The Firefox Kid

A few days ago I came across the IEEE Spectrum magazine's November issue. I was surprised to see a 21 year boy on the cover page with the title "The Firefox Kid". I did not understand what this is !! What a 21 year old boy doing on the IEEE Spectrum's cover page and what is this relation with Firefox. So I just went through with the article. I was more than amazed by what i read. So I thought i should share this with you all.

The kid's name is BLAKE ROSS. and hold your breath !.. He is the Co-founder of Firefox !! Has this not amazed you?..I know, but ya thats true. He began baddling in s/w at the age of 3. Then he joined Netscape when he was 15. He has a major part in developing Mozilla Firefox..The best Internet browser today ! He surely is an Inspiration for many of us !!!

Nice Quote

I read this quote while browsing...This really matches my thinking...

Joel Spolsky from JoelOnSoftware.com says this about "Programming from Ground Up":

"Trying to be a programmer without understanding how a CPU works is like trying to practice medicine without learning anatomy. Sure, you can have limited success curing patients with medical advice gleaned from Google, but on the whole you're going to be a pretty bad doctor. For those who missed out on learning assembly language, I highly recommend working through this book, even if you'll never program in assembly again. I promise that all kinds of lights will go on in your head and you'll be a vastly better programmer."

Programming from the ground up

Today i found a nice free e book "Programming from the ground up" . This book is an introduction to programming using Linux Assembly language.

Programming from the Ground Up uses Linux assembly language to take you a step at a time through these concepts:

• How the processor views memory
• How the processor operates
• How programs interact with the operating system
• How computers represent data internally
• How to do low-level and high-level optimization

The book can be freely downloaded from download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/pgubook/ProgrammingGroundUp-1-0-booksize.pdf I have read a first few chapters and believe me..Its really amazing. The way the book makes us think while programming is quite extra ordinary. Even the computer architecture (complex thing..isnt it?) has been explained in a very good manner. Even a non electronics guy can understand the working.. It is that easily explained.Must Read for any programmer even if you are not going to work in assembly at any point in your life..But this will surely change the way you think when you program.

"The Venice Project" is now "Joost" officially

Joost is a new venture of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and kazaa). The pair plans to develop software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web using peer-to-peer tv technology.

The program is based on P2PTV technology and is expected to deliver near-TV resolution images. As opposed to streaming technology (servers -> clients) P2P TV technology (streams are resent from multiple viewers to new viewers) moves the distribution costs from the channel owner to the internet service providers. P2P TV technology is less efficient than streaming technology since it requires more global upstream capacity than downstream requests. CDN technology offers best of both worlds: no centralized servers and still high volume viewers.

The project is in beta testing currently.

Apple iPhone is out

On 9th Jan,2007 Apple gave a pleasant gift to the world by launching the most awaited - Apple iPhone.

iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a wide screen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

This surely is Today's other mobile phone's killer !!

See this link to see more details of this gadget - iPhone

Going deep into Windows

Microsoft has a discussion forum called Channel 9 where MS developers discuss about MS products. this really is a cool place to know these products from perceptive of the people who have developed them. It include videos as well. I just visited a topic called "Going deep into Windows". this is a 4 part video series. If you want to understand how Windows works, you must see this. The video features Dave Probert, Windows Kernel architect who explains the Windows NT architecture in very detailed and sophisticated manner. This is the best explanation i have seen so far. Dave here explains the architecture in comparison with UNIX. Processes, threads, multiprocessing, concurrency ... I wonder how these concepts can be so simple. Dave really is a great teacher. This video has really changed my thinking in looking at OSs. great job done , Dave !

Training on Windows internals..

The last weekend was one of the best weekends in my life. Hold on... i did not go for party,neither did i go on a picnic. but, i had attended Windows Internals training... confused?... Yes, I say this because i gained whole lot of things from this. To give you a background, I am a BE(E&TC) guy...I never had a course on OS in my syllabus...I had read Galvin in last month or so..but you know, the concepts get cleared if somebody is there to explain the things in a little simpler or detailed manner for understanding...then you can grasp concepts in lesser time... i feel there's nothing bad if you get your concepts cleared by some one rather than to develop wrong concepts...I have seen people who are very confident but with wrong concepts... so i was dieing to attend this training session...

The training was taken by Prasad Candade from Metaparadigm, India. The concepts were explained in details. The architecture of Windows NT, context switching, multi threading, SMP systems ... he explained all this with ease. The training was for 4 days...But these 4 days saved at least 15 days of me reading Windows internals by Solomon for concepts understanding. In this time only, I found a link for channel9. I had never came across something like this from Microsoft. truly, this really is a great initiative in order to spread knowledge. This really was a pleasant surprise. I will write more on Channel9 in my next blog. Cheers.