devashish

Captcha And Re-Captcha

2010-08-06T23:55:00.002+05:30

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Before talking about captcha let us take a brief look on captcha….

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots,"( an automated program for doing some particular task, often over a network or automated programs usually written to generate spam). No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into "reading" books.

To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then transformed into text using "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.

But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

Currently, The CAPTCHA team is helping to digitize old editions of the New York Times.

You can also use a reCAPTCHA in your website as well as for your e-mail ID to protect them from spams. The CAPTCHA api for dot net, php, mediawiki and java is easily available on net or simply go through sites.google.com/site/codemastercse…

Posted by:

Pranay Joshi

Job sites for Engineering Students

2010-03-31T22:23:00.005+05:30

Following are some of the sites that can help an engineering student to get a job:
Elitmus
Campus Connect
PAC
MeritTrac
ShredsKerala
FreshersWorld
Monster
Career Net
Chetanasforum

I got my first job through Elitmus and one job offer through Career net and second job where I am working currently through Monster.
Elitmus exam details can be found at http://elitmus.com/ph_test/test_takers
At the time when I gave Elitmus pH test I found Analytical section a bit tough, Quantitative a bit lengthy and English was easy.

If you know any other site that can help others, then please post the link in the comment.

jQuery - write less, do more

2010-03-27T01:54:00.007+05:30

jQuery is a javascript library with many Ajax and Javascript features to enhance user experience.
It is easy to learn and is a well known tool to build an AJAX based application.
If you’re planning to build a highly interactive application, jQuery should be one of your choices. Lots of plugins are available over net for jQuery.

The documentation and tutorials in jQuery's site are very well documented.
You can found the tutorials in the following sites:

Useful links for jQuery
http://www.jquery.com
http://www.jqueryui.com

Books:
jQuery in Action - By Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz
jQuery for Designers - By Remy Sharp

Google Code

2010-03-16T18:10:00.002+05:30

If you are looking for Google's Featured Products, Developer Resources, News, Announcements, etc, then visit http://code.google.com to see the latest articles. Currently you will get following useful information for the following:
# AJAX APIs
# Android
# App Engine
# Google Apps Marketplace
# Google Web Toolkit
# Project Hosting
and many more things

SCJP

2010-02-20T10:42:00.010+05:30

Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) is a certification exam for Java programmers. Visit this link for details http://in.sun.com/training/certification/java/scjp.xml
Being an SCJP certified gives you many benefits like
1. First of all while preparing for the exam, your understanding of the Java language will be improved, your concepts will become stronger and you will have a good command over the language.
2. Being an SCJP certified programmers separates you from the crowd.
3. You will get a logo to add it into your resume, this will add value to your resume.
4. Wherever there is a requirement for Java developers, you will surely get a preference. Even there are some companies like NDS who gives chance for SCJP certified programmers to go through their recruitment drive.

You can purchase exam voucher through any of the prometric center near by your location.
Visit this link to get the list of prometric centers in India http://www.javabeat.net/cert/prometric-center/india.html

Books recommended:
SCJP Study Guide By Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates
A Programmer’s Guide to Java(TM) Certification By Khalid Mughal, Rolf Rasmussen
Apress SCJP Exam for J2SE By Paul Sanghera

Just search in internet, you will get dump for the exam, some institutes might also provide you with dump. As far as I know most of the questions come from dump, in my case around 60% to 70% questions were from dump. I am not responsible if questions in your exam doesn't come from dump. It may or may not happen. If you have a good command in Java, you can prepare within 10 to 20 days for it otherwise it may take you more than a month.
In my opinion the biggest hurdle in clearing the exam is students plan for it and then thinks that when they will be fully prepared then they will purchase the exam voucher. If you are one of this kind (except for some few dedicated students) then Forget it, you wouldn't ever give this exam, because I am sure your preparation can never reach 100%, always somewhere something would get left and you will be just postponing your plan from this month to next month, next month to another next month and so on......
So my suggestion would be if you are not a type of very dedicated personality and really want to give the exam then purchase the exam voucher as soon as possible and fix a date for your exam then only you can start serious preparation for the exam otherwise you would just keep postponing it from time to time...........

Must read for Engineering students

2010-01-10T13:12:00.003+05:30

I am writing this post for all engineering students especially for my junior friends from GBPEC Pauri Garhwal who are going to pass out this year i.e. 2010. Many of you would have got job offer through campus placement in 1 or more companies (Although in most campuses, students are not allowed to sit in other companies after getting one job but in one college that I knew, girls and some special students are allowed to sit, now please don't ask the name of the college and the eligibility criteria to become special students!!!!!).

For those students having a job offer:

First of all congrats for getting a job offer, and I am sure most of you would have got the offer from India's most reputed companies, rite!!!. So, now most of you will be in ur dreamland, already got a job in a reputed company, and enjoying rest college days without trying for anything else, even for some students its like a dream come true!!!!! if ur answer is yes, then i would say either
-you have got an job offer from Google, Oracle, etc
-u have become an entrepreneur,
-u have achieved something which i can't even think of, or
-u think its the best you can get with your full potential

If none of the above conditions are true for you, then you are in a wrong track, i would just say 2 words for you, "WAKE UP"

For those students unhappy with rejection or looking for job

Forget the past, and be prepared for the future, don't wait for the opportunities to come your way, just make them. One important thing, company never selects such candidates who are better than their requirements, as these candidates can easily get better offers and can leave them anytime. If you are not in IIT or some other well reputed college, then I would say better try off-campus (but try to get atleast one job on-campus for backup purpose if u want), there are many good companies which I am sure you won't have even heard of. I have also gone through this phase in my life that is why I have written this post. Thanks to my seniors especially Shitiz Raikwar and Abhiraj Mehrotra for their guidance that helped me to "WAKE UP".

Hope my post will "WAKE UP" the sleeping ones.