If something as simple as setx CLASSPATH %CLASSPATH%;d:\jars\foo.jar doesn’t work, I won’t use it (All I want to do is globally set environment variables from the command line). I’ll probably cook up a quick Perl script for this, using Win32::Registry.

Update: My blushes. The reason setx seems to not work is because NT’s console will not reload the environment after a program changes it — opening a new console shows the changes just fine. Bad usability, but setx isn’t to blame — cmd.exe really needs a Unix-style export internal.

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SecurityFocus: Yaha Worm Takes Out Pakistan Government’s Site.

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ToI: From the reclusive Simi Garewal to the garrulous Urmila Matondkar, everyone wants to see Devdas — and wants to see it now. Ditto here.

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Jet Airways reduces prices by 64%, Indian Airlines follows suit. This scheme is operational for three months — August to October, the lean tourist season. This is, of course, also a way for the airlines to recoup losses from the lack of tourist traffic (because of the travel advisories), but also has the salutary effect of giving Indian Railways a solid kick in the pants and rousing it out of its slumber. 2AC and 3AC (sometimes called ‘upper class’) berths cost a lot (in part because they subsidize freight and SL (`sleeper’) berths). Now, August through October, flying will have a cost comparable to that of traveling by train. Done round the year, this would kill off the market for xAC berths, with the entire customer base flocking to planes instead. I can only hope airlines would revisit this decision in September. (Relatively) cheap air travel round the year would transform Indian society and business, as distances will begin to matter less and less.

Update: The Railways prepares to slash prices on their fastest trains. These trains are comfortable for sure, but going from Chennai to New Delhi via train takes 29 hours on the fastest train (which is available twice a week), and 33.5 hours on a slightly slower train which is available everyday. Given the chance to cut that down to 4 hours for an extra 1000 bucks, I’d bite. About the only reason I can think of for choosing trains in a scenario like this would be capacity. A fully laden train can carry 1000+ people, and the Railways has a lot of ‘em. And while the airlines aren’t exactly lacking in planes, they have far less capacity to handle the sheer numbers the railways move every day. Ah, deregulation, where art thou?

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As someone who is perpetually 8-16 pounds overweight, and doesn’t really do anything about it, I read the NYTimes Big Fat Lie article with great interest. Thankfully, most (non-vegetarian) Indian diets, while carbohydrate-adequate (for the hot climate and the higher metabolic rate), are not fat/protein deficient. And processed flour (”maida” and friends), while more common than it used to be, is still looked at with disapproval by ‘traditional’ wisdom.

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Rob Fahrni on build breakage:

Working for a large company has it’s ups and downs. Once Visio became a part of Microsoft we had immediate access to cool tools to make our jobs better. Our test organization has probably benefitted the most, but we’ve also seen some cool stuff in development. Every large software company has their own set of home grown tools to help with the process. We had them at Visio, just not in large quantities like we have at MS. Anywho, back to the story. There’s been one area that has totally stunk since we started using some of the Office teams tools. Builds! The single most important thing to keep working is now often busted. Breaking the build should be punishable by death, ok maybe not death but you get the picture. The other cool tools we have access to don’t mean squat if you don’t have a build to work with.

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Seth Schoen’s second post on Palladium has lots of juice (and less Descartes :-)). I stand corrected, Palladium != TCPA, Palladium is similar to TCPA. On the other hand, the similarity extends far enough: alternative OSes will be able to run on a Palladium PC, largely since the extra, Palladium functionality can be ignored. Also, most OSes should be able to enable the Palladium featureset if they so choose.

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…in the ToI.

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Message to Sun: please please pretty please lose the goddamn fucking classpath in Java 1.5. Or add a saner alternative. Thank you. From another disgusted soul.

PS. I use this script to save myself from turning into clarence-the-cross-eyed-lion:

#!perl -w
$#ARGV eq 0 || die "Usage: perl showenv.pl ENV_VAR\n";
$vars = `echo \%$ARGV[0]\%`;
$vars =~ s/;/\n/g;
print $vars;

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Btw, for those who asked if I have turned into a penguinista: nope. I still am using Windows 2000, Office XP, and Visual Studio.NET. But, as always, I still have PuTTY and a trusty SSH prompt by my side

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