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MPEG-4 Part 2 is a video compression technology developed by MPEG. It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standard (ISO/IEC 14496-2). It is a discrete cosine transform compression standard, similar to previous standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. Several popular codecs including DivX, Xvid and Nero Digital are implementations of this standard.

If you were looking for MP4/Mpeg4 Part 10  CoreAVC vs FFmpeg video codec performance review then click here

Codecs:

Though there are several codecs that perform the encoding owing to the universal use of this encoding in dvds, common implementations are Nero, Divx, Xvid etc. Among these arguably the most popular codecs are Xvid and Divx. We will be seeing side by side comparison of both in the article. You can find both codecs individual history on their wiki pages. I find the history of Divx quite amusing,They adopted their name Divx to mock a company that used to charge users for viewing by the hour and themselves used spyware in their later version hence becoming a subject of mockery. You might have already noticed that “Xvid” is “Divx” backwards.

I will talk of decoding performance here. Decoding probably makes much more sense to a normal user as encoding is done by few but everybody decodes videos. Decoding is quite a subjective criteria hence besides my own comments I have also attached screenshots that allow the user to make his/her own judgment. The codecs were taken from Final build site.

Xvid

There is a very good chance that any video that you come across is encoded with Xvid. Across my search of encoders I found Xvid is the most preferred one for encoding. Its opensource hence free, much more configurable hence lets you draw the last byte’s worth. Though it seems logical that if video is encoded with encoder its respective decoder should also be the best, however I found the results didn’t fare as I expected.

Divx

The good old closed source version. Divx is costly and costing is on per PC basis hence encoding costly. Decoding can be done for free using their web player. The pro version is not free however there are other ways of using the codec in Media Player classic shipped with Klite Codec as explained below.

Here is the screenshot of Gspot codec analyzation. This provides the codec information with which the file was encoded in:

Important things that can be highlighted from the Gspot codec is

1. Video Encoding was done by Divx version 5.1.1

2. Audio Encoding was done by MPEG-1 Layer 3 more popularly known as MP3

3. The default resolution is 352×272 and should be judged at that resolution

Further information can also be seen from the screenshot

PS: you can also use other codec information utils like AVI codec etc.

Following are the screenshots taken from the video with different filters(All the left screenshots are Divx and right ones are Xvid)

Click the pics and view them at full-size and compare them. As the videos clearly depicted the Divx Filter far outperforms Xvid Filter in visual apeal.

There is a very important decoder that I have not mentioned here, that is the FFmpeg decoder(default decoder in most open players like mplayer, media player classic and vlc). This decoder generally uses libavcodec to decode the media files and even though the performance is not as good as the above decoders but it is good enough but the difference in CPU usage is extreme. Ex for a normal movie where Divx and Xvid take as much as 25-30% CPU usage, FFmpeg will take barely 10-15%. So if its quality you are looking for then look no further than Divx but for performance nobody matches FFmpeg

So overall the results are quite ambigous. If you are looking for quality then Divx, for free encoding/decoding Xvid and for decoding performance FFmpeg . You can download the filters from here, and you can learn how to switch your filter from here. So what are you going to do with your player???

MPEG-4 is used for AV data for web (streaming media) and CD distribution, voice (telephone, videophone) and broadcast television applications.MPEG-4 adds new features such as (extended) VRML support for 3D rendering, object-oriented composite files (including audio, video and VRML objects), support for externally-specified Digital Rights Management and various types of interactivity. AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) was standardized as an adjunct to MPEG-2 (as Part 7) before MPEG-4 was issued.The key parts to be aware of are MPEG-4 part 2 (MPEG-4 SP/ASP, used by codecs such as DivX, Xvid, Nero Digital and 3ivx and by Quicktime 6) and MPEG-4 part 10 (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, used by the x264 codec, by Nero Digital AVC, by Quicktime 7, and by next-gen DVD formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc).

If you were looking for MPEG 4 Part 2/ AVI video codec performance review: Divx vs Xvid then click here

Codecs:

As told previously 2 parts of MPEG-4 format are popular. There are several codecs available that implement  MPEG-4 with different level of perfection, popular ones are Quicktime(Part 10), FFmpeg(Part 10), Xvid(Part 2), Divx(Part 2) and CoreAVC(Part 10). After consulting several forums, I found 2 of those very talked about CoreAVC and FFmpeg. I have compared the 2 codecs below.

FFmpeg

Whether you are a codec geek or not, this is the most probable codec that you have been using since time  immemorial.  Its free, opensource, can allow a lot of tweaking, plays a major number of containers and codecs. I will try not to go beyond H.264 in this article but one thing is for sure, whether you are using CoreAVC or not, you definitely have to use FFmpeg due to its overwhelmingly large number of codec compatibility.

CoreAVC

Its a closed source alternative for decoding H.264, infact its one of the accepted formats for Blue-ray. When it came out it astonished everyone with the sheer speed and performance outputs. Its known to exceed several hardware implementations (reminds me of John Carmack implementation of square root in Quake 3 which was faster than FPU). Corecodec people call it the fastest codec on earth.(and I am nobody to argue).

Left one is CoreAVC and right is FFmpeg

Doesnt take a rocket scientist to notice that better one. However when I discussed this on outside forums, I faced considerable shouting and screaming so I did more tweaking and testing and found another bit of information that convinced me to use CoreAVC for good.
Left is CoreAVC and right is FFmpeg.
Top is W/O post processing and bottom is with Post Processing

Difference between CPU usage when using FFmpeg and CoreAVC is huge. It can be seen from the above CPU usage or by seeing CPU cycles consumption . Considering that I have a Core 2 duo system with 1.8Ghz this difference is a substantial one, infact with preprocessing the player hung at 100% cpu usage in FFmpeg.

I found out to my amazement that Corecodecs are actually the fastest codecs in the world. I used all possible codecs at my disposal(VLC, ffmpeg, quicktime, windows media player and Nero) but CoreAVC not only gave better performance compared to all of them but also astonishingly smooth one at that. I ran it on 1080p trailer of 10000BC on MPC using quicktime alternative(had to rename .mov to .hdmov to use coreAVC) and performance was mind boggling.
Bottomline, I’d suggest you one thing. just go right now to Final build site and download the coreavc format and start using it. You can find out how to do that here.

If you are dissatisfied with the codec used by your Media Player classic to decode your videos you can easily switch them to other codecs.

Step 1:

Decide the codec you wanna use. There are considerable number of guides available on this on the net. I have found doom9 forum quite helpful and informative.

MPEG 4 part 2/ AVI codec review: Divx vs Xvid here

H.264/ MP4/ HD codec review: CoreAVC vs FFmpeg here

Step 2:

Download the codec. Though there are several sites that provide opensource codecs for free, there are few that provide closed source too.  I have found Final build site to be quite good and provides almost all codecs. If you dont have any codecs at all I do suggest you to install Klite codec Pack and have some basic codecs to start with.

Step 3:

If you have started using Media Player classic without any change then you are most probably using FFmpeg codecs. These are very good codecs and use libavcodec for most of the decoding. It decodes most formats however not all of them perfectly. Now that you have your new filter installed.

1. Open the options window in media player classic(by pressing ‘o’ or through right click menu )
2. Go to External filters option. Now in the right side of the window select Add Filter
3. You will get an elaborate window with a plethora of options. Select your codec
   1. If your codec is not available there you will have to put a little more stress. Open the folder that your codec installed in.
   2. find a file with .ax extension in that folder and put it in filters folder inside Klite Codec Pack folder
   3. Now you should click browse in the bottom left of codec window and select the filter inside filters folder. You can browse to select ax file from the folder it was installed but needlessly adds a dependency.
4. After selecting that filter go the right of the window and click Prefer among the 3 options(prefer, block and merit)

Eureka your filter is changed, you have a better video already!!!

Service Pack 3 download locations have been revealed. You can download them from the following locations

Windows XP Service Pack 3 English
Windows XP Service Pack 3 Simplified Chinese
Windows XP Service Pack 3 German
Windows XP SP3 French
Windows XP SP3 Russian
Windows XP SP3 Japanese

These are official windows update links.

Courtesy: Ghacks

Recently, I came across this problem of adding a scripting interface to an application that we were developing as a part of our term project. Let me describe more details about the project and the problem. The project that we were working on is all about generating Random Graphs and their analysis. A little research for libraries that would simplify our task yeilded an open source gem JUNG. As this post is neither about JUNG nor opensource I would try to talk as little as possible about their coolness. Some serious effort for a couple of days from my beloved friend Praveen resulted in this java beast.

The app has more tools for network analysis than this simple visualization like plotting the Degree Distribution Vs Rank, Pk Vs k, Clustering Coefficient Vs Rank, Betweenness centrality Vs Rank plots. Despite this much effort we are not confident about getting the best possible grade due to the lack of good innovation ( I guess I am talking big here). So, here comes the small innovation. The networks that we analyse are generated using standard models like Barabási–Albert (BA) model, Erdős–Rényi model etc. In this way the application is limited and finds little use as these models had been analysed fully in every possible angle. So the application needs to support new models. But, writing code for each and every model is too complex and inefficient. The obvious path then would be to somehow express a network. The simplest way for the end user would be to express the network in english :). But poor computers yet donot understand english completely. So, the alternative is to ask the user to express the network in a language that computers can understand. The essence is that we need a scripting interface to express the network in our application. A single problem can have more than one solution and with opensource its more true. After all opensource is about choice. We had a couple of alternatives for this problem too. There are lots of embeddable scripting languages at our disposal.

We finally decided to pick java for this purpose. The solution that we picked might seem odd as it comes second to last in the scriptometer rankings. But, it has its own benefits. The obvious thing is the simplicity and elegance of the soultion.

1. There is no need for us to learn a new language
2. There are no integration costs. ( If you have missed the point, we programmed the whole application in java itself )

Once we have decided that the end user expresses the network in java, we need to chalk out a solution for running his network model to generate the set of vertices and edge. The problem boils down to two things

1. Compile the code that he has written from the application itself.
2. Execute his code to generate the network graph.

So how do you compile java code from java application. There are two solutions to this problem too. The first one is using an undocumented java class com.sun.tools.javac.Main. The other solution is to use a more standard and documented api available from java 1.6 onwards. We chose the earlier one as the final application has to run on a machine with only java 1.5, though that means using undocumented and unsupported functions. Time for some real java

String[] optionsAndSources = {”Synthesis.java”};

try{
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter( new FileWriter( “C:\\out.txt” ) );
int status = Main.compile( optionsAndSources, out );
System.out.println( “status: ” + status );

} catch(IOException e){
System.err.println(”The file cannot be opened “+e);
}

Remeber to include the tools.jar shipped with the jdk in the classpath. Main.compile is basically a wrapper over the javac ( javac is not required on the machine running this application. ). It does the real job of compiling the java source code and producing the class file. The arguments are self explanatory.

Once the class file is generated it has to be executed. This process is much simpler and doesnt require any undocumented classes ( aah releif !! ). Java has a class called Class. Instances of the class Class represent classes and interfaces in a running Java application. One can create a new instance of any class using the member function newInstance(). Once a new instance is created it has to be typecasted into a class that the compiler knows at compile time so that we can invoke its methods. So we have an abstract base class called Model that models all network models. Any network model defined by the user inherits this base class and also implements an abstract function defined in the base class Network called generate. Once a new instance of the user’s network model is created, it is typecasted to the base class Network and the generate method is called on this object to generate the network. More code follows …

Model obj=null;
try {
Class c = Class.forName(”UserModel”);
obj = (Model)(c.newInstance());
} catch (Exception e) {
/* Catching Exception for simplicity. */
System.err.println(”error while loading class”+e);
}
obj.instantiate();
obj.compute();

I would try to write more about creating an applet from this application and may be a link to the applet that we created in my next blog.

Well, you are an opensource user. Your geek rating is much higher than any of your other puny friends on facebook. You bask in the glory of being clean and untainted. But dont confuse being opensource as “not being evil”. The real trick is to use the good will of opensource and still use it for your nefarious (defination) purposes. Behold the sins of Opensource and how/where to use it in your own company:

1. As Strategy (aka Greed): Most evil are those who employ opensource as a strategy, this not only allows them to publisize there product but also gives them a GNU loving status. Google like always leading the way with Google Gears and Libjingle. By making Gears opensource it caused a 3 way effect
   1. It allowed the people to look into the code and ensure that there are no google spies sitting in it, hence building trust.Without this nobody would opt for it
   2. It also became instant favorite to all those who hate The Microsoft way, giving them the satisfaction of using an opensource alternative on an opensource platform(firefox).
   3. Allowing other people to step in with it and start making more tools to replace more softwares(ZOHO, Offline WIkipedia etc)

   So using it as a stratigic weapon you can assasinate a lot more quickly than otherwise.

2. As a User (aka Gluttony): You reading this blog in firefox and me writing it in wordpress doesnt make things a whole lot better. If you have used a product of opensource and have never cared to:
   1. Submit a bug report.
   2. donate for it(and are never planning to).
   3. Contribute back.

   then you are evil. You are another one of those selfish people who just wanna use the product for free and run away with the benifits. I wouldnt blame you for it but we are all sinners

3. As a developer(aka Pride): If you are a developer associated with a opensource community because of any of the following reasons then you are also a sinner:
   1. Even if you see your own project suffering because of unsufferable GUI, you still stand by and keep working on core internal library which is already ruthlessly efficient. Since GUI is one of the most boring things to work on you choose to ignore it and because of that your project suffers. This is the sin that leads to poor interfaces of so many opensource software.
   2. You have been laid off, and just want to code to keep your skills sharp and to build your CV and have no interest in the concept of “greater good” and benifit of all man kind.
4. As a startup(aka Sloth): If you are a startup or for that matter any company and you are using opensource software because of any of the reasons then you are also sinners:
   1. Using your expert skills you are able to disprove Microsoft’s TCO model and use opensource as cheap software.
   2. Use plenty of opensource tools in your company but have never released any of the scripts etc neither have cared enough to put even a simple logo on your official site.
   3. You rely of free service of opensource community that is 10 times larger than that of any company’s support staff.
   4. Worse are all are those developers who use the free experience provided by opensource community in development of features that they eventually want to put in there own software(best oppurtunity is GSOC).

Disclaimer: I’d like to apologize to anybody who feels offended. This article fundamentally represents how opensource is practically being used by different catagory of people(coders, users and companies). There are several other ways of employing/deploying opensource which will be discussed in future articles.

“Google is more like us than anything that we have ever competed before.”

This famous quote about Google is by none other than Bill Gates himself. Microsoft is one of the biggest and fastest growing giant, the world has ever seen. The reach of Microsoft in various fields is inspiring. With a steady product range and effective marketing strategy, Microsoft is poised to become bigger and better by the day. Google is a relative new comer and often underestimated in comparison to Microsoft. True Google has an entirely different revenue model and ideology but that ideology to organize the world’s information is the key to success of Google in the fields where Microsoft has been unable to leave a footprint.

Everybody knows that Web is growing at a rapid rate. Over 5.4 million new sites are put up monthly and the success of Google in monetizing this exponential growth has made Google the fastest growing company in the history of the world. . The growth of internet will inevitably have far reaching consequences than earlier predicted. It has already started pushing more and more desktop functionality to the internet making all our information available everywhere. Google has anticipated this trend and has started developing applications to mimic the desktop functionality. No spreadsheet in the world will provide you with infinite rows and columns like Google spreadsheet, and no hard disk can provide potentially infinite video storage space like the way YouTube does. The consequences don’t stop there. Ads were well known to the real world till Google came along with state of the art Adsense. Now the traditional video ads that we are so familiar with on television are being replicated in Adsense. Your friend circle has migrated on the web, your college facebook, your mails, your calendar, even you yourself can now have a second life.

There are no two ways about it. Google has not only pioneered the IT revolution it is leading it with an online revenue generation of over 16.59 billion dollars, if that’s not enough then check this out; Google owns about 5% sites in the world that’s 77 million sites worldwide. Only those companies will continue to succeed which are backed by effective research and the best employees. Microsoft is renowned for its efforts in research and work culture. Microsoft has come up with products which have ensured its continued capture on existing market. Google is not far behind with its unique way of promoting research among its employees. I am of course talking about the 20% free time, which is an integral part of Google’s company policy. Using this Google has targeted the researcher in its employees. This free time has lead to numerous products which are in main stream for Google like Orkut, Gmail and even the popular Adsense. This unique work culture also has been the key to attract the best employees around the globe. Not only this, If you are wish to know in depth about any field the best lecture you can find is probably Google tech talks. Google tech talks are available on Google videos on almost all fields (Bio fuel, Second life to begin with). People who talk are from variety of backgrounds and are generally the forerunners in their field.

Those who claim that Google is not the next Microsoft have perhaps not observed the striking similarity between the acquisitions undertaken by Google in the recent years and that of Microsoft in the early 90s. Microsoft undertook major acquisitions in process of its growth targeting a vast array of companies. The companies’ skill set ranged from Business Intelligence to server virtualization.

Microsoft’s aggressive takeovers were the backbone of its strong and innovative lineup of software. Google also is actively acquiring companies with a wide agenda in mind. It has acquired companies like Double click to improve its existing ad services and it has also acquired companies like Android to expand into mobile devices thereby diversifying its target market.

Anybody who has observed the growth of Microsoft knows that acquisitions were not the only way Microsoft grew. It undertook major alliances with companies such as Dell, IBM. A prime alliance methodology was the OEM alliance, this alliance helped Microsoft to capture the desktop market. Google has also learned from this and started alliances with a wide array of companies. For example the alliance with Airtel in India, Apple iPhone in US and the major alliance with Firefox which ships Google as a default search in over 150 million browsers worldwide. This shows that it has the business acumen to compete with Microsoft and even outsmart it.

A major speculation made on Google is that its state in the market is fragile, owing to the one-dimensional success that it has established till now. However I would like to point out that Google is not as fragile as they think. There are several reasons for it.

1. Google shows interest in competing startups and acquire them if they show promising talent, for example YouTube.
2. Google has always stimulated diversification by keeping its employees in small groups imitating the research groups kept in the best universities in the world.
3. A typical misconception about Google is that it leads the market solely because of its powerful search. Very few people know about its Map Reduce. What is this Map Reduce? Imagine the power to organize millions of bytes of information in a matter of seconds. The power that enables Google to process over 20 Peta bytes of information daily. This magic sauce allows Google to quickly test out its innovative ideas in matter of days faster than anybody else in the world. Taking this amazing algorithm in account, who’s to say that Google won’t venture into as many dimensions as Microsoft if not more?

Reaching the heights to which Microsoft has reached is an ambitious target. There are very few companies in the world that can achieve what Microsoft has done in the software market. There is always the chance that Google may also fail to do so, but I think that it does have the right mix of ingredients to become a Microsoft or even topple it.

PS: I could talk about how Microsoft and Google both are being sued for antitrust or how both have shown monopolist tendencies, but I believe that this point of view would not weaken my cause but would also not be credible. Just because Google has made the same mistake as Microsoft in a juncture of its corporate lifetime does not prove or disprove that Google will become the next Microsoft.

MP4

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/f27853y2/iphone/972345688g_1_ip.mp4

3gp

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/f27853y2/iphone/972345688g_1_ip.3gp

Well there are no 2 ways about it, the world is entering the age of data and even if you want to protect data, you inevitably have to provide it to sites/insurance salesman/girlfriend/devil. While the latter 3 are not so harmful the first one can be quite a death threat. So how to ensure that your account has not been hacked and your life stolen from under your feet:

• GMAIL hacked:
  

  Open your Gmail account settings and check your filters. If you find a weird filter which was not made by you , then your account was HACKED.

  This was a nifty little trick to hack the gmail javascript and add a filter that sends mails as designated by the hacker to a particular account. The emails are also deleted hence you cannot retrieve them. Moreinfo here. (Google has fixed the vulnerability but if your account was hacked you will still have to manually correct it). Curse google for not being a little more vocal about it and tell its users.

• Google reader hacked:
  

  Go to your google reader and unshare all items

  Okay Okay the reader is not hacked but Google has started its new share feature that not only allows you to force your shared items on your friends “All items” list, but also to all the folks that you have ever contacted(mailed, send gtalk request to). So if are privy about your shared items in any other mode (besides all and none) you cannot do so with current Google reader settings. There are workarounds(http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/managing-your-shared-items.html) but I am more of a better safe then sorry kind of guy

• Taking over of double click:
  

  Pray

  Google’s attempt to buy out display ad service DoubleClick has received the approval of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), although it still faces European antitrust scrutiny(I trust in Europe).
  The £1.56 billion deal has been heavily-criticized for potentially reducing the options open to web marketers and endanger web user privacy. There is nothing you can do about that except pray to god that the big brother(Google) doesn’t take over

• What privacy??
  

  “you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services”

  Ya thats true for Picasa, Google groups and many such services, including google apps.

• General privacy concern:
  

  Well, use MSN atleast you’ll die in peace

  http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-553961 I don’t think more needs to be said

There are many other threats out there to privacy. But bottom line is that in this age of data, stricter privacy laws are in demand, because as you can see from above not much can be done to protect your data(besides not using the service at all). Protection of IP needs to take front row, the more social we get , more problems will emerge. So you can either put your head in sand and hope that your data is not being used, or stand up straight and take action.

What does scripting languages like php, Perl, python offer over compiled languages? Well if you ask me i would say the ease of development. Make a change in the code and then see the change reflected quickly. This is one of the main reason why scripting is preferred in the web environment. Majority of the websites these days are powered by php in the LAMP stack. Performance of scripted language is far lower than any compiled binary. Compare that with the ASP.NET. The scripts are compiled into MSIL and run on the .NET runtime. Even without caching the ASP framework is almost 2-3 times faster than the Apache on php with mysql. I am not a MS fan-boy nor an open source evangelist.  I had the privilege on doing extensive development on both platforms. There are times when i wished for a platform which had the best of both worlds. When php scores on flexibility for advanced developers. ASP.NET scores on its default ability to separate UI from Logic. Enough of this Web programming. Let me get into what i started out to do.

I had been working on a .NET project where  a DLL A.dll is being used by two different applications. On one application i create an object of a class C inside A.dll, fill its members and serialize it into a binary stream using the standard .NET serializer  and save it into a file. On the second application when i get a request to load the data from the file, I dynamically load the Assembly A.dll. Then i open the file that i saved the byte dump then deserialized it back into an object of the class. Sounds easy, Not so… I was getting an Exception.
System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException: Unable to find assembly ‘A’. 

Then i compiled the dll with the application and checked whether its working.  I then got another exception while casting the Deserialized object into a variable of type A.C

Unable to cast type A.C into A.C. 

What the hell!!!  That was my first impression. This was one of the least helpful messages the Visual Studio debugger threw at me. I then tried searching for related resources online in vain.  That’s when i came across this elegant solution involving AppDomains and Serialization Binders. Needless to say my deserialization worked on the dynamically loaded assembly. You can find more details about creating AppDomains here.

I am attaching my C# code below. Hope this proves helpful to you. Look at the serialization binder class in the Deserialize function. The binder class allows you to change the type to which you want to deserialize the byte array to.

public static byte[] Serialize(Object o){           
 MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
 BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
 formatter.AssemblyFormat
     = System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.FormatterAssemblyStyle.Simple;
 formatter.Serialize(stream, o);
 return stream.ToArray();
}
public static Object BinaryDeSerialize(byte[] bytes){
  MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(bytes);
  BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
  formatter.AssemblyFormat 
      = System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.FormatterAssemblyStyle.Simple;
  formatter.Binder 
      = new VersionConfigToNamespaceAssemblyObjectBinder();
  Object obj = (Object)formatter.Deserialize(stream);
  return obj;
}
internal sealed class VersionConfigToNamespaceAssemblyObjectBinder : SerializationBinder {
  public override Type BindToType(string assemblyName, string typeName) {
   Type typeToDeserialize = null;
   try{
     string ToAssemblyName = assemblyName.Split(',')[0];
     Assembly[] Assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies();
     foreach (Assembly ass in Assemblies){
       if (ass.FullName.Split(',')[0] == ToAssemblyName){
           typeToDeserialize = ass.GetType(typeName);
           break;
       }
     }
   }
   catch (System.Exception exception){
     throw exception;
   }
   return typeToDeserialize;
  }
}

The period between 2000 and 2004 had Intel and its rival AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) beefing up their silicon platters with more and more transistors. With Intel winning the GHz Race (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/tsearch/gigahertz+1ghz+barrier.htm).

Both Intel and AMD continued to push forward in their race to beat the 2Ghz. The main stream consumers suffered frequent system shutdowns owing to their molten cpus. It was not until the exploding athlon on Toms Hardware that AMD realized that they needed to get back to the drawing board. Out came the AMD64bit line of cpus. The Intel camp also were busy melting the silicon wafers.  Still the gigahertz race was on. The heated cpu cores from their prescot line of Pentium 4 processor showed the inevitable futility of the Gigahertz race. There was a big lull period during 2004 and 2005 during which both Intel and AMD couldnt push their processor speeds and ratings past the 4Ghz. That was when the giants realized that one core is retro and multi core is the new Pentium.

Putting more and more cores on a single die means more power consumption. Power efficient processor designs decreases the cost to run data centers and huge computing clouds. Given the fact that we would be running out of oil in the next few decades. Its onus own our part to decrease our energy consumption

Here is some of the recent developments of an economy conscious about power usage.

• Apple to adopt Intel’s ultra-mobile PC platform : This is an exclusive report of Apple insider. A 1 Watt processor is going to bring a paradigm shift in the way we use computers. Something which is already shaken by the apple iPhone. It is going to make mobile platform as the main stay in computation.
• Solid State Hard drives : These drives run at twice the speed with 10 times lower latency and more than 60% less power compared to top of the line hard disks of today. Mass adoption would hopefully bring the price down. Apple is already looking to put in their their mac book pro line of notebooks.
• MIT Students run super computer using pedal power : A virtual nuclear fusion reaction was modelled on a super computer running for 20 minutes on bicycle power pedalled by 10 cyclists from MIT. I wonder how they have time for all these pet projects between course work

GNU license (whether 1 or 2 or…) makes sense to few. But whats more important in this world is compatibility. As Linux grows, the arrogance of few are blocking the freedom that comes with it. Its sad when somebody giving something as “free” also wants people using it to be bound by their philosophy, its like a religion being forced upon others.

Recently bought a PCI-express gigabit ethernet card(Agere chipset ET1310)].  I put it in linux (secretly  praying for a stable driver), reboot and pop goes ubuntu, restricted driver found, turns out the restricted driver is put up, under BSD license. And so another day goes by where ubuntu saves countless hours of setup time and futile searching and debugging, thanx to a few people who can accept other people for not following their philosophy as bible.

Microsoft has released the release client of  its latest service pack 3 here. I cant find anything new in it(despite several claims) … and definately none of the highly desired features are released(complete details in white paper)

Though the improved Wifi security is bound to be an essential  upgrade, but some of the basic ones like IE7 were left out .. Difficult to figure out ,what is going on in redmond these days (Copying in Vista! approve or deny  )

I’d prefer you get to know me by my work rather than some introduction(try identity 2.0 btw). This blog will encompass a broad range of interests, people interested in only subset can use tags to ensure that the right content reaches them. Important events in technology , personal management  and politics are likely to be discussed. Comment and let us know if you like something. lets start an see where it goes…

I once set out to start my own website and blog only to have it decorated and deserted in a weeks time. People ask me why now? why all of a sudden? Don’t you learn from past mistakes? Well two reasons… one to record my life and thoughts as i happen to enjoy both and have a multitude of the latter which would make sense once it is documented. The second being able to keep track of the interesting things that happen around me. Overburdened by the world wide web and inefficient storage of web- browsers. I chose to put up as a record the content out there hidden from common sight by the search engines(No bias here)

The concept of “Express yourself”, the anthem of the past century, a motto of the freedom movement, later passed as a law of rights in the legislatures and embossed into the constitutions of a democratic country and which danced into the limelights of the Hollywood by Madonna and that brought the mobile revolution in India through Airtel and forked the most powerful free press of the world by means of blogs which has lately used by Ithink app on facebook created by Minekey; all capture the inner desire of human beings for nothing but to express themselves. And that is my idea.