Sachintha

KGB Archiver 2

2012-03-24T03:01:00.000-07:00

This is my first post after a long vacation. Today the article is based on a software review.
This is about a utility that allows us to compress and decompress files with a high compression ratio. Basically when we consider about compressed files and decompressed files, compression of files gives us some benefits. They are,

Easy to upload to the internet and email them to your family members,colleagues etc.
When uploaded to file hosting sites or web pages it takes up a only small fraction of disk space from the server computers.
A number of files could be clustered together as one file.
Saves disk space of our own computer. ( It will be handy for those who have low hard disk space.)

(Tell me if you know some more benefits and I would be glad to add them.)

In my experience there are two soft wares which gives us high compression ratios.

UHARC - A software programmed by Uwe Herklotz.A CMD(command)version as well as a GUI (Graphical User Interface) version is also released after onwards.
KGB Archiver

Every compressed file should be extracted to retrieve the files it contains within it. For these some soft wares are there according to the type of compressed file. The most common types of soft wares are shown below with the corresponding extensions.

KGB Archiver - .kgb
7 Zip - .7zip
Winrar - .zip or .rar
UHARC - .uha

Interface of KGB Archiver 2

Among these Winrar is used commonly. KGB archiver is also a powerful tool used for compression as well as decompression.This tool is programmed by Thomasz Pawlak using C++ programming language. This software uses a special type of algorithm to compress files. To compress it takes 75% of the RAM thus slows down the PC so much. This utility allows to create SFX (SelF eXtracting) archives which as the name implies extracts itself when executed and doesn't need any software to open it.

Recently I had an experience of this extremely powerful tool that is I recently downloaded the most popular collection series of GTA that is SAN ANDREAS which was a file of only 64kb with an extension of .kgb which is compressed by KGB Archiver. So I launch the KGB Archiver and was extremely surprised of the file because I saw that the compressed file was actually 680 Mb. I couldn't believe my eyes. Not only this the unbelievably thing in my whole life was when i tried to decompress it took me 5,000,000 + hours for extracting it so I had to abort it finally.

In my opinion it is unwise to run it on a computer in which the required hardware configuration is minimum.This software mainly depends on the RAM. Without more RAM, this software is useless. In my case I had faced this situation. It might even crash your computer.

Recommended hardware requirements :

Processor - 3.0 Quad Core
Ram - 1+ Gb

Here are few screen shots taken from the software.

Option given when compressing.


Compressing a folder.

Amount of memory consumption.

Compressing a file using PAQ 2 algorithm.

LightPeak

2011-06-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

In computers, the mostly used technology for information exchange is copper conductors. This could been clearly seen in the motherboard when taken out of the case. Instead of these copper conductors, a new method was discovered recently using optical fibres. Intel Company discovered this technology and named it as LightPeak. Using tiny optical fibres any of the computer devices can be connected together. By using these optical fibres, every copper conductors or copper wires would be replaced. The special advantage occupied by these optical fibres is the speed of data transferring speed through it.The speed is 10 Gbps, so to copy 25 Gb of data it takes only 30 seconds or less. This LightPeak technology ids even faster than the new USB port interface USB 3.0 which has a speed of 5 Gbps.

By 2020, the speed could be increased to 100 Mbps. The optical fibres used for the method LightPeak has a circumference of 62.5 micron-wide.That's as half of a single hair. Normally optical fibres are made of glass and easily fragile. These LightPeak fibres are made by a special type of plastic called Ultem plastic. Because of the special type of plastic, this fibre is high in flexibility. Another cover is installed in this fibre for the resistant of bends. Further these optical fibres resists dust and is shockproof. Therefore this suits for the day to day activites.
In 2009 September 23rd, the Intel Company revealed about this LightPeak Technology in the IDE (Intel Developer Forum) conference. After this the Intel Company showed that LightPeak works by a computer system which is connected each other by LightPeak fibres in 2010 May 24th.

Mouseless - the invisible mouse

2011-05-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Even the wireless mouse did came it's stay as a device. Saying goodbye to this method,Pranav Mistry in Massachusetts Institute of Technology has introduced a invisible mouse called as mouseless. A IR device should be installed to a computer which hasn't a mouse or being mouseless. There are a number IR rays and even the slightest changes of the rays are detected by a camera. User should stay as normal in front of the computer and keep his hand as if there is a mouse. The movement of the finger is enough to move the cursor , double click, right click, scroll, drag...etc. Mouseless method can detect not only normal mouse clicks, it detects the click patterns the user had added into the library.The user can add various click patterns to the library as his choice. You will think that it seems as a touch pad of a laptop which is limited in area. The rays could be focused to anywhere with a greater area. For ease of the user. The computer identifies the mouseless by a special software. The software was programmed by the team who made mouseless. The team included Pranav Mistry , Liyan Chang and Pattie Maes. This software identifies the clicks or finger movements by shining globes. Anyway , this mouseless unit costs 20 dollars but it would cost low after some time. When this mouseless unit is released to market as commercially the price would get low as 5 dollars.

A. Move
B. Left- click
C. Right- click
D. Scroll
E. Drag

If you like this post please be feel free to comment on it.

10 Facts about laser printers you didn't knew before.

2011-05-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

The fastest laser printer for office use was introduced in 2009. It could print double-sided 37 times and single-sided 47 times in a minute. This printer costs $ 1500.

The first commercial laser printer came to the market in 1975 as a IBM product.

To heat the toner, heat cylinder heats up to 400 degree Fahrenheit.

If the toner touches your cloth, first softly wipe and wash with tap water. Never wash with hot water or the stain will lie there and you would have a great trouble to remove it, because if the toner powder get heated it will melt.

A laser printer could be used for a long time and has 2400 dpi.

Recycled raw material of plastics are used to make laser printer toner cartridge.

When printing, the laser printer uses energy 3 times more than, not in use.

Laser toner powder are made by nano plastic spheres. These are made to be sensitive to static electricity and the process for making toner is kept as a secret by the producers.

Compared to other printers , the laser printer is high in cost, but low cost is spent for printing.

Some colour printers prints the printer model,serial no and date, etc... information in very small dots in every print.

The new browser RockMelt

2011-05-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

RockMelt was specially designed browser for social networking. The technical task to build the browser was done by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes. Mark Andreesen introduced RockMelt with the help of the above mentioned persons. Anyway, the only way to use the browser is by having an account on facebook. After you enter to the browser (login password of facebook is required to enter) you could see that your facebook friends on the left side of the browser. Not only facebook , the RockMelt browser can connect with twitter microblogging service too. RockMelt supports Windows and Mac OS X platform. Your Favourite Website List is stored on a server unit , so you can access to your account on RockMelt and go to your previous websites. Its just like email account, but the only difference on RockMelt is, being a browser. This is a special feature given only from RockMelt.

The new Linux OS PORTEUS

2011-05-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

PORTEUS is one of the free OSs' held in the internet. This OS is fully run by the RAM. It is not required to install it on your hard disk because the main speciality of that is, it could be launched even by a pen drive ( The OS should be stored in your pen drive ).It takes less than 40 seconds for the booting process. The shut down process too will be done in seconds. Extra softwares which come along with PORTEUS are stored in modules. Modules give information only when it is asked and at the other time it doesn't . So this makes the softwares to activate within seconds and the PORTEUS OS fast. Linux Live Script methodology has benefited this OS. PORTEUS was made by upgrading Slaxware using Linux Live Script. SlaxRemix was the name mentioned before. Other hand, PORTEUS would be a great support for those who would like to try Linux OS because it could be easily activate or remove.

---------------------GOT INTERESTED, then you could download it free from------------------http://www.porteus.org/ (the file is as little as 300MB)