Hari's Corner

Papa Hari News Service

Ushering in a new era in secure computing, the Papa Hari Foundation announced a new OS, innovatively titled "Papa Hari OS" which will completely revolutionize Operating System security as it exists today.

"The Papa Hari OS is one of our major successes!" said a developer who unveiled the Operating System in a test machine. "Our greatest achievement is that the OS is fast, easy to use and yet absolute 100% secure off the shelf. There is absolutely no way any malicious software or virus could ever get into the machine as we have completely disabled networking, USB drives, CD-ROM, floppy disks and other peripherals. The OS is totally self-contained and will not allow any user to execute any program without foolproof authentication. The OS has no GUI because we do not allow any third party software to be executed on the machine... so there is simply no need for a GUI. You will find that our command prompt is fairly reminiscent of a fairly old operating system but don't let the black and white fool you into thinking that our OS is ancient."

Demonstrating the only built-in command to be implemented so far, the DIR command, the developer continued: "The OS requires that you salute Papa Hari every time you execute any command. This is to allow our users to express their gratitude to us at every opportunity. Currently the OS requires fingerprint authentication before any command will execute successfully; but because we have disavowed supporting any third-party software or peripherals, the Papa Hari OS doesn't support any finger-print scanners yet - however when we manufacture our own scanner with proper device drivers, that feature will work as expected. Till then your fingerprint must already exist in the system."

When a journalist asked how the fingerprint can currently be transferred to the system running Papa Hari OS without any scanning support, the developer promptly dismissed his concerns: "What the user wants is security! Features are always subservient to security, even if something doesn't work. Our users would prefer it that way."

He continued: "Our commitment to security is unrivalled in the OS world. We have gone one step further than a famous BSD operating system in ensuring that absolutely no software can harm your computer and we have achieved our results at a fraction of the effort... In the not-too-distant future, we are planning to release an OS which will require a Papa Hari World Government official to be physically present on location whenever any user powers on their computer. Our security systems go way beyond mere software issues."

A fan of the Papa Hari OS claimed that he had succeeded in getting the famous DIR command to execute successfully after he had written his own device driver for the fingerprint scanner he uses, but he was promptly arrested on charges of hacking before he could make the details known.

Most of those who attended the press conference were impressed with the commitment to security shown by the Papa Hari OS developers. "Executing the DIR command all day long is an uplifting and educating experience," said a committed user of the Papa Hari OS, "Other Operating System users will never have the chance to learn something in as much depth as I have learned in using the DIR command."

However, a discordant note was struck when a cynic claimed that his computer was even more secure when it was not switched on and his friend added that his computer was the most secure because he hadn't bought one yet. Neither of these two gentlemen have been heard from again, but rumours suggest that they could have been arrested on charges of sedition and could have most likely been taken to the Papa Hari Maximum Security Prison to await re-education.

"True security goes beyond computing..." said the Papa Hari Police Commissioner cryptically when asked to clarify on the status of the detainees.

Papa Hari News Service

Following widespread demand from a huge but shy and retiring community of content producers online and in the publishing world, the Papa Hari Foundation for the Benefit of Uncreative, Unrecognized and Undeserving Content Producers (PHFBUUUCP) has come up with a new license that legally protects them from the embarrassment of being attributed and quoted authoritatively.

The new license, labelled not inappropriately "Uncreative Extraordinary" fills an unfulfilled need in the community of writers and artists who otherwise desire to share their work, but do so in a less embarrassing way.

The three-point license is spelled out in the terms given below:

• You are hereby granted full and complete rights to copy, derive from or otherwise trash or share this work so long as you claim it as your own work and desist from attributing the original creator.
• You may make commercial use of this material, if you can. Good luck. You will need it.
• If you actually profit from this work commercially, you are required to keep that information to yourself because a weak-hearted content-producer might actually die of shock and you will have pangs of guilty conscience that will last you the remainder of your miserable existence.

Explanation of "Extraordinary": It is legally assumed that you must be extraordinarily desperate and/or even more talentless than the original content producer in order to use the content for your own purposes. Our sympathies go out to you.

"This content license model has finally filled a growing demand for a truly inclusive and factually correct representation of a huge, but under-represented and silent community of content producers worldwide," said a spokesperson of the Anonymous Group of Extraordinarily Uncreative Writers (AGEUW). "I am truly grateful to the Papa Hari Foundation for recognizing our genuine grievance against conventional copyright laws as well as embarrassing licensing models like the Creative Commons. Being truly uncreative and honest about it, we cannot, in good conscience license our content under the CC model."

In the meantime, many copyright activists has staged demonstrations and protests against this license, calling it "discriminatory and biased." Many critics have also dismissed this license are all hype and no substance.

"When copyright law has been serving the needs of the creative community for such a long time, what is the need for this fancy license? It's all a fad, just like that other one creative whatever..."

When it was pointed out that this license was for the protection of the uncreative writers, the demonstrators vehemently protested against the discriminatory terminology and demanded an immediate and unqualified apology. When asked for an explanation, a demonstrator thundered, "Why do you say writers? There are a lot of uncreative journalists, television show producers, movie directors, artists and musicians." However, he withdrew the demand for journalists being included under the description as it was just too difficult to classify them on any basis.

Many movie directors however, have shown no enthusiasm for the new licensing model whatsoever. In a moment of extraordinary frankness (pardon the usage) a famous director's disgruntled assistant, under the condition of absolute anonymity said "This license is merely an affirmation of the existing conditions of our industry. The script writers mostly remain anonymous, uncredited and underpaid and in most cases their work is crap and copied blatantly without attribution or recognition. We deserve the true credit for being an inspiration to the Papa Hari Foundation."

It is believed that many reality TV show producers have hastily filed an application to cover their work legally under this license.

In order to enhance your commenting experience on this blog, I've added limited BBCode support to my blog software (bold, italic, code/fixed width, quote).

The quote functionality works for all selected text on the page. So if you wish to quote a comment or part of the post, you can simply select it and click the quote button:

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Hope you enjoy the new feature. Let me have your feedback. Do you want any more formatting codes for comments? (except clickable URL links of course)

This is more a quick reminder to myself as much as a tip to anybody who happens to find this information useful. If you find that your wireless networking doesn't work even if your Wireless chipset driver is compiled into the kernel, make sure your kernel actually supports the IEEE 802.11 stack. I found that it's better that these options are built-in rather than as kernel modules. Choosing to build in support right into the kernel, rather than compiling as modules seems to work better for me.

To configure the wireless networking support in the kernel, you need to enable it in the Networking -> Wireless menu of make xconfig or make menconfig utility. Make sure you enable all the options as highlighted in the screenshot below (taken while configuring a custom kernel 2.6.25.20):

Now after you finish compiling your kernel and reboot (provided everything else is configured fine), your wireless network should work (almost) flawlessly.

I would like to write a bit about how a lot of people in online communities of geeks in general have this inherently flawed notion that their choice of OS (mainly *nix based) is due to their earnest quest for knowledge and understanding and that people who don't choose their OS based on their ideas of knowledge are simply lazy, unwilling to learn or understand.

There is a small grain of truth in their argument in the most restricted and primitive definition of 'learning', but I hasten to add that there are a lot of misconceptions and myths which equate the geek-factor with knowledge and the ability to edit a few miscellaneous configuration files from a command-line terminal following explicit instructions equate to learning. In my humble view, nothing can be further from the truth.

To me, knowledge is a very broad term and learning is a process that furthers knowledge. Merely gathering some information, even highly technical information, does not guarantee better understanding of a subject. It might make you a specialist in a very narrow sense of that word, but nothing more than that.

Blindly learning to execute commmands or programs actually hinders the grasp of knowledge because it keeps you away from the things that really give you knowledge. An extreme example of this would be forcing somebody to learn how to edit a text file using a "geek" editor like vi, ed or emacs. If you feel a compelling urge to show your geekiness that way, it is a process that distracts from the real point of learning something new. If editing a simple text file is something that warrants so much effort, then it is equal to a huge waste of time and effort because there are editors that allow you to do it in a much simpler way without any loss of productivity. On the other hand, learning a text editor because you are genuinely interested in its usage is something different, but I would still argue that it's equally time-wasting as text editors are one of the most re-invented wheels in computing since the invention of the microchip. I find the over-emphasis on using specific tools to accomplish tasks that can be done in other ways ridiculous and narrow-minded. It distracts from the objectives of real learning by focusing too much on the tools used in the process. It places too much emphasis on doing something rather than understanding why it is done. 'Learning' in this way has made such people better at following and memorizing instructions, not given them any real grasp or understanding of the subject of learning.

Similarly if configuring a basic ethernet network connection involves hunting down several text files and many different configuration settings, your learning of basic networking concepts is hindered by your being tied down in minutiae. If anybody claims to be a geek by merely knowing how to configure a network connection in a particular Operating System, that's what I question as a severely flawed concept of learning. Another conception which I find amusing is that doing things the 'hard way' is a part of the learning process, even if that hard way happens to be extremely tedious and repetitively boring. Repeatedly executing a fixed set of tasks is something even a monkey can be trained to do. Hell, that's what computers were created for in the first place! To type ./configure; make; make install does not make an end user any more intelligent unless he actually understands the code itself or at least has some understanding of the theory of compiling and linking.

Of course, learning the nuts and bolts of a system is essential for those who want to make a career of it or maybe those pursuing academic specialization, but for all practical purposes, is that information really going to be of practical use to a hobbyist geek?

I'm not questioning the bona-fides of people who use any particular OS because of their personal preferences and their need to assert their own personality through their choice of OS. We wouldn't be human if we didn't feel a sense of pride or accomplishment upon mastering or at least gaining a new set of skills. We wouldn't be human if we didn't - at least to some extent - identify our personality with the things we frequently use in our lives.

What I DO object to is the sense of arrogance that some people develop because of this flawed conception of 'learning' and 'knowledge' - words they frequently use without fully understanding, a ridiculous personification of an Operating System into an object of love or hate, and the prejudice that anybody who doesn't think in that manner must be lazy, unwilling to 'learn' or simply stupid and worthy only of scorn or pity.

Well, the (mis)adventure continues...