BUHTH

Mountain Lion OSX Preview

2012-02-23T22:47:00.001+04:00

Apple’s Mountain Lion OSX debuted last week and has been garnering rave reviews from most tech nerds. It’s not hard to see why. The company is billing Mountain Lion as “the most advanced OS ever,” and by the looks of things that’s just not grandstanding. Many of the “new” features on the system will look familiar to long-time Apple users, as they have been ported straight from iOS.

The iCloud is certainly going to be one of the most popular features. iCloud allows users to store their information — music, documents, videos — on the Cloud, which means less space is taken up on the hard drive. Users will be able to store up to 5GB of information for free, although it will be limited to items bought within the Mac Store.

Messages is another feature that was such a hit in iOS that it’s being ported straight to OSX. Users will find the familiar iChat application gone and in it’s place will stand Messages. This is a huge improvement over an application that didn’t really have anything wrong with it to begin with. Users can now chat with friends using Gmail, Jabber, AIM and Yahoo Instant Message handles, as well as phone numbers. The application fully syncs with iOS, so when you start a conversation at home and have to leave, you can simply pick up your iPhone or iPad and continue.

Finally, the integration of Twitter represents a pretty huge change from anything we’ve seen before from Apple. Safari browsers will now come complete with a “Share” button that will allow pages to be shared via Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. The popular social media platform has also been integrated into Apple’s popular Photo Booth application, so the next time you take a ridiculous picture of yourself using an outrageous filter, you can share it with the world by simply clicking a few buttons.

Mountain Lion OSX will be available to consumers by early Summer 2012.

Melissa is a guest blogger who likes writing about new gadgets, tech news and how to use Dell coupons for deals on new toys.

Google optimizes search of medical symptoms in its search engine

2012-02-15T10:16:00.001+04:00

Google's is trying to be a doctor too. In a recent blog post, the search engine announces a new feature in the results of queries related to symptoms and diseases. However, this feature is new for the moment and restricted to English results only.

Here is a novelty that may or may not be liked by hypochondriacs who used to query Google in any symptoms: the search engine has announced the establishment of research relating to the above results when research are about medical symptoms.

For instance, the result for "abdominal pain on my right side" would propose relative keywords as shown below:

"Our data shows that a search for symptoms is often followed by a search for a related condition." says Google.

"To make the process easier, now when you search for a symptom or set of symptoms, you'll often see a list of possibly related health conditions that you can use to refine your search. "

A feature that allows to put names on symptoms, but may probably lead to some additional panic among surfers who easily replace a query over the Internet to a visit to a real doctor. Currently limited to results in English, it is unclear whether Google plans to adapt this new feature in other languages or not.

Download LibreOffice 3.5 - final version

2012-02-15T09:56:00.003+04:00

The LibreOffice software, issue of the OpenOffice.org project and implemented by The Document Foundation, is now in version 3.5 with several new features for its desktop applications.

The 80 developers who participated in the development of this version have first worked on the functionality of the spell checker in the word processing software Writer. In addition to good typographical tools, the latter has a new interface for headings, line breaks and footers. Note also that the window for viewing the status of a document is updated in real time (number of words).

The spreadsheets manager Calc now supports up to 10,000 sheets. Functions (macros) have been made compatible with ODF OpenFormula specifications. The application would also show better performance when importing Excel files.

The vector drawing tool Draw, halfway between Inkscape and Microsoft Publisher, and Impress presentation software, allows imports of geometric figures from a PPT or PPTX file. The Document Foundation adds that it is now possible to insert a media file and import a document from Microsoft Visio.

LibreOffice 3.5 finally ships 'Base', a relational database management system. The latter was originally built in OpenOffice version 2.0.

Although it is a final version, the Document Foundation does not recommend updating as among advanced users and advises others to stay on version 3.4. Learn more about the new features on this page.

Windows

LibO_3.5.0_Win_x86_install_multi.msi 201 MB
LibO_3.5.0_Win_x86_helppack_en-US.msi 7.9 MB (en-US - English (US))

Mac

LibO_3.5.0_MacOS_PPC_install_en-US.dmg 206 MB - PPC
or
LibO_3.5.0_MacOS_x86_install_en-US.dmg 200 MB - Intel

Yearly Report - First Year Online

2012-02-15T09:23:00.002+04:00

BUHTH was launched in March 2011 maintained by Ibn Omar, a blog on software, web application and programming. I've been wondering for where I've reached for the first year of blogging, so I've done a small analysis and personally i consider it to be a success.

I've reached exactly 100 articles including:
Software and Web application News on Google, Firefox, and others.
Tutorials on web development and programming among others.
Tips on software and web application.
Software and web application Reviews.

Traffics and Pagerank
Well I know I'm still new but I must say I'm satisfied with over 250 000 pageviews for the first year. After a few month I've started this blog, i surprisingly got a pagerank 3, i even wrote a post on it but unfortunately this year it drop to 1, don't know what are the reasons yet but I'm working on it.

Subscribers stats
Facebook - over 900
Twitter - over 500
Feedburner - over 400

Earnings:
Hired for Writing - over $1000
Affiliate - over $500
Ads - over $200

Amount spend for marketing is around $100

Well that's why i consider my first year to be a success, i didn't expect this on the very first year. As a student (in Web and Multimedia Development) I am very happy and satisfied with this. In fact I've been able to pay my university fees for the first year with it. Hopefully the second year too. So my following report is scheduled to be on March 2013 and hopefully it will be better. ^^

From your experiences, may be you can suggest things to me!

If you want to be part of my blog and read my future posts, please follow me on either Facebook, Twitter or in your feed reader!

You may also subscribe for my newsletter below!

Add a relative Date format under Wordpress a bit like facebook

2012-02-12T12:34:00.000+04:00

There is a function that can be used in order to display the date on WordPress in a relative format such as "about 5 minutes or 7 hours or 5 days or 5 weeks or 3 months or 2 years"

Steps for the posts
Find the file single.php or content-single.php (which your need to get into functions.php to modify the function yourtheme_posted_on.

Locate the line which diplay the dat and replace it by:
<?php echo 'about ' . human_time_diff(get_the_time('U'), current_time('timestamp')) ; ?>

This will result in: about XX days

Steps for the comments
Locate the line for date in comments and replace it by:

<?php echo 'about ' . human_time_diff(get_comment_time('U'), current_time('timestamp')) ; ?>

Note: you can change about by any other word.

How to desactivate password reset on WordPress

2012-02-12T11:42:00.001+04:00

One way to secure your WordPress blog from hackers is prevent them from changing your password from a user account or email. The following plugin by D. Herman will help you to set only connected admins would be able to change the password.

<?php
/*
* Plugin Name: Password Reset Removed
* Description: Removes the ability for non admin users to change/reset their passwords.
* Version: 1.0
* Author: Derek Herman
* Author URI: http://valendesigns.com
*/
class Password_Reset_Removed
{

function __construct()
{
add_filter( 'show_password_fields', array( $this, 'disable' ) );
add_filter( 'allow_password_reset', array( $this, 'disable' ) );
add_filter( 'gettext', array( $this, 'remove' ) );
}

function disable()
{
if ( is_admin() ) {
$userdata = wp_get_current_user();
$user = new WP_User($userdata->ID);
if ( !empty( $user->roles ) && is_array( $user->roles ) && $user->roles[0] == 'administrator' )
return true;
}
return false;
}

function remove($text)
{
return str_replace( array('Lost your password?', 'Lost your password'), '', trim($text, '?') );
}
}

$pass_reset_removed = new Password_Reset_Removed();
?>

Steps
Connect to your FTP server with your FTP client, then create a new folder and name it mu-plugins in the folder /wp-content/

mu stand for must-use in "mu-plugins" whereby all the plugins within that folder will be activated automatically.

Create a new PHP file and paste the above code into it, save it, rename it (e.g lost-pass.php) and finally upload it to your server.

Reinitialise your wordpress password via ftp

2012-02-12T07:58:00.001+04:00

There is a PHP command which allow you to reset your WordPress password with the condition that you have in your possession the username and ID.

The site administrator is still the first account which greatly facilitates things as with an admin account you can change any other account.

Get the file functions.php which can be found within the theme folder under /wp-content/themes/THEME_NAME/ make a backup first, then open it.

Next, place the following codes in the beginning of the file:

<?php
$user_id = 1;
$password = 'newpassword';
wp_set_password( $password, $user_id );
?>

Save the file and then open the login page. Before validating immediately delete these lines of code, otherwise the password will be reset on each page load and therefore the connection itself. Don't forget to remove them else you'll stay on the login page.

How to create a family tree with SELECT SSADM

2012-02-09T17:07:00.002+04:00

SELECT SSADM is a powerful software (CASE TOOL) which is used to draw DFD (Data Flow Diagrams) and ELH (Entity Life Histories), among others. Well you can use other software to do this like paint or Photoshop, however, SELECT SSADM is a professional tool just to create these stuffs. You don't need to draw lines or boxes you just need to add parents, children or brothers to your diagram. So to create a family tree, we can use ELH or Structure Diagrams.

Open SELECT SSADM and click on "Project" and choose "New".
Enter a title and a path for the directory such as C:\TEMP\ELH01

After you click on create you'll get a second prompt box as in the screenshot above, choose "Yes".
Another box with appear saying "Project created ok", click "OK". The screen will be blank.

So if you were already running a project, you just need to skip this step and click on the "white button" as in the following screenshot to choose a diagram.

Then a box will appear, in "type of diagram" select "ELH" and click "Create". You'll get a white screen and another box will appear prompting you to enter parent entity for ELH as follow:

I've entered PARENT.
Then click OK.
SSADM will generate the first parent box in it written PARENT. Also you notice written "OPERATION LIST" on the white background, just right-click on it and click "Hide".
You can move the parent box anywhere on the white background.

Now to add a child just right-click on the parent box and click "Add Child > Structure Box", a box will be created under it as a child. Double click on the blank box to give it a name. Write the name and click OK, you'll get the following.

In my case i've put "ME". Instead you can put your name, etc..

Now if you have brothers or sisters, you can add them by click on the child box, andd choose "Add Brother > Structure Box". Similarly double click on the box generated to give it a name. Do same to add another brother or sister. We have reach the following:

You can continue to add children and brothers as much as you want.
You can move the boxes already created to suit you views.
Finally, you can print it or do a screenshot and save it.

BTjunkie the .torrent search engine is now closed (2005 - 2012)

2012-02-09T12:24:00.003+04:00

The search engine that specializes in .torrent links, BTjunkie, announced its voluntary closure during the night from Sunday to Monday, after seven years of existence.

Launched in 2005, BTjunkie was as a global engine dedicated to BitTorrent download link (.torrent). Besides the possibility for users to store their own links, it had a robot able to go searching for other content sources, and thus presented a database of more than four million pieces of content.

On the night of Sunday to Monday, the site administrators have chosen to close the site, and the following is now displayed on the site homepage:

BTjunkie was very popular, and had alternatives such as The Pirate Bay or Isohunt but was never directly concerned by the court, even if btjunkie was included in the blacklist sharing sites established by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In early 2011, the Italian courts had compelled the local access providers to block access to the site. For several months it was also the subject of a restriction on the search results returned by Google.

Download Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.4 - Mac only!

2012-02-09T12:07:00.002+04:00

Carbon Copy Cloner is an easy-to-use backup utility: Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it. Try it 'til you trust it.

In its simplest form, CCC will clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. This is very useful if, for example, your laptop is damaged and you must send it in for repair.

CCC can also be used to perform regular backups of your data. When you select a source disk in CCC, you are presented with the contents of that disk (hidden items too). Simply uncheck the items that you do not want to backup, and CCC will provide ample indication what will and will not be copied. Select a target disk to which you would like to backup, then press the clone button.

The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly. When left to a human, the task often gets tacked on to the end of a very long list of other things to do. When you eventually have a catastrophe, the data is simply gone. You know that feeling -- you just lost six years of family photos. Your kids being born, their first birthdays, their first everything. The answer to this is consistent and regular backups, placed on a schedule and handled automatically by your computer. CCC includes that functionality, and takes it even further.

Download Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.4

What's New - Version 3.4.4:
- Made several changes to the preset configurations. Both the wording and some of the settings have been changed in response to user feedback and typical usage scenarios.
- New feature: CCC now provides support for archiving and cloning the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Recovery HD partition. Choose "Disk Center" from CCC's Window menu to find this functionality.
- New feature: Scheduled tasks can now be configured to wake or boot the system when the task is scheduled to run.
- New feature: For users with a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Installer application in /Applications, CCC's Source menu now includes a handy "Create a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Installer..." choice that will clone the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Installation disk image onto a physical volume.
- Window positioning of the scheduled task helper application is now retained on a per-task basis, so you can move these windows around on your screen and multiple tasks won't be stacked on top of each other.
- CCC will now mention the lack of a Recovery HD partition in the Cloning Coach prior to running the initial backup task.
- The table of scheduled tasks in the Scheduler window are now sorted alphabetically by default.
- Fixed a scheduler issue in which tasks scheduled to run on the first (any weekday) of the current month would be scheduled to run in the following month.
- Fixed an issue in which CCC was not "remembering" the last preset that had been selected upon relaunching CCC.
- Fixed an issue with the German localization related to the application of a particular setting in custom presets.
- Fixed an issue in which a scheduled task had trouble mounting a disk image when uncommon permissions conditions were present (such as when a system is bound to an Active Directory directory service).
- The "This volume will be bootable" message is back, though with a caveat that I have to insist upon from a support perspective. Many external hard drive enclosures still manage to screw up the boot process, and it's impossible for me to determine if that is going to happen for any particular user from within CCC.
- When backing up to a subfolder, CCC now overlays an icon of the underlying volume on the folder icon in the task status panel.
- Scheduled tasks that specify a network volume as the destination are now aborted when CCC receives a sleep notification.
- Growl notifications should now work properly on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with Growl 1.3.
- Email notifications now include the sender's full name.
- Fixed a couple minor bugs associated with email notifications.
- Fixed an issue in which the scheduled task window would be unresponsive while CCC waited for a response from an email server.
- Added support for sending email to servers that use a self-signed certificate. This support is disabled by default, see the documentation for details on enabling this functionality.
- Resolved a problem in which an errant filter would protect items in folders that were to be deleted, resulting in CCC reporting that it couldn't replace a particular folder or application.
- Fixed a minor 5-second shutdown hang associated with CCC scheduled tasks.
- Numerous tweaks to the advice that CCC offers for various error conditions.
- Fixed some Mac OS X 10.7 Lion-specific problems with the mounting of sparsebundle disk image files that are hosted on a network volume.
- If you're running an ad hoc task in CCC (e.g. click "Clone" in the main window), CCC will ask before deleting anything from the _CCC Archives folder. To avoid problems that would affect automation, this warning is not provided for scheduled tasks.
- CCC is more proactive about dealing with the 4GB file size limitation of FAT32 volumes. Files larger than 4GB will now be excluded by default, and you'll get a warning of this exclusion before running the task.
- Fixed a hang that would occur at the end of a scheduled task while CCC tried to unmount the destination volume (network volumes only, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion only).
- Made some cosmetic changes concerning ZFS support.
- Mail account settings on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion are now properly imported and populated into the email notifications tab of the scheduled tasks window.
- The path to a disk image file is now properly provided as the fourth argument to postflight scripts.
- Fixed a 30 second hang that would occur while saving changes to scheduled tasks on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. For every OS, though, saving scheduled tasks should be considerably faster.

Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later

Reviewed by MacUpdate.
Developper's site

HTML: Organizing texts, creating links and inserting images

2012-02-08T15:34:00.002+04:00

After our introduction article to HTML, now we put forward another article on how to organize texts, create links and insert images in HTML.

Organizing the text of a web page

Yes! a blank page is useless, lets try some more cool things on our web page.

What our page need now is some content added to it, that is some text, image or even video. Well don't rush we'll start with text implementation first. There exists different types of texts and throughout this course we'll learn how to write them, make paragraphs, titles, give importance to some text (bold, italic etc) and some rare tags that you might need one day.

Paragraphs
It is quite easy to write some text and make them in paragraphs in HTML. Paragraphs function with the tag <p> and ends with </p>. (p means paragraph^^)

Do you still remember the first page we created? if not, you may want to go back and see it again. Ok so if we want to implement a paragraph in that page we simple need to place it between the tags <body> and </body>.

Lets make a paragraph:

<p>BUHTH is a technology blog on software and webware (web application) launched in 2011. The main goal of BUHTH is to show people how to benefit more from software and webware they enjoy using.</p>

Now lets place this paragraph in our .html page and it should look like:

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to buhth.com !</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>BUHTH is a technology blog on software and webware (web application) launched in 2011. The main goal of BUHTH is to show people how to benefit more from software and webware they enjoy using.</p>
</body>
</html>

Now save your .html page and click on it to see your first paragraph. Well its a good start ! We have some text on our page. It is no more "blank" !

See Demo

Note: If you want to leave a line in the same paragraph and write on the next line, you won't be able, you'll have to write it between another <p> and </p> tags again. It is not possible to press "Enter" on your keyboard to leave a line for HTML. However it exist a tag that can replace your keyboard "Enter" button to write on the next line without changing paragraph and it is <br/>. Here the slash is after the words in the tag.

Titles
Before you get confused i would like to make this clear first. The tag <title> </title> are for the title of the page which we write between the <head> </head> tags. Here we will talk about the title of our page content, titles of the articles, etc..

You may write anything but without a title there is very low chance that people will read it! In HTML there is 6 size of titles that we can use. Sounds great ! Hence there are 6 differents tags that we will learn for the titles. All are base on the importance of the title, from 'most important' to 'not important at all', so it depends on what you writes. See the new tags for titles below:

<h1> </h1> - This tag is used for 'most important title' - generally used for the title of a page on top.
<h2> </h2> - This tag is for 'important titles' and can be used for the title of any new paragraphs.
<h3> </h3> - This tag is almost the same, and is used for 'subtitles' more commonly.
<h4> </h4> - This tag is for titles which are 'less important'.
<h5> </h5> - This tag is for titles which are 'not important'.
<h6> </h6> - And finally this one is for titles which are 'not important at all'.

Most of the time we will use the first three tags which is h1, h2 and h3 as the three rests are not that important. Noting that browsers will display these title tags on 6 different levels. That is, h1 will be bigger and h6 will be smaller in size. Lets see an example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to buhth.com !</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This tag is used for 'most important title' .</h1>
<h2>This tag is for 'important titles'</h2>
<h3>This tag is almost the same, and is used for 'subtitles' more commonly.</h3>
<h4>This tag is for titles which are 'less important'.</h4>
<h5>This tag is for titles which are 'not important'.</h5>
<h6>And finally this one is for titles which are 'not important at all'.</h6>
</body>
</html>

See Demo

If you have grasp enough, may be you can try a title and a paragraph by yourself to see if you can do it.

Adding value to the text
Now we'll try to give some value to the text, that is making some text more important in a same paragraph.

Make your text italic

To make a text in italic we use the tags <i> and </i> or <em> and </em>. See example below:

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to buhth.com !</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>BUHTH is a <i>technology</i> blog on <em>software</em> and webware (web application) launched in 2011. The main goal of BUHTH is to show people how to benefit more from software and webware they enjoy using.</p>
</body>
</html>

See Demo

The words technology and software is made italic with the tags <i> </i> and <em> </em>. You can use either tags but not both for the same word or phrase or paragraph etc..

Make your text bold
To make a text in bold we use the tags <b> and </b> or <strong> and </strong>. See example below:

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to buhth.com !</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>BUHTH is a <b>technology</b> blog on <strong>software</strong> and webware (web application) launched in 2011. The main goal of BUHTH is to show people how to benefit more from software and webware they enjoy using.</p>
</body>
</html>

See Demo

The words technology and software is made bold with the tags <b> </b> and <strong> </strong>. You can use either tags but not both for the same word or phrase or paragraph etc..

Make your text UNDERLINE
Do the same as for bold and italic but in the place of placing your words or phrases between <b> </b>or <i> </i>, place them between the tags <u> </u>.. For example:

<u> My name is technology</u>.

Will result in:

My name is technology

Some other tags for texts
I know we have learn many tags till here and here we'll learn some more tags but we are not going to learn all the tags that exists now as it will be too long.

References or powers (like in mathematics) and indices
No ! we are not going to learn mathematics, I'm not good in that^^. We will try to make the text above the main text. For example: 21^st century. See the "st" higher than the number "21". To do so we use the tags <sup> and </sup>

On the other hand, if we want to make a word lower that the main text then we use the tags <sub> and </sub>. For example: SONY_TM, the TM is lower than the word SONY. Ok now lets apply this in our .html page.

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to buhth.com !</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The 21<sup>st</sup> century is full of technology and SONY<sub>TM</sub> is one of the most influential technology brands.</p>
</body>
</html>

See Demo

Quotes
To quote a "phrase" or a "word" in a paragraph we simply use the tags <q> </q>. This is for short quotes. Now if we want to quote a large amount of text, lets says a paragraph entirely then we will use the tags <blockquote> </blockquote> Lets try it:

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to buhth.com !</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>We are testing a blockquote and a simple quote.</p>
<blockquote>Notepad++ is a free source code editor that thousands of webmasters and web designers are using to create, build and edit web pages. In fact if you are a <q>beginner</q> to web design and web development, then this is the best tool you can possess. It is easy and simple to use. The latest version distinguish the tags by colors and help you concentrate on what you are coding more.</blockquote>
</body>
</html>

See Demo

You can clearly see that paragraph has been quoted and it has moved a bit from the starting line. And also the word beginner is in double inverted comas (quote).

Acronyms
Another cool tricks in HTML is acronym, you use this so that when someone hover their cursor over a certain text, there is some other text that appears. People use this to highlight shortcut words (acronyms). For example, hover your cursor over the word HTML. Do you see some other text (HyperText Markup Language) describing the word HTML appears? this is what we are going to do !

To make this, we simple writes:

<acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>

And the results is:

HTML

Hover over the word HTML again to see it. You can do this with any words and put whatever titles you want. You can use acronyms in any paragraphs.

Creating links in a web page

After we have learn about tags and attributes and how to make a page in HTML, now we move on to the next part which is creating links in those pages. A link is simply some text on which we can click to go to another web page.

Relative and Absolute links
There is two types of links which are relative and absolute. These are used for:

Internal links: those links which link to your pages within your site as normally your site will contain one or more pages. For example: "home.html" or "contact.html". Normally they are short and these are relative links.

External links: those links which link to external websites and web pages. For example "http://www.buhth.com" or to a precise link "http://www.buhth.com/p/about-buhth.html". Normally they are long and starts with http:// and these are absolute links.

What people use more are absolute links: "http://www.buhth.com/p/about-buhth.html", they are more simple to use.

Now if you have created two .html file on your computer and have placed it in the same folder, for example:
c:\webpages\page1.html
c:\webpages\page2.html

If you want to place a link in page1.html that link to page2.html (which are in the same folder) you simply have to write "page2.html"

However if the files are not located in the same folder, for example:
c:\webpages\page1.html
c:\webpages\archive\page5.html

In this case if you want to link page5.html on page1.html you have to write "archive/page5.html". If ever there are more folders, then you add them separating with a slash for each level.

Another case is that you may want to link to page1.html on page5.html. Then we'll write "./page1.html"

Note: On internet we use slash which is / but on windows you will see anti-slash which is \, so you just have to know the level of the folder and change the anti-slash to slash.

We'll learn more on this later when we'll come to the practice phase.

Linking to another page
It is very easy to create links, we simply use the tag <a> and we add the attribute href to it - to add the link.

Lets make a link to buhth:

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to buhth.com !</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hey, i know a very good blog where we can learn HTML & CSS and it is <a href="http://www.buhth.com">buhth</a> go and take a look!</p>
</body>
</html>

See Demo

Yes it was that easy :) - we made our first absolute link^^ which start with (http://), now lets try to do a relative link.

Note: As from now i will not put the complete html page codes in the examples (<html <head <body... and their closing tags, etc), i hope that you have you understand them and have save them somewhere for reference. If not you can always come back to this page or the previous pages and grasp them. So i will simply place the code we are dealing with but when you try them you have to place them in your html page with the complete codes. So get a Notepad saved with these codes and then you just have to replace/change/modify what is between the <body> </body> tags

Lets move on with the relative links, suppose i create two .html file. One with the name qwerty.html and the other with name keyboard.html and they are located in the same folder.

qwerty.html

<h2>Qwerty</h2>
<p>Do you want to choose another <a href="keyboard.html">keyboard</a>?</p>

keyboard.html

<h2>Keyboard</h2>
<p>You are now on keyboard.html</p>

The 'see demo' link below will open the page qwerty.html and when you click on keyboard you will land on keyboard.html
See Demo
This is how relative links are done! there is no need to place http:// + site address etc..

A help box in the link
If you want a help box to appear when hovering on the link (like we've done with the acronym tag), then we simple add the attribute title to the link, example:

<p>Do you want to learn HTML and CSS? go to <a href="http://www.buhth.com" title="A blog on software & Webware featuring web development & programming">buhth.com</a></p>

See Demo
Hover on buhth.com to see the help box appear with what we've put in the title= attribute in blue!

Note:If you want the symbol & to appear in your html page you have to write &

Open a link in a new window
Although some browsers has block this feature and some open this kind of link in a new tab rather than in a new window, the way to do it is that we simply add the attribute target="blank" in the link. When you've clicked on "See Demo" in this course you should have notice that it is opened in a new window or a new tab. Here is how to do this:

<a href="http://www.buhth.com" target="blank">buhth</a>

The result of the above is:

buhth

So when you click on it you see it open either in a new window or a new tab depending on your browser and its version. The thing is that it open in a new thing^^.

A link to send an email
To make the one visiting your page send you an email to your email address you can make a direct link to do that. We do a normal tag and attribute for a normal link but at the place of a link we put mailto:youremail@gmail.com. Example:

To send me an email click <a href="mailto:youremail@gmail.com">here</a>

It will open your default email manager to send an email.
See Demo

Making a link to an anchor text
An anchor text is a reference point that you can place in your HTML page if it is large and contain many paragraphs. When making a link to an anchor text it will direct the visitor on the desired paragraph on the same page by clicking on that link to the anchor text.

To create an create an anchor we simply add the attribute id to a tag, it can be any tag. For example:

<h3 id="my_anchor">My personal blog</h3>

And then we make a link to that anchor as a normal link but in the attribute href we put the symbol # first. For example, to link to the anchor reference point that we just made:

<a href="#my_anchor">Go to my personal blog</a>

Normally this link will be located in the upper part of the page body. So when you will click on that link it will direct you on the text in the tag h3 which says My personal blog which is more lower in the page. As I've said your page should contain many paragraphs, if it contain only one or two paragraphs to the point that it fits your browser space then when you click on that link there will be no difference. The difference is made when there is many paragraphs so that you have to scroll down in the same page to read all the text.
See Demo

Linking to an anchor that is found on another page
This is also possible! And there is nothing complicated in doing it. You just have to place the link (relative or absolute) before the the #anchor in your link that links to an anchor. So now i will create another page to link to the anchors on the page that i've create previously here. For example as i'm using relative link i just put it like this:

Go to:<br/>
<a href="linktoanchor.html#oceans">Oceans</a><br/>
<a href="linktoanchor.html#earthquakes">Earthquakes</a><br/>
<a href="linktoanchor.html#soil">Soil</a><br/>
</p>

So the page name of the page i've created as a sample was linktoanchor.html. You just have to replace it with yours and change the anchors to your ,etc..(i think you know what to do^^)
And the result will be:

Go to:
Oceans
Earthquakes
Soil

See Demo

Inserting Images in a web page

If you want to ad value to your web page you can insert related images in the content of your web page. This not difficult, if you have understand well in the previous chapter how to insert links in a web page (relative and absolute) then you won't fear this chapter.

The different types of Images
An image can be saved in different formats and its size in KB (Kilobyte) or MB (Megabyte) will depend on the format you saved it and the quality of the image too will depend on that. In our basic windows image editor known as "paint" we can save an image in the different formats (see screenshot):

The formats varies when they are a photo, drawing, animated, etc..So we'll try to take a look at them quickly so you'll know which image to save in which format.

Images format that are used on internet
JPEG: This format is very popular and it is most used for digital photos. Normally the extension of this kind of image is .jpg and sometimes .jpeg but they are the same. See an example below:

PNG: PNG is the latest, and it can be transparent (that is only the object in the image that is cropped). Best viewed in firefox:

GIF: The PNG is best as it contain millions of colors whereas GIF only 256 colors, however the only advantage is that GIF can be animated, See example:

These are the most used formats on internet, formats such as .bmp (BITMAP) are good for the bin, they are too large in size and thus slow down the page load if it contain such an image. PNG is light and best to use for your web pages. Also it is better not to leave space and write in block letters, always write in small letters and replace any space with a symbol for example my_photo.jpg

Inserting an Image
Now lets move to the code that we need to insert an image in our HTML page. The tag to insert an image is an alone tag such as <br/> and it is <img/> and this tag can contain a lot of attributes. Two necessary tags are:
src: this attribute will tell your browser where the image is located and it will load it. You can either place an absolute or a relative link for the image. For example an absolute image link would be: src="http://www.buhth.com/cascade.jpg" and a relative link would be src="cascade.jpg".

alt: this attribute is "alternative text". The alternative text will describe what is in the image, for example for the a photo of the nature we put alt="cascade photo". This tag is necessary for your XHTML page to be valid. If you don't use it, your image will still load but it won't be a valid HTML page. Also search engine will know that their is an image which is called "cascade photo" on a certain page and when people will search they will get to your web pages via search engines. Now lets try to insert an image in a web page:

<p>
This is an image that i took at a cascade<br/>
<img src="cascade.jpg" alt="cascade photo"/>
</p>

See Demo

Resizing an image
Resizing an image is easy, for example the image that we've used "cascade.jpg" is 520px x 300px. If i want to re-size it without doing this in an image editor, i just have to add the attribute width and height so that i can put my custom size, as normally it would appear to its default size if you don't add the attributes width and height to it. For example if i want to resize the cascade image to 300px x 100px :

<p>
This is an image that i took at a cascade<br/>
<img src="cascade.jpg" alt="cascade photo" width="300" height="100"/>
</p>

See Demo

Note:You can resize the image according to your needs, however if there is a wallpaper (large image) and you want to resize it to 100px x 100px (small square) then better you do it on an image editor first (making it really 100px x 100px), if not the image will load slowly.

A help box
You can also add a help box when someone put their cursor on the image they will know about what the picture is. To do this we simply add the attribute title to it just like we've done when creating links. For example:

<img src="cascade.jpg" alt="cascade photo" title="This is an image that i took at a cascade"/>

See Demo

So when you place your cursor on the image you see the help box to appear, this is what we've done with tha title attribute.

A click-able image
If you want your reader to click on an image and then land on another page, this is very very easy! We have already done it, we just have to merge them together. So make an absolute link (still remember??) and then we put the image link where we would place an anchor text. For example:

<a href="http://www.buhth.com"><img src="cascade.jpg" alt="cascade photo"/></a>

See Demo

Don't worry about the border around the image, with CSS you can remove it.

Now that you have finished with the bases of HTML, if you don't know about CSS, then start with CSS to make your page appearance better.

You may follow our other posts on HTML to learn more about it.

Javascript Calculators Code

2012-02-08T09:47:00.000+04:00

Javascript calculator using prompt boxes
This code below will generate a simple calculator with 3 prompt boxes, first box you'll insert the first number, second box you'll insert a mathematical operator (+ - * /) and third box you'll insert the second number and finally you'll get the result in an alert box. Moreover if you have inserted the operator incorrectly, there will be an error alert box.

<script language="javascript"></script>

Try it now!

Javascript calculator appear on html page
The code below should be saved into an html page an will result into a wonderful calculator whereby you insert two number and then choose whether to add, subtract them ctc..

<html>

<head>

<title>Javascript Calculator 2</title>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"></script> 

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"></script>

</head>

<body>

<form name="calculator">

First Number: <input type="text" name="digit1">
<br/>
Second Number: <input type="text" name="digit2">
<br/>
<input type="button" value="+" onclick="javascript:addition();">
<input type="button" value="-" onclick="javascript:subtraction();">
<input type="button" value="×" onclick="javascript:multiplication();">
<input type="button" value="÷" onclick="javascript:division();">
<input type="button" value="R" onclick="javascript:modulus();">
<br/>
Result: <input type="text" name="total">

</form>

</body>
</html>

Try it now!

Like a real calculator with frames
The code below should be saved in an html page and will result into a nice framed calculator just as the one used in shops.

<form name="calculator">
<table border="5">
<tr>
<td>
<input type="text" name="input" Size="15">
<br>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<input type="button" name="one" value=" 1 " OnClick="calculator.input.value += '1'">
<input type="button" name="two" value=" 2 " OnCLick="calculator.input.value += '2'">
<input type="button" name="three" value=" 3 " OnClick="calculator.input.value += '3'">
<input type="button" name="plus" value=" + " OnClick="calculator.input.value += ' + '">
<br> 
<input type="button" name="four" value=" 4 " OnClick="calculator.input.value += '4'">
<input type="button" name="five" value=" 5 " OnCLick="calculator.input.value += '5'">
<input type="button" name="six" value=" 6 " OnClick="calculator.input.value += '6'">
<input type="button" name="minus" value=" - " OnClick="calculator.input.value += ' - '">
<br> 
<input type="button" name="seven" value=" 7 " OnClick="calculator.input.value += '7'">
<input type="button" name="eight" value=" 8 " OnCLick="calculator.input.value += '8'">
<input type="button" name="nine" value=" 9 " OnClick="calculator.input.value += '9'">
<input type="button" name="times" value=" x " OnClick="calculator.input.value += ' * '">
<br> 
<input type="button" name="clear" value=" c " OnClick="calculator.input.value = ''">
<input type="button" name="zero" value=" 0 " OnClick="calculator.input.value += '0'">
<input type="button" name="DoIt" value=" = " OnClick="calculator.input.value = eval(calculator.input.value)">
<input type="button" name="div" value=" / " OnClick="calculator.input.value += ' / '">
<br>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

Try it now!
Enjoy!

Download Skype 5.8 for windows will full HD video - Final Version

2012-02-06T12:47:00.003+04:00

A new version of the VoIP software, Skype, is now out.

Skype, a subsidiary of Microsoft, has released version 5.8 of its VoIP software for Windows. It can now make video calls in full HD (1080p). Skype says that this option is only available with compatible webcams including the Logitech C920. That means that the camera itself will take care of the encoding with a full HD record (or HD (720p), depending on the performance of the machine). Skype says that an Internet connection of 2Mb per second is required for full HD.

The Integration with the giant community Facebook has again gone further with the ability to make video calls even with friends who do not have a Skype account. Note that it is also possible to hide his Facebook friends offline. A New Push To Talk button turns off the microphone on the fly via a keyboard shortcut.

In addition to integrating the Bing toolbar, Skype also announced the correction of several bugs and security holes.

Download Skype 5.8 - Official update link from skype

Note: After the update it will prompt you to check your audio/speaker and camera. An Skype will take a photo of you to use on your account from your web cam or you can browse and select a picture from your computer.

Download Firefox 10 - final version

2012-02-02T10:11:00.001+04:00

A new version of Firefox is available for download. The Mozilla browser has now moved to version 10.

Mozilla developers have updated their FTP directories by publishing a new final version of the Firefox browser. It passes to final version 10 actually about six weeks after the availability of Firefox 9.

This new version is characterized by an automatic update in the background with a better management of extensions. Specifically, rather than blocking the extensions that are not specifically developed for Firefox 10, the browser will assume that they are readily compatible. Mozilla says the add-ons developed for Firefox 4 should work fine on Firefox 10. Developers will also be able to deploy faster fixes for them.

Among the other new features introduced in Firefox 10 we have a full screen mode for web applications. Rather than pressing the traditional shortcut F11, this display can be set to one element of a web page in particular, for example by being associated with a tag type <video> or an iframe. Firefox 10 is the first edition of ESR (Extended Support Release - with extended support), facilitating the deployment and management of the browser in enterprise.

The mobile edition of Firefox enhances the management of multipoint directly on the web pages based on W3C recommendations Touch Events. Thus, web developers can now make use of JavaScript to provide a richer navigation within their sites. Navigation is optimized through the hardware acceleration (OpenGL ES).

Download Firefox 10 - final version - Windows
Download Firefox 10 - final version - Mac OS X
Download Firefox 10 - final version - Linux

Pwn2Own 2012 promises up to 60 000 dollars as reward to hackers

2012-01-27T14:26:00.002+04:00

The organizers of the CanSecWest hacking contest just indicate that they have slightly modified the appointment functioning. Instead of naming a single winner, a podium will be drawn and each winner will get between 15 000 and 60 000 dollars.

For those who don't know, the Pwn2Own is a meeting of the world of hacking. It gathers annually specialists to exploit security holes present in mobile operating systems or browsers. For the 2012 edition, the organizers say they will change the staffing system.

Thus, there will be three winners. The first will walk away with 60 000 dollars, the second with 30 000 and the third with 15 000 dollars. The organizers state that the publisher HP will sponsor the event and provide the rewards. Google will be a partner and will give 20 000 dollars as reward for vulnerabilities found in the Chrome browser.

The contest will be held in Vancouver, Canada from 7 to 9 March 2012. The browsers that will be targeted are Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Mozilla. The only clarification is that they will operate on Windows 7 or Lion. Similarly, under the traditional conditions of participation, the version tested should be the latest issued by the publisher.

However, this year, the smartphone hacks will not be part of the competition.

Download Opera 11.61 - final version

2012-01-27T13:57:00.004+04:00

The Norwegian editor Opera Software announces the release of a new version of its browser.

24 hours after the release of a candidate release, the Opera Desktop Team Announces the availability of a final version of the browser, now in version 11.61. On its official blog, the team said briefly that this update was recommended as it has fixed some problems related to security and the stability of the software.

Nearly forty bugs have been reviewed at both the user interface, the runtime or third-party applications like Mail, Chat and Newsgroup. In terms of security, Opera 11.61 fixes a vulnerability through which a malicious user could inject malicious code via a cross-scripting attack. Note also a patch for a vulnerability which allows to know the location of local files on the victim's computer.

Download Opera 11.61 - final version - direct link

MegaUpload: closing order

2012-01-21T11:20:00.001+04:00

American justice has decided to close the MegaUpload site. It has five charges against the company and also of its founders. In its decision, the Court details the functioning, the economic model of the platform and condemned it for having reverted money to its contributors.

The indictment is not only directed against the legal entity (MegaUpload) but also against the creator of the site Dotcom Kim (or Kim Schmitz) and other "founding fathers" of the platform such as Julius Bencko, Sven Echternach, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann, Andrus appointed and Bram Van der Kolk. Besides closing the gate, the U.S. court seeks to condemn these people personally for their alleged illegal activity.

According to the charges, all sites of the galaxy; Mega and its officers are accused of racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering but also to have used and invested in a computer network distribution of copyrighted content without permission.

The Grand Jury adds that MegaUpload had "reproduced and distributed millions of copies of cultural content (movies, TV programs, ebooks, images, video games and software) in violation of copyright" for nearly five years. It also notes that the portal does not offer a search engine but is based on "hundreds of third party sites that offer links" directing the user to the content. For the Court, this is a method of concealment.

These people considered part of the "Mega Conspiracy" would have won no less than $175 million through the functioning of the site. The Grand Jury also believes that the activity of the platform would have caused $500 million of damages to the cultural industry. Rated as the 13th most visited site, the judges added that 180 million users are registered and that on average the site receives 50 million hits per day and represent 4% of daily traffic worldwide.

The Court also dissects the income of the site. They says that the online registration and advertising are the two main sources of revenue for MegaUpload. The first source (premium registration) would have generated $150 million. However, advertising seems to be a vector of input far side of money with only 25 million. Another important point, the jury noted that the company redistributed a portion of its revenue to its largest contributors, but it makes no payment to the estate. It is formally accused of conducting illegal activity and to benefit its members.

In its indictment, the Justice specifically target those responsible for this "conspiracy". At its head, Kim Schmitz also known as Kim Dotcom and Kim Tim Jim Vestor have employed 30 people in 9 countries. Through its activity, the judges considered him to have personally received $42 million in 2010.
Finn Batato (Germany) is identified as the head of marketing and would have earn 400,000 dollars.
Julius Bencko, the graphic director would have received 1 million,
Sven Echternach (head of business development) $500 000 dollars,
Mathias Ortmann (technical manager) would have earned 9 million,
Andrus Nomm (developer) $100,000 and
Bram Van der Kolk (programmer) 2 million.

Mega Indictment

45,000 Facebook IDs retrieved by the worm Ramnit.C

2012-01-11T12:39:00.000+04:00

A variant of the Ramnit worm (Ramnit.C) targets the Facebook community network and many European countries would be affected countries.

The security cabinet Seculert said to have observed a variant of this worm targeting the Facebook network. Around 45,000 accounts are already infected, more particularly in France and UK. The hackers behind the Ramnit worm are suspected to be retrieving IDs and use these to connect to the accounts of the victims and make fraudulent links transfer to their friends. Thus victims using the same password for other online accounts are encouraged to modify it.

The worm was discovered in April 2010 by the Centre for Protection of Microsoft, the Ramnit worm appears as a complex malware infecting Windows executable files and HTML pages. According to Microsoft it would be able to retrieve sensitive information such as identifiers of FTP software or browser cookies.

According Seculert, the analysts of Symantec explained in their annual report that the variants of Ramnit accounted for 17.3% of all new infections. The experts said that they had notified Facebook of these discoveries.

Download Thunderbird 9.0.1

2012-01-01T00:33:00.001+04:00

The Thunderbird email client password version 9.0. The opportunity for Mozilla to switch on the Gecko 9 rendering engine and offer users a new tool for feedback on performance

Thunderbird 9.0 takes advantage of an updated rendering engine (Gecko), but inaugurates no new real functional. A personal customization interface tool in the address book or the possibility, under Windows, now hide and show the menu via the Alt key.

When it launch, we also discover the emergence of a new screen offering to provide a performance report to Mozilla, which in fact corresponds to the integration of the default extension Test Pilot. The choice, logically left to the user, is proposed at the first launch in the form of a banner floating at the bottom of the screen, but can be modified later via the menu tools. Among other small fixes, Thunderbird 9.0 is also an opportunity for Mozilla to fix some security holes.

Download Thunderbird 9.0.1 - Windows
Download Thunderbird 9.0.1 - Linux
Download Thunderbird 9.0.1 - Mac

The issue of Software Crisis

2011-12-04T15:23:00.001+04:00

Software is a system that has several thousand lines of codes and is developed by a bunch of experts in the field such as programmers, analyst, and software engineers among others. Even with so many professionals, we have issues such as:

• Over 50 errors are found for each 1000 lines of codes.
• Out of 3 large projects 1 is never finished.
• Out of 8 terminated software projects, just 1 is deemed as a success.

Experts in the field have developed numerous methodologies and processes in order to decrease the software crisis but with different level of success as there is no way out to terminate the software crisis. There will always be failures and successes particularly with large software projects. That's why it is truly said that creating the software is easy but creating the system is hard.

The Code and Fix Approach
This approach is the basic approach that each and every programmer has learned. This is good for small software; however when it comes to large software projects then this approach would simply be a catastrophe. Reasons are:

• Budgets or time-scale can't be estimated.
• Risks and design flaws can't be assessed.
• Technical issues at the end might lead to the start again.

The diagram below show how the Code and Fix approach directs to the Software Crisis.

During the 1980's for developing software was half the price of owning software. And the cost of ownership increased by 30% during the 1990's. Moreover, statistics tells that in 1995 half of software development projects were considered unsuccessful even they were operational. Three on four delivered software were failures, that didn't met requirement or were never used.

Some of the problems of software crisis
• Low quality software.
• No formal development process
• Poor design and documentation
• Requirements were not met.
• Codes were difficult to maintain.
• Software were Undelivered
• Budget were not enough in the middle of the development
• Projects taking more than enough time.

Limitations of present software development
• The development of software projects are taken as a craft instead as a science.
• Not yet a mature discipline of engineering.
• Hardware are developed faster than software.
• Software technology is constrained by hardware technology.
• Software are made too quickly just for it to be adaptable for the hardware.
• Ad hoc approach do not function
• More consumer electronics are in need of software

Luckily the software crisis is known and now software industries are more incline towards a formal software process which gradually leads to superior class of final product. For example the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) which is one of the best in the field make use of a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to evaluate the development process. This model is not new however its application to software development is.

Maturities are from level 1 to 5. Level 1 is the ad hoc development type and level 5 the formal process which also has more improvements. Level 5 is hard to reach and not all software reach this level and it is sad that only 2% of reviewed projects rated in the top two Maturity Levels, that’s why most consumers with large projects seek for organizations with a high Capability Maturity Model ratings. Mature software is also one which is reusable.

A new trojan sending premium SMS

2011-12-01T11:47:00.001+04:00

The editor of Kaspersky Security warns users against a new Android smartphones trojan that has plagued many countries around the world. It sends premium SMS without the knowledge of users, guaranteeing them hefty bills.

After launching, this app shows an ‘Android version is not compatible’ error message:

This new Trojan, called Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Foncy, according to Kaspersky was launched since September. At that time of the Android smartphone users had found the fraudulent SMS after downloading an infected application: ironically, it was used just to manage the classification of messages sent. "After launching this application it displayed the message that it was not compatible with the user’s Android version. And then the user’s mobile account was emptied. "said one security expert.

The application is distributed outside the Android Market, as the SuiConFo.apk: it should be noted that a real application of the same name is available on the market of Android applications, and the latter is payable and completely safe, as pointed out in its designer's comments Kaspersky blog.

Once installed on a terminal, the trojan sends four SMS to premium rate numbers from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, UK and Canada by country corresponding to the SIM card of the device. Once the operation completed, a message is sent to a mobile number with text in french from the response of a premium rate SMS. "This may help the cybercriminals find out how many premium SMS messages have been sent." says the editor.

Kaspersky adds that this method of sending premium SMS through a trojan is one of the most lucrative for cybercriminals to enrich quickly. "I’m pretty sure it’s not going to stop any time soon. " added the expert.

Europe and Canada are currently the focus of this malware: This type of malware was far more likely to deal with countries like China or Russia, because of the widespread use of applications from unofficial sources in these regions, but the trend is changing.

Download SeaMonkey (all in one browser) 2.5 final version and 2.6 beta

2011-11-30T16:24:00.001+04:00

Along with Firefox and Thunderbird, Mozilla continues to develop its other programs, including the SeaMonkey browser.

SeaMonkey the all-in-one software gathers on the same platform a browser, an email handler, an IRC client and a HTML editor. If the pace of development has not been reached on that of Firefox and Thunderbird, developers, however, continue their work and have recently announced the availability of SeaMonkey 2.5 in final version.

SeaMonkey is available in 24 languages, this version runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Once the upgrade is complete, each third-party extensions will be reviewed by the user, a way to bring him to face more control modules installed. Noting also a better support for HTML5 with the integration of Media APIs which provide better performance for playback of audio and video files.

Besides, an update of WebSockets, WebGL technology, allow to take advantage of hardware acceleration, and the CORS technology providing more flexibility to access resources on a web server. SeaMonkey 2.5 also fixes several bugs while providing greater stability.

Moreover SeaMonkey 2.6 is available in beta, it adds a print preview feature in the HTML editor composed, but also an implementation of the 'Do Not Track' module to protect the user against targeted advertising. Other stability fixes were made and a new rendering engine optimization for HTML5 elements.

Download Mozilla SeaMonkey 2.5 or 2.6 beta 1

An overview of Database Systems

2011-11-30T14:28:00.001+04:00

Database refers to the collection of data stored in a Database system. Database systems were developed in order to store high volume of data, which can be changed or updated on a regular basis by different users. The database approach has overcome the file-based approach due to many inherent limitations. And since the early 80's a database system called "The Relational Model" has been prevailing and is still the main model used although there are other models which have been developed.

The File-Based Approach
File-Based approach implies that data is stored in one or more separate computer files. Inconsistency might occur when data is updated in one or more file but not in the other files. Moreover if these files have copies in several departments, you can get an idea how difficult it would be to update or change all these files. One application can access one file at a time.

The Shared File Approach
The Shared File Approach consists of each application to have its own set of files which can be shared between the different applications. Does this solve the problem of inconsistency? Not at all, file structure between departments might not match or files might have been sorted differently, one by name and the other by date. Moreover some applications would need to access more data than others. What if we need to change the data file, does it not need to be changed in all the applications? This issue is called physical data dependence. Another issue is concurrency control when making updates hereby a clash should be prevented.

The Database Approach
The database approach or database management system (DBMS) offer conveniences for integrity, querying, data security and more importantly allows concurrent access by many users. A DBMS is software used to store and retrieve data. The DBMS uses database application to perform computer related tasks. Using this approach there is no problem of physical data dependence and data file can be changed.

This is achieved by a hierarchy of levels of data specification. Each specification of data in a database is called a schema. The different levels of schema are:

The External database schema are programs which have an interface or mapping to the conceptual schema and interacts with the external database schema. It depict the database as the user see it and it is a subset of the conceptual schema which sometimes requires computing and other processes. It can be altered without changing the physical storage.

The conceptual schema has an interface or mapping to the internal schema. It is concerned with the data itself. It describes the world of interest to the users of the database system.

The internal schema finally manages how data is kept on physical Medias such as disks. There's just one such schema on a database system. Changes in the internal schema won't affect the two other schemas and are transparent to users or programs.
So if a need come to alter the structure of a file from a disk, it'll be stored in the internal schema and resolved the issue of physical data dependence. And to achieve logical data independence changes to the conceptual schema can be isolated from the external schema and the internal schema. The changes are handled by the interfaces between the conceptual, middle layer, and the physical and external layers.

The ANSI/SPARC architecture is depicted in the diagram below:

The ANSI/SPARC model is three-level database architecture with a hierarchy of levels from the users and their applications at the top, down to the physical storage of data at the bottom.

ANSI: American National Standards Institute
ANSI/X3: Committee on Computers and Information Processing
SPARC: Standards Planning and Requirements Committee

Components of a Database Management System
The DBMS engine or the main component, it provides access to the database and coordinates all of the functional elements of the DBMS. Its source is the Metadata (data about data) part of a data dictionary.

The User Interface subsystem provides access to the various components of the DBMS to users. Interfaces are in various data language for various level users.

The Data dictionary subsystem is used to store data about numerous aspects of how the DBMS functions. Data in the dictionary varies from definitions, access rights, to data structures.

The Performance management subsystem provides means to optimize or improve the DBMS. Data can be retrieved and changed without requiring users to wait for for the DBMS to carry out the requested action. Query Optimization and DBMS reorganization are two important functions of the Performance management subsystem.

The Data integrity management subsystem manages the integrity and consistency of data in the database and the integrity of metadata in the Dictionary. Three important functions are Intra-record integrity, referential integrity and concurrency control.

The Backup and recovery subsystem logs transactions and changes, occasionally making backup, and recovering the database if failure occurs.

The Application development subsystem allows programmers to develop complete database applications with CASE tools. Not to forget screen generators and report generators. Often applications pass through three different development environment; the first stage (development), pre-production (volume testing) and production or live environment (final). Each environment has at least one database system.

The Security management subsystem ensures to protect and control access to the database and data dictionary.

Benefits of the database approach
Among the benefits of the database approach, we can say:
• Minimal data redundancy and inconsistency is reduced.
• It is easy for developers.
• Administrator can define standards for names.
• Sharing of data.
• Physical data independence.
• Better modeling of real world data.
• Uniform security and integrity controls.
• Economy of scale.

Risks of the database approach
Organizations will need to hire or train new personnel such as database administrators and application programmers.
• Explicit backup need
• Conflict in organization
• Large size which often needs large amounts of processing power
• Failures
• Expensive

The data administrator and the database administrator
The Data Administrator is the one responsible for issues that may concern the management and use of data in the organization. His role is to determine and publicize policy and standards for data naming and data definition conventions, access permissions and restrictions for data and processing of data, and security issues.

On the other hand, the Database Administrator is the one responsible for the database (i.e he manages data within the database) or a set of databases, and related computer applications. Moreover the Database Administrator is responsible for the development, implementation, operation, maintenance and security of the database and the related applications. His activities will be within guidelines of the Data administrator.

Now if you want to know more about the data administrator and the database administrator, just look into the organization or company you are studying or working and determine their role.

Apple buying system in-app cracked by hackers

2011-11-23T15:02:00.001+04:00

Some hackers have managed to undermine the in-app purchase system offered by Apple, with the help of a tool called iAP Cracker.

Thus the business model of the Cupertino company became no longer reliable for developers. This is so, because so far, developers using the purchase system in-app in their applications were sure that the users could not bypass it, even if the app itself was recovered without paying. Piracy was then a "distribution channel". But the situation is now different, as the system developed by Apple, and forcing users to buy content dematerialized and other virtual currency without leaving the application, has recently fallen into the hands of hackers.

Through the tool called iAP Cracker, it seems possible to hack the payment functions to access paid content for nothing. The UK developer Mobile Pie explained "By expanding our research, we realized that illegal in-app purchases were made on jailbroken phones using iAP Cracker" said the developer Will Luton. A situation far from being an isolated case.

The application, which requires a unbridled terminal iOS, exploits flaws in many applications using the purchase system in-app of Apple: a list that lists all the apps with which the method works is also available on the Internet , suggesting that some programs are currently saved. Will Luton said to work on a method that would block the ability to block illegal purchases.

Top 25 worst passwords 2011

2011-11-23T14:17:00.001+04:00

The top 25 worst passwords used in 2011 has been derived by Splashdata [the editor of SplashID which propose secure passwords to its users] from a list of passwords put online by hackers during the year 2011. They has been classified is ascending order.

password
123456
12345678
qwerty
abc123
monkey
1234567
letmein
trustno1
dragon
baseball
111111
iloveyou
master
sunshine
ashley
bailey
passw0rd
shadow
123123
654321
superman
qazwsx
michael
football

A top 25, which confirms a trend that is not new: BitDefender put forward a year ago that 73% of the questions from a study were reported using the same password for each account requiring identification. Last June, an independent developer noted that the sequence of numbers "1234" is the password used by most iPhone owners.

In another recent study by Lieberman Software Corporation, the problem comes from the number of passwords to remember, especially in business. "Nearly half of IT professionals surveyed said they would retain 10 or more passwords as part of their work, while 42% reported sharing passwords to access systems and applications," summarizes the investigation.

Therefore the number of attacks and other intrusions on databases, widely publicized this year like the hack of the Playstation Network has therefore clearly not affected the Internet in enhancing the security of their accounts. A trend that, unfortunately, is true every year ... to the delight of hackers, especially followers of the brute force method with little effort required to access accounts which are not secure.