics card. But xgl and compiz had absolutely no problem with my hardware. They work great and the performance is not bad either. All the sleazy graphics work smooth. Seeing all this, I don't see how Microsoft can justify people to buy new hardware if they want the full Vista experience.

Below is a screenshot of my current desktop. And no, this is not Vista. It is Fedora Core 5!

XGL + Compiz on Fedora Core 5

Well, I could finally get this working on my system! I cannot access the internet from within Linux :( That's the reason for such a long delay. I had to actually download the entire yum repository for XGL/Compiz from office and take it my home PC. But, all's well that ends well! It works great! There is no noticeable lag, and all the animations are smooth.

For installation, I simply followed the instructions given here. Instead of using yum, I installed the rpms manually. There were only a few minor hiccups related to rpm dependencies, but nothing too great to report about. Screenshots coming soon...

Break Windows Notepad

This is a funny way to break windows Notepad, according to a blog here. And no, this is completly harmless, and can be a little fun on a boring afternoon. Just fire up notepad, and type in the text "this app can break". Save the file somewhere, and open it in notepad again. You will see a bunch of garbage. Apparently the flaw is to do with the win32 API IsTextUnicode(), which passes this string off as unicode.

Woman marries snake

A woman from Orissa, claims she was proposed by a snake in her dreams. She has hence, tied the knot with the loved one! During the wedding, since the groom in question was not present in his ant-hill, a brass replica of the snake was kept by the bride's side. The groom in question was a cobra by the way. You can read more here.
Well, what can I say, stranger things have happened... I think.

Are you a nerd?

If you think you are a computer geek, nerd, IT savy etc. take this test to find out.
My own score is shown below, which places me in the "Computer high-geek" category !

Movie review: 36 China Town

First up, the butler is the murderer. If you still want to see the movie after knowing this then read this review! The movie genre is more of comedy rather than thriller. There is hardly any suspense built up to know who is the killer, rather the entire emphasis is on comedy. There is nothing else to say about this movie. Just shut your mind and see it for timepass. Kareena Kapoor looks hot! And yes, there is Priyanka Chopra in guest appearance.
And for those people who really don't want any spoilers, well I'm warning you here that this review is a spoiler, so don't read it.

Movie review: Poseidon

I saw this movie during the weekend. To sum it up, it is a typical hollywood disaster flick. No surprises there! The first 15 mins are used to set up all the characters in the movie, then comes the inevitable disaster which leaves dead a lot of redundant characters. This sets the stage for the actual characters to show their courage,wit etc. to rescue their near dear ones and then try and save themselves. In the process, some of the main characters die leaving behind a lot of emotion for the others. Finally, in the end the remaining characters do survive.
That sums up the movie. Here are some of the highlights. First of the rogue wave itself, it is awesome! This is one of the best special effects scenes I'm seeing after a long time! This movie is a must see just for this one scene itself! I can't describe it in words, just go & see it yourself. Kurt Russell plays his usual self, sacrificing himself in the end. And of course, there's the hot Emmy Rossum.

Vim 7 released!

After a long wait, Bram Moolenaar has just announced the release of a new version of vim. Some of the new features include spell-checking, intelligent code completion, tab pages, internal grep and many more. Go get it here.
For me, vim is the best text editor on this planet period. All emacs fans can go to hell!

Apple's new switch campaign

This can be regarded as Apple's second attempt to get users to buy a Mac. Only this time, they have far more convincing reasons. For those of you who must go and buy these new Macs, it would be better to hold on a bit longer. Firstly, Intel is supposed to slash prices of core duo processors later this month. The new conroe chips are also on their way! We have yet to see Apple announce their Intel PowerMac equivalent. Then of course, there's Leopard.
Most existing Mac users also may not have bought their new Intel-based cousins, since many of their applications still don't have universal binaries. For them it would make sense to wait a bit longer till all their applications have been ported.

Windows Genuine Advantage Spyware!

Well, what else can you call it? As you all know, if you install the latest security updates from Microsoft, annoying popup notifications appear for all pirated versions of Windows out there. On top of it, if you try to kill "WGAtray.exe" (one of the responsible culprits), it starts again immediately. So you have a process that can't be killed, and popups appearing everywhere, if it's not spyware, what else is it?

There are a lot of remedies to get rid of this spyware, but I believe in the old saying "Prevention is better than cure". So the simplest possible solution would be to change Automatic Updates setting to "Notify me but don't automatically download or install them". I would suggest one to do this immediately after installing windows. Now windows will notify you when there are updates to be downloaded. In this case, you will find "Windows Genuine Advantage" update. Uncheck the checkbox, tell it I don't want to be notified of it again, and you are done! For those of you who have already installed this update, nothing to fear, there are lots of sites out there that'll help you get rid of this spyware. Just do a search for it!

Switching to Mac

The world has been turned upside down with the the release of Boot Camp from Apple. There is a good possibility that this will make many to switch over to a Mac, including myself. Windows users for a change can say they have sexy looking computers! Contrary to what many say, I believe this will in fact be beneficial for OS X. Windows users can for the first time feel the so called Mac experience. For novice users, I recommend this ExtremeTech article titled "A Switcher's Guide to Windows / OS X". But for a seasoned Windows user, who has never worked with a Mac, I would highly recommend this excellent piece from Anandtech. Though the article is old, it's a must read for anyone considering a switch to a Mac.

IE7 Standalone

There's been enough rant about this already. Many have run into strange behavior with IE6, Explorer etc. causing many a headache to resolve the issue. For those of you who want to try out IE7 Beta2 without actually installing it or facing post-installation traumas, I would recommend Jon Galloway's IE7 Launch script. This should enable you to run IE6 and IE7 side-by-side, very useful for site developers to test out their pages against this new browser. This method is not recommended by Microsoft, so you are on your own if you run into problems!

Useful extensions for Firefox

For all those Firefox fanatics out there, extensions are nothing new. They all have their favorites. For newcomers, there are tons of sites out there that tell you the must-have extensions to make Fireferret useful. Here's one more from Extremetech which I think will be very useful for a newcomer.