Bug in Blogger in Alignment in HTML Mode

Sometimes, in blogger, when you post in edit HTML mode, the alignment fails partially/fully. The partial/full text is shown in a single paragraph. That is due to some bug in blogger, where it stops converting the new lines to <br>. In that case, wherever you want new lines, use <br> tags yourself and don't depend on blogger for converting automatically.

Anonymous Feedback Without Anonymity

I know a company which takes regular anonymous feedback. They have enough checks to make sure that, the feedback is really anonymous. The feedback is conducted by a third party, and it contains many objective questions. The third party aggregates all the responses at the senior manager level for each question and gives it back to that company. All the senior managers and above would know the aggregated feedback, and they are obliged to publish the aggregated feedback to his/her team.

In that company, some time back, under one senior manager, for the question, Intent to stay in the company, nobody said, they would stay in the company.

Where is the anonymity in that? If there was atleast one person who intended to stay in the company, the anonymity would have been there for everyone. But, now, it is clear that the entire team under that senior manager wants to leave the company soon, it would be too embarrassing for everyone in that team.

By the way, soon after publishing the results, the senior manager left that company.

Error With %0D in Linux - Removing 0D characters in VIM

Symptom
If there is a batch file in Dos/Windows, and if it is copied to Unix/Linux and run it as a shell file, it appends %0D at the end, and the command won't work. But, if the file is opened in a text editor, everything looks proper and you cannot find any ^M characters.

Cause:
In DOS/Windows, the new line is represented by CRLF. In Linux, it is represented by LF, and in Mac, it is represented by CR. If you are getting error with 0x0D in Unix/Linux, it is due to the difference in the line terminator only. The hexadecimal code for CR is 0x0D and it is represented by ^M in VIM and other similar text editors.

Verifying:
Run hexdump on that file, and see whether you are seeing 0a0d or only 0a. If you see 0a0d, it means, it is a DOS file.

Resolution:
Easiest solution is, if you have dos2unix command, then just running that command on that file would remove the 0x0D characters.

You can remove it from VIM also. If you open that file in VIM, and if you see ^M characters, then run the command

:%s/<Ctrl+V><Enter>//g

The above command will remove all the ^M characters in the file, and the file can be used as if, it is a unix/linux file.

If you don't see ^M characters in the file, it may be because, the configuration has been set to recognize DOS files. (i.e., you will not see ^M characters, which are valid in DOS). To remove the ^M characters, first we have to let VIM to show them. For that, we need to set the file format as unix, and reload the file to open in that format. The following commands set the file format to unix and reloads the file.

:set ffs=unix
:e <filename>

If we run the above two commands, it will show ^M characters, and by running the command (:%s/<Ctrl+V><Enter>//g), those characters would be removed, and you can use that file as if, it is unix/linux file. The above commands have the scope of the present buffer, and if we reopen VIM, the file format would be reverted to the one that is set in the configuration file.

Transliteration From English to Indian Languages in HTML and Javascript

In continuation with Transliteration From English to 6 Indian Languages, I have changed the transliteration from Java/JSP to Html and Javascript.

The primary differences are, the transliteration happens instantly and anyone can use this offline without installing any softwares.

URL: http://www.tnsatish.com/translate

To access this offline, save http://www.tnsatish.com/translate/index.html and http://www.tnsatish.com/translate/translate.js in the same directory and open translate.html.

I have tested this in Firefox 3.6, IE 8, Opera 10.63, and Google Chrome. If you face any issues please let me know.

Courtesy: Cannot be disclosed. [If I disclose it, they may fight for copyright ;) ]

Corruption Vs Policies

If I have to choose one of the following

• Getting back 10 times of what we lost in 2G scam
  
• Completely liberalizing Education and Transport in India
  

Without any second thought, I would choose the second option.