O0o. Ur Pathfinder .o0O

Virtualization is here .....

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:29:00 +0530

Unfortunately for a price .

"Parallels Desktop for Mac is the first solution that gives Apple users the ability to run Windows, Linux or any other operating system and their critical applications at the same time as Mac OS X on any Intel-powered iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook or MacBook Pro.Unlike past software that allowed Windows programs to run on a Mac, Parallels Desktop does not need to emulate the hardware that's inside a PC. That's because Macs and PCs now use the same Intel-based chips. As a result, the speed of Parallels is far better than past efforts at bringing together the two operating systems, the software start-up said.

Unlike dual-boot solutions, in which users must completely shut down Mac OS X and endure a full OS start-up cycle to access a important application, Parallels Desktop for Mac empowers users with the ability to run important Windows programs like Outlook, Access, Internet Explorer and all other applications without having to give up the usability and functionality of their Mac OS X machine even for a few minutes.

You can use any version of Windows (3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, Me, 2000, NT, XP, 2003), any Linux distribution, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2, eComStation, or MS-DOS in secure virtual machines running alongside - not instead of - Mac OS X.

Using the Parallels Shared Folders you can even easily share documents and folders, or cut and paste data, between any Windows XP, 2003 or 2000 virtual machine and your Mac OS X machine."

The apple site now actually mentions parallels instead of bootcamp. I believe there is a 15 day free trail ( yes , this has to be paid for ) , so everyone out there with an intel mac please do try this out and tell us.

According to parallels , their software runs as smoothly as bootcamp , but i doubt it .

This is actually the same technology ( or something like this ) that apple promises to incorporate into OS X 10.5 leopard (the next version ) .

Apple's site
Parallels site

Jungle Disk

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:23:00 +0530

Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com’s S3™ Storage Service.

-Store an unlimited amount of data for only 15¢ per gigabyte
-No monthly subscription fee, no startup fee, no commitment
-Your data is fully encrypted at all times
-Data is stored at multiple Amazon.com datacenters around the country for high availability
-Access files directly from Windows Explorer, Mac OSX Finder, and Linux

Visit

Installing Ubuntu on your Hard Disk

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:07:00 +0530

First and foremost, create an ext3 or ext2 partition on your hard disk using some software, I used Partition Magic as it is the least complicated to use.

You can also borrow a Knoppix (another Linux type) disk and use a program called QTParted in case you don't have the Windows software available. I use a 2.9 GB ext3 partition which is sufficient for all my trysts with Linux (leaving about 700 MB free). There is also something called a swap partition, people say that it should be about twice the size of your RAM but usually allocating so much space is useless. Initially I had a 512 MB swap partition (for 256 MB RAM), but then realised that it was remaining empty for almost all the time, so I reduced it to about 200 MB and my system still runs fine!
For installing Ubuntu, you must set up your computer to be able to boot up from the CD ROM.
After booting up you will see a screen like this, simply press Enter to continue.

Select your language.

Choose English and press ENTER.

In the next screen choose your location.

Then choose the Keyboard type, you can test which keyboard you have (if you are not sure) but in all probability, it'll be English (American).

Now give the name of your computer to identify it on your Local Area Network (LAN), don't worry if you are not just type any identifying name. This is similar to your computer name that you see while browsing the "Network neighbourhood" in Windows.

Now comes the most important part Do not press ENTER without double-checking what the computer is saying as it can erase your entire disk.

Choose "Manually edit partition table", I don't think any of you would want to erase your complete disk!

In the next dialog, select your 'ext3' type partition (that you had created previously) and press Enter to see another dialog similar to this.

Format the partition if you are not upgrading from an existing installation. Next goto the 'Mount Options' and press Enter, you will see a screen like this.

Choose the first option for 'the root filesystem' and press Enter.

There's no need to modify any options for the Windows Partitions they will be just fine!

The next step may ask you to install a boot-loader GRUB and will also detect your existing OS, just accept the default options and it will be OK.

That's it, you will have installed Ubuntu!

If u want free Ubuntu Linux,go to:

www.shipit.ubuntu.cim

So who's the next Big Brother??

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:03:00 +0530

Washington, June 16: Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates will give up his day-to-day role in running the software giant that he co-founded in 1975 and devote more time to his philanthropic foundation, the firm announced.

The company announced that Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie will immediately assume the title of chief software architect and begin working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities, to ensure a smooth transition. Similarly, Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie will immediately take the new title of chief research and strategy officer and will work closely with Gates to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts; Mundie also will partner with general counsel Brad Smith to guide Microsoft’s intellectual property and technology policy efforts.

“Our business and technical leadership has never been stronger, and Microsoft is well-positioned for success in the years ahead. I feel very fortunate to have such great technical leaders like Ray and Craig at the company,” Gates said. “I remain fully committed and full time at Microsoft through June 2008 and will be working side by side with Ray and Craig to ensure that a smooth transition occurs.”

“This was a hard decision for me,” Gates added. “I’m very lucky to have two passions that I feel are so important and so challenging. As I prepare for this change, I firmly believe the road ahead for Microsoft is as bright as ever.”

“Bill and I are confident we’ve got a great team that can step up to fill his shoes and drive Microsoft innovation forward without missing a beat,” Ballmer said. “We will continue to hire the world’s best technical talent and give them the tools to do their best work, and we will continue to tackle the biggest challenges and opportunities for our customers by investing for the long term.”

Ozzie and Mundie will continue to report to Gates. At an appropriate time during the two-year transition period, they will shift to reporting to Ballmer.

Source: Microsoft.com

The On/Off PC!

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Tue, 6 Jun 2006 19:21:00 +0530

Sometime back i remeber my friend Titus talking about an ON/OFF PC. He was pissed with the fact that he had to wait for such a long time for the PC to boot up. His idea was to have a PC which would simply Switch 'on' much like a fan and allow a user to work on it. You can read more on his Blog.The link is on the right. By the way dont click on any Ads on his blog.. I am not supportive of ads on Blogs and Il make sure Titus takes em off before i thrash the shit outta him!

Well there are ways to do this!

1) Keep your PC switched on 24 hours. Well this would be the simplest way, isnt it?
In the long run no! Simply because itl take a toll on the PC components and really mess your PC up pretty quickly. Besides there was some issue , that Windows would restart after 46 days.
Let me explain-:
There is a variable maintained by Windows and stored in a CPU register. This variable maintains the time for which the PC has been on. So when the value of the variable becomes too large the CPU register will not be able to store it. So the PC goes Kaput!

2)Use Hibernation
Yes this does the trick. Its an old technique but sadly I had never given it much though for use on a Desktop. Laptop users use this trick all the time. Basically Hibernation is a procedure by which All Current System Information is saved to the harddisk. When the PC starts it simply dumps that info in the places where it is required. This is much faster than loading all system files and processes again! Finally my 15 min booting up problem has been fixed. My PC now takes 30 seconds to load now. I am trying to imagine how fast itl load up when I format my PC and install everything.....YES you guessed it! An ON/OFF PC.

How to send your PC into Hibernation?
My Computer--->Control Panel--->Power Management--->Hibernate--->Enable Hibernation.

This will enable Hibernation for the PC.

For hibernating.
Start--->Shut Down--->
Press Shift. The Standby mode will convert to a Hibernate Button. Press the button.
Voila Your PC just shifted form and changed to a polar bear.

Turn off the power.
To bring it back, just switch the Power button ON.

There you go Titus. I demand a treat now :D

Time to study now....
ciao

O0o. UrPathfinder .o0O

p.s. The docs just called their strikes off! I was hoping that Arjun Singh would get a heart attack, and get turned away from a hospital coz of a strike... Il hope for something more probable next time.

Business of Outsourcing

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:06:00 +0530

Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy on the Outsourcing backlash:

Let me explain that to you — when I get up in the morning I use my LG refrigerator, a South Korean product. You know we had our own refrigerator industry but it could not compete with these MNCs so it closed down, and jobs were lost. Then I drink a Coke or a Pepsi — we had our own soft drink industry but they closed down and jobs were lost. Then I use my Toyota — we had our own car industry, not very good but still, and it too had to close down and again jobs were lost. Then I come to my office and I use my Toshiba laptop or my Dell desktop — we too had our computer industry but it could not compete with the global giants and they had to close down — so you see again we lost jobs.

Now, I could take two views, the first view is we must keep these MNCs away as they cause loss of jobs — probably five million jobs. The second view is these MNCs have enhanced competition in India, they have enhanced customer satisfaction, as a result, 200 or 300 million Indians have benefited. I would like to believe that a paradigm which has benefited 300 million Indians is much better than not having that.

Nice stuff. Read the full interview here.

A C++ question

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 6 Apr 2006 18:51:00 +0530

The following is the background you need for the questions.

There is a string. Nothing special about it. Just your common everyday collection of ASCII characters. Then there is is person A. The only string operations person A is capable of performing are adding, removing, replacing (and choosing to do nothing to) one character in the string at a time. To clarify, he may only look at one character from the string he is working on at a time and then choose to perform either of the said operations on it. He is then free to look at any other character.

Q1. Suppose we give person A strings 'a' and 'b'. I want your program to calculate, given these two strings, the minimum number of operations A needs to perform on a to convert it to b. There is no reason for len(a) to be equal to len(b).

Q2. (Harder) Tell me how (any one way) he would perform the conversion from a to b.

Email answers to ryadav88@gmail.com. Any questions go in the comments.

Happy hacking.
--Ravi

Mac and Windows

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 6 Apr 2006 18:43:00 +0530

Mac do windows too...
Yes , it true . apple now gives users an official way to boot XP on your mac.
Apple has released "bootcamp " that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac . it is available as a public beta here .

Bootcamp creates CD with all drivers for the hardware and a new partition onto which you can then load windows ( using your own copy ) and you can choose between the two during start up . Just make sure you have an intel mac and enough space on your drive .

Apple says this technology will be a feature in its next edition of mac OSX ( leopard).

PS - the screen shot says -"pull divider to change size of partition" , sweet !

Google - Related Links

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:02:00 +0530

Google Related Links use the power of Google to automatically bringfresh, dynamic and interesting content links to any website. Webmasterscan place these units on their site to provide visitors with links touseful information related to the site’s content, including relevantnews, searches, and pages. Learn more…

Visit

Information And Communication Technology: How Will It Shape My Future?

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 21:05:00 +0530

‘Change’- as they say- is the way of life. Moore’s Law predicted that the processing power of computers would double every eighteen months, and boy, haven’t those predictions come true!

In 1975, we could just begin to envisage what computers could do. Kenneth Olsen, President and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation remarked in 1977 that:“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer at home.”

“The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us,” said Western Union Internal Memo in 1876.

Today, computers, software and the internet are creating opportunities for people everywhere. It is expanding productivity, firing imaginations with creativity and putting dreams of people in their own hands!

The future promises to be brighter.

The clock dates the second of February, 2013 and it’s my mother’s birthday- her golden jubilee! I, at Harvard Business School, am miles away from home and my mother, my heart and soul making me passionate vis-à-vis giving my mother a revelation- a big one!

Everyone in my family is connected over a 10Mbps satellite internet connection, a tera-hertz computer, a million pixel CCD video camera and shared calendars. I instantly fix up a time for the big one, when every one is at his terminal be it at home, work or school and blast! My potential, mind’s imagination and creativity and tools were technology’s most precious gifts take me and my family into a virtual party with the presence of all loved ones. Sharing laughter, tears, memories and even a virtual dinner- technology gets it all happening - from different parts of the globe!

The future of technology shall have the most profound impact on the professional dimension of human life. Imagine I am the CEO of ArcTech®, the largest architecture and design firm on the globe. I get a client with a great project at hand – designing a 267-storied tall tower. The client talks over VoIP from the state of New York in the United States to me in my office in Taipei. The deal gets finalized and a contract summary expected by the client within the hour. I make a brief overview of the proposed project and share it with my Director of Operations at New York over optical-fiber video conferencing. Soon the officer contacts me back with the complete outline which is passed with amendments by the board and I put it back to the client. He approves, gets inspired by our on-time synchronized work and gives us two more projects. That’s $1 billion worth of profit signed up for in just 44 minutes- by the clock! Isn’t it work@thought, powered by technology?

“A good teacher teaches,
A better teacher explains,
A great teacher demonstrates,
But the best one inspires!”

Information and communication technology shall help inspire the creative genius of potential Einsteins and Newtons and lead to more innovative and path breaking discoveries. A virtual classroom where even villagers are taught by some of the most renowned teachers on the earth (precise the purpose of India’s EDUSAT satellite), where live discussions is made through V-SAT classrooms and problems resolved by a virtual online community are all the future promises of technology.

Information and communication technology shall also redefine medical care by introducing telemedicine and e-consulting on a practical and accessible scale – all contributions that shall make the world a global village.

In short, how the growth of Information and Communication technology shall affect my future can be beautifully summarized in the following quatrain:

“Technology indeed forms the backbone of the future-
Potential it has to heal and to nurture:
Time shall make grow to attain a new height;
And it shall make my future- happy, prosperous and bright!”

--RAVI YADAV

How to Create a Podcast for Almost Nothing

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 16:12:00 +0530

Creating a podcast is quick and easy (and almost free) if you know how.

You will need:

--Computer with 1 free USB and/or microphone, sound card and speakers
--Internet connection (high-speed is favored for improved file-transfer speeds)
--Computer microphone or microphone/headset combo
--Audio-recording program

Procedures:

--After deciding on the topic of your podcast, create a blog on Blogger to correspond with it.

--Create an RSS feed for your blog using the free web-based service Feedburner.

--Click the Optimize tab in Feedburner and click SmartCast on the left-hand side.

--Activate the service, tailor the options to your needs and click Save.

--Go to Blogger. In your settings, make sure the Link field is enabled for posts. Now, when you go to create a new post, a new field (Link) will be located under the title field.

--Be sure that your microphone is plugged in, the volume is turned up and it is set as the recording source in your audio recording program (I recommend Audio Recorder for Free).

--Record your podcast.

--If you wish, use an ID3 tag editor (such as TagScanner) to add information such as Artist, Year and Album to your podcast so that it can easily be recognized on a portable media device.

--Create an account with a free file-hosting service that includes direct-linking to files (such as Files.bz).

--Upload your podcast to the file-hosting service.

--Create a new Blogger post. In the Link field, paste the URL of the file that you uploaded to the hosting service (such as www.files.bz/files/myfile.mp3). Describe your podcast and publish the post.

--Feedburner SmartCast will automatically recognize the sound file in the Link field and create an enclosure. Now people subsribed to your blog's RSS feed will automatically receive your podcast.

--If you wish, create an iTunes account and add your podcast to their directory so that it can easily be accessed by others with iTunes and iPods.

--You're done! All you have to do now is place a link to your RSS feed in your blog (such as feeds.feedburner.com/Myblog) and tell others about it.

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 16:01:00 +0530

Google Pack is a free collection of essential software from Google and other companies. The software in the Google Pack helps you browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize your photos, and more.

Google Pack also takes the hassle out of downloading, installing, and updating software. You can download and install the entire Google Pack in just a few clicks. And the included Google Updater helps you discover new programs and keep your current software up to date.

Convert saved chats to cartoons

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:56:00 +0530

Chatfu has created a fun way to convert your saved chats into comic-strip style cartoons. You can simply cut-and-paste a chat session from any instant messenger and Chatfu will “cartoonify” the dialogue, with each person getting their own cartoon character.

Google accidentally deletes its blog

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:47:00 +0530

Google has admitted that it accidentally deleted its own official blog on Monday night. “We’ve determined the cause of tonight’s outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d’oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad,” Jason Goldman, Blogger Product Manager, wrote in a posting on the Google Blog. Apparently, the Google Blog was unavailable for a short time on Monday.

How to make scratched CDs work... No, seriously

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 11:49:00 +0530

A simple way to remove scratches from a CD so you can get your data back off the disc again.

Step 1 : Gather Required Materials.
First gather the following materials.

- Paper towel (softer is better)
- Polishing cloth (eyeglasses cloth will do fine)
- CD scratched beyond playability (Easy to find)
- Can of Brasso Metal Polish.

Step 2 : Add Brasso and Start Polishing!

Take some of the brasso and pour it onto the CD. Please be careful with the Brasso, and only perform this in a well ventilated area. I was making this guide at at the office, and forgot about the fumes. I had to polish the CD in the stairwell as I would have fumed out my co-workers otherwise.

Use the paper towel pieces to polish the CD. Polishing is ideal in straight strokes from the center of the disk to the outside so you polish perpendicular to the tracks on the disc. Because I was short on time, I used small circular motions similar to how I'd polish a car. Take your time with this. Add Brasso when it dries or gets pushed off the CD. Continue this process for about 15 minutes.

You should feel the abrassiveness of the Brasso on the CD as you are doing this. If not, then use a different papertowel. The brasso is removing part of the plastic from the disc not adding to it. You are actually scraping away part of the CD which makes the existing scratches smaller.

After 15 minutes or so, Rince the CD off under water and check the CD. The brasso will have left small scratches on the disc as it wore down the CD. Keep going until the deep scratches are gone, and all that remains are the marks from the brasso. (they will diminish as you continue and get an even surface again).

When done, rinse the disc, and wipe it with the soft eyeglass cloth.

Step 3 : Insert CD into CD-ROM Drive and Test.

Take your polished, rinsed and dried CD and test it in your CD ROM. If it still doesn't work go back to step #2.

As you see by my example, I was successful at pulling the data off my CD-ROM.

I have not attempted this on DVDs or video console games. Please do this at your own risk. results will vary on your patience, and polishing technique.

Hating Macintosh and Loving PC

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 16:43:00 +0530

http://www.explorerdestroyer.com/

Gmail + Aliases

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:58:00 +0530

Some email providers support something called “plus” addressing. Gmail is one of them. It’s not a well-known feature;

Essentially, “plus” addressing lets you create aliases by appending additional characters to the account name part of your email address. To do this, precede it by a plus sign (+). For example, if your gmail address is johnsmith@gmail.com you can create the following alias:

johnsmith+test@gmail.com

No matter what valid characters you place after the plus sign (up to eight characters max), the mail will be delivered to you Gmail inbox.

So, why would you want to do this? There are a couple reasons . One is to (try) to control future spam. When you sign up for something at a web site, instead of giving your regular Gmail address, make one up for the site. For example, if you were to sign up for a free newsletter at extrahotsizzlingstocktips.com you might use the email address of johnsmith+extratips@gmail.com. Since you can see the “To:” address in your gmail messages, you can see if any future spam from other sites are using this address. If so, you know where it came from. At that point, you can treat emails to that address as spam. (Of course, I’m sure some sites will have this naming scheme figured out and sell your real gmail email, but many probably won’t)

You can also search and sort your email based upon the “plus” address. If each service you are signed up to is given a different email alias, you can search on that alias, or set up labels to automatically file these emails into unique labels.

If you aren’t using this to control spam, you can set up broad email aliases and associated label categories like “stocks”, “banks”, “technicl” (8 characters max) and so on. Then, you would use johnsmith+stocks@gmail.com for all your stock investment services, johnsmith+banks@gmail.com for all your bank accounts and johnsmith+technicl@gmail.com for all your technical site sign ups. Everything will be neatly organized under the associated labels.

Did you know how to rename Recycle Bin ? Here's an answer

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:58:00 +0530

Most the windows user don't know how to change
the name of "Recycle Bin". Well! here a way to
change the name of "Recycle Bin".

Click start and then Run.
Type "regedit.exe" or "regedit" and press enter.
In the registry locate CLSID.
Find this key "645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E "
In the right side, double click default and rename recycle bin
to whatever you like.
Exit and restart.

That's it. Next time u do it just don't forget to praise me for this.

Finally iMac goes windows style

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:37:00 +0530

Some enterprise hackers (the white hat kind, not the guys that wreak havoc) got their hands on an Intel based Mac and successfully booted Windows XP and almost won $14,000 for their efforts.

Here are a couple of pictures::

Torrent link to download the entire video is here.

Google Mars released !!!!

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:26:00 +0530

Google Mars has just come out!
Some probably aren't even familiar with Google Moon And if you zoom all the way in the moon really is made of cheese. Anyways its basically the same earth mapping technology from Google combined with NASA imagery. I thought I was one of the only people that knew about Google Mars until I saw the Google Logo on the front page of Google.com

Google Mars doesn't have the same interface as Google Earth, though I'm sure it could easily be done that way, its put in the same format as maps.google.com Below is a sneak peak at the same viewing area in three different image forms.

Elevation

Infrared

<< I'm here to tell u every thing about the tech world >>

ryadav88@gmail.com (RAVI YADAV) — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 14:35:00 +0530

Ravi Yadav is the sole webmaster of this tech blog.
He is 17 years old. He is a student at Modern School VV and is currently giving his XII boards.