US spying is killing the internet claims Google

Splinters everywhere

US internet spying is going to lead to the creation of splinter networks which will eventually kill off the net, the search engine Google has warned.

According to Reuters, Google warned that the development of splinter nets could hurt US business. Richard Salgado, Google's law enforcement and information security director, told Congress the search engine outfit should be allowed to provide the public more information about government demands for user data.

He said that the lack of transparency about the nature of government surveillance in democratic countries undermines the freedom and the trust most citizens cherish, it also has a negative impact on our economic growth and security and on the promise of an Internet as a platform for openness and free expression.

Google was furious after a Washington Post report late last month said that the NSA had tapped directly into communications links used by Google and Yahoo to move huge amounts of email and other user information among overseas data centres.

Salgado warned that the NSA operations led to "a real concern" inside and outside the United States about the role of government and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which decides in secret on legal problems about electronic surveillance efforts.

He thinks that some countries will attempt to create a "splinter net" by putting up internet barriers, he said. For example, a government plan in Brazil would force global internet companies to store data on Brazilian users inside that country.

All this will lead to a closing of the markets through data location requirements and similar restrictions, Salgado told Reuters after the hearing.

This is bad for all of the American companies and the internet. Salgado added that this was a real business issue, particularly those who wanted to set up cloud services. 

Read more: http://news.techeye.net/business/us-spying-is-killing-the-internet-claims-google#ixzz2kdp6Pq26

MIT puts genetically modified virus in battery

What could possibly go wrong?

Researchers from MIT researchers, who apparently have not watched any sci-fi horror movies, have been adding genetically modified viruses to the production of nanowires.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, co-authored by graduate student Dahyun Oh, professors Angela Belcher and Yang Shao-Horn, and three others the idea was to develop   stronger materials for the batteries’ 

electrodes and improving the number of charging-discharging cycles the batteries can cope with.

The target of their work was to increase the surface area of the wire, thus increasing the area where electrochemical activity takes place during charging or discharging of the battery.

They made an array of nanowires, each about 80 nanometres across, using a genetically modified virus called M13. This can capture molecules of metals from water and bind them into structural shapes. Wires of manganese oxide were built by the viruses and have a rough, spiky surface, which increases their surface area.

The increase in surface area produced by this method can provide “a big advantage” in lithium-air batteries’ rate of charging and discharging.

Another process involves adding a small amount of a metal, such as palladium, which greatly increases the electrical conductivity of the nanowires and allows them to catalyze reactions.

These modifications produce a battery that could provide two to three times greater energy density than today’s best lithium-ion batteries, the paper said.

Read more: http://news.techeye.net/science/mit-puts-genetically-modified-virus-in-battery#ixzz2kdoUm1yv

How to earn "Easy" Money?

We all want to earn easy money without giving extra time from our busy schedules or working hard on extra income after hard working a minimal of 8 hrs a day.

So how to earn that extra income? How to get that extra without working hard or at all?

You are looking for an answer of this that's why you are reading this, so let us first understand the basic of the things and then we would talk about earning the "Easy Money".

Money

What is Money?

We all know this and I don't think any explanation to this answer is needed, does it?

What is Easy Money?

To understand the concept of earning money without working hard, we need to understand what is "Easy Money" and why is it called so?

Easy money is nothing but that money for which you neither have to work explicitly for long hours daily nor you need to do hard work.

There is also another type of money for which you don't have to work at all which is called "Easiest Money". The example of this type of money are giving loan to someone, renting a property and so on.

But we are not here to talk about "Easiest Money", instead we will talk about "Easy Money" since for the "Easiest Money" there is a prerequisite that you should already own some assets(money/property) so that may earn you the money. While the "Easy Money" would earn these assets for you so that you can earn "Easiest Money".

Before understanding how to earn "Easy Money", we should understand how does money works and how we can redirect the money to work for us?

How does money actually works?

We all know the basics of how money works. When we want something, we first earn the money by working hard and after from that hard earned money we go and buy that thing. For example, if you want something from the departmental store, you go there and buy that stuff, after that the same money is given to the workers of that departmental store as a salary, and they buy the stuff from stores and the cycle goes on.

But think if, if we don't need to work hard for that money, if we don't need to take out the extra hours from our daily life schedule to work for that extra income. How nice it would be, wouldn't it?

How to earn "Easy Money"?

Finally, here it comes the way to earn the "Easy Money". So without wasting any time I think we should directly see how to earn "Easy Money"

1. Profession

What do you do currently to earn money? Means are you an Architect, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Labor, Manager, Housewife etc.

You can use your profession to enhance your capabilities of working to earn the side income or what is known as "Easy Money".

Lets understand this with examples, architect may earn extra just by helping there neighbors with there house structure problems, if you are a software engineer you can think for the free lancing or creating websites for the people who required that.

2. Interest

What is your interest? Are you happy with the job profile you have or you want to do some other things in the life? If yes then start performing those things and while performing those things you would enjoy as well as earn too.

3. Environment

Always remember, it is always beneficial to keep your eyes and ears open to understand in what environment you are actually in. This would help you to grow as well as to earn that "Easy Money".

Again I would make you understand this with examples: We all use smartphones in our daily life, there are like thousands of apps which are present to earn make you earn money by just clicking on the ads, we just need to click on the ads and there you go, you earned the money without any much work. The site www.fingify.com provides an app which would pay you just to unlock your phone, we do that like a million times in a day, so think how much would you earn just by unlocking your phone. 

The same applies for the computers, there are many sites which will pay you for just clicking on the ads.

Now this is called "Easy Money", isn't it?

How to check which application is using DGPU?

This post is for checking whether your laptop is using the Integrated GPU or the Dedicated GPU at a given time.

Some Basic knowledge:

What basic components are used in processing?

1. CPU
2. Integrated GPU (or iGPU)
3. Dedicated GPU (or dGPU)

1. CPU

A CPU or a Central Processing Unit which runs all the time, as soon as you turn on the computer and stops only when you turn your computer off.

CPU is a hardware within a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program by performing the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. But CPU mostly doesn't perform the graphics computations, what I meant is that they mostly don't perform graphics related rendering since graphics rendering mostly requires parallel processing which is usually performed on the GPU which has large amount of cores as compared to CPU which has very limited number of cores. 

2. iGPU

An integrated GPU(Graphics processing unit) or an iGPU comes built-in with the CPU which is required to perform the usual image related computation. An iGPU is a GPU but with very less computation power as compared to the dGPU, hence an iGPU requires very less electrical power as compared to dGPU.

It is used to power applications like Window's built-in games, media players etc.

Note: Nowadays a new range of Intel's iGPU are being launched in market which are powerful enough to play some high end games like Battlefield 3, Tomb Raider 5 etc. but of-course on low quality.

3. dGPU

A dedicated GPU or a dGPU is a GPU which is solely added to the machine only to meet the requirements of the user for high need of computation. It requires more amount of electrical power as compared to iGPU but it also provides the user with the higher amount of the computation power.

It is used to power applications like Adobe CS5, Battlefield 3, Crysis 3 on high-quality.

Nvidia Optimus technology v/s ATI Hybrid Graphics.

Overall both the technology by the GPU giants are one and the same. But let me tell you the basic things you need to know about them.

When you are performing some low-end computation task at that time, your computer switches to iGPU which can meet this requirement and since it also requires low power consumption, the battery of your laptop is conserved, since the dGPU is off it doesn't requires much power. But if you start performing a task which needs high computation power like gaming or working on 3D apps, then your computer turns on the dGPU providing you the required computation power.

Nvidia came up with this concept first under the brand name Optimus which was later followed by the ATI under Hybrid Graphics.

If you want to check whether your laptop is currently working on iGPU or dGPU then you can perform the following steps:

I am only showing the steps for Nvidia Optimus enabled laptops

Step 1: Right Click on desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel.

Nvidia Control Panel

 Step 2: Click on Desktop and select Display GPU Activity Icon in Notification Area.

Display GPU Activity Icon in Notification Area.

Step 3: Click on Display Activity Icon in Notification Area to check which application or display is using the DGPU

Activity Icon.

How to start any program automatically at start-up in Windows 7?

Do you ever wanted that some of your daily-use programs should run automatically, whenever you boot into windows?

If yes? Then this post will help you to make start your favorite programs, files launch whenever you log-in to windows.

For Windows 7

1. Goto start menu.
2. All Programs.
3. Search for Startup folder.
4. Right click open (or Open for all users if you want to run this file for all the users of your PC).
5. Just copy the file (either ".exe" or any file) you want to run, whenever you log-in to the windows.

Note: If your program file is having a dependencies files then the above method won't work since you only copied the .exe file, and if you try to copy all the files to this Startup then, all files will open and this will also not work.

So what to do now?

It's easy: Just create a shortcut of the .exe file on the desktop by:

1. Right click on the .exe file
2. Send to ->Desktop (create shortcut)

and now copy this file in the Startup folder.

That's all.

For Windows 7 & 8 both:

1. Press Winkey + r.
2. Type shell:startup (for specific user you logged on) OR
3. Type shell:common startup (for all users).
4. Just copy the file (either ".exe" or any file) you want to run every time you log-in to the windows.

Note: If your program file is having a dependencies files like .dll files, then the above method won't work since you only copied the .exe file, and if you try to copy all the files to this Startup then, all files will open and this will also not work.

So what to do now?

It's easy: Just create a shortcut of the .exe file on the desktop by:

1. Right click on the .exe file
2. Send to ->Desktop (create shortcut)

and now copy this file in the Startup folder.

Please spare time and comment.

Suggestions and complaints are heartily welcomed.

Oceans do not mix here!

Fact or Fiction?

Is it really possible that on earth there is a place where the two oceans often meet but they do not get mix along with each other?

These two oceans meet in the middle of The Gulf of Alaska and the meeting point could be seen as a border of foam developing at the junction of these two oceans. 

The Answer is: Fact

Reason:

The reason behind this, is pretty similar to one what we see when we try to mix oil and water, but they don't get, instead oil floats on the surface of the water (which is also one of the greatest reason we are experiencing environment disaster when the oil tankers meet any accident, but that is different). 

This abnormality occurs, since, the one water body consist of perfectly melting glaciers of fresh water while on the other hand the other ocean consist of highly concentrated salt water which results the tow ocean bodies of water to have different densities and therefore makes it difficult to mix. Because of the difference in the concentration of salt between the two oceans, a surface tension is developed between the two oceans acting like a thin wall that doesn't allows them to get mix. But eventually, they will mix together over given enough amount of time.

The above picture is the meeting point of the 2 different oceans water bodies, in the middle of Alaskan Gulf, where a foam wall is formed. It was captured by a person on Alaskan Cruise.

BMW about to sell insurance?

Does it sound weird that BMW will now be selling insurance instead of its famous super cars and bikes?

Yes it is, but its now true that BMW will now be selling insurance to people. But that doesn't mean that BMW is quitting on cars.

BMW is planning to hit the market of retail banks like many other multi-international companies. But the reason is not that what you are thinking, BMW is still making enormous profit from selling cars, but along with cars BMW is planning to expand its business by selling insurance.

The complete incident took place when Ralph Silva, first visited BMW showroom along with its pet dog Jazz. The salesmen of BMW was showing its salesmanship by asking the name of dog and getting familiarizing with the customer. Next time when Ralph visited BMW showroom to buy a car, he was also offered car insurance, home insurance and even pet insurance for his dog Jazz, which eliminated the need for him to go for retail banks.

But does this mean that car making giants like BMW, Mercedes, Audi will now not only competing among each other but also with the retail banks?
But if this is a new strategy of this giants then retail banks will become history in a decade or two.
My advice to retail banks is to watch out and be prepare or as a saying "If you can't defeat them, join them".

Microsoft Surface vs Apple iPad

Microsoft announced its first home-grown tablet called surface on June 18, 2012. The surface was designed as a platform to showcase its upcoming Windows 8 OS, which is a huge step forward for Microsoft as it's the first time it will be embracing the ARM platform as well. There will be two distinct versions of Windows this time - Windows RT for ARM-powered devices will be launched some time in October followed by Windows 8,  an upgrade to Windows 7 that will work on existing Intel and AMD-based systems. Today I'll be comparing the Surface to the Apple iPad, since that's going to be it's biggest competitor.

Display

Apple still reigns supreme here with the Retina Display on the new iPad. The surface has a 10.6-inch ClearType display with a HD-ready resolution and though Microsoft doesn't specify the resolution, it's not Full-HD. So, the iPad wins here.

The Surface does have a slightly larger display and it conforms to the 16:9 aspect ratio; so, watching movies should be better on it than on the iPad.

Processor

Microsoft has once again not specified which SoC will sit in the Surface, but we do know Nvidia is making it, so everything points to Tegra 3.

This packs in a quad-core CPU and 12-core graphics chip which does make it a lot more powerful on paper compared to the new iPad. However, it's yet to seen if Microsoft can actually exploit this to the fullest.

Connectivity

This is one area where the Surface wins hands-down. The tablet is about the same thickness as the iPad and yet packs in a full-sized USB port, microSD card slot and HD video-out. The iPad does support these features as well (except memory expansion), but you need to buy adapters for it and they aren't exactly cheap. Microsoft also has an upper hand when it comes to it Touch Cover and unlike Apple's Smart Cover that simply protects the screen. Touch Cover has as an embedded keyboard in it, so the tablet transforms into a notebook make it more comfortable to type on.

App Support

Apple has an edge here for the time being as it will be a while before the Windows Store is populated with all the popular apps. This shouldn't take long though as apps ported over to the Metro UI will work across Windows RT and Windows 8, giving developers an incentive to port their  apps quicker.

Nokia Hacks: Tips & Tricks

These Nokia codes will work on most Nokia Mobile Phones,

Code Description

*#3370# Activate Enhanced Full Rate Codec (EFR) - Your phone uses the best sound quality but talk time is reduced my approx. 5%.

*#3307# Deactivate Enhanced Full Rate Codec (EFR)

*#4720# Activate Half Rate Codec - Your phone uses a lower quality sound but you should gain approx 30% more Talk Time.

*#4720# Deactivate Half Rate Codec.

*#0000# Displays your phones software version, 1st Line : Software Version, 2nd Line : Software Release Date, 3rd Line : Compression Type.

*#9999# Phones software version if *#0000# does not work.

*#06# For checking the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI Number).

#pw+1234567890+1# Provider Lock Status. (use the "*" button to obtain the "p,w" and "+" symbols).

#pw+1234567890+2# Network Lock Status. (use the "*" button to obtain the "p,w" and "+"  symbols).

#pw+1234567890+3# Country Lock Status. (use the "*" button to obtain the "p,w" and "+" symbols).

#pw+1234567890+4# SIM Card Lock Status. (use the "*" button to obtain the "p,w" and "+" symbols).

*#147#(Vodafone) This lets you know who called you last.

*#1471#(Vodafone) Last call.

*#21# Allows you to check the number that "All Calls" are diverted to.

*#2640# Displays security code in use.

*#30# Lets you see the private number.

*#43# Allows you to check the "Call Waiting" status of your phone.

*#61# Allows you to check the number that "On No Reply" calls are diverted to.

*#62# Allows you to check the number that "Divert If Unreachable (no service)" calls are diverted to.

*#67#  Allows you to check the number that "On Busy Calls" are diverted to.

*#67705646# Removes operator logo on 3310 & 3330.

*#73# Reset phone timers and game scores.

*#746025625# Displays the SIM Clock status, if your phone supports this power saving feature "SIM Clock Stop Allowed", it means you will get the best standby time possible.

*#7760# Manufactures code.

*#7780# Restore factory settings.

*#8110# Software version for the nokia 8110.

*#92702689# Displays - 1.Serial Number, 2.Date Made, 3.Purchase Date, 4.Date of last repair (0000 for no repairs), 5.Transfer User Data. To exit this mode you  need to switch your phone off then on again.

*#94870345123456789# Deactivate the PWM-Mem.

**21*number# Turn on "All Calls" diverting to the phone number entered.

**61*number# Turn on "No Reply" diverting to the phone number entered.

**67*number# Turn on "On Busy" diverting to the phone number entered.

*1# To know your own mobile phone number.
press and hold # Lets you switch between lines.

How to give your processor your name?

Ever wanted to change the name of your processor to your name.

Go to

Start>
 

Run>

 
Type regedit>

 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>

HARDWARE>

DISCRIPTION>

SYSTEM>

Central Processor>
On right side, click on ProcessorNameString and then write anything you want in that textbox.

If you have Core 2 duo processor then you'll see 2 folders each for one core

0>
On right side, click on ProcessorNameString and then write anything you want in that textbox.

1>
On right side, click on ProcessorNameString and then write anything you want in that textbox.

Any suggestions/improvements/complaints are heartily welcomed...