tech inside

What is DOTA

2010-11-22T04:26:00.000-08:00

Defense of the Ancients (commonly known as DotA) is a custom scenario for the real-time strategy video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft.. The objective of the scenario is for each team to destroy the opponents' Ancients, heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters called "creeps". As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the mission.

The scenario was developed with the "World Editor" of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and was updated upon the release of its expansion, The Frozen Throne. There have been many variations of the original concept; the most popular being DotA Allstars, which eventually was simplified to DotA with the release of version 6.68.This specific scenario has been maintained by several authors during development, with the current publicly anonymous developer known as "IceFrog" developing the game since 2005.

Since its original release, DotA has become a feature at several worldwide tournaments, including Blizzard Entertainment's BlizzCon and the Asian World Cyber Games, as well as the Cyberathlete Amateur and CyberEvolution leagues; Gamasutra declared that DotA was perhaps the most popular "free, non-supported game mod in the world".Valve Software is currently developing a sequel, Dota 2.

How a Cell Phone work

2010-11-22T04:19:00.000-08:00

All over the world, people use and communicate with cell phones. Cell phones range in sizes from as small as a thumb, to as large as a regular telephone if needed. Cell phones can flip, fold, compact and store just about anything. But how do they work?

Imagine...A Radio?

In a sense, a cell phone is just like a radio. It picks up signals from towers But if you wonder how the cell phone works and what makes it different from a regular household phone, read below as we go through the basics.

Each cell phone has a cellular system. When we say a cellular system, it means a division of a city into small cells. Each cell has a base station that consists of a tower and a small building containing the radio equipment this allows widespread frequency reuse across a city, so that millions of people can use cell phones concurrently. Each cell is typically sized at and covers about a 10 square miles radius.

There is a requirement to have a large number of base stations in a city of any size to make cell phone use function conveniently. A typical large city can have hundreds of towers placed in certain regions to cover most of the areas completely. Central offices called the Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO) handles all of the phone connections to the normal land-based phone system, and controls all of the base stations in the region. Each carrier in each city runs one.

Special Codes - All Cell Phones Have 'Em

All cell phones have special codes related with them. These codes are used to identify the phone's owner, phone, and the service provider that they use. Here is what happens when you use your phone:

When a person first turns on their phone, it listens for a System Identification Code (SID) on the control channel. An SID is a unique 5-digit number that is assigned to each carrier by the FCC. This is a unique frequency that the phone and base station use to send signals to another about things like call set-up and channel changing. If the phone can't find any control channels to listen to, then it's out of range and will display on the phone a "no service" message.

When it receives the SID, the phone matches up to the SID programmed into the phone. If the SIDs match, the phone realizes that the cell it is corresponding with is part of its home system.

The phone also transmits a registration request, along with the SID and the MTSO keeps track of your phone's location in a database -- this way it is known what cell you are in when it wants to ring your phone.

The MTSO gets the call that is calling you and it tries to find you by looking in its system to see which cell you are in. The call is sent to you at that time. You are now talking by two-way radio to a friend!

As you travel and move near the end of your cell, your cell's base station sees that your signal strength is diminishing. In the meantime, the base station in the cell you are moving closer to sees your phone's signal strength increasing. The two base stations coordinate with each other through the MTSO, and at some point, your phone gets a signal on a control channel telling it to change frequencies. This hand off switches your phone to the new cell with out interruption to you and your call. As you travel, the signal is passed from cell to cell. And the amazing thing is that all of this happens within seconds!

Small devices, amazing technology. Who would have thought something so small could be so powerful and complex? All of the above is transparent to a customer, which makes a cell phone even more enjoyable!

History of Chelsea F.C

2010-11-22T04:12:00.000-08:00

Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in west London. Founded in 1905, they play in the Premier League and have spent most of their history in the top tier of English football. Chelsea have been English champions four times, FA Cup winners six times and League Cup winners four times. They have also been successful in Europe, winning the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup twice.

The club had their first major success in 1955, when they won the league championship. Chelsea won several cup competitions during the 1960s and 1970s, but after that did not win another major title until 1997. The past decade has been the most successful period in Chelsea’s history, capped by winning Premier League titles in 2005, 2006 and 2010, and reaching their first UEFA Champions League final in 2008.

Despite their name, the club are not based in Chelsea, but in neighbouring Fulham. The club's home is the 41,841 capacity Stamford Bridge football stadium in Fulham, where they have played since their establishment. In 2003, they were bought by Russian oil magnate Roman Abramovich.

Chelsea's regular kit colours are royal blue shirts and shorts with white socks, the combination used since the 1960s. The club crest has been changed several times in attempts to modernise or re-brand; the current crest, featuring a ceremonial lion holding a staff, is a modified version of one first adopted in the 1950s.The club has sustained the fifth highest average all-time attendance in English football.Their average home gate for the 2009-10 season was 41,423, the fifth highest in the Premier League.

Windows Mobile

2010-11-22T03:56:00.001-08:00

Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was for use in smartphones and mobile devices, but is being phased out to specialized markets.

The current version is called "Windows Mobile 6.5". It is based on the Windows CE 5.2 kernel, and features a suite of basic applications developed using the Microsoft Windows API. It is designed to be somewhat similar to desktop versions of Windows, feature-wise and aesthetically. Additionally, third-party software development is available for Windows Mobile, and software applications can be purchased via the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Originally appearing as the Pocket PC 2000 operating system, most Windows Mobile devices come with a stylus pen, which is used to enter commands by tapping it on the screen.Microsoft announced a completely new phone platform, Windows Phone 7, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 15, 2010. Phones running Windows Mobile 6.x will not be upgradeable to version 7.

Windows Mobile's share of the Smartphone market has fallen year-on-year,decreasing 20% in Q3 2009.It is the 5th most popular smartphone operating system, with a 5% share of the worldwide smartphone market (after Symbian, BlackBerry OS, Android and iPhone). In the United States, it is the 3rd most popular smartphone operating system for business use (after BlackBerry OS and iPhone), with a 24% share among enterprise users.Microsoft is phasing out Windows Mobile to specialized markets, such as rugged devices, and focusing on its new mobile platform, Windows Phone 7.

This is Android

2010-11-22T03:56:00.000-08:00

Android is a mobile operating system initially developed by Android Inc., a firm purchased by Google in 2005.Android is based upon a modified version of the Linux kernel. Google and other members of the Open Handset Alliance collaborated to develop and release Android to the world.The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is tasked with the maintenance and further development of Android.Unit sales for Android OS smartphones ranked first among all smartphone OS handsets sold in the U.S. in the second and third quarters of 2010,with a third quarter market share of 43.6%.

Android has a large community of developers writing application programs ("apps") that extend the functionality of the devices. There are currently over 100,000 apps available for Android.Android Market is the online app store run by Google, though apps can be downloaded from third party sites (except on AT&T, which disallows this). Developers write in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries.

The unveiling of the Android distribution on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 78 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.Google released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free software and open source license.

The Android operating system software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java based object oriented application framework on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation. Libraries written in C include the surface manager, OpenCoremedia framework, SQLite relational database management system, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API, WebKit layout engine, SGL graphics engine, SSL, and Bionic libc. The Android operating system consists of 12 million lines of code including 3 million lines of XML, 2.8 million lines of C, 2.1 million lines of Java, and 1.75 million lines of C++.

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2010-01-17T06:42:00.000-08:00