Mega Byte

Consoles and Gadgets have become a greatest source of entertainment amongst the youngsters and kids in the UK. You will find a huge variety of gaming consoles and gadgets in UK and people there get carried away by the advanced technology that often keeps them occupied most of the times. They get so involved in playing the latest games on these gadgets that they go on playing for hours without actually realizing the fact. In UK these advanced gaming consoles and gadgets are continuously upgraded so that the customer always finds a new and unique application installed with the upcoming consoles and gadgets. The experts in gaming industry in UK regularly study the market demands and generate ideas to satisfy the huge mass interested in playing the most thrilling and exciting games. With all these trends, how can one stop himself to purchase the latest technology offered in Consoles-n-Gadgets in UK? You will be able to find the latest Consoles-n-Gadgets on a number of online stores in UK. You have to make a sensible choice while selecting a website that offers a wide range of latest consoles and gadgets at affordable prices. Most of the gaming websites of UK offer you various gaming consoles and advanced gadget like Nintendo, Wii fit, ds lite, ps3, ps2, PSP, Xbox 360, Xbox live, wireless video games, controllers, GPS, USB, flash drives, mp3, download, software, electronics, LCD TV, laptops, digital camera, mobile phones, nun chuck, gadgets, boys toys, HDMI, hand held network, community, blue ray, Bluetooth and many more. The collection is so huge that you will be amazed and confused as to which one to choose. Now that you can get so many gaming Consoles-n-Gadgets in UK, you need to be careful while choosing the website that offers you this amazing collection. You can enjoy several benefits while making an online purchase of the latest Consoles-n-Gadgets in UK. Firstly, in UK you can shop the latest Consoles-n-Gadgets online very conveniently as you don’t have to wait for long hours in shopping queues nor do you have to waste your gas bills by driving long ways to malls in UK, moreover you also save your valuable time. You just place your order online and it is delivered at your doorstep anywhere in UK. Thus you can shop online with great comfort and ease of your home in UK. get the latest gaming console and enjoy playing throughout the day. Secondly while shopping on online stores in UK, you get to see the complete range of Consoles-n-Gadgets that are displayed on the website, whereby you can pick one that is latest and suits your style. Its not just that you can see a number of online game retailers in UK but you can even compare the prices offered by these stores and this helps you to choose one such genuine online store in UK where you can shop the desired Consoles-n-Gadgets for affordable prices. The other great thing about the online game retailers is that the prices offered are highly competitive and thus they offer Consoles-n-Gadgets at lower prices as they have no overhead costs and this is truly beneficial to the customers of UK. Most of the online game retailers offer free shipping anywhere in UK and due to this facility you just need to choose your favorite Consoles-n-Gadgets displayed on these online game stores in UK, make the payments and wait for just 2-3 days for you item to arrive at your doorstep. Now that’s really unbelievable, isn’t it?

Among our friends and clients at Lingoport.com, we regularly see ranges of confusion, to complete lack of awareness of what Unicode is. So for the less- or under-informed, perhaps this article will help. The advent of Unicode is a key underpinning for global software applications and websites so that they can support worldwide language scripts. So it’s a very important standard to be aware of, whether you’re in localization, an engineer or a business manager.

Unicode Growth

Firstly, Unicode is a character set standard used for displaying and processing language data in computer applications. The Unicode character set is the entire world’s set of characters, including letters, numbers, currencies, symbols and the like, supporting a number of character encodings to make that all happen. Before your eyes glaze over, let me explain what character encoding means. You have to remember that for a computer, all information is represented in zeros and ones (i.e. binary values). So if you think of the letter A in the ASCII standard of zeros and ones it would look like this: 1000001. That is, a 1 then five zeros and a 1 to make a total of 7 bits. This binary representation for A is called A’s code point, and this mapping of zeros and ones to characters is called the character encoding. In the early days of computing, unless you did something very special, ASCII (7 bits per character) was how your data got managed. The problem is that ASCII doesn’t leave you enough zeros and ones to represent extended characters, like accents and characters specific to non-English alphabets, such as you find in European languages. You certainly can’t support the complex characters that make up Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages. These languages require 8-bit (single-byte) or 16-bit (double-byte) character encodings. One important note on all of these single- and double-byte encodings is that they are a superset of 7-bit ASCII encoding, which means that English code points will always be the same regardless the encoding.

The Bad Old Days

In the early computing days, specific character single- and double-byte encodings were developed to support various languages. That was very bad, as it meant that software developers needed to build a version of their application for every language they wanted to support that used a different encoding. You’d have the Japanese version, the Western European language version, the English-only version and so on. You’d end up with a hoard of individual software code bases, each needing their own testing, updating and ongoing maintenance and support, which is very expensive, and pretty near impossible for businesses to realistically support without serious digressions among the various language versions over time. You don’t see this problem very often for newly developed applications, but there are plenty of holdovers. We see it typically when a new client has turned over their source code to a particular country partner or marketing agent which was responsible for adapting the code to multiple languages. The worst case I saw was in 2004 when a particular client, who I will leave unmentioned, had a legacy product with 18 separate language versions and had no real idea any longer the level of functionality that varied from language to language. That’s no way to grow a corporate empire!

ISO Latin

A single-byte character set that we often see in applications is ISO Latin 1, which is represented in various encoding standards such as ISO-8859-1 for UNIX, Windows-1252 for Windows and MacRoman on guess what platform. This character set supports characters used in Western European languages such as French, Spanish, German, and U.K. English. Since each character requires only a single byte, this character set provides support for multiple languages, while avoiding the work required to support either Unicode or a double-byte encoding. Trouble is that still leaves out much of the world. For example, to support Eastern European languages you need to use a different character set, often referred to as Latin 2, which provides the characters that are uniquely needed for these languages. There are also separate character sets for Baltic languages, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, and on and on. When having to internationalize software for the first time, sometimes companies will start with just supporting ISO Latin 1 if it meets their immediate marketing requirements and deal with the more extensive work of supporting other languages later. The reason is that it’s likely these software applications will need major reworking of the encoding support in their database and functions, methods and classes within their source code to go beyond ISO Latin support, which means more time and more money – often cascading into later releases and foregone revenues. However, if the software company has truly global ambitions, they will need to take that plunge and provide Unicode support. I’ll argue that if companies are supporting global customers, and even not doing a bit of translation/localization for the interface, they still need to support Unicode so they can provide processing of their customer’s global data.

Unicode

We come back to Unicode, which as we mentioned above, is a character set created to enable support of any written language worldwide. Now you might find a language or two lacking Unicode support for its script but that is becoming extremely isolated. For instance, currently Javanese, Loma, and Tai Viet are among scripts not yet supported. Arcane until you need them I suppose. I remember a few years ago when we were developing a multi-lingual site which needed support for Khmer and Armenian, and we were thankful that Unicode had just added their support a few months prior. If you have a marketing requirement for your software to support Japanese or Chinese, think Unicode. That’s because you will need to move to a double-byte encoding at the very least, and as soon as you go through the trouble to do that, you might as well support Unicode and get the added benefit of support for all languages.

UTF-8

Once you’ve chosen to support Unicode, you must decide on the specific character encoding you want to use, which will be dependent on the application requirements and technologies. UTF-8 is one of the commonly used character encodings defined within the Unicode Standard, which uses a single byte for each character unless it needs more, in which case it can expand up to 4 bytes. People sometimes refer to this as a variable-width encoding since the width of the character in bytes varies depending upon the character. The advantage of this character encoding is that all English (ASCII) characters will remain as single-bytes, saving data space. This is especially desirable for web content, since the underlying HTML markup will remain in single-byte ASCII. In general, UNIX platforms are optimized for UTF-8 character encoding. Concerning databases, where large amounts of application data are integral to the application, a developer may choose a UTF-8 encoding to save space if most of the data in the database does not need translation and so can remain in English (which requires only a single byte in UTF-8 encoding). Note that some databases will not support UTF-8, specifically Microsoft’s SQL Server.

UTF-16

UTF-16 is another widely adopted encoding within the Unicode standard. It assigns two bytes for each character whether you need it or not. So the letter A is 00000000 01000001 or 9 zeros, a one, followed by 5 zeros and a one. If more than 2 bytes are needed for a character, four bytes can be combined, however you must adapt your software to be capable of handling this four-byte combination. Java and .Net internally process strings (text and messages) as UTF-16.

For many applications, you can actually support multiple Unicode encodings so that for example your data is stored in your database as UTF-8 but is handled within your code as UTF-16, or vice versa. There are various reasons to do this, such as software limitations (different software components supporting different Unicode encodings), storage or performance advantages, etc.. But whether that’s a good idea is one of those “it depends” kinds of questions. Implementing can be tricky and clients pay us good money to solve this.

Microsoft’s SQL Server is a bit of a special case, in that it supports UCS-2, which is like UTF-16 but without the 4-byte characters (only the 16-bit characters are supported).

GB 18030

There’s also a special-case character set when it comes to engineering for software intended for sale in China (PRC), which is required by the Chinese Government. This character set is GB 18030, and it is actually a superset of Unicode, supporting both simplified and traditional Chinese. Similarly to UTF-16, GB 18030 character encoding allows 4 bytes per character to support characters beyond Unicode’s “basic” (16-bit) range, and in practice supporting UTF-16 (or UTF-8) is considered an acceptable approach to supporting GB 18030 (the UCS-2 encoding just mentioned is not, however).

Now all of this considered, a converse question might be, what happens when you try to make your application support complex scripts that need Unicode, and the support isn’t there? Depending upon your system, you get anything from garbled and meaningless gibberish where data or messages become corrupted characters or weird square boxes, or the application crashes forcing a restart. Not good.

If your application supports Unicode, you are ready to take on the world.

As soon as you mention getting something for FREE these days, people instantly start thinking of common and negative phrases like,

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch”

“Nothing in this life is free”

“If it sounds too good to be true, then it normally is!”

When initially hearing about this Referral Based Advertising idea, where you can basically receive a £299 Playstation 3 for free, it seems incredibly unrealistic. At first it is hard to believe, it seems ridiculous and incredulous. The thought of getting something for nothing seems to send people into a frenzy of disbelief, but why is that?

Is it that hard to imagine in a decade where you get given free mobile phones, worth hundreds of pounds when you take out a new contract or when you get given £50 of Marks and Spencer’s vouchers for recommending a friend to Sky. Other examples of getting things for free, are when you take out broadband with a company, more often than not they will give you a free modem or wireless router.

These companies are basically paying / bribing you into trying their products, and why not let them? For this reason I suggest forgetting the aforementioned negative phrases associated with getting something for free, and consider this positive one:

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

With this positive notion in mind, lets examine how this whole system works.

Referral Based Advertising & Affiliate Marketing

In order to get a Free Gadget, such as a PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, iPod Touch, or iPhone, you will have to try a product or service, then recommend friends to do the same. This is basically how Referral Based Advertising works.

One site which specalises in helping get free gadgets online is Gratis Gadgets (www.gratisgadgets.co.uk).  At the moment they are particularly helping users get their hands on a free PS3 This site was set up by a group of people who have received free gadgets online in the past and are now helping others do they same.

Normally a product or service sells well if it receives good word of mouth reviews, and people tell their friends how great this product / service is. Referral Based Advertising is similar, except that when you spread the word about the company you will receive an item in return for free.

Affiliate Marketing is simply the process of a Company paying another 3rd party company (Reward Network), to direct new customers to their door. The company then pays the 3rd party company for each and every new customer, or referral, sent their way.

So, if you sign up to one of the Companies (such as Lovefilm, or one of the various Credit Card offers available), the Reward Network receives a fee. If you then recommend 8 friends to so the same, the Reward Network will receive another additional 8 fees. How much is this fee? I believe it varies depending on the Company and the offer, but if we call it £25 for argument’s sake, then you can quite clearly see below, how the whole process works.

In this example above, I’m going to be using an 80GB PS3 as the receiving gift. The PS3 requires 15 referrals and each referral earns the reward network £25 commission.

Does this actually work?

It does. Having been sceptical about the whole process, with a head full of ideas about scams and major disappointments, I tried this Referral based advertising program and received my first free Nintendo Wii in February of 2008.

Now you will have to nag and persuade your friends and family to sign up for you, this goes without saying, as 9/10 people seem to disbelieve that you can get something for nothing. However, maybe if you point out to them that companies in the UK, USA, and Canada give away free products every day in return for you trying or using their product it will make sense. This is just a different twist on the process.

Brisbane is a city that has a diverse and exciting range of attractions and activities to keep you busy. Take the lift to the top of the neoclassical tower at City Hall and get a great view of the city skyline, or ride on the Wheel of Brisbane and view the cityscape from a height of 60 meters. The Logan Art Gallery is a popular venue celebrating artists from the region, or just chill out exploring the city at your own pace and discover the nightlife.

Brisbane is the capital of Queensland and the night scene is energetic and pulsating. The locals love to hit the town and enjoy a drink or two and the city is also a popular tourist destination, so the crowd on an evening is very mixed.

Whatever your taste you’ll find a range of entertainment to keep you occupied. There are casinos, stylish bars, energetic clubs, comedy nights and live music venues. There is a wealth of discount accommodation Melbourne venues to choose from. Book before you travel and put your mind at rest that you have somewhere to stay on arrival.

Brisbane is also known for its important music establishments and venues, including the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Queensland Orchestra, Queensland Youth Orchestras and the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. There is also a Queensland Music Festival held over a period of 17 days and featuring the best of local, national and international talents and every style of music in Brisbane and around the region. Most of the events are free to attend.

The Family can be found on McLachlan Street in Fortitude Valley and is worth seeking out if you enjoy the clubbing scene. The venue has 2 dance floors and 4 bars, and plays host to some of the top international DJs, including the Stafford Brothers and Baby Gee. The crowd comprises serious techno and house ravers and the club includes a techno room, a trans-dance room and chill out bar which is completely made of ice. The club is open from 9pm – 5am Friday and Saturday nights.

The Beat MegaClub on Ann Street, St. Fortitude Valley is open from 5pm till 5am and has 5 dance floors, 6 bars and hardcore techno music from top DJ’s making it the ideal place for dance devotees. It’s all the rage with the gay crowd and has regular drag shows with artists known as Trixie Lemonte and Seena Mirag, but anyone is welcome. Accommodation Brisbane can be found in any price range, budget or standard, check online for availability and book instantly.

The Fringe Bar, also on Ann Street is a hip 70′s club with local city bands performing live on Thursdays, also DJ’s playing funk house and electro until the early hours of the morning. It’s popular with a young crowd, although if you are a bit older then head down here at the weekends as it’s more mainstream. The Fringe is split into 2 levels and has chill out sessions upstairs till 3am and dance downstairs till 5am.

Uber is a club located on the West End in Boundary Street and one of the city’s newest arrivals to the clubbing scene. It attracts a hip and smart clientele and has a self-indulgent air about it with furnishings of brushed steel and dark wood. There is a wide selection of music played but only house music on the weekends. Hang out at the balcony bar with a cocktail and admire the views of the West End.

Brisbane is proud of its well known musicians, amongst them Jeffrey Black and Lisa Gasteen, internationally-acclaimed Australian opera singers, Carol Lloyd who was the songwriter for a band called Railroad Gin before going solo, The Bee Gees and Custard. Also from Brisbane are rock bands The Saints and Powderfinger, Savage Garden, Isis, Margaret Roadknight, and singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tyrone Noonan.

If you are a student or watching the pennies, then Brisbane accommodation at reasonable prices is abundant and also cheap hotels Darling Harbour. Check online today and make your travel arrangements.

Cot Death / Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – A Dowsers view.

Sudden adult Death Syndrome Have the answers been there all along?

Cot death Syndrome or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is one particular field of work many doctors have so far struggled to come to grips with. We have heard of the wrong sort mattress being harmful. We have heard all kinds of advice on what not to do to ensure the safety of a baby. We are told that there has been a downward trend in cot deaths after the advice, not to place the child facing down. But in all they seem to still be struggling to find the real and deadly cause of this terrible phenomena.

It seems clear that all the precautions already taken has only limited the numbers involved in this insidious loss of life. The reason of which can only be ignorance of the real and so far elusive cause of Cot death. The answer I suspect will be found to be not one but two or more factors contributing to cot death.

This article is aimed at a new and I hope fresh approach to this subject. There is much we still need to learn about ourselves. The doctors, scientists, and establishments that fund this type of research are only as good as the direction they set for themselves. It is certain that human endeavour will always overcome any problem and this is no different. The problem always is time. Those that have an incurable illness only wish that it came after a cure was found as with parents who lose a child because of the lack of knowledge we have to prevent it.

Most recently we are hearing that they now think some babies are genetically deficient in some way and others have some form of illness that could make them fall to this the fatal condition. Whilst no one can be sure of this at this time of writing, subtle differences in chemical biological and electro conductivity of the nervous and cell system seems to me the main culprit. Though I hasten to add, with that something extra in the formula that makes worse the situation, a form of catalyst that most would not think of.

One thing is for sure. When a mother loses her child it must be the most devastating personal tragedy she has possibly ever encountered. So what of the mothers that have lost two children and worse, even three from one family? What then? . Its usually prison for the mother who is thought to have killed her children. Most experts for the prosecution seem to think in straight lines and say one death is possible, two is suspicious and three is proof of guilt.

This thinking might now be reconsidered in the light of newer evidence especially in the UK following the release of women sent to jail after so called expert evidence that was recently found to be totally wrong, This doctor, highly regarded by the establishment, who by the way has recently been expelled from the medical register was cause of sending many women to jail following his expert testimony in court cases.

Yes, it is possible for a mother to kill her children and cover it up by saying it must be cot death. I just do not believe the vast majority are caused this way. However, as a dowser and I hope a sensible person that can balance the probabilities of fact and fiction, it seems to me that we as dowsers may very well know the answer but have not questioned our selves thoroughly enough on this very disturbing subject. Maybe we are in some form of denial on this issue. I say “maybe” we should stick our heads above the parapet and say what we know.

Some of the things that are well established in our field of work is, it is known that babies are sometimes seen crawled up in to the corner or one end of a cot and found fast asleep. Other babies seem to cry all the time. Yet when the cot is moved to another room the problem seems to disappear. We know about dowsing for negative and positive lines that cross the globe and for deep underground water and other problems causing negativity that can stress those living within these negative fields. In simple terms, there are bad places to sleep and good places to sleep.

As for example there are people that are Geopathically Stressed, some being very sensitive to their environmental location. Having map dowsed a clients home some years ago and returned the plan for her to inspect, which I must say seemed not too bad as the one negative line that went through her house was close to a wall roughly where the door handle was to their bedroom. There was no deep underground water that could have been a problem. The bed was completely clear and she was notified that her house was found to be fine to live in and she had no cause to worry about being Geopathically Stressed by what I had found.

To my amazement, the lady in question was tearful in a joyful way and explained the reason for coming to the BSD [British Society of Dowsers] and then to me was that she felt she was losing her mind. She just could not understand what was happening to her at home. This problem had created a terrible stress in her marriage. I never want to know ahead of time the actual complaint or the location of the beds or seating arrangements as it could colour my findings but following the dowsing exercise and returning the plan to her duly completed she then told me her specific problem. She had complained that when she awoke to go to the bathroom during the night she had a tingling sensation down her left hand side of her body going out of the room and sometimes a similar sensation to the right hand side of her body going back in to the room. Her husband could not understand all the fuss she was making. Nor would he believe that there was anything wrong. Except with her mental state. She said, I thought we might have ghosts but I do not believe in them. However, something was causing her these sensations that was upsetting her so much.

Having seen the one line I had drawn in, she immediately understood the problem and could then deal with it in her own way. It was clear to me and her she was very sensitive to this particular negative line.

Over the years I have come across a few people that say that they can actually feel depressed when sitting in the wrong place and then move to another seat and find themselves feeling better. Last year there was a case of a college student who went to sleep during the day on a sofa and she inexplicably died of what the coroner said was cot death syndrome.

All this seems to add weight to there being an outside influence acting in some way. A young lady who was healthy with no known illness at the time simply died. A tingling sensation felt walking thorough a negative line. Babies attempting to get out of the way of something they obviously don’t like.

Doctors and scientists have been struggling to find the cause of cot death syndrome, and in my view they may nearly have the answer. However, in any form of research the final truth can be ever elusive and take many more years before it is nailed once and for all and then maybe we can get to the bottom of this terrible problem that sometimes runs in families.

Yet aren’t all the clues there in human knowledge, a puzzle that needs to be put together in some coherent way to form the final picture?

We as human beings are as varied as the pebbles on the beach. We are not all alike and thank God for that. There are the strong, the brilliant, and unfortunately the weak and those that suffer many kinds of ailments and are far from being healthy. All babies are different, each having its own characteristics. My theory, if I may call it that says we are all made to survive on our own with our auto involuntary functions ensuring our hearts pump away, digestive systems work as they should and the nervous system that connects all parts of our bodies and brain are in tip top condition with a little current of electricity racing through the nerves, aided by a balanced electro chemical reaction from one point to another. However in some cases, especially in the very young, either by a genetic defect or simply because the system has not fully developed as yet or even an illness that dampens the ability for the nervous and cell system to function properly.

Added to the above, should the baby or even an apparently healthy young lady, as in the case of the college student mentioned above, be subjected to Geopathic stress, in my view could further reduce their ability to function properly and dampen the electrical signals that are normal, causing the cessation of breathing and then heart failure.

As an example of what can happen to electrical equipment when there is a massive electro magnetic pulse?. With electricity the electrons speed up through the circuits and in the case of some sun spot eruptions and also with Atomic Detonations, electrical equipment can be burnt out d by these invisible but factual phenomena. EMP causes a form of super conductivity. A few years ago sun spot activity caused EMP to overload the power grid from Quebec to Washington blacking out vast areas following an unusual sunspot burst. What happens is an illustration that outside forces that are completely invisible and fairly rare can have a bearing on how things work.

In my theory it is the opposite end of the electro conductivity scale that I am very much concerned with.

The electrical pulses through our nervous and cell systems are relatively low. Anything that might dampen it such as an illness, probably associated with a chemical imbalance or a genetic fault or even a system not yet used to coping by its self, as in the case of a baby that depended on mothers heart to do much of the work, and now possibly still not quiet ready for the big world find themselves in difficulties because they have their cot placed in a negative area of the house. Dowsers can find water underground just as they can identify global grid lines which are negative or positive, along with deep underground water. All of which can affect people sleeping above such anomalies.

I would say that some babies might have died anyway because of illness or genetic fault. However, I would also say that children at risk, for that matter every child ought to be placed in neutral areas of the house and never in a place that could Geopathically Stress them. Even better is to identify a good positive line and place the cot correctly in line with it to make best use of the recuperative powers afforded by it? I have never heard of any harm that could come to any one thus placed.
The medical profession has worked very hard to identify the cause of Cot Death, they have identified many contributory factors all of which should be considered in the over all picture when looking after a baby. However the race is still on, there is no real answer at this time of writing. But one thing is for sure all human endeavour results in moving our knowledge forward. On this occasion the doctors might be dealing with something out of their immediate field of expertise. In which case, if Geopathic Stress or some form of negativity in the home is the missing link, it is unlikely it will ever come to them as a contributory factor, unless there is specific research on the matter.

Maybe we might have some thought on the subject and help end this terrible waste of life.

John E. Emin
Published by the British Society Of Dowsers about two years ago.

So you have a passion for music and want to produce music of your own? There are a number of ways to get started, and I will cover a few of the most popular ones. To produce music is to have a creative mind and get rewarded for that creativity. Some people are even able to sell and license their music to artists after only a few months of practice.

The first thing to decide is what kind of music you want to produce. There are almost unlimited choices when it comes to producing music. You may choose to make hip hop beats, r&b beats, rap beats, or maybe you like trance or techno. Either way certain tools make it easier to produce certain genres of music.

If you want to start producing trance or techno music, you may want to check out a program called FL Studio. I have found that FL Studio is a good music production program for those looking to get started with trance, techno, electronic, or drum and bass music. However, I would not recommend starting with this program unless you have SOME music production experience as you may find the controls and settings a little bit too technical for your liking.

For those who want to start making hip hop or rap beats, I would suggest a program called Sonic Producer. It’s not exactly a program, it’s more of a complete system to help you constantly improve your music production skills. Sonic Producer is a social music production website that is based around their state of the art music production sequencer.

Membership to the site is only $29, which includes a whole lot: access to their sequencer, which is worth more than double that on its own. It has 16-tracks, an enormous preset instrument library, mp3 export capability, 8 DJ pads, and that’s just scratching the surface. With membership they give you access to an amazing wealth of knowledge right at your fingertips. The community there is very supportive and I have seen newbies go from no music production experience to selling their beats to artists with a Sonic Producer membership in a matter of months.

After you become proficient at making beats and producing music, you can start to integrate offline music production programs into the mix. You see, I like to use my offline programs like FL studio for creating beats and samples to plug into Sonic Producer. It’s simply not worth it for a beginner to drop a few hundred bucks on an expensive desktop program at first when they can get a beat maker, beat making lessons, community support, and the option of a full refund with Sonic Producer. If you’re looking to produce music, look no further than Sonic Producer.

Security plays a significant role in our day to day life. So far software applications are concerned, security of data is required for authentication and for several validations. Normally while developing the applications, we use the concept of cryptography for password encryption and decryption. Some applications require more security, so they go for high end security system like trusted security certificates. The security mainly focuses on the integrity of the data at the several ends.

Technicalities For data security Java Cryptography provides a suitable framework to implement several kinds of cryptography. However there are basically two types of cryptography. Once is Symmetric Cryptography and Asymmetric Cryptography. When both the ends communicate the secured data with a common key for encryption and decryption, it is called the Symmetric Cryptography. In this case a shared key is used by both the parties to encrypt and decrypt the data. However there is a problem relating to exchange of key for symmetric cryptography. To overcome this problem java provides another approach for the cryptography called Asymmetric Cryptography. In case of Asymmetric cryptography, there will be two keys unlike one key in case of symmetric cryptography. One key is called Private key and other is called Public key. These two keys are generated together and can be used for encryption and decryption. In this case the Public key is used by anyone who wishes to communicate securely with the owner of the Private key. The Private key is used by the main owner and the owner gives the Public key so that they can decrypt the data. In this article I will give you the example on Asymmetric cryptography. You can find more tutorials and concept on Sun’s JCE(Java Cryptography Extension). In my next article, I will provide you the example on Symmetric cryptography.

Complete Example This example is only meant for learning and not for any specific use. You can take the piece of code to test in your system to learn the above concept.

The following class is used to create the Public key and Private key. This class contains generic methods to generate the Public and Private key. If you run the testharness class, you will find the two files called “Public.key” and “Private.key”. Please go through the java docs mentioned in the methods.

Class Name : – KeyCreator.java

package com.dds.security;

import java.io.FileOutputStream;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.security.KeyPair;

import java.security.KeyPairGenerator;

import java.security.PrivateKey;

import java.security.PublicKey;

/**This class is used to generate the Private and Public key file.

* The Public.key file and Private.key file will be generated in the

* current directory.

* @author Debadatta Mishra(PIKU)

*

*/

public class KeyCreator

{

/**

* Object of type {@link PublicKey}

*/

private PublicKey publicKey = null;

/**

* Object of type {@link PrivateKey}

*/

private PrivateKey privateKey = null;

/**Default constructor.

* Here KeyPair object is initialized and

* thereby public key and private key objects

* are created.

* @throws Exception

*/

public KeyCreator() throws Exception

{

super();

/*

* The following line is used to

* generate the Public and Private

* key.

*/

KeyPair keyPair = KeyPairGenerator

.getInstance(“RSA”)

.generateKeyPair();

publicKey = keyPair.getPublic();

privateKey = keyPair.getPrivate();

}

/**Method to return the {@link PublicKey}

* @return the {@link PublicKey}

*/

public PublicKey getPublicKey() {

return publicKey;

}

/**Method to return the {@link PrivateKey}

* @return the {@link PrivateKey}

*/

public PrivateKey getPrivateKey() {

return privateKey;

}

/**Method used to write the Public or Private

* key file.

* @param filename of type String indicating

* the name of Public or Private key

* @param contents of the key

*/

public void writeKey(String filename, byte[] contents)

{

try

{

FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(filename);

fos.write(contents);

fos.flush();

fos.close();

}

catch (IOException e)

{

e.printStackTrace();

}

}

}

The following class is used to read the “Public.key” and “Private.key” generated by the above program. If you are the owner you can have the “Private.key” file based upon which you have to encrypt the data and give your “Public.key” file to other end who wants to decrypt the data. In this following class, you can read both the “Public.key” and “Private.key” files.

Class Name:- KeyReader.java

package com.dds.security;

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;

import java.io.FileInputStream;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.security.KeyFactory;

import java.security.PrivateKey;

import java.security.PublicKey;

import java.security.spec.PKCS8EncodedKeySpec;

import java.security.spec.X509EncodedKeySpec;

/**

* This class is used to read the Private and Public key

* files generated using the Java’s Asysmmetric Security

* system.

* @author Debadatta Mishra(PIKU)

*

*/

public class KeyReader

{

/**

* Object of type {@link KeyFactory}

*/

private KeyFactory keyFactory = null;

/**

* Default constructor to initialize the

* keyFactory.

*/

public KeyReader()

{

super();

try

{

keyFactory = KeyFactory.getInstance(“RSA”);

}

catch( Exception e )

{

e.printStackTrace();

}

}

/**This method is used to read the bytes from the file.

* The file can be a Public key file or a Private key

* file. In this file, you have stored the security key,

* based upon which encryption and decryption can be

* performed.

* @param fileName of type String indicating the file name

* @return the bytes from the file

* @throws Exception

*/

private byte[] getKeyData( String fileName ) throws Exception

{

FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(fileName);

ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

int b;

try

{

while ((b = fis.read()) != -1)

{

baos.write(b);

}

fis.close();

baos.flush();

baos.close();

} catch (IOException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

return baos.toByteArray();

}

/**This method is used to return the object of type

* {@link PrivateKey}. In this method you have to pass

* the file name of the Private.key file.

* @param filename of type String indicating the

* file name.

* @return the object of type {@link PrivateKey}

* @throws Exception

*/

public PrivateKey getPrivateKey( String filename ) throws Exception

{

PrivateKey privateKey = null;

try

{

byte[] keydata = getKeyData(filename);

PKCS8EncodedKeySpec encodedPrivateKey = new PKCS8EncodedKeySpec(keydata);

privateKey = keyFactory.generatePrivate(encodedPrivateKey);

}

catch( Exception e )

{

e.printStackTrace();

}

return privateKey;

}

/**This method is used to return the object of type

* {@link PublicKey}. In this method you have to pass

* the file name of the Public.key file.

* @param filename of type String indicating the

* file name.

* @return the object of type {@link PublicKey}

* @throws Exception

*/

public PublicKey getPublicKey( String filename ) throws Exception

{

PublicKey publicKey = null;

try

{

byte[] keydata = getKeyData(filename);

X509EncodedKeySpec encodedPublicKey = new X509EncodedKeySpec(keydata);

publicKey = keyFactory.generatePublic(encodedPublicKey);

}

catch( Exception e )

{

e.printStackTrace();

}

return publicKey;

}

}

The following class is a utility class which is used to encrypt and decrypt the data.

ClassName :- SecurityUtil.java

package com.dds.security;

import java.security.PrivateKey;

import java.security.PublicKey;

import javax.crypto.Cipher;

/**This is a utility class to provide

* encryption and decryption based upon

* the key. The key can be your either

* Public or Private .

* @author Debadatta Mishra(PIKU)

*

*/

public class SecurityUtil

{

/**

* Object of type {@link Cipher}

*/

private static Cipher cipher = null;

/*

* The following static is used to

* initialize the Cipher object

*/

static

{

try

{

cipher = Cipher.getInstance(“RSA”);

}

catch( Exception e )

{

e.printStackTrace();

}

}

/**Method used to encrypt the string and return as bytes.

* Here the input parameter will be your Private key.

* You have to encrypt the string using your private

* key at your end.

* @param messsageBytes , it is the bytes from the

* string to encrypt

* @param privateKey of type {@link PrivateKey}

* @return encrypted bytes

* @throws Exception

*/

public static byte[] getEncryptedBytes( byte[] messsageBytes , PrivateKey privateKey) throws Exception

{

byte[] encryptedBytes = null;

cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE , privateKey );

encryptedBytes = cipher.doFinal(messsageBytes);

return encryptedBytes;

}

/**Method used to decrypt the string and return as bytes.

* Here the input parameter will be your Public key.

* You have to decrypt the string using your Public

* key at the destination end.

* @param messsageBytes , it is the bytes from the

* string to encrypt

* @param publicKey of type {@link PublicKey}

* @return decrypted bytes

* @throws Exception

*/

public static byte[] getDecryptedBytes( byte[] messsageBytes , PublicKey publicKey)throws Exception

{

byte[] decryptedBytes = null;

cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE , publicKey );

decryptedBytes = cipher.doFinal( messsageBytes );

return decryptedBytes;

}

}

The following is test harness class to test the functionality of the above program. Please go through the comments and java docs of the above and below programs.

Class Name :- SecurityTestHarness.java

package com.security.testharness;

import java.security.PrivateKey;

import java.security.PublicKey;

import com.dds.security.KeyCreator;

import com.dds.security.KeyReader;

import com.dds.security.SecurityUtil;

/**This is a test harness class used to

* encrypt and decrypt the string based

* upon the Public and Private key.

* This class also helps to test how

* Public and Private key can be created.

* @author Debadatta Mishra(PIKU)

*

*/

public class SecurityTestHarness

{

public static void main(String[] args)

{

try

{

/*

* The following lines will generate the

* PublicKey and PrivateKey files.

*/

KeyCreator keyCreator = new KeyCreator();

PublicKey publicKey = keyCreator.getPublicKey();

PrivateKey privateKey = keyCreator.getPrivateKey();

/*

* Generate two files named Public.key and Private.key

*/

keyCreator.writeKey(“Public.key”, publicKey.getEncoded());

keyCreator.writeKey(“Private.key”, privateKey.getEncoded());

/*

* Get the public and private key

*/

KeyReader keyReader = new KeyReader();

PublicKey publicKey2 = keyReader.getPublicKey(“Public.key”);

System.out.println(“Public Key—-”+publicKey2);

PrivateKey privateKey2 = keyReader.getPrivateKey(“Private.key”);

System.out.println(“Private Key—-”+privateKey2);

String str = “Hi, Hello World, Welcome to the World of Java”;

byte[] stringBytes = str.getBytes();

byte[] encryptedBytes = SecurityUtil.getEncryptedBytes(

stringBytes, privateKey2);

String encryptedString = new String(encryptedBytes);

System.out.println(“EncryptedString—-”+encryptedString);

byte[] decryptedBytes = SecurityUtil.getDecryptedBytes(encryptedBytes, publicKey2);

System.out.println(“Decrypted String—-”+new String(decryptedBytes));

}

catch( Exception e )

{

e.printStackTrace();

}

}

}

To test the above programs, please create the appropriate package as mentioned in the program. You can also create your own package and modify the package name in the above programs. You can all the code in your favorable java editor.

Conclusion I hope that you will enjoy my article. If you find any problems or errors, please feel free to send me a mail in the address debadattamishra@aol.com . This article is only meant for those who are new to java development. This article does not bear any commercial significance. Please provide me the feedback about this article.