I went outside in the morning for breakfast , I was observing every one , the hotel owner where I use to have breakfast daily, the shopkeeper where I use to buy my daily needs, I was asking every one , how you will going to celebrate ? they were giving all common answers, ” en celebration sir ? ellaa haage, pratee varsha iddadde ala ” .  Yes a common man should say like that, he can not make a big party, he can not take a leave and go somewhere with family to celebrate , because his one day profit means a lot for him.

That is not the case with software engineers! , I saw people and their living style , So much expensive  life style, they never use to talk in Kannada with their kids , that kind of status they are maintaining. Their life is colorful in their own way, these IT industries are attracting people . Most of the student after PUC will think to become an engineer or doctor . Yes there are few people who will say they will become an astronaut and something else. In reality once they complete their PUC , most of them will join a BE college.

Well that is their living style, as a software engineer will earn enough and will spend enough but when I sit and think what we are doing in software company ? my mind will fall in a puzzle . Are we doing anything great here ? are we really achieving something new here ? are we forgetting our society due to such living style? does our education system changed ? whether we are getting a quality education in all the sectors ? what is happening in our public government sectors ? . People became so much busy in their life that, they not even have time to think over it.

We can see many innovations in our day today life , but most of the time it will be from some other country. I am not saying Indians are doing nothing , but I am saying it is lesser compared to others. If we take software companies only, why India is still not able to give a big software company like Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM ? , I will not give answer for this, think over it.

Last time when I did visit bangalooru , my main purpose was to take part in protest against corruption in freedom park, surprisingly only one of my friend came and joined me . Guys this is a serious matter to think ,  ok not every one is same, there are many people who took part in protest , I appreciate  but over all what happened is we software engineers have time to attend meeting , just to discuss what problem the client is facing ! but we don’t have time to think about the problems what our society is facing. Every one say, ” I hate politics “, please think once again what you are telling ! we not even spend some time to analyse what the government done so far? we have time to enjoy the party with friends , but we don’t have time to discuss such matters with friends . In my home town if I go outside in the evening , aged people will be having a discussion in temples, gardens , our young generation are busy in smoking, party and some other palthu works .

Just think yourself , whether we ever tried to guide our juniors ? how they suppose to study ? how they suppose to build up their career ? . Whether we did show them any other platform other than BE ? , whether we tell them to go for MSc physics , chemistry, maths and any other ? .  I usually discuss some physics stuff with one of my junior sister who is studying Nuclear physics in Msc , she is facing so much problem in her education, she has many ideas but she don’t have necessary things with her, this is what happening in our education  system other than BE . Can’t we sit and spend some time to think over such problems ? and try to find solutions? We will be very enthusiastic when we do meeting for a client , but why that enthusiasm will miss when such things come in mind?. I wish recession should not come , and think over it, if it happens none of the software company will dare to take different step. Still why we are so much dependent ?, is there any other way so that recession does not affect to us. Do we have our own idea ? so that when client does not come to us and we start working on our own idea? No not at all , many people will lose their job. I wish it should not happen and let this new year will be a colorful for every one.

Keeping all such things in our mind, what if , we set up a goal and try to find a better way of  living ? I am not blaming software companies, but I am telling along with working for only clients problems , why can’t we work and find solution to our own problems?

Analyse the problems that our country is facing, why research oriented stuffs are not booming ? How can we improve our education quality , our government sectors , there are many more.

So new year came, let us start a new way of living , let us set up some useful goals and try to achieve them. We will make this year special and colorful. I thought to give a message to every one for this new year and wrote what I was thinking. Things are not so easy as it is to discuss, but we should try at least from our end !

MAKE THIS YEAR SPECIAL  AND COLORFUL

Whenever we sing a song, our voice floats through the air that is fine but what if your digital data floats in the air ? Ah ha What am I talking ?? of course wireless technology is nothing but the same which I said right? . But still , I want to make it big and very big? . Sorry !! Am I confusing you guys? . Ok let me tell you directly , what if our huge data floats through the clouds ?? Yes I am talking about cloud computing . This is not a very new topic but some one did request me to write an article on cloud computing and I thought of doing it. Even I was not knowing it completely but I just did little Investigation and collected information . So let me eat your head

Cloud Computing :

It can be defined as , ” A model for, on demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. A resource here may be a network , server , storage , applications and services” .

A simple plain definition does not give any clear picture , let me explain you how a cloud computing works . Think that you are an executive at a large corporation . Your responsibility is making sure that all of your employees have right hardware and softwares. Whenever you have a new hire then you need to provide necessary software and hardware for the new employee. Your current software license should allow another user . It is so stressful that you find it difficult to handle all once the organization grows in big size . Instead of installing an application in every system , what if , it is installed somewhere in a server and a simple web based service hosts the necessary application upon successful log in ? . No need to install in each and very system .

Remote machines will run the actual applications , may be a e-mail client, word processors or any other complex data analysis programs , everything will run somewhere else, but you can access it in your system with a simple web based application. It is called as cloud computing. A users machine need not worry about the necessary hardware or software , the demands on the users side decrease greatly . The only thing the user’s computer needs to be able to run is cloud computing system’s interface.

This is all about how an application be in cloud , but what if a data ? Say I have a big company , every day huge amount of data I need to store for the future . My requirement demands 100s of GBs storage for every day . Is it not a big problem to handle such a huge data? . Yes ultimate solution for it is , cloud computing . Give all your data to a trusted cloud computing service provider , he will maintain your data and he will store the data. you don’t bother about the storage . This is how a your data store in cloud . What about a data security ? Yes it is a serious matter . Your all confidential data will be given to some one else ! . Guys one good example for cloud computing is dropbox , I hope many people knew about it . If not search in net and read about dropbox . It provides every user of about 2GB space for free. You can store photos, videos anything you want and share with your friends .

I was working on a project , and suddenly my client request for a big server , to store huge data base . What should I do? buy a big server , install it , do necessary set up and make use of it in your project . But how long it takes to install a server? what are the difficulties I need to face to achieve this? My god very hectic !! . I will not bother about server , I will raise a request to my cloud computing service provider , he will install a server for me . Imagine how long he take time to install it ? one day? may be it is too much . They may able to do it within hours . Over my need of server got a solution within hours .

In this way a cloud computing does provide all necessary resources like softwares, hardwares . But Still many companies does not go for cloud computing due to data security. Because our valuable data will be stored somewhere in other’s machine . Even though cloud computing services are trusted , each person need to think before giving that confidential data. Keeping this matter aside , let us think about the benefits and functionality of the cloud computing also let us study its architecture .

Cloud computing Architecture: 

Cloud computing is fully enabled by virtualization technology and virtual appliances. This is a key advantage to cloud computing. The ability to launch new instances of an application with minimal labor and expense allows application providers to :

1> Scale up and down rapidly .

2> Recover from failure .

Its architecture can be divide into two sections: the front end and the back end. They connect each other through a network. The front end is the side the computer user or client sees. The back end is the “Cloud ” section of the system.

Front end includes the clients computer and a web based application required to access the cloud computing service. It is also known as Cloud computing interface. Services like web based e-mail programs also a cloud computing interface. Like gmail, yahoomail , hotmail are all examples for cloud computing. On the back end of the system, there are various computers, servers and data storage systems that create “Cloud” of computing services.

A central server administers the system , monitoring the traffic and client demands to ensure everything runs smoothly. It follows set of rules called protocols and uses a special kind of software called middleware. Middleware allows networked computers communicate with each other. What protocols are being used? this is little bit difficult for me to understand , but I have given a link , if you are interested read it and teach me .

Everyone know how the performance factor is important for an application, let me clear this point for non IT friends. Let us think that you people are listening music in winamp player, and if you press next button in winamp , it should switch to next song immediately , But what if, it takes 5 min to switch to next song? ah that is what we call as very low performance. It takes hell amount of time. When the word ‘time’ comes  my mind will start to think too much. Because whole universe and its birth can be described in terms of time, Forget it now . So performance is an important factor and we developer should think a lot before coding ( which I won’t do ). If our code is poor then it takes more time, more time means more processing, more processing means more energy consumption , more energy consumption means more CO2 release. What the hell is this? Started with coding and ended with CO2?. Yes everybody should be aware of this fact that , whatever we do with Google, Facebook, twitter, everything is related to release of CO2. I have already posted an article on google and CO2 release. ( link ) But I was searching something and this time I got an important factor about the facebook.

Guys facebook is developed in PHP. Every day millions of people use facebook, upload video, picture, write stupid words on Wall etc. An analyst says that If facebook switch to C++ from PHP , facebook could move 30,000 servers down just to 7500 servers, and trim 49000 tons of Carbon dioxide emission from its footprint.

Since an average server consumes about 200 watt and with an average SI EER ( Site Infrastructure Energy Efficiency Ration)  of 2. This translates to around 400 watt including  cooling and other overhead, and this brings us to a total CO2 emission by the facebook server park of about 59000 ton of CO2 per year. This is 1/1000 th of the total CO2 emission by Finland( an European continent ).

Facebook only says “the bulk” is running PHP. Of course we know that C/C++ are most efficient than any other high level language. But definitely it is very difficult to develop facebook using C++. But facebook is a big company, earns like anything. Why can’t they invest and recruit C++ developers in mass and try to achieve it? Why can’t they want to give an environment friendly Facebook?. hmmm profit ! now they are getting nice money, why the hell they want to think about environment?

All the data, what I have given here may not be exactly correct, but it make sense if we think over it. Common guys upload your resume to facebook , mention in resume that We will give environment friendly facebook . Facebook spends $1million on their electricity bill per month. Guys you can reduce this amount too .

See when we talk about google, facebook and twitter we get these kind of big information. Now just think about the millions of websites, millions of servers, altogether how much CO2 is being released? just think. After reading this , girls please don’t stop uploading your photos .

Filed under: Technical Articles ]]> http://sadanandt.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/environment-friendly-facebook/feed/ 2 Su http://sadanandt.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/%e0%b2%86%e0%b2%b8%e0%b3%86/ http://sadanandt.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/%e0%b2%86%e0%b2%b8%e0%b3%86/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:52:12 +0000 Sadanand Teggi http://sadanandt.wordpress.com/?p=499 ]]>

After that  many  times I read in internet about the speed of the computers and their development. I came across an incident , when I was doing my final year project with my idiot project mates( it was a great team ) , there was a feature in our project , that is nothing but transferring a multimedia file ( image or video ) from one system to another system by sending an SMS to a server machine. So our project idea was using mobile phones as a console terminal like keyboard or mouse. whatever we do with keyboard we want to do it by sending an SMS to the system. Ok that is not the topic to discuss here. In our project when we were written code to transfer a small video file, my god it was taking hell amount of time . The moment when it was taking so much time, I was discussing with my team, that there must be something ( a technology which is unknown to this world ) which transfers a huge amount of data in fraction of seconds. Something like switching on our TV and getting the display for the next moment? Of course the discussion went very well , but we didn’t get any idea and we didn’t find any such technology in internet too. Finally my idiot team mates did stopped discussing on that. From that day onwards I was searching, searching and searching ( sadly I have to say , I was not thinking , I was simply searching ). Today I got one useful link  which describe about yet another innovation on data transfer. Here in this blog I wanted to share that with you all. Hmmm of course I didn’t understand it completely , but still it is very nice topic to read and to do R&D on it.

Laser – Quick Data Transfer:

Researchers learn how to make lasers directly on microchips – The result could be computers that download huge files much more quickly . For the first time , researchers have grown lasers from high-performance materials directly on silicon’s. Bringing together electrical & optical components on computer chips would speed data transfer within and between computers.

It is a real fact that when we play with light, we can see dramatic speed .  but bringing electrical materials along with light is not an easy task ( said by researchers ) . There are many hurdles in bringing best laser material with silicon’s but University of California , Berkeley have surmounted this hurdle.

When the nanopillar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanopillar ) is pumped with light from another laser, the light spirals around inside the pillar, as if running up and down a spiral staircase. The difference in materials between the core and the shell encourages this effect trapping the photons. They spiral until they reach a high enough energy threshold and are emitted. Researchers say that , this spiral effect is something that hasn’t been seen in other types of laser before.

Another key to making lasers on silicon chips is not to let the temperature get too high. Chang-Hasnain(  http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/chang-hasnain.html )  says that her process could eventually be used to grow high – quality lasers on otherwise finished and optical components giving them the capability of encoding data into pulses of light. A lot of progress has been made on silicon optical components says Intel’s Paniccia .

So this is all about Laser technology , I didn’t give detailed explanation on technical words or concepts over here, because it’s very complex to understand for me . I just kept the idea in front of you guys. If anybody do R&D on this and If anybody understand it, please share with me. This is not an easy task to implement it in today’s memory technology , It may be expensive but in future we may play with this. Can anybody guess what kind of speed we may get in data transfer by using this technology? . You can transfer 10GB of data in one second. Super fast like light . Every time when I build iPhone app of size 70MB , It will take 5min to transfer , I have to wait to run it in the device. Every time when testers will be logging the defect like performance hit , memory reached threshold level etc  etc. We struggle to speed up the process of our application. But how difficult it is to achieve the speed? and here we are dreaming to transfer 10GB in one second!!! Great idea , Is it not?

We almost every one know about byte ordering in the underlying architecture . In which order each bit of a data stored in memory ? does tell byte ordering. Of course it is different for different architectures. It become very awkward when a programmer do develop for some other architecture which is not the same as the architecture on which he is developing . It will be something like A right-handed person trying to write with his left hand.

Today I am not going to explain what exactly mean by byte ordering. Instead I am providing a simple definition and two images . some one said that One image is equivalent to Thousand words .  And also some interesting facts on byte ordering.

Endianness: It is the ordering of individually addressable sub-units (words, bytes, or even bits) within a longer data word stored in external memory. (wiki definition ).

Two Types Of Byte Ordering:

1> Big Endian: Underlying architecture stores the least significant byte in the lowest address.

2> Little Endian: Underlying architecture stores the least  significant byte in the highest address.

How they fit in memory?

For better understanding: I am giving an example of C Structure.

Try to understand the image. See the memory layout of a C Structure . Mainly look that character array and one more char variable in memory.

Struct{
 int     a;     //0x1112_1314    word
 double    b;    //0x2122_2324_2526_2728    double word
 char  *c;    //0x3132_3334    Word
 char    d[7];    // ‘A’ ‘B’ ‘C’ ‘D’ ‘E’ ‘F’   ‘G’     byte array
 short    e;    // 0x5152
 int    f;    //0x6162_6364
}S;

Memory Layout :

Endianness

See the  memory as a series of array locations:

Alternate view of Memory Map

(If Image is not visible clearly, please write click on the image and open it in new tab)

Some interesting facts on Endianess:
1>    Our entire Internet is in big endian format. It means almost all the protocols, APIs are in big endian . And hence writing internet programs on PC makes very awkward. In Windows WinSock provides htoi ( host to internet ) and itoh ( internet to host ) APIs for  necessary conversions.

2>    Java stores its byte code in big endian format , even though the underlying architecture is little endian, a compiled version of a java program, has a byte code in big endian format.

3>    Most of the architectures and network protocols (TCP/IP & UDP mainly ) are big endian . Visit this site for more details :  Please refer table 1 & table 2 in this link. http://www.intel.com/design/intarch/papers/endian.pdf

4>    Even though most of the architecture are in Big endian, why Intel switched to little endian? By the time Intel grown up, most of the network protocols and many other architectures were developed in big endian format. But still intel started its processor manufacturing in little endian. Are there any specific technical reason behind this? I am in search of answer . Help me !!!

Yes We found a very beautiful snake , according to my friend Raj Paban, who has enough knowledge on wild life, it was a  Malabar Pit Viper, found only in western ghats . you can see the images below. I am going to explain you guys about the characteristics of that snake in detail. I got lil information from Raj Paban, and detailed information in Wikipedia also some other sites.

PitViper

great work by Raj Paban, it is a wonderful snap . I was very happy that moment, I was excited when we were taking the snap, Yes we didn’t disturb it much, It was sleeping

Pit Viper:

Biological name: Crotalinea , ( damn sure I can’t remember it )
Common Names: Pit vipers
Habitat: Found in Asia and Americas.
Group of snakes which come under this category: Rattlesnakes, Lanceheads , Asian Pitvipers.

Characteristics: They are distinguished by the presence of a heat – sensing pit organ located between the eye and the nostril on either side of the head. It will grow to an average only 30 – 45 cms , Lachesis muta is a species that is known to reach is maximum of 3.65 meters . This is the longest viperid in the world.

They are unique in their own characteristics . A deep pit or Fossa , in the loreal area between the eyes and the nostril on either side of the head. They are extremely sensitive infrared detecting organs, this in effect gives the snakes a sixth sense that helps them to find and perhaps even judge the size of the small warm-blooded prey on which they feed.

When a prey comes into the range, infrared radiations falling onto the pits allows the snakes to determine its direction. Having one of these organs on either side of the head produces a stereo effect that indicates distance as well as direction. When deprived of their senses of sight and smell , these snakes can strike accurately at moving objects that are less than 0.2°C warmer than the background.

Few species are highly active by day , like Green Pit viper ( Link :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimeresurus ) , most of them are nocturnal( highly active in the night ). They prefer to avoid scorching( very hot ) daytime temperature . The snakes heat – sensitive pits are also thought to aid in locating cooler areas in which to rest.

They typically wait patiently somewhere for unsuspecting prey to wander by. Studies have indicated that these snakes learn to improve their striking accuracy over time.

Many temperate species ( e.g . Most rattle snakes ) will congregate ( gather in mass ) in shelter area or dense to overwinter , the snakes benefitting from the combined heat, they gather because the mass produces heat, snakes are cold-blooded , usually a many snakes come out for basking (lie exposed to sun light ) on sunny ledges. pit vipers gather in mass to get benefitted from the combined heat, this is unique characteristic of vipers.Like most snakes pitvipers will strike only if cornered or threatened.

Physicist Leo Van Hemmen of the Technical university of Munich in Germany, who is working on finding how heat sensing organs work in pit vipers has said that, these snakes have organs that process images reaching their heat sensors, allowing them to see prey with more clarity than just a warm blob as seen in an infrared. But an amazing skill of vipers made scientists amazed. “ In Lab BlindFolded snakes can strike a running rat behind the ears to avoid its sharp teeth, Says Physicist Leo Van Hemmen “. The pit organs suppose to work as pin hole cameras , except that the holes are too large at 1 millimeter or more in diameter. These must produce images that are just fuzzy blurs. So how can the snake strike with such precision?

Van Hemmen and his team developed a model to study how the snakes process the information reaching their heat sensors. They takes into account both the infrared noise created by moving prey and error generated by the snake’s pit itself. The team recombined the inputs from the 2000 – odd receptors to filter out the noise and create a sharp image. In their model a heat signal reaching each receptor causes a neuron to fire , but the firing rate depends on the input . By tweaking how the receptors interact , the team create precise images, even when there was a lot of background noise. Think guys, they just created a model and were able to produce precise image , it’s just a model, then what about the snake’s organs, a real organ , a god gift? Is it not a great ??? Really it is amazing.

This is all about the Pit vipers. It is a real challenge to scientists to understand, how the pit vipers heat sensing organs work? how can it is possible to the snake to locate its prey? If a typical image processing was taking place in the eyes of the snake, then how can a snake was able to strike the prey when it was blindfolded in lab  ? Technology grows like anything but still we can’t beat the nature, scientists have given many theories on pit vipers , but I still say that, they can’t say with 100% accuracy .The actual technique processed in snakes might be something else, something new to us !!!

See this video , It is not clear but you will get an idea about how snakes capture an image of prey using heat sensing organs and Infrared  . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lySW2-eYilg

For all interested people , this will be the best topic for research .

Take a look at wonderful snake once again.

PitViper

we did also see many butterflies , frogs , wonderful and colorful fungus . totally it was awesome moment , also the KoodluTeertha is very beautiful falls.

Butterflies:

1>Chocolate Pancy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junonia_iphita

ChocolatePancy

2> EggFly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypolimnas_bolina

EggFly

3> MalabarNymph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_malabarica

MalabarNymph

Frogs:

1>BlackTorrent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrixalus_saxicola
I have posted something about black torent in my blog on yedakumari trekking : http://is.gd/i31OB

BlackTorrent

2> Unknown Frog:

Unknown

3> Unknown Frog :

unknown

Spider:

1> GaintWoodSpider:

GaintWoodSpider

Fungus: We did see many beautiful fungus there, most of them are Red color , some of them are white color .

Fungus

fungus

fungus

And finally it is my humble request that please drive slowly in forest area, and stop the road kills , you can save a life .

RoadKill

Our destination:

KoodluTeertha

Photography: Credit goes to Raj Paban .

“Love the nature , save the earth “