How to become a hacker

So, I'll let you in on the secret. Here are the steps to becoming a hacker:

1. Download the source code to the program you want to change
2. Untar it on your hard drive
3. Get it to build and run
4. Open the source code in an editor
5. Find the part of the code that you need to change to make the program do what you want it to do
6. Make the changes you need to make to the code and test it to make sure it works
7. Run the diff -u command and email the output to the mailing list

That's it; follow those instructions and I guarantee you will be a hacker.

If there are no programs that you want to change, then maybe you don't want to be a hacker after all. Or maybe you haven't used software enough; how can you be a software user in 2005 and not have things you want to change?

Steps 1-4 sound stupid and obvious, but the fact is most people get stuck on step 1. Can you be a hacker if you don't have any source code on your computer? It might be possible but I haven't seen it done.

If you bloody your toes on step 3 a few times, don't be discouraged. It is ridiculous and humiliating but sometimes this step takes the longest and is the most difficult.

If you're lucky, step 5 is as easy as grepping the source tree for some relevant string from the program's GUI or output. It's more likely that you'll need to spend some time figuring out the layout of the code, sprinkling source files with printf's as you home in on the right area. It might also help to step through things in a debugger.

Step 5 gets easier the more experience you have. The more code you've read, the more programming patterns you know. Recognizing programming idioms makes it easier to figure out what someone else was thinking when he wrote the code you're trying to change. Of course step 5 is also easier if the software you're working on was written by a programmer with a lot of experience, who tries extra hard to write easy-to-understand code. Programmers with experience write easier-to-read code because they've been through the shock of having to fix a bug in code they wrote a year earlier and recognizing nothing.

Step 6 is commonly referred to as "hacking" but it's not always the part that takes the longest. If you're trying to hack a change into something big and complex, expect step 5 to eclipse step 6 in time consumption. One of the best hackers at Novell recently spent two months working on a hack involving Wine that ended up being a two line change. So prepare yourself mentally to spend a lot of time in step 5 before you reach step 6, and sometimes to go back from 6 to 5 a few times.

But most people don't reach this point, so if you're at step 6 you can safely call yourself a hacker. Whole books are written on how to do a good job of step 6, so I won't elaborate too much here, except to say that you probably can't be good at writing code until you've written a huge amount of it.

The real key to being a hacker is getting to the point where you're hacking. Without source code, a working build and a working knowledge of the layout of the code, you're not even able to start hacking. But once you know your way around in there and you're writing code and watching the program take shape, well, that's the fun part.

You just gotta get there.

Google Web Accelerator: Hey, not so fast - an alert for web app designers

Google’s web accelerator seems like a good thing for the public web, but it can wreak havok on web-apps and other things with admin-links built into the UI. How’s that?

The accelerator scours a page and prefetches the content behind each link. This gives the illusion of pages loading faster (since they’ve already been pre-loaded behind the scenes). Here’s the problem: Google is essentially clicking every link on the page — including links like “delete this” or “cancel that.” And to make matters worse, Google ignores the Javascript confirmations. So, if you have a “Are you sure you want to delete this?” Javascript confirmation behind that “delete” link, Google ignores it and performs the action anyway.

We discovered this yesterday when a few people were reporting that their Backpack pages were “disappearing.” We were stumped until we dug a little deeper and discovered this Web Accelerator behavior. Once we figured this out we added some code to prevent Google from prefetching the pages and clicking the links, but it was quite disconcerting.

This wouldn’t be much of a problem on the public web since it’s pretty tough to be destructive on public web pages, but web apps, with their admin links here and there, can be considerably damaged. If you have a web app, it might be worth returning a 403 when the HTTP_X_MOZ is set to “prefetch” header is sent. This will keep Web Accelerator from clicking destructive links.

(found this article from some url)

Cross-Site Scripting Worm Hits MySpace

With the advent of social networking sites, becoming more popular is as easy as crafting a few lines of JavaScript code, it seems.

One clever MySpace user looking to expand his buddy list recently figured out how to force others to become his friend, and ended up creating the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. In less than 24 hours, "Samy" had amassed over 1 million friends on the popular online community.

How did Samy transcend his humble beginnings of only 73 friends to become a veritable global celebrity? The answer is a combination of XSS tricks and lax security in certain Web browsers.

First, by examining the restrictions put into place by MySpace, Samy discovered how to insert raw HTML into his user profile page. But MySpace stripped out the word "javascript" from any text, which would be needed to execute code.

With the help of Internet Explorer, Samy was able to break the word JavaScript into two lines and place script code within a Cascading Style Sheet tag.

The next step was to simply instruct the Web browser to load a MySpace URL that would automatically invite Samy as a friend, and later add him as a "hero" to the visitor's own profile page. To do this without a user's knowledge, the code utilized XMLHTTPRequest - a JavaScript object used in AJAX, or Web 2.0, applications such as Google Maps.

Taking the hack even further, Samy realized that he could simply insert the entire script into the visiting user's profile, creating a replicating worm. "So if 5 people viewed my profile, that's 5 new friends. If 5 people viewed each of their profiles, that's 25 more new friends," Samy explained.

It didn't take long for friend requests to start rolling in - first in the hundreds, then thousands. By 9:30pm that night, requests topped one million and continued arriving at a rate of 1,000 every few seconds. Less than an hour later, MySpace was taken offline while the worm was removed from all user profiles.

Samy says his intentions weren't malicious, but expressed concern that MySpace, which was purchased by News Corp. in July for $580 million, wouldn't see it that way. Company officials have not contacted him, but his account was deleted.

"My primary motivation was to make people laugh. I wanted a few friends to have my name appended to their list of heroes, including some of their own friends whom I don't know directly," Samy told BetaNews in an e-mail interview. "Me, a hero? That had to be the funniest joke people have heard in a while. Well, a lot more people heard it than I had really wanted."

Still, aside from remnant "samy is my hero" text strewn across the Internet's fifth largest Web site, the end result could end up positive.

The worm has piqued the interest of a number of security professionals who say XSS is a major problem that many companies overlook. Google employee Evan Martin even broke down the worm's AJAX code on his personal Web log.

"Found in over 90 percent of Web sites, Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities are by far the most common security issue," Jeremiah Grossman, co-founder and CTO of WhiteHat Security, told BetaNews. "The incident with MySpace illustrates the dangers presented by XSS vulnerabilities and underscores the importance for organizations to fix these issues."

"Those who do not, especially the on-line financial institutions and community Web sites, are prime targets," added Grossman. But Samy noted that MySpace isn't the only party to blame for the vulnerability, stating that browser makers also need to do a better job with security.

"MySpace has always properly filtered out valid JavaScript indications," Samy said, "however it was due to browser leniencies that allowed me to still get JavaScript to execute."

Thought of the day!

In a country of free speech, why are there phone bills?

English Auction

Most people who have ever attended or taken part in an auction have experience with English auctions. For those in the United States, these are the most common types of auctions and are generally the type that third-party auction sites most often use. While this type of auction may seem to be the most simplistic, it can be more complicated and may not always be the best choice for sellers.

In an English auction, an item is placed up for bid and the seller generally sets a reserve price. The reserve price is the minimum selling price for the item and is generally not known to bidders. That does not mean that bidding will begin at the reserve price. Sometimes these auctions begin below the reserve price and if that reserve price is not met, then the item is not sold and the transaction is not completed.

After the reserve price is set, bidding begins at a price determined by the seller and increases in previously specified increments. With online auctions, either the seller or the auction site will set the length of time the auction will last. When the auction ends, the highest bidder is named the winner (if his bid is higher than the reserve price) and he pays his the price he bid. For example, a seller may have a used computer up for auction. He may set the reserve price at $100 and may start bidding at $50. Additionally, he decided to raise bids in $5 increments and to allow the auction to go on for 14 days. Bidder A bids $100, Bidder B bids $105, and Bidder C bids $150. Bidder A then places a second bid for $160 followed by a second bid from Bidder B for $175. When the bidding ends fourteen days later, Bidder B is the winner and he pays $175 for the used computer.

English online auctions can also be further complicated by sniping and by proxy bidding. Sniping is the practice of waiting until an auction is almost over and placing a higher bid. Generally, snipers have been watching the auction for a number of days but refrain from placing a bid because they do not want to drive up the price by expressing interest. Proxy bidding is the ability to set a maximum bid amount in order to continue bidding even when not present or taking an active part in the auction. For instance, Bidder A may place a maximum bid of $125 and a current bid of $100. Technically, this Bidder A has bid $100. If another Bidder B places a bid of $115, then the Bidder A remains the high bidder but he his actual bid would go up to $120. If Bidder B placed a bid for $130, then Bidder A would be outbid and would have to place a new bid in order to continue participating in the auction. Sniping and proxy bidding add in the need for further strategy. Bidders who get into the auction early must try to determine the maximum price the item will reach and must keep in mind the possibility of losing out to a last minute sniper.

esides these complications, English auctions are not always the best bet for sellers. The price for the item is usually increasing in small increments and the bidding is open so that everyone involved can see the current bids (not the maximum proxy bids, which are kept sealed). Consequently, bidders generally try to work hard to keep the prices lower so that they can purchase the item below its value. When this happens, the seller ends up earning less on the item than they may have realized if another type of auction logic was employed.

On the other hand, English auctions have often caused bidders to become overly enthused by the activities and to bid even more than the value of the item. Paying more for an item than it's value is known as the Winner's Curse. The bidder»s desire to win the auction and/or to beat the competition is such a motivating factor in these instances that many bidders do go far beyond an item's value. The end result, of course, is a greater profit for the seller. However, sellers do not always benefit from the Winner's Curse and other related phenomenon. In many cases they can receive better results by opting for a traditional Dutch auction, which uses a descending-price structure along with open bidding.

Dutch Auction

Typically, when people think of an auction, they think of either a numbers of bidders all competing and raising the price until one person wins and ends up paying the highest bid. The reality is that this is just one type of auction. For example, there are second price auctions in which the bids are sealed from all of the bidders and the winner actually pays the highest losing price. Dutch auctions are another variation on what is considered a traditional auction. These Dutch auctions are so-named because they have been used for centuries in Holland as ways for produce and flower vendors to sell their goods. In more recent times, sellers of fish, credit, and a wide variety of other items have used this auction version to sell their products.

In a Dutch auction, a seller offers up an item for bid at a very high price. The initial price is much higher than the item's value usually and no seller expects to get that price for the item. Because bidders must know the amount of the bids, bids are not sealed as they are in some types of auctions. The price is lowered in increments until a bidder chooses to accept the current price. He pays that price for the item as the winner. For example, if a business is auctioning off a used company car, the bidding may start at $15,000. The bidders will wait as the price is lowered to $14,000 to $13,000 to $12,000 to $11,000 and to $10,000. When the bidding reaches $10,000, Bidder A decided to accept that price and he because he is the first bidder to do so, he is considered the winner and has to pay $10,000 for the automobile.

Like second price auctions, Dutch auctions can also be used quite easily for selling multiples of the same item. For instance, if the business was selling three cars, Bidder A may have purchased the first at $10,000 but that wouldn't stop the auction. The price would continue to decrease. So it might go down to $9,000 then to $8,000 and Bidder B might choose to accept that price, so he would pay $8,000 for his car. Since one car is still available, the price continues to be lowered. At this point, the bidders would begin to get anxious since only one car is left. Bidder C would wait until the price went down to $6,000 and then he would make his move and would end up paying $6,000 for the automobile.

While the above example may make it seem like the seller could be losing money in a Dutch auction, the reality is that they generally make more than they would with a more traditional ascending-price auction. With an ascending-price auction, the bidders do raise the price but rarely will they raise above the item's actual value. They have no reason to act fast because they know exactly when the auction will end, and they can always sneak in at the last second with a slightly higher bid. In a Dutch auction, however, bidders must act fast because they have no idea when the auction may be over. So even though the price is being lowered instead of increased, bidders will end up paying at or even above the item's value.

One of the only problems with Dutch auctions has nothing to do with the auction logic itself but with a common area of confusion. The financial world and some third-party auction sites use the term »Dutch auction» when they refer to second price auctions. In truth, there is a huge difference between the two types of auctions. Second-price auctions are auctions in which the winners pays either the price of the lowest winning bidder or the price of the highest losing bidder. The confusion in the terms can be problematic for individuals interested in getting involved in either type of auction, so it is important to clarify which type of logic will be used before participating.

Depending on what individuals have to sell and how much money they hope to earn as a result of a successful auction, Dutch auctions can be an ideal alternative to more traditionally used approaches. The descending-price structure of these auctions increases competition among bidders and makes acting fast a necessity. Bidders just need to be sure that they are participating in a real Dutch auction, not a misnamed second price auction before getting started.

The Art Of Making Animated GIFs

Here's a guide that will take you each step towards making easy animated gifs in a matter of few minutes.

My artistic ego got a boost and took a front seat when a friend of mine insisted that I make some animated gifs for his project. After rummaging around on the Net for a couple of minutes, I came across the latest version of Easy GIF Animator; one of the easiest ways to make animated gifs. And to prove that point, here's a guide that will take you each step towards making easy animated gifs in just a few minutes.

The application

As aforementioned, we'll be using the Easy GIF Animator 3.5 for this guide. The 20-usage trail version is available for download here. I suggest you install the software first so that you can try making gifs as you go through the article. The installation takes a couple of minutes and is pretty simple.

Features at a glance

Easy to use software for creating and editing animated GIF images, animated pictures, banners, and buttons.

Support for all types of GIF animation and provides good image compression.

Edit and modify animated GIF images.

Create moving text effects.

Optimize animated GIF images so they take less space and load faster.

Preview GIF animation in web browser.

Manage animation frames and set animation loop count and frame duration.

Extract separate animation frames.

Convert GIF animation to grayscale.

Edit animated GIF palette.

Reverse GIF animation or a portion of it.

Export GIF animation to AVI format.

Generate HTML code for publishing animation on the Web.

Get, Set, Go!!

The welcome screen gives you an option that allows you to create a new animated gif banner for web pages or just edit an existing animated gif.

Let's start with making a simple animated gif image. Before proceeding further, I suggest that you prepare few image files, which you will use to create your animation. It is recommended that they all have the same dimensions.

Click the Insert Picture Frame icon if you want to insert a picture directly or the Insert Blank Frame icon if you want to manually create a design on your own.(GIF Animator 3.5 uses MS Paint as the default frame editing application, but you can specify any other application of your choice as well.)

That's how the window looks after you've inserted picture frames.

Selecting any single frame will give you its Frame and Animation options.

The Animation properties allow you to either repeat the animation indefinitely or set the number of times it will be repeated.
One can resize the entire animation and scale up or scale down the image dimensions. This may not be as cool as it sounds as it simply degrades the quality of the pictures.

You can also optimize the entire animation so that you can save on size of web pages you want to upload the gif on to.

Incase, you want the frames to move in a particular way one after the other, you can use the Transition settings to do the needful. It provides PowerPoint-like options to give various transition effects to a single or multiple frames.

The Convert to Grayscale option transforms all the frames in the file to Grayscale.

The Preview option on the top right of the edit window lets you see the resulting animation before you save it. Also, GIF Animator allows you to preview the gif in a browser window as well.

As far as saving goes, you can save the entire set of frames as a single gif animation or export any single frame. One can also export the animation to a .AVI file.

That done, you can generate the HTML code for the gif with just a few clicks and then copy-paste the code to your webpage script.

Well, that was our dope on how to create your own animated GIFs. The same goes for banners as well. Now, let's see how to make buttons.

The create button wizard guides you through the entire process with considerable ease.

First, select the shape for the button. You can select ready sizes or templates that are available with GIF Animator. You can also include a set of your own templates to do the job.

A small frame at the bottom of the window gives you a preview of how the button looks at every stage.

Next step is to select the size, background, and border of the button that can be done very easily. Check the screenshots below.

This is followed by the part where you give a caption to your button. Here, you have the option of giving up to three captions to the button that cycle through one after the other in the set duration.

That done, we are transported back to the main window that will allow us to change any part of the frames we want as well as change the animation and frame setting. Again, real-time preview as well as web page preview is available.

Well, that's one of the quickest and easiest ways of making animated GIFs, banners, or buttons for your web page. I must say, if you want pro-like features or quality, the Easy GIF Animator is not for you. This one's for all those creative geniuses who don't have the time or energy to learn ultra high-end professional software for a couple of gifs or buttons here and there. I am sure this guide will set you in the right direction.

Coming Soon: Rival to Wikipedia

According to reports, Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the site's former editor-in-chief, is launching a rival site called "Citizendium".

"Citizendium" aims to weed out biased or incorrect information and obscenities by creating user registration and editorial controls, in contrast to the more open submission process at Wikipedia. Besides, the site will be an invitation-only one for experts in various fields.

According to Sanger, "Citizendium" will initially start with replicating the database of articles on Wikipedia, which uses open-source code. It will then evolve into a new encyclopedia as expert participants post their material.

Sanger pointed out that there are a number of problems with Wikipedia that can be solved, and that by solving these, they can end up with an even bigger and better encyclopedia.

A test version of "Citizendium" to be launched this week in Harmon, California, will deploy experienced editors and subject authorities to tune information submitted by Web surfers.

Sanger said that by engaging expert editors, eliminating anonymous contribution, and launching a more mature community under a new charter, a much broader and more influential group of people and institutions will be able to improve upon Wikipedia's extremely useful, but often uneven work.

And in an attempt to discourage mischievous postings, Sanger said that "Citizendium" would require members to register their real names before they write for the online encyclopedia.

Meanwhile, "Citizendium" will be open within the next few days to a limited number of invited editors and members of the public who apply, and will be made generally available by the end of the year.

Google Gadgets for Your Webpage!

Now, with "Google Gadgets for your Webpage," users can make their Web sites look more dynamic and content-rich.

Google Gadgets, a tool previously available to users for adding to their personalized Google homepages and Google Desktops, is now available to Webpage owners to add to their own Web sites.

Google Gadgets are actually miniature-sized objects that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the Web.

According to Adam Sah, architect, Google Gadgets, "Now anyone can have a great-looking Web site with automatically updating content. By making Google Gadgets available for users to add to their Webpage, we are working to connect developers with enthusiastic consumers, and to make information universally accessible and useful to individual users."

Google Gadgets allow Webpage owners to add complex, dynamically updating content to their own Web sites, with almost no effort, and at no cost. Users have an enormous variety of around 1,220 Google Gadgets, including games, news clips, weather reports, maps, sports, business, and more to choose from, providing the freedom to select only those gadgets that best complement their page.

Google Gadgets are small bits of code that function as dynamic applications when installed on a Web page.

To add a gadget to their Webpage, users have to visit the directory of "Google Gadgets for your Webpage" and find gadgets that they would like to add, and then select the preferences for the appearance of the gadget on the page. After this, users need to copy and paste the HTML code from the window onto the HTML code for their Web sites.

To distinguish these new Web-based programs from Desktop Gadgets; Google has dubbed them "Universal Gadgets". By contrast, Desktop Gadgets are designed to run only on Google sites, or on users' computer desktops.

First time not at home on Diwali :-(

Today is Diwali. My favourite festival. Home beckons. But, what m I doing? Staying back in my hostel. Till yesterday it was something like I can manage without going home. But now even before the evening has come, I feel sickening. It's for the first time I am not at home on Diwali or is it the beginning of never being at home on Diwali henceforth? Given that I'll be moving to South India few months from hence, the second one is more likely. Yesterday morning dad gave me a call. He wanted to know when I am coming. When I refused to come, it was mom who was pressurizing. "I'll not make anything if you don't come", she said. Now, that is so...grrr. It's the time when everyone enjoys, there are lotsa sweets and delicacies and she says she won't make anything if I don't come. Anyways, I convinced them by saying, "I have exams 2 days after Diwali". Now, you all don't think that I was lying. I do have exams. So, they gave up. But, now I am feeling sick. Mom's sweets, my lovely younger brothers' happiness and all the joys involved in Diwali, I am missing them all. Waiting to get a call from Dad. Miss you.

Happy Diwali !!!

My Desktop - What a mess!!!

Thought of the day!

The trouble with being punctual is that no one is there to appreciate it.

Which baby are you? Nature by month of birth...

JANUARY
Pretty/handsome. Loves to dress up. Easily bored. Fussy. Seldom shows emotions. Takes time to recover w hen hurt. Sensitive. Down-to-Earth. Stubborn.

FEBUARY
Abstract thoughts. Loves reality and abstract. Intelligent and clever. Changing personality. Attractive. Sexiest out of everyone. Temperamental. Quiet, shy and humble. Honest And loyal. Determined to rea ch goals. Loves freedom. Rebellious when restricted. Loves aggressiveness. Too sensitive and easily hurt. Gets angry really easily but does not show it. Dislikes unnecessary things. Loves making friends but rarely shows it. Horny. Daring and stubbor n. Ambitious. Realizing dreams and hopes. Sharp. Loves entertainment and leisure. Romantic on the inside not outside. Superstitious and ludicrous. Spendthrift. Tries to learn to show emotions.

MARCH
Attractive personality. Sexy. Affectionate Shy and reserved. Secretive. Naturally honest, generous and sympathetic. Loves peace and serenity. Sensitive to others. Great kisser. Easily angered. Trustworthy. Appreciative and returns kindness. Hardly shows emotions. Tends to bottle up feelings. Observant and assesses others.

APRILSuave and compromising. Funny and humorous. Stubborn. Very talkative. Calm and cool. Kind and sympathetic . Concerned and detailed. Loyal. Does work well with others. Very confidant. Sensitive. Positive Attitude. Thinking generous. Good memory. Clever and knowledgeable. Loves to look for information. Able to cheer everyone up and/or make them laug h. Able to motivate oneself and others. Understanding. Fun to be around. Outgoing. Hyper. Bubbly personality. Secretive. Boy/girl crazy. Loves sports, music, leisure and traveling. Systematic. Hot but has brains.

MAYStubborn and hard-hearted. Strong-willed and highly motivated. Sharp thoughts. Easily angered. Attracts others and loves attention. Deep feelings. Beautiful physically and mentally. Firm Standpoint. Needs no motivation . Shy towards opposite sex. Easily consoled. Systematic (left brain). Loves to dream. Strong clairvoyance. Understanding. Sickness usually in the ear and neck. Good imagination. Good physical. Weak breathing. Loves literature and the arts. Loves traveling . Dislike being at home. Restless. Not having many children. Hardworking. High-spirited.

JUNEYou've got the best personality and are an absolute pleasure to be around. You love to make new friends and be outgoing. You are a great flirt and more than likely have an a very attractive partner. a wicked hottie. It is also more than likely that you have a massive record collection. You have a great choice in films, and may one day become a famous actor/actress yourself - heck, you've got the looks for it!!!

JULYFun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself. Has reputation. Easily co nsoled. Honest. Concerned about people's feelings. Tactful. Friendly. Approachable. Emotional temperamental and unpredictable. Moody and easily hurt. Witty and sparkly. spazzy at times. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets. dislikes nonsensical and unnecessary things. Guides others physically and mentally. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving. Treats others equally. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. Hardwork ing. No difficulties in studying. Loves to be alone. Always broods about the past and the old friends. Waits for friends. Never looks for friends. Not aggressive unless provoked. Loves to be loved. Easily hurt but takes long to recover.

AUGUSTOutgoing personality. takes risks. feeds on attention. No s elf-control. Kind hearted. Self-confident. Loud and boisterous. VERY revengeful. Easy to get along with and talk to. Has an "every thing's peachy" attitude. Likes talking and singing. Loves music. Daydreamer. Easily distracted. Hates not being trust ed. BIG imagination. Loves to be loved. Hates studying. in need of "that someone". Longs for freedom. Rebellious when withheld or restricted. Lives by "no pain no gain" caring. Always a suspect. Playful. Mysterious. "charming" or "beautiful" to everyone. stubborn. curious. Independent. Strong willed. A fighter.

SEPTEMBERActive and dynamic. Decisive and haste but tends to regret. Attractive and affectionate to oneself. Strong mentality. Loves attention. Diplomatic. Consoling, friendly and solves people's problems. Brave and fearless. Adventurous. Loving and caring. Suave and generous. Usually you have many friends. Enjoys to make love. Emotional. Stubborn. Hasty. Good memory. Moving, motivates oneself and others. Loves to travel and explore. Sometimes sexy in a way that only their lover can understand.

OCTOBERLoves to chat. Loves those who love them. Loves to t akes things at the center. Inner and physical beauty. Lies but doesn't pretend. Gets angry often. Treats friends importantly. Brave and fearless. Always making friends. Easily hurt but recovers easily. Daydreamer. Opinionated. Does not care to contr ol emotions. Unpredictable. Extremely smart, but definitely the hottest AND sexiest of them all.

NOVEMBERTrustworthy and loyal. Very passionate and dangerous. Wild at times. Knows how to have fun. Sexy and mysterious. Everyone is drawn towards your inner and outer beauty and independent persona lity. Playful, but secretive. Very emotional and temperamental sometimes. Meets new people easily and very social in a group. Fearless and independent. Can hold their own. Stands out in a crowd. Essentially very smart. Usually, the greatest men are born in this month. If you ever begin a relationship with someone from this month, hold on to them because their one of a kind.

DECEMBERThis straight-up means you are the most good-looking person possible... Better than all of these other months! Loyal and generous. Patriotic. Competitive in everything. Active in games and interac tions. Impatient and hasty. Ambitious. Influential in organizations. Fun to be with. Easy to talk to, though hard to understand. Thinks far with vision, yet complicated to know. Easily influenced by kindness. Polite and soft-spoken. Having lots of i deas. Sensitive. Active mind. Hesitating tends to delay. Choosy and always wants the best. Temperamental. Funny and humorous. Loves to joke. Good debating skills. Has that someone always on his/her mind. Talkative. Daydreamer. Friendly. Knows how to make friends. Abiding. Able to show character. One guy/girl kind of person. Loveable. Easily hurt. Prone to getting colds. Loves music. Pretty/handsome. Loves to dress up. Easily bored. Fussy. Sel dom shows emotions. Takes time to recover when hurt. Sensitive.

How to kill a lion By Companies...

Cognizant Method:

hire a lion... ask him to stay for late nights but give him no work to do.
give him gobi 65 to eat again and again.
hire 100 more lions but do not increase the space to sit
give them same gobi 65 to eat
hire 200 more....... and more .......

TCS method:

hire a lion
give him hell a lot of work and pay him government salary
lion dies of hunger and frustration

Kanbay Method:

Hire a Cat; give him a salary of a Lion...
Give him work of 3 Lions
Tell him to work late and even on weekends...
No time for food and family, automatically die

IBM's metbod:

hire a lion, give him a pink slip in an hour ...
he dies of unemployment...

Syntel Method:

Hire a Cat ...
assure him that he will eventually become a Lion once he reaches onsite and
make sure that he never reaches onsite.
Cat dies in hope of becoming a Lion....

MBT method:

hire the lion, make him take 14 tests and tell him that if he doesn't score 60% he will lose the job.
lion dies of the strain?

i-Flex method:

hire a lion???.oops cow, tell him he is a lion, send him in African safari
for implementing flexcube in god forbidden territories, tell him if he comes
alive he will get band movement (promotion)
holy cow dies in fear of the real lion

COSL Method:

hire a lion .
tell him to merge with Goats (polaris) and reduce his allowance...
lion dies from fear that tommorrow he might become a goat....

Polaris Method:

hire ..sorry....purchase a lion(COSL) ..
change his timings...(instead of 9 AM ...change it to 8:30 AM )
cut down his allowance (coupons etc)
lion dies from fear of becoming CAT.....


Patni method:

hire a lion, give him a salary of a cat...
the lion dies before joining....


Wipro Method:
Hire a Lion,
give him a mail Id.
he will die recieving stupid mails all day........!!!!

In Last But not the least

Accenture Method:

Hire a lion....
Send him to chennai
Ask him to stay on bench for a long time
Ask him to eat idli,Dosa and Vada
No hindi, kannada or no other languages speaking ppl other than TAMIL...
No good food, No water..and specially No Beautiful girls
And say him "Go Ahead be a Tiger".
Lion dies in confusion he is Tiger or lion......

Thought of the day!

A friend in need is a pest indeed.

Speed of Internet is directly proportional to Cricket

Hmmm so does this title sound weird to you? Well, it's very true...atleast here in my hostel. Now, that the champions trophy (a.k.a mini world cup) is going on in India, the country is again gripped with cricket fever. Yesterday was India's first match. India Vs England. As far as I have personally viewed cricket matches, I have never seen England win against India in any major series like World cup and Champions trophy. Should I watch? Ahhh! leave it. Given that my interest in the game has been declining steadily by each passing year, this is the question least correct to even ponder about. So, laptop was brought back to life and what followed afterwards lead to this post. So, if you had been wasting time to read this, you now know whom to blame. Suddenly, the Wi-Fi was very fast if not extremely. I was simply aghast by this new found speed of mine. Most of the hostel mates were in the mess watching the spectacular performance of India having the least knowledge that they were actually providing me with a faster Internet access. "The Internet can be even more faster...ummmmm 11 Mbps", I thought. "Damn, these girls aren't watching cricket. It's them whose preventing those dreaming speeds". However, I was atleast a bit satisfied with even this speed. And yah! thanks, for it's only b'coz of you that I discovered something. Speed of Internet is directly proportional to Cricket. Who won? Well, India as usual.



[ England batted 1st. Score: 125 all out in 37 overs.
India achieved the target in less than 30 overs losing 6
wickets
]

Thought of the day!

Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking.

Creating and Using a robots.txt File

In this article we will take a look at how you can create an effective robots.txt file for your site, why you need one and at some tools that can help with the job.

What on Earth is a robots.txt File?

A robots.txt is a file placed on your server to tell the various search engine spiders not to crawl or index certain sections or pages of your site. You can use it to prevent indexing totally, prevent certain areas of your site from being indexes or to issue individual indexing instructions to specific search engines.

The file itself is a simple text file, which can be created in Notepad. It need to be saved to the root directory of your site, that is the directory where your home page or index page is.

Why Do I Need One?

All search engines, or at least all the important ones, now look for a robots.txt file as soon their spiders or bots arrive on your site. So, even if you currently do not need to exclude the spiders from any part of your site, having a robots.txt file is still a good idea, it can act as a sort of invitation into your site.

There are a number of situations where you may wish to exclude spiders from some or all of your site.

1. You are still building the site, or certain pages, and do not want the unfinished work to appear in search engines
2. You have information that, while not sensitive enough to bother password protecting, is of no interest to anyone but those it is intended for and you would prefer it did not appear in search engines.
3. Most people will have some directories they would prefer were not crawled - for example do you really need to have your cgi-bin indexed? Or a directory that simply contains thank you or error pages.
4. If you are using doorway pages (similar pages, each optimized for an individual search engine) you may wish to ensure that individual robots do not have access to all of them. This is important in order to avoid being penalized for spamming a search engine with a series of overly similar pages.
5. You would like to exclude some bots or spiders altogether, for example those from search engines you do not want to appear in or those whose chief purpose is collecting email addresses.

The very fact that search engines are looking for them is reason enough to put one on your site. Have you looked at your site statistics recently? If your stats include a section on 'files not found', you are sure to see many entries where search engines spiders looked for, and failed to find, a robots.txt file on your site.

Creating the robots.txt file

There is nothing difficult about creating a basic robots.txt file. It can be created using notepad or whatever is your favorite text editor. Each entry has just two lines:

User-Agent: [Spider or Bot name]
Disallow: [Directory or File Name]

This line can be repeated for each directory or file you want to exclude, or for each spider or bot you want to exclude.

A few examples will make it clearer.

1. Exclude a file from an individual Search Engine

You have a file, privatefile.htm, in a directory called 'private' that you do not wish to be indexed by Google. You know that the spider that Google sends out is called 'Googlebot'. You would add these lines to your robots.txt file:

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /private/privatefile.htm

2. Exclude a section of your site from all spiders and bots

You are building a new section to your site in a directory called 'newsection' and do not wish it to be indexed before you are finished. In this case you do not need to specify each robot that you wish to exclude, you can simply use a wildcard character, '*', to exclude them all.

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /newsection/

Note that there is a forward slash at the beginning and end of the directory name, indicating that you do not want any files in that directory indexed.

3. Allow all spiders to index everything

Once again you can use the wildcard, '*', to let all spiders know they are welcome. The second, disallow, line you just leave empty, that is your disallow from nowhere.

User-agent: *
Disallow:

4. Allow no spiders to index any part of your site

This requires just a tiny change from the command above - be careful!

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

If you use this command while building your site, don't forget to remove it once your site is live!

Getting More Complicated

If you have a more complex set of requirements you are going to need a robots.txt file with a number of different commands. You need to be quite careful creating such a file, you do not want to accidentally disallow access to spiders or to areas you really want indexed.

Let's take quite a complex scenario. You want most spiders to index most of your site, with the following exceptions:

1. You want none of the files in your cgi-bin indexed at all, nor do you want any of the FP specific folders indexed - eg _private, _themes, _vti_cnf and so on.
2. You want to exclude your entire site from a single search engine - let's say Alta Vista.
3. You do not want any of your images to appear in the Google Image Search index.
4. You want to present a different version of a particular page to Lycos and Google.
(Caution here, there are a lot of question marks over the use of 'doorway pages' in this fashion. This is not the place for a discussion of them but if you are using this technique you should do some research on it first.)

Let's take this one in stages!

1. First you would ban all search engines from the directories you do not want indexed at all:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /_borders/
Disallow: /_derived/
Disallow: /_fpclass/
Disallow: /_overlay/
Disallow: /_private/
Disallow: /_themes/
Disallow: /_vti_bin/
Disallow: /_vti_cnf/
Disallow: /_vti_log/
Disallow: /_vti_map/
Disallow: /_vti_pvt/
Disallow: /_vti_txt/

It is not necessary to create a new command for each directory, it is quite acceptable to just list them as above.

2. The next thing we want to do is to prevent Alta Vista from getting in there at all. The Altavista bot is called Scooter.

User-Agent: Scooter
Disallow: /

This entry can be thought of as an amendment to the first entry, which allowed all bots in everywhere except the defined files. We are now saying we mean all bot can index the whole site apart from the directories specified in 1 above, except Scooter which can index nothing.

3. Now you want to keep Google away from those images. Google grabs these images with a sperate bot from the one that indexes pages generally, called Googlebot-Image. You have a couple of choices here:

User-Agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/

That will work if you are very organized and keep all your images strictly in the images folder.

User-Agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

This one will prevent the Google image bot from indexing any of your images, no matter where they are in your site.

4. Finally, you have two pages called content1.html and content2.html, which are optimized for Google and Lycos respectively. So, you want to hide content1.html from Lycos (The Lycos spider is called T-Rex):

User-Agent: T-Rex
Disallow: /content1.html

and content2.html from Google.

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /content2.html

Summary and Links

Writing a robots.txt file is, as you have seen, a relatively simple matter. However it is important to bear in mind that it is not a security method. It may stop your specified pages from appearing in search engines, but it will not make them unavailable. There are many hundreds of bots and spiders crawling the Internet now and while most will respect your robot.txt file, some will not and there are even some designed specifically to visit the very pages you are specifying as being out of bounds.

robots.txt File Generators

I think it may be easier to write your own file than use these but for those who would like to have their robots file generated automatically there are a couple of free online tools that will do the trick for you. But, if you are going to write quite complex robots.txt files it may be worth your while having a look at RoboGen, a program that will create the files for you:
RoboGen

More about Robots and Spiders

The Web Robots Page

Has more information than you will probably ever need about robots and spiders of all kinds, including a comprehensive database of information about all know ones.

Poll age

hi there, so here I start a new thing...guess what??? Polls...and the very first one is whether you think we should have a single common currency worldwide...your opinion matters. plz do poll so that we can know what people think about it.

Computer Security

The purpose of this information is to enable to you to achieve maximum computer security at minimum cost. These are not all of the security resources available on the Internet. But they work, and they are generally either free or low-cost.

There are now three types of Internet access in common use. The slowest is conventional modem, but it is also the most secure because it does not generally mean the computer is continuously online. High speed telephone connections are less secure, because they are continuously online, but each line is private. Cable modem access can be extremely insecure right out of the box. Not only is it continuously online, but access to the Internet is shared on the same network with other cable modem users. This means that it is readily accessible to outside intrusion. Some cable companies offer safety advice and firewall-protected modems.

Here are some simple methods of keeping your computer safer. Note that there is no such thing as unhackable personal firewall software. The only unhackable computer is one that is turned off. There are even means of observing computer activity by interpreting the RF output of a system, and reconstructing its activity on another computer. Radio output can be recorded and reconstructed at a later time.

The simplest means of preventing this particular type of intrusion is to reduce the RF output of the computer. To do this, a computer expert or security expert should be consulted. Most modern computers have a very low RF signature as it is, but it is still possible to make it lower.

Another form of direct attack involves entering the computer manually. This can easily be prevented by using a password protection system. However, the standard Windows 95/98 system that many people use is, to a greater or lesser degree, easy to defeat. Another means of protecting your computer is through the use of biometric security. You can get a free voice-print authentication screensaver, VoicEntry I, from Te-Netix.

Keytronic offers a Secure Finger Scanner Keyboard for a list price of $149.00. When this replacement keyboard is added to your system, entry is restricted to those with previously enrolled fingerprints.

Digital Persona offers a seperate fingerprint scanner that plugs into a computer's USB port for $149. This system allows you to encrypt specific files, which can then only be decrypted by the use of the fingerprint scanner.

The most common problem is hacker attack. Hackers use continuously running scripts or programs that attempt to connect to computers by accessing open software ports. Depending on the operating system on the computer and the type of port being accessed, the computer may be vulnerable to attack. allowing access to your files, your computer, and even the data being transmitted across your Internet connection. If you are on an internal network, this would mean that your entire system could be as accessible to the hacker as it is to anybody on your network. If you have a single computer running Windows 95/98, the first step to security is to turn off file and print sharing. This is simple. Go to the icon marked Network Neighborhood, right-click on it, go to Properties and click on the File and Printer Sharing button. Uncheck file and printer sharing.

The next step is to obtain personal firewall software. There are many good firewalls available, but they all, to a greater or lesser degree, will interrupt your access to the Internet. Some firewalls are easier to manage than others. Zone Alarm offers good protection and convenient access, as it will query you about whether or not you want a given program to access the Internet as you work, then automatically allow the access if you agree. You can also control access, and the level of access, from a window. Zone Alarm is free for personal users.

Other good firewalls are ConSeal Private Desktop and Black Ice Defender. Black Ice will make a record of all activity, including the IP addresses of computers attempting to access your system, and the ports they have attempted to access.

If you have a cable modem and your provider does not offer a firewall protected modem, you should use a Cable/DSL Router with its own IP address. This will be the only IP address that the cable network will see, and it will offer a significant increased level of protection. However, hackers can "spoof" such systems and find the actual IP addresses of the consealed computers, so a firewall on each computer is also necessary for thorough protection. A good router with its own IP address is the Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router.

Once your system is secured, you can test the effectiveness of your firewall with Shields UP!.

Shields UP! is a system that will ping your computer and tell you the degree of firewall invisibility that it found, and recommend whatever changes may be necessary to offer you effective protection. Other good security sites are HackerWhacker and PRO-TECT 2000.

As you browse the Internet, your browser leaves behind and picks up all sorts of information. Your most basic defense against this is to make certain that the browser warns you when a cookie is about to be sent to your computer. You can also strip your browser of all the invasive debris that it has picked up by using a program called Window Washer.

Anonymizer also enables private web browsing by enabling you to browse through their servers. Bear in mind that Window Washer will erase passwords saved in Explorer, so be certain that you know what they are before using the settings on this program that will completely wipe Explorer of all its stored information.

A $49.95 program called Freedom allows the user to create pseudonyms while they chat, surf or shop online, and to send aliased e-mail. Remember, if you are in e-mail correspondence with anybody you don't know personally, that programs like this exist. You have NO WAY OF KNOWING if your correspondent is a real person or a pseudonym. Freedom is a powerful program. Bear that in mind. However, it not only offers people who would like to conceal their true identities the opportunity to do so, it offers you the freedom to access the Internet with total and complete privacy.

E-mail security is another important issue. As your e-mail travels across the Internet, it is quite easy for hackers of all kinds of pick it up and read it. The solution is encryption, and there are a number of programs that will do this. Invisimail offers totally automatic encryption and decryption as long as both users have the program properly installed in their system. Installation can be touchy. PGP offers certificate-based authentication. Both users must have PGP, and must have traded public keys to decrypt one another's messages.

PrivacyX enables the sending of encrypted messages that require the receiver to have a digital certificate to decrypt. Certificates can be obtained by signing up for a PrivacyX account. www.privacyx.com. Ziplip enables users to set up a free email account that offers encryption security. Recepients of the messages do not need Ziplip accounts, but must have a password given to them by the sender. This is a very convenient, and free, system.

Thought of the day!

Marriage is one of the chief causes of divorce.

David J. Bradley - the inventor of "Ctrl-Alt-Delete"

David J. Bradley (born 1949) was one of the twelve engineers who worked on the original IBM PC, developing the computer's ROM BIOS code. He is most famous for inventing the "Control-Alt-Delete" (also known as three-finger salute) key combination that was used to reboot the computer.


Three Finger Salute

Bradley did not intend Control-Alt-Delete to be used by end users — it was meant to be used by people writing programs or documentation, so that they could reboot their computers without powering them down. This was useful since after a computer was powered down, it was necessary to wait a few seconds before powering it up again if one wanted to avoid damaging the hardware. Since software developers and technical writers would need to restart a computer many times, this key combination was a big time-saver. He used this key combination because it is practically impossible to accidentally press this combination of keys on a standard keyboard.

This key combination still exists in the Microsoft Windows operating system. It either gives a list of running programs (in the case of Windows 95 and Windows 98), or gives a list of administative functions, such as to reboot the computer, give a task list, or password protect the computer (in the case of Windows 2000 and Windows XP).

It is used for these functions because only the kernel can respond to this key combination. Other programs are interrupted by it. It is therefore a secure way to assure that the operating system is running, rather than a hostile program that emulates the operating system to record passwords or other sensitive data.

The U.S. Trade Advantage with China

I love surfing the net all the time. Hmmm, so is it coz of my surfing that the US has trade advantage with China??? No!!! actually yes...you see actually the reason is that coz i surf so much i happened to read an article which talks from absolutely different perspective. Well the article is authored by Jason Hommel. lets have a look what he has to say:

There are misconceptions about our trade relations with China. Misguided U.S. patriots complain about the cheap Chinese labor taking away domestic jobs and U.S. politicians blame the cheap Chinese currency, and complain about the unfair trade advantage that China has.

Those are one-sided views. Here's the truth: We have the trade advantage with China. We send a little paper dollars that they cannot use, and we get a lot of great stuff that we buy and use continually. We give paper money that is an unjust weight and measure, an abomination. We are cheating them; they are not cheating us.

Our trade advantage with China is so great that we could not do any better than if we sent over troops, conquered their nation, and made them all our slaves. Not only would that be far more costly, but impractical, unthinkable, and unimaginable. Nevertheless, our situation today is better than if we beat them in a war, and made them all our slaves. We could not force them at gunpoint to work for us as cheaply as they do today. We have utterly conquered them economically, and we are reaping rewards greater than the spoils of war.

We don't have to fear them conquering us in a trade war, because we've already won. They work for less than slave labor prices, and we get great stuff, which proves it.

Just like when any conquering nation benefits from slave labor, the local peasants who are unhappy and unemployed feel that they are priced out of work, and so they complain and beg for government handouts. It was not much different back in the Ancient Roman Empire.

Why do the U.S. politicians and the media say that China has the trade advantage, when clearly, the advantage is ours? I don't know, but I can only guess when it comes to motives.

First, I must consider the possibility that Americans, including the Media and Politicians genuinely do not understand the benefits of trade. Few do.

Here are the essential details of trade: Trade boosts efficiency, increases specialization, increases productivity. People and nations trade the thing they are most efficient at producing, specifically, the highest value surplus goods that take the least effort to create. The U.S. creates extra dollars very efficiently; we print them. The Chinese produce goods cheaply, because their people are numerous and relatively poor. And so we trade. Who is most efficient at producing what they produce? I suspect we have a much higher profit margin on the dollars we create out of paper. Therefore, once again, we have the trade advantage.

So, it could be that the media and politicians are stupid and don't understand how trade works, or it could be that they are defending the fraud of the overvalued dollar. I don't know which, but it's one of the two, or both.

Our politicians must do two important things. 1. Keep the trade going (since it is so lucrative for us), and 2. Appease the local peasants in the U.S.A. I believe both of these goals are served at the same time when the politicians "complain" about China's "unfair trade advantage" and China's "undervalued currency". But this is a smokescreen, and it properly deceives two groups of people.

First, our politicians deceive the local peasants into thinking that the politicians actually care about their "lack of jobs".

The other reality that U.S. workers and employers need to face is that there is always an infinite amount of work to do in the real world. I know, because I ran several businesses, and I'm very busy today, because we are in a silver boom market. You can always improve your own property, and spend more time taking care of your business. The best way to manage your property is to learn about the economic forces in the world that create imbalances and opportunities that you can then take advantage of by investing your time or assets in projects that will be most productive and give the greatest return. (Today, I think that means buying silver stocks.) People at home are priced out of work due not to China's low currency, but due to our overvalued currency. It is not China's fault that we have an overvalued currency! People also lose jobs due to bad business regulations that have been continuously created ever since we left using gold and silver as money (which is what really threw people out of work) to begin with!

Second, our politicians deceive China into thinking they have the trade advantage, as we draw attention to our "economic pain" and "loss of jobs" here at home. Since China tends to consider us as the enemy (while envying our lifestyle), I think they tend to want to do the opposite of what we complain about. I actually think we have fooled China into thinking they have the trade advantage, but clearly, they do not.

Not only are we receiving goods from China, we are also receiving real money, silver. So, not only are they sending us goods, but they are paying us, in real money, at the same time! And some say China has the advantage? Clearly, we are taking advantage of them more easily than if we were ransacking their cities; looting and stealing everything in sight. But our trade advantage is better than that, because we steal and destroy nothing; creating a situation where we can steal from China year after year. China may be increasing their exports of silver:

http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/031212/minerals_china_silver_1.html

HONG KONG, Dec 12 (Reuters) - The Chinese government is expected to issue 2004 export permits for silver to selected Chinese firms on December 15, industry sources said on Friday. In early November, the Ministry of Commerce said it would allot export quotas for 3,050 tonnes of silver for 2004, up 39 percent from 2,200 tonnes allotted this year.

So, why is China so easily deceived by our paper money? Could it be the same reason that nearly everyone in our nation has been deceived by our paper money? I think it is greed. China envies the Western Lifestyle. That must be the reason. Unfortunately, China seems to forget that the time period of industrialization and prosperity for the U.S. took place during a time when we used gold as money, and that the U.S. was not built on paper money. We are only prosperous now because we are enjoying the spoils of war through unjust trade with nations like China.

If China really wants to help their own economic boom take place, they must allow economic freedom and competition, and they need to put an end to fraud and corruption. To that end, they should pursue using gold and silver as money, and they should reject the U.S. paper dollars that they receive in trade with us, and demand gold and silver as payment, instead. They should reject the frauds of fractional reserve banking and should reject paper money. If they do this, they will stop being economically exploited in trade relations with the U.S., and they will prosper.

It's really quite ironic. Communism was supposed to prevent the exploitation of the worker. But China is more exploited now than ever. The last of the Communists just don't get it. The only way to end exploitation is freedom. At least they are slowly headed in the right direction by allowing the trade of gold and silver. Unfortunately, they may also allow futures markets, which is an open invitation to another paper nightmare of fraud.

If they want what we have, they ought to stop giving us what we have, and instead, they ought to make it and keep it for themselves, or trade value for value; not trade value for nothing as they are doing.

If only the people of our nation had the courage and wisdom to reject the frauds of paper money and fractional reserve banking.

Look at the amount of dollars out there that could buy gold.
$20,200,000,000,000: U.S. bond market, yr. end, '02:
http://tinyurl.com/vr7g
$8,835,000,000,000: M3 (money in the banks) Oct. '03
http://tinyurl.com/vra0

$20 trillion in bonds, $9 trillion M3 = $29 Trillion. A mere 1% of those dollars is $290 Billion, which, at $400/oz. is a massive demand of 725 million ounces, or 22,549 tonnes. $290 Billion at $1000/oz. gold is a massive demand of 290 million ounces, or 9020 tonnes. The physical gold market has an annual supply of 2500 tonnes, and an annual demand of 4000 tonnes, so do you understand what that means? 22,249 tonnes and/or 9020 tonnes is still much, much more than either 2500 or 4000 tonnes! That means that far, far less than 1% of dollars, in either bonds or M3 can buy gold, because there simply is not nearly that much gold available.

Long before 1% of U.S. paper money tries to buy gold, gold will be leaping well past $1000/oz.

The other interesting fact is that China's foreign exchange reserves stand at $383.9 billion in September 2003. See: www.rieti.go.jp/en/china/03103101.html

China's $384 Billion is much more than the 1% of dollars, or $290 Billion, that, if it were exchanged for gold, would cause gold to leap well past $1000/oz.

Other interesting articles on China's trade situation with the US:
www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/EG15Dk01.html
www1.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-08/07/content_252808.htm

Thus, China alone could cause gold prices to hit $1000/oz. or higher by selling dollars for gold, either covertly or overtly, because outright war with China would do the same thing.

In the meantime, by the time 1% of U.S. dollar owners decide to protect their fraudulent paper wealth with gold and silver, the price of silver will be headed well past $50/oz, (at a 20:1, silver to gold ratio) and the silver stock boom will be just beginning.

My very first poem

hey guys...here I now present the greatest poem ever written in the world to someone special... ( I m not naming that person here).

By San @ 1:45 a.m Sep 21, 2006
ver 1.0

tum na hira ho,
na panna ho,
phir bhi hum tumhe bayshkeemti mante hain

tum na sundar ho,
na intelligent ho,
phir bhi hum tumhe palkon pe bethate hain

tum na accha gaatee ho,
na accha dance karti ho,
phir bhi hum waah waah karte hain

tum na accha batlati ho,
na accha samjhati ho,
phir bhi hum itna interest dekhate hain

tum na accha joke karte ho,
na accha hansti ho,
phir bhi hum tumhare hansi mein hansi milate hain

samjhna na hame tum naadaan priye,
tumhara dil rahne ke liye,
hum khusi khusi ye gam sahjate hain


...and well if u do copy it to forward someone, plz do mention my name "SAN"

Regrets!!!

Scripts posted below for orkut may not work coz all the parts of script isn't visible due to suppression of it by blogger.

Orkut Tricks & Crazy Scripts

##Starting with a simple one

know how to miss call on orkut..............
just type [ i ] withought spaces nd an invisible scrap will b sent
means empty scrap
or
[u ]
[ b]

## now next one is how 2 get invisible on orkut
just go 2 ur edit profile option
delete first nd 2nd name
then on the first name text box type ALT + 0173
do th same for the 2nd name box then update the page
simple
keep the ALT key pressed while typing 0173

## trick

how 2 mirror a message

& # 8 2 3 8
type it without spaces b4 ur msg nd submitt ur message will be inverted..................

## crazy scripts

crazy scripts

just copy paste them in ur adress bar

and press enter

javascript:R=-1;DI=document.links;DIL=DI.length;function A(a,b,c){return Math.sin(R/350*6.28*b+a)*c+c}function B(a){DIS=DI.item(a).style;DIS.position='absolute';DIS.left=A(5,100,500);DIS.top=A(5.6,60,150)}setInterval('R++;B(R%DIL)',15);void(0)
__________________

javascript:R=-1;DI=document.images;DIL=DI.length;function A(a,b,c){return Math.sin(R/350*6.28*b+a)*c+c}function B(a){DIS=DI.item(a).style;DIS.position='absolute';DIS.left=A(0,7,300);DIS.top=A(1.6,6,150)}setInterval('R++;B(R%DIL)',15);void(0)


few more.....
javascript:function flood(n) {if (self.moveBy) {for (i = 35; i > 0; i--) {for (j = n; j > 0; j--) {self.moveBy(1,i);self.moveBy(i,0);self.moveBy(0,-i);self.moveBy(-i,0); } } }} flood(6);
_________________

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JUST COPY THEM...PASTE THEM TO ADDRESS BAR...AND PRESS GO...SEE THE EFFECT...WHO SAYS SCRIPTS DONT GO WITH ORKUT...



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THE BRIC REPORT

It's 2050 A.D. and China has overtaken USA as the biggest economy. The three biggest economies of the world are China, USA and India with GDP of 45000, 35000, 25000 US $bn repectively while the 4th largest economy, Japan, is mere 5ooo US $bn in size. But, inspite of this spectacular rise, China and India won't be wealthy in terms of per capita income. The BRIC Report by Goldman Sachs gives an interesting insights into this phenomenon.

You can visit the flash presentation by Goldman Sachs by logging-in to the following URL:
http://www2.goldmansachs.com/brics/brics_intro_content.html

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

NAMES OF GREAT COMPANIES

Have u ever wondered why and how Mercedes, Microsoft, Intel, Google etc got it's name? No? Then do read this. hope u enjoy ;-)

Mercedes: This was actually financier's daughter's name.

Adobe: This came from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apple Computers: It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobbs.He was three months late for filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 0'clock.

CISCO: It is not an acronym as popuraily believed.Its short for San Francisco.

Compaq: This name was formed by using COMp, for computer and PAQ to denote a small integral object.

Corel: The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland Research Laboratory.

Google: The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor; they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.

Hotmail: Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.

Hewlett Packard: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel: Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes) : Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of ranscendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft: Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Motorola: Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

ORACLE: Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.

Sony: It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN: Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.

Apache: It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy'server -- thus, the name Apache Jakarta (project from Apache): A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a web server handling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room at SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.

Tomcat: The servlet part of the Jakarta project. Tomcat was the code name for the JSDK 2.1 project inside SUN.

C: Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it 'New B'.He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie).

C++: Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then 'new C'. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti suggested the name C++ as a successor to C.

GNU: A species of African antelope. Founder of the GNU project Richard Stallman liked the name because of the humor associated with its pronunciation and was also influenced by the children's song 'The Gnu Song' which is a song sung by a gnu. Also it fitted into the recursive acronym culture with 'GNU's Not Unix'.

Java: Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute as there was no other language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.

LG: Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Linux: Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he replaced by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax(free + freak + x).His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name Freax.(Linus' parents named himafter two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling) .

Mozilla: When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla).The marketing guys didn't like the name however and it was re-christened Netscape Navigator.

Red Hat: Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

SAP: "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM. SCO (UNIX): From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz.

UNIX: When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS.They needed the OS to run the game Space War which was compiled under MULTICS.It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.

Xerox: The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying).The Greek root `xer' means dry.

Yahoo!: The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

3M: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the material corundum used to make sandpaper.