"Wine"ing against windows..

Ok, so hands down linux is much more robust an OS compared to windows,heck it is better at almost everything practically usable, thanks to its powerful UNIX kernel and a large open source base.What is that I hear? "I have heard that before, but windows is still a monopoly over almost entire PC industry, and every software that is made is made with only windows in mind as it will sell with the closed source OS."
Though that is not entirely true, with most of the major applications availabe for linux too, it is true that some of the most used ones are not.
Consider for example, utorrent, a simple c coded torrent client ehich i really like running neatly on one corner in my windows session.
Though there is transmission built into linux itself, is good, i find its minimalistic look, no support for tracker and peer addition, and feel coupled with the not so good number of connections possible a dealbreaker.
So in order to keep the power of unix and open source with utorrent, i decided to use a little software called as wine for linux.
you can get it from here.
After installing it from the terminal window, you can run most windows programs on it, including a few games.
Thogh still in beta stages, the latest version does have a very large support base for many windows apps.
Aditionally when installed you can also change the options as to which os it should replicate, vista,xp or the older 98..
It stores all the data you use here is virtual disks c and z, which can easily be accessed from linux itself.
Now if only linux would support directx and i could play games like crysis on it..I would have no reason to stay with windows and its truant "genuine only" policies.

The Eeeasy experience

So, on my quest to find a laptop, which truly did what it was initially conceived to do, that is, 1)to be portable, unlike its bulky brother, desktop, and 2)have a price tag which was justifiable in the light of above said inclusion, I found one which came pretty close to the ideal condition.
The "laptop" or more precisely the netbook that I am talking of here, is the eee pc, from the gamer-centric company, asus (though this laptop is not really for even legacy games).
The eee line of netbooks was first made by asus a year or so back, with their main focus over budget portability, rather than performance, which was a refreshing change for once from the ridiculously priced , under performing laptops like macbook air (mac fanboys will really hate me for this..)
Initially shipped versions had within them "remix" versions of popular linux distros like xandros, which made them very user friendly, with most functions availabe at the touch of a on screen shortcut.
They didnot have the power to run windows or run games,because they were just not made for that.
These netbooks excelled at one thing above all- portability.
Initial models had 7inch screen sizes and weighed under a kg, making them ideal for travel.
Aditionally, they predominently had SSD's within them, so for the most part they were shock proof too.
However as the market matured, and a pleothera of these sub-notebooks flew in grom literally every company, the product line was improved, the one that I got was the eee 1000h, which had some intresting features.
First up, was that it came with xp, though the home edition, this was the only legal way to get xp,ie.in the ULPC's now that windows had done away with selling the OS, thanks to vista.
unlike its older sibling though, the 1000h had a 10 inch screen, larger than any of them, whic makes it easier to scroll and read web pages on it.
then there was the weight which was now very close to the borders of the subnotebook region, at around 1.45 kg, partly due to its 6cell Li-ion battery, and a HDD being present of the laptop instead of a solid state drive.
Though this means that it is more prone to mechanical shock, it does give this version of eee a 80gb hard drive space, enogh to install multiple OS's and store downloaded data, unlike the older 4g models which had just 4gb space.
Also on it is a 6 cell battery instead of 3 cell ones on older models, which improves battery times quite drastically, though i found that the long battery span per charge is generally more so because of the bundled application called as hybrid engine from asus.
What it does is that when the laptop is running on battery, it "underclocks" the CPU, from 1.6 GHz to 800MHz and hence reduces the voltage used by it.
The Cpu itself, intel atom which was recently released from intel for these subnotebooks is quite under and over clockable and uses very little power.
The build quality of the laptop was quite good, thogh there was a slight flex on the keys to the right of the laptop, though nothing much to be worried about.
Apart from that, the biggest hurdle in the older netbooks is rectified here, which is that for such small devices, the keyboard is generally cramped up, for example in the older 4g models the keys were so small that it would be hard to type without hitting the wrong key accidentally.Here however the keyboard is almost full sized compared to the usual laptops and after a little practice, one gets adept at using it.
The other intresting thing on this laptop was its touchpad, which with the right drivers can be used with three fingers simultaneously to simulate many conditions.Though it had bugs with recognizing the multiple finger taps, it is more of a software bug which should be rectified soon enough.
For example, 2 finger tap enables sroll, 2 finger motion of moving diagonally away or together zooms or zooms out the fram, three finger tap gives right click and so on..
other than that, it also had a wireless n support though nothing on wimax.The draft n is almost ready and hence this will enable much faster throughputs.
Webcam and microphone was also thrown in for the support of video chatting, skype comes preloaded in xp for that, and the laptop also has a button exclusively to open skype(which thankfully can be programmed to behave differently as i rarely ever use video chatting).
Speakers are phenomenally good too, with a sticker saying that they are dolby certified.Though the sound is not 5.1 channel good, it is exceptional for speakers of this size on such a small laptop.
The audio chipset itself is from realtek and supports hd.
the lcd too is good with bright colors appearing very nice and text easily redable at half the maximum brightness too..though you will not be able to play games or 1080p hd videos on it..thanks to the integrated intel gma 950 video chipset.
all in all though, it fits perfectly in as a second or third laptop for almost anyone who needs a "on-the-go" laptop.For everything else like running adobe CS or playing crysis there is always the good old trusty desktop..

Dimentional stacking, Spirituality and Science..

String theory predicts that there may be an infinite number of dimentions stacked atop another one below it, and Einstein's theories seem to support this.

for example, a 3 dimentional creature like us, might tinker with the 2 dimentional world, for example an infitesimally thing sheet of paper. For the 2d creature we would be percieved only as length and breadth, meaning it would only be able to perceive us layer by layer.

Ifnow, say i would take the sheet of paper and fold it around to make a loop, in 3d, in 2d it would appear as if a point had appeared with which one could "magically"disappear from one end of this dry space and appear at a new location.

similarly, any pin which is pushedinto this fabric will be perceived not as a long rod, but rather a small metal circular object lodged on their lands, which, as they would call it came out of nowhere.

Now if we look at the 4 dimentional space time curve, we being a lower dimensional being perceive of the 4d more as the 2d creatures would look at us, one "frame" at a time, with any one given copy of us seen to us, in the long line of events that take place in the 4d.Hence we see only ourselves as being in the present time.

However we would have a complete persona of ourselves in 4d with every event from birth to death in this chain.

The same amazing things could be done by beings if present in the 4d to us as we would be able to on the 2d world.This would mean that a creature in this 4d would be able to "jump" around magically in the 3d and tinker with time.

The higher dimensions too have this property of controlling a lower order dimension, perceiving it though is extremely difficult, as we cannot even at times perceive 3d(mechanical problems relating friction).

So looking at this stacking of dimensions, one thing that does come to my mind is that, what if, the being we call as the God, or a higher power is just a being of this higher order dimension.

It would be possible to do things inconceivable to us in our 3d, just as the 2d creatures think of folding in 2d as magic.This would also produce effects of such profound nature as the space and time twist people claim to have "seen".

However if there exist such beings in higher order dimensions and if it is possible for what we perceive as living to exist in these dimensions is a different matter, but I think that if a being can have such profound effets on this world then it would only be possible through such dimensional analysis.

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, It's Google chrome??

First came google search, then the g"oogle" mail, and since then it has not stoped, be it mobile OS or maping softwares, there was google always on the forefront of it, with their brilliant software developers making a new code like eating candy, and stealing the market share from the Redmond overlord like stealing candy from a kid.

Their policy, well quite simpe- Do No Evil, absolutely... urm.. opposite to the "micro"coders.

And so on their path, they have released a brand new... internet browser, called google chrome.

Well actually it seems like they have taken all the pointers from their peers, the close to awesome bar from firefox, the yellow(from blue) highlight and the incognito (from private browsing) mode from apple safari, with the hint of fresh thumbnail page displays from opera.

However what I found good in the browser was its stability.It is hard on resources when compared to the other browsers in the short run, but the effects of each page and each tab having its own memory and handles was really startling, not once did it crash on me whereas firefox had done so atleast half a dozen times when it was released, and add ons added to it.

Speed is another plus, with java scripting having a new V8 code, benchmarks like the sunspider ran twice, yes twice as fast as even firefox, leaving all the rest of the browsers in its wake, sniffing dust.

Besides the fast browsing, it also opens up fast, but that is thanks to the fact that it can use multicores in a useful way, unlike the normal browsers.

Ok, so enough of the praises that google is so habituated to hear, you ask if it is the best browser yet?

Far from it, will be the answer from anyone using it long enough.

Firstly I personally hate the fact that it has only been released for windows, who made that decision anyway?They should have released it simultaneosly on all the three major platforms.

The reason google has the "cool" factor is thanks to the nature of the software it develops, alike for all the platforms, nothing that suggests them being even close to Microsoft fanboys.

Second is the features.When I had first fired it up, the one word that had come in my mind to describe it was "minimalistic", and minimalist it was.Sure I donot exactly like the unix style, do it yourself all the time, but atleast a few features would have been good, say the ability to look under the hood of the browser using about:config, or the ability to sync booksmarks with a online place, like delicious does in firefox, or for that matter even a working toolbar from google itself(yeah, google toolbar doesnot support chrome).

besides there isin't even a mechanism wherein the browser woould warn me when i am accidentally about to close a dozen tabs, they just close.

And then there is this big reason google might be doing this browser side-mission,to get the customers to browse faster through google so that they can go there several times,so that they can get increased revenue and also by the collection of search terms.

One big thing that was really more of a necessity and wa missing on chrome was ad-block.

this can be overcome by using a simple bypass technique.

after installing chrome, install privoxy and use the following settings in the options(wrench bar in chrome-upper right corner)-->under the hood-->change proxy settings,  to localhost and port as 8118 in lan settings.

voila, this should do the trick, not as good as the ad block plus in firefox but nevertheless, a way to get around those pesky ads(which you might experience more in chrome thanks to google's adsense), in chrome, IE, opera, safari...

let's hope the RC of the chrome beta is better, and still does no evil...

Upcoming Nehalem...more cores, does it really matter?

For those of you who do not already know, Nehalem (core i7) (7th generation?)is the upcoming desktop CPU (at least initially) from the processor giants....Intel.This one will have several features like a true quad core(the core 2 had 2 dual cores on a single dye), which will enable it to switch off each core separately if needed when the cpu loads are low, hence having absolutely no leakage current.Plus it will feature power manager processor within it, making it much better then the current 65watt cpu's and also a oct core will finally be on a single physical processor(more like the current quad, 2 nehalem quad's in a single cpu).
What I really donot understand is their naming scheme, the pentium remained with us for a lot of time, then came the core technology with gen 1 and 2, but all of a sudden it has a new name instead of the core 3 people thought it would be.
aditionally what I am excited about is its capacity to turn off cores and increase the multiplier in it to increase the CPU speed, until it remains in the thermal limits.This would mean that depending on the ambient temperature the performance may vary with the processor.

Also behind the scenes Intel is working on its fabled stream processor, Larrabee,which will place intel in a strong place in the GPU market, if it can make the programmers code in the x86 architecture.However a 80 core processor would help process the graphics in software mode much better, unlike the presently underpowered integrated graphics solutions availabe.

End of the world?....more like the end of sane human logic.

                                                                                                

Funny, how people are ultra paranoid about things that they do not fully understand.There were predictions of "the world coming to an end on september 10th" and so on, due to the fact that LHC was being fired up all the way in Geneva.

But truth be told, even if they were right that a "black hole formed by the collision of protons would suck the universe in", there was no scheduled smashing of protons that was sheduled to occur on this day, only the revolving the protons 11000 times on the circumference as seen on CERN's site.

Surely, this could not create a black hole? Protons are accelerated to such 

speeds all the time in the nature,and we donot see any anomalities in space and time.
Even when they will be smashed into each other, in 2-3 month time,

 at the most a infinitisimally small "black hole" will be formed around the 

region of the collision due to the high energies involved, but then again 

protons are extremely 

minute, weighing 1.6726*10^-27 kg.

This would mean that any region formed would break down 

in almost no time.
However seems like the media had got something to blabber about 

due to this, for 

example a
news channel that was blatantly posting an item as "breaking news" 

that "world will end

tomorrow", and that too they got their dates wrong...

While some people oppse the creation of this facility,saying that 

it is a waste of taxpayer money,

In reality, if the scientists are able to find anything that tells us 

about the fundamental particles

in space, which would explain so many other things like whether 

there are dimentions above us,

and the very nature of mass itself, thanks to the fabled higgs

boson in the higgs field.