My personal logo!

I recently decided to design my own logo since i started to do some freelance design works. Below you can find the first version of it. I appreciate every form of feedback 🙂

G.

Explaining Windows RT

With less than a week left from the general availability of Windows 8 and the release of Microsoft Surface tablets a lot of discussion and open questions raised within the Windows community about the difference of Windows RT and Windows 8.

For those who are still unfamiliar with the term “Surface”, it’s Microsoft’s new flagship device that aims to position the Redmond giant in the race for the tablet-market.

Understanding the differences between the first two models may not be quite as easy — particularly for the everyman, or the type of user that is not familiar with Microsoft’s other Surface. Microsoft unveiled two editions of their new tablet: Surface with Windows RT and Surface with Windows 8 Pro. The design of each one looks nearly identical, the innards expose major differences in architecture. Let’s take a deeper look, shall we? 🙂

 

Surface for Windows RT tablet

• Processor: NVIDIA Tegra-based ARM chip
• Weight: 676 grams
• Thickness: 9.3 millimeters
• Display: 10.6-inch ClearType HD capacitive touchpanel
• Battery: 31.5Wh
• I/O: microSD, USB 2.0, Micro HD Video, 2×2 MIMO antennae
• Software: Windows RT + Office Home & Student 2013 RT
• Accessories: Touch Cover, Type Cover, VaporMg Case & Stand
• Capacity: 32GB / 64GB
• Availability: “Around” the Windows 8 launch
• Pricing: To be determined

 Surface for Windows 8 Pro tablet

• Processor: Intel Core i5 (Ivy Bridge)
• Weight: 903 grams
• Thickness: 13.5 millimeters
• Display: 10.6-inch ClearType Full HD (1080p) capacitive touchpanel
• Battery: 42Wh
• I/O: microSDXC, USB 3.0, Mini DisplayPort, 2×2 MIMO antennae
• Software: Windows 8 Pro
• Accessories: Touch Cover, Type Cover, VaporMg Case & Stand, Pen with Palm Block
• Capacity: 64GB / 128GB
• Availability: “Three months after” the Windows 8 launch this fall
• Pricing: To be determined

So, what’s the story? Basically, there’s the Surface for Windows RT, and Surface for Windows 8 Pro. RT is for the everyman, average Joe, layman, and more importantly, the iPad demographic. The Pro is for, um, professionals, and probably enterprise customers, and will definitely cater to those eyeing up an ultrabook, especially with the Touch and Type cover thrown into the mix.

Physically, the RT model is both thinner and lighter, which is certainly something to keep in mind considering these are tablets and meant to be super portable. Those looking for the entire Windows 8 experience, though, will have to pony up for the Pro model, which also comes with a microSDXC, a whopping 128GB (and 64GB) of storage and USB 3. In addition, users who opt for the Pro model will get an Intel core i5 Ivy Bridge processor for increased speed and to handle that 1080p ClearType Full HD display.

It’s worth mentioning that you can’t upgrade to Windows RT from anything, because it’s a brand new Windows for a previously unsupported platform. If you’re currently on Windows 7 you’ll be able to upgrade to the normal Windows 8 from Starter, Home Basic or Home Premium, but you’ll need to perform a clean installation if you’re running Windows 7 Ultimate or Professional. If you plump for Windows 8 Pro, you can upgrade from any version of Windows 7. As ever, 32-bit installations can only be upgraded to 32-bit versions, and 64-bit ones to 64-bit ones.

This is the most important difference between Windows RT and Windows 8: Windows RT only runs on ARM-powered devices, while Windows 8 only runs on x86 devices. Windows RT won’t run natively on an Intel- or AMD-powered PC, and Windows 8 won’t run on an ARM-powered device such as the new Surface tablet. Both Windows RT and Windows 8 run the new Metro interface, but Windows 8 can also drop down to the traditional Desktop for older apps. Windows RT can’t: while it does have the old Windows Desktop for some of Microsoft’s own apps, the desktop won’t be available to third-party software.

On the first look the differences are not that dramatic, and it depends on the purpose of the user and their decision whether they want to have an tablet with functions that will be more than enough when it comes to emailing, reading, playing casual games and work on office material, or if they want the full Windows 8 experience that they have on their PC’s or laptops.

DoS VS. DDoS: What’s the Difference?

Obviously the big news of the last 48 hours was that “The Pirate Bay” was taken down for 24 hours due to a DDoS Attack (Distributed Denial of Service Attack). So i decided to make a short post about the difference about the two main methods to take a website down: DoS and DDoS.

DoS = Denial Of Service

DDoS = Distributed Denial Of Service

Whilst DoS and DDoS sound remarkably similar there are in fact differences between the two.

DoS

A DoS Attack is a Denial of Service attack.

This means that one computer and one internet connection is used to flood a server with packets (TCP / UDP). The point of such a denial of service attack is to overload the targeted server’s bandwidth and other resources. This will make the server inaccessible to others, thereby blocking the website or whatever else is hosted there.

DDoS

A DDoS Attack is a Distributed Denial of Service Attack.

In most respects it is similar to a DoS attack but the results are much, much different. Instead of one computer and one internet connection the DDoS attack utilises many computers and many connections. The computers behind such an attack are often distributed around the whole world and will be part of what is known as a botnet. The main difference between a DDoS attack vs a DoS attack, therefore, is that the target server will be overload by hundreds or even thousands of requests in the case of the former as opposed to just one attacker in the case of the latter.

Therefore it is much, much harder for a server to withstand a DDoS attack as opposed to the simpler DoS incursion.

– Granit

 

First Impressions of Windows 8!

Being busy with working and studying makes it hard sometimes to be regular in blogging when it comes to fields such as programming which require a bit more free time 😛 Thus, I thought a blog post about the new Microsoft Operating System would be appropriate. 🙂

Maybe I should have written this article quite a while ago when the ‘Developer Preview’ was more actual considering the fact that the ‘Customer Preview’ (or the Beta) will be released in the next couple of days but I’ll also test the Beta and then list the changes Microsoft have been working on so far 🙂

So. the installation of the preview was quite smooth and didn’t take too long. I used Oracel’s VirtualBox to emulate the OS. It took a few minutes to extract the files onto a virtual image, but feature installation then seemed to happen almost instantaneously (according to the feedback on the screen).  The installation routine then went into a preparation cycle that took two or three minutes.  Then the virtual machine rebooted and after a couple of minutes more preparation, up came the licence terms page.

Of course, Oracle’s Virtual Box (and my Lenovo notebook) haven’t quite mastered the art of touch yet.  For non-touch users a scroll bar appears at the bottom of the Metro UI. I had a moment’s innocent fun pretending to swipe the screen with my finger while actually scrolling with the mouse :D.  Ah, happy days.  Then I discovered that the scroll wheel on my mouse does the equivalent of finger swiping on the Start page.

Do you like traditional tabs?  That’s not a problem, because the good-ole desktop is just a click (or maybe a tap or a swipe) away.  There is even a useful widget on the now-you-see-me/now-you-don’t address bar that takes you to desktop view.  It is a bit of a one way trip, and results in a new IE frame opening on the desktop for the current page.  On the desktop, IE10 looks just like IE9.  It is, however, significantly more accomplished, and has closed much of the remaining gap between IE9, the full HTML5 spec and some of the additional specifications that people incorrectly term ‘HTML 5’.

For a few minutes, I was rather confused about the apparent lack of a proper Start menu in the desktop view.  If you click on Start, you go back to the Metro Start page.  And then the obvious dawned on me.  In effect, the new Metro Start screen is simply an elaboration of the old Start menu.  In previous version, when you click Start, the menu pops up on top of the desktop.  It is quite rich in previous versions, and allows you to start applications, perform searches for applications and files or undertake various management and administrative tasks.  Windows 8 is really not very different.  However, the Start menu has now morphed into the new Metro Start page which takes up the whole screen.  Instead of a list of pinned and recent applications, the Start screen displays tiles.  Move the mouse down to the bottom right corner (I don’t know what the equivalent touch gesture is), and up pops a mini Start menu.  Clicking ‘Start’ takes you back to the desktop.  Click on ‘Search’ to search for applications files or settings.

The say first impressions are the most important.  When I saw the on-line video of Windows 8 a couple of months back, I almost fell off my chair in surprise.  Now I have got my hands on an early version I am really quite impressed. Like everyone else, I couldn’t see how Microsoft could possibly compete against Apple and Google in the tablet space. Let’s see what the Beta Version will bring to us in the next couple of days 🙂

So stay tuned for more updates 😉

G.

 

Hello Again!

Hello World….again 🙂

This is my second personal blog and this time i decided to focus more and be more regular in updating my blog with code snippets from various projects I’m currently working on, news from the world of IT and Software development and personal thoughts and opinions on current developments worldwide concerning my field of study.

For those of you who do not know me, my name is Granit Gjevukaj and I’m Computer Science student at the University of Prishtina, Kosovo. Also I consider myself as a  Computer and Software enthusiast and I’m trying to become a Freelance Developer, with focus on Mobile Software development.

Actually quite a lot happened since my last blog post, I’ve been quite busy on working on some projects together with colleagues and friends from the Faculty, started digging deeper in the world of Android development (which you can tell from the header 😉 ) and also learning continuously C#. Thus, i will keep you updated about one or two projects which i personally think will be very important on my way in becoming a programmer.

So let me thank you for visiting my blog, any comments, suggestions and critics are more than welcome. You can contact me anytime via twitter @GranitGjevukaj 🙂

So bare with me and let’s code!

– Granit