I had a fun time with my parents when they visited me here in US. Lots of my friends are also planning to bring their parents here, so thought will pen a blog which will share my memories and will help my friends to plan their trip. This is going to be a series of blogs and here comes the first one.
In my case my mom didn’t want to get out of India and take a flight and come to US. It involved lot of cajoling, sentimental talks and threatening (saying that I would get married to my imaginary American g.f if they don’t come here) to make her to come here. I started the process a year back with Passport and others. Visa interview was booked in the starting of the May and they came to US on May 21st. I was so excited to and couldn’t contain my excitement when I was waiting for them in the airport. Then there she came out with 1000 Watt smile in her face and off course my dad was ensuring that all the baggage’s came out proper and things like that. When planning for their flight journey I followed these tips or thumb rules whatever you want to call it
1) I didn’t want to book a direct flight from Chennai to JFK, It will be difficult for them to sit continuously and travel. So I booked tickets in Lufthansa from Chennai to Frankfurt (7 ½ hours) with a 3 hour layover in between and Frankfurt to Philadelphia (7 ½ hours). With a 3 hour layover in between they can stretch their legs in between the flights and can get refreshed. I am not a big fan of long haul flights.
2) I made sure that they carry some dry fruits and biscuits incase they don’t like the food in the flight, it helped since mom didn’t like the food in flight and she ended up surviving in biscuits. Even though they are non-vegetarians (like most Indians they don’t eat red meat), we made the food choice as Asian Vegetarian since they may get some dosa or idli in the initial flight.
3) They had enough foreign exchange (my dad got it from Thomas cook in Spencer Plaza Chennai) with a seal on his passport for getting foreign exchange.
4) I took a printout of customs declaration form and Immigration form from Path2usa.com and filled the details out and sent a scanned copy. This would ease their fears and questions on what to fill for what.
5) My dad can speak decent English so I didn’t give any other letter to immigration but for parents who cannot speak English then you can give a letter stating that they have problem with the language and you can give your contact number and details Immigration generally calls you for details. My friend did that for his parents.
6) For Philadelphia airport there will be porters for taking your baggage and putting it in big cart and take through customs and bring you out. They charge 10$ for that cart and I asked my parents to use that rather than them going through to find 1$ bills and put it in the vending machine for carts.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
What happend to me?
What happened to me? I didn't write a blog for more than a year now. Lots of things happened in between. I had to shift to Philadelphia from Scranton. New location, new people, new project etc etc. Philadelphia is a nice place and lot more things to do but miss Scranton. Obviously one bound to get an attachment to place if you stay there for long, i stayed in Scranton for 3 years and it was like home away from home. Made lots of friends, fell out with a few but still i can come back once in a while to say a hi to them and keep in touch with them. It is a place where i started playing volleyball after a gap.
After almost breaking my hand in volleyball last year April, I had to change my game. I couldn't set anymore due to injury and I am too attached to miss volleyball. I ended up changing my game, became an outside hitter. It is not that i am good at it but i am putting all the effort to be good in it and I have improved a lot from last year. Shifting bases did help in becoming an outside hitter, playing with some good setters and better skill level does help in that.
Parents visited me from India for 3 months. It was awesome to have them here and take them around to lots of places and meet my friends etc etc. They did enjoy US to the most part except that my dad kept complaining that he didn't get a kind of spinach what he use to get in India( ponnagani keerai), I was like yaa yaa yaa. I cannot forget the way my parents and my friend priya's parents enjoyed like little kids in Niagara, the happiness in there face was a definitely a kodak moment. I am gonna blog about the whole trip and tips for do's and dont's when bringing parents to US( East coast in particular).
And with My mom's visit my 2 years hardwork of decreasing and maintaining weight is gone. Too much of good food and i packed on pounds like anything. I am getting into weight loss mode again. I hope i reduce my weight like last time with good workout, i have to get good motivation for working out though.
After almost breaking my hand in volleyball last year April, I had to change my game. I couldn't set anymore due to injury and I am too attached to miss volleyball. I ended up changing my game, became an outside hitter. It is not that i am good at it but i am putting all the effort to be good in it and I have improved a lot from last year. Shifting bases did help in becoming an outside hitter, playing with some good setters and better skill level does help in that.
Parents visited me from India for 3 months. It was awesome to have them here and take them around to lots of places and meet my friends etc etc. They did enjoy US to the most part except that my dad kept complaining that he didn't get a kind of spinach what he use to get in India( ponnagani keerai), I was like yaa yaa yaa. I cannot forget the way my parents and my friend priya's parents enjoyed like little kids in Niagara, the happiness in there face was a definitely a kodak moment. I am gonna blog about the whole trip and tips for do's and dont's when bringing parents to US( East coast in particular).
And with My mom's visit my 2 years hardwork of decreasing and maintaining weight is gone. Too much of good food and i packed on pounds like anything. I am getting into weight loss mode again. I hope i reduce my weight like last time with good workout, i have to get good motivation for working out though.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
I hope you can spin it more
This was ROFL, i was thinking about it and laughing all the time. I dont think Siddarth Trivedi can be insulted any more. I wish i saw the video of his facial expression when he heard this from Shilpa Shetty. If you are puzzled about what I am talking about, check the link out.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
New Hampshire Trip
New Hampshire Fall Trip
This is my first trip to see fall foliage in New Hampshire. We went to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to see fall colors, guess we made a good decision to go there to look at fall colors. Trip was planned within two days, with the logistics of car, accommodation and food were taken care in 2 days. We hit the road @5 in the evening on Friday, the customary round trip after driving to the first stop sign to get something what we missed to take was done this time too. We consider doing that as a good luck at the start of the trip, this time the culprit forgot to bring the music cds. Drive up to New Hampshire was good, with some discussions and good music. We stopped for our dinner in a rest area in Connecticut. It was decided earlier that we would cook(that we doesn’t include any bachelors) some food and take it up there for our dinner, which turned out to be a good decision except the fact that we ended up eating our food in the freezing temperature outside.
There were quite a lot of cops on the road and lot of people were pulled over for over speeding or other violations, we were extra careful on not to get caught. We reached the place where we stayed at around 1.30 in the night. I wanted to go and take some photos early in the morning of fall colors, early morning and the evening are the best time to take photos, I set my phone alarm to 6 A.M and retired to bed. All my buddies were up playing cards, looks like they had decided to play a prank on me. Switched off all the lights and adjusted the time of my phone to 5.30 A.M after 10 mins I dozed off to sleep. They were smart to the change the alarms of most of the phones in the room. Alarm started going off, I didn’t feel like I slept for a long time, I woke up and saw how it looked outside, it was dark, I still decided to go ahead with my plans. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, came out to put my shoes and leave, the room was bright and everyone was up, it took sometime for the reality to sink in that they have played a prank on me. It was a good way to start the trip, rest of the trip was also lot of fun.
I went to take some early morning photos on Saturday, it was cloudy and it spoiled the start. We went to Franconia Notch and Flumes Gorge during the day. We had to trek in freezing temperatures up in mountains in Franconia Notch. I got some good colorful photos at the flumes gorge, there was lot of deliberation and discussion on whether we have to walk to the flumes gorge which is a 0.75 mile trek or go in a bus, I was up for walking and finally convinced everyone to do that. I don’t think any one regretted walking to the flumes gorge. Dinner for the night was suppose to be prepared by the bachelors but a better cook took over the mantle from us and cooked a tasty chicken curry for us. I was very tired after seeing for the whole day through the view finder of my camera, I retired to bed very early on that night.
Sunday we decided to go to Mount Washington, there was lot of hype on how difficult it is to drive in that road. I have been to quite a lot of hill stations in India, compared to that this Mount Washington drive is nothing. They are marketing the place very good, which attracts so many people towards this spot. They had restrictions on how many persons can go in a car in a van etc etc. Two of my buddies dropped out and waited in the lower base of Mount Washington while we guys drove up. I don’t regret driving up there, the colors were really good and I got some really nice fall color photos.
We drove via Boston when returning back to Scranton, we went to a restaurant called Fire and Ice. They had a very good concept, it’s a buffet, they had all the raw materials like vegetables, meat, egg, sauce etc as a Buffet. You have to go and pick things in a bowl and give it to the cook who will cook it in front of your eyes. Cook won’t add anything extra apart from what you have got there so the taste is based on what you take to the cook for eating. I enjoyed it up there. It was a good trip. You can see the photos of the trip here
This is my first trip to see fall foliage in New Hampshire. We went to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to see fall colors, guess we made a good decision to go there to look at fall colors. Trip was planned within two days, with the logistics of car, accommodation and food were taken care in 2 days. We hit the road @5 in the evening on Friday, the customary round trip after driving to the first stop sign to get something what we missed to take was done this time too. We consider doing that as a good luck at the start of the trip, this time the culprit forgot to bring the music cds. Drive up to New Hampshire was good, with some discussions and good music. We stopped for our dinner in a rest area in Connecticut. It was decided earlier that we would cook(that we doesn’t include any bachelors) some food and take it up there for our dinner, which turned out to be a good decision except the fact that we ended up eating our food in the freezing temperature outside.
There were quite a lot of cops on the road and lot of people were pulled over for over speeding or other violations, we were extra careful on not to get caught. We reached the place where we stayed at around 1.30 in the night. I wanted to go and take some photos early in the morning of fall colors, early morning and the evening are the best time to take photos, I set my phone alarm to 6 A.M and retired to bed. All my buddies were up playing cards, looks like they had decided to play a prank on me. Switched off all the lights and adjusted the time of my phone to 5.30 A.M after 10 mins I dozed off to sleep. They were smart to the change the alarms of most of the phones in the room. Alarm started going off, I didn’t feel like I slept for a long time, I woke up and saw how it looked outside, it was dark, I still decided to go ahead with my plans. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, came out to put my shoes and leave, the room was bright and everyone was up, it took sometime for the reality to sink in that they have played a prank on me. It was a good way to start the trip, rest of the trip was also lot of fun.
I went to take some early morning photos on Saturday, it was cloudy and it spoiled the start. We went to Franconia Notch and Flumes Gorge during the day. We had to trek in freezing temperatures up in mountains in Franconia Notch. I got some good colorful photos at the flumes gorge, there was lot of deliberation and discussion on whether we have to walk to the flumes gorge which is a 0.75 mile trek or go in a bus, I was up for walking and finally convinced everyone to do that. I don’t think any one regretted walking to the flumes gorge. Dinner for the night was suppose to be prepared by the bachelors but a better cook took over the mantle from us and cooked a tasty chicken curry for us. I was very tired after seeing for the whole day through the view finder of my camera, I retired to bed very early on that night.
Sunday we decided to go to Mount Washington, there was lot of hype on how difficult it is to drive in that road. I have been to quite a lot of hill stations in India, compared to that this Mount Washington drive is nothing. They are marketing the place very good, which attracts so many people towards this spot. They had restrictions on how many persons can go in a car in a van etc etc. Two of my buddies dropped out and waited in the lower base of Mount Washington while we guys drove up. I don’t regret driving up there, the colors were really good and I got some really nice fall color photos.
We drove via Boston when returning back to Scranton, we went to a restaurant called Fire and Ice. They had a very good concept, it’s a buffet, they had all the raw materials like vegetables, meat, egg, sauce etc as a Buffet. You have to go and pick things in a bowl and give it to the cook who will cook it in front of your eyes. Cook won’t add anything extra apart from what you have got there so the taste is based on what you take to the cook for eating. I enjoyed it up there. It was a good trip. You can see the photos of the trip here
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Niagara
I am always awestruck on seeing this falls, the power and beauty of the falls makes me to go this place again and again. I planned on making a trip to Niagara for the 7th time in a span of 3 years, one difference this time is I was armed with a Nikon D80 for capturing the awe and splendour of the falls.
We rented a car, we decide to pack our food and take it there rather than eating outside. We hit the road @6 in the morning, I know it is quite early for a saturday
morning :). It is a 300 miles drive from Scranton to Niagara, the drive isnt too tough, there wasnt much traffic in the morning. I started driving the car and we had our first stop/breakfast break @8.30 in the morning. Home made kichadi for morning breakfast was just too good. Then my friend started driving the car,I have this very bad habit, I like to drive the car or I would prefer to sleep in the back seat. I caught some sleep for 2 hours when he was driving, we stopped for our second break some 50 miles from Niagara for a coffee and french fries, I just love junk food.
I did not want to go on any rides in Niagara falls, I was just there to see the Niagara and enjoy the view. Our timing was just too good, it is a normal weekend and there wasnt much crowd for the ride Maid of the Mist( they take you in a small boat right under the Horseshoe falls). Engineering marvel is @ the best in Niagara, they do the unthinkable by controlling the amount of water that can flow in the falls. The ride what my friends went was the last for the day. They had to decrease the flow of water in Niagara falls due to some emergency, there wasnt much information available to us at that point of time.
We had our lunch @3 and then decided to go for Jet boat ride in the Niagara gorge. It was one of the best rides I ever had. Niagara gorge has lot of class 6 rapids, they take the jet boat through that. It was just too much fun. Timing was good there too, we went for the 5.30 P.M ride, if we have gone for 4 of clock ride the ride could have just been a normal ride since they decreased the flow of water due to some emergency.
We were right in time for the Niagra Night view. I did not speak to anyone for sometime, I was awestruck for sometime. I tried to capture the beautiful night view in my camera here
It was an awesome trip.
We had our dinner in a worst Indian restaurant in Niagara welcome center, the food really sucks there. I would suggest no one to go there. It was the only bad thing in the entire trip. we hit the road @11.15 P.M, I was too tired to drive, I drove for inital 1.45 mins then my friend took over from me. I took the back seat and slept really well, we reached scranton @4 in the morning. It was a well planned, well executed trip.
I want to take my parents to Niagara when they visit me in US next year.
We rented a car, we decide to pack our food and take it there rather than eating outside. We hit the road @6 in the morning, I know it is quite early for a saturday
morning :). It is a 300 miles drive from Scranton to Niagara, the drive isnt too tough, there wasnt much traffic in the morning. I started driving the car and we had our first stop/breakfast break @8.30 in the morning. Home made kichadi for morning breakfast was just too good. Then my friend started driving the car,I have this very bad habit, I like to drive the car or I would prefer to sleep in the back seat. I caught some sleep for 2 hours when he was driving, we stopped for our second break some 50 miles from Niagara for a coffee and french fries, I just love junk food.
I did not want to go on any rides in Niagara falls, I was just there to see the Niagara and enjoy the view. Our timing was just too good, it is a normal weekend and there wasnt much crowd for the ride Maid of the Mist( they take you in a small boat right under the Horseshoe falls). Engineering marvel is @ the best in Niagara, they do the unthinkable by controlling the amount of water that can flow in the falls. The ride what my friends went was the last for the day. They had to decrease the flow of water in Niagara falls due to some emergency, there wasnt much information available to us at that point of time.
We had our lunch @3 and then decided to go for Jet boat ride in the Niagara gorge. It was one of the best rides I ever had. Niagara gorge has lot of class 6 rapids, they take the jet boat through that. It was just too much fun. Timing was good there too, we went for the 5.30 P.M ride, if we have gone for 4 of clock ride the ride could have just been a normal ride since they decreased the flow of water due to some emergency.
We were right in time for the Niagra Night view. I did not speak to anyone for sometime, I was awestruck for sometime. I tried to capture the beautiful night view in my camera here
It was an awesome trip.
We had our dinner in a worst Indian restaurant in Niagara welcome center, the food really sucks there. I would suggest no one to go there. It was the only bad thing in the entire trip. we hit the road @11.15 P.M, I was too tired to drive, I drove for inital 1.45 mins then my friend took over from me. I took the back seat and slept really well, we reached scranton @4 in the morning. It was a well planned, well executed trip.
I want to take my parents to Niagara when they visit me in US next year.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Inflation and Dollar Vs Currency Exchange Rates
Being in US, the dollar exchange rate and Indian inflation controls my savings range. I was trying to understand on what changes the Dollar Vs Rupee exchange rates and figured that many like me would have the same questions. Economics is about Demand Vs Supply. As most of you would be aware that world business is done in US dollars. Any change to the value of the US Dollar will affect Indian Economy too.
Statutory Warning: This blog may be very dry for lots of people as it is related to economics.
Inflation
Inflation usually refers to the general rise in the level of prices of goods and services over a period of time. India’s current inflation is 12%, which means for example if you have bought 100 pencils for 100 rupees a year back you have pay 112 rupees to get 100 pencils. Money is getting devalued, more money chasing less goods that is leading to price increase, Demand Vs Supply. Central Bank or RBI tries to control India’s inflation. How they do it??? They increase the interest rates and the percentage of money what the banks should hold. What happens if they increase the interest rates, it decreases the money in the market or money circulation in the market. Less Money and more goods, inflation will come down. Then there will be next question on how more money comes to the market, who else RBI prints and releases it to the market. We can think on why RBI can’t increase the rates to have Inflation under control. There is a flipside to it. How Inflation does controls the Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates
Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates
India allows FDI or Foreign Direct Investment, to see the list and percentage of investments allowed in different areas refer to the link << http://www.dipp.nic.in/manual/fdi_manual_11_2006.pdf>> . How does this control the Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates? India is considered to be the economically booming country, lot of FDI’s are going into India for example from buying HUTCH and naming it as VODAFONE, NOKIA factory being opened in India, all those investments are done in through Rupees. Dollar has to be exchanged into rupees and then the investment has to be done. More Dollar --> Less Rupee in the market, Rupee will appreciate and that will affect the conversion rate. RBI controls the Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates too, how do they do it either by increasing the interest rates to suck the excess rupee out of the market, which would decrease the value of rupee and then it inturn increases the value of the dollar trade with rupee. Why should RBI do it ??? To keep the Export market in India including IT industry to be profitable, more export a country does more economically strong it will become.
I am not sure on how clear I have written this blog, since it is a very very grey area for me too, I am trying to understand the economics behind these exchange rates.
Statutory Warning: This blog may be very dry for lots of people as it is related to economics.
Inflation
Inflation usually refers to the general rise in the level of prices of goods and services over a period of time. India’s current inflation is 12%, which means for example if you have bought 100 pencils for 100 rupees a year back you have pay 112 rupees to get 100 pencils. Money is getting devalued, more money chasing less goods that is leading to price increase, Demand Vs Supply. Central Bank or RBI tries to control India’s inflation. How they do it??? They increase the interest rates and the percentage of money what the banks should hold. What happens if they increase the interest rates, it decreases the money in the market or money circulation in the market. Less Money and more goods, inflation will come down. Then there will be next question on how more money comes to the market, who else RBI prints and releases it to the market. We can think on why RBI can’t increase the rates to have Inflation under control. There is a flipside to it. How Inflation does controls the Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates
Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates
India allows FDI or Foreign Direct Investment, to see the list and percentage of investments allowed in different areas refer to the link << http://www.dipp.nic.in/manual/fdi_manual_11_2006.pdf>> . How does this control the Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates? India is considered to be the economically booming country, lot of FDI’s are going into India for example from buying HUTCH and naming it as VODAFONE, NOKIA factory being opened in India, all those investments are done in through Rupees. Dollar has to be exchanged into rupees and then the investment has to be done. More Dollar --> Less Rupee in the market, Rupee will appreciate and that will affect the conversion rate. RBI controls the Dollar Vs Rupee Exchange Rates too, how do they do it either by increasing the interest rates to suck the excess rupee out of the market, which would decrease the value of rupee and then it inturn increases the value of the dollar trade with rupee. Why should RBI do it ??? To keep the Export market in India including IT industry to be profitable, more export a country does more economically strong it will become.
I am not sure on how clear I have written this blog, since it is a very very grey area for me too, I am trying to understand the economics behind these exchange rates.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Google Chrome
Google Chrome
It is a not a new buzz word. It is going next Gen web browser. Just due to the amount of features what it offers beneath the browser. Quite a lot of architecture changes to a browser
Tabbing
Opening a Tab in a window was a craze when it first came out in FireFox or Mozilla, IE also copied it soon. But there were host of problems with the way Tabs were architectured to run internally in the browser. It was designed as One Process per Window, so if you open multiple tabs within the same window it is single process and multiple threads and it all shared the same address space in windows. So a programmer who knows hack into this can read the data handled in the next tab, for example you have opened a credit card statement in one tab and some website which runs the Malware in the next tab, the Malware can read the credit card statement since it is under the same process. If 1 of the 10 tabs that were opened in a window crashes then the whole window will crash. All these problems have been alleviated in Google Chrome.
1 Tab -- > 1 Process 1 address space. It is crash proof against other bad tabs.
JavaScript
Performance
JavaScript is the most important thing in web today. There are so much complex things done with JavaScript today, the performance of JavaScript affects the web applications.
Being a web developer myself, I know the pain of trying to improve the performance of slow running web application, most of the times the culprit is the slow running or slow loading Java Script. Browsers are inherently single threaded, Browsers have to handle the control the JavaScript when it starts executing, the browser cannot do anything till the JavaScript finishes execution and handles the control back to the Browser. If there are 10 tabs opened in a window and 1 tab starts executing the complex JavaScript, then the all the 10 tabs will stop responding till the execution of JavaScript is complete. With 1 Tab -- > 1 Process 1 address space this problem is addressed.
Compatibility
When you write a web application with lot of JavaScript in it then the web application has to be tested for compatibility since the JavaScript implementation and support is different in different browsers. Again being the web developer, seeing something not working properly in one browser to the other can be nasty. I wish JavaScript had a Virtual Machine which takes care of the internal implementation rather than the developer worrying about those. My prayer for a VM in JavaScript has been partially answered, with the introduction of JavaScript Virtual Machine V8. I wish that the JavaScript VM becomes a standard and other browsers also adapt this.
Memory Handling
The main problem with the JavaScript is Bad Garbage Collection, I would say worst Garbage collection. Current Browsers with the existing JavaScript uses Conservative Garbage Collection. It is like you have a Rack full of bundled clothes and searching for a small Handkerchief in the mess, you wouldn’t know where the Handkerchief would be so it is going to take more time to find it. If you exactly know where the Handkerchiefs are stored it would make it faster to search and find those, that is what the JavaScript VM V8 does. It also does an Incremental Garbage collection which can result in the applications being more interactive like a smoother drag and drop in the netflix applications.
Security
As I said earlier in the Tabbing section of the blog 1 Tab 1 Processes 1 Address Space. This architecture change has enabled the Sandboxing of the Tabs, means they can use the processor for computing but they cannot use it for read files from the machine or write files in the machine. Plugins have always been a big headache for the security of the browser’s (client) machines that run those. Plugins can access anything in the browsers machine and read or write things. For example if we install a Adobe Plugin in the browser, that does not fall under the standard security, they generally run at a higher level and generally works with the renderer( the part of the browser) which graphically displays the web page to the user. Renderer and Plugins run in the same address space. But in Google Chrome the plugins have been isolated and have been kept in a separate address space or sandboxed in a separate address space, so the security threat is minimized to a great extent. Another major problem with internet security is phishing attacks, it is like for example there is a bank site called www.icici.com and there is a hacker who opens a www.icicibank.com , how would you know what is the original site and where to enter the password, Google Chrome claims to warn the users against the phishing attacks and keeps updating the list of phishing websites. This sounds interesting but not sure on how well it would work.
End user should not worry about what happens under the hood of the browser and shouldn’t find a difference between the application written as a thick client (stand alone application) or thin client (browser), usability of the application shouldn’t get affected, and there are limitations with writing applications of that kind with the existing technologies and with the existing browsers. I hope Google chrome can address that problem too. Definitely a good start but way to go.
It is a not a new buzz word. It is going next Gen web browser. Just due to the amount of features what it offers beneath the browser. Quite a lot of architecture changes to a browser
Tabbing
Opening a Tab in a window was a craze when it first came out in FireFox or Mozilla, IE also copied it soon. But there were host of problems with the way Tabs were architectured to run internally in the browser. It was designed as One Process per Window, so if you open multiple tabs within the same window it is single process and multiple threads and it all shared the same address space in windows. So a programmer who knows hack into this can read the data handled in the next tab, for example you have opened a credit card statement in one tab and some website which runs the Malware in the next tab, the Malware can read the credit card statement since it is under the same process. If 1 of the 10 tabs that were opened in a window crashes then the whole window will crash. All these problems have been alleviated in Google Chrome.
1 Tab -- > 1 Process 1 address space. It is crash proof against other bad tabs.
JavaScript
Performance
JavaScript is the most important thing in web today. There are so much complex things done with JavaScript today, the performance of JavaScript affects the web applications.
Being a web developer myself, I know the pain of trying to improve the performance of slow running web application, most of the times the culprit is the slow running or slow loading Java Script. Browsers are inherently single threaded, Browsers have to handle the control the JavaScript when it starts executing, the browser cannot do anything till the JavaScript finishes execution and handles the control back to the Browser. If there are 10 tabs opened in a window and 1 tab starts executing the complex JavaScript, then the all the 10 tabs will stop responding till the execution of JavaScript is complete. With 1 Tab -- > 1 Process 1 address space this problem is addressed.
Compatibility
When you write a web application with lot of JavaScript in it then the web application has to be tested for compatibility since the JavaScript implementation and support is different in different browsers. Again being the web developer, seeing something not working properly in one browser to the other can be nasty. I wish JavaScript had a Virtual Machine which takes care of the internal implementation rather than the developer worrying about those. My prayer for a VM in JavaScript has been partially answered, with the introduction of JavaScript Virtual Machine V8. I wish that the JavaScript VM becomes a standard and other browsers also adapt this.
Memory Handling
The main problem with the JavaScript is Bad Garbage Collection, I would say worst Garbage collection. Current Browsers with the existing JavaScript uses Conservative Garbage Collection. It is like you have a Rack full of bundled clothes and searching for a small Handkerchief in the mess, you wouldn’t know where the Handkerchief would be so it is going to take more time to find it. If you exactly know where the Handkerchiefs are stored it would make it faster to search and find those, that is what the JavaScript VM V8 does. It also does an Incremental Garbage collection which can result in the applications being more interactive like a smoother drag and drop in the netflix applications.
Security
As I said earlier in the Tabbing section of the blog 1 Tab 1 Processes 1 Address Space. This architecture change has enabled the Sandboxing of the Tabs, means they can use the processor for computing but they cannot use it for read files from the machine or write files in the machine. Plugins have always been a big headache for the security of the browser’s (client) machines that run those. Plugins can access anything in the browsers machine and read or write things. For example if we install a Adobe Plugin in the browser, that does not fall under the standard security, they generally run at a higher level and generally works with the renderer( the part of the browser) which graphically displays the web page to the user. Renderer and Plugins run in the same address space. But in Google Chrome the plugins have been isolated and have been kept in a separate address space or sandboxed in a separate address space, so the security threat is minimized to a great extent. Another major problem with internet security is phishing attacks, it is like for example there is a bank site called www.icici.com and there is a hacker who opens a www.icicibank.com , how would you know what is the original site and where to enter the password, Google Chrome claims to warn the users against the phishing attacks and keeps updating the list of phishing websites. This sounds interesting but not sure on how well it would work.
End user should not worry about what happens under the hood of the browser and shouldn’t find a difference between the application written as a thick client (stand alone application) or thin client (browser), usability of the application shouldn’t get affected, and there are limitations with writing applications of that kind with the existing technologies and with the existing browsers. I hope Google chrome can address that problem too. Definitely a good start but way to go.
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