Tuesday, August 24, 2010

virus on ur mobile??

If you have Virus On mobile
1 - remove memory card.
2 - dial *#7370* or *#7073*
3 - It format your Phone
4 - Format memory card.
and use your virus free mobile...

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

How to Find Out Someone's Email Address

How to find out someone's email address is a common question. Whether you have lost the email information or are trying to find an old family member or friend. Unfortunately most people don't use their real names in their email addresses, so you have to do some digging.

The first method is old emails, yes it sounds obvious but some people skip the fact that you could have someone's email in the archives. Check you're sent messages and old inbox messages and they might be in there.

Another method is social bookmarking sites; many people are on social bookmarking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. When you are searching these sites they can come back with thousands of results for names. The more common the name the harder it will be to track them down. Many older people are getting more and more into social bookmarking sites, but it's still not the majority of them. So it will be harder to find someone older on a social bookmarking site.

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Alta Vista and more are great ways to find out someone's email address. This is a good option for finding emails, but a good tip is to be as specific as you can be. The more details you can put in about the person you are trying to find the better. If you know the full name, last known city they lived in or even schools they went to, that's a good place to start.

Email service is probably the easiest most accurate way to find someone. These services have multiple sources or references they pull from. They usually pull from all the social bookmarking sites, different directories and many more services. Looking up someone's email through this software is pretty advanced, some of them will even show you the person's parents or where they live.

So there are a ton of resources to pull from, you can go the free way which might take a lot more time, but still free.

Or there are the paid email services to find someone that are still pretty cheap and they give you good accurate results.

Whatever method you prefer there are a lot more ways to be your own private investigator and find out someone's email address.

Virus attacks your computer?

Does your computer lag or does it seem to have any unusual behavior, if it does chances are your computer is infected with a virus. To help you with solutions to computer viruses I have answered some questions people ask me about getting rid of viruses.
1.) Whats is a computer virus?
Computer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation. A virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your e-mail program to spread itself to other computers, or even erase everything on your hard disk. Viruses are most easily spread by attachments in e-mail messages or instant messaging messages. Viruses can be disguised as attachments of funny images, greeting cards, or audio and video files, this is why most viruses come from downloading movies, music, illegal programs and most of all from pornographic material.
2.)What are other names for a virus?
You may have heard of malware, spy ware, Trojans, trackers, hijackers, ad ware, etc... these are just subsections of viruses.
3.)Symptoms of a virus?
After you open and run an infected program or attachment on your computer, you might not realize that you have introduced a virus until you notice something is not quite right.
Here are a few primary indicators that your computer might be infected:
Your computer runs more slowly than normal,
Your computer stops responding or locks up often,
Your computer crashes and restarts every few minutes,
Your computer restarts on its own and then fails to run normally,
Applications on your computer do not work correctly,
Disks or disk drives are inaccessible,
You can not print correctly,
You see unusual error messages,
You see distorted menus and dialog boxes
You are BOMBARDED with pop ups,
4.)What are some solutions to computer viruses?
The perfect solutions to computer viruses are purchasing a quality virus program, and staying off unwanted sites. Then your computer and your privacy is secured.
5.) What is the best virus protection for me?
Even if you do not have a virus, or already have one, purchasing a quality virus program is the best solution to computer viruses. I have mentioned the best solutions/products for your computer virus problems below.
6.)How easy is it to use the software?
You can have the software downloaded and running within ten minutes. It's that easy! You can even set it to run regularly - you do not even have to know it's there. It will just run regularly to clear out new viruses that might have somehow crept in.
7.) Why should I pick any of these virus protection programs?
Well that is a good question. What is special about these programs is that they attack viruses before the virus attacks your computer. Compared to Norton Anti virus, which lets the virus attacks the computer and then kill the virus and go after its sources. The negative about this is, if u let the virus install it self, its almost impossible to kill its roots. Also the programs I have listed below have real time protection. Real time protection is denying the virus from entering your computer, therefore you can surf any website you want.
8.) Okay, but still, why should I pick these programs? (convince me more)
Alright, well Big brand name programs such as Norton or Mcafee, come out with new editions each year, which means that you need to buy the latest version in order to keep up with the virus world. In comparison the programs i mention, you do not need to but the new version every year, the programs virus definitions are auto updated. Also these programs are a lot more affordable than brand name programs. THE PROGRAMS GET THE JOB DONE!!
My computer had been attacked in the past, it deleted all my work from my computer, i could have lost my job!, So i took the extra step and purchased all of theses programs. If you are confused or not sure with program suits you best, all these programs offer free trials. Hope you found questionnaire about solutions to computer viruses helpful, you can learn more at:

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

What Can Hackers Do?

A few years back I'm sure we all remember hearing or reading about what websites were defaced that given week. This in itself can be embarrassing for the website owner and was very prevalent. It's not that this sort of thing does not happen anymore but it is eclipsed but the more serious things that take place. Banks being defrauded by unscrupulous employees, Online Stores having their patrons credit card information ripped off, and a host of other more serious actions.

The reality is that as network systems become more complex and widespread, the opportunities for those who wish to compromise or HACK computers become much greater. Take a look at this Threat and Trend graphic. It will layout just a few entry points and opportunities for hackers!

As a home or small business computer user there are many ways you could be at risk. Many people store their financial information on their computers using a simple spreadsheet or document, or maybe something like Quicken / QuickBooks accounting. Many people store all their logins and passwords in plain text documents on their computers. How many people store information regarding their medical conditions on their computers. Computers are there to make our lives more simple and provide us with a means to store all of our most important information. What if this information were in the hands of someone else? What could happen;

* Is it possible for someone to assume my identity if they access the above information;
* Can someone find out what all of my logins and passwords are;
* As a business owner do I need to be concerned about corporate fraud;
* Is it possible for a hacker to steal my companies intellectual property;
* Can an unauthorized person access my company's sales information including clients and prospects;
* And, as a home user, or small business owner, could I be held liable for something someone else does with my computer?

The answer to all the above is, yes! If your computers are not properly configured, kept up-to-date with patches, or secured against the most common types of attacks you are at risk!

Take a look at the following Threat Spectrum to get an idea of the potential risks!
There are new vulnerabilities for computers found almost everyday. If you are not diligent in keeping your computers up to date and secured you can expect (it's just a matter of time), that in one way or another your system will be compromised.

Over the years, we have seen just about everything under the sun when performing small, medium, or large computer security assessments;

* Home computers being used to relay information and stolen software;
* Business computers being used to store stolen software as well as distributing it;
* Employees using their work computers to run businesses such as pornography sites;
* Ex-employees still accessing their work computers because of the lack of security;
* People trying to extort or intimidate others using information they gathered from unsecured computers;
* The potential for civil and criminal legal action against users for participating in malicious tasks;

and that's just to name a few of the things we have seen!

Don't underestimate what can happen to you. Human beings are very risk adverse however we are also very bad at determining the real risks. Many people are afraid to fly in planes but have no qualms about climbing up a 10 foot later to change old ceiling fan without cutting the electricity first. You have more of a chance climbing that ladder, getting shocked, falling and breaking your neck than going down on a plane. This seems to apply to many methods of analyzing risks.

Think about this. In testing where we placed out-of-the-box computers on the Internet it takes approximately 15 to 30 minutes before it's hacked or compromised in some way or another.

Are My Computers Safe From Hackers?

The meaning of the term "HACKER" has really changed over the years. Early on anyone who was considered a "HACKER" was someone who new the intricate workings of computers and various technology. Someone who was considered to be a guru at what they did whether it be a programmer who wrote software or someone who knew everything there was to know about a particular Operating System. These day's the moment someone hears the word "HACKER" it conjures up many thoughts and images. Some people imagine a teenager sitting home writing programs to break into business computers or their school. Others may imagine someone who attempts to access online computer systems such as Banks or Stores to commit fraud and make off with millions of dollars. The fact is, all the above are pretty much true images of a HACKER. It just depends on who it applies to!

Is A Hacker Is Using Your Computer

A good friend of mine called me one day and told me his computer was running particularly slow and the odd thing was it was worse in the evening. I took a look at his computer and found that someone had got into it and was storing large (I mean Large) amounts of Pornography, Stolen Software, Music and Videos, on it. Most "Hackers" are not looking to do something to your computer that you will immediately be aware of. They are looking for what is called "staging areas" where they can store things for distribution or later use. Can you imagine how my friend felt once I showed him what was on his computer! This happens all the time. There are organizations out there who are paid by the Entertainment Industry, the Government, and other institutions who are looking for this type of issue. If they locate these things on your computer, trying to prove that you had nothing to do with it could be a pretty difficult thing to do.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Want to be a Hacker

What Is a Hacker?

The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term ‘hacker’, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.

The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term ‘hacker’.

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers.
The Hacker Attitude

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
4. Freedom is good.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.

Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. To be accepted as a hacker, you have to behave as though you have this kind of attitude yourself. And to behave as though you have the attitude, you have to really believe the attitude.

But if you think of cultivating hacker attitudes as just a way to gain acceptance in the culture, you'll miss the point. Becoming the kind of person who believes these things is important for you — for helping you learn and keeping you motivated. As with all creative arts, the most effective way to become a master is to imitate the mind-set of masters — not just intellectually but emotionally as well.

Or, as the following modern Zen poem has it:


To follow the path:
look to the master,
follow the master,
walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master.

So, if you want to be a hacker, repeat the following things until you believe them:
1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.

Being a hacker is lots of fun, but it's a kind of fun that takes lots of effort. The effort takes motivation. Successful athletes get their motivation from a kind of physical delight in making their bodies perform, in pushing themselves past their own physical limits. Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic thrill from solving problems, sharpening your skills, and exercising your intelligence.

If you aren't the kind of person that feels this way naturally, you'll need to become one in order to make it as a hacker. Otherwise you'll find your hacking energy is sapped by distractions like sex, money, and social approval.

(You also have to develop a kind of faith in your own learning capacity — a belief that even though you may not know all of what you need to solve a problem, if you tackle just a piece of it and learn from that, you'll learn enough to solve the next piece — and so on, until you're done.)
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.

Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating new problems waiting out there.

To behave like a hacker, you have to believe that the thinking time of other hackers is precious — so much so that it's almost a moral duty for you to share information, solve problems and then give the solutions away just so other hackers can solve new problems instead of having to perpetually re-address old ones.

Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide that we can do better. What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels.

(You don't have to believe that you're obligated to give all your creative product away, though the hackers that do are the ones that get most respect from other hackers. It's consistent with hacker values to sell enough of it to keep you in food and rent and computers. It's fine to use your hacking skills to support a family or even get rich, as long as you don't forget your loyalty to your art and your fellow hackers while doing it.)
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.

Hackers (and creative people in general) should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work, because when this happens it means they aren't doing what only they can do — solve new problems. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil.

To behave like a hacker, you have to believe this enough to want to automate away the boring bits as much as possible, not just for yourself but for everybody else (especially other hackers).

(There is one apparent exception to this. Hackers will sometimes do things that may seem repetitive or boring to an observer as a mind-clearing exercise, or in order to acquire a skill or have some particular kind of experience you can't have otherwise. But this is by choice — nobody who can think should ever be forced into a situation that bores them.)
4. Freedom is good.

Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can stop you from solving whatever problem you're being fascinated by — and, given the way authoritarian minds work, will generally find some appallingly stupid reason to do so. So the authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest it smother you and other hackers.

(This isn't the same as fighting all authority. Children need to be guided and criminals restrained. A hacker may agree to accept some kinds of authority in order to get something he wants more than the time he spends following orders. But that's a limited, conscious bargain; the kind of personal surrender authoritarians want is not on offer.)

Authoritarians thrive on censorship and secrecy. And they distrust voluntary cooperation and information-sharing — they only like ‘cooperation’ that they control. So to behave like a hacker, you have to develop an instinctive hostility to censorship, secrecy, and the use of force or deception to compel responsible adults. And you have to be willing to act on that belief.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.

To be a hacker, you have to develop some of these attitudes. But copping an attitude alone won't make you a hacker, any more than it will make you a champion athlete or a rock star. Becoming a hacker will take intelligence, practice, dedication, and hard work.

Therefore, you have to learn to distrust attitude and respect competence of every kind. Hackers won't let posers waste their time, but they worship competence — especially competence at hacking, but competence at anything is valued. Competence at demanding skills that few can master is especially good, and competence at demanding skills that involve mental acuteness, craft, and concentration is best.

If you revere competence, you'll enjoy developing it in yourself — the hard work and dedication will become a kind of intense play rather than drudgery. That attitude is vital to becoming a hacker.
Basic Hacking Skills

1. Learn how to program.
2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.
3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.

The hacker attitude is vital, but skills are even more vital. Attitude is no substitute for competence, and there's a certain basic toolkit of skills which you have to have before any hacker will dream of calling you one.

This toolkit changes slowly over time as technology creates new skills and makes old ones obsolete. For example, it used to include programming in machine language, and didn't until recently involve HTML. But right now it pretty clearly includes the following:
1. Learn how to program.

This, of course, is the fundamental hacking skill. If you don't know any computer languages, I recommend starting with Python. It is cleanly designed, well documented, and relatively kind to beginners. Despite being a good first language, it is not just a toy; it is very powerful and flexible and well suited for large projects. I have written a more detailed evaluation of Python. Good tutorials are available at the Python web site.

I used to recommend Java as a good language to learn early, but this critique has changed my mind (search for “The Pitfalls of Java as a First Programming Language” within it). A hacker cannot, as they devastatingly put it “approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store”; you have to know what the components actually do. Now I think it is probably best to learn C and Lisp first, then Java.

There is perhaps a more general point here. If a language does too much for you, it may be simultaneously a good tool for production and a bad one for learning. It's not only languages that have this problem; web application frameworks like RubyOnRails, CakePHP, Django may make it too easy to reach a superficial sort of understanding that will leave you without resources when you have to tackle a hard problem, or even just debug the solution to an easy one.

If you get into serious programming, you will have to learn C, the core language of Unix. C++ is very closely related to C; if you know one, learning the other will not be difficult. Neither language is a good one to try learning as your first, however. And, actually, the more you can avoid programming in C the more productive you will be.

C is very efficient, and very sparing of your machine's resources. Unfortunately, C gets that efficiency by requiring you to do a lot of low-level management of resources (like memory) by hand. All that low-level code is complex and bug-prone, and will soak up huge amounts of your time on debugging. With today's machines as powerful as they are, this is usually a bad tradeoff — it's smarter to use a language that uses the machine's time less efficiently, but your time much more efficiently. Thus, Python.

Other languages of particular importance to hackers include Perl and LISP. Perl is worth learning for practical reasons; it's very widely used for active web pages and system administration, so that even if you never write Perl you should learn to read it. Many people use Perl in the way I suggest you should use Python, to avoid C programming on jobs that don't require C's machine efficiency. You will need to be able to understand their code.

LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot. (You can get some beginning experience with LISP fairly easily by writing and modifying editing modes for the Emacs text editor, or Script-Fu plugins for the GIMP.)

It's best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/C++, Java, Perl, and LISP. Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each will educate you in valuable ways.

But be aware that you won't reach the skill level of a hacker or even merely a programmer simply by accumulating languages — you need to learn how to think about programming problems in a general way, independent of any one language. To be a real hacker, you need to get to the point where you can learn a new language in days by relating what's in the manual to what you already know. This means you should learn several very different languages.

I can't give complete instructions on how to learn to program here — it's a complex skill. But I can tell you that books and courses won't do it — many, maybe most of the best hackers are self-taught. You can learn language features — bits of knowledge — from books, but the mind-set that makes that knowledge into living skill can be learned only by practice and apprenticeship. What will do it is (a) reading code and (b) writing code.

Peter Norvig, who is one of Google's top hackers and the co-author of the most widely used textbook on AI, has written an excellent essay called Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years. His "recipe for programming success" is worth careful attention.

Learning to program is like learning to write good natural language. The best way to do it is to read some stuff written by masters of the form, write some things yourself, read a lot more, write a little more, read a lot more, write some more ... and repeat until your writing begins to develop the kind of strength and economy you see in your models.

Finding good code to read used to be hard, because there were few large programs available in source for fledgeling hackers to read and tinker with. This has changed dramatically; open-source software, programming tools, and operating systems (all built by hackers) are now widely available. Which brings me neatly to our next topic...
2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.

I'll assume you have a personal computer or can get access to one. (Take a moment to appreciate how much that means. The hacker culture originally evolved back when computers were so expensive that individuals could not own them.) The single most important step any newbie can take toward acquiring hacker skills is to get a copy of Linux or one of the BSD-Unixes or OpenSolaris, install it on a personal machine, and run it.

Yes, there are other operating systems in the world besides Unix. But they're distributed in binary — you can't read the code, and you can't modify it. Trying to learn to hack on a Microsoft Windows machine or under any other closed-source system is like trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast.

Under Mac OS X it's possible, but only part of the system is open source — you're likely to hit a lot of walls, and you have to be careful not to develop the bad habit of depending on Apple's proprietary code. If you concentrate on the Unix under the hood you can learn some useful things.

Unix is the operating system of the Internet. While you can learn to use the Internet without knowing Unix, you can't be an Internet hacker without understanding Unix. For this reason, the hacker culture today is pretty strongly Unix-centered. (This wasn't always true, and some old-time hackers still aren't happy about it, but the symbiosis between Unix and the Internet has become strong enough that even Microsoft's muscle doesn't seem able to seriously dent it.)

So, bring up a Unix — I like Linux myself but there are other ways (and yes, you can run both Linux and Microsoft Windows on the same machine). Learn it. Run it. Tinker with it. Talk to the Internet with it. Read the code. Modify the code. You'll get better programming tools (including C, LISP, Python, and Perl) than any Microsoft operating system can dream of hosting, you'll have fun, and you'll soak up more knowledge than you realize you're learning until you look back on it as a master hacker.

For more about learning Unix, see The Loginataka. You might also want to have a look at The Art Of Unix Programming.

To get your hands on a Linux, see the Linux Online! site; you can download from there or (better idea) find a local Linux user group to help you with installation.

During the first ten years of this HOWTO's life, I reported that from a new user's point of view, all Linux distributions are almost equivalent. But in 2006-2007, an actual best choice emerged: Ubuntu. While other distros have their own areas of strength, Ubuntu is far and away the most accessible to Linux newbies.

You can find BSD Unix help and resources at www.bsd.org.

A good way to dip your toes in the water is to boot up what Linux fans call a live CD, a distribution that runs entirely off a CD without having to modify your hard disk. This will be slow, because CDs are slow, but it's a way to get a look at the possibilities without having to do anything drastic.

I have written a primer on the basics of Unix and the Internet.

I used to recommend against installing either Linux or BSD as a solo project if you're a newbie. Nowadays the installers have gotten good enough that doing it entirely on your own is possible, even for a newbie. Nevertheless, I still recommend making contact with your local Linux user's group and asking for help. It can't hurt, and may smooth the process.
3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.

Most of the things the hacker culture has built do their work out of sight, helping run factories and offices and universities without any obvious impact on how non-hackers live. The Web is the one big exception, the huge shiny hacker toy that even politicians admit has changed the world. For this reason alone (and a lot of other good ones as well) you need to learn how to work the Web.

This doesn't just mean learning how to drive a browser (anyone can do that), but learning how to write HTML, the Web's markup language. If you don't know how to program, writing HTML will teach you some mental habits that will help you learn. So build a home page. Try to stick to XHTML, which is a cleaner language than classic HTML. (There are good beginner tutorials on the Web; here's one.)

But just having a home page isn't anywhere near good enough to make you a hacker. The Web is full of home pages. Most of them are pointless, zero-content sludge — very snazzy-looking sludge, mind you, but sludge all the same (for more on this see The HTML Hell Page).

To be worthwhile, your page must have content — it must be interesting and/or useful to other hackers. And that brings us to the next topic...
4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.

As an American and native English-speaker myself, I have previously been reluctant to suggest this, lest it be taken as a sort of cultural imperialism. But several native speakers of other languages have urged me to point out that English is the working language of the hacker culture and the Internet, and that you will need to know it to function in the hacker community.

Back around 1991 I learned that many hackers who have English as a second language use it in technical discussions even when they share a birth tongue; it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job. For similar reasons, translations of technical books written in English are often unsatisfactory (when they get done at all).

Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of developers for Linux. It's an example worth following.

Being a native English-speaker does not guarantee that you have language skills good enough to function as a hacker. If your writing is semi-literate, ungrammatical, and riddled with misspellings, many hackers (including myself) will tend to ignore you. While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong — and we have no use for sloppy thinkers. If you can't yet write competently, learn to.
Status in the Hacker Culture

1. Write open-source software
2. Help test and debug open-source software
3. Publish useful information
4. Help keep the infrastructure working
5. Serve the hacker culture itself

Like most cultures without a money economy, hackerdom runs on reputation. You're trying to solve interesting problems, but how interesting they are, and whether your solutions are really good, is something that only your technical peers or superiors are normally equipped to judge.

Accordingly, when you play the hacker game, you learn to keep score primarily by what other hackers think of your skill (this is why you aren't really a hacker until other hackers consistently call you one). This fact is obscured by the image of hacking as solitary work; also by a hacker-cultural taboo (gradually decaying since the late 1990s but still potent) against admitting that ego or external validation are involved in one's motivation at all.

Specifically, hackerdom is what anthropologists call a gift culture. You gain status and reputation in it not by dominating other people, nor by being beautiful, nor by having things other people want, but rather by giving things away. Specifically, by giving away your time, your creativity, and the results of your skill.

There are basically five kinds of things you can do to be respected by hackers:
1. Write open-source software

The first (the most central and most traditional) is to write programs that other hackers think are fun or useful, and give the program sources away to the whole hacker culture to use.

(We used to call these works “free software”, but this confused too many people who weren't sure exactly what “free” was supposed to mean. Most of us now prefer the term “open-source” software).

Hackerdom's most revered demigods are people who have written large, capable programs that met a widespread need and given them away, so that now everyone uses them.

But there's a bit of a fine historical point here. While hackers have always looked up to the open-source developers among them as our community's hardest core, before the mid-1990s most hackers most of the time worked on closed source. This was still true when I wrote the first version of this HOWTO in 1996; it took the mainstreaming of open-source software after 1997 to change things. Today, "the hacker community" and "open-source developers" are two descriptions for what is essentially the same culture and population — but it is worth remembering that this was not always so. (For more on this, see the section called “Historical Note: Hacking, Open Source, and Free Software”.)
2. Help test and debug open-source software

They also serve who stand and debug open-source software. In this imperfect world, we will inevitably spend most of our software development time in the debugging phase. That's why any open-source author who's thinking will tell you that good beta-testers (who know how to describe symptoms clearly, localize problems well, can tolerate bugs in a quickie release, and are willing to apply a few simple diagnostic routines) are worth their weight in rubies. Even one of these can make the difference between a debugging phase that's a protracted, exhausting nightmare and one that's merely a salutary nuisance.

If you're a newbie, try to find a program under development that you're interested in and be a good beta-tester. There's a natural progression from helping test programs to helping debug them to helping modify them. You'll learn a lot this way, and generate good karma with people who will help you later on.
3. Publish useful information

Another good thing is to collect and filter useful and interesting information into web pages or documents like Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) lists, and make those generally available.

Maintainers of major technical FAQs get almost as much respect as open-source authors.
4. Help keep the infrastructure working

The hacker culture (and the engineering development of the Internet, for that matter) is run by volunteers. There's a lot of necessary but unglamorous work that needs done to keep it going — administering mailing lists, moderating newsgroups, maintaining large software archive sites, developing RFCs and other technical standards.

People who do this sort of thing well get a lot of respect, because everybody knows these jobs are huge time sinks and not as much fun as playing with code. Doing them shows dedication.
5. Serve the hacker culture itself

Finally, you can serve and propagate the culture itself (by, for example, writing an accurate primer on how to become a hacker :-)). This is not something you'll be positioned to do until you've been around for while and become well-known for one of the first four things.

The hacker culture doesn't have leaders, exactly, but it does have culture heroes and tribal elders and historians and spokespeople. When you've been in the trenches long enough, you may grow into one of these. Beware: hackers distrust blatant ego in their tribal elders, so visibly reaching for this kind of fame is dangerous. Rather than striving for it, you have to sort of position yourself so it drops in your lap, and then be modest and gracious about your status.
The Hacker/Nerd Connection

Contrary to popular myth, you don't have to be a nerd to be a hacker. It does help, however, and many hackers are in fact nerds. Being something of a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important things, like thinking and hacking.

For this reason, many hackers have adopted the label ‘geek’ as a badge of pride — it's a way of declaring their independence from normal social expectations (as well as a fondness for other things like science fiction and strategy games that often go with being a hacker). The term 'nerd' used to be used this way back in the 1990s, back when 'nerd' was a mild pejorative and 'geek' a rather harsher one; sometime after 2000 they switched places, at least in U.S. popular culture, and there is now even a significant geek-pride culture among people who aren't techies.

If you can manage to concentrate enough on hacking to be good at it and still have a life, that's fine. This is a lot easier today than it was when I was a newbie in the 1970s; mainstream culture is much friendlier to techno-nerds now. There are even growing numbers of people who realize that hackers are often high-quality lover and spouse material.

If you're attracted to hacking because you don't have a life, that's OK too — at least you won't have trouble concentrating. Maybe you'll get a life later on.
Points For Style

Again, to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help. They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of hacking.

*

Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of hackers (including all the most accomplished ones I know of) are very able writers.
*

Read science fiction. Go to science fiction conventions (a good way to meet hackers and proto-hackers).
*

Train in a martial-arts form. The kind of mental discipline required for martial arts seems to be similar in important ways to what hackers do. The most popular forms among hackers are definitely Asian empty-hand arts such as Tae Kwon Do, various forms of Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, or Ju Jitsu. Western fencing and Asian sword arts also have visible followings. In places where it's legal, pistol shooting has been rising in popularity since the late 1990s. The most hackerly martial arts are those which emphasize mental discipline, relaxed awareness, and control, rather than raw strength, athleticism, or physical toughness.
*

Study an actual meditation discipline. The perennial favorite among hackers is Zen (importantly, it is possible to benefit from Zen without acquiring a religion or discarding one you already have). Other styles may work as well, but be careful to choose one that doesn't require you to believe crazy things.
*

Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar kinds of music. Learn to play some musical instrument well, or how to sing.
*

Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay.

The more of these things you already do, the more likely it is that you are natural hacker material. Why these things in particular is not completely clear, but they're connected with a mix of left- and right-brain skills that seems to be important; hackers need to be able to both reason logically and step outside the apparent logic of a problem at a moment's notice.

Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as you work. For true hackers, the boundaries between "play", "work", "science" and "art" all tend to disappear, or to merge into a high-level creative playfulness. Also, don't be content with a narrow range of skills. Though most hackers self-describe as programmers, they are very likely to be more than competent in several related skills — system administration, web design, and PC hardware troubleshooting are common ones. A hacker who's a system administrator, on the other hand, is likely to be quite skilled at script programming and web design. Hackers don't do things by halves; if they invest in a skill at all, they tend to get very good at it.

Finally, a few things not to do.

*

Don't use a silly, grandiose user ID or screen name.
*

Don't get in flame wars on Usenet (or anywhere else).
*

Don't call yourself a ‘cyberpunk’, and don't waste your time on anybody who does.
*

Don't post or email writing that's full of spelling errors and bad grammar.

The only reputation you'll make doing any of these things is as a twit. Hackers have long memories — it could take you years to live your early blunders down enough to be accepted.

The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification. Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser.
Historical Note: Hacking, Open Source, and Free Software

When I originally wrote this how-to in late 1996, some of the conditions around it were very different from the way they look today. A few words about these changes may help clarify matters for people who are confused about the relationship of open source., free software, and Linux to the hacker community. If you are not curious about this, you can skip straight to the FAQ and bibliography from here.

The hacker ethos and community as I have described it here long predates the emergence of Linux after 1990; I first became involved with it around 1976, and, its roots are readily traceable back to the early 1960s. But before Linux, most hacking was done on either proprietary operating systems or a handful of quasi-experimental homegrown systems like MIT's ITS that were never deployed outside of their original academic niches. While there had been some earlier (pre-Linux) attempts to change this situation, their impact was at best very marginal and confined to communities of dedicated true believers which were tiny minorities even within the hacker community, let alone with respect to the larger world of software in general.

What is now called "open source" goes back as far as the hacker community does, but until 1985 it was an unnamed folk practice rather than a conscious movement with theories and manifestos attached to it. This prehistory ended when, in 1985, arch-hacker Richard Stallman ("RMS") tried to give it a name — "free software". But his act of naming was also an act of claiming; he attached ideological baggage to the "free software" label which much of the existing hacker community never accepted. As a result, the "free software" label was loudly rejected by a substantial minority of the hacker community (especially among those associated with BSD Unix), and used with serious but silent reservations by a majority of the remainder (including myself).

Despite these reservations, RMS's claim to define and lead the hacker community under the "free software" banner broadly held until the miid-1990s. It was seriously challenged only by the rise of Linux. Linux gave open-source development a natural home. Many projects issued under terms we would now call open-source migrated from proprietary Unixes to Linux. The community around Linux grew explosively, becoming far larger and more heterogenous than the pre-Linux hacker culture. RMS determinedly attempted to co-opt all this activity into his "free software" movement, but was thwarted by both the exploding diversity of the Linux community and the public skepticism of its founder, Linus Torvalds. Torvalds continued to use the term "free software" for lack of any alternative, but publicly rejected RMS's ideological baggage. Many younger hackers followed suit.

In 1996, when I first published this Hacker HOWTO, the hacker community was rapidly reorganizing around Linux and a handful of other open-source operating systems (notably those descended from BSD Unix). Community memory of the fact that most of us had spent decades developing closed-source software on closed-source operating systems had not yet begun to fade, but that fact was already beginning to seem like part of a dead past; hackers were, increasingly, defining themselves as hackers by their attachments to open-source projects such as Linux or Apache.

The term "open source", however, had not yet emerged; it would not do so until early 1998. When it did, most of hacker community adopted it within the following six months; the exceptions were a minority ideologically attached to the term "free software". Since 1998, and especially after about 2003, the identification of 'hacking' with 'open-source (and free software) development' has become extremely close. Today there is little point in attempting to distinguish between these categories, and it seems unlikely that will change in the future.

It is worth remembering, however, that this was not always so.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Get a job


How are you today? Me? I need a job. Well, I don't need a job. But I would like some extra money to fix up my bicycle, and add to my collection of Star Trek:Voyager action figures. There's this one 12" Captain Janeway action figure (MIB) that I really want. But on eBay, it's like $100. Fudge that! (Pardon my French.) Anyway. I need temporary employment. And Quiznos is out, because I'm still mad about those counter guys hurting my feelings, and knowing me, I'd eat myself out of a job.
So here's my idea: I want to be… a whisperer!
From what I've read, "whispering" is the hottest new employment trend. You've got your "horse whisperers," your "dog whisperers," and even your "ghost whisperers." I mean, what's the big whoop about whispering? I can whisper the crap out of these guys. (Pardon my French.) The question is, what kind of whisperer shall I be? I'm really good at picking songs for other people to sing in karaoke, so maybe I could be a "karaoke whisperer." I'm also marginally talented at suggesting delicious, non-crowded breakfast spots (AKA "breakfast whispering"). I could definitely be a "lamb whisperer." For example, just today Karen (that's my pet lamb) was really acting out. She wanted to go to the park, but I needed to drop some books off at the library. She pitched a huge hissy fit. So I told Karen, "If you'll go to the library with me, I'll buy you a jumbo Slurpee from the 7-11." I didn't whisper it though. That's where I messed up, I think, because Karen ran into my bedroom and defecated on my slippers. (Is "defecation" a French word? Pardon me if it is.)
Or maybe I could be a "co-worker whisperer." You could hire me to come into your office, and tell your co-worker something you're too scared to say. Such as "you're wearing too much perfume." (Except I would whisper it.) Or, "no one really cares about what happened last night on Dancing with the Stars. Could you be quiet, please?" (Except I would whisper it.)
You are welcome to suggest "whispering" jobs for me. Oooh! Maybe I could be a "blog whisperer" and write a bunch of critical suggestions in the blogger's comments section. How much do you think someone would pay me for that?

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Earn Money Fast


Everybody needs a quick infusion of cash from time to time. These ideas bring in money fast, and many can also be done at flexible times, so it's easier to arrange child care with a friend or family member for free.

1. Have a garage sale. By using a few easy tricks, like posting fliers at grocery stores and Laundromats, making signs that can be seen from nearby busy streets and displaying your items in a department-store style, you can increase the amount your sale brings in.

2. Sell on eBay. Books, CDs, unused sports or exercise equipment, clothing, novelty items -- people buy all kinds of things. Even if you're selling several small items, the money can add up. Just make sure the buyer, not you, pays the cost of shipping.

3. Put clothes on consignment. This is an especially good way to get rid of clothing like fancy dresses (think old prom gowns and cocktail dresses you'll never wear again), but anything in good condition can be put on consignment. You share the money from the sale with the consignment shop, but it's an easy way to squeeze some money out of clothes that would otherwise just take up closet space.

4. Perform household services. You can earn some money informally by letting friends, family, church members and others in your community know that you're available to clean their houses or apartments, or to take in ironing. If you find you have a knack and stamina for cleaning quickly and thoroughly, you can turn this into a regular, reliable way to earn extra money every month.

5. Have a bake sale. Do you make killera chocolate chip cookies? chocolate chip cookies? Are yummy breakfast burritos your specialty? If so, why not bring in your items once a week to your job and sell them to coworkers and other businesspeople in the vicinity? If you don't have a job, what about a friend's workplace, a community center or a nursing home? Put the word out beforehand and gauge the response as you go, so you don't end up with a lot of leftover food. By talking up your home-baked goodies and arriving at the same time every day or every week, you may find that people start to anticipate your arrival. You can start a cottage industry along the lines of Mary's Monday Cookie Break when you come around to hawk your wares.

6. Sell homegrown fruits and vegetables. You don't have to have a farm to produce delicious, organic produce. By presenting your goods in an appealing way (save the plastic or cardboard produce containers from the grocery store and tie them with a distinctive ribbon or desktop-printed label), you give them niche appeal, and you can sell them much the same way as baked items, listed above.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

How to fastest Your Computer Without the Hassle

You certainly know it if your computer is not running smoothly. Computer lags and Internet freezes will certainly break your day. So, to save your sanity, here are some tips on how to speed up your computer:

1. Defragment monthly --
Your files are stored in different places in your computer. If you open an application, your computer will search all over your hard drive to locate all the files needed to make that application running. Hard drive defragmentation will erase unused space in your computer to free hard drive room which will help your computer find files easier and faster.

2. Regularly update your antivirus software --
You antivirus application will not be able to identify new malwares if its database is not updated regularly. Aside from that, you must also scan your computer at least once a week.

3. Install a firewall --
A firewall is a software that hinders malicious threats from the Internet to infect your computer. There are a lot of zombie computers on the Web that continuously scan computers to find security holes. If you don't have a firewall, your system is so vulnerable to Internet threats.

4. Uninstall unwanted applications --
A computer can do many tasks but it doesn't mean you should install every program you can think of. Better consider uninstalling the programs you only wanted to try or those that you don't need anymore. Getting rid of the clutter is a great way on how to speed up your computer.

5. Keep your CPU cabinet clean --
Open up the back cover of your CPU. Use an anti-static cloth and compressed air can to clean the dust and dirt from the CPU. Hold the can upright and spray cautiously so you won't mist on the meticulous circuits. Use the anti-static cloth to wipe off the dust.

6. Keep your CPU cool --
Your computer heats up as you use it. That is why it is highly advisable to put your computer in a ventilated room. And if you'll be out for some time, shut down your computer so it can cool down. That's a good way to save on electricity as well.

7. Hardware upgrade --
Check your computer or have a professional diagnose your system. You might already need some hardware upgrade if your computer crashes frequently. There are energy saving processors nowadays so you'll have a faster computer and you'll also save money from electricity. You can also upgrade your memory and graphics card depending on your needs.

These 7 tips on how to speed up your computer will help you become more comfortable with your computer. At least, you'll have lesser ruined days just because of a slow-poke computer by following these tips.

The author is a PC fan and like many people, he was fed up with some of the issues that occur after having his computer for awhile. So he put a site together to document some of the major popular computer problems that happen. It focuses on teaching how to speed up your computer. The author hopes to have helped readers have a better and speedier computer with this simple site.

Need job

Job interviewing never seems to get any easier - even when you have gone on more interviews than you can count. You are meeting new people, selling yourself and your skills, and often getting the third degree about what you know or don't know. Here are job interview tips to help prepare you to interview effectively. Proper preparation which help alleviate some of the stress involved in job interviews.

Job Interview Tips

Practice

Practice answering interview questions and practice your responses to the typical job interview questions and answers most employers ask. Think of actual examples you can use to describe your skills. Providing evidence of your successes is a great way to promote your candidacy.

Prepare

Prepare a response so you are ready for the question "What do you know about our company. Know the interviewer's name and use it during the job interview. If you're not sure of the name, call and ask prior to the interview. Try to relate what you know about the company when answering questions.

Watch

Take a look at my Job Interview Tips Videos, so you'll be sure to dazzle a potential employer and leave the right impression.

Get Ready

Make sure your interview attire is neat, tidy and appropriate for the type of firm you are interviewing with. Bring a nice portfolio with copies of your resume. Include a pen and paper for note taking.

Be On Time

Be on time for the interview. On time means five to ten minutes early. If need be, take some time to drive to the office ahead of time so you know exactly where you are going and how long it will take to get there.

Stay Calm

During the job interview try to relax and stay as calm possible. Take a moment to regroup. Maintain eye contact with the interviewer. Listen to the entire question before you answer and pay attention - you will be embarrassed if you forget the question!

Show What You Know

Try to relate what you know about the company when answering questions. When discussing your career accomplishments match them to what the company is looking for.

Follow Up

Always follow-up with a thank you note reiterating your interest in the position. If you interview with multiple people send each one a thank you note.

More Job Interview Tips
Tips for phone interviews, second interviews, lunch and dinner interviews, behavioral interviews, interviewing in public, and more advice for interview success.

Phone Interview Etiquette
Phone interview etiquette is just as important as in-person job interview etiquette when it comes to getting hired. That's because, regardless of how you interview, a sucessful interview will get you to the next stage of the hiring process.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

facebook Security

1. You Have To Visit Different Links To Hide Your Profile Info From The Public
This is especially important if your kids have their own Facebook accounts.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
On the upper right-hand corner of the screen, click Account > Privacy Settings > Personal Information and Posts. Make sure you adjust your privacy settings beside all 12 categories.
Then click Back To Privacy > Contact Information. Make sure you adjust your privacy settings beside all 9 categories.
Then click Back to Privacy > Friends, Tags & Connections. Make sure you adjust your privacy settings beside all 10 categories.

2. Facebook Uses Your Info in Ads
When your friends view Facebook ads, they may see your name.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF:
On the upper right hand corner of your screen, click Account > Account Settings > Facebook Ads.
Select No one beside Allow ads on platform pages to show my information to & beside Show my social actions in Facebook Ads to.

3. You Have Been Enrolled In The Instant Personalization Pilot Program
Facebook gives websites like Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft Docs access to your profile info.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
On the upper right hand corner of your screen, click Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites.
Click Edit Setting beside Instant Personalization Pilot Program.
Then uncheck the box at the bottom of the screen.
Even if you opt out of the Instant Personalization Pilot Program, websites may still access info about you via your friends, unless you block each individual site’s application.

4. Your Friends May Be Sharing Your Info With Third-Parties
When you Facebook friends use applications you do not use, they may be sharing your info with third parties.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
Click Account > Privacy Settings > Applications & Websites > What your friends can share about you.
Uncheck all 13 boxes.

5. You Can Monitor Which Devices Access Your Facebook Account
This tool, released Friday, helps fight hackers by notifying you of unusual log-ins.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
On the upper right-hand corner of your screen, click Account > Account Settings > Account Security.
Click Yes below Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?
The next time you log in, Facebook will ask you to name the device you are using. Then it will send you an email. This way, if anyone logs in to your account from a device you don’t use, you’ll know about it.

6. Yes, You Can Delete Your Facebook Account – But It’s Not Easy
Facebook makes it easy to deactivate your account, which means you can reactivate it at any time without losing your profile info.
However, deleting your account is much more difficult.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
To deactivate your account: On the upper right-hand corner of your screen, click Account > Account Settings > Deactivate Account.
To delete your account: Use this link to delete your Facebook account: https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
Click Submit.
Enter your password and fill out the text box. Press Okay.
Do not log into Facebook for two weeks, or your account will be reactivated. After two weeks, you won’t be able to log in to Facebook.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Twitter tips and tricks

Webbmedia Group has an excellent Twitter tip sheet that goes over some Twitter basics and outlines some tools to consider.

Twitter is a lot more than just Twitter.com. Through its powerful API, there are a whole host of Twitter clients like Twhirl and Twitterrific (also a mobile client) and add-ons that extend the usefulness of Twitter far beyond 140-character messages.

Many people prefer using these clients to Twitter.com, and they can be a handy way to monitor multiple accounts at once. Clients like Tweetdeck make it easy to stay on top of trends (and it’s a pretty good client for sending out tweets).

There are also several fantastic mobile clients for Twitter as well (I use TwitterFon on my iPhone). I even have an iPhone app dedicated to just monitoring keyword terms like beat blogging and beatblogging (not the same term).

For journalists, the ability to search Twitter is huge. Any journalist on Twitter should bookmark search.twitter.com. You can use this service to grab an RSS feed of terms you want to follow (earlier this week Etan Horowitz talked about the power of this).

Here are some of the key areas Webbmedia’s tip sheet goes over:

* Basics — If you’re new to Twitter, this tip sheet explains some terms and symbols that may perplex you, like # hashtags and why people use @ all the time.
* Utilities — There are many Twitter utilities that extend the capabilities of Twitter, like the ability to post your tweets on a blog or to Facebook.
* Clients — Some people like using Twitter.com, while others swear by one of the many clients available for Twitter. It’s all personal choice. Many of the clients are free too. The only downside is that there is a limit to how often you can get updates on a client.
* Trends and analysis — You’ll be amazed at what kinds of trends you can spot with Twitter, from the most popular words and topics to the most posted URLs.
* Search — There is more than just the official search.twitter.com. Different search engines have different focuses and different strengths.
* People relationship management — One of the best tools when you get started on Twitter is Twubble. It will help you find people to follow. The key to success on Twitter is building a good network.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Top 10 Facebook tips

Below is a listing of our top 10 tips for the popular social networking website Facebook.

Hide users, games, polls, etc.

It quickly gets annoying seeing some users posts, game invites, polls, etc. Hovering your mouse to the right of the post and clicking the Hide button as shown below can hide any post. Once this button is pressed you'll be prompted with the option to hide that user or in the case of a Facebook application the option to hide that application from ever showing up on your profile.

Hide Facebook users, games, polls, etc.

To unhide someone or unblock an application click the Edit Options link in the bottom right corner of the news feed as shown below.

Facebook unhide friends

Greasemonkey and FB Purity:

Although Facebook does not allow the ability to hide friends getting new friends messages, friends becoming fans of something, and some application messages they can still be hidden with browser add-ons. If you're running Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari we suggest installing the Facebook Purity add-on.

Update your privacy settings:

Click Account in the top right corner of the Facebook window and then click Privacy settings to adjust who is capable of seeing what on your Facebook profile. We highly recommend going through all the privacy settings to verify your privacy is properly protected.

Anything that is not set to friends only or friends of friends can be seen by anyone searching on the Internet. Below is a few things we recommend for most users.

1. Under Search in Privacy settings uncheck Public Search Results. This will prevent users from finding your account and profile picture in search results such as Google
2. Under Application settings, make sure you're only allowing applications you want to have access to your information. Applications that you grant rights to can have access to your Facebook profile information.

Use the Facebook top bar for navigation

Facebook navigation

Knowing how to properly navigate is vital if you want to get the most out of Facebook. Below is a brief description of each of the available options in the top bar as shown above.

Home (facebook logo) - Clicking this logo will take you to your wall (News Feed) that shows all friends recent posts.

Friend requests - If any friend requests are waiting to be approved this icon will show a notification of how many friends are waiting for approval. This icon can also be clicked when you want to view any friend recommendations or search for friends on Facebook.

Messages - This section allows you to send and receive private messages between one or more people you're friends with.

Notifications - Any time a friend or Facebook application creates a new post you'll be notified in this section. Clicking this icon will show all recent notifications. If you wish to change what is capable of sending you notifications including any Facebook applications or games click the See All Notifications link at the bottom and check or uncheck what you want to be notified on.

Search - Finally, the search box in Facebook can be a powerful tool that can be used to quickly find any current friends or people on Facebook. In addition searching for terms such as a company name, product, sports team, music band, etc. will find fan pages and groups that can be joined.

Modify your account notifications

Keep your e-mail and/or your cell phone clean by updating or eliminate Facebook notifications or keep more up-to-date by adding new notifications. Facebook notifications can be added and removed by clicking Account link in the top right corner, then Account Settings, and then clicking the Notifications tab.

Top News and Most Recent


Facebook News and most Recent

By default Facebook will display your wall postings in the News format, which means it only displays posts it believes are most relevant to you. These results are based on your past interaction with your friends. If you want to see every post made by all your friends that are not hidden click the Most recent link in the upper right section of your news feed as shown in the above picture example.

If you want to adjust who shows up manually click the Edit Options in the bottom right corner of your news feed.

Facebook unhide friends

View High School work friends


If you've added your High School and/or previous Work locations to your profile, quickly see all classmates and co-workers on Facebook by clicking the link in your Info tab under your profile.

Quickly change profile picture


Your profile picture can be quickly changed to any other picture by visiting your profile, hovering the mouse over your current profile picture, and clicking the Change Picture link that appears in the top right corner of the picture.

Don't post private information on friend's walls on in comments


When you make a post on a friend's wall or in any of their comments realize that any of their friends are going to be able to see that post. If you wish for something to remain only between you and a friend send them a Facebook message instead.

Suggestions and random friend invites

As you get more friends on Facebook it will begin making friend, groups, and fan suggestions. These are suggestions made by Facebook and not your friends. Unless these are something you're interested in they can be ignored.

This same rule can be applied to people who may want to be your friend that you don't know. If you don't know someone don't accept his or her friend invite. Once someone becomes your friend they'll have access to any information your friends are capable of seeing.

Tag your Facebook friends in your photos

Always make sure to tag any of your Facebook friends that are in pictures you upload. However, never tag someone who is not in the picture. When someone is tagged in a photo that picture is automatically added to that persons profile and is a great way to share pictures with all friends.

Error Message: Disk Boot failure

If your computer has just been formatted, your computer might require you to insert the boot CD to be able to run it. You might hence get the error message Disk Boot Failure- Insert disk and press enter displayed on the screen every time you will try to run it. This might be linked to:
• 1. The boot options not correctly set in BIOS
• 2. A non bootable CD is found in your CD drive
• 3. You do not possess any bootable device
• 4. You have installed a new hard disk
• 5. The hard disk is not properly plugged
• 6. Your system files have been infected

Solution 1: Ensure that your drives are empty

If there is a non bootable CD or disk in the drives, your computer might be attempting to boot the program with this disk. Hence, ensure that the floppy disk drive, the CD/R and DVD drives are all empty before restarting your computer and trying to run computer again.
Solution 2: BIOS set up

If this has not solved the problem, it might be linked to a wrong set up of BIOS. Hence,
• 1. To enter BIOS, press the F8 key when the Windows screen shows up upon the start of the computer.
• 2. Then all you have top do is to prioritize the boot sequence to Disk C:

Solution 3: New hard drive configuration

If you have just installed a new hard drive, you should insert the system installation CD and restart your computer again so that it reboots with the CD.
Solution 4: Hard drive not properly plugged in

If your hard drive is not properly plugged in, this can also lead to a rebooting error message. Hence, I will suggest you to switch off your computer and remove it from the power switch before checking the cables attached to it. Ensure also that the motherboard is correctly installed. Hence, put it again and try running your system.
Solution 5: Restore the corrupted system files

If neither solution has solved your issue, then it might be due to a corruption of your system files. Hence,
1. Start your computer with a system boot CD and once it is running, enter the command â€Å“Dir C:” to ensure that you can access the C: drive’s contents.
2. If the computer enables you to access the contents, then you can enter the command

What does the term "Ping" mean

Q:
What does the term "Ping" mean?

A:
Basically, ping is short for Packet InterNet Groper and it is a utility that is most widely used to check for network errors. It's the main utility that is used to verify whether or not a network data packet can be sent to an address (usually an IP address) without any errors.

Now, let me try to explain how a ping process works. First, a ping command is used to ping an IP address and that request is then sent over the network to the computer with that address. Once it's successfully received, the computer produces what is called a "pong" response. The time between the two is then calculated to come up with an average response time. If the ping, for some reason, does not make it through to its destination, the computer will then receive a timed out error.

So, if you've ever received an error like that, you now know that it's coming from the ping utility. The term ping is also used quite a bit in computer gaming. In this case, it goes by either a high ping or a low ping and it basically has to do with how fast of a connection a user has to the game server. For example, if you play games online, you'll want to have a lower ping rate (around 50 is good). If you have too high of a ping speed, you may not be able to play, because a lot of game servers only accept low pings. Well, hopefully that helps you all in understanding this computer term a little more. As you can see, it's all in the ping and the pong!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Missing Or Corrupt Hal.dll Error Resolution

• "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file."
• "\System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:
Please re-install a copy of the above file."
• "Cannot find \Windows\System32\hal.dll"
• "Cannot find hal.dll"
The "missing or corrupt hal.dll" error displays shortly after the computer is first started. Windows XP has not yet fully loaded when this error message appears.
Cause
Causes of the "missing or corrupt hal.dll" error include, naturally, a damaged hal.dll DLL file or a hal.dll file that has been deleted or moved from its intended location.
Additional causes may include a damaged or missing boot.ini file or possibly a physically damaged hard drive.
Resolution
1. Restart the PC. The hal.dll error could be a fluke.
2. Check for proper boot order in BIOS. You might see the hal.dll error if the boot order in BIOS is first looking at a hard drive other than your main hard drive.

Note: If you've recently changed your boot order or recently flashed your BIOS, this may be what's causing your problem.
3. Run Windows XP System Restore from a command prompt. If this doesn't work or you're receiving the hal.dll error message before you're able to complete this process, move on to the next step.
4. Repair or replace the boot.ini file. This will work if the cause of the problem is actually Windows XP's boot.ini file and not the hal.dll file, which is often times the case.

Note: If repairing the boot.ini does correct the hal.dll issue but the problem reappears after a reboot and you've recently installed Internet Explorer 8 in Windows XP, uninstall IE8. In this specific situation, IE8 could be the root cause of your hal.dll problem.
5. Write a new partition boot sector to the Windows XP system partition. If the partition boot sector has become corrupt or isn't properly configured, you may receive the hal.dll error.
6. Recover data from any bad sectors on your hard drive. If the physical part of your hard drive that stores any part of the hal.dll file has been damaged, you're likely to see errors like this.
7. Restore the hal.dll file from the Windows XP CD. If the hal.dll file is truly the cause of the problem, restoring it from the original Windows XP CD may do the trick.
8. Perform a repair installation of Windows XP. This type of installation should replace any missing or corrupt files. Continue troubleshooting if this does not resolve the issue.
9. Perform a clean installation of Windows XP. This type of installation will completely remove Windows XP from your PC and install it again from scratch.

Note: While this will almost certainly resolve any hal.dll errors, it is a time consuming process due to the fact that all of your data must be backed up and then later restored.

Important: If you can't gain access to your files to back them up, you should understand that you will lose them all if you continue with a clean installation of Windows XP.
10. Test the hard drive. If all else has failed, including the clean installation from the last step, you're most likely facing a hardware issue with your hard drive but you'll want to test it to be sure.

If the drive fails any of your tests, replace the hard drive and then complete a "new" installation of Windows XP.
Applies To
This issue applies to the Windows XP operating system, including Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home Edition. Windows 7 and Windows Vista do not utilize the hal.dll file.
Still H
aving Hal.dll Issues?
Let a community of PC support enthusiasts help out! Post the details of your problem in the PC Support Forum. Be sure to let us know what steps you've already taken to resolve the "missing or corrupt hal.dll" issue.
Other Errors That Appear During the Boot Process

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Microsoft Windows XP and Vista boot time

Microsoft Windows XP and Vista boot time
If you're running Windows XP or Vista with a computer that has a multiple core processor, such as the Intel Core 2 duo, you can increase how fast your computer boots up by having it use multiple processors for its boot sequence. Following the below steps to have Windows do this for you.
1. Click Start and Run (for XP) and type: msconfig and press enter.
2. Click the BOOT.INI or BOOT tab.
3. XP users highlight the line beginning with "multi" if not already selected and click the Advanced Options button.
4. In the Advanced Options Window for /NUMPROC= or Number of Processors change it to 2.
5. Reboot the computer.

Your modem/fax does not work properly

My modem is a 56K, but I can connect to the Internet only at slower speed.
The current copper wired telephone lines are limited only to about 53K. If you are connected only to 33.6 or 28.8K, check the following first:

  • Is your modem compatible with the modem used at your ISP?
  • Is your modem set up to run at full speed?
  • What's the maximum speed your ISP allows?
  • How far away are you from your ISP?
  • Some modems need special initiation strings to get full speed.
  • Some conditions are out of your control, such as weather and conditions of the telephone lines in your community.
  • Problems may occur when you are dialing through a phone system such as one in a hotel.

Modem answers incoming calls and then returns to the on-hook condition, disconnecting the caller:
This occurs most often when connecting to a UNIX system. In most case, the host does not prefer to see any result or command echo codes. If this is the case, the codes can be disabled by adding E0 Q1 to the modem configuration string.

The modem dials and appears to complete the connection, but the communications software does not enter the correct mode. (The screen remains blank)
This is normally caused by an I/O address or IRQ conflict. Verify that the COM port is not in use by any other serial device and if necessary use another COM port or I/O address settting. Refer to your computer manual on how to determine what serial ports are installed.

The modem dials and appears to complete the connection, but the communications software does not enter the correct mode. (The screen remains blank)

  • There may be an I/O conflict (see the solution for the previous problem).
  • The Result Codes may have been disabled by the software configuration set up. Check if Q1 is in the configuration or initialization string. If so, change it to Q0.
  • Your software may require numeric result codes rather than verbal result codes. Use either V0 for numeric result codes or V1 for verbal result codes in your initiazation or configuration string.
  • Some software require full extended result codes (i.e., CONNECT 33600 instead of CONNECT). This can be controlled by the Xn command. X0 sends a summarized code (CONNECT) and X4 sends a full extended code (CONNECT 33600)

The modem does not auto answer
The auto answer mode is determined by the S0 register. If S0 has been set to 0, the modem will not answer. Asign another value to S0 by entering the following command: S0=n, where n = the number of rings to occur before the call is answered (ATS0=2, the modem answers after two rings)

The modem always answers the phone.
Set the S0 register to 0. ATS0=0.

The communications software displays, "No Dialtone."
Make sure that your phone cable is working properly and that it is firmly seated to the phone socket at your phone jack and in the real panel of the modem.

A high pitched squeal is emitted from the external speakers
This phenomenon is "feedback" and occurs when the microphone is pointed at the external speaker or is close enough to pick up the speaker output. This may be remedied by using a unidirectional microphone, making sure that it is pointed away and as far from the speaker as functionally possible. Another option is to use a headset with an attached microphone.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010


How to enter the BIOS or CMOS setup.

Solution:

Because of the wide variety of computer manufacturers and BIOS manufacturers over the evolution of computers, there have been numerous different ways to enter the BIOS or CMOS Setup. Below is a listing of the majority of these methods as well as other recommendations for entering the BIOS setup.


New computers

Thankfully, computers that have been manufactured in the last few years will allow you to enter the CMOS by pressing one of the below five keys during the boot. Usually it's one of the first three.

A user will know when to press this key when they see a message similar to the below example as the computer is booting. Some older computers may also display a flashing block to indicate when to press the F1 or F2 keys.

Press to enter BIOS setup

Tip: If your computer is a new computer and you are unsure of what key to press when the computer is booting, try pressing and holding one or more keys the keyboard. This will cause a stuck key error, which may allow you to enter the BIOS setup.

Older computers

Unlike the computers of today, older computers (before 1995) had numerous different methods of entering the BIOS setup. Below is a listing of general key sequences that may have had to be pressed as the computer was booting.

  • CTRL + ALT + ESC
  • CTRL + ALT + INS
  • CTRL + ALT + ENTER
  • CTRL + ALT + S
  • PAGE UP KEY
  • PAGE DOWN KEY

ACER BIOS

If your computer is unable to boot or you wish to restore the BIOS back to bootable settings and your computer uses an ACER BIOS, press and hold the F10 key as you turn on the computer. While continuing to hold the F10 key, you should hear two beeps indicating that the settings have been restored.

AMI BIOS

Older AMI BIOS could be restored back to bootable settings by pressing and holding the Insert key as the computer is booting.

BIOS / CMOS diskettes

Early 486, 386, and 286 computers may have required a floppy disk in order to enter the BIOS setup. These diskettes are known as ICU, BBU, and SCU disks. Because these diskettes are unique to your computer manufacturer, you must obtain the diskettes from them.

Early IBM computers

Some models of early IBM computers required that the user press and hold both mouse buttons as the computer was booting in order to enter the BIOS setup.

Other suggestions

Finally, if none of the above suggestions help get you into your CMOS setup you can cause a stuck key error, which will usually cause the CMOS setup prompt to appear and remain until you press a key to continue. To do this press and hold any key on the keyboard and do not let go (you may get several beeps as you're doing this). Keep holding the key until the computer stops booting and you're prompted with an option to enter setup or to press another key to continue booting.

Your modem/fax does not work properly

My modem is a 56K, but I can connect to the Internet only at slower speed.

The current copper wired telephone lines are limited only to about 53K. If you are connected only to 33.6 or 28.8K, check the following first:
• Is your modem compatible with the modem used at your ISP?
• Is your modem set up to run at full speed?
• What's the maximum speed your ISP allows?
• How far away are you from your ISP?
• Some modems need special initiation strings to get full speed.
• Some conditions are out of your control, such as weather and conditions of the telephone lines in your community.
• Problems may occur when you are dialing through a phone system such as one in a hotel.

Modem answers incoming calls and then returns to the on-hook condition, disconnecting the caller
:

This occurs most often when connecting to a UNIX system. In most case, the host does not prefer to see any result or command echo codes. If this is the case, the codes can be disabled by adding E0 Q1 to the modem configuration string.

The modem dials and appears to complete the connection, but the communications software does not enter the correct mode. (The screen remains blank)
This is normally caused by an I/O address or IRQ conflict. Verify that the COM port is not in use by any other serial device and if necessary use another COM port or I/O address settting. Refer to your computer manual on how to determine what serial ports are installed.

The modem dials and appears to complete the connection, but the communications software does not enter the correct mode. (The screen remains blank)
• There may be an I/O conflict (see the solution for the previous problem).
• The Result Codes may have been disabled by the software configuration set up. Check if Q1 is in the configuration or initialization string. If so, change it to Q0.
• Your software may require numeric result codes rather than verbal result codes. Use either V0 for numeric result codes or V1 for verbal result codes in your initiazation or configuration string.
• Some software require full extended result codes (i.e., CONNECT 33600 instead of CONNECT). This can be controlled by the Xn command. X0 sends a summarized code (CONNECT) and X4 sends a full extended code (CONNECT 33600)

The modem does not auto answer

The auto answer mode is determined by the S0 register. If S0 has been set to 0, the modem will not answer. Asign another value to S0 by entering the following command: S0=n, where n = the number of rings to occur before the call is answered (ATS0=2, the modem answers after two rings)

The modem always answers the phone.
Set the S0 register to 0. ATS0=0.

The communications software displays, "No Dialtone."

Make sure that your phone cable is working properly and that it is firmly seated to the phone socket at your phone jack and in the real panel of the modem.

A high pitched squeal is emitted from the external speakers

This phenomenon is "feedback" and occurs when the microphone is pointed at the external speaker or is close enough to pick up the speaker output. This may be remedied by using a unidirectional microphone, making sure that it is pointed away and as far from the speaker as functionally possible. Another option is to use a headset with an attached microphone.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Best Keyboard Shortcuts

Getting used to using your keyboard exclusively and leaving your mouse behind will make you much more efficient at performing any task on any Windows system. I use the following keyboard shortcuts every day:

Windows key + R = Run menu

This is usually followed by:
cmd = Command Prompt
iexplore + “web address” = Internet Explorer
compmgmt.msc = Computer Management
dhcpmgmt.msc = DHCP Management
dnsmgmt.msc = DNS Management
services.msc = Services
eventvwr = Event Viewer
dsa.msc = Active Directory Users and Computers
dssite.msc = Active Directory Sites and Services
Windows key + E = Explorer

ALT + Tab = Switch between windows

ALT, Space, X = Maximize window

CTRL + Shift + Esc = Task Manager

Windows key + Break = System properties

Windows key + F = Search

Windows key + D = Hide/Display all windows

CTRL + C = copy

CTRL + X = cut

CTRL + V = paste

Also don’t forget about the “Right-click” key next to the right Windows key on your keyboard. Using the arrows and that key can get just about anything done once you’ve opened up any program.
Keyboard Shortcuts

[Alt] and [Esc] Switch between running applications

[Alt] and letter Select menu item by underlined letter

[Ctrl] and [Esc] Open Program Menu

[Ctrl] and [F4] Close active document or group windows (does not work with some applications)

[Alt] and [F4] Quit active application or close current window

[Alt] and [-] Open Control menu for active document

Ctrl] Lft., Rt. arrow Move cursor forward or back one word

Ctrl] Up, Down arrow Move cursor forward or back one paragraph

[F1] Open Help for active application

Windows+M Minimize all open windows

Shift+Windows+M Undo minimize all open windows

Windows+F1 Open Windows Help

Windows+Tab Cycle through the Taskbar buttons

Windows+Break Open the System Properties dialog box

acessability shortcuts

Right SHIFT for eight seconds…….. Switch FilterKeys on and off.

Left ALT +left SHIFT +PRINT SCREEN……. Switch High Contrast on and off.

Left ALT +left SHIFT +NUM LOCK……. Switch MouseKeys on and off.

SHIFT……. five times Switch StickyKeys on and off.

NUM LOCK…… for five seconds Switch ToggleKeys on and off.

explorer shortcuts

END……. Display the bottom of the active window.

HOME……. Display the top of the active window.

NUM LOCK+ASTERISK……. on numeric keypad (*) Display all subfolders under the selected folder.

NUM LOCK+PLUS SIGN……. on numeric keypad (+) Display the contents of the selected folder.

NUM LOCK+MINUS SIGN……. on numeric keypad (-) Collapse the selected folder.

LEFT ARROW…… Collapse current selection if it’s expanded, or select parent folder.

RIGHT ARROW……. Display current selection if it’s collapsed, or select first subfolder.
Type the following commands in your Run Box (Windows Key + R) or Start Run

devmgmt.msc = Device Manager
msinfo32 = System Information
cleanmgr = Disk Cleanup
ntbackup = Backup or Restore Wizard (Windows Backup Utility)
mmc = Microsoft Management Console
excel = Microsoft Excel (If Installed)
msaccess = Microsoft Access (If Installed)
powerpnt = Microsoft PowerPoint (If Installed)
winword = Microsoft Word (If Installed)
frontpg = Microsoft FrontPage (If Installed)
notepad = Notepad
wordpad = WordPad
calc = Calculator
msmsgs = Windows Messenger
mspaint = Microsoft Paint
wmplayer = Windows Media Player
rstrui = System Restore
netscp6 = Netscape 6.x
netscp = Netscape 7.x
netscape = Netscape 4.x
waol = America Online
control = Opens the Control Panel
control printers = Opens the Printers Dialog
internetbrowser

type in u’re adress “google”, then press [Right CTRL] and [Enter]
add www. and .com to word and go to it
For Windows XP:

Copy. CTRL+C
Cut. CTRL+X
Paste. CTRL+V
Undo. CTRL+Z
Delete. DELETE
Delete selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin. SHIFT+DELETE
Copy selected item. CTRL while dragging an item
Create shortcut to selected item. CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item
Rename selected item. F2
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word. CTRL+LEFT ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph. CTRL+DOWN ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph. CTRL+UP ARROW
Highlight a block of text. CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys
Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text within a document. SHIFT with any of the arrow keys
Select all. CTRL+A
Search for a file or folder. F3
View properties for the selected item. ALT+ENTER
Close the active item, or quit the active program. ALT+F4
Opens the shortcut menu for the active window. ALT+SPACEBAR
Close the active document in programs that allow you to have multiple documents open simultaneously. CTRL+F4
Switch between open items. ALT+TAB
Cycle through items in the order they were opened. ALT+ESC
Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop. F6
Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer. F4
Display the shortcut menu for the selected item. SHIFT+F10
Display the System menu for the active window. ALT+SPACEBAR
Display the Start menu. CTRL+ESC
Display the corresponding menu. ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name
Carry out the corresponding command. Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu
Activate the menu bar in the active program. F10
Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu. RIGHT ARROW
Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu. LEFT ARROW
Refresh the active window. F5
View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer. BACKSPACE
Cancel the current task. ESC
SHIFT when you insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive Prevent the CD from automatically playing.

Use these keyboard shortcuts for dialog boxes:

To Press
Move forward through tabs. CTRL+TAB
Move backward through tabs. CTRL+SHIFT+TAB
Move forward through options. TAB
Move backward through options. SHIFT+TAB
Carry out the corresponding command or select the corresponding option. ALT+Underlined letter
Carry out the command for the active option or button. ENTER
Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box. SPACEBAR
Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons. Arrow keys
Display Help. F1
Display the items in the active list. F4
Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box. BACKSPACE

If you have a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, or any other compatible keyboard that includes the Windows logo key and the Application key , you can use these keyboard shortcuts:
Display or hide the Start menu. WIN Key
Display the System Properties dialog box. WIN Key+BREAK
Show the desktop. WIN Key+D
Minimize all windows. WIN Key+M
Restores minimized windows. WIN Key+Shift+M
Open My Computer. WIN Key+E
Search for a file or folder. WIN Key+F
Search for computers. CTRL+WIN Key+F
Display Windows Help. WIN Key+F1
Lock your computer if you are connected to a network domain, or switch users if you are not connected to a network domain. WIN Key+ L
Open the Run dialog box. WIN Key+R
Open Utility Manager. WIN Key+U

accessibility keyboard shortcuts:

Switch FilterKeys on and off. Right SHIFT for eight seconds
Switch High Contrast on and off. Left ALT+left SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN
Switch MouseKeys on and off. Left ALT +left SHIFT +NUM LOCK
Switch StickyKeys on and off. SHIFT five times
Switch ToggleKeys on and off. NUM LOCK for five seconds
Open Utility Manager. WIN Key+U

shortcuts you can use with Windows Explorer:
Display the bottom of the active window. END
Display the top of the active window. HOME
Display all subfolders under the selected folder. NUM LOCK+ASTERISK on numeric keypad (*)
Display the contents of the selected folder. NUM LOCK+PLUS SIGN on numeric keypad (+)
Collapse the selected folder. NUM LOCK+MINUS SIGN on numeric keypad (-)
Collapse current selection if it’s expanded, or select parent folder. LEFT ARROW
Display current selection if it’s collapsed, or select first subfolder. RIGHT ARROW