The first step is to identify the directory where squid is caching all the files. In order to find this out open the squid.conf and search for Cache_dir

Let us assume that the Cache_dir is /var/spool/squid

Next from the Squid.conf find out who is running squid. This can be found by searching for cache_effective_user

Let us assume the user to be proxy

Stop squid using the command /etc/init.d/squid stop

Next Delete cache directory using rm -rf /var/spool/squid

Create new cache directory using mkdir /var/spool/squid

Change ownership to squid user chown proxy.proxy /var/spool/squid

Create cache again using the command squid -z

Finally start Squid using the command /etc/init.d/squid start

Note: you might to run all these commands as sudo.

Display the Nth Node from the End

void findNfromEnd(int nodeNum){
	node *ptr1, *ptr2;
	ptr1 = ptr2 = head;
	for(int i=0; i< (nodeNum-1) ; i++){
		ptr1 = ptr1->next;
	}
	while(ptr1->next != NULL){
		ptr1= ptr1->next;
		ptr2 = ptr2->next;
	}
	cout << "Nth Element from End: " << ptr2->data << endl; 
}

void displayReverse(node* head){
	if(head==NULL){
		cout<<"Nothing to display"<<endl;
	}
	else
	{
		if(head->next != NULL){
			displayReverse(head->next);
		}
		else
		{
			cout<<head->data<<endl;
			return;
		}
		cout<<head->data<<endl;
	}
}

Chris Smoak’s Smokescreen does exactly what it promises: enable Flash content to play on Apple’s iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. Technically it might just be a Flash to HTML 5 converter but for Ad Networks it is a big leap in bringing Flash to the iDevices.

At a time when Apple and Adobe  are fighting it out, technologies like these that try to bring the expressive flash content on extremely popular devices like the iDevices.

But Google has put the life back on the mobiles, thus enabling people like me carry one device less.

The next update for Google’s Android mobile operating system, Android 2.2 (codename: Froyo) will support data tethering via USB and Wi-Fi. The tethering function will let one share their phone’s data connection with other devices. This is exactly what I wanted. One can either hook it up via USB and acting much like a 3G USB dongle, or you can create a Wi-Fi hotspot like the MiFi personal wireless router which is more cool.

This would definitely make my current USB powered wireless modem, obsolete. Hope that Froyo powered devices arrive in India soon and also are affordable.

It all started with Apple claiming that Adobe’s Flash Player was buggy and was not a correct fit was the iPhone. This led to Adobe working on an improved version of Flash player which would run on smartphones the way it runs on the PC. But Apple was still didn’t want to integrate it in the iPhone. In my previous post, I had commented on why Apple followed this approach. Apple simply didn’t want Flash on their phones as it directly competes with the AppStore

After all this, Adobe decided to ensure that Flash was not let out of iPhone and created an iPhone Packager Utility in the Flash CS5 and the feature got accepted widely and the community was extremely happy. But the latest changes to the Developer Agreement directly apposes the use of  this Flash Utility.

The Daring Fireball wrote in detail about this in two specific posts,

New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler

Why Apple changed section 3.3.1

Now comes the interesting part.

Quoted from Venturbeat article “Did Opera put the squeeze on Apple to get its browser on the iPhone?“

That Opera Mini made it through Apple’s iTunes Store approval process is a major accomplishment. Apple relaxed its rules to allow for third-party browser applications on the iPhone a year ago, but they were restricted to the WebKit browser framework (which Safari also uses). Opera Mini is based on Opera’s proprietary Web-browsing engine, so it technically should never have been approved. In this case, it’s hard to conclude that Opera’s loud publicity stunts didn’t make a difference.

Apple could have also been trying to avoid legal trouble with the Norwegian browser maker. Opera was previously at the heart of the most recent European legal case against Microsoft’s antitrust behavior with Internet Explorer — which led to Microsoft implementing a browser choice screen for European Windows users. Apple could have accepted Opera Mini simply to avoid a similar fate.

Now with Opera in AppStore, there is another interesting bit to this story, with a new entrant in the mobile browser market, SkyFire. SkyFire which is also similar to Opera Mini,  it routes page requests through a central server that crunches down the requested page for quick viewing on mobile. But unlike Opera Mini, Skyfire can handle a variety of video formats, including Silverlight and Flash. And based on the entry of Opera in AppStore, SkyFire quoted this would accelerate their strategy on the iDevices. Here is the engadget article.

Now if SkyFire makes it to the iPhone AppStore, that would mean that Flash would finally make its way into the iPhone. What would be Apples strategy to this. Would they disapprove the entry of SkyFire into their device, or would they make sure that SkyFire does not transcode Flash Content. What ever might be the outcome, it is an interesting space to watch out for.

The AS3 NativeProcess Class provides us with the much needed functionality to launch external processes and interact with them using standard input or output. But I hit the road block when I had to launch a batch file. I tried to launch a batch file the same way I launched an EXE and boom it failed. The reason AIR doesn’t allow us to launch batch files directly and the work around is to launch CMD.exe with the batch file as an argument to it. After googling and binging for examples, I decided to write my own.

So here is how we can launch a batch file using AIRs Native Process API

public function launchBatchFile():void{
    var file:File = File.applicationDirectory;
    file = file.resolvePath("C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe");
    var nativeProcessStartupInfo:NativeProcessStartupInfo = new NativeProcessStartupInfo();
    NativeProcessStartupInfo.executable = file;
    nativeProcessStartupInfo.workingDirectory = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath(<PATH to BATCH FILE>);
    var args:Vector<String> = new Vector<String>();
    args.push(<BATCH FILE NAME>);
    args.push(<ARGUMENT TO BATCH>);  // Repeat this to pass all the arguments 
    nativeProcessStartupInfo.arguments = args;
    var process:NativeProcess = new NativeProcess();
    process.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo);
    process.addEventListener(NativeProcessExitEvent.EXIT, exitHandler);
}

protected function exitHandler(event:NativeProcessExitEvent):void{
    Alert.show("Execution Complete");
}

I have updated the code based on the new Flex Spark Framework. Code can be found in the following link.

This John Gruber’s blog post that I read a couple of days back would throw more light on this regard. It is not a biased one but would throw a lot of light on where Apple is proceeding.

Also I think another reason for abandoning Flash was to generate revenue for all the developers who have adopted the Apple’s runtime. There are zillions of free flash games on the web and if Flash was made available on the iPhone, who would buy them from the App Store and Apple could not boast of more than a million applications and 3 billion downloads.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

and for all of those who tried it, it bombed.

It was then I realized that the repositories might not have been set properly in the /etc/apt/sources.list file.I ran the update command

sudo apt-get update

and then tried to download the desktop package. Bingo it worked.

So for all those who are facing an error that the package was not found please update your repositories and try to do an install.