What is Pixel?

•Pixel is the acronym of Picture Element.

•The number of colors in a picture depends on the bits per pixel

•It need not be a square.

•The standard aspect ratios are 4:3 and 3:2.

•Number of pixels is not the only factor for resolution.

Quotations

·       It is possible to overcome the waves of the ocean and then drown in the glass of water.

·       Monsoons are the creation of Mother Nature, with whose showers, today, only we have the green earth in this black universe.

·       I was born intelligent, but education ruined me.

·       O’ GOD, GIVE ME THE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS WHICH I CAN CHANGE AND THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT THINGS WHICH I CANNOT CHANGE AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.

·       LET YOUR WORK BE ONCE BEGUN,

DO NOT LEAVE TILL IT IS DONE.

            LET YOUR WORK BE GREAT OR SMALL,

            DO IT WHOLE OR NOT AT ALL..

comparison of two internet technologies

DTH-SATELLITE TV

DTH (Direct to Home)

DTH stands for Direct-to-Home. It is a wireless system for delivering television programming directly to a viewer's house.

Components of a Satellite TV System/ DTH System

There are five major components involved in a direct to home (DTH) or direct broadcasting (DBS) satellite system: the programming source, the broadcast center, the satellite, the satellite dish and the receiver.

·         Programming sources are simply the channels that provide programming for broadcast. The provider doesn't create original programming itself; it pays other companies (HBO, for example, or ESPN) for the right to broadcast their content via satellite. In this way, the provider is kind of like a broker between you and the actual programming sources. (Cable TV companies work on the same principle.)

·         The broadcast center is the central hub of the system. At the broadcast center, the TV provider receives signals from various programming sources and beams a broadcast signal to satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

·         The satellites receive the signals from the broadcast station and rebroadcast them to Earth.

·         The viewer's dish picks up the signal from the satellite (or multiple satellites in the same part of the sky) and passes it on to the receiver in the viewer's house.

·         The receiver processes the signal and passes it on to a standard TV.

Satellite TV Signal

Satellite signals have a very long path to follow before they appear on TV screen. Because satellite signals contain such high-quality digital data, it would be impossible to transmit them without compression. Compression simply means that unnecessary or repetitive information is removed from the signal before it is transmitted. The signal is reconstructed after transmission.

Standards of Compression

Satellite TV uses a special type of video file compression standardized by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). With MPEG compression, the provider is able to transmit significantly more channels. There are currently five of these MPEG standards, each serving a different purpose. DirecTV and DISH Network, the two major satellite TV providers in the United States, once used MPEG-2, which is still used to store movies on DVDs and for digital cable television (DTV). With MPEG-2, the TV provider can reduce the 270-Mbps stream to about 5 or 10 Mbps (depending on the type of programming).

Encryption and Transmission 

After the video is compressed, the provider encrypts it to keep people from accessing it for free. Encryption scrambles the digital data in such a way that it can only be decrypted (converted back into usable data) if the receiver has the correct decryption algorithm and security keys.

Once the signal is compressed and encrypted, the broadcast center beams it directly to one of its satellites. The satellite picks up the signal with an onboard dish, amplifies the signal and uses another dish to beam the signal back to Earth, where viewers can pick it up.

India’s DTH Provider- Tata Sky

It uses MPEG-2 digital compression technology and transmits using INSAT 4A at 83.0 E. It is a Joint Venture between the TATA Group, that owns 80% and STAR Group that owns a 20% stake. It was launched in 2006 and offers close to 173 channels including some interactive channels

Beautiful locations of north india

Neural Networks

Neural Networks (NN), which is simplified models of the biological neuron system, is a massively parallel distributed processing system made up of highly interconnected neural computing elements that have the ability to learn and thereby acquire knowledge and make it available for use.

Various learning mechanisms exist to enable the NN acquire knowledge. NN architectures have been classified into various types based on their learning mechanisms. Ability of NN to learn is called ‘training’ and the ability of NN to solve a problem using the acquired knowledge is called ’inference’.

A human brain develops with time and it is generally known as ‘experience’. Technically, this involves the ‘development’ of neurons to adapt themselves to their surrounding environment, thus rendering the brain ‘plastic’ in its information processing capability. On similar lines, the property of plasticity is available with NN architectures. Further, the ‘stability’ of NN is also desired, i.e., the adaptive capability of the NN in the face of changing environment. This is so since NN systems essentially being learning systems need to preserve the information learnt, but at the same time, need to be receptive to leaning new information. The NN needs to remain ‘plastic’ to significant or useful information, but remain ‘stable’ when presented with irrelevant information. Neural networks, with their remarkable ability to derive meaning from complicated or imprecise data, can be used to extract patterns and detect trends that are too complex to be noticed by either humans or other computer techniques.

RIBHU ON WINDOWS 7

A soft ware is said to be in its beta stage when it is released for testing purposes only and the developer provides no technical support with it. This is the somewhat formal definition of beta software as known to all of us. Betas as we all know are for testing only and the developers strongly recommend that they should not be used for mainstream applications. Still there is a kind of excitement in using these programs. It’s like exploring some uncharted territory. Where you don’t know what to expect next and you may be welcome with a delightful new feature and any moment. Now talking of software the piece of software used by most of us most commonly is the operating system. As depicted in Microsoft ads a few years back a computer without an operating system is just like a garbage can.  Also we know that the most commonly used desktop operating system on planet earth is Microsoft Windows. And those familiar to windows must be aware of the fact that another version of windows called Windows 7 is on the anvil and is expected to appear on the shelves sometime later this year. So as a part of the testing cycle for this software Microsoft corporation has ( had until you read this) released a beta version of this version of windows. Actually Microsoft released some 2.5 million copies for download and testing purposes. To clear some doubts here only Microsoft is NOT giving out free windows; it is just a pre release evaluation version of windows that will expire as soon as the clock strikes the beginning of August 1,2009. Now coming back to the download, as said earlier Microsoft released 2.5 million copies of windows 7 beta. A 2.44 GB download and needles to mention one of these was downloaded by none other than yours sincerely.

So here I will be reviewing the windows 7 Beta for you and will start from the installation.

The installation process is similar to windows vista the only difference being that a somewhat blue background replaces the blue-green aura of vista. The install took about 22 minutes on my AMD Athlon 4400+ desktop with 2 GB RAM.

The user interface: All I can say here is have a look for yourself. The UI is much more sleek than ever before. The taskbar and the start menu have been redesigned to give a better working environment. The desktop peek makes all the windows transparent to give a view of the desktop. You can pin applications to the taskbar like the quick-launch bar just that now a pinned application returns to its icon when minimized. Taskbar buttons provide full screen previews when moused over. Jump lists provide your recently used documents. The best thing about all this is that it is not at all hard to get used to and is intuitive as Microsoft describes it.

Compatibility: When Windows Vista was released some two years back; one major problem was device and software compatibility. Nothing seemed to work with Vista, so no doubt no one liked it. In the past 2 years a lot of vista compatible hardware and software has been released and the best thing about windows 7 is that almost everything that works with vista works with it(almost because my antivirus software refused to do so except that I had no problems with anything). Also my hard drive had some compatibility issues with windows vista; those have disappeared now. I now have what they call a squeaky clean device manager. Also AVG8 free is a good alternative for antivirus.

Libraries: Another thing I liked about this version of windows. Instead of using  a single folder as your my documents or my pictures you can use a collection of multiple folders known as libraries. This is actually helpful in finding documents and other similar things.

Touch: I don’t have any firsthand experience on this but still Microsoft describes it as the best feature of windows 7.It requires a touch screen display and am not buying one just for the sake of it.

Themes: Also an addition to the UI these are an instant way to change the look and feel of windows. Colour schemes and wallpapers all clubbed into one. A total of five themes have been provided with windows. However I do miss the windows classic theme which is somehow absent.

Applications: Almost all the standard applications of windows are bundled including the games. Also we have a new calculator and a new user interface for paint and word pad. However certain applications have been unbundled and have to be downloaded spartanly as windows live essentials. This additional 173 MB download and includes applications such as mail, messenger and photo gallery.

As I have just had only seven hours with this mind blowing operating system so these are the only features I have discovered. But there lies a lot more hidden inside and I seriously am looking forward to it. So in the end all I would like to say is three cheers for Microsoft and for Windows 7.

WEB TECHNOLOGIES

Today, the world wide web(WWW), alias Internet is ubiquitous. Everyone is connected to this information gateway through one way or the other. Even a kid of second standard knows how to play online games on the internet. Now, how all this stuff works….

Let’s try to unfold the secrets layer-by-layer.

The most basic web page is an html page, which can be coded in Notepad, and run on a web browser (IE, Mozilla, Opera,Safari,Mosaic, Google Chrome)…

HTML means hypertext markup language, a language that the browser understands. We have three basic entities, a client, a server and a host. Taking an example, you have to open your Gmail inbox. As a client, you send a request to the server, where the Google is hosted, by specifying the hyperlink (complete address) of the web page, along with your user name and password. A server is a software that acts as an intermediary between a client and host. It takes the requests from client, processes them, connects to the database (host) where your data (all the messages of your inbox) are stored, and returns to the client in html format. There are various server-side scripting languages, which run on the server, process user requests, connect to the database and output the html to the client. They are as follows:-

1. JSP:- Java Server Pages. It is based on Java language. It is the most secure language, but simultaneously, very costly to implement. There are three stages in Java Technologies

a)      Core Java, which deals with all the intricacies of the programming tools and object-oriented paradigm, which serves as the basis of this language.

b)      Advance Java, which deals with the applet programming. An applet is a small application running within a large program. You can embed various applets within your web pages to enhance GUI, as applets follow event-driven programming. Example applets are- calculator, analog clock, etc.

c)      Enterprise Java, includes JSP and servlets, and various advance features like EJB,AJAX,etc.

2. ASP:-Active Server Pages. It is the Microsoft’s answer to Sun Micro System’s                  Java language. Microsoft provides an integrated development environment “Visual Studio” for development in ASPX (an extension to ASP), with the .NET framework. Visual Studio is very-much developer- friendly, very easy to learn.

The most famous web-server to be installed on your system to run JSP programs is “Apache Tomcat “ , which you have to explicitly install. Also, you have to install an SQL database (use MYSQL, its nice) to store all you application data. The advantage here is freedom to choose various products, whereas with Visual Studio 2005/2008, you have an IIS Server, SQL Server Database integrated with the .Net Framework.

Also, JAVA is open-source, and with Microsoft’s ASPX, you have to use Microsoft’s products only. The choice is purely yours.

3. PHP:-HyperText Pre-Processor. To a beginner in web-development, it is the most famous and easy-to-learn web-technology. The PHP Servers are least expensive in case you want to deploy you website, and the availability of XAMPP tools.

In industry, LAMP architecture is most famous, L-> Linux OS,  A->  Apache Web Server, M-> MySql Database, P-> PHP language. And X in XAMPP-> any operating system, like Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc.

So with all the different web technologies, all depends on the developer to choose the technology which satisfies nearly all his requirements.

With the availability of a large variety of Rapid Application Development (RAD)  tools, developing a website of your own is just a matter of 2-3 hours. There are services available, which give you a complete template of your website, all database connections, etc. and you just have to feed in the content. But this type of development is good for fun and experience. For serious and flawless web-development like the Google website, the developers have to be more mature, experienced and well-versed with the concepts of software engineering, which defines all the stages of development of a software product.