If you have been using Internet on a regular basis or working in a large company and surf the Internet while you are at work, you must have surely come across the term firewall. You might have also heard of people saying “firewalls protect their computer from web attacks and hackers” or “a certain website has been blocked by firewall in their work place”. If you have ever wondered to know what exactly is this firewall and how it works, here we go. In this post I will try to explain “How firewalls work” in a layman’s terms.

How Firewalls Work

Firewalls are basically a barrier between your computer (or a network) and the Internet (outside world). A firewall can be simply compared to a security guard who stands at the entrance of your house and filters the visitors coming to your place. He may allow some visitors to enter while denying others whom he suspects of being intruders. Similarly a firewall is a software program or a hardware device that filters the information (packets) coming through the Internet to your personal computer or a computer network.

Firewalls may decide to allow or block network traffic between devices based on the rules that are pre-configured or set by the firewall administrator. Most personal firewalls such as Windows firewall operate on a set of pre-configured rules that are most suitable under normal circumstances so that the user need not worry much about configuring the firewall.

Personal firewalls are easy to install and use and hence preferred by end-users for use on their personal computers.  However large networks and companies prefer those firewalls that have plenty of options to configure so as to meet their customized needs. For example, a company may set up different firewall rules for FTP servers, Telnet servers and Web servers. In addition the company can even control how the employees connect to the Internet by blocking access to certain websites or restricting the transfer of files to other networks. Thus in addition to security, a firewall can give the company a tremendous control over how people use the network.

Firewalls use one or more of the following methods to control the incoming and outgoing traffic in a network:

1. Packet Filtering: In this method packets (small chunks of data) are analyzed against a set of filters. Packet filters has a set of rules that come with accept and deny actions which are pre-configured or can be configured manually by the firewall administrator. If the packet manages to make it through these filters then it is allowed to reach the destination; otherwise it is discarded.

2. Stateful Inspection: This is a newer method that doesn’t analyze the contents of the packets. Instead it compares certain key aspects of each packet to a database of trusted source. Both incoming and outgoing packets are compared against this database and if the comparison yields a reasonable match, then the packets are allowed to travel further. Otherwise they are discarded.

Firewall Configuration

Firewalls can be configured by adding one or more filters based on several conditions as mentioned below:

1. IP addresses: In any case if an IP address outside the network is said to be unfavorable, then it is possible to set  filter to block all the traffic to and from that IP address. For example, if a cetain IP address is found to be making too many connections to a server, the administrator may decide to block traffic from this IP using the firewall.

2. Domain names: Since it is difficult to remember the IP addresses, it is an easier and smarter way to configure the firewalls by adding filters based on domain names. By setting up a domain filter, a company may decide to block all access to certain domain names, or may provide access only to a list of selected domain names.

3. Ports/Protocols: Every service running on a server is made available to the Internet using numbered ports, one for each service. In simple words, ports can be compared to virtual doors of the server through which services are made available. For example, if a server is running a Web (HTTP) service then it will be typically available on port 80. In order to avail this service, the client needs to connect to the server via port 80. Similarly different services such as Telnet (Port 23), FTP (port 21) and SMTP (port 25) services may be running on the server. If the services are intended for the public, they are usually kept open. Otherwise they are blocked using the firewall so as to prevent intruders from using the open ports for making unauthorized connections.

4. Specific words or phrases: A firewall can be configured to filter one or more specific words or phrases so that, both the incoming and outgoing packets are scanned for the words in the filter. For example, you may set up a firewall rule to filter any packet that contains an offensive term or a phrase that you may decide to block from entering or leaving your network.

Hardware vs. Software Firewall

Hardware firewalls provide higher level of security and hence preferred for servers where security has the top most priority whereas, the software firewalls are less expensive and are most preferred in home computers and laptops. Hardware firewalls usually come as an in-built unit of a router and provide maximum security as it filters each packet in the hardware level itself even before it manages to enter your computer. A good example is the Linksys Cable/DSL router.

Why Firewall?

Firewalls provide security over a number of online threats such as Remote login, Trojan backdoors, Session hijacking, DOS & DDOS attacks, viruses, cookie stealing and many more. The effectiveness of the security depends on the way you configure the firewall and how you set up the filter rules. However major threats such as DOS and DDOS attacks may sometimes manage to bypass the firewalls and do the damage to the server. Even though firewall is not a complete answer to online threats, it can most effectively handle the attacks and provide security to the computer up to the maximum possible extent.

MegaUpload Responded to MasterCard Cutoff

A few days ago the Recording Industry Association of America made an effort to force MasterCard to cut off payments to cyberlockers like MegaUpload. Now MegaUpload is responding on this news.

Things over blocking infringing websites are currently heating up between the MPAA, RIAA, and a number of sites accused of facilitating copyright violation. A few of those websites host large files, allowing people to download them as a side bonus of saving bandwidth costs for some companies. Meanwhile, some accuse such websites of duping consumers into paying for illegal content, and the RIAA is one of them, trying to force MasterCard to block payments to MegaUpload.

While the entertainment industry is claiming that payment system had come to them on its own will to cooperate, MegaUpload also made a statement in respond. There it wonders since when payment processors are making an effort to become the legislature of our time and decide what is right and what isn’t, instead of the elected governments. The hosting service representative pointed at the example of WikiLeaks as the beginning of new era, asking where it will end. In fact, consumers may end being unable to settle their broadband provider bill by MasterCard, because their carrier of choice may profit from copyright violation, which is literally nonsense.

MegaUpload admitted that it is watching the situation with interest, but since the major part of its revenue comes from advertising, the decision to cut them off payment systems would have a limited effect on its operations.

In fact, the US entertainment industry has yet to try to litigate the company, as it would indeed be hard, considering that MegaUpload has a copyright complaints system in place. Currently the service can boast more than 100 million registered users and more than 45 million daily visitors. Moreover, employees of around 70% of the world’s largest companies possess accounts with MegaUpload. This means that the site hosts more than a billion legal files, including documents, pictures and backups. In other words, the service is sure that if MasterCard decides to turn against it, it will be the payment system, not a hosting site that faces a problem.

Well, it will be quite interesting to watch the unfolding events in the forthcoming weeks should these tensions keep rising.

How to Protect Your Computer from Keyloggers

Keyloggers have been a major problem today as it does not require any prior knowledge of computers to use it. So hackers mainly use keyloggers to steal your passwords, credit card numbers and other confidential data. Below are some methods through which you can protect your computer from keyloggers:

 

Use a Good Antivirus

This is the first and basic step that you need to take in order to protect your computer from keyloggers. Use a Good antivirus such as Kaspersky, Norton or Mcafee and update it regularly.

 

Use a Good Antispyware

Since keyloggers are basically spywares, if you are a frequent user of Internet then you could be exposed to thousands of keyloggers and spywares. So you should use a good antispyware such as NoAdware.

 

Antilogger can be Handy

Antiloggers are programs that detect the presence of keyloggers on a given computer. Over past few years, I have tested a lot of anti-logging programs and have found Zemana Antilogger as the best antilogger.

Zemana

Normally a keylogger can be easily detected by a Good Antivirus program, but hackers use some methods such as hexing, binding, crypting and similar techniques to make it harder to be detected by antivirus programs. In this case Zemana Antilogger comes handy as the program is specially developed to protect your system against harmful keyloggers.

 

Online Scanning

When ever you receive a suspicious file, you scan it with online scanners such as Multi engine antivirus scanner which scans your file with 24 antivirus engines and reports it back to you if the file is recognized as a virus or spyware. This ensures that none of the malicious programs can escape from being detected as there are 24 different antivirus engines are involved in the scanning process.

 

Sandboxie

Sandboxie is another great program to help you protect your computer against harmful keyloggers and spywares. Sandboxie runs your computer in an isolated space which prevents your program from making permanent changes to other programs in your computer.

When ever you receive a file that looks suspicious, just run the program with Sandboxie so even if it is a keylogger or any other virus it will not make permanent changes to your computer system.

To run a program in Sandboxie follow the steps as mentioned below:

1. Open sandboxie and click on sandbox menu on the top

2. Now goto Default sandbox

3. Then click on run any program

4. Now select the file you wish to run in sandboxie and click open

 

Keyscrambler

Keyscrambler is one of the best protection against keyloggers that you can have, Keyscrambler is a small program which encrypts your typed keystrokes so even if the victim has installed a keylogger on your system, he or she will get encrypted keys. Keyscrambler currently supports Firefox, Internet explorer and other applications, however its premium version supports more than 160 applications.

Avatar Crowned The Most Pirated Movie of 2010

 

Last year Avatar broke all records at the box office, and in 2010 the film’s success continued online scooping up yet another prestigious award.

With 16,580,000 downloads on BitTorrent alone, Avatar is undisputedly the most pirated film of the year.

Never before have we seen this many downloads of a movie in a single year. This honor previously belonged to last year’s winner Star Trek with 10,960,000 downloads, but Avatar quashed this previous record.

Earlier this year we already crowned Avatar as the most downloaded Blu-ray film ever, with 200,000 downloads in just 4 days. In the months that followed the number of Blu-ray downloads of Avatar have exceeded two million.

Another expected entry in the list of most pirated movies in 2010 is The Hurt Locker. This film was already available on BitTorrent for most of 2009, but really started to gain attention from the public after it won six Oscars.

This huge success online compared to the meager box-office earnings was most likely one of the reasons why the makers of the film sued thousands of alleged BitTorrent users last spring. Despite the looming threat of legal action the downloads continued pretty much undeterred, resulting in a 9th place in todays list.

As every year there are also a few notable absentees, such as the two best grossing movies at the box-office this year, Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland. On the other hand, Kick-Ass and Green Zone were both hugely popular among the downloading public, while their box office grosses were relatively modest.

The data for this list is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from thousands of BitTorrent trackers. All release formats, including cammed versions are counted. Afterwards, the data is carefully checked and corrected.

Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent, 2010

rank	movie	downloads	worldwide grosses
1	Avatar	16,580,000	$2,779,551,867
2	Kick-Ass	11,400,000	$96,130,432
3	Inception	9,720,000	$825,408,570
4	Shutter Island	9,490,000	$294,803,014
5	Iron Man 2	8,810,000	$621,751,988
6	Clash of the Titans	8,040,000	$493,214,993
7	Green Zone	7,730,000	$94,875,650
8	Sherlock Holmes	7,160,000	$523,029,864
9	The Hurt Locker	6,850,000	$48,612,915
10	Salt	6,700,000	$175,190,850

Data Center Construction Simulation

15 Best Windows 7 Tips and Hacks

You have upgraded to Windows 7, love the new taskbar, and enjoy the power of using the cool Libraries feature.

But now you want more. You want the cool tips and tricks that make Windows 7 fun!

So here are the best ones to help you get the most out of your new OS. In this article, we will focus on the Windows 7 interface to get you started on the road to becoming a Windows 7 Power User. In Part 2, we will be looking at advanced tips for usability, performance, and security.

1. Use Keyboard Shortcuts

Using the mouse, you can drag-‘n-dock windows to either side of the screen, or drag it to the top to maximize it. These keyboard shortcuts are even faster:

• Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock the window to the left and right side of the screen
• Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximize and restore/minimize
• Win+M minimizes everything
• Alt+Up, Alt+Left Arrow, Alt+Right Arrow navigate to parent folder, or browse Back and Forward through folders in Explorer
• Win+Home minimizes/restores all open windows except the active window
• Alt+Win+# accesses the Jump List of program number ‘#’ on the taskbar

2.Rearrange System Tray Icons

You can rearrange icons on the taskbar as you wish and start new (or switch to running) instances of the first ten taskbar programs using Win+1, Win+2, and so on. The cool thing is you can also rearrange system tray icons. Reorder them on the tray or move them outside or back in the tray. Take control of what you want to always keep an eye on, and from which apps you’ll require notifications.

3. Access Jump Lists with the Left Mouse Button

Jump Lists usually show up when you right-click on a taskbar icon. However, they can also be accessed by holding the left mouse button and dragging upwards. If you’re using a laptop touchpad or a touch screen, this is convenient because you do not have to click any button to access a context menu.

4. Add Any Folder to Favorites

You can add any library or folder to the Favorites section in Windows Explorer. To add a folder, navigate to it in Explorer, right-click Favorites in the left navigation pane, and select Add current location to Favorites. Now you get quick access to your favorite folders in all File->Save As dialogs!

5. Pin Frequently Used Folders to the Taskbar

Right-click, drag, and pin your favorite folders to Windows Explorer on the taskbar. They will now show up in the Jump List when you right click on Explorer giving you quick access to your favorite folders.

6. Pin Control Panel to the Taskbar

You cannot pin the Control Panel to the taskbar via the Start Menu or by drag and drop. Open the Control Panel and right-click its taskbar icon to pin it to the taskbar. An advantage of this is that Control Panel’s Jump List allows quick access to recently used functions.

7. Create Keyboard Shortcuts for Programs

You can create keyboard shortcuts for any program in Windows 7. Right-click the program icon and select Properties. Select the Shortcut tab, click in Shortcut key, to set the keyboard shortcut for that program.

8. Open Command Prompt in Any Folder

Like the command prompt? Miss the ‘Open Command Window Here’ Windows XP power toy? Press ‘Shift’ when right-clicking on a folder to get that option in the context menu. This also works on the desktop. No power toy required!

9. View Expanded ‘Send To’ Menu

Press Shift when right-clicking on a folder to get an expanded Send To menu.

10. Adjust Screen Text with Clear Type

Use Clear Type Tuner for the best look on your LCD monitor or laptop screen. Run ‘cttune.exe’ from the Start Menu search box, or go to the Control Panel Display applet, and select Adjust ClearType Text from the left.

11. Get Exact Colors On Your Screen

If you are an artist or you work with colors, use the Calibrate Color option in the Control Panel Display applet or run dccw.exe from the Start Menu search box. You can adjust gamma, brightness, contrast, and color balance, ensuring that colors are displayed correctly on your screen.

12. Customize the Power Button

If you restart your computer more often than you shut it down, change the default Shutdown power button to Restart. Right-click on Start, select Properties, and choose the Power button action that you use the most.

13. Customize Number of Items in Jump Lists & Start Menu

Right-click Start, select Properties, click Customize and choose the number of recent programs to be shown in the Start Menu and the number of items displayed in Jump Lists from the Start Menu Size section below.

14. Search Internet from the Start Menu

Enable Internet search from the Start Menu using your default browser. Run GPEDIT.MSC from the Start Menu search box to start the Group Policy Editor. In the left pane, go to User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Start Menu and Taskbar. In the right pane, right-click to Edit and Enable Add Search Internet link to Start Menu.

15. Add Videos to Start Menu

Windows 7 does not place a link to your videos on the Start Menu by default. To add a link to your videos on the Start Menu, right-click Start, select Properties, click on Customize. In the Videos section at the bottom, choose Display as a link.

The major incidents on the Internet in 2010

 

 

 

Let’s get started! The major incidents on the Internet in 2010 were…

Wikipedia’s failover fail

 Wikipedia has become so ubiquitous that it can’t go down for a minute without people noticing. According to Google Trends for Websites, the site has roughly 50 million visitors per day.

In March, when servers in Wikimedia’s European data center overheated and shut down, the service was supposed to fail over to a US data center. Unfortunately, the failover mechanism didn’t work properly and broke the DNS lookups for all of Wikipedia. This effectively rendered the site unreachable worldwide. It took several hours before everyone could access the site again.

WordPress.com’s big-blog crash

WordPress.com got a pretty bad start this year when a network issue caused the biggest outage the service had seen in four years. The outage became extra noticeable not just because of the sheer number of blogs it hosts (at the time 10 million, now many more), but also because so many high-profile blogs use it. The WordPress.com outage took down blogs such as TechCrunch, GigaOM and the Wired blogs for almost two hours in February.

Gmail’s multiple outages

Gmail is one of the world’s most popular email services, and is an integral part of Google Apps. Unfortunately, it’s had several notable outages this year. These issues haven’t always affected Gmail’s entire user base, but enough of it to make headlines in the news.

In February, a routine maintenance caused a disruption that cascaded from data center to data center, knocking out Gmail worldwide for about 2.5 hours. In March, Gmail had an issue that lasted as much as 36 hours for some users. Another incident happened early in September, whenoverloaded routers made the service completely unavailable for almost two hours.

China reroutes the Internet

In April, China Telecom spread incorrect traffic routes to the rest of the Internet. In this specific case it meant that during 18 minutes, potentially as much as 15% of the traffic on the Internet was sent via China because routers believed it was the most effective route to take.

Similar incidents have happened before, for example when YouTube was hijacked globally by a small Pakistani ISP two years ago. Normally this results in a crash since the ISP can’t handle the traffic. However, China Telecom was able to handle the traffic, so most people never noticed this. At most they noticed increased latency as traffic to the affected networks took a very long and awkward route across the Internet (via China).

Even though no serious outage happened as a result of this, we think it’s such a fascinating disruption of the traffic flow that we felt it was worth including here. This is an inherent weakness of today’s Internet infrastructure, which largely relies on the honor system. Renesys has a more in-depth explanation of this incident and how it could happen. We should state that it wasn’t necessarily an intentional hijacking.

Twitter’s World Cup woes

Twitter seemed like the ideal companion to the World Cup (soccer to you Americans, football to the rest of the world, John Cleese explains it best). Tweeting about the World Cup proved so popular that it slowed down or broke Twitter several times during the weeks of the event. The upside is that this effectively load tested Twitter’s infrastructure, revealing potential weaknesses. As a result, Twitter’s service today is most likely more stable than it might otherwise have been.

Facebook’s feedback loop

Facebook has become a true juggernaut with more than 500 million users. That hasn’t changed its development philosophy, “don’t be afraid to break things.” This aggressive approach to speedy development has been key to Facebook’s success, but, well, sometimes it will break things.

Facebook’s worst outage in four years came in September when a seemingly innocent update to Facebook’s backend code caused a feedback loop that completely overloaded its databases. The only way for Facebook to recover was to take down the entire site and remove the bad code before taking the site back online. Facebook was offline for approximately 2.5 hours.

Foursquare’s double whammy

Foursquare’s location-based social network has been a resounding success and has in little time gathered a following of millions, so when the service went down for roughly 11 hours early in October, people of course noticed. The culprit was an overloaded database. And as if to add insult to injury, almost exactly the same thing happened the day after, taking the site down for an additional six hours.

Paypal’s payment problems

When Paypal stumbles, so do the many thousands of merchants that rely on Paypal to handle payments, not to mention the millions of regular consumers who use Paypal for their online payments. You can imagine the effect, and sales lost, if Paypal stops working for hours on end. Which was exactly what happened in October when a problem with Paypal’s network equipmentcrippled the service for as much as 4.5 hours. At its peak the issue affected all of Paypal’s members worldwide for 1.5 hours.

Tumblr’s tumble

Tumblr was (and still is) one of the great social media successes of 2010, but with rapid growth comes scalability challenges. This has become increasingly noticeable, and culminated with a 24-hour outage early in December when all of Tumblr’s 11 million blogs were offline due to a broken database cluster.

The Wikileaks drama

If you’ve missed this you must have been hiding under a rock, which in turn was buried below a mountain of rocks. The site issues that Wikileaks experienced during the so-called Cablegate were significant. First the site was the victim of a large-scale distributed denial-of-service attack which forced Wikileaks to switch to a different web host. After Wikileaks moved to Amazon EC2 to better handle the increased traffic, Amazon soon shut them down. In addition to this, several countries blocked access to the Wikileaks site. And then the possibly largest blow came when the DNS provider for the official Wikileaks.org domain, EveryDNS, shut down the domain itself.

Without a working domain name in place, Wikileaks could for a time only be reached by its IP address. Since then, Wikileaks has spread itself out, mirroring the content over hundreds of sites and different domain names, including a new main site at Wikileaks.ch.

As if this wasn’t enough drama, you have to add the reactions from some of Wikileaks’ supporters (not from Wikileaks itself). The services that cut off Wikileaks in various ways (Paypal, VISA, Mastercard, Amazon, EveryDNS, etc.) were subjected to distributed denial-of-service attacks from upset supporters across the world, which resulted in even more downtime. There was also collateral damage, when some attackers mistook the DNS provider EasyDNS for EveryDNS, aiming their attacks at the wrong target.

The Wikileaks drama is without a doubt the Internet incident of the year.

Final words

The events we have listed here above really are just a small sample of everything that has happened in 2010. Even without Wikileaks, it’s been a very eventful year on the Internet. That said, this is something we find ourselves saying every year. The truth is that the Internet is not quite as stable and solid as most of us would like to believe. It’s a complex system, like a living organism, and things do break from time to time. Sometimes it’s small-scale enough that nobody notices, and sometimes hundreds of millions of people are affected.

Hopefully 2011 will be a less eventful year, but we wouldn’t count on it.

BitTorrent Released New Useful Apps

BitTorrent’s Apps studio introduced VLC media player application to its users, which allows them one-click streaming of files from their favorite BitTorrent client. In addition µCast allows users create list of files, called TorrentCasts, available for sharing with others.

BitTorrent Inc. has announced a number of new applications for both BitTorrent and uTorrent clients, saying that it will allow users to do what they couldn’t before.

The first innovation is a VLC player application, enabling you to automatically display the torrents that you have downloaded in a single list, which allows to easily play each of them via the VLC media player. The player is widely known as the one playing each and every file type currently existing, including disc images having extension .iso. This means that when you click on a file, there’s almost no chance to get that annoying dialog which asks you to find the relevant program to play it – VLC just knows. Thus, this program is a perfect match to different file types existing in the BitTorrent ecosystem. Besides, BitTorrent Inc. claims it to keep with the most valued qualities and be light and easy to use.

Then comes µCast, enabling users to create RSS feeds, also called TorrentCasts, of their own torrents in order to share them with others. The way it works is quite simple: you create a feed by just selecting the files you are willing to share. Then, your TorrentCast link’s recipients simply load it into their own BitTorrent application and get able to access any file from the feed. In addition, the TorrentCast is password protected in order to prevent illicit editing of your list by your recipients. Meanwhile, your recipients are able to add and edit files on the list if you provide them the password.

At the same time, µCast can be used as part of BitTorrent’s effort to help musicians reach P2P users, providing them with a very convenient way to deliver their songs or films to their fans. It can be made just as it is described above. The only exception is that the artist first has to convert their material to a torrent, which is not too difficult, even if sounds a little technical.

These were not the first useful apps the company released this year: the Apps SDK for uTorrent were introduced this mid-summer in a bid to allow third party developers to create and add their own applications offering new features and services.

BitTorrent Exclusive TV-Series Went Further

“Pioneer One”, a TV-show that was created for and made possible by P2P users, appeared to be extremely popular earlier this year – about a million users have downloaded the pilot episode. Despite the fact that it was created and distributed exclusively at BitTorrent, the innovative model couldn’t go unnoticed by TV-insiders: the series won an award for “Best Drama Pilot” at the New York Television Festival. Now, the second episode is already released, and 2 more are promised to follow in the forthcoming weeks.

Six months ago filmmakers Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith decided to set themselves up with quite a challenge: after they finished a script for the new TV-series called “Pioneer One”, instead of offering it to traditional TV-companies, the creators made a decision to fund and distribute the film online.

And they did it! The duo cooperated with the VODO BitTorrent distribution platform for distribution and promotion, and managed to collect the first $6,000 for shooting the pilot episode, which was eventually released in the early summer via VODO and quickly gained an amazing audience.

After hundreds of thousands of P2P users had viewed the show, they decided to donate money for future episodes: the donations scaled to another $20,000 in just 2 weeks and went on increasing until it was enough to shoot more episodes of the 1st season. The show creators realized that they had to do more than one episode at a time in order to make it cost-effective and timely, so they took time to prepare and managed to start shooting in fall.

Three more episodes were shot in October, and the first of them has already been released on VODO. Of course, just as the pilot episode, this one is available for downloading for free. Soon two more episodes will be released, and the team hopes to gather enough funds to complete the first season, which will have 7 episodes in total.

“Pioneer One” relies entirely on the BitTorrent community, so the release of the new episode is promoted by lots of P2P partners, including being bundled with new installs of uTorrent client. It will be curious to watch how the public will pick up the new episode. While the creators have high hopes, they still realize that the success of the pilot won’t be matched so easily. However, they believe that the 2nd episode is a step above the pilot.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article

Login to Multiple Accounts Using Gtalk

Have Multiple Google Accounts?
And want to login with both of them on Gtalk on single PC?

This is what I wanted to do as I’ve got two Google IDs, so I found out the way to run multiple GTalks simultaneously…

How to do it:

1. Create a shortcut to GTalk on your desktop (if you dont have currently).
2. Go to the properties of the shortcut. There in the target, you’ll see something like: “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe”
3. Add /nomutex to that target line. Then the line would be (Include the Quotes in the address) :
   
   

   “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

4. “Apply” it and then click “Ok”.
5. Check out if it works, Enjoy Multi-GTalks!

Don’t forget to leave comments here if this works…[:)]

TeraCopy – Copy all Files at Lightning Speed

Teracopy is new software which helps you to copy all files, folders, images of your computer at lightning fast speed.
TeraCopy Pro utility specially designed to copy / move files quicker and more secure. you can also resume copying file where you want.


Once you installed this application, it will completely replace the explorer copy and start to function  automatically whenever you copy files….
Features :-
– Lightning fast copy files
– Pause and resume of copying files
– Automated error recovery, if any problem occured in Downloading  multiple files, it will not skip the whole process of downloading
– Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.
– Automated function, it will start functioning automatically whenever you copy files in your computer
–  Fix problem, after copying the multiple files, it shows failed transfer file list, so that you can delete or re-copy failed transfer files at next time.

****** Download Link *****

Some Hidden Programs in Windows XP

 

Programs :

1. Private Character Editor :
Used for editing fonts,etc.
** start>>Run

** Now, type eudcedit

2. Dr. Watson :
This an inbuilt windows repairing software !
** start>>Run
** Now, type drwtsn32

3. Media Player 5.1 :
Even if you upgrade your Media Player, you can still access your old player in case the new one fails !!!
** start>>Run
** Now, type mplay32
4. iExpress :
Used to create Setups
You can create your own installers !
** start>>Run
** Now, type iexpress

{How To} Send Free Long SMS in India (Upto 500 Characters)

1. iBibo iSMS
iBibo lets you send 300 character long SMS in India. When service was launched 300 character were not allowed but you can send 300 characters long SMS using iBibo. I think it is a good news that you can use.

2. sms7
I have already discussed about this service in one of my post. This service lets you send 440 characters longs SMS, many of you should be using this service I think. With this service you get phone book and reminders, best of all it is also free.

3. Chikka Messenger
This free messenger is brought to you by indiatimes.com, it is a PC to mobile application. You can add your Gtalk buddies in Chikka and receive Google talk message. Using this service you can send 320 character long SMS. You can add 200 friends in your friends list.

4. Bollywoodmotion
Finally blast at the last, bollywoodmotion let you send 500 characters long SMS in India without signup. I do not know this service works or not I tried to send SMS, it told send but I did not receive any SMS, so the service may be fake or due to Ayodhya verdict.
I do not know about any other services that let you send long SMS for free, if you know any other please tell me by leaving a comment or you can email me.

5. CodeSMS
Send free SMS to ant network in India. Send SMS using your own mobile number. CodeSMS let you send 320 Character long SMS.

6. MyCantos
On 8 November I had an email from MyCantos telling about 300 characters long SMS  I can send.

Latest Bsnl 3G Hack Trick 2010

BSNL 3G service trick 2010:-
2+Mbps & Unlimted Downloading = Rs 274/mo.
Req.
Brand New BSNL 3G sim
& 3G handset
1). Go to a BSNL outlet n ask for a 3G sim
2). Then recharge it with Rs. 120 in which u ll get Rs 20 balance & 6 month validity
3). Then convert it to 2G by recharging it with Rs. 2
4). Then activate Unlimited GPRS plan for 2G on ur card by recharging Rs. 274(or plan in which u get unlimited acc. to your state)
Now in ur Handset
set access point as bsnlnet
n now use unlimited GPRS with speed of 3G.
BSNL user Use this trick 
100% Working yet Presently
First of all Buy a normal 2g bsnl’s sim card and keep balance 50+ rs.
Now activate gprs by sending sms GPRS PRE to 53733 It will be
activated in 24 hours, after activation get gprs settings by calling c.care
Now do e-recharge with 230 rs (or whatever unlimited plan exists in your area)
in it, After activation You have to change only one thing in your 3G enabled cell.
Go to settings>tools>settings>phone&get>network>network mode> now select UMTS
THEN do manual searching for network u will find bsnl 3g network there with small 3g logo along with its name,select it as default
Now see your data signals logo….. vow it is converted into 3G
You will get near about 500kbps to 1200 kbps speed
Remember use BSNLEGPRS or BSNLPREPAID as your access point
but its 100% working
Enjoy 3G at minimum cost……!!!!
Hope its Works for you. 

**** Try @ your own risk ******

Youtube Trick

 

You may notice just under the lower right coner of the video window, some videos have an option to “Watch In High Quality”. By default, these videos will play as a 320×240 FLV file

at 320Kb/s. Check out this sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyyjgYcS8Fs

The user could click on this link to “Watch in High Quality” which will reload the video and play the MP4 version , which is 480×360 at 512Kb/s. By adding &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, you’ll make the URL you share with others bring them right to the high quality version. Here’s the same video in the High Quality view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyyjgYcS8Fs&fmt=18

What else are you gaining besides increased video resolution? The video is compressed with H.264 compression, so you get better video even at the same data rate. You also go from a low fidelity mono audio feed to stereo @ 44.1Khz sample rate.



&fmt=6 increases the resolution from 320×240 to 448×336, Flash 7 video @ 900Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 96Kbps Mono CBR.

&fmt=18 increases the resolution to 480×360, H.264 video @ 512Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 128Kbps Stereo. Note, the bandwidth may be lower, but it’s utilizing a more efficient compression codec.

&fmt=22 increaes the resolution to 720p HD video if the source was uploaded at a high enough resolution.

Youtube - Advancing the video to a specific playback point.

If you ever wanted to link to a video in YouTube that was lengthy, but had a very interesting part partway through, there is a hack to allow you to begin playback at a precise time. You can specify the minutes and seconds of the start time like this:

add #t=53s to the end of the URL to start at 53 seconds into it:

CODE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A#t=53s

add #t=1m57s to the end of the video URL to start playback at 1 minute 57 seconds:

CODE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A#t=1m57s

Think of this as bookmarking your video clips! Now you can link to a video, and have an index of the segments included, which link right to that precise moment

How hackers can erase their tracks after hacking.

Whenever someone comes in contact with another person, place, or thing, something of that person is left behind. This means that the attacker must disable logging, clear log files, eliminate evidence, plant additional tools and cover his tracks.

Here are some of the techniques that an attacker can use to cover his tracks:-

(1) Disabling logging – Auditpol was originally included in the NT Resource kit for administrators. It works well for hackers too, as long as they have administrative access.
Just point it at the victim’s system as follows:
C:\>auditpol \\192.168.10 /disable
Auditing Disabled

(2) Clear the log file – The attacker will also attempt to clear the log. Tools, such as Winzapper, evidence Eliminator, or Elsave, can be used. Elsave will remove all entries from the logs, except one entry that shows the logs were cleared.
It is used as follows:

Elsave -s \\192.168.13.10 -1 “Security” -C

(3) Cover their tracks – One way for attackers to cover their tracks is with rootkits. Rootkits are malicious codes designed to allow an attacker to get expanded access and hide his presence. While rootkits were traditionally a Linux tool, they are now starting to make their way into the Windows environment. Tools, such as NTrootkit and AFX Windows rootkits, are available for Windows systems. If you suspect that a computer has been rootkitted, you need to use an MD5 checksum utility or a program, such as Tripwire, to determine the viability of your programs. The only other alternative is to rebuild the computer from known good media.

How to access the sharing data offline

Access the shared data offline allows you to keep using your shared files, folders and software programs when disconnected from the data server. When you reconnect to your data server, all files will be synchronized to the files on the network.  

There are two types of configurations required to set the access shared folders offline available, one for data server and other for client computer. 

Configuration on Data Server.

First locate the folders that you would like to share or make new folders then share these folders so they can be accessible to any one on the network.

Now right click on that folder and click on the option "Sharing and security".

A small dialog box will appear with the title "data properties". Under the "Sharing" tab, select the check box "Share this folder on the network" under the "Network sharing and security".

Now set the share level permissions that you want to give the users on every folder. Enable cache of share folders by click on cache button (by default it will be enabled).

Configuration on Client Computer 

On the client computer, first open My Computer then click on Tools.

In Tools menu bar, click on Folder Options, a window will appear with the title Folder Options.

Under the Offline File tab, check the option Enable Offline File. Here you can choose the synchronization process "Synchronize all offline files when logging on", "Synchronize all offline files before logging off" and others.

Click on Apply button to save the settings and then Ok button to close this window.

Now sitting on the client computer, try to access the shared folder from the data server.

First Right click on the shared folder and Click on Make available offline.

To synchronizing the offline work from client computer to data server, again open My Computer then click on Tools. Click on Synchronize then click on synchronizing button. 

After that down to data server and then try to access share folders by give the UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path of data server. But it will be accessible weather the server is down or up.

Extract RAR Files Without Password Free – Open Locked RAR Files

If you are looking for free softwares to extract rar files without password then here are two simple tools to open locked rar file archives. Simply download them you might jut be able to extract files from password protected Rar files.

Extract Files from Password Protected RAR Files

Winrar Unlock

Unlock locked winrar archive (including SFX) allowing you to modify the content freely. With Winrar archive lock to prevent modification, people cannot change the content/comment in it. Through some patching of few bytes, you are able to modify your archive with ease.

Download Winrar Unlock: Link

RAR Password Cracker

This program is intended to recover lost passwords for RAR/WinRAR archives of versions 2.xx and 3.xx. The program finds by the method of exhaustive search all possible combinations of characters (“bruteforce” method), or using passwords from lists (“wordlist” or “dictionary” method). Self-extracting archives and multivolume archives are supported.

**** Download RAR Password Cracker ****

The program is able to save a current state (you can interrupt the program at any time, and restart from the same state later).

Note: Most of the time for password protected RAR files For eg. Heroes.S02.E10.www.Free-Offline.com.rar the password is in the name it self. In this case the password, it is www.free-offline.com