Friday, June 30, 2006

The American Scientist: An endangered species?

Politicians are freaking out about competition from China and India, especially when the drastic drop in American scientists and engineers being produced by the nation's universities is considered. But is the situation quite as bleak as everyone seems to think? Re-analyzed data paints a much prettier picture...

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Wikipedia 3.0: The End of Google?

Semantic Web + Wikipedia’s Ontoworld = Ultimate Answer Machine

Here is an intereseting article

The Semantic Web (or Web 3.0) promises to “organize the world’s information” in a dramatically more logical way than Google can ever achieve with their current engine design. This is specially true from the point of view of machine comprehension as opposed to human comprehension.The Semantic Web requires the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords.
                                     However, the Semantic Web, which is still in a development phase where researchers are trying to define the best and most usable design models, would require the participation of thousands of knowledgeable people over time to produce those domain-specific ontologies necessary for its functioning.
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Living with web-based software

Lifehacker explains how new web-based aplications are becoming more part of day-to-day life..

More and more web applications offer the features and functionality of desktop software every day. Over the past several months, I've been moving my work to Web-based software applications as much as possible. My favorites include Google Calendar, Writely, Bloglines, Blinksale, Delicious, Ta-Da Lists and Flickr. While many users may balk at leaving their familiar world of desktop software, the benefits of secure storage, sharing files and accessibility make managing your data with hosted web apps a smart move for a lot of people.
writely.jpg

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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The Next Gen Of Cars



The GM Hy-wire, appropriately named for its technology, incorporates the features first envisioned in the AUTOnomy concept vehicle at the 2002 North American International Auto Show in Detroit and the Geneva Motor Show. Hy-wire was introduced to the public at the Paris Motor Show last year.
“ The fact that we developed Hy-wire as a driveable concept vehicle in just eight months (from its introduction in Detroit) shows our commitment to this technology and the speed at which we are progressing,” said Rick Wagoner, GM’s president and CEO.
via : http://www.sagags.com/

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Todo.txt

todo.sh is a powerful shell script that adds to, edits, sorts and searches your todo.txt file from the command line. Mark items as complete and archive them into a done.txt file with todo.sh as well.


http://todotxt.com/


See todo.sh in action here:

Friday, June 23, 2006

Million Dollar Stuff...

Million Dollar Building : http://www.sandberg.nl:16080/artvertising/
This a project inspired from Million Dollar Homepage.



About Million Dollar Homepage :
The Washington Post has a feature on Alex Tew, the twenty-one-year-old creator of the Million Dollar Homepage. Tew sold 10-by-10 pixel advertising tiles on the page for $100 each. When the eBay auction for the last of the page's real estate ends tomorrow at 1:42 pm EST, Tew will have earned much more than $1 million.

The phenomenon he created has been hailed by some as a genre-changing concept in online marketing -- otherwise an advertising badlands of spam, banner ads and pop-ups. Others say it's a brilliant, one-time marketing aberration that will never be replicated.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

10 Top Goofs Interns Make

Internships are becoming more important as an entrypoint to the working world. Here are the top mistakes interns make, and how to avoid them.

Think working late makes you look dedicated? Your boss might just be wondering why you can't get your work done on time. Or is your air of confidence coming off as cockiness instead? We asked top recruiters and former interns for the low-down on the top intern mistakes -- and got their advice on how to avoid them.


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Monday, June 19, 2006

India Awakens

Fueled by high-octane growth, the world's largest democracy is becoming a global power. Why the world will never be the same
Even if you have never gone to India--never wrapped your food in a piping-hot naan or had your eyeballs singed by a Bollywood spectacular--there is a good chance you encounter some piece of it every day of your life. It might be the place you call (although you don't know it) if your luggage is lost on a connecting flight, or the guys to whom your company has outsourced its data processing. Every night, young radiologists in Bangalore read CT scans e-mailed to them by emergency-room doctors in the U.S. Few modern Americans are surprised to find that their dentist or lawyer is of Indian origin, or are shocked to hear how vital Indians have been to California's high-tech industry. In ways big and small, Indians are changing the world.

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Source :

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Rendr : CSS-HTML rendering tool

Rendr is a live CSS and HTML rendering tool. It displays what the page would look like as you type, making it great for rapid testing of page designs .
You can also install it as firefox extension using greasemonkey . Here is the script.
Read More here : http://gregtaff.com/rendar2.html

Thursday, June 08, 2006

The Best Google How-TO Ever

Complete guide to all the most advanced features of Google search. It demonstrates how to easily find & download mp3s and complete albums too.. heh, when will the RIAA be suing Google?

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Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO

This book provides a set of design and implementation guidelines for writing secure programs for Linux and Unix systems. Such programs include application programs used as viewers of remote data, web applications (including CGI scripts), network servers, and setuid/setgid programs.

read more | digg story

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Google Spreadsheet

Another week, another Google product launches. Or almost launches in this case. Google hasn’t opened up Google Spreadsheets, an Ajax spreadsheet, to the general public yet but they have published a tour of what the product will look like once it actually does launch, and you can request an invitation to try it out.

Files can be imported in CSV or XLS formats, so excel documents and other spreadsheet files should work in Google Spreadsheets. Files can be saved in CSV, XLS and HTML formats.

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Source : http:/techcunch.com

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

howto: Photograph Sunrises and Sunsets

While sometimes wonderful sunrise and sunset shots can be taken spontaneously without any forethought it�s often the case that the best ones come out of planning. Scope out places that might be good for sunsets in the day or two before your shoot.

read more | digg story

Inside the Linux Boot Process

This article explores the Linux boot process from the initial bootstrap to the start of the first user-space application. Along the way, you'll learn about various other boot-related topics such as the boot loaders, kernel decompression, the initial RAM disk, and other elements of Linux boot.

When a system is first booted, or is reset, the processor executes code at a well-known location. In a personal computer (PC), this location is in the basic input/output system (BIOS), which is stored in flash memory on the motherboard. The central processing unit (CPU) in an embedded system invokes the reset vector to start a program at a known address in flash/ROM. In either case, the result is the same. Because PCs offer so much flexibility, the BIOS must determine which devices are candidates for boot. We'll look at this in more detail later.

When a boot device is found, the first-stage boot loader is loaded into RAM and executed. This boot loader is less than 512 bytes in length (a single sector), and its job is to load the second-stage boot loader.

When the second-stage boot loader is in RAM and executing, a splash screen is commonly displayed, and Linux and an optional initial RAM disk (temporary root file system) are loaded into memory. When the images are loaded, the second-stage boot loader passes control to the kernel image and the kernel is decompressed and initialized. At this stage, the second-stage boot loader checks the system hardware, enumerates the attached hardware devices, mounts the root device, and then loads the necessary kernel modules. When complete, the first user-space program (init) starts, and high-level system initialization is performed.

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Monday, June 05, 2006

Creating Firefox Extension

Learn by example

Everyone has a good idea at one time or another to implement a new feature in a web browser. Well, with the goodness that is Mozilla Firefox, now you can do just that. You need to have a vague understanding of XUL and Javascript, but you certainly don't need to be a master of either.
The author explains how the extensions break down in a nutshell, using BugMeNot as an example

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Related Post : If you want to develop firefox extension

Friday, June 02, 2006

Stupid Engineering Mistakes

"Wired has bestowed on us a list of the ten worst engineering mistakes of all time. We have the St. Francis Dam designed by 'self-taught' enginner William Mulholland, which burst and wiped out several towns near LA; the Kansas City Hyatt walkway collapse; the DC-10, and more, but my favorite is the one I'd never heard of: a giant tank of molasses that ruptured in 1919 and sent 'waves of molasses up to 15 feet high' through Boston, killing 21."

Source :

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Vim tips: Using viewports

A really useful feature in Vim is the ability to split the viewable area between one or more files, or just to split the window to view two bits of the same file more easily. The Vim documentation refers to this as a viewport or window, interchangeably.
You may already be familiar with this feature if you've ever used Vim's help feature by using :help topic or pressing the F1 key. When you enter help, Vim splits the viewport and opens the help documentation in the top viewport, leaving your document open in the bottom viewport.
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Article By: Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
Also Emacs Tips : Buffer & windows