CSEA Linked List Node6 by IIT Guwahati

Node 6, November 2011

Who’s who of CSE faculty @ IITG Facchas in conversation :-)

Interview with “the man ” behind the 8086 microprocessor

Message from the editor A concoction of amazing ideas, a team full of panache and chutzpah, the erudition of our faculty and alumni. All this, and much more has gone down in the past few months. And it was well worth it. We present to you the 6th Node of our very own magazine- the Linked List. The winters are setting in and yet the final year students are facing the heat with the incoming placement season. The end semester examinations, which start in less than 2 weeks from now, are also giving students the jitters. Internships are the talk of the town with everyone hoping and working towards securing a nice internship for the upcoming summers .The scenario of internships started with gusto as Microsoft bagged around 12 of our students and since then many more have got offers. The freshers are the only ones it seems, having carefree days.Computer Science is a vast field with endless opportunities.This edition of the Linked List brings to you some of the trending topics of the day such as Robotics, Hacking, Ubiquitous Computing and Browser Wars. The wide variety of trends covered should sate everyone's curiosity. This edition we have reached out to some of the titans in various fields pertaining to Computer Science. The creator of the 8086 microprocessor, Mr Steven Morse is one of the greats we got an opportunity to interact with . We have interviewed Mr. Gautam Roy who works as a software engineer at the world's largest social networking site, i.e Facebook . We also got the opportunity to interact with our professor, Mr. Amit Awekar, who recently joined the institute and in a small amount of time, has become quite beloved among the students. He talks about his views and stances, his personal life et al, all of which will hopefully prove to be interesting to read for the readers. We also chronicle the internship experience of one of our final year students.

TEAM Editor RISHI R.BORAH Co-Editor VIKRAM GOYAL junior co-editors ARKO SABUI PIYUSH DHORE HARSHIL LODHI HITESH ARORA ROHIT KAMRA Designer

And last but not the least , I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Editorial Team for their priceless contributions to this edition. Also, I would also like to thank all the students and Professors who have helped the publication of this Magazine in any capacity.

Rishi Raj Borah Publication Secretary, CSEA

ASHOK THARIYAN

CSEA PRESENTS

LINKED LIST July 27 nov 12 node 6 WINDOWS TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB.

THE ART OF EXPLOITATION.

THE IITGian WHO SCALED FACEBOOK.

THIS SUMMER CODE THE GOOGLE WAY. 14

KNOW THE ROBOSAPIENS.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT.

FACCHAS IN CONVERSATION.

WHO’S WHO OF CSE FACULTY @ IITG.

WHO SIGNED THEIR PAYCHECKS.

THE SENIORS WHO PASSED OUT

UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING

candid conversations

“If you are clear you want to pursue a research career,go for a PhD directly”

“If you really love your work,you are not working you are having fun”

“The kind of culture we have does not allow us to take risks “

-GAUTAM ROY

-STEPHEN P. MORSE

AMIT AWEKAR

Interview

Dr. Amit Awekar Assistant Professor, Dept. of CSE, IITG

Interviewed by : Piyush Dhore and Rohit Kamra B.Tech Year 1

[About his research]

1] What were the motivating factors or any any particular event in your life when you decided to become a professor? IWhen discovered joystudent of teaching accident. ofIt I was athe PhD in thebyUniversity was the year 2006 and I was in my second year North Carolina, I never thought of becoming a pursuing Thethe faculty the professor.PhD. , It was year member 2006 andteaching I was in my undergraduate DBMS my course to leave second year pursuing PhDdecided under professor the university before thetime beginning of the Jae Woo Kang.just During that my professor semester. I wasand given a chance teachtothe full went to Korea I was given a to chance teach course in his place. And I got hooked on to teachin his place. At that time I realised that I liked ing. Then, I completed of Accomplishteaching. also workedCertificate under Professor Nagisa ment in Teaching from North Carolina Samatova in the year 2009 and I liked the wayState she University and students. I started I liking teachingabout even interacted with never thought more. While my PhD research work under making a lotdoing of money. Being a professor helps the guidance of Professor Samatova, I could see you to attain respect and job satisfaction, and the profound impact good professor can have that’s what you need afrom a job. This motivated on students’ lives. Being a professor, one can me to become a professor. enjoy the joy of creativity through research, teaching, andthe mentoring. This areas job might not earn 2] What are interesting of research you big bucks, but it’s the respect and the job you have been associated with in the past? satisfaction that made me choose academics over industry. When I was doing my masters I worked on a WEB SEARCH ALGORITHM for improving the web 2] WhatI also are worked the interesting areas of research search. with Yahoo on CLUSTERING you have been associated with in the past? on ALGORITHMS, and during my PhD I worked ALL PAIR SIMILARITY SEARCH. When I was doing my masters degree I worked on 3] Since youalgorithms. mentioned yahoo, is there in a web search During mywhy internships yahoo star on your door? Yahoo!, I worked on email spam filtering. I have lots of them. Actually I was supposed to have a name plate of mine that didn’t arrive for

the past eight months, so I used a yahoo star, and During my PhD, I worked on similarity search. And with my students, I am venturing new fields the yahoo star. I worked in Yahooout forinthree years like opinion mining, in social network during my internship my PhD years.analysis, There, I human and many more problems. workedcomputing on clustering algorithms, but left it

3] you mentioned Yahoo, why is there a theSince companies want is that a task you initially yahoo on your door? you would become took a star month to complete, Iminutes. have lotsThus, of Yahoo worked therethe for every youstars. are Istuck doing same summer during my PhD. Actually I amI didn’t still waiting monotonous work all the time and really for thethat. official name plate to arrive for my office! enjoy 4] What is your current project or what is the the project you are going to start, and what are its applications?

Currently I am working on DEVELOPING INFRAINFRASTRUCTURE FOR MINING COLLABORATIVE COLLABORATIVE REPOSITORY,which which will other help KNOWLEDGE REPOSITORY, will help people to develop intelligent data insights mining algoresearchers to derive interesting from rithm. Say, for instance, there is a as siteWikipedia like Wikipeonline knowledge sources such or dia, where a lot answer of articles on a This single topic will are online question forums. project give freedom to other data mining researchers to muchon of this information might data not be correct, so focus developing intelligent mining algohere this research comes in take use. With help of rithms while our work will care the of efficient this method the most reverted information is data management. omitted and the search gives the most authentic result to the person who is working on that information.

Interview 5] Your advice for the undergraduate

solid foundation in core subjects like computer architecture, operating systems, networks, compilers etc. Eventually you will realize your knowledge that you have acquired in the past interest. 6] Your advice for a person who wants to become a researcher after PhD and not work as a faculty?

I enjoyed my PhD days. Attended a variety of courses. Explored various research areas. Got married in the middle of degree. Drove coast to coast. Learned to cook. Worked with industry every summer. Taught for a couple of semesters. PhD was one hell of a circus! 2] What is the importance of socialising in college life? Just grab on any new opportunity you can get. It can be organizing an event or volunteering for a social cause or backpacking to unknown destinations or trying out new food. Life has lot to money [About IITG] 1] What are your comments about the students’ academic culture here at IITG, and

In India, government and industry research labs have severe shortage of computer science PhDs. After PhD, you can also have your own start-up, of North Carolina? ,or work for new start-ups. Becoming a faculty member is “Just grab on any Students here are shy to discuss just one of the bright opportutheir problems with faculty memopportunity you can nities after PhD bers. Instructors’ time spent in get. It can be organ- stopping plagiarism can be better [About him] izing an event for a utilized to teach new things. Frank 1] Tell us about your college and constructive feedback from life, your journey from the social cause or students can help to make University of Pune to North backpacking to unk- academic experience more open Carolina State University. nown destinations, and fruitful. Unlike students at IITs, students in North Carolina were surprises you faced? not that much focused on CPI than just the degree.”because the society there also I was born and brought up in Do focus on a topic givesnot them freedom to single take risks, like ifor after 4 Pune. I am a typical Punekar. Throughout my years you say that “I don’t like B.Tech ,I want to student life, I was always actively involved in do anysubjects other course” no one is going support core Eventually youtowill extracurricular activities like elocution, debate, you here because the kind of culture we have dramatics, and poetry clubs. However, studying does not allow us to take us that much risks and was never boring for me. IIT Kanpur was a tremendously enriching experience. The facilities and professors were compa2] Why are the universities abroad considrable to any university in the world. We were ered superior than the IITs? challenged to our limits. The professors trusted and motivated us a lot. The peer pressure and I don’t think so. IITs is an established and interaction, both worked well for me.

Interview and respected name in academia globally. However, if we want IITs to be known as absolutely the best university then research is the only way forward. We have to focus not only on improving quantity and quality of research, but also on successfully commercializing our academic research. Look at the list of companies founded by the alumni of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As per Wikipedia, these companies can stand as the eleventh largest economy in the world, even larger than the Indian economy. And that’s just one university in US. There are dozens of such good universities in US. These universities are magnet for the best talent in the world because they can successfully demonstrate social and commercial impact of their academic research. and schedule: 10+2+4 and then you got to have a high paying job. But American system has a lot mates who have worked for ten years and have kids. In my opinion, American education system lets you take more risk, forces you to work harder, and expects you to be more ambitious.

2] IITs or as a matter of fact IITG, should utilise its resources and create a more research based environment, but the environment is still dormant, and most of talent is wasted, what are your suggestions? Come and talk to faculty members. We have excellent facilities and many young faculty members who are eager to build their research program. Government is ready to pour any amount of money into research. The only thing we don’t have enough is the enthusiastic students. As far as my personal experience goes, I am underutilised. I don’t have enough number of students working on challenging project to keep me busy. On the lighter side, that is what helps me to pursue my other interests such as cinema and poetry. Most of the students in the third year prefer going to other places for internships. Why can’tthey do good work here? We might not be able to compete with the summer beauty of Europe or the stipend of industry research labs, but when it comes to quality of work and quality of guidance we are ready to compete with anyone.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we have done something wonderful, thats what matter to me “ Steve Jobs

Browser Wars Can your favorite browser pass the acid test ? By Arko Sabui , B.Tech Year II Man’s basic needs no longer are restricted to food, clothing and shelter. Now he needs these three and an Internet connection to survive. Browsers were naturally introduced with the advent of the dot com era. But ever since the beginning there has existed a “Browser War” being waged by first Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape and then the turn of the century saw numerous other players with Apple’s Safari , Opera , Google’s Chrome and Mozilla Firefox end IE’s reign at the helm. When Tim Berners-Lee gifted us the World Wide Web, little had anyone realised that the Internet would come to play such a pivotal role in our lives and browsers are the door to that virtual world. Berners-Lee himself created the first browser called WorldWideWeb. The year 1993 saw the emergence of many other browsers the most prominent of whichwas Marc Andreessen’s browser Mosaic which quickly became Mosaic Netscape. It was later renamed Netscape Navigator. In 1995, it faced competition from the newly developed Microsoft Internet Explorer 1.0. Thus began the Browser wars. New versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape were released at a rapid pace over the following few years. Development was rapid and new features were routinely added, including Netscape's JavaScript (subsequently replicated by Microsoft as JScript) and proprietary HTML tags such as <blink> and <marquee>. Cascading Style Sheets were introduced by Netscape in 1996 which revolutionised the style and look of web pages In October the following year, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4.0. The release party in San Francisco featured a ten-foot-tall letter "e" logo. Netscape employees found the giant logo on their front lawn the following morning.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer team had also attached a note saying "From the IE team.....We Love You". The Netscape employees promptly knocked it over and set a giant figure of their Mozilla dinosaur mascot atop it, holding a sign reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18" representing the market distribution. This “war” had a negative impact on the standardisation of the web. It was common during those days for websites to carry a tag saying “best viewed in Netscape” or “best viewed in Internet Explorer” based on the browser on which the page had been tested. However, the vast resources of Microsoft as compared to Netscape and the fact that it was available to even commercial users of Windows free of cost as compared to Netscape which was free only for private users and students, led to IE winning the war. With the acquisition of Netscape Communications by America Online for 4.2 billion dollars in 1998, Microsoft had won. The first browser war ended with Internet Explorer having no remaining serious competition for its market share. This also brought an end to the rapid innovation in web browsers; until 2006 there was only one new version of Internet Explorer since version 6.0 had been released in 2001. However, there were many negative impacts of the browser wars. New features at the cost of fixing bugs, proprietary features instead of standard ones and security loopholes were some of them. But with the opening up of the Netscape source code and the community-driven Mozilla project which led to the development of Firefox 1.0. Open source proved to be a boon for the Mozilla project which also led stress on standardization and not competition.

Browser Wars In 2003 Microsoft announced that future versions of Internet explorer would have WPF(Windows Presentation Foundation) and XAML(Extensive Application Mark-up Language ) support to enable developers to build extensive web applications. In response Opera Software and Mozilla Foundation joined efforts to develop new open technology standards to be approved by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Subsequently IE7 was pitched against new and upcoming browsers prominently Opera 9. In 2006, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 was released. It featured a session restore ability and spell-checker for textfields. On December 28, 2007, Netscape announced that support for its Mozilladerived Netscape Navigator would be discontinued on February 1, 2008, suggesting its users migrate to Mozilla Firefox officially bringing an end to the Netscape era. The year 2008 saw Googleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chrome browser emerge as a very strong competitor to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 and Microsoft IE.One of the major features of Chrome was the super fast JavaScript engine V8. In 2009 IE 8 was released that provided better privacy protection, had better accelerators and a compatibility mode for web-pages designed for IE 7. By the end of 2009, statistics indicated that Mozilla Firefox was slightly more popular than IE 7 and IE 8. Although many hailed this as the end of the reign of IE as the most popular browser, but Microsoft IE loyalists pointed that it came at a time when IE 8 was replacing IE 7. Less than quarter of a year later IE 8 has reestablished its dominance. The year 2010 also saw the drop in IE usage to below 50 percent. Mozilla released Firefox 3.6 the same year with

support for personas (a single click to change the very appearance of the browser). It also saw a steep increase in the usage of Opera and Safari browsers. Mobile browsers particularly Opera-Mini and Android based devices also captured the marketBy 2011, the competition from Google Chrome had become so fierce that Mozilla released three versions of Firefox in 9 months and IE 9 was released by Microsoft. Opera released Opera 11 this year too. Although the competition has become fiercer, the fact that browsers are following the standards of the W3 Consortium and focussing on bug fixing alongside newer features indicate that the competition has become fairer too. The loss of monopoly of IE has opened up the market and led to the rapid ascent of Chrome and Opera alongside Firefox. Thus, users and Internet addicts have a wider variety of browsers to choose from which is no longer limited to non-mobile devices. Opera mini and Android are already leading a revolution in mobile browsers. In a nutshell, the browser war of the 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s has given way to a steady stream of innovations (like audio web search supported by Chrome and image search). War or Revolution, choose whatever word suits you but this competition is bound to get fiercer in the coming years and the ones to benefit will be the users .

THE ART OF EXPLOITATION

By - Harshil Lodhi, B.Tech Year I On 28th Oct 2003, Mark uckerberg wrote the code for Facemash, the predecessor of Facebook. According to The arvard Crimson ( arvard’s Daily Newspaper), Facemash used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine ouses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the hotter person . To accomplish this, uckerberg hacked into the protected areas of arvard s computer network and copied the houses private dormitory ID images. arvard at that time did not have a student directory with photos, and basic information and the initial site generated 50 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online. 6 That the initial site mirrored people’s physical community with their real identities represented the key aspects of what later became Facebook. In April 2011 as well as in October 2011 George otz, a 22 year old American hacked the world’s most secured gaming network, Sony’s Playstation network. PlayStation Network, often abbreviated as PSN, is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service. PSN has over 77 million registered accounts. acking of PSN risked the personal information and credit card details of around half a million people. Earlier in between 2008-2010, otz released various jail breaking techniques for iOS.

So what is Hacking actually? acking is unauthorized use of computer and network resources. (The term hacker originally meant a very gifted programmer. In recent years though, with easier access to multiple systems, it now has negative implications.).

There are various techniques for hacking. Some of them are-

1.Back Doors - ackers can gain access to a network by exploiting back doors, open ports ,administrative shortcuts, configuration errors, easily deciphered passwords, and unsecured dial-ups. With the aid of computerized searchers (bots), hackers can probably find any weakness in your network. 2. Trojan Horses - Trojan horses, which are attached to other programs, are the leading cause of all break-ins. When a user downloads and activates a Trojan horse, the hacked software (SW) kicks off a virus, password gobbler, or remote-control SW that gives the hacker control of the PC. Generally a program known as binder binds the Trojan to image, music or exe file.

3. Key loggers- A key logger is a tool designed to record ( log ) every keystroke on an affected machine for later retrieval. Its purpose is usually to allow the user of this tool to gain access to confidential information typed on the affected machine, such as a user s password or other private data. Some key loggers uses virus-, trojan-, and rootkit-like methods to remain active and hidden. They also have the feature of regularly sending keystroke data via email to hacker.

Your pc has been affected . Have a nice day!!

THE ART OF EXPLOITATION

4.SQL injection- A often used way to attack the security of an website is to input S L statements in a web form to get a badly designed website to dump the database content to the attacker - an S L injection. S L commands are thus injected from the web form into the database of an application (like queries) to change the database content or dump the database information like credit card or passwords to the attacker. S L injection is mostly know as an attack vector for websites but can be used to attack any type of S L database There are tools to automate the process of S L Injection into login and other fields. One hacker process, using a specific tool, will be to seek out a number of weak targets using Google (searching for login.asp, for instance), then insert a range of possible injection strings (like those listed above, culled from innumerable Injection cheat-sheets on the Web), add a list of proxies to cover his movements, and go play XBox while the program automates the whole injection process.

5.Cross Site Scripting(XSS)- Cross-site scripting holes are web-application vulnerabilities which allow attackers to bypass client-side security mechanisms normally imposed on web content by modern web browsers. By finding ways of injecting malicious scripts into web pages, an attacker can gain elevated accessprivileges to sensitive page-content, session cookies, and a variety of other information maintained by the browser on behalf of the user In the past these vulnerabilities had been found in prominent social networking websites like Facebook,Orkut and Twitter. To start with hacking , the only thing you need to know is understanding English. Google hacking, you will get more than 113,000,000 results

acking is a thing which cannot be learned from a book, because everyday new methods, new ways, new loopholes and new security updates are coming. So a acker knowledge needs to updated daily. Today there is high demand of security experts and ethical hackers by the industry. In the daily use of internet a normal user should have the basic know-how to protect himself against hacking

1.Phishing Mails and sites - These are very common. If you have an email account, then you have definitely received mails with the words, O AVE WON A BILLION DOLLAR LOTTER . These are fraud mails sent with the intention of extracting your personal information like bank details etc. To identify these mails, one only has to observe the email address of the sender. In the case of phishing mails, the email address generally loks meaningless(eg. ahbdy yhaoo.com). Phishing websites look like an exact copy of the main websiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s login page. They are embedded with a script that sends your username and password to the hacker. enceforth, always ensure that you check the RL before sending personal information over the web. 2. Do not copy-paste unknown scripts into your RL bar. It may be coded to extract information from your browser.

If something appears too good to be true, then it is not true

Alumni talk

Gautam Roy Batch of 2005 Logged in : FACEBOOK Status

: Software Engineer

Interviewed by : Piyush Dhore, B.Tech Year I

Tell us about your college life, how was it? College life was great. One of the best times of my life .IITG was a unique opportunity. There were less students so we were involved in everythingTechniche, Alcheringa , Manthan, Inter IIT .Also made some of the best friends in my life there .and of course there were studies too .

Your comments about accademicsVs extra curriculars? You have to do well in acads. But that is not enough.i.e. only being good in acads in not enough to have a successful life or career.Extracurricular have their place. They build personality. Teach you how to deal with people and be a part of a team. They will help in dealing with the world. In 6 years after IIT, We have seen that CPI is not the only determinant in success.People with low GPAs have gone on to found successful companies,If you want to go for further studies good academics will be the platform you need. But you have to learn to make good decisions and academics don't teach that.I would suggest that people pursue their interests to the fullest.One of the main things to decide is whether in the future you want to be in the technical field.The only way to decide that is to work hard on academics and do hands on projects. Now for the people deciding between MS and JOB, how is the office culture suiting you, i.e office culture in general and that of Facebook? Well I can tell you my story. After I graduated from IIT Guwahati. I joined Samsung, Bangalore.In my first year of my job I applied for further studies focussing on DSP. However by the time my admits arrived, I was starting to

get interested in CS due to my work in Samsung which was on the Symbian operating system.I also got hooked on to algorithm competitions.So I deferred/gave up my admits.The next year I applied again. And joined the Computer Science department in TAMU.I was interested in algorithms, and I felt distributed algorithms as a field would have a lot of future.So I worked with a prof on distributed algorithms for my MS. It turned out that research in algorithms is a whole another beast, It was too theoretical for my liking and had no practical applications.So I decided not to go on to a PhD .I guess my research on distributed algorithms impressed Facebook enough to hire me. Facebook is a great place to work.The big shock I got here compared to Samsung was the speed at which things move here.Work is extremely fast. A monthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;sproject in Samsung would be a 3 day project here .The people around you are great so it pushes you forward to achieve more. So regarding the people deciding between a job and a MS. You should really be deciding between a job and a PhD.An MS is an extended bachelor almost.I.e. it involves courses and some research, and you could choose to not do any research. An MS is a ticket to the US.So I would suggest this, If you are clear you want to pursue a research career. Go for a PhD directly.If you want to work in the industry, it may be a good idea go do a job and see how you feel. It may convince you to do a PhD I think doing a job really worked out well for me.i.e. doing a job before my MS. It taught me what is relevant in the industry and redefined my interests.

Alumni talk y

You changed your job because of your interest in research, but,there is a trend of people changing companies after a few years for better CTC , job- profile . what comment do you have regarding that ? CTC is thinking very short term IMO. Your real aim should be to figure out what you really love doing. Do you love writing code and would like to continue doing that? Would you like to move to managing people? Would you like to start a company which will involve bothIt is critically important to figure these things out. You will have a long career, so it is going to be very hard if you don't enjoy it. You don't want to chase CTCs for 7 years and realize you don't really want to be doing what you are doing By the way for getting a job, I would say, it is actually kind of obvious, but I should be repeated that you should really try hard to get the best possible job you cani.e. if you decide you want to see how the technical industry works before deciding on further studies, it is important to go to a really good company. By going to the best company possible, you will save yourselves the doubts that arise from not liking the job. You may feel it’s the jobs fault, or another job could be better. If you go to say Facebook it will be pretty clear you don't like being a software engineer and you should do something else. How do you think a student can boost his chances of getting a good job in a technology company? Best thing is to have clear technical conceptsand for software jobs, preparationi.e. be good with algorithm, data structure questionsinterview questions are actually quite repetitive. i.e.you can find websites like ‘’careercup’’ which will give you an idea for the questions.You also want to have some real programming experience under your belt, through class projects.Doing something like Google Summer of Code and contributing to open source projects will help.And if

you actually attempt to start company and pursue it, that will be very valuable ,but you should remember that 90% of start-ups fail and participating in algorithm competitions will help for software jobs too . if I were to choose one of the above methods, I would go the GSOC, open source of self-started software project route .That is the best way to learn how software is written .Also for any particular company's interview you should read ahead about what the company is doing, especially their engineering blog if they have one, and see if it excites you. If recession were to strike today, how drastic would be its impact on your job/company? Silicon Valley companies are the few companies that are not being affected by the financial crisis yet, A recession would have its bad effects, i.e. companies revenues would go down.Most probably hiring would slow or stop, I don't think is any immediate danger of Facebook laying off people Actually Facebook increased its hiring during the 2008-2009 financial crisis because during such markets it’s easy to pick up great talents.But as a whole the technical industry would suffer, and there would be layoffs and hiring freezes. Hope you remember your college well, because this one is from the fachachas [fresher’s] like me. Well in the first year, we have do a lot of unrelated courses, so the question is, Do courses like real analysis actually help in professional life? So Real Analysis is not a course that will directly help. It is supposed to build mathematical foundation for other courses,So it may be useful for academic purposes, i.e. some parts of real analysis will be useful if you study ece ,but your career most probably won’t be determined by real analysis.

Alumni talk y

Lastly about academic curriculum, any changes you - feel will lead to better students passing out? -

So the courses you have look fine by name. There should be an additional course which tells about latest web technologies.Also latest big data related technologies like map reduce, big table etc which are widely used now should be part of the curriculum, and design is becoming really important in the industry.

Good design is making a comeback.Apple has really changed the industry that way.Good technology is no longer enough, it also has to appeal to people's aesthetics .So a product or visual design elective course from the design department may also help.I don't think computer scientist will become great designers. That just depends on whether you have those skills,however computer scientists tend to look down on UI and design but they are currently very important in the industry. So we should keep that in mind.

A Glimpse of the Facebook Office, Palo Alto

Measuring programming by lines of code is like measuring aircraft bulding progress by weight - Bill Gates

G-SOC Information about the most sought after intern brought to you by two GSOC participants Gaurav Ranjan and Kolli Rajendra, Btech Year 4

Q.)What exactly is Google Summer of Code? Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers student developers stipends for working on various open source projects. Launched in 2005, the program involves pairing up of students with mentors belonging to a select group of participating organisations. All the participating organisations are involved in open source projects. Q.)Who all are eligible to apply for it? All students more than 18 years of age are eligible to apply for it. There is no CPI criterion for GSoC. However, eligibility criteria also depend on the coding project the student wishes to undertake. Q.)What is the procedure for applying? Each mentoring organisation has its own procedure. They release an application form which has to be submitted before the due date. The student chooses a particular mentoring organisation and a project proposal (which is an expected timeline of the project). Subsequently, he sends a mail on the mailing list and talks to the person who replies (if he likes your proposal).The student talks to the mentor personally and after sometime, the mentor himself will inform the student how to proceed. Q.)What is the right time to apply? In 2011 deadline for submitting applications was 8th April and form submission started on 28th March. Usually, the submission of forms starts in the last week of March and the deadline is within 10 days. However, the candidate should come in contact with the mentors earlier than this time because the more you influence the mentors the more are your chances of getting selected. Q.)What are the various projects students get to work on as a part of GsoC? In 2011 alone there were 175 organisations listed for GSoC. The projects are very varied in nature and you choose one depending on your level of skill and interest. Some of the relevant open source software projects are on Linux, kernel, networks, eclipse, gnome etc.

G-SOC

Q.)Are the internees paid also? Yes, the student developers are rewarded handsomely for their efforts. In 2011 the total stipend on completing the project successfully was $5000(INR 2,00,000 approx.) and the stipend usually increases every year. Since, the internees work from their homes, so all the money is saved i.e. no extra expenditures like travelling cost etc, is required. Q.) What was your schedule as a GSoC internee? I officially started working on my project from 23rd May. Initially I was paid $500. There was a midterm evaluation of the project. On passing that, I continued my project and finally there was an end term evaluation which I also passed and finally uploaded the code on the GsoC website. I used to send each day’s status report to my mentor. The mentors were very friendly; any problems whether personal or professional could be discussed with them. The project usually required 8-9 hours of work each day (if you know the language you are working with). The code used in the project can’t be copied from anywhere else. Q.)What are the pre-requisites before applying? You are eligible to apply if you are enrolled in an accredited pre-university educational program. Apart from this only coding skills are required. Specific skills might be required depending on the mentoring organization you are applying to. Q.)What is the mode of applying? The mode of applying is completely online. You send your proposals by E-Mails and you can contact your mentor via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Each organisation has a free node chat.

“We want google to third half of your brain” - Sergey brin

G-SOC

Q.) What are the benefits of associating with G-Soc

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Robotics

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ROBOTICS

By: Arko Sabui, Btech year II

Did you know that most of the stock trading around the world is carried out by Robot trading agents using complex mathematical and financial models and even more complex algorithms to manipulate them? Did you know that arguably the most advanced non-humanoid autonomous robot, Roomba, is a state-of-the-art cleaning robot that uses proprietary indoor navigational algorithms? Since the beginning of time, man has been intrigued by the possibility of an artificial entity capable of carrying out a complex series of actions, some of which may resemble human locomotion skills, automatically. To put it in simple terms, robots have always fascinated us. Where did this word come from? It was coined by the famous Science Fiction author Isaac Asimov in his 1941 science fiction story â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Liar!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; There would be very few on Earth who would not be intrigued or amazed by a robot. It is because of these amazing inner features of this field that most of the people still donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any idea about it. Robotics is majorly divided into 2 categories: 1) Human-controlled Robotics (Manual Robotics) 2) Autonomous Robotics Manual Robotics is the one in which the human controls the robot using a joystick or switches (remember the ketcher plugs and push buttons of Technicheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s manual robotics?). Whereas, in autonomous robotics, there is no human intervention while the robot performs a specific task. It is coded and programmed to do a specific task only.

The first foray into robotics usually involves Manual Robotics. The pre-requisites are nothing more than enthusiasm and a genuine love for robotics. Manual Robotics familiarises people with the basic concepts of circuit design and simple logic implementation. One mostly learns to build mechanical mechanisms and do simple welding or fitting tasks at the workshop. In addition to that one also learns simple circuit design and realisation. Autonomous robots are designed to perform special tasks in a given environment without continuous human interference. Generally, a completely autonomous robot has the capability to operating in human intervention environment property, or itself unless those are part of its design specifications An autonomous robot designer should have the knowledge of operation of sensors which are the eyes and ears of the robot in its environment of operation. Not only should the robot be able to â&#x20AC;&#x153;senseâ&#x20AC;? its environment, it should be aware of its own internal status too. Common proprioceptive or self-sensors are thermal, Hall Effect, optical and contact.

Robotics

Common exteroceptive or environment sensors are Electromagnetic spectrum, Sound, Touch, Chemical sensors (smell, odour), Temperature, Distance to things in the environment, Altitude (Inclination). Whereas the sensors form the receptive part, Artificial Intelligence algorithms and logic blocks work at the backend to give the robot its brain. Mechanisms, mechanical or otherwise, can be used to derive the robotâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s output, that is, its response to a given stimulus from the environment. Of course, knowledge of computer architecture is equally vital for an autonomous robot designer. Fields where autonomous robots find application include simple task performance like

vacuum cleaning a house for which it can use contact and non-contact sensors. Other areas are indoor and outdoor navigation and position sensing. Now you must be wondering how a Computer Science Engineer can contribute. Well, other than writing code and coming up with algorithms for autonomous robots one can dabble in sensor technology and microcontroller programming amongst others. The team that represented IITG at Robocon 2 11 had quite a handful of Computer Science students. Robotics can also serve as a launching pad for students interested in Artificial Intelligence and its application. There is an entire fascinating world of robotics waiting to be explored.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;At bottom, robotics is about us. It is the discipline of emulating our lives, of wondering how we work.â&#x20AC;?

-ROD GRUPEN

Memoirs A summer to remember â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Ubiquitous Computing && New Hampshire By Ravi Tandon ,B.Tech Year IV After having spent three years of pursuing your bachelors of technology, the rd year internship comes as a pleasant reprise, and a foreign internship is the icing on the cake. I did my summer internship at the Human Computer Interaction roject 4 Labs under Andrew un at the niversity of New Hampshire in Durham. It was around November when I got a positive reply from my mentor there. The topic of my internship was biquitous Computing and I had to work on Interaction of Tangibles on Microsoft Surface.

Experiences: Durham, set in the serene isolation of nature, is more of a small hamlet and a university-town that caters to the need of the small student population there. With a very small population base it becomes a very apt place for a cool summer. Although not very highly ranked, the niversity of New Hampshire, did provide me with a lot of valuable experiences and at the same time great friends too. The lab I worked in, had people (1 Masters, 1 hd and 4 engineers) working on two separate projects. They were as follows:

you also get to make so many people with such diverse backgrounds. For example, in my lab there were Serbian nationals. I got to meet Russians, razilians, etc.

Cultural Assimilation:

Apart from that you also get to visit lots and lots of new places. We planned a trip to New ork City and the Niagara Falls. Some of the sites such as the Empire State uilding, The Twin Tower Site, The Wall Street and of course the Niagara Falls were the highlights of the tour. of car drivers ou get to taste the flavor of the American way of life and at the same time realize that your ! # $ % nation is not that bad at all, when you see the Surface problems, although of a very different dimension, people are faced with there. I chose to work on the second one. The lab had other under-graduates working on these Another very useful aspect of the foreign internship is the amount of self confidence it projects only. generates within you. ou need to face and & land and in such an advanced setup is that you solve a lot of un-foreseen problems throughout the course of the internship procedure, which get to know the scientific culture there, as to builds in a very positive outlook in a person. how people with such huge amount of knowledge approach, solve and validate their solutions to the various problems. Apart from this

Memoirs

In the second phase of my internship, I was asked to come up with a novel interface design. I worked on dynamic sensitivity sliders using multi-object interaction. I also got to perform experiments on six different subjects using a heart rate monitor and an eye tracking device which was pretty exciting too. If anyone is interested in working on such exciting projects during this summer, he she can get more information from the following resources: I.My ouTube channel:

http://youtu.be/lJsXdCI0kiQ II.Some of my posts on ECE logger:

Recommendations: et another useful thing about foreign internships is you get recommendation letters from the professors there who constantly monitor your performance throughout the summers. We, IITians, generally work quite far above the professorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expectations on the internships, which thereafter, holds us in good light in the future especially if one is going to apply for further studies (Masters or HDs both).

Project Experience: My work was on interaction of tangible objects on Microsoft Surface. Tangibles are usually everyday objects that we can touch such as bottle caps and hockey pucks. Initially, I had to learn to use the Touch A Is and had to make an application out of it that catered to the need of the user and presented new ways of interaction with data to the user. I worked on presenting weather related data through my application.

http://www.eceblogger.com/author/ ravitandon/ Finally, I would encourage all the juniors to apply for foreign internships right from the second year itself in order to get richer experiences of work being done in better research labs and to gain valuable experiences from there, that would enrich their knowledge and lead a brighter and successful career.

Fachchas in conversation Freshers forum

CSE faccha

mech faccha

civil faccha

biotech faccha

1 Dude didn’t see you in lecture theatre today

2 11

Faccha 1 Welcome to the group, this group is created for the freshers of 2 11 batch of CSE department where you can post your comments about your IIT life, and share your experiences.

I didn’t go to lecture today ’what happened, are you not well!!

Facchi “My eautiful Campus”

yaar , mujhe to time table hi nahi samaja !! the divisions are unfair , division 1 has biotech and design , an division 2 has nothing, nothing worthwhile to look in the lecture theatre except for 1 or 2 ..... i think they considered the situation of mech guys lol!!

faccha 1 and 37 others like this 23

Wow ...! Its so beautiful

its because of thoughtful people like you our collegebecomes so famous

2 11 hey, did you guys had pdp sessions in your hostel? what all things happened in your pdp session??’’. well, first we, some five fachhas did the wall, then intro, then enacted some scenes of special movies, then did some predefined actions, first it felt dumb doing it, then it was felling funny, a different experience indeed’’ i don’t know the meaning of these things, but we have no ragging nuisance in our hostel, :-/

Faccha 1 “My eautiful Campus”

which hostel?? barak. lol!! These double meaning things you will never understand, moreover a hostel without, you people really missed something of college life I wonder subhansiri me ragging hoti hai kya?? :- ’’

yaar, koi to dekh ke like maar do :(.

tu mechanical ka hai?? yes dude, how did you know....

Facchi :RUNHG IRU WHFKQLFKH IRU KRXU

Hmmm.. kuch nahi aise hi guess mara lol!!

poor girl!! next time we will work together...:)

tu to is department ka bhi nahi hai, what tu to is department ka bhi nahi hai, what are are you doing on CSE page you doing on CSE page aar havana wo ko samajh.....

1 2 11 yaar ye khana hai??!!,fresher’s guide me to jannat dikha rahe the?? :chappan bhog khilaenge bola tha, north indian south indian , sab ki taste to eek hi lagti hai !!!! who wrote that guide?!! abhi hostel me aaya bhi tha vo??!!

Fachchas in conversation Freshers forum

CSE faccha Faccha 1 ’worked for techniche for the whole day’’ :-0

mech faccha

civil faccha

biotech faccha

dude, which branch are you from?

12/07/2011

civil. to konsa jhanda gaad diya tune!!!

ab kya iske liye bhi status updates dalega,to hum kya kare??

how many girls are there in your branch? dudes, please change the topic what is your branch, and how many in your’s? mine is comp. Sci. And we have 7 girls.

Faccha 1 “Real’’ity Analysis

please yaar topic change karo . arre , itna kyu ro raha hai?’’ dude he is in mech. Branch :P . oh!! Sorry, i understand your feelings, quite sad condition of you people i am from biotech and.... let’s change the topic.’ yeah let’s change it lol!!

yaar aise thodi udate hai kisi branch ki, this is not fair

dude go to your own branch page then

[Techniche] 1 week before, dude , khemka bhaiya gave such a nice description of techniche, I am so excited about it. yeah,me too!! [Techniche day1] dude, haven’t slept last night was working on techniche organisation, what were you people doing?’’ I was packing toothbrush and soap for the people who came for events. í was painting the arena for galactic football’’. [Techniche day 2] just too tired of serving the guest, help kya kar di waiter hi samajte hai :@ !!’’. I was hanging poster for the whole day, But I think my condition is better than yours :-P’’. [Techniche day 3] finally the last day, I tell you if one more day I had to be the butler of these people then….. tired of making announcements every 15 min, in event organisers ko khud ko pata nahi rahata hai ki event kaha pe ho raha .

Fachchas in conversation CREATED BY-

DESIGNED BYDESIGNED BY-

tu to mil hume :@

SPECIAL APPEARENCE ASSISTED BY

MECH FACCHA tu inhe kaha se mil gaya??!!

Facchi 23 21 Likes 12 COMMENTS

hmmm.. nice pic!! :)

FRESHERS 2011

Professors The thoguht of a securing a coveted internship is dream shared by all students. So, we bring to you a list of professor's of IITG and the pre-requisites required to secure a research intern under them. Hope, you manage to bag an intern under one of professors.

Gautam Barua Purandar Bhaduri Research Interests : My interest is in formal approaches to model-based design of distributed embedded control systems. Such systems are used in modern aircraft and automobiles. They are safety critical real-time systems with stringent timing requirements, which must work in a faultfree manner in their operating environment. The challenge in designing such systems is that they control a physical environment which is highly dynamic, concurrent and evolves according to complex laws. An important problem is to components. The biggest challenge here is to deliver all real-time and other performance guarantees without looking inside the components. This calls for a interface theory for compositional design of hard real-time systems. This

Research Interests : Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Networks, Database Management Systems

Pinaki Mitra Research Interests : Cryptography & Security Database security, Optimization, Computational Geometry, Parallel Algorithms, Randomized Algorithms, Graphics

Pre- requisites : The background needed is basic automata theory and logic (essentially CS 202 and CS 203 in the new curriculum), and an interest in formal mathematical description and analysis of systems. Students who wish to work (Embedded Systems) as an elective. CS 525 is also helpful, but not an essential prerequisite

Benny George Research Interests : Combinatorics, Algorithms, Word Combinatorics

Pre- requisites : Discrete Mathematics, Algorithms,Sophomore onwards.

Aryabartta Sahu Jatindra Kr. Deka Research Interests : VLSI Design, multiprocessor Design, System on Chip, Network on Chip

Pre- requisites : Data Structures,Architecture Logic.

Research Interests : Advance Computer Architecture, Multicore Parallel Compiling and Programming, Data prefacing in muti-processor, Hardware acceleration of multi-processor operating system, Automatic performance training of multi-processor, Compiler Transformation Options for large scale multi-processor. VLSI & FPGA Design.

Pre- requisites : Basic Opearting Systems Algorithms

Professors

Arijit Sur

V.Vijaya Saradhi

Research Interests : Information Hiding: Steg-

Research Interests : Kernel methods, Machine

anography and Steganalysis, Statistical steganalysis, Reversible data hiding Multimedia Security: Image and Video Watermarking. Currently-Video Watermarking on H.264/ABC Future-Video Watermarking on H.264/SVC Network Security: Intrusion Detection System and Network Steganography.

learning ,Data mining and application of these techniques Currently working onQuality analysis of Correlation Clustering, Improvisation of Parameter Tuning Techniques in SVM(support vector machine), Classification & Clustering of link prediction techniques.

Pre- requisites : Signal systems,Probability Pre-final and final year students preferred.

Krishnamachar Sreenivasan Sajith Gopalan Research Interests : Algorihmic Gain Theory, Algorithms Currently working onApplication Domain of machine learning, Spectral Clustering Methods & their improvement, Graph mining techniques(software bugged indentification) Pre- requisites : Pre-final and final year students preferred.

Research Interests : Cloud Computing: Performance Framework for Cloud Systems, Flow of Clops in a cloud configuration, Installing clouds, Communication networks.

Pre- requisites : Computer Architecture, Communication, Probability, Mathematics Pre-final ,final year students and post graduates preferred.

Pradip Kr. Das Deep Medhi Adjunct Professor

Research Interests : Computer Networks

Research Interests : Digital Signal Processing Speech Processing,Man-Machine Intelligence Software,Speaker Characterisation,Sound Characterisation,Speech events modelling,Local Language processing,Data Compression.

Pre- requisites : Data structures Sophomores onwards.

Professors

Ashish Anand

Amit Awekar

Research Interests : Machine Learning and its

Research Interests : Large scale Data Mining,

applications in Computational Biology, Systems Biology, Different Biological Networks, Evolutionary Algorithms.

Building large Hadoop clusters,Social network analysis,Developing tools for introducing CS to high school students,Developing distinction between humans and bots.

Pre- requisites : Maths specific core courses and Optimisation for algorithms. Machine learning,Interest in Biology for computational biology. Pre-final year onwards.

Pre- requisites : Basic Computer science,Maths, Physics and Chemistry courses and enthusiasm.

S. B. Nair Samit Bhattacharya Research Interests : Human Computer Interaction, Model based evaluation of Interactive systems, Development of User Models , Rehabilitation Engineering, Designing new interactive systems that will make interaction natural, Modelling Interfacing.

Pre- requisites : Pre-final year onwards.

Research Interests : Intelligent Robotics Currently working onArtificial Being (ABe) -A congregation of networked mobile robots emulating the various parts/organs of a body,A Muti-Agent Emotion Machine,Mobile agents, Speech: recognition, analysis, characterisation.

Pre- requisites : Knowledge of and interest in Mobile Robotics BTP,MTP or Phd students preferred.

Diganta Goswami Santosh Biswas Research Interests : Networking, Fault Tolerance, VLSI Testing, Embedded Systems

Research Interests : Distributed Algorithms Fault tolerance(Check pointing and roll back recovering),P to P Systems,Software Engineering

Pre- requisites : All basic courses ,Algorithms Operating Systems

Professors

Sukumar Nandi

Hemangee Kalpesh Kapoor Research Interests : Formal Verificatin of

Research Interests : Networks (Specially: QoS, Wireless Networks), , Computer and Network Security, VLSI.

Circuits(Applied Formal methods),Computer Architecture,Network-on- Chip design Process calculi,Asynchronous systems.

Pre- requisites : Sophomores

Sanasam Ranbir Singh Research Interests : Web Mining, Complex Network Analysis,, Spyware Prevention for Mobile security.

Pre- requisites : Data Structures,Algorithms

Saswata Shannigrahi Research Interests : Data Structures and Algorithms, Combinatorial Geometry, Analysis of Social Networks.

Pre- requisites : Data Structures, Discrete Mathematics, Algorithms, Desired prerequisites: Data Structures Lab, Probability Theory and Random Processes, Theory of Computation

R.Inkulu Research Interests : Algorithms:Computational

T. Venkatesh

Geometry .

Pre- requisites : Discrete maths,theory of

Research Interests : WDM Optical Networks, IP

computation ,data structures,geometric optimisation ,Final year student preferred.

over WDM Networks, Broadband Access Networks, Performance Evaluation of Computer Networks, Network Tomography

S. V. Rao Research Interests : Computational Geometry and Its Applications

Sushanta Karmakar Research Interests : Distributed algorithms, Fault tolerance, Ad-hocs & sensor networks

Pre- requisites : Final year student preferred

Placements NO. OF COMPANIES THAT CAME FOR RECRUITMENT IS 45 No. of Students Recruited By Them Were :Google-4 Microsoft-IDC-6 Amazon-1 Adobe Systems-5 Directi-1 Hewlett-Packard-3 Yahoo R&D-2 Deloitee-1 Qualcomm-1

Capital IQ-3 Dell R&D-2 Citrix R&D-5 IBM-ISL-1 Sourcebits-1 IBM-GBS-1 CRL-BEL-1 Attomic Labs-1 Samsung SISO-4

Nextgen(NIL Labs)-2 Virtusa India-1 Tejas Networks-1 Nagarro Software-1 Airwana Networks-1 3-D Solid Compression-1 The ICFAI University, Tripura-1

De Shaw-1 Oracle(ST)-6 Oracle(AD)-2 Oracle Sun Microsystems-4 NetApp-2 IOCL-2 BHEL-1 C-Dot-1 Infosys-3

Gold m Geo a n S a c h d Pola esic(Eng s-2 ri in IBibo s Softwa eering) -1 r Cisco web pvt e lab-4 . Glob Systems Ltd.-1 a Sam l Analyt 3 ic sung SISC s-1 -4

Sapient-1 Corporation-1 K.L. University-2 M.M. University-1

Placements

Average salary in last 5 years 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

B.Tech M.Tech

2005-06

2006-07

2007-08

2008-09

2009-10

2010-11

Cities where students were placed in 2011 Percentage of Students

Banglore Hyderabad Delhi & NCR Others

Be nice to nerds, chances are uâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll end up working with one - Bill Gates

Yearbook Sagar Agrawal

AATISH RATHI

6th Dec.

28 th Aug

BTP-Project on Speaker Recognition (Modifying VQ based LBG algorithm

Ratha

Currently- Job at Oracle Apps.

BTP- Watermarking in H.264/AVC Video

Saggy Boy Currently- Job at D.E. Shaw Hyderabad.

AJeet Kumar Tiwari

Ajay Choudhary

12th Jul

23rd Mar

BTP- Speech Recognition using Basic Features of Speech Signals

Lala

Chotu Currently- Job at BHEL

Currently- Job at HP-ISO Banglore

Ankit BHatnagar

Amlan Pradhan

12th Jul

29th Aug

BTP- HDL simulations on multi processors using Cilk

TTA Startup Protocol in SPIN

Vicks

Bhau

Currently- Job at Oracle ST, Banglore.

Currently- Job at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

Bhaskar Brahma

Bharat Lodha

10th Aug

26th May

Lodha

BTP- Demand Based Energy Efficient Topology Management for MANET

Currently- Job at Microsoft IDC, Hyderabad.

BTP- File Synchronization Software

Ninja Currently- Job at Oracle Apps.

Yearbook Chandan Kumar Jha

Bhaskar Sarma

7th Jan

13th Dec

Master Blaster

Sarma Currently- MS.

BTP- BOUNDS ON NUMBER OF TERNARY SQUARE-FREE WORDS

Currently- Job at Microsoft IDC

Deepanshu Gupta

Devadeep Shyam

15th May

25th Dec

BTP- Evaluation of Aesthetic Value of an Animated Video

BTP- Intrusion Detection System for MANET

Deva

Deepu Currently-Job at Google.

Currently- Job at IOCL

Jackey Mohan Boro

Garima

4th Oct

12th Oct

BTP-Assamese Character Recognition

BTP- Traffc Engineering in Networks-on-Chip

Chuchi

Fruti Currently- Job at Google.

Currently- At IIM Calcutta.

Shashi Kiran Jupaka

Karthik Jalapally

3rd Oct

12th Dec

Wanted

BTP-Uniform Distribution of Clicks for Pay-Per-Click Bidding Policies

PokerJupaka Currently- Job at IOCL.

Currently- Job at BHEL, Hyderabad.

Yearbook K.Navin Kumar

Ravindra Kasturi

8th Nov

8th Jan

Envelopment Analysis

Ravi

Nani Currently- Job at C-DOT.

Currently- Job at Minnesota.

Kommineni Rupa Sravani

Komal Jalan

26th Aug

16th Oct

BTP- Analysis of Response Time in Cloud Computing

Rupha

KJ Currently- Job at Amazon.

Currently- Job at Infosys.

K Sanmukh Rao

KS Phani Prakash 13th Oct

7th Oct

Sanmukh

Phani Currently- Job at Oracle.

Currently- Job at Adobe, Noida.`

Aditya Nihar Maddula

Durga Prasad

9th Oct

29th Sept

Peddaina Currently- Job at Directi FTW.

American Currently- Job at Cisco Systems,Banglore.

Yearbook Vishnu Mane

Manav Verma

24th Jan

14th Mar

Mane

Manab

Currently- Oracle System

Currently- Job at Capital IQ, Hyderabad.

Nitin Dua

Manpreet Singh

12th Mar

4th Dec

Dua

Manpreetey Currently- Job at Qualcomm.

Currently- Microsoft IDC, Hyderabad.

Ponugoti Gowtham Kumar

Om Prakash Patri

31st Jul

5th Oct

Ponnu

Patri Currently- Phd at University of South California.

Currently- Job at Virtusa India.

Rajan SIngh

Pranav Kumar

28th May

8th Nov

Peddaina Currently- Job at Adobe, Noida.

Lala Currently- Job at Capital IQ.

Yearbook Ravi Ranjan

Rakesh Yarlagadda

7th Fab

25th Nov

Rodda

BTP- Performance Improvement by N-Chance Clustered Caching in NoC based Chip Multi-Processors

BTP- Per-Node Per-Â°ow Fairness in Mesh Networks Grammar

Dean

Currently- Job at Yahoo.

Currently- Job at Capital IQ

Sai Sheshank Bura

Rohan Khot

27th Nov

3rd Dec

BTP- Detection of Communities and Leaders in a Social Graph

Shawshank

Kholu

Currently- Job at Citrix R&D

Currently- Job at Google. Capital IQ

Sumit Kumar Tomar

Shekhar Chandra

5th Aug

5th Oct

BTP- Classroom Attendance Schemes

BTP- Cloud Computing : Resource Management and Job Scheduling

Lolly

Ranu Currently- Job at Citrix Banglore.

Currently- Job at Cisco, Banglore.

Utkarsh Shrivastava

Tuniki Vishal Sharma

16th Jul

24th Sept

Vishu

BTP- Learning Based Large Chip Multiprocessor Performance Tuning

Currently- Job at Ibibo, Gurgaon.

BTP- QoS Aware HandoÂŽ Between IEEE 802.11 and GPRS Network

Currently- Job at Infosys .

Yearbook

GURMEET Singh

Surbhi Maheshwari 13th Aug

BTP- QoS BASED SCHEDULING OF APPLICATIONS ON LARGE CHIP MULTIPROCESSORS

Sur

Currently- Job at Oracle, Banglore.

27th Oct

Guru

Currently- MS at Illinois University.

Deepak Kumar

Shailendra Agrawal 4th April

9th May

BTP- Data Squashing for Scalable Maximum Margin Classifcation

Tau

Nawaab

BTP- Delay Tolerant Broadcast Using Partially Constructed Spanning Tree

Currently- MS at UBC .

Currently- MS at University of Waterloo.

Vidur Taneja

Jatin Matani 10th Sept

3rd May

Tanny

BTP- Managing Main Memory Augmented with NOR Flash in Handheld Devices

BTP- Multi-Class Classification Methods in Semi-Supervised Learning

Currently- Job at Citrix Banglore.

Papa

BTP- Typhon - A Mobile Agent Framework for Real World Emulation

Currently- Job at Google.

Threats

Threats getting smarter...! By Niteesh Kumar, Btech Year IV

Computer viruses, a great threat to machines, are continuously touching its peak. From old days of Slammer worm which was reported to infect hosts slightly before : TC on Saturday, anuary 2 , 2 , infecting more than , machines, perhaps considerably more, causing network outages and many unforeseen consequences such as cancelled airline flights, interference with elections, and ATM failures. Within ten minutes, it infected more than 9 percent of the vulnerable hosts. Slammer, with a size to fit in single network packet, exploited buffer overflow vulnerability in computers on the Internet running Microsoft s S L Server or MSDE 2 (Microsoft S L Server Desktop Engine). This weakness in an underlying indexing service was discovered in uly 2 2. Microsoft released a patch for the vulnerability before it was announced. The Sapphire Worm was the fastest computer worm in history. As it began spreading through the internet, it doubled in size every . seconds. Sapphire s spreading strategy is based on random scanning -- it selects I addresses at random to infect, eventually finding all susceptible hosts. Random scanning worms initially spread exponentially, but the rapid infection of new hosts becomes less effective as the worm spends more effort retrying addresses that are either already infected or immune. Thus as with the Code Red worm of 2 1 ,which attacked computers running Microsoft s IIS web server, the proportion of infected hosts follows a classic logistic form of initially exponential growth in a finite system. We refer to this as the random constant spread (RCS) mode. Summer of 2 will sadly remain infamous for net surfers on account of the propagation of an Internet worm called the laster Worm (also known as MS last), which infected millions of hosts running Microsoft Windows.

These were some of the localized worms those worked independently , before the emergence of OTNETS. This defined another class of worms which can listen to the commands from its mentor. There are broadly two kind of “botnets” - one centralized, which listens to the commands from a central controller (more precisely may be from IRC) and other distributed which listens to commands from its origin. Security Researchers at Russian Antivirus endor- “ aspersky Lab” warn that TDSS, one of the most dangerous and widespread family of rootkits (collection of tools (programs) that enable administrator-level access to a computer or computer network), recently received an update that forces infected computers to mine ITCOINS (decentralized, peer-to-peer network that tracks and verifies transactions). TDSS rootkits have consistently grown in sophistication since first appearing in 2 . The latest version known as TDL4 installs itself in the master boot record (M R) and is capable of infecting all Windows versions, including 4-bit Windows ista and Windows , which require signed device drivers. The other well-known name in the list is “Mariposa otnet” which was recently broken. It started in May 2 . Mariposa, (meaning butterfly in Spanish) was a botnet initially created in Spain, which found its way into millions of computers spread around the world. The top country was India, but it was everywhere. ut what can they possibly do by keeping such a huge network of zombies. The answer is “anything”. The computation power of millions of computer can block any communication over any link, can speed up the brute-force attacks over cryptographic algorithms and much more.

Threats ut this is not the topic here, the main concern of mine, is to how the security expert actually finds them and how do they break them. The idea is very similar to what you do to catch a pest in your home. The simplest solution is the trap. What they actually do is they keep some machines that emulates exhibits all vulnerabilities and attract these worms. Once attacking these machines they get into trap. Security specialists decompile debug them and understand the command and internals, making their signatures and use their forensics skill to mitigate the effect. On a production network, evil hackers will attack some kind of fake system, losing time in doing so and giving information about themselves and their methods. Nepenthes are one among them. Named after the flower this is low interaction honeypot software that emulates several vulnerabilities. Other commonly used tools include Honeyd, to make honeypots (trap set to detect, deflect, or in some manner counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems). The procedure is not as simple as it sounds. When worms are made of only a small amount of code and are not very complex, it will be easy to analyze the network traffic and the binaries caught. ut if the worm emits more complex packets at the network level (cipher), or if it modifies its behavior and eventually its signature (similar to viruses with polymorphism), the analysis becomes complicated. Moreover, if the worm quickly destroys infected hosts, for example just after few bounces, the sacrificial lamb could be lost and all posterior analysis could be compromised. So, does it sound arduous to make such bots undetectable and immune to get attracted to these traps? Not exactly, a smart worm before infecting a machine can viably check the OS fingerprint. It’s just a matter of come packets exchange. Most of these honeypots are made to run over virtual

environment those can be easily detected. Though remote detection may be difficult but a bot can also kill itself if it detects that its running in a virtual machine. These softwares, even today, are far from being perfect, and emulating a given real machine still poses many challenges due to complexities involved when trying to emulate every component of a given machine. ut how will a bot know that it is running in a virtual environment? es it is possible. There are several ways that a worm can do that. If it finds the OS it is running is windows, it can check its registry for the presence of certain files. Linux, though it does not have anything like registry, is also no good here. irtual environment traces can be found in ‘dmesg’ and file-system. These methods are not full proof. They might give a false positive result. What’s next I have in my pocket is something related to machine codes that issues a special Invalid Opcode instruction. M software will recognize this invalid op-code and act accordingly, causing no exception if M was present and an exception if M isn t present. When an invalid instruction (that is not present in the ISA) is encountered, the machine raises an exception of the type Invalid Op-code . The software can either handle the exception (using the usual try catch mechanism), let the operating system handle the exception, or crash the machine in worst cases. irtual machine emulators deploy various non-standard x x 4 instructions to simulate sensitive instructions. As they are non-standard instructions they would generate exceptions in real systems but run smoothly on a virtual system. Finding these instructions and running them can be a good method to detect such virtual machines. .

Threats

worst cases. irtual machine emulators deploy various non-standard x x 4 instructions to simulate sensitive instructions. As they are non-standard instructions they would generate exceptions in real systems but run smoothly on a virtual system. Finding these instructions and running them can be a good method to detect such virtual machines. The story is not over as yet . There is still something more interesting I have in my bag “Memory Artifacts”. As was observed by Redpill and Scoopy-ng, there is a difference in the location of descriptor tables in virtual and real systems. These provide vital clues to presence of virtual machine. Tobias lein(Scoopy-NG) using SIDT, SGDT, and SLDT instructions respectively, observed that for host operating systems, these tables, are generally located far lower in memory. Another child to this group is to check the Task Register, STR (Store Task Register) instruction that stores the selector segment of the TR register in the specified operand. esides these a worm can also rely on hardware finger-printing. A device fingerprint (or machine fingerprint) is a compact summary of software and hardware settings collected from a remote computing device. Most of virtual machine have emulated hardware manufacturer name as virtual machine name themselves, which never existed in real.

Not only this, but some worms can also detect that they are being debugged hence destroy themself on the fly. ut this is completely the other side of story. If you are thinking, why run these traps in virtual machines why not in the native machines, a host almost sacrificed (called a sacrificial lamb ) on a network while waiting for any aggressor. es you are right these machines are called high interaction honeypots. Classical virgin computer can be installed with the required services on the appropriate operating system. ut to remove the crowd of such machines, these machines can also be part of a system accommodating several operating systems at once, through virtual machines.

“The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards.” – Gene Spafford

Ubiquitous Ubiquitous Computing: Tangible dynamic Sliders Introduction: design is Ubiquitous computing, and it is this all pervasive paradigm that we make use of in our slider interface design. The hypothesis being that people used to everyday objects would be able to use these objects in a computing environment or for data visualization in a far more comfortable manner. Also certain solutions such as dynamic scale adjustment might be faster with tangible widgets than with digital representation of the controls that make the system more complex. Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) provide the users with enhanced abilities to comprehend and manipulate digital information presented by the Graphical User Interface. They provide tactile guidance and haptic interaction competence to dealing with Multi-Touch Surfaces, where better approaches of object recognition such as Object Tagging by Microsoft Surface Vision System are

In order to provide dynamic sensitivity adjustment ability to the user, we use multiple objects to create the slider scale. We use two objects in both the cases (the linear slider, the angular centre one in case of angular slider). The thumb is moved along the periphery (clockwise or anticlockwise) in case of the angular slider or towards or farther away from the other object in case of the linear scale.

by Value

= f (discurr ,dis int ,range) = (dis curr) * range (disinit)

δ(Value curr ) (δ (Distanceend points) ) ((Disendpoints/Disinit)*range=) range = (δ (Distance ) ) Disinit

Sensitivity =

end points

Disinit

Fig Figure igure 1 ig 1:: TThe he h e Line Linear eaarr Scale based on the tth he distance diistan d ssttan ance bet twee een en the tth he two tw wo objects. ob o bje ects. between Thi is shows sho sh ows th tthat hat th tthe he sse ensitivitty level level le e of the the scale th scal sc ale al e is is This sensitivity inversely proportional to the initial distance between the end objects. For a higher sensitivity scale the initial distance is kept lower, and for a lower sensitivity the end objects are kept far apart.

The Angular Slider Scale The angular slider-design is based on the Polar Coordinate System where the user can specify

The Value of the Scrolling Scale

Terms ratio of the change in the value of the scale to the actual distance moved by the thumb of the scale. Sensitivity =

mapped to the scale value. The value of the scale is a function of the current distance, initial distance between the scale objects and the

(δ (Value of the scale) ) (δ (Distance moved by the thumb))

The Linear Slider Scale The linear scale is a two object scale where the Euclidean distance between the objects is

The value on the scale is obtained by the following mapping function: Value

= f (anglecurrent ,angle total ,range) =

anglecurrent *range ,angletotal angletotal

= 360

Ubiquitous The value of the angular scale is thus tied to the angle the outer object makes with the centre keeping the initial position as the position of angle 0. Thus the value of the scale is independent of the actual distance between the two objects unlike the distance based scale described earlier.

Our application takes care of the dynamic readjustment of the scale and enhances the way users

The Sensitivity Level

overall amount. For e.g. Geographic Information

ratio:

sampling rates, some at intervals of weeks others at intervals of seconds. Users could use our slider

the circumference of the circle specifying the value through the angle.

Application

Change in the data value Scale sensitivity = Distance moved along the circumference

)( )

( δ(

δ =

)

anglecurrent distancecircumference* range * range δ angletotal radius* angletotal = distancecircumference distancecircumference

Range Radius *angle total

1 Radius

also be used in customary document scrolling and map zooming.

Conclusion We tested the angular scale with the existing scales and it did show some improvements in terms of lesser cognitive load and faster sliding over values. Ubiquitous comput ing is here to stay. However, only integrated into the digital world, thus limiting it scope of useful ess. It requires a lot of imagination and creative thinking. Such an integration of the physical world into the virtual leads to both intui tive and user-friendly interface designs.

Useful Links

Figure 2: The green region shows the higher sensitivity region whereas the red region is lower sensitivity region. The sensitivity of the scale varies inversely with the radius of the circle chosen. Thus the user can decide the sensitivity of the scale based on the radius of the scale chosen. The application uses two tagged dices as

1. YouTube Channel Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/ra vifreekk?feature=mhsn 2.Eceblogger Posts: a.http://www.eceblogger.com/2011/06/pressuro meter-pressure-sensitivity -through-taggedobjects/ b.http://www.eceblogger.com/2011/06/dynamic -angular-sliders-using-tagged-objects-objects/ tagging-a-faster-approach-to-gesture-creation/ d.http://www.eceblogger.com/2011/06/usingphysical-objects-as-time-sliders/ e.http://www.eceblogger.com/2011/06/on-theuse-of-physical-objects-with-multi-touch/

Guest Talk

STEPHEN P. MORSE "Father of Intel 8086 processor “ Interviewd by : Rishi Borah , Naga Rohit and Hitesh Arora

est known as the “Father of Intel processor”, the predecessor of today’s entium processor, Stephen . Morse has focused much of his energies in recent years on genealogical endeavours. Q-1 Lets begin with your current field of interest and expertise, i.e genealogy. You have been working on this for the last ten years and have taken the genealogical research process to greater heights by creating the ”One-Step website.” Can you tell us more about it? A- I created the model of ONE-STE Website 1 years ago when I was interested in applying computers to genealogy. I’ve been into computers my whole career and took up genealogy as a hobby. I found that there were certain things that I had trouble doing. There are a large number of records on websites but they are very hard to access. I found that I could access them much better in my own way and hence put up a set of tools for genealogists to collect data which made it easier to access these records. It’s called the ONE-STE website. Q-2 Can you give us a brief idea about the one-step model? A-It comprises of a wide range of things. I ll provide you with the history. It started back in 2 1, when a new website was being created online which maintained a record of every person entering the S from the Ellis Island. It was a valuable source for genealogists to find out how their ancestors came to S. I had

found all my ancestors all of my grandparents and all of my wife’s grandparents, prior to the arrival of this website by going down to the archives. ut there was one grandparent I couldn’t find and I was very anxious to do so. When this new website came online, it was almost impossible to use and it took many steps to search and extract useful information. I found that I could do it myself in an easier way and found a way to pile up all data and do everything in a single step. That’s why it’s called the OneStep website. This website is not just about genealogy it’s also about how to get the records recognised in the census and for this reason I put up some tools. Now the website has 1 different sections and 2 different tools, making it easier for people to access any kind of data, and not just genealogical data. It ranges from genealogy to doing astronomical calculations, like calculating timing of sunrise and sunset another of my interests. I pursue whatever I’m interested in at that moment. I’ve had many interests during the course of my career. Most of them were obviously computer related. I use my computer skills to further explore and nurture my other interests. Q-3 When you developed the 8086 processor, it required various modifications .You took a huge step in moving from 8080 and 8085 to 8086. The process was long and required various revisions; how did you keep working towards it? A-I started by writing the specifications for the new processor. I tried to figure out what a nice instruction set would be. It had to be something

Guest talk y

nice and symmetric. I then tried figuring out the useful instructions. Now I had a preliminary specification. - I then spoke to a lot of people to understand their requirements in a High Level Language people - who would write in High Level Language rather than Assembly Language and Machine code. I found out what they wanted in a processor and made it easier to support High Level Language. I had known all this myself but I had to speak to a lot of different people to understand the kind of injections to introduce, the appropriate addressing modes to use and other related things. The whole process went through several revisions. Q-4 You are touted as being the ‘FATHER OF 8086’. Do you consider this a great achievement? A-I feel that it’s matter of luck that that I made it. I feel I was at the right place at the right time and I never consider myself better than others. Q-5 Apart from your research in genealogy and computer architecture, you have been a very good web developer too. Would you like to share something about that with us? A-At the pace at which the web has developed, there are a lot of clever things that have come with it. A lot of research has gone into accessing databases even when names are spelled incorrectly. So in collaboration with a leading company in linguistics, we came up with a system for phonetic matching from the approximate spelling of the name. First we deduce the language and then narrow it down to the correct pronunciation of the name. Eventually we find names similar to the incorrectly spelled by applying pronunciation rules of the language as suggested by the database. I have also worked towards creating bookmarks for websites independent of browsers.

Q-6 You have so many interests. How do you concentrate on so many different interests at the same time and excel in each of them? A-Actually I don’t premeditate on what to do things just come to me .When I get an idea ,I pursue it until I get that working and then I get another idea and I pursue that. I have always been what people call as a ‘self-starter’. When you get into the business they categorise people into different categories depending on their abilities and my ability has always been of a self-starter. I have never been told what to do and every job I have ever had, I picked out what’s useful and what sort of things I could do to contribute and I did that in my own way. I just pursue my ideas in my own way. Q-8 What is the factor that motivtes you to keep working hard towards your interests? A-I think my motivation is the thought of the end result. I like to see something working. I am a thinker but I build things too. Sometimes I dabble in electronics, never professionally but it’s a hobby. I build some electronic devices and i like to see them work and that’s what motivates me. Q-9 You have worked in various companies like IBM’s Watson Research entre, INTEL, BELL Laboratories, GE Corporate Research and Development.etc. How do you demarcate the work culture in them? A-The work culture in various companies varies. Starting with the ELL Laboratories, it’s a very conventional type of company. I M was a research department, specially my division was different than the rest of I M. I M had a reputation in the 19 s, everybody worked in the

Guest talk research laboratory in the same engineering suits and we didn’t rest at all in the lab. The culture changed more significantly along with time. Then came the 19 s when I came to Intel, the culture and the industry had changed. It was no longer suits for engineers, much less formal. Intel, in some sense, was very dictatorial, and the head of Intel was very demanding and people didn’t like that and I was one of them. Other companies like Netscape were very liberal, and many other companies had a much more accepting culture in which you can do what you like and I believe you will get better results if you give rewards rather than punishments. Q-10 Do you find open source software more useful than the closed source ones such as Microsoft Windows? A-I find open source useful as it made the One-Step website more popular and easily accessible to common people. I was invited at several places to talk about the One-Step website as it gained a lot of popularity and ended up getting nearly , hits a day. Q-11 Would you like to tell us something about your early education and about things you had interests in? A-I was always fascinated by electricity and had a great interest in numbers, as far back as I can remember. I recall being in sixth grade and taking out whatever books I could find in the library on these topics. In junior high I asked my mother what field I could go into that would combine my love of electricity with my strong ability in mathematics. Electrical engineering, she replied. From then on my career course was charted, and I never deviated--I went on to get a bachelors, a master s, and a hD, all in electrical engineering from CCN , the olytechnic Institute of rooklyn and New ork niversity.

Q-12How has been your first visit to India and your stay at IIT Guwahati ? A-This is my first visit to India and it’s been really nice. First, i went to meet my friend in Delhi, who was my classmate at graduate school. We visited places in Delhi, aipur and the beautiful Taj Mahal in Agra. IIT Guwahati is a beautiful place and I am really happy to be a part of Techniche. The students are doing an excellent job and the event is fascinating. The hospitality has been worth appreciating and it feels really nice talking to you guys. Q-13 What is your advice for the present generation of students? A - ou should do what you enjoy. If you really love your work you are not working, you are having fun. If you go to work because someone tells you to and it’s not fun, there’s no sense doing it. If you are having fun and enjoy what you are doing, it will be very rewarding and you will go the extra mile. If I want to see something work, I work through the night. ou know I get paid to work through the night but I also get to see that final product working and do something wonderful. That’s what I love. If you love that too, you’ll enjoy you work and become good at it. Q-14 How do you view the future of computing in the coming years? A-I remember when the computers were born, they were big and huge, almost the size of a room, and then developments took place and desktops came along, new microprocessors and the development is still on. In the next fifty years, the future of computers will be fascinating and you are all going to be a part of it.

People who enjoy what they are doing, invariably do it well ~ Annonymous

Obituary The Forgotten Genius Dennis Ritchie,the computer wizard, who

created the C programming language and was the co-developer of Unix Operating System, passed away on October 12, only a week after Jobâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death. A very low-key genius, he received the prestigious Turing award and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton. He joined Bell Labs in the 1960s and did pioneering work there which changed the digital world. Computer historian Paul E. Ceruzzi said after his death: "If you had a microscope and could look in a computer, you'd see his work everywhere inside."

The monk who sold Apples There are phones and there is the iPhone. There are music players and there is the iPod. There are PCs and there is the Mac. Steve Jobs, an innovator, an inventor, a design patron, the man who created a new way designers and non-designers think, do, share, listen, create, behave ... is no more with us. That 300 million iPods have been sold till date are the evidence that they changed the way people listened to music since 2001. It also tells us why Jobs' net-worth was over $8 billion when he passed away on Thursday. He said in an interview with Wired magazine in 1996 that "Design is a funny word. most people think design means how it just looks. But if you dig deeper, it's really how it works as a whole." For Apple, it is always an integrated experience - hardware, software, connections, apps, content, delivery. Everything is excellently designed, crafted, engineered and delivered in or people peop from analytical a way that can be outdone only by the next generation of the Apple experience. For

on intuitive risks and not on market data. But he had the ultimate conviction inn bringing design and business together for giving us nomanuals-needed gadgets.s. ibow. isalute. RiP Steve Jobs.

Initiatives of CSEA <>Fresher's orientation in the presence of the faculty. <>Internship Talk by the 4th year students for the benefit of the third year students. Node 6, November <>Interaction session of 4th year students with the2011 faculty wherein they described their projects to the faculty. <>Various lectures organized in association with the coding club (the newest initiative of the Technical Board, IITG). List of the executive members of CSEA can be found here

Faculty Initiatives Colloquium: Started in the department of CSE with an aim to foster academic interactions. The talks held from 5:00 to 6:00 P.M. every Wednesday at the CSE seminar room, were to be pitched at the senior undergraduate level. The schedule for the colloquium might be found here.

Interview with â&#x20AC;&#x153;the man â&#x20AC;? behind the 8086 microprocessor

Computer Science and Engineering Association Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati Node 6, November 2011 Guwahati - 781039

Thank You For reading the magazine P.S.:- All Tomatoes and Flowers to be mailed to csea@iitg.ernet.in

The Publication Team:-

Interview with â&#x20AC;&#x153;the man â&#x20AC;? behind the 8086 microprocessor