HOW TO LOCK A FOLDER BY USING NOTEPAD

1) Suppose you want to lock a folder named debasish in your f:\, whose path is f:\debasish

2) Now open the Notepad and type the following

ren debasish debasish.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30 309D}

3) Where debasish is your folder name. Save the text file as loc.bat in the same drive.

4) Open another new notepad text file and type the following

ren debasish.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30 309D} caclub

5) Save the text file as unloc.bat in the same drive.
---------
Usage:
---------
6) To lock the debasish folder, simply click the loc.bat and it will transform into control panel icon which is inaccessible.

7) To unlock the folder click the unloc.bat file. Thus the folder will be unlocked and the contents are accessible.

HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR HARD DISK

HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR HARD DISK

Speed up Your Hard disk

To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a special buffering the computer's memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk.

This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher.
Follow these steps:

Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.

Expand the system.ini file window.

Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].

Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type

Irq14=4096

Note: This line IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!

Click on the File menu, then choose Save.

Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer.

Done >> Speed improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots.

HOW TO PREVENT DEADLOCK IN SQL SERVER

A deadlock occurs when two system server process IDs (SPIDs) are waiting for a resource and neither process can advance because the other process is preventing it from getting the resource.

The lock manager’s thread checks for deadlocks. When a lock manager’s deadlock detection algorithm detects a deadlock, the lock manager chooses one of the SPIDs as a victim. The lock manager initiates a 1205 error message that is sent to the client, and the lock manager kills the SPID. Killing the SPID frees the resources and allows the other SPID to continue. Killing the SPID that is the deadlock victim is what causes the broken connection that the Visual Basic front-end application experiences.

In a well designed application, the front-end application should trap for the 1205 error, reconnect to SQL Server, and then re-submit the transaction.

Although deadlocks can be minimized, they cannot be completely avoided. That is why the front-end application should be designed to handle deadlocks.

So what can cause deadlocks?

1.Locks

2.Worker threads

3.Memory

4.Parallel query execution-related resources

5.Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) resources.


Here are some tips on how to avoid deadlocking on your SQL Server:

*Ensure the database design is properly normalized.

*Have the application access server objects in the same order each time.

*During transactions, don't allow any user input. Collect it before the transaction begins.

*Avoid cursors.

*Keep transactions as short as possible. One way to help accomplish this is to reduce the number of round trips between your application and SQL Server by using stored procedures or keeping transactions with a single batch. Another way of reducing the time a transaction takes to complete is to make sure you are not performing the same reads over and over again. If your application does need to read the same data more than once, cache it by storing it in a variable or an array, and then re-reading it from there, not from SQL Server.

*Reduce lock time. Try to develop your application so that it grabs locks at the latest possible time, and then releases them at the very earliest time.

*If appropriate, reduce lock escalation by using the ROWLOCK or PAGLOCK.

*Consider using the NOLOCK hint to prevent locking if the data being locked is not modified often.

*If appropriate, use as low of an isolation level as possible for the user connection running the transaction.

*Consider using bound connections.

How to debug deadlocks

Turn on deadlock trace
DBCC TRACEON(1204,1222)

This will enable deadlock tracing for all existing connetions and new. Trace flag 1204 reports deadlock information formatted by each node involved in the deadlock. Trace flag 1222 formats deadlock information, first by processes and then by resources.

Use SQL Profiler to trace deadlock events and get the resource ID of the table or index under contention. The steps to do this are:
Start SQL profiler
On the Trace Properties dialog box, on the General tab, check Save to file and specify a path to save the trace
Click the Events tab, only add Locks\Lock:deadlock and Locks\Lock:deadlock chain
Click the Data columns tab, add DatabaseID, IndexID, ObjectID

This trace will record all deadlocks on this SQL Server instance, along with the ID of the source table of contention. To translate the database id and object id into names (although DatabaseName and ObjectName are selectable columns, the data is not always presented in the trace), you can do
SELECT database_name(DatabaseID)
SELECT object_name(ObjectID)

Use SQL Profiler to trace batch statements or RPC statements, to trace which statement causes the deadlock. The restriction of this is that if the repro is far between and you have a busy system, the trace file will grow too large to be useful.

You can also run following query to check which process is being blocked.
SELECT * FROM sys.sysprocesses WHERE blocked <> 0

Get the SPID from blocked column

DBCC inputbuffer (SPID)

sp_who2

sp_lock2

You can also use SP_LOCK2 to receive detailed locking view.

DNS

The Domain Name system (DNS) associates various sorts of information with so-called domain names; most importantly, it serves as the "phone book" for the Internet by translating human-readable computer hostnames, e.g. www.example.com, into the IP addresses, e.g. 208.77.150.31, that networking equipment needs to deliver information. It also stores other information such as the list of mail exchange servers that accept email for a given domain. In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of contemporary Internet use.

The most basic task of DNS is to translate hostnames to IP addresses. In very simple terms, it can be compared to a phone book. DNS also has other important uses.

Preeminently, DNS makes it possible to assign Internet names to organizations (or concerns they represent), independently of the physical routing hierarchy represented by the numerical IP address. Because of this, hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain the same, whatever the current IP routing arrangements may be, and can take a human-readable form (such as "www.abcxyz.com") which is rather easier to remember than the IP address 208.77.150.31. People take advantage of this when they recite meaningful URLs and e-mail addresses without caring how the machine will actually locate them.



The Domain Name system distributes the responsibility for assigning domain names and mapping them to IP networks by allowing an authoritative server for each domain to keep track of its own changes, avoiding the need for a central registrar to be continually consulted and updated.

DNS servers

The Domain Name System consists of a hierarchical set of DNS servers. Each domain or subdomain has one or more authoritative DNS servers that publish information about that domain and the name servers of any domains "beneath" it. The hierarchy of authoritative DNS servers matches the hierarchy of domains. At the top of the hierarchy stand the root nameservers: the servers to query when looking up (resolving) a top-level domain name (TLD).


PROTOCOL DETAILS

DNS primarily uses UDP on port 53 to serve requests. Almost all DNS queries consist of a single UDP request from the client followed by a single UDP reply from the server. TCP comes into play only when the response data size exceeds 512 bytes, or for such tasks as zone transfer. Some operating systems such as HP-UX are known to have resolver implementations that use TCP for all queries, even when UDP would suffice.

EXTENSIONS TO DNS

EDNS is an extension of the DNS protocol which enhances the transport of DNS data in UDP packages, and adds support for expanding the space of request and response codes.



THE INTERNET DOMAIN STRUCTURE

The Internet domain name space is divided into several organizational and geographical top-level domains. Top-level non-geographic domains include:

COM
commercial organizations

EDU
educational organizations

GOV
government organizations

INT
international organizations

MIL
military departments

NET
networking organizations

ORG
miscellaneous organizations
The top-level domains are shown here in upper case. In fact, domain names are case-insensitive. That is, the COM domain is equivalent to the com domain and is usually written in lower case.

Although the three-letter top-level domains are primarily intended for use by companies and organizations in the United States, domain names in COM, EDU, INT, NET, and ORG are often allocated to companies and organizations in other countries.

Geographical top-level domains generally follow the ISO 3166 standard, which contains abbreviations for each country (for example, ca for Canada, ch for Switzerland, and it for Italy). An exception is the domain uk (United Kingdom) which is used for Great Britain rather than the value gb defined by the standard.

INDIA CREATE HISTORY AT PERTH

It was a sweet revenge for India as they beat world champions Australia in their den on Saturday, Jan 19th. After the Sydney Test fiasco and lot of bad blood, India beat Australia in the third Test match at Perth by 72 runs, halting for a second time the Oz’s march towards a world record 17th consecutive Test win. “No body gave us a chance but here we are,” said a proud Kumble, the winning captain. Kumble also thanked all his supporters for supporting the team when Team India was in turmoil after Sydney game. Irfan Pathan was declared Man of the Match. Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar termed the victory as India’s “greatest in 40 years”.




WACA, the home of ‘Retravision Warriors’, witnessed something very unusual, as India came out victorious against Australia in their den, putting an end to Kangaroos’ sixteen match winning streak. India are the first team in the last five years to beat Australia in their own backyard. The win at Perth is India’s fifth Test match victory in Australia. The win came, though not before Stuart Clarke and Mitchell Johnson ensured that Indian bowlers and fielders were sent for a leather hunt.

India breathed a big sigh of relief after dismissing Stuart Clarke for 35. Earlier, at the start of day four, it was Ishant Sharma who started the Indian campaign by getting rid of dangerous looking Ricky Ponting. Soon it was Michael Hussey who saw the rub of the green going against him as Asad Rauf ruled him LBW on a RP Singh delivery. The Perth Test also saw Kumble crossing the 600-wicket mark -- the first Indian to do so. Sehwag and Kumble proved to be the chief architect of the Indian demolition drive, getting rid of Adam Gilchrist and Michael Clarke respectively. India at that moment needed just two more wickets to create history at Perth, which many thought ‘impossible’ four days ago.

Just when it looked that Gilchrist would threaten Indian chances of registering its first victory at Perth, India’s comeback man Sehwag dismissed the south paw. Soon, Brett Lee also departed giving Sehwag his second wicket of the day. Kumble was not far behind as he got rid of a stubborn Clarke.

Earlier, Australia were 257/8 in their second innings post tea. Believe it or not it was the duo of Kumble and Sehwag who threaten the Kangaroos most on the world’s fastest pitch at Perth.

Ponting, Hussey and Symonds were all back in the dressing room, cooling heals as India saw the best of Australian batting only in the end. Ishant Sharma, RP Singh and Anil Kumble were the wicket takers in the morning. Last time India managed to do so in Kolkata, when Ganguly’s men halted the progress of Steve Waugh’s team.

It was advantage India in Perth as Australia lost Michael Hussey post lunch session, LBW to RP Singh. With six wickets in hand Kangaroos had a tough task cut out for their world record victory but they failed to do so.

Ricky Ponting’s agony finally ended as Ishant Sharma got the vital breakthrough for India. Ishant Sharma induced Ponting’s edge as Rahul Dravid completed the catch. Ponting survived almost a half a dozen of LBW appeals before nicking one to the lanky tall Delhi bowler. Ponting and Hussey added 74 runs to Aussies total of Day 3.

Ricky Ponting survived a close shout early in the innings as Billy Bowden turned Ishant’s appeal while the batsman was not offering any shot. The hawk eye clearly suggested the ball was heading for the off stump.

Australia`s most successful run-chase in the fourth innings is 404 for 3 recorded against England at Leeds in 1948 and with the hosts having already lost two wickets the target looks even more daunting.

On day three the final session of play saw two wickets falling for Australia, after which the pair of Ponting-Hussey added valuable runs to elevate the home team’s total to 65 runs. They still require 348 runs more to clinch a victory while India are just eight dismissals away from crafting a historic win. Irfan Pathan and VVS Laxman proved to be the stars of the day with sublime performances.

Indian seamer Irfan Pathan struck a fatal blow to the Australian batting top order as he claimed opener Phil Jaques for a score of 16 runs with a jaffa of a delivery. Wasim Jaffer took the catch that saw the Australian scoreboard reading 43 runs for the loss of two wickets. Mike Hussey walked in to give support to Ponting as both the openers were back into the pavilion. Pathan took three wickets in the second innings and contributed with useful 48 runs.

PAID TO CLICK (PTC) SITES

Always wanted to earn money for use on the internet, without doing any work at all?

Bux.to is one of the best ptc sites. http://bux.to

Bux.to is an site that offers free money just for visiting adds, it will only take about 3-5 minutes a day, and is very easy to do. You get about 10-15 adds every day. To "complete" an add, you just have to visit it for 30 secounds. For every add you complete, you get 0.01 dollar. That won't make you rich, but if you invite other people to the site, you also earn 0.01 dollar for each site they visit. That means, if you get 9 of your friends register, and they and you all click 10 times a day, you earn 1 dollar a day, that's 7 dollars in just one week! Imagine what then will happen if you invite 10 or 20 more friends, you can get rich in no time.



Payments are made through paypal . http://www.paypal.com

PDA

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are handheld computers, but have become much more versatile over the years. PDAs are also known as small computers or palmtop computers. PDAs have many uses: calculation, use as a clock and calendar, accessing the Internet, sending and receiving E-mails, video recording, typewriting and word processing, use as an address book, making and writing on spreadsheets, scanning bar codes, use as a radio or stereo, playing computer games, recording survey responses, and Global Positioning System (GPS). Newer PDAs also have both color screens and audio capabilities, enabling them to be used as mobile phones (smartphones), web browsers, or portable media players. Many PDAs can access the Internet, intranets or extranets via Wi-Fi, or Wireless Wide-Area Networks (WWANs). Many PDAs employ touch screen technology.

FEATURES:

Currently, a typical PDA has a touch screen for entering data, a memory card slot for data storage and at least one of the following for connectivity: IrDA, Bluetooth and/or WiFi. However, many PDAs (typically those used primarily as telephones) may not have a touch screen, using softkeys, a directional pad and either the numeric keypad or a thumb keyboard for input.



Software typically required to be a PDA includes an appointment calendar, a to-do list, an address book for contacts and some sort of note program. Connected PDAs also typically include E-mail and Web support.

Touch ScreenTypical features

Currently, a typical PDA has a touch screen for entering data, a memory card slot for data storage and at least one of the following for connectivity: IrDA, Bluetooth and/or WiFi. However, many PDAs (typically those used primarily as telephones) may not have a touch screen, using softkeys, a directional pad and either the numeric keypad or a thumb keyboard for input.

Software typically required to be a PDA includes an appointment calendar, a to-do list, an address book for contacts and some sort of note program. Connected PDAs also typically include E-mail and Web support.

Touch screen

Many original PDAs, such as the Apple Newton and the Palm Pilot, featured touch screens for user interaction, having only a few buttons usually reserved for shortcuts to often used programs. Touch screen PDAs, including Windows Pocket PC devices, usually have a detachable stylus that can be used on the touch screen. Interaction is then done by tapping the screen to activate buttons or menu choices, and dragging the stylus to, for example, highlight.

Many original PDAs, such as the Apple Newton and the Palm Pilot, featured touch screens for user interaction, having only a few buttons usually reserved for shortcuts to often used programs. Touch screen PDAs, including Windows Pocket PC devices, usually have a detachable stylus that can be used on the touch screen. Interaction is then done by tapping the screen to activate buttons or menu choices, and dragging the stylus to, for example, highlight.

Although many early PDAs did not have memory card slots, now most have either an SD (Secure Digital) and/or a Compact Flash slot. Although originally designed for memory, SDIO and Compact Flash cards are available for such things as Wi-Fi and Webcams. Some PDAs also have a USB port, mainly for USB flash drives.

As more PDAs include telephone support, to keep the size down, many now offer miniSD or microSD slots instead of full-sized SD slots.

Most modern PDAs have Bluetooth wireless connectivity, an increasingly popular tool for mobile devices. It can be used to connect keyboards, headsets, GPS and many other accessories, as well as sending files between PDAs. Many mid-range and superior PDAs have Wi-Fi/WLAN/802.11-connectivity, used for connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots or wireless networks.



APPLICATIONS OF PDA :

1) Games
2) Phone calls
3) Emails / SMS
4) eBooks
5) Watching movies
6) Diary
7) Contacts
8) Alarms
9) Finances
10) Internet
11) Reference material (iSilo, TR3 etc.)
12) mp3 player
13) Golf score keeper
14) Calculator
15) Trip management
16) Torch (I've used it a few times for this)
17) Radio player (with internet)
18) Office document reader/editor
19) Medication manager
20) Diet manager
21) Photo viewer
22) To do list!
23) Pregnancy and Birth monitoring (Apparently it's true)
24) planning projects (bigger scope)
25) password keeper
26) weather (like when the satellite TV goes out so you can't get the weather channel, but you want to see the radar, since you are in a tornado watch)
27) Make little notes to remember/reference later
28) List questions for the pediatrician appointments.
29) In-car / other navigation
30) VOIP (Phone Calls...again)
31) Journal (Different from a diary)
32) Doorstop
33) Cookbook
34) News Reader (NNTP/RSS)
35) Camera
36) Flash drive
37) IM client
38) Wireless modem for laptop etc
39) Terminal Services / VNC client
40) Scanning barcodes
41) Giving presentations
42) Drawing pictures
43) Beaming / receiving business / vCards

and many more .............

NANO : THE ONE LAKH CAR

The Tata Rs 1-lakh ( less than $3000 US )car is here! And it's called the Tata Nano !

Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata on Thursday unveiled the Tata Nano at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi.

DETAILS:

Ratan Tata, while unveiling the nano, said: "The car will meet all current safety nroms and all emission criteria. The pollution it will cause will be lower than 2-wheelers."

The car, Tata said, is smalled than a Maruti 800, but has 21 per cent more volume or space inside than the 800. He said that the dealer price of the car will be Rs 1 lakh, plus value-added tax (VAT) plus transport charges.

The car will have a 624-cc petrol engine generating 33 bhp of power. It will sport a 30-litre fuel tank and 4-speed manual gearshift. The car will come with air conditioning, but will have no power steering. It will have front disk and rear drum brakes. The company claims mileage of 23 km per litre.



The car's dashboard features just a speedometer, fuel gauge, and oil light. The car does not have reclining seats or radio. The shock absorbers are basic.

Tata Nano. Photograph: Rajesh KarkeraNano, the world's cheapest car, costs almost half of the cheapest car currently available anywhere in the world.

"Since we started the small car project four years ago, there has been a big rise in input costs, but a promise is a promise," Ratan Tata said while unveiling the car.

The Nano is expected to be commerically launched in the second half of 2008. News reports say that Tata Motors hopes to sell 500,000 units of the car, almost four times the number of Indicas it sells. Tata plans to focus on a market segment hitherto untapped.

So far, they have invested Rs 1,500-1,700 crore in the small car project.

The car will comply with Bharat III & Euro 4 emission norms. He said that the car meets all safety standards including crash test, offset and side crash.



Not since the launch of the Maruti 800 in 1983 has any car gripped the imagination of a nation and indeed car manufacturers the world over so intensely. If commercially successful, the Tata Nano can alter the passenger car market in India, and perhaps the world, beyond description.

GEO TARGETING

Geo targeting (in internet marketing) is the method of determining the physical location of a website visitor and deliver different content to that visitor based his location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, ISP or other criteria.

The IP address of the visitor is usually the attribute that is used to make the determination where the visitor is located. For this reason is geo targeting also referred to as IP targeting.

With this information, web sites can target content, advertising, or route traffic depending upon the geographic locations of their visitors. Through web site requests for geographic information, a central database tracks an Internet user's traffic on the Internet whereby a profile can be generated. In addition to this profile, the central database can store visitor's preferences as to what content should be delivered to an IP address, the available interface, and the network speed associated with that IP address.



The geographic location information of Internet users can be used for a variety of purposes. For instance, a position targeter can be associated with web sites to target the delivery of information based on the geographic location information. The web sites can selectively deliver content or advertising based on the geographic location of its visitors. The geographic location information can also be used in the routing of Internet traffic. A traffic manager associated with a number of web servers detects the geographic locations of its Internet visitors and routes the traffic to the closest server.

The databases of geographic locations can contain other information that may be useful to web sites and other requestors. The databases, for instance, can serve as a registery for allowed content that may be delivered to a particular IP address or range of IP addresses. Thus, prior to a web site delivering content to an IP address, the web site may query the database to ensure that the delivery of the content is permitted. The databases may store network speeds of Internet users whereby a web site can tailor the amount of content delivered to an Internet user based in part of the bandwidth to that user. The databases may also store an interface of an Internet user whereby a web site can tailor the content and presentation for that particular interface. Other uses of the geographic location and of the systems and methods described herein will be apparent to those skilled in the art and are encompassed by the invention.




Geo targeting is also done based on geographical and other personal information that were provided by the visitor himself.

The automated discovery of user city-level information based on IP addresses by trace routes, pings, and a combination of other tools and methods is far more advanced. It is dependent on the pre-analysis of the entire IP address space. There are more than 4 billion possible IP addresses, and detailed analysis of each of them is a Herculean task, especially in light of the fact that IP addresses are constantly being assigned, allocated, reallocated, moved and changed due to routers being moved, enterprises being assigned IP addresses or moving, and networks being built or changed. In order to keep up with these changes, complex algorithms, bandwidth measurement and mapping technology, and finely tuned delivery mechanisms are necessary. Once all of the IP space is analyzed, each address must be periodically updated to reflect changes in the IP address information. This process is analogous to Internet search engine spidering in its enormity, yet requires far deeper layers of intelligence to keep the information about the constantly changing 4 billion-plus IP addresses current.

APPLICATIONS OF GEO TARGETING

1.Webmasters who want to serve local content on a global domain

2.Content Owners and Delivery Networks restrict streams based on the geographical information

3.Pay per click advertisement to have ads appear only to users who live in selected locations

4.Display advertisement where banner or other multimedia ads are selected to be displayed based on the visitors location. The use of connection speed data correlated to IP address to tailor content

5.Online Analytics identify live the correlation of city-level geography, connection speed data and certain demographic data to IP addresses

6.Enhanced Performance Networks provide superior Customer Targeting to advertisers.

7.Fraud prevention identifies suspicious payment transactions live by correlations between IP Address and additional information (billing records, email header).

KNOCK OFF RESTART NAGS IN WINDOWS

Whenever Windows (OS) updates ,it issues reboot reminders every 5 mins. How to get rid of it ??

To stop the pop ups in XP pro & Vista

--> Select Start

--> Run (just type Start in Vista)

--> Type gpedit.msc & press

--> Navigate in the Group Policy Object Editor's left plane to Local Computer Policy
>> Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates
>> Windows Components >> Windows Update

--> In the right pane , double-click Re-prompt for restart with scheduled
installations.

--> In the next dialog box, select Enabled , and set the number of minutes to
something very high, such as 600

--> Click OK & close the Group Policy Object Editor.

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Nanotechnology refers broadly to a field of applied science and technology whose unifying theme is the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale, normally 1 to 100 nanometers, and the fabrication of devices within that size range. It is a highly multidisciplinary field, drawing from fields such as applied physics, materials science, interface and colloid science, device physics, supramolecular chemistry (which refers to the area of chemistry that focuses on the noncovalent bonding interactions of molecules), self-replicating machines and robotics, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering. Much speculation exists as to what may result from these lines of research. Nanotechnology can be seen as an extension of existing sciences into the nanoscale, or as a recasting of existing sciences using a newer, more modern term.

Two main approaches are used in nanotechnology. In the "bottom-up" approach, materials and devices are built from molecular components which assemble themselves chemically by principles of molecular recognition. In the "top-down" approach, nano-objects are constructed from larger entities without atomic-level control. The impetus for nanotechnology comes from a renewed interest in Interface and Colloid Science, coupled with a new generation of analytical tools such as the atomic force microscope (AFM), and the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Combined with refined processes such as electron beam lithography and molecular beam epitaxy, these instruments allow the deliberate manipulation of nanostructures, and led to the observation of novel phenomena.


One nanometer (nm) is one billionth, or 10-9 of a meter. For comparison, typical carbon-carbon bond lengths, or the spacing between these atoms in a molecule, are in the range .12-.15 nm, and a DNA double-helix has a diameter around 2 nm. On the other hand, the smallest cellular lifeforms, the bacteria of the genus Mycoplasma, are around 200 nm in length. To put that scale in to context the comparative size of a nanometer to a meter is the same as that of a marble to the size of the earth. Or another way of putting it: a nanometer is the amount a man's beard grows in the time it takes him to raise the razor to his face.



APPLICATIONS

Already today nanotechnology is available in the market for applications such as cosmetics and sunscreens, water filtrations, glare filters, ink, stain-resistant clothing, more durable tennis balls, more lightweight tennis rackets, dressings for burns or injuries, etc. However, we have only begun to see what can be achieved through nanotechnology, and its continued development to the point of maturation will lead to changes in the world that will redefine life as we know it.

Some of the potential future benefits of nanotechnology include: solution to the global water shortage problem by means of filtration that will completely purify even the most polluted of water, agriculture that can be sustained within greenhouses instead of acres of land, computers billions of times faster and yet inexpensive enough to be readily available to everyone, significant improvements in living conditions through the elimination of insect-borne diseases and the easy installation of pipes and plumbing for sanitation purposes, the technology required to support large-scale solar energy, the protection of the environment, especially as an indirect result of the abovementioned applications. Furthermore, the benefits to the study and practice of medicine are too numerous to enumerate, but suffice it to say that medical services will be much more inexpensive as well as much more effective.

CURSE : GAME OF DEATH

Of all tales of the supernatural, this one is perhaps the best
documented, the most disturbing and the most difficult to explain...

The Princess of Amen-Ra lived in 1050 B.C. When she died, she was laid in
an ornate wooden coffin and buried deep in a vault at Luxor, on the banks
of the Nile.







In the 1880s, four rich young Englishmen visiting the excavations at Luxor were invited to buy an exquisitely fashioned mummy case containing the remains of the Princess of Amen-Ra.

They drew lots. The man who won paid several thousand pounds and had the coffin taken to his hotel. A few hours later, he was seen walking out towards the desert.
He never returned. The next day, one of the remaining three men was shot
by an Egyptian servant accidentally. His arm was so severely wounded it
had to be amputated. The third man in the foursome found on his return
home that the bank holding his entire savings had failed. The fourth man
suffered a severe illness, lost his job and was reduced to selling
matches in the street. Nevertheless, the coffin reached England (causing of the misfortunes along the way), where it was bought by a London businessman.

After three of his family members had been injured in a road accident and
his house damaged by fire, the businessman donated it to the British Museum.
As the coffin was being unloaded from a wagon in the museum courtyard, the
wagon suddenly went into reverse and trapped a passer-by. Then as the
casket was being lifted up the stairs by two workmen, one fell and broke
his leg. The other, apparently in perfect health, died unaccountably two
days later.

Once the Princess was installed in the Egyptian Room, trouble
really started. Museum's night watchmen frequently heard frantic hammering
and sobbing from the coffin. Other exhibits in the room were also often
hurled about at night. One watchman died on duty; causing the other
watchmen wanting to quit. Cleaners refused to go near the Princess, too.
When a visitor derisively flicked a dust cloth at the face painted on the
coffin, his child died of measles soon afterwards. Finally,
the authorities had the mummy carried down to the basement, figuring it
could not do any harm down there, while leaving the lid of the coffin on
display. (The lid of the coffin (Exhibit No. 22542) is still there!)
Within a week, one of the helpers was seriously ill, and the supervisor of the
move was found dead on his desk.

By now, the papers had heard of it. A journalist photographer took
a picture of the mummy case and when he developed it, the painting on
the coffin was of a horrifying, human face. The photographer was said to
have gone home then, locked his bedroom door and shot himself. Soon
afterwards, the museum sold the mummy to a private collector. After
continual misfortune (and deaths), the owner banished it to the attic. A
well-known authority on the occult, Madame Helena Blavatsky [Author of
"The Secret Doctrines" & "Isis Unveiled"], visited the premises. Upon entry,
she was sized with a shivering fit and searched the house for the source
of "an evil influence of incredible intensity". She finally came to the
attic and found the mummy case. "Can you exorcise this evil spirit?" asked
the owner. "There is no such thing as exorcism. Evil remains evil
forever. Nothing can be done about it. I implore you to get rid of this
evil as soon as possible." But no British museum would take the mummy; the
fact that almost 20 people had met with misfortune, disaster or death
from handling the casket, in barely 10 years, was now well known.
Eventually, a hardheaded American archaeologist (who dismissed
the happenings as quirks of circumstance), paid a handsome price for the
mummy and arranged for its removal to New York. In April of 1912, the new
owner escorted its treasure aboard a sparkling, new White Star liner about
to make its maiden voyage to New York. Because the reputation of the
mummy was well known, the owner, who was a chess player named William T. Stead,
was afraid that his cargo would not be loaded. Therefore, he secretly arranged for the mummy to be hidden under the body of a new Renault automobile, which was being transported to America on the ship.

Stead did not reveal the truth about his cargo to the other passengers until the night before the next disaster. On the night of April 14, amid scenes of unprecedented horror, the Princess of Amen-Ra accompanied 1,500 passengers to their deaths at the bottom of the Atlantic. The name of the ship was Titanic.

JASON BOURNE

Jason Charles Bourne is a fictional character of Robert Ludlum novels and subsequent film adaptations. He first appeared in The Bourne Identity (1980). This novel was adapted for television in 1988 and a film by the same name in 2002.

The character has since been in four sequels (the last two written by Eric Van Lustbader) and two other films, The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007).

PROLOGUE

Jason Charles Bourne has a mysterious past, which continues to torment him throughout his lifetime. His real name is David Webb, and he is a career foreign service officer and a specialist in Far Eastern affairs. Before the events in Identity, Webb had a Thai wife named Dao and two children named Joshua and Alyssa in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. But during the Vietnam War, an aircraft strayed into Cambodia dropping two bombs and strafed a spot near the Mekong River, unintentionally killing Webb's wife and two children. Owing to Cambodia's neutrality in the war, every nation disclaimed the plane, since no one wanted to be responsible for the incident. Having nothing left, Webb went to Saigon and trained for a special top-secret unit called Medusa. (Many years later the unit and its actions would still remain top secret.) At this point, Webb was known only as Delta One, his code name within the unit.

Medusa

The top-secret and government-funded project codenamed 'Medusa' is a vital part of David Webb's life. Taking place during the Vietnam War, Webb was recruited into Medusa by friend and CIA officer, Alexander Conklin, after the death of Webb's wife and children. At the time, Webb was furious and wanted revenge in any possible capacity. By joining Medusa, he felt he was seeking revenge against the people who presumably killed his wife and children, the North Vietnamese. The reason Medusa remains top-secret is the fact that many of the members of Medusa were criminals whom the American government hired during the war to infiltrate parts of Northern Vietnam and kill suspected members of the Viet Cong. In addition, they also killed village chiefs that were suspected to be in collaboration with the Viet Cong and aided in rescuing POWs wherever they could. They were considered an assassination team or a death squad. Each member would be compensated by the United States for doing this.

Most of the members were murderers, fugitives, smugglers, arms dealers, or drug lords being led by a man called Delta. Delta became well known as a ruthless person, with little regard for orders, but succeeding in all his missions. But the fact that "Delta" was really David Webb had become known to too many people. To get to Delta, his brother, Gordon Webb, a US Army Lieutenant stationed in Saigon, was kidnapped.

One member of Medusa was a man by the name of Jason Charles Bourne. During the mission to save Gordon Webb, it was found out that the Australian-born Jason Bourne was a double agent. Bourne was involved in illegal activity including slavery, narcotics, smuggling, and assassinations. With this knowledge, Delta executed Bourne in Tam Quan while he (Bourne) was busy exposing the rescue operation. This was on March 25, 1968. Due to the American government not wanting to acknowledge the existence of Medusa or its members, it never reported the death of Bourne, but rather listed his status as MIA.

Treadstone 71

Years later, a black ops arm of the CIA was formed called Treadstone 71, named after a building on New York's Seventy-First Street, and Webb was called up by the creator of Treadstone and the creator of Medusa, David Abbott, who was nicknamed The Monk, short for The Silent Monk of Covert Operations. At this point, Webb (Delta) takes the identity of Jason Bourne due to his status as MIA in the war and the fact that Bourne was in reality a ruthless killer with a long criminal record. The point of all this was to turn Jason Bourne into something more than he really was, a contract assassin who would be known all over the world for terminating the lives of just about anyone. The assassin's alias was Cain. The reasoning for creating such a fallacy was to create a competition for a well known assassin named Carlos, or Carlos the Jackal, real name Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, who at that time was considered the world's best and most famous assassin. The name Cain was chosen because it had some significance for what he was doing. During Vietnam, Cain was used instead of Charlie in the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot...) because Charlie became synonymous with Viet Cong. So Delta dropped back one letter to Cain, which stood for Charlie. In Spanish, Charlie is Carlos; Carlos was Venezuelan. The myth of Cain was created by having Cain take credit for any well publicized killings that took place in Asia, and later Europe, regardless of the circumstances. By creating this myth, Cain was to drive Carlos out in the open and capture him. To add insult to Carlos's name, Cain stole the credit for Carlos's kills, even if Cain had no part. Later in the story, Cain learns of a contract Carlos accepted on an Ambassador Leland, which he attempted to prevent. However, Cain was unsuccessful and ended up being shot several times, once in the head, and left for dead in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. He would later be recovered by a fishing boat and awake as an amnesiac, presumably a side effect of the gunshot wound to his head.

Identity


Throughout the novel Bourne fights to learn about his past and his true identity while being chased by both the CIA and Carlos' henchmen. During the novel, at a hotel, Bourne takes a young woman hostage to escape. This woman, named Marie St. Jacques, is an employee of the Canadian government. Bourne and Marie start discovering the identity of Jason Bourne, the contract assassin. The true identity of David Webb is known only to those at Treadstone. She is convinced that the man she knows as Jason Bourne cannot be the ruthless killer that all discoveries they make seem to imply. It is due to Marie that Jason continues to search for his true identity and in the end finds the truth. Through this time, Bourne continually has the phrase "Cain is for Charlie, and Delta is for Cain" flash through his mind, propelling him in the direction of his mission. Charlie refers to Carlos in Spanish and Bourne (Cain) is to replace him.

Between the books Identity and Supremacy, Bourne marries Marie and they both settle down (although under guard) in a small town in Maine. David Webb would go on to become an associate professor in Asian studies at a local university.

Supremacy


When Supremacy starts, Marie is taken captive by the United States government in an attempt to turn David Webb back into his former self, the mythical Jason Bourne. While in reality it was the U.S. government who took Marie captive, it has pinned the blame on a fictitious powerful Chinese druglord. This scheme was conducted to send Bourne after a phony Jason Bourne who had been credited with a Far East political assassination that could, in a worst-case scenario, cause a civil war in China over the ownership of Hong Kong.

Ultimatum


As Carlos the Jackal enters old age and his infamy fades, he decides that he will do two things before he dies: the first is to kill Jason Bourne. Webb's family is forced to hide in the Caribbean while Webb himself works with old friend and CIA agent Alex Conklin to hunt down and kill the Jackal first. Webb poses as an important member of Medusa, now a nearly omnipotent economic force that controls the commander of NATO, leading figures in the Defense Department, and large NYSE firms. The plan is to use Medusa's resources to contact the Jackal. Webb just misses the Jackal several times, including when the Jackal locates Webb's family in the Caribbean, before Webb stages his own death and convinces the Jackal that he has succeeded. Following this, the Jackal turns to his second goal: to destroy the KGB facility of Novgorod, where the Jackal was trained and later turned away. His files with his real identity were still stored there. Webb tracks the Jackal down with the help of Conklin and a KGB agent as the Jackal begins destroying the KGB compound. In a final confrontation, Webb at last kills the Jackal and returns to his family.

In the films, the character of Jason Bourne, portrayed by Matt Damon, is a much simpler character than the one described in the novels, and the background story is moved forward from the Vietnam War to the Gulf War. The movies make no mention of Carlos the Jackal; the real Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, was in prison by the time the films were made.

Jason Bourne was born as David Webb on September 13, 1970 in Nixa, Missouri. He joined the Army and was deployed in the Gulf War. Later he joined the United States Army Special Forces and attained the rank of Captain. He is a Catholic with type O negative Blood type as shown on his dog tags in The Bourne Ultimatum. His film backstory also makes no mention of Jason Bourne as a separate character (the real Jason Bourne in the novel backstory was a double agent who was killed by Webb, who then later assumed his identity).

In June 1999, Webb volunteered for Operation Treadstone which was a secret CIA black-ops program. The Bourne Ultimatum reveals that Webb's free will and sense of morality were intentionally broken down by means of an insidious behavior modification process: he was deprived of sleep for days on end; a hood was pulled over his head and he was repeatedly held underwater in a tank almost killing him; and he was told to shoot and kill an unknown bound, gagged and hooded man sitting in the corner of a room, as the head of the department asks him, "Can you commit yourself entirely to the program?". Webb's questions of "what has he done" were brushed aside; the man is to be killed because Webb has been ordered to kill him, and refusal to kill the man results in Webb being subjected to another near-death experience in the water tank. Finally Webb's personality was broken: he capitulated and killed the subject without remorse. The Treadstone chief welcomed him to the program, and told him that David Webb was dead and that he is now Jason Bourne.

As Jason Bourne he learned all the CIA protocols and tradecraft. He is an expert in physical combat, superb at handling vehicles, and speaks fluent French, Russian, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish (as well as English), rather than French and "Eastern dialects" as in the novels.

Once training was over, Bourne was deployed to various locations around the world and assassinated many people. But on a job in France he had a sudden attack of conscience when he saw his target in the company of his children, aborted his mission, and was shot in the back twice while attempting to escape. Similar to the story in the novel, he was left for dead in the Mediterranean Sea and woke up with his memory gone.

MOVIES --> BOURNE TRILOGY : * The Bourne Identity (2002)
* The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
* The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)


The Bourne Identity is a 2002 film loosely based on Robert Ludlum's novel of the
same name.

It stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac attempting to discover the truth of his identity amidst a CIA-involved conspiracy of which he is the center.
Along the way he teams up with Marie, played by Franka Potente, who assists him on his globe-trotting journey to learn about his past and regain his memories. The film also stars Chris Cooper as Alexander Conklin, Clive Owen as The Professor, Brian Cox as Ward Abbott, and Julia Stiles as Nicky Parsons.

The film was directed by Doug Liman and adapted for the screen by Tony Gilroy
and William Blake Herron from the novel of the same name written by Robert Ludlum, who also produced the film alongside Frank Marshall. Universal Studios released the film to theaters in the United States on June 14, 2002 and it received a positive critical and public reaction. The film was followed by a 2004 sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, and a third part released in 2007 entitled The Bourne Ultimatum.









The character of Bourne in the films is a very quick-thinking, linear type of person that moves quickly and brutally towards his goal. He gives the impression of someone who has been severely traumatized and who is suffering from paranoia. He is tormented by fragment memories of his past. He is highly adept at hand-to-hand combat. He also shows an immediate ability to utilize lateral thinking to solve problems. He sometimes uses improvised weapons, for example using a pen to stab an assassin in The Bourne Identity and using a book and a towel in The Bourne Ultimatum. He is shown using tactical improvisation such as using a fan, torch light and tape to fake his location (The Bourne Ultimatum) and gas, a toaster and a magazine to cause an explosion (The Bourne Supremacy). He is also proficient with firearms, explosives, electronics and evasive protocols — for moving, driving, and the like.

His training has apparently been very efficient, but also ruthless to a degree that indicates severe psychological and physical side effects requiring drug treatment. This indicates that the training methods are, at least to some degree, based on the brainwashing-based techniques rumored (but never substantiated) to have been used on Soviet special forces during the Cold War.

The bourne series is one which you shouldn't miss.Its one of my all time favorites.
Folks in case you have missed any one of them make sure you see it at the earliest.
I CAN BET THAT THESE MOVIES WONT DISAPPOINT YOU.

MOTOROLA Q 8

The Motorola Q is a Windows Mobile smartphone first announced in the Summer of 2005 as a thin device with similar styling to Motorola's immensely popular RAZR. Motorola in a partnership with Verizon Wireless released the Q on May 31, 2006. A version for Sprint was released early in January of 2007 and one for Amp'd Mobile in April of 2007.

The Q differs from Verizon's flagship Windows Mobile phone, the Treo 700w, in that it is very thin, runs the Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition OS (lacking touchscreen support), and has a landscape 320x240 screen. It also employs a thumbwheel on the right side of the unit, similar to the industry-leading BlackBerry. Motorola hopes to position the Q as an attractive alternative to the BlackBerry.

The Q was first released in Canada on June 15, 2006 with Telus Mobility. Bell Mobility began offering the phone later that year (September 22) and then became the first North American carrier to offer a black version of the Motorola Q on November 13, 2006.

In late July 2007, a new model of the Moto Q, the Motorola Q 9, was released. The Motorola Q 9h was released in Italy and across Europe and in November in the US through AT&T. In August, the Motorola Q 9m was released in the US through Verizon. In November, Sprint offered the Motorola Q 9c. All Q9 models run Windows Mobile 6.


SPECIFICATIONS:

Network
GSM 850 / GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900

Size
Dimensions: 116 x 63 x 11.5 mm
Weight: 115 g

Display
Type: TFT, 65k colors
Size: 320 x 240 pixels, 36 x 48 mm
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- 5-way navigation button
- Downloadable wallpaper and screensavers

Ringtones
Type: Polyphonic
Vibration: Yes
- Dual stereo speakers

Memory
Phonebook: Yes, Photo call
Call records: Yes
Card slot: miniSD, 128 MB card included
- 64MB internal memory

Data
GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD: No
EDGE: Yes
3G: No
WLAN: No
Bluetooth: Yes, v1.2
Infrared port: Yes
USB: Yes, miniUSB

Features
OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone
Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email
Games: Yes
Camera: 1.3 MP, 1280x960 pixels, video, flash
- MP3/AAC music player
- MPEG4 video recording & playback
- Voice memo
- Voice dial
- Built-in handsfree

One Year Manufacturers Warranty.

The Motorola Q has the ability to synchronize via USB or Bluetooth to a Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Exchange Server database via Windows Mobile Device Center in Windows Vista or via Microsoft ActiveSync in Windows XP and below, allowing the user to synchronize contacts, emails, tasks, and calendar appointments to the Motorola Q. Microsoft Office files may also be synchronized, but Windows Mobile only supports reading them, not editing them.

It had now been launched in India as well. The blackberry market is not too big here, but it does have its own customers. The Moto Q has been launched for a decent price of Rs. 19,990 so its in the sub Rs. 20k range.

INDIA vs AUSTRALIA

It is not that every series India play these days is likened to the Ashes. With India-Pakistan fixtures reduced to regular spin-offs, and Pakistan far from the team that regaled world cricket in the 80s, it is the India-Australia ties that have had a lasting claim on our fond recollections.


Brett Lee regards it as one of Australia's greatest challenges as far as Test cricket goes. The thought of playing India incites the sadist in Matthew Hayden; the burly opener has no qualms saying that India have replaced England as his favourite punching bag with the bat.

He may not deny though that on cricketing pedigree and class, India in recent times have stepped with the Baggy Greens toe to toe. Recall the high altitude of skills evident when the two sides locked horns in the Twenty20 World Championship.

In One-Day cricket, Australia continue to stand apart and afar. In the last seven years, India alone can lay claim to a 40% win record against the world champions.


Every series in recent memory has been fiercely contested, barring the one in 1999 when Steve Waugh's indomitable outfit handed a neat 3-0 drubbing to Sachin Tendulkar & Co.

The 4-0 score line in 1992 may signify that Allan Border's side pounded India hollow but it could well have been 3-2. India almost closed the Adelaide Test until the umpires officiating that game set a new benchmark for incompetence, while at Sydney rains played spoilsport at the most unholy hour with the Indians within an ace of victory.

Outcome of the fixtures hardly matter when one re-lives some of the cult classics that were born out of them – the tied Test at Chennai (1987) and Melbourne 1981 are just a few that spring to mind.

It would be fair to say that by the turn of the 2000s, India-Australia became the mother of all rivalries. Cricket frisson started to have a troubling hold on the Indian fan when Australia became insuperable Goliaths of the game.

In the 1997-98 series, Tendulkar's onslaught on Shane Warne had the Kangaroos transfixed. It is well-known that in 2001, the Oz, riding on a 16-Test winning streak, were well braced up for everything in India: heat, dust and even Tendulkar.


The side was armed with rare wherewithal; and the quality of cricket – Adam Gilchrist's belligerence in the 1st Test in Mumbai and Hayden's bludgeoning blade right throughout the series – was out of the top drawer.

However, little did the Australian skipper apprehend that they would have to reckon with a young finger spinner (Harbhajan Singh) who could make balls rear up like a cobra, and that a Hyderabadi's (VVS Laxman) long, winding wrists would draw out as many as 281 runs and turn the series on its head.


The ongoing 2008 india vs australia series is posed at a very interesting stage.

It is for sure that the India vs Australia series generates the same interest and enthusiasm as the Ashes .

It is arguably the best ever rivalry in world cricket.

CYBORG

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism (i.e. an organism that is a self-regulating integration of artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space.

Fictional cyborgs are portrayed as a synthesis of organic and synthetic parts, and frequently pose the question of difference between human and machine as one concerned with morality, free will, and empathy. Fictional cyborgs may be represented as visibly mechanical (e.g. the Borg in the Star Trek franchise); or as almost indistinguishable from humans (e.g. the Cylons from the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica). These fictional portrayals often register our society's discomfort with its seemingly increasing reliance upon technology, particularly when used for war, and when used in ways that seem to threaten free will. They also often have abilities, physical or mental, far in advance of their human counterparts (military forms may have inbuilt weapons, amongst other things). Real cyborgs are more frequently people who use cybernetic technology to repair or overcome the physical and mental constraints of their bodies. While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, they can be any kind of organism.

The prefix "cyber" is also used to address human-technology mixtures in the abstract. This includes artifacts that may not popularly be considered technology. Pen and paper, for example, as well as speech, language. Augmented with these technologies, and connected in communication with people in other times and places, a person becomes capable of much more than they were before. This is like computers, which gain power by using Internet protocols to connect with other computers. Cybernetic technologies include highways, pipes, electrical wiring, buildings, electrical plants, libraries, and other infrastructure that we hardly notice, but which are critical parts of the cybernetics that we work within.
The "cyborg soldier" often refers to a soldier whose weapon and survival systems are integrated into the self, creating a human-machine interface. A notable example is the Pilot's Associate, first developed in 1985, which would use Artificial Intelligence to assist a combat pilot. The push for further integration between pilot and aircraft would include the Pilot Associate's ability to "initiate actions of its own when it deems it necessary, including firing weapons and even taking over the aircraft from the pilot. (Gray, Cyborg Handbook)

Military organizations' research has recently focused on the utilization of cyborg animals for inter-species relationships for the purposes of a supposed a tactical advantage.

PROXY SERVERS

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it would 'cache' the first request to the remote server, so it could save the information for later, and make everything as fast as possible.

A proxy server that passes all requests and replies unmodified is usually called a gateway or sometimes tunneling proxy.

A proxy server can be placed in the user's local computer or at specific key points between the user and the destination servers or the Internet.

TYPES OF PROXY SERVERS :

Caching proxy server

A proxy server can service requests without contacting the specified server, by retrieving content saved from a previous request, made by the same client or even other clients. This is called caching. Caching proxies keep local copies of frequently requested resources, allowing large organizations and Internet Service Providers to significantly reduce their upstream bandwidth usage and cost, while significantly increasing performance.


Web proxy

Proxies that focus on WWW traffic are called web proxies. Many web proxies attempt to block offensive web content. Another purpose is to serve as a web cache. Some web proxies reformat web pages for a specific purpose or audience (e.g., cell phones and PDAs)

Anonymizing proxy server

Anonymous proxy servers generally attempt to anonymize web surfing.

Hostile proxy

Proxies can also be installed by online criminals, in order to eavesdrop upon the dataflow between the client machine and the web. All accessed pages, as well as all forms submitted, can be captured and analyzed by the proxy operator. For this reason, passwords to online services (such as webmail and banking) should be changed if an unauthorized proxy is detected.

Intercepting proxy server

An intercepting proxy (often incorrectly called "transparent proxy") combines a proxy server with a Gateway. Connections made by client browsers through the gateway are redirected through the proxy without client-side configuration (or often knowledge).

Intercepting proxies are commonly used in businesses to prevent avoidance of acceptable use policy, and to ease administrative burden, since no client browser configuration is required.

It is often possible to detect the use of an intercepting proxy server by comparing the external IP address to the address seen by an external web server, or by examining the HTTP headers on the server side.

Transparent and non-transparent proxy server

The term "transparent proxy" is most often used incorrectly to mean "intercepting proxy" (because the client does not need to configure a proxy and cannot directly detect that its requests are being proxied).
Because proxies might be used for abuse, system administrators have developed a number of ways to refuse service to open proxies. IRC networks such as the Blitzed network automatically test client systems for known types of open proxy. Likewise, an email server may be configured to automatically test e-mail senders for open proxies.

Groups of IRC and electronic mail operators run DNSBLs publishing lists of the IP addresses of known open proxies, such as AHBL, CBL, NJABL, and SORBS.


Split proxy server

A split proxy is a proxy implemented as two programs installed on two different computers. Since they are effectively two parts of the same program, they can communicate with each other in a more efficient way than they can communicate with a more standard resource or tool such as a website or browser. This is ideal for compressing data over a slow link, such as a wireless or mobile data service, as well as for reducing the issues regarding high latency links (such as satellite internet) where establishing a TCP connection is time consuming.

Taking the example of web browsing, the user's browser is pointed to a local proxy which then communicates with its other half at some remote location. This remote server fetches the requisite data, repackages it, and sends it back to the user's local proxy, which then unpacks the data and presents it to the browser in the standard fashion.

Reverse proxy server

A reverse proxy is a proxy server that is installed in the neighborhood of one or more web servers. All traffic coming from the Internet and with a destination of one of the web servers goes through the proxy server. There are several reasons for installing reverse proxy servers:


* Security: the proxy server is an additional layer of defense and therefore protects the web servers further up the chain.
* Encryption / SSL acceleration: when secure web sites are created, the SSL encryption is often not done by the web server itself, but by a reverse proxy that is equipped with SSL acceleration hardware. See Secure Sockets Layer.
* Load balancing: the reverse proxy can distribute the load to several web servers, each web server serving its own application area. In such a case, the reverse proxy may need to rewrite the URLs in each web page (translation from externally known URLs to the internal locations).
* Serve/cache static content: A reverse proxy can offload the web servers by caching static content like pictures and other static graphical content.
* Compression: the proxy server can optimize and compress the content to speed up the load time.
* Spoon feeding: reduces resource usage caused by slow clients on the web servers by caching the content the web server sent and slowly "spoon feeds" it to the client. This especially benefits dynamically generated pages.
* Extranet Publishing: a reverse proxy server facing the Internet can be used to communicate to a firewalled server internal to an organisation, providing extranet access to some functions while keeping the servers behind the firewalls.


Circumventor

A circumventor is a method of defeating blocking policies implemented using proxy servers. Ironically, most circumventors are also proxy servers, of varying degrees of sophistication, which effectively implement "bypass policies".

A circumventor is a web-based page that takes a site that is blocked and "circumvents" it through to an unblocked web site, allowing the user to view blocked pages. A famous example is 'elgooG', which allowed users in China to use Google after it had been blocked there. elgooG differs from most circumventors in that it circumvents only one block.

Students are able to access blocked sites (games, chatrooms, messenger, offensive material, internet pornography, etc.) through a circumventor. As fast as the filtering software blocks circumventors, others spring up. It should be noted, however, that in some cases the filter may still intercept traffic to the circumventor, thus the person who manages the filter can still see the sites that are being visited.

Circumventors are also used by people who have been blocked from a web site.

Another use of a circumventor is to allow access to country-specific services, so that Internet users from other countries may also make use of them. An example is country-restricted reproduction of media and webcasting.

The use of circumventors is usually safe with the exception that circumventor sites run by an untrusted third party can be run with hidden intentions, such as collecting personal information, and as a result users are typically advised against running personal data such as credit card numbers or passwords through a circumventor.

Risks of using anonymous proxy servers

In using a proxy server (for example, anonymizing HTTP proxy), all data sent to the service being used (for example, HTTP server in a website) must pass through the proxy server before being sent to the service, mostly in unencrypted form. It is therefore possible, and has been demonstrated, for a malicious proxy server to record everything sent to the proxy: including unencrypted logins and passwords.

By chaining proxies which do not reveal data about the original requester, it is possible to obfuscate activities from the eyes of the user's destination. However, more traces will be left on the intermediate hops, which could be used or offered up to trace the user's activities. If the policies and administrators of these other proxies are unknown, the user may fall victim to a false sense of security just because those details are out of sight and mind.

The bottom line of this is to be wary when using proxy servers, and only use proxy servers of known integrity (e.g., the owner is known and trusted, has a clear privacy policy, etc.), and never use proxy servers of unknown integrity. If there is no choice but to use unknown proxy servers, do not pass any private information (unless it is properly encrypted) through the proxy.

In what is more of an inconvenience than a risk, proxy users may find themselves being blocked from certain Web sites, as numerous forums and Web sites block IP addresses from proxies known to have spammed or trolled the site.

MEGASTRUCTURE : WORLD'S TALLEST BRIDGE

The world's tallest suspension bridge, Millau Viaduct (French: le Viaduc de Millau) is a large cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France. Designed by French bridge engineer Michel Virlogeux and Foster and Partners, it is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one mast's summit at 343 metres (1,125 ft) — slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower and only 38 m (125 ft) shorter than the Empire State Building. The viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute axis from Paris to Béziers. It was formally dedicated on 14 December 2004 and opened to traffic two days later.

Millau Viaduct is located in Millau, France, in the Département of Aveyron. Before the bridge was constructed, traffic had to descend into the Tarn River valley and pass along the route nationale N9 near the town of Millau, causing heavy congestion at the beginning and end of the July and August vacation season. The bridge now traverses the Tarn valley above its lowest point, linking the Causse du Larzac to the Causse Rouge, and is inside the perimeter of the Grands Causses regional natural park.

The bridge forms the last link of the A75 autoroute, (la Méridienne) from Clermont-Ferrand to Pézenas (to be extended to Béziers by 2010). The A75, with the A10 and A71, provides a continuous high-speed route south from Paris through Clermont-Ferrand to the Languedoc region and through to Spain, considerably reducing the cost of vehicle traffic travelling along this route. Many tourists heading to southern France and Spain follow this route because it is direct and without tolls for the 340 km between Clermont-Ferrand and Pézenas, except for the bridge itself.

Design and construction of the bridge took a long time. In this region, climatic conditions are tough, with violent winds. Geological characteristics of the high plateaus of Larzac are peculiar, and, because the Tarn Valley is so deep, crossing is difficult. Different approaches were investigated, and all of them were found to be very technically demanding. Ten years of research and four years of implementation were required for completion of the Millau Viaduct.

NB : The construction of the bridge was depicted in an episode of the National Geographic Channel "MegaStructures" series .