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Sunday, February 21, 2010

Mesh networking

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Intel is getting heat; not from it's processor but from NEC

NEC demo'd their new communication interface, that is powerful that the USB and the PCI express. Ofcourse Intel had something in the pipeline with their Light Peak interface, that is capable of speedups up to 10Gbps, however NEC's new interface as demo'd is capable of speeds up to 16Gbps, that means Intel has to push back on their interface? And what happens to the USB and PCI express?

http://www.pureoverclock.com/story4352.html

http://legitreviews.com/news/7410/

Saturday, February 13, 2010

C# lock, is it good to use?

Often .NET C# programmers are accustomed with writing the following code block:

lock(someObject)
{
/// code here...
}

But what happens when the compiler sees the above code? It simply emits the code below:















The above code guarantees that the lock is released i.e. the monitor is released no matter even an exception occurs within the try block. That means the data the code might be manipulating within the try block might be corrupted. And corrupted data is prone to more corruption when the program keeps proceeding further, this is really bad for the user. So it is better to use the below pattern,

Monitor.Enter()
/// your code here...
Monitor.Exit()

By doing this you are at least guaranteed that you prevent corruption of data and fail fast. Failing fast is good, you get to the root cause of the problem directly and fix it quicker.

Avoiding Lock is good not just because of the corruption of data scenario, code using "try, finally" is a perf hit. Remember try, catch, finally is an over-head unless it is used in the right place.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

GMAIL to mock Twitter

Google could launch a Twitter-killer as soon as this week, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Google already allows Gmail users to update their status. The prompt reads, "let people know what you're up to, or share links to photos, videos, and Web pages." But every time a user updates their status, the previous update disappears into the ether.

The WSJ says the new feature will "allow Gmail users to view a stream of status updates from people they choose to connect with." It will be tightly integrated with Google's video-sharing site YouTube and its photo-sharing site Picasa.

Yahoo launched a very similar feature for its email service back in August 2009.

If Google is smart, these status updates will pour into and out of Facebook and Twitter. That way it will have an immediate install base of users already trained to update everyone they know about the latest thing they viewed, thought or ate.

Otherwise, it's hard to see how this feature won't end up as another in a long line of Google products that tried, and failed, to beat popular services from Web rivals (See Orkut versus MySpace, Google Video versus YouTube, Open Social versus Facebook Platform, Google Friend Connect versus Facebook Connect).


Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Touch patents!

Patents applied recently on the touch technology....every one is in a race to tout on their touch ;)

apple patent 1

apple patent 2

List of interesting touch patents from Apple, Microsoftetc

Interesting touch patents

Interesting reads:
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2008/02/multitouch_patents

Monday, February 01, 2010

Conversation with a doc

This is the snippet of the conversation that happened couple of hours ago today; it’s like people from two worlds having a conversation. OK now to the topic; I had to meet up with the doc as I was getting myself tested for blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure etc. as part of my health check routine for this year. [Pardon me for the informal language used.]

The doctor reading the report says that my glucose level is low, but not to worry I said OK, then she says your blood pressure is normal, but the systolic one is little higher but not to worry, I said OK. Then the doctor says your good cholesterol is higher than the normal but it is OK, I say OK. I quickly interrupted her, I see there are just 8-9 items in your list of checks and already 4 are out of the normal and you say not to worry...is this to make me feel better or is there is a bug with the machine generating report? What bug? The doc looks at me with a serious look...no…no I mean anything wrong with the machine? Nope she says and goes on….and then starts explaining her reasons. Did you eat food properly? Asks the doc and I said i had my breakfast but yet to take lunch. OK that's the reason the glucose is low, clarifies the doc. Then the doc says the good cholesterol when high is really good as it will be secreted to the liver blah blah blah... I said, what does that mean, the doc said it means it is good unlike the bad cholesterol. I was like that’s easy explanation hmmm waiting to hear more…but the doc kept quiet that the explanation she gave was enough. I asked her for further explanation to the cholesterol stuff, she said it simply means you will not get heart attack for a while. I thank her for the good news, but realized she kind off answered my question but not really. Then the doctor asked about my eating habits and about my exercise, I said i do not have the bandwidth to take care of them properly...with eyebrows up she asks...what do you mean by that? I am like there is no time for that stuff because I am busy and stuff…she looked again and asked nope the other word…you used some “bandwidth” blah blah.. What’s that? , I said we (IT) say that when you do not have enough room to do things…we call it bandwidth in our (IT) terminology. She did not seemed to be convinced and felt I was telling something that did not make sense….kindoff sensed that from her face. I then gave her examples where exactly we use and the terminology…she was like OK…hmmm whatever!