58 GB of Downloadable Bangla Songs!!!

Thanks Rony for the wonderful website. It has tons of Bangla songs, at this moment 13304 songs to be precise. Anyone can download and upload songs to it via ftp. The ftp address is ftp://bangla.homeip.net:2121. You have to create an account before loggin in which is free.

Mahfuz Anam's apology to Tarique Rahman!

This is an excellent riposte by the revered editor of The Daily Star, Mahfuz Anam to the leading corrupt of the nation Tarique Rahman. Mr. Tarique has grown so big in power that he seems to interfere in anything now. Though I do not know the incident exactly, going through the editorial, it is easy to understand that the ongoing "Joggo Prarthi Andolon" has disturbed him so much that he spoke out against it. I think what he thought was he is not a "Joggo Prarthi" (:D) and so felt humiliated by the campaign. I don't think he thought wrong! :D

Saeed Anwar - highest individual ODI score ever made

Saeed Anwar makes 194 runs against India during the Independence Cup in May of 1997. This is the highest individual score ever made in an ODI. If you are a cricket fan and have not watched it then it is a crime!!!

A Late Update

Lot of things happened in last two weeks and I am now in UTD for my phd. I applied for visa more than two months ago. My wife was refused spouse visa and I was referred to security clearance. I was waiting for the security clearance to come. Almost all who applied for visa at the same time got their security clearance. My orientation date was 14th August. I was losing hope and at one stage gave up the hope completely. But dramatically, on the 8th August it came. I only had a handful of days to prepare and fly. After much struggle, I got one expensive ticket to Dallas of British Airways. I flied on the 14th and reached Richardson on the 15th. My friend Arif and his wife came to receive me. I attended the late orientation on the 17th.

There are lots of things to tell among these events. If I start in detail it will take so long that my fingers will start aching. So, I think I should skip most of them and just tell how much I miss my family, my home and my country. I was feeling so bad in the flight from London to Los Angeles that I decided to get back to country after one week. I miss my family terribly. I realized how sweet one's motherland is after leaving it. No country, regardless of how rich, developed it is, is comparable to one's motherland. I am dying for the moment I will be again in my country. I am staying with a fellow Bangladeshi here who is really a good person. I am fortunate to get a Bangladeshi roommate. My friend Arif and his wife are helping me a lot. I am very grateful to them for arranging everything for me before I arrived here. My class has begun on the 17th. The load will increase gradually. As I am a TA here, I will have to do a lot of TA works too. One of them has already begun. I already told my professor that I will go to Bangladesh after this semester. He is a nice man too. He did not disagree.

I hope I will be able to fulfil the purpose for which I came here though I will not be happy here without my family. After I get the degree, I will get back to Bangladesh, my sweet home country.

Amazing!!! 19 downloads in two weeks!!!

Since I uploaded the TrayController project to SourceForge.net, the installers have been downloaded 19 times. Isn't it cool? I am very excited and happy to see this. I really did not expect that much. I hope the software is being used by the downloaders. I am yet to receive any feedback from users. I will be happier to get some suggestions, comments or bug reports from the users.

An excellent criticism of Java

This is by far the best article by Joel Spolsky I have ever read. While reading the article, I wondered whether he read my thoughts before writing it or not. The points he made are very valid and I can no more agree with him. I have been long looking for this kind of articles in the net which will support my view unequivocally. I am sure that some of my ardent java fan friends will be hurt by it, but what he wrote is fact no fiction. I cannot like Pointer-less programming languages for the reasons mentioned in it. C++ is the best (as suggested by the poll in the right side too :-) ), no doubt about it. It is so much powerful and flexible that one can do anything (s)he likes. Chopping off the head to get rid of headache is not any solution. But unfortunately, popular programming languages like Java and C# have done exactly that by leaving out pointers. I was always a fan of Joel's articles but today I have become a bigger fan :-). Sorry Java-lovers ;-).

My first open source project

I created my first open source project in sourceforge.net. It is an application which ejects and closes trays of available CDROMs and DVDROMs. Actually, the idea came to my mind because I needed such an application. My fancy CPU casing adds extra button on the drives' eject/close button. For that it became hard for me to open and close them as the buttons are not of good quality. Closing the trays are even harder as the tray hides the button when ejected. So I needed some kind of software control. Trays can be ejected through windows explorer but they can't be closed. My application adds an icon in shell notification area (the one where the clock resides). Right-clicking the icon opens a menu through which trays can be ejected and closed. Left double clicking also opens a window through which the same things can be done. The application is started when windows starts. I have licensed the project with GPL. So, downloading binary/codes, editing, using etc. all are free. I have not build the homepage of the project yet. But the svn repository can be accessed via the URI: svn://svn.sourceforge.net

/svnroot/traycontroller/code/trunk. The files can be viewed by browser through this URL: http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/traycontroller. I will try to add a nice page in the homepage location soon. I am very excited about my first open source project. It will be very nice if someone really uses it. Any contribution is very welcome. I will be very happy if I get any comments, feature requests or any kind of feedback. Hope, I will be able to build more open source software in future which will be more useful to people.

More Zidane Stuff!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/13/zidane_headbutt_outrage/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dijXiu64nsc&search=a%20new%20way%20to%20solve%20problems
http://funnymovies.net/games/view/541/

A BOLD ARTICLE

I loved every bit of it. This kind of explicit article is very much needed to unveil the masquerades of the corrupt politicians. I thank wholeheartedly whoever posted the article. It should reach the mass people of our country who are perpetually being robbed and deceived by these swindlers. More people should come up with such stories. We are badly in need of a corruption free country.

ZIDANE in Action: A Hilarious Stuff

Visit here and must click the mouse :D:D:D.

However, I feel sorry for him. His end should not be such a tragedy. A great hero he is!

How Brazil Lost, An Analysis

I got this from a friend. An excellent analysis. It supports my view. The inclusion of aged players by the coach ruined Brazil's chances this year.

SAMS Reference Library

SAMS publishing has provided online html copies of some of its books. They are calling it Reference Library. Entire books can be found here. Most of the books are old, may be not much needed these days. But people who really need them can be benefited by the library as these books are almost out of the market now. I think it is a good move by SAMS to benefit the readers.

Shame on Parreira!!!

Parreira is the only person to blame. I wonder how a person not fields his best team and still stays as coach. He killed Brazil's chances even before the tournament by being the coach. Shame on him!!! Shame on Cafu and Roberto Carlos who selfishly stayed in the team whereas they should have retired to provide opportunities to brilliant youngsters like Cicinho. Shame on Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Kaka! They should concentrate more on their clubs to earn millions. Because that's where they belong. The good news for Brazil is Parreira, Cafu and Carlos will no longer be burden of next Brazil world cup team.

World Cup Blog

World cup blog is a great site for world cup 2006. I liked it more than the official FIFA site. In fact, it is far better than that in terms of content. Yahoo did not do a good job in the official site. It seems boring to me. The interface is too crowded and the content is poor and short. The BBC world cup site is a good one. Its look is same as its other pages, they did not use any different template. But the content is better than the official site. It also provided some user feedback option, much like discussion forum. Among these three the blog site is the best. I am getting news as well as people's views here. There are photos, fixture, score sheets, virtually everything. I regret not to find it early. Anyone, who wants to read a lot about world cup, can visit this site.

New Chip Breaks Speed Record

Researchers at I.B.M. and the Georgia Institute of Technology are announced that they have broken the speed record for silicon-based chips with a semiconductor that operates 250 times faster than chips commonly used today.The achievement is a major step in the evolution of computer semiconductor technology that could eventually lead to faster networks and more powerful electronics at lower prices, said Bernard Meyerson, vice president and chief technologist in I.B.M.'s systems and technology group. He said developments like this one typically found their way into commercial products in 12 to 24 months. At 500 gigahertz, the technology is 250 times faster than chips in today's cellphones, which operate at 2 gigahertz. At room temperature, the chips operate at 350 gigahertz, far faster than other chips in commercial use today. I think it is a major breakthrough in semiconductor technology. It was really heard that silicon chips are reaching their limit and optical technology will replace them. But it seems that silicon chips will live longer than expected. The news can be read here.

Joel Spolsky writes on his first experience with Bill Gates' review

This is another mind-boggling article from Joel Spolsky. I liked both the date-time thing and Bill Gates' review part. The date-time part was funny. And the review was funny too but at the same time it provided some valuable insight on how technical Bill Gates is. People used to think that he is just an executive who oversees business leaving all the technical stuff for his subordinates. I am really impressed to see how active he was to read a long review with taking into account every details in only one night. He must be as good in technical side as in business. I also can't agree more with Joel on that a software company should be led by technical people not some MBA type people.

Nuclear Energy: Only solution to our power crisis

Nuclear energy is the only medicament to our ongoing horrible power crisis. It is best both for short term and long term solution. Building many power plants for small production like 200, 250, 400 MW is no more a solution for our country. We build few and more power plant phases out at the same time. As a rapidly developing country, our energy need is growing each day too. So, there is always a gap and that gap is widening. Furthermore, looking not so far in future, fossil fuel is limited in quantity, it will be depleted some day. We will face trouble even before that when the fuel will become dearer. So, it is right time to set up a nuclear power plant. We are long holding a site to build one. We must start building it now. I think we can seek complete help from U.S. They will be costly, but they will provide the most reliable and easy and cheap to maintain technology. Foreign minister sought help from China in this regard. I think government is looking for cheap technology. But building a nuclear power plant will be very costly in any way. So, we have to spend it. But we can spend some extra bucks to get the desired reliability and cheap easy maintenance. The extra money will also be huge, but it is worth it keeping in mind that we have to spend the huge amount only once. Spending big amount initially is certainly better than spending less and then spend every now and then just to keep poor things running. The only thing I am concerned about is whether U.S. will like to help us in this regard or not.

A miracle opportunity for Bangladesh

Right after connecting to SEA-ME-WEA-4, Bangladesh has got a rare opportunity to join another consortium. The new consortium is led by Telecom Malaysia and includes seven countries at this moment. It will lay a cable which will connect south east Asia with U.S.A. The new cable is named Asia-America Gateway or AAG in short. Bangladesh, if acts wisely and promptly, can join this consortium. It will give it a much needed backup to SEA-ME-WEA-4. Currently, the ISPs have to maintain their old vsats just for backup purpose which is not lowering the cost of internet. The new cable will give us huge bandwidth along with the much needed backup. I think, it is a must for Bangladesh to join this consortium. The ruling party must forget its any mean political and financial interest and decide to avail the marvelous opportunity. Otherwise the sad history of 90's will repeat.

Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/06/06/d6060601033.htm

An amazing revenge

This is the most spectacular revenge story I heard any time soon. Amir Massoud Tofangsazan, a con man, thought himself very smart which he actually was not. He sold an out of order laptop by eBay for £375 to Thomas Sawyer, a 23-year-old student. He thought he would get away with it as he did with Debbie McInerney by selling an iPod, which never really reached her. But I think it was the greatest mistake of his life to underestimate Thomas Sawyer and turn down his pleas to refund. In retaliation, Thomas set up a blog about the incident. It is a mocking first-person account which brought fantastic result. When I visited it, the hit counter was showing 2655821!!! This proves that Thomas avenged the fraud with overwhelming success. The anguished Amir told the Daily Mail that the website had made his life a "living hell". The real good news is that police is currently investigating the incident. It is one of the smartest revenges I have ever heard of. So, blogs have found one more use: to take tormenting revenges!!! Thanks Thomas for the novel idea!

An Open Source Scientific Library/Database in C++

Code Cogs is a great site for open source code library in C++. It is the only of this kind in the world. Its intention is to provide open source efficient solutions of mathematics, statistics, science, engineering and finance. It has some excellent notable libraries. Anyone can contribute and be benefited from it.