Mar 062011
Oct 192010
It really seems impossible that any one of you might not know about the Microsoft, but here is 10 facts you didn’t know about this company.
1. It is impossible to create a folder with the name “Con” or “con” on Microsoft operating systems and in case, you attempt to make one with the name C-o-n, you’ll get an error message saying that the drive name is invalid. The more unusual is the sound it makes when you attempt to create such a folder. Why would any name be invalid?
2. Secondly, when “=rand(200,99)” without quotations is entered or typed into Microsoft Word, something equivalent to (I must say) electronic sneeze occurs. If that line mentioned above is entered and then hit the ‘Enter’ key, the document is instantly filled with over four hundred thousand words. Another interesting fact is that when you scroll down the page, the setting has changed, so that you never scroll past a page break Have you observed it before?
3. Bill Gates, the founder and cornerstone of Microsoft officially left the company. Although, it was Bill Gates, who alongside Paul Allen started the company from the ground up. It was many of Bill Gates’ ideas that pushed Microsoft to be the top software company in the World. Now as Bill Gates left Microsoft, so let us all hope for their sake that some of his genius has worn off on the employees of the company.
4. Google challenges the supremacy of Microsoft by offering FREE software on the web some way behind. Now that Google has entered the competition with their free software and much more, now it seems increasingly difficult for Microsoft to keep its hold on its place in the heats and more importantly, the computers of their loyal customers, as now that Google offers for FREE its products as compared to the fairly expensive products offered by Microsoft. Now its time for a need of Bill Gates and his expertise to tackle the situation and proceed further.
5. Microsoft Windows is currently installed on almost over ninety percent of all computers worldwide. This is close to billions of computers. This is a true testament to the framework set for the company by its founders. Furthermore, Microsoft Office makes up a replica of around ninety percent of all office based software currently used on those same computers worldwide. Because of this, Microsoft has been ordered to pay an antitrust fine of four hundred and ninety seven million euros. This fine was ordered in 2004 and paid in 2007. Apparently not all people find it inspiring that Microsoft done so well.
6. Although everyone knows that Microsoft has created the Xbox game system which has people praising all over the internet. Xbox Gaming system is no doubt one of the best gaming system available today. It is not known to everybody, however, that the old Encarta program that was sold on CD for computer has been reincarnated online by Microsoft. In addition to this, the more popular Microsoft Mouse is also prominent. But above all, in competition with the ever popular Apple’s iPod, the Microsoft Zune is an alternate source for MP3 on the go.
7. MSNBC is a child, so to speak, of Microsoft. Up until they were equal owners in the television network. However, afterwards Microsoft decided that it was in its best interest to quit the partnership keeping its fifty-fifty hold over the MSNBC website which is still running strong.
8. Microsoft has been trading stocks since 1986. Whoever decided to buy stock in such a new company back in 1986 would today be very happy at the decision. Microsoft has the third highest stock market capitalization in the united States at a total of two hundred and seventy billion dollars. This puts them easily above and beyond its competitors like Google, Apple and IBM. It is amazing that the margin between companies with such similar products. Google is making a comeback with their aforementioned free software, but Apple may want to think twice before bragging about their own superiority.
9. Microsoft Corporation opened its first research lab in Redmond, Washington back in 1991. Because of this, it was one of the first computer companies to create its own computer science research organization.
10. The name of the company was at first Micro-Soft and was first conceived in a letter written by Bill Gates and sent to his partner Paul Allen. After it was first mentioned it was deemed to be better as one word and was shortened to what we all know today. The first mention of the name was in 1975 and stuck until it was officially trademarked a year later. It seemed that Bill and Paul liked the single word instead of the hyphenated Micro-Soft.
Sep 042010
1. The iPod Easter egg !
Select “About” from the main menu, then hold the center button for a couple of seconds. A miniature Breakout game, created by the founders of Apple Inc. when they worked for Atari, appears on the screen.
2. The Mozilla Firefox Easter egg – Message to IE team
Type “about:Mozilla” in the URL bar. You’ll read a message which is a reply to the Internet Explorer 5 team’s joke about Mozilla crashing computers.
3. Open Office Easter egg – Star wars game
Create a new spreadsheet in the OpenOffice.org Calculator.
Type “=game()” into a cell and validate it by pressing Enter. The cell will display, “Say what?” to which your typing finger will reply “=GAME(“StarWars”).” A new window will open with a little game called Star Wars. Simple as that.
4. Skype Easter egg – Hidden Icons
Enter a chat session and type words like “drunk” and “ninja” with the brackets to view amusing emoticons. Also, try these words.
(finger)
(bandit)
(mooning)
(swear)
(drunk)
(rock)
(poolparty)
(bug)
(ninja)
(smoking)
(fubar)
(tmi)
5. MSN Messenger Easter Egg
When in a conversation, type “/patchou” without the quotes and you’ll get a picture of the creator of the software, with the message: “Thank you for using this software. The best reward I can get for my work is to see you highly satisfied. Sincerely, PaTchou.”
6. Adobe Photoshop CS 5 Easter egg
This is a traditional easter egg, because you find this commonly in many Adobe products.
Open Photoshop CS5
Once open, hold down the CTRL key
Select HELP –> ABOUT
Follow the White Rabbit. 
7. Winamp Easter Egg
With the defualt skin chosen (Modern) stretch the main window until the Beat Analyzer (it says “beat” under it) appears. Hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift and Click the Center (be very precise here) of the beat analyzer. Now play any song and enjoy the show.
8. Mozilla Firefox Easter Egg 2 – Firefox inside Firefox
Simple one. Open FF, type the following to the address bar.
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Enjoy the show.
9. Windows Notepad
- Open an empty notepad file.
- Type “Bush hid the facts” (without the quotes)
- Save it with any file name with as .TXT file.
- Close it, and re-open it. Presto!
10. Google Picasa Easter egg
This is for the Picasa app.
Open Picasa 2, then press Ctrl + Shift + Y That’s all.
Sep 042010
Sep 022010
Aug 272010
A directory containing personal details about more than 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on an Internet file-sharing site.
The most dramatic “data theft” to hit social networks in quite a while isn’t a theft at all.
Facebook users were hit with another frightening reminder on Thursday that not everyone online is their friend, as over 100 million personal profiles and details from the service were scraped from Facebook’s pages and published on the Web.
But Facebook wasn’t hacked. Far from it. And if users had personal details exposed, they have no one but themselves to blame.
A program written by Ron Bowes, a security consultant at Skull Security, scanned all the listings in Facebook’s open-access directory and then compiled a text file that lists the information he uncovered. That data potentially exposes some Facebook users’ birthdays, addresses, phone numbers and more — but only because they chose not to keep those details private.
“All I’ve done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis,” Bowes told the BBC. He explained that he had simply accessed the same information that’s available to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo — or the countless white-pages services available online.
But the stunt should make those 100 million Facebook users reconsider what personal information they make available online.
Going public with your birthday and address exposes you to the very real threat of identity theft and fraud — not to mention stalking and other unwelcome advances. Hackers typically troll for such information to open credit cards under aliases, or they use the names they find in other online scams.
And it’s hardly unreasonable to presume that some of the thousands of people who have downloaded Bowes’ file since it hit the Internet have criminal intentions.
Facebook is putting a straight face on the story. Company spokesman Andrew Noyes told FoxNews.com that the “information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher … no private data is available or has been compromised.”
As Facebook leaves it up to its users to decide how much personal information they want to reveal to the public, people who want to keep some things to themselves are encouraged to take a few specific steps.
To be removed from the open access directory that Bowes scanned, users should select “Privacy Settings” under the “Account” heading on the Facebook screen, then edit the “Public Search” option to uncheck the “Enable public search” box.
Then they should go back to the privacy settings and select “Custom” to specify what information (photos, comments, and so on) they want to share, and with whom.
If your profile was set to be searchable by everyone, chances are you’re in Bowes file, and there’s nothing you can do about that now.
Facebook users should also be aware that after they have changed their privacy settings, their old profile pages may still be publicly available because they are often stored (or cached) by search engines.
Ultimately, this latest incident is just another reminder of the basic reality of modern cyber security:
Whatever it is . . . if you wouldn’t put it on a billboard in Times Square, don’t post it on the Web.
The most dramatic “data theft” to hit social networks in quite a while isn’t a theft at all.
Facebook users were hit with another frightening reminder on Thursday that not everyone online is their friend, as over 100 million personal profiles and details from the service were scraped from Facebook’s pages and published on the Web.
But Facebook wasn’t hacked. Far from it. And if users had personal details exposed, they have no one but themselves to blame.
A program written by Ron Bowes, a security consultant at Skull Security, scanned all the listings in Facebook’s open-access directory and then compiled a text file that lists the information he uncovered. That data potentially exposes some Facebook users’ birthdays, addresses, phone numbers and more — but only because they chose not to keep those details private.
“All I’ve done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis,” Bowes told the BBC. He explained that he had simply accessed the same information that’s available to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo — or the countless white-pages services available online.
But the stunt should make those 100 million Facebook users reconsider what personal information they make available online.
Going public with your birthday and address exposes you to the very real threat of identity theft and fraud — not to mention stalking and other unwelcome advances. Hackers typically troll for such information to open credit cards under aliases, or they use the names they find in other online scams.
And it’s hardly unreasonable to presume that some of the thousands of people who have downloaded Bowes’ file since it hit the Internet have criminal intentions.
Facebook is putting a straight face on the story. Company spokesman Andrew Noyes told FoxNews.com that the “information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher … no private data is available or has been compromised.”
As Facebook leaves it up to its users to decide how much personal information they want to reveal to the public, people who want to keep some things to themselves are encouraged to take a few specific steps.
To be removed from the open access directory that Bowes scanned, users should select “Privacy Settings” under the “Account” heading on the Facebook screen, then edit the “Public Search” option to uncheck the “Enable public search” box.
Then they should go back to the privacy settings and select “Custom” to specify what information (photos, comments, and so on) they want to share, and with whom.
If your profile was set to be searchable by everyone, chances are you’re in Bowes file, and there’s nothing you can do about that now.
Facebook users should also be aware that after they have changed their privacy settings, their old profile pages may still be publicly available because they are often stored (or cached) by search engines.
Ultimately, this latest incident is just another reminder of the basic reality of modern cyber security:
Whatever it is . . . if you wouldn’t put it on a billboard in Times Square, don’t post it on the Web.
The 2.8GB torrent was compiled by hacker Ron Bowes of Skull Security, who created a web crawler program that harvested data on users contained in Facebook’s open access directory, which lists all users who haven’t bothered to change their privacy settings to make their pages unavailable to search engines.
Bowes’ directory contains 171 million entries, relating to more than 100 million individual users – more than one in five of Facebook’s recently trumpeted half billion user base.
The file contains user account names and a URL for each user’s profile page, from which details such as addresses, dates of birth or phone numbers can be accessed. Accessing a user’s page from the list will also enable you to click through to friends’ profiles – even if those friends have made themselves non-searchable.
There’s absolutely nothing illegal about what Bowes has done – the information is, after all, publicly available – but perhaps the existence of a stalker’s online black book might finally persuade less security-minded Facebook users to get their arses in gear.
http://www.skullsecurity.org/Resume-20100621.pdf