Today I came across  Crystal Disk Info 3.5, part of crystal’s dew world excellent freeware diagnostic tools. Having used Speed fan to be able to make sense of the S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T) information on hard drives for all my time but I noticed it doesn’t detect a lot of the newer hard drives.If you ever wondered whether your hdd was dying the S.M.A.R.T information is a great place to start.The purpose of S.M.A.R.T. is to warn a user or a system administrator of impending drive failure while there is still time to take action, such as copying the data to a replacement device.

Work at Google on over 100,000 drives has shown little overall predictive value of S.M.A.R.T. status as a whole, but suggests that certain sub-categories of information which some S.M.A.R.T. implementations track do correlate with actual failure rates – specifically, in the 60 days following the first scan error on a drive, the drive is, on average, 39 times more likely to fail than it would have been had no such error occurred. Also, first errors in reallocations, offline reallocations and probational counts are strongly correlated to higher probabilities of failure.

Are you sure ?

A lot of us are getting more and more addicted to this social networking phenomenon. While some can handle it, most of us are trying to deal with the time spent on Facebook, Twitter and myspace. Even the self gratification of getting people to acknowledge how cool you are is not worth it anymore.

While some tried locking out and disabling their accounts, these companies make sure they don’t delete our accounts knowing that we will be back. Everytime I reactivate my account a little bit of me dies in me and can hear the chuckle of some guy working in those companies shouting back at me ” We knew you would be back “.  For such reasons a bunch of gurus/genius (depending if you are a pc or a mac enthusiast) in Rotterdam have come up with a Web 2.0 suicide machine. It logins into each one of your accounts and deletes manually all your friends but the best part must be the fact that it changes the password and doesn’t even tell you about it. Great way to die and start the new year I reckon.

Commit NOW !

http://suicidemachine.org/

Both provide key-value access to data. The Hashtable is one of the original collection classes in Java. HashMap is part of the new Collections Framework, added with Java 2, v1.2. The key difference between the two is that access to the Hashtable is synchronized on the table while access to the HashMap isn’t. You can add it, but it isn’t there by default. Another difference is that iterator in the HashMap is fail-safe while the enumerator for the Hashtable isn’t. If you change the map while iterating, you’ll know. And, a third difference is that HashMap permits null values in it, while Hashtable doesn’t.

How do I choose between Hashmap or Hashtable in java? Here are some questions that will help.

(a) Is my process multi-threaded? If yes, Hashtable is the choice since it is thread-safe. However there is a way of making Hashmaps thread safe using Collections.synchronizedMap(new Hashmap() ). If my Java version is 1.5 or higher, then I have the option of using ConcurrentHashMap.

(b) What is the data-type of my keys? It seems like when the keys are a set of integers, Hashtable has better performance.

Note: The Hashtable is not part of the Java Collections Framework. But it does support all the API that a Collection interface specifies. Hashtable is what the Sun calls, the legacy collection implementation. Hashtable inherits from the Dictionary class which is obsolete in Java 1.6, while the HashMap inherits from collection interface “Map”.

If you are using Java 1.6, it might be a good idea to check the latest additions to the Map implementations like NavigableMap. (Navigable is a misleading name, which makes me think of google maps.) But the operations that it provides to extract a subset of entries based on satisfying criterion is pretty cool.

// Demonstrate a Hashtable
import java.util.*;

class HTDemo {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Hashtable balance = new Hashtable();
        Enumeration names;
        String str;
        double bal;
        balance.put("John Doe", new Double(3434.34));
        balance.put("Tom Smith", new Double(123.22));
        balance.put("Jane Baker", new Double(1378.00));
        balance.put("Todd Hall", new Double(99.22));
        balance.put("Ralph Smith", new Double(-19.08));
// Show all balances in hash table.
        names = balance.keys();
        while (names.hasMoreElements()) {
            str = (String) names.nextElement();
            System.out.println(str + ": " +
                    balance.get(str));
        }
        System.out.println();
// Deposit 1,000 into John Doe's account
        bal = ((Double) balance.get("John Doe")).doubleValue();
        balance.put("John Doe", new Double(bal + 1000));
        System.out.println("John Doe's new balance: " +
                balance.get("John Doe"));
    }
} 

Hospitals alwasy seemed to be a great place for web related applications to store those enormous amount of prescriptions and medical history that a human being would have to take within a lifetime . Its been long coming, and in 2007 Microsoft released Health Vault which provided a free unified service where we were able to upload all our medical records from the past and even allowed the Health Industry to access and connect to update it with their patient data.  Then by 2008 google followed to form Google Health which follows the same idea and principles of Health Vault  ( who said microsoft is always a follower ).

The idea is simple, just like your web mail you will be able to access your health records and health information from anywhere. Hence the idea that these records are managed by the individual rather than the old notion of the hospital or clinic storing such information. Every individual would be able to manage his health information and monitor it. This allows the ability to built apps ( like facebook apps ) that would allow you have various applications. The important issue here is the secrecy of these records and both google and microsoft have enabled features where only systems that you allow, are able access the information. Some even allow you to upload files like XRay scans and MRI images to your account. Its feels like the web 2.0 has finally caught up with the Medical Information systems.

Microsoft Common User inteface for Health

Microsoft has been dead serious about windows 7, in its development strategy ( about 40 teams of 25 individuals ) , in its marketing and even in its secrecy about during the development and that attitude seems to have reflected on the product or atleast the Release Canditate. Even the RC is so polished, I actually installed it on my main setup.Windows 7 gives the feeling that the PC can be cool too. I have never warmed up to an OS so quickly. I felt so much in control of things and found the OS to be much more responsive.
Some of the feature I am totally loving since I installed the RC were.

The Library :

Why didn’t anyone think of that before. One place for multiple folders from different locations. Great Idea. Sweeeet. I been doing this using shortcuts for a while now but didn’t find a real alternative to that until now.Its a great feature that itself warrants an upgrade. There are 4 default built in libraries - Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music but you can create your own and mix and match between these, for example you can add pictures music and vidoes to your favorite artist library. I cant wait to try the possibilities on this one.

Window Media Player 12.

Windows media player is so much improved, I didn’t bother installing my beloved media monkey yet. I would love to see the zune interface implemented by I guess that branding is exclusive to the zune.  I love the aethestics of new windows media player and how it get very minimal while playing videos. Its a keeper definitely

JumpList

Microsoft needed to find a way to execute actions from applications straight from the aptly named Super bar ( duh ). Its solution was jump list as a way to allow users regularly accessed  tasked within application. I show some pictures of this and how useful it can get. Only software released by microsoft currently support to see but I am sure others will follow in the future versions. I think its a great new productivity tool that will save quite a few of us while multitasking our way in the internet.

Wireless Networking

This is a major improvement over Vista which didn’t have the fastest networking sense. Sometimes it would take a whole minute to realize that I had disconnected the wireless connection. In contrast, the Wireless Networking in seven was up and running in 10 seconds after installation. The new Networking interface is quite intuitive and responsive. The new interface saves you a lot of time trying to connect to different networks too.

I will write more about new features as soon as I discover them. In the mean time please enjoy the screen shots of  Windows 7 that I have posted.

Ever wondered the beginning of the Internet. During my normal random clicking  ( a phenomenon I discovered to find amazing videos on youtube ), I came across  a video about the history of the internet. This video is a must watch for every internet enthusiast out there  or even people like who must  know the origins of the anything. Let the geek in everyone of us enjoy!!

Whats with java inner classes and how to work around them.

package innerclassdemo;
public class Main {

public static void main(String[] args) {

// Create an object instance of a class that contains
// an inner class - we will call it outer class.
OuterClass oc = new OuterClass();

// Create an object instance of an inner class.
OuterClass.InnerClass ic = oc.new InnerClass();
OuterClass.InnerClass.InnerInnerClass iic = ic.new InnerInnerClass();

// Display data from both outer class and inner class.
System.out.println("Access data from outer class = " + oc.data);
System.out.println("Access data2 from inner class = " + ic.data2);
System.out.println("Access data2 from inner class = " + iic.data3);
// Invoke a method from an inner class
ic.method();
iic.method2();
}

Semantic Web is  a buzz word that is still hanging around the web for quite a while now .What exactly is it then? I just got my summer placement / Msc project confirmed today and it involves building intellingent semantic web applications. Semantic web, simply put is a web that allows computers to actually understand what the informations is all about make sense of it. Huh ?? What does that mean. It allows computer to talk to each other and find relevant information without human intervention.Huh still don’t get the big deal about it? Why not listen to Bernard Lee, the inventor of the web and creator of the first website about his talk in the 2009 TED about the next generation web has to offer.

After taking a lot of raw affection from all mac fans out there PC users are something to get back with. Windows 7 or at-least the beta  is such an improvement compared to that Vista even blogger famous for criticism of everything microsoft actually like it. But people tend to forget why Windows 7 may become Microsoft’s best operating system for a while, i.e. Vista. Yeah it might have its glitches back then but it was because people hate change. Vista was quite an accomplishment itself,a complete revamped kernel, more secure than flawed Win XP and even introduced Aero, microsoft new UI engine. To think of it vista paved the way for Windows 7 and if windows vista hadn’t come out people would still hate windows 7. Windows 7 is nothing but a child to vista but more like a child who wanted to be exactly the opposite of its dad but got he still inherited his dads genes.

 

Just shows how the splash screen wanted to be different from Vista

After about 15 years of the normal taskbar since windows 95 we are introduced to a revamped and aptly named Superbar. Some might think it a dock ripoff but after using the dock for quite a while i prefer the superbar far more than i ever liked the dock. Yeah the dock provided with eye candy but so does the super bar. The search in seven is more responsive. Windows seven looks like a genuine and much thought attempt from microsoft to regain its lost footing. You don’t seem to find any of old windows xp icons hidden below the hood somewhere in the system32 folder anymore. Great work from Microsoft this time. I think I will be be buying some microsoft stock soon.