Threads August 2012

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

August 2012

Page No. : 2

DepartmentofComputerScienceandEngineering

August 2012

Ubuntu Linux 12.04 'Precise

Pangolin' Is Here at Last .

For PC users, Ubuntu 12.04 supports lap-

tops, desktops, and netbooks with a unified

look and feel based on an updated version of

the desktop shell called 'Unity,' which intro-

duces 'Head-Up Display' search capabilities,”

wrote Ubuntu Release Manager Kate Stew-

art in the official announcement. “Finding

and installing software using the Ubuntu

Software Center is now easier thanks to im-

provements in speed, search, and usabil-

ity.”As a Long Term Support (LTS) release,

Ubuntu 12.04 will be supported for a full five

years on both desktops and servers, making

it a particularly attractive choice for business

users.

Though Canonical's servers appeared to

be swamped by demand on Thursday morn-

ing, the free and open source operating sys-

tem is available for download from the Ub-

untu site. Users of Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric

Ocelot” will be offered an auto-

matic upgrade. For a quick tour of Ubuntu

Linux 12.04, check out the slideshow I put

together earlier this week.

Seven New Features in Ub-

untu 12.04 'Precise Pangolin'

Beta 1

The HUD Makes Finding Menu

Items Super Easy:

Have you ever been in a situation where you're using a program, and want to do something specific that you know is in the menus, but you just don't know where? The new HUD solves that problem. Just hit Alt,

and a search bar will pop up in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. From there you can type in what you're looking for, and it will return any menu items that match your

query. If you've ever used a Mac, it's almost exactly like the Spotlight bar you get under the "Help" menu of individual applications, and it is a lifesaver.

Miscellaneous Improvements in

the Unity Interface

Love it or hate it, Unity is here to stay, and

the newest version has a few tweaks that

make it a bit more appetizing to those of us

on the fence. At the top of the list is a new

Video lens in the Dash (remember lenses?),

which searches not only videos on your com-

puter but videos online. That means you no

longer need to head to Amazon, Vimeo, or

TED Talks in your browser to start searching

for videos—just hit the Super key, click on

the video lens, and start typing. Sadly, it

doesn't search all of YouTube yet, just You-

Tube Movies and YouTube Shows, but hope-

fully this will change or someone will create

an add-on in the future.

You'll also find that Nautilus now has a

pretty beefy right-click menu in the Unity

UBUNTU LINUX 12.04

LinuxCorner

Page No. : 3


August 2012


dock, which is nice, plus some nice color-

matching effects if you have a powerful

enough machine. The "Appearance" settings

pane also has a few Unity-specific prefer-

ences, like auto-hiding the launcher.

Touchpads With Built-In Buttons

Work a Tiny Bit Better

For a long time, Ubuntu has had trouble with

ClickPad devices, where the touchpad itself is

the mouse button (like those found on

MacBook laptops). In Precise, ClickPad de-

vices are now fully supported. Finally, you can

click the button, but still move the cursor

around with a second finger on the trackpad.

In previous versions of Ubuntu, it had trouble

recognizing the second finger. Unfortunately,

trackpad support still really isn't there. While

clicking and dragging mostly works, Canonical

seems to have completely ignored regular

mouse movement. If you have your thumb on

the bottom of the trackpad, you can't move

the mouse with a second finger. The whole

thing still feels unnatural and unfinished.

Rhythmbox Is the Default Music

Player Again

We really dug Banshee as the default music

player in Ubuntu, but with version 12.04

they've defaulted back to the stable, popular

Rhythmbox. The biggest change here is that

the Ubuntu One Music Store is once again

available in Rhythmbox, so Ubuntu One users

are the only ones really affected—everyone

else can continue using whatever music player

they want.

Ubuntu One has a Few More Op-

tions

Lastly, Ubuntu One users will also find that

the Ubuntu One client interface has changed

a bit, and is now more similar to its Windows

counterpart. You also have the option to

choose which folders you want synced to your

machine, which is nice.

LibreOffice 3.5 and Rhythmbox :Among the default applications in Ubuntu

12.04 are the newly updated LibreOffice

3.5 as well as Rhythmbox as the default music

player.

Better Language Support When users install new software through

the Ubuntu Software Center, the correspond-

ing language support packages--including

translations and spell check modules--are now

installed automatically as well, thus eliminat-

ing the need to open "Language Support" af-

ter installing new software.

A Fresh Kernel :Finally, upgrading from the second alpha re-

lease of Precise Pangolin, this new beta ver-

sion includes the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel,

which is based on version 3.2.6 of the up-

stream stable Linux kernel.

LinuxCorner

Page No. : 4


August 2012

TechnologyTrendz

SURFACE COMPUTERS A surface computer is a computer that in-

teracts with the user through the surface of an

ordinary object, rather than through a monitor

and keyboard. The category was created by Microsoft

with Surface(codenamed Milan), the surface

computer from Microsoft which was based

entirely on a Multi-Touch interface and using a

coffee-table like design, and was unveiled on

30 May 2007. Users can interact with the ma-

chine by touching or dragging their fingertips

and objects such as paintbrushes across the

screen, or by setting real-world items tagged

with special bar-code labels on top of it.

The Surface is a horizontal display on a table

-like form. Somewhat similar to the iPhone,

the Surface has a screen that can incorporate

multiple touches and thus uses them to navi-

gate multimedia content. Unlike the iPhone,

which uses fingers' electrical properties to de-

tect touch, the Surface utilizes a system of in-

frared cameras to detect input. Uploading digi-

tal files only requires each object (e.g. a Blue-

tooth-enabled digital camera) to be placed on

the Surface. People can physically move

around the picture across the screen with their

hands, or even shrink or enlarge them.

The Surface has a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo proces-

sor, 2GB of memory, an off the shelf graphics

card, a scratch-proof spill-proof surface, a

DLP projector, and 5 infrared cameras as

mentioned above. However, the expensive

components required for the interface also

give the Surface a price tag of between

$12,500 to $15,000.

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface is a planned series of tab-

let PCs designed and marketed by Microsoft.

The Surface will be available in two versions,

"Surface" and "Surface Pro". "Surface" will

run the Windows RT operating system and

use an ARM CPU. "Surface Pro" will run the

Windows 8 Pro operating system and use an

Intel CPU. The display is a 10.6-inch, 16:9

widescreen HD Display (Surface), or Full HD

Display (Surface Pro).The product was an-

nounced by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a

Los Angeles event on June 18, 2012, at Milk

Studios.

Microsoft Surface is a touch-based graphi-

cal user interface. Using specialized hardware

designed to replace the keyboard and mouse

used in typical computing applica-

tions,Surface enables a level of interaction

previously unattainable with conventional

hardware. The system is composed of a hori-

zontal touchscreen under a coffee table-like

surface, with cameras mounted below to de-

tect user interaction activities. All interface

components such as dialogs, mouse pointer,

and windows, are replaced with circles and

rectangles outlining "objects" that are ma-

nipulated via drag and drop. The "objects" in

question can be either virtual objects dis-

played on the screen, or physical objects

such as cellphones, digital cameras, and

PDA's placed on the screen. Physical objects

are automatically identified and connected

to the Surface computer upon their place-

Page No. : 5


August 2012

TechnologyTrendz

Specifications

The most interesting thing about Microsoft

Surface is that it works on off-the-shell parts.

This means that it uses the standard CPU, Core

2 Duo chips used in most laptops and is built on

Windows Vistas operating system; Microsoft

didn’t have to re engineer anything special for

the Surface. The specifications of the Surface

are:

Display Type: 30-inch Flat panel display

CPU: Core 2 Duo processor

Processor: 1 GHz processor.

Installed Memory: 2GB of RAM

Hard drive: Yes

Graphics Card: 256MB graphics card.

Projector: DLP light engine (like the one used in

rear-projection HDTV).

Cameras: Five cameras with infrared filters -

net resolution of 1280 x 960

Surface: Not touch-sensitive surface. When you

place or drag a finger, internal projector lights

screen from beneath.

Power Supply: Standard American 110–120V

power

Operating System: The custom software plat-

form running on Windows Vista

Network Connectivity: Wired Ethernet 10/100

and wireless 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 con-

nectivity.

Dimensions: 22 inches high, 21 inches deep and

42 inches wide.

Weight: 150 pounds

Technology

Multi-touch Technology: Multi-touch is a key attribute of Microsoft Surface. Multi-touch is a human-computer interaction tech-nique and the hardware devices that imple-ment it. Multi-touch consists of a touch screen or touch tablet that recognizes multiple simul-taneous touch points and software to interpret simultaneous touches. This frequently includes the position and pressure or degree of each touch point independently, which allows ges-tures and interaction with multiple fingers or hands and can provide rich interaction

(including direct manipulation) through intui-tive gestures.

Digital Light Processing Technology:

Microsoft’s new tabletop Surface technology

moves optical technology forward by combin-

ing physical and virtual worlds. It can interact

with objects placed on top of it through touch

and vision. It enables people to directly inter-

act with the interface on the table top, drag-

ging and dropping virtual objects such as digi-

tal photos with their fingers. The Surface uses

8-bit,75-inch tags that the cameras under-

neath the table can visually recognize. The

tags would have patterns of dots that the

cameras could see and translate into the com-

puter. Hence, the system is able to tell one

object apart from another. It uses the same

digital light processing technology (DLP) that

is behind rear-projection TVs to project im-

ages from the bottom of the table to the top,

which is a translucent acrylic screen.

Infrared: Surface also features the ability

to recognize physical objects that have identi-

fication tags similar to bar codes. For instance,

this means that when a customer simply sets

a wine glass on the surface of a table, a res-

taurant could provide them with information

about the wine they’re ordering, pictures of

the vineyard it came from and suggested food

pairings tailored to that evening’s menu. Sur-

face features a touch interface, but it doesn't

use a touch screen. Instead, five separate

cameras are used to record motion on the ta-

ble's surface.

The CPU: Surface currently runs on a high-

end PC but uses mainly conventional compo-

nents. It's powered by a Core 2 Duo chip, 2GB

of RAM and a 256MB graphics card. Surface

runs on a standard Vista installation with a

layer of code on top that is specific to the pro-

ject; the underlying operating system has not

been modified in any way. Surface applica-

tions can be written in Windows Presentation

Foundation or XNA.

Page No. : 6


August 2012

DidYouKnow

BIRTH CENTENARY OF ALAN TURING

University and work on comput-

ability

Turing studied as an undergraduate at

King's College, Cambridge from 1931 to

1934. In 1935, he proved the central limit

theorem despite the fact that he had failed

to find out that it had already been proved

in 1922 by Jarl Waldemar Lindeberg.Turing

reformulated Kurt Gödel's 1931 results on

the limits of proof and computation, replac-

ing Gödel's universal arithmetic-based for-

mal language with the formal and simple

hypothetical devices that became known as

Turing machines. He proved that some such

machine would be capable of performing

any conceivable mathematical computation

if it were representable as an algorithm. He

went on to prove that it is not possible to

decide algorithmically, whether a given Tur-

ing machine will ever halt.

From September 1936 to July 1938 he

spent most of his time studying under

Church at the Institute for Advanced Study

in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied cryp-

tology and also built three of four stages of

an electro-mechanical binary multiplier. In

June 1938 he obtained his PhD from Prince-

ton University; his dissertation, Systems of

Logic Based on Ordinals, introduced the

concept of ordinal logic and the notion of

relative computing, where Turing machines

are augmented with so-called oracles, al-

lowing a study of problems that cannot be

solved by a Turing machine.

Back in Cambridge, he attended lec-tures by Ludwig Wittgenstein about the foundations of mathematics .. He also started to work part-time with the Govern-ment Code and Cypher School (GCCS).The

two argued and disagreed, with Turing defend-

ing formalism and Wittgenstein propounding his

viewthat mathematics does not discover any

absolute truths but rather invents them.

Cryptanalysis During the Second World War, Turing was a

leading participant in the breaking of German

ciphers at Bletchley Park.From September 1938,

Turing had been working part-time with the

Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS),

the British code breaking organisation. He con-

centrated on Cryptanalysis of the Enigma, with

Dilly Knox, a senior GCCS codebreaker. Soon af-

ter the July 1939 Warsaw meeting at which the

Polish Cipher Bureau had provided the British

and French with the details of the wiring of

Enigma rotors and their method of decrypting

Enigma messages, Turing and Knox started to

work on a less fragile approach to the problem.

The Polish method relied on an insecure indica-

tor procedure that the Germans were likely to

change, which they did in May 1940. Turing's

approach was more general, using crib-based

decryption for which he produced the initial

functional specification of the bombe.

On 4 September 1939, the day after the UK

declared war on Germany, Turing reported to

Bletchley Park, the wartime station of

GCCS.Specifying the bombe was the first of five

major cryptanalytical advances that Turing

made during the war.By using statistical tech-

niques to optimise the trial of different possibili-

ties in the code breaking process, Turing made

an innovative contribution to the subject. He

wrote two papers discussing mathematical ap-

proaches which were entitled Report on the ap-

plications of probability to cryptography and

Paper on statistics of repetitions, which were of

such value to GCCS and its successor GCHQ, that

they were not released to the UK National Ar-

Page No. : 7


August 2012

DidYouKnow

and its successor GCHQ, that they were not re-

leased to the UK National Archives until April

2012, shortly before the centenary of his birth.

Turing–Welchman bombe

Turing had specified an electromechanical

machine that could help break Enigma more

effectively than the Polish bomba kryptologic-

zna, from which its name was derived. The

bombe, with an enhancement suggested by

mathematician Gordon Welchman, became one

of the primary tools, and the major automated

one, used to attack Enigma-enciphered mes-

sages.The bombe searched for possible correct

settings used for an Enigma message (i.e. rotor

order, rotor settings and plugboard settings),

using a suitable crib: a fragment of probable

plaintext. For each possible setting of the rotors

(which had of the order of 1019 states, or 1022

for the four-rotor U-boat variant), the bombe

performed a chain of logical deductions based

on the crib, implemented electrically. The

bombe detected when a contradiction had oc-

curred, and ruled out that setting, moving on to

the next. Most of the possible settings would

cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving

only a few to be investigated in detail. The first

bombe was installed on 18 March 1940.

Hut 8 and Naval Enigma

In December 1939, Turing solved the es-

sential part of the naval indicator system, which

was more complex than the indicator systems

used by the other services. He also conceived of

the idea of Banburismus, a sequential statistical

technique to assist in breaking naval Enigma.

For this he invented a measure of weight of evi-

dence that he called the Ban. Banburismus

could rule out certain sequences of the Enigma

rotors, substantially reducing the time needed

to test settings on the bombes.Turing travelled

to the United States in November 1942 and

worked with U.S. Navy cryptanalysts on Naval

Enigma and bombe construction in Washing-

Labs with the development of secure speech

devices.

Turingery

In July 1942, Turing devised a technique

termed Turingery (or jokingly Turingismus)

for use against the Lorenz cipher messages

produced by the Germans' new Geheim-

schreiber (secret writer) machine. This was a

teleprinter rotor cipher attachment code-

named Tunny at Bletchley Park. Turingery

was a method of wheel-breaking, i.e. a pro-

cedure for working out the cam settings of

Tunny's wheels.

Secure speech device (Delilah)

Following his work at Bell Labs in the

US, Turing pursued the idea of electronic

enciphering of speech in the telephone sys-

tem, and in the latter part of the war, he

moved to work for the Secret Service's Radio

Security Service (later HMGCC) at Hanslope

Park. There he further developed his knowl-

edge of electronics with the assistance of

engineer Donald Bayley. Together they un-

dertook the design and construction of a

portable secure voice communications ma-

chine codenamed Delilah. It was intended

for different applications, lacking capability

for use with long-distance radio transmis-

sions, and in any case, Delilah was com-

pleted too late to be used during the war.

Though Turing demonstrated it to officials

by encrypting and decrypting a recording of

a Winston Churchill speech, Delilah was not

adopted for use.Turing also consulted with

Bell Labs on the development of SIGSALY, a

secure voice system that was used in the

later years of the war.

Page No. : 8


August 2012

Tips�Tricks

FunnyFunnyFunnyFunny Tricks

Some webpages use this behavior to create

some amazing and funny results. Here is a

list of few such keywords that have some

funny websites at the first position in

Google. To use these tricks, open Google's

homepage, type in the phrase and hit the

I'm feeling lucky button. To use the I'm

feeling lucky button, you have to disable

Google Instant.

1. Google Gravity

The force of gravity is non-existent in cyber

space. Google gravity makes you realize

how Google would have been if gravity had

been effective on the internet as well. Just

type Google gravity in the search bar and

press the I'm feeling lucky button. This will

take you to the Google gravity page which,

at first look, might appear to be the Google

homepage itself. Wait for a few seconds

and you will realize why this Chrome experi-

ment is called Google gravity. Although the

website lists it as a Chrome experiment, it

works on Mozilla Firefox as well, although it

does not work on IE8 and previous versions

of IE.

2. Who is the cutest?

Want to know who is the cutest person in

the world? Just use this phrase. This one

will definitely make you smile.

3. Google Sphere

Want to see images on Google dance in circular

motion? Google sphere is the phrase for that.

This phrase will take you to the Google

sphere Chrome experiment. Google sphere is a

modified version of Image search that adds a bit

of fun to your regular search. This Chrome ex-

periment, just like the previous one, works on

Chrome, Firefox and IE9.

4. Enable Pirate language in Google

Google too has their own pirate version to com-

pete with that of Facebook's. Just use

the Google Pirate phrase or directly head over

to Google Pirate.

5. Epic Google

Epic Google will take you to a growing version of

Google that will continue to increase in size until

it becomes too large to read.

6. Annoying Google

Want to get annoyed while searching on

Google? This one is for you. This phrase will take

you to a Google search homepage with each

word having alternate capital and small letters

making everything a bit too hard to read.

7. Google Rainbow

This phrase will take you to a Google search

homepage in which each element changes its

color rapidly to create the rainbow effect. The

search result page obtained for queries is very

annoying too as it contains a very loud color

combination of red, blue and green.

Page No. : 9


August 2012

Tips�Tricks

8. 2204355

Are you already familiar with the age old inter-

net prank called rick-rolling and want to dis-

cover something new? Chicken rolling is for

you. Try this new way of trapping unsuspect-

ing internet users by typing the code 2204355

in the Google search box and hitting the "Lucky

button."

9. Zerg Rush

Search Google for Zerg Rush and you will see

the O's of Google attacking the search results

page. They will attacking every result one by

one. There is a health bar which indicates how

injured a search result is. You can also kill these

O's by clicking on them. They also have health

bars which indicates their health. You get points

on the basis of how many O's you kill. The aim

of this game is to beat as many O's as possible.

10. Google Magic

Do you like magic? Here's a trick to impress

your friends with. Type in Google Magicin the

Google search box and hit the I'm feeling lucky

button and you will be taken to a special

Google homepage. On this page, cover the two

O's in the Google Logo with your hand and click

anywhere on the page. Wait for sometime

(5 seconds). You can say some

magic words to add effect.

Remove your hand and you will be surprised

to see that the two O's have disappeared.

Again cover the two O's and click anywhere

on the page. Again wait for 5 seconds and

the O's will magically reappear. A third click

however will take you to the actual Google

homepage.

11. Google Pacman

Not a Google bomb but an immensely popu-

lar doodle which Google used on its home-

page on the 30th anniversary of Pacman, the

arcade game in May 2010. Just type Google

Pacman in the search box, hit the I'm feeling

lucky button and you will be taken to

the Google Pacman page. You can use your

arrow keys to start playing the game. To play

in 2 player mode, hit the Insert Coin button.

W, S, A and D keys will control the second

player.

Documents

Threads August 2012