Friday, July 25, 2008

My First Big Step!!

Lalita Surabhi

writes on GLOBAL WARMING

for mritsece.co.nr
So, I took my first big step today..
Yeah, I'm talking about the global warming issue.. Yes, it is the buzz word right now.. True, You look and also feel like a hero talking about it.. and, sure, if you start a conversation about global warming or the likes of it, you become this ultimate cool guy/girl.. But, how many of us take the issue further? Further than just a conversation? I was also one of those people till today.. I would talk about the unnecessary abundance of carbon Di-oxide on the planet and the thinning of the ozone layer, etc.. I would actively discourage friends to stop littering wrappers around, and avoid plastic bags, may be just to be in that fancy limelight..
This morning I was watching this show on TV about the youth and their responsibilities.. It kind of shook me.. I realized I was actually not doing anything.. Practically nothing.. Just inches close to zilch.. This was my wake up call... Finally, I could hear it..
What will happen to my planet? I have the right to choose where I want to grow old..
Time for some action.. Best and easiest target-kids..They're the only kind of human beings who would welcome new ideas.. I got a group of kids, all of them my sister's friends.. made them sit down and got going..asked them to list out what problems the world faces now..
The five girls very patiently and devotedly jotted down all that they could think of.. As they were doing that, I got some time for some research work and thanks to Google, I was now clear to very clear about the whole concept - ''GLOBAL WARMING''..
I spoke to the girls about the issue.. told them what they could do, how they could help, how they could save our planet.. And there were five beautiful smiles right in front of me.. That was probably the time when I was proudest of myself.. I did it.. I took that step.. That '' charity begins at home'' step..
The plan's made.. We'll get more people joining us in a few days.. Their friends and my friends..
And a big bunch of us will take our first real big step.. We're in plans of celebrating ''Green Day'' which does not fall on any particular day of any month.. Just the day when the climate is perfect and all of us have that precious little devil, time, in hand.. We'll plant lots of plants.. lots and lots of them..
I know pretty well that my contribution is not big enough, but, what's the big deal in starting small?
This is our time now.. We're the rulers, the creators, the people.. Only we can make a difference.. Only we can help ourselves.. Waiting for some miracle to happen is sheer stupidity.. Turn yourself into that miracle and change things around.. Take that one step and the rest of them will follow.. One step.. Just one at a time.. Just one for now..
GREEN!

Thursday, July 24, 2008

A Lazy Intelligent Man

By Akash Pakanati

Guest Author mritsece.co.nr

He looked around. There was nothing to do, its usual. He lied on the couch and switched on the idiot box. He started surfing, which was his usual habit with the half screwed up remote. Within five minutes he realized that watching TV would not break his boredom. But then he had nothing to do either so continued watching TV.

He lived in a one bedroom house which looked normal from inside but was a cheap ramshackle from outside. Being tenants, he could not ask to change the state of the house. The land lord was supposed to be a short tempered person and would give out tons of crap if any one questioned him. So, he preferred a cheap house to crap on him.

There was a knock on the door. He did not realize that knock would change his life forever. He went and opened the door.

“Mr. Subhash Kumar?” a man asked. There were two persons.

“Yeah. It’s me. Please come in.” the man told.

Two men came in, one was tall and thin and the other was normal height and fat. They both wore white dresses and carried some files.

“Please sit down.” Subhash told.

“What is it that you have come for?” Subhash asked.

“Shall we go out and talk in nearby park?” the fat man asked. Subhash nodded and the three left the house.

“We come from the company Techatronics. Our records show that you are a pass out from Osmania University with an M Sc in Electronics. We come with a job offer as an engineer in our firm.” The tall man answered. They were in the park now and were sitting under a tree.

Subhash’s eyes brightened. He was looking for a job though he had his own conditions. The fat man understood from Subhash’s eyes that he was interested in the offer. He said –

“Before we go ahead, we need to know your background info. Also, our records show that you have passed out 2 years back. But you are unemployed. What is the reason?”

Subhash started chronologically.

“I was born in 1982. My father is a clerk in the Road Transport Department. He will be retiring in a few months. My mother is working as a teacher in the government school. I did B Sc and M Sc in electronics. I was the university topper in M Sc. I was unemployed all these days not because I dint get any offers but because I was not interested in working for 10-12 hours per day.”

The fat man did not seem to hear. He asked –

“What is your family income per month?”

“Around eight thousand rupees.” Subhash answered.

“Don’t you think you should have worked long back? Is 8000 rupees sufficient for your family?” the fat man asked. Subhash understood why the fat man asked that question before.

“No sir. It’s not sufficient. We barely manage. But sir, I told you. I can’t work for 10 hrs per day.”

“You can’t work so much and you are a goddamn topper. Your brain must be super awesome.” The tall man observed.

“Also, I would like to make it a point that I am interested in your offer only if I am allowed to work for 4-6 hrs. Anything more than that, I can’t accept.”

At this the tall man seemed to flinch. He certainly dint expect this from Subhash.

“See, your position is critical. Your father will be retiring and your life cannot go ahead if you can’t work. Nobody in this present contemporary world would pay you for just 4 hrs of work. You have to accept our offer. Or else you will repent.” The fat man said.

“Hey mister. I have never asked you for a job. I have put forth my conditions and if you people don’t accept then it’s your problem.” Subhash retorted.

At that instant a branch from the tree below which the three were sitting broke. It fell directly on Subhash, just above the ear where the bone protecting the brain would be egg shell thin. The branch stuck him hard and Subhash fell down.

Subhash shook his head. There was neither pain nor blood. He just got up. He looked around and was surprised to see himself lying in a pool of blood. He looked around. The tall and the fat men changed slowly into bodies of black coal. They looked terribly scary with white, long and sharp teeth protruding out of their mouths. They looked like ghosts.

“What happened?” Subhash asked. He still couldn’t figure out why he could see himself sleeping as if in a trance. His figure below him looked ice cold, as if..dead. This thought sent a chill through his spine.

“It’s like 10 seconds since you died.” The changed fat man said.

“What?” Subhash knew that he heard them write, “But I feel alive and who are you?”

“We are the emissaries of Yama, the lord of death. We have actually come to take you. And your soul is speaking to us. You are free from your body”

In a moment the whole world collapsed for Subhash. He could not understand the situation.

“Then why did you come to me faking a job offer and stuff. If u had come to take my life, you could have just taken it. Why this deception?” Subhash’s blood boiled. There wasn’t any blood though. It was just a soul.

“Let me explain. Before death, our lord Yama gives two choices. One is to choose death and other is to choose to live. This choice is not given directly. It’s an indirect process and you have chosen death.” The fat man said.

“How is that?”

“We know that you are a lazy bug. You have screwed up 2 years of your life because of the laziness. You are intelligent but lazy. You would turn out to be a good for nothing fool. So it was destined that you will die. But people with your brain are very few. Hence we (Yama) offered you a choice by faking this offer. When you refused to work, you have indirectly chosen death.”

“Do I deserve to die just because I refused to work?”

“Yes! Your situation is like that. Your parents are working hard when they shouldn’t. And you are sitting in your house when you should slog. We know that your family’s financial status is low. In that case, as a young man, you should take up the responsibility and solve your family’s problems. Instead you were just whiling away the time. The present contemporary world has no room for laziness.” The fat man who was now a messenger of Yama explained.

“As a matter of fact, I am relieved that we killed you. Maybe your parents will be broken at the loss their child, but half their burden will decrease and they will live happily for sometime.” The tall man said.

“What if I had chosen your job offer?”

“Simple, we would have used our magic to get you a job. Can’t we do that?” the fat man blinked with a wide grin.

“If everything is destined, why are humans given this opportunity of making a choice?”

“Who said everything is destined?” the tall man said. “Nothing is destined kid. It all depends on you. You make your own destiny. You have chosen to die. Well, if everything is destined, why catch a thief? You should leave him assuming that it is destined that he will rob. Anyways, no point in wasting our time with a dead person.” The tall man said.

“You know, there is not much of a difference between a lazy person and a dead person. Instead a lazy person causes problems to others like you have caused to your parents.” The fat man said.

“I understand. I agree my mistakes and shortcomings. I promise never to be lazy again. Please could you give me back my life?”

“Ha...realized that life is precious? There isn’t any way of you getting back your life.” the fat man snapped. “Let’s Go!”

“Where?” Subhash asked innocently.

“To Hell!” both said in chorus.

Black Holes & Solar System

Guest Author Akash Writes for mritsece.co.nr

Black Holes have been my interest ever since I have started reading about Space and its mysteries. The following is something which everyone interested in Space and related stuff should know!

In 1915, Einstein put forward his revolutionary General Theory of Relativity. In this, space and time were no longer separate and independent entities. Instead, they were just different directions in a single object called space-time. This space-time was not flat, but was warped and curved by the matter and energy in it. In order to understand this, considered a sheet of rubber, with a weight placed on it, to represent a star. Theweight will form a depression in the rubber, and will cause the sheet near the star to be curved,rather than flat. If one now rolls marbles on the rubber sheet, their paths will be curved, rather than being straight lines. In 1919, a British
expedition to West Africa, looked at light from distant stars, that passed near the Sun during an
eclipse. They found that the images of the stars were shifted slightly from their normal positions. This indicated that the paths of the light from the stars had been bent by the curved
space-time near the Sun. General Relativity was confirmed.

Consider now placing heavier and heavier, and more and more concentrated weights on the rubber sheet. They will depress the sheet more and more. Eventually, at a critical weight and size, they will make a bottomless hole in the sheet, which particles can fall into, but nothing can get out of.

What happens in space-time according to General Relativity is rather similar. A star will curve and distort the space-time near it, more and more, the more massive and more compact the star is. If a massive star, which has burnt up its nuclear fuel, cools and shrinks below a critical size, it will quite literally make a bottomless hole in space-time, that light can't get out of. Such objects were given the name Black Holes, by the American physicist John Wheeler, who was one of the first to recognise their importance, and the problems they pose. The name caught on quickly. To Americans, it suggested something dark and mysterious, while to the British, there was the added resonance of the Black Hole of Calcutta. But the French, being French, saw a more risqué meaning. For years, they resisted the name, trou noir, claiming it was obscene. But that was a bit like trying to stand against le weekend, and other franglais. In the end, they had to give in. Who can resist a name that is such a winner?


Solar System

It was during my 1st grade that I was introduced to the concept of Solar System. My Teachers explained it to me in such a way that I believed it to be flat without any distortions, which isn't true. Solar System is curved due to the gravitational force between the planets.

Flat Model :
On a table place balls of various sizes in a such a way that they represent the Solar System with the central position occupied by a big ball. This ball represents Sun. Remaining balls as the planets. Generally planets move in their orbits becoz of the gravitational force between the planet and sun and angular velocity of planet. The net force acting between these two makes the planet to move around the Sun in their specific path called as Orbit. Hence if the angular velocity of the planet is reduced, it wud fall directly on Sun. All this phenomena is not observed with the balls on table. Even if they are made to move with certain angular velocity with gentle push, they would move as if each ball is independent and doesn't have any influence over the other balls. The randomness increases with each second and we will not be able to explain the actually Solar System with this model.
We can avoid all this drawbacks if we consider the curved model!

Curved Model :
In this take a bowl and place the big ball at the bottom of the bowl. Instead of taking other 8 balls for planets, take 1 ball for convenience. Now project the ball on the curved part of bowl and observe.
The ball moves on the curved surface and looses angular velocity continuously. When it reaches zero, the ball falls into the big ball at the center. The same thing happens in the Solar System. When a planet doesn't move with sufficient angular velocity, the net force on the planet acts in the direction of gravitational force towards Sun. Hence, the planet would fall into the Sun. This force is more pronounced if the planet is nearer to Sun since Force acting between two bodies is inversely related to the square of the distance of separation, according to Newton's Law.
Gravity is comparable to the curvature in the bowl. If the bowl(Solar System) is more curved, more is the force with which the ball(planet) falls in to the Big Ball(Sun) if the angular velocity is less!
Einstein's statement " Gravity is a distortion in Space " proves the same. More the distortion(curvature) more is the force of gravity. Also this theory is in accordance with the concept of Black Holes. They are stars which distort the space around them so much that even Light cannot escape its gravity!

Monday, July 7, 2008

Why LINUX ?


A couple of years ago, the Linux desktop was a pimply adolescent with half-baked ideas. Today we see a handsome, well-dressed grown-up who handles a range of tasks with confidence and even performs fancy tricks. No longer need we make allowances for his dress sense or his strange habits.

The timing couldn't be better. Vista is a Wagner Opera that is usually late to start, takes too long to finish, and is spoilt by floorboards creaking under the weight of the cast. Mac OS X Leopard, meanwhile, is the late show in an exclusive nightclub where the drinks are always too expensive. In contrast, the Linux desktop is the free show in the park across the street -- it imposes some discomforts on the audience, but provides plenty of entertainment.

The first challenge is getting hold of tickets, since you can't just choose your new PC and then tick the Linux box in the list of software options. The good news is that installing Linux is no longer a challenge that rivals splitting the atom. With a handful of mature distributions designed for simple users, the benefits Linux offers are much easier to verify. And there are plenty:
  1. Cost -- Linux is free, and that includes all the apps. Microsoft is greedy. Vista Home Premium and Ultimate cost hundreds of dollars, even when upgrading from Windows XP. Moving up to Office 2007 involves handing over another bundle of dollars.

  2. Resources -- Even the most lavishly equipped Linux distros demand no more resources than Windows XP. Vista is greedy: a single-user PC operating system that needs 2GB of RAM to run at acceptable speed, and 15GB of hard disk space, is grossly obese.

  3. Performance -- Linux worked faster on a Dell Inspiron Core Duo than XP, at least the way XP worked out of the box. After cleaning out the bloatware and trading McAfee's Abrams Tank for the lightweight NOD32, XP and Linux (with Guarddog and Clam-AV) perform at similar speed.

  4. No bloatware -- Linux is free from adware, trialware, shovelware, and bloatware. Running Linux is like watching the public TV network.

  5. Security -- Last year, 48,000 new virus signatures were documented for Windows, compared to 40 for Linux. Still, most distros come with firewalls and antivirus (AV) software. Programs like Guarddog and Clam-AV are free, of course.

  6. Dual booting -- The best Linux distros make dual booting a simple affair, along with the required disk partitioning (so you don't need to buy partitioning software). Windows on my Dell laptop is still intact after installing and uninstalling a dozen distros.

  7. Installation -- Anyone who's done it once knows that installing Windows from scratch takes hours or even days by the time you get all your apps up and running. With Linux, it can take as little as half an hour to install the operating system, utilities, and a full set of applications. No registration or activation is required, no paperwork, and no excruciating pack drill.

  8. Reinstalling the OS -- You can't just download an updated version of Windows. You have to use the CD that came with your PC and download all the patches Microsoft has issued since the CD was made. With Linux, you simply download the latest version of your distro (no questions asked) and, assuming your data files live in a separate disk partition, there's no need to reinstall them. You only need to re-install the extra programs you added to the ones that came with the distro.

  9. Keeping track of software -- Like most Windows users, I have a shelf full of software CDs and keep a little book with serial numbers under my bed in case I have to reinstall the lot. With Linux, there are no serial numbers or passwords to lose or worry about. Not a single one.

  10. Updating software -- Linux updates all the software on your system whenever updates are available online, including all applications programs. Microsoft does that for Windows software but you have to update each program you've added from other sources. That's about 60 on each of my PCs. More icing on the Linux cake is that it doesn't ask you to reboot after updates. XP nags you every ten minutes until you curse and reboot your machine. If you choose "custom install" to select only the updates you want, XP hounds you like a mangy neighborhood dog until you give in.

  11. More security -- These days, operating systems are less vulnerable than the applications that run on them. Therefore a vital aspect of PC security is keeping your apps up-to-date with the latest security patches. That's hard manual labor in Windows, but with Linux it's automatic.

  12. No need to defrag disks -- Linux uses different file systems that don't need defragging. NTFS was going to be replaced in Vista, but Microsoft's new file system didn't make the final cut. Instead, Vista does scheduled disk defragging by default, but the defrag utility is a sad affair.

  13. A wealth of built-in utilities -- The utilities supplied with Windows are pretty ordinary on the whole, that's why so many small software firms have made a nice living writing better ones. Linux programs are comparable with the best Windows freeware, from CD burners to photo managers, memory monitors and disk utilities. PDF conversion is built-in, both into OpenOffice Writer and into the DTP application Scribus. All you do is click a button on the task bar.

Friday, July 4, 2008

A New Beginning


All that has happened has happened, let us hope for a greater day ahead.
And without the worry about outcome of the work you put in,put your sincere efforts and success will come running to you.

And please, don't ask what has happened to the old posts & other info. , because even we do not have an idea as what has happened in the background.
And sincerely speaking,we are not worried about what has happened may be because we are only here,for helping the fellow students and are not bothered about any insults/ignorance we face in this process.
So,please co-operate with us.

Thanking you,
Surya Tej Reddy
for the board of Administrators
mritsece.co.nr