Traffic Police and Bribes

Economics is a cool thing. The concept of trickle up and trickle down are too awesome. They just mean that something foreign will adapt to the existing environment or the environment will accommodate the foreign element.

Most people complain about the traffic police who take bribes. I think its OK for the police to take bribes. In fact, the fines should be higher for some serious offences like speeding, drunken driving, non insured vehicles, polluting vehicles and such. Something like, Rs 2000 - Rs 5000 fines will force people to have proper driving discipline, like how it is in US/UK. Each fine is about 5-10% of the monthly income of a upper-middle-class citizen. And look how that works out for them. People follow lane discipline, lesser number of accidents and the intensity of the accidents is about the same as here (except for the pile-up type accidents), but the frequency is very less comparatively. So if the fines are higher, the police will also increase the bribe fee, which is still pinching for most people. That will force people to follow the traffic discipline. As a side benefit, police will see this as an additional income and do their work more stringently and that's the only thing that matters to me. In fact, if the government allocates something like a 20% of the fine amount collected by them as their reward, the corruption could be minimized while maintaining the same duty motivation.

Alongside, the police should install more speeding interceptors, photo tickets at most signals which will increase their income and will decrease the number of traffic problems in most cities. The "Chaos" city of Hyderabad can benefit most from this sort of system. Keep logging the complaints and fines on the registration. Send the tickets to the registered address. When you catch the vehicle in the random checks, seize the vehicle if there are any outstanding bills to be paid. Sell the vehicle to others if it stays in impound for more than a year. Pretty cool huh?

Any thoughts/comments?

Cool Engineering Tools For Windows!

Well, most of these are already known to most of you. but i would like to summarize so that you can refer to these when ever you are rebuilding your system! All these tools are FREE!!

OpenOffice: A truly respectable software that gives you all the essential and some premium features of MS Word (called Writer), MS Powerpoint (called Impress), MS Excel (called Calc), MS Visio (called Draw), MS Access (called Base) and an equation editor called Math. You can save these documents in most of the formats including MS office formats (Basically supports existing MS document formats!). PDF writing is built into this software suite.

Gvim: A very powerful text editor (second to only Emacs but much easier!) and supports syntax highlighting. Its available on windows now. You can also try SciTE.

WinMerge: A powerful, yet easy text comparing and merging tool. Very useful for code revision checks.

7Zip: one word for this archive manager. Awe... wait for it... some!!!

Gimp: The most powerful image editing tool across all platforms and it is free.

IrfanView: Image viewer. Simple and fast! Supports some very cool features like hex view of the image, image transcoding, basic image edits and resizing.

ImgBurn: Simply a too awesome Disk creater. not once did it fail on me!

VLC: An all in one media player supporting almost all the codecs. Also supports streaming video and video capture. Media Player Classic is another media player which has all this features but i prefer VLC! :)

VirtualDub + AviSynth: A powerful video editing tool. You can write your own scripts for the filters or you can use the already developed ones by other users.

Video Edit Master: Video cut and join software. Fast and easy to use.

Audacity: Sound recording and editing. Used only a couple of times but liked it!

WordWeb: A free dictionary which will improve your vocabulary above and beyond.

SuperCopier2: If you have a lot of big files to move around, this is the tool that makes your job much easier. It supports copy pause and resume. Also has improved speeds for over the network transfers.

Foxit PDF reader: Really, leave Adobe and experience this fast PDF reader! Though both are free, this is faster too...

Octave: This is a MATLAB substitute. Supports almost all the functions of MATLAB and is free.

Icarus verilog + GTKwave: Verilog simulator and waveform viewer. This is the best free simulator there is!

Netbeans IDE: A cross platform IDE that supports most of the major languages. Ajax, C/C++, Databases, Debugger, Desktop, Editor, Groovy, GUI Builder, JavaEE, JavaFX, JavaME, JavaSE, JavaScript, Mobile, PHP, Profiler, Python, Refactor, REST, RichClient Platform, Ruby, SOA, SOAP, UML, Web, WSDL, XML are the languages supported by Netbeans IDE.

Perforce server and client: A modern CVS system for your code. The free server supports 2 users and 5 client spaces. You have to purchase license if you want to add more. Client software is free.

Magic and PSpice: VLSI backend tools. Very good for learning purposes. Since there are no free synthesizers for ASIC, you can not actually implement anything complex with this. For synthesis, the standard libraries are required which are specific for each process (eg. 90nm). So IMO, it will not be available for free. Prove me wrong!

If you know of any free tool that i can put up here, please do leave a comment.

Laptop Purchasing tips

Hey fellas... Buying a laptop can be a costly affair. So make sure you take the laptop after you feel confident. Here are some tips on what to look for a laptop. I started off this without planning and now feel that its a bit too big. So i will summarize below. If you are interested more, you can read the rest of the article.

Thigs to look for in the laptop

1. Mobility - more battery life (>3hrs), less weight, latest connectivity (802.11n)
2. Ergonomics - Ergonomic keyboard and mouse, less heat dissipation
3. Performance - decent processor (T6400 + or equivalent), necessary screen size (1280x800 + in 15.6" or less panels, 1920x1080 for Full HD in 16.4" panels), necessary graphics card (internal gfx Intel X4500 for light gaming and Full HD theater experience, External gfx geforce 9300+ or equivalent GPU for main-stream to higher end gaming), OS (Windows for Gamers, Ubuntu for the rest. But most laptops bundle Windows, so go for it!)
4. Aesthetics are tie-breakers only.

A laptop is better than a desktop only in certain additional features. mobility and power backup are two distinct advantages of the laptops. Of course, some laptops ace in aesthetics too. A desktop usually has higher power devices (processor and graphics) giving higher performance as well. So, you need to choose wisely when you are considering a computer purchase. Let me tell you what one should look for in a laptop. You can find many sources on the Internet suggesting you which is the best laptop in town. You can either listen to them, or you can make your own decision.

If your computing does not need to be mobile, take a desktop. Desktops are often cheap and can be upgraded and repaired easily. They are much more economical than laptops. You can connect to screens of your choice, connect a large number of PCI and USB devices. Laptops have a maximum of 3-4 USB ports beyond which you need a port multiplier. Other devices are net-tops which i personally don't prefer due to their ergonomics and then there are the tablet/ultra-mobiles which are exorbitantly priced for a decent configuration or very lowly equipped for a decent price!

Laptops are definitely most awesome mobile devices. The main advantage of the laptop is that it is mobile. So, this should be your primary concern while purchasing a laptop. Ergonomic is another equally important factor. We don't want to spend so much money on something if we are going to get hurt while using it. Performance is another aspect you want to consider and most people do consider this. Finally, aesthetics do play a role, but don't make this your primary factor. Unless you are taking the computer only to flaunt, keep this as a tie-breaker kind of thing.

1. Mobility::Battery Life: Battery life is probably the most important thing in a laptop. If your laptops runs on battery for like 1 hr., its no good now is it?? So, make sure you read how much is the max battery life on a full recharge for the laptops you are interested in. Usually, something like "up to 4hrs" is mentioned with the laptops. With regular usage, one can expect 75% of this value. Caution with going for extended batteries. They increase the weight of the laptop and also dissipate more heat when being recharged. Also, carrying an additional battery might come in handy over long travels. So, a replaceable battery is preferred.
2. Mobility::Weight: If you are moving a lot with your laptop, consider a lighter weighing laptop. Since you are moving a lot with the computer, the designers assume (for some unknown apparent reason!) that you don't move much. So the gaming laptops, large screen laptops with HD screens are all in this category. If you are well built and don't mind the extra kilo (2.2 pounds!), go to the next step. Otherwise, this should be in consideration.
3. Mobility::connectivity: The connectivity needs to be as latest as possible. For example, most of the HP and DELL laptops now ship with 802.11 b/g wi-fi cards. Going for a 802.11 b/g/n is a better idea because the 802.11n is 11x faster (600Mbps Vs 54Mbps) as compared to the 802.11g. Also, you get most of your routers with the n-standard. So exploit your local intranet games and transfers with blazing speeds.
4. Ergonomic::Input devices: Try out the keyboard and mouse of the computer you want to buy from a local store. If you are not comfortable, there is no point buying it as you will always have to carry spare mouse and keyboard. Wrong usage of keyboard/mouse can lead to RSI (repetitive stress injury).
5. Ergonomic::heat dissipation: This is more important to the guys :). If you are using your notebook as a "lap top", then you might want to check the amount of heat it generates. Again, check out the local store for the display items. Usually, the heat dissipation remains almost same with all the laptops from the same vendor in a particular category. For example, the heat dissipation of all Dell Inspiron laptops is almost the same. Of course a lot of customizable add-ons will increase the heat. The gfx card, the additional battery, higher TDP (Thermal Design Power) processors, add-on cards all result in higher heat dissipation.
6. Performance::Processor: A lot of people need a moderate powered processor. Any latest generation of processors with moderate processing power will do the job. For example, a Core2 duo T6400 processor serves most needs in the present market. Most people don't need the Core2 Duo P9600 processor which bloats the system cost and with out significant advantage because you will not be using all the processing power. However, if you are a programmer and plan to run important simulations on your laptop, you should consider a higher power processor. Going for the lower speed processor can affect adversely for mainstream users too. A slower processor takes more time to complete a task while consuming same amount of power as a faster processor per unit time. So a slower processor will take more power to do the same task as compared to a faster processor. So its important that you choose the correct processor to optimize your mobility experience.
7. Performance::display: Display is again one of the most important things in a computer. Make sure that your display is as bright as you can afford. A LED back lit display is slimmer and gives some additional power savings. The picture quality is about the same with CCFL back lit displays and the LED back lit displays. If you don't see the "LED" term in your display description, it means it's a CCFL back lit display. Choose the LED display if your budget allows you to do so. Choose your screen size appropriately. A larger screen will draw more power and will be heavier. while the smaller screens will not play the full HD content and higher resolution games. Along withe the screen size, a resolution will be mentioned. This resolution means how many dots are present in the screen in horizontal and vertical direction. These dots are called as pixels. For example, if the resolution is 1280x800, it means that there are 800 lines on your screen with each line containing 1280 pixels. A Full HD screen will be of a resolution 1920x1080 or higher. A 15.6" display can have a resolution of 1280x800 or 1920x1080. Unlike the screen size, an increase in resolution has less impact on the weight and power dissipation of the system.
8. Performance::Graphics: For most of the people, who don't play any games or play very lightly loaded games like Warcraft and such can suffice on internal graphics. The latest Intel X4500 series is good even to play the full HD movies with image enhancements. For the mid-range to heavy gamers, choose the discrete graphics cards. Discrete cards need not take more power than the integrated graphics cards. As a gamer, you would want to buy the Nvidia 9300 + or equivalent powerful graphics card. The 9300 works well for the 1280x800 resolution but you will need more powerful gfx cards for higher resolutions like 1680x1050. A geforce 9600 plus or equivalent card should serve all your needs but will definitely affect your battery life.
9. Performance:: OS: Operating systems choice b/w Microsoft Windows, Apple MAC OS-X, Ubuntu Linux and such is important. For most of the people, windows works, but is expensive. First, the OS costs a lot. Then, you require a Anti-system-harming-programs software (like antivirus, anti-spyware, blah blah). Also, you will have to keep updating these definitions every once in a while. With all this protection too, the OS crashes or hangs for no apparent reason understood by commoners (God's wrath for using a windows machine as some might put it!). Apple OS-X is cheaper in that your maintenance is low regarding the anti-virus software and such. But Apple laptops themselves are exorbitantly priced. In both windows and MAC-OS X, the software like word processors and such applications cost a lot of money. Ubuntu Linux distribution is a free software with all the programs you need for a normal computer operation. However, due to lack of direct-x in Linux, not many graphics intensive games are developed for Linux platforms in which case windows is the operating systems to go for. For most general applications, Ubuntu serves better than the other two operating systems. Its free and is bundled with all the essential tools like office, e-mail, browsers, media players, code development, codecs, games, photo editing, pdf creating, Disk creating and many such software. Whats more, you have one single update manager (also built in) which effortlessly checks and installs the updates of each software installed on your system. Also, it has the best Graphical User Interface, aka GUI (google for beryl and see) as compared to MAC and Windows. Thanks to the Open source initiative, some of these free software are now available for windows and MAC too. I will write a separate article about these software soon.
10. aesthetics are individual choice. you decide on what you like! :D

Happy shopping.

PS: I will not recommend any processor other than Intel. Because, the second most power consuming device in a system needs to be the best performer. The highest power in a system is consumed by the display.

After a lot of thinking on what to write on this post, i think i have a perfect solution. A lot of my friends and acquaintances keep asking me which is the best laptop or what is the desktop to buy. I do a lot of free consulting and assistant computer shopper roles for these people. What the heck, let me help out people who don't know about computers as much as i do.

I will be configuring the systems for different budget levels and for different needs. I will also be posting if its a good time to buy in case there are some new products that are being launched. I work with Intel presently and so, most of my system recommendations will be Intel based. Will try to give an honest opinion about AMD systems too. :)

So... Keep watching this post. You can bookmark this page for your future references. I will help you get the system you require. Leave a comment or request in the comments section and I will try to respond as fast as I can.

My name is… My name is … My name is RED… ah ah ah.. Yeah yeah… Wazzat… want me to stop.. Okay okay.. Ahem… I think that sounds might have given a wrong impression… For the record, I was trying to rap… I know I am not good with that :)… One of my friends told me that I can have a lot of benefits from blogging. Its supposed to improve my relatively poor writing skills (blame GRE for that!). Also, he told me that if I made some interesting blog, Google will give me some money… That one got me interested. After a lot of contemplation on what to write in my blog, the answer was pretty simple… what ever I like. There are like 7 billion people in the world.. And almost 1 billion people online… at the least a couple of hundred will be interested in what I am.. So… Here goes my effort to improve my writing skills and earn some money (or take some money back from Google! :D)