TecH GaraGe

Karnataka Elections 2023: The Handslide

2023-05-14T01:22:00.003+05:30

The Congress party won the 2023 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election by a landslide, winning 126 seats and forming the government. The BJP, which was in power for the last five years, was reduced to 39 seats. The Janata Dal (Secular) won 37 seats.

There were several reasons for the Congress's victory. One reason was the anti-incumbency factor. The BJP had been in power for five years, and there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the government's performance. The Congress was able to capitalize on this dissatisfaction and win over many voters.

Another reason for the Congress's victory was its strong local leadership. The party had a strong organization in Karnataka, and it was able to mobilize its supporters effectively. The BJP, on the other hand, was seen as being out of touch with the people of Karnataka.

The Congress also benefited from the fact that it was able to project a more secular image than the BJP. The BJP has been accused of being too close to the Hindutva ideology, and this alienated many voters in Karnataka. The Congress, on the other hand, was able to appeal to a wider range of voters, including Muslims and Dalits.

Finally, the Congress also benefited from the fact that it was able to get its message across to voters. The party ran a well-organized campaign, and it was able to reach out to voters through a variety of channels, including social media and door-to-door campaigning. The BJP, on the other hand, was not as effective in its outreach efforts.

The Congress's victory in Karnataka is a significant development. It shows that the party is still a force to be reckoned with in Indian politics. The BJP, on the other hand, will need to do some soul-searching if it wants to return to power in Karnataka.

Future of AI

2023-05-14T01:15:00.000+05:30

The Future of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important technologies of our time. It is already having a major impact on our lives, and its influence is only going to grow in the years to come.

AI is already being used in a wide variety of applications, including:

Natural language processing: AI is used to understand human language, which is essential for applications like speech recognition and machine translation.
Image recognition: AI is used to identify objects and patterns in images, which is used in applications like facial recognition and self-driving cars.
Machine learning: AI is used to train machines to learn from data, which is used in applications like fraud detection and spam filtering.

These are just a few examples of the many ways that AI is being used today. As AI continues to develop, it will be used in even more applications, and its impact on our lives will only grow.

So what does the future hold for AI? Here are a few predictions:

AI will become even more powerful: AI is constantly being improved, and it is likely to become even more powerful in the years to come. This will allow AI to be used for even more complex tasks, such as medical diagnosis and creative writing.
AI will become more integrated into our lives: AI is already being used in a variety of ways, but it is likely to become even more integrated into our lives in the future. For example, AI-powered assistants may become commonplace, and AI may be used to personalize our experiences in a variety of ways.
AI will raise ethical concerns: As AI becomes more powerful and integrated into our lives, it will also raise ethical concerns. For example, there is concern that AI could be used to create autonomous weapons systems, or that it could be used to discriminate against certain groups of people.

It is important to be aware of the potential risks of AI, but it is also important to remember that AI has the potential to do a lot of good. AI can be used to solve some of the world's most pressing problems, such as poverty, disease, and climate change. It is up to us to ensure that AI is used for good, and not for harm.

Are CRED Rewards a Sham?

2023-05-14T01:04:00.000+05:30

CRED is a fintech startup that offers a credit card bill payment app. The app is designed to make it easier for users to pay their credit card bills on time and earn rewards. However, there are some concerns that CRED may not be good for consumers.

One concern is that CRED encourages users to spend more money than they can afford. The app uses gamification and social media to create a sense of competition among users. This can lead to users spending more money in order to climb the leaderboard and earn rewards.

Another concern is that CRED's rewards program is not as generous as it may seem. In order to earn the most rewards, users need to pay their credit card bills on time and in full. However, many users may not be able to do this, especially if they are struggling to make ends meet.

Finally, CRED's privacy policy has been criticized for being too vague. The policy states that CRED may share user data with third-party partners, but it does not specify which partners or what data will be shared. This lack of transparency could make users uncomfortable with sharing their personal information with CRED.

Overall, there are some concerns that CRED may not be good for consumers. The app encourages users to spend more money, its rewards program is not as generous as it may seem, and its privacy policy is vague. If you are considering using CRED, it is important to be aware of these concerns and to make an informed decision.

Welcome Back TG!

2023-05-14T01:01:00.000+05:30

It's been a while since I've written a blog post, but I'm back! I'm so excited to be sharing my thoughts and ideas with you again.

A lot has happened in the past few months. I've been working on some new projects, traveling, and spending time with my family and friends. I've also been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to write about on this blog.

I've decided that I want to focus on writing about things that are important to me, such as my faith, my family, my hobbies, and my thoughts on current events. I also want to share my experiences and insights with you in the hopes that it will help you in some way.

I'm so grateful for your continued support. I hope you'll join me on this journey as I explore new topics and share my thoughts with you.

Thank you for reading!

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.....