Who is a Boss, Really

Man entered a pet shop, wanting to buy a monkey.
The shop owner pointed out three identical monkeys and said,
"The monkey to the left costs 500 dollars."
Why does that monkey cost so much?" the man wondered.
The owner replied,
"Well, it knows how to use a computer."
The man asked about the next monkey on the perch.
"That one costs 1,000 dollars because it can do everything the other monkey can do, plus it knows how to use the LINUX operating system."
Naturally, the startled customer asked about the third monkey.
"That one costs 2,000 dollars."
"And what does that one do?" the man asked.
The owner replied,
"To be honest, I've never seen him doing anything, but the other two call him boss!"

Indeed Splendid

تو غنی از ہر دو عالم من فقیر، روزِ محشر عذر ہائے من پذیر، گر حسابم را تو بینی نا گزیر،از نگاہِ مصطفیٰ پنہاں بگیر

You are the Lord of both Worlds - I am a Faqeer...

On the Day of Judgement, Accept my Excuses & Pardon Me!

But if You must Judge me and take account of my sins,

Please do this unseen by the Muhammad (SAW)'s Eyes

Iqbal (RA)

BayChara Aadmi

Ahmed Faraz on LAL MASJID Tragedy

Simply Incredible and Realistic ...

Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"

One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."

The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."

"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."

"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."

"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."

"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."

"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!)."

The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.

Darknesses & Lights ...

The Reality -- Today is life ...

Mindset can be disastrous

Wonderful Thinking

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, 'How was thetrip?' 'It was great, Dad.' 'Did you see how poor people live?' the father asked. 'Oh yeah,' said the son. 'So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?' asked the father The son answered: 'I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.' The boy's father was speechless. Then his son added, 'Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.' Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have. Appreciate every single thing you have, especially your friends! .

'Life is too short and friends are too few.'

Gender Bias

A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.' 

'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.' 

A student asked, 'What gender is 'computer'?' 

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer' should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computadora'), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic; 

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else; 

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and 

4.. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it. 

(THIS GETS BETTER!) 

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ('el computador'), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on; 

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The women won

Vanilla Ice Cream that puzzled General Motors!!!!

This is a real story that happened between the customer of General Motors and its Customer-Care Executive. Pls read on.....

A complaint was received by the Pontiac Division of General Motors: 'This is the second time I have written to you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we've eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It's also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem..... You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won't start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I'm serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds "What is there about a Pontiac that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?" The Pontiac President was understandably skeptical about the letter, but sent an Engineer to check it out anyway.

The latter was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well educated man in a fine neighborhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinner time, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn't start. The Engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, they got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla. The car failed to start. Now the engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this man's car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem. And toward this end he began to take notes: He jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas uses, time to drive back and forth etc.

In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavor. Why? The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to check out the flavor. Now, the question for the Engineer was why the car wouldn't start when it took less time. Eureka - Time was now the problem - not the vanilla ice cream!!!! The engineer quickly came up with the answer: "vapor lock". It was happening every night; but the extra time taken to get the other flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapor lock to dissipate. Even crazy looking problems are sometimes real and all problems seem to be simple only when we find the solution, with cool thinking.

We shouldnt' just say it is "IMPOSSIBLE" without putting a sincere effort.... Observe the word "IMPOSSIBLE" carefully... Looking closer you will see, "I'M POSSIBLE"... What really matters is our attitude and our perception

Never underestimate your Clients' Complaint, no matter how funny it might seem !

Coffee

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee, and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite- telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for urself, that is the source of ur problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases it even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the cups..... And then you began eyeing each otherʼs cup.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.

Sometimes, by contrasting only the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us. 'God brews the coffee, not the cups..... Enjoy your coffee!' The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the best ofeverything." Live simply Love generously Care deeply Speak kindly Leave the rest to God You r the miracle, ur life either shines a light - or casts a shadow.

"The purpose of life is to live life with a purpose"!!!!
God Bless you

Rabbit's Thesis

Scene:It's a fine sunny day in the forest, and a rabbit is sitting outside his burrow, tippy-tapping on his typewriter. Along comes a fox, out for a walk.Fox "What are you working on?"Rabbit "My thesis."Fox "Hmmm. What's it about?"Rabbit "Oh, I'm writing about how rabbits eat foxes." (incredulous pause)Fox "That's ridiculous! Any fool knows that rabbits don't eat foxes."Rabbit "Sure they do, and I can prove it. Come with me."They both disappear into the rabbit's burrow. After a few minutes, the rabbit returns, alone, to his typewriter and resumes typing.

Soon, a wolf comes along and stops to watch the hardworking rabbit.Wolf "What's that you're writing?"Rabbit "I'm doing a thesis on how rabbits eat wolves." (loud guffaws)Wolf "You don't expect to get such rubbish published, do you?"Rabbit "No problem. Do you want to see why?"The rabbit and the wolf go into the burrow, and again the rabbit returns by himself, after a few minutes, and goes back to typing.

Scene: inside the rabbit's burrow. In one corner, there is a pile of fox bones. In another corner, a pile of wolf bones. On the other side of the room, a huge lion is belching and picking his teeth.

Moral: It doesn't matter what you choose for a thesis subject. It doesn't matter what you use for data. What does matter is who you have for a thesis advisor.

Cyborg Moth Gets a New Radio

10 February 2009—Attempts by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create cybernetic insects (hybrids of biological and electronic bugs) have yielded ultralow-power radios to control the bugs’ flight and a method of powering those circuits by harvesting energy, according to research that will be reported this week at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)
Two papers being presented at ISSCC reveal the latest initiatives in the DARPA-sponsored Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) project, which is currently in its third year. The program’s goal is the creation of moths or other insects that have electronic controls implanted inside them, allowing them to be controlled by a remote operator. The animal-machine hybrid will transmit data from mounted sensors, which might include low-grade video and microphones for surveillance or gas sensors for natural-disaster reconnaissance. To get to that end point, HI-MEMS is following three separate tracks: growing MEMS-insect hybrids, developing steering electronics for the insects, and finding ways to harvest energy from the them to power the cybernetics.
Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, in Ithaca, N.Y.—which is one of the contractors on the HI-MEMS project—presented progress on the first goal at the IEEE MEMS 2009 conference in Italy two weeks ago, describing silicon neural interfaces for gas sensors that were inserted into insects during the pupal phase. At ISSCC, the HI-MEMS projects focused on new chip technology for the second two goals: Researchers led by DARPA contractor MIT will present a low-power ultrawide-band radio, a digital baseband processor, and a piezoelectric energy-harvesting system that scavenges power from vibrations.
The HI-MEMS project was conceived in 2005 by program manager Amit Lal, an electrical engineering professor on leave from Cornell University while he coordinates the four-year DARPA effort. MIT is one of three major contractors, including the University of Michigan and Boyce Thompson. The research also draws on the work of entomologists, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Arizona, and Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. To be considered successful, the final HI-MEMS cybernetic bug must fly 100 meters from a starting point and then be steered into a controlled landing within 5 meters of a specified end point. On landing, the insect must stay in place.
The electronic and MEMS components of the system must consume little power and be absolutely featherweight. After all, an average hawk moth weighs 2.5 grams; with too much extra weight it would be unable to fly.
Anantha Chandrakasan, an electrical engineering professor at MIT, is a coauthor on each of the ISSCC papers. The first is an ultrawide-band receiver system on chip, a radio that works at extremely low power over a broad swath of spectrum. (Earlier research had created the transmitter.) The device was specifically built for the HI-MEMS project in order to steer the moth. To control the moth’s flight direction, Chandrakasan and MIT graduate student Denis Daly designed a small, lightweight, low-power radio connected to a tungsten 4-electrode neurostimulator. When this radio picks up the right commands, the device stimulates the nervous tissue in the moth’s abdominal nerve cord. The stimulation makes the moth’s abdomen move in a way that alters the direction of its flight. The radio and stimulator are powered by a hearing-aid battery.
The second chip is a low-power digital baseband processor that can very quickly synchronize with wireless signals. That solves a particular problem with wireless communication. “When you send a piece of data through a wireless link, the receiver takes some time to lock to the transmitter,” Chandrakasan says. “Our new algorithms can very quickly synchronize, which means that you can turn on the radio, take the piece of data, and then turn the radio back off very quickly. That saves a lot of power.”
A third chip being presented at ISSCC, which Chandrakasan says is unrelated to the radio chips and not funded under HI-MEMS, could nevertheless be used to meet the DARPA project’s goal of finding ways to efficiently harvest energy from the moth. While a cyborg insect would be fairly autonomous and self-fueling, there would be no way to recharge its equipment payload on missions. Batteries are heavy. So the researchers are seeking a method by which the insect’s flight itself generates the electrical energy the payload electronics require. Harvesting ambient vibration energy through piezoelectric means—in which energy is converted between mechanical and electrical forms—could supply between 10 and several hundred microwatts of power.
The research presented at ISSCC addresses a common problem with energy-harvesting circuits: The power consumed by the harvesters’ control circuits reduces the amount of usable electrical power. The solution, a circuit called a bias-flip rectifier, improves the power-extraction capability by “more than four times,” according to the paper by Chandrakasan and graduate student Yogesh K. Ramdass.

The HI-MEMS project is not the first attempt at creating cyborg animals. The list is long, including pigeons, beetles, cats, and bees. Perhaps the most famous example is the cyborg rat. In 2004, John Chapin, a professor at the State University of New York Health Science Center, in Brooklyn, demonstrated Rescue Rats. These were lab rats with neural implants that encouraged them to steer through rubble piles with a camera and GPS locator to find people. Using a radio remote control, Chapin stimulated a part of the rats’ brains that mimicked the sensation of being touched on the whiskers. In response, the rats turned in the direction of the sensation. When they turned, Chapin rewarded them with a quick jolt of electricity in the pleasure center of their brains.
Jelle Atema, a biologist at Boston University and at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, was also funded by DARPA in 2005 to research steering sharks with similar neural implants. Atema says that while he applauds the HI-MEMS project for its technical ambition and engineering virtuosity, he is concerned about its ultimate biological feasibility: Electronic control would compete with natural brain processes. He cites some limitations for insects, including a tendency for moths to approach light sources (the proverbial flames) and a powerful sex pheromone response that could override attempts at remote electronic control. “Pheromones are incredibly powerful,” he says.
In addition, modifying just one moth would be prohibitively time-consuming and expensive, especially in light of the life span of the animal, says Atema.
Even if HI-MEMS never produces a working cyborg moth, Chandrakasan says that the usefulness of these devices is not limited to the specific DARPA project. You can repurpose the chips for assistive technologies and implantable devices. In particular, he says, the energy-harvesting system would be a promising technology for prosthetic arms, which have a similar problem with weight and battery life.

Golden words

• Zindgee guzarnay ky do treeqy hain "jo psand hai usay hasal kr lo" ya "jo hasal hai usay pasand kr lo"