Catchy & Crazy.....!!

1. For those of you using Windows, do the following:

*Open an empty notepad file

* Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes).

* Save it as whatever you want.

* Close it, and re-open it.is it just a really weird bug?You can try the same thing above with another sentence "this app can break"

2. The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the worlds population.

3. The founders of Google didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface, thats one of the main reason why the home page is so bare!!

4. The name "Google" comes from a spelling mistake, the founders intendent to write "Googol".

5. Google comes from the word googol, which is 1 followed by a hundred zeros!

6. The highest amount of money paid for a domain name is for business.com, $7.5 million.

7. 28% of IBM employees are Indians!

8. Bill Gates began programming computers at age 13!

9. Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of number 13 and Paraskevidekatriaphobia is fear of Friday the 13th.

10. The ZIP in Zip Code means "Zoning Imrovement Plan".

11. Each King in the Deck of playing cards represents a great King from the History.

1. Spades - David

2. Clubs - Alexander The Great

3. Hearts - Charlemagne

4. Diamonds - Caesar

Just for Laughs

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A programmer is walking along a beach and finds a lamp. He rubs the lamp, and a genie appears. "I am the most powerful genie in the world. I can grant you any wish, but only one wish."
The programmer pulls out a map, points to it and says, "I'd want peace in the Middle East."
The genie responds, "Gee, I don't know. Those people have been fighting for millenia. I can do just about anything, but this is likely beyond my limits."
The programmer then says, "Well, I am a programmer, and my programs have lots of users. Please make all my users satisfied with my software and let them ask for sensible changes."
At which point the genie responds, "Um, let me see that map again."
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CIA - Computer Industry Acronyms

CD-ROM:

Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
PCMCIA:

People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms

ISDN:

It Still Does Nothing

SCSI:

System Can't See It

MIPS:

Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed

DOS:

Defunct Operating System

WINDOWS:

Will Install Needless Data On Whole System

OS/2:

Obsolete Soon

TooPnP:

Plug and Pray

APPLE:

Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity

IBM:

I Blame Microsoft

MICROSOFT:

Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers

COBOL:

Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language

LISP:

Lots of Insipid and Stupid Parentheses

MACINTOSH:

Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs

AAAAA:

American Association Against Acronym Abuse.

WYSIWYMGIYRRLAAGW:

What You See Is What You Might Get If You're Really Really Lucky And All Goes Well.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A man is smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke rings into the air. His girlfriend becomes irritated with the smoke and says, "Can't you see the warning on the cigarette pack? Smoking is hazardous to your health!"
To which the man replies, "I am a programmer. We don't worry about warnings; we only worry about errors."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Enigma Cipher

There is an interesting encryption technique using some hardware called "three rotor machine" or "The Enigma Cipher". The device was invented by the Germans during the II World War. There will be three rotors, to start with. The plain text will be typed in through the key board. When the first character is typed, it passes through the first rotor and gets encrypted according to the position of the rotor, because the rotor has 26 teeth, one for each alphabet. The first rotor passes it's output to the second rotor and the encryption takes place according to it's position, similarly with the third rotor. The new letter that we get for the plain text character, will be bounced off a reflector and we obtain at the first rotor.

The beauty of this machine lies in the complexity that it imposes by rotating. Initially, the first rotor makes its first move for the first character and the other two rotors remain stationary. Once the first rotor completes 26 moves, the second rotor makes a single move. Even now the third rotor is stationary. Till now, we have 26x26=676 combinations, coz the first rotor makes 26 moves for each of the 26 teeth in the second rotor. When the second rotor completes 26 moves, the third rotor makes a single move. The entire process repeats now. To sum it up, we have 26x26x26=17576 combinations.

The initial position of the rotors act as the key. The decoding people must know the initial configuration to decode the message. In those times, the configuration was written on a diary which had the configuration for each day. This was insecure, coz if someone happens to get the diary, he may form the machine of his own. The Enigma cipher was broken(decrypted secretly) by Alan Turing (In picture) and group of scientists for America. Had this not been broken, the Germans would have had a different course of war!

Proxy Servers

Many a times we have come across the term "proxy servers". Proxy servers are an intermediate link between the "client" and the "internet". When a client sends a request to the internet, its first received by the proxy server and then its forwarded to the internet. The reply from the internet reaches the proxy server and then the proxy server forwards that result to the client. People use different proxy servers depending upon their need. The major types are listed below.

Web Proxy:

This server is used to monitor the contents transferred over the world wide web. These are mainly used in schools, colleges and other institutions where the offensive contents and unauthorized sites need to be blocked for client accessing. In these cases, the client sends a request to the internet, which is received by the proxy server and it forwards the request to the internet. The reply from the internet reaches the proxy server and if any offensive or illegal content is present, the access to those contents is prevented by the proxy server.

Anonymous Proxy:

This proxy server helps to remove information that may identify the person, information that are confidential from the user's request. For example, while accessing the social networking sites like, orkut, facebook etc. the information is at the risk of being known to many people. So, these servers take care of what contents must be seen by which group of people.

Caching Proxy:

This is a special type of proxy in which the proxy server replies to the client's request without contacting the main server. This action is possible when the proxy server has some part of the contents in the main server cached into it's memory and there must have been some information sent to the main server by the proxy that it will be replying to the client directly. This ensures the clients get their queries answered very soon.

Forced Proxy:

Forced proxy just forwards the client's request to the main server in the internet everytime. The client will not know that they are using a proxy site.

Open Proxy:

Open Proxy enables that anybody can obtain a link to this proxy server and use it. This causes security to be breached and facilitates exploitation by spammers. Many organizations deny requests that come from proxies that are known to be "Open".

From the above discussion we see that, proxies can enable faster operation by quickly processing user requests and reduce the load on the main server by serving some of the requests on their own and they also act as firewalls for educational insttutions.

Internet Trivias

1. Who coined the phrase 'World Wide Web'?

Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. He's also considered by most people as the person who started the whole thing rolling.

2. How did the Internet Start and Why?

It all started with the time-sharing of IBM computers in the early 1960s at universities such as Dartmouth and Berkeley in the States. People would share the same computer for their computing tasks. The Internet also received help from Sputnik! After this Russian Satellite was launched in 1957, President Eisenhower formed ARPA to advance computer networking and communication.

3. Who was J.C.R. Licklider?

Licklider is often referred to as the father of the Internet because his ideas of interactive computing and a "Galactic Network" were the seeds for the Internet. His ideas would be developed thru DARPA,(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1962. Later he would help form ARPANET and the Internet was on it's way.

4. What was ARPANET?

ARPANET stands for 'Advanced Research Projects Agency Network' Came about in the arena of Sputnik and the cold war. The militaryneeded a method of communicating and sharing all the information on computers for research and development. It would also be a handy communication system if all traditional ways were wiped out in a nuclear attack!

5. What was the First long distance Connection?

In 1965 using a low speed dial-up telephone line, MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts working with Thomas Merrill, connected the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32 in California. The phone lines weren't quite up to the task!

6. When was the first mouse introduced?

The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo in San Francisco.

7. Country with the highest percentage of net users?

Sweden at 75%.

Losing Your Temper....

It's really painful when our friends or colleagues at business places shout at us for unnecessary reasons. Its mainly due to the fact that people who lose their temper feel that they are not being respected or their opinion is being flatly brushed aside. Among friends, one starts shouting at other because the other dint listen to his orders or did something he wanted. This often occurs when one of the friends is so dominating over others. Many think that showing a dominating character is a "virtue", but the truth is that it may land them into a land of troubles. Peers don't respect them and also their opinions and move with them for the sake of that association that they had with those short tempered people.

The general principle is that, try to respect the other person's needs and wishes and behave accordingly. True friendship lies in sacrificing at times our own wishes and trying to get the wishes of our friends' satisfied. We must be able to observe our friends' behaviour and be able to identify the way they adjust with us even though we are so rude at them and do something that is not desirable to them. When our friends are ready to bend their wishes for us, then it becomes a duty for us to reciprocate atleast some amount of this kind hearted behaviour if not fully.

Do not burst at your friends since because they say something against your opinion. Take time to analyze whats that so good in their view that it makes your's a little lower in grade. If you still feel your's is still better, then try to convince your friend politely by highlighting the inherent good qualitites of your idea. Even at work places, do not dominate or over power your team mates with your solutions. Ask your team members for their views and try to incorporate your proposals along with theirs. Be it friends or colleagues, respect to human stands tall amongst all vital characters for human beings.

Cold War Among Friends... The worst of all!

Everyone of us in our life through our school to college must have experienced or at least witnessed the sort of misunderstanding that exists among friends termed as "Cold War". When friends are in cold war, they don't face each other face to face, they don't talk with each other. But, the most amazing thing is that they don't attack each other explicitly and also deliberately. This sort of bitterness goes on and on between them unless either of the two friends breaks the ice and speaks out.

The common problem among friends is that they think that they don't do any mistakes and any problem that occurs in the relationship is purely due to the other person. Everyone is liable to err and every single person must know this fact. When the other person does some mistake, it is the beauty of friendship that one must notify it to the other person rather than rebuking him severely. Think for a minute why the other person is not speaking out to you. Don't always look for the other person to satisfy your desires. Take some pain in getting done the things the other person likes to enjoy.

True friendship is when both the persons know each others' strengths and weaknesses and try to help each other in overcoming their weakness. When someone stops communicating with the other just because of some minor misunderstanding, then its not at all termed "friendship". There is selfishness creeping in here. Friendship is that where there is no selfishness and sacrifice is the most valuable gift that one can give to one's friend. Finally, don't forget your friends for what they are and also learn to rate your friends according to the care that they show to you. Showing similar reaction to all your friends may not sound well all the times. Cheers to friendship......