Sudar Blogs: My Certification Experiences

A record of my experiences with certifications. Starting with BrainBench, moving on to Microsoft (MCP, MCDBA, MCAD) and … surely one day with Sun (SCJP), together with things I come across my day to day life.

Note: This blog has been moved to http://SudarMuthu.com/blog/

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Happy Birthday Google

Happy Birth Day Google.

Google has turned 7 this month. And the birth day gift is that Google is expanding it’s web search index by 1000 times.

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Monday, September 26, 2005

Learn J2EE programming with passion

Found this from SitePoint

Ready to get serious about learning Java Web application and enterprise application development? I can’t say I blame you—those skills will net a pretty penny in the current job market. That’s why J2EE Programming (with Passion!), a free online class offered by Sun Microsystems employee Sang Shin in his spare time, is such an amazing opportunity.

Offered by means of a Yahoo! Groups discussion list, the class runs for about the length of a university semester. Once you subscribe, you’re responsible for reviewing the weekly pre-class reading material, reading the classroom slides with accompanying notes, and completing the assigned coursework and final project by the assigned dates. It’s just like taking a university class only you don’t have to show up at lectures… oh, and did I mention it’s free?

If you’ve been awaiting an opportunity to learn J2EE in a structured way without shelling out a bunch of money on books and classes, this might just be the ticket. Sang Shin also offers a few other online classes, an advanced J2EE class among them.

The next session is starting today (26-Sep-2005) and I have registered for it. How about you? Thanks Sang Shin for the course

Update: Forgot to link to sitepoint when I posted it for the first time. Thanks Kevin for reminding.

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Sunday, September 18, 2005

Apple vs Microsoft

I was going through CNET’s editor’s top 10 list and found some wired pattern.

Apple has two products listed in the ‘Top 10 products of the decade’ – iPod (2001) and Apple iMac (1998) and Microsoft has two products listed in the ‘Top 10 worst products of the decade’ – Microsoft Bob and Windows ME

Does it infer anything?

Incidentally Google and Firefox also find a place in the ‘Top 10 Best products of the decade’.

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Monday, September 12, 2005

Two companies change hands

I was reading Robert Scoble and he reports that two companies are changing hands. First Skype is sold to eBay and Oracle buys Siebel.

He also discuss about the advantages that eBay may get by using Skype.

Some people have come up to me and asked me "does this deal make any sense to you?" It does. eBay is a marketplace. It's about putting buyers and sellers together. Now, how can you make that marketplace more efficient? Voice and video.

Selling things is easier when you can tell and show. Skype is all about that.

Can't wait to see how this is going to change the way people buy things online.

Hopefully at least this is true, not like the Technorati rumor

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Saturday, September 10, 2005

My First Podcast

Just now finished my interview with Kamla. The feeling that my voice is getting recorded made me little restless in the beginning but once I got started the restlessness vanished. I just cannot wait to hear my voice back. She said that she will probably post it later today. So guys be ready to read err… listen my first podcast. I will post the link as soon as it is uploaded.

Thanks Kamla for making my view reach the public and also for your great tips.

Update: Here is the link for the podcast http://talknewsindia.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=20763

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Interview with Kamla

I am still not able to believe this. I am going to be interviewed by Kamla for a podcast to be featured in the techtalk section of her podcast/blog. If you are wondering who is Kamla, she is the first Indian podcaster. She maintains two podcast sites at www.newsaboutindia.blogspot.com and www.talknewsindia.libsyn.com

I just had a chat with her over phone and she seems to be a very knowledgeable person. We had a quick discussion about KingPing and GoogleMyWay (my two pets). We also chatted about life in India and particularly in Chennai, about work, about the outsource world and also about the collaboration between India and US in the IT field.

Hear about all these in the podcast which is scheduled to be recorded this afternoon and also I have a surprise for you in that podcast ;-)

As you know I start my day by reading Jeremy and Robert Scoble. May be from tomorrow I have to add Kamla to the list.

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Friday, September 09, 2005

Major Security Threat in IE

Recently I came to know about a major security threat in Internet Explorer from Lifehacker tips. Any website can read the text present in your clipboard with out your knowledge and can even replace the text present in your clipboard. I went to the article present in the tip and they mentioned that you can use ASP, PHP or Perl together with Javascript to retrieve the text.

This interested me much and I tried to figure out how to do it and to my surprise I was able to retrieve the clipboard text with just two lines of javascript code alone without even using any server side script like ASP or PHP. I have written more about it and you can find it out in this url (www.clipboard.googlemyway.com).

After retrieving the text I was thinking what a website can do by knowing your clipboard text and then an idea struck me what if it is combined with AJAX. The website can get the contents of the user’s clipboard even if the user is not submitting a form or clicking a link. I have put up a practical demonstration of it here. Once you enter your email I take you clipboard text and email it to you even if you don’t click a link or submit a form. This sounds to be a very serious threat for me.

I have also put up a page, where you can find out how you can prevent it by changing your Internet Explorer settings. Luckily this seems to occur only in Internet Explorer. Firefox doesn’t seem to have this vulnerably. So one more reason for me to use Firefox. Asa, are you reading this?


Friday, September 02, 2005

Gmail Outage ScreenShot

I cannot believe this. Gmail is down. Here is the screenshot which I took on 2-Sep-05 at 10.15 pm (IST Indian Standard time) (GMT + 5.5hrs) Did any one else noticed it? PS: If the screenshot is not clear, here is a big one http://www.flickr.com/photos/sudarmuthu/sets/870900/ Update: 11:00 PM Gmail is back again.
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