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EDITALK
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EDITALK A
s you’ve probably figured out, we’re celebrating open source this month, and no, we’re not talking (just) about software. We have highlighted all the other aspects of the open source philosophy. It’s not just about software, or Linux distros, but more about a way of life. Open source has extended to cars, gadgets, hardware, cooking, music, movies and much more. What started in 1985 as a paper titled the GNU Manifesto, by Richard Stallman, has grown exponentially, under the GNU license and the Free Software Foundation, into the biggest community initiative of all time. Free software is good, and open source software even better, but some of the pontifications of the evangelists are just plain silly. Somewhere along the way, everyone’s forgotten that in 1985, the computing world was made up of mostly developers and other computing specialists, and it is just the opposite today. If we’re ever going to get the open source and collaborative philosophy to spread, and apply it to all the other facets of our lives that aren’t displayed on a monitor, we should first be allowed to think openly. Instead of bickering about whether a particular Creative Commons licence is truly open or not, or trying to classify an author based on the way he wants to share his works, why can’t we just applaud the desire to share? Isn’t some sharing better than none at all?
philosophy behind open source movement has been discussed to aid the user in making a good choice. A manual has been given for installing Linux as an alternate operating system to Windows. Open Source alternatives to popular windows applications for day to day use have been discussed. Open source software has found its way into Government as well. Several governments have stood up and taken note of the rise of open source from nowhere to where it is now – an indispensable artifact of computing and software. Many countries including India have policies that more or less 'mandate' the use of open source in their departments. The list includes Israel, USA, Russia, etc. Several countries also try to enforce the use of open protocols and open standards, which prevents them from any kind of vendor lock-ins. At last, let’s remember that the basic principle behind open source, the FSF and GNU are pretty much all the same — let’s all work together and make life a lot easier for ourselves and everyone around us.
Ehsan Quddusi
Ehsan Quddusi, Editor editor@globekashmir.com
“What started in 1985 as a paper titled the GNU Manifesto, by Richard Stallman, has grown exponentially, under the GNU license and the Free Software Foundation, into the biggest community initiative of all time.”
In this issue of GLOBE, we have focused on unlocking the potential of open source for end users and simplifying things for them as much as possible. History and
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VOLUME 1 \ NUMBER 3
MARCH 2011
Contents 24
COVER STORY ADVISORY BOARD Dr. Mehraj Ud Din Er. A H Moon Sajjad Bazaz Dr S M K Qaudri
CHIEF EDITOR Dr. Jauhar Quddusi
EDITOR Ehsan Quddusi Sub Editor: Irshad Ul Islam, Shahid Qazi Asstt Editor: Obaidullah Malik Writers: Mir Nazim, Owais Lone, Vivek Khurana, Atul Jha Campus Correspondent: Zaid A Hakak
ENTER THE WORLD OF OPEN SOURCE
DESIGN Creative Director: Rajaji Sr Designer: Javeed Meian Designer: Parvez Mir, Mir Parvez
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PRODUCTION & LOGISTICS Production Manager: A G Quddusi DISTRIBUTOR JANTA AGENCIES Char Chinar Complex, M A Road, Opp Govt Women College, Srinagar - 190001 Phone: +91 194 2474755 OFFICE ADDRESS GLOBE Magazine Khan Complex, Madeena Chowk, Gaw Kadal, Srinagar - 190001, J&K Phone: +91 194 2473818 Mobile: +91 9419422263 Email: globe@globekashmir.com TO ADVERTISE Call on +91 9419422263, 9419030006 Or email at advertise@globekashmir.com Published, Printed and Owned by N. Quddusi. Published from New Colony, Pulwama - 192301. Printed at Al-Hayat Printographers, Gaw Kadal, Srinagar - 190001 Editor: Ehsan Quddusi
From Windows to Linux: Why & How? Open Source alternatives to popular Windows Apps
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Popular Open Source Softwares for you
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Configuring Photon+ on Linux Open Source in Governments
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INTERVIEW
HANDS ON
“The ICT industry has an annual turnover of around Rs 35 crores right now, employing nearly 4000 skilled youth.” Jahangir Raina Chairman, ICTA JK
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FEEDKCAB Send your feedback at globe@globekashmir.com be sure and confident that "if a job is worth doing, its worth doing well." Manzoor Malik via Email Welcome to Globe. Stay, and we promise to make it much more informative, fun and addictive for you. Editor
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Content aids learning at home Dear Editor, i first of all congratulate you on your idea and efforts in launching so much informative magazine in J&K. On going through the pages of the issue, I realised that the content of this magazine aids in learning of computer and computer related problems at home, in addition to the titbits of information technology. This magazine is really useful for the computer operators, shopkeepers as well as owners of Cyber Cafes. Also
Firstly, I would like to congratulate and thank the entire Globe team for the February issue. It was a refreshing and welcome change. Of the few other magazines that I have read in the past, Globe is definitely more “value for money”. My encounter with Globe was in my institute library. What first attracted me to it was the hands on tutorial on refilling cartridges at home. I would like to make a suggestion as there is always scope for improvement: I would like you to come up with an alternate subscription plan where a digitised version of the magazine is provided in the CD/DVD itself. I feel the need for such an option because my CA course leaves me with no time to read the magazine. Saleem Baba via Email
We’ll try and keep you happy on all counts. Look for your suggestion being implemented in the very near future. Editor
Nice look Great issue I just love it. Looks tidy, smaller fonts, more articles, interesting sections, better article distribution, improved page quality, and the same excitement of a previous session of Globe. I am looking forward for some good gaming content. Cover Story was cool. I loved the different tech products listed. The only thing I miss in the new Globe is some programming related stuff. All of us would really like to improve upon our programming skills. Here’s a review of your magazine: Features: 9 Performance: 9 Build quality: 9 Value for money: 9 Overall: 9 Good luck for next issue. Thanks for the flattering review.
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WHAT’S NEW
TECH NEWS
TECHNEWS FRESHLY BAKED NEWS FROM THE STATE & OUTSIDE
Laptop Battery Life Has Officially Reached Insane Levels
LOCALNEWS J&K to set up 4000 Common Service Centers
Attention, laptop-toting members of the global workforce: In an effort to maximize potential productivity to stratospheric levels, new portable computers with 30+ hour battery life will soon be entering the market. Who to blame? Start with Lenovo. The company unveiled the ThinkPad T420 yesterday, promising that the machine “reaches new battery life benchmarks of up to 30 hours with an extended battery.” Then feel free to re-direct some or all of your anger at HP, which today one-upped Lenovo with the EliteBook 8460p—a computer that “provides industry-leading battery life of up to 32 hours.” Alas, the days of conveniently blaming our lack of productivity on dead laptop batteries are quickly drawing to a close.
Huawei launches IDEOS, low entry Andriod 2.2 Smartphone Huawei Device launched IDEOS smartphone powered by the latest iteration of AndroidTM 2.2 in India. IDEOS™ redefines the "entry-level" concept by combining high-quality hardware and software with a high price-to-performance ratio and is available at Rs. 8499. IDEOS embodies creativity and inspiration, the "ID" standing for inspiring industrial design, the "OS" represents the operating system and the "E" symbolizes the evolution to mobile internet.
As part of the e-Governance initiative, J&K Government is planning to setup 4000 Common Service Centers(CSC) across state. These centres will provide multiple facilities to the people living in remote and rural areas State Information Technology Minister Syed Aga Ruhullah Mehdi announced it while chairing a meeting of the officers convened to identify the services to be kept available at CSC by different departments. The Minister said that the priority of the government was to introduce eGovernance in the state, adding a mechanism would be evolved to make all the 4000 CSC operational by the end of this year. He said IT Department has created required basic infrastructure in 1100 centers, adding work is apace on other centers. The Minister said that that CSC is an efficient mechanism to deliver education, power, passport, driving license, job forms from Service Selection Recruitment Board, Public Service Commission, PAN cards, postal and a host of other services. “For this the departments will create IT infrastructure in their respective offices and tie up with IT Department,” he said.
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TECH NEWS
WHAT’S NEW
LOCALNEWS IT vehicle for people’s friendly e-governance module in J&K:Omar
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World Cup 2011: Online streaming of matches big hit, brands find good value Online streaming of the ongoing cricket World Cup is proving to be a hit among netizens, with the website of the broadcaster ESPN Star Sports (ESS) registering over one million viewers in the India-Bangladesh opening match. "The web streaming has already attracted an incredible one million plus unique video viewers so far," ESS said, The online medium is thus turning to be a lucrative advertising platform for many brands and companies, such as Happydent chewing gum, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Hindustan Unilever, 22bestdeals.com, Spicejet, Old Spice, Spicejet and Mc Dowell's.
J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah recently said that the initiatives of Information Technology (IT) department at present should determine the future roadmap for e-governance, transparency and quick response to public needs in the State. “It is as such, essential to move forward with solo motto to benefit general people through the IT service”, he said and asked the IT department to fix decent time frame for achieving useful results in this field. “In the first phase you need to identify a group of core departments for thorough focusing on the subject and building their e-governance capacity”, he said adding that the strategy to this regard could be gradually extended to other departments. “The technology is becoming more easy, holistic and cheap day-by-day”, he said adding that IT department should take best advantage of the latest available technology and create its strategy for delivery of services through a State Data Centre (SDC) and State Wide Area Network (SWAN), connecting all identified areas. In a power point presentation, Secretary, IT gave overview of the functioning and achievements of the department in application of IT initiatives in the State. He explained the roadmap for futuristic targets and gave detailed resume of the vision for IT in J&K.
J&K to introduce e- PDS The Jammu and Kashmir government has decided to introduce information technology in Public Distribution System and launch e-PDS in the state. The plan includes the installation of GPS tracking devices on vehicles carrying food and other supplies to check pilferage, Minister for Consumer Affairs & Public Distribution and Transport Qamar Ali Akhoon said.
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“The digital platform is available 24x7 and consumed by people as and when they want. The website is a relevant platform for consumers that Galaxy Tab targets as it is a convergence device and users can consume information as per their convenience," said a Samsung official.
Net Connect: Most Indians prefer `desi' languages Love for mother tongue is clearly evident in India and especially in its heartland Uttar Pradesh. Data from search engine Google show that 87% of the surfers prefer to use the Internet in local languages. Interestingly, there are reverse trends in rest of the world. "Such trends made us believe that empowering the Indian user meant enabling them to access information in their own language," said Shrikanth Belwadi, product manager, Google India. In Lucknow recently to flag off the Google Internet Bus, Belwadi said that local languages would be the mainstay of surfing in the days to come. "As of now, only 7% of India's population uses Internet. Literacy rate on the other hand is as high as 60%, which translates into immense business potential for us," he told TOI. He informed that a decade ago, 70% of Internet users hailed from metro cities. But now, 75% of Internet savvy users are based in the B-class cities.
Facebook Attacker gets a job at Facebook Sometime back, a kid named Chris Putnam wrote a computer virus that rapidly spread across Facebook. The bug's effect was make Facebook users' profiles look like MySpace profiles. Unfortunatly, the worm also deleted some users's contact details. Pretty quickly, Facebook's COO, Dustin Moscovitz, was able to figure out Putnam was behind the attack. But instead of having Putnam arrested, Facebook hired him.
MARKET WATCH
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market watch
In this column, we will bring best deals to our readers in the computer market
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INTERVIEW
JAHANGIR RAINA
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Jahangir Raina, Chairman ICTA JK, in conversation with Ehsan Quddusi discusses the state of IT industry in J&K and the role ICTA has been playing in generating substantial job & business opportunities in ICT sector of J&K. Jahangir Raina is serving as Chairman of ICTA JK. Besides, he is also involved in two ICT businesses: iLocus which operates under a KPO model carrying out market research for telecom industry, Kolahoi which is into web products.
“The ICT industry has an annual turnover of around Rs 35 crores right now, employing nearly 4000 skilled youth. These figures exclude hardware sales.� 12
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First of all, will you throw some light on the state of IT industry in J&K? The IT industry has grown on its own without any developmental incentives or set policies devised by the government. The industry has grown past its infancy. However the attention from the state government remains elusive. The industry has an annual turnover of around Rs.35 crores right now, employing nearly four thousand skilled youth. Those figures exclude hardware sales.
Recently in an interview with Mehraj Ud Din, Director IT&SS, KU, he said, "IT industry in J&K will be visible in next 05 years". How do you take this statement?
I guess it is already visible. We have had our period of infancy and we grew out of infancy without people around us even realising it. Today the IT industry in J&K is an established sector of the economy employing 4,000 people and generating revenues in excess of 35 crores a year.
What type of IT business models can be found here? We have a good variety. There are software companies, networking companies, and BPOs. There are product companies as well as services companies among them. Among the BPOs you have CRM companies as well as those who carry out digitization. Then of course, you
JAHANGIR RAINA
www.globekashmir.com have the IT training institutes.
What is the top most challenge facing this industry? The toughest challenge is government apathy. If we carry on with the same momentum we have had, the industry could employ projected 30 thousand skilled youth by the year 2016. If however, the government gives this industry the due attention it deserves, we can boost that figure up to round abut 50 thousand.
This is a big figure. Can you explain how that can be achieved? The govt of J&K has lined up egovernance projects worth over a thousand crores over the next three years. There is a project called State Wide Area Network (SWAN) that provides connectivity to all govt offices upto block level. An associated project is State Data Center, which apart from providing officials access (via SWAN) to all the data of the state offices in digitised format will host various custom software applications for local needs. Obviously data needs to be digitised first to justify needs for SDC and SWAN. Together the digitisation, SWAN, and SDC projects are worth near about Rs.500 crores. This is just one line of spending in e-governance projects. There are many IT projects pertaining to various state departments. The projects are worth thousands of crores over the span of next 10 years. The problem is that the state govt has always shown preference to national level players, bypassing the local vendors. If it engages the local vendors and local industry it can significantly boost the employment in local IT sector.
What is the role, ICTA has played in this regard? We have spent a lot of our time and energy explaining to the govt that if a certain percentage of these IT projects are allocated to local IT vendors, we can generate substantial employment. We have maintained a sustained level of campaigning to this effect.
If we carry on with the same momentum we have had, the industry could employ projected 30,000 skilled youth by the year 2016. If however, the government gives this industry the due attention it deserves, we can boost that figure up to round about 50,000. We interacted with the Rangrajan Committee recently and hope to have a good representation in that report for the local IT sector. ICTA has also set up consortiums of local IT companies in order to better perform at tendering level. Basically the state govt has to go ahead with its IT projects at some point. It can choose to do them with us or without us. 'With' us would be great because that helps generate meaningful employment.
We just mentioned ICTA. When was ICTA set up? ICTA stands for Information and Communication Technology Association. I t w a s s e t u p around Novem b e r 200 8 .
INTERVIEW
Prior to that there were efforts throughout the summer of 2008 to arrive at a consensus as to the requirement of such a forum and what the objectives should be. A lot of the initial momentum was put in by an NGO called Mercy Corps. They huddled the IT players together in the initial stages.
What does the Association plan ahead? Our priority lies in securing a substantial share of government business because we realise that government is the biggest potential customer for the local IT sector. Although an overwhelming majority of the industry turnover is due to the work conducted with customers out of state and out of country, we realise that there are business opportunity just across the street with our own state government. It would be foolish to relinquish such opportunities.
Any out-of-the-box ideas to overcome the complacency from the government quarters? We have submitted input on a regular basis through different foras. In terms of an out-of-the-box ideas, we recently suggested to the state IT department to turn JAKEGA into a PSU with participation from local IT companies. JAKEGA is a government agency for implementing e-governance projects. By turning it into a PSU, the government can create corporate speed for implementation of egovernance projects. At the same time participation of local IT vend
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INTERVIEW
JAHANGIR RAINA
www.globekashmir.com
ors in such a venture will create opportunities and jobs in those companies.
What other challenges does the IT industry face? There are many. And we are working on them. We do not have an advances package custom made for IT sector. We need to have that in place. We do not have IT parks or office facilities that can house small IT companies and provide them the requisite infrastructure. We need to work on a general awareness about the presence of an IT industry in the state. There are issues related to bridging the skills gap. Sometimes we are not able to find the people with requisite skills. The Internet connectivity is not of the standards that is required for a growing IT industry. I must also add that the disturbance that we have seen consistently over the last three years has also weakened the IT industry.
We recently suggested to the state IT department to turn JAKEGA into a PSU with participation from local IT companies. By turning it into a PSU, the government can create corporate speed for implementation of e-governance projects. At the same time participation of local IT vendors in such a venture will create opportunities and jobs in those companies.
Why is ICTA putting so much emphasis on public sector IT projects? See when you engage youth in these projects, not only do you generate employment, but overtime they will acquire skills. These skilled people will create new business opportunities in turn and bring more business into the state. So it is a virtuous cycle you are setting in. Don't look at public sector projects as just a oneoff opportunity. It is an opportunity to create a sustainable industry. Having said that, our emphasis is not only the public sector IT projects. ICTA roadmap contains mandate to seek business from out of state by establishing tie-ups with bigger IT companies. This bit we have done to an extent by facilitating several partnerships. Our mandate also involves helping local companies develop demos and then marketing them overseas. There are also plans to position companies for venture capital. So there are lots of things we plan to do. However the first two years of ICTA have gone into government advocacy mainly.
Are the companies in ICTA having so
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much of strength (technical and financial) to work in this model?
and that the industry exists. I think we were successful in sending that message. All the major government officials were there including the CM and the concerned minister. Today the IT department and the IT policies that are coming up recognize that it is important to have a strong component about employment in the state IT policy. Previously the IT policy was confined to effectively implementing the e-governance projects. The expo is also going to be our yearly feature. So eventually this becomes a buyer seller meeting point and event.
How is ICTA an excitement for a local company to join in? How many companies have already joined in? ICTA is basically a social cause. While there are benefits for companies in identifying business opportunities, I think that should not be the reason to join ICTA. The reason for joining ICTA should be driven by the desire to work towards establishing IT as a sustainable industry in Kashmir. We currently have 24 companies as our members.
I think it would be fair to say that on an individual level we are able to focus on individual sub-segments of the ICT market. But on a collective basis we are capable of delivering scalable end to end solutions. That is one of the reason why there are consortiums like Webone and Unisource in place. These consortiums have been put in place by ICTA.
What is ICTA doing in bringing uniformity and code of conduct in tendered works? We provide feedback on each of the large IT projects when the DPR and EOIs come out. We make sure that the local companies have favourable qualifying parameters. Usually the IT department listens.
ICTA had arranged an IT EXPO some time back, what was its target and who got benefited by that? The main purpose of that event was to tell the state govt that we are here
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CLOUD COMPUTING IN FOCUS
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Cloud Computing Giving you ability to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without the overheads of new infrastructure investments, software liscensing and personnel training.
C
loud Computing is a comprehensive umbrella term. Some analysts and vendors perceive it as just an updated version of utility-computing with virtual servers available over the Internet. Other definitions pose the argument that anything you consume outside the firewall is actually "in the cloud". Nonetheless, the ability to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without the overheads of new infrastructure investments, software liscensing and personnel training cannot be ignored however you define it. Cloud computing encompasses any payper-use service or subscriptionbased service, in real time over the Internet. Cloud computing is simplification of usage and extension of the potentials, it's about shifting more of your material out "there" and less on PCs or servers that a business runs for itself. The maintenance burden of applications and servers is no longer going to be your personal heartburn. The capability of scaling systems up or down on demand, access to your data anytime from anywhere with an internet connection are some of the implications. The ability to replace occasional heavy expenditure on IT with regular and predictable operational expenditure is a management boon.
Risks Nothing comes withhout it's own inherent
risks. Your provider's downtime or insolvency means loss of your service. No control over how the data is protected poses security concerns. There are also issues concerning regulatory problems when personal data is stored internationally. Onesided service agreements and lock-in dependency on proprietary cloud applications can lead to uncomfortable situations for the user. Let's have a look at some of the terms prevalent in Cloud Computing.
SaaS (software-as-a-service) Pre-build applications like Google Mail and Google Docs which can be accessed by simply navigating to a particular url, belong to this category of Cloud Computing.
PaaS (platform-as-a-service) A set of API's open for developers
PROS AND CONS
to hook into, and, providing them the ability to develop custom applications. They are basically a set of lower-level services such as an operating system/computer language interpreter/web server offered by a cloud provider. Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure are examples of PaaS.
IaaS (What is infrastructure-as-aservice) Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is an example of IaaS. Servers or Virtual servers that can be used on a pay-as-you-go scheme are IaaS. Generally cloud suppliers provide add-on services too. Hence, very often, the definitions for PaaS and IaaS overlap.
Multi-tenancy An application like Salesforce.com where a single Cloudhosted application is shared by a number of customers signify Multi-tenancy. Although the application is shared, obviously, each user has access to his own data. This is the most costeffective form of Cloud computing.
Public, private and hybrid clouds Providers like Google, A m a z o n a n d salesforce.com are public clouds. Here the shared services are open to all. By building a cloud-like infrastructure at your own data centre, the benefits of cloud computing can be
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IN FOCUS
CLOUD COMPUTING
www.globekashmir.com 'individually plugging into' may be short-lived. With the advent of ServiceOriented-Architecture(SOA) and virtualisation in the enterprise, coupled with the concept of a scalable, agile infrastructure powering loosely coupled services, we may soon reach a stage where every enterprise is a node in the cloud. It's still at a tender stage, but in the list of major metatrends, cloud computing is definitely in the Uppercase.
Obaid Malik Senior Software Engineer at iKraft & Assistant Editor at Globe
POPULAR CLOUD COMPUTING APPS & WEBSITES reaped without the risk of a third party handling your data. This would be a Private cloud. A cloud which comprises a Private cloud and using a Public cloud too, would be categorised as a Hybrid cloud.
A peek into Amazon's cloud computing platform From it's experience in the ecommerce domain, Amazon adapted the techniques for massive scaling it learnt and applied them to a service offered to others at commodity prices. Chief services include: 1)Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for virtual servers running Linux or Windows 2)Simple Storage Service (S3) for storing files in the cloud. Amazon also offers database and payment services. It is is a platform for developers.
A peek into Google's cloud computing platform Chief services include email, online documents like word processor, spreadsheet and presentation graphics – stored on the cloud and edited in the browser, payments and mapping services. It also offers a platform for Python and Java devlopers to build
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custom applications.
A peek into salesforce.com cloud computing platform A multi- tenanted application for CRM (customer relationship management) is the core of the platform. An extension names as Force.com using it's own programming language called Apex was plugged into it. Cloud computing may be thought of as a form of "sky computing" consisting of a number of isolated clouds of services, wherein customers must plug into individually. Although with the emergence of cloud computing aggregators and integrators, this requirement of
Instant Messaging Meebo.com File Storage Box.net Email Gmail To Do List RememberTheMilk.com Scheduling Google Calendar Document/Spreadsheet Google Docs Zoho.com Blogging Wordpress.com Image Storage Flickr.com Video Sharing YouTube.com
GOOGLE TRENDS FOR CLOUD COMPUTING
WEB TURNS 21 IN FOCUS
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The Web turns 21 Peer Javeed Iqbal rewinds through the history of Internet from old text-only browsers to modern day Web Apps & semantic websites. Saturday, the 13th of March 2011 will be marked the 22nd anniversary of the World Wide Web. In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, then a little-known computer scientist, wrote a proposal entitled “Information Management: A Proposal”. He was then working as a consultant at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research now called the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), near Geneva. Mike Sendall, his supervisor, described it as “vague, but exciting”, but, later gave it the go ahead, although it took a good year or two to get off the ground. It was this proposal that paved the way for the World Wide Web and the consequent information explosion we are familiar with today. Indeed, it is difficult to think of life without access to Internet! Be it access to or sharing of data files and documents, e-mail, banking, chat, news, job hunting, product info, shopping on the net, entertainment, contests, rail or air tickets, downloading software or games, matrimonial alliance and so on - the list is growing! The Internet is the transport vehicle for the information stored in files or documents of another computer. It would, however, be a misstatement when one says, “I found the information on the Internet!” In fact, what one means is that the document was found through or using the Internet on one of the computers linked to the Internet. The Internet itself does not contain any information. Rather, it is the World Wide Web (WWW or the Web, as it is popularly known today) that incorporates all of the Internet services mentioned above, and much more. The Web helps retrieve documents, view images, animation and video, listen to sound files, speak and hear voice, and view programmes that run on practically any software in the world provided our computer has the hardware and software to do these things.
How did it all begin? Let us first briefly consider the development of the Internet that paved the way for the Web. It was in 1960s that Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, embarked upon an ambitious project through its agency ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency) to develop a network of computers in which one computer could communicate with another. The nodes of the network were to be high-speed computers which were in real need of good networking for the national research projects and other development programmes. By December 1969, an infant network came into being with just four nodes, called ARPANET. The four computers could transfer data on dedicated high-speed transmission lines. They could even be programmed remotely from other nodes. Scientists and researchers could share one another's computer facilities over long distance. In 1971, there were 15 nodes in ARPANET, and in 1972 there were 37. TCP or Transmission Control Protocol converted messages into streams of packets at the source, and then reassembled them back into messages at the destination. IP or
Internet Protocol handled the addressing, seeing to it that the packets are routed across multiple nodes and even across multiple networks with multiple standards. ARPANET itself expired in 1989. However, as the 1970s and 1980s advanced, with availability of more powerful computers, it became fairly easy to link the computers to the growing network of networks. Since the software (network protocol) called TCP/ IP was public domain, and the basic technology was decentralized, it was difficult to stop people from barging in, linking up somewhere or the other. This is what came to be known as the “Internet”. The nodes in the growing network of networks were divided up into basic varieties, say, gov, mil, edu, com, org and net. Such abbreviations are a standard feature of the TCP/IP protocols. The use of TCP/IP standards is now global. What was the situation prior to 1989? The Internet only provided screens full of text, usually only in one font and font size. Surely, it was good for exchanging information, and even for accessing information such as the library catalogues. But, it was visually
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IN FOCUS
WEB TURNS 21
very boring. Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) added a bit of colour and layout giving it a slightly better look. In the mid-eighties, personal computers were just beginning to adopt Windows interfaces. One of the significant predecessors of the Web was the Xanadu project, which worked on the concept of hypertext, or the machine-readable text that is organized so that related items of information are connected. Clicking on a hyperlink (a word from a hypertext file) would link the user to another location or file. It is interesting to note that it was to click on the hyperlinks that the mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart. The mouse was to later become a very important part of personal computers. The idea of clicking on a word or a picture to take a user somewhere else was a basic foundation of the Web. Next came URL (Uniform Resource Locator), allowing one to find one's way around by naming a site. Yet another feature was the Hypertext Markup Language (html), the language that allowed pages to display different fonts and sizes, pictures, colours and so on. Before HTML, there was no such standard. The GUIs we talked about earlier only belonged to different computers or different computer software. They could not be networked. This was the situation that existed till 1989, when Tim Berners Lee brought this all together and created the World Wide Web (WWW or the Web). It may not be an exaggeration to say that the Web saved the Internet! Not only did it change appearance of the Internet, it made it possible for pictures and sound to be displayed and exchanged. How did it all happen? The Web was, in fact, invented to deal with a specific problem. In the late 1980s, CERN was planning one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. We may note that LHC was started, and then shut down again because of a leak in its cooling system, in September 2008. Tim Berners-Lee's proposal aimed at keeping track of the huge data LHC would generate, sharing it, and linking of electronic documents in laboratories around the world. The first few lines of the proposal read: “Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question - 'Yes, but how will we
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www.globekashmir.com ever keep track of such a large project?' This proposal provides an answer to such questions”. The proposal incorporated three technologies - HTML, HTTP and a web browser client software program to receive and interpret data and display results. An important concept of his proposal included the fact that the client software programme's user interface would be consistent across all types of computer platforms so that users could access information from many types of computers. Tim Berners-Lee and his colleague at CERN, Robert Cailliau, came up with the first web browser in October 1990, which looked pretty similar to the ones used today. By 1991, browser and web server software was available, and by 1992 a few preliminary sites existed. By the end of 1992, there were about 26 sites. May 1991 was the first time that the information-sharing system using HTML, HTTP, and a client software programme (WWW) was fully operational on the multiplatform computer network at the CERN laboratories in Switzerland. All of the documents coded with HTML elements were stored on one main computer at CERN called a “web server” because it “served-up” batches of cross-linked HTML documents. There was only one Web server located at CERN, but by the end of 1992 there were over 50 Web servers in the world, mainly used by thousands of scientists around the world to swap, view and comment on their research, regardless of the distance or computer system. The Web, as we know, has found uses far beyond linking of electronic documents about particle physics in laboratories around the world. Cailliau still marvels at developments like wikipedia that allow knowledge to be exchanged openly around the Web. A search engine is very centralized, while the Web is totally decentralized. From personal and social networks, industry to commerce, it has transformed the business of doing science itself. This is why the number of WWW (Internet) users that was only a few thousand in 1992 mostly scientists exchanging information in different parts of the world - swelled to 36 million from all walks of life in 2000. In 2008 it was 1.6 billion. In India, there are more than 60 million internet users today
as compared to about 4 million in 2003. How has the Web changed the way we do science? We are familiar with the benefits of journals being published online and links to be made from one paper to another. It has also permitted professional scientists to recruit thousands of amateurs to help them in their research. In one such project, called GalaxyZoo, used this unpaid labour to classify 1 million images of galaxies into various types - spiral, elliptical and irregular. This project, intended to help astronomers understand how galaxies evolve, proved to be so successful that a new project now has been launched to classify the brightest quarter of a million of these galaxies in finer detail. There is also an ongoing project to scrutinize and decipher scanned images of handwritten notes about old plant cuttings stored in British museums. This could allow the tracking of changes in the distribution of species in response to, say, climate change. Scientists have thus been utilizing the Web to further their research. There are also novel scientific applications of the web allowing social scientists to do things that would have been impossible previously, say in studying the phenomena like social networking. What does Tim Berners-Lee think of the future of the Web? The next avatar of the Web would be one in which information is given welldefined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. In the near future, these developments will usher in significant new functionality as machines become much better able to process and understand the data that they merely display at present. Another key future development is the webto-mobile initiative, he says. The Web is one of the many different applications which are run over the internet. However, the achievement of Tim Berners-Lee was to recognize the power and potential of the internet. Indeed, the Web is really now the web of life! (The writer is working in IGNOU as Consultant and can be reached at javed.iqbal.p@gmail.com)
PART 1
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LEARN 2 PROGRAM
Learn to Program Introducing first in a series of tutorials designed to teach you how to program & a place for the future programmer to start with.
C
omputers have changed the way we get our work done these days. Computers can be seen everywhere. Baaah! You probably know that already, so I am not going to waste your time with gibberish. Let's get to the point. Computers are dumb. No, really! They are. They cannot do anything on their own. Computers need to be told repeatedly what to do. Not only that, they even need to be told how to do that stuff. How do we do that? We write programs. Programs are a sequence of precise instructions to accomplish a job/task at hand, which are fed to the computer for it to execute in the precise order. The programs are also known as software. Your web browsers like Firefox, Google Chrome, etc., are programs, your office productivity suites like OpenOffice, MS Office, etc., are programs. Your operating systems like Ubuntu, Windows, etc., are a set of programs. Even the the whole Internet is a set of programs working together. Now how do we create these programs. We need Programming Languages for that. Programming languages are similar to normal human languages like English, Arabic, Spanish, etc. Just like we have many languages to communicate with our fellow humans, there are many languages to communicate with computers. The only difference between human languages and programming languages is that languages used for programming are variants of English(mostly), dumbed down to a level computers can understand(remember, computers are dumb). Well, there are more differences, but let's not worry about those, for the time being, at least. The method of writing the programs using programming languages is called programming and that's what we are going to learn here. We will learn to write programs with a simple and elegant language called Python. Fun fact: A programming languages is also program(or a set of programs)
Before we start We need to download the Python programming language and a decent text editor(No, notepad and wordpad are not decent text editors). We will use GEdit as our text editor. To get them, go to learn2program.globekashmir.com/download You should see links to download Python and GEdit for your operating
systems. Download and install both Python and GEdit specific to your operating system. You will need a working internet connection to download these. If you are running Linux or Mac OS X, chances are you already have python and a decent text editor installed. You should still install python from the the link provided to ensure that you have proper versions of Python and GEdit. Note: Python can also be downloaded from the official Python website http://python.org.
Starting Python From Terminal Now, that we have python downloaded and installed, let's write our first program. Open the terminal application provided by your operating system(on Windows press Windows + R. Windows "Run Command" dialog will appear; type cmd in it and press Enter), type python at the command prompt and press Enter. You should see some text appearing in the terminal which should look something like: Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Sep 15 2010, 16:22:56) [GCC 4.4.5] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
The above output might differ slightly on different operating systems, but basically what we need is >>>. This is called The Python Prompt. If you see The Python Prompt, it means that python is installed properly. If you do not see The Python Prompt, go back a bit and ensure you did not miss any step. From now onwards, whenever you see >>> or you are told to go to python prompt, it means: 타open the terminal application 타type python at the command prompt and press Enter.
Your First Program Now let's write our first program. Go to the python prompt and enter the text exactly as you see below. >>>print "Hello World" Do not type >>>, type print "Hello World" where
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PART 1
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>>> appears
Now let's try some subtraction:
As soon as you press Enter, your terminal should look like:
>>>22 - 11 >>>3.14 - 2.9 >>>"Hello" - "World"
>>>print "Hello World" Hello World >>> NOTE: It is important that you do not type anything between >>> and print, not even a space. Why? Let's worry about it later What happened here? Remember, earlier in this article we learnt that computers are dumb and we need to provide precise instructions for the job/task at hand. That's exactly what we did here. We asked the computer to print Hello World on the terminal. So print is the command and "Hello World" is the data on which the command should act. There! You wrote your first program, wasn't difficult at all. Was it? But why do we need to put "(called double quotes) around the Hello World. Which brings us to our next section. EXERCISE ŸEnter >>> print Hello World (Hello World without
the double quotes) and see what happens. ŸInstead of "Hello World", try numbers after print
command. ŸTry typing random things after print. Try numbers,
alphabets, combinations of alphabets and numbers. ŸNow finally, try all of the above again but without print in
front of them. Note down what you see and what you understand from this exercise. I mean it! Get your notebook and a pencil right now and note it down.
Literals A literal is a fixed value. It can be a number, it can be a sequence of alphabets, it can be a collection of values. Type the following in the python prompt and see what happens. >>>"Hello World" >>>22 >>>3.14 Literals(or values) also have a type. In the above example. First one is a String. Second and third are Numbers. Any literal enclosed inside "(double quotes) or '(single quotes) are treated as strings. For example: "Hello" is a string, "12", '33', '4.5' are strings, not numbers. There are other types of values as well, but for now we will only work with numbers and strings. You can perform mathematical calculations with these values. For example, try the following and note the results: >>>22 + 31 >>>3.14 + 2.9 >>>"Hello" + "World"
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You must have noticed that numbers can be subtracted, but subtraction on strings results in something different. You should see something like: >>> "Hello" - "World" Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'str' and 'str' >>> This is an error: Python is trying to tell you that something went wrong. In other words, we tried to do something that is not possible or python does not accept this operation. But what went wrong? We tried to subtract two strings. Not all mathematical operations can be performed on all types. In other words, strings can be added to each other, but we cannot subtract one string from the other. Think about it, while "5 - 2" makes sense, "Hello" - "World" does not. When we perform a mathematical operation on literals, they result in new values, which are literals of the same type as the ones we performed the operation on. That means adding/subtracting two numbers will result in a new number and adding two strings will result in a new string. Addition of two strings cannot result in a number or vice versa. Similarly you can divide values >>>5 / 2 >>>10 / 5 >>>22 / 11 Multiply values >>>5 * 2 >>>6 * 88 >>>33 * 4 Now let's combine all that we have understood so far and try out a few things. >>>print "Hello World!" >>>print "My name is Mir Nazim" >>>print "I am ", 27, " years old" >>>print "I started programming at the age of ", 10 + 9 >>>print "After 3 years I will be ", 27 + 3, " years old" >>>print 3, " years back, I was ", 27 - 3, " years old"
EXERCISE ŸThere is something different in the above examples. Try
to find out what it is. ŸTry different combinations of printing number and
strings together.
PART 1
www.globekashmir.com 타Try out all mathematical operations with both numbers
and strings in various combinations. 타There is one more mathematical operation performed
with '%'(example: 5 % 2). Try to find out how is it different from division '/' EXERCISE First, calculate the result of the following examples with a calculator or by hand, and then try them at the python prompt: >>>10 >>>33 >>>33 >>>10 >>>10
* * / +
2 2 2 2 2
* * /
33 10 10 / 10 40 / 8 * 100 / 20 2 + 66 * 2 / 66
If the results on the python prompt are different from what you got with the calculator, try to find out the reason for the different answers.(Hint: Both the results from the calculator and the ones on the python prompt are correct; try to find out why they are different) Variables A variable is a name given to a literal or a value, so that we can use that name instead of the value in our programs. For example: >>>myname = "Mir Nazim" >>>myage = 27
In the above example we put "Mir Nazim" into a variable called myname and 27 in a variable called myage. Now let's repeat the last example, but with variables. >>>print "My name is", myname >>>print "I am ", myage, " years old" >>>print "After 3 years I will be ", myage + 3, " years old" >>>print 3, " years back, I was ", myage - 3, " years old" >>>print "I started programming at the age of ", myage - 10
From the above example, we understand that we can use the variables inside mathematical operations. But why use variables? EXERCISE 타Compare both examples(with and without variables) and
list the differences. 타Try to think of reasons whether using variables instead of
literals is good or bad. (Hint: Try changing my name and age to your own name and age in both examples.)
Running Programs From A File So far we have been writing programs on the python prompt. We can also write the programs inside files and run those files instead. Before we do so, lets create a folder to hold all our programs. (Following instructions are specific to MS Windows, if you are on Mac OS X or Linux I am confident you can adapt these instructions to equivalent ones on your operating system). Go to the terminal(but not the python prompt) and type these commands one by one.
LEARN 2 PROGRAM
cd C:\ mkdir learn2program cd learn2program Remember we downloaded and installed GEdit editor and Python earlier in this tutorial. Now open the GEdit editor and type the following example myname = "Mir Nazim" myage = 27 print "Hello World!" print "My name is ", myname print "I am ", myage, " years old"
Now save this file inside C:\learn2program and name it as helloword.py. Remember to give it extension .py. From now onwards, save all your files in learn2program folder. Now go the terminal and type the following commands in order: cd C:\learn2program python helloword.py You should see the following output: My name is Mir Nazim I am 27 years old If you see a different output, you missed some steps. Go back and make sure that you followed the instructions properly. What we did here is we asked python to run the program written in the file called helloword.py. Simple. Isn't it. From now onwards we will write all our programs inside files. Note: Do not type '>>>' in front of lines. There should not be any spaces before the first character in the files also, or python will throw IndentationError, for example: File "<stdin>", line 1 print "Hello World" ^ IndentationError: unexpected indent IndentationError always means that there is a space character before some line of code. EXERCISE Convert all previous examples to files and run them from terminal.
Road Ahead In the next article in this series, we will continue to learn more about input/output, numbers and strings. We will also learn how to make decisions inside code and to execute things repeatedly. Till then, happy programming.
Mir Nazim Author is co-founder and Chief Architect at iKraft Software (P) Ltd. He has been developing large scale web application with Python, Ruby, PHP and related technologies, for 8 years. He is a Free and Open Source Software evangelist. He can be reached at mir.nazim@ikraftsoft.com.
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GAMING ZONE
URBAN TERROR
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Where quake meets reality!! By Owais Lone, loneowais@gmail.com
U
rban Terror, commonly abbreviated as UrT, is a free online, multiplayer, first person shooter developed by FrozenSand, that does not require Quake III Arena anymore. It is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh. The current version is 4.1. It was originally a total conversion of “id Software's Quake III Arena. FrozenSand released Urban Terror as a free stanalone game in 2007 utilizing ioquake3 as an engine. It was nominated to the 2007 Mod DB's Mod of the year Award.
Gameplay Urban Terror is billed by frozen sand as a “hollywood tactical shooter”; somewhat realism based, but the motto is "fun over realism". This results in a very unique, enjoyable and addictive game. UrT allows players to perform superhuman feats. Damage is a key example; while damage taken depends on the part of the body which is hit, one can keep going after receiving numerous hits. Players, are also allowed to walljump and powerslide. Wall
Urban Terror is billed by frozen sand as a “hollywood tactical shooter”; somewhat realism based, but the motto is "fun over realism". This results in a very unique, enjoyable and addictive game. 22
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jumping allows a player to jump off walls and helps the player to gain more hight, speed and distance. Powesliding is a technique which lets a player move rapidly in a crouched position maintaining speed. Numerous maps have been designed specifically for jumps and slides in recent time. Well if a couple of words could describe the gameplay, I would use PURE AWESOMENESS
Weapons and Equipment Players have one primary weapon slot, one secondary weapon slot, a sidearm A.K.A pistol slot. Besides a grenade slot and three general equipment slots. Players must select one primary waepon and sidearm(that slot can't be empty, even if you want). Players are automatically equipped with a Ka-Bar knife which you can use to slash or throw. Primary weapons include heavy firepower of sniper rifles (remmington SR8) and assault rifles(LR300, Ak103, M4, Negev) etc. Secondary weapons include a couple of submachine guns and a shotgun. A player can also pick up weapons from a dead friend or an enemy. Other equipment that a player can choose are grenades (fragmentation or smoke), Kevlar vest, tacgoggles, Kevlar helmet, silencer, extra ammo and a medic kit.
Stamina and Damage A stamina system is also present, and is depleted by jumping and sprinting. The amount of stamina is related to the amount of health a player has. Equipping or picking up a kevlar vest
or the Negev decreases stamina considerably. Stamina is recharged fastest when a player is motionless and crouched, but will recharge slowly during normal movement. Damage in UrT, is done by dividing the player target into four discrete areas: head, torso, arms, and legs. The effects on the torso and head can be reduced by game items such as the kevlar vest and the kevlar helmet, respectively. In addition to the damage system, wounds require bandaging, and wounds sustained in the legs slow the player down considerably until they are bandaged. When a wound is not ban-
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URBAN TERROR
GAMING ZONE
daged, the player will eventually slowly die from bleeding to death. Players can also bandage each other to restore other players health partially. The bandaging proceed much faster if the player that is bandaging is equipped with a medkit item, and which also allows the healing of others back to almost full health. What are you waiting for? All you need is an internet connection hooked up to your rig, downlaod the game and play online with your friends. Its FREE. Have FUN!!
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COVER STORY OPEN SOURCE
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ENTER THE WORLD ALL YOU WANTED TO
O
pen source software is the most significant allencompassing and longterm trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s". This is one of the conclusions of a recent IDC report [IDC 06], which shows how much the perception of FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) has changed in the recent years. Right now, the majority of developers in the world are using open source software [Forr 07], and FLOSS platforms are used in one way or the other by a large share of companies. Despite this situation, there is still a significant barrier in the adoption process for end users; small and medium companies. According to Wikipedia, “The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's
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source materials.” According to OSI, “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.” In late 1970s and early 1980s, work was done for establishing the roots of the current open source software movement. On the US East coast, Richard Stallman, formerly a programmer at the MIT AI Lab, resigned, and launched the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation. The ultimate goal of the GNU Project was to build a free operating system, and Richard started by coding some programming tools (a compiler, an editor, etc.). As a legal tool, the GNU General Public License (GPL) was
designed not only to ensure that the software produced by GNU will remain free, but to promote the production of more and more free software. On the philosophical side, Richard Stallman also wrote the GNU Manifesto. During 1991-1992, the whole landscape of open source software, and of software development in general, was ready to change. In Finland, Linus Torvalds, a student of computer science, unhappy with Tanenbaum's Minix, 5 was implementing the first versions of the Linux kernel. Soon, many people were collaborating to make that kernel more and more usable, and adding many utilities to complete GNU/Linux6, a real operating system. The Linux kernel, and the GNU applications used on top of it are covered by GPL. The late 1990s were very exciting times with respect to open source software. Open source systems based on GNU/Linux
OPEN SOURCE COVER STORY
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OF OPEN SOURCE KNOW ABOUT OPEN SOURCE or *BSD were gaining public acceptance, and had become a real alternative to proprietary systems, competing head to head with the market leaders (like Windows NT in servers). In many niches, the best choice was already open source (an outstanding case is Apache as Web server, with a market share consistently over 50%). The announcement of the liberation of Netscape Communicator, in 1998, was the starting point of a rush of many big companies to understand open source software. The label “open source” was adopted by some people in the free software movement at a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator. The group of individuals at the session included Christine Peterson who suggested “open
source”. The term was given a big boost at an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly. A main principle and practice of open source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product, source-material, "blueprints", and documentation available at no cost to the public. Motivations for using and developing open source software are mixed, ranging from philosophical and ethical reasons to pure practical issues. Usually, the first perceived advantage of open source models is the fact that open source software is made available gratis or at a low cost. But this characteristic is not exclusive to open source software, and several proprietary software products are made available in similar ways (a prominent case could
be Microsoft's Internet Explorer). Open source software promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code. A proprietary solution can not compare to that of open source. With thousands of developers already 100% knowledgeable with your software framework, any open source friendly company can work on your website. Don’t be bound to a single development company because you are stuck using their proprietary software. Recently a trend has started in our valley as well, where in people have started shifting from Windows to Linux because of security and stability concerns. In the next few pages, Globe will try to provide you a complete guide to unlock the potential and power of Open Source.
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COVER STORY OPEN SOURCE
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From Windows to Linux (Ubuntu) Why & How? D espite the stereotype of Linux as a hard to use OS, in many ways the most basic computer users have the most to benefit from it. If you do little more on your computer than make office documents, burn a few CDs, play small and simple card and puzzle games, browse the internet, downloads media of Peer 2 Peer programs and plays this media, chat with someone on AIM, or need to do basic image manipulation (whats known as “photoshoppery”), you can use Linux(Ubuntu) with little problems after settting it up properly.
With Ubuntu you won’t have to worry about Viruses or Spyware (which they often have trouble controlling) and you don’t have to invest lots of money on software for something that is little more than a tool to you. Ubuntu is free (in cost). and upgrades to sofware will be always free. It also allows you access to thousands of free programs. On the other hand, Windows by default lacks many thing (a decent CD burner, anti-virus software, an image manipulation program, office software) that often you have to buy for thousands of rupees. Ubuntu has an awesome community that is ready to help you if you have got an issue with it, which is not true with Windows.
exciting, which you will for sure, go ahead and install it. There are two ways to install it on your machine. Either you can install it inside your Windows or create some free space using your Windows Disk Management Application to install it on. Please remember, by free space, you have to either delete one of the existing partitions in your Windows machine or shrink on of the partitions to go ahead. After shrinking a Windows partition, you should reboot once into Windows prior to installing Ubuntu or further manipulating the partitions. This allows the Windows system to automatically rescan the newly-resized partition (using chkdsk in XP or other utilities in more recent versions of Windows) and write changes to its own bootup files.
If you are installing Ubuntu inside Windows using Wubi (Windows based Ubuntu Installer), simply instert the CD into your CD ROM after your Windows boots up and run the autoplay to proceed. Create a folder somewhere on your hard disk and point your Ubuntu installation there and you are done. You got a new OS alongside your Windows.
How to Install Intalling Ubuntu is very simple. Download Ubuntu from its website or simply go to Ubuntu ShipIt to order your CD free of cost (even you don’t need to pay courier charges). Ubuntu comes in both 32-bit and 64bit flavours. Choose the correct flavour and get ready for installation. You can simply try the Ubuntu by booting from the CD without the need to install it first. If you find it
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Restart your computer and select Ubuntu from the boot menu to login to your Ubuntu OS.
For installing Ubuntu on created free space, restart your machine and boot from the CD to go ahead. Ubuntu installer will go through some screens until you reach a screen where you will have to make a choice; whether to install Ubuntu or simply try it. Select Install Ubuntu and go ahead. You will be asked to whether install updates and third party plugins automatically or not. Select Yes, if you already have an internet connection or else no and go ahead. In the next screen, you will be asked for the location to install the Ubuntu. Select Specify Partitions manually and go ahead. In the next screen you will see the space that you have freed in Windows, select it, click on New and create a new partition by leaving
some space from it to be used as swap area ahead. Select the mount point as ‘/’ and file system as Ext4 for this partition. For the remaining space, create another partition and use it as ‘Swap Area’ in the provided options. Click Next, set up your time and other settings, create administrative user account and you are done.
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Open Source alternatives to popular Windows Apps Can we get alternatives for any proprietary software from the open source world? The answer is no. But of course almost all the popular proprietary applications have an alternative that we can find in the open source world.
Operating systems Examples of open source desktop operating systems are Ubuntu and Fedora. In windows operating system the variants differ from each other depending on the price. The most expensive variant has all the features included and least expensive has only the basic features. But in case of open source operating systems the way they vary is different. The variants are created according to the needs of the users. For example, KDE and GNOME are totally different desktop environments. The users who want eye candy but can afford high profile hardware can go for the KDE version of Ubuntu or Fedora. People who don't need resource hungry desktop can go for GNOME version. There are also customized 'spins' of the operating systems available which cater to specialized needs. One such spin is Ubuntu studio which contains the software needed for image, audio and video editing. A spin of Fedora named â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fedora games spinâ&#x20AC;? comes pre-loaded with games, meant for gamers. There are other operating systems as well, like Debian, OpenSuse and Mandriva.
Internet utilities Internet explorer is a popular proprietary web browser. Mozilla Firefox can be used as an open source
alternative to it. Pidgin and empathy are open source chat clients that can be used for different servers such as yahoo, Google chat, MSN etc. They support jabber and IRC accounts too. There are open source email clients too such as Thunderbird and evolution. There are tools like Gwibber to access some popular social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Document viewing and processing tools For word processing, spreadsheet and presentation there are open source applications such as OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. These utilities support the open document file format and also proprietary file formats like Microsoft office doc format. Lyx is an open source typesetting tool and document processor which can be used for creating professional typeset documentation. Evince and okular can be used for viewing pdf documents.
Text Editors Kate, gvim, and gedit are some of the text editors which are open source. These text editors are good alternatives to notepad and wordpad. Programmers can use notepad++ which offers them advanced features relevant to a programmer.
Image management Shotwell is an image browser and organizer and editor with minimal editing functions. Other image open source image organizers include fspot and Digikam
Image manipulation software
GIMP is an alternative to the popular image manipulation software Photoshop. Along with another application named ufraw, it supports RAW format images of different vendors. There is a software based on GIMP named GIMPshop which looks similar to Photoshop. Photoshop users who want to migrate to GIMP can use GIMPshop.
Media players VLC is a open source media player that run on many platforms like windows, mac, Ubuntu, Fedora, FreeBSD etc. VLC can play a wide variety of audio and video files and reads different disc formats such as audio CD,video CD, SVCD and DVD. VLC media player can also act as a streaming server that can serve videos across many clients. Other media players include Mplayer, Xine and Totem. For Playing audio, one can use xmms which resembles the popular audio player, Winamp. Other audio players like banshee, rhythm box, etc.
Disc burner software There are many open source disc burner software available for use. One popular disc burner application is Brasero disc burner. Both DVDs and CDs can burnt using the application. It supports various disc speeds that the disc drive is capable of. Similar softwares are k3b and xcd roast.
Johnson Johnson is an open source enthusiast. Loves photography as a hobby. He works for CSS Corp and is based out of Chennai.
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COVER STORY OPEN SOURCE
11
Most Popular Open Source Software Ever
These days, you can quite easily buy a brand-spanking-new computer and install all the software you need for free, using applications offered under the Open Software License. You can get a free image editor, a free sound editor, a free word processor, media player, file archiver, PDF creator… the list goes on and on and on. While some of these free apps do not offer quite the same level of polished functionality as their commercial rivals, others far exceed the capabilities of everything else on the market. Below, we take a close look at the cream of the crop: 20 invaluable and indispensable open source applications that you really should be using, if you’re not already. The vast majority of them are crossplatform and absolutely 100% free! You’re bound to find several that are perfectly suited to your needs.
Firefox Firefox currently accounts for 24.43% of the recorded usage share of web browsers, but this figure is on the rise. Already the browser of choice for most web professionals, Firefox’s popularity is growing thanks to its vast selection of third party add-ons, which let users tailor their browsing environment down to the finest detail.
GnuCash GnuCash provides a great, free alternative to paid-for accounting software. Designed for personal and small business use, it offers bank account, stock, income and expense tracking, in addition to double-entry accounting.
Audacity Music software like Cubase and Logic Pro can be incredibly expensive, which
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is why an increasing number of people are turning to Audacity, a free, cross-platform sound editor. Users can record and edit live audio; cut, copy, splice and mix sounds; and convert ageing tapes and records into digital format.
GIMP Just like sound editors, industry standard image editing software is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people, but GIMP provides a free alternative. It performs every major function you could desire, except for, vitally, CMYK separation functionality necessary for prepress work.
OpenOffice With the ability to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases, OpenOffice is an accomplished rival to Microsoft Office, which clearly influenced OpenOffice’s design. Microsoft Office users will feel completely at home and find that OpenOffice performs just as well, if not better.
VLC At last count, VLC media player had been downloaded 300 million times. Unlike some paid-for alternatives, VLC supports practically every audio/video codec and file format. The most recent VLC release also offers live recording of streaming video, frame-by-frame advancement and superb speed controls.
HandBrake Handbrake rips/converts DVDs to MPEG-4 for playing back on your iPod or archiving. It doesn’t have
the ability to decode DVDs, but can do so if you have VLC, which includes a DVD encoder, installed on your computer.
Pidgin Pidgin is the ultimate, free instant messaging tool. It provides you with one window through which you can simultaneously interact with different people, whichever instant messaging platform they’re using.
7-Zip 7-Zip is an extremely popular file archiver for Windows, which, although free, outperforms Winzip. It can unpack the vast majority of archive formats and can create TAR and GZ archives, commonly used on Unix and Linux systems, as well as its own 7z format, which easily outshrinks ZIP files.
PDF Creater Windows users can consider PDFCreator a credible rival to Adobe Acrobat. Creating PDFs is as easy as printing, literally, as once installed, you can select PDFCreator as your printer, letting you create PDFs from practically any application.
TrueCrypt TrueCrypt really is the best free encryption program around for anyone worried about their security. It offers 11 algorithms for encrypting your files, as well as a comprehensive help manual, which gives advice on complex password creation, hidden volumes and erasing encryption giveaways.
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Configuring TATA Photon+ on Linux TATA Photon+ has been a big hit in the state of J&K with its good speed and better coverage. Most of the devices provided by Tata Indicom these days are compatible with Linux. In this tutorial we will show you how to run the device on your Ubuntu OS. To run this device properly, you will require a package called wvdial. Run this command to install it, if it is not already installed. sudo apt-get install wvdial
Alternatively, you can download the debian package offline from http://free.nchc.org.tw/ubuntu// pool/main/w/wvdial/wvdial_1.60.1 +nmu2ubuntu1_i386.deb
Now connect the device with the USB port of Desktop / Laptop. Login to the Graphical Interface and open the terminal from the Applications. Terminal can be
found at this location: Applications > Accessories > Terminal In the terminal type the following command sudo wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf
which will detect the modem and installs it for internet connection. But sometimes, wvdial fails to detect the modem, due to some misconfiguration. Run this command to proceed. lsusb It will output like this Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f2:b015 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 003 Device 003: ID 19d2:fff6
This will show you a list of devices connected to your usb. Note the Photon device. Now type this command to configure it. modprobe -r usb-storage usbserial
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x19d2 product=0xfff6
Replace the vendor and product ID with yours. Now run wvdialconf again and this time, it should detect your modem. wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf
This will basically create your config file for wvdial. Run gedit /etc/wvdial.conf
to edit the config file.Enter phone no as #777, username and password as internet. Add this 2 extra lines in the configuration file at the last. Init3 = AT+CRM=1 Stupid Mode = 1
Save the file and close it. Congrats! you are done. Now run this command to connect to internet. sudo wvdial
Keep your terminal open and start browsing.
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COVER STORY OPEN SOURCE
www.globekashmir.com threat to a developing or developed nation these days and security vulnerabilities in software will only make matters worse. This fear can be mitigated by adopting open source.
Military
Open Source in Governments
How open source can open up e-governance
O
pen source software has found its way into a lot of domains. Governments are one of them. Several governments have stood up and taken note of the rise of open source from nowhere to where it is now – an indispensible artifact of computing and software. There are a lot of benefits in using open source software for the governments that they can use to their advantage. Open source software provides with several important capabilities to the government while addressing some of the most pressing needs of the century.
Present Scenario Many countries including India have policies that more or less 'mandate' the use of open source in their departments. The list includes Israel, USA, Russia, etc. Several countries also try to enforce the use of open protocols and open standards. The open document format has been officially recognized as a standard by the Beareau of Indian Standards (BIS). India's stance has for long been pro- open source. India infact has a distribution of its own dubbed BOSS after Bharat Operating System.
open source is used by the governments here.
Economy The advancements in education and rural upliftment include computer literacy. Linux being an open source operating system, fits there very well. The OLPC project runs a variant of Linux on the hardware. Sevaral countries in Africa and East Asia (including the Indian subcontinent) have rural kiosks running Linux that lets the people of that locality try their hand at computers. For such purposes, it is better to have an operating system that is not only free of cost, but also free of licensing and patent restrictions so that it will be easy to customize them according to specific needs of the users.
Healthcare Open source in the healthcare space has seen steady growth. There are software that cater to almost all the needs of the healthcare industry. Patient Medical Record management, Medical inventory management, Electronic Medical Record management, etc are certain areas where radical improvements have been made using open source.
How it can be utilized
Security
Open source finds use in a lot of domains in a government. Like, healthcare, security, Economy, Education, etc. Open source, by definition is synonymous with democracy. One that exists within the software community. I will address a few of domains where
Open source is also used widely by governments for the sake of security. Governments can make development of certain software easy by roping in the community. But an added factor is the sense of security that governments get when the code of the software is open for scrutiny. A cyber attack is a real
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The armed forces use open source in various forms. They require reliable, stable software that is tested and tried. Moreover it is ill advised for a government's critical organization to be locked-in with a private vendor.
Research As much as Open source software aids a lot in research, it also contributes to research methodology. Open research is the term that is given to research that is done following the spirit of open source. This will greatly aid in the dissemination of vital knowledge when it comes to critical areas such as agricultural research or research on seismology for instance.
Some key players ŸIndia has standardised the use of
open formats for documents. The BIS standard is open document format. (ODF) ŸIn the month of January, 2010, the London Stock Exchange switched to Linux for better security against cyber attacks. ŸSeveral state governments in India switched to or are in the process of switching to Open Source. This includes, Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, etc. ŸThe US dept of defense and the US navy are almost entirely on Linux and open source. ŸPakistan runs all schools and institutes on Linux.
Conclusion While open source seems to be gaining steam in several fields, it is absolutely useful for the governments to seriously start using open source in full swing. This will bring with it some very beneficial advantage.
Yogesh Girikumar Yogesh is an open source enthusiast based out of Tamil Nadu. He is working to bring open source into the mainstream. He can be reached at yogeshg1987@gmail.com
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TIPS & TRICKS
10
RUN YOUR LAPTOP EFFICIENTLY
Ways to make your Laptop run more efficiently
Whether it's for work or entertainment, a laptop can be a real joy. However, if your laptop is not running as fast as it did when it was new, its time for some routine maintenance and cleanup.
always be visible on your desktop, they're still running in the background and sucking up your valuable RAM. This can significantly slow down the laptop as time goes by. Find out how to modify your "msconfig", and manually remove these programs from launching on startup. You won't be removing them from your computer, just preventing them from running every time you start up your computer
Here are a few simple tips that you can use to make your laptop run faster, and last longer: Defragment your laptop on a regular basis – at least once a week. Your T I P computer breaks all of your files up into many pieces, and scatters them throughout your hard drive. What defragmenting does is take all these mixed and scattered pieces, and re-organizes them neatly into a space where they can be easily accessed more quickly .
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Cleaning your Registry is a must. One of the most important parts of T I P Windows is the registry. Fatal errors to your laptop can occur from disfiguration or corruption of this section. The most common cause of registry problems is buggy software installation. Keep your registry clean and consider getting and running a registry cleaner from time to time. There are many of these programs available online, and some of them are even free.
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Unclutter Your Hard Drive of unnecessary programs and files such as T I P entertainment, games, music, pictures, etc. If you allow them to add up, these files can clog the hard drive and slow it down. If your hard drive is too full, it can also cause problems with your computer's RAM and processing capability. This can lead to significant slow-downs and frequent crashes
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04 TIP
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Get good virus protection. You need to run a good anti-virus program and spyware/adware program at least once a
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Zaid Aijaz zaid_aijaz@kashtech.info week, if not more. Many people do this every day at start-up. Most of these programs are able to run automatically on their own schedule without your assistance, which can save you a lot of time . Empty The Recycle Bin Regularly. It doesn't do you a lot of good to delete all TIP that unnecessary junk if it's just going to sit in your Recycle Bin. No one likes taking out the trash but it needs to be done!
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Keep Your Laptop Running Cool. Avoid keeping your laptop directly T I P on a soft surface such as your bed or couch. It needs to be able to breather freely and allow air to circulate. Otherwise, your processor might overheat, causing slow-downs, crashes and even physical damage to components.
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Uninstall Unused Programs. Any programs that are not being used are T I P just taking up space on your hard drive. Please note that deleting a program folder is not the same as uninstalling. Make sure to properly remove programs using the Uninstall function in your Control Panel. Otherwise, you could just end up creating more problems.
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Erase temporary Internet Files. This cannot be stressed or TIP emphasized enough. Every time you go to a site on the web or open a file, a temporary copy is made and kept in your hard drive. They may be called "temporary" but they're there for a long time. The more you have on your system, the more they're going to slow down your laptop. Whether you're running Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer, find out how to clear your browser's cache, and do it regularly – Delete Internet History, Cache and More.
If you follow the advice , you can possibly get an extra 2 or 3 years of life from your laptop before you'll need to replace it.
Get Rid Of Unnecessary Startup Programs. Many programs want to T I P start running as soon as you boot up your computer. Although these programs may not
But remember… before doing any kind of work on your system, it's vital that you create a backup copy of all your most important data. This way, you'll be prepared in the unlikely event that something goes wrong.
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10.Upgrade your RAM if necessary. If you have a tendency of having many T I P large programs all opened at once, you may not have enough RAM on your system. Look into purchasing some new RAM. Prices are very reasonable, and it's a cost-effective way to increase the speed and efficiency of your laptop.
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GOOGLE TRICKS
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TIPS & TRICKS
cool tips to make search in Google more effectively
If you’re not from some other world, you probably use Google many times in a day. But unless you are a technology geek, you probably still search Google in its simplest form. If your current use of Google is limited to typing a few words or phrase in, and wading pages after pages until you find what you’re looking for, then I’m here to tell you that there’s a better way to make your Google search more effective and the best part is, its not hard to learn. These Google search tips are based on my own experience and I find them quite useful sometimes. For you, some of these tips are that you know about, some are lesser-known and some you haven’t listen yet. Google can be your calculator
volume among many others. So when you want to know what is the equivalent pounds of 5.5kg you can view it by entering (5.5kg in pounds) in the search box. You can also try out other unit conversion too as you want.
name of the city. Synonym Search
Currency Conversion
If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign (~) in front of your search term. Make Google your quick dictionary As the name suggests, Google can tell exchange rates between any currencies. For example, you want to convert Euro in US Dollars, type (euro in usd). Search with keywords in a given sequence
Type “define” before any English word into the Google search box and get the quick definition at the top of the search results.
Type a math problem into the search box and Google will compute it. You can spell out the equation in words (four plus four), use numbers and symbols (4+4) or both (4+four). Other than addition, you can do minus, divide, multiply, percentage etc.
If you want to search Google in the same sequence as you entered in the search box, then double quote the search string,ex: “the key to success”.
Unit Conversion
Find local time of any city in the world
Get the weather status of any city in the world
Type “weather” before any city name or city code and get the weather status of that city at top of the Google web page. Numrange Operator You can use Google search to convert between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and
If you want to know the current time of any city, just type “time” before the
Search for a numerical range using the numrange operator. For exam-
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TIPS & TRICKS
GOOGLE TRICKS Search with keywords in a given sequence
www.globekashmir.com properly query google, you can find open indexes of music files easily. “-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:”index of” mp3 “blackout” This command will find open directories with mp3 files with “Memoirs of an imperfect angel”. You can change the album name or a file type(mp3, wma etc.) to better define your search.
ple, search for LG TV between $400 and $500 with the string “LG TV $400..$500″ Search based on File Type
If you want to search Google in the same sequence as you entered in the search box, then double quote the search string,ex: “the key to success”.
Track Flight Status
For Music Lovers
You can search any keyword in any of the File Type format like DOC, PDF, XLS, PPT etc, just type for example “admission in mba collge filetype:pdf”.
Everyone loves music, if you
hello.
Enter the airline service name and flight number into the Google search box and get back the arrival and departure times of that particular flight.
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MAKE YOUR OWN ETHERNET CABLES
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Make Your Own
Ethernet Cables Need a custom size cable for your home/office network? With a spool of Cat5e cable, a crimping tool, and RJ45 connectors, you can quickly make the exact size cable you want.
I
t happens too often: You unbox the networking device you just bought and pull out the included Ethernet cable, only to find that it is far too short—or too long—for your needs. Most cables are at a fixed length, usually measuring no more than 4 feet. That length doesn’t present many placement options for devices that aren’t portable and are usually hard-wired to a network, such as routers, switches, servers, and NA Ses. Of course, you can purchase longer Ethernet cables from Best Buy and other electronic/computer stores. Buying pre-made Ethernet cables is the most practical option if you have just a couple of devices to set up on a small or home network.
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But what if you are responsible for a large network, or several networks, as a small-business tech consultant or need to setup a network at home? Or, what if you need a super long cable that you just can’t find in the store? The answer is simple: Make your own cables. Ethernet cables (also known as RJ -45, patch, and network cables) are easy to make with a little practice and the right tools. Even with modest cabling needs, you can reach the break-even point and pay off the small investment you’ll need to make your own Ethernet cables. At Best Buy, for example, a 2-foot, Cat5 network cable costs Rs 100. This price is for just one cable. If you’re up for the
challenge of making cables yourself, you can buy a 150-foot spool of Cat5e for between 1000 and 1500. You’ll also need “connectors,” the modular plugs used to terminate an Ethernet cable; a 100-count bag will cost you under 600. And the crimping tool you’ll also need will cost you anywhere from Rs 200 to Rs 500, depending on the quality and additional features you want the tool to have. But this is a one-time startup cost. Follow these fairly simple steps, and you'll have Ethernet cables exactly the way you want them in no time. Determine which type of cable you need. Newer networking STEP hardware, adapters, NA
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Ses, switches and routers are connected with what’s called a straight through cable. This is the type of Ethernet cable that generally ships with today’s networking devices. In some cases you’ll need a cross-over cable for connecting older devices or connecting two hubs (a technique called daisy-chaining), or connecting two older laptops to each other (for file transferring, for example). Cross-over cables are rarely needed for networking hardware that’s only about three or fours years old, thanks to a technology known as Auto-MDIX, which can automatically sense on network ports whether a straight through or crossover connection is needed and will make the appropriate connection. However, if you want to link older equipment, check your device’s documentation to see if the connection requires a cross-over cable. Get the right tools. You will need a spool of Cat5 (Cat5e is now the standard) or Cat6 STEP (i f your network is Gigabit Ethernet) cable. Cat5 or Cat6 cable can have plenum or PVC jackets. PVC cable is cheaper, but unlike plenum, it releases a toxic smoke if it catches on fire, so some building codes prohibit it. But if you’re new to making Ethernet cables and your building allows it, your best bet is to start with PVCcoated cable. It’s easier to work with
because the wiring is not as soft as a Plenum cable’s. You’ll also need RJ 45 heads that terminate both ends of the cable, a wire cutter (or a good, sharp pair of scissors), a wire stripper, and an RJ -45 crimper. The crimper is used to secure the heads at each end of the wire. You can purchase crimpers, cable and plugs from a slew of online stores or Radio Shack. Cut the wire to the desired length and strip about an inch of the jacket off. This should expose the four twisted STEP pairs of inner wiring. When stripping the cable, be careful not to
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Call nick the wires. This can cause problems with the connection. Do this at both ends of the cable. Prepare your wire for termination, or “crimping.” Untwist the wire. Arrange your STEP wires based on whether you need a straight-through or crossover cable. For a straightthrough, arrange the wires, on both
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Get out your crimper. With a steady hand, crimp down on the plug, pressing the crimper firmly, but not too STEP hard.
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ends as you are holding and looking at the cable, from left to right: whiteorange, orange, white-green, blue, white-blue, green, white-brown, brown. For a crossover cable, the wire arrangement is differentat both ends. At one end, arrange as follows: white-green, green, white-orange, blue, white-blue, orange, whitebrown, brown. At the other end, arrange as you would for a straightthrough cable: white-orange, orange, white-green, blue, whiteblue, green, white-brown, brown.
Test the cable. Use the cable to connect a networking device with an LED STEP indicating network activity
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Terminate the cable at both ends. Straighten the wires out as much as possible; it STEP will make them easier to place inside the RJ -45 plug. Get the wires as close to one another
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as possible, holding them between your thumb, index, and middle fingers. Trim the wires down evenly to about a quarter of an inch. Here’s the tricky part, which may take some practice: Slip the wires inside of the RJ -45 plug with the clip side down. Don’t try to jam the wires in; they should slip inside the clip and fit snug. You don’t want to see any wires between the plug and the jacket; you want just a bit of the jacket going into the plug. You also want to make sure each wire is making contact with the gold leads in the plug. Take the crimper and crimp down on the plug, pressing the crimper firmly, but not too hard.
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Additionally a tool called LAN Tester can be used for checking patch cables and testing for correct termination of a cable at the patch panel and jack. Just insert the two ends of the cable into two jacks, one on the main tester body and other one on the attached detachable tester part. Turn on the tester and check for LEDs. Glowing of all the LEDs at both sides means that the patch cable is working correctly.
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Ideogram Technology Solutions Quality solution providers at most competitive rates. By Shahid Qazi
I
deogram Technology Solutions [P] Ltd. is a team of Professionals with experience in High-End Project Planning and Development. “We aim at being Total Solution Providers at most competitive rates with quality to our Clients. Our areas of Expertise being Web Design, Software Development, Web Development, Networking, Turnkey Projects, Consultancy, Offshore Development, VoIP Solutions, SMS Based Solutions, Search Engine Optimization and much more”, said Rahul Pandit, Director. “Our professionals employ industry best practices to drive project success and are uniquely positioned to deliver significant cost and time savings Solutions”, he said. Having a passion for "Excellence in Execution," experienced professionals and a sincere desire to service the client’s specific needs, allows them to accomplish their objectives. “We are in a unique position to offer a most comprehensive solution in convergent solutions. Our team has young, aggressive, customer-focused team of professionals that believe in interactive technology, proven methodologies and integrated Direct Marketing disciplines & rich experience in developing and deploying IT solutions”, echoed Rahul. Ideogram has been in business since 2005 and has been serving more than 500 clients across four continents. The company has two development centres with more than 20 staff members working full time. Ideogram has technology compe-
tence in Microsoft .Net, PHP, Flash, databases (MS SQL & MySQL) and experience in developing usable front-ends. “We adopt two methodologies for the development of our software systems; RUP model is adopted for complex projects, whereas, for small to mid size projects, agile methodology is adopted”, said Bhat. The company has a vast clientele which involves most of the industrial sectors. Ideogram has developed websites for Ellaqui Dehati Bank, JK F o re s t D e p a rt m e n t , K a s h m i r Images, Govt MAM PG College among others. Ideogram has also ventured into IT education with the launch of their professional training academy under the banner of ActIT Technologies and Educational Services Pvt Ltd. Education and Industry are the two vital pillars of a successful and promising Economy. While both are diametrically opposite in their approach and objectives, yet, they are closely linked in terms of contributing towards a society's prosperity. Quality education is the way forward, be it for desired Economic growth or for creating desirable Human Beings! The Indian IT industry, over three decades old, is emerging as a serious driver of the country's GDP. IT Industry is in boom and from the last few years absorbed a huge manpower but still there is shortage of skilled Professionals. At ActIT, the endeavor is to advance Industry growth through its Educational Programs, Market Research, Networking Events, and Professional Certifications. The
academy is pioneer in providing Professional Industry endorsed Courses in the fields of Web Designing and Software Development. ActIT has been introducing new and innovative Educational Programs every year empowering learners to meet the challenges of a dynamic society. ActIT is the first of its kind to introduce the concept of training students on Web Technologies. Main focal Programs includes WebX (Expert Web Designing Professional), SoftPro (Expert Software Professional), CompNext (A complete Hardware Course), ProIT(1 Year IT Professional Program). Above all Students are being prepared to face the challenges of Tomorrow's IT Industry equipped with latest technologies by IT Professionals with Industry Experience. The collaboration of this academy with Ideogram itself provides an Edge to students to face the Industry with best of the practical knowledge. In a short period of time , ActIT has given the Industry 1500+ Professionals out of which 300+ are recruited in Top IT Companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Microsoft India, SAPIENT, UNISYS, CSC, Tech Mahindra, Fujitsu, PC Visor USA, Micro Clinic India, Unbugme and many more “ActIT accomplishes to train 500+ students on Software Technologies and 400+ students on rest of the technologies every year”, Bhat said. The company can be visited at www.ideogram.co.in
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TML 5 is planned to be the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. In this version, new features are introduced to help web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. The ideas behind HTML 5 were pioneered in 2004 by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG). HTML 5 was adopted as the starting point of the work of the new HTML working group of the W3C in 2007. The HTML working group has published the First Public Working Draft of the specification on 22nd January 2008. HTML 5 should be flexible to handle incorrect syntax in contract to XHTML where the browser must refuse to render the page at all even if there is just one illegal character or missing close tag. HTML 5 is designed such that the old HTML 4 browsers will escape the new HTML 5 tags or constructs. HTML5 contains many new features to make HTML much more powerful and suitable for building Web applications. In the list below I've summarized the main ones you really should know about. New semantic elements As you will already know, semantics are very important in HTML — we should always use the appropriate element for the job. In HTML 4.01 we have a problem — yes, there are many elements for defining specific means such as tables, lists, headings, etc., but there are also many common web page features that have no element to define them. Think of site headers, footers, navigation menus, etc. — up until now we have defined these using <div id="xxx"></div>, which we can understand, but machines can't, plus different web developers will use different IDs and
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Fifth major revision of the core language of web
classes. Fortunately, HTML5 comes with new semantic elements such as <nav>, <header>, <footer> and <article>. New form features HTML 4.01 already allows us to create usable, accessible web forms, but some common form features are more fiddly than they should be, and require hacking to implement. HTML5 provides a standardized, simple way to implement features such as date pickers, sliders and client-side validation. HTML5 forms are covered in detail in the article New form features in HTML5. Native video and audio For years, video and audio on the Web has been done using Flash, generally speaking. Flash provided a high quality, easy way of making video work cross-browser. HTML5 includes <video> and <audio> elements for implementing native video and audio players really easily with nothing but open standards, and it also includes an API to allow you to easily implement custom player controls. Canvas drawing API The <canvas> element and associated API allows you to define an area of the page to draw on, and use JavaScript commands to draw lines, shapes and text, import and manipulate graphics and video, export in different image formats, and a whole lot more. Web Sockets This API (defined in the Web Sockets spec, separate from the HTML5 spec) allows you to open a continuous connection between a sever and a client on a specific port and send data in both directions until the port is closed. This improves the efficiency of web applications a great deal, as data can be continuously and accurately exchanged between client and server without constant page reloads, and without constantly
having to poll the server to see if updates are available. Offline web applications HTML5 provides a number of features to allow web applications to run offline. Application Caches allow you to save a copy of all the assets and other files needed to run web applications locally, and Web SQL databases allow you to save a local copy of a web application's data. Together, these allow you to continue using an application when it goes offline, and then synchronize changes with the master version on the server when the network is available again. Web Storage Cookies allow us some degree of local data storage, but their use is fairly limited. HTML5 Web Storage allows us to store a lot more data, and do a lot more with it. Web workers A common problem encountered by web applications is that their performance suffers when a lot of data processing is required, due to the fact that everything happens in a single thread/process (only one load of processing can happen at once). Web Workers mitigates this problem by allowing us to create background processes to take care of some of the number crunching, allowing the main process to get on with other things. Geolocation The Geolocation spec (again, not a part of the HTML5 spec) defines an API that allows a web application to easily access any location data that has been made available, for example by a device's GPS capabilities. This allows you to add all kinds of useful location-aware features to your applications, for example highlighting content that is more relevant to your location.
Ehsan Quddusi
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C++
Buffer Overflow
Exploit By Ankush Sharma
I
t is believed that hacking or cracking is a very difficult task and needs quite hi-fi techniques, but sometimes it is not necessary and even simple techniques work. All we have to do is be alert about the happenings in our computer.
C++ BUFFER OVERFLOW EXPLOIT
At first look, this program looks very effective and as you get deep inside code you will find that it is easy to hack too. Both the used buffer here is allocated 10 bytes of memory but suppose if the user enters more than 10 bytes, it will lead to buffer overflow. Save the above code with any name say prog.cpp and compile it. I have used code::block for this. D:\>bufferoverflow admin adminpass Access granted
This is how an innocent user will do D:\> aaaa aaaaa Wrong username D:\>bufferflow AAAAAAAAAAAAAA Wrong username D:\>bufferflow AAAAAAAAAAAAAA Access granted
Look at that access granted, this is the stack overflow exploit. here the user is sending more than 10 bytes to buffer causing it to call buffer overflow. Now let’s understand how access is granted without entering username and password stored in buffer.
C++ buffer overflow is one such simple method to hack.
name=aaaaaaaaaa
When user allocates more bytes into buffer, it is known as buffer overflow. Though this technique is pretty simple to implement, it can be a serious security threat to the programs. It is called C++ exploit just because it was discovered in C++ and today this exploit can execute into any language. With the help of this exploit hacker can introduce his own code into the victim’s code.
pass=aaaaaaaaaa
Here is a simple example of vulerability which would make it easy to understand the work. #include <stdio.h> #include<string.h> int main(int argc, char**argv) { int at; char name[10], pass[10]; strcpy(name, argv[1]); strcpy(pass, argv[2]); if(strcmp(name, “admin”) == 0 && strcmp(pass, “adminpass”) == 0) { a = 1; } if(a) { cout << “Access granted”; } else { cout << “Wrong usernmame”; } return 0; }
This code is easy to crackdown, why? See the above strcpy function there which can be fooled using buffer overflow exploit. Here we have used ‘at’ variable which stores the value if string comparision comes out to be true. strcpy copies the command line argument to buffers named as name and pass where name stores the ‘username’ and pass stores the ‘password’. If ‘a’ comes out to be true then the access is granted othwrwise you get dropped.
SECURITY
a=)x41414141
If you have entered nine times ‘A’, it won’t overflow buffer, but if you enter 11 of htem, then it will overflow to the pass(the next character array in memory). Even though you are typing to name, it is overwriting pass and finally enough ‘A’s and you overwirte ‘at’ with “AAAAAAA” causing it to become 0x41414141, instead of 0. Since I check if “a” is true(or greater than 1 basically), I am granted access. Now you have understood that how it works and now let’s work on securing it because even an experienced programmer can commit this crime of leaving his application vulnerable. All you need to check is the input length of the arguments that you are passing to the buffer. Instead of strcpy you should use strncpy because strncpy lets you decide the number of characters to read from input even if user enters the characters more than required. strncpy(buffer, anotherbuffer, strlen(buffer)); buffer(MAX_SIZE)=”\0";
strncpy function here copies the string to the buffer as same as strcpy but exactly that much bytes as mentioned in program. So there is no chance of the overflow as it copies the amount as we mentioned earlier. This is very simple but very effective way of avoiding overflow. Here we have also terminated the buffer by putting null value at end of it so as to suppress any chance of overflow. Hope you have learned now about the C++ exploit and way to secure your code. So you may now secure your website or can try to hack others. Choice is yours.
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Q&A
INSTALLING WINDOWS 7
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Q A &
Having trouble with computers, we will try to deal with all the computer niggles and nags here. Email questions at questions@globekashmir.com Create Partitions & Install Windows 7 I want to format computer by Widows 7 & create partitions in hard disk of 250GB. Please explain stepwise how format & partition is done? By Ghulam Nabi (Email) A: Insert the Windows 7 media in the CD ROM reader of your system. Go to your BIOS settings (Press esc or F2, depending on your system) and change the boot priority to CD ROM as first boot device. Save these settings and exit from BIOS. The system will restart, press any key to boot from the Windows 7 media. There are two options to choose from
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during the Windows 7 installation process: Upgrade. This option replaces your current version of Windows with Windows 7, and keeps your files, settings, and programs in place on your computer. Custom. This option replaces your current version of Windows with Windows 7, but doesn't preserve your files, settings, and programs. Click on Custom Installation and go ahead. On the Where do you want to install Windows? page, click Drive options (advanced). Click the partition that you want to change, click the
formatting option you want to perform, and then follow the instructions. The options include deleting a partition, formatting a partition or creating a new partition out of unallocated space. When you've finished formatting, click Next.
Follow the instructions to finish installing Windows 7, which include naming your computer and setting up an initial user account.
Random blue screens My computer configuration is: Intel Celeron 2.53 GHz Processor Asrock 775 i65GV
INSTALLING WINDOWS 7 Q & A
www.globekashmir.com Motherboard 80 GB Seagate HDD Supercomp 400W SMPS Windows XP Professional SP2
data, neither am I able to format it. Every time I try to copy data, it says write protected. Is
The password should be present in a text file in the root folder. Windows XP and Vista will have no problems accessing each other over the network. Once on the network, you should be able to see shared folders through the Network link
My problem is that when I click on a drive, it does not open. Can you tell me how to set Open as the default action. Can you also tell me more about the Windows Blue Screen of death? I have faced it two or three times so far. How do I get it on demand and how do I get rid of it? By Manzoor Malik A: The default drive action might have been modified by a worm or virus. To change this, you’ll have to reset the setting for the drives. One of the simplest ways to fix it is to click on Start > Run. Type regsvr32 /I hell32. Memtest86+ is a good utility to scan for memory errors. Faulty hardware could be one of the causes for the blue screens. Bad memory, faulty hard drives, buggy drivers could also cause this. Run a program called Memtest86+ (www.memtest.org) to scan your memory for errors.
Password protection errors with flash drive 1. I have an 8 GB Kingston pen drive. One day I gave it to my friend and after I got it back I have been unable to copy any
up in the list. Try using some other hard drives and see if they work or not. Try replacing the cable as well and also scan the hard drive for problems using a drive diagnostics tool. It could also be some issues with the partitions on the
there any way to remove the write protection or is it useless now? 2. I have a 512 MB MicroSD Kingston memory card. I locked it with a password. Now I have forgotten the password to my card so I am not able to use it with any other cell phone or on any card reader. Is there any way or any software to change or remove the password of my memory card? 3. I wanted to know if we can connect XP and Vista over the network. A: Try using USB WriteProtector (www.gaijin.at/dlusbwp.p hp) to unlock the drive. With any flash drive or memory card, one of the simplest ways to remove the write protection is to delete the partition. Click on Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Click on the flash drive, right click on the only partition and delete it. Remember that this will delete all the data on the drive. If nothing works, it might be worth trying to format the drive also. If you are using a Nokia phone, use an application called FExplorer and access the memory card.
in Windows Explorer. Just make sure to share folders before you do by right clicking on a folder and clicking on Sharing.
Error loading operating system I built a new PC using an ASUS M2N68-AM-SE2 motherboard running an AMD Sempron processor, 1 GB Kingston memory and a 160 GB Western Digital hard drive. When I install both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating system, it gives me an error saying “Error loading operating system”. The system boots with the installation disk, it copies the files to HDD but when it reboots, it says “error loading operating system”. I tried finding solutions online, people suggest enabling LBA mode but it is already enabled. A: It could be some problem with the BIOS or the drive. Enter the BIOS before boot up and check whether the drive shows
drive. Format the partition you are trying to install the OS on.
Virus attack! Viruses with filenames regsvr.exe and mediacontrol.exe have creeped into my laptop. My anti virus has been disabled by the viruses. I had installed Norton anti virus, but I’m not even able to remove it or install a new anti virus. All my video files are getting corrupted and turning into IMG files. Also, I’m unable to access my guest account and the registry editor has been disabled. A: First, try updating the virus definitions for your current anti virus. Try a different anti virus program that comes with a backup CD or DVD disc that you can boot into and scan the drive without Windows running. Some others will let you create a rescue disc. Try using these to fix the problem.
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