Here I write about various events I was involved in and ideas that inspired me. Recently, it is more of a linux blog because I have been doing a lot of work on it. However, off and on I write on various other things that my mind just can't let go easily.
In this blog, I am writing about some Firefox tweaks and add-ons that help me improve my online experience. AdBlockPlus heads the list. It is an add-on by Wladimir Palant that blocks unwanted ads. As I hate to see fancy useless flash ads on my screen, this is always the first add-on I get from Mozilla. Also, it has remained at the top of recommended add-ons for quite some time. The ABP icon usually resides right of the search bar as you can see below. Next comes Video DownloadHelper. At times videos are more insightful than plain text. That's why sites like youtube are so popular. I like to keep videos for offline use. So Video DownloadHelper is an essential for me. Its icon resides to the left of address bar as seen below. It is usually deactivated; but activates when there are links that can be downloaded. There are lots of add-ons available that allow numerous customizations from splash screens to 3D cube effect.
Now let's see how easy it is to manage cookies in Firefox. Simply click on Tools->Options->Privacy. A window appears as follows. You can manage your private data, cookies and history to suit yourself.
Sunday, 5 October 2008
With Peter Norvig as the Director of Research, Google Brain is no surprise.
Google changed the definition of beta just like it has done for many other things. From the beginning it has become a centre of innovation in software. Google has shown the way to capture the market when open source software was gaining momentum. Google uses a nice business strategy with a place for open source in it. It is interesting to note that Google supports Firefox, yet launches its own Chrome browser.
I have been critical of the the incorrect use of 'beta' for about two years now, but mostly offline. However, recently I found a discussion at Slashdot supporting my ideas. That inspired me to write this blog. I like the line about getting out of jail for free.
'Beta' means it may change without warning. Well then a number of Google applications tell us at the first page that they are likely to change without warning and we are supposed to tread ahead at our own risk. However, they do it with flair: the 'beta' tags usually blend nicely with the background. Thereby, most of the users become mere beta testers for Google - a novel way to get intelligent testers at a large scale, as required for web applications.
This is my first non-technical blog. So, there might still be a technical undertone (probably my meticulous nature forces it more often than I realise).
This one is about democracy. Well first a little recap as democracy is fairly new. In the old autocratic times, there used to be kings on whose wisdom the kingdom either prospered or got doomed. With the world shrinking small, some people figured out better ways of controlling the large populations of big countries like India, America, etc. Those were democracy and communism. (Frankly speaking, there might be others but these two have been evidently the most influential. There might be other forms which the academicians might like to point out. Also, India came much later in the race of democracies. I just put it there because I am an Indian and also in keeping with India's huge population.)
We all know that there are rules and that they are broken. The difference is in the way it is done in a democracy and in a communist country. The methods of covering up are different, but that doesn't mean there is no covering up. The communist guys talk about economy clearly. The democratic fellows find better words. Well the American presidents have had a history of politeness in public speaking and George Bush Jr. made it to the news by being the first to break the unwritten law.
"People vote their wallets, even when they know the politicians are lying through the teeth." - Mark Ludwig
At first I thought I wouldn't have to explain this but the fact that I am writing this blog tells me that some people need an explanation because otherwise I wouldn't need to write this blog. People vote their wallets; all the while using words that tell them they are doing some common good or some other crap. By this they are lying to themselves, fooling themselves into an illusionary world that doesn't exist.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" - Benjamin Franklin
Many of us today have complaints that there is much hatred and increased "negativity" in the world today. Yet the our world survives, we survive. It is because of many unsung heroes who lead the path of good, he path of "positivity". Today I found the following videos on youtube which are aimed at highlighting such unsung heroes.
The first one is called "Random acts of kindness".
The next one is called "make a difference".
Through this blog, I am doing my part of spreading the "positivity". Hope you do your part too and pass the message on. Lets make the world a better place.
This is the fifth in the Commandos series from Eidos. However, this is a first person shooter game (fps) unlike others in the series which were third person strategic games.
One of the major drawbacks of the game is the dumb enemy artificial intelligence(AI), especially while working with the spy. However, the AI was fine when the enemy dodge bullets. Despite that the game is worth playing for its unique gaming experience provided by some features pretty new in the industry. These features make the game very realistic.
The game features dynamic switching between the commandos during the game play. In the following screenshot, I am shooting with the Green Beret (a character in the Strike force team).
While I am using the Green Beret, who is positioned in the heart of action, I am also using the sniper to provide cover to the Beret.
It was really wonderful to be able to see the course of action and be involved in it from two different perspectives at the same time. Such dynamic switching between characters of a game is unprecedented and is appreciable. It makes the game worth playing just for the experience of a new style of gameplay. You can see for yourself in the following video. I am not the player here though.
Earlier we have had games with multiple characters involved in action. However, dynamic switching was not there. One of the early examples of this is the famous game Max Payne 2. There is a level in the game where Mona Sax saves Max Payne by providing sniper cover while Max's response is simulated. In the next level, Max Payne plays in the same scenario with Mona's cover simulated. The developers of Strike Force have take a step towards next generation gaming by introducing dynamic switching.
To add to the realism in the game, there is a fist-fight between a Russian soldier (below) and a Nazi soldier(above) in the following screenshot.
It helps paint the image of world war 2 times in the mind of the gamer. The following screenshot was taken after a couple of Nazi soldiers were killed while they were basking in the warmth of the fire. The rifle of a Nazi soldier fell on the drum when his body fell down.
In the next screenshot the Green Beret is feeling the sharpness of the edge of the knife.
These elements add realism to the gameplay. Its nice to see a Nazi officer, out in cold, yawning. Another interesting feature is the ability of the sniper to hold his breath during shooting to be accurate.
Recently I was working on my brother's computer, when I found the following popup from the antivirus. Evidently the real time protection worked as it came when I was working online.
The malware (I choose to refer in a generic fashion as different vendors differ on whether it is a trojan or a virus) Trojan.Clicker.CM comes from adsrevenue.net. Now, I was working in a different site and I tried a download. The download was supposed to be initiated from another window and along with that new window came the popup which was blocked by the antivirus.
Some googling yielded that http://www.adsrevenue.net/ is the website of a company that lives on ads. However, it also hints at the grim prospect that malware are used by companies to make money, that cybercrime secretly thrives on companies like this one.
Basic electronics tells us that there are three passive components : 1. Resistor 2. Capacitor 3. Inductor. Now the trinity has been joined by a new member - the memristor.
In 1971, an IEEE fellow and pioneer of non-linear circuit theory, Leon Chua, working as an engineer in the University of California, Berkeley, predicted that there should be a fourth element: a memory resistor, or memristor. But no one knew how to build one. Now, 37 years Hewlett-Packard researchers have finally designed one.
Earlier it was conceived only from a mathematical perspective and no real manifestation was existent. According to Chua, memristor provides a similar relationship between magnetic flux and charge that a resistor gives between voltage and current. That it acts like a resistor whose value varies according to the current passing through it and which remembers that value even after the current has disappeared. This hints at using the device as a memory resistor.
The team was lead by R. Stanley Williams. They were working on molecular electronics. The memristor is fundamental circuit element as no combination of other fundamental passive elements can make a device remember the current flowing through it earlier. The effect can be produced using transistors and capacitors but a large number of them is needed to produce the effect of a single memristor. The symbol for memristor is as follows.
Looking into the practical applications, we see that with the use of memristors we might never need to boot up again; everything that was in memory while we turned off would be in memory when we turn the system back on. Moreover, memristors are likely to help hardware based implementations of neural networks and fuzzy logic. According to Williams, computations may no more be in Boolean fashion only. Also there can be designs of non-volatile memory based on memristors that could be 1000 times faster than traditional magnetic disks yet consume quite less power.
This is an achievement of nanoscience. For those who could not welcome nanoscience due to prejudices of privacy breach by nanorobots, here is a view of how much easy nanoscience can make your lives.
Some time ago I had read a Linux kernel developer saying that we are not having enough development in hardware. Well here is one.
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