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Beware : The First Apple Ipod Virus

Kaspersky Lab, a Russian company based in Massachusetts recently announced that they found a virus on an Apple iPod. The company itself have a very few details and said that this virus would not be very harmful to the people using iPods. They even said that this virus will only be active on a linux installed iPods and will only affect if someone puts the file in the iPod disk first. The virus “Podloso” shows its existence when u first use your iPod. It asks user to install Linux in the disk and then scans the disk to infect all .elf files. If user tried to run these files it shows a message “You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus.”

Apple Ipods get Affected by Podloso

According to Kaspersky Lab, the first virus Podloso which is designed to affect iPods is an early awareness to the Apple Company to take action on it and try to provide some security measures even though this virus does not pose any threat to an average people who owns iPod. If the user installs the virus then it installs itself to the folder containing demo version of the program.

Podloso is a proof of concept virus i.e. it just demonstrate that it is possible to infect a particular platform and don’t do any harm to the device. The people who created virus have successfully demonstrated that it is theoretically possible to create malicious programs for such devices, Kaspersky Labs reports. And now this is to people who use iPods believe that “iPods are not 100% safe”.

References:

• Mercury Web
• BBC
• CNBC

“Encoding Google”-Google made easy

Think “search”, and chances are you’ll think google. Here’s how we
make the reliable website better for you. At Google’s home page, if you click on Advanced search, you can access advanced options that narrow down results to more specific links.

Language:You tend to get a lot of non-English results whilst searching. By restricting your search to English sites from the drop-down box, you don’t waste time on results you can’t understand anyway.

Getting format specific:You can search specifically for, say, PDFs or PPT files. Choose the format of your choice across the six listed on the Advanced page, or exclude the results that return formats that you don’t want, by selecting the format and clicking ‘Don’t’.

Pageing specifically:

The options under the Page- Specific Search heading allow for quickly locating pages that offer services, or have content similar to that of a specified Web page. For instance, if you enter ‘space.com’ (a site for astronomy enthusiasts), the similar pages listed include some from NASA as well as Sky and Telescope magazine, and several other well-known space-enthusiast sites.

Preferences:

If you want your browser to remember your

preferences, you need to set it to accept cookies—Tools > Internet Options > Privacy for IE.

Language specific:

You can choose to restrict searches to only English pages, but remember Google also provides a reasonably accurate translation of pages in five listed languages—German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.. If you only need English results, set it from the Advanced Search page instead.

Content censoring:

To ensure that search results do not turn up explicit sexual content, use the Safe- Search option. This can be set under SafeSearch Filtering. Choose from three levels— no filtering, moderate filtering that only blocks explicit images, and strict filtering for explicit text and images.

Here are some of the other features of google search engine:

Keyword/ symbol	Usage	Action
[+]	Chevrolet +optra	Looks for documents containingboth ‘Chevrolet’ and ‘optra’
[-]	Chevrolet -optra	Results will contain ‘Chevrolet’but not ‘optra’
[~]	~ transducer	Searches for the term ‘transducer’as well as its synonyms
OR	sunday OR monday	Results will have either ‘sunday’ or‘monday’, or both
Cache:	cache:http://www.youtube.com/	Returns Google’s cached pagesof www.youtube.com
define:	define:spams	Gives the definition of theword ‘spams’
site:	Apple site:www.food.com	Will restrict search to pagescontaining ‘apple’ only atwww.food.com
related:	related:www.timesjob.com	Will fetch results of sites similarto www.timesjob.com
info:	info:www.santabanta.com	Will present information thatGoogle has on www.santabanta.com

For more search terms check out http://www.google.com/help/operators.html

Practice Division – To Be Perfect

Today again…we have the reader Ankit contributing in addition to his Vedic Maths series.

“Practice makes man perfect “

Today let’s see few more things on divisions. If you have come across division with 7 you would have seen a pattern after the dividend is over and u get a remainder. Remainder when you divide an integer by 7 is between 0 and 6(inclusive).

Pattern seen is 142857….

1/7=0.142857*

2/7=0.285714*

3/7=0.428571*

4/7=0.571428*

5/7=0.714285*

6/7=0.857142*

So basic pattern is ….142857….

How to remember?

7*2=14

14*2=28

28*2+1=57

Some other sequences:

13—— >….076923…. (07—–23*3——13+10—-)

17—— >….0588235294117647…..

(Such sequences exists for many numbers but are difficult to memories so we use some other techniques)

Related Posts:

• Division xx..9 Made Easier – Reader’s Contribution

By Ankit Mundra

(OxyGyan Reader)

Wanna Contribute? Mail Us Your Article at

Division xx..9

This week, we are starting with a new section called as “Readers”…Here we will constantly publish the article submitted by the readers. The first reader who has spent his valuable time to come with the article based on Vedic Mathematics is Mr. Ankit Mundra.

Now if you have number to be divided by 19 and you want to get an accurate answer to few decimal places then no need to panic you can do orally till infinite decimal place. Its looking interesting now, I guess!

Method:

1) Reduce the numerator such that it is less then 19.
eg. If you want 20/19 then reduced for is 1 1/19.
2) Now next number to 19 is 20 so wee simply divide the number by 2.(why ? explained ahead) 19202
3) So know we need to find 1/19.
4) We divide 1/2 = 0, remainder 1.
5) Append remainder (1) to previous partial quotient (0), number becomes 10.
6) We divide this remainder by 2. i.e. 10/2 =5, remainder = 0
7) Now we append reminder (0) to previous partial quotient (5), number becomes 05.
We divide in similar fashion and continue till 18 places then the digits will recur.
(But not necessary for other xx…9)

See following figure for better understanding:

Extension:

1) If you have any number ending with nine take the next number.
For eg., 49505
2) Now follow the above procedure to compute the answer taking 5 as divisor in this case.

If number is 99 then division is by 10. 9910010
If number is 9 then division is by 1. 9101
i.e if you have 3/9 answer is 0.33333…..

A Short Note for Readers:

The techniques shown here are taken from various articles and books written over ages. There are few additions and simplifications to existing techniques. The readers to benefit from the techniques need to use them smartly and should practice them on regular basis.

By Ankit Mundra

“OxyGyan Reader”

Wanna Contribute?Mail Us Your Article at

Past, Present and Future of Super Computers

Many definitions of supercomputers have come and gone. Some favorites of the past are any computer costing more than ten million dollars, whose performance is limited by input/output (I/O) rather than by the CPU, that is “only one” generation behind what you really need.

We’ve all heard of supercomputers. Unlike mainframes and minicomputers, supercomputers are used for the heavy stuff like weather maps, construction of atom bombs, finding oil, earthquake prediction, and sciences where a lot of calculations must be done. They are also used to help governments eavesdrop on anything passing through telephone, data lines, e-mail, or radio waves; and anything that is written, etc.

In computing, FLOPS (or flops) is an acronym meaning Floating Point Operations per Second. This is used as a measure of a computer’s performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating point calculations. (Compare to MIPS — million instructions per second.) One should speak in the singular of a FLOPS and not of a FLOP, although the latter is frequently encountered. The final S stands for second and does not indicate a plural. The standard SI prefixes can be used for this purpose, resulting in such units as megaflops (MFLOPS, 106 FLOPS), gigaflops (GFLOPS, 109 FLOPS), teraflops (TFLOPS, 1012 FLOPS), petaFLOPS (PFLOPS, 1015 FLOPS) and exaFLOPS (EFLOPS, 1018 FLOPS).

Though all contemporary personal computers perform in the tens or hundreds of megaflops, they still cannot solve certain problems fast enough. It was only in the beginning of 2000 that the supercomputing arena moves into the gigaflops region. What this means is that you can have a computer calculate problems at the speed of a few gigaflops, but doing the same calculations at “just” 100 megaflops and within acceptable time, too, is almost impossible. Meaning, with supercomputers you can do calculations within a time limit or session that is acceptable to the user. To put it stronger: you can do anything in real time with a supercomputer that cannot be done in your lifetime with one single PC.

Blue Gene L Super 16 Racks Super Computer

According to the Top 500 Super Computers, the fastest computer in the world as of June 2006 was the IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, measuring a peak of 207.3 TFLOPS. It has been designed in such as way to provide efficient cooling. In June of 2006, a new computer was announced by Japanese research institute RIKEN, the MDGRAPE-3. The computer’s performance tops out at one petaflop, over three times faster than the Blue Gene/L. MDGRAPE-3 is not a general purpose computer, which is why it does not appear in the Top 500 list.

Why are thousands of processors used in supercomputers? Have you ever thought of that? The most obvious reason is that our technology is not capable of producing a chip that powerful as yet. The other reason is that since our technology is not capable of making that super chip, YET, we combine many chips to form one ‘virtual’ processor, operating as one big single CPU. Yet another reason is money, to put many single reasonably cheap CPUs in a large array is mostly cheaper than to produce a giant one. With the contemporary technology available to us now, we would have to produce a CPU the size of several square meters. So the technology to make one is not in place yet. What is needed is the implementation of new technology, something like bio neural processors, quantum based CPU’s and also an upcoming field, CPUs based on light.

Construction of supercomputers is an awesome and very expensive task. To get a machine from the laboratory to the market may take several years. The most recent development costs of supercomputers varied between 150 to 500 million dollars or more. This is one of the major reasons that the development of a supercomputer is kept very hush-hush. The latest supers are only possible to create with the help of governments and one or more large size companies. Using a supercomputer is expensive as well. As a user, you are charged according to the time you use the system what is expressed in the number of processor (CPU) seconds your program runs. In the recent past, Cray (one of the first supercomputers) time was $1,000 per hour. The use of this “Cray time” was a very common way to express computer costs in time and dollars.

Who really needs supercomputing today are mostly scientists performing mass computing at ultra high speed. They use such computers in all imaginable disciplines: space exploration and related imagery, environmental simulations (global warming effects) mathematics, physics, gene technology, and many others. More real world examples are: industrial and technological applications, world spanning financial and economical systems in which speed is essential. Also, more and more supercomputers are used for creating simulations for building airplanes, creating new chemical substances, new materials, and testing car crashes without having to crash a car. Supercomputers are used for applications where it will take more than a few days to get the results or when the results are impossible for a slower computer to calculate. Supercomputers have been used to improve car and plane safety, predict dangerous weather accurately, and to design life-saving drugs quickly.

Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was the first electronic digital computing device built by Dr. Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry at Iowa State College during 1939–42. The machine, conceived in 1937, was capable of solving up to 29 simultaneous linear equations and was successfully tested, though its input/output mechanism was still unreliable in 1942. The ABC pioneered important elements of modern computing, including binary arithmetic and electronic switching elements, but its special-purpose nature and lack of a changeable, stored program distinguish it from modern computers. The system weighed more than seven hundred pounds (320 kg). It contained approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) of wire, 280 dual-triode vacuum tubes, 31 thyratrons. The original ABC was eventually dismantled, and all of its pieces except for one memory drum were discarded. In 1997, a team of researchers from Ames Laboratory (located on the Iowa State campus) finished building a working replica of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer for a cost of $350,000. This replica dispelled any doubt over whether or not the ABC actually could perform the tasks it was designed to do. The new ABC is now on permanent display in the first floor lobby of the Durham Center for Computation and Communication at Iowa State University.

In the mainframe area in the early 1960s; the bunch was the major players in that field. Others entered the arena in supercomputing after CDC and Cray showed it was possible to create supers. In 40 years there are but a few players left in the supercomputing arena like Cray, Dell, HP, Amdahl, Compaq, IBM, NEC, SGI, Sun, etc

The Blue Gene/L supercomputer has broken its own record to achieve more than double the number of calculations it can do a second. It reached 280.6 teraflops – that is 280.6 trillion calculations a second. The IBM machine, at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, officially became the most powerful computer on the planet in June 06. Blue Gene’s performance, while it has been under construction, has quadrupled in just 12 months. Blue Gene will work on materials ageing calculations, molecular dynamics, material modeling as well as turbulence and instability in hydrodynamics. Their massive brains will be able to perform half a petaflop together – that is half a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) calculations a second.

A supercomputer generates large amounts of heat and must be cooled. Cooling most supercomputers is a major HVAC (Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning) problem. Supercomputers consume and produce massive amounts of data in a very short period of time. According to Ken Batcher, “A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems.” Much work on external storage bandwidth is needed to ensure that this information can be transferred quickly and stored/retrieved correctly. The challenge which was a dream has undertaken by company, RIKEN, Intel K.K., and SGI Japan, Ltd. They have recently announced that they have succeeded in building a high-speed computer system, named “MDGRAPE-3″, for carrying out molecular dynamics simulations at a theoretical speed of one petaflops. The system consists of 201 units of 24 specially designed MDGRAPE-3 chips (a total of 4808 chips), plus 64 servers each with 256 of the new Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5000 series processors, and 37 servers each containing 74 Intel Xeon Processor 3.2GHz (2MB L2 cache) processors.

Read More about  Atanasoft Berry Computer>>

Design for Compact Super Computer

Popular Internet search engine Google is reportedly developing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers in a bid to outstrip rivals Yahoo and Microsoft. According to The Telegraph, Google is building a vast complex said to be the size of two football pitches with cooling towers four floors high in Oregon. The new Google “powerplant”, which is known as “Project 02”. The new Oregon centre will form just a part of Google’s global computing system, called the “Googleplex”.

Computers are constructing and testing new computers, which in their turn are even faster, and so on….

Related Articles:

• FlOPS – Wikipedia
• Top500 Super Computers
• About Supercomputing Seminar In IIT Bombay

Windows Vista

Some have heard it, but I have felt it, yes I am talking about the Microsoft’s new creation the windows vista. As many of you are aware of that its system requirements are very high because of which many of u’ll aren’t able to use. But since I have the entire required system configuration in my PC so I am sharing my experiences by writing this article for my friends who are not able to use this OS.
Let me start with the very first screen of any OS that is the desktop.

Desktop: Vista desktop is not a normal desktop with few icons and system tray, rather it contains the gadgets i.e. the clock, calendar, picture slide show and many more.You can add any of the desired gadgets on the screen. In the quick launch bar besides the start button there is an option of switching between windows. When you click the button, all the currently open windows will tilt and become smaller and then you can choose any window from it.

Default applications: with the windows vista comes a set of default applications already installed for you to use. Some of them are the
1. internet explorer 7.0
2. windows media player 11
3. windows DVD maker
4. windows photo gallery
5. windows contacts
6. windows defender, and many more

Additional games from the previous windows are:
1. 3D chess
2. Inkball
3. Mahajong titans, etc

My Computer: as you open my computer you will have a different feel as the disk drives contains the visual information of the free space also you can change the view in different design. You can also save your searches one of the different features of vista.

Network and Sharing Center: here you can view the status of your network with the options that are enabled or disabled. You can view the full network map of your computer graphically.

The most relishing feature about vista I liked is that we don’t need to install the all the drivers of the motherboard, it gets automatically installed all the tedious work gets removed with this feature.

Related articles:

• Vista’s promising updates:
• Is vista secure enough?

The Flying Kiss

–>>More on this

Ever felt sick of having to switch-off your cell phones while traveling on air? Well, that procedure could be history soon. Emirates and RyanAir are set to introduce in-flight mobile phone use for passengers. The move follows AeroMobile, the mobile phone service provider to airlines, announcement in late 2006, to introduce its first-of-a-kind facility on-board Emirates.

As of now, passengers are asked to switch off their mobile phones once on the airplane. It was believed that such telecom signals would interfere with ground-communication and navigation abilities of an airplane. However, AeroMobile, based in the
UK, has developed an aircraft system which controls the power output of all mobile phones down to the minimum level allowing their safe use onboard aircraft. Apart from this, the flight-crew would be able to control and regulate usage of passengers, like allowing only text-only mode (no voice) mode on night-flights for passenger convenience.

The first step would have to be, of course, to establish a reliable communication system. Signal reception at high altitudes could be a problem. Under the new technology developed by AeroMobile, GSM phone signals will be transferred from the cabin through a satellite to a GSM network on earth and connect the in-flight caller to the receiver of the call. Inmarsat satellite communications system have already installed been installed on all Emirates’ aircraft.

And how much would you have to shell out for such a service? Well, that remains to be seen. But prices comparable to international roaming rates for calls and text messages, are certain.

As for Indian airliners, Kingfisher Airlines, could well start first. It is said to be in talks with an on-flight mobile service provider to enable GSM mobile technology. So the next time you take your seat on a flight, don’t be surprised if you hear those irritating Bollywood ringtones again.