Famous quets on maths,

Famous quets on maths

Charles Babbage

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.

Pierre Fermat

(and this one may prove useful in finding excuses for not finishing your homework sometimes!)

In the margin of his copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica , Fermat wrote:

"To divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power or in general any power whatever into two powers of the same denomination above the second is impossible, and I have assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it."

LINK SCANNER,

 LINK SCANNER :

         LinkScanner Pro is a safe browsing, safe searching application that analyzes system traffic, web site content and online application behavior in real time to protect you against a wide range of online threats, including malicious content, phishing, social engineering, and targeted software exploits.

LinkScanner Pro's technology is highly dynamic, enabling it to react quickly and effectively to protect systems without relying on out-dated databases that introduce time-wasting false alarms. Its protection and site ratings are based on an inspection of any requested web page in its current state, along with the content and data stream entering a computer over HTTP. Using this approach, LinkScanner Pro can provide a timely and accurate analysis of every web site and alert you to suspicious activity, blocking remote attempts to exploit software vulnerabilities and compromise your system.

LinkScanner Pro classifies every inspected site in one of four categories: Dangerous:  This page contains active threats.

Risky:  This page contains the potential for active threat delivery.

Questionable:  Site ownership or registration is not clear.

Safe:  This page contains no active threats.

and provides details as to how this assessment was reached.

LinkScanner Pro's network monitor goes beyond advice to provide always-on proactive blocking of dangerous content before it can enter your PC. The detection technology references the current state of any given site and as such is as reliable as possible, effectively blocking targeted software exploits and other security vulnerabilities. 

Cloud Computing,

Introduction

In traditional desktop computing we run copies of software in our own PC and data is stored in there, hence traditional computing is PC centric. Cloud computing is an emerging Paradigm in computer industry where the computing is moved to a cloud of computers. Here documents are stored on a collection of servers accessed via internet. The data is also stored in servers. Hence the cloud computing is document centric.

Cloud Computing

What is Cloud Computing?

The cloud is a large group of interconnected computers. We usually use the symbol of cloud to denote the complicated networks in circuit. That is why the name cloud computing is given for these network of computers. These computers may be personal or public. Cloud computing extends beyond a single company or enterprise. Access is via internet and it offers massive computing power and storage capability and enables wide scale group collaboration.Basically it is a coming back to the centralized computing infrastructure which was popular in 1950s and 60s.

Key Properties of Cloud Computing

The key properties of Cloud computing are

1.    User centric : This means once an user is connected to cloud any data there, such as images, videos, applications, becomes his property. Not only the data but the devices connected also becomes his and he can share it with other users.

2.    Task Centric : Cloud computing focus on what one need and how application can do it for us. Here documents are given more priority than the applications which create them.

3.    Powerful : Powerful in the sense that as there is large computers more computing power and mass data storage possible.

4.    Self Healing : Is called Self healing because hot backups are available for every document in the cloud. Hence if one document crashes there will be it's duplicate ready to run.

5.    Multi-tenancy & Intelligence: Multi-tenancy refers to sharing of data and costs across a large pool of users. As various data are stored in cloud data mining and analysis are necessary for accessing information in an intelligent manner.

6.    Programmable : Many processes in cloud computing shall be automate such as backing up crashed data with it's duplicate. Hence programming is associated with cloud computing.

7.    Flexible : Flexible as the  users may be of different varieties and hence it has to match with their needs.

Understanding Cloud Computing

1. Understanding Cloud Architecture

Individual users connect to the cloud from their own personal computers or portable devices, over the Internet. To these individual users, the cloud is seen as a single application, device, or document. The hardware in the cloud is invisible.

Oracle Private Cloud

2. Understanding Cloud Storage

In Cloud computing data is stored on multiple third party servers rather than on the dedicated servers in traditional network data storage.

3. Understanding Cloud Services

The wide range of applications and programs include Cloud Services. Any web-based service or application offered via cloud computing is called cloud services.

Benefits From Cloud Computing

1. Reduces Run time and Response time : As there is large computing capability run time and response time get reduced.

2. Minimize Infrastructure risk : As there is service providers to provide necessary infrastructure and services infrastructure risk get reduced. We need not purchase infrastructure.

3. Lower Cost of Entry : For new organizations the infra structure and services can be rented and this reduces their cost of entry into the market.

4. Increased Pace of innovation : As the new and small firms can compete with the leaders in the industry with the help of cloud computing, this increases the pace of innovation.

5. Cost Conscious users are satisfied : Most of the users are cost conscious. They are well satisfied by the services cloud computing provides.

Cloud Computing Services

1.Amazone Web Service

Amazone web services is the set of cloud computing services offered by Amazone. Different services provided by Amazone are

a) Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2)

b) Simple Storage Service (S3)

c) Simple Queue Service (SQS)

d) Simple Database Service (SDS)

2. Google App Engine

Google App Engine allows you to run your web Applications on Google’s infrastructure.

The environment includes following features.

• dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies

• persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions

• automatic scaling and load balancing

• APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts

• a fully featured local development environment that simulates Google App Engine on your computer

Cloud Computing In Real Domain

•Time Machine

Times machine is a New York Times project in which one can read any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851 through to The New York Times of December 30, 1922. It used Amazon’s EC2 platform..

• IBM Google University Academic Initiative

Google and IBM came up with an initiative to advance large-scale distributed computing by providing hardware, software, and services to universities .Their idea was to prepare students ‘to harness the potential of modern computing systems.’

• SmugMug

SmugMug is an online photo hosting application which is fully based on cloud computing services which is based on Amazon’s S3 services.

• Nasdaq

NASDAQ which had lots of stock and fund data wanted to make extra revenue selling historic data for those stocks and funds. For this Amazon’s S3 service is used to host data.

Conclusion

Thus cloud computing provides a supercomputing power .This cloud of computers extends beyond a single company or enterprise.In cloud computing, there are large self-managed server pools available which reduces the overhead and eliminate management headache.The applications and data served by the cloud are available to broad group of users, cross-enterprise and cross-platform.Also it is a new emerging architecture needed to expand the Internet to become the computing platform of the future.

Tongue Drive System to Operate Computers,

Tongue Drive System to Operate Computers

                  Engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology say that a new technology called Tongue Drive system will be helpful to individuals with serious disabilities, such as those with severe spinal cord injuries and will allow them to lead more active and independent lives.

Individuals using a tongue-based system should only be able to move their tongue, which is especially important if a person has paralyzed limbs. A tiny magnet, only a size of a grain of rice, is attached to an individual's tongue using implantation, piercing or adhesive. This technology allows a disabled person to use tongue when moving a computer mouse or a powered wheelchair.

Scientists chose the tongue to control the system because unlike the feet and the hands, which are connected by brain through spinal cord, the tongue and the brain has a direct connection through cranial nerve. In case when a person has a severe spinal cord injure or other damage, the tongue will remain mobile to activate the system. "Tongue movements are also fast, accurate and do not require much thinking, concentration or effort." said Maysam Ghovanloo, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The motions of the magnet attached to the tongue are spotted by a number of magnetic field sensors installed on a headset worn outside or an orthodontic brace inside the mouth. The signals coming from the sensors are wirelessly sent to a portable computer that placed on a wheelchair or attached to an individual's clothing.

The Tongue Drive system is touch-free, wireless and non-invasive technology that needs no surgery for its operation. During the trials of the system, six able-bodied participants were trained to use tongue commands to control the computer mouse. The individuals repeated several motions left, right, up and down, single- and double-click to perform computer mouse tasks. The results of the trials showed 100 percent of commands were accurate with the response time less than one second, which equals to an information transfer rate of approximately 150 bits per minute.

Scientists also plan to test the ability of the system to operate by people with severe disabilities. The next step of the research is to develop software to connect the Tongue Drive system to great number of devices such as text generators, speech synthesizers and readers. Also the researchers plan to upgrade the system by introducing the standby mode to allow the individual to eat, sleep or talk, while prolonging the battery life.

SIXTH SENSE,

SIXTH SENSE

            ‘SIXTH SENSE’ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

We have evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us.When we encounter something,someone or some place,we use our five natural senses to perceive information about it;that information helps us to make decisions and choose the right actions to take.The information,data  and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about anything and is increasingly and are available online.Although the miniaturization of computing devices allows us to carry computers in our pockets,keeping us continually connected to the digital world,there is no link between our digital devices and our interactions with the physicall world.Information is confined traditionally on paper or digitally on a screen.sixth sense bridges this gap,bringing intangible,digital information out into the tangible world,and allowing us to interact with this information via natural hand gestures.

The Sixth sense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector,a mirror and a camera.The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device.Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the users pocket.

The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces,walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces;while the camera recognizes and tracks user’s hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques.The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camer and tracks the location of the colored markets (visual tracking fiduc ials)at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques.

The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces.The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiduals,thus Sixth sense also supports multi touch and multi-user interaction.

The Sixth Sense prototype implements several applications that demonstrate the usefulness,viability of the system. 

The map application lets the user navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures,similar to supported by multi-touch based systems,letting the user zoom out or pan using intuitive hand movements.

The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index finger.

The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index finger.

Sixth Sense also recognize user’s freehand gestures(postures).for example,the sixth sense system implements a gestural camera that takes photos of the scene the user is looking at by detecting the  ‘framing’ gesture just by using the hands alone.

The user can stop by any surface or wall and flick through the photos he/she has taken.Sixth Sense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing an ‘@’ symbol which lets the user check his mail.

The sixthe sense system also augments the physical objects in which the user is interacting by projecting more information can be provided on a regular piece of paper.

The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch

If the user is on the way to an airport and if he picks up the boarding pass he can know the flight delays,change of gates etc.

If the user interacts with a person he can see a word cloud of tags,words associated with the person      he can see a word cloud of tags,words associated with the person,personal web pages whether  the student is interested in camera,music ets.

This device is invented by an Indian MR>PRANAV MISTRY who is a research assistant and ph.d scholars in MIT media lab.

The current prototype system costs approximately $350 to build.

Lip-Reading Computers Able to Identify Different Languages,

Lip-Reading Computers Able to Identify Different Languages

         One of the latest inventions created by scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) are lip-reading computers that are able to identify different languages.

Scientists managed to come up with lip-reading computers some time earlier but now they created the first computer that can really distinguish different languages. This latest invention could prove to be very useful for people with hearing problems, as well as for law enforcement agencies, and in noisy environments.

The revolutionary research is currently led by Stephen Cox and Jake Newman of UEA's School of Computing Sciences. They will present their latest invention at a major conference that will take place in Taiwan on April 22.

It is worth mentioning that the technology was built up by statistical modeling of the lip movements developed by a team of 23 bilingual and trilingual speakers. The system could distinguish any language with extremely high accuracy. It could identify English, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Polish and Russian ,..etc..,

The study was funded by the EPSRC and is a part of a larger project of the University of East Anglia that focuses on automatic lip-reading. Soon scientists will start working on the system closer to an individual's physiology and their way of speaking.

Ada Lovelace-The first programmer in WORLD,

Ada Lovelace-The first programmer in WORLD

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; thanks to this, she is sometimes considered the "World's First Computer Programmer".^[1][2]

She was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron (with Anne Isabella Milbanke). She had no relationship with her father, who died when she was nine. As a young adult, she took an interest in mathematics, and in particular Babbage's work on the analytical engine. Between 1842 and 1843, she translated an article by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on the engine, which she supplemented with a set of notes of her own. These notes contain what is considered the first computer program—that is, an algorithm encoded for processing by a machine. Though Babbage's engine has never been built, Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities

Charles Babbage

Ada Lovelace met and corresponded with Charles Babbage on many occasions, including socially and in relation to Babbage's Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. Babbage was impressed by Lovelace's intellect and writing skills. He called her "The Enchantress of Numbers". In 1843 he wrote of her:

Forget this world and all its troubles and if
possible its multitudinous Charlatans – every thing
in short but the Enchantress of Numbers.^[20]

During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes.^[21] The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include (Section G), in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, which would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine been built. Based on this work, Lovelace is now widely credited with being the first computer programmer^[1] and her method is recognised as the world's first computer program.^[22]

Part of the terrace at Worthy Manor was known as "Philosophers Walk", as it was there that Lovelace and Babbage were reputed to have walked discussing mathematical principles. In 1939, the house was let to Dr Barnardos housing child evacuees from cities, including Bristol, during World War II. After a brief spell as a country club in the early 1950s, it fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1974. Parts of the gardens, though severely overgrown, are visible from the footpath from Porlock Weir to Culbone. The village computer centre in the nearby village of Porlock is named after Lovelace.

Some biographers debate the extent of her original contributions. Dorothy Stein, author of Ada: A Life and a Legacy, contends that the programs were mostly written by Babbage himself.^[23]Babbage wrote the following on the subject, in his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864).^[24]

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

The level of impact of Lovelace on Babbage's engines is difficult to resolve from Babbage's writings due to Babbage's tendency not to acknowledge (either orally or in writing) the influence of other people in his work.

FIRST COMPUTER PROGRAM

In 1842 Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his analytical engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer, and future prime minister of Italy, wrote up Babbage's lecture in French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève in October 1842.

Babbage asked the Countess of Lovelace to translate Menabrea's paper into English, subsequently requesting that she augment the notes she had added to the translation. Lady Lovelace spent most of a year doing this. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea's paper, were then published inThe Ladies' Diary and Taylor's Scientific Memoirs under the initialism "AAL".

In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lady Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and Lady Lovelace's notes as a description of a computer and software.^[27]

Her notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, the Countess describes an algorithm for the analytical engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered the first algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and for this reason she is often cited as the first computer programmer.^[28] However the engine was never actually constructed to completion during Lovelace's lifetime.

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980, and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, "MIL-STD-1815", was given the number of the year of her birth. Since 1998, the British Computer Society has awarded a medal in her name^[29] and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students of computer science