Microsoft to offer free anti-virus software

This is a news report that I came across where Microsoft have said that they are going to offer something for free!!! From when have they become so generous?

Microsoft said on Thursday that it will soon release free anti-virus software so people on tight budgets won’t skimp on protecting
their computers from hackers.

A beta, or test, version of Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) will be publicly available for download beginning June 23 in Brazil, Israel and the United States. It is to be rolled out in other countries later in the year.

“Cost and performance barriers prevent many consumers from using up-to-date security software to protect their PCs,” Microsoft said in a statement.

The US software giant described MSE as “a no-cost anti-malware solution that provides consumers with quality protection from threats including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.”

The technology firm said that effective anti-virus protection is a “must-have” for computer users given increases in the number and severity of attacks by cyber criminals using malicious software to infect machines.

Paying to buy and routinely update computer security software “does not meet the needs of many consumers,” including those in emerging markets where money and resources are scarce, according to Microsoft.

The Redmond, Washington-based company said it will automatically update MSE for users.

Whats new in EJB 3.1

Few interesting new features are being added in EJB 3.1, the main ones are listed below. Asynchronous invocation is definitely a BIG plus.

1. no-interface session beans
2. Singleton session beans
3. Asynchronous invocation of Session beans
4. Global jndi names
5. TimerService enhancements
6. EJB Lite
7. Packaging enterprise beans within a WAR
8. Embeddable EJB containers

More details at

http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=EJB3-1Maturity

Did you know? New things I learned about Servlets

I learnt few new things about Servlets recently

1. SingleThreadModel has been deprecated since 2.4 specification

2. Servlet’s init method should throw UnavailableException if it cannot complete its initialization

Smart and funny ways to save money during recession

Loading Files using Java in a location independent way

Location independent access to Java Resources is a nice tutorial if you would like to know how to load files in java without specifying absolute paths. In a nutshell its done by using methods getResource and getResourceAsStream method in class Class. There is another set of methods in ClassLoader for loading system resources.

Smart and funny ways to save money during recession

Import test and static data using Hibernate’s hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto

Hibernate comes with a nifty feature that makes it unnecessary to use DBUnit or any tool for initializing your test database with data before the unit and integration tests are run. Ofcourse you need to be using Hibernate Core or its JPA module to take advantage of this. Steps to achieve this are very straightforward

1. Configure Hibernate’s hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto property in the persistence.xml to one of the allowed values. e.g. The following configuration tells Hibernate to create the tables as per the given JPA/Hibernate mapping

<property name=”hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto” value=”create”/>

2. Place additional tables/sequences/trigger creation scripts and the test data insert statements in a file with name import.sql and place it in the runtime class path. In case of eclipse, put it directly under build/classes.

3. Make sure the insert statement has no newline character

That’s it!!

YM

Investing in Index funds – So boring but I will still do it

I came across the book “The bogleheads guide to investing” in the public library recently. I took it since the name Bogle sounded familiar and I had only 15 mins to choose a book before the library closes down for the day. I assumed it was written by John Bogle but it was not be so. It had three authors – all leaders of an online forum called bogleheads who are basically diehard fans of John C Bogle’s investment philosophy. I was sceptical but the book was quite ok. The opinions and advice of the authors had lots of common sense and some of them had really caught my attention and I really want to put them in practice even though my ego is still actually reluctant to follow them.

One of the points was to invest a bulk or all of your money in index funds – equity and/or bond. I am also a DIY investor who started a year ago, right at the peak of the Indian Bull Run. And I don’t have to say that I am not doing too well with my portfolio. It’s obvious isn’t it? But I don’t know if that’s attributable to the financial crisis that swamped the global markets since I started or it’s my poor stock selection. Anyhow!! Coming back to the topic of Index funds I know for sure that investing in these funds are the easiest and the most efficient, and perhaps most assured, way to long term wealth. It does not need much of your time – you don’t have to spend hours going through company’s financials, prospects for the sector, profiling the quality of the management etc. Basically you don’t have to do anything except for choosing an index fund with good track record and low expense. That’s it!! It’s as simple as that.

But the problem lies in this simplicity. Is it not too boring? Where is the challenge, where is the uncertainty, where is the thrill? Don’t we want to beat the market and those highly paid and fancied fund managers? Yes, we certainly want to do that and we can do that – that’s what our ego tells us. But if you really let your commonsense rule then you know for sure this is the way to go forward. So, reluctantly, I am going to look for an index fund that gave decent returns over 5 year period and has a low expense ratio and put in 50% or more of my money. Rest I will manage actively to feed my ego. I may do well or may not, I don’t know yet but what I know for sure is that the 50 odd % of my money in the index funds will do its job of compounding my wealth at decent percentage every year.

So, now let me focus on choosing an index fund!!

Posted originally at http://theindiastockmarket.blogspot.com/

An update on the Tata Nano!

This is a follow up to my last post where I was wondering about the status of Nano and the lack of media attention on it esp since there are no problems attached to it anymore.

I just came across this article on rediff where they mention that Nano will now roll out in the first quarter of 2009 and the exact date has not yet been decided. Nano seems to be undergoing road tests. You can read the news report here

Whats with the Tata Nano project?

Have you heard anything on the Tata Nano project of late?  I did not. This project hogged the limelight till the time it moved to Gujarat, after which everyone seem to have forgotten about it. Of course, much larger happened in the mean time esp the Mumbai bomb blasts which, oddly,  seem to suggest that bad news follows Tata’s every where. But I think the Mumbai blasts and the Mamata’s senseless agitations actually helped Tata a household name within India as well as abroad which might help them in the long run ini saving costs to build up a brand.

ym

http://yourmitra.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/do-indians-really-stink-can-we-do-something-about-it/

Do Indians really Stink? Can we do something about it?

It was just a pure accident that I stumbled upon a post where the topic of odor from Indians was discussed. I searched on the internet and found many similar topics and it was mostly from the US. This perception really surprised me.

 I am an Indian and had worked and lived in various countries outside India. The perceptions, which I felt , about Indians varied from country to country and it boiled down to the type of Indians that these people came in contact with. For example, people in Thailand and Singapore think Indians are low lives, that they stink since they don’t bath regularly. For a middle class Indian, like me, it sounded ridiculous as bathing is an integral part of our lives and bathing atleast once a day is considered a must in almost all the homes I know. But on deeper analysis I found that this perception stemmed from the fact that the Indians they have come in contact with are the labrourers, mostly construction workers, who have migrated to these parts many many years ago before the educated ones. Considering the nature of their work, their low pays and the horrible living conditions this is certainly a truth. And this one cannot be associated with a race as people with these jobs and standards smell and stink anywhere in the world. Its the same for Indians, Chinese, Europeans or the Americans.

 But in countries like the US and Europe where the educated ones moved in first this perception about body odor, I thought, was not there. They do think that Indians are brainy and smart and also its true that they dont like the smell of our cooking.  They are simply not used to this smell and for them it is a stink. Its the same for us when, say, Malaysians cook. I dont think anyone can be blamed here since the smell is alien to them and we cannot live without all the spices et all. And there is nothing much that we can do about this aspect.

But I found today that even in these countries they think that Indians stink. Most of the people who responded to these posts thought it was due to the spices in our diet and its not because of lack of hygiene. That was the good part of this rather unpleasant topic. But some posts do looked like more racist and it was driven more by the hate of the success of Indians in these countries. Migrants, esp the successful ones, are never liked by the natives in any country. Thats the fact!

But thinking about this I thought that we, from our side, can do a little extra to change this perception and others like we are not that courteous. Many of the people who travel for the first time are not familiar with the western etiquettes. So either they have to take the intiative to learn or the companies that send them have to educate them. This will help in improving the image a lot.

 Coming back to the smell,  I think we should get into into perfumes and deos. They are not part of most of our lives. Having a good bath once or twice a day is considered enough for a good hygiene but in US or Europe or in any other developed countries where the focus on how you smell and look is so much important it will really help if we spend a little on a good perfume or a deo. Whats the point in taking 2-3 baths a day and your natural body odor which is alien to people outside your home causes negative perception. If you smell great then it does not matter if you really take bath daily. Thats superficial and fake but thats what is important in todays world.

India is a great country and we as, Indians, are the ambassadors of our country. The way we act and the things we do impact how we as a race and country is perceived. Lets do our best to show that Indians are as good as anyone and lets try to change our fellow countrymen who due to their indifferences and laziness spoil our image. And more importantly lets try very hard to change the perception of those foreigners who think Indians are low lives.

YM

Eclipse hangs with a blank screen on start up

I ran into a problem where the Eclipse just hangs and shows a blank screen on start up. On analysis I found that its due to the perspective that its trying to open with. I could not find the problem thats causing this but I wanted to open the project and do some work on the java code base.

Since I cannot change the perspective from the eclipse workbench I looked around and found the file that can be edited to make eclipse open in the perspective you want.

It is workbench.xml file that will be under %workspace%\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.ui.workbench folder. Search for perspectives element and modify it to open up in the perspective you want. For e.g. to open in java perspective you can use the following

<perspectives activePart=”org.eclipse.jdt.ui.PackageExplorer” activePerspective=”org.eclipse.jdt.ui.JavaPerspective”>