Education is the Movement To light from Darkness

AT&T upgrades 3G network and takes over Starbucks Wi-Fi

2008-02-14T19:05:00.001-08:00

AT&T reported last week that it will be upgrading its wireless network to “3G services” to an additional 80 US cities for a total of 350 by the end of 2008. The upgrade process will encompass more than 1,500 new sites, and cover the “top 100 US cities”.

In that announcement, AT&T stated “Other plans for the new year include completion of the nation’s first High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)-enabled network by the middle of the year.” AT&T’s wording is odd; perhaps intentionally vague. But parsing the announcements a bit, it sounds to me like the announcement breaks down into three announcements:
1. AT&T is deploying “3G” wireless HSxPA (it’s variously stated as High Speed Packet Access, HS Downlink PA, HS Uplink PA) to an additional 80 cities, bringing their total “3G” deployment to 350 cities, including all of the “top” 100 US cities, by the end of 2008.
2. These new deployments will be the latest generation of HSxPA.
3. Coinciding with the timetable of the additional deployments, AT&T will com 942 plete the upgrades of all of its “3G” systems (350 total, including the “top” 100 US cities) by the end of 2008.

So, summarizing, by EOY 2008, AT&T will have HSxPA capability in 350 US cities, including the “top” 100 US cities.

In a kind-of-related announcement, AT&T announced that it is the new Wi-Fi service provider for Starbucks at their 7,000 company-owned stores, taking over from T-Mobile. There were a number of “sweeteners” to this deal, resulting in easier and cheaper Wi-Fi Internet Access for many. Those who use Starbucks “stored value” cards will be able to get two hours of Wi-Fi Internet Access free. Starbucks “partners” (employees) will be able to use Starbucks / AT&T Wi-Fi service for free. AT&T customers of fixed-line services will be able to use Starbucks Wi-Fi for free.

For corporate / enterprise users, “AT&T’s remote access services business customers will be able to access Wi-Fi service at Starbucks locations”. Also, T-Mobile customers and those who have existing T-Mobile Wi-Fi HotSpot accounts will be able to continue to use Starbucks “… at no additional cost”. Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Networking News reports that Wayport also has a hand in the Starbucks / AT&T Wi-Fi deal - I’ll leave it to Glenn to explain the particulars.

The deal with AT&T will consolidate the two distinct data communications deals that every company-owned Starbucks store currently has- corporate Intranet via AT&T, and public Internet access via Wi-Fi from T-Mobile; now AT&T will do both.

And, as a final nod to the inanity of AT&T wireless customers not being able to (without paying a usage fee) use their iPhones, in Wi-Fi mode, at AT&T Wi-Fi HotSpots, comes this terse teaser: “AT&T will soon extend the benefits of Wi-Fi at Starbucks to its wireless customers.”

If this plays out the least bit logically, the real winners of these two announcements will be users of the “Version 2″ iPhone, expected to debut sometime this year, that will 8e7 be able to use the AT&T “3G” / HSxPA network and then “roam into” Starbucks for an even “higher bandwidth fix” for downloading big media files onto their iPhone along with their caffeine jolt, all for no additional charge and a seamless experience.

Radial Basis Neural Networks

2008-02-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

During the last two decades, there is a tremendous growth in neural computing field with the invention of large number of new theories, new network topologies and learning algorithms. The overall objective of these discoveries was to develop/design a neural network model which has the ability to learn, to adapt and to generalize for a given input-output mapping with further enhancements for existing models. Architecture of neural networks have been developed from its simplest form, perceptron and to the other types such as multilayer feed forward networks, recurrent networks, Hopfield networks etc. There are various weaknesses exploit in these types of neural networks such as having complex architecture, having slow training procedure etc. In order to overcome these problems, a neural network type called Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFNN/RBNN) was developed recently. Radial basis neural networks have advantage of being simpler than other types of neural networks while providing faster training time. Also it has the property of universal approximation of functions.

Download Free Java ebooks

2008-01-14T02:02:00.000-08:00

I got following URLs for downloading some java ebooks freely.
JDJ - June 2007
JDJ - 2007 June issuePDF | 9.5 MBformerly Java Developer's Journal

Taming Java Threads
Description:Learning how to write multithreaded applications

Inside the Java Virtual Machine (Java Masters Series)

For the advanced Java developer, Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine offers

Enterprise Java 2 Security: Building Secure and Robust J2EE Applications

What is Mesothelioma International

2008-01-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

Mesothelioma International is dedicated to the fight against mesothelioma – a worldwide health crisis with roots in humanity's use of asbestos. Although the use of asbestos has now been banned in the European Union, it is estimated that 250,000 workers in Western Europe alone will have died from mesothelioma by 2029. It is our hope that this website will be helpful to those throughout Europe who have been affected by this epidemic.

Mesothelioma is a rare and virulent form of cancer that affects the lining of the lung, lining of the abdominal cavity or lining around the heart. Mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos, and occurs in those who have breathed in asbestos fiber, in many cases 20 to 50 or more years ago. Some were exposed on their jobs; others were exposed secondarily through family members who without their knowledge, brought fiber home on their work clothes or on their hair or skin.

Despite the serious nature of the disease, there is hope. Every year, doctors and scientists worldwide are developing new treatments and making new discoveries that help to improve the chance of survival and the patient’s quality of life. This website, Mesothelioma International, helps patients and their family members connect with the resources they need to be informed and make the best decisions on their potential treatment and care. for more information see

How Do We Evaluate Artificial Immune Systems?

2008-01-01T23:55:00.000-08:00

What is an artificial immune system (AIS)? One answer is that an AIS is a model of the immune system that can be used by immunologists for explanation, experimentation and prediction activities that would be difficult or impossible in ‘wet-lab’ experiments. This is also known as ‘computational immunology.’ Another answer is that an AIS is an abstraction of one or more immunological processes. Since these processes protect us on a daily basis, from the ever-changing onslaught of biological and biochemical entities that seek to prosper at our expense, it is reasoned that they may be computationally useful. It is this form of AIS—methods based on immune abstractions—that will be studied here.

Although AIS is a relatively young field, advancing on many fronts, some central themes have become apparent—the question is, are these AIS delivering anything useful, or are they just another addition to the increasingly long line of approaches that are biologically inspired? These approaches include established paradigms such as genetic and evolutionary computation (GEC), artificial neural networks (ANN) and various forms of artificial life; as well as less established topics such as ant colony dynamics (Dorigo, 1992; Dorigo, 1999) and cell membrane computing (Paun, 2002). The intention here is to provide an assessment of prior developments in AIS, its current strengths, weaknesses and its overall usefulness.

Perhaps the biggest difficulty faced by AIS is that it has few application types for which it is undisputedly the most effective method. Despite the many points in its favor, this single point is enough to allow it to be ignored by many. Although two important areas have been identified in which AIS is unique in its ability to provide solutions, further impressive demonstrations of effectiveness will be required if AIS is to be pushed to the fore.

XBee Wall Router Makes it Easy to Deploy and Extend ZigBee Networks

2007-12-25T23:08:00.000-08:00

Digi International today introduced the XBee wall router, a ZigBee router used to expand a ZigBee network’s range. By plugging into standard power sockets, XBee wall routers are easy-to-install building blocks for self-healing ZigBee networks and ideal for creating robust Drop-in Networks.

“The XBee wall router’s small form factor and ease of deployment make it perfect for creating Drop-in Networks,” said Larry Kraft, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Digi International. “Installation is easy and completely unobtrusive.”

M-Commerce: The Trend of Mobility

2007-10-22T01:33:00.000-07:00

Researches on mobile technology introducing new services to fulfill the growing demand of mobility in today’s world. One of the attractive services developed with support of mobile technology in recent years, is providing banking and financial services. Applications in this are includes buying over phone, purchase and redemption of ticket and reward schemes, travel and weather information, and writing contracts on the move. These types of mobile applications are categorized as m-commerce [3]. There is significant and growing demand on deploying banking and financial services over mobile networks.

M-Commerce applications are very useful for mobile users in many ways. Any user with a mobile phone can access m-commerce application in real time at any place. Also mobile device provide security into some extent than online business because SIM card can be used to store confidential user information. Also it can be develop to provide local information services by localizing registered users within a specific area with the help of positioning techniques such as GIS/GPS technologies. But there are some limitations such as mobile devices provide limited capabilities (such as limited memory/display etc) and communication through the wireless mobile network introduce additional security treats. (e.g.: eavesdropping)

In fact, m-Commerce has potential to address a major service gap in developing countries that is critical to their social and economic development. However the success of m-commerce very much depends on the security of the underlying technologies.

Sensor Network Overview

2007-10-22T01:26:00.001-07:00

The traditional sensor networks are deployed on labs, buildings or under special technical environment. They are large and consuming lot of power. But due to the rapid development of technology today the sensor networks consist of smart sensor devices. Sensor nodes are kind of computers with small computational power. They are operating using battery power and have wireless link to communicate with other nodes. Sensor node typically use extremely low power and physically they are very small. Because of the physical size they can be controlled easily. But power consumption is utmost important, because sensors should work continuously for a long period without human intervention.

Distributed information systems should access data frequently in remote locations to proceed with there operations. Accessing the data frequently and processing various queries are costly in terms of communication link, energy, computational power and latency etc. As a solution for the above problem, Acquisitional Query Processing Approach is introduced. According to the ACQP approach, data is acquired (sampled) after the query passed into the node. Hence data is gathered as specified in query. So the nodes in distributed system have control over time, place and how often particular data sample is acquired. Due to the data gathered as specified in query, unnecessary data is not acquired and the cost of processing power and the power consumption of the node is reduced. Not only that ACQP approach can use in all level of query processing (query optimization, query execution) in order to increase the efficiency. (Because information over location time parameters)

Pablo Picasso

2007-06-14T03:51:00.000-07:00

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain. The son of an academic painter, José Ruiz Blanco, he began to draw at an early age. In 1895, the family moved to Barcelona, and Picasso studied there at La Lonja, the academy of fine arts. His visit to Horta de Ebro from 1898 to 1899 and his association with the group at the café Els Quatre Gats about 1899 were crucial to his early artistic development. In 1900, Picasso’s first exhibition took place in Barcelona, and that fall he went to Paris for the first of several stays during the early years of the century. Picasso settled in Paris in April 1904, and soon his circle of friends included Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude and Leo Stein, as well as two dealers, Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill.