Goodbye Gates!

Bill Gates is one of my favourite persons anyway. It's a little wonder for me to see him getting retired from Microsoft. Many people considers him as one of the most important person in ICT sector. Yes, that may not be an overstatement. Well, Bill is gone, and so as Windows from my everyday pc schedule. In fact I have been using Microsoft Windows since 1997. Remember, they had a version called Windows 97 ®, hmm... I bet you have a sharp memory. Anyways, as you can see, I have been using the pirated version of Windows for ten long years! A very experienced pirate indeed :D

Enough of talking for nothing. Let's share a little experience.

I have been taking my introductory course in Java from May 2008. So, it's time for me to get Object Oriented! No wonder, I have been dreaming about big Os in my dreams. We are actually using NetBeans IDE 3.6 in our University lab. But it's a pity that we're using that in Windows XP. Meanwhile, I have used all my expertise to get free DVD of NetBeans 6.1 in the meantime. And Me too, was running that in Windows. So, I finally decided, enough is enough. Let's start it in Linux.

I didn't actually had to install NetBeans in Linux to run a Java Program, as I already had an JDK installed in my Ubuntu 8.04. So I was happy coding with text editor and running it from Terminal, yup the place where you don't have to wait for bus to arrive! In fact, my all writing, no clicking was going smoothly. That was until I found that JoptionPane is not working in Ubuntu. As they say, naah...I don't like Linux, it's too complicated. Ya, I say, for complicated people like you! Anyway, I went to ubuntufourms and found out an straightforward solution of my problem. Here it goes.

Step 1: Go to Terminal, type sudo update-alternatives --config java

Step 2: Install the latest SDK from sun. In this case it was java-6-sun. See the complete process below:

tarif@tarif-desktop:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config java

[sudo] password for tarif:

There are 3 alternatives which provide `java'.

Selection Alternative

-----------------------------------------------

1 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

2 /usr/bin/gij-4.2

*+ 3 /usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/jre/bin/java

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 1

Using '/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java' to provide 'java'.

I have selected 1 one changed my configuration to sun java 6 :D

So, friends. Let's say goodbye Bill Gates! From the bottom of our heart. It's still sad that some people thinks Windows and Linux are enemies. After reading my blog, they would now understand, that they really are NOT ;D

Take care everybody.

Unix: Here We GO!

Hi friends! I want to talk about Unix with you today. Don't worry, I'm not that much expert to bore you out already, ;D I've just started to read the Harley Hahn's book on Unix a few days ago. I was inspired by my senior friend Taskinoor Hasan at Bangladesh Open Source Network and hired this wonder book on Unix from him. Even though I'm reading in Computer Science and Engineering for four months, you can consider myself a complete computer illiterate! But anyway, this should be one of those books that will eventually take me to the light!

Anyway, let's turn ourselves to Unix. Unix is an operating system to say the least. So, you can expect at least to do the jobs of memory maintaining, file managing and other OS stuffs from Unix. As I was reading the first few chapters of Hahn's book, I was fascinated to know that any Unix computer can communicate with any other Unix computer! Well, after all we're all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve! Even though the name Unix means something that is maintained by a single person, it's actually designed for the multiuser environment. Now let's talk about a few common terminology.

Hosts and Terminals
Every Unix system has a host (at least). A host is a piece of hardware that has all the things in it (you know what things ;) Surprisingly, not one but many Terminals can have access to this host. What's this Terminal guy anyway? Well, a terminal can be a keyboard and an screen and possibly a mouse, that can set a communication with the host and even the one that's attached with the host has no particular especiality. Let's say, a terminal can be as close as the life is from death and even can be as far as the heaven from the earth! The thing that surprised me the most that even though you see a character exactly the same time as you typed it on the keyboard, it is not exactly the case. If you press "I love you", it would only be visible after the host reads it and ECHOES the letters back to the terminal and finally to the screen. Wow, who says computers don't know how to love! (Or even make then visible :D Now I can recall one similar situation where I didn't actually see any CPU. It was at the sun lab of my university. Aha! So it was a host that was missing!

Workstation
When I was a child (many say I still am :( ), I travelled a lot in train. And it always amazed me when I passed through a railway station. Everyday hundreds of trains pass through an station, and you could expect to have the station people to have the "ah! forget it" type of emotions towards the train. But to my wonder, it never happened. If you ever come to my country, you'll see that whenever a train passes through an station, people, no matter how busy they are will keep looking at it.

Back to Unix. What if a Unix is installed at your home pc and you have no access to any other network. Obviously, you have a host (your CPU) and a Terminal (your keyboard and screen). In this case, your system would be called a workstation. You might say, Wow! I'll rule my own world! But as you can see, dictators tends to be foolish. Why? Cause you can't do everything by yourself! If you had a shared host, he would have given you more choices like cool softwares (and more porn movies, if you're a teenager :) and an expert would actually keep a backup for your system! You can not get them done all by yourself, don't you remember, your boy/girlfriend would be crazy if s/he hear that you are nothing but a computer freek! But don't worry. Workstations can also be connected by networks!

Next time I'll talk about client server and ummm.....we'll see..

Good Night friends
Bye for now!

First Blog!

Hello Everyone, this is my first ever blog at blogspot. Well, from the heading, you can guess that my blog would contain mind blowing combination of Open Source and Open Content, THE two things that completely changed my entire life for good (to be exact, great :)! The power of open content and the freedom of open source has added so much to my life that I finally decided to give something back. In this blog, I would share my experience and stories with you and YOU only! My blogs may contain serious issues or just simple gossips and of course all of them are not only about Open Source. May be I could get some ideas from you about how to propose a girl that I like or get moral support from you after breaking up with her ;D I would tell you stories and stuffs that you hear everyday or haven't heard before. Thus I would let you know about my feelings for Open Source and Open Content, most importantly my feeling about being free!


Welcome to the world of FREEDOM!

Take Care everyone
Tarif (my family nick is Dheeman, but friends call me Tarif, it's your choice :D )