Interesting C Question

A simple C question, What is the maximum size occupied by a structure? This question was asked by R* after reading some C books as a part of his placement preperation. The question is very very simple still i wanted to check how many are like me.

#include
int
main ()
{
struct simple
{
int a,b,d;
char c[2];
}tmpob;

int size;
size = sizeof (tmpob);
printf ("Total size of structure : %d\n",size);
return 0;
}

Predict the answer and give some explanation so that i may know the answer.

Consistent team ever

Just five more days to go for the FIFA world cup. With all the warm up matches over, the whole world is waiting for the great event to unfold. Wonder where India is ? They are in a very formidable 117th position. They have successfully retained their 117th position for the second year. No one to challenge them for their position. They should have done a lot of work to stay in that position. Hats of to them. Waiting to see who is going to win the contest. Too many contenders b razil, england, germany, france etc.... but my support goes to brazil and france.

Stepping into Final year

The VI semester exams came to an end on may27 and with that ended the eventful third year. The third year went fine except for the marks which continued the same decreasing trend. A lot happened in the last year like gr8 gr8 CAS, department symposium which still remains fresh in my memories, fabulous FStival '05, interesting intra and inter department contests, spicy industrial visit, numerous night labs, fun with seniors, thiki thenarum seminars, delicious treats (delicious till u dont spend) and a lot more. Fun and work constituted third year. All that has ended and now its time to take up the new role, the final year and senior most students of the college. A lot more may come this year results,placements,fun etc etc etc ........

Virus....Virus...Virus

Thats how my windoze desktop looked when i connected to net when my system was under the attack of viruses. All because of some new viruses with names win32host.exe, smss.exe, lsass.exe etc. Googling said they are called Trojan.systemposer and are capable of sending mass spams, modifying the registry runkey to start them when system is rebooted, spying on keystrokes and exploring the vulnerabilities of other running processes. They seem to do a lot of work than all other processes running in my system. There were around 23 infected files, and with antivirus updates and GNU/Linux i was able to remove some. Still some remain and continue to disturb me. Silly to spend more time and resource to guard the OS than working on it.

Fighting for a good cause

A good move by the medical college students in the northern states. It is good to see students voicing out their view against the government, which sticks on to the old customs that no longer exist. For example in TN when an OC candidate with 280 cutoff mark struggles to get a seat in a good Engg. college some get it easily with 270,260 or even 240. What is to be pitied here is that the student with 240 is socially and economically well established and has more oppurtunities than the poor OC guy. This is how quotas are used or to be more apt misused. Today everyone has equal oppurtunity. Reservation policy looks like an attempt to lure poor people and to maintain their support. If at all the government wants to help them they may find a method to provide all with good education so that they could get the seat by themselves rather than relying on the idiotic schemes which are to be rendered obsolete. I think students will understand that it is talent that will help the country's growth and not all these craps. The students will surely succeed as long as politics doesnot play spoilsport.

Words of Wisdom

From Robert Langdon's thoughts in Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons"

"Faith does not protect you. Medicine and airbags.... those are the things that protect you. God does not protect you. Intelligence protects you. Enlightenment. Put your faith in something with tangible results. How long has it been since someone walked on water? Modern miracles belong to science....computer, vaccines, space stations...........who needs god? No! Science is god.

Seems to be true.

Internals Schedule

Third internals started on Monday keeping all busy for six days. The schedule has been quite tight the whole week. This was my schedule for the third internals

Afternoon & Evening : Come back from college at around 2:00pm. Too tired to start studying. Better sleep after a heavy lunch. Wake up at around 5:00 pm. All work and no play makes sen a dull boy. So better play for around 1/2 hrs. It would not be nice to shutdown the system without listening to songs. So listen to songs for 1/2 hrs.Now the time is 6.00pm. The evening looks pleasant. Go for a walk and come back by around 6:30pm.Call Nirmal and ask for the important questions. Spend the next 30 minutes creating the schedule. It turns out to be an optimistic schedule, 3 units for the night and two to be completed in the morning.

Night: Start studying the first question by around 7:15pm and continue till 8:15pm. The subjects are like rocket science. Mom and Dad arrive from office so spend some time with them. Suddenly the time becomes 9.00pm.Its time for dinner. Hmm the dinner also tastes good. So have a good dinner watching songs or serials in TV. Now the time is around 10.00pm, lot of portion to complete. Try studying the units sincerely, unfortunately end up sleeping in the chair. Dad asks to go to sleep(with a little anger). Obey him immediately. Set the alarm at 2.00am and go to sleep at around 10.30pm with just only one question completed.

Next Day morning : Wake up at around 5.00am. Wonder why the alarm did not strike and who switched it off at 2.00am. Too sleepy to study. Forgot to check mails yesterday so check mails,orkut and blogs for 1/2 hour. The time is around 5.30am. Still 4 and 1/2 units to complete. Start studying intensively. Newspaper boy comes at around 6.30am. Not knowing what is happening around the world would be bad. Spend 15 Min for sports and cinema news. Oops time is 7.00am. Got to catch A5 so that i could get a seat and use the 30 minutes in the bus effectively :), so it is time get started. Manage to catch B5 at the last minute that means it is not possible to open the book in the bus. Somehow manage to complete around 2 units in the bus and in between 9 and 9.30.

In the Exam Hall : Get the question paper. The first look of the question paper gives an impression that the question paper does not belong to us. Look at it keenly and laugh (looks to me like greek and latin). See praveen and musi, thank god they are also laughing. Start putting margins to all pages since that is going to be the only good thing in the answer sheets. Oh God ! the two marks are a little tough, compulsory question is not the expected one, no hope of touching questions from 4th and 5th unit. Write something in the paper for 3hours and get prepared to repeat all this for the next exam.

Net result : The internal marks may get a little lower. The probability of continuing the bad run in the externals gets a little higher.

Entitled to Elect

Last week i got my voter's identification card and from now on my vote may play a vital role in determining the fate of India :) provided someone doesnot use it before i go to the polling station. I was asked to come to take photo for the identification card on March 8. My second internal exams started on 9th so i had time on wednesday afternoon to take the photo. The way in which the photo was taken is something unforgetable. The photographer came so close and he might have kissed me i he had been a little more closer. Finaly the photo was taken with the digicam just a centimeter or so away from the tip of my nose. I expected the photo to be beautiful considering the way the photo was taken. I received the identification card two days later as the lamination material was not available on that day. What i thought didnot go wrong, the photo was too good that even i could not take a second look of my picture there. So beautifully taken. I learnt from the card that i could use the card as identification card for other government purposes. But i dont think it would serve to identify me as most of the information seem to belong to some sen and surely they dont belong to me.

I lost track of what is going on in the politics of TamilNadu in the recent days. No clue about which all parties have formed what alliance. It is surprising to see how politicians could change sides so quickly. They keep talking about party's policy and kolgai always but when elections are announced all seem to evaporate so suddenly. Adding to all these are the new parties formed by actors. It is interesting to watch the campaigns of the actors, their talk is filled with punch dialogues and uncountable number of promises. Amidst all these i heard that 5 IIT graduates are going to contest. This is a good news and it would be much better if every contestant is well learned.

CAS in Action

Hurray!! After a tiresome work on saturday CAS-Central Authentication System popularly called Single Sign On came into effect. We have been working on this for about three months starting from December. We started this on December without a single hint about what we are supposed to do. It was like walking in the dark forest, knowing nothing about our next step. But all went fine under seniors guidance and here we are, at the edge of a finishing it. Still a lot of loose ends to be tied up and everything would be fine once all are done. Lot of problems are sure to occur. Hope everything goes fine without problem.

Staying in touch with TVSLMHSS

This is all about the community for TVSLMHSS in orkut. For those who donot know about TVSLMHSS, it is a well known school in Tamilnadu and it was there i did my schooling. I was not aware of what was happening there in the school and how is it going after i left. Thanks to orkut, it has linked me again with the school or atleast with the students and alumni of my old school. Orkut has an active community for TVSLMHSS with 199 members and the owner is Guruguhan Meenakshisundaram. The discussions going on there reminded me about the classes. One such discussion was about their favourite teacher. It was interesting to read the replies. Most of them quoted Mr.Balu,our english teacher as their favourite and their replies contained a number of his famous and interesting dialogues. I felt like sitting in my class on reading thosee replies. I enjoyed the seven years i studied there. It was something great, the teachers were cool and understanding, the whole environment rocked. My memories are still fresh and i could go on talking about that for one full day but i have no intention of doing that.

And about the recent developments in the school, Mr.Sudhakaran has left the school so it is the turn of Mrs.Uma Ramesh of Maths department to act as the principal of the school. And Mr.Ramesh sir of Biology department is the vice principal. My favourite teacher Nagarajan sir of the physics department is the assistant principal. Mr.Rajkumar of biology department has left the school and is working as the vice principal in chethana school in Madurai. This is what i got from orkut and i am not sure how much of it is true. And i think they have purchased some more buses increasing the count further.