Think before you type!

We,all know the importance of functions in C. And any good-programmer will be using well coded functions in his program, may be including them in a loop as well.But, while using the function in a nested if else we must be careful and should keep in mind the output of the function and what exactly do we want.I am saying this because my program returned insane values due to a careless use of functions.

The problem causing bit of code is here:
if(strt < insert(strt,end,value)
 {
     //some stuff;
  }
else if(strt == insert(strt,end,value)
{
   //some stuff;
}

what happened here was that, for the 1st if statement the function insert was called. Now suppose the value is false and the other if statement is to be implemented, then it will again call the insert function which is not how it should happen because for the  new function, it will find a new value instead of the old value. So, it is better to store the value of the function and compare the stored value.
Lets hope that we don't make this mistake again. : )

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Boosting your browsing speed in Mozilla

you may be happy with the time it takes for a webpage to load in Mozilla but getting a better browsing speed is always a welcome change isn't it? Here is a simple way to boost your speed.
->Open a new tab and in the address-bar type: about:config
->Now in the box of filer type browser.cache
->Now turn the value ofbrowser.cache.disk.enable to false. It can be done by just double clicking it.
->Similarly set browser.cache.memory.enable to true.
->Now right click on an empty space select new->integer and give it name : browser.cache.memory.capacity and in the give it value100000 or 100Mb.

Mind you this will store the cache in main memmory and may take upto 100Mb of your RAM.So just take care of not giving some superficial value as capacity.Also, the process will increase the speed of cached pages only.Anyways, any betterment is welcome isn't it?

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Exploiting facebook/twitter mobile facilities

We have seen many GPRS based applications for tweeting and updating your facebook status. But what to do if you want to tweet/update status without connecting to internet? Well, facebook and twitter have facilities where you can tweet/update status by simply sending a message to a certain number. You can use that technique in your application. For this you just have to know the method for sending a message from your mobile. If you are coding in C# it is very simple to do.
You just have to writing the following code:
->Microsoft.WindowsMobile.PocketOutlook.SmsMessage sms = new SmsMessage(number,text);
->sms.Send();
In case of facebook the number will be:923223265 and for twitter it is:53000.
Another thing that needs to be kept in mind is that, you need to add
Microsoft.WindowsMobile.PocketOutlook in the references.

This is a simple way to keep your app different from others.Though C# is used for programming for windows mobile.

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Another useful html tag!

WEll, this time I am talking about the < pre >  tag. It is used when you donot want to insert all the whitespaces individually.
Simply speaking, this tag is used when you want to have a preset text in your web-page.
Generally, the white spaces in your script are neglected by the browser. And they can be added using '&nbsp' ( meaning new blank space).Instead if you are using the 'pre' tag, it will display the text as it is written.
Despite the advantage, this tag is rarely seen in the web-pages.
This is the w3schools article on the tag.

PS: Being busy with my other work, am not able to blog regularly

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# in html!

All the C programmers tend to think of #include as soon as they see '#' symbol. But not all the people know that there is # used in html also!
Well we all have seen the wiikipedia page on one or the other thing,right? Now, there is a table of contents in every page. The elements of this table point to links in the same page. This is where a # symbol comes in handy. It is basically used to maintain an index within the web-page.
while giving the address give href="#link" instead of the entire address of the page.

and to give the target location give name="link" as a part of the 'a' attribute of the location


Here the difference from a normal href is that here we are starting the URL with # indicating that the target is in the same page. Also we have given an attribute 'name' with value=link. This is the address of the target.
(How else would the browser know where to point next?)

Hope you will find it helpfull.


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Time for some shortcuts!!

Usage of mouse all the time to navigate is not so ergonomic, is it? Today I and my friend had nothing else to do so tried out many combinations of key strokes to see what happened. Here are some that might be interesting!

For navigation purpose:
-> Well some of you may be knowing that to go to the previous directory in
your Explorer, be it your internet explorer or the file one, you can use
backspace key.
But do you know that to navigate forward you can use shift + backspace?
for e.g search anything in google and go to the first webpage. now press
backspace
and you will reach back to the search result and now press shift + backspace.
-> You may use windows + D for navigating to the desktop. And press it again to go
back to return to your application.

Notepad:
-> The function keys do have some use in notepad.
-> First is F1: for help
-> Next is F5: for date and time. (Who needs it?)
-> Next is F10: To go to the menubar. If you dont want to use the function keys you
may also use atl button followed by the underlined letter in the respective
field e.g alt + f for file menu.


More will be coming soon!

My first C# project

I was very keen on jumping from writing console applications to applications having a better user-interface and being able to handle events such as a mouse-click. So I jumped over to C#. The guide that i was using turned out to be incorrect one and created a lot of confusion. But in the end I was atleast able to understand how to make a form(interface) and how to handle events.
So, I started meddling with things on my own.For starters I thought of an application that took some input and gave a corresponding output based on some formula . This, led to the project I am talking about.
Last year I had made a program that calculated the 'Daily Breathing Loss' based on a given formula. I just had to take the inputs,use a formula and print the output. Easy isn't it? So, I thought that I could use the code to explain how a simple C# program is made. Coders in VB might find it similar. I have attached, the .zip file and the.rar file. You can download as per your wish. In this code, I have not included any extra header file and have used the default template of the Visual Studio 2008 C# programs.

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Innovative Ideas

The Chinese are famous for their innovative ideas.But, they lack in the quality of products. But what to expect when the Chinese ideas meet with the Finnish quality?Well its the 'plug and touch technology' from the Nokia research Center at Beijing.
  What is 'plug and touch'? Well, how does your Plasma TV acting as your N8 sound to you! ? Interesting isn't it? It is a simple yet powerful app. Basically you have to connect your N8 to your TV using the HDMI cable and keep your phone such that the camera is facing your TV. The display of your TV will turn into a large N8. Now you can touch or scroll in your TV instead of your phone.I haven't yet got a chance to try it out. (Don't even expect that from me.!) But what I saw on TV suggests that the app still lacks in accuracy and is a bit less responsive, but the innovation is what matters doesn't it?Nokia says that the application is a prototype for a 3D interface for mobiles.
   The technology may sound futuristic but I wonder why we would want to interact with our phones using TV when our phones already have touch interface? Also, the need of 3D interface for phones is doubtful.
  Having said that I would also like to add that the 3D interface can be used to interact with some other device,like scientists can easily make and modify their designs this way rather than making them on AutoCAD or such softwares.
  I would like to say that the application can have huge success , given that the Espoos donot limit it to mobile phones.
This is the link for the Nokia's blog on the technology.

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Speed Dial on Firefox!

Chrome and Opera users will be aware of the speed dial feature so that you can save time by directly selecting the site of your choice from the speed-dial list.
But what about the firefox and internet explorer users? Okay we have, add-ons but why download add-ons if you can easily make a html code for that. I have attached a file below that contains the code.
The code is simple to understand and if you don't know what the target="_newtab"is that it opens the links in new tabs or new-windows as your browser interprets them. My Firefox 3.6.8 opens them in new tab while the Internet Explorer opens them in new window.But problem in Firefox is that if you have opened a tab by clicking on a link, clicking on a different link will open the link in the same tab as the previous and hence overwriting the already open link.On the other hand in Internet Explorer, the code makes the link to open in new window. I am trying to solve both the problems and will post an update ASAP.
Here is the link for the code.
After creating the code you must remember to rename the extension of the page to ' .html '(How else will it be a webpage!? ;) )Well to set the page as webpage as home-page you have to  do the following steps:

Firefox : Tools->Options and in the homepage box enter the location of the webpage
                             for e.g:file:///D:/html/homepage.html
                          Click on Save. Your home page will be displayed when you restart your browser.

Internet Explorer: Tools->Internet Options-> enter the location in the homepage section
                                                for e.g: file:///D:/html/homepage.html
                         Click on OK. Your home page will be displayed when you restart your browser.

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Linux deserves more?

  Okay we have all heard that the Linux has a lot of cool features but still the Linux distributions have a small share in the OS market. Why is it so?
   The main reason is the marketing skills of Microsoft. Microsoft through it's great marketing skills has reduced the share of all other OSs to a minimal amount. Apple has retained the share of Mac OS through its high class products. On the other end we rarely see anyone marketing Sabaoyon or Ubuntu.
    Also, same is the case for the famous computer games. A few games have now come on the MAC OS but has anyone played Halo in Ubuntu! ? We only get to play the games developed by the OS development team,  which are no ways as glamorous as the games designed for Windows. This leaves out all the potential and hard-core gamers from the Linux users community.
    Coming to the user experience factor, though we can make many configurations in Linux, many of them are useless for the average users.As a result they underachieve.Also  the user interface of the Linux distributions is of lower grade(considering the beauty) compared to Windows counterparts of the same time period. Linux allows us to customize as much as possible but the fact is that we are now so lazy that we dont even bother to look into all those features. Again, Linux is underutilized.
    One of the reasons that Linux users community is limited to developers and geeks is the confusion " which distro is good for me?". All Linux distros have some or other good and bad points. I personally find Sabayon to be the best as it has a beautiful interface plus the only Linux distro which has the most entertaining game of all. Also it has many more interesting features. It does at the cost of storage space(Sabayon 5: 4.38 GB  when installed on my virtual machine).
  In the end I can say that Linux is an under-utilized OS and should be certainly tried out,if not installed then at least on a virtual machine. If u get any interest, here are some links for downloading some Linux distros:

UBUNTU
SABAYON
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Firefox 4 beta review

Firefox 4's new beta (no.6) has been released and the firefox team has got enough time to correct all it's glitches.  Here is what i think about the new release:

The design seems to be inspired from Opera browser though the speed fails to inspire them.

For me the most important thing is the absence of support to save webpages as .mht format. Those of you who do not know the .mht format, it is a format of webpage where your entire webpage is saved as a single file and you donot need any other folder to contain the files.Isnt it intimidating?

A noticable feature is that of option to 'switch to tab using smart location bar'.
It is not a big deal or something  that forces you to download and install the new beta. It only notifies lets to switch to an already open tab having the same address that you want to visit.

A feature that is intelligent is the merger of the reload and stop buttons.
Now this is somehing smart as you are never going to reload a page before it's loading is  stopped. You have to give this to the mozilla team.

Apart from the above features, there is a support for WebM, new html5 tags, css3 though not completely flawless.

Firefox stresses on the hsts protocol support, this is what i got when i tried loading google using it! 

All in all, the design looks good but the responsiveness and speed of  firefox 3.6.8 is still better than 4
and lets hope to get a .mht file saving support in the later releases.

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Aggressive Corporate Rivalry resurfaces

Well, you might be aware of the internet explorer v/s netscape navigator and the aggressiveness in the competition(it also featured in one of the discovery shows).

This time it is Nokia and HTC. Nokia had a press event planned in London from months in advance and HTC held an event within weeks at the same place. The mobile phone giant did not take it nicely and hit a nasty blow.
Nokia sent a few people to stand infront of the venue and hold red balloons saying" We know where we are, thanks to the Nokia's OVI maps". Creating a scene aren't they?
Actually this is not all as the Espoos also went ahead and distributed "HTC press conference survival kits". Lets see what does HTC does. Being an HTC user I hope that HTC hits back with double force.
Here is the snapshot of the kit:

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Remote for Humans!

The above news might sound like a spoof to you but the American Government's DARPA has made it a possibility.
According to the Department of Defense's recent blog post, the military is interested in developing remote control techniques using ultrasound... for soldiers. Arizona State University neuroscientist William Tyler has been working on the project for several years, and now, DARPA is getting involved as well. Tyler and his team have developed a transcranial pulsed ultrasound capable of stimulating brain circuits from outside of the brain, and it can target deeper parts of the brain than past devices. The prototypes are small enough to be placed inside of a helmet, and the plan is to improve its spatial resolution with DARPA's new infusion of funding.
The power of the instrument is such that if the soldier is standing in intense heat, it can make him feel as if he isn't feeling any heat or make a wounded soldier feel no pain. MAN! DO SOLDIERS NEED SUCH A PUNISHMENT? I  mean a wounded soldier is made to feel no pain so that he can fight to the last minute and die of the wound he didnt even know of.
  Or worse think what would happen if enemy got an access to all the chips. They can make the soldiers die of  pain that they dont really have! I just hope that the project is scrapped as it will cause much more harm than good
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I CAME, I SAW AND I RETURNED

This was my situation when I was going back to Baroda from Surat. The train in which we had planned to travel by was an hour and a half  late   (Disaster begins!) . So we thought   "HA! we have another train who will stop us!?" and as it was some time for it to come, we went to the food-express and ordered for sandwiches.
     When the sandwhich we ordered for, arrived, we heard a whistle which unfortunately turned out to be of our train. WHAT NOW? Nothing i gave the sandwhich to my friend and ran for the train.  . When i reached the train, it turned out that the train  was jam-packed. I thought there would be people coming out of  the train and was still positive. Now, hopeful as i was, i went to the general compartment just to find out that the crowd outside it was the double of what it was inside.
   Thus, I CAME, I SAW AND I RETURNED.

Google Instant

 Just imagine you typing your search query and google displaying the result even before u complete typing it! Cool isn't it?

Well Google has just launched the service called Google Instant which does the same. It not only shows suggestions but also does an instant search by auto-completing ur  query. The service is just available in the US,UK,France and Russian domains as of now. Also it is available only if you have a google account.
      Well Google says that it is saving 2-3 seconds per search query and about 11 hours per second. The numbers may sound attractive but wonder what will happen if you have a slow connection. Well the Google solution to the problem is automatic disabling of the service for slow connections.wondering how many connections will support the service in  India
     The service is also now available on mobile browsers.

Compatibility?
    Well the service is available if you have Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer     v8.
.   In case of mobiles, the mobiles having browsers supporting AJAX can use this service.
   

      Here is a snapshot of the google instant search. Me being in INDIA i still havent got a chance to test it.

Effect Of Music

No here I am not talking about the effects of classical music on plant growth.The plants in my garden grow properly anyways!

Today, I am talking about the effect of music on us humans. I discovered the tremendous effect of music on me today during the train journey from home to hostel.
For the first half hour or so, i sat without music and was bored seeing the background and was wondering how i was able to live through the journey earlier times.
So to kill time i started to listen to music on my phone(wondering why i didnt do that straight away).
I was amazed by the effect that it produced in my thinking.
When there was a soothing music playing, i would look at the greenery outside and praise the nature. But if there would be a metal or Rock song playing, seeing the fields would make me run up the fields and keep running till my mind didnot calm down.

This was just the effect on my train journey(mind you, the light music inspired me to write the blog). Music also very necessary during the exam times. After ur exam if u hear to a Metal or a HardRock song, you will be able to get rid of some of your frustration. Also you can start afresh for the next exam.

Now is the turn of driving.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: DO NOT LISTEN TO LOUD SONGS WHILE DRIVING.
Why?
Oh c'mon you know how many horns are you able to hear if you play loud music(especially if it is a 4wheeler). Also if the music has high tempo, it will inspire you to drive fast. So please no loud music while driving.

.m3u

If u are a windows user, you certainly would have made a media player play-list or at least seen it.Even some torrent downloads have a play-list in the folder.

Ever wondered how it is stored or how to make one without using media player.The playlist is stored in the form of a file with extension '.m3u'. They contain nothing but the path of the songs you selected, in order of your selection. Creating one is also very easy.
Creating a play-list
Lets make a play-list in a folder containing 2 media files abc.mp3 and def.mp3.
First of all create a new text document.
give it any name say playlist.txt.
Now just enter the names of your media files in it. In the order of your choice.
Now change the extension of playlist.txt to .m3u

There it is. Your play-list is ready. Double click on it and listen to your songs.

hiberfil.sys

HIBERFIL.SYS

HIBERFIL.SYS is a file the system creates when the computer goes into hibernation mode. Windows uses the file when it is turned back on. If you don't need hibernation mode and want to delete the file you need to turn the hibernation option off before Windows will allow you to delete the file. The procedure for turning hibernation off differs markedly between Windows XP and Vista. The file size depends largely on the size of active RAM in the computer as the contents of the file are basically a RAM image.

*
Windows XP
* Procedure for Windows XP. This procedure makes use of the graphical user interface.
o Start | Control Panel | Power Options
o Go to the Hibernate Tab.
o Uncheck the Enable Hibernation box if you don't need the hibernation function.
o The file should now be able to be deleted.
* How to Troubleshoot Hibernation and Standby Problems in Windows XP. See this Microsoft Knowledgebase article.
o
*
Windows Vista
* Procedure for Windows Vista and Windows 7. This procedure requires that you be an administrator and uses the command line.
o Start | All Programs | Accessories
o Right click on the Command Prompt entry and choose Run as Administrator from the context menu that pops up (OK any UAC queries about doing this).
o A Command Prompt window should open.
o At the command prompt (where the flashing cursor is) type powercfg.exe /hibernate off and press the Enter key.
o The box should flash and you'll be back at the Command Prompt; type exit and press the Enter key to exit the Command Prompt mode.
o Hibernation should now be turned off and the file HIBERFILE.SYS deleted. If you want to turn it back on repeat the procedure and use /hibernate on instead.
o More Information: Microsoft Support documentWeb Link. A method of doing this using the graphical user interface is available using the Disk Cleanup Wizard. See the writeup hereWeb Link for that if you absolutely refuse to use the command prompt.
* How to Troubleshoot Hibernation and Standby Problems in Windows Vista. See this Microsoft Knowledgebase article.

Access tokens

An access token is an object that describes the security context of a process or thread. The information in a token includes the identity and privileges of the user account associated with the process or thread. When a user logs on, the system verifies the user's password by comparing it with information stored in a security database. If the password is authenticated, the system produces an access token. Every process executed on behalf of this user has a copy of this access token.

The system uses an access token to identify the user when a thread interacts with a securable object or tries to perform a system task that requires privileges. Access tokens contain the following information:

•The security identifier (SID) for the user's account
•SIDs for the groups of which the user is a member
•A logon SID that identifies the current logon session
•A list of the privileges held by either the user or the user's groups
•An owner SID
•The SID for the primary group
•The default DACL that the system uses when the user creates a securable object without specifying a security descriptor
•The source of the access token
•Whether the token is a primary or impersonation token
•An optional list of restricting SIDs
•Current impersonation levels
•Other statistics
Every process has a primary token that describes the security context of the user account associated with the process. By default, the system uses the primary token when a thread of the process interacts with a securable object. Moreover, a thread can impersonate a client account. Impersonation allows the thread to interact with securable objects using the client's security context. A thread that is impersonating a client has both a primary token and an impersonation token.

The two types of tokens:

Primary token
Primary tokens can only be associated to processes, and they represent a process's security subject. The creation of primary tokens and their association to processes are both privileged operations, requiring two different privileges in the name of privilege separation - the typical scenario sees the authentication service creating the token, and a logon service associating it to the user's operating system shell. Processes initially inherit a copy of the parent process's primary token. Impersonation tokens can only be associated to threads, and they represent a client process's security subject. Impersonation tokens are usually created and associated to the current thread implicitly, by IPC mechanisms such as DCE RPC, DDE and named pipes.

Impersonation token
Impersonation is a security concept unique to Windows NT, that allows a server application to temporarily "be" the client in terms of access to secure objects. Impersonation has three possible levels: identification, letting the server inspect the client's identity, impersonation, letting the server act on behalf of the client, and delegation, same as impersonation but extended to remote systems to which the server connects (through the preservation of credentials). The client can choose the maximum impersonation level (if any) available to the server as a connection parameter. Delegation and impersonation are privileged operations (impersonation initially wasn't, but historical carelessness in the implementation of client APIs failing to restrict the default level to "identification", letting an unprivileged server impersonate an unwilling privileged client, called for it).

Innovative ideas

Again from Google this one is called Google Sets
This service lets u enter a list of items from any set.
Then on submitting our list of items, google will automatically generate a list. Interesting stuff really
Check it out on:

Innovative ideas:

This time it is Google Image Swirl
The Google Image Swirl to represent ur search result in an innovative way.

all ur data is arranged hierarchically in groups and subgroups based on visual and semantic similarity.It is mainly useful if ur search query is ambiguous eg, Apple & Jaguar

You can visit the site at:
http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/

The most dangerous earthquake in the world

The most dangerous earthquake in the world happened in Chile on 22 MAY 1960
The magnitude in Richter scale being:9.5
Here are images showing the devastations:

Here is a collections of amazing illusions


Is it a duck or a rabbit??


Are the gears moving or they are stagant??


Do you see black dots in the white areas?

The symbol for Rupee

This the picture of the symbol for the Indian Currency.
Designed by D Uday Kumar, it is based on Devnagari script. It is also similar to English alphabet 'R'. The two parrallel lines are used to denote the tricolour.

Just look at the size of the turbine

Nicknames for famous companies

there r many funny nicknames given to different companies:

NOKIA:Espoo
SAMSUNG:Sammy
MICROSOFT:Redmond

Also the team in manufacturing of Audi R8 is called Silver-liner because of the average age of the members.

The complex of Google is called GooglePlex.

Web Browser war

Opera browser for computer has beaten all other web browser interms of browser speed.

Warning for Windows phione users!

IF u r using windows phone and like me, have a habit of trying out new posts, this is important for u.
the SMS tweaker application that i tried on mu HTC Touch Viva caused real problems on my message folders.
First i changed the mode to threaded mode and then i changed back to normal mode.
due to this the messages which i received were stored god knows where.
in the end i had to remove the app and restart my phone to get the message facility work properly.
the more intigying thing was that the app was given a trusted app certificate.

welcome message

when we login in our computer,
we see a welcome screen but do not get your name.
here is an easy method to welcome yourself!
FIRST OF ALL CREATE A NEW NOTE TEXT DOCUMENT.
in the document write:
x=("Welcome ",0,"welcome message")

name the file as wecome.vbs
and place it in startup folder of your computer.
you can find it in:
start->all programs->startup

fast shutdown

Ever wanted to have a shutdown button on your desktop?
It's very easy to have one!
Follow the following steps-
right click in any empty area on the desktop->create->shortcut
in the location box type->shutdown -s -t 0(zero).
Here typing zero will mean that as soon as you open the shortcut,your computer will shutdown.
You can type any other number to shutdown your computer after that many seconds of opening the shortcut.

if you are searching for any information on wikipedia you can directly type
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/topic
keep in mind to keep the first letter capital and if there is a space replace it by underscore(_).
eg www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude
or www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude_Says