OS X Applications for System and Network Administrators

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Admin, Apple, Network, Reviews, Technology

I’m very happy with my Mac and I think there’s no turning back now. The elegance, simplicity, stability and security of OS X can never be compared with Windows. I still have a Windows pc and a notebook with some windows only applications installed. Also one thing to note is that the corporate world is full of windows, so I think a system and network admin cannot completely ignore windows. Anyway, if you’re planning to switch to a Mac, the good news is that there’re enough Mac application for productive system and network administration. Here are the applications I find useful for my daily system and network administration.
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Buddha was not a prince

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Body, Mind & Spirit, Life, Nepal

A newly published book, "The Great Sons of the Tharus: Sakyamuni Buddha and Emperor Asoka", written by Subodh Kumar Singh claims that Buddha did not come from a royal family but a "Tharu" community that today is at the bottom of the social hierarchy in Nepal, living as bonded labourers.

Singh, himself is a Tharu and says ‘The word Tharu comes from Sthabir in Sanskrit, meaning monk or the Buddha. The Tharus are therefore the Buddha’s people.’

In his book, Singh claims that when Buddha came back to his kingdom after attaining enlightenment so many people joined him as followers. But he selected only a few of them and told others to be Buddhists after being indoctrinated by these chosen leaders. These people who became Buddhists were called Stharu, which ‘perverted’ into Tharu, in due course of time. Singh says, Tharus are originally Kshetriyas.

Google Apps for Your Domain

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Admin, Email, Network, Technology

Google Apps for Your Domain is a new free service from Google that includes Gmail (with your own domain name) with 2 gigabytes of storage, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Page Creator. I’ve just signed up for this service to test internally within our office. It’s very easy to setup (just need to change the MX record for the domain) and found it very useful. I think it can be a great package for small to medium sized companies and startups. The privacy issues might hold some organizations from embracing the service. But no hardware, no software and free of charge for excellent email system, IM, Calendar and web for your organization, with Google’s backing is hard to resist. I think they’ll be adding Writely and Google Spreadsheets soon to make it something like Google Office, that everyone is talking about.

What the Terrorists Want

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Life, Links, Security

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article on What the Terrorists Want and how we should be fighting them.

I’d like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

Amazon Astore

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Blogging, Links, Technology

Amazon’s new Astore allows you to create your own Online Store. It’s new Associates product, very easy to setup, allows you to create your store in few minutes by choosing any products that Amazon has to offer. You can link the store to your blog (it stays in amazon’s domain). It would be great if you could create the store in your own domain. Here’s Nirlog Book Store, I created using Astore in 5 minutes.

10 Ways to Exercise the mind

by niranjanPosted on Posted in HowTo, Life, Links

Allen suggests that mind is like a muscle and weakens if you don’t exercise it regularly. He offers very simple 10 ways to exercise our mind.

  1. Regularly solve puzzles
  2. Play a musical instrument
  3. Paint, sketch or draw.
  4. Learn a new language.
  5. Learn how to juggle.
  6. Play Chess, Backgammon, Checkers or even Go!
  7. Play computer games.
  8. Write!
  9. Try amateur dramatics.
  10. Travel.

The Desktop in your browser

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Network, Technology

Desktoptwo is a Flash-based desktop suite. It’s got beautiful interface and has most of the basic application for daily use pre-installed. It comes with 1GB of free storage (you can buy more). It has email program, IM application, MP3 player, blogging client and OpenOffice. It’s in beta and not as perfect as your desktop but for those who can’t afford to have their own desktop this is a very good alternative.

Test your Internet Speed

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Links, Network, Technology

SPEEDTEST.NET is a very interesting online tool that allows you to test your Internet Connection Speed, both download and upload. You can choose to test your Internet speed against servers located in different cities in US, Europe or Australia.

Nuclear war starting in 10 days?

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Life, Random

This is what a Russian News Pravda is reporting.

Our world is on the brink of another world war. It will originate August 22nd in the Middle East. The prediction was presented not by Vagna or Nostradamus but by an American political scientist Bernard Lewis in the acclaimed publication of Wall Street Journal. He is a man with close ties to the Bush administration as well as to the non-conservatives pushing for the radical solution of the ‘Iranian Threat.’

Live-Share — Online file hosting and sharing service

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Links, Network, Technology

Live-Share is a simple, fast and free file hosting and sharing service. I just got registered, it works well with firefox (doesn’t work with safari). Anonymous users are given 300MB and registered users get 500MB of free storage. It’s really simple to use, all you got to do is:

1. Select your file and press upload
2. Receive download-link and share it

Currently the interface is clean but the terms says "advertisements will be displayed on all pages", so I guess ads will start to appear soon. Easy to use but would be great with some features like: grouping, tagging and password protection, if I wanted to share some confidential information. Anyway, it’s simple, free and works well.

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