The D Programming Language Rocks

Right now I am parsing my way through Andrei Alexandrescu's 'The D programming language' and so far I am loving everything in it. This language hits a real sweet spot for a developer - tight, native executables, good integration with C libraries, a nice functional programming paradigm, generics support (*real* generics not the pseduo crap that we have in Java), support for modular programming, the no-shared-data way of doing concurrency and all the above in a clean, readable even elegant syntax.

Wow - just simply wow. Of course, I need to do some *real* programming like writing some usable frameworks/apps/libraries in D before jumping the gun, but I do have to say that it looks *really* good. Considering that my beloved Java is sucky and stale nowadays and its providence in Oracular hands is murky at best, D appears to offer a clean and powerful alternative.

VIM D editing support:

• Syntax File


• Make and error formats

Simple One Line Http Server

• Get Python 3.1.x.
• Navigate to the directory that you wish to server.
• Issue this command python -m http.server
• Enjoy

Space Opera by David Drake

I have always been a science-fiction/fantasy addict - it's a wonderful 'escapist' way to leave the real world behind and literally 'live' in another's imagination.

Having always been an "HonorVerse" fan, I only recently commenced the "RCN series" by David Drake. It's highly enjoyable space-opera - not anything that makes a deep impact in the SF/fantasy world, but just plain fun nevertheless.

The books describe the adventures of Lt Leary (who gets promoted over time) and his signals officer Adele Mundy. Adele Mundy, who is described in the books (by her peers) as the best 'information specialist' in the galaxy, is actually a hacker - and she has to be the best 'space-age' hacker that I have seen described in any space-opera fantasy. Not only that - she is an expert shot with her pistol. (And yeah - I have a small crush on her)

I can't help admit that I devoured all the books in the series within a fortnight and now need to wait for a l-o-o-ng time till Mr Drake comes up with something new.

Airtel India blocks IRC Undernet

The Undernet group of servers in the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) system, (us.undernet.org/eu.undernet.org) has been inaccessible since the last week of August for Airtel India users. Despite many complaints by many users to Airtel India over the last 20 days, they are still in denial mode and refuse to acknowledge a problem.

For the uninitiated, The Undernet is one of the oldest and largest realtime chat networks in the world, with approximately 19 servers connecting over 35 countries and serving more than 1,000,000 people weekly. See http://www.undernet.org/ for further information.

The problem is faced by all Airtel ISP users in India across all Indian cities - Delhi, Bangalore, Allahabad, etc.

Since the undernet group of servers generally has a community of vocal and gifted programmers/hackers, it is possible that Airtel has decided to 'silently' block this and claim otherwise. If so, this goes against our right to free speech and expression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Rights_in_India

If you are an Airtel user, please register a complaint by e-mailing Airtel at your city's customer care address, the list of which are available from:
http://www.airtel.in/wps/wcm/connect/airtel.in/Airtel.In/Home/ForYou/Broadband+Internet/Reach+Airtel#

For example, the complaint e-mail for Bangalore is: care.ncr@airtel.in
Please note - that page DOES NOT WORK in firefox (or any other browser apart from Internet Explorer) - another minus mark against Airtel.

Users have a on-going discussion page at the Undernet forums http://forum.undernet.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9536&st=0&sk=t&sd=a , but are unsure on what to do.

I am a 2Mbps, un-limited download Airtel user. For India, which has poor broadband facilities, that falls into the top segment of broad-band users and I pay a bucket of money for the service.

After Airtel's well known policy of padding your bills with ringtone costs you never use - (and calling them up to fix this never works), this is personally pretty much the limit for me.

Can't extend ByteBuffer

java.nio.ByteBuffer is not extensible and this really sucks badly. I didn't realize that till today when I thought to write a custom ByteBuffer implementation and then realized that all the constructors had only package visibility.

The thing is that there are many good reasons why you would want a custom implementation of ByteBuffer . Maybe you want to proxy over another ByteBuffer for example; have an optimized view over a larger ByteBuffer to reduce data copying.

It seems that I was not the only one to feel this way. Check out http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=693259&messageID=4028590

It appears that not just a few people, but also whole frameworks like Apache MINA have gone ahead and constructed their own ByteBuffer replacements. Check out http://mina.apache.org/report/1.1/apidocs/org/apache/mina/common/ByteBuffer.html which is extensible.