August 2004 Entries
Now is the time to network with more people using the mobile network. Read more about this at PRWeb. Tejas Patel
Ya, this happens many times that somebody has a meaning less or quite annonying email address that he/she is trying to give out over the phone and the reciever person is annoyed figuring out what the hell it is. Have had many such experiences myself which is both funny and annoying at times. More annoying when people start putting the year when they opened that email address or start putting the country they were in when they started a email address. Recently I saw an aspring email address addresses...
Looks like Ask Jeeves is silently improving on their search engines as well. I tried their search engine at Ask.com and tried few different queries and seems to be better results than what I was getting last time I tried. Even the features and options have improved. The related searches feature is working excellent and another feature I liked was “Email This” functionality on 'Picture Search'.Try this query to see an example. I am sure it is still far from reaching the heights of Google,...
GmailFS stands for 'Gmail File System'. “GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. GmailFS is a Python application and uses the FUSE userland filesystem infrastructure to help provide the filesystem, and libgmail to communicate with Gmail. GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename. This means that you can use all your favourite unix command line tools to operate...
Let me admit it, these months are getting extremely busy for me, with my University studies load, personal studies, social life, friends, relatives, calling, sleeping and ofcourse my office work. Trying to find the time to read all the nice and informative blogs that I am subsribed too is getting problematic, but I somehow keep up with the most of them. Also there is this feeling of guilt for not posting regularly and too much on my blogs too (especially when people come up to me and say that they...
Few months back I heard the fact that Microsoft is going to start a minimal version of Windows XP in selected countries and today I read on WinXPnews.com that it will be around $ US 30.Cheap eeh, ya I know it's still not free but still very much affordable for the things that it can do. More about on this on WinXPnews.com site. Best of all it will be coming in a localised version which is so good for computer starters in countries like Inida, even my grand ma can start to learn computers now! Tejas...
Sijin links me to http://johnny.ihackstuff.com website. It is a collection of Google hacks and what interesting stuff can be found on Google just by searhing properly. I have been to this site before too, very interesting. It is sad that I cannot find an feed to subsribe to this site, any links anybody? Tejas Patel
OK, I admit I don't often visit homepages of corporate websites. If I do visit than it will be their Knowledgebase and their support centre on their websites. Won't have even noticed about the redesign if not read on Unofficial Microsoft Weblog. I think the new design looks better than before when I last looked. Also it has all the main pointers on their great grand website. Does it assume that everyone accessing Microsoft website is using Windows XP as their desktop system? Looks like people are...
There is a new service called Blogversations in the market that allow bloggers to earn money while they blog. More on this story from WiredNews. Let me know what your views are on this. I will be putting my views on this later tommorrow. Just as a side note, it is annoying for me that Blogversations are collecting private information and they still don't have a privacy policy ( I know that it is still in Beta, but this is basic stuff now). Tejas Patel...
Plaxo has updated their blog today with a new feature that will allow non plaxo users to save their contact info for further use. Joseph Smarr of Plaxo reports :- “All you have to do is check the "save my info" box and create a password the next time you respond an update request. After that, if another Plaxo member asks you for your contact information, you can just click to send some or all of the information you previously entered. If you decide to download Plaxo and become a full member,...
Technology keeps on getting better and making me say 'cool'.Segate is coming up with a USB drives soon that will be as small as 1'' and will hold upto 5 GB of data. That is the capacity of DVD now a days. More info on this found http://www.seagate.com/docs... Look at the second page of this pdf file. Tejas Patel
This article from CNet comes very handy while I am writing a report for one of my assignments for a Masters's subject I am doing this semester. The subject of my report is “guidelines on managing cross-cultural issues”. In this report I write how companies can identify cross cultural issues in an organisation and manage those cross cultural issues to keep things going smoothly. As a part of the report I am writing as to how cross-cultural ignorance has costed companies millions of dollars...
Ok, if my readers are using Bloglines for subscribing to their feeds, I have added a bloglines subscribing button on the side bar so they can subscribe directly from here. Tejas Patel
I was talking to one of my friends the other day who works as a Manager in an accounting firm. He said most of the half techo people in their companies were to eager to try new XP SP2 service packs, but the System Admins there were not allowing them to do so and there were few firey conversations between admins and some half techo guys. I am sure that this might be the case in few different places as well. But testing all your applications with the new Service Pack is important before one goes and...
The Developer of Fanganfinder (which is a good tool to use too) has created a new tool called URLinfo. I should say it is a very useful tool for people who are allways into finding and exploring more things about a site, webpage and many more things about it. It is a web based tool that has many functionality's under the same page. Below is a summary of functionalities that the tool consists. One can browse through many important pages offering useful services under the same page instead of visiting...
This is a cool timepass game when you don't have anything better to do in the office. Go to http://www.wagenschenke.ch/ and make the drunken person walk and walk. Tejas Patel
I was thinking on trialing out on Cluster Server's the other day to see and learn how things work there, but then thought it was not that easy to do it. Today, I found links on Bink.nu on how to setup a cluster server on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, wow this is cool and I am try this out when I get some spare time for this. I have been using VMWare for a long time now, have'nt tried Microsoft's Virtual PC extensively, may be now is the time to move to Virtual PC series of products. May be the answer...
Today my new friend Joat blogged about so many things that I had to point them to it all, so for Network Security people and hackers, here is the link and this link to his blog for the day. For my reference, he talks about how Dana Epp work on making Nmap to work again on Windows XP SP2 machines. There is a link on his blog to the patched version as well. A article from Security Focus on Netflow. Rootkit Hunter 1.1.6. I have all of the respective blogs subscribed into Newsgator.Lately I am just neglecting...
Heather writes another excellent post on how to go about dealing with salary matters while you are going through the interview process. My favourites are:- 4) When it comes time to negotiate, look at the offer and take some time to think about it. Sometimes the excitement of the offer, or the impact of hearing the actual details of the offer (and how they may differ from your ideal, + or -), can take you off guard. When you get an offer, ask any clarifying questions that come to mind initially (stuff...
Innovative technology! Now the motorists in UK will pay for their insurance by the miles they move around. This is quite good and I can imagine that how many people would say a good amount of money on a yearly basis.The box fitted in the car will record the usage of the vehicle in real time and will upload the information to Norwich Union using mobile technology. I am waiting for this technology to come to Australia and hope that Australian insurance companies use this technology to benefit users...
Visit Technet Virtual Lab for testing on the technologies before installing it on your system and going through the whole process of configuring it. Although has few labs at this stage, but one can actually play with Virtual Machines. It can be accessed by going to http://technet.msft.demoser... . Tejas Patel
This version of MBSA is compatible with XP SP2 and should be upgraded for compatibility with XP SP2 features. “MBSA is the free, best practices vulnerability assessment tool for the Microsoft platform. It is a tool designed for the IT Professional that helps with the assessment phase of an overall security management strategy. MBSA Version 1.2.1 includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems. MBSA runs on: • Windows 2000, Windows...
Two people replied to my post today. One is TDavid and the other one is Joat (Jack of all trades) (sorry could not find your real name from your blog, am I blind ?). To start with TDavid, I read his Bio and check his blog http://www.makeyougohmm.com/. I am quite impressed as to what he has done by himself and what he does for community and on his blog. I found few good feeds through which I am subscribed. Talking about Joat, he/she ( I think it's he) has a fine collection of feeds that he is subscribed...
Browse through Windows XP tricks & tips . Some of them I never knew before and some might help you in cracking the installation CD and some might help you in hacking (kind of) in the OS. I will probably be more productive reading all of them and knowing all the tips. Tejas Patel
This reading comes to me when I am reading further on how to secure the systems and how to clean the systems that are allready been corrupted or have been intruded into. “Windows rootkits like the popular open-source "Hacker Defender" are malicious applications which help an attacker to disguise trojans and other kinds of malware. Rootkits can be compared to a "cloak of invisibility": After a rootkit gets activated any files designated by the attacker will vanish. This will most likely include...
OK, many people asked me today whether they should install XP SP2 yet. Some of them were a bit scared based on some of the bad reviews that they read on the Internet and newsgroups. They were mostly worried about system incompatibilities and want to install this on their home computers. For me the benefits for a home user are more than some of the annoying error messages that they might have to face from their system applications. Most of the vendors are updating their applications to meet with the...
OK, I know Robert Scoble is not a God neither do I consider him the ultimate decider on what blog is good or what is bad. But I feel happy about the fact that I made to his blogroll cut. I have respect for him as a person and as a blogger although I have never met him personally ( this is where you judge and feel a person from what he/she writes and what others have to say about him) Lately I am seeing traffic increasing on my blog day after day, but to make to anybody's blogroll is a good thing...
There are/were rumours in the market that Microsoft is going to buy Nitendo. I found the following link on a web forum. Users have posted error messages that they might encounter while they are playing the game.Some of which were funny for me. Apart from this I read somewhere else too during the day. I find some of those comments very sarcastic and some of those from people who are very much insecure. They think that Microsoft might buy everything and will rule the world! Their comments were full...
Although I still prefer to use IE and Opera 7.51 for my personal use, I see that many people are using Firefox and more and more people might be using it in the coming days. I found this link to a tool called Flexbeta FireTweaker XP 1.0 Beta. Below is a description of this tool from the website. “ Flexbeta FireTweaker XP 1.0 Beta Flexbeta FireTweaker XP is a tweaking and optimizing software for Mozilla Firefox. Flexbeta FireTweaker XP bundles more than 20 different tweaks to optimize or customize...
If you are one of those who don't want to install SP2 yet on the computers and wait for few days or months before other issues are rectified than you should use SP2 blocking tools. Once installed, the toolkit will disable the delivery of SP2 till mid December on the systems after which SP2 will be applied to those systems. I think this can be handy for system engineers and admins. Has anybody used this yet and did you have any special reasons? Tejas Patel ...
I never liked Bittorents as it did not have a great interface and whenever I tried to download something using torrents, it failed or gave me unfriendly messages. Thanks to Battle Torrent, this might change now. Will have to give it a good shot, but from the documentation that I have read and the screen shots, looks like it will be easy for a novice computer user to share and download files now. The objectives are as follows:- To make it completely effortless for complete neophytes to download torrent...
This morning I pointed towards a tutorial on how to slip stream the service pack into the installation files. I will show you another tool that will do the work for you now and it is called AutoStreamer. It can be downloaded from Neowin.net. Have'nt tried it myself and reading the comments to the post on Neowin.net website, looks like it works for most of the people and everybody is happy :)). Tejas Patel ...
Since last two days I am reading a lot of buzz about people sharing Windows XP SP2 files using conventional P2P mediums including Kazaa and Bittorent. Here is the latest one that I read. If it was me, I won't really rush into downloading such important stuff over the internet unless I really knew from who machine I was downloading the software. I have heard people talking that they are helping Microsoft reduce their bandwidth bill! Guys if Microsoft does'nt mind, why do you? Microsoft is even ready...
A good article on basic common sense database security principles. Tejas Patel
I am a hindu, we don't get tombstones when we die. I will preferably be put on a layers of Sandalwood logs and burned there. But incase I had to have a tomb, I would prefer to have something scripted on it. Using Tombstone Generator, I generated this tombstone. (Via, Scripting News) Tejas Patel-pretending to be dead...
Yesterday evening was a busy evening for me in terms of answering email and some phone calls. I wrote about Installaing XP SP2 on my blog and also emailed quite a few people I knew about Installing SP2 on their systems as well as on the systems of anybody that they knew. I wrote them a whole lot of benefits ( I wonder why I did'nt cut and paste from here http://www.microsoft.com/wi... & http://www.microsoft.com/wi... ). Still not everybody on my email...
Download it from here. It is not meant for updating the individual computers though. Tejas Patel
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales interviewed by Slashdot. A good read with some interesting comments and facts in those comments. I am a new fan of Wikipedia when it helped with one of my assignments. Worth watching is thier efforts to create Wikibooks as well where books on different topics are found along with few books on computer security. Tejas Patel...
H2K2- Hackers On Planet earth which was conducted in 2002 has their audio files available on their website. There are interesting topics on security. It can be found from http://www.h2k2.net/panels.... Tejas Patel
A lot of buzz going around for Windows XP Service Pack 2. I thought I would put add few lines to that buzz too. I downloaded and installed SP 2 from MSDN subscription. Installed it on one of the systems which is a P III systems. The installation worked just fine. No problems at all. I restart the computer and try to access that Windows XP box from my server box, and damn. I cannot connect to it anymore. I use WinVNC to connect to that machine and I use KVM switch between that system and my Server...
Through Chris Pratley's blog I learn about the price change of Microsoft OneNote and that it is now $ US 99 across the countries. OK what I think about this? Ofcourse it is a good news. Price drops for software is allways a good news for the consumers I guess. But when I come to think about this, I was wondering that how people in asian countries like India, Pakistan, Sri-Lanka. If I caculate, than $99 would be 4600 Indian Rupees. Indian economy is going up, but do people from India and sorrounding...
Partho Ghosh who as from India on a training camp at Microsoft USA died on 27th July in a hotel room. There are not many details as to why this might have happened, but my condolences go to his family and friends. I am sorry on hearing this. Just can't imagine how his parents might have felt when they heard this news. What a shock I mean? A son goes to America for some training and next thing you hear is he is dead! Some more details here. Tejas Patel :((...
I come from India, where we use a variety of oil in daily cooking. I have seen canola oil, sunflower oil, vegetable oil & peanut oil used in daily cooking in our house (of course, not all the oil at once). I did hear the word Olive Oil back in India but had never used it or seen anybody using it in daily life ( I did not cook anything back at home nor did I visit my Kitchen too frequently). After coming to Australia, I started olives in abundance in things like pizza ( I survived eating pizza,...
My friend Nitin forwarded me a email with a link to a website that shows different places in Japan with panorgraphic photographs. Can't afford to visit Japan at this stage, but can allways enjoy watching the fabulous places it has on the Internet and all for free. Update:- I am going to set the scenic views as my desktop background. Tejas Patel...
Now this is catchy news for me. How many of us will take this seriously? But looks like this has happened (Not all Powerpoint's fault though). This is not to say that Microsoft Powerpoint is bad, but this is to say that how important it can be to prepare proper presentation slides with Powerpoint. It is to say that it is important to use various features available to powerpoint slides to make them more friendly and tolerable for your audience. Normally I hate to look at slides as most of the times...
It is a road map of Microsoft Client systems.I have'nt seen this before on the Internet. If you have'nt either, than it can be seen by going to Bink.bu website. I will have to see this Windows Media Centre, heard few good things, never saw one in action. Tejas Patel
Found this interesting article on Microsoft Research Website as I was giving the website a surprise visit. The article is on SPAMMING and the cost of spamming to spammers and what Microsoft is suggesting to increase the cost of spamming to Spammers. I never thought that it was this profitable to send out SPAMS. As per the article, it says that Spammers get upto $11 for a single response from their SPAM and that the cost of Spamming is $0.01 cent a message. My greed says that this is a good business...
Although I did understood what Wiki is and how it works, I truly got the value from it today. I am preparing for and working towards a 4000 word report that I have to generate in three weeks time for one of the University assignments I am doing. I have been prescribed a very informative book on Software Engineering. Although I like the way the book is written in, some topics are just above my head being a non-programmer. In such instances, I have to go to the Internet looking for a better explanation...
Guys, those of us that could'nt make it to Canberra, keep an close eye on the TechEd Bloggers website. Ofcourse I will be checking Feedster as well. Tejas Patel
Lately, since I started using more and more of shadow copies in Windows 2003 environment, I am becoming a big fan of it. I love using it. Incase you are an administrator of a small Network and still don't use this facility in Windows 2003 Server, than you should atleast check it out. You will be able to find it at http://www.microsoft.com/wi... A client tool can be downloaded for Windows XP, 2000 and Windows 98 from http://www.microsoft.com/wi...