Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Historic Change to Internet's Domain Name System

ICANN's Board of Directors has approved a plan to usher in one of the biggest changes ever to the Internet's Domain Name System. Starting in 2013, regulators will allow websites to buy new Internet addresses that include common words or corporate brand names. Instead of the familiar website addresses that end in .com, .net, or .org, for example, there could be addresses ending in .Apple, .CBS, or .McDonalds.

More south Indian languages in Google translate

From today onwards, Google translate supports five indian languages-Tamil,Telungu,Gujarati,kannada and Bengali. In India and Bangladesh alone, more than 500 million people speak these five languages.

Indic languages differ from English in many ways, presenting several exciting challenges when developing their respective translation systems.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

How to hide folders or files in windows and linux ?

In Windows/

Here you have two methods.
  1. "hidden" attibute
  2. Right click on the file or folder. Go to "Properties". In the "General" tab, you can tick mark the "Hidden" in the "Attributes". And the folder or file will be hidden from the users. Also Go to My computer-> Tools(In windows 7, press ALT)->Folder Options. There change the option to "Do not show hidden files".
  3. Command line
  4. This method is better than above. Take command line prompt in windows in administrator mode. then locate your folder , say i want to hide the D:\Pictures\family folder. for that type following command and press ENTER.
    attrib +s +h D:\Pictures\family
    If you want to make it visible again , type the following
    attrib -s -h D:\Pictures\family

In (Ubuntu) linux

In ubuntu, any file or folder name starting with a fullstop/period "." will be hidden by default. For example the folder .music will be hidden. So rename your file or folder such that add a fullstop at the starting. Done !

How to troubleshoot the "NTLDR is Missing" error message in windows XP

When you start your Windows XP based computer, you may receive the following error message:
NTLDR is missing
Press ALT+CTRL+DEL to restart 

Why this problem?

This problem occurs if one or more of the following Windows boot files are missing or damaged:
  • ntldr
  • ntdetect.com
  • boot.ini

How to solve?

  1. Insert the Windows bootable CD/DVD or flash drive
  2. Boot the computer from it
  3. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to repair the Windows XP installation.
  4. Now you can see the lis of windows installations . Type the number that corresponds to the Windows installation that you want to repair, and then press ENTER. For example, type 1, and then press ENTER
  5. Type the Administrator password(if you dont have any passowrd,leave it blank), and then press ENTER.
  6. Type map, and then press ENTER. Note the drive letter that is assigned to the CD-ROM drive that contains the Windows XP CD-ROM. Let it be E:\ (This may be different in your computer)
  7. Type the following commands, pressing ENTER after you type each one. E:\ in the following commands is the CD-ROM drive letter obtained from step 6.
    • copy E:\i386\ntldr C:\
    • copy E:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\
  8. Type exit and press ENTER. Then computer restarts.. Done!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Cooperative Linux

What is Cooperative Linux ?


For layman, Cooperative Linux means software which allows Microsoft Windows and the Linux kernel to run simultaneously in parallel on the same machine.

Technically, Cooperative Linux is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run as an unprivileged lightweight virtual machine in kernel mode , on top of another OS kernel .


It allows Linux to run under any operating system that supports loading drivers , such as Windows or Linux, after minimal porting efforts . An alternative to using a Linux PC is a free license of Cooperative Linux (coLinux).This Linux project is a new approach to getting the Linux kernel to run under Windows. CoLinux contains special Windows drivers, which allow it to run under Windows as a guest operating system with all privileges .

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Changing BSNL router configurations (Passwords / DNS etc)

If you are using BSNL as your ISP, you can configure and change the settings of your router by a web inteface.

In your web browser(firefox, google chrome etc), type 192.168.1.1 in the address bar . It asks for username and password. Default username and password provided by BSNL is "admin" and 'admin' respectively. After your first login, change the password.

Once you login, you have four menu items.
  1. Device Info:
  2. Here, you get all the informations about your network, WAN , LAN , IP addresses, DNS address etc.
  3.  Advanced setup
  4. Here, you can change the settings of LAN , WAN , etc
  5. Diagonostics
  6. Management
  7. Here you have system logs, back up features , internet time synch and changing access passwords of the router etc. 

How to change BSNL router password?

 IMPORTANT: Change your router password as soon as you login for the first time itself.Otherwise, attackers can easily access your networks. For eg: someone else can change your WiFi settings so that it can be accessed by public.

For changing , first of all go to 192.168.1.1 in your web browser(like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome etc) and give default username and password both as "admin". Go to "Management"->"Access control"->"passwords". Select user as "admin" and type your old and new password and then "save&reboot". Done!

How to change DNS server addresses of your router ?

Login to 192.168.1.1 . Then go to "Advanced setup" ->"DNS"->"DNS Server". If you want to add DNS server other than that used by BSNL, untick " Enable Automatic Assigned DNS" and add your primary and secondary DNS server address. You can use OpenDNS server addresses ie 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.(Why?)

Web content filtering with OpenDNS

Are you searching for a tool that will restrict your children or students from accessing unwanted websites? Are you in search of an easy tool to manage your networks web activites ? Then ,OpenDNS is the tool for you..!

How to set up?

First of all, change your router settings to use openDNS as your DNS servers. That is, change your DNS address as 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Dont know how to change DNS address of your router ?

Now create an account in www.opendns.com if you dont have one. Once you register, login to your openDNS dashboard. Now , go to "create a network" option in the dashboard. You can create networks as many as needed for your purposes. For example, for maintaining your home network ,create a network named "HOME" and for your office maintanence purposes , you can create a "OFFICE" network.

While creating networks, they will ask the IP address of your router. If you are using static IP, you can give that IP directly. But if you are using dynamic IP, you have to update the IP each time you have a new IP. You can do that manually(oops!) or you can use client softwares which will automatically updates your IP address once you get a new IP(:-) cool). You can download that softwares here(for windows,for mac).

So you have set up the your networks and now you are using openDNS. Now the important step comes..Content Filtering

Content Filtering

Go to "Settings" tab of your dashboard and choose the network for which you are going filter contents. Now in "Web Content Filtering" tab, you have different levels of web filters High,Moderate,Low,None and Customize. Choose one among them according to your need and give "Apply". Done! It will take about 3 minutes to get the settings active since the new rules are to be updated in all the openDNS DNS servers around the world!.

Manage individual domains

Another cool feature is that you can manage(either always block or never block) individual domains where you can make exceptions. For example, if you choose "Customize" level and you ticked "serach engines", all the search engines will be blocked. But if you want to allow "Google", you can just add a "never block" to google.com. Give it as google.com (not www.google.com) to apply this same rule for all the subdomains of google.com .

Who all are using OpenDNS?

  • OpenDNS is the number one choice for K-12 schools. More than 40,000 public and private schools and school districts around the world use openDNS to control Web content. 
  • OpenDNS is the smartest and easiest way to protect all Internet access in your home.

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