While searching for information on Finite Automata & languages, I found this page which has a huge set of Java simulations on every core topic related to concepts in computer science.
Elementary Data Structures
Trees
Recursion
Elementary Sorting Methods
Quicksort
Priority Queues / Heaps
Mergesort
Elementary Searching Methods
Balanced Trees
Hashing
File Compression
General (Terms) About Graphs
Elementary Graphs Algorithms
Connectivity
Weighted Graphs
Directed Graphs
Network Flow
Finite State Machine
If you are new to CS or trying to just remember things these simulations are of great help.
Server post : A implementation of the POST method in XUL.
The above examples are not much to look at but if you are learning XUL then they are a great help, in case you want to downlaod any of the XUL code just open the link in IE and you can download and examine the code.
After successfully flashing DD-WRT onto my FON router I wanted to try and upgrade my Belkin router to DD-WRT . The Belkin F5D7230-4 v2000 router is a cheap router based around the Broadcom chipset with 2mb of flash. The complete specifications for this router can be found here. After some research on the net I found out that
DD-WRT is partially supported on this router.
Since the available memory is too small nothing usable can be accomplished by upgrading the firmware.
Work is going on on several fronts to get DD-WRT micro edition compatible with this router.
A lot documentation is available to install a USB port as well as a serial console on this hardware.
The FCC ID for this particular router is FCC ID: K7SF5D7234A I decided to go ahead despite the fact that the router is partially supported by DD-WRT, You can easily recover from a bad flash by making sure the firmware is available to the router during startup. As stated on most sites I was able to flash the router successfully and got WLAN working but LAN ports were not working properly. Some of the sites that I found useful were
haxxed.com : Custom firmware for Belkin routers with 2MB Flash
TFTP server : TFTP server used to upload the firmware onto the router.
Note: DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT TRY FLASHING DD-WRT onto this particular router, you will gain no serious advantage and will be left with a router with no web based administration interface and will have to re-flash to original firmware.
Rumors are rife over the inter web that Google is prepping a super phone (code named Switch) to directly compete with the iPhone while this might seem to be the next logical step for the search behemoth, what other avenues are they leaving unexplored.
The much mangled TV/set top box idea has been tried by Microsoft and a few other players but none of them are in the unique position that Google is in now. A TV/set top box can provide Google with the perfect avenue to consolidate all their existing services in one place and deliver it to a lot more people than before. For the generation who are growing up with Wii, Xbox and Play station it will be a natural transition.
With a set top box Google can reach millions of homes around the world where PC penetration is very less. This concept must not be confused with GoogleTV 😛
think of the benefits:
1. Email : Gmail for every one (even for your grandma on her old analog TV).
2. Remotely hosted applications like the Google productivity suite (word processing, spreadsheet, presentations etc)
3. On demand streaming video with their YouTube or Google video service , you will naturally pay for the video rental using Google checkout 🙂 .
4. A online news and feed reader (Google news & Google reader).
5. on the fly Translation service.
6. classifieds and shopping with a combination of Google base, Froogle & Google checkout
7. they can even have their own gaming franchise (Google games how does that sound, music to my ears 🙂 )
8. voice and video calling with Gtalk.
9. Free WiFi with the TV box (Google acquired a lot of dark fiber over the last year and may soon turn into an ISP)
10. Online book rentals with Google books (Google could soon be your librarian).
11. Google maps and Google earth to plan your trips.
12. Close integration of all these services to you mobile or hand held device via Wifi/bluetooth sort of a Google on the go service.
13. Customized home page sort of like Google IG for each user (might be a bad idea from a usability stand point)
14. use your imagination, I cant think of any more……. 😦
With the popularity of Tivo and other devices like game consoles such an idea would actually work this time around because of the vast financial ,technological the sheer amount of brains/sq meter at Googleplex. Google alrready provides customized hardware to corporates and a TV Set top box would be something similar but targeting the home user segment.
Theoretically such a device would obviously run on Linux and would have Firefox closely integrated with the OS ( insert obligatory Microsoft and IE integration joke here), The desktop would be minimalistic one modeled on the Wii interface with each service appearing as a channel and would in theory enable you to work on multiple application simultaneously.
The specifications for the device will be open (at least documentation for some user customizable i/o ports will be given, such that you can interface your own sensors etc, something like the ports available on the new Roomba devices ) such that hardware hackers can extend and add more functionality to the device. Google has tried this before with their software offerings such as Google desktop widgets, the Google maps API and more recently with Sketchup for Google earth and the community contribution to these projects are mind boggling.
The folks at Google have developed their own OS, their own hardware and their own delivery system, much of which can be utilized for this idea. A major hurdle to such a device would be handling user input, a conventional keyboard and mouse would not work and thus a new kind of interface must be developed. Wiimote has significantly contributed to this change but it still needs to improve a lot.
Minority report has a cool interface that some one is already implementing so maybe Google could hire that guy to develop the interface.
I received the FON router from a friend and decided to install DD-WRT onto it as FON’s custom firmware lacks certain features that I wanted. After doing a quick Google search I found out that
1. the Fonera’s firmware version is noting but a customized version of DD-WRT
2. the Fonera’s firmware version which is crippled disables ssh access by default.
3. the Fonera’s firmware version does not allow you to flash custom images of DD-WRT without signed firmware.
There are several hacks on the net that rely on exploiting certain vulnerabilities in the router software, chief among them is the ability to inject custom commands through a specially crafted set of HTML pages. The HTML pages allow you to enable ssh access on the router by enabling access to port 22 in iptables. Once ssh access is gained a series of steps will enable you to first disable the Fonera router from downloading and reverting to the custom firmware thus disabling SSH access, The tutorial will also enable you to flash the latest version of DD-WRT on to the router.
The latest hack released by these guys called the kolofonium makes it as easy as changing the DNS settings on the router to enable the SSH shell.
I downloaded the Tutorial detailing the process from here. A slight change would be to use the kolofonium hack to enable access SSH shell rather then using the 2 HTML pages and once SSH access is gained follow the rest of the tutorial to flash DD-WRT on to the router. The only problem that I faced during the process was the lack of a cross cable which was easily resolved by cutting up a straight cable and rewiring it to work as a cross cable, the result while not very pretty got the job done.
Some of the sites that I researched before trying the hack are:
There are hundreds of programs on the internet which allow you to create custom screensavers using your own videos, photos and music but all of them lack the ability to really personalize the screensaver the way you want it. Flash 8 provides an easy way to create custom movies with what ever multimedia elements you want and then using screenswift you can easily convert the flash movie to a windows screensaver.
If you are savvy enough to use flash then you can easily learn hoe to use ScreenSwift as it is completely user friendly and allows quick creation of screensavers.
If you own a laptop or Desktop with a Broadcom 43xx chipset and if you have been having problems installing this card under Linux please sign this online petition requesting Broadcom to release Linux compatible drivers for them.
UC Berkley has put the entire lecture notes for some computer science courses online and completely free for you to download and enjoy. The site contains both vid-casts and podcasts of each lecture. This can be a great resource for a undergrad/grad student who just wants to review the basics or learn more about a course he intends to take.
After AOL released user search data last year and the chaos that ensued have led to increased concern among users of being profiled by search engines. If you would like to thwart these search engines from profiling you, you should get the TrackMeNot extension.The extension periodically queries designated search engines with random keywords and thus provides bogus data to the search engine which in turn totally messes with the search engines profiling.
If this extension is used along with Tor and Privoxy it can cloak you in an extra layer of privacy. This is one of the must have extensions for those who value their privacy.
I recently came across Tinyapps.org this site has got some very useful utilities all of which have a very small footprint, in an age where most applications tend to be bloatware, tinyapps provides great applications that can be put onto a USB thumb drive or onto a floppy if you can still find one that is 😛 .
Tech Notes, Ramblings and Whatnots 