GodSend In the life of a Computer science grad student

What I was doing – the week of 2009-04-12 (Twitter)

• Another weekend gone fooling around with technology! #
• Does the Indian railway have all trains in Sleeper class with 3 side berths?! #
• Barbecue this weekend!! Yay #
• @suren: before you "graduate" u mean? Pass out can mean other things #
• I want this bill to pass - http://tinyurl.com/cpepzb #
• Super brain yoga! http://tinyurl.com/csjrft LOL #
• Ctrl+a and Ctrl+e are Home and End key equivalents on a Mac. Yay!! found by accident #apple #macbook #

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What I was doing – the week of 2009-04-05 (Twitter)

• Weekend comes to an end. Another week starts. Work, work work! #
• forced to leave home late... wish I had this, wish I had that.. #
• Paperwork is boring.. #
• Weird but funny.. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ritubpant/3399560622/sizes/o/ #
• http://tinyurl.com/d9ft3p #
• Sick and tired of dell laptops and more with their customer care!! #fail #
• How can the sound from a laptop resemble the chirping of a bird or a laser??!! - source: dell customer care #
• Lastly, won't a sane person know if sound is coming from his laptop or his AC adapter!! #
• @cyberian I just ordered mine man #
• @anshprat Mine is a Dell Studio 1535.. #
• @sp2hari Just copying the VMWare files folder should work I think.. Doesn't it? #
• http://www.canucklehead.ca/look/i_hate_sandcastles.html #funny #
• @suren All the Best! #
• Its Shipped! #
• @rvivek @aditya87 Happy Birthday!! #
• has got his first MacBook! #
• Coconut rice lunch... yummmm #

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What I was doing – the week of 2009-03-29 (Twitter)

• Tired... Lotsa work to be done this week... #
• http://tinyurl.com/6h7dj3 #
• slow day.. just leaving for lab #
• No more classes this week #
• Obama answering a Google comp sci question!! - http://tinyurl.com/ytyuou #
• @rvivek My good friend "the coder" aka viv has the best solution till date #
• Got up early! #
• @alagu Guess all mom's did. It supposedly came in Ananda vikadan.. #
• @alagu Yeah #
• @raghavendra Happy New Year!! Party! #
• WFH.. #
• @taggy I meant PhD research work at the univ. Work in the lab.. #
• saw this somewhere - "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital" !! #
• Formula 1 race weekend! I soo wish it would come to Indianapolis, so that I can see it in person #
• @ankurkhetrapal I have not seen the qualification, but the results look interesting. Planning to stay up and watch the race! #
• @ankurkhetrapal Wish I did #
• @raghavendra You dirty statisticians #
• @rvivek What are you doing at 5:30 in the morning??! Another night out a? #
• @alagu Which macbook do you have? #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-22

• What a weather! Hail Spring!! #
• The day was not too interesting.. Had Indian lunch at Raja-Rani restaurant, Ann Arbor and saw 2 ep of Heroes #
• Been to an Indian restaurant - Raja-Rani at Ann Arbor.. Watched 2 ep of Heroes.. #
• @rvivek: you meant something like in the evening, chick++ ? or kozhi kunju count panninaya? #
• Going to Boston in April to present a poster at NSDI!! #
• Went to Sommerset mall, troy, MI. Big mall with costly stores. Got a superb Bose demo #
• Went to MGM Grand, Detroit. Scary place!! Doubled my cash investment of $1 there #
• Dinner at Priya, Indian restaurant near Ann arbor #
• Back at West Lafayette! #
• All MBA students seem to have a survey ready for us all the time! #
• @divinjohn I see a lot of my friends doing that.. #
• Back in the lab after Spring break #
• no mood to start working yet #
• just got up.. #
• @rvivek Whats the bliss? #
• What you are doing, man? #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-15

• Research feels good #
• Happpyyyyyyyyyy!!!!! #
• @divinjohn Whats with the twitter spam? #
• Midterms coming up! #
• Drove for about 6 hours today at 70mph! What an experience... #
• at Michigan - Ann Arbor, home of UMich. #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-08

• wants to go home #
• Wonderful weather! reminds me of Fall in Spring! #
• Gmail has a better attachment adding feature now.. Shows progress #

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Skype facts!

Skype is a wonderful VOIP application that has reached an astounding user base of few million users at any point. There are lots of features that appeal to its users and there is the usual first-time-user-follows-his-friends-softwares case (that was how I got started with skype myself). It allows for free voice and a great video chat feature, which for me and many of my friends here in the US is a big saviour - to catch up with our friends and family all over the world. Skype does not have a lot of their own infrastructure in place to support the millions of users nor does it disallow people behind a NAT box (in layman terms, makes networking softwares more restricted). So how and why do they do it?

An important fact that many of us have missed out is knowing that Skype is actually a p2p application! Thats right, peer to peer just as in BitTorrent. So whats the catch in p2p? - Every user who uses it contributes something to the whole cause.

"Well, I don't think I do anything on my part for Skype. I just make calls to my friends and family". Well, you might be wrong. Skype uses the chic concept of super nodes. These are some "special" nodes/computers on the internet to which people can connect to in common to talk to each other(supposing they are not able to make direct connections to each other). You are probably a user who falls into this category if you use a wireless/wired broadband router at home. If you are the person who is geeky enough to do port forwarding on it, here is some bad news, you are being used as a super node!

So what if I am a super node? Well, people connect to you and use your bandwidth so that they can talk to their loved ones. Firewall..... not a solution. Skype takes the privilege of disabling the Windows firewall to allow itself to use your internet bandwidth. Some of my friends have reported seeing their bandwidth being eaten up even when they are not around the computer.

I am not saying that you should not sacrifice some of your bandwidth for the general good. I am just trying to inform atleast some people who use this software to actually know what they are doing. Of course, this would be included in the fine-print in the Skype user agreement. But nobody reads it! Someone who is reading this and who has limits on their internet bandwidth and use skype, promptly exit it after you use it, unless you want huge bills!

Still, Skype is one of the popular and neat pieces of software that is built on the p2p framework to achieve a wonderful user experience for all of us. I am still using Skype after this post, just more careful with it.

PS: Do keep seeding those torrents

Sources:

Skype in Wikipedia

How dangerous is Skype?

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