Dr. Har Gobind Khorana :: lived Jan1922-Nov2011

Dr. Har Gobind Khorana

Indian Born, American Chemist

* Research on RNA, producing different strings of amino acids

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1968/khorana-bio.html

Youtube Video of Noble Prize Winner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-BidjlCnHs

John McCarthy (jmc) lived:1927-2011

wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist)

important contributions (as per I know)

* initiated the 'Time-Sharing' mechanism

* did initial development in field of A.I.

* creator of programming language 'Lisp' (just younger to Fortran)

* coined the term 'Artificial Intelligence'

* Invented Automatic Garbage Collection.

* published several Mathematical and Computational Logic Papers; even one of the initial papers on E-Commerce referred to as 'buying and selling by computers'

* even tried promoting his ideas through medium of literature, a science fiction made public by him..... 'The Robot and The Baby' (download as PDF).

Links to know more:

* First contribution mentioned wasn't known to me until I came across Herb Sutter's following article http://herbsutter.com/2011/10/25/john-mccarthy/

* "History of Lisp" by John McCarthy http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html

* a Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvIqc0aBR0A

Dennis Ritchie (dmr) lived:1941:2011

wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

image courtesy: wikipedia

important contributions (as per I know)

* creator of 'C' Programming Lanaguge

* creator of 'Unix' (along-with Ken Thompson)

* was the R in 'K&R C', the awesome C book

* retired as Head of "Lucent Technologies System Software", Research Department in 2007


A Small Video of KenThompson & DennisRitchie over Unix:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVQTPbD6UY


small Biography: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bigbio1st.html

ABC News Video "Unix Starting point for PCs" : 
http://abcnews.go.com.....video/unix-.....PC.....

got a fine theme for this blog after so many years

recently after dmr died, I just realized again that several people from ComputerScience/IT world don't know about several contributors instead of using their created technologies daily..... it's like living on a land without knowledge of who fought for its freedom

so, there was a new boost for this Blog that I registered several years back to talk about the grounds where we stand

so, first of all I'm not plagiarising Wikipedia or any such entry..... those links will be provided separately at a single place so everyone could look in detail at what major information is available

and just the major details and important notes to know the people/tech/* quickly will be present

Social Engineering : an old real case [courtesy: Art Of Deception]

Social Engineering is the most damaging, feasible and research-oriented Hacking Technique for Reconnaissance about the target. In current scenario, most of the security practices are based on using infeasible mathematical complexity to design strong cryptographic algorithms. 

To counter such security practices, Hackers have been popularly using ‘Social Engineering’ tactics to collect all kind of information regarding the target to be used to break into their system. This sidesteps the need to carry out rigorous cryptanalysis on the cryptographic algorithm. This makes social engineering one of the most popular techniques used for hacking.

[courtesy.book: 'Art Of Deception']

ORIGINAL CASE STUDY

Its a real incident of Social Engineering, in 1978 'Stanley Mark Rifkin' was working under contract for 'Security Pacific'. He was there to develop a backup system for wire-room system's data. This role gave him authorities to access all transfer procedures. He knew bank officers were authorized to order wire transfer where they had a closely guarded 'daily code' to use while calling the wire-transfer room.

The employee in wire-transfer room used to keep a slip of that Code to be matched with the code confirmation by bank officers.

So, one day he went to "Authorized-Personnel-Only" wire-transfer room, where the staff sent and received transfers totaling several billion dollars every day. He showed that he is just there taking notes about some activities involved in his work, but his motive was to get a look of the code. 

He eyed the code, came back and made a fake call from pay-phone in the building lobby.

He told his name to be 'Mike Hansen', who was a Bank Officer in International Office. After confirming his identity with the stolen 'daily code', he asked the employee on phone to transfer 'Two Hundred Thousand Dollars' to Irving Trust Company by which he already had an account. Then employee on phone asked him for inter-office settlement number.

He just overlooked this requirement while preparing for this fraud, but he didn't give it up. He told her to wait for his another call because he don't remember it.

He then called another bank department, claiming an employee at wire-transfer room and obtained the settlement number.

He called back to Wire-Transfer room and gave the settlement number. The employee thanked him and completed the money transfer.

Some old Computer Quotes which still rock Part#1

Some old Computer Quotes which still rock Part#1

"Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months."
--Clifford Stoll {a US astronomer and Author}
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stoll/

"Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window."
--Steve Wozniak {CoFounder of Apple Inc.}
http://www.woz.org/

"The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do."
--Ted Nelson {An IT Pioneer, known for HyperText and One-liners}

"To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so."
--Robert Orben {American Magician and Comedy Writer}

"A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing."
--Emo Philips {American Comedian}

"Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
--Andy Rooney {American Radio/TV Writer}

"Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living."
--Nicholas Negroponte {Amrican Arhitect, Co-Founder of OLPC}

"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them."
--Isaac Asimov {Robot Series Fiction Writer}

"Microsoft is not the problem. Microsoft is the symptom."
--Eric S. Raymond {Open Source Supporter, Developer}
http://www.catb.org/~esr/

"Bell Labs created Microsoft by charging $25,000 for Unix.
If they'd charged $50, Unix would be the world standard."
--Anonymous

"Why are video games so much better designed than office software?
Because people who design video games love to play video games.
People who design office software look forward
to doing something else on the weekend."
--Anonymous

Animation History

"Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised forquick mass appreciation."
—Walt Disney
 
Animation History With the precursor of the horizontal presentation on the microfilm of today can be found in an Egyptian decoration of circa of wall 2000 B.C. In the successive panels it depicts the actions of two combatants in a variety of hooks. In one of the most famous illustrations of Vinci of da of Leonardo it shows how the members would look in various positions.it the angels of Giotto seem to take the flight in their reiterated movements. The rollers employed Japanese for saying continuous stories.


True animation cannot be achieved without first understanding a fundamental principle of the human eye: the persistance of vison. This was first demonstrated in 1828 by Frenchman Paul Roget who invented thaumatrope. It was a disc with stringor peg attahced to both sides. One side of the disc showed a bird theother an empty cage. When the discwas twirled the bird appeared in thecage. This proved that the eye retains images when it is exposed to a series of pictures one at a time.
 

Two other inventions helped to further the cause of animation. The phenakistoscope invented near Dish Of Joseph in 1826 was a circular card with slits around the edge. The viewer held the card up to a mirror and peered through the slits as the card whirled.T hrough a series of drawings around the circumference of the card the viewer saw a progression of images resulting in a moving object. The same technique applied to the zeotrope . In 1860 Pierre Desvignes inserted a strip of paper containing drawings on the inside of a drum like cylinder. The drum twirled on a spindle and the viewer gazed through slots ot the top of the drum. The figures on the inside magically came to life endlessly looping in an acrobatic feat.

The development of the motion camera and projector by Thomas With . Edison and others provided the first real practical means of making animation. 

Even still the animation was done in the simplest of means. Stuart Blacktona film published runs in 1906 authorized Phases of Humourous of the funny faces where he drew comical faces on a blackboard photographed them and the erased it to draw another stage of the facial expression. 

This "stop-motion" effect astonished audiences by making drawings comes to life.

In the early twenties the popularity of the animated cartoon was on the decline and movie exhibitors were looking elswhere for alternative entertainment media. The public was tired of the old formula of stringing sight gags together without including a story line or any character development. What the art of animation could accomplish was not yet evident in this period except for in the works of Winsor McCay like Dinosaur De Gertie 1914 . The principal achievement of Mccay was the fact that it had developed a character in its dinosaur something which previously only had been seen inside Otto Messmer Felix the cat . McCay's piece had a galvanizing effect on audiences. The notion of a dinosaur coming to life on the screen was astonishing. Of all the early animations Felix the cat developed the strongest personality of screen did not develop not drank more to count the turns visual crudes to amuse goes downwards for the ace of hearing opposed to develop has Person stronger of screen.

With this time many of the animations were based one primitive gags and violence which is still true of cartoons today. One character would beat another mercilessly only to cuts his victim instantly recover and return the favor. Perhaps the hero would swing his sword and reduce the villian to baloney slices only to cuts him reappear have yew magically rejoined. With big change came over the industry in the mid twenties: like rcialization. Big studios took over the smaller cottage industries and set standards for animation. With nimators were given quotas on the number of drawings they had to produce a day. Cartoons now had to manufactured in quantity and cheaply.

Without Disney's streamlined organization of talent and creative collaboration the animated cartoon could never have advanced as rapidly or as beautifully as it has....yet, as at the Bray and Sullivan studios, in the process many of the men responsible for the studio's achievements remain anonymous and forgotten.  
Had Disney animators Vladimir Tytla and Freddie Moore been alive during the renaissance their names might well have been numbered among Da Vinci and Michelangelo. For all their accomplishments, however, they remain totally eclipsed by the titanic figure of Walt Disney.Walt Disney's first important contribution to animation was to move his studio to Hollywood in 1923. Los Angeles had become the center of live-action filmmaking, but the animation industry remained rooted in New York with a few studios scattered throughout the Midwest, like Disney's.
Accompanying him on his move from Kansas City were Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, who would eventually found the Warner Bros. and MGM animation houses. These 3 studios were to become the leaders of the animation industry. Disney's decision to move to California was a pivotal turning point in the development of animation as a business.


Walt was the one who steered cartoons away from the "rubber hose" style of the silent era (dubbed thus because of the way characters moved without regard to anatomy, as if all their limbs were rubber hoses) and encouraged his artists to develop a realistic, naturalist style of animation in the early 1930s. He was the moving force behind such groundbreaking films as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), the first full-length animated feature, and "Pinocchio" (1940), a film whose intricate levels of technical brilliance many animators feel has never been surpassed.

Finally in the 1990s the artists in the television cartoon industry began to figure out how to work effectively with the limitations of the field. 1992 saw the debut of Warner Bros. "Batman: The Animated Series."


It was inevitable, in spite of Winsor McCay's warnings, that animation would become a "trade" in the form of the studio system.