A little head start on the password protected Exun Members Only download area. All download URL’s that require to be password protected can be stored in the directory “downloads” in the “logexun” directory on the FTP server.

I understand not everyone has access to the FTP server. But indirectly (through blogger) you guys can upload material into the directory. Just make sure, it’s “logexun/downloads” in Blogger.

For example http://logexun.exunclan.com/downloads/MYFILE.DOC (yeah, logexun.exunclan.com works just like exunclan.com/logexun) is not accessible without the password, but after you’ve supplied a correct password, you’re on your way to downloading the file.

A PHP solution to this password protected thing is

http://logexun.exunclan.com/download.php?url=http://logexun.exunclan.com/downloads/MYFILE.DOC

For those interested, the PHP source is also available.

Hail to the Power of PHP.

hi all

check this out

FIN.PSD

udit

[Karan – I’ve fixed your link, Udit. This now links to your Panda PSD.]

[Aurojit – For some reason I can’t post a comment, so this is gonna have to do. Well we are not in China, and the only way exun and the panda are related is me. Understand that exun is bigger than one person or one name, the panda doesn’t fit into the logo. Humor is ok, but don’t do this with the logo]

Questions and Answers from the Quiz Finals at Mother’s International School’s MINET 2004 which took place on the 8th of August 2004 are available for download: click here to download the Word (.doc) file.

The file is protected with a password. Until I can figure out a PHP method to make secure downloads (for only Exun members) possible, you will have to send an email to [email protected] or [email protected] and request for the password.

–Karan

The Class X Inter-section IT Quiz took place on Friday the 13^th of August 2004.

The Results are:

1. First Position – Section F
2. Second Position – Section D
3. Third Position – Section G

Exun would like to take this opportunity to thank Rohan Kharbanda (Exun 2002-03) for being the most important part of the Quiz, the Quizmaster.

This Quiz was organized by Exun members:

Gursartaj Singh Nijjar, Dhruv Kumar, Abhishek Suri, Abhisheyk Gaur, Maanick Nangia and Karan Misra

PS: Shall try to add the names of the participants if possible.

Sorry to delay Entrance Test for junior programmers. A logic test will be conducted for students of class VIII on 18^th August 2004 (Wednesday) during stay back hours. Students who want to give the test may or maynot be familiar to Basic/C++ programming language (though it would be better if they have some knowledge about programming). Students will be tested only on their logical and analytical skills. They wouldnot be asked to write any programs. Exun members of class VIII or IX are requested to announce about this test in all sections of class VIII.

If you’ve been keeping up with Windows Longhorn or Mac OS X, you will see that ever since Apple released OS X in 2001, both companies have been trying to make their operating systems look “prettier”. Although Apple completely rewrote the millions of lines of code comprising the Mac OS from scratch for version 10, I think that both Apple and Microsoft have moved in a terribly wrong direction.

Mac OS X

To a certain extent Mac OS X’s interface is very good indeed. For example, the buttons for closing, maximizing and minimizing a window are marked with distinct colours. Also, Exposé along with anti-aliasing make Mac OS X a really sweet sight. Now many of you may disagree with me on this, but I find two very basic things in Mac OS X to be fatally flawed:

1. The Dock
2. Minimizing and Maximizing

By default the dock is at the bottom of the screen where it takes up more than 1/10th of the screen, and that vertical space becomes completely unusable. Secondly, the bouncing action of the icons (by default, it can be changed) when an application starts is really kiddish and one gets fed up of it pretty soon. Minimizing: firstly, all software don’t support the standard Apple-M keyboard shortcut for it (for example, FireFox doesn’t) and secondly, once you send a window into the Dock, there’s no way of maximizing it again with a keyboard shortcut. This is, in a word – bugging. These are not all of the GUI troubles with Mac OS X, there are many more, but these tend to bug you a lot in regular everyday use.

Windows

There’s no point in arguing that Windows XP wasn’t inspired by Mac OS X, because it definitely was. I have no qualms with the Windows interface. In fact, I happen to believe it as being one of the most well-designed and most accessible user interfaces, beating Mac OS (elegant though it may be) and Linux (really not a challenge) in many many areas. When I see the Windows UI, the word that comes to my mind is “efficient” – this is the UI you want to work on, compared to the word “cool” that comes to my mind when I think of Mac OS X. Windows XP was supposed to look cool; however, I think that if you ever get around to doing serious work on XP, you almost always switch back to the Classic (Windows 95 to 2000) look, simply because it’s just more efficient, and those jazzy animations, shadows and transparency really don’t help at all.

Mac OS 9

“Ultrafast, Efficient” come to my mind. The OS 9 (or Classic) GUI beats the Mac OS X, Windows and Linux GUI in every area. It is the most usable thing on this planet. In fact, it’s always been a major reason for the fact that Macs were used extensively in graphics and video development (Intel’s ads were until recently made on Macs). Not only that, but with all its efficiency, it’s also much better, more space saving and easier to use than the current Windows or Mac OS X GUI. If somebody could just slap the Classic GUI on top of Windows or Mac OS X, I would be the happiest person on this planet.

–Karan

Hello,

We need to know if sufficient people will be attending the session. So please post names, whoever would like to attend the session.

Also for the ones who’ll want to attend, brush up a bit on the basic syntax.

Thanks,

Mukul

Exun members are invited to send articles for the Dips Diary 2004-05 which will be featured in the Exun section of the Dips Diary.

Please send your articles (with all attached media) to [email protected].

–Karan

Seeing that you guys cracked the first code pretty easily, I’m giving a second code, obviously difficult than the previous one. I found it quite difficult to crack but I don’t know about the rest of you.

The following scriptures were actually found in the diary of a 16th century englishman. You have to decode this. It decrypts (obviously) into English.

Frankly speaking I wasen’t able to decrypt it without looking at the hint.

Mail me at [email protected] for a big hint

Best of Luck!

Hopefully you’ll find this more time consuming than the previous one.

PS: Please don’t check up the solutions from anywhere.

Also please don’t mail solutions on the blog. Mail them to me (again at [email protected]) if you manage to solve it.

Techedge was at Birla Vidya Niketan on 3 August , the round I was pretty simple, but the second question for round II involved GRAPHICS for which we required the “help file”.I apologise for posting the questions so late, and thanx Souvik for ur help.the questions are :

Round I

Question 1:

Make a program which sort a 2D matrix according to the following example

9 1 4 2 1 2 3 4

11 10 16 8 5 6 7 8

5 12 17 15 à 9 10 11 12

6 3 13 14 13 14 15 16

Question 2:

Write a menu driven program for encrypting, decrypting and splitting files.

Round II

Question 1:

Write a program to make an asterisks bounce on the screen such that it moves with variable velocity. The asterisks should increase velocity on hitting the edges. Also the initial acceleration and initial velocity should be user input.

Question 2:

Make an analog clock with least count=1 second(using graphics complete with hour hand, minutes hand and the seconds hand)