I searched for ubuntu ethernet not working. I tried figuring out the problem and I was frustrated eventually. Then I found an amazing solution. I installed “wicd network manager” from synaptic manager. This fixed all my internet connection problems. It is so simple that it doesnot need a guide.
I asked my cousin Sunny to book a ticket through IRCTC using SBI Virtual Debit card. This was right after the announcement of SBI Virtual debit card. This happened to be the right opportunity to test it. The entire transaction went smoothly but my mother suddenly had a question. What if you cancel the ticket? Do you get the refund back to your account? This is especially because the card expires in 48 hours. To confirm this I mailed the sbi customer care and I found that you do get your refund back for a canceled transaction.
The following is the exact email conversation between me and the support team. You can see that for yourself 
I hope this saves you some panic and work.
“”
For any further question on Virtual card product,
please call us on 1800-102-8724(Toll free) or send an email to sbisupport@cardbranch.com.
And also can visit our website www.sbi.co.in or www.statebankofindia.com or www.onlinesbi.com
Yours faithfully,
State Bank Virtual Card Team
—–Original Message—–
From: “Ravikanth Andhavarapu” <ravika********@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, 6 May, 2012 9:29am
To: sbisupport@cardbranch.com, feedback.virtualcard@sbi.co.in
Subject: Return money on cancelled transactions done through Virual card
Hello,
I have booked a railway ticket using virtual debit card. If I cancel the ticket will i recieve the refund because it is past the 48 hours of limit of the card. A lot of people are looking for this. i will post this on internet when I get a reply. For instance HDFC allows this - http://ub7.net/do-hdfc-
regards,
Ravikanth A ”"
“Confidence is one of the most important ingredients for success”. If I tell you that is one of the biggest blunders you can make you probably wont even listen to me. Let me illustrate. Who caused the recent financial meltdown? Is it the confident people or the people with low confidence? People with low confidence would never be able to take such decisions. Only confident people can cause such disasters. I am sure you are against this argument because every successful person you know says that confidence is very crucial. Now that you have heard enough of that why don’t you see if there is any sense in what I am saying. You are probably thinking “But so many people cant be wrong!”.
We have to explore the fundamentals of confidence if we have to deal with this. For quite a few successful people confidence is built unconsciously. By the time they think about confidence they find themselves confident enough. Let us see an example of how confidence is built up.
Puliraja is a good kid who does mathematics very well. Everybody including his teachers told him he is smart. He was not so good with other subjects. He reasoned that if he is so smart he should also be good at other subjects and it is just a matter of working hard. He worked hard but it did not work out. He worked even harder then figured out what he was not doing right. He corrected them himself and lo he became a confident and smart student. He could not be wrong because everybody says the same thing. Puliraja found that whenever he had a hard time dealing with something he knew he was smart and that confidence helps him solve his problems.
Puliraja enrolled in a university and graduated with flying colours. He got employed in a good financial institution. His achievements have led him to rise fast in the company. One day he became the CEO of the company. Puliraja, CEO of Gali Brothers. A lot of his solutions were very creative and they worked out. He then embarked on creating a financial instrument. A lot of people told him that it is dangerous. He is confident and past achievements are a proof. One thing led to another and Gali Brothers was completely wiped out due to a financial disaster.
You are right it is easy to criticise after something happens. We are not here to discuss what is easy or tough. The fact that Puliraja is confident did not stop the disaster from happening. Let us first see why confidence is necessary in the first place. When you do something new or complex there is a certain degree of uncertainty involved. Anything which is unknown creates fear. This is a natural trigger to help you to be careful in dangerous situation. If we do not address this fear properly it will not let you think clearly or work properly or it won’t even to start doing something. If you lived in a jungle this fear would have been tremendously helpful for you because it prepares your body for an escape. The fear can take several forms the most important being self doubt – can I do this? People use several ways to address this fear. Some call it believing in themselves, some call it being confident and a few others use God for this. There are also quite few people who keep telling themselves “I can do it, I can do it” just to handle the situation. The name can be anything but the game is dealing with fear.
Building confidence is a way which is quite effective to deal with this fear. It gives some stability to your thought process and lets you work properly. The problem is that we tend to use confidence as a substitute to clarity. Confidence is a cheap substitute to clarity. Take the example of crossing busy roads in India. Just because you are confident you cant just cross the road closing your eyes. You have to observe the traffic time your movement and cross the road. Of course if the fear of the crossing road gets to you very badly, you can’t even begin crossing road. Unfortunately in life because we have confidence we don’t seek the necessary clarity to handle the situations we encounter. This is because we reason saying I have been successful in doing so many thing in past so I will be able to do this. This is cheap psychology not a great way of succeeding. You are just trying to handle your self doubt or fear.
How do you handle this “lack of self confidence” or the self-doubt or fundamentally the fear?
The first thing to do is to prove to yourself that doing the right things is the reason why you get things done. It does not matter who you are. Just reading these two sentences a hundred times wont do any good. You will forget everything when the fear gets to you. You have to realise this yourself by doing things yourself. Start doing things which you can handle. Increase the complexity of those things until you realise that “doing the right things is the reason why you get things done”. If you want such opportunities all you need to do is to volunteer some help(do something which is complex enough).
Over time you realise that it has nothing to do with people. It is just about doing right things. It is just that some people have developed the necessary clarity to figure out the right things in a given situation and they have a higher success rate. The funny thing is that even if you do the right things for the wrong reasons it works out!
What are you currently doing?
As of the July 2011 I was working on developing a UAV with my prof at IIT Madras. We are waiting for the release of next set of funds from the government. In the mean time, since this cracker project closes in three months (maximum), I got involved.
Of all the things, why crackers?
Firstly I did not plan for this. It just happened because of an accidental invitation by a friend of mine(Viswanath M)- the partner in this project.
What were you thinking?
Well, firstly a part of the business is same whether you are selling crackers or airplanes. My thought of this was “when was the last time I acted upon an Idea I had”. I am looking at it like quick mini-start up experience.
But crackers?
Well, yes this was a difficult one. Firstly, because they pollute environment. Secondly, because I am not actually creating a real product.
They pollute environment:
If it is us, atleast we are doing something about it by helping plant trees. Better us than someone else
I am not actually creating a real product:
It wont be quick if I actually create a real product.
I am primarily in it for the learning experience and I really haven’t planned anything after this Diwali.
If you are on a limited connection on BSNL you will want to check your broadband usage. There are several accounts. You need to get your PORTAL ID and PASSWORD. This is not something you create. This is not the one you use to connect to Internet. BSNL is supposed to give the portal login details. If you donot have it call your LOCAL BSNL office and ask for it. They will just ask you for your landline phone number and let you know over phone. Once you get it. Just use those details to log in to http://www.data.bsnl.in/wps/portal . The rest is easy once you log in.
IIT Madras has this series of lectures called Extra Mural Lectures where they get the big guns in their respective fields to talk on their respective subjects. A few of them leave indelible mark on the students. I had the opportunity to attend one of his talks at my college. I like the way he started his talk. The first question he started with was why politics is important. The following is a summary of what I learned from his talk at the insti and other videos I watched on youtube. It was difficult to find space to stand in the lecture hall on that day. I guess that was not a surprise.
Why politics?
Politics according to him is one of the biggest levers which mankind wields. A small change from those in power can make a really big difference to the people. The point is if you want to make a difference to the lives of people in the country then politics is a great place to do it. He quoted of an example where spending about 36 crores ends up saving the lives of about a million kids per year if a certain vaccine is administered to the kids. Changes of this type can only be done through government. It is sort of obvious because no one else has such a large network.
Corruption
Contrary to what we think India as a country is highly ethical – this is not a blank statement. Readers digest conducted the following experiment about 20 years ago. They left envelopes with some pretty good amount of cash in each of them at several places. They found that about 85% of the finders were trying to return the cash to the owners. Very recently they did a similar experiment to see if this has changed. They left pricey mobile phones at several public places and found that about the same percentage of people are trying to return the phones.
Corruption in politics
We are not alone in this game. Between 1850 and 1900 Britain politics was extremely corrupted. The legislator of a certain constituency at the end of his term did the following. He put up a notice saying he had to spend about 3000 pounds to become the legislator of that constituency and earned about 100 times that money. He did this when he lost the next term. Some other guy spent 8000 pounds to become the legislator which made him lose. He further informed the people that he bought another constituency for 3000 Pounds for the new term and he did not really loose. After 1900 the corruption has declined drastically. The point is its a part of progress and there is nothing which is hopeless about it.
Voting:
I am not going to bull shit about this. At this point of time voting does really bring about any tangible immediate benefits to the voter. Lets not get unrealistic and patriotic about this issue(If you think supporting India while it is playing cricket is patriotism I cant really help you ). To be frank not many people are motivated to vote to save the country. Everybody has their own share of problems in their life to address. Common, when the vote does not do a damn thing to my life why would I want to vote.
How corruption is almost institutionalized in politics in India:
View point of the people
Rich:
It does not really matter to them whether the country is corrupted or not. If the country is corrupted they use it to their advantage and earn more money. If the country is ethical they just have to change their strategy to earn money. When it really does not matter to them why would they be interested in doing anything to make this country ethical. In some cases it is advantageous for them to have corruption in the system.
Middle class:
No hope. The middle class does not have any problems with their basic needs. In their perception it really does not make any difference in their lives whether they vote or not. The roads, drainages and everything are same. If that is the case it is sensible for me to NOT vote and save some time. Common, I am just being patriotic about myself and not being patriotic about my country. Why is the situation this way? You have a problem with your phone line or power you want it solved you call the local office and they wont help you out. Your vote is supposed to give you some authority to ask these people about this. Your local government is powerless to do anything sensible because the power is sucked out of them and it is really in the hands of MLAs and MPs. You cannot even touch the see the MLA forget about talking to him. The government is highly centralized and it needs to be decentralized. Whomever you vote wont change this thing. Why would they? If they do that the MLA/MP will not earn as much money as he is currently earning.
Poor:
These are the only set of people who get some kind of tangible immediate benefit when there is election. To be frank these guys would love election everyday . They are probably highly convinced that the only certain thing about the election is the liquor and food on the day of election. They vote whoever pays them more. They are being fair to the people who are paying them. I would seem like a dumbass if I ask them not to do it. All the reality about a change in their future does not make sense to them since it does not work in their perception.
The rich are anyway safe. The middle class does not have any hope and they don’t seem to expect anything. The poor is happy with the day of election because in their perception that is the only benefit.
View point of politicians:
why are they in politics? Ideally politics is primarily the place for power hungry people not for the money hungry. Business is primarily the place for money hungry people. Currently Indian politics is the only place where you can get both power and money at the same time- because of the centralized control. If you can get it, doesn’t it sound like an excellent deal- double dhamaka? This is the case for the set of people who have different set of ethics than the ones we commonly presume.
Now the guys whom we deem good first need to get into power to do anything. How do they do that? They have to get votes from people. For this to happen people have to know(and believe) that this person is what he says. Jayaprakash Narayan is an outlier. People got a chance to see him working when he served as an IAS officer. How can normal build trust in the people? They have to build it slowly. This means politics should not be one’s profession. It has to be a side activity for a long time. Everybody wants results fast. Even politicians want it fast. If you want things fast you need to cut deals with people who have control over large groups of people. This is what is happening now. By the time politicians come into power they would have cut so many deals that dont really have anything to give to people. Cutting deals is what we call corruption.
Do you see how the cycle works? There is a need for a change in the governance system (decentralized control) before you can see the results of your vote in reasonable amount of time. To change the system we need to vote. But the tendency is not to vote until we see a clear benefit. The way out is to educate people on this and let them know that this the only way.
This post might spur quite a few controversial comments(feel free to comment though). I do not intend that. Please try to understand what I mean. I have put in decent amount of effort to make sure “what I write” and “what I mean” are pretty close. The way I see it this is one of the best posts I have written. Happy new year!
There are levels of misunderstandings. Misunderstanding between people is common place! Not understanding what one is talking about is a whole new level of misunderstanding. Common, if you don’t know what you are talking about and you don’t know that ‘you don’t know what you are talking about’, its a pretty bad situation to be in – I don’t want to be in it. Now, that sentence was confusing, read it again if you have to. Even if you go to a highly illiterate person and ask him what God is he will have his own version of what he means by the word “God”. I am not going to discuss whether it is sensible or not. I only assume that he has his own understanding of what God is. The word which is PROBABLY more deeply misunderstood than the word “GOD” is “passion”. I am not going to get into the dictionary meaning of it. I am going to tell what I have observed!
Level 1:
This bunch of people usually don’t know what they are talking about. They use it to get around the situation. They really are not serious about it when they use the word “passion”. This is an excellent way to end arguments. If someone asks me why I am building a robot or took a certain job and if my answer is that I am passionate about it the conversation moves to the next topic. Not many people really dig deeper. Discussion usually does not happen at this level. Some of us find it strange to ask why they are passionate about something. We take it as a given.
Level 2:
There are three camps(groups) in this level. This bunch knows what they are talking about but they mostly don’t have a clue of what people in other camps talk about.
Camp 1:
These guys associate themselves with fields/ideas. I am passionate about aerospace/finance/biology- you hear these kind of arguments from this bunch. Some of them are passionate about ideas. Some of them end up like this because they are fascinated by these things when they are young. They are downgraded versions of game fanatics and celebrity fanatics. The difference is that these guys are fascinated with abstract things and some of them act on their passions. It appears as if they are possessive about their passions! If you don’t like a guy who is like this you say “That idiot is stuck with his aerospace”- if he is passionate about aerospace. These guys are extremely proud about their passions. Even categorizing this way hurts them pretty deeply. Outsiders have no clue of why they are the way they are.
Camp 2:
These guys associate themselves with ideals. People don’t want to talk about these guys because we look bad socially if we talk pragmatically about these guys. For instance if you can see people fighting against rape, corruption with insane amount of efforts. These guys usually are victims of such crimes and they make it their life mission to fight against. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not belittling them. I am just trying to understand where they are coming from and why they are the way they are. Whatever be the reason for their passion they end up doing some benefit to certain sections of people.
Camp 3:
This camp looks most confusing for outsiders. These guys seem to be doing infinite things and they keep saying that they are passionate about all those things. Sometimes we wonder if these guys are hypocrites. The fact is a major portion of these guys are introspective. They keep asking themselves why they are passionate about the things they do. If you notice you can find a common thread among all their passions. They like certain type of activity. For instance a friend of mine likes to bring order to things in whatever he works in. It does not matter if it is engineering or room cleaning. The activity is same. I have seen very few people who are this introspective at my age group. This is also the reason for them to be successful in several fields. Though it looks as if they are doing different things, it is the same thing for them. A good example is people who like poetry. These guys appear as if they are in camp 1 and camp 2 but what they really like is the activity. Since the word “poetry” is a noun we usually think that they are in the first two camps.
The take away from this discussion is not to decide which camp/level is better. It is just to be aware of the camp we are in so that we understand the people from other camps . This categorization is only for convenience. Please don’t focus on that and miss the whole point.
Mistakes are not always unpleasant. For instance the following picture is an example where it was clicked a little earlier and I haven’t captured anything like it after this.
Mom(on phone at home): Wait a minute. Let me turn off the music
Me(on phone at my lab): Don’t worry let me take care of that.(I paused it using one of the remote desktop clients)
Mom(completely shocked – she started using a computer just about an year ago): How can you switch off music by being 1000km away?
Technologically it makes complete sense for us but we still can’t dismiss the wonder in us when it happens the first time. Remember the first video chat of yours?
I was talking to a friend of mine about this. He used this to play a prank in his hostel. This guy switched on his computer and left for home. He set the manual volume control to the maximum when he left. He sshed to it from his house and started playing music at full volume very early in the morning(He most likely chose a Sunday). His wing mates woke up and had no clue of what was happening(the official phrase in IIT is “they bulbed”). Imagine it – ROFL. In a couple of minutes they were fully awake and started thinking about how to turn off that “bloody music”- he obviously locked the room when he left. They suddenly remembered that the power switch of rooms can be accessed from outside. They used it to turn off the music. All they had to was switch it off and on.
My friend seems to have figured out a work around for this. The power switches(in IIT) which are outside the room are paired. I mean when you switch it off from outside both you and your neighbour looses power. That means your room neighbour would not want to keep it off for long. The solution he mentioned in passing is the following:
This only works in secured private networks like the ones in IITs. We can configure the BIOS in such a way that it automatically starts up when it receives a certain set of packets of data. So when your neighbours actually switch off the power and switch it on you can get it booted and continue with your prank 
. I can imagine a solution for this also but I will leave it to you guys to both play the prank and to counter it. You guys are anyway capable of both Have fun
Caveat: I am not responsible if somebody complains to the authorities and if you are thrown out of the hostel because of that. This is intended only to be informative but by all means I would like to hear your experience
I was ill for a couple of weeks after my last blog post. I lost enthu after that. I want to thank all those guys who prodded me to restart it. I want to particularly thank Hari for reminding me thrice and recently sending this facebook message which really made me do it. Thanks I actually have a few blog posts in debt which I need to post. Those are serious topics and I decided to restart with something lighter. On a different note I will disclose the name of the prankster only if he allows me to do it.
I am assuming you are working on linux.
For IIT Madras users. It was always a big pain for me to set the repositories. Here is the deal for ubuntu users of IIT Madras.
System->Administration->Synaptic package manager
Set the following two things
1)Settings->preferences->network
Click on Direct connection to internet
2)Settings->Repositories->Ubuntu software (by default it will be on ubuntu software)
select download from http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/ubuntu – you can do this by selection other in the selection which will lead you to the ftp site i mentioned
Click RELOAD once this is done- please dont forget to do this. Repositories are set
As I mentioned before I am assuming you have installed qt by downloading it from the nokia website. Once you have installed qt do the following
uninstall:
libqt3-headers
libqt3-mt-dev
qt3-dev-tools
install:
libqt4-core
libqt4-dev
libqt4-qt3support
qt4-dev-tools
source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=593183
Download “C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4, Second Edition
by Jasmin Blanchette; Mark Summerfield” from gigapedia.com. Yes it is an ebook. Write your first program. The instructions are very clear in the ebook – even I could do it