A shape exerciser
December 6th, 2009 by pranavA program to help you to learn shapes using the vOICe.ShapeExerciserInstaller
A program to help you to learn shapes using the vOICe.ShapeExerciserInstaller
This wonderful collage of moves by dance masters past reveals how Michael Jackson developed his signature style.
[via]: fimoculous
A awesome set of Diwali picture from the always excellent The Big Picture blog. Be sure to check them out.
The best new series of 2009
And the best continuing series of 2009
We are all familiar with the Chivalric literature featuring popular characters like King Arthur and Lancelot – brave knights who are strong and moral, uphold virtue, save damsels in distress, and are overall awesome people. It turns out that the real medieval (circa. the high middle ages – 12th, 13th century) knights were nothing better than thugs and villains. The local life in a medieval village was cut-off from the distant king. It was the local knight (or knights – there could be more than one knight in one area) who had the wealth and power. Encased in armor when they went out and protected by their stone castle walls when they were at home, knights acted as gangsters, ordering people to pay taxes in exchange for – theoretically at least – offering protection. Knights with land also forced peasants to work on their lands, most of the time for free. Most of what the peasants produced went into the hands of someone else. According to Philip D, Chivalric literature developed by these medieval plutocrats in an attempt to whitewash or at best to salvage the reputation of these otherwise extremely unpleasant people. So the next time you read about the knights of the round table, you know that it’s a fantasy in the very real sense. Even the characters it’s supposed to be based on, were not quite the heroic people that are described and hailed in these texts.
[Source]: Philip Daileader, Associate Professor of History at The College of William and Mary in Virginia, on the Planet Money podcast.
I have quoted the last point almost verbatim from commentator “Hank Van den Berg” and I find it the most convincing and
[Source]: Points derived in large part from the NYT thread “The Catastrophic Option”
[Update]: Tim Hartford, in the FT blog post titled “A brilliant (and doomed) template for healthcare reform“, proposes (at least) considering a system where we pay for medical services the same way we pay for our cars or our food or a roof over our heads
He believes that the high cost of health care is because the users are disassociated from the actual bill of the services rendered. Since people never bear the actual cost of the services and never see the actual bill they never have to wonder about whether a procedure was worth the price. He then goes on to say “I never had to ask myself whether my doctors and I were treading the path of cost-effectiveness, straying off into wasteful indulgence, or indulging in dangerous penny-pinching. Someone else always picked up the bill.“
To tackle catastrophic events then he suggests that it is perfectly possible to design a system where redistribution, forced saving and “real” insurance – that is, against unexpected and very costly events – address these concerns without whisking away every bill before the patient sees it.
And finally, to refute my first point,
it is true that patients do not today have the information they need to make sensible decisions about buying their own healthcare. But then, why would they, given the current systems? I recall the local press in the US being full of articles along the lines of “the city’s 50 best dermatologists”. Value for money was never mentioned, but ask patients to buy their own treatment and you can be sure that such articles would soon be supplemented by the medical equivalent of “cheap eats” reviews.
Here’s one reason why the Euro is not a viable alternative (emphasis mine).
Among the greenback’s chief rivals, only the euro is widely held as a reserve currency, but it has some significant disadvantages relative to the dollar, including fractured debt markets and fiscal policies.
[Source]: The Economist Blog
just went up by a whopping 18% for 2010. I am fortunate enough to be working for a decent sized company with a decent medical coverage and they will absorb about 13% of that. So I am facing a premium increase of a (still absurd) 5%. There will be some increase in the deductible limits though.
Health care reform has still some way to go but I am glad it at least got out of the finance committee. There’s a long road ahead but I hope that we’ll get something meaningful out of it.
In 1965 the average CEO was paid about 24 times as the average worker.
In 2007 the average CEO was paid about 275 times the average worker
Source: The New Yorker, Oct 12 – 2009
Newborn babies have little visual acuity. They are not able to focus properly so things have to be held at the exact distance for them to recognize it.
Bought the G1 yesterday. The G1 is a HTC phone and it seems to me that it’s supposed to rival the iPhone. Not really used the iPhone but this phone is a beauty! The only problem is that the battery life sucks majorly and that’s where this comes in. I’ve ordered my piece and am waiting for it. The only downside to this large battery is that it’s going to increase the bulk of the phone. In that case though it would still not be any worse than the Palm Treo that I had before.
In California 10% farms are producing 60% of all the food. A lot of small farms produce very little of the total food. I big chain like Whole Foods, which is supposedly sustainable, buys from a few big Organic vendors.
My list of the reasons for the financial crisis is as follows:
Barry Ritzholtz’s list from Bailout Nation (Chapter 19) goes something like this:
From Basic of Economics by David E O’Connor.
Macroeconomics
Microeconomics is the branch of economics that focuses on the inter-
actions among the individual decision-making units within an economy…
The most important partici-
pants in the microeconomy are households, business firms, and the government.
The private sector, or nongovernmental sector of the economy, consists of
households and firms. Households, for example, consume the lion’s share of all
goods and services produced in the U.S. economy. Hence, one important micro-
economic topic analyzes consumer demand, why people choose to buy certain
goods or services and not others. The behaviors and decisions of other house-
hold units including savers, investors, workers, and entrepreneurs are also criti-
cal elements in this study. Businesses, the other decision makers in the private
sector, supply goods and services in an economy. Economists who study the mi-
croeconomy are concerned with how firms make pricing, output, hiring, and
other production decisions. These business decisions are guided by the desire to
maximize profits in a market economy—another major topic in the field of mi-
croeconomics.
…
Macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is the branch of economics that deals with the eco-
nomic performance of the entire economy.…
Macroeconomics focuses on economic growth and eco-
nomic stability in a nation. Economic growth is often measured by tracking a
nation’s real gross domestic product over time. The real gross domestic prod-
uct (GDP) is the dollar value of all newly produced goods and services in an
economy in a given year, adjusted for inflation. Economic stability refers to
maintaining stable price levels for consumer and producer goods, and a fully em-
ployed labor force. In short, macroeconomics is concerned with aggregates such
as national output, national income, national savings rates, and the national un-
employment rate, rather than with the behaviors of individuals or firms.
Fiscal and Monetary Policy [emphasis mine]
Government is also a major player in the realm of macroeconomics. This
is because the federal government devises policies that affect the economy as a
whole. The two most important government policies that influence a nation’s
economic performance are fiscal policy and monetary policy. Fiscal policy in-
volves changes in taxes and government spending, while monetary policy in-
volves changes in the money supply and cost of credit. For example, if the
government wants to jump-start a sluggish economy, it could lower taxes and in-
crease government spending. The government could also increase the money
supply and make credit easier to come by. Combined, these policies would in-
crease aggregate (total) demand in the economy and thus stimulate production,
create jobs, and encourage new investment. In the U.S. economy, Congress and
the president are mainly responsible for forming an effective fiscal policy for the
nation, while an independent Federal Reserve System (the Fed) devises the na-
tion’s monetary policy (see chapter 10 for more on monetary and fiscal policy).
Stefan Collignon in the journal Social Europe.
Since World War II, three paradigms have dominated political and economic thinking in the world. In the East, Marxism rejected markets and democracy; in the West, Keynesianism laid the foundations for social democracy and political liberalism, while Friedman’s counter-revolution developed a neoliberal ideology from the theories of monetarism.
I just came across this article from the Washington Post. In the context of India, I find that the sentiments expressed here are rather relevant. The failure of India to either reduce the levels of poverty or generate sustainable growth in the country is a failure of ingenuity, innovativeness. India has a intelligence capital and culture capital but we have not utilized it in any way to keep it vital to the current age or to leverage it to move the populace forward for it to be of any meaningful use to the society as a whole. Indeed, there’s a very under-developed realization of “society” as such. Therefore all concerns and then solutions are very individual. There’s a startling intellectual bankruptcy in the society where everyone is so risk-averse that everyone treads the same worn path of disource, habit and vocation. China is offered as a counter example in this article but then it’s probably the exception to the rule and also who’s to say that their model of limited capitalism by decree is sustainable. Emphasis is mine.
The Global Poverty Trap
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, October 31, 2007; A19
It’s nature vs. nurture. One of the big debates of our time involves the causes of economic growth. Why is North America richer than South America? Why is Africa poor and Europe wealthy? Is it possible to eliminate global poverty? The World Bank estimates that 2.5 billion people still live on $2 a day or less. On one side are economists who argue that societies can nurture economic growth by adopting sound policies. Not so, say other scholars such as Lawrence Harrison of Tufts University. Culture (a.k.a. “nature”) predisposes some societies to rapid growth and others to poverty or meager growth.
Comes now Gregory Clark, an economist who interestingly takes the side of culture. In an important new book, ” A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World,” Clark suggests that much of the world’s remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can’t take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money) can’t overcome this bedrock resistance.
“There is no simple economic medicine that will guarantee growth, and even complicated economic surgery offers no clear prospect of relief for societies afflicted with poverty,” he writes. Various forms of foreign assistance “may disappear into the pockets of Western consultants and the corrupt rulers of these societies.” Because some societies encourage growth and some don’t, the gap between the richest nations and the poorest is actually greater today (50 to 1) than in 1800 (4 to 1), Clark estimates.
All this disputes the notion that relentless globalization will inevitably defeat global poverty. To Clark, who teaches at the University of California at Davis, history’s most important event was the Industrial Revolution — more important than the emergence of monotheism, which produced Judaism, Christianity and Islam; or the invention of the printing press around 1450, which spread knowledge; or the American Revolution, which promoted democracy.
Before 1800, says Clark, most societies were stagnant. With some exceptions, people lived no better than their ancestors in the Stone Age. Economic growth was virtually nonexistent. Then England broke the pattern, as textile, iron and food production increased dramatically. Since 1800, English income per person has risen by a factor of 10. Much of Europe and the United States followed.
Almost everything that differentiates the modern era from the preceding millennia dates from this point: the virtual end of hunger in advanced societies; the expectation that living standards will constantly rise; the creation of the welfare state to redistribute income; the destructiveness of contemporary warfare; industry’s environmental spoilage. But why did the Industrial Revolution start in England?
It’s Clark’s answer that convinces him of the supremacy of culture in explaining economic growth. Traditional theories have emphasized the importance of the Scientific Revolution and England’s favorable climate: political stability, low taxes, open markets. Clark retorts that both China and Japan around 1800 were about as technically advanced as Europe, had stable societies, open markets and low taxes. But their industrial revolutions came later.
What distinguished England, he says, was the widespread emergence of middle-class values of “patience, hard work, ingenuity, innovativeness, education” that favored economic growth. After examining birth and death records, he concludes that in England — unlike many other societies — the most successful men had more surviving children than the less fortunate. Slowly, the attributes of success that children learned from parents became part of the common culture. Biology drove economics. He rejects the well-known theory of German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) that Protestantism fostered these values.
Clark’s theory is controversial and, at best, needs to be qualified. Scholars do not universally accept his explanation of the Industrial Revolution. More important, China’s recent, astonishing expansion (a fact that he barely mentions) demonstrates that economic policies and institutions matter. Bad policies and institutions can suppress growth in a willing population; better policies can release it. All poverty is not preordained. Still, Clark’s broader point seems incontestable: Culture counts.
Capitalism in its many variants has been shown, he notes, to be a prodigious generator of wealth. But it will not spring forth magically from a few big industrial projects or cookie-cutter policies imposed by outside experts. It’s culture that nourishes productive policies and behavior.
By and large, nations have either lifted themselves or have stayed down. Societies dominated by tribal, religious, ideological or political values that disparage the qualities needed for broad-based growth will not get growth. Economic success requires a tolerance for change and inequality, some minimum level of trust — an essential for much commerce — and risk-taking. There are many plausible combinations of government and market power; but without the proper cultural catalysts, all face long odds.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company
I am writing this document to facilitate Windows users switching from running from an administrator account to a restricted user account. Most Windows users run as an administrator. Though this insures hassle free computing, it is not a secure practice to follow. This is because in case your computer gets infected with a piece of malware, that malware will run in the context of the current user. If you are running as an administrator, then the malware will be able to install itself and gain complete control of the computer. All other operating systems run regular users as restricted users. Most things that people need to do such as e-mail; word processing and surfing the Internet do not need administrative user privileges. These privileges are usually required to carry out operating system level activities such as updating components of the operating system, setting operating system level settings such as security related settings or updating device drivers.
Despite what you may read in the popular press, Windows from Windows 2000 onwards is very secure especially when a user runs under a limited user account. The trouble is most of us by default are set up to run as an administrator when we think about switching to running as a limited user, we find that the process can be intimidating and perhaps complex. What if a particular application does not work? Usually, the answer of experts would be that the application has been badly written. This indeed may be the case but, just because of that, we really cannot stop using a given application. It would be nice to find alternatives but, we may not have the time or the inclination to do so. This document will show you how to start running as a restricted user.
The primary challenge of running as a restricted user is to identify what special access a given program needs to run effectively. There is no easy way to do this except monitoring the event logs in Windows. You need to use the group policy editor to ensure that you have set the correct audit privileges to monitor access to different objects in Windows. An object could be a running process or a file. Once you launch an application under a limited user account, it will bring up an error message. Or, if it is really badly written, it will crash. Immediately after this crash, you must log back on as the administrator, review the security and or application logs and, make relevant changes to Windows permissions.
Another challenge is to migrate settings from one user profile to another. Settings would include both operating system settings and application level settings. For example, you could have a number of e-mail accounts and message rules set up in Microsoft Outlook. You need to ensure that the transition from the administrator account is as painless and seamless as is possible.
My computer is currently running Windows XP professional, all updates applied as of this writing, Microsoft Office 2007, Dragon naturally speaking and a host of other applications. I’m going to be outlining how I carried out the migration to another profile and will also tell you a little about the challenges I faced with some of the utilities and applications I use regularly. This list of course is not complete but I will add to it as and when I encounter anything new.
In an ideal world, the best way to do this is actually not to have to migrate at all. You must start running as a limited user. Given that this is not possible for most of us, there are a few ways that this can be accomplished.
1. |Copy the administrators profile to that of the limited user,
2. Create the user account; configure the applications individually in that account and then export whatever data is required from the administrator’s profile.
I’m going to follow the second approach. I did try copying my user profiles but, this method was not very successful. This is because some applications such as Abbey fine reader had their program data corrupted.
account
To create the restricted user’s account, you log in to the account you are currently using. You then navigate to the users applet in the Windows control panel. This applet looks something like a web page. All you need to now do is choose the relevant options. You need to select “restricted user” when you are asked about the type of the account you want to create. Once you have created this account, you can then close the applet and navigate to the “users and groups” item under the “computer browser.” The computer browser is found in the administrative tools applet of the Windows control panel. Here, you can right click the user that you have created and set its password. While you are here, navigate to the “groups” item and create a group. This group can be called anything. In my case, I have called it “regular users). We will use this group to give our user relevant permissions.
The crucial thing to remember is that your limited user is not the owner of the files that have been created on your computer. It is the administrative user who owns the files. Of course, if you create documents under the limited user account, then that limited user will be the owner of those documents. The result of all this is that when you try and delete or modify the files that have been created under the administrative user’s login, you would be unable to do so from the limited user login. Therefore, you create a group and allow full access to the relevant files and folders that you have created under the administrative user’s login. Please ensure that these files and folders are only documents such as word processing files, spreadsheets and in some cases media. I usually keep all my data outside the “my documents” folder. Therefore, I had to give full permission to the group to manipulate the folders where I had stored the documents I had created. This folder in fact was on a separate partition. The advantage of creating a group is that you can add as many users as you like and, they will all have the same set of permissions.
It is now time to export your bookmarks or favorites and any RSS feeds you may be having in Internet Explorer. You carry out the export using the “import export wizard). This is accessed from within the file menu of Internet Explorer. Do ensure that when you are saving the favorites and feeds, save them to a location other than the default location suggested by the wizard. Otherwise, you will have to launch Windows Explorer using administrative credentials from your limited user account and then copy them into the limited user’s profile. Also be warned, the favorites will be organized alphabetically once you import them into Internet Explorer.
When you log on for the first time as a limited user, you might be forgiven for thinking that you have actually re-installed Windows. A number of the prompts you get this time round are those that come when Windows is being installed. This is because the new user is being created and certain settings need to be customized. Answer the prompts as best as you can. You now need to import your favorites and feeds. You can do so from Internet Explorer.
Note:
At the time of this writing, Internet Explorer version 7 has a bug. The menu bar does not display when you are running under a limited user account. You need to click on the “links” toolbar to enable it. Once you’ve enabled that, the menu bar comes up automatically. You can then check the “menu bar) item under the “toolbars” menu item which is under the “view” menu of Internet Explorer version 7. You can then disable the “links) toolbar.
as a limited user
1. One of the most tedious things you will need to do once you have logged in as a limited user is to configure the rest of your programs. The only easy way to do this than I have found is to launch every program and set it up afresh.
This program works seamlessly even under accounts that have limited user credentials. However, if you try and copy user profiles, then the program will warn you stating that “program data has been corrupted”.
If you are using Microsoft Office 2003, you can use the files and settings transfer wizard to transfer your office settings to your newly created account. If you are using Microsoft office 2007, you will need to re-customize Microsoft Office. Having said that, there is a way to import settings from your account with administrative privileges to your limited user account especially for Outlook 2007. Be warned that this method does not import the passwords that belong to your e-mail accounts. You will need to re-type those passwords. See the following link for details. Exporting Outlook 2007 settings
Note:
As a general rule, it is advisable to store your outlook e-mail in a separate folder. This way, you will be able to use Outlook in both profiles.
You will need to re-customize this application. Alternatively, you can copy the FileZilla settings from the relevant folder under the administrator account. See the FileZilla project Wiki for more information on where the FileZilla settings are stored.
With J-say and Jaws for Windows
You will need to customize your settings for Jaws for Windows. By settings I mean settings related to speech rate, pitch, the reading of graphics and so on. Dragon NaturallySpeaking does indeed work seamlessly even under limited user credentials. However, you need to ensure that you have backed up your user profile. This is so because Dragon NaturallySpeaking will be unable to access your user profile if it is stored in the default location. The default location is user specific and will be mapped to your initial user who has administrative credentials. Another way around this is to export your vocabulary and commands and then create a fresh profile under limited user credentials. This is what I chose to do. J-say for the most part is also working seamlessly. I am unable to create text notes when running as a limited user.
You will need to reconfigure and also reregister this application.
You will need to reconfigure this application. When you launch it for the first time, it will install itself in your currently active user profile.
You will need to reconfigure this application. When you launch it for the first time, it will install itself in your currently active user profile.
<h4The Opendns client for Windows
You will be able to install this application. However, I was unable to install it is a service while running from my limited user account. I could however do so when I logged in using my account with administrative privileges.
This program works seamlessly under a limited user account. No action was required on my part. It was just there in the system tray. I still need to test it’s kill power functionality. It is able to send e-mail notifications without any difficulty even when running under a limited account.
when running as a limited user, you use the “runas” utility to carry out administrative tasks. See the following Microsoft knowledge base article for details.
kb294676
one of the biggest headaches you will encounter when running as a limited user is that it is difficult to install or remove programs. Many programmes right to the “program files” folder. You could either redirect these or, ideally, run the installation as an administrator. Always try installing a programme from the limited account first unless of course the programme explicitly states that it needs administrative credentials for installation. be warned that you will encounter several programs that do not state this explicitly but still require those credentials based on the locations they write to in Windows.
When Windows XP displays a list of possible accounts you can run from, in some situations, you may encounter an account called “administrator”. This is a hidden account which is usually visible only in safe mode. It is not password protected. You should login into safe mode and set a password for this account to maximise your computer security. See the following link for more information on how to do this.
Windows XP Administrator Account Passwords
If you use the scheduled tasks feature of Windows, you would need to recreate the tasks that you have created under the administrative account. Alternatively, you can set those tasks from the administrative account to run under the credentials of the limited user account. If you do this, be aware that you may have to set special permissions for files and folders to allow these tasks to run successfully. In some cases, if your scheduled tasks do not require any user intervention, you would have to make no changes except that you must ensure that the option to allow the tasks to run without that user being logged on is checked.

Migrating to a restricted user account from an administrator account by Pranav Lal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Norway License.
See the below links to older downloadable versions of this post.
Click here to download migrating to a restricted user account from an administrator account in Word 2003 (*.doc) format
Click here to download migrating to a restricted user account from an administrator account in PDF
Click here to download migrating to a restricted user account from an administrator account in RTF
Note
My Thanks to Wayne Johnson for creating the initial tagged PDF version of this document.