Friday, May 30, 2008

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

Few days back, a good friend of mine - Aditya shared me a youtube link. I wasnt really excited about it... as the video was some 76 minutes long and So it would take few hours to buffer that. Rather I decided to download it so that i can see it afterwards. Well the video is about Randy Pausch, A 47 year old Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Professor, and it was his last lecture. Randy was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer in Sept 2006 and was told in August 2007 to expect a remaining three to six months of good health.

This lecture is titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". Before speaking, Pausch received a long standing ovation from a large crowd of over 400 colleagues and students. When he motioned them to sit down, saying, "Make me earn it," some in the audience shouted back, "You did!".

Few excerpts from the Wall Street Journal's article on Randy. I recommend all to read this article.

"Randy Pausch, a professor at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, has become famous for the way in which he chose to say goodbye to his students and colleagues. His final lecture to them, delivered last September, turned into a phenomenon, viewed by millions on the Internet. Dying of pancreatic cancer, he showed a love of life and an approach to death that people have found inspiring. For many of us, his lecture has become a reminder that our own futures are similarly -- if not as drastically -- brief. His fate is ours, sped up."

I am embedding that video here for your reference - DON'T MISS IT !

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Spread Firefox - Download Day 2008


Come, Join Mozilla in a mission to create a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours ! As many of you might be aware that Firefox 3 is set for its release in June, all you have to do is download Firefox 3 on the Download Day(official date to be announced soon) and help your favorite browser make a Guinness World Record. Check out SpreadFirefox link for details.

One more thing needs to be added. As i see the SpreadFirefox site now, Only 1321 people from India have pledged to download Firefox 3 on the download day, out of the total 99269 pledges. Come on India, What is this?.. I am sure we can do a hellll lottt better.. Lets show the world, we are not far behind ! I hope my countrymen do not let me down..I HOPE !

Saturday, May 24, 2008

The 3 mistakes of my life


For all u Chetan Bhagat fans out there(i am surely being one), CB has come up wid his new book almost after a span of 3 years - the 3 mistakes of my life! Given the vast success his previous two books had achieved, this one is not going to disappoint you. Though many CB critics feel that his books do not fall into the literature category - I dont care, rather we all CB fans dont care! "The biggest-selling english language novelist in India's history" -- Chetan Bhagat covered by New York Times! This man is really making India read big in recent times. FPS, one night @ call center and now 3...The subjects are so close to the current generation..No wonder he strikes the chord with the indian youth in no time !

The 3 mistakes of my life is again a story of 3 friends..a story about business, cricket, and religion...I really enjoyed reading it. There are lots of incidents which are totally filmy..but isn't it a CB book speciality?..I would not go into the plot of the story..its better you go n read ! I recommend this book to all! You can also have a look at some of reviews here - Rashmi, livemint.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Memristor - The Fourth Passive Circuit Element revealed


Memristor (Short for Memory Resistor)is all over the news today...Yesss the missing fourth fundamental passive circuit element has been discovered at last ! This is in no boubt a real big achievement.. and is something really new in the fundamental electronics.

Well, theorotically Memristor isnt anything new. It has existed in theory for last 37 years, But it is now, today that it has been discovered by four researchers at HP Labs’ Information and Quantum Systems Lab, led by R. Stanley Williams. In a paper published in today’s edition of Nature, researchers at HP Labs presented the mathematical model and a physical example of a 'memristor' – a blend of memory and resistor – which has the unique property of retaining a history of the information it has acquired.

And this can mean big implications ! One application for this research could be the development of a new kind of computer memory that would supplement and eventually replace today’s commonly used dynamic random access memory (DRAM). Computers using conventional DRAM lack the ability to retain information once they lose power. When power is restored to a DRAM-based computer, a slow, energy-consuming 'boot-up' process is necessary to retrieve data from a magnetic disk required to run the system. “A memory based on memristors could be 1000 times faster than magnetic disks and use much less power,” Williams says.

A memristor is essentially a resistor with memory. The actual resistance of the memristor changes depending on the amount of voltage and the time for which that voltage has been applied to the device. The IEEE Spectrum article has much more profound article on this and as is EETimes article. trust me, both are a must read!

And as IEEE Kirchoff Award winner Leon Chua( He was the one who predicted the existence of memristors) says about this discovery "now all the EE textbooks need to be changed" !!!