Dei Hard Techie

History of Computers.

Die Hard Techie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:54:19 +0000

A computer is an electronic device. It can be made to work like a human. It can store information. It can also manipulate and transmit data. It can process and retrieve data very fast. But it can act only according to instruction fed to it. Micro processors almost simulate the intelligence of men. Today, micro processors are used in children’s toys, calculators, robots and home appliances. The use of computers is growing everyday. Telephone booths and hotels have computing machines. Reservations in trains and buses are done in computers.

Super computer have transformed agriculture of India. Weather is forecast very accurately. Farmers can plan their work well ahead. Communication satellites are monitored with the help of computers. Computers assist scientists in atomic power stations in supervising the safety of the plant. India is leading the world in the export of software. Internet has exploded the borders of the world. People exchanging valuable information through Internet one can reach any website and learn anything. Encyclopedia will cease to play vital roles. In future children would consult Internet and clear their doubts. It is no wonder even students of primary classes are given computers education.

The computer is one of the most wonderful products of modern science. The computer is scientific marvel. It is called a mechanical brain. A computer works with fantastic speed and efficiency, precision and accuracy. It can make a few thousand calculations in a second. It can count, write, solve problems of highly complex nature and it can also store information and recall it when required. The computer is a friend to students, businessmen, industrialists, scientists, and others. Today computer is used in all fields, our work is made easy.

It was a scientist by name Charles Babbage who invented the modern computer in the 19^Th century. The computers are used in offices, banks, shops, factories etc. employers pay particulars are prepared by the computer; establishments maintain their accounts through computers.

Importance of music in life .

Die Hard Techie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:50:25 +0000

Importance of music especially in today’s humdrum life cannot be overstated. Today man is surrounded by innumerable worries and listening to music soothes his nerves. Music acts as a stimulant and soothes the nerves. It is a fine art and groups of all ages get attracted to its sweet sound.

A person gifted with aesthetic capabilities finds music as a food for his soul. Some of the great musicians of the world are held in high esteem irrespective of the kind of music they produce i.e. western, oriental, classical, pop, and light. These musicians organize concerts which attract people from all walks of life. So it will be great benefit to the children who are interested in pursuing music as a hobby or a career to receive music training at the school level itself. The children will thus learn the basics of music at the school level and as the times grow they will be great musicians later. Therefore, we must suggest that each school must have facilities for music training. If people are exposed to blaming music they will definitely find life a rich and healthy experience. In this way, the importance of music is really immense.

Need of awareness for health care.

Die Hard Techie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:46:56 +0000

In a recently released survey report it has been reported that we are becoming a nation of under achievers. It is because of eating good food and doing no physical exercise. At the same time, we suffer from shocking vitamin and mineral deficiency. Then our sedentary life style leads to obesity and diseases like diabetes and heart problems. Due to growth in the standard of living, people are eating nutritious food. It is among the middle and upper middle classes. These classes lead a sedentary life, that is, they do not do any physical labor. As a consequence, their eating habits become a cause of obesity. Other diseases like heart problems, diabetes, and high blood pressure start troubling them. It is time that awareness for health care reaches these people.

This is a great need of this awareness among the children at first. The school curriculum should have chapters that explain what a healthy food is. It is satisfying that in New Delhi; there is a government move that students should not eat fried food like oily items noodles and cold drinks. In many schools these are banned. The print media should carry out such articles from time to time to spread health consciousness among the educated. Physical exercises or physical training should be made compulsory in schools.

Conserve forest for a happy future .

Die Hard Techie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:44:51 +0000

forests have been cut to develop new colonies and start new industries. But the disappearance of forests never means a happy future. On the other hand these are the forests which ensure a happy future. Forests are a perennial source of many things. These things are indispensable for a happy life. For example, innumerable birds and animals thus they help maintain an ecological balance in nature. If this balance is disturbed our life stands threatened. Since the last many years we have been seeing rising of temperature all over the world. This tends to increase global warming and green house effect. This will make the sea level rise many a time. Countries situated on the sea coasts will be submerged if this happens. This is all due to the deforestation.

Forests, indeed, give us life and continue renewing it. We can say that they are our life. They check the soil erosion and floods also. They cause rains in plenty. And where there are rains, there is life. They then are a source of raw material for many industries. In this way, they ensure a happy future for us all as they keep the environment clean and pollution free. So forests ensure a happy future. We must plant more and more trees. We must invent other material to take the place of wood as is being done these days.

Mythbusting “Linux”

Die Hard Techie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:14:51 +0000

Linux like Unix in general is a major democratic OS and a major democratic social force in computing despite the fact that the development of the kernel is ruled with iron fist by Linus Torvalds. Along with DOS, Unix was among the first a democratic operating system that helped people to get rid of the power of the corporate and university “computer center” bureaucracy and Linux continues this tradition. Paradoxically Linux never got an upper hand technically in fierce competition with FreeBSD and never even approached the security of OpenBSD or platform independence of NetBSD. It was blatantly “gray” OS that achieved success exactly like Microsoft of Unix world. I think that one of the main achievement of Linux is it’s counterbalancing value and positive influence on Microsoft and Sun: it did contributed to the lessening what is called the “operating system tax” (while the cost of Microsoft OSes in the USA is very competitive, this is not true for other countries). And this influence of Linux on Microsoft is very important and should not be underestimated. It is especially important for developing countries, because PCs in those countries very often contain components for which Linux drivers are non-existent.

Debian gets ported to the G1, makes nice with Android

Die Hard Techie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:13:53 +0000

Recent firmware updates may have aimed to shut down such shenanigans, but it looks they were a little too slow to stop Jay Freeman (a.k.a. Saurik) from going to town with his newly jailbroken G1 and installing Debian on the handset. What’s more, he apparently even managed to get Debian and Android to play nice with each other, letting you have a completely normal and unassuming phone by day and a nerd machine by night. As you might expect, however, it’s not exactly as simple as installing an app from the Android Market, but anyone with a little experience in installing Linux distributions on unconventional devices should be able to follow the instructions fairly easily, although actually turning it into something useful is another matter. Hit up the read link below to get started

Promoting Literacy in India

Die Hard Techie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:13:06 +0000

It is said that even many years of independence, we have not been able to remove illiteracy from the country. Out of every 20 people in the world 3 are Indians. Of those 3, 2 are illiterate. It means 50% of the world’s illiterates are Indians. According to the president’s address on world’s literacy day, education is the only key to root out all the maladies like poverty, health problems, over population etc.
Illiteracy is a curse as the illiterates do not know the governments plans made out for their uplift. Then they are likely to be cheated by the unscrupulous. They can be discriminated against. In short they can’t move ahead with the changing times. We can remove illiteracy by adopting education for all. Students can play an important role in this field. During their holidays, they may take classes of the illiterate. They can also spread awareness about the utility of being literate. The government should join hands with non government organizations in their voluntary service to promote literacy though various programmers. These can be of adult education, motivation for learning in children and non formal education. This programme of spreading literacy is of national importance. So all the educated persons should render whatever help they can to remove the illiteracy from the country.

Techie’s thoughts on Inflation!

Die Hard Techie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:12:18 +0000

Inflation is a burning social issue today. Inflation means an increase in the piece of things. It is bound to grow. When it is persistent, it reduces the purchasing power of people. The income of people does not grow in proportion to inflation. Millions of people have limited income. Recently eatables cost went double in Chennai. The price of vegetables also sky rocketed recently. Onions were sold at rs.50 per kilo gram. Onion and potato are widely used as side dish in northern India. The layman was unable to buy them. People expressed their displeasure over the inflation in the recent elections. The governments’ efforts to import onion from Dubai may reduce the problem to some extent. Grocery dealers hoard essential commodities, and create an artificial demand. Inflation is a paradox. The farmer gets only rupees six hundred for a rice bag. But it is sold in the open market for sixteen hundred. Government should take severe steps to control the price raise. Hoarders must be punished.
The public distribution system must be supervised periodically. Corrupt staff members of he fair price shops must be sacked. Essential commodities must be distributed at subsidized price through PDS in all the villages. Some salesmen have a nexus with merchants. They sell rice and oil to them. They deprive the poor people of their share of essential commodities. To control price rise, government should pay more attention to agriculture. If agricultural produce increases, price rise will naturally come down. But agricultural lands are becoming real estates.

A simple introduction to stock markets

Die Hard Techie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:11:21 +0000

There are people who had become millenaries over a mid-night; as well
there are millionaires, who had lost their shirts and pants in a day.
Either side is possible in stock market
. The most volatile area in business is stock market.

In simple terms, ’stock market’ is a place where shares are bought and
sold, otherwise ‘traded’.

A company’s share is the basic unit of its asset. That’s, when you buy
all the shares of a company, you end up buying the whole company
itself in other hand.

A company has to list its shares in any stock exchange (like BSE, NSE
etc), in order to enable the public people to buy and sell it.

In developing countries like India, the stock market has become modern
and has grown like rockets due to number of new businesses (business
enlargement) and large pool of investors.

Narrowing down this topic, we restrict ourselves to discuss the stock
exchanges in India.

BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange)

BSE, other wise known as Bombay Stock exchange is one of the oldest
trading exchanges in India. It is fifth biggest stock exchange in the
world and operates with the market capital of R.s.33.4 billions (US
$730 billions) [Oops! 7 times of Bill Gates!].

A company has to list its shares in a Stock Exchange (like BSE or NSE)
to be traded. There are around 3500 companies listed their shares in
BSE as of Mid 2006.

A company has to meet BSE’s eligibility criterions in order to get
listed in it. Like wise, every stock exchange in the world will have
its eligibility criterions to approve the share listing of a company.
In India, when a company enters into Stock Exchange, it has to get the
approval of SEBI also, before listed. SEBI is the market regulator,
which resolves financial related issues in Indian Stock Exchanges and
in other major financial institutions.

When a company lists its share as a first time in a Stock Exchange
like BSE, this first time issue is especially termed as IPO. Only the
first time share-issue is called IPO and the company may list
additional volume of shares in future, that’s not called IPO.

And, usually people call it as ‘going public’, when a company lists
its shares at first time.

Solar - Sun Tracking System

Die Hard Techie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:09:26 +0000

An interesting paper on sun tracking system.

The present energy scenario needs to be developed using renewable
energy sources to avoid pollution free air and to keep the natural
resources for some more extend. The present scenario dictates 70 % of
the energy is from firing of coal(thermal), approximately 20 % from
hydro power plants, the rest from all other means like wind, atomic,
tidal, diesel,…etc.

Thermal power plants are the major contributors in the power sectors for

at least another 80-100 years. After 100 years the word coal will be
in the paper only. This can be extended by conservation and
introducing renewable energy sources like solar, wind, etc. If we
introduce renewable energy sources to the power sectors may enhance
the availability of the coal for longer.

There is no contribution of solar energy in the existing scenario, but there

is a huge potential and necessity is there in the solar energy to
contribute for the upcoming power scenarios. Even if 1% contribution
makes our country pollution free and natural resources will be
preserved and “source of energy conservation” will be possible.

Nowadays solar energy collection system is costly because of low usage
and poor reliability of auxiliary storage system. Even though there is
no maintenance cost, running cost, the initial investments are too
high for the power produced. So payback time is too high.

In present scenario union government and state government power
sectors are trying to reduce the cost of solar photo voltaic cells and
its associated elements from 16 crores to 6 crores per mega watt. In
such a case we need not depend on imported fuels and disappearing
resources like coal and oil.

In case of satellite area, we could get 16 day lights within 24 hours
cycles, where the cycle gap of day and night become too less
approximately 40 Mins. Charging for 40 Mins and using the same energy
for the next 40 Min’s is quite simple because there is no need of huge
storage system.

But in earth, we can have one cycle per 12 hours.

The solar energy can be better received using intelligent tracking
system with lowest energy for tracking. An excellent charging
technique can be employed using power electronic components like
MOSFETs & IGBT’s. A state of art embedded technology can be used for
multilevel and multibattery charging system. A specially created
software will be used for this project to analyze, indicate, record,
control the above said all.

According to our scheme, the first moment of sun rays will be started
with energy (battery charging) storing and will be continued till the
last second of sun available on a particular day.

The efficiency will be ultimately increased beyond the expectation. In
these circumstances, solar energy becomes the real alternate for
existing power generation system. Our real concept starts from
tracking the sun and ends with connecting the obtained energy to the
existing SCADA electrical network as a co generation input. When the
energy obtained from solar is connected to SCADA will give advantage
that, the power is connected to the main distribution system. Thereby,
a remarkable contribution to the energy scenario will be possible near
future.

In this project, we have used light sensing systems using commercially
available LDR’s and connected to the embedded system directly to
minimize the electronic complexity to this project. Embedded
controller is the whole system behind this project, because it accepts
data interacts with mechanical model, collecting the data from
position transducers, directing the power from photovoltaic to
charging system, controlling the MOSFET & IGBT’s and relays with
appropriate threshold level. In final it interacts with computer for
advanced diagnostic purpose