Friday, October 29, 2004

What is the science behind barbie and other crazy stuff

Just how cuckoo can a research topic for a paper be? The answer is that it can be really very much indeed.
Here are a few of the research paper topics that I found in a magazine that tries to turn science upside down:

Research topic1:
Do too many cooks spoil the broth? Questioning the proverb!
Reasearch topic 2:
Why Barbie is perceived as beautiful? Barbie ain't human!
Research topic3:
Conclusive proof of global warming from studies of frozen confectionary.

And the one that I found totally cool was this:
Staying dry in the damp: Should you run or walk in the rain?

There are a few more and then some under the guise of articles, experiences and stuff. Fortunately, this is the first edition of the magazine, and nothing more than an epitome of trivialities. (Hmm....and what would this blog be if I were writing about such sites....Yikes!)

Thursday, October 28, 2004

SP2 me!

I've got it!

It's awesome getting something free via airmail from microsoft! (though, i understand that the cd was distributed from "Navi Mumbai").

BTW, that got me thinking. Why wud microsoft send free cds worth Rs.100 for EVERYONE?

My theory is that, microsoft don't want any windows owner, even if he is running a pirated version of windows, to get a sp2-less vulnerablity. I guess most of the windows users are free software believers (euphemism for piraterss [more on this in later post]) and obviously wudn't wanna spend their fortune to download the hunky sp2. This will leave a lot of whiners whining how their pc got hijacked or was on the receiving end or giving end of a DDos attack and stuff like that, if there was no one to patch THOSE guys up.

So ask them to give their address and don't ask for a identity revealing productID or any commitment for the user.

Neat idea, that is, if that is what is behind this free sp2 thang. Anybody know the actual reasons?

Really Frightening Codes (RFC)

How did RFC become Really Frightening Codes?

A few days ago, my fellow blogger, sriram mailed me the regular expression for finding out the validity of email addresses. Then I began reading the underlying RFC and this is what I learnt from it:

"There's always the easy way and the hard way. And, unfortunately, it seems that the hardest way is always the most correct way too. Almost always"

Life's got too many examples for this. Let me post two of it:

1. Parsing an Email address:
The supposedly correct way for doing it is here:
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html
And the program to generate the regex is here:
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address/Mail-RFC822-Address-0.4.tar.gz


2. Parsing an URL:
The RFC (and, you guessed it, the hard)way of doing it right:
http://www.foad.org/~abigail/Perl/url3.regex
And the program that would generate the behemoth:
http://www.foad.org/~abigail/Perl/url3.pl

But you've got to be wise in choosing a way when there is an easy way and a hard way. Because of the presence of those cute things called "exceptions". Now, the RFC equivalent of email address and url parsing are a bit old. They include regex to cover the following types of email addresses too:

Alfred Neuman@BBN-TENEXA
:sysmail"@ Some-Group. Some-Org
Muhammed.(I am the greatest) Ali @(the)Vegas.WBA


Now really! Valid? These are unheard of in the real world, people. So, you see, there are exceptions and they are cute too.

Now I Request For Comment.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Mobile phone rant

"Mobile phones. They are everywhere. So many brands, so many service providers, so many offers, so many new services... Isn't it becoming a bit of over-crowded with moblie phones in here?", you might ask.

Yes, it is. Infact, the number of mobile phones is currently more than the number of wired phones and then some. And they all use the the same spectrum of radio waves alloted for cellular communications.

Some fellow named Marty Cooper was interested in this, and like all researcher with too much data and too much free time, announced a law, not surprisingly named, the "Cooper law", which states that the number of conversations that can be conducted concurrently in the same spectrum has doubled every two-and-a-half years for the past 104 years. By the way, Marty Cooper also happens to be the creator of the Mobile phone.

Now before I take you to wonder land, let me show you around kansas first, Alice.

Assuming that you know the basics of how cells are created, let me tell you how cooper's law has been kept up for so long.

Frequency planning: First off, people created the basic "cell", a hexagonal structure in theory for easily dividing the given area(city, state, county) and at the same time covering the most area with the least uncovered area, than considering the entire area as a single broadcast area. Adjacent cells avoided using and listening to the same radio frequency band, and thus avoided a few bad words in communication, which I will name only once for you: "interference" and "Noise".

Some decades later, as DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technology got better, so did the ability to eliminate the effect of the bad words. People started spliting cells into microcells and pico cells.

Sectorization: Now a single cell can use the same frequency band by spliting a cell into "sectors". Sectors are created by directional antennas, which effectively cuts the cell into three or more sectors. Each sector behaves like a cell.

Now that you've got the low-down of existing cell site architectures, let me take you to Wonderland.

How would you like a dedicated cell site for your mobile phone/laptop?

Enter "Personal Cell Core Technology". Let me lay it all down for you before I continue.

What PCCT acheives is this: Instead of wasting radio energy by broadcasting, the smart antennas can locate a user, target the conversation only to the user. This creates a personal "cell site" for the user and follows the user as he moves around the city. Since there is a personal connection with the user, the cell site can allot the same frequency to many other users in the same cell.
What if all the users, allotted the same frquency, call from the same direction? Will the antenna be able to discriminate their signals correctly?
Yes! Hell, It can even discriminate two users even if they are using the same frequency and just inches apart!

PCCT uses an array of "adaptive smart antennas", developed by ArrayComm.

This magic words behind PCCT are GPS sattellites, "Super amplification" for the correct user and "signal supression" for other users, etc. , all handled by ArrayComm's adaptive algorithm and other intellectual Property.


The implications of noise free, full bandwidth, anywhere online and always online properties of ArrayComm's PCCT didn't go unnoticed. iBurst, an australian broadband company, implemented it as a low cost, high bandwidth technology for mobile phone users. Their service provides an always-on connctivity for laptops and mobile phones at a maximum data transfer rate of 1Mbps! (This is considered 4G by some, but that's a topic for another post). All that at the cost of an ordinary dial-up. No need to wait for other users to get off the network or to wait for a spot where you will be within the base station's range again.

And iBurst also created the "Liberate you laptop" campaign. If u don't have the time for stupid things in life, then don't bother:)

One of Marty Cooper's comment on the objective of the mobile phone comes to my mind:

"When you call a landline, you call a place. But, when you call a cell phone, you call a person."

Friday, October 22, 2004

2005's Blockbuster revealed!

Which game made you run with dread in your eyes, from one dark corridor to another while never letting go of the trigger? (and most often never making it there alive:)

Which game made you cringe into the shadows for 10 minutes before you calmed youself down before you entered another dark corridor?

Which game made you swear for the amount of adrenaline it required for you to play it?

Which game has the most fantabulous graphics that left many to loathe their old PCs?

Which game's demo marked an unpercendented tens of millions of downloads?


Well, I'll be Doomed if I gave away any more clues!

The awesome news is that, Universal Pictures says that the most awaited game ever is going into production, Aug 2005!
Dave McCallion is writing the story and Enda McCallion is producing it.
No more details are available yet. But here's a link.

I have but one wish: Just make sure that the movie lives upto the game!

Saturday, October 16, 2004

The AABBA teens?

Question: How can you make remember a word easily?

The Answer is what the rest of the post is all about.

In my 14'eens or 15'eens, I joined a program named "Max Excel". It was an improve-everything-about-you-but-your-looks program. They promised (and it did work, I should say, for some people) to improve your memory to Guinness levels, improve your handwriting enough that you wouldn't need to learn hypnotism, teach you to study well, breath correctly (yeah, correctly), relieve yourselves of tension, activate any side of your brain at will, etc.

I should say, they worked pretty well for me too. But just like any park opened in chennai looks like a "petrified forest museum" after a few weeks of its inaguration due to immaintenance, I've lost the super memory thing.

I will concentrate more on the memory thing in this post. I can promise you the rest of the techniques in future posts.

The way to have guinness standard memory is really simple:

1. Create folders or drawers in your mind. This step is somewhat of a one time mugging up of a seqeuence of 100 to 200 names for neophytes and some thousands for the insane...er... experts.
For the names, we were asked to write down and memorize 200 friends' and relatives' names in the decreasing order of love and affection.

For example:
1 = Neo
2 = Morpheus
3 = Trinity
4 = Oracle
.
.
.
.
199 = Vivek srikumar
200 = Sriram krishnan

2. After you are able to name any relative's name given their index number, you have created a near-permanant (I can't remember the list now. Needs maintenance, as I told ya already.) Folder structure or named drawers in your brain.

3. How is this used in storing and retreiving data, fast?....or retreiving at all?

The crux of the technique is that, human beings tend to remember things that have a strong sense of emotion to it. In "Max Excel", they chose humor as the strong emotion. To remember a word, you take the first data to be memorized and invent a funny story involving that data and the relative/friend in that slot.

Say, you wanna memorize the periodic table, eh? (No, I am not Canadian.)
For example, you wanna remember that Hydrogen's position in the periodic table is number one. So you invent a funny story involving the element "Hydrogen" and "Neo".
Like,
"Neo takes the red pill and starts floating toward the ceiling, and morpheus shouts at him, "Haha, gotcha! That was hydrogen in that , fool!""

Ok, I am not good at making up funny stuff, but you get the idea.

4. Now comes the retreiving part. This is the inverse of the memorizing part. You see either the number "1" or the name "Hydrogen", you will remember the strongly humorous scene playing back in your mind, and then you'd get the answer automatically.

How do you manage multiple sessions? That is, you wanna memorize the periodic table and the India EPCO standards (or those Environmental laws, for us Fourth year under-grads). What then?

You can manage multiple sessions, alright, but it will require you to actively carefully conjure up stories involving also the context. (periodic table=chemistry related funnies, EPco sections=Law and ethic related jokes, etc...).


All that flashbacks aside, now for the thing that invoked the flashbacks: OEDILF
which stands for the,
Omnificient English Dictionary In Limericks Form.

This is a novel dictionary which describes and explains english language words in a limerick form. It is totally , unbelievably, astonshingly, technically, ingeniously, superfluously funny way to remember a word. You've got to see it to appreciate that.

Believe me, you would be craving to cry out your own AABBA after reading through the site. Seriously.

What's a "Limerick"? How's a limerick different from a freakin poem? AND WHAT"S AN "AABBA"?

I come prepared for that query. Let me try to explain "Limerick" via a limerick...

AABBA is how a Limerick goes,
If not then it's some other prose.
There are two line pairs
That produce different airs,
While the fifth line, like the first pair echoes.

That should clear it up.
BTW, Limericks are supposed to be very funny so that you may remember the theme word in a flash, accomapnied by a funny feeling (Hmm...that could be misundersood.).


Here's my few other experiments with Truth and Fun:

Next time a pirate asks you to walk the plank
You don't have to look blank.
Walk in the direction away from the pointed sword
And jump feet first, praying to the Lord
That you don't sink like a tank.


The little penguin called Tux ,
Can be had for zero bucks.
As many distros does it come,
And not a single virus is welcome
In any flavour of Linux.


To be very frank,
Your site needs more Page Rank.
To get more, you need
More sites pointing to your home-stead,
With big pointers giving you more rank.


Yes, you can add your own Limerick to the OEDILF site. But as of this writing, they are archiving words that start with "A" only. It will take some time before they move onto higher alphabets.
That's because, the review panel is composed of slow, pathetic humans and so far, humans are not able to convince machines of the fact that there is such a thing called "humour".

I am a great fan of IRC quotes databases and visit the king of all online quotes database, Bash.org, but still I think the OEDILF is much funnier than the quotes.

And that's saying something.


PS: You don't get 5 points for guessing the theme of any of the above Limericks.

PPS: And oh, the Limericks are Trade Marked, Patented, Copyrighted et al by me. So don't plagiarize these without reference to me and my this site. [I am hoping to improve my Page Rank :) ]

Monday, October 11, 2004

System Idle Process.

Heh. This is one of those random thoughts which I argue with myself in the backof my head while I am coding or doing something important.

It was like, "What do you think is the difference between solving problems in maths in your lower classses and solving problems after you graduate?" I ask myself.

And snap came the reply, like:

"Heh heh, that's simple. When you solve some problem in maths you don't improve algebra or anything. I mean, you don't see any kid going like:

"Look ma, I solved a problem in addition! Do you think, I can present a paper on it or something?"

Nah... But you can very well do it almost everytime and for everything that you find out in your college/university life though. Like:

".........And so our proposed method increases efficiency by almost 0.00001%, provided the #$%@!* holds up which it does so with a probablity of 0.003......" "

Now that I have satisfactorily answered my own query, I look for some other nagging questions to chew on while I debug.

And I find one.

It went like "Is being a herbivorous human being good? Is it worth it? Is it natural? What does Nature have to say on us being omnivorous? I mean, does she show explicitly by some creature whether we must be flesh eating or leaf eating?

The last question brought in a barrage of visual answers, some of which I will try to code...er...type in.

The answer thoughts were like this:

"What does nature say on all this plant vs flesh, you ask. Ok..Try this. People say "Strong as a Bull". So Bull is a symbol for strength and machissmo, we must eat the bull's diet, right?

......No wait. A Bull ain't at the top of the food chain. A Lion is. So be a carnivore because a Lion is stronger than a bull?

Ok, that was because you assumed Lion is stronger than a Bull. Think about the African Bull or ox like thing which can fend off a lion.

Hey! that's not fair! I don't want to lose!
[I am a non-vegitarian :)] [At this point of desperation, I even doubt the diet of an african bull and imagine it eating meat and stuff, then think it off]
Ok, here. The African Bull fights only when in herds by standing in circle. Even then they may lose one or two young one or weak ones. Whereas the lion, He fights single or in threes. Ha ha! So there! Carnivores win!."
[And to assure that I win, I add some more arguments ;)]
"Look, even the crockadiles, which are not eaten by anything, is a carnivore!
Also, carnivores live a longer life than the herbivores :).

Wait a minute! Turtles are the oldest living things. And even Elephants. I don't see THEM eating any meat. So herbivores win by your argument of living longer! "

The rest of the argument was cut off by the thought which said I have to blog about it :(

I know it all sounds so abrupt, but that's what happens when you dump out your actual thoughts, I guess.

But whatever happens, I am remaining an omnivore :)

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Marine, go frag that penguin!

The linux version of Doom 3 has been released yesterday alongside a free demo. But if you are not a serious-playful penguin, then the latest demo might be something that you might want to try out atleast, that is if you can download the 460 MB binary.

Oh and don't bother if you pwn an ATi card.

"ATi drivers are not supported yet. New drivers are being developed ASAP at ATi"

Nuff said.
A great anti-great news along side a great news.
"No downloads for my penguin for now.", I hear many people say.
Much louder than the rest, is my voice.

I will let you in on somethings about ATi. Now if you don't own an ATi card and/or you have been living under a rock, you won't know that ATi announces a driver almost every month or so. And that those releases are covered as a main headline in many tech news feeds.

Given that fact, ATi also released a "Doom 3 Hotfix" driver well before schedule for its next installment of driver. (Infact, the hotfix was Catalyst 4.9 whereas the next expected driver version was Catalyst 4.8, and that too not until some weeks later!). This release coincided with Doom3's windows release.

My point is, ATi had obviously worked overtime to ensure windows compatiblity, but skimped with the linux version of its drivers. Actually, ATi doesn't devote a lot of developers for its linux team and even points out the fact next to a sentence pointing to other third party forums that are developing the drivers.

"Maybe it's because not a lot of its users are linux fans?", you think.
Maybe.

"Maybe linux doesn't need constant updates?", you say, proudly showing off your tux tatoo.
No, the drivers are for the 'ardware not the penguin! And considering that Doom3 won't run correctly in the current driver, think for youselves #!!@#.

It's not that I am a Linux fan and want to game in linux or die trying(swear, it's not a double-entendre!). Just couldn't leave this topic "unranted"©.

Read through this forum thread for links to demo and a lot of geek noise on carmack's latest port.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

This means war!

Originally recruited by the military to create a War Simulator for the then covert operation of training the soldiers about MOUT combat even in their vacation, Pandemic's Full Spectrum Warriors is a true war-time simulator. In short, FSW is a no-relation-with-Hollywood game. Infact, a look at the trailer would change your ming about Half life 2 being the king of all games.

MOUT, or Military Operations on Urban Terrain, is becoming the only kind of battlefield available today. This is either because of the fast growth of cities or becuase of civilian insurgencies that is plaguing our planet. MOUTs are thousands of times more deadly than a desert or open field operation. A Soldier's fear of MOUTs spring from the fact that they have to walk, eat, shoot and take cover in the enemy's own backyard.

The game is set in contemporary times at a place called, not coincidentally, Southern Zekistan, a fictional country experiencing the real world problems of ethnic cleansing and terrorist sponsorship.

Everything about FSW is different from the run-with-your-guns-ablaze kind of FPS that is prevalent today. For starters, in some operations you don't get to shoot a single bullet. Just command your men to do so. The game is based on real life scenarios and expect you to act like you are in one. The game is more of a soldier's fodder than your normal FPS gamer's.

Though I am yet to buy the game, which I doubt I will, the laurels and accolades that it had received is simply awesome. The game's trailers and screenshots are also a must see. FSW excels at all levels: graphics, sounds, physics, game play, user interface, voice acting, realism....

Saying that this is the best war game is an understatement. In the game, you can employ all the tactics and strategies that you would employ in the real world. The website provides a list of tactics that can be tried out in the game. Some are like providing "for the effects" gunshots while your team mate runs accross an open space, moving in "Stack-formation" along side a wall or a vehicle, using smoke grenades and coverfire to block out the enemie's sight, searching for weapons on enemy dead bodies with two soldiers covering you and a third soldier guarding the body, and the list goes on....

The above tactics apart, the game also supports a wide variety of strategies. Since the game relies on realism, don't expect to see Soul cubes and UFC Plasma guns from DoomIII.

And talking of weapons, something has to be said about the game's physics. Taking cover behind structures is what you will be doing a lot. Expect the same from the terrorists as well, only the terrorists will be sitting in their own house cooking some home-made bombs in their kitchens, to lob at you when you pass by their windows. While taking cover, the "stack formation" comes in handy. But don't expect your cover to remain forever. Building's walls chip away naturally, as bullets and bombs wear them out. Also, don't stand too close to your cover wall, lest you want the concrete chips inflict damage to your face. Bodies too behave naturally to bullet wounds.

Unlike in contemporary games where you are either alive or dead, FSW characters can become injured in the spots where they are actually wounded. Enemies fight even till all they can do is pull the trigger. But as soldier or seargent, depending on what you are, you are supposed to help out other soldiers that are wounded. One of General Patton's many quotes comes to my mind:

"The point is not to die for your contry,
The point is to make some other bastard die for his"


Another war game that was recently released with much controversy is "Shellshock: Nam'67"
The game's cover says :

" "The fear, chaos and atrocities" of our country's (US) involvement in South-East Asia "

and infact, the above statement about summarizes the entire game. What the above statement seems to miss are heads of various men and women on stakes, men being beheaded, diced, sliced, smashed, etc, watching your fellow soldier writhe in pain as he is caught in a vietnamese booby-trap, captured vietnamese soldiers and farmers committing suicide and a lot more common violence, only in close-up.

The game, according to the makers and some critics, is filled with the same fear that US soldiers faced in vietnam. Booby-traps galore, along side headless bodies lying in a pool of blood. And if that ain't gritty enough, you can return to base camp and visit the local brothel.

Your life in the vietnam camp is spent watching the above mentioned visuals in gritty detail, coming back to the base camp and then going back to watch them again. So you will find yourself spending more time in the basecamp.

The base camp is more closer to home than the paddy fields of vietnam. Some 67's radio hits blares from the bull-horn speakers. You can buy a cool one from the bar and sip on it while listening to a DJ. You can also check out the hospital to "visit" the nurse there.

Realism and bringing out the truth behind wars aside, truly, do we need such games? After all these years of playing sugar-coated games which potrays death as a mere delay before respawning, how much of a shock will these games be? With the Doom series getting the blame for bringing gore and violence into teen minds, where will these games be?

All those ethics and morals apart, would you be buying these games? Most people don't want to invest in no-fun games. But times are a changin, with "Counter Strike" like games coming to the front, maybe everybody will get these war simulators and play someday.

But until that day, if you enjoy button bashing action games, then these simulators are not for you. Though I am not sure about "Shellshock:Nam'67", the visuals and other realisms of Full Spectrum Warrior are nuff reasons for buying it.