Operating Systems For Mobiles

An Operating System is a program which manages the hardware and software resources of any device. We are acquainted with the Operating System of our computer which is usually Windows or Linux, but how many of us know that the mobile which we use also has an operating system of its own. A few of the operating systems that are widely used in mobiles are the Symbian, PalmSource, Microsoft Windows, Linux, etc.

Symbian OS is an operating system designed for mobile devices with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian Ltd. Several mobile companies like Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung use it. Its major advantage is the fact that it was built for handheld devices, with limited resources, that may be running for months or years. There is a strong emphasis on conserving memory, using Symbian specific programming idioms. They keep memory usage low and memory leaks rare. Further Symbian OS programming is event based, and the CPU is switched off when applications are not directly dealing with an event. Also they may also provide better battery life. Most of the Symbian OS programs can be programmed in OPL, Python, Visual Basic, Perl, JavaME, etc. This OS has been subject to a variety of viruses, the best known of which is Cabir, however anti-virus soft wares have been developed to overcome the effects of these viruses. Some of the devices that use this OS are the S60 series such as the N72, Nokia 6630 and many more.

Palm OS is a compact operating system developed and licensed by PalmSource, Inc. for personal digital assistants manufactured by various licensees. It is designed to be easy-to-use and similar to desktop operating systems such as Microsoft Windows. The Palm series and Treo 650 are a few of the famous models using this OS.

Further some of the operating systems used for computers like Windows and Linux are also used in mobiles. However they are not as popular as the others mentioned. The Samsung Black Jack, Motorola Q are few of the smart phones which use the Windows OS. Motorola first launched the Linux OS with its model E680.

Interesting Facts

1. Money isn't made out of paper; it is made out of cotton
2. The 57 on a Heinz ketchup bottle represent the variety of pickles the Company once had
3. Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself
4. The dot over the letter 'i' is called the title
5. A duck's quack doesn't echo, no one knows why
6. Forty percent of McDonalds profit comes from the sales of 'Happy Meals'
7. Every person has a unique tongue print
8. 315 entries in Websters 1996 dictionary were misspelled
9. On an average 12 newborns will be given to wrong parents daily
10. During the famous chariot scene in "Ben Hur", a small red car can be seen at a distance
11. Warren Beatty and Shirley Maclaine are brother and sister
12. Chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system. A few ounces will kill a small sized dog
13. Most lipsticks contain fish scales
14. Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants
15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as a medicine
16. Leonardo Da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time
17. There are no clocks in the Las Vegas gambling casinos
18. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver
19. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it go mad instantly and sting itself to death
20. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand
21. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class
22. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying
23. The glue on Israeli postage stamp is certified kosher (halal)
24. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries
25. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them

UNIX

UNIX is derived from the word UNICS - Uniplexed Information and Computing System. It's a computer operating system originally developed by AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Rithchie, and Douglas Mcllroy. Over the years, several Unix like operating system such as Linux, Mac OS X have been encountered.

Unix is an operating system widely used in both servers and work stations. It is more useful at server space than at client space. It is considered to be very reliable and secure. The various components of the Unix operating system are

• Kernel - Handles memory management, system calls, etc.
• Development Environment - Includes libraries, compilers and assemblers
• Commands - Contains the executable commands
• Documentation - Contains the manuals and documents for various commands

Though the earlier version did not have a Graphical User Interface (GUI), the later versions even included the GUI component.

Later, a GNU Project was announced to create a free Unix like system. A compatible Kernel was successfully developed called Linux. Examples of these Linux based Operating Systems are Fedora, SUSE, Mandrake.

Graphic Cards

A Graphics Processing Unit (Visual Processing Unit) is a dedicated graphics rendering device for a personal computer, a workstation or a gaming console. Their highly parallel structure makes them more efficient than a typical CPU for a range of complex algorithms. The most common operations of these devices is their 2D graphic support. However the modern GPUs even support 3D graphics and include digital video related functions. Examples of companies that produce such GPUs are GeForce and Radeon.

Modern GPUs use transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics. They are widely used for texture mapping and rendering polygons. Since most of these computations involve matrix and vector operations, GPUs are also being used for non-graphical calculations. Recent graphics cards even decode high definition video on the card, taking some load off the central processing unit.

The presently available Graphic Cards can be classified as

• Dedicated Graphics Cards - The term "dedicated" refers to the fact that these cards have RAM that is dedicated to the card's use. These cards are removable as they interface with the motherboard by means of an expansion slot such as "PCI Express Graphics" or "Accelerated Graphics Port". They are considered to be the most powerful class of GPUs present. Examples includes the graphic cards from GeForce and Radeon
• Integrated Graphics Solutions - These are graphics processors that utilize a portion of a computer's system RAM rather than dedicated graphics memory. Such solutions are typically far less expensive to implement in comparison to dedicated graphics solutions. However they are considered unfit to play modern games as well as run graphically intensive programs. Modern desktop motherboards often include an integrated graphics solution and have expansion slots available to add a dedicated card later. An example is the Intel built in graphic card
• Hybrid Solutions - This type of graphic cards competes with the integrated graphics in the lower end PCs. They are a bit more expensive than Integrated Graphics but cheaper than dedicated cards. They share memory with the system memory, that is, they utilize a part of their internal memory and a part of the system RAM. It is important to note how much of the system memory is utilized besides the total memory. Examples are Hypermemory and Turbocache
• Stream Processing - A new concept application of GPUs is that of stream processing and the General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU). In certain applications requiring massive vector operations, this can yield several orders of magnitude higher performance than a conventional CPU. Still efforts are being made to pursue this new market with an array of applications

To know about your graphics card, follow these four simple steps

1. Open start menu
2. Select Run
3. Type dxdiag and press Enter (This actually runs the diagnostics of DirectX)
4. Select the display option to know about the graphic card

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is one of the most popular words in the mobile industry. It is basically a cable replacement technology. It is a substitute to the cables which have become a pain in many houses and offices. Technically, a Bluetooth is a protocol of short range frequency hopping radio link.

It was first developed by Sven Mattison and Jaap Haartsen who were working for Ericsson Mobile platforms. Bluetooth is formally known as IEEE 802.15.1.

The name Bluetooth is derived from a Danish Viking and King Harald Blatand (translated as Bluetooth in English) who lived in the latter part of the 10th century. He united and controlled Denmark and Norway. He got his name from his very dark hair which was uncommon for Vikings. Blatand means dark complexion. However a more popular reason is that he had a strong inclination for eating blueberries which made his teeth stained with the color. Its logo merges with the Nordic runes analogous to the modern Latin H and B.

Bluetooth is known for its low power consumption and a low production cost. But at the same time it has a short range. However as it uses a radio communications system, the devices which are undergoing a Bluetooth communication need be in line of sight, as long as the transmission is powerful enough.

One of the most important applications of this Bluetooth is in data transfer. It uses the SAFER+ algorithm for authentication and key generation for preventing eavesdropping. It has even replaced the traditionally used Infrared. This is because data transfer in Infrared takes place in the form of straight lines where as on the other hand, for Bluetooth it is concentric circles. This technology has even crept into the gaming industry in the form of wireless controls for game consoles like Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3.

Along with Bluetooth, there is the WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) which is widely used in homes and offices. Even in the game consoles mentioned above. WiFi uses the same radio frequency as that of Bluetooth, but with higher power consumption resulting in a stronger connection. Spatial capacity is a method used to compare the efficiency of wireless transmission protocols.

The future versions of Bluetooth code named Libson and Seattle concentrate more on enabling faster data transfer with low power operations.

Thermistors

Thermistor is a portmanteau of the words thermal and resistor. A thermistor is a type of resistor used to measure temperature changes, relying on the change in its resistance with changing temperature. The temperature coefficient of a thermistor is defined as change in the resistance for 1 K change in temperature.

Semi conductors are classified as posistor and a thermistor based on their temperature coefficient of resistance. A posistor has a positive coefficient of temperature where as a thermistor has a negative coefficient of temperature. That is as the temperature increases the resistance decreases for a thermistor. Thermistors are semiconducting ceramics composed of mixtures of several metal oxides such as those of Cobalt, Magnesium, Manganese, Nickel, Tin, Titanium, Uranium, Zinc and Aluminum. Some NTC thermistors are crystallized from semiconducting material such as Silicon and Germanium.

Electrical circuitry is colder at start-up than after running for a length of time. NTC thermistors are used to take advantage of this to protect the circuitry from the surge in electrical flow that accompanies start-up. Because the resistance of NTC thermistors varies gradually with temperature, they are also used as temperature measuring devices.

The variation of resistance with temperature can be expressed linearly for a small change of temperature. However for higher temperatures, the resistance / temperature curve must be described in more detail. So, Steinhart Hart equation is widely used,

1/T = a + b ln(R) + c (ln(R))^3 where T is the temperature and R is the resistance. Further a, b, c are Steinhart-Hart parameters which change from device to device.

The above equation can be approximated for a temperature T as 1/T = a + b ln(R). When T = T0 then R = R0, we get

1/T - 1/T0 = B (ln(Rt) - ln(R0))

This equation on simplification gives Rt = R0 exp B (1/T - 1/T0) where,
R0 - Resistance at T0 K in ohms
Rt - Resistance at T K in ohms
B - a constant depending on the material of the device

The value of B is given by B = E/K where,

E - energy gap in eV
K - Boltzmans constant (8.625 x 10^(-5) eV/K)

If T tends to infinity then R tends to A which is the thermistors resistance as temperature approaches infinity. Therefore, the temperature resistance relations can be written as Rt = A exp B/T.

The temperature coefficient of resistance is usually expressed as

alpha = dR/dT (1/R)
= (A exp B/T) (-B/T^2) (1/A exp (B/T))
= -B/T^2

where T is the absolute temperature in Kelvin.

Towers Of Hanoi

The Towers of Hanoi puzzle was published in 1883 by French mathematician Edouard Lucas, under the pen-name N. Lucas de Siam. The Towers of Hanoi puzzle basically consists of three towers. A specific number of discs are placed on one of the towers, such that the discs are placed in the ascending order of their size from top to bottom. The objective of the game is to move the discs to another tower such that they still follow the same order. Further only one disc can be moved at a time and a bigger disc cannot stand on a smaller disc.

Consider the following scenario. Here we have three towers. The first one will have three discs arranged in ascending order from top to bottom. The other two towers will be empty. The ending scenario could be - The towers 1 and 2 will be empty and the third one will have the three discs arranged in ascending order from top to bottom. The challenge of Tower of Hanoi is to achieve this with the constraint that only one disc can be moved at a time and a bigger disc cannot stand on a smaller disc. The choice of starting tower and destination tower is possible and also the number of discs can be chosen. The more the number of discs, the challenge becomes more difficult.

Legends

There is a legend related with the game which states that in Benares, during the reign of the Emperor Fo Hi, there was a temple with a dome which marked the center of the world. In this temple there contained a large room with three time-worn posts in it surrounded by 64 golden discs. The priests of Brahma, acting out the command of an ancient prophecy, have been moving these discs, in accordance with the rules of the puzzle. According to the legend, when the last move of the puzzle is completed the world will end. The puzzle is therefore also known as Tower of Brahma puzzle.

If the legend were true, and if the priests were able to move discs at a rate of 1 per second, using the smallest number of moves, it would take them 2^64 - 1 seconds or roughly 585 billion years.

There are many variations on this legend. For instance, in some stories the temple is a monastery and the priests are monks. The temple or monastery may be said to be in different parts of the world - including Hanoi, Vietnam and may be associated with any religion. In some versions, other elements are introduced, such as the fact that the tower was created at the beginning of the world, or that the priests or monks may make only one move per day.

Mathematical Significance

The problem of the Towers of Hanoi is isomorphic to finding a Hamiltonian path on a n-hypercube. The problem is solved by a remarkably simple recursive procedure. Further the terms of the sequence resembles the binary carry sequence. Amazingly, the number of discs moved after the kth step is the same as the element which needs to be added or deleted in the kth addend of the Ryser formula.

The number of steps required for n discs is 2^(n) - 1 which is the Mersenne numbers. Further this relates the Pascal's triangle to the Hanoi graph.

Significance in Computers

The problem of Towers of Hanoi is one the common methods of finding the speed of the computer. A code is written to solve the problem and the time taken for the computer to execute this code is used to determine the speed of the computer. You can try out the Towers of Hanoi here.

Vocabulary 03

• Aggrandize - To extend or exaggerate
  The media always tries to aggrandize any news it gets.
• Alienate - To isolate oneself from others or another person from oneself
  After finding that Ramu was a thief, he was alienated by all his friends.
• Amalgamate - To merge or combine into a single thing
  The two companies were amalgamated as they were not functioning properly.
• Ambiguous - Unclear or capable of having more than one meaning
  It was ambiguous what the lawyer was trying to prove in the court.
• Ambivalent - Characterized by uncertainty; unable to decide between opposites
  The jury was ambivalent when it was asked to choose the winners.
• Ameliorate - To enhance or improve something
  After the company had been taken over, it was ameliorated by the new CEO.
• Amenable - Responsive to suggestion; willing
  My boss was amenable to the suggestion I made.
• Amiable - Friendly and pleasant
  The students of my class were amiable to me when I first met them.
• Amortize - To reduce gradually over a period of time
  The prices of Televisions have amortized from the past 10 to 15 years.
• Anachronistic - Out of order; chronologically misplaced
  The death of the king was anachronistic in the textbook.

Song For All Professionals - The 8 Stages

1. When in College - Hum honge kaamiyaab, Hum honge kaamiyaab ek din...
2. When giving an interview to a Multinational company - Tu hi re... Tu hi re... Tere binaaa main kaise jiyunn...
3. Waiting for Interview Result - Intehaa ho gai intzaarki... Aayinaaa kuch khabar mere yaarki...
4. Just joined - Too cheez badi hai mast mast...
5. After some time - Ye kahaan aagaye hum?
6. After some more time - Naa koyi umang hai, Naa koyi tarang hai, Mere jindagi kya ek kati pathang hai (booohoooo)
7. Floating the Resume - Kabootar ja ja ja... Kabootar ja ja ja... Pehele pyar ki peheli chitti...
8. Finally when you don't get a better offer - Jeena yehaan, Marna yehaan iske si wa jaana kahaan...

PlayStation Emulators

Do not have a PlayStation but interested in playing PlayStation games? Try a PlayStation software emulator.

A software emulator allows computer programs to run on platforms other than the one for which they were originally written for. There are several emulators for PlayStation. A few of them are ePSXe, pSX, Bleem!.

• Bleem! was one of the commercial PlayStation emulators. It could execute a few games but however could not run all the commercial games available
• pSX is a little different from the modern emulators since it does not use plugins for graphics, sound and controller. However it requires a BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) for it's execution
• ePSXe is the best free PlayStation emulator available. It requires plugins for Graphics, Controller, Sound, CD-ROM. Further it requires a BIOS for it's execution. This emulator is worth the effort, it's plays almost every commercial game available in the market. Personally, I tried games like Tekken 3, Monkey Magic, Spider-Man 2 and they worked perfectly in this emulator

One of the hiccups of obtaining a working PlayStation emulator is finding a BIOS since the websites with these emulators do not provide it because of legal issues. So a little effort and search is to be put in for this.

Emulators for PlayStation and other consoles can be obtained in many sites. Emulator Zone is one of them. Download the requirements and configure your emulator properly to get things up and running.

Happy Gaming!!!