Showing posts with label cool stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cool stuff. Show all posts
Sunday, April 25, 2010
How to solve puzzles
Interested in solving single player puzzles such as "Sudoku", "Rubik's Cube", "Missionaries and Cannibals", "Traveling Salesman Problem"? Try out my newest project, JSimpleAI. For a detailed description, check my blog post on How to solve puzzles
Monday, January 12, 2009
Tyranny of autorun.inf
Irritated with the darn viruses...?
A friend of mine came up with this cool idea.
As u all might already know. Most of the viruses create an autorun.inf file (hidden obviously) in the drive. On double clicking the drive, the script is , triggering the virus (Trojans).
Here's the big idea, create a autorun.inf file (blank one) with read only and hidden attributes set. Paste this file in all your drives...even your pen drives. That way, even if a virus is present, it wont be able to create its own autorun.inf, as one already exists, i.e., with the read only permission.
Viola, the virus is as good as useless as it wont be triggered. This applies to most of them but not all.
A friend of mine came up with this cool idea.
As u all might already know. Most of the viruses create an autorun.inf file (hidden obviously) in the drive. On double clicking the drive, the script is , triggering the virus (Trojans).
Here's the big idea, create a autorun.inf file (blank one) with read only and hidden attributes set. Paste this file in all your drives...even your pen drives. That way, even if a virus is present, it wont be able to create its own autorun.inf, as one already exists, i.e., with the read only permission.
Viola, the virus is as good as useless as it wont be triggered. This applies to most of them but not all.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Cool web pages...
Designing cool looking web pages is not a rocket science. Awesome effects can be acheived without javascript, flash etc etc...
Dont let these things deter you, best example is my friend vivek...with just 2-3 days of work he managed to make a gr8 web page (just needed to learn CSS). Take a look at his page.
Also he showed me some of the coolest web pages ever...very simple in concept and could have been implemented by YOU.
Check out Tyler's web page, this page takes time to load...let it load completely before clicking on any thing. This page was made using the '#' element...pretty cool nah!
Also there is a site called CSS beauty, it has a listing of all the cool web pages...hope this gives you enough inspiration to work on that innovate page of urs :)
Dont let these things deter you, best example is my friend vivek...with just 2-3 days of work he managed to make a gr8 web page (just needed to learn CSS). Take a look at his page.
Also he showed me some of the coolest web pages ever...very simple in concept and could have been implemented by YOU.
Check out Tyler's web page, this page takes time to load...let it load completely before clicking on any thing. This page was made using the '#' element...pretty cool nah!
Also there is a site called CSS beauty, it has a listing of all the cool web pages...hope this gives you enough inspiration to work on that innovate page of urs :)
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Pure Genius...
I accidentally came across a lecture on 'human computing' by Louis Von Ahn, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. This is one of the best works i have seen. Pure genius and totally awesome...
Dont forget to check this out:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&hl=en
Dont forget to check this out:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&hl=en
Friday, October 31, 2008
Better Explained?
Cant help but post this, Check out http://betterexplained.com/. It has amazing new perspectives on simple issues...for starters, take a look at the pythagorean theorem. Im sure it'll amaze you as much as it did to me.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Reverse Engineering the Brain
Oh yes, you heard it right. It’s no longer a stuff of science fiction. On July 25, 2008, Intelligence Realm Inc. has completed a simulation of 100 billion neurons, the estimated size of the human brain. The simulation used distributed computing and involved over 3000 volunteers, 10000 processors, 180 TB of data and it lasted for a couple of months. This was the first simulation that bypassed the 100 billion level and used database files to store the data. The simulation is one of the first steps in a long-term project that is aiming to build a large-scale artificial intelligence by reverse engineering the brain.
So how are the neurons simulated? The concept of artificial neural networks (ANN) is used which can perform tasks like predicting stock market, hand writing recognition, face recognition and many more. A typical ANN hardly consists of 100 neurons. Imagine the potential of an ANN with 100 billion neurons. 'Google' on Artificial neural networks for more information...
So what’s the catch? There are many challenges involved to simulate an ANN at this degree.
1) Interconnection of neurons and their weights associated.
2) The processing power and storage capabilities.
The latter can be solved in an economical manner by using a distributed computing scheme similar to SETI (wherein, volunteers can share their processing power). As for the storage, with TB’s of hard disks coming up, that shouldn’t be much of an issue.
To solve the former, scientists have decided to mimic the connections and weights used in the brain. After all it is nothing less than marvelous. Take a look at www.brainmaps.org. They have created a brain map of many species. So far 92% of the human brain is mapped because of the complexity involved.
To get the gravity of this research, imagine the following scenario. A person is permanently blinded because of damage to visual cortex of the brain. Since, human brain mapping is available. A Nano sized chip could be made containing all the ANN’s required to process visual data. The beauty of this is that we don’t even have to understand how the information is processed. All we have to do is device a way for it to interact with the remainder of the brain by interconnecting the neurons of the chip with the real ones with a Nano surgery just as described by the brain map. By this a permanently blind person’s vision can be restored. This is because; the visual cortex neurons, connections and weights are mimicked exactly as it was in the real brain.
Seems far fetched? You’ll be in for a real surprise. Back in 1980’s, it was estimated that the number of computers to be used by the year 2000 would be about 100.
So how are the neurons simulated? The concept of artificial neural networks (ANN) is used which can perform tasks like predicting stock market, hand writing recognition, face recognition and many more. A typical ANN hardly consists of 100 neurons. Imagine the potential of an ANN with 100 billion neurons. 'Google' on Artificial neural networks for more information...
So what’s the catch? There are many challenges involved to simulate an ANN at this degree.
1) Interconnection of neurons and their weights associated.
2) The processing power and storage capabilities.
The latter can be solved in an economical manner by using a distributed computing scheme similar to SETI (wherein, volunteers can share their processing power). As for the storage, with TB’s of hard disks coming up, that shouldn’t be much of an issue.
To solve the former, scientists have decided to mimic the connections and weights used in the brain. After all it is nothing less than marvelous. Take a look at www.brainmaps.org. They have created a brain map of many species. So far 92% of the human brain is mapped because of the complexity involved.
To get the gravity of this research, imagine the following scenario. A person is permanently blinded because of damage to visual cortex of the brain. Since, human brain mapping is available. A Nano sized chip could be made containing all the ANN’s required to process visual data. The beauty of this is that we don’t even have to understand how the information is processed. All we have to do is device a way for it to interact with the remainder of the brain by interconnecting the neurons of the chip with the real ones with a Nano surgery just as described by the brain map. By this a permanently blind person’s vision can be restored. This is because; the visual cortex neurons, connections and weights are mimicked exactly as it was in the real brain.
Seems far fetched? You’ll be in for a real surprise. Back in 1980’s, it was estimated that the number of computers to be used by the year 2000 would be about 100.
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