Month / June 2008

by Nirupam Biswas

jDCBot nearing its finale – The 1.0 milestone

The open source project DC client framework jDCBot (http://jdcbot.sourceforge.net) I have been working on is now nearing its 1.0 milestone. Version 1.0 means that it will have all the required features that a DC client framework should have, like – managing shared files, hashing them, creating file lists, queuing downloads and resuming them when the source is available, multi-source downloading, etc.

This framework has been created from scratch, so unlike other DC clients which share DC++‘s code for the core functionality and hence provide similar features, jDCBot will provided unorthodox features. For example DC++ clients and its derivatives allow users only to provide different user names and passwords for different hubs. jDCBot on the other hand allows you to be passive or active in different hubs. So you can be passive and active both at the same time. This is useful in situations when say you are inside your college LAN and you want to connect to hubs inside the LAN and outside on the Internet too. In this case DC++ and derivatives will force you to be passive, but in jDCBot you can be active for inside your LAN and passive for outside the LAN. Well, you also get to set different descriptions, email addresses and connection types too.

There some other cool features too which are not present in other clients like allowing you to set different upload speeds for different users (this way you can give your friends a boost), blocking upload to particular users (could be misused but we are giving the power and it is upto the clients who will use jDCBot to make the decisions), using the virtual file list concept which allows the users to organize their share into virtual directories without actually reorganizing the files, the file names in file list can even be different from the original allowing the user to rename the file in the file list without rehashing or allowing the user to re-associate the virtual file with the actual file after the original file name/path changes so that rehashing is not required, and many more. Last but not the least it is pure JAVA framework and hence is platform independent and is very modular.

by Nirupam Biswas

Rush Hour 3 – Review


Yesterday I saw Rush Hour 3. I know it was released long ago, in fact one year ago, but I have much less time or rather I love to do others tasks more and so movie watching takes a back seat. Anyway back to the movie. This is one of the most ridiculous movies I ever have seen, yes there are some, much more ridiculous, but its one scene broke all limits and forced me to actually blog about it!

Warning story spoiler (huh! as if it has any story)

This movie uses numerous well known formulae to create its plot. This movie has a typical protagonist (Jackie Chan) who has an evil brother – the villain. The protagonist tries to shrug off any fact that he actually still cares about his evil brother, but he indeed does care about him. The evil brother in question doesn’t give a damn about his protagonist brother, but he is very much aware about his brother’s weakness for him. So much so that the evil brother doesn’t fear a gun at his temple when pointed by his protagonist brother, after all the writer of the story has given him his word. The movie’s focal point was that a criminal secret society has (again) a secret ridiculous ritual. Because of the only reason that they
want it to remain secret that they rough-up and kill people. The same old story. Yawn!

The movie starts with a scene with a traffic cop (Chris Tucker), iPod in his ears, guiding the traffic or shall we say just dancing. Here we get to meet the typical black side-kick that many movies have. Oh, yes, by-the-way the evil brother – the villain, is not the main villain, as it can very well be assumed when a villain is shown in the very first 15 mins of the movie. Another typical formula, make an old, caring and father figure the main villain. I had a gut feeling who was the main villain from the very beginning, so much so, when I saw the protagonist trusting him so much I felt like going through the screen and pull Jackie Chan’s ears and tell him – You fool, can’t you see he is the real villain, haven’t you seen enough movies? The movie is peppered with ridiculous moments, I am still coming to the biggest of such moments. In one scene when Jackie and his associate reach the hospital where the shot ambassador was kept, they find not a single security personnel. During this time the villainous gang attack but our heroes save the day, as expected. Later nowhere in the movie they raise question about it. As if they had an amnesia and now none of them remember that they were just now attacked and mysteriously there was no one else to cover.

Now the biggest ridiculous moment of all. This is the only scene that actually forced me write this blog – This is my first movie review. This was so so (double ‘so’ was intended) ridiculous. In the climax of the movie it was shown that the mafia has control over the Eiffel Tower! Not even that, they even happen to have a plush apartment up there, and nobody in France seems to be bothered about it or maybe they don’t know about it – Ah the might of the writer’s pen, they can make anything possible. The last scene too was kinda funny. When the old, caring and father figure main villain, points his caring gun at our protagonists, a shot is fired, and (here we go again) as always he gets the shot, but from a cab driver who wanted to kill someone without reason (‘to become a true American’), and as this was not a ‘no reason’ hence his dreams were shattered. Poor driver. Then happens the funny part. The dying old, caring and father figure main villain walks up to the pool to take his eternal plunge. In many movies the villains take plunge into the near-by pools when they are shot (during the climax), as if to hide their shameful faces, but never before I had ever seen them walk for meters for the plunge. He didn’t looked like he was shot, rather he looked like a tired person lost in the desert and seeking water. Brett Ratner you could have made him walk up close to the pool when he was alive and then he could have just fallen into it without the walking stuff. Anyway this last part did really give me the laughs.

Conclusion

What can I conclude? You have nothing else to do and have no other options then, well, you have no other options, so see this movie, else recommend this movie to your enemy.