Under Sea Cable

A breakdown in an international undersea cable network badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday. Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry said a communications cable in the Mediterranean was cut, disrupting 70 percent of the country's Internet network. The ministry said in a statement it was not known how the cable was cut but that services would probably take several days to return to normal. India reported serious disruptions to its services and one Indian Internet service provider linked the problem to the Egyptian outage.

"There has been a cable cut on several cable systems in Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted internet connectivity in India," Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), an internet service provider, said in a statement. VSNL said its service had been "largely restored" by diverting to another cable.

India said it had lost more than half of its capacity. "There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told Reuters. He told the Headlines Today news channel that a "degraded" service would be activated by Wednesday night, but full restoration will take 10 to 15 days. Chharia said companies, including some of India's many outsourcing businesses, had been affected.

 

With iPads in the wild, buyers react

Already the iPad has been estimated to have outsold the original iPhone in opening weekend sales. After waiting in line or for UPS to deliver, the first customers are unboxing their new iPads, and their reactions to the gadget are beginning to come in.


There seem to be few complaints from new owners though one issue did come up almost immediately. Some users who have connected their iPad via USB are getting a notification that says "not charging." Apple's support site says some USB ports--typically older computers or USB hubs--are not powerful enough to charge the iPad while it is in use, or may do so slowly.

Apple told MacWorld that it's recommended to charge the iPad via the included USB wall charge adapter because you can still use it while it's charging. However, if using a lower-power USB port or hub, the iPad will still charge, but only while it's in sleep mode, not while in use.

Otherwise, reactions seem pretty positive. A search of "iPad" on Twitter revealed almost 1,000 new mentions of the device every five minutes. Most were positive, including some saying the iPad was a "big hit at Easter dinner."

Roman Mittermayr of Seattle was spotted trying out his new iPad in a San Francisco Starbucks on Saturday. He said his first experience with the device was positive, but said he could already foresee some drawbacks to not having purchased the 3G version.

"Wi-Fi only is fine for coffee shops, but I travel for business, and hotel Wi-Fi you usually have to pay for. So that could be an issue," he said. He also said he was not a huge fan of the case, which can be used as an iPad stand. The case does not provide the most comfortable viewing angle, he said.

Gizmodo found some issues typing on the virtual keyboard, calling it "serviceable but not without strange moments."

The more curious among us couldn't just be satisfied swiping, pinching, and typing on their new iPad. iFixit did a teardown of the device Saturday, revealing what the tablet looks like on the inside.

And the members of the iPhone Dev Team, whose mission is to unlock the software of every new iPhone OS version, have turned their attention to the iPad. The team claims to have jailbroken the iPad after one day.

Enjoy Your Photos Like Never Before!

See Your Photos turn to PhotoToys, 3D Screensavers and Wallpaper Collages

No matter how many wallpapers you have, you'll eventually grow tired of them... and this is where PhotoJoy comes in handy!


This fun app creates fresh desktop images based on a variety of background designs, over which PhotoJoy arranges your pictures in nice, original collages. The program includes several types of backgrounds (abstract, nature, animals...) and produces really nice results, though you can't select which photos will be selected for the wallpaper.

But that's not all. PhotoJoy also uses your photos to create amazing three-dimensional screensavers that you can preview in the program and set as default screensaver on your system right away. Plus the program includes the so-called PhotoToys, small desktop widgets (similar to Vista gadgets) that let you browse your photos in very original ways: like a magazine, a 3D puzzle, and more.

The main drawback about PhotoJoy is, as you can infer from all those three-dimensional features, that you need quite a powerful machine to run it without problems.

 
Download it here!
http://www5l.photojoy.com/photojoy/setup/2009042701/downloader/PhotoJoy_Install.exe

Paint.Net an alternative to Photoshop!

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.


It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

Download it here:
http://www.dotpdn.com/files/Paint.NET.3.5.4.Install.zip

Hacker Psychology

Who is a hacker? A hacker is someone who looks like you and me! but who thinks outside the box. It's someone who discards conventional rules wisdom, and does something else instead. It's someone who think beyond the limits. It's someone who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don't follow them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of systems. A normal man ask his wife “how many teeth in your mouth?” but a good hacker would have simply counted his wife's teeth without her knowing about it, while she was asleep. A bad hacker might remove some of them, to prove his skill (Well that is next stage of hacking which called cracking!)
Computers are the perfect playground for hackers, as we do all the works and transactions online in this technical age. The best way to defeat your enemy is to know their mindset! So we will discuss how hacker works and what he/she thinks? How they work?
How hacker works? Hacker have several ways to hack information like login and password, it depends who you are, where you are and how the hacker reaches you.

1. Mind Reading This can do anyone! They no need to be specialized for this. A hacker thinks what can their victims can set as password? They start with guesses like date of birth, family names, pet names or address information.
2. Common words What if, I set my password as 12345678? or abcd? These are the most easy to break passwords.
3. Proxy If the hacker is just standing behind you, He will see what you entered from the keypad? This may happen at cybercafé or ATM!
4. Trojan Horse Tools: There are many hacking tools are available on the internet, that can be easily downloaded and used on someone’s machine. {Due to security reason the tool names and how to use is now given here} These software use to extract passwords from cookies saved on local machine!
Key Logger: This is more worst then previous one! This will track entire activity from your keyboard and send the information through email to the hacker. There is also some hardware based key logger that can be fitted before keyboard plug as show below;

5. IP address Hacker can get your IP address and tack back the activity on the IP address by sending some “Trojan horse”. How they get your IP address? Well that’s very easy, If you write comments on my Wordpress blog I’ll have your IP address! {Feel free to write comments at my blog, Coz I’m not a hacker! or interested in doing so!}
6. Try and Try Hackers can program a server to give different passwords to open someone’s account, but after some false try the login screen ask to solve the CAPTCHA CODE that can’t be solved by machine only human’s can solve it {Not so far! now servers also solves CAPTCHA CODE!}

The above are some examples only, more can be done by a hacker! After understanding how a hacker hacks some one’s password. we will understand how to make a complex password?
Password complexity A good password is like; 5eR3$1♥x9%#DF (if you able to remember it!)
Keys can be entered from keyboard:

Capital Letters	26
Small Letters	26
Numerals	10
Symbols	32
Total Characters	94

Suppose you chose 1 letter as you password e.g. “r” so there is maximum number of tries will be 94 {remember this is maximum, minimum could be 1!}. But if you choose 2 letters e.g. “mk”, the number of tries will be 94^2 = 8836 (94x94)
To make a real complex password you have put some special characters like;

Code	Key
☺	9786
♥	9829
♫	9835

There are 65535 symbols that you can put! they can be entered by holding down the Alt key and entering the number from number pad in the right of your keyboard {remember number pad in right of your keyboard, not the above number line on top of QWERTY}

So the above table can be reviewed like this:

Capital Letters	26
Small Letters	26
Numerals	10
Symbols	32
Symbols (With Alt)	65535
Total	65629

Suppose you chose 1 letter as you password e.g. “r” so there is maximum tries now will be 65629!  {but still the minimum is 1 if some get rite guess as the first attempt!!} and think about 2 letters! it will be 65629 x 65629 = 4307165641!! So make the password more complex and hard to guess.

Why they hack?

1. Personal gain Now a days most of hackers gain access to someone’s account or get access to machine and encrypt all files in hard drive, they decrypt your data if you pay them what they want!
2. For fun Some hackers only hack for their own fun, or to prove their skills!
3. Revenge Some time revenge is also a fact to hack some one. As we see often terrorist hacks government websites.
4. Ethical hacking Well ethical hacking is also a part of hacker’s life. Some time to rescue some one or to prevent damage to someone, they have to do hacking which is called ethical hacking.

Hacker targets celebrities to get fame and to be in limelight, as sometime before Britney Spears’ account was hacked!
Note: This article is not to teach hacking or to appreciate it in any manner! this is just to improve your knowledge and to protect you from password hacks! :)
–Rohy