E@zyVG’s Vichar::World Connected

I’d love to see Canada and Russia in the Gold Medal game in Quebec City in the upcoming final game on May 18.

This is both a no-brainer and a very bold prediction. It’s a no-brainer because these two dominant forces of world hockey have assembled great teams for the 2008 World Championship. But it’s also a daring prophesy because Canada and Russia almost never meet in the finals.

There is no Olympic team sport that for so long has been dominated so emphatically as hockey by Canada and the Soviet Union/Russia. Just look at these facts:

• Canada and Soviet Union/Russia have combined for 47 out of 71 possible IIHF World Championship gold medals since 1920. Canada leads with 24, while their greatest rival has 23. This is a combined share of 66 percent.
• The dominance is even greater in Olympic hockey where the two hockey giants together have grabbed 15 out of 21 gold medals (71 percent).
• Combining those two biggest IIHF-organized events, Canada and Soviet Union/Russia have a whopping 62 gold medals between them from 92 opportunities. This amounts to 67 percent of all available gold medals in the history of international hockey thus far.

But despite Canada’s and Soviet Union/Russia’s supremacy in the most exciting game in the world, the countries don’t play each other in the finals very often. Since the IIHF introduced the playoff system with a one-on-one final gold medal game in 1992, the two giants have made it to the tournament-ending game together only once – and that was at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France. Russia (then under the impossible name of Commonwealth of Independent States) defeated an Eric Lindros-led Canada 3-1.

Since then, there have been 15 IIHF World Championship gold medal games and another four Olympic finals, but so far there hasn’t been a second occasion for a Canada vs. Russia clash at the summit. One of the reasons is, of course, the relative decline in the eastern power’s hockey program since they stopped appearing in the great CCCP-marked jerseys after 1991.

While the Soviet Union’s Big Red Machine won 22 World Championship titles and seven Olympic gold medals in the 47 years of Soviet hockey’s existence (beginning in 1954), Russia’s record is one World Championship title (1993) and one Olympic gold (the 1992 win in Albertville).

BTW, celebrating the 100 Year Anniversary (wow) of IIHF, the medals will have a retro look, as well as for the first time in the history the teams will also appear in retro jerseys. The following is what Russian Jursey will look like on this championship:

The Soviet Union 1956 Olympic jersey as their retro outfit, winning their first gold medal.

So, if these two great teams will make it to final, who will win the first Canada vs. Russia gold medal matchup in 16 years?

Here is the 2008 IIHF World Championship Schedule:

Notes:

Quarter-finals | May 14, 2008
Quebec City 1E-4E & 2E-3E | Halifax 1F-4F & 2F-3F
If Canada qualifies for quarter-finals, Canada's game will be at 3:30pm et

Semi-finals | May 16, 2008
W/G (1E-4E) - W/G (2F-3F) & W/G (1F-4F) - W/G (2E-3E)
If Canada qualifies for semi-finals, Canada's game will be at 5pm et

Let the games begin ……….

It’s not quite the same type of hybrid drive-train you’d see in street vehicles, but in an exciting announcement, Max Mosely of F1 has announced that all cars will become hybrid by 2013, along with other changes to the vehicles.

The hybrid system that will be phased in is known as KERS, which stands for Kinetic Energy Recovery System. KERS doesn’t store as much energy as a traditional hybrid system, but it only weighs 55 pounds and the limited energy storage capacity is well suited for Formula-style racing.

The biggest difference between KERS and a regular battery-electric hybrid is that KERS stores recovered waste energy in a rotating flywheel. Instead of converting waste energy into electricity and than back into useful energy again with an electric motor, KERS simply transfers the kinetic energy to a ~5kg flywheel in the F1 car’s transmission. The energy stored in the flywheel can then be used by the driver by pushing a “boost” button.

KERS is particularly exciting for us regular car drivers because the creators have claimed that it is twice as efficient as a standard hybrid system. If this system can be applied to production vehicles, it will be possible to realize huge improvements in fuel economy and pretty respectable reductions in GHG emissions.

The systems has its’ pros and cons, as well as supporters and those who are not liking it, at least with the current version. I am quite sure that with time this will evolve to suit all the teams, and later will be a version for street cars.

Even though the above cartoon is a true statement in a way, this doesn’t seem to apply to me … I still manage to stay skinny and active :-p

You might have noticed that Google and Yahoo show different results when you search, but why? The simple answer is that each search engine uses different methods to decide what’s relevant to you, and also what sites they want you to see, for advertising reasons.

Search engines have a lot of different ways to decide what to show you. Among them are reading the page title, headings, the text, image names, the web site name, information you can’t see (in the behind-the-scenes coding) and also how many pages are linked to each site.

The first thing to keep in mind is these are both big, wealthy sites who make money from advertising. Fortunately Yahoo and Google will return free results alongside the paid ads, but they still have some big differences in what comes up.

Each engine places different values on what matters the most. If we look closer here are the main differences from Google to Yahoo:

Google looks closely at a web page’s text and also where it links to. It can tell a little better if the links make sense, and manages to filter out a lot of sites that have added fake or broken links just to try to get themselves on top of the search results.

Lots and lots of links to different sites need to be relevant - if they are links to unrelated sites Google won’t rank it as highly as a page full of relevant links.

Yahoo will often include a page filled and overflowing with one particular word - again which the owner has repeated over and over to try to get themselves up to the top of the search results. Google realises that it’s probably not the best article if it needs this to get there, and will sometimes remove it from the results shown to you.

Yahoo isn’t quite so good at stopping “clone” sites appearing more than once. Ten sites all saying the same exact text isn’t very useful to you, and Google tends to keep these out a bit better.

Overall, Google tends to supply general information results, and Yahoo’s results tend to be a little towards the shopping side of things - even if those results aren’t paid advertising for Yahoo … personal thought.

So there you have it. There are technical scientific reasons of course, but the search engines guard these fiercely from our eyes. Which one you use comes down to personal preference. I prefer Google as it feels a little less biased, but a true shopaholic will love Yahoo. So enjoy whichever one suits you best, both are good for sure.

…. Not The Dream But Still Excellent Results

Unfortunately the 4.0 mark remained unreachable ……

Few days ago I ordered parts to assemble a new computer for myself. After receiving them all, first thing was to check if all was working fine in default mode, i.e. just plug everything and press the power button and after that install the OS. OS, well, at first I installed Linux (trust it more at this than Windows), the openSUSE distribution and after that the all necessary Windows, in my case the Vista x64, for doing all the overclocking. Once through the installing of OSs, came a time to squeeze maximum out of newly built computer. Here is how it looks from inside:

all the wires nicely tucked for better airflow

the blue aura

I was able to reach easily 3.6Ghz out of my Q6600 G0 processor. Next was 3.8Ghz, and that is where I reached the maximum stability, though 4.0Ghz was in reach. What I mean to say is from the tests the Asus P5K-E can handle around 490-500Mhz, meaning that when i tried to go for 4.0Ghz (500×9 or 450×8), the system was very-very unstable, even with the Vcore set @1.65, which of course is damn to high, unless you have some excellent watercooling. I could reach Windows log-in screen, but most of the time it just crashed. Have to say that when it came to runnig Linux, it did much better. All this meant that this particular silicon die was not planning playing nice @4Ghz. After this I decided to go for sweet spot 3.8Ghz, knowing that 3.9Ghz will also require high voltage.

Notice: All voltages mentioned here are that of in BIOS readings, same as what you see in CPU-Z, Asus Probe, etc. And temperatures what I saw in Core Temp 0.97.1.

3.8Ghz - not bad, but I didn’t want to have my system running hot with high Vcore. 3.8Ghz came as Vcore @1.525 initially and FSB @423×9 with NB @ 1.40V and memory runnig @1016Mhz 2.10V with 5-5-5-18 timings (memory was able to reach a max of only 30-40Mhz over its’ rated speed). At these settings computer was stable running several 32M SuperPi, several runs of 3DMark06 and several hours with OCCT at mix mode, but not with Prime95 (but with 3.7Ghz was stable). Being frank, I am not that bothered with Prime95, as am not planning to run some high FPU intensive simulations where minor mathematical error ruins whole deal. Next step was to see what P5K Pencil Vdroop (voltage fluctuation problem) Mod would give me. As this is not the first time I was doing mod, I checked few forums for instructions and went ahead. Wow … this mod came as surprise. Voltage fluctuation vanished 99.5%. Before if I wanted a real Vcore 1.525, I had to set Vcore 1.56 in BIOS, and it fluctuated quite a lot when in IDLE and LOAD. With this mod, I set 1.525 in BIOS and it was same in CPU-Z, and barely fluctuated between IDLE and LOAD, and even Prime95 runs became much more stable. What came to me as a very nice surprise, is that with this mod done, I could run the same settings not @1.52 but rather Vcore @1.4875. At this Vcore, apart from Prime95, all runs very nicely and mainly temperatures have dropped (even 1.4725 is working but not as quite stable as I would like).

Here is link to CPU-Z Validation Database

BTW, apart from lowering the Vcore, I also decided to changed the fan on Scythe Mugen cooler, which had 1200 RPM, to a little more powerful one, i.e. Zalman ZM-F3 set at around 1650-1700 RPM. With this I lowered temps another 2-4C. The following is what I get @IDLE with room temperature around 22C.

surely not the best result, perhaps AS5 in future will help

13.618secs is what I get from 1M on SuperPi/mod1.5 XS:

ah, I was hoping for 12.xxxs :-p

Now it was to overclocking the video card, which is MSI’s 8800GT, the OC version. The official specs for 8800GT are 600Mhz/1800Mhz/1500Mhz (Core Speed/Memory Speed/Shader Clock), while MSI 8800GT-OC came as 660Mhz/1900Mhz/1650Mhz. Surely, it is nice to get a pre-o/ced card, but then we enthusiasts want more. The max stable I could get from this card was 730Mhz/2050Mhz/1700Mhz, but then I decided to slow down and go with 701Mhz/2001Mhz/1701Mhz, so to keep the card cooler, as extra 30Mhz on core and 50Mhz on memeory wont give me much, besides I want my case to run little cooler so that all are in their sweet spot.

With Q6600 @3.8Ghz, Memory @1016Mhz and 8800GT @700/2000/1700 I get 15036 on 3DMark06. Compare this to around 3000 (as I remeber) I got from my previous rig.

Final O/C setup:

• Q6600 GO @3.8Ghz
  • Vista x64 Stable @1.48
  • Linux x86-64 Stable @1.46
    
• ASUS P5K-E @423×9 (BIOS 1012)
  
• OCZ Platinum XTC 2×2048MB @1016Mhz 5-5-5-18-4-60-8-4-4-2T
• MSI 8800GT 512MB @701/2001/1701Mhz

For a complete specs of my computer check out the following link.

Conclusion: Am I happy with the results … surely I am. A quad core @3.8Ghz is no joke and with 8800GT @700/2000, I can play current and near future releases at high resolutions with latest graphics effects and settings set at high. And think of all that blazing performance in Linux … hahaha :-p

On 4.0 Mark: I tried playing with different settings, including with CPU PLL Voltage, FSB Term. Voltage, SB/NB Voltage … but to no avail. If you think you can help me to reach the magic 4.0, please let me know, and if it will work, expect a donation from me.

Linux Test: I will soon have latest benchmarks done on Linux posted on my Linux and Open Source blog.

UPDATE (09.04.08): Super Pi result on Linux:

10.109 on Linux vs 13.618 on Windows

Yesssss ……. no, this is not April’s fool day joke

I was actually planning to upgrade my aging computer for some time now, and only now managed to sum up budget for new rig. Thanks to a project I’ll be working on, I got some advance payments, with which I am getting myself a new computer. You’ll notice that I ended up going with Intel Core 2 platform, rather than AMD Phenom that I was actually wanting, reason being that even with the latest Phenom X4 B3 stepping it doesn’t come close to what Core 2 has to offer, especially in the overclocking department. Also, this time it is nVidia video card, as ATI really does ruin mood when it comes to Linux desktops, ’cause of driver issues (do you know that in Vista’s case it is the other way around). So, here is what I ended up ordering, which should be delivered in next 2-4 days:

1. Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Kentsfield 65nm) 2.40Ghz 8MB cache 1066Mhz [SLACR -> G0 Stepping]

The options were Q6600, E8400 and the latest Q9450. Went with Q6600 as I really wanted to make a jump straight to quad core, though of course the dual core E8400 would have overclocked better and would have ran cooler. Unfortunately the Q9450 is still not available, and those that have charge premium..

2. Scythe SCINF-1000 Mugen (Infinity)

I was always quite picky about cooling, hence went with one of the best the market has to offer.

3. ASUS P5K-E/WiFi AP (Intel P35+ICH9R chipsets)

4. OCZ Platinum XTC 2×2048MB DDR2 PC2-8000 OCZ2P10004GK 1000Mhz @5-5-5-18

Before I saw these sticks, I was going for Corsair Dominator TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF … boy I saved some $$.

5. MSI NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC 8800GT 512MB

In this case I had 2 options, the latest 9600GT and the older 8800GT. Simply speaking, the 9600GT has nothing much new to offer and 8800GT is definitely faster, as well as, at least here in Moscow, the price on both the cards are similar. Aah, Linux + nVidia card, I am gonna enjoy it.

6. 2xWestern Digital 500GB WD5000AAKS 16MB SATA-II

You somehow always manage to run out of space … this drive comes to the rescue.

7. NEC/Optiarc DVD-RW AD-7203S Labelflash SATA

My first SATA based DVD-RW …. yups, it is too early for Blue Ray ReWriter.

8. Microsonic CR09 USB 2.0 57-in-1 3.5″ int. USB 2.0 Card Reader

Needed SDHC support, as my older one didn’t support it.

9. TRENDnet TBW-105UB USB 2.0, Class II Bluetooth v2.0 with EDR

10. Thermaltake PurePower RX 600W ATX 2.2 (W0142)

Initially I was going for 500W, but then the price difference was not big, and decided to get 600W. I’ll need it to run my overclocked computer stable 24/7.

11. Thermaltake M9 Mid-Tower ATX Case

At first I was going for Thermaltake Armor Jr., but then found this case, which though not as sexy as previous one, seems to be better when it comes to cooling factor … and saved some $$.

That’s about it. I already have descent monitor (though already dreaming of 24-27″), keyboard/mouse combo and a webcam. If you wanna know which ones I got, you can check’em up here.

Now it is time to assemble and then start doing tests and benchmarks to reach the highest possible overclock with processor, motherboard and memory and as well with video card. Once completed I’ll post my results.

I am gonna enjoy this weekend like I haven’t for some time …. knock wood :-p Expect my next post once this computer has been assembled and thoroughly tested.

BTW, it came out to US$1310 in total.

Community Organization to Assure Neutrality and Longevity of Specification for Building Social Applications Across the Web

Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google today announced they have agreed to form the OpenSocial Foundation to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web. Yahoo!’s support of OpenSocial and role as a founding member of the new foundation are landmarks for the rapidly growing specification which will now offer developers the potential to connect with more than 500 million people worldwide.

The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction.

“Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” said Wade Chambers, Vice President – Platforms, Yahoo!. “Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web.”

“Together with the OpenSocial community we are setting new industry specifications for social web application development,” said Steve Pearman, SVP of Product Strategy, MySpace. “Yahoo! is an important addition to the OpenSocial movement, and through this foundation we will work together to provide developers with the tools to make the Internet move faster and to foster more innovation and creativity.”

“OpenSocial has been a community-driven specification from the beginning,” said Joe Kraus, Director of Product Management, Google. “The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open.”

The OpenSocial Foundation website at www.opensocial.org will serve as the portal for the community to find all information about OpenSocial and the foundation as they evolve. Developers and website owners can now visit www.opensocial.org for the latest specifications, links to other resources, and the opportunity to get involved.

Engineers from Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google will continue to work together and with the OpenSocial community to further advance the specification through the new foundation, continuing several core elements of OpenSocial since its announcement by Google, MySpace, and many others in November 2007:

• all specifications are available under a Creative Commons copyright license
• public community involvement shapes the specification’s direction
• an open source reference implementation called Shindig is being created and developed as a project in the Apache Software Foundation incubator, available at http://incubator.apache.org/shindig/

OpenSocial addresses an emerging problem for developers who are eagerly building applications people can enjoy with their friends: before OpenSocial, if a developer built a “favorite photos” application to work on one social network, it would have to be built all over again to work on another site. OpenSocial tackles this problem at its technology roots, providing common “plumbing” that lets social applications run on many different websites without requiring duplicate work from either developers or the websites.

The result is a vast distribution platform for social applications, whether they are for sharing photos or playing games or arranging real-world meetings or any number of other activities – everything is more fun, interesting, and useful when users can involve their friends and contacts.

Jodhaa Akbar (Hindi: जोधा-अकबर, Urdu: جودھا اکبر) is a 16th century love story of a Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great and a Rajput (Hindu) princess Jodhaa. It is about a great Emperor who is tolerant towards a religion and culture which is not just alien to him, but is also the religion of the land he rules. Of course, how much of this is actually true is anybody’s guess. Apparently, the director of the movie, Ashutosh Gowarikar (the same director who made the Oscar nominated Lagaan) has admitted that 70 percent of the movie is fiction, which means it is very loosely based on history. What seems to be true is that Akbar married a Rajput princess… beyond that historians don’t seem to agree on anything much. They don’t even agree that it was princess Jodha who married Akbar. However what is true is that Akbar the Great had a tolerant attitude towards religion and encouraged religious debate. This has been well documented.

In any case, the love story doesn’t ring true, not if one thinks of it in a historical perspective. Akbar married a Rajput princess to form a political alliance, and therefore one wonders whether there was true love between the two. There probably wasn’t, knowing he had more than 300 other wives - it is believed though that more than one of these wives was Hindu. Interestingly, Akbar’s son Jehangir, who succeeded him, was the son of a Hindu mother, and while some say it was Jodha Bai, some say it was another Hindu princess.

The movie itself is amazing in scope…and manages to switch between the battlefield and court politics to the love scenes very smoothly. It casts thousands of characters…soldiers and ordinary people…and everyone in authentic costumes. The battlefield scenes, with elephants and costumes are impressive, although I wish they had been less gory.

This movie is a must-see, not because it is great cinema, but because it’s good, path breaking Indian cinema. I really enjoy watching historical films, even if they are mostly fiction based. We don’t get too many many good historical films. The other Indian-made historical epic I have liked was Mangal Pandey and it was excellent. This film falls somewhere in between, as Ashoka was mostly not enjoyable.

Historical films are important…they bring our past to life, and Jodha Akbar has done it with panache and style. True, the film could have done with tighter editing, and some more believability…but the music was also good. And I am not sure why all the fuss about this movie that went down in India, especially with initially release of the movie being banned by the States of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand (by the time you read this maybe the ban will be lifted) … they have to understand that this is movie only, and no is not being preached as a true part of Indian history.

The movie was around 3 hours and 20 minutes long and I enjoyed most of it.

All we hear round the clock is how motion picture industry keeps on complaining about the piracy hurting their revenues. Now look at the latest figures from Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA):

The confusing part is the link in the “Latest News” section of MPAA that claims an all-time high in domestic and global box office sales. The global market grew 4.9% to $26.6 billion, claims the MPAA, and the U.S. domestic market grew roughly 5.4%, passing the $9.6 billion mark.

It is surprising to see the MPAA claim that the motion picture industry is taking a beating from piracy when their own data shows that the market is producing better than before. This is not to say, however, that piracy doesn’t have an effect on the film industry.

So please stop complaining as you yourself just proved that even though the film industry is taking some large hits from piracy, the industry is still raking in quite a sum of cash. And btw, with getting rid of DRM agenda I am quite sure that there is even more money to be made.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that India’s largest automaker Tata cannot be stopped. On the verge of finalizing a deal to acquire Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford, Tata is now rumored to be interested in buying a stake in one of the most beloved performance marques of all time: Ferrari. Tata said Luca di Montezemolo, chairman of Fiat and Ferrari, has invited Tata to Italy, to explore the design and luxury sector opportunities.

Tata is no stranger to diversifying his portfolio, already in talks with Ford to buy its Jaguar and Ford divisions, due for an official announcement any time now. He also sits on Fiat’s board and has an alliance with Fiat in India, according to Italy’s Finanza e Mercati daily.

Is this a rumour or not, time will tell. BTW, TATA’s IT company known as TCS is already an IT supplier to Ferrati Formula 1 team. Could it be that in next 50 years the Ferrari F1 will be an Indian team?