Archit Tantia

The Indian Government approved the Indian Rupee currency symbol in July last year and within a span of less than three months, the symbol officially made it to the Unicode Standard.

The Indian IT department had initially proposed that the character code U+0971 be assigned to the Indian Rupee sign, as the code was within the range of Devnagri characters, but the Unicode Consortium approved the code U+20B9 which is the same range that is used for other currency symbols like Euro, Franc and Peso.

As the symbol is now a part of the official Unicode standard you need to update you existing fonts in order to type the new currency sign into a word processor or a spreadsheet using a regular keyboard.

There are a couple of fonts which support the Indian Rupee Symbol but they aren’t widely accepted fonts. So here is the good news, Microsoft recently updated all the common fonts that ship with Windows to include support for the new Indian Rupee symbol. You simply need to update your existing Windows fonts by installing the kb2496898 hotfix available for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 as well as Windows 7.

Once the update has been installed, launch Microsoft Word, change the document font to an update font, for example Arial, and type 20B9 followed by Alt+x.

There is however a small catch to this font update. If you add the Rupee symbol to your document through a computer with the new updated fonts and share it with somebody who doesn’t have the updated fonts, the person would just see some random junk character in place of the Rupee symbol.

So if you want to share a document with the Rupee Symbol, convert the document to PDF file with font embedding enabled which would preserve the character even if the font is missing in the other person’s computer.

P.S. / Want to test whether any of the fonts installed on your machine can rendering the new Rupee symbol? Run this Font Reporter tool.

Apple’s tethering instruction says:

“Test by opening a web page that does not have a lot of complex graphics, such as google.com.”

Really Apple?

Steve said, “If I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator what a Macintosh should be like, they couldn’t have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it, so I had to go and create it, and then show it to people, and say now what do you think?”

Both of them had this ability not to invent products but to discover products. Both of them said these products have always existed—it’s just that no one has ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them. The Polaroid camera always existed, and the Macintosh always existed—it’s a matter of discovery. Steve had huge admiration for Dr. Land.

A friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day. And this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he’s a vendor for Apple), and as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking, because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.

Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everybody was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Everyone around him knows he beats to a different drummer. He sets standards that are entirely different than any other CEO would set.

He’s a minimalist and constantly reducing things to their simplest level. It’s not simplistic. It’s simplified. Steve is a systems designer. He simplifies complexity.

The legendary statement about Microsoft, which is mostly true, is that they get it right the third time. Microsoft’s philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve would never do that. He doesn’t get anything out there until it is perfected.

– John Sculley

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” — What Steve Jobs said to make Pepsi executive John Sculley defect to Apple, according to legend.

Taken from Apple’s website (HTML5 Section):

Every new Apple mobile device and every new Mac — along with the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser — supports web standards including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. These web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient. They allow web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, typography, animations, and transitions. Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today.

HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript support! Sounds really good but wait, with a pledge on making the web more accessible with the support of the latest web standards, ever though about validating your own website Apple?

While validating the HTML5 and CSS3 markup, I found 2 errors and 275 errors respectively.

It’s nice to see a company like Apple which has excelled in popularizing devices like the tablets, talking about HTML5. Their HTML5 section showcases a lot of the latest web standards. Unfortunately, the way they are presenting the showcase, you would come to the conclusion that Safari is the only web browser that supports these latest web standards. Don’t believe me? Try visiting the site with any other browser and you’ll get a message telling you to download Safari to view the demos.

After boasting so much about web standards, Apple is detecting the user-agent string and only allowing Safari users to see the galleries. Not only is user-agent detection the wrong way to determine the HTML5 capabilities of the current browser, one could easily spoof the browser’s user-agent to fool the websites.

I had to spoof the user-agent in Firefox and Chrome to test Apple’s demos in these browsers. Most of the test worked perfectly on Firefox 4 RC1. As Chrome uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari everything worked without any issues in it.

For Apple, the showcase isn’t really about web standards; It’s about their own version of web standards.

P.S. Mozilla’s HTML5 demo page doesn’t block the other browsers!

I have had a few domain names registered with Net4India since the past 4-5 years. All these years I never needed to contact the customer support team of the company as all the domains were not basically in use by me, they were just parked there.

I decided to use on the domains a few days ago and logged in to the Net4India Domain Control Panel. From the login page itself, the company showed how much fun they have not being a professional company. First, you cannot login with your “username”. You need a CRN ID which is associated with your username. So I had to check my email to find my CRN ID and then login to the Control Panel.

Next up, the Control Panel design. It is so amateurishly made. The page refreshes very slowly everytime you click on a link (Change MX Records, ABT Records, etc) and comes to the same place as before, then it gives a javascript popup where you can make changes to your domain. That’s not all. I tried changing the Name Servers of my domain and everytime I was given a Sever Database Error. After about 6-7 tries, the page finally loaded up very slowly and telling me that they would about a day to make the changes sent by me. Don’t tell me they do take requests from their customers and then they make all the changes manually!

After that, CName Record changes. I could not find a link where I could add/edit CName Records. After digging the website for a few minutes I gave up and called the customer support call center. They took about 15-20 minutes to attend my call. The representative asked me to click on “Add Subdomain” to add my CName Record. I was like wow! Then he asked me “Are you setting up Google Apps?” I replied with a yes. So he then advised me “not go with Google Apps as they are unreliable and I should go with Net4India’s Business Email Service”. That was the most unethical business attitude I had seen by a company till now. I politely declined his offer and hung up. Then out of curiosity, I visited they Business Email Service and was flabbergasted by the price of the service. For 1 user account with 1 GB, they charge Rs. 2549 (approx. 57 USD)! I mean why wouldn’t I pay Google 50 USD for 25 GB/user account + the other perks?

Anyway I proceeded to add a CName Record happily and guess what? After I clicked on Proceed, it gave a server error, yet again. So after a few tries I successfully added my first CName record. Now I went ahead to add another CName Record and what I saw then, completely blew my mind off. It was asking me for Rs. 500 (about 11 USD)! Where in the world does a domain company allow only one CName record change other that Net4India? And, why would I pay 11 USD/CName Record? The time was approximately 10:30 PM now so I tried calling their “24 Hours Customer Call Center” but in vain, got no response. So in fact, the 24 hour call center is just a publicity stunt. What surprised me was that when I tried calling their Sales line that time, somebody picked up. So they want to do sale, but after sales support – “Who cares once they pay us the money!”.

Anyways, I had to send them an email for my problem. So I emailed this:

I am unable to add more than one CName entries for the ***.in domain. It is taking me to the Shopping Cart when I an trying to add more than one CName record. Kindly change the CName records as follows: 1. Enter the following as the CNAME value or alias: mail calendar docs sites 2. Set the CNAME destination to the following address: ghs.google.com

And this is the canned reply which I got next morning:

This is in reference to your query; we would like to inform you that the CNAME can be created from control panel. Below mentioned are the steps for the same:- Login to “net4.in” along with your crn id and password – click on Manage my Services – click on Domains – click on “Add Sub Domain” link – select Cname – page will automatically get refreshed – In the sub domain text box enter the alias name like www – In the right side Text box enter destination address like ghs.google.com – click on “Create Now” button, further it will take 4-8 hrs to reflect globally. For any further assistance do contact us, on 39891414 (from Landline), from Mobile phone dial city code as prefix

So I replied:

In reference to TT-20100317-183740. I am sorry to say that after following the steps you had instructed to, the goal cannot be reached. Only my first attempt of adding a CName record was accepted. All the other attempts are taking me to my shopping card and asking me to pay Rs. 500/per subdomain. I hope this time I will receive a sensible reply and not a Canned Response telling me to goto “add subdomain” and follow the same procedure. Kindly add the requested CNAME records in my previous record. Thank You.

After a few hours, I get a reply. But, the same canned response which was sent to me earlier:

This is in reference to your query; we would like to inform you that the CNAME can be created from control panel. Below mentioned are the steps for the same:- Login to “net4.in” along with your crn id and password – click on Manage my Services – click on Domains – click on “Add Sub Domain” link – select Cname – page will automatically get refreshed – In the sub domain text box enter the alias name like www – In the right side Text box enter destination address like ghs.google.com – click on “Create Now” button, further it will take 4-8 hrs to reflect globally. For any further assistance do contact us, on 39891414 (from Landline), from Mobile phone dial city code as prefix

I mean how unprofessional can the company be. They do not even read the full support tickets.

So I sent a reply again:

In reference to TT-20100317-183740 and TT-20100317-192659. What sort of a professional business model does your company have to provide just one CNAME record for domain-only customers? Doesn’t that sound silly that one can have only one CNAME record for his domain? I would like a much more sensible reply back this time.

And, got this reply:

This is in reference to your query; we would like to update you that there is only one CNAME/Subdomain free with domain only pack. Incase you required another CNAME/ Subdomain that we would request you to make the payment for the same. For any further assistance do contact us, on 39891414 (from Landline), from Mobile phone dial city code as prefix.

After that I called the Call Center again to ask what was going on and the representative who attended my call was very rude in telling me that as I was “just” a domain-only customer, they cannot allow me to have more than 1 CName record per domain.

Oh by the way, I don’t understand this, they allow the “domain-only” customers to change the Name Servers of their domains but do not allow more than one CName records. So I changed the default NS to MediaTemple with which I host my domains and then activated a DNS only hosting there. Vola! Now I can set as many DNS records as I want to. So basically, Net4India just lost a customer with this attitude as I am definitely not going to renew my domains with them anymore.

Just in case you are planning to buy domains with them and if you do not believe my review, do a Google search and see for yourself what sort of a reputation do they have. Oh and don’t go by their attractive “Just Rs. 199 for .in Domains” offer. They will charge you Rs. 199 for just 1 year. If you buy it for more than a year you pay the overpriced Rs. 499/year (before multiple-year discount). So they are just pulling you for a one time sale. And you know by now about their after-sales support. Oh, seems like I am not the only Net4India unhappy customer here.

Its gives me immense pleasure to announce the launch of HCK.IN to my dear readers.

HCK.IN will soon be offering exciting ethical hacking tools and security services. Our first service is the HCK.IN Forums. HCK.IN Forums is a forum for everything related to security – from softwares, to scripting languages, to hardwares; oh and did we forget, gaming consoles even.

We are very close to releasing the next service to the public, so visit the HCK.IN Forums and signup to get an exclusive sneak-peak of our upcoming service – only for our registered forum users! 🙂

Here is a great video created by the guys at Whirled Interactive. It captures a few important events of the year 2009. The interesting part, if you notice in the video, is that there was not a single positive thing that happened in the year 2009! Nice.

Anyways here goes the video.

It’s an amazing video in terms of creativity but only if somebody could make a video on how to really use Google Wave easily!

I had ordered a Dell Studio 1555 because they are the only company in India that I know of who offer customizations on orders. I received the product on the 14th of November, 2009.

I was very happy with the order and delivery process. They were very nice and fast. On my first run I noticed a dead pixel on the WLED screen. So I mailed the support team asking for an explanation as I found the dead pixel on the first run of my brand new laptop. Alas, I got no reply.

The problem did not finish here. After a few days I noticed that the charger adapter would make sparkling sounds once the laptop’s battery finished charging and then it would become so hot that one could make a hot cup of soup on it. So, on the 4th of December I called the Dell Support as the last time I did not get a reply through email. They were ready to replace the battery adapter but were not ready to replace my WLED screen(now that explains why they didn’t reply to my previous email) as they claimed that 1 dead pixel is not covered under warranty and that it is a factory standard to have 1 dead pixel. Alright wait a minute here, I have been a Compaq, HP, and Acer, Sony, Samsung and LG customer for many years now and have never ever seen a single dead pixel even after using them for long periods. Apparently, Dell laptops have Samsung’s WLED screens.

Coming back to the topic, the customer care representative explained that I needed to have at least 6-7 dead pixels on my screen to get a replacement. Hearing this I reminded them of one more incident. My uncle has bought the same Dell model a couple of months before me and he too had a dead pixel on his laptop’s screen in the first run. For his case too, Dell was not ready to replace his laptop or even the screen for the first attempt from him. When he asked for a money back, they said they cannot do that as the 30 day money back period was over. Kindly keep in mind that it was the Dell guys who took more than 30 days to solve his problem. After he sent a long email to Dell USA’s top executives(don’t ask me how we got their emails) explaining about their service, a few people from Dell started calling him and offering a full product replacement. Look at the sudden change in their attitude. My uncle realized that for a high-end product which cost him near about USD 2,000 Dell created so much issue solving a small problem that too in the first month using the product, what would they do after the warranty gets expired, so he asked for a money back and went on to buy a HP laptop again as we have been a customer of HP for a long long time.

After hearing this the representative I was talking to, did not have anything to say and asked me to be on hold while he spoke to his senior. After a long hold, he agreed to send me replacement of both the power adapter and the WLED screen.

The replacement arrived on the 8th of December and a technician came to my office to replace the WLED and the power adapter. So the real story begins here!

The engineer who came was a newbie sort of a guy, he was damn slow at his work and at every step on opening my laptop, was figuring out what to do next. Anyway, I just sat there staring at what he was trying to do and he replaced the WLED after about 45 minutes or so. When he handed me the laptop to check it out, I noticed that He had not fixed the WLED cover and my keyboard properly. So I had to point it out all to him and he was looking a bit surprised on how he missed fixing those properly.

After the technician went I noticed that he had left lose a small portion of the WLED cover which I hadn’t noticed before. So I called the Dell customer care helpline and they said that they would send yet another replacement to fix the problem. I had made them aware of their technicians professionalism and had requested them not to send the same technician the next time.

It had been 5 days now and I hadn’t heard from anybody regarding the new replacement which was supposed to come in 2 days as said by them. On 12th December I received a call from Dell that they were short of supplies so they were not able to send a replacement. He said that the replacement would be shipped soon and that I would get it on the 14th positively. On 14th I got a call from them that they yet again had a problem with the supplies so I would get it on the 16th.

Today, 16th December, I finally get the replacement but guess what? Even after me requesting not to send the same technician who had come before, they sent the same technician. Anyway, that was not a big issue. The time the technician had come was 10:30 am.

Now the technician started opening my laptop and while replacing the old WLED panel with the new one, the technician pressed the screw on one side of the WLED so hard that the screw got hollow in the middle and got stuck. Great! Now the technician was trying to take the screw out with a scissor-plas. I was so surprised at this, I called the Dell customer care right then. I explained the whole story to them about what had happened till now and the representative asked me to hand the call over to the technician at my place. The representative had asked the technician his name and his employee id and then asked what his problem was. The technician was now literally shaking and sweating. He could explain the problem properly so I had to explain the problem to the representative. After hearing me, the representative asked me not to sign the service paper if I was not satisfied with the outcome.

While I was talking to the Dell representative, I saw that the technician was literally trying to pull of the WLED panel out by his hand. I am pretty sure he broke something inside while doing that. I asked the almost crying technician to put back the old components of my laptop and go as I would not be signing the service sheet. He asked me give him just a few more minutes so that he could solve the problem. I said OK. While yet again trying to fix the problem, he broke the inside plastic part of the display cover. Now I was tearing my hair apart. He then tried hiding the broken piece from me and called by some senior guy. Somebody came after about half and hour, and they were discussing what had happened. After some time, the senior technician fixed the problem is just under 15 minutes with the old components of my laptop. He did not use the new replacement parts which they had bought.

I was finally relieved that I could get back to work. The time now was approx 1:45pm. Basically Dell cost me almost 5 hours of time and money which I would have rather used doing my business if I had another company’s laptop.

When I was checking my laptop this time, I noticed that the display panel’s cover was still a bit lose but I didn’t say anything as I did not want to go onto yet another adventure. And when I closed the screen and picked it up vertically I noticed that the display panel was now a bit loose – the display panel would try to open itself a bit when picked up vertically. I pointed that out to the technicians and they said that was not a new problem and that happened with every laptop available in the market. NO! It doesn’t happen with any of the laptops I have used yet and it did not happen with this laptop before these guys came today. Anyway I was happy that my laptop was now atleast in a working state so I did not tell them anything.

The whole story in a few lines: I get a dead pixel on the first run of my new Dell Studio laptop. I complain about it through email. Get no reply. The power adapter has a problem after a few days. I call Dell to replace that, they agree but not for the display panel. They claim dead pixel counts under 5-6 are not covered under warranty and are according to the factory standards. I tell them my uncle’s experience with his Dell laptop which is returned back eventually tired of Dell. They agree to replace my WLED panel too. A technician comes but does not do the job properly and leaves the panel loose. I call and complain to Dell about it and they send another replacement taking a week. The same engineer comes and this time he stuck a screw while replacing the panel and breaks a plastic part which is inside of the panel cover. He calls for another technician who comes and fixes the problem with the old panel and does not use the replacement part which had arrived. They leave the display panel loose this and claim it is normal. They leave after about 5 hours of wasting my valuable time. The problem is solved (oops, I am lying )

Now Dell, I must say you guys do a great job providing customized solutions to your customers and I find your products a great value for money, BUT. After I spend a hell lot of cash from my pockets to buy your laptop, you provide me with a very bad customer support. Is that a good sign?

I was about to place a bulk order of desktop computers and laptops to Dell for my new office but I don’t think so I would go with you guys now. I would rather go with HP or even somebody else with whom I have had very good experiences in the past with not a single problem, and an adventure like this.

Just trying to open your eyes.

To my friends out there, for now, do not buy Dell. For now. Its just an advise. All up to you. But here I am, one unhappy customer.

Signing off.

A not-so-proud customer of Dell.

One customer lost, a hundred customers lost.

Anybody who wants to discuss about this can contact me here.

Apparently the kid’s mother canceled his World Of Warcraft account his brother plants a camera in his room just before he completely goes crack. You should see what follows!

It’s a LOL¹⁰ video. 😛

GoDaddy recommends against purchasing .tv domain names. The island is sinking!