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Monday, April 25, 2005

Virus pits itself against music pirates

A hacker has created a virus that targets music lovers by deleting MP3 files on infected computers, according to antivirus company Sophos.
The worm, dubbed Nopir.B, spreads over peer-to-peer networks and appears to have originated in France, security researchers at Sophos said Friday.

Nopir.B is designed to look like a DVD-cracking program, to fool people looking for a program that will circumvent copy-restriction technology on the discs. When the worm is downloaded and run, it attempts to delete all MP3 music files and wipe some programs from the infected PC, the company said in its advisory.
Sophos said it believes the author of the virus may be looking to stamp out music piracy.

"The Nopir.B worm targets people it believes may be involved in piracy, but fails to discriminate between the true criminals and those who may have legally obtained MP3 files," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said in a statement. "Whichever side of the fence you come down on in regards to Internet piracy, there's no debate about the criminal nature of this worm--it's designed to inflict malicious damage on people's Windows computers."
Sophos has received few reports of the virus, but recommended that people update their security software. The malicious software affects PCs running Microsoft Windows.

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Sunday, April 24, 2005

An Insider's View Of Longhorn's Top Features

Microsoft group VP Jim Allchin realizes the rest of us may need help sorting out what's so special about Microsoft's next-generation operating system. So the 15-year company veteran has come up with his own list of Longhorn highlights.

"There's so much in Longhorn, it's hard to figure what are the things that are just over the top that people will appreciate," Allchin said in a recent interview. With that in mind, Microsoft's top Windows exec (chief software architect Bill Gates excluded) ranks the following among his top Longhorn features:

1. Unrivaled security and safety. Among the improvements are a version of Internet Explorer that runs with user rights that are more restricted than current versions of IE. In addition, some portion of Microsoft's hardware-level Next-Generation Secure Computing Base technology will be included in Longhorn. "We're supporting some of that work," Allchin says.

2. New data-organization and visualization capabilities. Even without the still-in-development WinFS file system, Longhorn will come with advances in data search and management that are "integrated into everything," Allchin says. Search results can be stacked, rearranged, filtered, and used to create new lists. And lists can include RSS feeds.

3. Reduced operational costs. Microsoft intends to demonstrate Longhorn costs less to manage and support, using real-world customer examples.

4. Mobile computing advances. "It's going to be the mobile operating system," Allchin says. "It's going to be a significant advancement." Examples include "auxiliary displays" that let a laptop user view her calendar even when the computer is off. And the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base technology will provide added protection if a laptop is misplaced or stolen.

5. Increased resiliency and simplicity. Today, Windows is "just harder than it should be" when it comes to basics such as organizing data or guarding against system failure, admits Allchin. "We're doing a bunch of work to make the OS more resilient and simpler," he says.

6. Other "goodies." Longhorn will come with giveaways such as peer-to-peer games for home users and wireless-projection capabilities for the office.

That's Allchin's short list of must-have Longhorn features. By the way, Longhorn is being driven by several fundamental design goals. Here's a quick recap of those, too:

# It just works. Example: No more fussing to find and use a new printer when you move from place to place.

# Safe and secure. By "safe," Microsoft doesn't just mean avoiding malicious software. Longhorn will have a built-in parental controls over PC games and Internet usage.

# Easy to deploy and manage. The goal is to get better at everything from adding a new home PC to managing multiple PC "images" in a corporate network.

# Improved end-user experiences. Whether in a home or office, or on the road.

# Roles-based servers. Taking the concept of rolls-based servers (Web server, E-mail server, directory server, database server), available today with Windows Small Business Server 2003, to larger companies.

# Creating an OS that will be around for 10 years. "To some degree," Allchin says, "this is all about APIs."

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Clever design gives AMD edge over Intel

When Advanced Micro Devices created the Opteron, the Sunnyvale company devised some clever designs that caught rival Intel by surprise, analysts say.

Intel's Itanium chip focused on 64-bit performance, crunching data in chunks that were twice the size of those processed by standard 32-bit microprocessors. But the Itanium was incompatible with 32-bit software. AMD, on the other hand, designed the Opteron to run 32-bit software at high speeds while being capable of handling 64-bit software.

AMD also decided to move a component dubbed a memory controller into the microprocessor that would make it a much better traffic cop for data coming in from memory chips. The innovation allowed data to be routed faster from the memory into the microprocessor, a growing problem because memory chips weren't keeping up with the speed of processors.

That made the Opteron faster than Intel's 32-bit chips, which didn't have the same component on the processor.

Pat Gelsinger, Intel's vice president and former chief technology officer, says that AMD's memory controller decision had its trade-offs.

Intel marketing manager Anuj Dua noted that if memory technology evolves rapidly, ``it's a mistake to put it on the processor which can't be changed quickly.''

But it turned out to be a good gamble for AMD because memory technology didn't take any sharp turns. AMD also bet right on how to create the high-speed connection between the microprocessor and the rest of the system.

AMD's solution, dubbed hypertransport, was an idea borrowed from communications chips. And again, it helped AMD beat Intel by loosening the bottleneck of data traffic between chips.

``We were forced to go another direction because of Intel,'' said AMD Senior Vice President Dirk Meyer.

Fred Weber, chief technology officer in AMD's computational products group, says the Opteron innovations also helped AMD produce better dual-core chips -- chips with two microprocessors -- which the company launched Thursday.

Kevin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, agrees AMD's three major innovations for the original Opteron have given it an edge over Intel's designs.

``It was a one, two, three punch,'' said Weber.

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New Antivirus-Firewall Combo Protects XML Traffic

XML is becoming the great enabler for E-commerce. Years of proprietary and expensive connections between companies are being replaced by XML transactions over the Internet. But while companies use XML to exchange goods and currency at unprecedented rates, the information is at risk from virus attacks.

Two vendors on Monday will try to reduce such threats by combining antivirus software for XML with firewall protection at the edge of the network. Forum Systems Inc. will integrate Computer Associates' eTrust Antivirus software with its Forum XWall Web Services Firewall to fight viruses, worms, and other malware entering networks via XML, Simple Object Access Protocol, and attachments. The vendors hope to cut down on the threats that can damage IT infrastructure, degrade network performance, and hurt business apps that use XML as a standard data format.

The XWall firewall already has XML Intrusion Protection, WS-I Profile conformance, XML Schema Restriction, WSDL Access Control. It will include antivirus support. The new firewall filters and scans all XML traffic and Soap documents and their file attachments. CA's eTrust Security Adviser then sends antivirus signatures to the XWall. The new XML firewall is scheduled to ship May 1 and ranges in price from $5,000 to $40,000, depending on hardware and software configurations.

Many companies freely exchange unprotected and important data using XML, and they don't even use basic antivirus applications to protect it in the same way they use security software to scan E-mail, one analyst says. As more companies let business partners send information directly to their computer systems, they "need to check and make sure it's not carrying anything harmful."

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Saturday, April 23, 2005

Blinkx Smart Folders Get Smarter

Blinkx has improved its Web and PC search software's Smart Folders by turning them into an online content distribution tool and allowing users to share them, the company announced this week.
The Smart Folders functionality, introduced last November, automatically populates topic folders in users' PCs with documents the Blinkx tool collects from users' hard drives and from the Internet.
For example,a user who creates a Smart Folder devoted to a specific sports team will see it get continually populated with relevant documents and files that the Blinkx tool finds on the user's PC and out on the Web.

Now, Web site owners can create what Blinkx calls "customizable" Smart Folders for visitors to install on their own machines. Upon download, these Smart Folders will contain an initial set of the Web site's content and links, which thereafter are automatically updated and added to.
That way, users can receive new content from the Web site without having to visit it. Thus, a Smart Folder of this type becomes a tool for Web site owners to distribute their content.

"It's another kind of [content] subscription mechanism. It's an interesting one with interesting differences [from technologies such as RSS]," says David Schatsky, a Jupiter Research analyst.
Instructions
Download the software

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Thursday, April 21, 2005

Linux's Next Frontier: Database-Intensive Apps

Database-intensive applications are the next frontier for Linux, but those applications need to be ported to the open-source operating system.
When that happens, Linux will become the operating system of choice for many users. But this requires the cooperation of the ISV community, who are still being pushed along this path.

Strong adoption growth is also in the cards for this year and next with Linux having clearly moved from its initial infrastructure and high volume back-office uses to more analytical uses, including risk management, portfolio management and profitability analysis.
Investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein runs its portfolio risk management on Linux, using 80 Intel-based xSeries 4000R servers deployed in Linux clusters.

"There will be multiple drivers for this, including lower cost (a 25 percent to 30 percent savings); the fact that it is now easy to justify the short-term ROI; its ability to run on multiple hardware platforms; and Linux's proven on-demand availability.
"The next and final frontier will be moving custom database-intensive applications like Sybase to Linux"
IBM is doing its part to drive the porting of applications to the Linux platform: Its new Chiphopper program encourages ISVs to port their software applications that run primarily on x86 hardware to all its hardware platforms.

Chiphopper, which refers to chips hopping from x86 to IBM's zSeries and Power architectures, will automate the process of porting across different hardware and chip architectures for ISVs. "Linux is not about free, it's about freedom"
Scott Handy, IBM's vice president for Linux, in Somers, N.Y., told eWEEK recently that IBM already has some 6,000 applications that run on Linux x86—a number it plans to double by the end of 2007—as well as 1,000 on Linux on Power. It also expects more of those 6,000 applications to come across to Power and zSeries.

In another session dealing with virtualization technology, Pat Aughavin, the vice president of business development for DataSynapse Inc., said virtualization provides a business opportunity, including improving response time by three times or more and significantly improving throughput.
Application silos create operational inefficiency and its GridServer product provides a virtual operating environment, which improves agility and responsiveness and helps enhance service levels.

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Category-Operating Systems

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Opera Software Upgrades Hacker Defenses

Better security and the automatic scaling of Web pages to fit screens of any width are among the features included with a new browser released by Opera Software ASA on Tuesday.
In version 8 of Opera, a security information field automatically starts when a user visits a secure Web site, indicating the level of security on a scale of one to three and showing who owns the security certificate.
This way, surfers can evaluate the trustworthiness of banking and shopping Web sites and minimize the risk of phishing attacks, in which scammers send e-mail tricking recipients into revealing credit card numbers and other sensitive personal information.
The new browser version can be downloaded for free with advertising for the Windows and Linux operating systems. An ad-free version costs $39. Opera also released a test version, or "beta," for Mac OS computers.

Opera 8 rearranges Web pages as necessary so Web surfers can view them within narrower windows without having to slide a horizontal tab. This feature is particularly useful for the small screens of mobile phones; Opera sees such devices as a growth potential.
The browser also allows voice commands to the computer and having the machine read pages aloud, though the feature is only available in English and for the Windows 2000 and XP operating systems.
Opera commands less than 0.2 percent of the Windows market, behind the industry leading Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corp. and various browsers based on the Mozilla Foundation's open-source code, according to tracking by WebSideStory.

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Google Launches Personal History Feature

Google Inc. is experimenting with a new feature that enables the users of its online search engine to see all of their past search requests and results, creating a computer peephole that could prove as embarrassing as it is helpful.

Activating Google's "My Search History" service, unveiled Wednesday afternoon at http://labs.google.com, requires users to create a personal login with a password. Users of Google's e-mail, discussion groups and answer services can simply use their existing log-ins.

The service allows users to decide if they want Google to automatically recognize them without having to log in each time they use the same computer. Those who prefer to log in on each visit can use a link that will appear in the right-hand corner of Google's home page.
Whenever a user is logged in, Google will provide a detailed look at all their past search activity. The service also includes a "pause" feature that prevents it from being displayed in the index.
Users will be able to pinpoint a search conducted on a particular day, using a calendar that's displayed on the history page. The service sometimes will point out a past search result related to a new search request.

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Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Computer generates verifiable mathematics proof

A computer-assisted proof of a 150-year-old mathematical conjecture can at last be checked by human mathematicians.
The Four Colour Theorem, proposed by Francis Guthrie in 1852, states that any four colours are the minimum needed to fill in a flat map without any two regions of the same colour touching.

A proof of the theorem was announced by two US mathematicians, Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken, in 1976. But a crucial portion of their work involved checking many thousands of maps - a task that can only feasibly be done using a computer. So a long-standing concern has been that some hidden flaw in the computer code they used might undermine the overall logic of the proof.
But now Georges Gonthier, at Microsoft's research laboratory in Cambridge, UK, and Benjamin Werner at INRIA in France have proven the theorem in a way that should remove such concerns.

They translated the proof into a language used to represent logical propositions - called Coq - and created logic-checking software to confirm that the steps put forward in the proof make sense.
"It is a landmark," says Randy Pollack, from Edinburgh University in Scotland, who wrote one of the first logic-checking programs using Coq. "Mainly because it is such well known theorem and because there was such a row in 1976."

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Friday, April 15, 2005

New Search Engine(YaGoosearch)

A new Search Engine has arrived combining the feautures of google and yahoo.
This is more than the Yagoohoogle.com which was started as an april fool joke.
This is developed and being maitained by an Indian(my classmate) living in hyderabad doing his MSIT at JNTU Hyderabad.
YaGoo

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Thursday, April 14, 2005

The Planet's IPS blocks Attacks

The Planet Blocks up to One Million Internet Attacks Per Hour with the World’s Most Advanced Intrusion Prevention System

Dallas, TX - The Planet, the world's fastest growing Web hosting company, announced today that the recent deployment of the TippingPoint 2400 Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is helping the hosting giant block hundreds of thousands of attacks per hour at its datacenters. The new IPS has also helped the company block up to one million attacks per hour during Internet worm and botnet storms.

The system combines ultra-high performance with accurate, reliable protection from next generation worms, rogue applications, and attackers to deliver the most powerful network protection available to The Planet's 10,000 customers, hosting 1 million Web sites on 23,000 servers.

"Our datacenters share a total of 32 Gbps of backbone capacity, and the only network IPS technology capable of efficiently protecting our network came from TippingPoint," said John Bradberry, Vice President of Information Security at The Planet. "Only TippingPoint could scale to keep up with our fantastic growth."

According to Mr. Bradberry, the combination of ISP-class performance and comprehensive protection from deep-packet inspection is amazing. The system provides up-to-date protection for more than 1,000 exploits and vulnerabilities, including the three most common Internet attacks observed at The Planet - the persistent MS-SQL Slammer-Sapphire worm, the family of phpBB exploits, and attacks against Microsoft RPC services.

But the real proof of the TippingPoint 2400's power is in the performance. The system at The Planet's D2 Data center digests more than 1.5 million packets per second (pps), while the system at the D4 Data center digests more than 2.5 million pps.

"This system is essential to our competitive position," concluded Mr. Bradberry. "During our continued expansion, including the opening of our newest datacenter at the Infomart, we're giving customers the most effective network protection available without sacrificing network performance. TippingPoint is saving our customers money by protecting their networks and online assets from malicious attacks and unwanted traffic."

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AppTune, the application tuner

Internet technology developer NetScaler (netscaler.com) announced on Monday that it had launched AppTune, a technology that accelerates application delivery regardless of protocol, client type or user location.

NetScaler develops integrated networking devices that combine load balancing with application acceleration technology. With AppTune, network administrators can adjust the configuration of their NetScaler systems to match the unique attributes of each application they support. This fine-tuning...... Netscaler says, ensures the fastest possible delivery of all applications, regardless of protocol, client type or user location – increasing the performance of Web and non-Web applications by up to five times.

"Enterprises spent the last decade or so building out their infrastructure with basic components to interconnect networks," says BV Jagadeesh, president and CEO of NetScaler. "Today, these same businesses are making purchase decisions on the next wave of core infrastructure solutions based on the behaviors of the applications traveling across those networks. Technology designed from the ground up to deliver on the vision of these forward-thinking global enterprises will be best positioned to be the next dominant leader in networking."

NetScaler's AppTune supports a broad range of applications and features automatic performance tuning recommendations. AppTune will be available to NetScaler customers at no additional charge starting in May 2005.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

'Matrix' laptop-triggered landmine

The US Army will by June deploy in Iraq its "Matrix" system of remotely-detonated landmines, despite widespread concerns about the technology. The Mosul-based Styker Brigade will, according to Yahoo! news, be able to control individual devices from a laptop via a WLAN set-up. The Army reckons Matrix will eliminate accidental deaths caused by dumb landmines. Critics say otherwise.

Following successful tests in September, the US will deploy 25 sets of mines in Iraq. These include both M18 Claymores, which deliver steel balls, and the "M5 Modular Crowd Control Munition" - a non-lethal rubber-ball-delivering alternative. The Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey said in a January statement that Matrix was intended for "firebase security, landing zone security, remote offensive attack and both infrastructure and check point protection".

Matrix project leader, Major Joe Hitt, declared: "The system is user friendly and a soldier will require a minimal amount of training in order to safely employ and use the system."

However, Human Rights Watch researcher, Mark Hiznay, countered: "We're concerned the United States is going to field something that has the capability of taking the man out of the loop when engaging the target. Or that we're putting a 19-year-old soldier in the position of pushing a button when a blip shows up on a computer screen."

Globalsecurity.org military analyst, John Pike, weighed in: "If you've got 500 of these mines out there, trying to figure out which one you want to detonate, when the clock's ticking, well that could be a brain teaser."

Several organisations, including Landmine Survivors Network and the Presbytarian Peacemaking Program are urging opponents of Matrix to lobby Donald Rumsfeld for the deployment to be scrapped. A Landmine Survivors Network statement asserts: "It seems obvious that these remote-control anti-personnel mines, however carefully monitored, will present new dangers to innocent Iraqi civilians for years to come."

The US military has made available few technical details about Matrix, or how it works in practice. We at El Reg hope that enterprising Iraqi insurgents do not make merry with the Army's Claymore-controlling WLAN. It would certainly give a new edge to the phrase "wardriving".


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Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Denial Of Service Attacks

A denial-of-service attack (also, DoS attack) is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational resources of the victim system.
A DoS attack can be perpetrated in a number of ways. There are three basic types of attack:
1. consumption of computational resources, such as bandwidth, disk space, or CPU time
2. disruption of configuration information, such as routing information
3. disruption of physical network components

Attempts to "flood" a network with bogus packets, thereby preventing legitimate network traffic, are the most common form of attack, often conducted by disrupting network connectivity with the use of multiple hosts in a distributed denial-of-service attack or DDoS.

In a distributed attack, the attacking computer hosts are often personal computers with broadband connections to the Internet that have been compromised by viruses or Trojan horse programs that allow the perpetrator to remotely control the machine and direct the attack, often through a botnet. With enough such slave hosts, the services of even the largest and most well-connected websites can be denied.

Denial of Service attacks can also lead to problems in the network 'branches' around the actual computer being attacked. For example, the bandwidth of a router between the Internet and a LAN may be consumed by a DoS, meaning not only will the intended computer be compromised, but the entire network will also be disrupted.

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Security Web Sites Fall to DDoS Attack

Two prominent Web sites that specialize in remote access software known as rootkits have been taken offline by a large distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The take-down was allegedly ordered by a shadowy group of hackers and rootkit authors who took offense at criticisms of their software posted on the sites.

The programs are powerful spyware tools that, when combined, enable remote attackers to secretly compromise other machines using attack Web pages. The programs are sold online at Web sites like Spyinstructors.com and are popular with the people behind spam campaigns, who use the tools to plant remote-control programs that are then used to send out spam, Hoglund says.

Within hours of the first post from ATmaCA, the Rootkit.com Web site was under attack by a network of more than 500 compromised computers, or bots, that flooded the site with about 170,000 requests a second, making it unreachable for most Internet users, he says.

Two rootkit-focused Web sites operated by Holy Father were also downed by DDoS attacks after that person posted remarks critical of ATmaCA and SIS-Team, according to an e-mail from Holy Father. More on DDoS Attacks in my next post.

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Monday, April 11, 2005

Category-Google

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Category-Security

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Category-Microsoft

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Category-Software

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Category-Miscellaneous

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Radio 'Freak'uency ID: The next big thing after Internet

Imagine being away from home, clicking on the mouse to know the exact contents of your fridge, even the expiry date on that ice-cream tub in the freezer.

Or being able to track down that stolen wristwatch within minutes and having the key to every possible information about any product that you have bought. This is what Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are all about. This technology, already a rage in USA and Singapore, is catching up in India too.

RFID tags are similar to bar code stickers and can be used to track objects to which they are attached. The tag, for example, fixed on an ice-cream pack by the manufacturer, responds to radio signals within a particular frequency range, transmitted by an antenna. A software then converts the RFID signal into readable information on your laptop. While the tag itself is minuscule, the antenna too can be as small as 6 X 3 inches.

Sun Microsystems has developed Sun EPC, the software to read data and now plans to provide complete end-to-end RFID solutions for customers. If a company wants to use RFID on its products, Sun, in partnership with other service providers, will cater to all aspects of it -- from the tags to application software.

‘‘Right now, we are only working on prototypes in India, but it is only a matter of time before it becomes a reality. We have already been approached by companies like Satyam and Wipro to join hands for a complete solution,’’ Sun Microsystems spokesperson Divyesh Shah told this website’s newspaper. Engineers in Bangalore are working on application-specific reader software.

This cutting-edge technology has a wide range of applications. It could be used by retail chains for taking inventory of large stocks without manual effort and to detect theft. It can also be used by financial and government agencies to keep tabs on the large amount of paperwork required.

In Singapore, these tags have been fastened on to cars, which allow them to pass tollgates without stopping to pay. A reader installed a few metres before a tollbooth identifies the pre-paid user and the gate swings open automatically.

Back home, you can even use it to find that remote control that you left atop the idiot box.

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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Use Google Search your way

To Find Free MP3s, WMAs, OGGs, and Other Music Files
People leave music files in unprotected directories all of the time. Here's how to get to them.
We all need music. If you properly query google, you can find open indexes of music files easily. Here are some hints to get you started.

Google: -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3

Using this string we are using the "index of" and the inurl commands to attempt to isolate directories only. The mp3 tag on the end tells google to look for mp3s in these open directories. You can change this to wma or ogg if you wish.
You can add additional search criteria to focus your search more.

Google: -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "pearl jam"

This command will find open directories with mp3 files with Pearl Jam. Obviously you can change the band name or file type to better define your search.
To Find Free eBooks (Electronic Books).....

Googe will easily show you all those ebooks that are hanging out there for free!
Once you learn google search, you can find anything. Want some ebooks? Oh, yeah... google does that easily. Another power searching lesson coming right up.

Google: -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" +("/ebooks""/book") +(chmpdfzip)


What does all of this mean? The -inurl htm and -inul html is attempting to get rid of regular webpages and show just index pages. Looking for index of in the title is doing the same. Using the pipe ( ) tells google to look for something OR something else. Here were are telling google to look for book or ebook directories... and we have listed several common ebook formats (zip, pdf, chf).
If you would like to look for a particular author or title just tack it to the end of your search.
Google: -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" +("/ebooks""/book") +(chmpdfzip) +"o'reilly"


This uses the same idea but attempts to focus on directories that contain O'Reilly stuff. It's not perfect, but it's better than paying.

Search for Public Online Cameras and Video Feeds

Using google it is very easy to find open cameras and video feeds online. A voyeur's paradise!
Using some focused google searching, you can find online cameras and video feeds with ease. Here are some common examples.

Google -
intitle:"WJ-NT104 Main"

Google -
intitle:"snc-rz30 home"

Requires installation of activeX plug-in. Great video feeds.
Google -
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion"

High quality feeds with zoom and pan. Require an activeX plug-in
Google -
inurl:LvAppl intitle:liveapplet

I love the zoom and pan on these. So freaking cool!
Google -
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS"

Requires installation of a activeX plug-in to view
Google -
"Powered by webcamXP"

Google -
inurl:indexFrame.shtml "Axis Video Server"

Google -
"MOBOTIX M1" and "open menu"

Will display some with feeds and others with refreshing pictures.
Google -
intitle:flexwatch intext:"Copyright by Seyeon TECH Co"

Click on Live View for the video feed from java applet. catgoo Category-GOOGLE

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Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Google Speeds Up Firefox Searches

One more Firefox vs IE Issue
If you are using a Firefox (or other Mozilla-based) browser, you will be in for some pretty handy Google speed increases.

Google has a feature whereby when you key a search term into Google it often has a pretty good idea of what it is you are looking for. This will be enhanced for Mozilla-based browsers, where Google will anticipate your selection and "prefetch" the target page content while it's waiting for you to click on its link. This will mean that there is a good chance that the page you are looking for has already been locally cached.
The Inner Details....
When you key a search term into Google it often has a pretty good idea of what it is you are looking for. For example, if you key in "microsoft" it's likely you are looking for the Microsoft.com page, and Google puts it up in the top search results position.

In cases like this, where Google assumes that it is very likely that you will click on the obvious choice for your search term, it now attempts to speed up the subsequent display of the the likely target page-that is, if you are using a Firefox
(or other Mozilla-based) browser. What happens is that Google will anticipate your selection and "prefetch" the target page content while it's waiting for you to click on its link. So, when you finally do request the page, it's hopefully already in your cache, speeding up its display. If you click on another link instead, it will stop the prefetching process.

Why just for Firefox? Mozilla utilizes a function called "prefetching." Here's the definition of prefetching from the Mozilla Link Prefetching FAQ:

"Link prefetching is a browser mechanism, which utilizes browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future. A web page provides a set of prefetching hints to the browser, and after the browser is
finished loading the page, it begins silently prefetching specified documents and stores them in its cache. When the user visits one of the prefetched documents, it can be served up quickly out of the browser's cache."

It looks like another win for FireFox, which has now moved up from 39.7% of Google Tutor readers in March to 45% so far in April (versus Internet Explorer at 35.3%). If you have not yet downloaded Firefox, get it here. (You don't need to dump IE; it will still be there.)

But wait, maybe you don't think it's a win for Firefox. In fact, depending upon how you feel about filling your cache and adding to your cookies, you might think the whole thing stinks. You see, if you don't actually go to the presumed target web site Google prefetches, you're still adding to the cache and potentially adding a cookie each time you perform a search. The extra pages in your cache can't be a big deal, but you may or may not be thrilled about the cookies. It doesn't really bother if you visit many web sites all day long, what's a few more cookies and cached pages?

The good news is that if you don't like the idea of prefetching, you can disable it. In Mozilla 1.3+, there is a preference in the UI to disable prefetching. See Preferences->Advanced->Cache to disable it. In Firefox, you can disable prefetching by doing the following:

1. Type "about:config" the address bar.
2. Scroll down to the setting "network.prefetch-next" and set the value to "False".

With prefetching, you better hope that if while searching on your computer at work the first search result isn't a porn site, and ends up getting downloaded into cache. If you have to explain that to an administrator who discovered porn in your cache, make sure to tell him or her that the content is flagged in a different way from content that is actually chosen to download.

Explain that an ‘x-moz: prefetch' header is sent with the request, and the referrer header will match the Google search results page.

If you are techie, you might be interested in how this works. On searches where Google thinks it knows you'll end up clicking the top search result, it inserts a special link tag, supported by Firefox and Mozilla, that tells the browser to download the top search result before the user clicks on the result. This tag is only inserted when it is likely that the user will click on the first link.

For example, when a Firefox user searches for "microsoft", Google includes the following tag in the results HTML:
<link rel="prefetch" href="http://www.microsoft.com/">

The official Mozilla Link Prefetching FAQ describes the behavior of this tag in detail.

If you are a webmaster, be aware that prefetching may impact your site by generating additional traffic usage, because the prefetch request will happen whether or not the user clicks on the result.

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Monday, April 04, 2005

Yahoo has slight edge among desktop search programs

No longer is search just about finding stuff on the Internet.

The battleground has moved to individual PCs as leading search companies develop free tools for cataloguing your computer.

Of the three desktop search programs, the Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. products differ slightly in how they approach your data, while the Google Inc. alternative diverges quite a lot.
Which one is right for you comes down to your needs and regard for privacy.

Microsoft's MSN Desktop Search,...... which is part of the MSN Toolbar Suite, and Yahoo Desktop Search are still "beta," or test, products, which could explain why Yahoo kept crashing on one work machine while MSN refused to index my laptop.
Google, which recently left beta, worked fine on both but has other flaws.

All three programs, available only for Windows XP and 2000 machines, index file names as well as contents, so a search for "stupidity" generates documents with that word buried inside.

For music, photos and video, the programs look for "metatags" that carry song names and other descriptions.

MSN and Yahoo both claim to handle more than 200 file types, though MSN needs a plug-in to fully scan PDF documents. Google officials refused to provide a full list, but the company's Web site lists more than a dozen, the ones you're most likely to need.MSN and Google also let outside developers make plug-ins for unsupported formats.

All three programs index e-mail using Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express software, but Google goes further in handling Mozilla-based products, including Netscape and Thunderbird.

Yahoo also scans attachments, while the other two only capture their file names (though MSN lets you change a setting for full scanning).

Google also records your instant messaging conversations over America Online Inc.'s AIM software, while Yahoo and MSN index their own IM programs.

Yahoo, which licenses technology from the startup X1 Technologies, was the most comprehensive under default configurations, finding twice as many files on one machine as Google while taking about half the time.

On a different machine, MSN found only a quarter of what Google indexed. That's because MSN looks mainly in your documents folders, which is where most of your key files are likely to be anyway. But MSN alone also gives you the option of fully scanning any networked drives you may have.

Google, meanwhile, stands out in recording Web sites you've visited. Say, you saw in interesting article but could no longer find it on the Web. Google's program can retrieve it from your computer, even if you had never saved it.

That feature cuts both way, however: Perhaps you DON'T want your computer to remember everything you've ever browsed -- especially if you've been goofing off at work.

Of course, you can turn off the indexing when visiting sensitive sites, so it's not a show-stopper.

What bothers more is the fact that deleted e-mails and files stay in the Google index unless you delete them there as well. Google says it's a good backup mechanism, but there's usually a reason to delete a file. Both MSN and Yahoo remove deleted items, and Google ought to at least make that an option.

So while Google's ability to index Thunderbird e-mail is great, there can be hesitation when it comes to retention and privacy. Yahoo is a bit better than MSN -- Yahoo won't record any IM chats by default, and like Google it lets you exclude certain file types from indexing. But MSN supports third-party plug-ins and network scanning
The flip side to indexing, of course, is finding the files.

All three programs have deskbars -- small boxes that sit anchored to the bottom of your computer screen -- from which you enter search terms. MSN will even find files as you type from the deskbar, while Yahoo does it only from its desktop search application.

Google once again stands out here. It doesn't offer as-you-type searching or the ability to search partial words, but it alone integrates your desktop and Web results into one page.

That's good if you don't like thinking of information in compartments, whether it's on the Net or stored locally. It's just information.

That said, because Yahoo and MSN treat your files as files, you can more easily sort results by file type, name, date or whatever. You can also do more with a file -- open it, print it, reply if it's e-mail.

Between the two, the advantage goes to Yahoo. Its application devotes a generous amount of space to preview files. You see photos as photos, not small thumbnails. You see spreadsheets as spreadsheets, not mangled text.

All three programs handle the basics well, so your choice may ultimately come down to what e-mail and IM programs you use and whether you care about Google's retention of deleted files.

If you're indifferent, Yahoo's preview feature may help tip the scales.

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