Internet telephony has changed a lot the way we communicate with our near ones. PC to PC calling has become incredibly simple with applications provided by Skype, Google, Yahoo and others. It is a very exciting thing for users like me to use these applications to make voice calls on the internet for free. But the whole thing I hate with the PC to PC calling is that I have to use a PC to call!
It would be too convenient if there can be a telephone set which just hooks on to the internet and can make voice calls using Skype.If everyone (at least most of everyone!) uses this kind of telephone set, phone calls can be completely free and you get unlimited talk time! No monthly rentals, no paying by the minute for your talk time, no distinction between local, or international calls since everything is free.All that it takes is internet bandwidth.So, If you pay your internet service provider, you are done with it!
This technology easily extends to mobile telephony by just having a WiFi enabled phone with the Skype running over it. So now you also have mobile phone free of charge! This technology also paves way for the video telephony which has remained a luxury with the traditional telephone.In summary, the future telephony will not only be completely free but also offer much much more than what we are are getting now.
Well, this is not at all a good news for all the telephone service providers. They will have to shut down their telephone service unit altogether and only provide broadband connections if this becomes a reality. They will lobby with the governments (read bribe them like crazy) to ensure that this technology does not become widespread.
It will be interesting days that are going to come which we can wait and watch. One day, the internet might become free too!
Monday, March 26, 2007
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Future of Windows Piracy
"Install genuine Windows. It costs only 10% of the hardware cost" There goes in an Ad asking people to buy genuine windows. But people here in this part of the world ask a more basic question. Why would I pay that 10% when I am getting it completely free?! Hmmm.. makes sense. And people are not deterred by the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) (Yes it is a genuine advantage for Microsoft!). They simply install SP2 for the XP and disable all auto updates. No home user that I have seen owns a genuine version of windows. There are exceptions who have bought laptops with XP bundled with it.
There will be some interesting developments here when Microsoft takes stricter anti piracy measures. I am very much sure that people here are not going to buy any future version of windows but wait for the pirated, hacked, cracked version of windows to get released. But, If windows becomes 100% hack free,
then it will lead to flourishing of other alternatives like linux.
Linux has already caught up with the people in here because computer usage is mostly by youngsters. These people are willing to learn, experiment and play around with these alternatives. So, that means, stricter anti piracy measures implies growth of OSs like linux.
This was one reason why Microsoft allowed piracy in countries like India and China (For Windows 95,98 2000...). Microsoft feared the emergence of Linux in these countries and allowed people to use Windows illegally. That means, he made the Americans, Europeans and others pay for the Chinese and Indian Windows users (If this were not to be the case, then MS would have gone into losses)!
But the question remains if MS is going to continue on this same strategy of doing charity in India and China!
There will be some interesting developments here when Microsoft takes stricter anti piracy measures. I am very much sure that people here are not going to buy any future version of windows but wait for the pirated, hacked, cracked version of windows to get released. But, If windows becomes 100% hack free,
then it will lead to flourishing of other alternatives like linux.
Linux has already caught up with the people in here because computer usage is mostly by youngsters. These people are willing to learn, experiment and play around with these alternatives. So, that means, stricter anti piracy measures implies growth of OSs like linux.
This was one reason why Microsoft allowed piracy in countries like India and China (For Windows 95,98 2000...). Microsoft feared the emergence of Linux in these countries and allowed people to use Windows illegally. That means, he made the Americans, Europeans and others pay for the Chinese and Indian Windows users (If this were not to be the case, then MS would have gone into losses)!
But the question remains if MS is going to continue on this same strategy of doing charity in India and China!
Why does Windows Vista require so much of hardware?
If you were to be asked what is that one thing you would want in the next release of Windows, what would your reply be? Well, I feel that any enterprise or home user would want one or all of these.
1) Better security from viruses, Trojan horses and million other badwares.
2) Better in terms of performance. Quicker response times, less resource hogs.
3) Better usability. More intuitive (not necessarily more colourful)
4) Stability. I don't want to update a "service pack" every week.
OK and now what is Microsoft planning to give its customers with Vista?
1) An OS which consumes as much hardware resources as you supply and still ask for more.
2) Fancy features like the "3D desktop" which is meant to be just eye candy.
3) Enhanced security features. But, You sill have to pay your antivirus vendor.
And why is MS doing this?
Well as I can see, MS has tied up with PC makers like Dell and HP and asked them to make "Windows Vista Capable" PCs. MS might have told its system architects "Implement whatever you feel like implementing. But let it consume lot of memory, require a dual core processor to run and refuse to run with even slightly old graphic cards(The ones manufactured 2 years ago)!!
This will automatically make even PCs that were bought 2 years back completely obsolete. Enterprise and home users invariably have to change their PCs to run the new fancy OS designed by MS. This results in a surge in PC sales and PC makers will make lot of money!
As a matter of fact major antivirus makers might also be paying royalties to MS for keeping enough security holes in the system!
1) Better security from viruses, Trojan horses and million other badwares.
2) Better in terms of performance. Quicker response times, less resource hogs.
3) Better usability. More intuitive (not necessarily more colourful)
4) Stability. I don't want to update a "service pack" every week.
OK and now what is Microsoft planning to give its customers with Vista?
1) An OS which consumes as much hardware resources as you supply and still ask for more.
2) Fancy features like the "3D desktop" which is meant to be just eye candy.
3) Enhanced security features. But, You sill have to pay your antivirus vendor.
And why is MS doing this?
Well as I can see, MS has tied up with PC makers like Dell and HP and asked them to make "Windows Vista Capable" PCs. MS might have told its system architects "Implement whatever you feel like implementing. But let it consume lot of memory, require a dual core processor to run and refuse to run with even slightly old graphic cards(The ones manufactured 2 years ago)!!
This will automatically make even PCs that were bought 2 years back completely obsolete. Enterprise and home users invariably have to change their PCs to run the new fancy OS designed by MS. This results in a surge in PC sales and PC makers will make lot of money!
As a matter of fact major antivirus makers might also be paying royalties to MS for keeping enough security holes in the system!
Sunday, February 11, 2007
The Google grid
Ever wondered if Google requires all that space that it promises the Gmail users? I mean does Google need 2 GB * (Number of Gmail users) amount of space on the disk? Well this discussion will prove that he does not need all that space and can still promise his users the 2 GB quota. But this is also an attempt to figure out how much roughly could be the minimum storage capacity required by Google for its Gmail users.
Assume that 'L' is the storage limit imposed by Google for its mail users.
Let S = Rate at which Google's storage increases per month
Let Ri = Initial average rate at which email volume increases in a mailbox
Let r = average rate at which email volume increases in a mailbox at any given time.
As the limit to mail per person is limited by L, it can be assumed that the average mail volume increases exponentially. It starts with an initial rate Ri and the mailbox finally reaches the volume limit.
Thus Consumption C per person = C = L(1-exp(-Ri*t/L)) --- (1)
The rate of mailbox size increase = r is the differentiation of (1) wrt t
r= Ri*exp(-Ri*t/L)
At any given point, the rate of Google's storage space increase should be greater than or equal to r.
Assuming equality, S=r,
S=Ri*exp(-Ri*t/L)
The current value of L is 2816 MB
Ri can be assumed to be 40 MB/Month/Person
At t = 24 months, S turns out to be 28.4 MB/Month/Person
Assume that there are roughly 40000000 Gmail users.
The the average storage capacity added to Google every month should be
40000000*28.4 = 1.1 Peta Bytes per month! (Peta = 10^15)
For the past 2 years, Google should have then amassed 24*1.1 = 26.4 Peta Bytes of storage space! As Google's storage is triple redundant, it should have around 80 Peta bytes of Hard disk space!!
Well there are too many approximations and assumptions in here. But it gives the magnitude of space that you should have/add to promise a free storage space of 2.8 GB.
This shows that if all Gmail users would use up all Google's space today, each user would end up getting only about 660 MB of space!
Assume that 'L' is the storage limit imposed by Google for its mail users.
Let S = Rate at which Google's storage increases per month
Let Ri = Initial average rate at which email volume increases in a mailbox
Let r = average rate at which email volume increases in a mailbox at any given time.
As the limit to mail per person is limited by L, it can be assumed that the average mail volume increases exponentially. It starts with an initial rate Ri and the mailbox finally reaches the volume limit.
Thus Consumption C per person = C = L(1-exp(-Ri*t/L)) --- (1)
The rate of mailbox size increase = r is the differentiation of (1) wrt t
r= Ri*exp(-Ri*t/L)
At any given point, the rate of Google's storage space increase should be greater than or equal to r.
Assuming equality, S=r,
S=Ri*exp(-Ri*t/L)
The current value of L is 2816 MB
Ri can be assumed to be 40 MB/Month/Person
At t = 24 months, S turns out to be 28.4 MB/Month/Person
Assume that there are roughly 40000000 Gmail users.
The the average storage capacity added to Google every month should be
40000000*28.4 = 1.1 Peta Bytes per month! (Peta = 10^15)
For the past 2 years, Google should have then amassed 24*1.1 = 26.4 Peta Bytes of storage space! As Google's storage is triple redundant, it should have around 80 Peta bytes of Hard disk space!!
Well there are too many approximations and assumptions in here. But it gives the magnitude of space that you should have/add to promise a free storage space of 2.8 GB.
This shows that if all Gmail users would use up all Google's space today, each user would end up getting only about 660 MB of space!
Friday, January 26, 2007
Evolution of the Digital Organisms
Millions of years into the future...... There is an alien invasion on earth. But don't worry
you don't have to sell your shares because the human species has gone extinct! The earth-landed aliens start exploring the earth for signs of life. But everything has gone completely dry and dead. Some amount of digging and they come across different kinds of fossils. Fossils of computing machines, robots, more and more intelligent machines....
Observing closer, they also see remnants of some other kind of "tools" that they presumed that would shape the intelligent machines. They conclude that the machines are the living organisms which evolved over a period of time. The aliens also reason out that the machines used the "tools" to actually make themselves better. They see the humans as the tools that the machines used to evolve themselves into better organisms!
We are already seeing the evolution of these machines and the important point is that the evolution has never been this fast. It took roughly 3 Billion years for the man to evolve
Whereas, it has not even taken 50 years for the intelligent machines that we are seeing today. Going by the natural process of evolution, it would have taken millions of years for such evolution to have happened. And now we see that people are making this evolution happen by working day in and out in front of computers, making them more intelligent, more integrated and filling them with more information. As i am publishing this blog, I am adding a small piece of information into this gigantic information warehouse which one day might act like a conscious, intelligent supermachine.
As I understand, it is nature's own way of speeding up the evolution process using humans as
a platform
you don't have to sell your shares because the human species has gone extinct! The earth-landed aliens start exploring the earth for signs of life. But everything has gone completely dry and dead. Some amount of digging and they come across different kinds of fossils. Fossils of computing machines, robots, more and more intelligent machines....
Observing closer, they also see remnants of some other kind of "tools" that they presumed that would shape the intelligent machines. They conclude that the machines are the living organisms which evolved over a period of time. The aliens also reason out that the machines used the "tools" to actually make themselves better. They see the humans as the tools that the machines used to evolve themselves into better organisms!
We are already seeing the evolution of these machines and the important point is that the evolution has never been this fast. It took roughly 3 Billion years for the man to evolve
Whereas, it has not even taken 50 years for the intelligent machines that we are seeing today. Going by the natural process of evolution, it would have taken millions of years for such evolution to have happened. And now we see that people are making this evolution happen by working day in and out in front of computers, making them more intelligent, more integrated and filling them with more information. As i am publishing this blog, I am adding a small piece of information into this gigantic information warehouse which one day might act like a conscious, intelligent supermachine.
As I understand, it is nature's own way of speeding up the evolution process using humans as
a platform
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