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Top 50 Free Open Source Classes on Computer Science

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Computer science is an interesting field to go into. There are a number of opportunities in computer science that you can take advantage of. With computers increasingly becoming a regular part of life, those who can work with computers have good opportunities. You can find a good salary with a program in computer science, and as long as you are careful to keep up your skills. Here are 50 free opencourseware classes that can help you learn more about computer science:

Introduction to Computer Science

Learn the basics of computer science, and get a foundation in how computer science works.

Introduction to Computer Science: Learn about the history of computing, as well as the development of computer languages. A great basic course on introductory computer science.
Introduction to Computer Science and Programming: A series of video lectures from MIT about computer science, and the basics of programming.
Introduction to Computers: UC Berkeley offers a course on the basics of computing and science.
Artificial Intelligence: Learn about the basics of artificial intelligence and how it has been developed for computer applications.
Breadth Topics in Computing Science: This class from Capilano University offers a wide view of computer science. Learn about design, programming and more for different opportunities in computer science.
The Anthropology of Computing: This MIT course offers an interesting look into the development of computers and their impact on human society.
Human Computer Interaction: Basic information on how humans interact with computers, and how to better design usability, from the University of Washington.

Comprehensive Computer Science Collections

If you are interested in courses that are a little more comprehensive in nature, you can get a good feel for computer science from the following collections:

Computer and Computer Systems: An overall view of computers and how they are organized into systems.
Science and Technology: Connexions, from Rice University, offers a comprehensive course on different types of computer science.
Information and Technology: Many of the courses offered by the University of Tokyo include English translations, so you can get a good grasp of information and technology.
Electrical and Computer Engineering: Choose from a variety of courses that can give you a good grasp of the principles behind computer engineering.
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Learn about electrical engineering and computer science can be combined to create amazing technology.
Science and Technology: Choose from a variety of courses on technology and computers, as well as science, from OER Commons.

Programming and Languages

Get a handle on computer programming, and learn about different computer languages used in programming.

Building Programming Experience: Helpful hints for building up your programming capabilities.
Computer Language Engineering: Overview of how computer languages are developed, and how to program them.
Programming Languages: Provides a basic overview of programming languages, offering special insight into Scheme +.
AJAX: Land of Code offers this tutorial related to programming with AJAX.
C Programming: The University of Strathclyde provides this course on using the C programming language.
Fundamentals of C++: This course is offered at free-ed.net, and provides insight and helpful hints on programming with C++.
Java Programming: This course is written by a computer science professor at Orange Coast College, and is provided through the Sofia Open Content Initiative.
Perl Lessons: Learn about Perl, and how to use it, especially with CGI.
PHP Tutorial for Beginners: Get an overview of PHP, and how it can be used in a variety of circumstances.
Ruby Programming: Learn about Ruby, and learn how to use it for your projects.

Computer Software

Learn about software development, and the importance of software in computer programming.

Designing the user interface: This software design course from The Open University helps you learn the principles of usability.
Modelling object-oriented software: Learn about object-oriented software, and how it can be used to structure systems.
Software development for enterprise systems: An overview of how to design software meant for business.
Software Engineering for Web Applications: Learn about how to design software for web apps.
Elements of Software Construction: MIT takes you through the basics of constructing software.
Software Engineering Concepts: Learn the fundamental concepts behind engineering and developing software.

Computer Systems and Information Technology

Learn how to construct computer systems, and get the basic outlines of information technology.

Systems Design and Administration: Learn how to design and administer computer systems from Dixie State College.
Applied Parallel Computing: Learn about how you can use parallel computing systems.
Machine Structures: UC Berkeley offers a course on the structure of computers, and how they can interact in systems.
Operating Systems and System Programming: Get a handle on operating systems, how they work, and how to program them properly.
Information Technology and the Labor Market: Learn about IT, the demand for it, and how IT is reshaping the way things are done.
Global Issues in Information Technology: Weber State University introduces different issues in IT.
Finding information in information technology and computing: An overview of how information is arranged, and how to look for what you need.

Computer Processes and Data

Learn more about computer processing and data management.

An introduction to data and information: The Open University offers a helpful course on data and how it works in a computer environment.
The database development life cycle: A basic overview of how data development takes place.
Introduction to Algorithms: Algorithms are necessary for processing information. This MIT course introduces you to them.
Introduction to Communication, Control, and Signal Processing: Learn how computers process information and data.
Data Structures: Learn how data is structured, and how you can create your own structures.
Data and processes in computing: Follow data and processes development as part of computer science.
Representing and manipulating data in computers: A course in how you can use data for specific purposes.

Web Development

Part of computer science is being able to develop programs, applications and systems for the Internet.

Understanding Computers and the Internet: A look at computers and their importance to the Internet.
Digital Typography: Get an understanding of how to design typography for the Internet.
Information Visualization: Learn how to visualize information, and present it in a way that others can relate to.
User Interface Design and Implementation: A course from MIT about how you can design a usable interface, and implement it.
Communicating in Cyberspace: Learn how to communicate effectively using computers.
Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business: Get a handle on how search engines work, and how important they have become to society and to business.
Communications and Information Policy: Learn about different policies involved with communicating online.

Five reasons Android is superior to the iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000

While on vacation, I was reminded (yet again) how superior the Android platform is to the iPhone. How this happened was simple — during my large family gathering, I had to work on several iPhones but no Android phones. As I worked on the iPhones, it hit me just how inflexible the iPhone platform is and in how many ways the Android mobile is superior.

As with any listing of this nature, every point here could be argued, but I wanted to try to keep this particular listing to facts and not just opinion. So, let’s dig in and see how that goes.

Application options. With the Android platform, all you have to do is tap the Menu button to get to the application options, even while the application is running. This is very much in line with how PC applications work. However, on the iPhone, you have to go through Settings to get to the application options. Sometimes this is circumvented when iPhone app designers add an Options button within an application — but this leads to inconsistency, because not all applications have options.
Updates. For me, this one is the deal breaker for the iPhone. In order to get updates (especially firmware updates) the iPhone must be connected to iTunes. Android, on the other hand, offers two ways to get updates: OTA (Over The Air) or using a third-party tool that allows the upgrade to be installed via a PC. The third-party tool will depend upon the maker of the handset, but most of them work very well. The OTA updates also work almost flawlessly. The only bad experience I’ve had with OTA updates is with AT&T, because they only allow you to check for updates every 24 hours. This can cause some serious frustration when you KNOW there’s an update available, but your handset has yet to see it. But generally speaking, when your provider makes the update available, it will appear and be ready for installation.
No iTunes. I have always been very vocal about this. I have a great dislike for iTunes, and there are a lot of reasons for this. It’s not intuitive, it’s a resource hog, and it’s forced upon you by Apple, when you want to fully manage your iPhone. With the Android platform, there is not one single application required to manage your device. In fact, a single Android device can be managed by multiple applications and in multiple platforms.
Multitasking. That’s right, the Android platform does true multitasking. Sure, Apple claims the iPhone does, but I challenge you to actually manage multitasking on the iPhone platform. With Android, all you have to do is hold down the Home button to see a list of your running applications. From that list, you can switch between apps at any time. There are even third-party Android applications (such as Power Strip) that can be installed that make the task of multitasking even more powerful.
Application installation. With the Android platform, you can install apps from the Android Market, from your PC by simply copying the file to the mobile, or even transferring via Bluetooth. In fact, you can install home-grown applications just as easy as “official” applications created by Android developers. For developers, this is a real boon, because you don’t have to rely solely on an emulator to make sure your application works properly. Some people argue that this opens up Android for possible malware, but if done carefully, it won’t be an issue.

There are many reasons why I personally feel that Android is superior to the iPhone, but the above entries tend to float to the top for me. Yes, there are aspects of mobile life that the iPhone does quite well, but for anyone that prefers a sense of true freedom with their devices, Android is — far and away — the platform of choice.

How Insurance Works

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:48:00 +0000

While it may seem complex, insurance is really quite simple: The payments (or premiums) of the many pay for the losses of a few. Your premiums go into a large pool, if you will, at your insurance company. The claims of the few are paid from that pool. Because there are more people contributing to the pool than there are making claims, there is always enough to pay the claims – even large single claims like when someone is permanently disabled as a result of a car collision, or many smaller claims like those resulting from a natural disaster. (The 1998 ice storm that hit parts of Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick resulted in an estimated 700,000 claims for damage totalling $1.4 billion.) However, large disasters (such as the ice storm) do come close to emptying the pool.

Insurance for insurance companies

Even when the pool comes close to emptying, there is another pool from which insurance companies can draw to pay claims. Some of your premiums are used by your insurance company to buy reinsurance – insurance for insurance companies. Sometimes losses are so big – like those resulting from an earthquake – that there is no way that an insurance company can cover the costs. Reinsurance is an extra layer of protection against large losses.

Annual replenishing

Your insurance is an annual contract, so the pool operates for only one year at a time. Your premiums and the premiums of others are based on how much money the insurance companies think they will need to pay the coming year’s claims. Your premiums do not build up over the years – unlike the premiums for some types of life insurance.

How premiums are calculated

Within reasonable limits, some of which are prescribed by law, your premium is calculated to reflect the probability that you will make a claim – that is, that you will draw funds from the insurance pool. Those who are unlikely to draw from the pool pay less than those who are more likely to draw from it.

Insurers take many factors into consideration to determine the likelihood that you will make a claim. A common misconception is that a policyholder who has never made a claim should pay less, little or nothing for insurance. While it is true that past claims history is important, a more reliable indicator of how likely a person or business is to make a claim is the statistical group to which he/she/it belongs.

Industry earnings

Insurance companies generally do not make money on the premiums gathered from policyholders. In 2005, insurance companies paid more than $21 billion in claims while taking in $35 billion in premiums. The difference between the premiums and claims, in this case $14 billion, is used by the companies to pay salaries and taxes ($6.2 billion in 2005), and to cover the overhead costs (such as electricity bills) of running a business. It is also used to pay the administrative costs of settling a claim.

Insurance pays for …

Insurance pays for only those types of losses described in your contract. It is very important that you read your policy and/or talk to your insurance representative about what you are covered for and what you’re not. Insurance will not pay for every problem that you may encounter, nor is it a maintenance contract. Insurance is generally intended – and priced accordingly – to help policyholders cope with the financial consequences of unpredictable events that are "sudden and accidental." If, for example, you live on a floodplain by a river, flooding of your property in the spring is not sudden or accidental; it is inevitable and, therefore, uninsurable.

How Stock Market Works

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:46:00 +0000

In my effort to further educate newbies in the field of stock market, I initiated this article for stock market beginners. You may call it Stocks 101 or Stocks for Dummies.

First and foremost, what is the stock market? A stock market is an avenue for companies and corporations to offer their shares in the public. Once a company listed their shares in the stock market, then the public is free to buy and sell those stocks. It works in a similar way to how you might sell and buy gold. So what’s the pros and cons of a company in listing their stocks publicly?

Pros:

1. To raise capital. Companies hire an advisor called underwriter to formulate the Initial Public Offering (IPO) price of the company’s stock depending on several factors. Then executives of these companies will conduct a roadshow usually out of the country to entice foreign investors to buy these shares. The IPO price is the starting price of the company’s stock in the stock market when it first traded publicly. An oversold stock mean that it did well in its initial public offering. It means that a lot of investors bought the stock. It can be twice or thrice oversold depending on the turn out of the IPO.

2. To know the market value of a company. One way to easily know the market value of the company is by knowing the price of its stock. This in turn will be multiplied by the total outstanding shares that the company holds. Here in the Philippines, the largest company in terms of market value is PLDT.

Cons:

Since the company’s stock is now open for public, it can be subject to several external factors. Investors can now play its stocks. It can now be a subject for scrutiny by investors and analysts. Also, it can be a subject for manipulation. A company that did well, meaning, it beats analysts estimates on its earnings and profits will probably go higher as investors buy these shares. In contrast, those that did not meet or has some problems in liquidity, credit, labor, compliance, etc. will be dumped by the investors that will lead to the so-called ‘equity dry up’. This led to the recent bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.

So much for the pros and cons, we will now get into the basics of the stock market.

Once a company listed its shares in the stock market, this will be represented by a so-called Ticker Symbol. A ticker symbol is a short-cut name of the company. You won’t see the long name Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Company in the stock market. It may be hard to memorize and to recall. Instead, it is represented by the ticker symbol ‘TEL’.

An index tracks the movement of the stock market. The ups and downs of an index depends on the movement of the price of the stocks. You usually hear the index went up or down by so and so points. Different countries have different names for their indices for easy identification. In US, there are three indices. These are called a.) Dow Jones Industrial Average or DOW or DJIA. b.) NASDAQ and c.) S&P 500. In Japan, they called their index ‘Nikkei’. In Hong Kong, they call it ‘Hangseng’. In UK, they call it ‘FTSE 100′. In Germany, they call it ‘DAX 30′. Here in the Philippines, they call it ‘Phisix’.

Someone asks, is there a minimum amount to buy stocks? The answer is yes! Here in the Philippines, it usually takes a capital of Php 25,000 to open an account but some online trading platforms require just Php 5,000. All stocks have a minimum number of shares that each investor needs to comply. This is called Board Lot. The purpose of this is to avoid ‘odd lots’ and to facilitate easier trading. This depends on the price of a stock. Here in the Philippines, a stock with a price of 101 and up per share requires a board lot of 10 shares. A stock with a price of 10.25 to 100 per share requires a board lot of 100 shares. A stock price of 1.02 to 10 per share requires a board lot of 1,000 shares. So this mean that you cannot buy just 10 shares of a stock with a price of 10 per share.

The movement of stock prices is also subjected to ‘fluctuations‘. This is also dependent on the price of a stock. Here in the Philippines, a stock with a price of 101 and up per share is subject to a fluctuation of 1.00. It means that it can move to a multiple of 1, lower or higher, but it cannot move 0.25. Therefore, you cannot buy or sell it at 101.25 or 101.50.

When you buy or sell stocks, you placed a so-called Order. A ‘buy order’ mean that you requested to buy a stock at a specified price. A ’sell order’ mean that you requested to sell the stocks that you currently holds. Every order is represented by a price and volume. By volume, it refers to the number of stocks that you want to buy or sell. By price, it refers to the buy or sell price that you want. All these orders will be requested thru a stock broker. A stock broker will receive all these requests and will post it in the stock exchange. Once an order materialized, it is called ‘matched order’. Meaning, if you posted a buy order of 100 shares of TEL stocks at the price of 2,000, then another person posted a sell order of 100 shares of TEL at the same price of 2,000. And so your order has been matched! If you posted beyond the trading hours, then it’s called ‘off-hour order’ and your order will be exercised the next trading day. If you don’t have sufficient funds to buy a stock, then it will be a ‘declined order’.

Stock market is like any normal store. It has operating hours called trading time or trading hours. Depending on the country, the stock market normally operates from 9:30AM to 12:30 Noon. Some countries like Japan operates from 9AM to 3PM.

You’ve been hearing a lot about bear and bull markets. What do these terms mean? A bear market is a stock market where there are a lot of sellers than buyers. By law of supply and demand, since there are a lot of supply, in this case sellers of stocks, then the stock price will be bound to go down. Why is it called a ‘bear’ market? Just look how bear attacks. It fights by using its claws in the ‘downward’ position. In contrast, a stock market called a bull market is characterized by a lot of buyers than sellers. This is again by using the law of supply and demand. Why is it called a ‘bull’ market? Just look at how bulls attack. They have this set of thorns in the ‘upward’ direction when they fight with an enemy. When there is a bull market, stock ‘rally’.

A blue chip stock is a stock of a well-established company having stable earnings. The term ‘blue chip’ came from casinos where blue chips represent counters with the highest value. During trading, a stock can be called ‘most active’, ‘top gainers’ or ‘top losers’. A stock belonging to the most active list is a stock with a lot of buyers and sellers. These set of stocks are also called ‘movers’. Top gainers’ list are stocks with the highest gain in a single trading day while top losers are stocks with the highest loss in a single trading day.

A stock that belongs to the list of most active, top gainers and top losers is usually determined by its market volume and market value. A market volume refers as to how many shares were traded in a particular trading day. A market value, on the other hand, refers to the monetary value of all those traded stocks. You usually hear reports of, for example, 3 Billion shares with a value of 1.5 Billion ’shook hands’.

You usually notice a color associated with a stock during the trading. This indicates the movement of a stock. A color red means that the stock is going down. A color green means that the stock is going up. And a so-called unch, meaning a stock that did not went up or down, is represented usually by a black or white.

Now why do investors buy stocks? Well aside from the ‘buy low and sell high’ strategy called capital gains of making nice income from it, a stock gives ‘dividends‘. These are profit shares given by the company for investors who bought their stocks. All companies listed in stock exchange disclosed their dividend pay-out. This declaration commonly involves two dates: The ‘Ex-Date’ and ‘Payment Date’. The Ex-date is the date on which you should have acquired the said stock. The Payment date is the date at which the dividend will be paid. Dividends may come in two forms: Stock dividend and Cash Dividend.In order to illustrate more of this, let’s view the example below:

- Ayala Corp. (AC) declared to give 20% stock dividend declaration ex-date June 1; payment date July 31. Cash dividend of Php 5.75 per share ex date September 1, payment date October 30.

- As an investor, if you want to take advantage, acquire as much stock as you can before the ex-date. If the investor bought 100 shares of AC before September 1, the he/she will have 120 shares by June 1. Aside from this, if he/she retained the said stocks then he/she could have probably earned an additional Php 690 come October 30.

One last way of earning from stocks is the so-called ’stock rights’. It is the the option given to the present shareholders to buy additional shares of stock at a price lower than its market price. This is an additional opportunity for those who hold stocks of a company and one way to raise additional capital for the company.

Historical values of a stock also play an important role in assessing whether the value of a stock is cheap or expensive. A 52-week high means that it is the highest price of the stock achieved in a span of 1 year. Consequently, a 52-week low means that it is the lowest price of the stock achieved in a span of 1 year. A Year-To-Date (YTD) Yield represent just how much the stock moved up or down starting from the start of the year which is January 1. These two are both dependent on the present date and the closing price of the stock (the price of the stock when the stock market closed). To illustrate more of this, let’s view the example below. Consider the following prices as the closing price:

- SM Investments had a 52-week high of 400 and 52-week low of 185. If for example the date today is November 10, 2008, then the stock of SM achieved its highest price of 400 and lowest price of 185 from November 10, 2007 to November 10, 2008, a span of 1 year. In the case of YTD Yield, let’s say today the company has lost 35% of its value. This just means the stock has fallen 38% of its value since January 1, 2008.

Aside from the gauge of historical values of stocks, one way of assessing if a stock is cheap or expensive is thru its Price-Earning Ratio or so called ‘P/E Ratio’. This is the ratio of the stock price to the company’s earnings. The higher the P/E Ratio, the higher the profitability of the company. BUT do not solely rely on this ratio. It may indicate that a high P/E ratio means that the stock is overpriced.

You also hear the term ‘Technical Analysis’. This refers to the technique used by brokers and analysts to predict the future direction of a stock. They use charts and graphs and is usually based on the historical value of the stock. In using this, they can somehow know when a stock is cheap or not. However, this is not 100% accurate as no one can really predict the movement of the stock market.

Ok, we will now go to some terms that are used by analysts in stock trading:

Cost averaging - This means adding or buying more shares at a cheaper price and disposing it at a modest price so that the cost will eventually average out with the profit leaving a break even or a little income. This was a strategy to lessen losses. To illustrate it, let’s see the example. I bought 200 shares of AC at 250 per share. The stock went down to 150 per share. To take advantage of it, I will buy additional 200 shares. And so when the stock moved to at least a price of 200 per share, then I am break even. If I had not done it, then I will incur a loss when I sell it at 200 per share.

Window Dressing - It is another strategy used by fund managers towards the end of the year or fourth quarter. They buy stocks with attractive values and sell those ones with beaten prices so that their portfolio will look good to their clients. To illustrate this, a mutual fund company buys a stock whose trend is up and sell some of its shares in another stock whose trend is down, even at a loss.

Short Sell - This means that you sell stocks that you don’t have at the time of the sell. It is done with the intent of later buying the share at a lower price for a profit. Traders usually do this when there is an expected decline of a stock. When the stock price really went down, then the trader is well off. In contrast, when that expectation did not materialize, then the trader loses money. Recently, this practice was banned by Securities and Exchange Commission for manipulating the stock market.

Volatility - The volatility of the stock refers to its price movement. The larger the movement of the stock, the more volatile it is. This means that a stock which moved from 150 t0 350 then back to 250 per share in a span of 3 days is more volatile than a stock which moved from 150 to 200 to 175.

Why Google+ has a winning Chance..

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:40:00 +0000

The world doesn’t need another social network. Especially when you have one that already has 750 million highly active users in it.

The reasons why Facebook overtook MySpace was because it was different and solved a different set of problems. Facebook introduced “real identity” to the web. And, the “newsfeed” created a whole new distribution channel for sharing on the web that now rivals with likes of search for traffic.

But, now with 750 million users, with 4 billion things being shared everyday, noise has taken over the channel. Therefore, you don’t get to see the content you want to see; Facebook decides what you should see. This becomes a fundamental problem that causes frustration and where Google+ got it right with Circles.

On my Facebook account I have 474 Facebook friends. These range from family, close friends, co-workers, passive contacts, and acquaintances. However, when I log into Facebook – my newsfeed isn’t relevant. I rarely see my family and close friends – it’s basically about everyone else. Not a week goes by, when I have to hide connections from showing up on my feed. And that’s the bigger problem of the social web. Everyone loves the concept of the social graph, but the real defining graph – is your “implicit graph.”

While it took me some time to get used to, I now understand why Google+ forces you to organize your social graph into circles: Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Following and any other circle you wish to create. The first two groups are your “implicit graph”, Acquaintances becomes your “extended social graph”, and Following becomes your “interest graph” much like Twitter. Even though, not many people are on it yet (10 million vs. 750 million)– I already love the organization of the feeds. It makes sense, I get to now control the information I want in the circles I create, and I get to see my implicit graph come to life on a social network. This is a key difference and behavioral insight that gives Google+ a real chance to compete with Facebook.

I’ve always been a big believer that the “social graph” was just our explicit graph – an index of our address book of connections. But, the Holy Grail is going to be whoever can ascertain our “implicit graph” to show the content, messaging, and social experience consumers really want. It seems Google+ will be bringing that to a social network.

Courtesy : www.TechProceed.com

How To Lock Your Computer With USB Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 13:41:00 +0000

Tired of people starting your computer when you are not around and messing up custom settings? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could lock your computer by just removing your USB stick from it? I’ll show you how you can use your USB stick, Flash Drive or Pen Drive what ever you call it to lock your computer, among other things…

Boot Lock

This trick will allow you to use your USB to BOOT into Windows. If someone tries to start the computer without your USB stick, it will display boot errors. Before begin, you playing with the BIOS and boot files of your computer may result in you not being able to boot into your Windows partition; so continue at your own risk!

Things you need: A 64MB or larger sized USB Stick, Windows Recovery Disk (just in case). Unhide hidden and protected files : Go to Tools > Options > View, check Show hidden files and un-check Hide protected system files.

From the drive where Windows is installed (normally C:\), copy the files boot.ini, ntdlr and NTDETECT.COM to your USB Stick.
Now, we need to go into your BIOS, so restart the computer and keep jabbing [F8] as soon as the computer starts.
Once in the BIOS, enable USB Drive as the first boot device. You might have to enable USB Legacy Support on older BIOSes.
Restart your computer, if all goes well, you should be able to log into Windows. If not, then unplug the USB Stick, return to the BIOS and change the First Boot device to your hard disk drive and repeat the steps above.
Once you are logged into Windows, go to your Windows drive and rename boot.ini to boot.bak.
To check if you have setup everything correctly, eject your USB stick and reboot the computer. You should get error messages on the screen such as Invalid Boot.ini” or “Windows could not start”.

That's it ! :)

How To hack Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Hotmail passwords ?

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 07:53:00 +0000

Updated :: After receiving some harsh comments by some idiotic morons who don’t even bother to read the full post let me tell you I am not here advocating any hacking here ..Read the post carefully before commenting… don't try this… this technique was used by some cheap hacker on ORKUT… I am just mentioning it so that you people don't try it. If you try this you will lose your own password. There are many sites which says you can hack Gmail, Yahoo, orkut or any other site just by following the steps like these I have given below.. Ironically you will get yourself hacked by following these steps.

Well, yesterday I was going through one of the hacking communities just for checking if any new hacking script has come up or not. I saw a topic named "How To hack Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Hotmail passwords ?" Out of curiousity when I opened it, it made me laugh aloud. I mean some anonymous guy posting a topic like that seemed totally absurd and that too a cheap phishing technique probably used during the early ninties :)

check out what was posted in that topic..

How To hack Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Hotmail passwords ??

~~~

It is possible and it is easy. This way of hacking into any kind of account was brought to my attention by my friend working in microsoft,in animation cell. you have to just…

    STEP 1- Log in to your own Gmail/ Yahoo or hotmail account. Note: Your account must be at least 1 weeks old for this trick to work.

    STEP 2- Once you have logged into your own account, compose/write an e-mail to: ############################# (removed the mail id which was written because ppl were actually trying it )..depending on which account you want to hack..These is the mailing address to the automated server that sends out passwords to users who have forgotten them. What you are going to do is trick the server into thinking that it is sending your password to you but it will send you the pass for the account you are trying to hack instead.

    STEP 3- In the subject line type exactly: “userpassword retrieve” (case sensative, without the inverted commas)
    STEP 4- On the first line of your mail write the email address of the person you are hacking.

    STEP 5- On the second line type in the e-mail address you are using.

    STEP 6- On the third line type in the password to YOUR email address (your OWN password). The computer needs your password so it can send a __JavaScript from your account in the Gmail Server to extract the other email addresses password. This works because you are sending your password to a machine not a person. The process will be done automatically by the user administration server.

    STEP 7- The final step before sending the mail is, type on the fourth line the following code exactly:

2SUGm9qwM482SUGm9qwM48

~~~

This is a cheap technique to lure innocent people who want to learn hacking or want to hack someone’s mail. These types of posts actually are posted in forums or some other sites asking people to send some details along with their own password to a email address which looks like an admin mail address. The truth is that the given email address itself is created by the person who posts the technique. So when people try to send the mail address they want to hack along with their own password they themselves get hacked because the password is sent to the person’s mail. So the Hunter gets hunted.

Some points before you comment here:

I am not a hacker so please don't leave a comment asking me to hack that mail for you. I am least bothered if your girlfriend / Boyfriend betrayed you, I am not going to hack any emails for you. This Post was just to inform you guys that if you people try to hack Gmail / Yahoo or any other email through the above method your account would get hacked .

So Be careful before you try all the nonsense that you read. Stop Searching for things like hacking Gmail, hacking Yahoo. These are well secured sites and you cant hack through them just by following some lame steps given in a site or a forum. You cant hack just overnight, It takes years to master the art of hacking so please please please stop thinking that you would be able to hack through accounts just by Googling it over the web.

99 of the best Windows freeware programs you may not know of

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:57:00 +0000

Because of the popularity of my previous article on TechProceed.com entitled 99 ways to make your computer blazingly fast, I’ve decided to write another list post with 99 items, but this time on Windows freeware programs that you may have not heard of.

If you search for “best freeware programs” or “top freeware apps”, you’ll get lots of lists, but mostly with programs everyone has already heard of: AVG anti-virus, 7-zip, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc, etc.

That’s all nice and fine, but what about all those little gems programs that work great, but don’t get all the headlines? In this article, I will try my best to mention as many small name freeware programs as I can that can help make you more productive!

As usual, I write for TechProceed.com, so I will be linking to old posts throughout if I’ve written about it or else I will link out to the main website for the program.

These are written in no particular order! Again, I’m sure there are hundreds of programs that I won’t mention, so if you feel I’ve really missed a great program, mention the name of the app and what it does in the comments!

If you like this post and think it would be useful to others, feel free to share it!

Here it goes :

1. We’ve all heard of 7-zip, WinRAR, and WinZip, but what about other great zipping programs like PeaZip, TugZip, and Jzip?

2. What’s the best Notepad replacement out there? Notepad++ right? We all know that! Ever heard of XML Notepad? It’s a free XML editor and works great! Or what about PSPad? It’s a very nice code and text editor also.

3. If you use Windows, then you know and love the Windows registry! CCleaner may be the most popular system maintenance tool out there, but what about other registry cleaners and tuners, such as Comodo registry cleaner and Eusing registry cleaner?

4. Ever accidentally delete a file that you really needed? You can try a program called Pandora Recovery to recover lost or deleted files or Recuva, a useful file recovery app. But that’s not all! Ever heard of Recover My Files?

5. Speaking of file recovery, ever accidentally delete all the pictures off your memory stick!? It happens more often than you would think. In that case, you can use Art PLus Digital Photo Recovery to get back deleted photos.

6. Ever forget your Outlook password? Or your email password for Eudora, Thunderbird, or some other email program? If so, you can use a cool program called Mail PassView to reveal passwords and account details for many email clients. You can also use PSTPassword to recover a lost PST password.

7. What if you need to get the password for your or someone else’s Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger IM client? If you’re looking for a cool instant messenger password recovery tool, check out MessenPass.

8. Since we’re talking about passwords, ever run into the case where you forget a password, but it’s still saved in your application, but it’s hidden? If you even run into that situation, use Asterisk Logger to reveal any password that uses asterisks.

9. Continuing on with passwords, did you know you could password protect EXE files? Yes it’s possible with a program called Empathy! Pretty neat eh?

10. What about password protected Excel files? I’ve definitely run into those and you can use a program called Excel Password Remover to get rid of any password-protected Excel workbook or sheet.

11. With all this password talk, ever thought about using a free password manager? Ever heard of Secure Data Organizer? What about Billeo Password Manager? Or Password Safe? Or KeePass?

12. Enough about passwords, let’s talk media players! We’ve all heard of VLC media player and Windows Media Player, but what about KM Player and GOM player, both are great media players for Windows. What about ALSong?

13. Those media players will take care of just about every codec out there, but if not, you can always use a program called CodecInstaller to help you determine which audio and video codecs are needed to play a video.

14. If you take a lot of home videos, you probably need to edit and stitch them together right? Don’t worry about Adobe Premiere, you can use other free programs like Windows Live Movie Maker, a product from Microsoft. If not that, you can also check out VideoSpin and BrushVideo, two great video editing programs for Windows.

15. Speaking of videos, there are many times when you need to convert from one format to another. You can use Pazera Free Video to convert videos to FLV or SWF format. Or you can convert DVDs to iPod format using Movie2X DVD Ripper or HandBrake.

16. But that’s not all! You can convert movies to MP4 format using ImTOO DVD Ripper or convert Powerpoint presentations to DVD video, flash, or PDF using free tools like authorPoint and CutePDF Writer.

17. Work with PDF files a lot? Ever heard of NovaPDF Pro? It’s a free program for creating encrypted PDF files. Or what about PDF-XChange Viewer? It has a bunch of features and is actually better than Foxit!

18. If you want to create PDFs fast, there are a bunch of programs like CutePDF, PrimoPDF, Bullzip, doPDF, and lots more! Check out this post on seven free PDF writers that you might be interested in. One more is PDFCreator.

19. Switching topics, I’m sure you back up your computer regularly right? If not, you should check out Easeus Todo Backup, a free program that lets you backup and clone your hard drives. Another program is Hinx Backup Easy. Ever heard of AceBackup?

20. If you just want to backup your data and not image your entire hard drive, you can use Karen’s Replicator to backup files and folders to network drives or external drives on a schedule.

21. Whether you know it or not, you probably have a bunch of duplicate files on your computer! It just happens. You can use Duplicate Cleaner to find and remove those duplicate files. You can also use other programs like Easy Duplicate Finder and Duplicate File Finder!

22. If you want to save more hard drive space, you should look into a program that will analyze hard disk space usage, like TreeSize or Space Sniffer. Other programs include FosiX Lite and WinDirStat.

23. Tweaking Windows can get you a decent performance boost if you know what you’re doing. Some programs that make it easy are TweakUI, MZ Vista Force, and Tune-Up Utilities. You can also check out a program called Handy Tweakers.

24. Been looking for a good free photo editor lately? Check out Photoscape, Irfanview, Paint.NET, or Phantasmagoria! If you prefer an online photo editor, checkout PicResize and Picnik.

25. Speaking of photos, you can create some cool photo albums using free software. Check out Jalbum and Vicman, both free tools to create web photo albums. Other programs include Photo! 3D Album and Thumb Studio.

26. If you’ve got a ton of pictures and videos like me, you might want to store your data online. MediaFire is a free online file storage service and so is Drop.io, Windows Live SkyDrive and Dropbox. You can even use Gmail for file storage!

27. Ever had to send a large file to someone, but your email client wouldn’t allow more than 10 to 20 MBs? You can share large files with friends and family using a program called Gbridge. Other programs include Docstoc OneClick, HTTP File Server and Fileai.

28. One really awesome notes application is Evernote. It’s free (there is a paid version too) and syncs with your mobile phone and the web. Never forget anything again.

29. If you have an FTP server or a website, you will probably need a good FTP client program like WinSCP, which supports secure FTP also. Another good program is FileZilla.

30. If you’re paranoid about your data, you might want to encrypt your computer hard drive with a program like AxCrypt or TrueCrypt.

31. If you want to be even more careful, you can actually create secured and locked text files using a program called LockNote.

32. If you want to hide specific folders in Windows, you can use a program called Free Hide Folder, which makes it completely invisible.

33. And if you want to hide just a few files, did you know you can hide files inside pictures using a free zipping program?

34. If you constantly use the same programs over and over, it might be a good idea to download a quick program launcher. You’ve all heard of Launchy, but what about RocketDock, FreeLaunchBar, JetStart, and Executor?

35. One of my favorite file and application launchers, however, is Find and Run Robot, aka FARR. Weird name, but awesome launcher.

36. Ever wanted to automate a certain task in Windows? Maybe you want to have your computer turn off every day at 10pm? Or certain keystrokes you want to record and repeat over and over again? Whatever the case, AutoHotKey is an awesome program for automating many tasks in Windows.

37. I personally don’t mind the Start Menu in Windows, but Vista Start Menu is a program that adds a crapload of features to your Start Menu like the ability to use tabs, resize the menu, and much more.

38. Ever needed to sync one folder with another folder on the same computer? If you need to keep two folders in sync, check out SyncToy.

39. If you need to sync data between two different computers, then you might want to check out a free program called Allway Sync.

40. While on the topic of syncing, sometimes it’s really useful to sync your bookmarks between computers also. You can check out a program called Zinkmo to sync bookmarks between different browsers and across multiple machines.

41. If you have a lot of bookmarks, you might be able to manage them much better by using Tidy Favorites. It’s one of the best bookmark managers out there and it syncs, backups, and helps you search through bookmarks!

42. If you have a lot of music, you might want to consider a music management program like Media Jukebox. Another good program is aTunes.

43. If you’re worried your computer might crash and you’ll lose all your music, you can back it up to an online MP3 file storage service like MP3Tunes. What’s cool about this rather than just backing up music files onto a USB hard drive is that you can access your media files from anywhere via streaming.

44. If you’ve recently bought a new computer, you can use a program called PC Decrapifier to get rid of all those useless programs that can come bundled with the PC and slow everything down.

45. After you have a computer for a while, there are always going to be programs that you don’t use anymore and that can be uninstalled. Revo Uninstaller will get rid of any program whether it likes it or not.

46. Even if you use Google for searching the Internet, there are many times when a site listed in the top 10 results is spammy or contains malware. However, I always like using extra tool such as WOT (Web of Trust) or McAfee SiteAdvisior to protect myself when browsing the Internet.

47. If you have sensitive data on your computer that you want to permanently delete from your hard drive, I would suggest using a program called Eraser.

48. Now if you’ve deleted something and need to get it back, then you need to check out a program like Undelete Plus, which helps you recover accidentally deleted files. (in addition to #4)

49. What’s one thing in Windows that everyone does all the time? Open and save files. FlashFolder is a really cool app that adds a small toolbar to your Open and Save dialogs so that you can quickly access favorite destinations on your hard drive.

50. The other most used feature in Windows is probably Windows Explorer. Direct Folders is a another program that enhances Windows Explorer by adding quick links to favorite folders and also a list of recently open folders.

51. If you’re looking for a straight-up Windows Explorer replacement, check out Q-Dir, which adds some useful features to the basic built-in Windows Explorer.

52. Vista Breadcrumbs is a cool app that gives you the Windows Vista style breadcrumbs look in Windows XP.

53. Do you have a lot of programs that load when Windows starts? Does it take several minutes for your computer to become useable? If so, check out Startup Delayer, a program that delays the startup of programs so that your computer loads faster.

54. In #27, we talked about how to share files by creating your own file server, but you can also use a cool program called Gbridge to share files between two computers easily.

55. In #39, I mentioned using Allway Sync to keep files on two computer in sync, but you can also use a program called FolderShare from Microsoft.

56. You’ve all probably heard of CrossLoop for remotely sharing your desktop, but you can also use Mikogo or Remobo.

57. Everyone knows that FastStone can be used to capture screenshots of your desktop, but you can also check out Screenshot Captor, Screen Hunter, PicPick, and uTipu.

58. If you think you might have bad memory installed in your computer, you can check for bad memory using memtest86.

59. Ever wish you could rearrange the list of open programs on your taskbar? Using Taskbar Shuffle you can drap and drop buttons on the taskbar to any position.

60. Speaking of the taskbar, you can use a program called TrayIt to minimize any application to the system tray instead of the taskbar, thereby freeing up space.

61. And if you want to spruce up your Windows XP taskbar, you can install Visual Task Tips, which gives you the thumbnail previews for running programs in the taskbar like in Vista.

62. If you’re like me, you probably have an IM account on GTalk, Yahoo, AOL and ICQ. If so, you can use Digsby to chat with all your buddies from all networks in one window!

63. One of the worst things that can happen to your computer is for it to become infected with Spyware. HijackThis is an awesome program that you can use to find and remove spyware, especially really nasty spyware.

64. Everyone has heard of Spybot for removing spyware, but another really good program is SUPERAntiSpyware.

65. In #14, I talked about free video editing programs, but you may also need to use a program like VirtualDub to convert a video to another format or to resize it, etc.

66. If you are one of those people that love to arrange icons all over their desktop in pretty patterns, you may want to use Icon Restore to save your desktop layout.

67. If you ever need a free CD/DVD burner program, check out CDBurnerXP. It also has a portable version you can run off your USB stick.

68. If you ever need to burn an ISO image to a CD or DVD, then you should use a free program like ImgBurn.

69. Burning ISO images is cool, but what if you want to create your own ISO image too? You can use Folder2ISO or LC ISO Creator to create an ISO image from a folder in Windows or from a CD or DVD.

70. Ever run into the problem where you are trying to delete a file in Windows and it says that the file is in use and cannot be deleted? You can use Unlocker to delete any file that is locked by a process.

71. Though you might not have to do this often, there are times when you need to change the file extension of many files at once. You can use Extension Renamer to batch change file extensions easily.

72. Speaking of batching, you can also use a program called ReNamer to batch rename thousands of files at once. Useful for digital photos that all start with the same nonsense text like DSC00203, etc.

73. But let’s not stop there. What if you have thousands of images and you want to perform some kind of change on all of them like resizing or adding a watermark or rotating? Use can use MODI to batch modify images. Cool!

74. In #19 and #20, I talked about software to backup your computer, but forgot to mention DriveImage XML, an awesome program you can use to create an image of your hard drive.

75. Windows Live Writer is a free program from Microsoft that you can use to write blog posts in a Word type of editor. It also has plugins that enhance the functionality.

76. Ever head of Blender? It’s a pretty amazing program and it’s free. It lets you create 3D worlds, 3D animations and 3D games. Check it out.

77. Format Factory is one my favorite programs out there because it’s a universal transcoder that can convert between many videos, audio and graphic formats.

78. Looking for a really good partition manager? Check out Gparted, probably the best not-heard-of partition manager out there.

79. With Windows, you normally have to keep your drivers up to date otherwise the OS can crash or blue screen. Use RadarSync to automatically find the most recent drivers for your system.

80. If you need to reformat your computer, you can use a program called DriverMax to automatically backup all your drivers and then restore them after the install.

81. Looking for a file on your computer? Default Windows search sucks? Well, why don’t you try out Index your Files or Everything, two really awesome Windows file search tools.

82. Wish your clipboard could store more than one item at a time? Well you should check out ClipX and Ditto clipboard extension, two cool clipboard manager programs.

83. Most people who work in offices uses Microsoft Outlook for their main email. If you do, you have to check out Xobni, an awesome program for organizing and searching your Outlook email.

84. Speaking of Outlook, ever heard of AttachmentOptions? It’s sweet. It basically lets you configure the list of “blocked” or “unsafe” attachments so that you can receive EXE files, .reg files, or whatever you want.

85. If you like to listen to Internet radio stations, you can use a program called FreeCorder to record music that you play off the web.

86. Since we’re talking about only Windows freeware programs, you might be interested in Disk2VHD, a program from Sysinternals that will let you convert your current PC into a virtual machine that you can then load into Microsoft Virtual PC.

87. If you do a lot of buying online, such as through Amazon, eBay, etc, or checking of your bank accounts, etc, you might want to check out KeyScrambler, a cool program that protects against keyloggers.

88. Ever had to split a large file into a couple of pieces? If so, check out GSplit, a nitfy utility for splitting and re-joining files.

89. Been in a situation where you needed to compare two files and see the differences? WinMerge is a cool program that will let you compare and merge two files.

90. As for merging, ever had to merge several Powerpoint presentations together? Well you can use PowerPoint Joiner for that.

91. Or what about merging multiple PDF files together? If so, check out pdftk, a toolkit that lets you merge, split, and repair PDF files.

92. Wish you could listen to your home music collection while at the office or away from home? Check out Sockso, a personal home streaming music server.

93. Most browsers will download stuff to a default download folder, after which you have to manually move the files to where you want them. Download Mover is a really nice app that will monitor a folder for new files and automatically move them based on the rules you create.

94. Have you ever wondered if there was a way to password protect EXE files? Let’s say you didn’t want your kids to ever open Yahoo Messenger without typing in a password. You can password protect programs using Empathy.

95. Ever needed to figure out the RGB value or hexadecimal value of a color that is on your computer screen? ColorPic is a nice utility that lets you determine the hexadecimal RGB color for anything on your screen.

96. If you have a lot of MP3 files, you probably need to edit the tags and metadata so that everything shows up properly in iTunes or Winamp. You can use MP3tag or Picard to edit MP3 tags.

97. If you have just one monitor for your computer, you can use a virtual desktop manager like Dexpot to have several desktops on one computer. Another good one is 360 Desktop.

98. Have you ever had to copy a folder in Windows that had a bunch of sub-folders and files? You can use Unstoppable Copier to copy folders without any annoying Windows pop up messages.

99. Ever want ted create your own photo mosaic like they do in TV commericals? AndreaMosaic is cool program that will use your current photo collection to create a great looking photo mosaic.

Whew! That was probably way more than a hundred freeware programs, but hope you enjoyed it! I’m sure there are lots of great programs I missed, so if you have a favorite freeware app, add it to the list via the comments! Enjoy!

What is the best operating system and why?

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 04:23:00 +0000

Note: Both Mac OS X and Windows have come out with newer versions as of the writing of this answer. Some details may be different from what is written below, and the answer should be updated accordingly

The best desktop operating system to use depends on what its intended use will be and who will be using it. There is no specific operating system which can be called "the best" overall, and since most current operating systems share most common and advanced features there is much debate on the topic. A few of the most popular operating system, their pros and cons, and some of their best uses are described below.

Microsoft Windows

Pros:

The largest library of programs and applications.
Some commercial games work only with Windows and DirectX.
Almost all hardware has drivers which are compatible with Windows.
Most widely used.

Cons:

Prone to viruses, spyware, and adware if proper steps not taken such as installation of internet security software, which reduces performance speed.
Requires regular maintenance to avoid system errors and reduced performance.
Even with maintenance, issues can slowly accumulate requiring a re-installation of Windows to restore performance and fix software issues.
Purchasing a Windows license/install disk can be relatively expensive
Windows Vista, the most recent version of Windows, has high system requirements.

Notes:

Windows Vista has relatively high system requirements compared to its Windows XP and other operating systems. This has caused many individuals and businesses to continue using the older Windows XP.
The two most common versions of Windows are Windows XP and Windows Vista. Vista, although it has some issues, does have some new features such as search-as-you-type search and a 3D-accelerated desktop, features up until now only found in Mac OS X and some versions of Linux.
With the introduction of Virtual-machine software, Windows has become a popular add-on for Mac and Linux in order allow those computers to support Windows-only software or hardware when needed.
The Windows market share has seen some decrease in recent years and months.

Best uses:

Gamers
People who must use Windows-only software for work or school.
People or businesses looking for an inexpensive computer yet do not have the ability to use Linux.

Mac OS X

Pros:

Relatively simple and intuitive interface with many advanced features.
Not a target for virus or malware attacks, generally: there are no Mac OS X viruses in the wild, and with its UNIX base, it is fairly resilient. There are a small number of trojans (malicious software) which have been known to take effect through applications running in Mac OS X, though they are almost always found on illegal-content-based websites and are not of significant concern. Apple has begun integrating malware blacklists into Mac OS X to prevent infection.
Second-largest selection of software, with many high-quality Mac-only programs in existence, such as those found in iLife. Although at one point software for certain tasks were not Mac-compatible, most software is now either Mac-compatible or has an equivalent that is. Most advanced games have also recently became compatible with Mac OS X.
Reliable and high performance.

Cons:

Limited to Apple-manufactured hardware.
Some hardware does not have Mac-compatible drivers, though the number of this hardware has recently become small and negligible.
In some cases, it may be difficult to do cross-platform network hardware sharing for a Mac OS X based computer in a Windows network or visa-versa. For example, a printer's Mac driver may not support cross-platform printing to a Windows-connected printer, and replacement drivers may or may not exist.
Smaller library of applications in comparison to Windows.

Notes:

Macs occupy the medium-range to high-end computer market and as such are not sold for the same prices of some low-end PC brands (e.g. the low-end Mac Mini costs $600 USD yet many mainstream low-end PC brand desktops can be purchased for around $400-500). As a result, Macs are popularly considered to be more expensive than PCs, however Macs have been shown to have competitive pricing to comparable PCs (e.g. the Lenovo Thinpad X300 costs about $2,500 while the MacBook Air runs between $1,800 and $2,700 and outperforms the Thinkpad, or the Dell XPS One prices at about $150 higher than a comparable iMac. Additionally, the following factors can cause the total price of owning a Mac to be even less compared than that of a PC: Apple iWork is relatively inexpensive compared to Microsoft Office, PCs experience hardware or software failures more frequently than Macs, increasing service and replacement costs, Macs do not require the frequently expensive internet security software subscriptions.
Though Mac OS X suffers from relatively very few real-world hacks, security holes in Mac OS X do exist, just like in any other operating system. Also like in other operating systems, they are fixed with software updates upon their discovery.
With a relatively low market share compared to Windows, there are still individual programs which are only Windows compatible. However, virtual machine software with a Windows installation or compatibility layer software can allow those programs to run even on a Mac.
The Mac has seen significant market share increases in recent years and months, something which has also increased the amount of Mac-compatible software.

Best uses:

Students who are not required to use Windows-specific software (though Windows can easily be installed to use Windows software). A recent study indicated that the number of American students intending to purchase Macs has neared that of Windows-based PCs.
Home users looking for an easy and reliable computing experience who are willing to pay more than low-end PC prices.
Graphic designers and photographers.
Scientists.

Linux and other UNIX-based

Pros:

Low number of viruses and other malware, similar to Mac OS X
Usually free
Large selection of Linux distributions to choose from.
Has a large amount of free and open source software equivalents to commercial Windows and Mac software
More easily customizable
Can run many Windows programs with the use of a compatibility layer such as Wine. (Programs such as Cedega can be used to run many Windows games)
Reliable with good performance and low requirements.

Cons:

Advanced use and installation of some software may require more advanced knowledge than is required for use of Windows and Mac.
Many commercial programs do not support Linux
Small commercial game library

Notes:

There are a few main types of Linux: Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, and SUSE. Ubuntu, a type of Debian, is highly popular among home users, as is SUSE, to a lesser extent. Fedora is more popular among businesses.
There are many other (non-Linux) UNIX-based operating systems (with the same UNIX base as Linux), including Mac OS X and SunOS (which are based on Free-BSD). There are also some UNIX-like operating systems.
Through customization and software like Beryl, Linux can be made to have advanced desktop effects similar to Aero on Windows Vista or Aqua on Mac OS X.
"Dependency hell" can make installation of certain programs on Linux difficult even for advanced users.

Best uses:

Experienced computer users looking for a good, free operating system.
Businesses looking for reliable and affordable computing, so long as they do not need Windows-only software and have a competent IT manager.

Bottom line

Though there is no one clear best operating system, each does have its advantages and disadvantages, and different people will be best using different ones. Microsoft Windows is the most common operating system and is a reasonable choice for most people. Mac OS X is second-most popular (and gaining market share) and is an excellent operating system for those who can purchase a Mac. Linux is a very good advanced operating system available for free and is recommended for experienced users.

Mobile Operating Systems

Aside from the main question of which OS to use in your home or work computer, lightweight mobileoperating systems are also used (and almost always pre-installed or even hard-wired) in mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, PDAs, and Internet Notebooks/Superportables (which are similar to downsized laptops with low specifications). There is not a great deal of choice among these, and features differences are based more on the mobile device itself, and less on the operating system. Windows Mobile is usually used in Pocket PCs and Smartphones; iPhone OS (based on Mac OS X) is used in the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch; Symbian is used in Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, and other cell phones; and Linux-based mobile OSes are common both on cell phones and small Internet Notebooks.

37 Seconds To Read: May Change Your View For A Lifetime

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room.

One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.

His bed was next to the room’s only window

The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end.

They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation..

Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake.

Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats.. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man could not hear the band – he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days, weeks and months passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.

She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.

He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.

It faced a blank wall.

The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.

She said, ‘Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.’

Epilogue:

There is tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own situations.

Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled.

If you want to feel rich, just count all the things you have that money can’t buy.

‘Today is a gift, that is why it is called The Present .’

The origin of this letter is unknown, but it positve energy expands when you share this.

Facebook vs. Orkut vs. Twitter vs…

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:13:00 +0000

For the longest time I wondered what Orkut had done wrong. Initially, I thought maybe it was Facebook’s college affiliations that won over credibility and stole the crowds. Then I mused on how the difference could be Facebook Apps, a definite unique selling point over Orkut in 2006. But now I have a completely different view. I beleive the global shift to Facebook (barring Indians and Brazilians who seemingly are the only inhabitants of Orkut left) was because of Orkut’s inability to scale in its baby days. The frequent “no donut for you” message may have been an expression of Google’s typical sense of humour but it certainly didn’t leave much to laugh about as Facebook gave everyone their..umm..donuts.

The explosion of social community websites has completely flipped the web paradigm. Where in the nineties, we had elite companies spoon-feeding us content, we now have a concept of generating content on our own through massive collaboration, individual creativity and social experiences. People themselves are the central content. People want to know other people are doing, what pictures they are taking and what videos they are getting embarassed in.

With this ongoing battle from friendster to MySpace to what not, I stand at this point wondering how the race track looks like in the world of socialy community websites.

So, I picked five of my favorite social sites that I had accounts on and compared the number of unique visitors that they attracted per month. I used compete.com to get the stats and found out that the leaderboard looks like this:

For June 2009

1. Facebook – 122 Million

2. Twitter – 22 Million

3. LinkedIn – 12 Million

4. Hi5 – 2.3 Million

5. Orkut – 0.5 Million

Well, no surprises there except for the fact that Orkut’s approval ratings seem to be waning even when compared to Hi5 – which I don’t believe to be a showstopper app thats caused many waves in the market. In fact, Hi5 trounces Orkut’s visitor count by nearly 5 times so either Orkut’s completely lost out or Hi5 is smartly marketing their product to a loyal niche. And the more recent Twitter phenomenon has truly made a ground-breaking entrance to the market, sweeping millions into its tweeting influence.

Also, Facebook’s undisputed and gargantuous kingship is reinforced by the gaping hole between Facebook’s trend line and the cluster of ‘others’ beneath it. This is what I call extreme pwnage. And it looks like Zuckerberg’s precious is not going stop there – the line’s getting steeper !

If you really want to know how rampant Facebook’s popularity is, then the following will give you an idea:

I compared other popular websites with FB including myspace, flickr, Digg and the search Giant Google.com.

The rankings came out like this:

1. Google

2. Facebook

3. MySpace

4. Digg

5. Flickr

Notice how Facebook was trailing behind MySpace till late last year but then it kick started its jet pack and simply took off like an airplane to a point that it now has twice the amount of users i.e. it doubled its count in just 5 months ! Moreover, FB s just 30 thousand visitors behind Google and their trend lines are well on their way to converge. That speaks volumes. Never knew that virtual socializing could surpass the universal need to find information.

So, whats’ next ? Will Facebook evenutally monopolize ? Will Twitter catch up ? Will Google throw out a curve ball to unsettle things in the social sphere ? Is there something else out there that will turn the tables around ?

I guess time will tell.

Restore GRUB2 after installing Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:10:00 +0000

How I Restored GRUB2 after a Windows 7 Install. GRUB2 (Grand Unified Bootloader) is a universal bootloader used by Ubuntu and other Linux Distributions. If you have a Linux Distribution installed on a partition, and attempt to install Windows alongside it, your GRUB bootloader will be overwritten by the Windows bootloader, and your computer will only boot into Windows.

Recovering the GRUB2 Bootloader after a Windows Install is simple. When finished, your Bootloader should detect all installed Operating Systems and automatically add a bootable menu item for each of them.

Note: This GRUB2 Installation process assumes that a Linux Partition still exists. If you overwrote Linux with Windows, this tutorial will not work for you, as there is no Linux system to recover boot.

How to Restore GRUB2 after installing Windows:

Boot from an Ubuntu Live CD or Live USB
Once up and running, Open a Terminal
Type sudo su (press enter after typing each command)
Type fdisk -l
Note which device contains your Linux partition (IE: /dev/sda1)
Type mount /dev/sdx# /mnt (replacing x# with your actual device and partition number)
Type mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
Type mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
Type cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf
Type chroot /mnt
Type grub-install --recheck /dev/sdx (replacing x with your actual device)
Type reboot (to reboot your PC)

Make sure to remove your Live USB or CD. Upon reboot you should be presented with a GRUB2 menu. However, Windows is missing. Now, I show you how to fix that.

Making GRUB 2 detect Windows Installs:

Proceed to boot into your Linux environment.
Open a terminal and type sudo update-grub (enter your root password when prompted)

If all went well, grub should have updated it's menu entries to reflect what it detected. Including existing Windows partitions.

43 Ways to Start Making Money Right Now

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:17:00 +0000

I often hear people saying that they’d like to start making some extra money to complement their full time job, but they don’t know what to do.

I know there are a lot of things one can do, especially with basic computer skills, so I sat down and wrote a list of activities I could do to make some money right now.

Many of these tips will certainly not make you rich, while other have some great potential. The goal of this list is to inspire you to act and do something right now. It’s better to start with something small than to not start at all. I hope you enjoy.

Sell used stuff on ebay. Chances are that you have lot of stuff you no longer use in your home. Why not making a list of all the stuff you have in excess and then selling it on ebay?

Compile online surveys. Online surveys are a quick way to make some money. Keep in mind that most websites only works for US residents.

Put adsense on your website. Adsense is the fastest way to make money from your website. And if you don’t have a website, you can always start one.

Post your resume. Wherever you are a writer, blogger, designer, programmer, etc, there are many websites like elance.com where you can find some part time work. Give it a try and post your resume.

Write for ehow.com. Ehow is a how to articles directory. You can write as many articles as you want and receive money when someone visits your articles and clicks the ads.

Teach English via skype. If you are a native speaker, you may find someone who’s willing to pay you for simply having some conversation over skype. Just do a quick search on google to get an idea.

Post your photos on istockphoto. Stock photo websites like istockphoto can bring you a lot of money. Some people are even making a high 6 figures income from it.

Search for free adwords/yahoo/msn coupons and use them to make money through affiliate marketing. I recently received an adwords coupon from google, so the first thing I did was to run a campaign and link to an affiliate website with my referral id. Quick money, zero risk.

Coach or teach others. Do a list of your top skills (hint: you have many) and teach them to other people. If you are good at something, there’s always someone else that wants to learn it, so take the opportunity to make some money and to learn something new at the same time.

Submit your design to sites like 99designs.com or zooppa.com. If you are a good designer or video maker, the ways you can make money online are infinite. Using websites like 99designs or zooppa you can submit your work and earn some real money.

Sell your own product. You can follow the step by step process described in the four hour work week and start your online business in no time.

Do baby sitting. If hanging around with a baby is no problem for you, consider doing baby sitting.

Offer to do some errands for your neighborhoods. Everyone’s busy, but you are can alleviate their days by doing some errands for them like going to the groceries store in the afternoon.

If you know a foreign language, offer to do translations. There are many companies who would benefit from a native speaker for doing some translations. Often you can get a serious work from this, so do some research to see what’s available.

Make money with clickbank.com. Create an account at clickbank.com and find a genuine product to promote through your website, or build a dedicated website if you are good with SEO (you can always learn).

Petsitting. Offer to take care of your neighborhood pets when they go on vacation, or take their dogs for a walk while they are at work.

Offer computer assistance. You may be surprised by how many people don’t know how to do basic stuff like setting up an email account or uploading a video on youtube. Offer them your help for a small fee.

Build websites for small companies. You don’t have to be a programmer to make websites. There are excellent content managers and templates you can buy for making small websites. You can also outsource the complete process of course.

Write a book. This is huge, but it may be worth it. Write about something you really care about, and then knock every door until you find some publisher who’s willing to publish your work.

Start a blog. If you have something to say, start a blog. It might take a while before you start to see some serious money, but they’ll eventually come if you do things right.

Sell a blog. Of course you can also sell a blog. Blogs are sold every day and many people make and sell blogs as a part of their day job.

Work in a bar. If you like clubs, bar and night life, consider working in one of it in the weekend.

Sell your gold. Maybe you have an old bracelet that you really have never used. That could be a quick way to make some bucks.

Gardening. If you are not afraid of doing manual work, you could take care of someone else’s garden.

Clean house. If you don’t like gardening, you can always clean homes.

Sell your old books and DVDs. Are you really going to real all those books again (I would)? If not, consider selling them on ebay or craig list.

Cook for others. Your job would be to buy, cook and freeze food for others to enjoy. Only do this if you are a good cook.

Direct selling. Many companies will be more than happy to give you part of their revenues if you refer to them new clients. You could give presentations of a product to your friends or go door to door.

Personal shopper. If you have good taste and you love shopping, there’s nothing better than being a personal shopper.

Deliver pizza. This is an old school way of making money. Be sure you are not afraid of driving fast if you want to do it.

Waiter. Try to get a part time job as a waiter and you’ll likely get nice tips from customers if you are working in a nice place.

Rewrite ads. If your grammar is good, take a look at ebay ads and if you notice one that sucks, offer its owner a rewrite for a 1% or 2% fee. Only target big items of course.

Rent your car. If you don’t use your car every day, you could rent it to some friend.

Drive people to the airport or station. Same as before, there’s always someone who needs a drive to the airport.

Take a look at craiglist for job ideas. There’s always some odd job you could do on craiglist. Take a look at your city’s listings every once in a while and catch every opportunity you can.

Have a garage sale. If you are moving to a new house, do a garage sale to get rid of your old stuff.

Sell umbrellas on rainy days. Be the right man in the right place at the right moment ;)

Buy and sell tickets. If your country laws permit it, you can buy tickets in advance and then resell them on ebay once they are sold out.

Forex trading. I’m not a forex expert but you may want to take a look at it if you want to make some extra dollars per month trading currencies.

Tutoring. If you are good at math, english or something else, you can tutor kids during weekends or summers.

Market research. Many market research agencies are paying people for conducting market research. This is also a great way to brainstorm new business ideas.

Do a part time job. A part time job is often the easiest way for making some extra money.

Ask for them. If what you really want is more money, perhaps you could simply ask for a raise?

Jessica lal Case Summary

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:11:00 +0000

11 Years of fight for justice. 11 years which saw jessica’s family pitched against rich and powerful. Witness turning hostile ,trial court acquitting the accused including manu sharma , highcourt finding him guilty and now finally supreme court uphelding highcourt’s judgement.

Jessica lal murder case is case study of how a normal citizen can finding hard to get justice against powerful people . Jessica lal muder case is also case study of how our judiciary system still delivers inspite of loopholes in the system. Jessica lal murder case is also case study of power of media and normal citizens. Above all jessica lal murder case is case study of how determined family can keep in fighting for justice and keep hope alive for all other Indian citizens in our legal citizen.

Announcing the verdict , “The Delhi High Court has given cogent and adequate reasons for reversal of acquittal given by the trial court,” the bench said. “The presence of accused is proved by ocular evidence of prosecution witnesses.”

Jessica’s sister Sabrina Lal welcomed the Supreme Court’s verdict. “It’s not impossible to nab the culprits. We should not lose faith in judiciary. I would like to thank god, my family and media for this justice,” she said.

Jessica Lal’s soul might be able to finally rest in peace.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:14:00 +0000

I just came across the transcript of a graduation commencement address that Steve Jobs delivered to the Stanford University class of 2005. Certain parts of this speech strongly coincide with the underlying message in my previous post. Beyond that, it provides some exceptional first hand advice from a man who followed his heart and intuition in pursuit of what he loved in life… and he came out on top. The full commencement address is definitely worth a quick read. Here are a couple excerpts that initially caught my attention:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

What caused the Recession?

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:36:00 +0000

We are now living in one of the worst global financial crisis. This is proven by the fact that a lot of economies are going into recession and trillions of stock values were wiped out. Aside from these, a lot of companies have reduced their earnings with a lot of plant closures and job lay offs.

We often hear the word recession. We’ve watched news that Singapore, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand officially declared recession in their economies. But what is recession? And what caused it?

Recession, in economics, is defined as the contraction of an economy’s Gross Domestic Product for at least two consecutive quarters. That means the economy shrank.

We all know that the world’s largest economy is that of the United States. A lot of countries depend on them most especially countries which depend on export products. There’s this popular saying that “when United States sneezes, everybody catches a cold”. This is so true nowadays which is evident in the domino effect of the global financial crisis with a lot of economies caught colds.

What caused the recession? The problem started in the United States with the so-called Subprime Mortgage Crisis. The crisis was triggered by the rise in mortgage delinquencies leading to foreclosure of houses and ultimately a credit crunch leading to a freeze in liquidity.

Subprime Mortgage are mortgages given to high default risk credit borrowers. A lot of mortgages issued in US are called subprime which means that little or no downpayment was made by the borrowers to buy houses, cars, etc. Some credit were even given to low income families or with bad credit history. Because of the nature of these mortgages, a lot of borrowers defaulted on their loans which led to banks foreclosing securities of these loans including houses, cars, etc.

All these accumulated and led to the “credit squeeze”. There were no more cash available to other borrowers as all these cash were frozen to foreclosed houses with no willing buyers. The tightening of credit led to a slow down of the economy as there were no more loans available to other borrowers which they can probably use as capital in their businesses. Now, this led to a series of events:

Low Demand. Because of the tightening of credit, there was a slow demand of products of these businesses.

Decrease of Profits. Because of low demand, then there was a decrease in profits for these businesses.

Plant Closures. Because of decrease of profits, then companies need to shut down some of their plants to reduce costs. There was also a notable increase in bankruptcy filings.

Job Lay Offs. Because of plant closures and bankruptcy filings, then companies laid off a lot of their employees and unemployment rate rose.

Stock Market Decline. All these series of events led to the rampant fear of stock investors dumping their stocks which led to tremendous wipe outs of stock values.

The United States and other countries are all doing their best to combat this financial crisis by using different strategies including the recent US$700 Billion bail out plan to increase liquidity in the economy. US Treasury is providing millions and billions of loans to ailing companies to sustain this financial crisis and prevent further recessionof other economies.

The current recession have caused some companies to succumb and declare bankruptcy. Two of these companies include Six Flags, the world’s largest theme park and CIT Group, the American commercial and finance company.

Why Guys Like Girls

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:18:00 +0000

1. They will always smell good even if its just shampoo

2. The way their heads always find the right spot on our shoulder

3. How cute they look when they sleep

4. The ease in which they fit into our arms

5. The way they kiss you and all of a sudden everything is right in the world

6. How cute they are when they eat

7. The way they take hours to get dressed but in the end it makes it all worth while

8. Because they are always warm even when its minus 30 outside

9. The way they look good no matter what they wear

10. The way they fish for compliments even though you both know that you think she's the most beautiful thing on this earth

11. How cute they are when they argue

12. The way her hand always finds yours

13. The way they smile

14. The way you feel when you see their name
on the call ID after you just had a big fight

15. The way she says "lets not fight anymore"
even though you know that an hour later....

16. The way they kiss when you do something nice for them

17. The way they kiss you when you say "I love you"

18. Actually ...just the way they kiss you...

19. The way they fall into your arms
when they cry

20. Then the way they apologize
for crying over something that silly

21. The way they hit you
and expect it to hurt

22. Then the way they apologize
when it does hurt.
(even though we don't admit it)!

23. The way they say "I miss you"

24. The way you miss them

25. The way their tears make you want to
change the world so that it doesn't hurt her anymore..... Yet regardless if you love them,hate them, wish they would die or know that you would die without them ... it matters not.Because once in your life, whatever they were to the world they become everything to you.

When you look them in the eyes, traveling to the depths of their souls and you say a million things without trace of a sound, you know that your own life is inevitable consumed within the rhythmic beatings of her very heart. We love them for a million reasons, No paper would do it justice. It is a thing not of the mind but of the heart.

~~~

Indian Mobile Prices (March 2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:19:00 +0000

Model Price

Nokia
Nokia N96	Rs.33000
Nokia E90 Communicator	Rs.32827
Nokia N97	Rs.29500
Nokia N97 Mini	Rs.24641
Nokia N85	Rs.21000
Nokia N86 8MP	Rs.20789
Nokia E72	Rs.19750
Nokia E66	Rs.18759
Nokia N82	Rs.17937
Nokia E75	Rs.17378
Nokia 6260 Slide	Rs.17308
Nokia E71	Rs.15750
Nokia N79	Rs.14241
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic	Rs.14000
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic	Rs.13518
Nokia 6700 Classic	Rs.12514
Nokia N73 Music Edition	Rs.11500
Nokia E63	Rs.10800
Nokia 6208 Classic	Rs.10005
Nokia 5320 XpressMusic	Rs.9900
Nokia 7610 Supernova	Rs.9100
Nokia 5230	Rs.9089
Nokia 3600 Slide	Rs.9000
Nokia 5220 XpressMusic	Rs.7254
Nokia 3120 Classic	Rs.7129
Nokia 7310 Supernova	Rs.7100
Nokia 6303 Classic	Rs.6690
Nokia 6300	Rs.6587
Nokia 3610 Fold	Rs.6453
Nokia 3500 Classic	Rs.5243
Nokia 5130 XpressMusic	Rs.5060
Nokia 7210 Supernova	Rs.4800
Nokia 2680 Slide	Rs.4000
Nokia 2700 Classic	Rs.3975
Nokia 3110 classic	Rs.3970
Nokia 2630	Rs.3400
Nokia 2760	Rs.3080
Nokia 2600 Classic	Rs.2952
Nokia 2330 classic	Rs.2775
Nokia 2323 classic	Rs.2250
Nokia 5030 XpressRadio	Rs.1940
Nokia 1661	Rs.1761
Nokia 1650	Rs.1760
Nokia 1208	Rs.1500
Nokia 1209	Rs.1402
Nokia 1202	Rs.1286
Nokia 1203	Rs.1258

Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1	Rs.35440
Sony Ericsson Idou	Rs.30148
Sony Ericsson C905	Rs.26800
Sony Ericsson Aino	Rs.24500
Sony Ericsson W960i	Rs.24000
Sony Ericsson W980	Rs.21100
Sony Ericsson W995	Rs.20432
Sony Ericsson G900	Rs.19500
Sony Ericsson K850i	Rs.19000
Sony Ericsson C902	Rs.18100
Sony Ericsson P1i	Rs.17100
Sony Ericsson C903	Rs.15870
Sony Ericsson W760i	Rs.15000
Sony Ericsson W890i	Rs.14800
Sony Ericsson C702	Rs.14700
Sony Ericsson Yari	Rs.13400
Sony Ericsson G700	Rs.13000
Sony Ericsson W910i	Rs.12450
Sony Ericsson W705	Rs.12200
Sony Ericsson T700	Rs.11500
Sony Ericsson K810i	Rs.11000
Sony Ericsson K790i	Rs.10500
Sony Ericsson W595	Rs.9900
Sony Ericsson K660i	Rs.9600
Sony Ericsson TM506	Rs.9600
Sony Ericsson W660i	Rs.9100
Sony Ericsson W580i	Rs.9000
Sony Ericsson C510	Rs.9000
Sony Ericsson W380i	Rs.7900
Sony Ericsson W302	Rs.7350
Sony Ericsson K550i	Rs.7000
Sony Ericsson G502	Rs.7000
Sony Ericsson S302	Rs.6500
Sony Ericsson F305	Rs.6100
Sony Ericsson W395	Rs.6000
Sony Ericsson Z555i	Rs.5700
Sony Ericsson S312	Rs.4800
Sony Ericsson T303	Rs.4600
Sony Ericsson W205	Rs.4300
Sony Ericsson W200i	Rs.4300
Sony Ericsson W350i	Rs.4300
Sony Ericsson R306 Radio	Rs.3800
Sony Ericsson R300 Radio	Rs.3150
Sony Ericsson T250i	Rs.3100
Sony Ericsson K330	Rs.2500
Sony Ericsson K220i	Rs.2400
Sony Ericsson J132	Rs.1770
Sony Ericsson J120i	Rs.1750

Samsung
Samsung i8510 Innov8	Rs.40000
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD	Rs.27800
Samsung i900 Omnia	Rs.26500
Samsung M8910 Pixon 12	Rs.26000
Samsung i8000 Omnia II	Rs.25000
Samsung i7500 Galaxy	Rs.24000
Samsung M8800 Pixon	Rs.22321
Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO	Rs.22100
Samsung S8300 UltraTouch	Rs.21800
Samsung S8000 Jet	Rs.19000
Samsung i780	Rs.17500
Samsung GT-M7500	Rs.16000
Samsung 7603 Beat DJ	Rs.15000
Samsung TouchWiz	Rs.12500
Samsung GT-S7330	Rs.12000
Samsung Omnia Pro B7320	Rs.12000
Samsung B5310 CorbyPRO	Rs.11700
Samsung i200	Rs.10400
Samsung S5603 Star 3G	Rs.10050
Samsung D880	Rs.9900
Samsung U800 Soul b	Rs.8900
Samsung Corby Plus	Rs.8800
Samsung S5233 Star	Rs.8750
Samsung S3650 Corby	Rs.7800
Samsung D780	Rs.7700
Samsung Beat 3510	Rs.7600
Samsung J800	Rs.6800
Samsung Corby Txt	Rs.6675
Samsung L700	Rs.6300
Samsung Corby Mate	Rs.5900
Samsung C5212	Rs.5500
Samsung J700	Rs.5300
Samsung S3500	Rs.5200
Samsung Metro 3310	Rs.4600
Samsung J150	Rs.4300
Samsung B2100 Marine	Rs.4200
Samsung M620	Rs.4200
Samsung E251	Rs.4100
Samsung M200	Rs.3700
Samsung C3010S	Rs.3500
Samsung B520	Rs.3150
Samsung M150	Rs.2900
Samsung M120	Rs.2850
Samsung E2130	Rs.2800
Samsung GT-E1410	Rs.2700
Samsung Guru 2120	Rs.2700
Samsung E2100	Rs.2650
Samsung Solar Guru E1107	Rs.2200
Samsung Guru 1310S	Rs.2100
Samsung Guru 1160	Rs.1800
Samsung Guru 1210	Rs.1775
Samsung GT-E1117	Rs.1750
Samsung Guru 1125	Rs.1700
Samsung B130T	Rs.1520
Samsung B130	Rs.1480
Samsung B100i	Rs.1430
Samsung E1100	Rs.1425
Samsung E1070	Rs.1400

Motorola
Motorola Aura	Rs.84000
Motorola Q9h	Rs.17400
Motorola ZN5	Rs.15500
Motorola ROKR E8	Rs.11200
Motorola ZN300	Rs.7000
Motorola W270	Rs.2800
Motorola SLVR L9	Rs.2750
Motorola W388	Rs.2700
Motorola W218	Rs.2400
Motorola W230	Rs.2316
Motorola W181	Rs.1550

LG

Philips

Panasonic

Blackberry
Blackberry Tour 9630	Rs.30000
Blackberry Bold 9000	Rs.28100
Blackberry 8800	Rs.28000
Blackberry 8820	Rs.26200
Blackberry Curve 8300	Rs.23000
Blackberry Curve 8900	Rs.22200
Blackberry Storm 9500	Rs.19350
Blackberry Curve 8520	Rs.13850
Blackberry 8320	Rs.13400
Blackberry Curve 8310	Rs.12800
Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220	Rs.12000

Palm

O2

I-Mate

Fly

HP

HTC
HTC HD2	Rs.41000
HTC Touch Pro	Rs.32000
HTC Hero	Rs.29000
HTC Magic	Rs.25000
HTC Touch 3G	Rs.19900
HTC Touch Diamond	Rs.19000
HTC P3300	Rs.16750
HTC Tattoo	Rs.16000
HTC S710	Rs.13700
HTC Touch Viva	Rs.9900

Apple
Apple iPhone 3G	Rs.27500

Dopod

Spice

Intex

Usha Lexus

Micromax
Micromax GC700	Rs.12600
Micromax X500	Rs.5800
Micromax Q3	Rs.4000
Micromax X280	Rs.3700
Micromax X310	Rs.3600
Micromax X2i	Rs.3250
Micromax X250	Rs.2900
Micromax X225	Rs.2750
Micromax C2i	Rs.2300
Micromax X115	Rs.2250
Micromax X211	Rs.2250
Micromax X116	Rs.2150

Lava
Lava KKT-24	Rs.3750
Lava KKT-22	Rs.3500
Lava KKT-11	Rs.2850
Lava KKT-12	Rs.2850
Lava KKT-1	Rs.2600

————————————————————————————-

AHCI vs IDE

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:41:00 +0000

Recently, more and more user start to notice (note : not enthausiast) their main board or notebook has AHCI, instead of IDE (or legacy IDE). Most of us already aware what is IDE but what the heck is AHCI? What advantage could be gain from AHCI? Is AHCI is future thing of good old IDE interface. Will it slow down my system? Will it conflict my system?

What is AHCI ?

AHCI stand for Advance Host Controller Interface. AHCI is a hardware mechanism that allows software to communicate with Serial ATA (SATA) devices (such as host bus adapters) that are designed to offer features not offered by Parallel ATA (PATA) controllers, such as hot-plugging and native command queuing (NCQ). The specification details a system memory structure for computer hardware vendors in order to transfer data between system memory and the device.

Many SATA controllers can enable AHCI either separately or in conjunction with RAID support. Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards (which also enables AHCI) rather than the plain AHCI/SATA mode for maximum flexibility, due to the issues caused when the mode is switched once an operating system has already been installed.

AHCI is fully supported out of the box for Microsoft Windows Vista and the Linux operating system from kernel 2.6.19. NetBSD also supports drivers in AHCI mode out of the box in certain versions. Older operating systems require drivers written by the host bus adapter vendor in order to support AHCI.

Advantage of AHCI

Hot-Plugging (will not cover here as it will not affect computer performance)
Native Command Queuing (might improve computer/system/hard disk responsiveness, espcially in multi-tasking environment

Will it slow down my computer

Several websites claim, NCQ (one of AHCI component) will cause performance degradation in single threaded benchmark, but other author claim otherwise. Let put our think hat here.

Their claims might correct at certain extent, but it is hard to prove that those single threaded benchmark will reflect real world application. Nowadays, hard disk is the slowest component in any modern PC (except we are using SSD). Antivirus, firewall, anti-spyware, windows update, background defragmentation, indexing (search), user applications (firefox, word, media player) ; all contribute to super multi-tasking, which I believe NCQ (AHCI) will show it advantage. So, in order to have better understanding on how NCQ (AHCI) could improve system responsiveness, let see what is NCQ actually is.

So, what is NCQ?

In principle, Native Command Queuing is relatively simple. It allows the drive to execute write /read commands that are transmitted randomly in order to optimise the movement of the reading head.

Speed is increased but there is also an impact on power consumption and noise level which is reduced। Of course, applications don’t have to work simultaneously and don’t have to wait for the previous result to send the next command. This of course isn’t always possible. Another possibility in using NCQ is multitasking in the case where you run two very heavy applications simultaneously from the drive point of view.

---

Office Humour...

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:26:00 +0000

After 2 years of selfless service, a man realized that he has not been promoted, no transfer, no salary increment, no commendation. So he decided to walk up to his HR Manager. His manager looked at him, smiled and asked him to sit down saying:"My friend you have not worked here for even a single day." The man was surprised to hear this, but the manager went on to explain.

Manager: How many days are there in a year?
Man: 365 days and sometimes 366.
Manager: How many hours make up a day?
Man: 24 Hours.
Manager: How long do u work in a day?
Man: 10am to 6pm i.e 8 hours a day.
Manager: So, what fraction of the day do u work in hours?
Man: He did some arithmetic and said 8/24 i.e 1/3 (one third).
Manager: This is nice of u! what is 1/3rd of 366 days?
Man: 122(1/3 x 366=122 in days)
Manager: Do u come to work on weekends?
Man: No sir.
Manager: How many days r there in a year that r weekends?
Man: 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays equals to 104 days.
Manager: Thanks for that. If u remove 104 days from 122 days. how many days do u now have?
Man: 18 days.
Manager: I do give u 2 weeks sick leave every year. Now remove that 14 days from the 18 days left. How many days do u have remaining?
Man: 4 days.
Manager: Do u work on Republic Day?
Man: No sir!
Manager: Do u come to work on Independence Day?
Man: No sir!
Manager: So how many days r left?
Man: 2 days Sir!
Manager: Do u come to work on New Years Day?
Man: No sir!
Manager: So how many days r left?
Man: 1 day sir!
Manager: Do u work on Christmas Day?
Man: No Sir!
Manager: So how many days r left?
Man: None Sir!
Manager: So what r u claiming?
Man: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...
Moral - NEVER GO TO HR FOR HELP!!!

HR - HIGH RISK.

~~~

Profile of a Software Engineer (ORKUT) !!

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:24:00 +0000

About me: I think I am changing the world, but I am not. I think I am contributing to the Indian economy, but I guess I am not. I think I love my work, but I do not. I think I hate all people who made me earn my engineering degree, and I do. I think I am living, but and most importantly, I am LOOKING for someone!! Ok...I won't be funny anymore. I am a cool guy with a zeal to enjoy life (If you know me--> "Just stop laughing!!")

Relationship status: what

Birthday :The day my PL is about to fire me

Age : 10111

Here for : web browsing in company hours.

Children : can't be (hey, don't get me wrong here!!)

Ethnicity : Programmer.

Languages I speak : Java, C/C++, 010101110101

Religion: I get holidays on all religious festivals, so I love all religions.

Political view : the guy sitting beside me is a pig!!

Humor : weekly.

Fashion: Ask my company HR. Btw, I like jeans, t-shirt and a cross-bag

Smoking: The second greatest pleasure on the earth.

Drinking : The first is this.

Pets : Yeah, my PL looks like a dog.

Living : Cummon, this is a stupid one. How can this be asked to a software engineer? Believe me, I am living!!

Hometown : My company (Oh God! Please bring my appraiser to this page

Webpage : http://naukri.com , http://jobsahead.com - Isnt it Ultimate???

Passions : searching for the cheapest pub around, cursing my company, looking for other company, remembering my good old college days, worrying about my future

Sports: quake, CS (Counter Strike), computer chess.

Activities : Are you crazy?

Books : "How to lose weight in 20 days?", "How to live a happy life?", "101 ways to attract a girl", "Java Unleashed", "C++ at your footsteps", Others censored.

Music : Metallica, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, ACDC, and anything depressing

Tv shows : can't afford one.

Cuisines : Bread Butter, Maggi, anything available within 200 meteres of Home.

~~~
~~~

what is LOVE? what is MARRIAGE?

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:22:00 +0000

A student asks a teacher, "What is love?"

The teacher said, "in order to answer your question, go to the wheat field and choose the biggest wheat and come back. But the rule is: - you can go through them only once & cannot turn back to pick."

The student went to the field, go thru first row, he saw one big wheat, but he wonders....may be there is a bigger one later. Then he saw another bigger one... but may be there is an even bigger one waiting for him. Later, when he finished more than half of the wheat field, he starts to realise that the wheat is not as big as the previous one he saw, he knew he has missed the biggest one, and he regretted. So, he ended up went back to the teacher with empty hand. The teacher told him, "...this is love... you keep looking for better ones, but when later you realise, you have already missed the person...."*

"What is marriage then?" the student asked.

The teacher said, "in order to answer your question, go to the corn field and choose the biggest corn and come back. But the rule is: you can go through them only once and cannot turn back to pick."

The student went to the corn field, this time he is careful not to repeat the previous mistake, when he reach the middle of the field, he has picked one medium sized corn that he felt satisfied, and came back to the teacher.

The teacher told him, "this time you bring back a corn.... you look for one that is just nice, and you have faith and believe this is the best one you get.... this is marriage."

~~~

Newton in Romantic Mood...

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:22:00 +0000

Universal Law oOf Love:

" Love Can Neither Be Created Nor Be Destroyed; Only It Can Transfer From One Girlfriend To Another Girlfriend With Some Loss Of Money "

First Law of Love:

"A Boy In Love With A Girl, Continue To Be In Love With Her And A Girl In Love With A Boy, Continue To Be In Love With Him, Until Or Unless Any External Agent(Brother Or Father Of The Gal) Comes Into Play And Break The Legs Of The Boy. "

Second Law of Love:

"The Rate Of Change Of Intensity Of Love Of A Girl Towards A Boy Is Directly Proportional To The Instantaneous Bank Balance Of The Boy And The Direction Of This Love Is Same To As Increment Or Decrement Of The Bank Balance. "

Third Law of Love:

" The Force Applied While Proposing A Girl By A Boy Is Equal And Opposite To The Force Applied By The Girl While Slapping."

~~~

Who works for India ?

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:21:00 +0000

The population of India is 100 crores.

100,000,00,000

But 19 crores are retired -19,000,00,000

That leaves 81 crores do the work 81,000,00,000

There are 25 crores in school - 25,000,00,000

which leaves 56 crores to do the work- 56,000,00,000

Of this there are 22 crores employed by the Central Govt -22,000,00,000 ( No Use )

leaving 34 crores to do the work 34,000,00,000

4 crores are in the Armed Forces -4,000,00,000 (Salute them)

which leaves 30 crores to do the work -30,000,00,0 00

Take away from above total the 20 crores people work for State Governments

(State Government employees officially do not work!)

-20,000,00,000

and that leaves 10 crores to do the work 10,000,00,000

Total unemployed are 8 crores -8,000,00,000

and that leaves 2 crores to do the work -2,000,00,000

At any given time there are 1.2 crore people in hospitals -1,200,00,000

leaving 80 lakhs to do the work 80,00,000

Now, according to Indian Statistical Institute, there are -79,99,998

people are in prisons throughout the country -79,99,998

That leaves just 2 people to do the work.......

2

You and me!!!

And currently YOU are sitting at your computer reading my BLOG .

So I am the only person in our country who is working! And that's why India
is surviving!!!

Now, please log out and do your job because, for a change, I
want to rest. And I don't want India to suffer because of that.

~~~

Waiting for a Perfect Man

noreply@blogger.com (Snehal Masne) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:17:00 +0000

This is dedicated to all ladies who end up searching for a Perfect Man all their life time who can love them a lot and all the time..care for them a lot..do their work..help them all the time ..spend all his time with them..earn a lot.. buy any thing for them..call them Miss Universe.. praise them all the time.. !!!!! Enough.. this blog space is not enough to explain what they expect......!!!
Gentlemen - U can have a good laugh at it.

~~~

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