In future, cars will talk to each others as well

Remember?
You are on a highway, approaching towards the place of an accident that happened just a minute ago. You have no chance but to rush towards the end of the resulting traffic jam and depend on your reaction when the end of the congestion suddenly appears.
You have no chance because you cannot know!
Imagine!
You are on a highway, approaching towards the place of an accident that happened just a minute ago.
This time you know!
Your electronic assistant has already informed you about the impending situation and to slow down the car long before the danger comes into sight. The information has been transmitted to you by oncoming cars and the location of the traffic jam was forwarded from car to car through the traffic in front of you. Hence, an alternative route can be immediately calculated in order to safe you and others from delays and stress.
Your car being able to wirelessly communicate with its environment ensures safety and comfort for you and others while on the road.
Beyond the reduction of traffic risks, many other applications become possible: Imagine e.g. using a ‘drive through check in counter’ at the airport, forwarding travel info or music to your car from your living room PC or receiving a modified itinerary from your company at the petrol station to save time and energy.
In order to improve driving safety, traffic organisation and easy hotspot connections, six European car manufacturers founded the CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium. Its goal is to create a European industrial standard for future communicating cars spanning all brands.

Technical Approach

The radio system for the CAR 2 CAR Communication is derived from the standard IEEE 802.11, also known as Wireless LAN. As soon as two or more vehicles are in radio communication range, they connect automatically and establish an ad hoc network. As the range of a single Wireless LAN link is limited to a few hundred meters, every vehicle is also router and allows sending messages over multi-hop to farther vehicles. The routing algorithm is based on the position of the vehicles and is able to handle fast changes of the ad hoc network topology.

Mission and Objectives

The mission and the objectives of the CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium are

• to create and establish an open European industry standard for CAR 2 CAR communication systems based on wireless LAN components and to guarantee European-wide inter-vehicle operability
• to enable the development of active safety applications by specifying, prototyping and demonstrating the CAR 2 CAR system
• to promote the allocation of a royalty free European wide exclusive frequency band for CAR 2 CAR applications
• to push the harmonisation of CAR 2 CAR Communication standards worldwide
• to develop realistic deployment strategies and business models to speed-up the market penetration

Reference : http://www.car-2-car.org


Probably need to look for some car virus guards as the next step ;)

Technology in Tennis: Hawk-eye

These days we all talk about Tennis/Cricket, Umpire's/Referee's controversial decisions, TV replays , new technology, etc etc... Technology has been a significant part of those games and I thought of find out about this Hawk-eye technology.
(Hawk-Eye is a computer system used in cricket, tennis and other sports to track the path of the ball. It was developed by engineers at Roke Manor Research Limited in 2001; the patent being held by Paul Hawkins and David Sherry^[1]. Later, the technology was spun off into a separate company, Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd., as a joint venture with television production company Sunset + Vine.)
I found this from one of the blog sites (http://jtsang.blogspot.com/2006/07/technology-in-tennis-hawk-eye.html) and hope you guys would like this.

With the advent of technology, its integration into sports has come at an astonishing pace. We have seen technology used to aid in sports training (heart rate monitors, wattmeters, training programs etc), improve the field of play (artificial playing surfaces, covered/indoor stadiums, etc), enhance sporting equipment (tennis racquets, synthetic material for basketballs, hockey sticks, etc) and expand media coverage (newspaper, radio, television, internet etc).

One other area where technology has played a large role is that of officiating. Different sports have embraced technology at various levels. This difference can be seen between sports like baseball or soccer, where there is minimal technology used to aid in officiating, to sports like football and hockey, where video replay can be used to aid officials.

Over the last few years, tennis has been one of the sports that faced pressure from the public to adopt technological aid to assist in line calling. This pressure has been growing as a result of the increasing speed in the game, along with the increasing number of controversial line calls by officials. Perhaps the breaking point in this came in the form of the 2004 women's U.S. Open quarterfinals match between Serena Williams and Jennifer Capriati. In the third set of that match, there was an incorrect chair reversal of a call made by the linesperson which eventually cost Williams the match against Capriati. The mistake was acknowledged when the tournament's head of officiating removed that official from further matches and personally called Serena Williams to apologize for the bad call.

In March of 2006, tennis introduced technological aid in officiating in the form of instant replay technology at the Nasdaq-100 Open in Miami. Following the great feedback from players and fans, the use of electronic line calling will be expanded to include Sony Ericsson WTA Tour and ATP events participating in the U.S. Open Series. This will culminate in the debut of electronic line calling at the U.S. Open, a first for a Grand Slam event.

How does Hawk-eye work?


Hawk-eye uses multiple cameras placed around the court to track the players and the ball. These movements are then processed by computers. Hawk-eye takes ball skid and ball compression into account and is accurate to 2-3 mm.

A visual description of the Hawk-eye system (number of cameras may vary depending on setup)

It is important to note that Hawk-eye isn't entirely new; however, it has been refined over the years to such a degree that the confidence level in the system is high enough for use as an officiating aid.

The use of this tracking technology also allows for a new range of statistics to be captured and presented to the viewing audience; something that many tennis viewers may already be familiar with. In addition to calling lines, statistics that Hawk-eye can measure include speed of the ball at any point of a rally, service comparisons (i.e. service patterns, direction and depth of aces, placement of 1st and 2nd serves etc), bounce points of the ball, percentage of time a player spends in a region of the court or an approximate measure of distance that a player has run throughout the match.

Statistics from the 2005 Wimbledon Final between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick. We can see Federer targeting the Roddick backhand side on second serves. Also note the placement of Federer's aces on Roddick.

As part of this system, new video boards will be a large part of the in-stadium atmosphere on centre court for instant replay coverage, statistics, fan interaction, contests and corporate partner recognition. You may even see players sneak a peak at their stats during changeovers, in order to make in-game adjustments. The television broadcast is also enhanced by this system, primarily through the usage of the various camera vantage points around the court, and the display of statistics during the course of the match.

With all this technology in place, there is always an associated cost. The system costs approximately $20,000 to $25,000 USD for a court per week (excluding the video screens in the stadium). As a result, in Toronto's Rexall Centre and Montreal's Uniprix Stadium, this system will only be set up on the main court. Advertising opportunities will help to defray these costs, as partners can associate themselves with this technology (think of the Hawk-eye brought to you by "..." or these Stats are brought to you by "...").

Changes to the game

At all U.S. Open Series tournaments, the on-court instant replay system can be used by the players in the form of a challenge system. The challenge system will work in the following manner:

* Each player will receive two challenges per set to review line calls.
* If the player is correct with a challenge, then the player retains the same number of challenges.
* If the player is incorrect with a challenge, then one of his/her challenges is lost.
* During a tie-break game in any set, each player will receive one additional challenge.
* Challenges may not be carried over from one set to another.

Once a player challenges a line call, an official replay will be provided simultaneously to the television broadcast and in-stadium video boards, allowing players, officials, on-site fans and television viewers the opportunity to see the live results of a player challenge.

This serve is out

Reaction to this system

Most players have embraced this system. Perhaps the most notable exception is Roger Federer. "What is happening is madness," Federer said of the decision to use the Hawk-Eye computer system on the main court for the Nasdaq-100 Open. "A pure waste of money." Perhaps with time and/or further refinement of the system, he will come around.

Here are reactions from other players and broadcasters.

Andre Agassi - tennis player
In my 20 years in professional tennis, this is one of the most exciting things to happen for players, fans and television viewers. This new technology will add a whole new dimension to the game.

James Blake - tennis player
The ball's moving so fast these days that sometimes it's impossible for anyone to see, even a trained official. With instant replay we can take advantage of technology and eliminate human error. Having just a few challenges will make it both fun and dramatic for fans at the same time.

Jamea Jackson - tennis player (first to make a challenge)
It takes a lot of pressure off. You don't get so angry. If you think a call is incorrect, you don't spend extra games thinking about it. It's really quick. I remember people were complaining about maybe it throwing off the timing and rhythm of the match, but it didn't do anything like that at all.


John McEnroe - former tennis player, current broadcaster
If anyone's been listening to my commentary the past year then they know I'm in favour of using replay. I think it will make tennis more interesting.

Cliff Drysdale - former tennis player, current broadcaster
I'm thrilled about it because tennis needs it for a variety of reasons, one of which, the main one being the viewing public, the second being the live audience and thirdly just because we don't need more repetitions of what we've seen over the past year with people getting hooked out of matches.

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR),

Have you ever used “Google Image Search” to find few pictures of an apple we eat every day. If not try it today and lets talk about the beauty of CBIR next week.

Finding cheaper computer parts in Australia

Nowadays everyone would like to upgrade the desktop, laptop or the palmtop to the latest configurations available. But would prefer to get it for a better price. There are many computer shops, computer markets and promotions daily advertised in Australia and we would not know who has the best price unless we make a physical visit and check the prices by ourselves, which will cost our valuable time and fuel. Or else to ask from a geeky friend who roams in these shops on a daily routine. Life has been made much easier by the following web site which shows where you can find a desired computer accessory for the lowest price at the moment here in Australia!!!

http://www.staticice.com.au/

Hurray!!!!

The 4GB Windows Memory Limit: What does it really mean?

There seems to be a lot of confusion amoung us (Mosi 'N Shaminda) about what's commonly called the Windows “4GB memory limit.” I think this will help you guys to get more clear idea about it. I grab this one from www.brianmadden.com. and hope MAC users don't have this limitation since its a 64-bit OS ... :)

When talking about performance tuning and server sizing, people are quick to mention the fact that an application on a 32-bit Windows system can only access 4GB of memory. But what exactly does this mean?

By definition, a 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB).

In the 32-bit Windows world, each application has its own “virtual” 4GB memory space. (This means that each application functions as if it has a flat 4GB of memory, and the system's memory manager keeps track of memory mapping, which applications are using which memory, page file management, and so on.)

This 4GB space is evenly divided into two parts, with 2GB dedicated for kernel usage, and 2GB left for application usage. Each application gets its own 2GB, but all applications have to share the same 2GB kernel space.

This can cause problems in Terminal Server environments. On Terminal Servers with a lot of users running a lot of applications, quite a bit of information from all the users has to be crammed into the shared 2GB of kernel memory. In fact, this is why no Windows 2000-based Terminal Server can support more than about 200 users—the 2GB of kernel memory gets full—even if the server has 16GB of memory and eight 3GHz processors. This is simply an architectural limitation of 32-bit Windows.

Windows 2003 is a little bit better in that it allows you to more finely tune how the 2GB kernel memory space is used. However, you still can't escape the fact that the thousands of processes from hundreds of users will all have to share the common 2GB kernel space.

Using the /3GB (for Windows 2000) or the /4GT (for Windows 2003) boot.ini switches is even worse in Terminal Server environments because those switches change the partition between the application memory space and kernel memory space. These switches gives each application 3GB of memory, which in turn only leaves 1GB for the kernel—a disaster in Terminal Server environments!

People who are unfamiliar with the real meaning behind the 4GB Windows memory limit often point out that certain versions of Windows (such as Enterprise or Datacenter editions) can actually support more than 4GB of physical memory. However, adding more than 4GB of physical memory to a server still doesn't change the fact that it's a 32-bit processor accessing a 32-bit memory space. Even when more than 4GB of memory is present, each process still has the normal 2GB virtual address space, and the kernel address space is still 2GB, just as on a normal non-PAE system.

However, systems booted /PAE can support up to 64GB physical memory. A 32-bit process can "use" large amounts of memory via AWE (address windowing extension) functions. This means that they must map views of the physical memory they allocate into their 2GB virtual address space. Essentially, they can only use 2GB of memory at a time.

For more information about PAE, check this out http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx

Here are more details about what booting /PAE means from Chapter 7 of the book "Inside Windows 2000," by David Solomon and Mark Russinovich.

All of the Intel x86 family processors since the Pentium Pro include a memory-mapping mode called Physical Address Extension (PAE). With the proper chipset, the PAE mode allows access to up to 64 GB of physical memory. When the x86 executes in PAE mode, the memory management unit (MMU) divides virtual addresses into four fields.

The MMU still implements page directories and page tables, but a third level, the page directory pointer table, exists above them. PAE mode can address more memory than the standard translation mode not because of the extra level of translation but because PDEs and PTEs are 64-bits wide rather than 32-bits. The system represents physical addresses internally with 24 bits, which gives the x86 the ability to support a maximum of 2^(24+12) bytes, or 64 GB, of memory.

As explained in Chapter 2 , there is a special version of the core kernel image (Ntoskrnl.exe) with support for PAE called Ntkrnlpa.exe. (The multiprocessor version is called Ntkrpamp.exe.) To select this PAE-enabled kernel, you must boot with the /PAE switch in Boot.ini.

This special version of the kernel image is installed on all Windows 2000 systems, even Windows 2000 Professional systems with small memory. The reason for this is to facilitate testing. Because the PAE kernel presents 64-bit addresses to device drivers and other system code, booting /PAE even on a small memory system allows a device driver developer to test parts of their drivers with large addresses. The other relevant Boot.ini switch is /NOLOWMEM, which discards memory below 4 GB and relocates device drivers above this range, thus guaranteeing that these drivers will be presented with physical addresses greater than 32 bits.

Only Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server are required to support more than 4 GB of physical memory. (See Table 2-2.) Using the AWE Win32 functions, 32bit user processes can allocate and control large amounts of physical memory on these systems.

Welcome

Hi Guys!

Feel free to share all your techi findings here...!!!

happy posting..

Ras.