New Year

As the New Year comes in and 2012 becomes a thing of past, I wish all wishes made by the entire population of the globe be true.

As of me, I hope I turn workaholic in 2013, nothing can be more satisfying to work for what you truly love to do, to work hard towards it and find fulfillment and satisfaction.  My studies will carry on to be what it was, it was not in a good track and I doubt if it will be in the coming year.

Let’s try to be a good individual, productive for the country and responsible towards family, let’s work for it.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013

Books, Copies, Projects,Student and Corruption

One thing the comes into our mind when we say ‘corruption’ is the dirty politics of Politicians, the nexus between Politicians and bureaucrats, rising crimes like rape, robbery and the news of the guilty being given bail because of ‘lack of evidence’. Those people who are honest and powerful in the tree of Law and justice can’t take strict action because they are suppressed by Politicians either directly or indirectly (through goondas). 

1. Instead of blaming the system for being corrupt it is necessary that we try our bit to improve it. But how can we change it? (Mail me your answers)

2. We need to realize this that corruption starts at the root level, it starts when we copy our home work from a friend of us or from a guide book instead of doing it ourselves.

3. It is corruption when we agree to pay more to someone to get our work done early.

4. It is corruption when we do our project by copying it from a site in Internet. Realize that copying and doing by learning has a big difference.

5. It is better to get less marks by doing something by your own rather than getting full marks by copying it. That way you can be proud of the fact that the marks you got is truly yours and the best part is that, you aren’t cheating yourself.

6. Kids who are in their primary education copies a lot from us, if we stand as a true person to them, then they too will go at the right path, that way we can create a chain of good, logical and honest human being.

7. It is also a blunder when teachers allow us to cheat in practical exam. I know that happens in many institutions.

Are all the points above, nonsense??

Wait a minute, many of us won’t accept it in our heart that a friend of us gets good (read high) marks by copying an assignment and we get low marks just because we did it all by ourselves. Well, that is not logical you see, our friend may get good mark by cheating himself/herself. But that way, one is not true to own self.

See, if we are honest and true to our work, then it becomes easier for recruiter to judge us and accordingly we get a Job in a firm/company/business where our thinking/capability goes at par with it. The result, no matter what Job we do, we enjoy it and live life to the fullest.  So, we should be true to our self, so that we can excel in what we are best at, that way our contribution to the society becomes highest and this world becomes a better place to live in  J

WiTricity-Know The Wireless Electricity

Perhaps you know what WiFi is?? Keeping the same thing in mind, wireless electricity has been named WiTricity by Team of Research scientist in MIT who demonstrated wireless electricity by lighting a 60W light bulb kept 2 meters away from the source of electricity. How did they do it?? Let’s find out.

It was Nikola Tesla in late 1800 who first proposed wireless electricity but he was not entirely successful. Later some other scientist tried to modify Tesla’s experimentation of Wireless electricity but in vain. What they did was based on how transformers work today i.e. mutual induction. They worked on two coils, one primary and the other secondary. Current in the first coil induces a magnetic field, this magnetic field couples with the secondary coil to give an output current. But this has many disadvantages. First, the coil needs  to be kept very close to each other, if the secondary coil is taken far from the output then current lags in magnitude to a huge extent compared to primary. To compensate the current loss the intensity of magnetic field can be made stronger at primary by introducing more round of coils but this would waste a huge amount of magnetic field and hence energy since only a part of primary coil’s magnetic field will be coupled. Thus mere mutual induction can’t be used to transmit electricity due to huge inefficiency.

The WiTricity Team and at right an mutual inductive charger

WiTricity uses the similar concept like above but with added resonance to it. The primary coil is made to vibrate at a particular frequency (its resonance frequency); if this frequency matches with the secondary coil’s frequency then transfer of electricity with power loss can be obtained. Thus both the coil must have that much of current with the same resonate frequency. Added resonance changes the construction of the coil to some extent as well. The coil is throughout inductive with capacitive plates at its ends to store the charges, this is how the WiTricity team lit a 60W bulb wirelessly.

WiTricity Demonstartion,

Future Home using Electricity, Source: HowStuffWorks

David Criswell of the University of Houston proposed use of microwave to transfer electricity. He also tells that Solar cell station can be constructed at the Moon from where electricity will be directed to earth via microwave band of spectrum but again the question of maintenance of the solar cell at Moon is questionable. Furthermore microwave may also have health hazards.

NASA also proposed the use of infrared to transfer electricity to charge batteries and they have even used it but infrared requires direct line of sight with object for the transfer thus making it less feasible for the future.

Iamge Source: treehugger.com

 TIPS

Refer http://www.witricity.com/index.html

When it comes to Love, why is it always, ‘I Love You’??

Image: Google Images

The headline looks confusing but let me tell you that this blog post is a result of my googling about ‘I Love You’. Why is it that a lover always wants to say or listen to these 3 words to judge or to finalize a committing relationship? Do these three words have altogether different understanding in a boy and a gal? (or shall I say Man and Woman?)

Love, well let’s not debate about it or know what it actually is but to keep things simple I can say that since your Mom and Dad loves you hence love is the attachment of emotions present in a relationship within own blood. Now let’s keep our family aside, when you term a closing bond between your friends circle as Love, things get complicated there.

Psychologist put forward through their research that it is highly likely that a girl would firstly attempt to propose a boy when it comes to committing but practically it is the boy who does it. Why?? Well, not a single answer can be justified well but psychologist believes that guys are more willing to take a relationship to the next level (please understand what I mean) and this is what a girl is scared of at first and is likely to put down a proposal if she is not fully sure about committing herself. So practically it is the girl who can sense and judge a relationship well, it is she who can judge if it is right for her and the boy to be committed to each other. For a girl it is more alluring and relieving to hear a boy say ‘I Love You’ after the relationship has moved to the next level (Understand) as many boys (you may not agree) tend to break a relationship after the next level thing!

So, a relationship can go seriously wrong if the girl fails to judge a point because boys (mostly) don’t put much of their thinking into it. This is of course not always true, we do see some dumb girls who change their boyfriend often and same type of boys exists as well, but here we are not considering the relationship of fun.

Thus, this blog post gives one of the millions of reasons why it is always, ‘I Love You’. You may not agree and I don’t have any evidence to prove that I’m right.

Thank God, I could keep the post short; I don’t want to debate love just wanted to put a point.

The online storage drives!!!

Considering your personal computer or smartphone, you will have atleast one file which is more than important to you be it document or an image. Why not then keep the file safely over the web in what is known as cloud storage. It is more secure and there is no fear of losing it. Furthermore if you want to share a file to a huge bunch of people then e-mailing the same to so many people can be quite tedious, why not then generate a web link and let people download the file from the link.

Dropbox provides 2GB of free storage to anyone who sign ups. It is easy to use and very helpful at times (trust me). Visit dropbox, sign-up for an account. You’ll be prompted to download the dropbox software which you must install on your PC. After you install the software a new folder will be created on your computer’s root partition, anything you keep in this folder is saved automatically in dropbox servers whenever you are connected to the internet. Inside this same folder you get to see two sub folders, ‘Photos’ and ‘Public’. Anything you keep in the ‘Public’ folder becomes openly available to anyone in the web. To get the web link you simply need to right click the file, select ‘Dropbox’ then ‘Copy link address’. Same is the case with ‘Photos’ folder where you can keep any photos publicly. Simply read the ‘Get started’ pdf and the attached read me text files in the ‘Dropbox’ folder to learn the simple steps. So no matter where you are, your important files are always with you. Just visit www.dropbox.com, sign in and get all the files that you saved on the ‘Dropbox’ folder. Of course installing the ‘dropbox’ software is not always a necessity. You can simply visit the dropbox site and upload the files. As I told earlier, you can keep your files securely so that only you can access it or make it public

Snapshot during and after installation of dropbox in Windows 7. It is also available for different platforms. 

After you run the downloaded file install the dropbox software

In the notification bar, click the dropbox icon and a menu pops up

The dropbox folder, you can see the Public and Photo sub-folder here

Dropbox is present in the Internet for quite a long time now but not so recently has found many competitors. The Google Drive, drive.google.com. Better than Dropbox in terms of storage as it provides 5GB of free storage. After you sign up in the site with your regular google id (which almost all of you have) you will be prompted to download the ‘Google Drive’ Just one click and no installation required. Similar to the dropbox folder it creates a ‘Google Drive’ folder in the same location. Anything you save on this folder is saved on Google servers when internet connectivity is found. Go anywhere and you have the files with you on the web, just go to drive.google.com

On my personal front, I liked dropbox over Google drive simply because I found dropbox more convenient to use and the files were uploaded on the Internet (or say my dropbox account) immediately after I put a file in the ‘Dropbox’ folder of my computer, it was really fast on a slow internet connection. On the other hand Google Drive took a hell lot of time. Even after putting a very small sized file in the ‘Google Drive’ folder it took more than 3-4 minutes for the file to me shown up in my online G-drive account.

The competition is not only between Dropbox and Google Drive. We have Skydrive from Microsoft. It provides 7GB of free storage to its users and upto 25GB to existing users. I personally have not used skydrive so let me know how you find it incase you happen to use it.

These cloud storage options are getting wider and wider with both Microsoft and Google launching Smartphone applications for it through which a user can very easily store files online from his phone. We already know about Google Docs, the online office editing tool. So files (document ones) kept in Google Drive can be edited as well, ofcourse by Google Docs. Dropbox can provide you more storage (additional 512MB) then the existing 2GB provided you successfully invite your friends through referral. If you’re ready to pay then you can get upto 20GB in dropbox. Similar is the storage extension story for Google.

Dropbox, was simple and easy and it still is. Perfect synchronizing, nothing else.

TIPS
How about having Google Drive as a 'Send to' option in the right click menu? Yes, now you can right click any file and then Send to-->>>--Google Drive, its simple.
I got this tip in my regular tech magazine read. In WIndows 7, click the start menu and in the search bar type, ''%APPDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo'', now drag in the google drive folder to this SendTo folder and you're done.

Safety in Cybercafes

Image Courtesy:clickbd.com

You must have visited cybercafés for various tasks, be it downloading, editing etc. But beneath the work you do in those public computer lies huge set of security issues. An intended person can gain almost many of your personal information like login ID, password, bank PIN code etc. through a public computer from the history of your website visit. If you have transferred a document from your personal computer to a public computer for editing or uploading purpose then someone can gain your personal information from those documents too.

The threat in using a computer in cybercafé comes from keyloggers.  Keyloggers can trace whatever you type in your keyword by means of a software or hardware. For more on keylogger read my earlier post here.  Your web history in a browser or the log files created in your session of using the computer can be beneficial in many way to those who are looking for it.

Here I come up with some simple steps you can follow to be safe on a public computer.

1.    Make sure that you visit a Cybercafé which has a good population of people going in it. This will make your data a drop among the huge ocean of many data getting stored in it thus making it difficult for criminals to break into a specific user data.

2.      Use a cybercafé which has its computers in separate closed cubicles. This prevents others from shoulder surfing your personal information and prevents one from seeing whatever you have typed in your keyboard.

3.    Have a handy USB drive. You can install the portable version of a browser in your USB drive. Portable browser runs from the USB drive and has no relation with the default browser in the computer.  This ensures that your online activity is not stored in the public computer since you have not used the browser installed on the PC. Click here to learn and get a portable version of Firefox

  

4.     Keep an executable file of Free Commander. It can be found here. Free commander is like a windows manager which gives a detailed layout of the file management of the computer system. The file you want to work with can be opened from Free Commander Window. Most importantly you need to delete the file after you have finished working with it. Take a copy of the file to your pen drive. Next, go to ‘File’ option in FC window then Click ‘Wipe’. This will erase the file from the public computer permanently. Normally deleting and wiping from Free Commander has a difference.  Files deleted from delete option of windows (read OS) can still be recovered by software like Recuva etc. but wiping it from FC makes it unrecoverable. This is achieved by rewriting the memory location of where the file was after it has been deleted. ‘Eraser’ is a software which has been found to do this task more prominently then Free Commander (FC). Eraser can be found here.

5.    If you are following step 3 or even if you’re not doing so, be sure that you use virtual keyboard to type in email, username and password. Don’t stroke the keys on your physical keyboard to input sensitive information. For Windows user, Virtual keyboard can be found at Start-All Programs-Accessories-Ease of Access-On Screen Keyboard. This step can help you in a long way in keeping keyloggers away from your personal information. 

Following the above steps can be beneficial but one need to understand that a person who would want to steal your personal information would target you both socially and technically. Be sure not to divulge any personal information over the phone to any one, not even to the person who introduces you to be your banking employee  or an employee of a website. Be sure that the website you're visiting is really that website because it may be a copy image of the genuine website, made especially for you to reveal personal information. Listen your instincts. Safe Tasking!!

Any queries?? Write to rishiraj.in@gmail.com or comment below.

Where is the point?

Image Source:medicine.iu.edu

It has been happening and will continue to happen and a lot like me who think about it can only put down words but wont do anything about it. Education system needs a change.  What is taught inside the classroom is not applicable to the Job one gets, what is done in the practical classes has no resemblance with the task one does in his/her work. The question still stands tall, are the students trained and taught to be socially active resource of our country or is it a mere race for degrees where greater the marks you collect sweeter the degree you get. Maybe I’m writing this out of my frustration that I never top a single exam in my college or maybe because I dislike the subjects taught irrelevantly to me, where my marks will be the basis of my Job after about 4 years.

The system continues and we need to live by it, attempt to change the system will of course change us.

What I wrote above may not be totally right with all section of students.  Some simply leave study at a sensitive point in their life and later come up to be one of the most successful person, we have Thomas Edison, Einstein, Bill Gates to name a few.

An appeal to all: Do what you love to do, do what your passion wants to do. You may see a risk in it but once you go through you will later realize that you were never wrong doing so.

That’s what I’m doing, I love electronics assembling, and I’ll do that, what for do I need to study Biology and Chemistry? I’m not interested in researching with chemistry in electronics or chemistry in physics, many have done that before and specific people still exists to do the same.

Love Chocolates?? Are they really a health booster?? Find out

• ·         “Chocolates are good for health” This statement is like flower to our ears but scientific research has not reached to an extent that we can conclude if chocolate is really good for health.

• ·         Flavonoids, a component of some chocolate has antioxidant property which means that it can control diabetes, heart attacks, strokes  and cancer and improves brain function and slows the effects of aging.

• ·         The existence of flavonoids in chocolate is restricted to dark chocolate only. So you’re out of luck if you love only white chocolate, milk layered chocolate or candies. White chocolate or any other light chocolate adds nothing to your health but add a lot to your calories.

• ·         Flavonoids are found in cocoa beans. The outer layer of cocoa beans is very rich in flavonoids.  

• ·         All the chocolate packaging indicates the amount of each ingredient being added to the chocolate. Be proud to see if flavonoid or cocoa is one of them.  A chocolate made out of 100% cocoa is beneficial.

• ·         Some chocolate companies pay up for chocolate surveys. These surveys underline that chocolate is beneficial for health only to help boost the sale of the companies. Most of the chocolate survey are sponsored by chocolate companies itself thus putting suspect behind the famous saying, ‘chocolate is good for health’.

Chocolate maybe good for health

·         

HDTV, HD channels. . . Don’t get cheated, learn the basic of HD before you switch to anything that is HD.

Image Source: jcprovideo.com

With a number of commercials about HD Channels, HD Recorders, HDTV etc   people are tempted to go for HD without much knowledge about it. Hence some of them complain about poor picture quality even though their TV set is HDTV. Why is it so?

HD or high definition is the top tier of DTV i.e. Digital TV. Digital TV unlike analog TV works on digital signal of zeroes and ones whereas analog works on wave principle.  Remember that to experience HD you will at least need the following.

1     HD broadcasting station: The signal coming into your TV must be HD, for that the signal transmitted from the broadcasting station must be HD. When a particular channel has a HD tag then you can be sure of the fact that the broadcast of that channel is of HD mode.

2     HD Receiver: Either your cable operator should have a HD receiver i.e. a HD set top box or you yourself must have a digital signal receiver at home to decode the digital signal being broadcasted.

3      HDTV:  This is where the necessity of HDTV clicks in to see the progressive scan image of the received signal. 

1

Next, we learn the basic difference of an analog TV and   HDTV.

An analog TV works on interlacing. The pictures we see in our television set are a set of frames of images which are moved very fast to create a motion of picture, hence a moving picture results. Interlacing increases the frame rate by consuming the same bandwidth of received signal.  Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) is capable of displaying interlaced signals.

Digital TV uses progressive scan technology. In interlacing the frames are created by alternate odd and even line of pixel whereas in progressive scan technology all the pixel line are created sequentially. Analog TV has a standard aspect ratio of 4:3, 16:9 for digital TV. Aspect ratio is the standard width by height ratio of the image in a television.

You must have seen the tag 1080i or 1080p. It means that the screen resolution is 1920 X 1080 interlaced or progressive. Such a high resolution is available in HD transmission alone. When an analog broadcasting signal is viewed in a digital TV, then a poor picture quality is witnessed, that is because the broadcasted signal is in the ration 4:3 viewed in a TV of ratio 16:9.

The GNU/Linux Legend, Richard Matthew Stallman on the take of Free Software

Richard Stallman, developer of GNU/Linux who recently visited Gauhati University stressed on use of Free Software citing its advantage and attacking propriety software (Non-Free Software) for its evil deeds in society.

Following are some of his conclusion drawn from the lecture.

• Facebook, according to Mr. Richard is a surveillance, which is abusing its user and gaining lots of personal information to pass on it to the intelligence bureau.

• Microsoft Windows is a malware, so is Apple’s Mac and its software. That’s because they install software having malicious codes without the users consent. He further adds that once you install an OS from Microsoft or Apple to your computer, that particular computer becomes sole property of the said company because they obtain all the rights to play with any of your file in your computer. This is true and dangerous.

• Some websites when visited can install malicious program in your PC and track down your personal information including the place where you are living. This is basically achieved by websites running propriety JavaScript. Mr. Richard stresses on use of free JavaScript.

• Free Software unlike the paid ones respects your freedom. It will do what you want the program to do and let you modify it too. Further more, you can redistribute free software among your friends, it’s all legal. What happens in paid software is that they rarely allow the freedom to use the program as the user wants. According to Mr. Richard, propriety software makes a user dependent over it, over that, it can’t be redistributed and its source code is kept secret, all this going against the spirit of good will.

• Free Software will merge with Open Source anytime in near future.

• Mr. Richard objects that he is not the father of open source, he says, “If I am the father of open source then it would be like stealing my sperm and artificially inseminating it”

• Schools from Nursery to Post Graduate level should use free software, because it saves lots of investment of the schools and provides full freedom to modify the source code of the program student’s use. Some company ties up with schools to provide Computer knowledge, but what actually these companies do is against the well being of the society. These companies prompt the school student to use their software, but if some of the student out of curiosity wants to know how those program works then they are bound NOT to know it because the source code of those propriety programs are kept secret by the same company, thus defeating the purpose of good will and learning.

Mr. Richard Matthew Stallman concluded his lecture by appealing to use free software and spread the message of merits of free software. Answering to a question he said that free software can permanently come in the mainstream and rule over paid software once people learn about its internal advantage and start using them.

If you have ever used a touch screen then you must know this

Besides gaining huge popularity as touchscreen phones, touch screen are also found in ATMs, Airport etc. Why not to know the very basic science of it then? So here’s what Wiki and HowStuffWorks teach us, explained at Tech Affairs for the layman.

Touch screen are made of varied technology but the back bone comes from three techniques widely developed and used.

1. Resistive Type:      The resistive type of touch screen has two layers, one resistive and the other conductive. Whenever the screen is tapped with a stylus or fingers, the two layers make contact with each other and a voltage difference is created. The voltage difference judges the coordinate and the position of the screen being touched are responded.

2. Conductive Type:   A sheet of conductor is such set up so that it carries an electric field. Whenever the screen is touched the electric field is disturbed at a particular coordinate, the location of change in electric field is the location of touch.

3. Surface acoustic wave:      This technology is used in touchscreen phones. On the screen two transducers are designed that converts physical variation into electrical signals. One transducer at the x coordinate and other at the y. Whenever a touch event occurs the transducer can detect the change in wave and a signal is sent from one transducer (may be of x or y coordinate) to the other and the signal judges the coordinate point where the screen was touched.

Surface Acoustic Wave technology has gained more momentum then the other two technologies mentioned above because unlike the other two, Surface Acoustic produces far clearer and bright display making it suitable for phone use. Resistive and Capacitive transmits 70% and 90% light respectively. Also the Surface Acoustic type doesn’t have metallic layer on the screen.

The very basic about GPS enabled cellphones

If you carry a smartphone then most probably you have a GPS receiver embedded in it. OVI maps in Nokia phones or the Goggle maps pinpoint your location instantly. It gives information on your present location, restaurants near you etc.

A mobile phone network consists of a base station and a tower. Whenever you (your phone) move from one network to another, the base station of the respective network determines the signal strength. The tower transfer the signal from one base station to other depending upon the strength of the signal at a particular base station.

GPS in a smartphone can use two way methods to determine your location. It may scan for nearest towers in the phone’s vicinity. Determining the signal strength, the angle of approach and distance of the phone from the towers a location of the phone can be fixed, but this method is not the actual task of a GPS receiver. A GPS receiver in a smartphone actually scans for three satellites in the sky below which the GPS receiver is present, now a location of the GPS receiver is fixed by determining its location relative to the three satellites. The point where the end point of the waves from these satellites intersects on the surface of the earth is the location of the device. This technique is known as triletaration. Both the method mentioned above are used by smart phones simultaneously for better accuracy of the location.

Read More at How Stuff Works