10 ways to show you're a programming Rockstar

It seems nowadays that programmers are a dime a dozen, but how do you pick the best programmers from the rest of the crowd.

It's not just about coding (although that is a big factor). It's about building your skill set over the years and nurturing them so you can stand out from the programming "collective."

What characteristics makes them stand out? Are they easy to get along with? How long have they been programming? Are they teaching you things you never knew were possible? Here's how to find out if you are a programming rock stars!

Hackers turn back the clock with Telnet attacks

A new report from Akamai Technologies shows that hackers appear to be increasingly using the Telnet remote access protocol to attack corporate servers over mobile networks.

Akamai, which specializes in managing content and Web traffic, issues quarterly reports on Internet traffic trends. The latest report, which covers the third quarter of 2010, shows that 10 percent of attacks that came from mobile networks are directed at Port 23, which Telnet uses. That marks a somewhat unusual spike for the aging protocol.

Telnet is a remote access tool used to log into remote servers, but it has been gradually replaced by SSH, also known as Secure Shell. Administrators are generally advised to disable Telnet if the protocol is not used to prevent attacks targeting it, but some forget.

Although those attacks originated from mobile networks, Akamai said it did not appear that mobile devices were the source.

25 Years of Digital Vandalism - By William Gibson

IN January 1986, Basit and Amjad Alvi, sibling programmers living near the main train station in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote a piece of code to safeguard the latest version of their heart-monitoring software from piracy. They called it Brain, and it was basically a wheel-clamp for PCs. Computers that ran their program, plus this new bit of code, would stop working after a year, though they cheerfully provided three telephone numbers, against the day. If you were a legitimate user, and could prove it, they’d unlock you.

But in the way of all emergent technologies, something entirely unintended happened. The Alvis’ wheel-clamp was soon copied by a certain stripe of computer hobbyist, who began to distribute it, concealed within various digital documents that people might be expected to want to open. Because almost all these booby-trapped files went out on floppy disks, the virus spread at a pre-Internet snail’s pace.

Still, it did wreak a certain amount of low-grade havoc, freezing computers across the world. The hobbyists did it because they could, or to proudly demonstrate that they could, or to see what would happen, or simply because they thought it was neat.

This proved hellishly embarrassing for the Alvi brothers, whose three telephone numbers were often inadvertently included in the files, and eventually they had to cut all three lines. There were far too many angry callers, mainly from the United States and Britain. In short, the road to our present universe teeming with viruses, worms and Trojan horses was paved, a quarter-century ago this month, with the Alvi brothers’ good intentions of securing their intellectual property.

Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your Internet-Source: Wiki

Scenario: Your government is displeased with the communication going on in your location and pulls the plug on your internet access, most likely by telling the major ISPs to turn off service.

This is what happened in Egypt January 25 prompted by citizen protests, with sources estimating that the Egyptian government has cut off approximately 88 percent of the country's internet access. What do you do without Internet? Step 1: Stop crying in the corner. Then start taking steps to reconnect with your network. Here’s a list of things you can do to keep the communication flowing.

Response by Taj employees to 26/11 a case study at Harvard: Source- Indiatimes

The heroic response by employees of Mumbai's landmark Taj Hotel during the 26/11 terror attacks is now a case study at Harvard Business School that focuses on the staff's selfless service for its customers and how they went beyond their call of duty to save lives. 

The multimedia case study 'Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership' by HBS professor Rohit Deshpande documents "the bravery and resourcefulness shown by rank-and-file employees" during the attack. 

The study mainly focuses on "why did the Taj employees stay at their posts (during the attacks), jeopardising their safety in order to save hotel guests" and how can that level of loyalty and dedication be replicated elsewhere. 

The Three Dimensions of Emotion

People exhibit a huge range of emotions and it can be a bewildering challenge to ascribe unique meaning to each emotional state that a person might find themselves in. A framework for analyzing emotional states can help us understand emotions by decomposing them into underlying dimensions.

Three key dimensions appear to be:

1. Valence: positive vs. negative
2. Activation: ready-to-act/aroused vs. relaxed
3. Power: dominant vs. submissive

We can describe almost any human emotion using these three dimensions or axes. E.g., “admiration” could be considered a positive, aroused, submissive emotion. Or “boredom” could be considered a negative, relaxed, dominant emotion.

The “valence” of emotions is usually pretty straightforward for us to immediately grasp.  “Activation” and “power”, though, may not typically spring to mind for most people when trying to analyze emotions.  Yet thinking about the activation and power dimensions of any emotion can help us recognize and adapt to emotionally-driven urges and impulses.

TATA DOCOMO introduces SPARSH, India’s first M-Health Awareness Service

Tata DOCOMO today launched Sparsh, a service on sexual & reproductive health related issues. The service is aimed at using mobile phone to build awareness about issues related to sexual and reproductive health related concerns. The content of the service is extensively accurate and certified by FPAI (Family Planning Association of India), one of India’s largest sexual and reproductive Health NGO (Non Government organization). The service is currently available in English, Hindi and Marathi language and very soon Oriya, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malyalam languages will be added.

TATA DOCOMO customers can access this service by calling 529222 chargeable at Rs 10 for 10 days & browsing charge is 1p/sec. The service is currently being launched in three major languages English, Hindi and Marathi and more languages to be added in the second phase.

The service has a navigational feature to allow the users to navigate quickly through related content capsules.  For example, if the user is navigating to a capsule in the following manner: select category like AIDS information and then the user will listen to capsule on AIDS with various options such as contraception, AIDS prevention, other sexually transmitted diseases, etc.

Lessons To Learn from Bill Gates

25 Lessons To Learn from Bill Gates

1. Change the world, or go home. There is a little sign on many doors at Microsoft.  It features the blue monster and it reads:  “Change the world, or go home.”  Not only does that phrase capture the spirit of thousands of Softies … it speaks to the way Bill Gates drives his life.  He lives to build a better world, whether it’s one version, one platform, one system, one idea, one cause, one innovation at a time.  The beauty is, he knows how to scale and amplify his impact in powerful ways – he’s on top of his game.
2. Blaze the trail.  The path isn’t always there.  Sometimes you have to make it.  Sometimes people will think you’re crazy.   Sometimes you are just ahead of the curve.  it’s a dream for a reason, and sometimes making your dreams happen takes going out on a limb and giving your all for what you believe in.  Bill Gates believed that the personal computer was the future and that there should be one on every desktop and in the living room and it would change the way we work and how we live in unimaginable ways.

The Real Story of Taj Mahal: By P.N. Oak

The story of the Taj Mahal that most of us have known about may not be the real truth. Herein Mr. P. N. Oak presents an interesting set of proofs that show a completely different story. Contrary to what visitors are made to believe the Tajmahal is not a Islamic mausoleum but an ancient Shiva Temple known as Tejo Mahalaya which the 5th generation Moghul emperor Shahjahan commandeered from the then Maharaja of Jaipur. The Taj Mahal, should therefore, be viewed as a temple palace and not as a tomb. That makes a vast difference. You miss the details of its size, grandeur, majesty and beauty when you take it to be a mere tomb. When told that you are visiting a temple palace you wont fail to notice its annexes, ruined defensive walls, hillocks, moats, cascades, fountains, majestic garden, hundreds of rooms archaded verendahs, terraces, multi stored towers, secret sealed chambers, guest rooms, stables, the trident (Trishul) pinnacle on the dome and the sacred, esoteric Hindu letter "OM" carved on the exterior of the wall of the sanctum sanctorum now occupied by the cenotaphs. For detailed proof of this breath taking discovery, you may read the well known historian Shri. P. N. Oak's celebrated book titled " Tajmahal : The True Story". But let us place before you, for the time being an exhaustive summary of the massive evidence ranging over hundred points.


To Read further, visit The True Story of Taj Mahal

How does Google make money

One of the question I often have to answer is: “How does Google make money?”. They don’t sell any product, everything you use from them is free and on top of that they seem to be very active in the “open source” community. So how the hell can they cash-in?

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Advertisement, that’s how Google is making its money. Every time you do a search on Google, you’ve probably noticed that there was a section called “Sponsored Links”. Every time you click on one of those links, Google charge a certain amount of money to the website for the click. When you go on a website you’ll notice advertising from Google too. Daily Common Sense has ads from Google. Same thing happens here, when you click, Google charge a certain amount of money to the website you clicked on and part of that money is given to the webmaster publishing the ads. This is called AdSense and is an enormous source of income for Google.

How much does Google charge for a click?

The price advertisers pay for a click depends on a lot of factors and this is where Google is playing smart. They use some sort of bidding system. When you want to advertise with Google, you select keywords you are targeting. Let’s say I own an online guitar store and I want to bring potential customers to my website. I’m going to bid on the keywords “guitar” and “buy guitar” for example. The price I’m going to pay will depend if there is other companies bidding for that keyword. The more companies are fighting for a keyword, the more I’m going to pay for a single click to my website. The price can vary from 0.01$ to 100$ and more. Not to bad for a click hey? You can imagine that for highly competitive keywords like finance and health it can cost quite a lot of money for a company to advertise with Google.

No production cost

Google doesn’t sell any tangible product and that’s the beauty of their business. They sell something that doesn’t really exist. They really sell traffic. It mostly comes down to this: They get paid for sending traffic to other websites. That’s why Google seems to be everywhere now: They have to show substantial growth to their stakeholders and to do that they have to drive more and more traffic to provide more and more advertisement. That’s also the reason they’ll be jumping in the cell phone industry, so they can make a bit of money from all the web traffic that next generation cell phones are going to drive in the next couple of years.

Expect to see Google around more and more in the next couple of years…

EU warns Governments on Cloud Computing

Private cloud computing environments are much more suited to the needs of government bodies than their public cloud equivalents, despite the latter offering higher service availability and improved cost benefits, according to the latest report from the European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa).

The Security and Resilience in Governmental Clouds report presents senior management with a decision-making model with which to appraise the cloud solution which provides the best fit with their organisation.

Enisa concluded that, although cloud computing could theoretically offer better value, improved availability and stronger security than traditional environments, there are many weaknesses and threats "mainly linked to the lack of governance and control over IT operations and the potential lack of compliance with laws and regulations".

Public clouds are said to be the most risky from this standpoint because they can be owned by non-EU companies, and provide inadequate transparency about security and resilience measures and potential breaches.

The report also warns that internet connectivity may not be adequate in several member states to support such models.

"For sensitive applications, private and community clouds appear to be the solutions that currently best fit the needs of public administrations since they offer the highest level of governance, control and visibility," the report stated.

"Although, when planning a community or private cloud, special regard should be given to the scale of the infrastructure as most of the resilience and security benefits of the cloud model will not be realised if the necessary infrastructural critical mass is not reached."

Public clouds, on the other hand, should be used only for non-sensitive or non-critical apps and with a clear exit strategy, according to Enisa.

Government IT managers moving to the cloud need to establish a metrics framework including key performance indicators, and should test business continuity plans and carry out due diligence, the report concluded.

Also important is ensuring that security, resilience and legal requirements are detailed in service level agreements, and taking national cloud strategies into account, said Enisa.

Why is India still a Developing Economy

What is the definition of a Developed Economy? Wikipedia states that "The term developed country is used to describe countries that have a high level of development according to some criteria." What is this criteria? Has anyone come across the clearcut definition of this. This question is bigger and even bigger is the debate that it carries with itself.

Talking about India, when we categorically analyze these factors that differentiate between a Developed and a Developing economy, we come across many shortcomings with our own existence.

Looking around the world, we Indians are the most widely spread of the lot. More than 40% Indians have occupied NASA, the best brains available at the top Installations of Research are Indians. The biggest takeovers are done by Indians. A core industry like BPO has been revolutionized because of Indians.

So if we are so capable of doing things, then why is India is such a developing nation. We help create Developed economies, but what about our own Nation.

Cloud Computing: The Tomorrow

Cloud computing is location independent computing, whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and data to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid. Or more simply, remote computing. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, service-oriented architecture and utility computing. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.

Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a somewhat more objective and specific definition here. The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software like a Web browser, while thesoftware and data are stored on servers.

Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers, and typically include service level agreements (SLAs). The major cloud service providers include Amazon, Rackspace Cloud, Salesforce, Skytap, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the larger IT firms that are actively involved in cloud computing are Huawei, Cisco, Fujitsu, Dell, Red Hat, Hewlett Packard, IBM, VMware, Hitachi and NetApp.

Surface Computing

Surface computing is the term for the use of a specialized computer GUI in which traditional GUI elements are replaced by intuitive, everyday objects. Instead of a keyboard andmouse, the user interacts directly with a touch-sensitive screen. It has been said that this more closely replicates the familiar hands-on experience of everyday object manipulation.

Early work in this area was done at the University of Toronto, Alias Research, and MIT. Surface work has included customized solutions from vendors such as GestureTek, Applied Minds for Northrop Grumman.Major computer vendor platforms are in various stages of release: the iTable by PQLabs, Linux MPX, the Ideum MT-50, and Microsoft Surface.