which one do u think is the best OS now!

Monday, July 19, 2010

Ready Boost!!!

Starting from Vista up untill w7 ReadyBoost has been a improving facility..

So. what is Ready-Boost!!
well, ready boost is a technology that allows a flashdrive[specific-we will go into that] to use for catch to provide another layer between the RAM and the Harddrive.

and How does it work!!
Now its true that harddrives are much faster devices[an avg harddisk with 7200rmp speed can easily provide speeds upto 60-70MB/s] than flashdrives[typically 10-16MB/s] but its not the throughput that is important here...

Flashdrives are non-volatile, similar to RAMs and has a faster random access speed than any harddrive.
readyboost requires an access speed of 1ms or better while harddrives have 14-16ms due to the read/write head's moving time and other mechanisms.

the readyboost enabled flash drives are used to store the virtual memory pages. for small files it is faster to access the flashdrive than harddrives.. But the data is kept on both drives, so you can take the flashdrives out anytime without causing any dataloss..

there are 2 basic differences in the storing mechanism of harddrives and readyboost enabled storage drives..

1:  the data stored in the readyboost device is compressed by 2:1 ratio.. so a 4gb pendrive will actually be storing 8gb virtual memory pages...[readyboost cant support more than 4 gb till now]

2: the data stored is encrypted using 128bit AES on the fly.. this is necessary because you can take the drive any time causing the caches files to be retained on the drive..
the chart concludes that readyboost has very specific requirements to work. the key factor is the random read write speed.. Flashdrives are built for sequential read-write and they are very fast in that way. But there are very few flash drives with sufficient[>=2.5MB/s] random read speed. though they can provide random write speed sufficient enough..
Microsoft made if specific that readyboost needs a random read speed of atleast 2.5MB/s for 4kb.
and a write speed of 1.75MB/s for 512 kb.
but as they evolved with the technology, now ready boost does support even smaller read/write speed devices. But the main concept is the same..

space reservation....

A flashdrive used for ready boost should have a space reserved at 1:1 to 2.5:1 ratio. i.e. if you have 1 gb of ram then ready boost should consume 1 gb to 2.5 gb of space on the flashdrive.

performance boost...

readyboost is intended for slow systems. if you have a 512MB ram then there will be significant performance boost. the higher the system config. the lesser will be the impact significance.

finally....

readyboost is a technology which allows to catch harddrive data to a flashdrive and using if for faster access.
the obvious part is, all that read/write is going to effect the flashdrive performance/lifetime.
Microsoft has made significant improvements in this technology and expects a lifetime of 10 years for a flashdrive dedicated to readyboost.It may sound as drawback but 10 years are a huge time and no one usally expects to be using the same flashdrive for 10 years, which is not a proper justification but a bare fact.

as every other , this is also a technology and it has its goods and bads. and concluding something on technology is a vague practice. If people need it, they are going to use it...

you can share your views on it and let others share theirs'..



Friday, July 16, 2010

Genome 3.... WOW...

This September, a new desktop will be unveiled to the world in the form of GNOME 3. This desktop will change the way people view, work with, and think of the desktop. It's different, it's intuitive, and it follows the current evolution of what the desktop should be. But best of all, it's all about Linux.




Back in 2008 a few of the GNOME developers met and came to the conclusion that there was a lack of excitement surrounding GNOME and the Linux desktop. They needed a new vision. From that, and after a few years, that vision started to develop into a working, solid desktop that will be the new branch of GNOME this year.



But what will it look like? How will it work? Can we try it now?





Let's answer those questions.



A New Philosophy



The GNOME development team didn't just decide to make a new panel, or change the menus or window decorations on you. Instead they decided to look at the desktop in a completely new way. Now, you will think in terms of how you start an activity and how you switch between activities. The old desktop metaphor? Gone. Instead of a start button, you now have an Activity Window. Instead of a pre-configured set of desktop applications, you can create them as needed (and easily). Windows are moved between desktops easily and started in specific desktops with even more ease. GNOME 3 will also handle searching much better, as it will be integrated into the shell. So a user can quickly search for anything on their machine from the Activity Window.



GNOME 3 does everything it can to help you be productive. To do this it strives to keep everything out of your way, unless needed. So now...let's see what this will look and feel like.



The Desktop



Figure 1

The default desktop (see Figure 1) might not look that astounding to you. You see a wallpaper, open applications, what seems like a taskbar and a notification area. Don't be fooled, as those items are not what you think they are.



For instance: What you see in the upper right corner is the Activities hot spot that opens the Activities Window. There are actually three ways to open the Activities Window:



1. Move the cursor to the upper left corner until the window opens.



2. Click on the Activities link in the upper left corner.



3. Click the Super key (often referred to as the "Windows" key).



Figure 2

But what does this Activities Window look like? And how does it work? Let's examine it first-hand. Figure 2 shows the Activities Window "in action." What happens is, when you activate this window the "desktop" will shrink, giving way to the Activities Window. In this window you will see five sections:



Find: This is where you can search for anything. It's similar to GNOME Do in that you can do a search for either an application or a file you were working on.





Applications: This is the list of all the applications installed on your machine.



Favorites: These are applications that you use most often. We'll chat about adding to this list momentarily.



Places and devices: All the important folders and devices you have on your machine.



Recent items: The list of the recent items (documents, images, etc) you have worked on.



Now let's say you want open up an application. You can do this a number of ways:





Figure 3

Find and start: When you open up the Activity Window, immediately enter the name of the application you want to run. More than likely, before you finish typing, the application will appear in a list below the text area. You can hit enter (when you see the application) and it will open.



Favorites: If you see your application in the favorites, just click it and it will start.



Applications list: When you open up the Activities Window, click on the Applications area (the line that contains the word "Applications") and a new window will appear (see Figure 3) with all of your applications. Find your application, click it, and watch it open.



But what about those favorites? How do you add applications to that list? That, my friends, is very simple. When you have an application open, initiate the Activities Window, find your open application icon in the favorites section, right click the icon, select Add to Favorites, and the icon will remain their (even when the application is closed).



Workspaces



As I mentioned earlier, workspaces can be added or removed on the fly. This makes it so easy to expand your desktop as you need it. To add or remove a workspace to your desktop initiate the Activities Window and look for the "+" and ""-" symbols near the bottom right corner. To add a workspace click the "+" symbol and to remove one click the "-" symbol.


Figure 4

You will notice, as you add workspaces, there are two ways to view your entire desktop. You can view them one workspace at a time or all of them at once. To change this, initiate the Activities Window and you will see the workspace viewer icon near the bottom right corner of the Activities window. If you are viewing your workspaces one at a time you will see four small squares together. If you are viewing your workspaces all at once, you will see a single square. Figure 4 shows workspaces being viewed all at one. This, to me, is the most efficient way to view your workspaces. Why? Let me illustrate that for you.



Let's say you have four workspaces and you want one workspace dedicated to writing. So you want to open OpenOffice Writer in workspace number 2 (upper right workspace). All you have to do is open the Activities Window and click and drag the OpenOffice Writer icon to the desired workspace. Or, say you already have an application open and you want to move it to another workspace. Simple. Open up the Activities window and click and drag the open window to the desired workspace.



I hope you can see that GNOME 3 looks to be all about efficiency.



Installation



So...you want to give it a try? All you need to do is open up your Add/Remove Software tool, search for "gnome-shell" (no quotes), mark it for installation, and click Apply. I have had zero difficulty getting this installed on Ubuntu 10.04 and Fedora 13.



Final Thoughts



GNOME 3 has me excited about the desktop. That says a lot, because I have been through the gamut of desktops and back again. I have experienced every Linux desktop that has been available, and GNOME 3 proves there is still plenty of innovation left in the Linux desktop community.





I hope you are looking forward to September 2010 as much as I am. Although I have already been using this desktop for some time now and even in its "infancy," GNOME 3 is an impressive piece of work.


courtesy>linux.com

Thursday, July 15, 2010

a little concept on dual layer break-point

Now , it might occur to someone ... "why is it called a dual layer!! its just a single disk with more memory.."..

well a few years back I also thought so...

I came across this fine little info on dual-layer break points which clears all doubts ....

The layer break point is the place where a dual layer DVD switches from the first layer (layer 0) to the second layer (layer 1). DVDs are laid out in sectors (each sector contains 2048 bytes of content), starting with sector 0 (zero). The break point is the sector address of the first sector on the second layer. This number also represents the number of sectors on layer 0.




It is important to keep in mind that although your DVD-9 title has 2 layers, it is not 2 discs. The DVD player software will see only one disc, with one ISO/UDF file system, and one set of files. The DVD drive that plays back the disc will have to know where the layer break occurs, so it can refocus to layer 1 when it reaches the break point, or whenever any content is requested that is beyond the break point. The drive will read the layer break point in the control data, a small file at the start of the disc (in the lead-in).



The position of the layer break is important. It can also be called the layer split point, because it splits the contents of the disc into 2 layers. So, the position of the layer break determines how the contents of the whole disc is divided into 2, and how much content ends up on each layer. A dual layer DVD can only hold about 4 Gigabytes of data on each layer. If the total size of the DVD is 7 Gigabytes, for instance, and the layer break was set too far from the halfway point, one layer might end up with more data than the disc can hold. GEAR checks the layer break point that you enter, to make sure that it doesn't cause this problem.



At this time, all dual layer recordable DVDs are oriented with Opposite Track Path. This means that the first layer (0) is recorded in a spiral track from the inside to the outside of the disc, and the second layer (1) is recorded in a spiral track from the outside (at the same diameter where the first layer finished recording), back towards the inside of the disc. For all Opposite Track Path DVDs, the layer break point must be at a sector address that is at least halfway through the total number of sectors. This insures that layer 0 is larger than layer 1. If layer 0 was not larger than layer 1, the disc would run out of room when it records layer 1, since it starts at the end of layer 0 and records back to the inside.



DVDs are encoded with a sophisticated scheme that scrambles groups of 16 sectors, in order to minimize the visibility of any errors that occur during playback. These groups are called ECC blocks (Error Checking and Correction). The layer break must occur at the start of a new ECC block, so that an ECC block is not written on 2 separate layers. So, the layer break must occur at a sector address that is evenly divisible by 16.



When the DVD is being played back, it will reach the end of layer 0 at the layer break point. The player will refocus the laser to layer 1, which is behind layer 0. While this layer transition usually takes only a fraction of a second, the player's data buffer may run dry during this time, and the video and audio will appear to freeze for a moment or two. This is normal, but DVDs are designed to try to minimize this problem.



DVD Video titles consist of up to 99 Video Title Sets (a VTS). The audio and video content of each program is arranged in Video Objects (VOBs). Each Video Object is broken up into files that are 1 Gigabyte or less, but really the video object itself can be as large as 8 Gigabytes. DVD Video discs have an Information file (IFO file) for each Video Title Set. A spare backup (BUP) copy of this information file is also stored on the disc, in case the information file is unreadable.



The content within each VOB is organized into cells. Each cell is a segment of video (or a still picture), along with the audio. In order for the video decoder on a DVD player to function correctly, the layer break for DVD Video titles must occur at the start of a cell. To find the location of cells, you can use a tool called IFOEdit.



To help you calculate your DVD layer break point, download our Layer Break Calculator spreadsheet.



To summarize, you can find an appropriate layer break point using the following rules...



For all DVDs, the layer break point:



must be less than 2,074,496 sectors (so that layer 0 does not exceed 2,074,496 sectors, the maximum capacity of a DVD-9 layer)

can not be within a 16-sector ECC block (must be on a sector that is evenly divisible by 16)

For Opposite Track Path (OTP) discs (all DVD-Video titles, and all titles written to Double Layer recordable DVDs) the layer break:

must be greater than 1/2 the total sectors of the disc (insuring that layer 0 is bigger than layer 1)

For DVD-Video titles, the layer break:

must point to the start of an IFO File, or the start of a program cell within a VOB.

ideally, it should be at a cell that is flagged as non-seamless (seamless playback linked in PCI = no). This rule can be broken without negative consequences.

Generally, the ideal layer break point is halfway through the title, or as near to this point as possible (given the conditions described above). When one or both layers is filled to near capacity, the content is written close to the outer radius of the disc, where there is a greater possibility of problems in manufacturing either replicated DVDs or DVD recordable discs. This is why it is not a good idea to push the capacity limits of a DVD.



Also, you will notice that some of the rules that must be followed specify the minimum layer break point and some specify the maximum layer break point. These two points give you a range of acceptable values, or a "window" where you can place your layer break. As the content of your title gets larger, this window will get smaller. If you attempt to fill a DVD-9 to it's maximum capacity, the window for your layer break point will narrow to a single sector, exactly halfway through the title (at 2,074,496 sectors).

good to know.. right!!!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

PC problems...

I hope these still hold effective...



One long beep followed by two short - Graphics cards faulty or inserted incorrectly.
Two long beeps and three short ones - Possible flat battery.

One long, one short then four short beeps - BIOS checksum error (possible new motherboard).

Three long, two short then four short - Keyboard control failure (maybe damaged cable).

No beeps at all - If fan and lights are on the cpu has blown