Category: Science

Google tests cars that drive themselves

Google it has developed cars that drive themselves automatically in traffic, and that it has been testing them on the streets of California for months. It might seem like an unusual project for Google, but it could actually have big benefits. We’re not just talking about cars running Google Android. This is the stuff of science fiction. The only accident that has occurred so far, one of the cars was rear-ended by a driver at a stop light. human error! The vehicles have been tested on 140,000 miles of California road, from Silicon Valley to Santa Monica.

Each car is manned during the tests. One person sits in the driver’s seat, ready to take control of the vehicle instantly by grabbing the wheel or touch the brake should something go wrong with the system. The person in the passenger’s seat is an engineer who monitors the software operations on a computer.

Google hired engineers who previously participated in competitions and races involving automated cars – important turning points in the development of the technology, which has been coming into its own since around 2005 according to The New York Times.

If you first concern is one of safety, Google would argue that you’re going about it all wrong. Safety is one of the project’s purposes. Google believes that the technology could nearly half the number of automobile-related deaths because computers are supposedly better at driving than humans in the right circumstances.

There are other hypothetical pluses, too. The vehicles’ instant reaction time and 360-degree awareness would allow them to drive closer together on the highway than humans can, reducing traffic congestion.

They could be more careful when operating the gas, reducing fuel consumption. But the biggest  benefit for Google would be the hour or so of daily commute time the car owner would save. Instead of driving, he/she could either be productive or entertained in the vehicle, doing work on a wireless Internet connection or watching television. Google doesn’t say it explicitly, but TechCrunch was quick to note that this time could be spent using Google products and absorbing Goggle run advertising.

The most optimistic projection put this technology at least eight years away from market, though.

Legal hassles are among the myriad problems; all of the current traffic laws assume that a human driver is present in the vehicle. Do you think this technology will eventually be deployed, or is it just a pipe dream for Sergei and Larry?

Albert Einstein Who did change the world

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.

In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.

In the 1920’s, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.

After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.

Einstein’s researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920’s he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.

Einstein’s gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.

How To Add or Remove Shourtcut from Windows Quicklaunchbar

Quick Launch bar on Windows Taskbar lists icons of shortcuts for user defined frequently used programs so that users can easily and quickly access and run the program when needed. Tturn on and show Quick Launch bar in Windows XP, it’s time to manage and modify Quick Launch bar to add in commonly used shortcuts or remove unwanted icons in Quick Launch bar.

To Add Shortcuts to Quick Launch Bar

To add shortcuts into Quick Launch bar is pretty easy. Simply drag and drop a shortcut into Quick Launch bar and then icon of the shortcut will immediately appear on the Quick Launch bar location.
Alternatively, users can open up Quick Launch folder by right click on the empty space (around border area which does not hold any icons) in Quick Launch bar, and then choose Open Folder.

Or simply open Windows Explorer, and navigate to the following folder for Windows Vista:
C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
or
navigate to the following folder for windows xp:
C:\Documents and Settings\[User]\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
In Quick Launch folder, users can manage the shortcuts inside the folder as with any other folders.

To Delete or Remove Shortcuts from Quick Launch Bar

Quick Launch bar has several icons by default, which come together with Windows, or installed by programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Firefox and etc. Too many of them will force Quick Launch bar unaccommodating icons that cannot be fitted into available space to be hidden which can be accessed by clickon on the chevron (>>) on the right of the bar. If you doesn’t want these icons to appear in Quick Launch bar, or have inserted icons for programs that no longer been used, users remove and delete shortcuts away.

To remove a shortcut or icon from Quick Launch bar, right-click the icon item and click “Delete” on the context menu.

Alternatively, simply drag and rop the icons to the Recycle Bin to remove it.

If prompted with “Delete File” confirmation to move the shortcut to Recycle Bin, click on “Yes” button.

A short journey to Trincomalee

Another long week end, after long time. Our batch mates had organized a journey to Trincomalee. They had planned to left from University (University of Peradeniya) at around 8.00 a.m. There for most of our mates had arrived to the university on Thursday evening. But I had some work to take care of before I go. I planned to work Thursday to finish off them and join at Dambulla with others. So I got a bus from Colombo to Dambulla on Friday early in the morning and I could manage to arrive to Dambulla at around 8.00 a.m. One of my friend (Pradeep – Tayya) also was there at that time and I joined with him. Both of us had to wait around 2 hours there at Dambulla, until others come to join with us.

After very long time, about 50 folks have got together to have maximum of fun and spend some time gossiping. At that time, our guys have taken care of 10 bottles of …. . We had our lunch at “Hatharas Kotuwa” area and continued the journey. Driver of our bus was very cool person and he took very long time to reach to Trinco. First, we went to the hot wells at “Kanniya” and then to the beach. Sun was disappearing bellow the horizon when we reach to the beach. But everybody got down spending some time in the sea. Many guys had too much of drunk and doped. But we spent there at the beach until dark become very strong.

The place we were stayed at the night also very closed to the beach. There for we went to the beach once again with 3 bottles of liquor, as soon as finish the dinner. We kept on chatting and had a cool time, and got drunk- no excuse! As I thought, I took care of a lot of liquor. That makes me feel cool…. You know it’s very nice to be away for a while from the rush and busy city. And also to meet some people who close to me. We stayed till 1.30am

Got up at 5.00 a.m and went to the queue for attending to the short journey by ship. But there were lot more people there to travel by ship due to the long week end. We had to given up the idea and went to the “Koneshwaram Kovil”. After all these visits, I packed up my self and started to travel back to Colombo along, due to some work I had to taken care of. That was a short but sweet visit

Windows keyboard shortcuts

Why should you use keyboard shortcuts when you have a perfectly functional mouse? :D. It is a great time saver because of keyboard shortcuts provide a simple way to speed up your workflow. Would you rather get to certain areas of windows with one keyboard action or several clicks of mouse?

I mentioned bellow a number of keyboard shortcuts which are most recently used.

Windows system key combinations
• F1: Help
• CTRL+ESC: Open Start menu
• ALT+TAB: Switch between open programs
• ALT+F4: Quit program
• SHIFT+DELETE: Delete item permanently
• Windows Logo+L: Lock the computer (without using CTRL+ALT+DELETE)

Windows program key combinations
• CTRL+C: Copy
• CTRL+X: Cut
• CTRL+V: Paste
• CTRL+Z: Undo
• CTRL+Y: Redo
• CTRL+B: Bold
• CTRL+U: Underline
• CTRL+I: Italic

General keyboard-only commands
• F1: Universal help in almost all windows programs.
• F10: Activates menu bar options.
• SHIFT+F10 Opens a shortcut menu for the selected item (this is the same as right-clicking an object

• CTRL+ESC: Opens the Start menu (use the ARROW keys to select an item)
• CTRL+ESC or ESC: Selects the Start button (press TAB to select the taskbar, or press SHIFT+F10 for a context menu)

• CTRL+SHIFT+ESC: Opens Windows Task Manager
• ALT+DOWN ARROW: Opens a drop-down list box
• ALT+TAB: Switch to another running program (hold down the ALT key and then press the TAB key to view the task-switching window)

• SHIFT: Press and hold down the SHIFT key while you insert a CD-ROM to bypass the automatic-run feature

• ALT+SPACE: Displays the main window’s System menu (from the System menu, you can restore, move, resize, minimize, maximize, or close the window)

• ALT+- (ALT+hyphen): Displays the Multiple Document Interface (MDI) child window’s System menu (from the MDI child window’s System menu, you can restore, move, resize, minimize, maximize, or close the child window)

• CTRL+TAB: Switch to the next child window of a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) program

• ALT+underlined letter in menu: Opens the menu
• ALT+F4: Closes the current window
• CTRL+F4: Closes the current Multiple Document Interface (MDI) window
• ALT+F6: Switch between multiple windows in the same program (for example, when the Notepad Find dialog box is displayed, ALT+F6 switches between the Find dialog box and the main Notepad window)

Shell objects and general folder/Windows Explorer shortcuts
For a selected object:
• F2: Rename object
• F3: Open a search window
• CTRL+X: Cut
• CTRL+C: Copy
• CTRL+V: Paste
• SHIFT+DELETE: Delete selection immediately, without moving the item to the Recycle Bin (Delete selection permanently)

• ALT+ENTER: Open the properties for the selected object
To copy a file

Press and hold down the CTRL key while you drag the file to another folder.

To create a shortcut

Press and hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you drag a file to the desktop or a folder.

Automating build process with apache ant

Why and what is Ant?

Without using ant, building and deploying web applications and other enterprise applications required a series of scripts or manual processes, which often led to mistakes.

Apache ant is a powerful tool for automating software build processes. It is implemented by Apache Foundation using java language, requires the java platform and is best suited for building java projects. However that doesn’t means it restricted to java projects. Dot net project also can use ant to automate the build process (Nant). Ant makes application building process and releasing them across different servers far more efficient and less problematic. Ant is applicable for most integrated development environment (IDE) that uses java.

Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies. By default the xml file named as build.xml. This makes it really simple for you setup and edit different build processes. Build files in ant are extremely important in a project, must be written in care, and maintain in version control and re-factored periodically, when the project dependencies change.

Best features of Ant technology.

Ant is a powerful, platform independent, open source tool. If you choose to use it, get it to do absolutely everything. Ant can integrate with your source control database such as SVN or SCM, run SQL scripts, change file permissions, Send file across FTP, Zip and Unzip files, compile java files, create jar files, and many more tasks beside this.

The best features of the ant technology can be summarized as below:

Easy to Use: It is not a programming language, based on xml and easy to understand and implement.
Portable and cross platform based: Ant is implemented using java and it makes portable. i.e., it can be run on any platform.
Extended functionality: Ant’s functionality can be extended to any development environment based on java.
Build automation: Ant provides automated build process that is faster and more efficient.
Compilation of source code: Ant can compile source code from a variety of version controls and packaging of the compiled code and resources can also be done.

Ant expects your build file to be called build.xml and builds properties file build.properties. These files also should be in the root directory of your project. Spend the time to formatting the build file. Since XML is quite verbose, use tabs and line breaks to make the file readable to the human eye. Ant itself does not care if the file looks pretty. But you can bet that you and your team will.

Installing ant on the desktop:

The current version (1.7.1) of ant was released on 27-jun-2008 and it can be downloaded on http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi. They are provided many formats (zip, tar etc) and you can download any one from there. I’m explaining how to install ant from zip file here. After complete downloading, unzip the content to the C directory. The path for the ant will be “C:\apache-ant-1.7.0”. Then we have to set some environment variables to get ant to work. Right-click on the “MyComputer” and select “properties”. GF to “Advanced” tab and click on “Environment Variables”. Under environment variables, you have to set following path variables.
Set value “C:\apache-ant-1.7.0” to ANT_HOME variable
Set value “C:\apache-ant-1.7.0\lib” to CLASS_PATH variable
Set value “C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_15” to JAVA_HOME variable
Set value “C:\apache-ant-1.7.0\bin” to PATH variable

That is all you have to do for installing ant. Now you have to check whether the installation process is done properly or not. To do this open the command prompt and run the command C:\>ant (just type ant and hit enter). If the following message is appears, then it indicate that your installation is successful. Ant is properly installed on your system.

Microsoft and Intel are worked together to improve performance in Windows 7

Collaboration with Microsoft could allow the software giant’s upcoming Windows 7 OS to take advantage of multithreaded and multicore Intel chips for faster application performance, according to an Intel official.

Microsoft and Intel are working together to give Windows 7 the ability to better identify resources available and break up application processing over multiple chip cores and threads.

Observers have criticized Microsoft’s previous operating systems for not taking full advantage of multicore and multithreaded chips. Windows 7 will do a more intelligent job of allocating tasks across hardware resources, said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist with In-Stat.

A feature called SMT parking allows Windows 7 to take advantage of Intel hyperthreading technology for “better performance on hyperthreaded, multicore Intel processors.

This feature will help users break up tasks like video encoding and image filtering over multiple task-execution threads. Intel chips based on its new Nehalem architecture are capable of running two threads per core, and ultimately all of Intel’s laptop and desktop chips will be based on Nehalem.