TecH GaraGe

What is SAP ERP?

2011-08-23T22:20:00.000+05:30

$AP stands for System,Analysis and Products in Processing. It is a set of applications developed for enterprises and is also termed as SAP ERP. There are other ERP vendors in the market but SAP is the leader right now. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are software packages used to manage an organizations business processes.

SAP Product Suite consist of below system:

R/3 – Core ERP system
APO – Supply Chain Planning System
CRM – Customer Relationship System
BW – Reporting System
SRM – Supplier Relationship System
Others – PLM, XI, Netweaver...

R/3 is the heart of SAP and can further be divided into different modules:

Logistics

Sales and Distribution(SD)
Materials Management(MM)
Production Planning(PP)

Human Resource (HR)
Financial FICO

Finance FI (includes AR, AP, GL…)
Controlling CO
Profitability Analysis …

APO which is the Supply Chain Planning component of SAP contains:

Demand Planning (DP)
Supply Network Planning (SNP)
Global Available-To-Promise (GATP)
Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (TPVS)
Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PPDS)

SAP have its own programming language and all the applications and development in SAP is done in ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) only.

The power of SAP applications can be well understood by the fact that over 80% of fortune 500 companies run on SAP. Over the years SAP has improvised on their existing applications and introduced new applications which are considered as industry standards.They provide their clients with the industry best practices and give them the power to enhance and customize these based on their requirements.The clients are free to either change their working methodology and adopt to standards provided by SAP or to tweak SAP code and customize it.
For any organization running on SAP the IT team needs three kind of consultants:

Functional- Who consult in business process /business functions and configure SAP software to meet business needs of the client.
Basis -Who install SAP applications and manage the back-end..
Technical - Who do the development in ABAP based on functional specifications provided by the functional consultants.

Below is a brief pictorial representation of SAP system:

Note: SAP is pronounced as ess-ay-pea.

Hope this helps in developing the basic understanding of the SAP system.
I am familiar with ABAP and APO module (primarily DP and SNP) and hence most of my upcoming posts will be dedicated to it but I will try to bring in some insight on the other modules too.

.

Return of TG!!

2011-08-15T02:30:00.001+05:30

Its been two years that I was out of the blogger arena but now I am back and will bring back the much needed life to this blog.
In past two years I have learned a lot and will try to share all that on this blog.
From now on most of my post will be dedicated to SAP and ABAP and will try to bring back some halka fulka post here and there to add spice to this list.
Wish me luck!!
So here is the formal comeback declaration--
!!TG is back and now with a new flavor.!!

HTTP AND HTTPS-A Comparison

2009-08-11T09:43:00.002+05:30

Uniform Resource Locator(URL)

URL strings consist of three parts

Network protocol
Host name or address
File or resource location

These substrings are separated by special characters as follows:

protocol :// host / location

URL Protocol
The 'protocol' substring defines a network protocol to be used to access a resource. These strings are short names followed by the three characters '://' (a simple naming convention to denote a protocol definition). Typical URL protocols include http://, ftp://, and mailto://.

Now check out the URL of this page (the one that is displayed in the address(navigation) bar).What does that say ?What we are going to discuss is HTTP and HTTPS which have a role to play in our follow up post...

HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol

Used by browsers for fetching Web data from servers.
Because of its universal availability (e.g., firewalls don't interfere) has become widely used as a general-purpose protocol for network communication.
Simple request-response protocol, sent using TCP/IP sockets.

Sample request:

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1

Host: www.example.com

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0

Accept: text/xml,application /xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html*/*

Accept-Language: en-us

Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8

Connection: keep-alive

BLANK LINE

First line contains method, URL, version number

GET method: read information from server. Should have no side effects.
POST method:sends data from the browser to the server(typically form data), returns information from the server. Likely to have side effects. Data is in the body of the message, after the blank line.
There are several other methods defined besides these two, but they are not commonly used.

Headers: name-value pairs providing various information that may be useful to the server.

A request can also contain data following the headers, but the GET method doesn't have any data (POST does, though).

Sample response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2009 17:36:27 GMT

Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1

Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8

Content-Length: 1846

HTML

.......

/HTML

First line contains protocol version number, numerical status code, textual explanation.
Headers have same general format as for requests
Blank line separates headers from response data.

Redirection: rather than returning an HTML page, the server can set the Location header to some other URL and return a status of 307. This causes the browser to immediately fetch the new URL in place of the page initially requested. Useful if information has moved, and for handling POST requests.

For the most part, HTTP is invisible to Web application developers; everything happens automatically for you (occasionally you will need to read or write various headers).

HTTPS

Works identically to HTTP, except that the request and response messages are transmitted using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or its successor TLS (Transport Layer Security).

HTTPS is used automatically for any URL beginning with "https:" instead of "http:".

What HTTPS does for you:

The request and response messages are transmitted between the browser and server in encrypted form.
This prevents snoopers on the network from accessing private information in the messages, such as passwords or credit card numbers.

However, HTTPS does not guarantee that the browser and server can trust each other. You just know that no-one else is listening.

HTTPS requires additional server setup: must create a certificate that identifies the server to the browser.

In designing Web applications you must make sure that HTTPS is used whenever private data has been transmitted, such as when forms are submitted for login or for credit card authorization.

There are numerous security issues related to HTTPS, such as

When to use it.
How to mix HTTP and HTTPS safely.

T Shirt Quotes related to Computers

2009-04-13T19:04:00.007+05:30

Last week while searching for some computer related quotes for T Shirt I came across certain quotes that I thought were very good.So I thought why not share these quotes with you.So here are these quotes,pick the one you like or if you have any of your favorites then do share it with us.Here is the list..

"Programmers don't byte, they nibble a bit"

"To iterate is human, to recurse divine"

" first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time.
The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time"

"99% of all girls are beautiful, the rest 1% are in my college

"ASC!! a stupid question,get a stupid ANS!"

"In cartooned form
Atom1 - I have lost an electron.
Atom2 - Are you sure?
Atom1 - I am positive."

"There's no place like 127.0.0.1 (“Home” for the non-geeks)"

"YouTube(logo) myspace(logo) and I'll Google(logo) your Yahoo(logo)."

"~~I'm a programmar~~
~~I'm a programer~~
~~I'm a programmar~~
I write code"

Front: How many Java programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
Back: You’re still thinking procedurally. A properly designed light bulb object would inherit a change method from a generic light bulb class, so all you’d have to do is send a light bulb change message."

"Programmers never die: They just GOSUB without RETURN."

"When it comes to sports, I KNOW A LOT about computers."

"pro-gram-mer: n. an organism that turns caffeine into software."

"There are only 10 types of people in this world those who understand binary and those who don't."

"If at first you don't succeed call it version 1.0."

This is my favorite

COMPZ was cool...
untill we came along...
NOW ITS SIMPLY SEC C

That is what I collected from the Internet.If you have any other that you want to share then do push a comment.

If programming languages were cars...

2009-04-12T18:23:00.006+05:30

There have been many comparisons between programming languages and different aspects of human life by many individuals .This is one of them , a comparison between programming languages and cars.This post is inspired from the article originally written by Mike Vanier.This is an update to an old series of jokes about computer languages being like cars. Just go through this list and see if you can come out with your own list of comparisons.Here goes the list...

The list

Ada is a tank. A butt-ugly tank that never breaks down. People laugh uncontrollably if you tell them you drive Ada, but really, do you want to be driving a sports car in a war zone?

Assembly Language is a bare engine; you have to build the car yourself and manually supply it with gas while it's running, but if you're careful it can go like a bat out of hell.

Assembly Language: YOU are the car.

Basic is a simple car useful for short drives to the local shops. Once popular with learner drivers, it has recently been stripped down to a shell and rebuilt by a major manufacturer, The new version has been refurbished for longer journeys, leaving only cosmetic similarities to the original model.

C is a racing car that goes incredibly fast but breaks down every fifty miles.

Cobol is reputed to be a car, but no self-respecting driver will ever admit having driven one.

C# is a competing model of family station wagons. Once you use this, you're never allowed to use the competitors' products again.

C++ is a souped-up version of the C racing car with dozens of extra features that only breaks down every 250 miles, but when it does, nobody can figure out what went wrong.

Eiffel is a car that includes a built-in driving instructor with a French accent. He will help you quickly identify and learn from your mistakes, but don't you dare argue with him or he'll insult you and throw you out of the car.

Erlang is a fleet of cars that all cooperate to get you where you want to go. It takes practice to be able to drive with one foot in each of several cars, but once you learn how you can drive over terrain that would be very hard to navigate any other way. In addition, because you're using so many cars, it doesn't matter if a few of them break down.

Forth is a car you build yourself from a kit. Your car doesn't have to look or behave like anyone else's car. However, a Forth car will only go backwards.

FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN !

Fortran is a pretty primitive car; it'll go very quickly as long as you are only going along roads that are perfectly straight. It is believed that learning to drive a Fortran car makes it impossible to learn to drive any other model.

Java is a family station wagon. It's easy to drive, it's not too fast, and you can't hurt yourself.

Haskell is an incredibly elegantly-designed and beautiful car, which is rumored to be able to drive over extremely strange terrain. The one time you tried to drive it, it didn't actually drive along the road; instead, it made copies of itself and the road, with each successive copy of the road having the car a little further along. It's supposed to be possible to drive it in a more conventional way, but you don't know enough math to figure out how.

[Monadic version:]

Haskell is not really a car; it's an abstract machine in which you give a detailed description of what the process of driving would be like if you were to do it. You have to put the abstract machine inside another (concrete) machine in order to actually do any driving. You're not supposed to ask how the concrete machine works. There is also a way to take multiple abstract machines and make a single abstract machine, which you can then give to the concrete machine to make multiple trips one after another.

Lisp looks like a car, but with enough tweaking you can turn it into a pretty effective airplane or submarine.

Lisp: At first it doesn't seem to be a car at all, but now and then you spot a few people driving it around. After a point you decide to learn more about it and you realize it's actually a car that can make more cars. You tell your friends, but they all laugh and say these cars look way too weird. You still keep one in your garage, hoping one day they will take over the streets.

Mathematica is a well-designed car that borrowed a lot from the Lisp car without giving it nearly the credit it deserved. It can solve equations to determine the most efficient way to get to the destination, but it costs a fortune

Matlab is a car designed for novice drivers going on short trips over terrain similar to the terrain the Mathematica car is usually driven over. It is very comfortable when driving over this terrain, but if you go off the trail even a little the car becomes so hard to drive that more snobby drivers refuse to even acknowledge that it's a car.

Ocaml is a very sexy European car. It's not quite as fast as C, but it never breaks down, so you end up going further in less time. However, because it's French, none of the controls are in the usual places.

Perl is supposed to be a pretty cool car, but the driver's manual is incomprehensible. Also, even if you can figure out how to drive a Perl car, you won't be able to drive anyone else's.

PHP is the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, it's bizarre and hard to handle but everybody still wants to drive it.

Prolog is fully automatic: you tell it what your destination looks like, and it does all the driving for you. [Addendum from Paul Graham:] However, the effort required to specify most destinations is equivalent to the effort of driving there.

Prolog is a car with a unique trial-and-error GPS system. It will go down the road looking for your destination, and if it gets to the end of the street without finding it, it will back up and try the next street over and continue until you get where you need to go.

Python is a great beginner's car; you can drive it without a license. Unless you want to drive really fast or on really treacherous terrain, you may never need another car.

Ruby is a car that was formed when the Perl, Python and Smalltalk cars were involved in a three-way collision. A Japanese mechanic found the pieces and put together a car which many drivers think is better than the sum of the parts. Other drivers, however, grumble that a lot of the controls of the Ruby car have been duplicated or triplicated, with some of the duplicate controls doing slightly different things in odd circumstances, making the car harder to drive than it ought to be. A redesign is rumored to be in the works.

Smalltalk is a small car originally designed for people who were just learning to drive, but it was designed so well that even experienced drivers enjoy riding in it. It doesn't drive very fast, but you can take apart any part of it and change it to make it more like what you wanted it to be. One oddity is that you don't actually drive it; you send it a message asking it to go somewhere and it either does or tells you that it didn't understand what you were asking.

Visual Basic is a car that drives you. .

If you have any such comparison see what you come up with, just post a comment.Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks for this post to
Mike Vanier

Computer Tips Bollywood Style

2009-04-12T00:34:00.008+05:30

After a long gap I am writing a post...back in the blogger arena after such a long interval feels good.Here are some tips...

As they say "A picture is worth a thousand words".

TecH GaraGe (TG) is back with a new flavour in a new attire.Keep checking out this blog.

Digg Source Code has a "Secret Message"

2008-11-03T17:57:00.007+05:30

Recently I came to know about this, the homepage of Digg contains a "Secret Message". This secret message is in the source code of the Home Page of the website in the form of a comment at the very bottom .After analyzing the code it seems that some physics-lover has worked on the code of the website.The message is :::

< !-- digg is done serving you. 2.01355321270u 137.03599911 6.6742x10-11m3kg-1s-2 6.6742x10-11m3kg-1s-2 -->

This line is a comment and thus not visible on the website but can easily be seen in the source code of the homepage.These are not just random numbers but are a result of very smart physics work done at the Digg labs.
What is the significance of these numbers ? Take a guess (Hint :: Relate these numbers to physics)...

OK,here is the answer.....

2.01355321270u :: This is the atomic mass of the hydrogen isotope known as Deuterium.
137.03599911 :: This is a complicated one and really a geek in physics can figure this out.This is Inverse of the Sommerfield fine-structure constant.
6.6742x10-11m3kg-1s-2 ::The last two numbers are the same.This one is very easy to guess and is known as The Gravitational Constant(G).

The numbers represent Deuterium, Inverse of the fine structure constant, G, G.
After the analysis what we get is ::
2.01355321270u :: D
137.03599911 :: I
6.6742x10-11m3kg-1s-2 :: G
6.6742x10-11m3kg-1s-2 :: G

Finally , the secret message is DIGG !!.
Ohhk..someone at Digg is crazy or should i say a geek who came up with this crazy idea of encrypting "DIGG" as such a weird figure so that no one figures it out easily thereby getting them involved into this puzzle. What you say!!.

Links to Check::
Digg Home Page
Hyperevo
Wikipedia (For physics related information)

Android's Locking Pattern

2008-10-13T20:03:00.014+05:30

Recently there was so much talk about the locking feature that is present in Android phone.So I thought to check it out.Unlike other phones which require a four digit number for unlocking "Android" uses an innovative approach to lock your phone and prevent accidental dialing.It puts nine dots arranged in a square pattern (as in case of a grid)on the touch screen along with the caption "Draw pattern to unlock".

A pattern can be anything with the following constraints::

It needs to contain 4 dots.
Once a dot is lit,it can't be used again.
You can use one or several "knight moves" such as [0 5 4 2]
You cannot go over an unlit dot without lighting it.For example, the pattern [0 2 1 4] is illegal, because moving your finger between 0 and 2 will light 1.
Once a dot is lit, you can use it to reach another unlit dot. For example,both [0 4 3 5] and [0 4 5 3] are legal.

Kind of tricky .Isn't it?

Also some people using the phone have noticed that the repeated locking-unlocking process on the touchscreen interface may leave traces so that the unlock password can be guessed at some of the time.Solution to this problem from user side is to wipe down the screen whenever the phone is locked and there should be the alternate traditional locking system in the phone and this can be made an optional service for the reluctant users.Like all other Google products this is also in its Beta stage and there are chances for the improvement.You can also refer to this video and the links for more information.

Links to check::
Tech Crunch
Beust

Watch out these videos::
Android pattern
Unlocked Google phone

Custmizing Firefox : Tips and Tricks

2008-10-11T20:00:00.010+05:30

Here are some tips and tricks for Firefox users to customize their favorite browser.Check them out::
1.Keyboard shortcuts::These shortcuts will give you a better browsing experience

Spacebar ->page down
Shift + Spacebar ->page up
Ctrl + F ->find
Alt + N ->find next
Ctrl + D ->bookmark page
Ctrl + T ->new tab
Ctrl + K ->go to search box.....

Ctrl + L->go to address bar
Ctrl + =/Ctrl + + ->increase text size
Ctrl + -decrease text size
Ctrl + 0->default text size
Ctrl + W->close tab
F5->reload
Alt + Home->go to home page

2.Auto Complete::This is yet another feature of Firefox that is widely used. Go to address bar and write only the name of the site you want to open say for example Google and then press

Control-Enter->(for "www.google.com")
Shift-Enter->(for "www.google.net")
Control-Shift-Enter->(for "www.google.org")

3. Tab navigation::

Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)

4.Mouse shortcuts::

Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
Shift-scroll down (previous page)
Shift-scroll up (next page)
Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
Middle click on a tab (closes tab)

5. Smart keywords:: Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.

6.Speed up Firefox with pipelining:: By default, pipelining is turned off in Firefox, but it's easy to turn it on:

Type "about:config" into your address bar and hit Enter.
In the Filter text box, at the top of the page, type network.http.A list of settings appears, as you can see in the nearby figure.
Double-click the "network.http.pipelining" setting, to change it to true.
Double-click the "network.http.proxy.pipelining" setting, to change it to true.
Double-click the "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" setting, and in the text box that appears, type in 8 and click OK.
Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
Move or remove the close tab button:: Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through "about:config". Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:

0: Display a close button on the active tab only
1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
2:Don’t display any close buttons
3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar

8.Limit Firefox's use of RAM::Does Firefox use up too much of your RAM? Teach it to behave by limiting the amount of RAM it uses. To do it:

Type about:config into your address bar and hit Enter.
In the Filter text box, at the top of the page, type browser.cache.
Double-click the "browser.cache.disk.capacity" entry.
The default is 50000. If you don't have a lot of memory on your system, for example, between 512MB and 1GB, change the number to 15000 and click OK.

9.Personalize the Firefox interface by hacking userChrome.css:: In order to modify certain aspects of Firefox's chrome, you have to edit a file called userChrome.css stored in your Firefox profile directory. This file is user-specific and can be easily copied from one Firefox installation to another. Here's where your userChrome.css file is located, depending on your operating system:

Windows XP/2000

C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome\
where xxxxxxxx is a random string of 8 characters.

Windows 95/98/Me

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome\

Linux

~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/

Mac OS X

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/

Remove the Edit and Help menus

/* Remove the Edit and Help menus
Id's for all toplevel menus:
file-menu, edit-menu, view-menu, go-menu, bookmarks-menu, tools-menu, helpMenu */
#helpMenu, #edit-menu { display: none !important; }

Remove disabled back, forward and stop buttons

/* Remove Back button when there's nothing to go Back to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Forward button when there's nothing to go Forward to */
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Stop button when there's nothing to Stop */
#stop-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }
/* Remove Home button */
#home-button { display: none; }

Remove the Go button

#go-button-stack, .search-go-button-stack {
display: none !important;
}

Remove the search bar magnifying glass

/*Remove magnifying glass button from search box*/
.search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }

Remove the "throbber"

The "throbber" is the spinning dotted circle in the upper right hand corner of the Firefox.
/* Eliminate the throbber and its annoying movement: */
#throbber-box { display: none !important; }

There are a lot more of these kind of tricks available as it is infinitely customizable, via editing a text file called "userChrome.css", making changes via a command called "about:config", and using free add-ons to extend the features of the browser.If you know any trick worth sharing then do write a comment to this post.

Links::
ComputerWorld

Download Novel and Fiction e books

2008-09-29T17:59:00.021+05:30

Recently while going through some sites I came across e books of some great writers like Sidney Sheldon ,Dan Brown,Paulo Coelho etc.So i thought to collect all these links together and publish them to my blog for easy access for my readers.I will update this section as I will get some other e books.So check out these links::

Sidney Sheldon

The plot of the book spans six generations, and it is based upon the fictional lives of the Blackwell family. The book follows the life of an entrepreneur, Kate Blackwell, and explores her family, ancestry and life. It focuses on the building of her father's company, from a small business into a multinational corporation

Download Link::
Master of the game

This is a story of intrigue and revenge. Tracy Whitney is young, beautiful and intelligent - and about to marry into wealth and glamour. Until, suddenly, she is betrayed, framed by a ruthless Mafia gang, abandoned by the man she loves. Only her ingenuity saves her and helps her fight back.

Download Link::
If tomorrow comes

Three women doctors begin five years training at Embarcadero County Hospital, San Francisco. The story, set against hospital and courtroom, chronicles their lives together and their struggle to outwit those determined that they don't succeed.

Download Link::
Nothing lasts forever

Paulo Coelho

"The Alchemist", is an exciting novel that bursts with optimism; it is the kind of novel that tells you that everything is possible as long as you really want it to happen. That may sound like an oversimplified version of new-age philosophy and mysticism, but as Coelho states "simple things are the most valuable and only wise people appreciate them".

Download Link::
The Alchemist

Download Link::
Stories for parents

In The Zahir, Coelho shakes you up and leads you to ask yourself Whats my obsession? Whats my greater truth?In search of Destiny, you will often find yourself obliged to change direction.

Download Link::
The Zahir

Dan Brown

Download Link::
Angels and Demons

Download Link::
Digital Fortress

Download Link::
Deception Point

Download Link::
The Da Vinci Code

Salman Rushdie

Download Link::
The Satanic Verses 1
The Satanic Verses 2

Chetan Bhagat

Download Link::
The 3 mistakes of my life

APJ Abdul Kalam

Download Link::
Wings of fire

Mario Puzo

Download Link::
The Godfather

I will update this post as soon as i get some other books.If anyhow any of the link mentioned above does not work then please post a comment so that i can make necessary corrections.Your views will be highly appreciated.

Clickjacking "Browser Exploit"

2008-09-28T10:21:00.006+05:30

Clickjacking is a term used by two security experts Robert “RSnake” Hansen and Jeremiah Grossman to define a new major web attack that could potentially affect millions of web users.This threat exploits the bug that is present in "One of the Adobe products" but Jeremiah and Robert believe that the clickjacking flaw ultimately lies in the way that Internet browsers are designed.According to Grossman

"If I control what you click on, how much bad can I do? It turns out you can do a number of really, really bad things."

What makes the attack noteworthy is that this attack is compatible with all browsers and their all versions be it Firefox,IE,Opera,Safari or any other browser.Jeremiah and Robert were going to demonstrate this attack on Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) in New York City this week but on Adobe's request they postponed their demonstration so that the Adobe can contact all web browser vendors and can release a patch for this exploit.

The Approach:: In a clickjacking attack, the attacker tricks the victim into clicking on malicious Web links without realizing it. This type of attack has been known for years, but had not been considered to be particularly dangerous.However, in writing their proof-of-concept code, Hansen and Grossman realized that clickjacking was actually more serious than they'd first thought.

The Demo:: A small demo of this exploit can be seen on this link (this is just a temporary demo and will not affect your system).Open the link and then open anything on your same web browser and copy some data and try to paste it anywhere.What you see.Now to recover from this just restart your web browser.This demo is a "clipboard hijack" demo and exploits the clipboard.There can be many other types of possible hijack too.

But how much "bad" this exploit can get and how is attack work is still a question that needs to be answered and when are they going to disclose it because releasing the patches will take time .So either we should just "wait and watch" or search out by our own.If any one gets some info then just push a comment on this blog.

Links to check::
ars technica
Adobe's confirmation

The Great Zero Challenge

2008-09-22T19:13:00.002+05:30

In order to permanently delete data the only way is to destroy the hard drive ?Can we save the Hard Drive for future use destroying permanently the data?Can we recover data from a hard drive that has been overwritten with zeros once?
This is what The Great Zero Challenge is all about.It starts with the line::

It is noble and just to dispel myths, falsehoods and untruths

The challenge is organized by a firm in US named 16 systems and any established, professional data recovery company within USA can participate.Data recovery companies were contacted and the response of one of them was

According to our Unix team, there is less than a zero percent chance of data recovery after that dd command. The drive itself has been overwritten in a very fundamental manner. However, if for legal reasons you need to demonstrate that an effort is being made to recover some or all of the data, go ahead and send it in and we'll certainly make an effort, but again, from what you've told us, our engineers are certain that we cannot recover data from the drive. We'll email you a quote.

And the website quotes-As of September 6th, 2008 the challenge stands unaccepted.Check out the details of the challenge.
The organization (16Systems) have used a new Western Digital (WD800JB) 80GB hard drive with a default initialization and NTFS format from within Windows XP.They have used a Unix dd command using /dev/zero as input to overwrite the drive.You don't actually have to recover any more data to win the challenge, just tell them the name of one of the two files or the name of the one folder that existed in this screen shot before the dd command was executed.
The prize money is mere $500.00 USD (if the challenge is won) but the challenge should be accepted as they say "to dispel myths" because many people believe that in order to permanently delete data from a modern hard drive that multiple overwrites with random data, mechanical grinding, degaussing and incinerating must be used thus lots of good, usable hard drives are ruined in the process.

Links to Check::
16Systems

Crazy Typewriters

2008-09-04T18:10:00.006+05:30

Imagination have no boundaries and people ready to experiment can take their creativity to another level.Recently while surfing the net I came across this post on some site,what drew my attention was the work of Mr.Jeremy Mayer who collects antique typewriters, not to display them but to break them into small components and then combine them into some amazing sci-fi-inspired bugs, skeletons and human figures.
Mayer, who describes his work as a cross between Leonardo da Vinci's mechanical drawings and the gritty futures imagined by sci-fi maestros William Gibson and Philip K. Dick, assembles his artwork without welding, soldering or gluing.

Amazing Isn't it!!
Photos courtesy Jeremy Mayer

Google Android Challenge Winners

2008-09-02T00:14:00.003+05:30

Google has announced the winners of the first phase of the Android Developer Challenge a contest to create apps for Google's Android mobile operating system.Here are some of the ideas whose creators received $275,000 ::

Cab4me: Helps you to find a taxi.

CompareEverywhere: A price comparison engine and review reader.

Ecorio: Aims to track your carbon footprint.

GoCart: Lets you scan a product barcode to then find out where to buy this near-by.

Life360: This seems to be a social network for your neighborhood to post important alerts (like “dog ran away” or “house on fire”).

Locale: This tool automatically changes your phone’s setting based on where you are. (Not novel, but perhaps useful.)

PicSay: A picture editor which comes with color correction, distortion tools and more, as well as sharing features.

Softrace: Compare with others around the world in physical activities like racing.

TuneWiki: A self-proclaimed social media player, with synchronized lyrics, translation, music maps and more.

Wertago: A social tool aiming to let you find the “hottest parties in town.”

Links to Check::
Top 50 Applications
alleyinsider
blogoscoped

Google Chrome

2008-09-01T22:52:00.008+05:30

For all those Google fans and critics here is a new project from Google ,GOOGLE CHROME , an Open Source web browser.There have been rumors that Google was going to release its own browser. Now, thanks to Google Blogoscoped, we have some additional evidence: a 38-page comic book sent out by Google and drawn by no less than Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics, to announce the Google Chrome project. The features depicted in the comic book are::

Its an Open Source project based on Webkit rendering engine and includes Google Gears project.

The browser will contain a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8.

Like Mozilla it will include tabbed browsing but the position of the tabs will be on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.

The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features.and is called ’omnibox’ that resembles Firefox’s “Awesome bar”.

The browser will include Speed Dial feature as in Opera.

Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.

Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar like in Mozilla Prism.

Google also promises that whatever runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed. Plugins the user installed may escape this security model.

Although this could be a hoax, I’m inclined to believe it’s for real: the URL for Google Chrome is returning a custom 404 page, rather than the one Google uses for random words. I’m sure I won’t be the only Google fan hoping to see a release of Chrome.
An Instance of the Comic Book::

Reference:
Google Blogoscoped
Comic Book from Google
Download Google Chrome

CSI Stick

2008-08-30T22:32:00.004+05:30

Cellular Seizure Investigation (CSI) Stick, a product from the Paraben Forensic Training developed primarily for law enforcement, surveillance, and intelligence operations but available to the public, acquires data from cellphones.This portable solution is easy to use with a simple one button command to gather data from the device. Whether it is logical or physical information, the CSI Stick can gather the data.The most striking feature of this device is its size(that of a thumb or a small Pen Drive) and its single button interface which let intruders copy the data in a fraction of seconds.Moreover it does not require a "special" port for connecting to the cellphone.It connects to the data/charging port and will seamlessly grab e-mails, instant messages, dialed numbers, phone books and anything else that is stored in memory. It will even retrieve deleted files that have not been overwritten. And there is no trace whatsoever that the information has been compromised, nor any risk of corruption .Currently the CSI Stick supports 330 models of Motorola and Samsung phones and is supplied witll be released later this year increasing the number of models that the CSI Stick will support with LG and Nokia support already in development.The CSI Stick sells for $200 and requires an added piece of software to mine the data and do sophisticated processing on your computer. So now, in addition to worrying about your conversations or data being intercepted through your Bluetooth headset, there is a new threat, and it is very real.

So next time if someone asks to borrow your cell phone, or you leave it unattended, beware! Because they may be secretly grabbing every piece of your information on the device.So make sure make sure you actually see them using the phone and there is nothing connected to it.

ISSUED IN PUBLIC INTERST BY TecH GaraGe.

For more details check::
CSI Stick

Yahoo! buzz

2008-08-19T21:15:00.005+05:30

Yahoo Buzz,a Digg-like service that launched on February 25, is now open to all website owners and publishers.The beta test was limited to a few popular websites ( webmasters and bloggers kept joining the waiting list.At last it was opened for all on 18/08/08.
Anyone can now add Buzz buttons to their site which will allow readers to vote up the stories in various categories. However, voters will require a Yahoo! ID to submit and buzz the story. But once you start buzzing and voting, you can keep track of all your buzzing activity. When you buzz a story, they offer a cool alert with related stories too.The big benefit for publishers is that top Buzz stories are linked from the Yahoo home page, which turns a fire hose of traffic onto a story. When those stories hit the home page there’s a good chance that the linked site will have a record day in traffic. Yahoo says they’ve sent 16 million visitors to outside sites in those first two weeks.Yahoo is still ramping up the number of links it puts on the home page from Buzz, and is being careful about the potential to flat out nuke websites with all the traffic they can send. But it’s clear that a link from Yahoo.com blows away anything be it AOL's Propeller or Digg or any other competitorbecause of its massive user base.That will keep the Buzz publishers, who must be invited into the service, paying attention.I have also added buzz buttons below each post and readers can now vote for our stories too.

Optical Illusions

2008-05-25T14:59:00.020+05:30

Illusions of the senses tell us the truth about perception
-Teuber,1960
Illusions are fascinating to most people. Some of the illusions have been known since antiquity. The scientific study of illusions dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century when scientists got interested in perception. Since then there has been enduring interest, and illusions have been used as tools in the study of perception. An important strategy in finding out how perception operates is to observe situations in which mis-perceptions occur. By carefully altering the stimuli and testing the changes in visual perception psychologists tried to gain insight into the principles of perception.

An optical illusion(also called a visual illusion) is characterized by visually perceived images that are deceptive or misleading.Most effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye.There are so many websites dedicated to optical illusions.Some pictures are here for reference and for detailed description you can check out the links given at the bottom of this post.

1.Face of Devil OR Ladies
2. Jesus OR Jesus with followers

Anamorphism
An Anamorphoscope, a conical or cylindrical mirror is placed on the drawing or a painting to transform a flat distorted image into a three dimensional picture that can be viewed from many angles. The deformed image is painted on a plane surface surrounding the mirror. By looking uniquely into the mirror, the image appears undeformed. Anamorphoscopes were invented in China and brought to Italy in the 16th century, about the time Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci were mastering 3D and discovering slant anamorphosis.Recently I have seen the movie ANAMORPH which inspired me to get a look at this field.Some anamorphisms...

Ambigram
An Ambigram is a sentance or a single word that is written in such way, that it becomes readable even if you rotate it. John Langdon is a father of ambigrams.He did work for The Da Vinci Code movie, and to my knowledge, he was an inspiration to Dan Brown for his main character called Robert Langdon. John's ambigrams apeared not only in the movie, but also in original David Brown's books: "Angels & Demons" and "The DaVinci Code".Check out these cool ambigrams..
Robert Langdon Ambigram

Double Meaning Pictures
These pictures have two words written in the same picture in such a contrasting manner that only one can be read at a time.Check out the pictures...

1. GOOD(in Black) OR EVIL(in White)
2. Teach(on Top) OR Learn (at Bottom)

Interested huh then check out these links for details ....

Links to Check::
John Langdon
Mighty Optical Illusions
New Optical Illusions
Ambigram Maker

NOKIA- Technology meets Ecology

2008-05-25T00:52:00.009+05:30

Nokia ,showing its concern for the global warming issue , recently unveiled its new mobile the NOKIA 3110 EVOLVE-an Eco Friendly Mobile with the punch line technology meets ecology and also introduced the ECO SENSOR CONCEPT.
NOKIA Eco Sensor Concept
Reduce, reuse and recycle – the Nokia Eco Sensor Concept is built upon all three of these underlying principles of waste reduction.The concept consists of two parts – a wearable sensor unit which can sense and analyze your environment, health, and local weather conditions, and a dedicated mobile phone.
The sensor unit will be worn on a wrist or neck strap made from solar cells that provide power to the sensors. NFC (near field communication) technology will relay information by touch from the sensors to the phone or to or to other devices that support NFC technology.
Both the phone and the sensor unit will be as compact as possible to minimize material use, and those materials used in the design will be renewable and/or reclaimed. Technologies used inside the phone and sensor unit will also help save energy.

Nokia 3110 Evolve - technology meets ecology
It consist of bio-covers made from more than 50% renewable material. The device is presented in a small package made of 60% recycled content and it comes with Nokia's most energy efficient charger yet, using 94% less energy than the Energy Star requirements.Created from unpainted bio-sourced materials, reducing the amount of fossil fuels used during manufacture.Introduced the new AC-8 charger, created to minimize "no load" energy consumption in case you forget to unplug it from the power socket.
For more Queries Check out::
Eco Sensor Concept
Nokia 3110 Evolve

Hummer Slider Phone

2008-05-23T22:32:00.010+05:30

I think if this cell was produced by Nokia.It would have been a Rage!! just because it belongs to ModeLabs now marketed by FLY.It has not got the attention this masterpiece-a 10K multimedia device-deserved.Check out the pics...

Designed by French design company Modelabs, this Hummer-shaped GSM slider phone sports 2.2 inch touchscreen that supports 262k colors, 2 Megapixel camera, 25 MB of onboard memory, FM Radio, Bluetooth A2DP and Micro SD card slot.This Hummer handset is especially meant for the true road warriors as per its design and shape that is quite brawny, rugged and burly like Hummer.

A Software Bug

2008-05-23T22:04:00.006+05:30

This is another fundoo stuff from funlok.Chk it out....
....Life Cycle Of A Software Bug.....

Taj Mahal OR Tejo Mahalaya

2008-05-23T16:53:00.008+05:30

This is my first post which is not on technical front ,posting technical articles continuously was a boring task so i took this article.
Was Taj Mahal-an Islamic mausoleum as known today by the whole world OR an ancient Shiva Temple known as Tejo Mahalaya which the 5th generation mogul emperor Shahjahan commandeered from the then Maharajah of Jaipur?
Here are some facts collected over the net and You decide.....

Here are the facts...
NAME

1.The term Tajmahal itself never occurs in any mogul court paper or chronicle even in Aurangzeb's time. The attempt to explain it away as Taj-i-mahal is therefore, ridiculous.

2.The ending "Mahal"is never muslim because in none of the muslim countries around the world from Afghanistan to Algeria is there a building known as "Mahal".

3.The unusual explanation of the term Tajmahal derives from Mumtaz Mahal, who is buried in it, is illogical in at least two respects viz., firstly her name was never Mumtaj Mahal but Mumtaz-ul-Zamani and secondly one cannot omit the first three letters "Mum" from a woman's name to derive the remainder as the name of the building.

4.Since the lady's name was Mumtaz (ending with 'Z') the name of the building derived from her should have been Taz Mahal, if at all, and not Taj (spelled with a 'J').

5.Several European visitors of Shahjahan's time allude to the building as Taj-e-Mahal is almost the correct tradition, age old Sanskrit name Tej-o-Mahalaya, signifying a Shiva temple. Contrarily Shahjahan and Aurangzeb scrupulously avoid using the Sanskrit term and call it just a holy grave.

6.The tomb should be understood to signify NOT A BUILDING but only the grave or centotaph inside it. This would help people to realize that all dead muslim courtiers and royalty including Humayun, Akbar, Mumtaz, Etmad-ud-Daula and Safdarjang have been buried in capture Hindu mansions and temples.

7.Moreover, if the Taj is believed to be a burial place, how can the term Mahal, i.e., mansion apply to it?

8.Since the term Taj Mahal does not occur in mogul courts it is absurd to search for any mogul explanation for it. Both its components namely, 'Taj' and' Mahal' are of Sanskrit origin.

TEMPLE TRADITION

9.The term Taj Mahal is a corrupt form of the sanskrit term TejoMahalay signifying a Shiva Temple. Agreshwar Mahadev i.e., The Lord of Agra was consecrated in it.

10.The tradition of removing the shoes before climbing the marble platform originates from pre Shahjahan times when the Taj was a Shiva Temple. Had the Taj originated as a tomb, shoes need not have to be removed because shoes are a necessity in a cemetery.

11.Visitors may notice that the base slab of the centotaph is the marble basement in plain white while its superstructure and the other three centotaphs on the two floors are covered with inlaid creeper designs. This indicates that the marble pedestal of the Shiva idol is still in place and Mumtaz's centotaphs are fake.

12.The pitchers carved inside the upper border of the marble lattice plus those mounted on it number 108-a number sacred in Hindu Temple tradition.

13.There are persons who are connected with the repair and the maintainance of the Taj who have seen the ancient sacred Shiva Linga and other idols sealed in the thick walls and in chambers in the secret, sealed red stone stories below the marble basement. The Archaeological Survey of India is keeping discretely, politely and diplomatically silent about it to the point of dereliction of its own duty to probe into hidden historical evidence.

14.In India there are 12 Jyotirlingas i.e., the outstanding Shiva Temples. The Tejomahalaya alias The Tajmahal appears to be one of them known as Nagnatheshwar since its parapet is girdled with Naga, i.e., Cobra figures. Ever since Shahjahan's capture of it the sacred temple has lost its Hindudom.

15.The famous Hindu treatise on architecture titled Vishwakarma Vastushastra mentions the 'Tej-Linga' amongst the Shivalingas i.e., the stone emblems of Lord Shiva, the Hindu deity. Such a Tej Linga was consecrated in the Taj Mahal, hence the term Taj Mahal alias Tejo Mahalaya.

16.Agra city, in which the Taj Mahal is located, is an ancient centre of Shiva worship. Its orthodox residents have through ages continued the tradition of worshipping at five Shiva shrines before taking the last meal every night especially during the month of Shravan. During the last few centuries the residents of Agra had to be content with worshipping at only four prominent Shiva temples viz., Balkeshwar, Prithvinath, Manakameshwar and Rajarajeshwar. They had lost track of the fifth Shiva deity which their forefathers worshipped. Apparently the fifth was Agreshwar Mahadev Nagnatheshwar i.e., The Lord Great God of Agra, The Deity of the King of Cobras, consecrated in the Tejomahalay alias Tajmahal.

17.The people who dominate the Agra region are Jats. Their name of Shiva is Tejaji. The Jat special issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India (June 28,1971) mentions that the Jats have the Teja Mandirs i.e., Teja Temples. This is because Teja-Linga is among the several names of the Shiva Lingas. From this it is apparent that the Taj-Mahal is Tejo-Mahalaya, The Great Abode of Tej.

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

18. Shahjahan's own court chronicle, the Badshahnama, admits (page 403, vol 1) that a grand mansion of unique splendor, capped with a dome (Imaarat-a-Alishan wa Gumbaze) was taken from the Jaipur Maharaja Jaisigh for Mumtaz's burial, and the building was known as Raja Mansingh's palace.

19. The plaque put the archealogy department outside the Tajmahal describes the edifice as a mausoleum built by Shahjahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal , over 22 years from 1631 to 1653. That plaque is a specimen of historical bungling. Firstly, the plaque sites no authority for its claim. Secondly the lady's name was Mumtaz-ulZamani and not Mumtazmahal. Thirdly, the period of 22 years is taken from some mumbo jumbo noting by an unreliable French visitor Tavernier, to the exclusion of all muslim versions, which is an absurdity.

20. Prince Aurangzeb's letter to his father,emperor Shahjahan,is recorded in atleast three chronicles titled `Aadaab-e-Alamgiri', `Yadgarnama', and the `Muruqqa-i-Akbarabadi' (edited by Said Ahmed, Agra, 1931, page 43, footnote 2). In that letter Aurangzeb records in 1652 A.D itself that the several buildings in the fancied burial place of Mumtaz were seven storeyed and were so old that they were all leaking, while the dome had developed a crack on the northern side.Aurangzeb, therefore, ordered immediate repairs to the buildings at his own expense while recommending to the emperor that more elaborate repairs be carried out later. This is the proof that during Shahjahan's reign itself that the Taj complex was so old as to need immediate repairs.

21. The ex-Maharaja of Jaipur retains in his secret personal `KapadDwara' collection two orders from Shahjahan dated Dec 18, 1633 (bearing modern nos. R.176 and 177) requestioning the Taj building complex. That was so blatant a usurpation that the then ruler of Jaipur was ashamed to make the document public.

22. The Rajasthan State archives at Bikaner preserve three other firmans addressed by Shahjahan to the Jaipur's ruler Jaising ordering the latter to supply marble (for Mumtaz's grave and koranic grafts) from his Makranna quarris, and stone cutters. Jaisingh was apparently so enraged at the blatant seizure of the Tajmahal that he refused to oblige Shahjahan by providing marble for grafting koranic engravings and fake centotaphs for further desecration of the Tajmahal. Jaising looked at Shahjahan's demand for marble and stone cutters, as an insult added to injury. Therefore, he refused to send any marble and instead detained the stone cutters in his protective custody.

23. The three firmans demanding marble were sent to Jaisingh within about two years of Mumtaz's death. Had Shahjahan really built the Tajmahal over a period of 22 years, the marble would have needed only after 15 or 20 years not immediately after Mumtaz's death.

24. Moreover, the three mention neither the Tajmahal, nor Mumtaz, nor the burial. The cost and the quantity of the stone also are not mentioned. This proves that an insignificant quantity of marble was needed just for some supercial tinkering and tampering with the Tajmahal. Even otherwise Shahjahan could never hope to build a fabulous Tajmahal by abject dependence for marble on a non cooperative Jaisingh.

EUROPEAN VISITOR'S ACCOUNTS

25. Tavernier, a French jeweller has recorded in his travel memoirs that Shahjahan purposely buried Mumtaz near the Taz-i-Makan (i.e.,`The Taj building') where foriegners used to come as they do even today so that the world may admire. He also adds that the cost of the scaffolding was more than that of the entire work. The work that Shahjahan commissioned in the Tejomahalaya Shiva temple was plundering at the costly fixtures inside it, uprooting the Shiva idols, planting the centotaphs in their place on two stories, inscribing the koran along the arches and walling up six of the seven stories of the Taj. It was this plunder, desecrating and plunderring of the rooms which took 22 years.

26. Peter Mundy, an English visitor to Agra recorded in 1632 (within only a year of Mumtaz's death) that `the places of note in and around Agra, included Taj-e-Mahal's tomb, gardens and bazaars'.He, therefore, confirms that that the Tajmahal had been a noteworthy building even before Shahjahan.

27. De Laet, a Dutch official has listed Mansingh's palace about a mile from Agra fort, as an outstanding building of pre shahjahan's time. Shahjahan's court chronicle, the Badshahnama records, Mumtaz's burial in the same Mansingh's palace.

28. Bernier, a contemporary French visitor has noted that non muslim's were barred entry into the basement (at the time when Shahjahan requisitioned Mansingh's palace) which contained a dazzling light. Obviously, he reffered to the silver doors, gold railing, the gem studded lattice and strings of pearl hanging over Shiva's idol. Shahjahan comandeered the building to grab all the wealth, making Mumtaz's death a convineant pretext.

29. Johan Albert Mandelslo, who describes life in agra in 1638 (only 7 years after mumtaz's death) in detail (in his `Voyages and Travels to West-Indies', published by John Starkey and John Basset, London), makes no mention of the Tajmahal being under constuction though it is commonly erringly asserted or assumed that the Taj was being built from 1631 to 1653.

SANSKIRT INSCRIPTION

30. A Sanskrit inscription too supports the conclusion that the Taj originated as a Shiva temple. Wrongly termed as the Bateshwar inscription (currently preserved on the top floor of the Lucknow museum), it refers to the raising of a "crystal white Shiva temple so alluring that Lord Shiva once enshrined in it decided never to return to Mount Kailash his usual abode". That inscription dated 1155 A.D. was removed from the Tajmahal garden at Shahjahan's orders. Historicians and Archeaologists have blundered in terming the insription the `Bateshwar inscription' when the record doesn't say that it was found by Bateshwar. It ought, in fact, to be called `The Tejomahalaya inscription' because it was originally installed in the Taj garden before it was uprooted and cast away at Shahjahan's command.

A clue to the tampering by Shahjahan is found on pages 216-217, vol. 4, of Archealogiical Survey of India Reports (published 1874) stating that a "great square black balistic pillar which, with the base and capital of another pillar....now in the grounds of Agra,...it is well known, once stood in the garden of Tajmahal".

MISSING ELEPHANTS

31. Far from the building of the Taj, Shahjahan disfigured it with black koranic lettering and heavily robbed it of its Sanskrit inscription, several idols and two huge stone elephants extending their trunks in a welcome arch over the gateway where visitors these days buy entry tickets. An Englishman, Thomas Twinning, records (pg.191 of his book "Travels in India A Hundred Years ago") that in November 1794 "I arrived at the high walls which enclose the Taj-e-Mahal and its circumjacent buildings. I here got out of the palanquine and.....mounted a short flight of steps leading to a beautiful portal which formed the centre of this side of the `COURT OF ELEPHANTS" as the great area was called.

KORANIC PATCHES

32. The Taj Mahal is scrawled over with 14 chapters of the Koran but nowhere is there even the slightest or the remotest allusion in that Islamic overwriting to Shahjahan's authorship of the Taj. Had Shahjahan been the builder he would have said so in so many words before beginning to quote Koran.

33. That Shahjahan, far from building the marble Taj, only disfigured it with black lettering is mentioned by the inscriber Amanat Khan Shirazi himself in an inscription on the building. A close scrutiny of the Koranic lettering reveals that they are grafts patched up with bits of variegated stone on an ancient Shiva temple.

CARBON 14 TEST

34. A wooden piece from the riverside doorway of the Taj subjected to the carbon 14 test by an American Laboratory, has revealed that the door to be 300 years older than Shahjahan,since the doors of the Taj, broken open by Muslim invaders repeatedly from the 11th century onwards, had to b replaced from time to time. The Taj edifice is much more older. It belongs to 1155 A.D, i.e., almost 500 years anterior to Shahjahan.

ARCHITECHTURAL EVIDENCE

35. Well known Western authorities on architechture like E.B.Havell, Mrs.Kenoyer and Sir W.W.Hunterhave gone on record to say that the TajMahal is built in the Hindu temple style. Havell points out the ground plan of the ancient Hindu Chandi Seva Temple in Java is identical with that of the Taj.

36. A central dome with cupolas at its four corners is a universal feature of Hindu temples.

37. The four marble pillars at the plinth corners are of the Hindu style. They are used as lamp towers during night and watch towers during the day. Such towers serve to demarcate the holy precincts. Hindu wedding altars and the altar set up for God Satyanarayan worship have pillars raised at the four corners.

38. The octagonal shape of the Tajmahal has a special Hindu significance because Hindus alone have special names for the eight directions, and celestial guards assigned to them. The pinnacle points to the heaven while the foundation signifies to the nether world. Hindu forts, cities, palaces and temples genrally have an octagonal layout or some octagonal features so that together with the pinnacle and the foundation they cover all the ten directions in which the king or God holds sway, according to Hindu belief.

39. The Tajmahal has a trident pinncle over the dome. A full scale of the trident pinnacle is inlaid in the red stone courtyard to the east of the Taj. The central shaft of the trident depicts a "Kalash" (sacred pot) holding two bent mango leaves and a coconut. This is a sacred Hindu motif. Identical pinnacles have been seen over Hindu and Buddhist temples in the Himalayan region. Tridents are also depicted against a red lotus background at the apex of the stately marble arched entrances on all four sides of the Taj. People fondly but mistakenly believed all these centuries that the Taj pinnacle depicts a Islamic cresent and star was a lighting conductor installed by the British rulers in India. Contrarily, the pinnacle is a marvel of Hindu metallurgy since the pinnacle made of non rusting alloy, is also perhaps a lightning deflector. That the pinnacle of the replica is drawn in the eastern courtyard is significant because the east is of special importance to the Hindus, as the direction in which the sun rises. The pinnacle on the dome has the word `Allah' on it after capture. The pinnacle figure on the ground does not have the word Allah.

For detailed proof of this discovery,you may read the well known historian Shri. P. N. Oak's celebrated book titled " Tajmahal : The True Story".

Great Hackers

2008-05-18T11:00:00.006+05:30

The 414s
The 414s were a gang of six teenagers named after their Milwaukee, Wisconsin area code, who broke into dozens of computer systems throughout the United States and Canada in 1983.Their exploits included Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank.The incident appeared as the cover storyof Newsweek with the title Beware: Hackers at play,possibly the first mass-media use of the term hacker in the context of computersecurity. As a result, the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on computer security and passed several laws.

Mark Abene
Mark Abene (also known as Phiber Optik) inspired thousands of teenagers around the country to "study" the internal workings of the United States phone system. One of the founders of the Masters of Deception group.

Dark Avenger
Dark Avenger is the pseudonym of a Bulgarian virus writer who invented polymorphic code in 1992 as a means to circumvent the type of pattern recognition used by Anti-virus software, and nowadays also intrusion detection systems.

John Draper
John Draper(also known as Captain Crunch) is widely credited with evangelizing the use of the 2600 hertz tone generated by whistles distributed in Captain Crunch cereal boxes in the 1970s, and sometimes inaccurately credited with discovering their use.Draper served time in prison for his work, and is believed to have introduced Steve Wozniak to phone phreaking through the 2600Hz tone. Draper now develops anti-spam and security software.

Farid Essebar
Farid Essebar (also known as Diabl0) is the creator of Zotob

Nahshon Even-Chaim
Nahshon Even-Chaim (also known as Phoenix) was a leading member of Australianhacking group The Realm. He targeted US defense and nuclear research computer systemsin late 1980s until his capture by Australian Federal Police in 1990. He and fellow Realm members Electron and Nom were the world's first computer intruders prosecuted based on evidence gathered from remote computer intercept.

Markus Hess
Markus Hess is a West German who hacked into United States Military sites and collected information for the KGB,he was eventually tracked down by Clifford Stoll.

Jonathan James(convicted cybercriminal)
Jonathan James(also known as c0mrade) downloaded $1.7 million dollars worth of softwarewhich controlled the International Space Station's life sustaining elements, and intercepted thousands of electronic messages relating to U.S. nuclear activities from the Department of Defense. Sentenced at age 16, he was the youngest person ever incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States.

ne0h
ne0h was reported to have been employed by a Pakistani terrorist with Al-Qaeda connections, in order to steal student information from a Chinese university(reportedly, one comparable to MIT[citation needed]), India's BhabhaAtomic Research Centre, and SIPRNet, the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Data Network.

Adrian Lamo
Lamo surrendered to federal authorities in 2003 after a brief manhunt, and was charged with nontechnical but surprisingly successful intrusions into computer systems at Microsoft, The New York Times, Lexis-Nexis, MCI WorldCom, SBC, Yahoo!, and others. His methods were controversial, and his full-disclosure-by-media practices led some to assert that he was publicity-motivated.

Vladimir Levin
Vladimir Levin allegedly masterminded the Russian hacker gang that tricked Citibank's computers into spitting out $10 million. To this day, the method used, or even if Vladimirwas a mathematician, is unknown.

Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick was held in jail for four and a half years and released on January 21,2000. He was convicted of computer related crimes and possession of several forged identification documents. Once "the most wanted man in cyberspace", Mitnick went on to be a prolific public speaker, author, and media personality.

Robert Tappan Morris
Robert T. Morris, while a graduate student at Cornell University in 1988, created the first worm, Morris Worm, which used buffer overflows to propagate. He is the son of Robert Morris, the former chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA). Morris was not exactly a hacker of the computer security hacker culture, but a user of the MIT-AI, the home machine of the early academic hacker culture. According to Steven Levy, he was a true hacker who blundered.

v00d00
Jason Burks born October 2 1976, also referred to as "v00d00" is a former computer hacker, and malicious software writer. He is best known for writing the Juggernaut Hydra, and releasing it into the Progressive Insurance mainframe.

Craig Neidorf
In 1990, Neidorf (a co-founder of Phrack) was prosecuted for stealing the E911 documentfrom BellSouth and publicly distributing it online. BellSouth claimed that the document was worth $80,000; they dropped the charges after it was revealed that copies of the document could simply be ordered for a minuscule $13.

Brian Salcedo
Brian Salcedo was convicted in 2004 of conspiracy to commit wire and computer fraud for hacking the Lowe's home improvement chain's unsecured wireless LAN in an attempt to capture credit card numbers used during transactions. The FBI claimed that the crime could have caused more than $2.5 million in damages. He was sentenced to 9 years in federal prison. The government claims that at the time of its imposition, Brian Salcedo'ssentence was the longest federal prison sentence ever given for a computer related offense.

David L. Smith
In 1999, Smith launched the Melissa Worm, causing $80 million dollars worth of damageto businesses. Originally sentenced to 40 years, he eventually served only 20 monthswhen he agreed to work undercover for the FBI.

Altrenatives for Google applications

2008-03-16T00:52:00.004+05:30

Google is the soul of Internet but still for some netizens who want to get out of the google-grip.Here are some alternatives ::
1.Thunderbird
Thunderbird is right behind it in terms of usefulness, functionality, speed and extensibility. Thunderbird, although not an online app, is a great alternative to Gmail.
2. 30 Boxes.
Although the simple and fast Gcal meets all needs perfectly, 30 boxes is just as fast and easy, and is loved by many. If Gcal didn’t integrate with Gmail, people would probably be using 30 Boxes.
3. Netvibes.
Netvibes can not only hold all of your feeds in an organized way, it can replace both Reader and Google Personalized Homepage. A great way to organize all your favorite services in a personalized way.

4. Zoho Office Suite.

Perhaps the best online alternative to the Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Zoho has just about everything you’d ever need: a spreadsheet, word processor, presentation program, project manager, notebook, wiki, web conferencing, mail, chat, database and CRM. This might actually be my choice of the future.

5. Peepel. This new offering takes my online OS model almost literally — it offers a desktop environment from within your browser. This service contains office apps, accessible anywhere online, including a word processor, spreadsheet and more. It’s limited in its current beta release, but it has potential and plans to expand in the future. Replaces Google Docs and Spreadsheets

6. Bloglines.

If Netvibes or Google Reader isn’t for you, Bloglines is another popular and excellent choice.

7. Zimbra Collaboration Suite.

Yet another online office suite, Zimbra started out with email/calendar functionality and has since launched spreadsheet and word processing apps. It is open-source with an API that could have many uses. Another alternative to Google Docs and Spreadsheets

8. ThinkFree Online.

Billed as the “best online office on earth”, ThinkFree aims to ween people from Microsoft Office to is web office suite. It has spreadsheet, word processing and presentation apps, online storage, document sharing and more. Unfortunately, only some of that functionality is free, but it’s still an interesting suite. Replaces Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

9. OpenOffice.org.

It’s not an online appliaction, but it offers everything Microsoft Office can give you, but for free, and without all the bloat. Replaces Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

10. Flickr.

An obvious choice as a replacement for Google’s Picasa web photo service, Yahoo’s Flickr is actually much more popular.

Links to check:
life hack

Top Firefox extensions to avoid

2008-03-15T23:46:00.005+05:30

Firefox extensions ,known as ADD-ONs,enhances your browsing experience without any nasty side effects.But some extensions are "bad" in unapparent ways, or just don't provide enough benefits to be worth running because either they crash your browser or suck up all your CPU power) either get fixed quickly or simply vanish.So lets have a glimpse of these ADD-ONs

1.Fasterfox/Cooliris
This Web accelerator has a "pre-fetching" mechanism.While your system is idle, Fasterfox silently starts following links and downloading the destination pages. The idea is that if you then decide to click on one of these links, the page is already cached on your local machine and will pop up very quickly.This is an waste of bandwidth.
2.NoScript
This extension is hugely popular and works as advertised, giving you control over which JavaScript, Java and other executable content on a page can run, depending on that content's source domain. You whitelist the sites you consider safe and blacklist the sites you don't.But for the average Web surfer, constantly having to whitelist sites so that scripts can execute in order to give you a fully formed Web experience gets tedious very quickly.Most typical Web surfers who install this extension remove it after some time.
3.PDF Download
PDF Download lets you control how Firefox handles PDF files when you click on them -- you can display a pop-up box that lets you choose whether to download, open or view the file as HTML.The extension can run into trouble when it tries to handle certain PDFs. Some Web sites send you to a "silent interstitial" page for tracking purposes or some other reason, then redirect you to the PDF. In these cases, the extension won't work. Usually when this happens, PDF Download just gets bypassed, but we've had Firefox freeze up when dealing with redirected PDFs.
4.VideoDownloader
The problem is that the extension has to connect to a Web site in order to work, and more often than not, you'll find that instead of a download window, what you get is "Service Temporarily Unavailable." When it does finally work, the download is infuriatingly slow.Perhaps the extension is a victim of its own success, but until the server issues are addressed, save yourself some aggravation and skip this one.
5.Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is a really nifty extension to use, as long as you know what you're doing with it. It can potentially get you in trouble because it allows JavaScripts written by other people to run in Firefox. If one of those scripts is malicious, your system could be at risk.To stay out of trouble, you should use Greasemonkey only with scripts you know are safe, either because you're familiar enough with JavaScript to satisfy yourself or because the script has enough comments at userscripts.org to indicate that people are using it with no ill effects.
6.ScribeFire
This falls into the category of extensions that seem pointless. What we have here is a browser-based tool for writing blog posts. But don't most blogs already have a browser-based editor that works just fine? If you do happen to be using blogging software without a decent editor, ScribeFire would be a fine addition to your extension toolbox.But until we come upon such a case we'd rather skip the overhead of an extension and stick to our blogging software's built-in editor.
7.TrackMeNot
The technique used in TrackMeNot is questionable. The extension runs in the background while you surf, and sends random search queries to AOL, Yahoo, Google and MSN search engines. What a waste of system resources for both you and the search engines you rely on!
8.Tabbrowser Preferences
The problem is that if you uninstall the extension, it doesn't reset your tab settings, leaving you with tweaks that you have to undo by going to the about:config page, which many users don't understand or even know about.If you uninstall an extension, you do so for a reason, and once it's uninstalled, the browser should be reset to its default state.

Links to check -
Computer World