Microsoft’s Own Peer-to-Peer Application

Microsoft’s Own Peer-to-Peer Application

New York, June 20 (Kashar News): Microsoft is developing an alternative to BitTorrent Codenamed Avalanche, the program makes it easy to share content by dividing files such as software, audio or video, into chunks, much like BitTorrent.

Downloading will not be possible without a 'publisher's certificate'. In other words, it will have built in DRM technology. End users request the file parts from other users' hard drives and reassemble them to create the original file.

Avalanche’s main advantage over BitTorrent resides in one small, some will say, but actually very important aspect: before dividing the file into smaller bits, the program attaches a special algorithm whose purpose is to provide every piece of the file with information about the others.

The project came to light when Microsoft researchers in Cambridge, England, revealed they are developing the file-sharing technology to distribute big files such as films, television programs, security patches and software applications to users over the Internet.

A prototype of Avalanche is undergoing tests by distributing software to several thousand software beta testers, a research engineer demonstrating the software in Cambridge said. Avalanche can transmit a file of 4 gigabytes in size in as little as one day, down from about two weeks when it sends a program directly, he said.

Source: http://www.kashar.net/technews/complete.asp?id=1524

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What's In a Name? A Story of Palm Inc.

The company that created the first PalmPilots was called Palm Computing, Inc.; the name was changed to Palm Inc. in 2000. By then, Palm had started licensing its operating system to other companies, such as Handspring and Sony. As these licensees began introducing their own custom extensions to the OS--improved address books or high-resolution screens, for example--it became increasingly problematic for a single company to develop the OS and work with third parties on custom extensions, while at the same time creating devices that would compete with those of the third-party licensees.

So in 2003, Palm split into two companies. The corporate steward of the Palm OS became PalmSource, while the hardware company became PalmOne. A third company was created solely to administer the Palm brand name.

Since then, a whole generation of Palm OS-based devices has appeared with names like Tungsten and Zire. We might call them Palms, but officially they aren't: They're PalmOne PDAs.

And PalmSource, for its part, began talking about different versions of the Palm OS: Garnet, the version of Palm OS 5 running on the most advanced devices today; and Cobalt, the version previously known as Palm OS 6, which has yet to appear.

Eventually, PalmSource has said, it will be moving to a Linux-based OS because the Palm OS as it exists today simply isn't equipped to handle the advanced features that people have come to expect in PDAs. More recently, PalmSource has purchased a Chinese software company, China MobileSoft, with an eye towards developing mobile-phone operating systems that will look a little like the Palm OS but will have completely different underpinnings.

Anyway, the Palm name game is going to change in a major way: At the PalmSource mobile developers conference a few weeks ago, PalmOne CEO Ed Colligan announced that PalmOne has bought out PalmSource's share of the Palm brand holding company. That will allow PalmOne to make Palm PDAs again--and indeed, to change its name to Palm Inc. PalmSource gets to use the name Palm during a four-year transition period, but at some point the operating system won't be called the Palm OS anymore.

What's the impact going to be on Palm users? Well, for those who never stopped calling their PalmOne PDAs Palms, not much. Obviously this is one reason why PalmOne made the deal: Colligan believes most people think of a Palm as a piece of hardware. And as long as that hardware runs the OS they expect, most people probably don't care whether that OS is called Palm or Garnet or Joe Schmoe.

It's a little more problematic for people who were interested in Palm-based devices from third-party Palm OS licensees. How do you communicate to prospective customers that your software is what gives a device the look and feel associated with Palms, without mentioning the word Palm? You can argue that the development and marketing of such devices doesn't appear to be a booming business these days. Sony, you'll remember, quit offering Clies. But what about companies that might want to develop competitors to PalmOne's Treo?

Meanwhile, taken from the other direction, what's to stop PalmOne (or Palm, by then) to sell me a device that doesn't have the OS formerly known as Palm on it? In theory, at least, PalmOne could start offering Palms based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.

In short, the coming branding transition could make things confusing for Palm buyers--particularly for people who are upgrading and have to worry about support for legacy applications. PalmOne has a four-year deal to continue licensing PalmSource operating systems, so there's no cause for immediate alarm, but down the road we'll all have to pay closer attention to what's in a Palm.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121184,tk,dn060905X,00.asp

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US Air Force considering 'weapons of tomorrow'

May 25, 2005 01:20 ISTLast Updated: May 25, 2005 02:11 IST
The United States Air Force is testing 'weapons of tomorrow' including space weapons and an experimental microsatellite with the capability to disrupt other nations' military satellites. There is also a proposal to build a global strike space plane that can carry munitions halfway around the world in 45 minutes, and a 'Rods From God' programme that can hurl dense metal rods at targets on the ground with the force of a small nuclear weapon. Other programmes will use laser beams or radio waves to disable targets, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

While the Air Force is focused on the future, with no credible opposition or potential in the air, the Pentagon is already using devices which would disrupt Iraqi insurgent attempts to set off deadly roadside bombs by remote control. The devices shipped from the US can interfere with the enemy's radio waves so that the bombs would not go off.

Weapons in space worries The New York Times which, in an editorial on Tuesday, called on Congress and the Bush administration to assess whether a multilateral treaty to ban space weapons might not leave the nation far safer than a unilateral drive to put the first weapons in space.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/may/25us.htm

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India becoming e-Waste dustbin

NEW DELHI: Consider these facts and figures: More than 70 per cent of the electronic waste (e-waste) collected in Delhi's recycling units is actually exported or dumped by developed countries like the US. Despite a ban by the Central government, these countries illegally ship around 23,000 tonnes of e-waste every year to India and other countries in the subcontinent.

This alarming trend, among others, was revealed in a report presented by Toxics Link, a leading NGO working in toxics and waste issues, at a workshop organised by the Union ministry of environment and forests on Saturday. The ministry conducted a series of seminars to address some of the prevalent issues, on the occasion of World Environment Day on Sunday.

According to environmentalists, e-w aste — generated from obsolete computers and discarded electronic components — contains over 1,000 different toxic substances like heavy metals, PVC plastics, brominated flame-retardants etc., harmful to human beings and the environment. In India, this was te is subjected to primitive and highly polluting recycling operations, which contaminate air, water and harms the health of workers.


Said Ravi Agarwal of Toxics Link: "We have been repeatedly stating that tonnes of e-waste are landing in various Indian ports for recycling. In the absence of access to customs data, this could never be verified. The report, however, squarely indicts developed countries like the US and UK."

As for solutions, Agarwal stressed a proper framework before working on a concrete plan of action. He said: "Broadly, there are a few issues that need to be addressed. Instead of coming out with the latest products every now and then, the computer industry should focus on products that last longer. That way, there will be lesser dumping of components."

A large amount of ewaste is being imported to India because it is cheaper to recycle it here. "The government needs to control or prohibit the movement of hazardous wastes to the country. We don't want to be the waste-bin of the world," said Agarwal.

Source: Kunal Doley - Times News Network [Sunday, June 05, 2005 09:11:09 Am]

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There's a Chinese in my alphabet soup

MUMBAI: Yet another Chinese product has hit the Mumbai market, but this one is a little more lofty than cheap toys or electronic goods. China is now offering itself as the new education destination, where one can get courses in everything from medicine, engineering, finance and economics to science and technology.

Chinese educationists from Tianjin, near Beijing, who are seeking Indian
students before their academic year begins in August, promise that the cost of education will be cheaper than that offered by other foreign countries. That's not all. English, and not Chinese, will be the language in which the courses will be taught.

"The minimum fee for any course will not exceed Rs 69,000 per year," said Wang Hong, vice-director, Tianjin Municipal Education commission, who, along with representatives of 17 universities in Tianjin, talked about Chinese universities and colleges at a five-star hotel in Andheri on Thursday.

As Beijing is already overcrowded with Chinese students, the country is now opening up Tianjin, about 120 km from the Chinese capital, to international students.

Universities like Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin Normal University,
Tianjin University of Finance and Technology, Tianjin University of Science and Technology and Nankai University are looking at Indian students who may wish to study there.

At last count, around 10,000 international students were studying in Tianjin, about 1,200 of them from India. "We have about 80 Indian students studying medicine at our university. Our textbooks, teaching and classroom interactions are all in English," said Han Rui, international affairs department, Tianjin Medical University. "In fact, most of the universities are sending their teachers to the UK to study the English language."

A four-year undergraduate course can cost Rs 92,000 per academic year while a Masters' course will be about Rs 1.38 lakh per year. A course in medicine can cost Rs 1.84 lakh per annum. "Our courses and certificates are valid in other countries, so students can get jobs easily," said Wang.

Traditional Chinese medicine is one course which the country is trying hard to sell to foreign students. "Every year we have more than 1,000 students from 20 countries studying traditional Chinese medicine," said Prof Xu Li, vice-dean, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Source - TIMES NEWS NETWORK - Sandhya Nair

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Generating Pythagorean Triples

There is a simple formula that gives all the Pythagorean triples.
Suppose that m and n are two positive integers, with m < n. Then n2 - m2, 2mn, and n2 + m2 is a Pythagorean triple. It's easy to check algebraically that the sum of the squares of the first two is the same as the square of the last one. Why is it that every triple can be generated in this manner? Here are the first few triples for m and n between 1 and 10.

Notice any patterns? m= 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ---+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ n= 2 [3,4,5] 3 [8,6,10] [5,12,13] 4 [15,8,17] [12,16,20] [7,24,25] 5 [24,10,26] [21,20,29] [16,30,34] [9,40,41] 6 [35,12,37] [32,24,40] [27,36,45] [20,48,52] [11,60,61] 7 [48,14,50] [45,28,53] [40,42,58] [33,56,65] [24,70,74] [13,84,85] 8 [63,16,65] [60,32,68] [55,48,73] [48,64,80] [39,80,89] [28,96,100] [15,112,113] 9 [80,18,82] [77,36,85] [72,54,90] [65,72,97] [56,90,106] [45,108,117] [32,126,130] [17,144,145] 10 [99,20,101] [96,40,104] [91,60,109] [84,80,116] [75,100,125] [64,120,136] [51,140,149] [36,160,164] [19,180,181]

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Microsoft sued for stealing software - May 18 2005 by Reuters

Microsoft illegally took technology used to link spreadsheet data between two of its programs from a Guatemalan inventor, lawyers said during opening statements at a jury trial that started on Tuesday.

In a lawsuit, Carlos Armando Amado said he filed a patent application in 1990 for software that links Microsoft's Excel program with its Access database application via a single spreadsheet, and that he unsuccessfully tried to sell it to Microsoft two years later.
Amado is seeking damages that could exceed $500m in the lawsuit filed in the US District Court of Central California.

Microsoft began using his software without permission in various versions of Access, such as Access 95, 97, 2000 and 2002, according to Amado, who said he created the technology while he was a graduate student at Stanford University.

The suit did not specify a figure for damages, but Amado's attorneys estimated that it was about $2 per software copy sold, which would equal about half a billion dollars based on the software sold to date.

Joel Freed, Microsoft's attorney, disputed Amado's claims, saying Microsoft started working on such technology in 1989, three years before Amado approached the software giant with his idea.
At issue is a technology that lets computer users transfer data back and forth between Excel and Access by using a spreadsheet.

Freed said the plaintiff had recreated the data transfer for the courtroom. "It's never happened with anyone outside this courtroom," he said.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company currently has about 35 other patent infringement suits pending. The jury trial is expected to last two weeks.

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Open source apps given to millions in India - by Ingrid Marson May 26 2005

OpenOffice and Firefox included on freely distributed CDs...
The Indian government is trying to encourage the use of computers across the country by distributing free CDs that contain localised versions of popular open source applications.

The government has started distributing CDs containing Tamil-language versions of various open source applications, including the Firefox browser, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite and the Columba email client. It plans to freely distribute 3.5 million copies of the CD to Tamil speakers worldwide, according to RKVS Raman, a researcher at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, an organisation involved in the production of the CD.


Raman said the CDs are in considerable demand, following a newspaper and television advertising campaign last month. "We have had a tremendous response to this [initiative]," he said. "In the first two weeks of the campaign we got about 100,000 hits daily on the website offering CDs, and about two to three thousand downloads [of Tamil-language applications]. We have already sent out around 50,000 CDs and have a backlog of 35,000." Once the requested CDs have been sent out, further copies of the CDs will be distributed with computer magazines and newspapers, according to Raman.

Even the President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam, has taken an interest in the project and met the team involved in the production of the CD earlier this month.

The next stage of the project is to distribute CDs containing applications in Hindi, the national language of India. This stage will be launched on 21 June and is likely to involve more than the 3.5 million CDs earmarked for the current phase, said Raman. Eventually, the government plans to release CDs in all of the 22 official languages of India.

Raman believes open source software brings two main advantages to the Indian population - cost, and the freedom to modify the software. "We are sometimes not comfortable with Western user interfaces - they don't make sense in our culture, particularly for rural people who haven't had much access to technology. If we want to modify the software we have to have access to the code," he said.

The Indian government's decision to ship free software in this way is likely to be a blow to Microsoft, which plans to release a low-cost version of Windows in India soon. Microsoft originally hoped to release its Windows XP Starter Edition - a low-cost, feature-restricted version of Windows XP - by the end of March, but is now aiming for a June release.

Ingrid Marson writes for ZDNet UK

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Story of Sun Microsystem's StarOffice

StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000.

Future versions of StarOffice software, beginning with 6.0, have been built using the OpenOffice.org source, APIs, file formats, and reference implementation. Sun continues to sponsor development on OpenOffice.org and is the primary contributor of code to OpenOffice.org. CollabNet hosts the website infrastructure for development of the product and helps manage the project.

The OpenOffice.org source code includes the technology which Sun Microsystems has been developing for the future versions of StarOffice(TM) software. The source is written in C++ and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality, including Java(TM) APIs. This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing use of the suite as separate applications or as embedded components in other applications. Numerous other features are also present including XML-based file formats and other resources.

Source: http://about.openoffice.org/

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At 30, I am richer than most IIT/ IIM grads - Rishiraj Nath

June 01, 2005

I have always understood that success is hard to get at the 'right time'. That is when a student really needs to work hard. My schooling was at Central School, a very simple school in New Delhi. I was always notorious at school for cheating and bunking classes. My average score was 44 percent. I never got more than 35 percent in Hindi and Sanskrit, but I always managed to pass all examinations.

I would dream of driving a Ford Mustang GT, which I would watch from bus stands during my school days. Whenever I bunked school, I would to go near the embassies to pass time, watch the lovely cars with blue number plates (which all embassy cars have), watch the free movies they showed and attend their festivals.

Class X. I managed to get a first class. Two years passed by. I had no idea what to do.
I did not appear for any entrance exam. I scored 57 percent in Physics-Chemistry-Mathematics in Class XII. The world was dark for me. I was not even eligible to appear for many entrance exams.

My parents were good enough to understand I had some potential. As the youngest of three, my parents did not want me to waste time preparing for entrance exams. Coming from an engineer's family, they requested me to study engineering.

I managed to get an admission at the Poona University-affiliated Maharashtra Institute of Technology, only because my father paid Rs 125,000 from his PPF savings. My father told me: 'I am giving all my PPF savings only because I want to fulfil my responsibility of being your father'. 'If you pass your engineering exams,' he continued, 'and start to earn, I would be very happy.' He also said, 'If you can stand on your own feet, please come back or keep in touch. Else, don't show your face.' He paid my fees and expenses for four years at Pune.

I majored in Petroleum Engineering. No one really wants to study Petroleum Engineering -- that's why I got in. I was lucky to get a seat. I had no idea what the field was all about. I had visions of having to work at petrol pumps later on.

My Mechanical/ Electrical/ Computers and other counterparts would always taunt me that I would have to work at a petrol pump. Of course, I found I would have nothing to do with petrol or petrol pumps. I worked hard and topped the Petroleum Department with 78%. During the campus interviews, Schlumberger, the leading oil services company, offered me a job at $80,000 per annum with four months vacation every year. My friends who taunted me ended up with jobs in Indian companies with starting salary of Rs 4,000.

After two months of work, I would come home to Delhi for a month. I started my career in France and visited 30 countries in the course of my job. In two years, I had a car, two houses, enough bank balance. I was only 23 years old then. Life got a little boring because I had all my needs and luxuries covered. I then decided to do a Masters in the UK in Petroleum Engineering. I went to Heriot Watt University, and graduated with a 3.8 GPA.

I now work with a French oil company. I work for six weeks in Paris or London and I come back to India for six. I also have an insurance package of $401,000, which can be claimed anywhere in the world. Today I am 30, married, with nine years of experience working abroad. I have never worked in India.

I am neither an IIT graduate nor an MBA holder. When I compare myself with the IIT/ IIM or any other software engineering graduate my age abroad, I feel happy. I have seen how they live, how miserly they are, how they have to save money.

I have also started Archana Petroleum Scholarship, after my mother. It helps economically backward students at the Poona University Petroleum Department.

- source rediffmail.com

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