Crashing Windows to Trash!

I have been using windows for a long time now, it has given me the worst it could give. I always thought that i had to change my OS but then i had lesser choice. I remember when i asked people about Linux they said "Linux is more secure... but its not an OS for home PC" (4 years back). Not only this i heard many stories about it but then i thought to try it myself.. I got Red Hat CD (i don't know the version). I installed it but was disappointed i could not access my files on windows drive, i could not install any applications. I had to remove it.. After few months i installed Mandrake Linux.. same thing no apps, no files... But i never kept quite i tried so many more distros.. some of them could access my windows files but could not play music, could not open my documents.. Windows had so many problems but it looked so good, I appreciate MS for the UI and integration with MS products. I always wanted an alternate....

Then one day when i had been to my cousin's house i saw Ubuntu CD.. I thought of trying it but could not. Then i got an ISO image of it along with a magazine. I installed Ubuntu and believe me i just loved it so much that i don't use Windows now. i have everything here... i can access my windows files, i can play music, i can chat, browse, i can open MS Office files with OpenOffice, i can edit my photos, write programs. I get free updates, free softwares, i feel more secure moreover i feel comfortable to use it.

I did not know anything in Linux but then thanks to Ubuntu community based help those guys helped me for all my queries. For all who have been using windows for a long time and probably not satisfied with it, i recommend switching over to Ubuntu. If you are using a pirated copy of windows then remember that u will not be able to receive any more updates. Slowly but surely MS is going to fight piracy, MS will release updates only for activated copy of windows. The next version windows vista will burn a big hole in your pocket (both H/w and S/w). Before u get into more troubles its better switch to free, better, faster, safer OS and i meant Linux.

Delayed Vista a loss for Microsoft

Microsoft has yet released a preview version of the long awaited Windows update codenamed "Longhorn" now officially named as "Microsoft Vista". The company plans to release more and more preview versions instead of "Beta" and "Release Candidate" versions. In order to improve the quality of the final version the company plans to release a series of test versions this year. Each version of the release is intended to get feedback from specific audience. Vista has been a long wait for the consumers; perhaps this is the first time that MS plans to more frequent previews program. The company had planned for more frequent CTPs in order to get higher feedback but then later decided to go slow on releases. While all these may seem like a good move to improve the quality of the product, it could cause a great loss for the company. On the other side Apple computers yesterday announced the public beta release of Boot Camp Software that enables Mac users to run Windows XP natively on Intel based Macs. The software will be launched with the next version of Mac OS X 10.5 called the Leopard and is available for download on the Apple website. In last June Apple announced that it was shifting to Intel-based computers. Apple has been developing Mac OS X for with the intension that it would run on Intel and IBM PowerPC chips. In January this year first Intel-based Mac PC was released with Intel Duo dual core chips the new Macs are said to be three times as faster than previous ones that used IBM PowerPC chips. While Microsoft has been struggling to release its new operating system, Apple has regularly put out updates for its Mac OS. Moreover, Apple is already strong in areas where Microsoft has promised to deliver key improvements with Vista: security, and features such as video and photo editing and search. If someone wants the features that Vista has been promising to deliver then they can get it now from Mac. Many of the new music-handling and photo management tools in Vista are also strikingly similar to features that Apple has either in its OS or in companion products such as iPhoto and iTunes. There is a huge difference between Mac users and Windows users, Windows users don't bother to update to the newer version as fast as Mac users do. there are many reasons for this. One reason could be that most of the Home and Small Scale Industries use pirated version on the OS, the other reason could be that MS has failed to gain confidence of their users in terms of security and reliability. The Apple software and its integration with iPod could attract more users to the apple side.. It is heats up the competition with the hardware manufacturers too. The Macs are optimized for performance and shall surely perform much better than the normal PCs that are manufactured by companies like HP, Compaq, DELL, etc... Microsoft has taken around 5 years to release its new OS while Apple has been releasing update after update for its Macs. The major reason that MS faces is the need to support a large variety of hardware by different manufacturers and different standards. Apple too could face some troubles as has not completely switched over to the Intel chips, but then that is something that can be over come in a short span.. The two are likely to draw even more head-to-head comparisons now that both operating systems are running on the same underlying processors and other internal components. Apple's quicker pace has allowed it to get new features into its operating system faster. For example, both Microsoft and Apple talked about the need for improved desktop search at roughly the same time. Apple shipped the feature as part of a Mac OS X 10.4 update last April, while Microsoft's similar feature won't show up until Vista, though the company has made a downloadable desktop search (MSN Toolbar) add-on available amid competition from Google and others. Microsoft has always been best in what it has been doing: Improve the ideas that others have discovered. Microsoft has been doing just this from the days Windows OS was first launched. Win XP tried to provide the features that Mac OS X had. Now Vista promises to provide the features that Tiger includes.. By the time Vista is released Apple would come up with its next version of OS the Leopard that is expected late this year or early next year... This story is going too long i think i need to stop this here.

My Certifications

Last week i had been to Kerala to take my MCP Examinations and i got two MCP's this month

1. MCP in Developing and deploying Web Applications using C#.NET
2. MCP in Developing and deploying Windows-based Applications VB.NET

NITHYANAND K N

Desktop "Crystal Fusion"

It’s been long since I have posted any blog here, sorry for that but today I have a good story to be told it’s about another Tech Findings. Friends this is about a great development at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Researchers here have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature using 'crystal fusion', it is simpler, less expensive and it has the potential to produce even more neutrons than the previous version. Two opposing "pyroelectric" crystals that create a strong electric field when heated or cooled, it is filled with deuterium gas (almost similar to hydrogen, but has more electrons). The electric field rips electrons from the gas, creating deuterium ions and accelerating them into a deuterium target on one of the crystals. The particles smash into the target, neutrons are emitted, which is the shows that nuclear fusion has occurred.

A similar device was developed by a research team UCLA in 2005. The two major advantages of the new device are:

1. It has two crystals compared to one in the previous version. This makes it doubles the acceleration potential.
2. The new device does not require cooling of crystals which means that it is not only cost effective but also simple to develop.

The device, which uses two opposing crystals to generate a powerful electric field, could potentially lead to a portable, battery-operated neutron generator for a variety of applications, from non-destructive testing to detecting explosives and scanning luggage at airports. This can be implemented as a substitute to the heavy batteries for various devices. We can expect an efficient batteries that are very light weight and more efficient that the ones available these days. This concept can also be used to develop portable X-Ray generator. There is already a commercial portable pyroelectric x-ray product available, but it does not produce enough energy to provide the 50,000 electron volts needed for medical imaging whereas the new device is capable of producing about 2,00,000 electron volts, which could meet these requirements and could also be enough to penetrate several millimeters of steel. In the future this concept can also be used to treat cancer.

4G in India

India to adopt 4G Technology India plans to skip 3G and jump to 4G (4th generation) standards wireless technology. According to Dayanidhi Maran, the country's new minister for IT and communications, Current 3G services are not considered cost-effective enough and it is hoped that 4G might help reduce the expenses and stay on pace with the global market. Besides 4G networks could be the adequate tool to introduce broadband in rural areas: some 50,000 Indian villages do not have telephone facility. India's mobile telephony service providers are currently providing services based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), or CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technologies. "The 3G standard has been evolved, but has not proved cost-effective," said Maran in Delhi this week. "I therefore plan to leapfrog this generation and develop 4G technologies. India has an opportunity with its large market and high technical skills to be a significant player in this field. We are going to set up a National Center for Excellence in this area." The minister also rules out privatization of government-owned telecom services companies, such as BSNL and MTNL. The previous government had been pushing for privatization of some key government-owned companies. "I shall make all endeavors to make India the world's hub for outsourcing skilled manpower in the IT sector," he says. "India cannot hope to aspire to become a great IT nation without adequate level of research and development work. Toward this, our national R institutions would be given encouragement to invest in R and bring about world-class technologies." India also plans to have a national Internet exchange through which it hopes to connect all Internet service providers to achieve efficient Internet traffic routing, cost reduction, and improve the quality of service for the Internet users in India. The country also plans to migrate to Internet Protocol version 6 by 2006. "Worldwide, IPv6 is being implemented on the Internet to accommodate increased number of users and take care of security concerns," Maran says. On the whole we find India moving north... with new technologies coming in, outdated practices being trashed and young ministers stepping in INDIA seems to be clearer in its ideas and set to move north...

KamaSutra Effects

The KamaSurta worm also known as Blackmail, MyWife, Nyxem.E, and Grew is thought to have infected more than half a million PCs. Security vendor IronPort warned Thursday that these machines are now hard-coded to propagate the virus on Feb. 3.

According to F-Secure:

When run on a Windows PC, the worm copies itself to shared network locations and sends itself to e-mail addresses found on the target computer. The pest includes a timed attack that attempts to disable antivirus and firewall software and delete certain files, including Office documents on 3rd of the month. At the moment it's just sitting there quietly, and we won't know how many home users have been infected until Feb. 3. It is similar to the 'Email-Worm.Win32.VB.bi' that was found a few days ago.

Nyxem has the potential to cause havoc throughout the year, as infected PCs are set to activate on the third day of every month, unless they are cleaned up. F-Secure has reported that Nyxem.E reached the top position on Thursday in its virus statistics list, with 21.7 percent of all reported infections. The worm also has its own counting mechanism, and it showed 510,000 infected systems on Saturday.

Nyxem is certainly malicious. It can be delivered via e-mail, but also as a network worm. It probes other PCs on a closed network to compromise them and send itself to the other computers, to infect as many hosts as possible. The malicious software hides in attachment types not typically blocked by attachment filters

It got a lot of media attention because of the name and the illicit material, but it did not get attention from the major antivirus companies There was "some hype" fueled by some in the security industry that published high infection numbers. vast majority of the machines infected...are home computers.

Companies are unlikely to be directly affected if they are running up-to-date antivirus software, because the major antivirus vendors have now released patches. But IronPort warned that companies could experience secondary effects, as the virus tries to propagate itself by harvesting e-mail addresses on an infected machine. McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro say KamaSurta has come and gone. Still, PC users should keep their antivirus software up to date to be protected against possible variants.

The bottom line is that: There is nothing to fear about the KamaSurta since it no more exists on a large scale view, but as far as home users running age old antivirus systems (with no or older updates) and no firewall are still the once who will suffer.

technorati tags: Virus, worm, Blackmail, MyWife, Nyxem.E, Feb 3 2006, KamaSurta, internet

New RSS Aggregators : RSSOwl

RSSOwl is a wonderful news aggregator with a good interface and faster supports RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0. It can export teh feeds to many opne formats such as PDF, HTML, OPML... RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source in a convenient, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more. It's easy to configure, available in many many languages and the best of all: It's platform-independent. When exporting news into PDF, RSSOwl will create bookmarks showing the titles of all news. These are very helpfull when searching for a particular news inside the PDF document. The integrated newsfeed-search engine allows to search for newsfeeds by keyword. Simply enter words like "News" or "Linux" and press the search button. Soon the engine will give out a list of newsfeeds. You can also use the internal browser to read news that contain HTML.

Testing Microsoft Vista

Optimized testing schedules for MS Vista

Microsoft is planning to change and optimize its testing schedules for the long awaited Windows update codenamed "Longhorn" now officially named as "Microsoft Vista". Microsoft has already released a preview version of the OS. The company plans to release more and more preview versions instead of "Beta" and "Release Candidate" versions. In order to improve the quality of the final version the company plans to release a series of test versions this year. Each version of the release is intended to get feedback from specific audience.

A Community Technology Preview (CTP) program is all set to release early this year (around Feb) the company wants the corporations to test it. In the next quarter another Customer Preview Program (CPP) is expected to roll out this release will consumers to get a hands on Vista. Sources from Microsoft say that it has got almost all that is necessary and no major capabilities have been cut from the recent release; though these where not test for final release.

Vista has been a long wait for the consumers; perhaps this is the first time that MS plans to more frequent previews program. The company had planned for more frequent CTPs in order to get higher feedback but then later decided to go slow on releases. The company wants to delay the final release so that it can include as many new features as possible and come up with a more stable version, reducing the number of Service Packs. What I personally feel is that MS is trying to use these preview for its marketing, it might want more people to use the preview release and then buy the final release. Well what ever it is intended for it is a good move by Microsoft.

But the final big question is that: Is it worth the entire wait? Or is it a dream concept that Microsoft plans to achieve?

Privacy vs. Security

US Government trying to steel right to privacy

A fact that was disclosed in court documents last week confirmed that the US Department of Justice has complied many major search engines in US to hand over the details of all queries that where made; in order to revive the anti-pornography law. Definitely search engine giants such as Google, Microsoft Yahoo, AOL have heaps of information about the user, which has to be maintained; I don’t think government should be allowed to mine these data. We all hate child porn but that doesn’t mean we compromise with our right to privacy. Do We? The fact that we don’t know what the US government will be doing with the information.

I term this as illegal because there is not any kind of agreement or disclaimer with such a clause. I was surprised to hear that most of the major companies had agreed to comply. Thanks to Google it is trying to defend its customers. The data that the US Government has asked for contains information of many people who reside outside US territory. US govt can in no way justify such an act, it has no right to gather information or in a way steel the right to privacy of people outside its boundaries. Can a society maintain its freedom when a government is permitted to conduct searches without reasonable proof of any wrong doings?

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” - Edmund Burke

I don’t understand how the US govt can even imagine of such a decision, even if its applicable on its own citizens or other citizens; it is against a persons private interest. What about our democratic freedom, I mean how can we leave it to an other country's law. Any data generated will come under jurisdiction of the court of law from where the data or information is generated.

Does this mean that I should think thrice before I use a service that an US based company provides. Please post your comments or feedback on this and how you would react to this kind of actions...

in my room

My New pictures

Intel inside VoIP

VoIP refers to Voice over Internet Protocol, which basically takes a voice signal and puts it into packets much the same way that data gets packetized before it is sent over the network. But it's done in a way that the network recognizes that it's a voice session, which affects how the call is set up and managed through the network.

Intel is working to improve the conference calling capabilities of VoIP solutions. In a multi-tasking world, you might be hosting a conference call as well as sharing data or doing another application, and the performance demands on your platform begin to get fairly high.

A key barrier to widespread VoIP deployment has been lack of standards and interoperability. Intel is working with the industry to drive standards and rich interoperability to accelerate VoIP adoption.

Fire caught FireFox 1.5

I really like firefox, the fact is that since I got FF I actually never used IE in-fact, I don’t even remember that I ever had IE on my sys. However, version 1.5 has been blowing out, at least twice a day; FF 1.5 is not worth upgrade; certainly little has changed since 1.07, other than a few extensions. I observe that I often crash when I lock my broadband connection using firewall. Maybe some kind of ad server delay/crash is to blame… If any others experiencing similar problem or find the reason worth sharing please post a comment

Is .NET ready for Web 2.0???

Big Question: Is .NET ready for Web 2.0?

I was surprised to hear that some of the popular web 2.0 applications are developed using Microsoft .NET Framework. But this is true… “Best of 2005” list of .NET apps according to Nolan Zak include:

1. Press Display – Online viewing for all kinds of newspapers from all over the world using an AJAX-y interface. Allows viewing and printing of individual articles.
2. NASA Worldwind – View and pan over the entire world. Similar to MSN Virtual Earth and Google Earth but allows you to “replay” various events in the history of the world, like the 2004 Tsunami or some massive arctic icebergs breaking apart.
3. Grouper – Create your own peer-to-peer network to chat and share pictures, videos, and files with only the people you invite.
4. Writely – Share and collaborate on html documents in real time. That’s right, two or more people editing the same file at the same time!
5. Phanfare – The best of the .NET versions of online photo galleries. Flickr and YouTube are also better <gasp!>
6. Squeet - Online RSS feed management. This one is developed with .NET 2.0. See an overview and review by Scott Cate

Disclaimer If you find any other Web 2.0 applications please post in comments…

Feeding with .NET

I found libraries to generate and parse all the three major kinds of syndication formats.

1. Atom
2. RSS
3. OPML

These libraries can be used to generate feeds that visitors can subscribe in order to get the updated content on your site or blog. These libraries come with complete documentation that helps user to start developing web applications or web services using the .NET Framework.

I have not yet tried these libraries, let me try them first and I’ll share my experience creating a feed soon. J

You can find these libraries at: http://www.howdev.com/technologies/

Related Feeds: http://www.howdev.com/news/howelldevelopments-rss.opml

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A validation method better than what MS provides!

Change the border color of the controls whose validation fails

This is a wonderful blog that I came through I felt it very interesting… This (great) guy has done a wonderful job… Ever wondered how you can change the border color settings of the control whose client side validation fails, the solution is simple just modify the WebUIValidation.js file provided with asp.net