Memento

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Natalie: ... Even if you get your revenge, you are not gonna remember it, you are not even gonna know that it happened.

Lenny: My wife deserves a vengeance. It doesn't make any difference whether I know about it. Just because there are things that I don't remember, doesn't make my actions are meaningless. The world just doesn't disappear when  you close your eyes, does it? Anyway, maybe I'll take a photograph...

In movie 'Don', zeenat Aman in old/Priyanka Chopra in new, have opposite view on a similar situation. They want Don to recover back his memory before they can have their revenge. They reason it as saying Don should know why exactly he is being killed and also who (she is a sister of one of Don's victim) is killing him. 

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Teddy: You can't trust a man's life to your little notes and pictures

Lenny: Why not?

Teddy: Because, Your notes could be unreliable

Lenny: memories are unreliable

Teddy: Ah... Please...

Lenny: No No No...really. Memories aren't just perfect. They are not even that good. Ask the Police. Eyewitness testimonies are unreliable. Cops don't catch the thieves by sitting around and remembering stuff, right?... They collect facts, they make notes and they draw conclusions. Facts, not memories. That's how you investigate.

Teddy: I know. That's what I used to do.

Lenny: Look, memories can change the shape of the room, it can change the color of a car, and memories can be distorted. They are just an interpretation, they are not a record. And they are irrelevant if you have the facts.

e2sv and the shining

To migrate from 'e' based verification environment to sytem verilog is the possible biggest trend in the coming days. Especially during and immediately after the recession days. So any work done in automating or semi-automating the translation from e to SV could reap benefits.

Beginning from here, let me see how much can I contribute. It is a scary project, but could it be any scarier than this classic horror movie.

youtube link to one of finely crafted scene by Stanley Kubrick and wonderfully enacted by Jack Nicholson

 

shining: the bar scene

Filters: Recalling the basics

The following points on filters can only help to recall some of the basics and might provide the direction for further study. This is not a coherently written article but only a brief collection of interesting points that would explain filters in general.

To start with...

Analogue filters provide the required filtering using op-amps, capacitors etc and Digital filters uses a digital processors chip (like DSP)

In digital filters, an analog input is ADCed (sampled and quantized/digitized), then this is input to a processor, which perform some calculation on this input like xn+xn-1 or xn + yn-1, where x is input & y is output. The (filtered) result is then fed to DACs which convert them back to analog form.

Calculation inside a processor define a filter

If output is directly dependent on present and/or previous inputs, then this is called non-recursive filter or FIR

If output is dependent not only input values but also on previous outputs, then this is called recursive filter or IIR.

IIR - theoretically produces an infinite response to an impulse input (value 1 at time 0.) Practically, the output fades to 0 after a finite period!

FIR - Produces a response for finite period for the same impulse input

From the definitions it appears that IIR (recursive) filters require more calculation than IIR? No, actually FIR requires more calculation (less order filters) than IIR fitlers to achieve the same freq response characteristics Eg of recursive filter: y0 = x0 + y-1 y1 = x1 + y0 y2 = x2 + y1 and so on.

So, y9 = x9 + y8 for IIR calculation but for non-recursive, y9= x0+x1+x2+x3+x4+x5+x6+x7+x8+x9 (all prev inputs should be saved in memory.) Thus FIR requires more calc than IIR.

For IIR, order is the number of largest previous input or previous output. yn = xn + yn-1 is first order eg. yn = xn-1 + xn-2 +yn-1 +yn-2 is second order eg Ex of zero order IIR filter?? Impossible becoz yn = xn (is not FIR) and yn = yn is linear device and not a kind of filter by any definition.

Transfer function: Puts the filter expression in compact convenient form (op/ip) From this we can derive many characteristics of a filter like freq response. so yn = xn + yn-1 can be represented as

	yn = xn + z^-1yn   (1-z^-1)yn = xn   TF = yn/xn = 1/(1-z^-1) of IIR filter 

For FIR, TF doesn't contain any denominator. eg. yn = a0 + a1z^-1+ a2z^-2  

Origins of Urdu

Interesting history of origins of Urdu

Starting with Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030AD), Urdu grew to lay its roots in the North West and Central India. It evolved over the last two centuries and soon became a base for poetry in the North of India and Pakistan. The mogul courts used basically two languages, Persian or Farsi and the religious language which was Arabic. The sultans themselves spoke Turkish (or a Turkic variant). Urdu or Ordu means tent or army and Urduca was thus the language of the army. This 'Lashkarai Zaban' or Zaban e Ordu was needed for the armies of India, armies that often comprised soldiers with various native mother tongues from diverse regions of the Middle East & India. Hence, Urdu evolved to become the chosen language to address these soldiers as it abridged several base languages

Doordarshan nostalgia

If you are nostalgic about old doordarshan TV serials, then this should make you even more so: 

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=eA09SmFFOZ0

Remember "Bharat Ek Khoj"? Where a person enacting as Jawaharlal Nehru (also seen in movie 'Gandhi'),  use to narrate us the history of India from start ? Then, you might find this more educative now watching it again. Especially, the opening credits, which I realized now, has the words from the creation verses  of Rig Veda. 

Wiki material on Bharat Ek Khoj (Discovery of India).

Terrorists from across the border must be shown this serial before they blow up our country and make a movie of their own to show it to their children as titled: "Khoj: Ek Bharat ki" and in English: "LeTs Discover India"

5 to kick ass

Asked how terrorism might be counteracted, Frederick Forsyth says: 'The West can only form an "alliance of the civilized" and work on the five fronts on which all covert or "cold" wars are fought: diplomatic, financial, that of lethal action--and, most importantly, by using intelligence and psychological means, i.e. propaganda, persuasion, hearts and minds. You cannot defeat a modern, fanatical terrorist enemy without winning all five.' [Source: 'Note on Author' section in the book The Afghan]

I wish India be considered as part of the West. Or at least, if not the alliance, this is what India as alone should try to do with Pakistani terrorists. If we are already not doing this. I don't see anything being done in this direction by our Government or the Intelligence cadre.

India faces reality

The current war-like situation created by Pakistani based Islam terrorists and ISI together against India if analyzed objectively can beget this:

Now there are Pakistanis who argue that these terrorists are a greater threat to Pakistan than India is. But the fact is that they don't count for much. So one month after Pakistani jihadi terrorists attacked Mumbai, here's the objective reality: the Pakistani people are willing to allow their armed forces to provoke a nuclear war so as to protect terrorist organisations.
The 'peace process' of the last four years was doomed to fail because it refused to accept this fundamental reality. It was based on hope. But hope, to quote George Shultz, is not a policy. The price of ignoring this wisdom should be obvious now. (source link)

dharma: Ram Jois

http://www.vhp-america.org/dynamic_includes/ebooks/DHARMA_Ram_Jois.pdf

Vote for Nobody: A Myth

This chain mail with subject 'Vote 49-O' has been doing the rounds for some time now, but is based on a complete misunderstanding of the statutory provisions.

Neither the Consitution of India nor the Representation of the People Act, 1950 contain any provision to suggest that failure or refusal to vote can have any bearing on the outcome of an election at which other people have duly voted for the candidate of their choice. The provision in question, "49-O", is actually a mere Rule which has been enacted in order to deal with a peculiarity of the electronic voting system which India pioneered. {link ]

Wiki has similar information calling it "Disqualification hoax":

A hoax has been circulating which claims that if the '49-O' votes more than those of the winning candidate, then that poll will be canceled and will have to be re-polled. Furthermore, it claims that the contestants will be banned and they cannot contest the re-polling. This is false and has no basis whatsoever.