Gaveen's Blog

I'm being besieged by ants, constantly during the past couple of days. For some odd reason, ants in my home seem to find my notebook computer attractive. Whenever I turn it on and use it, ants (biting red ones, not the harmless black ones) come in a line, get through the space between the lid and the base, walk right over the power button (some over the speakers) and go in through the keyboard. First day I just blew a few. Then I realized that they were really determined. A fair amount of them started to crawl near the computer. The odd thing was they only tried to go in, when it was on. Whenever the computer was switched off, the few who made it in started resurfacing as the computer was cooling down. Was it heat (they should be nuts to seek heat in this climate :) or was it something else? I'm not sure. I was wondering whether it's because I blogged about SugarCRM a few days ago. :)

I've seen what they can do to a keyboard (they literally bites it and takes chews with them). After loosing a PC keyboard due to some spilled biscuit crumbs by a cousin, I was also determined not to let them damage my notebook. After a several tactical moves, and hard defending, I moved everything on the table away, and sprinkled the table with talc (not mine)! I also have a brush ready to defend, in the case of occasional break-ins. It seems to work. I only have a small half-circle shaped DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) around the computer to keep my hands, headphones ans external mouse. It's kind of cool, like working in snow :) when people are not telling me that I've got chalk on my arms.

According to the researchers and technology experts, availability of IPv4 addresses will exhaust in 2010 at this rate, probably between march and may. Thats less than 3 years from now. Most probably the panic attack will come before that. So I guess it's safe to assume that migration to IPv6 is going to be big after around 2 years from now. So buckle up, road ahead is bond to be a bit edgy (at least for tech people).

Well, I'm not in a mood to explain what IPv4/6 addresses are for non-tech-savvy people. So I'll give a very simple (technically inaccurate) example. Your house is named "Big House", and people know it by the name. Your house also has a number to be refers by the town authorities 63/57. For people and for day to day use "Big House" is more easier and convenient. But the actual representation of your house is 63/57. Taxing and evaluating are done in association with it. Think of domain names (Ex: google.com) as "Big House" and IP addresses (Eg: 64.233.187.99) as 63/57. An IPv4 address is a 4-segment representation where each segment can be a number between 0-255 (IE: 0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255). Each computer, router and any node directly connected to the Internet should have an IP address. In lay terms, IP address exhaustion means that by a certain date (Eg: march, 2010), there will be no more address available to be given to the new computers connecting to the Internet.

Even a kid can realize that this is a crisis. But unfortunately, most businesses who influence the IT industry didn't feel it was. They get the wake up call now. Comfort zone invaded, now they have to move to a new system to sustain the growth of the Internet. Solution: IPv6.

Back in early 90s, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), and other people foresaw the coming of the inevitable exhaustion. So in 1996, IETF released a set of specifications for the version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), starting with RFC 2460. 11 years later the industry has shown a terribly lukewarm attitude towards adopting IPv6. The concept has remained more academical than practical until recently. However with the predictions available, it can be expected to see more rapid adoption and migration to IPv6 from IPv4. The biggest pain, I guess would be to migrate business applications and legacy systems to IPv6. On system administration front, more and more IPv6 aware applications and tools are appearing.

I guess and hope that we are going to see the mass migration to IPv6 soon. Even the newly appointed IETF chair Russ Housley expects to see this sooner rather than later. He said this in an interview among other things. Russ being having a strong interest in security also expressed his eagerness to improve security of the Internet.

This is for people who try to argue with me that Open Source software is nothing serious. So read the article, research the Net and save me from the arguments. Of course, anyone else is welcome to read this, too.

This isn't going to be yet another 'Open Source is the best' article, or another 'Microsoft is evil' article (for that matter I'm not Anti-Microsoft, though I don't, can't and won't accept certain aspects of their vision and practices. Let's just say I'm Pro-FOSS). However this is a sort of an answer to Microsoft fanatics (not mere fans), then people who develop allergies when they hear 'Open Source' and people who are ignorant enough to refrain from opening up their minds.

All of them have been saying Open Source doesn't count, Open Source is for hobbyists and Open Source is not for enterprise. They as hard as they, could have been denying the influence the Open Source movement has done to the software, technology and culture. I just wanted to write this since I briefly had the opportunity to be bugged by seeing a couple of know-all tech gurus giving degrading comments about Open Source.


Open Source is a real deal:

Before I go into more things let me answer a few FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Disbelief) facts. Fist there are people who claims Open Source is only for hobbyists. Well, that doesn't explain why Apache is the most deployed web server, when so called industry standard web servers are there. I see no one putting million dollar marketing budget behind Apache. The claim doesn't also explain why Firefox has been downloaded several millions of times. It doesn't explain why operating systems like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc., server software like Postfix, Sendmail, qmail, Spamassasin, Squid, BIND, Snort, etc. and end user software like OpenOffice.org, VLC, MPlayer, Pidgin (Gaim), Thunderbird, Evolution, Wireshark (Ethereal), Nmap, FrostWire, Azureus, 7-Zip, TrueCrypt, GIMP, Inkscape, etc., programming tools like PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, CVS, Subversion, gdb, etc., Database management systems like PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. are so popular either. For people who haven't heard of any single thing in the list, I have to tell one thing. You have to use a computer if you want to see software. :)

And about lack of enterprise applications, well.... what should I say. I'll just give another list of names and leave you to check them out. These are Alfresco, WebGUI, Adempiere, Openbravo, Project Open, Pentaho, Jasper, SugarCRM, vtigerCRM, Scalix, Zimbra, Hyperic, Zenoss, etc., etc.


Open Source means business:

Which impact Open Source had on the software industry anf technology? None?

Wrong again. Although I may suggest that ambitious projects like Wikipedia are results of the inspiration, there are more solid examples that businesses and vendors are realizing what Open Source can do for them.

For example lets see a few projects and software which went Open Source after being closed source/proprietary. It includes Solaris operating system, Ingres database, Java programming language, Hyperic HQ IT asset management system, AOLServer web server, and even Quake (1/2/3) game engines.

The latest news about the battle for software freedom is surprisingly coming from the most unexpected source. It'll be interesting to see what the members of Anti-FOSS camp have to say about this.

Microsoft has launched an Open Source software site at
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/
And they are going to submit their Shared Source License for the approval of OSI (Open Source Initiative).

I hope, after all they have taken one step towards understanding that Open Source is not a rival revolution, but a revolution they can also take part in. I really hope so. Then again, I also hope for peace on Earth. :) Let's see.



Truth Happens:

I'm going to end this post by quoting a little old video from Red Hat (markets leading Linux vendor) which in turn quotes from Mahatma Gandhi.

First they ignore you...

Then they laugh at you...

Then they fight you...

Then you win.

SugarCRM, probably the most popular Open Source CRM project has decided to release their upcoming SugarCRM Community Edition 5 under the brand new GPL version 3.

It was nice for them to move to a real OSI certified Open Source license, rather than sticking with their own. Wait a minute...... version 2 of GPL doesn't appear in the OSI certified list yet. Well, I guess it's going to make it there. I have yet to study the GPL v3, so I cannot comment on technicalities or personal views. Should be an interesting reading (now, don't look at me like that), after considering the controversies linked with it, Linus Torvalds not being happy about an early draft and all.

SugarCRM is a promising project, but it has a little rough memory regarding the flame wars with their vtigerCRM fork. I guess SugarCRM people will have to get used to being used (their code actually) in other projects, if they are switching to GPL (ie: they cannot claim I stole their code, if I use their codebase to create a new software). However SPL (Sugar Public Licese), their previous license also viewed as an Open Source license by some people, although not officiall endorsed by OSI. They claim that's why vtigerCRM could use the codebase in the first place.

Anyway it still means that SugarCRM Community Edition is fully Open Source. Their fork vtigerCRM is and was Open Source all along. They've put together a FAQ about their move to GPLv3. I also hope that companies who claims to be Open Source (and never feel like releasing the code) should consider being actually Open Source. If they are not going to do so, let the customers put pressure on them like SugarCRM customers did (or so I've heard).

I know some of you are asking why, rather than how, regarding migration from Mozilla Thunderbird to Evolution. Maybe that's why there are lot of Evolution to Thunderbird migration guides, but not many vice-versa. Fear not, here is a guide, to assist who dare to migrate from Thunderbird to Evolution. The techniques described here are tested with the newer versions of both the software, namely Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 and Evolution 2.10.2. On higher versions also this should work without an issue.

I think Mozilla people are doing a wonderful job with both Firefox and Thunderbird. From my point of view Firefox is the best general purpose web browser around. It beats most proprietary browser in speed, stability, security, modularity, etc. (and don't start commenting the so and so browsers are greater or so and so is cool too. I know they may be, Fx is simply my choice. This also applies to any comparisons with Evolution too :) However Fxs' counterpart in e mail business, is not yet there at the helm. Thunderbird is a great application especially combined with Lightning addon, but from my point of view it's not there yet where Evolution is.

Evolution on the othet hand, has been the most popular Linux mail client during the past few years. It was started as a project of Ximian (later bought by Novell), but now a part of GNOME Desktop. Evolution now has a Windows XP version too (still in alpha stage as of this writing). To be more true to the point, Evolution is not just a mail client, it's a PIM application.

Evo comes very competitively on par with commercial applications like Microsoft Outlook. If you are looking for a replacement for Microsoft Outlook in a Linux environment, then Evolution is your best bet without a doubt. But on the other hand, I wouldn't use Outlook as an Evo replacement on Windows (if I have to use Windows that is. I don't hate Windows, I'm just Pro-Open Source).

Evolution comes with many rich features like calendar, appointments, tasks, memos, signature management, encryption, filters, Palm device support, developer platform, LDAP support, even Microsoft Exchange Server connectivity and lot more. Evolution is more feature rich, advanced, stable, less memory consuming than Thunderbird. One day Thunderbird might be "the" e mail client for Linux, but today Evolution is simply "the" client.

There are two methods. One is slower, proper method, good to learn more about the process and so. The second method is much quicker and great when you have a lot to migrate. So here are the steps first, then I'll describe each step more (I assume both Thunderbird and Evolution are installed. If not you might want to do it at this point. Most mainstream Linux distros ship with Evolution).


Method 1 (slower): General Steps:

1. Backup your .thunderbird directory
2. Configure Evolution
3. Export your contacts from Thunderbird and import them from Evolution
4. Import your mail archives from Thunderbird to Evolution

Yes, it's that simple. So let's now dig into details.


Method 1: Detailed:

1. Safety First (Backup your data)

Please backup the data before you try anything. Especially don't forget to get a copy of .thunderbird directory (located in the home directory, usually). All your current mails which you view withing Thunderbird are in this directory. So it is important to back this up.

(I'm not going to tell you how to copy a directory. It's out of the scope of this guide. Please refer to any documents on basic Linux operations.)


2. Configure Evolution

Create the necessary accounts in Evolution. How to configure accounts in Evolution is out of the scope of this howto. So I'll just assume that you created the desired accounts and relevant folders. For example I added my Gmail account and added several folder like Fun, Blog Comments, Personal, etc. to my Inbox folder. This is to organize your mails well. Now we are set to go.


3. Import Contacts

From Thunderbird you can export your contacts (Address Book) to several formats. Since our aim here is to import these back into Evolution, use either csv or ldif. This is how you do it.

In Thunderbird,

• Go to Address Book
• Select the address book you want to export, then
• Click "Export" from "Tools" menu (Tools --> Export)
• In the dialog give a name and a location to save the export
• Select either "Coma Separated" or "LDIF" as type
• Then click "save" to export

Now that exporting is completed, we can move into import these from Evolution

In Evolution,

• Go to Contacts Window View
• Click File --> Import
• Go ahead and select "import a single file" option when asked
• Select the file we created when exporting from Thunderbird
• Then import the contacts

Note: It's better to create a new address book to import the contacts, but it's rather your choice.

Now the contacts are imported and ready to go. So let us move to the next step.


4. Import mail archives

Now let's migrate your existing mails to Evolution. Thunderbird uses standars "mbox" format for mail folder, which is the most commonly used format in Linux. Your Thunderbird mail archives are at ~/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail/ (where xxxxxxxx will a different alphanumeric string). In this directory you'll have directories according to your mail accounts. In my case it's /.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail/Local\ Folders/Inbox.sbd/

There will be two types of files there. Files without an extention and files with .msf extention. What we need are the files without extentions. Eg: Fun, Tech, etc.

In Evolution,

• Go to mail window view
• Click File --> Import
• Go ahead and select "import a single file" option when asked
• Select the file (mail archive) you want to import and select a location to be imported. Eg: I imported "Fun" archive (not Fun.msf) into a directory named "Fun"
• Repeat the last step for every archive you have
  

Done! Now you are ready to go. Your mails and contacts are now successfully migrated to Evolution. You might ask me why not straight away copy the mbox files? Why import them?
Well, actually I didn't try it. Anyone is welcome to try that and let us know. I've heard it worked for people. But personally I felt like doing this way because it is common sense, to carry out these general steps to migrate to any client using mbox format.




Method 2 (Easier):

Well, I know the above method works, but it's not going to be easy if you are to migrate a large number of mails, or many accounts. Simply the Method 1 is not scalable. :) So I've checked other ways to do this, without the hazzle of going through import and export steps. When you have more than a few folders to import this method should be much much painless and easier. But this method is only for mails, for contacts you still have to do import/export.


1. Create a folder to accommodate your mails.

You can do this either using Evo or by creating a directory under your Evo local folder directory. Better to create a folder and copy a message there (within Evolution), this will create the directory structure under ~/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.sbd/


2. Copy the mail archive file to the new location in Evo local folder

Copy all the files in your Tunderbird mail directory into the newly created Evo directory. When you are copying files from your TB directory Eg: ~/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail/
to the new Evo directory Eg: ~/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.sbd/Thunderbird.sbd/ you only need the mbox files, there's no need to copy the .msf files.

If you don't want a separate folder for Thunderbird mails, you can just copy the files into ~/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.sbd/

Note: There's a little tweak needed if your Thunderbird directories have spaces in their names. Eg: If your TB directories have a name like "archive prior 2008.sbd" copying it directly into Evo directory the mails would not appear as you would hope. This is because Evo doesn't use spaces in the mail directory names. So just rename them by replacing each space with an underscore ("_"). I cannot verify this note, as I haven't personally tested this. However it was reported by a user in the comments.


3. Restart Evolution

Done! Just like that, all your thousands of mails, hundreds of folders will now appear under the directory you created. Obviously this method is quicker than the previous one. You can consider the previous method a drill to learn the structure and workflow. :)



Whenever you want to backup your Evolution mail archives they are at ~/.evolution/mail/ How to completely backup Evolution data can be seen here. Newer versions of Evolution has a neet function integrated in menus which will allow to backup Evo with settings (File --> Backup settings) and restore (File --> Restore settings). I've used it a couple of times and it works fine.

This post is based on an article I've posted in LinuxQuestions.org Linux Tutorial section. It also has a discussion page. If you have Linux questions you can go and ask the wonderful online Linux community, LinuxQuestions.org.

Well, this isn't hot news for followers. But it's good news for Google Apps users.

In this ZDNet article, Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google Enterprise claims that they plan to integrate Jot support into Google Apps. Google last year acquired JotSpot, who was one of the most innovative and advanced wiki providers.

I haven't actually used JotSpot, but I did look into it sometime ago. All in all Jot was quite a promising service. It had very useful features, including web application support, and claimed Jot is not a mere wiki, but an application wiki (if I remember correctly). However I required more flexibility than it was available with the JotSpots free plan. So I resolved to use a free, but not very popular thing called Schtuff. This year Schtuff dissolved their service and came to an agreement with PBwiki to host the existing users. So I also migrated from Schtuff to PBwiki which was more nicer. Since I was from the Schtuff migration, I have some bonus features which a normal (free account) user wouldn't have like larger spaces, page level access control.

Back to the story. I'm willing to see Jot integrated with Google Apps. In fact I've been wondering when they are going to do so, from the day I heard about Googles acquiring. It is however not mentioned exactly when it'll be available. I personally believe. This will enable GA users (especially small businesses) to be a lot more productive. It should cater their need of infrastructure at a fraction of the cost than if they plan to go for hosted things. They'll have email, basic collaboration with pages, docs and spreadsheets, etc. and now application wikis. However larger organizations might want to host their own, because the cost multiplies by the number of user accounts.

A couple of days ago I had a bit of a crisis when my Notebook running Fedora 7 refused to boot in the morning. It just hanged up after the line with 'Red Hat nash starting', after a package update. The update however, wasn't anything related to kernel, headers, nash or anything related. It was just a few regular package updates. The Fedora 7 crash was quite a disappointment as I was very impressed with how far Fedora 7 has come since FC3/4. I was using Fedora as my primary working distro, that was until the following incident.


Problem:

So I was stuck with a crashed computer with all my e mails, svn check outs, bookmarks and so on. I tried with modified grub parameters (and various other things) without any success, before deciding to do a fresh installation. The real horror was there.

My Fedora 7 DVD refused to boot into the installer and hanged at Running /sbin/loader. Every time I tried to do an installation it just hanged the same way. By this point I wasn't even sure whether the crash was related to the updates I made. I was worried to see a working system just go out like that (not that I haven't seen anything like that). Even more frustrating was not being able to get the DVD to install. So I downloaded a rescue CD image using another computer and tried to do a Net install with it, still without any success. I will submit these issues to Fedora bugzilla, hopefully soon.

It was about midnight when I had to let go of Fedora, I had to use the computer someway. So I checked my Linux disks. Among old CDs, the only recent thing I could find was the Ubuntu 7.04 CD. I gave it a try. As I expected the X failed at boot complaining about my graphics. Being a Debian fan, I didn't worry much to get Ubuntu boot and then trying to install. After all I was tired with trying so many things.

So ....., I downloaded and burned an Debian Etch NetInstall CD image into a DVD (which was another cause for frustration in a Windows box). Around 4 o'clock in the morning I started my first ever Net installation of Debian.

I set the alarm to 6 o'clock and went to sleep.


Solution:

A fresh day. A fresh OS. I got up (Nadee, if you are reading this, you just didn't see I slept only 2 hours...... Ok, I'm not doing that kind of things nowadays as often as I used to do. Really! Forgive? Yes, you do :). I had shiny Debian Etch installation (so much for the wait to download Debian DVDs).

Fedora and Debian are my favourite Linux distros for my Notebook. I have tried many distros for myself including Fedora, Debian, Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu, Vector Linux, Gentoo, Slackware, Mandrake/Mandriva, SuSE, Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, Lycoris Desktop, Lindows/Linspire, etc. and even something called KateOS. I'm not going to list the Live CDs I've tried here, don't worry. After all these years trying and running all these things, I prefer to install Fedora or Debian on my working (desktop) PC.

Anyway, I got the Debian installed and working. First thing I did was to install the graphic drivers for my 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. Most of you might know that the driver is broken on Fedora 7 and not yet fixed by ATI (AMD). So I was keen to try it in Debian. After several weeks on VESA I wanted to use a proper driver. What was the fun of having a graphic card like X1600 if I couldn't use it?

1.)
First I added non-free to enable using non-free packages in the Debian official repositories.
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

2.)
Then I installed the driver packages,
# apt-get update
# apt-get install module-assistant fglrx-driver fglrx-kernel-src

(fglrx is the driver, module-assistant was to build the kernel modules from the driver package)

3.)
# module-assistant auto-install fglrx-kernel-src

This builds and installs the driver kernel modules

4.)
# aticonfig --initial
# aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

Just like that I had my graphic drivers properly set up. So I gave it a run by running a few 3D FPS games like Nexuiz, Sauerbraten, etc. Worked fine. I'm happy and will try a few more games just to be convinced :). This is not to say that I'm happy with the driver scenario. I'm totally, utterly unhappy about the ATIs stand in Linux drivers. As a customer I can be unhappy.

So to finish up the thing. I'm now running Debian 4.0 (Etch) on my Notebook with ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 + 17 inch Widescreen graphics. I've lost my Evolution contacts list during the migration by mistake. I have to get them from Gmail again. I also have to install a few things from source. This include the things I usually install from source like MPlayer/MEncoder, ffmpeg, Nmap, etc. and a thing I usually don't install from source, Pidgin 2.

Altogether, Debian has slightly more things to configure than Fedora or Ubuntu which usually works out of the box. This may be credited to the wider scope of Debian. I can claim that I'm fairly satisfied with Debian Etch on my Notebook. However running Fedora on the Notebook was more smooth for me (I have a fair amount of memory and processor power to waste :). When Fedora 8 comes in a few months, I'll try it again if ATI people are nice enough to provide a working driver, otherwise I guess I'll stay with Debian.

Go Debian!
Note: I sincerely hope this little cheer will convince Debian people to do more frequent releases :) They are doing a great job of providing a stable, relatively less resource eating OS. But release cycle seems a little slower for the desktop.)

I got Metasploit running ages ago as you may know, and as a result of the prolonged exposure to highly contagious Metasploit 3, I was attracted to Ruby more. I did the Ruby in 20 minutes, then run in the browser lesson. And lo! and behold, I was hooked with Ruby (well, if any of Nadees friends are reading this, I should inform you that Ruby is a computer language. Even she knows that :).

Anyway, I loved the language and the how the OOP concepts are implemented (though I haven't done much with Ruby yet). From what I've seen so far, I have to say,
Ruby Rocks! .....er.... then I realize that Ruby is not a mere rock (alternate interpretation), then here we go,
Ruby Gems! I don't know how you interpret, but there's an alternate alternate interpretation because ruby has a package format called gems. So Ruby indeed does gem :)

I've found some good reading on the Net about Ruby and especially about web apps with Ruby on Rails. Anyway all of you are to make your own decision. After all I'm the guy who still think C is cooler than C++ (hmm.. perhaps it has something to do with me not being too exposed to c++ :).

Ok, there's a lot of buzz going on about the upcoming Harry Potter book. And not so surprisingly, there are quite a few individuals who claims to know what happens in the book. And there are quite a few versions of the book out there in the wild. If you are someone who are unlucky (actually, lucky) enough not to get your hands on one of these fakes (my, they actually wrote complete books, fake or not), here's my version. Er.. actually a couple of versions.


l33t v3rs10n:

I hacked as fast I could into the Bloomsbury server (or whoever it was) just now. I used several advanced out of this world hacks and kicked the hell out of their server defense systems. And being one of the l33t (a Scr1pt K1dd13) it was nothing for me. So just hacked into their poor box and managed my way to their 3D display of the filesystem. From there on, it was just a few clicks away to navigate and get to their fileserver. I got to the file "HP_Deathly_Hallows.pdf" and downloaded it to my box. Then I replaced the original one with a file containing the "Sw0rdPh1sh wuz here!!!" text in bright red point 45 text. Then I got the hell outta there to enlighten you lay ppl with the new Potter story. So here's it.

While Ron and Hermione are fighting a deadly battle with the dark lords minions, Harry is confronted with the dark lord himself. Although he puts a valiant battle with him, it looks like the dark lord is about to over power the boy wizard. In a cruel irony of life and in that fateful minute Ginny comes to the aid. She saves her love but falls at last and dies on Harrys arms :-( Or was it Ginny kicking dark lords a**, um... I'm confused. Whatever it was, I once again proved I'm da l33t sup4 HaXXor. You better bow down to me.


Lay version:

I was chatting on Yahoo (gosh, I hate even to fake using Yahoo! mail) in this nice literature chatroom. There was this nice lady (identity withheld due to privacy reasons) from USA. We were having this mutual intelligent chat about British writers when I popped the name Rowling. She claimed "Oh, my god!" (it was O,mg!) "u also a potter
fan, I mean a Potter fan?". I said yes and asked why, casually. One thing lead to another and then to another. To make a long story short, that was when she told me how her neighbour bought a dog from an old couple whose daughter didn't have a child, so adopted a Tasmanian devil from a welsh locksmith who happened to be the friend of a friend of a person who was distantly related to a person who knew someone working in the HR department of Bloomsbury!

Wow! She told me very secretly (we had switched to private chat by then) how Neville dies protecting Harry and Ginny and how Luna becomes a professor at Hogwarts later. She was kind enough to tell me that Ron and Hermione marries and Harry has two children with Ginny. There were other yummy details which I'd withhold because I don't want to be such a spoiler. And please don't tell anyone about these things because it might jeopardize my friends situation.


Reality:

I just can't believe I wrote all those. Well, I did and you might want to know why. Top reason is I'm sick of people forwarding fake books and jamming my e mail, and trying to show off saying "I got the leaked Harry Potter book, if you want I can give it to you. Don't give it to anybody else..... etc." Said that I'm not irritated, just amused.

Funniest thing with these Potter things was, when a self-claimed hacker (cracker) posted
a mail claiming about the ending of the book, apparently by hacking (more precisely, cracking) into a publishers system. This story was posted in Insecure.org (yes, the Nmap site) and was covered by popular media such as Reuters, BBC, NY Times, FOX News, MSNBC, Boston Globe and several others more. Fyodor (founder and maintainer of Nmap, and Insecure.org) claimed jokingly "Muggles take over Insecure.Org!" on Insecure.org homepage. Now, don't you go there and add more traffic! :)

Well, that's it. But given the nature of the subject at hand I'd like to post a disclaimer.
(Whatever included in this post, is just imaginary and for pure amusement. Nothing in this is related to 'Harry Potter' titles, movies or non whatsoever. I have no relationship with J.K. Rowling or her publishers or anyone or anything associated with 'Harry Potter' material. If you think this is in violation of any legal aspects, please stop reading. It will work.)