Projects
PAL Linux
PAL Linux is a Linux Kernel based operating system developed with a perspective of keeping the much needed balanced approach in the users’ requirements and the advancements in the technology. It has been designed and developed using the LFS track. Surely a modern operating system built using the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
philosophy. Just like you get your clothes tailored according to your needs in the same manner PAL Linux OS introduces the concept of tailoring operating system to suit user’s needs. It includes a whole suite of useful software, along with the KDE desktop environment, automatic hardware detection and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals.
Furthermore it brings the concept of live computing thereby making your operating system a mobile one…………..all that is needed is the PAL Linux live CD and you have your system up and running. The term “live” means that this Linux-based distribution is a complete, runnable, i.e. live instance of the operating system residing on a CD, rather than installation of a complete OS into your hard drive. The aim of the “Live Computing” release is to facilitate users by giving them value-added computing. Click for screenshots of PAL releases.
Image SemSearch
This is the age of knowledge and this information-driven world is in constant need of effective mechanisms for searching information. The World Wide Web revolution has sparked a new Web 2.0 era and this has given rise to concepts such as the “Semantic Web” . Likewise “Image SemSearch” is one of our major research innovations keeping in focus the need for an efficient way to search the Web for visual information. Intelligent image retrieval has now become an active area for research and “Image SemSearch” is a move in this direction. Furthermore, semantics are said to be the next big thing in search engine technology and Semantics can prove to be an effective solution to the image search problem.We have proposed a new technique for image search engines on basis of underlying image information and its semantics. Image and its semantics is the underlying theme to make the image searching process faster and effective: this is what our ongoing project “Image SemSearch” all about. Click here to download technological reiview document on “Image SemSearch” by UnHuman Productions.
Security Plus
Over the years the field of computer security has become an active research field. Passwords are though the most primitive and fundamental way to ensure security yet they continue to contain many lapses. This project is an attempt at removing these lapses by adopting a non-conventional approach and takes a careful look at this issue from the angle of philosophy and cognitive science. We have attempted to give new directions to passwords by making them close to human senses. Not only that “Security Plus” is a major research effort in the realms of computing: it is an unconventional boot loader or one can consider it as a powerful boot controller. It has a very appealing and easy-to-use graphical user interface. Not only that it is better than just a boot loader or firewall because it allows simple software to run before even giving full flash operating system. For instance the user can run just Fifa98 from boot loader without even loading full fladeged operating system. “Security Plus” enables administrator to personalize and customize all the applications at boot process which saves effective cost of firewall and hidden monitoring soft wares and also provides enhanced security. What’s more is that you can also set password from mouse and keyboard with typing speed check tool, its really a device-independent password so no overload on the clients. It sure gives a tough time to crackers if they try to nuke into your secure system. In fact password security is one area where Security Plus is ready to create standards and bring about a revolution.
Ad Hoc Map Simulator
This is a simulation engine designed to study the workings of ad hoc networks. The basic purpose behind “AMS” apart from studying the intricacies of ad hoc networks is to provide an algorithm for resolution of the energy problem in these networks. The simulation engine has been carefully designed keeping in mind the difficulties a beginner might face in visualizing the nitty gritties of ad hoc networks.The underlying algorithm used is a variant of the maximum flow (a class of network flow algorithms). “AMS” is purely a research project and was part of the BS final year thesis of one of the team members of UNHP (Muhammad Atif Qureshi): the thesis can also be downloaded to explore further into this research effort by UNHP.
Markov Chain Based Self-Healing Technology
This project is also part of the BS final year thesis of one of the team members of UNHP (Arjumand Younus) and it basically deals with a new paradigm in the software engineering framework: “Software Rectification.” Despite such a long history of software engineering efforts software development still remains a difficult process and in spite of the fact that software plays a crucial role in today’s world yet software failures are encountered. What is the need is a redefinition of the software engineering life cycle and this is what this project proposes. The focus is to embed a software rectification module into the software during the development phase itself which will give birth to “Self-Healable Software.” The project is aimed at pursuing an agent-based treatment having the capability to self-heal software systems and the task has been achieved through the use of Markov Chains: this is a long-term project by UNHP and the vision is to embed this self-healing module into the PAL Linux Operating System in order to make it artificially intelligent. To study it further the thesis is available for download.