IT Masala

1969: The publication of the first “request for comments,” or RFC, documents paves the way for the birth of the internet.

April 7 is often cited as a symbolic birth date of the net because the RFC memoranda contain research, proposals and methodologies applicable to internet technology. RFC documents provide a way for engineers and others to kick around new ideas in a public forum; sometimes, these ideas are adopted as new standards by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

One interesting aspect of the RFC is that each document is issued a unique serial number. An individual paper cannot be overwritten; rather, updates or corrections are submitted on a separate RFC. The result is an ongoing historical record of the evolution of internet standards.

When it comes to the birth of the net, Jan. 1, 1983, also has its supporters. On that date, the National Science Foundation’s university network backbone, a precursor to the World Wide Web, became operational.

(Source: Various)

The Russian security company Kaspersky Lab claims to have created the world's first "proof of concept" iPod virus. They provide exceptionally few details about the "virus" itself, but what they do provide tells us that the virus that they created doesn't really exploit that much. They named the virus "Podloso," which is—again—a proof-of-concept program and "does not pose a real threat," writes the company.

Security vendor Kaspersky Labs announced it has detected the first virus designed to infect iPod portable media players. Photo by Kaspersky Labs

Condition to be Affected :

Kaspersky says the iPod must have Linux installed. The company says that the user must put the virus' file onto the iPod's disk first . ( this is too much limitation..who the hell would do that..)

Virus Activity :

Once there, the virus installs itself into a folder that contains program demos on the iPod. It then allegedly scans the disk of the iPod in order to infect all .elf files, and if the user tries to launch any of these files, a mocking message will be displayed on the iPod's screen: "You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus."

"Podloso has no malicious payload, and does not present a real threat; it simply demonstrates that it is, theoretically possible to create malicious programs for such devices," writes the company.

Note : But still Ipod users are not away from the threat of being affected severely by malicious programmers . So be careful when you install any third party softwares or any hacks to your little music player .

via [ novinite ] 

Here's a nice article on what makes geeks better lovers !! Looks a bit funny too… but still its worth the read..go through it. SO here are ten things that makes geeks better …

- Geeks build it so you will come

- Geeks get personal with tech

- Geeks dig consensual role playing

- Geeks interact

- Geeks get things done

- Geeks are hot … ( wow.. thats cool ! ) 

- Geeks don't shock easily

- Geeks know kinky people

- Geeks understand multi-dimensional relationships  ( wow…)

- Geeks aren't threatened by new tech or "the future of sex"   ( lol…)

Read Full Article @ wired news 

NIH Director Elias Zerhouni wants to pay you upto $1.5 million in direct costs over five years for your innovative mind !

What do you have to do? Submit an innovative idea that could have an exceptional impact on biomedical or behavioral science.

Who is eligible?

Applicant PD/PI’s must hold an independent research position at a domestic (U.S.) institution as of September 20, 2007 and must have received their most recent doctoral degree (e.g., Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., D.V.M., or equivalent) or completed their medical internship and residency in 1997 or later.

“We want proposals in a broad range of scientific areas relevant to the NIH mission and from a diverse pool of applicants,” Zerhouni said

Application : 

Those who have an urge to do something for Science and also win the prize , download and submit the application, they could apply @ NIH. Click to read more information on the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Deadline : Applications will be accepted from April 25 through May 22, 2007.

NIH Director Launches Program for Innovative New Investigators [NIH News]

Google Summer of Code 2007 is on! They are now accepting student applications. They have also published some additional web app documentation for mentors and organization administrators.

What is Google Summer of Code?

Its a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects.

Who can apply ?

Students can submit their applications via the GSoC web app between March 14-24, 2007.

Deadline : March 14-24, 2007

Eligibility :

All college and university students around the world are invited to apply

Prizes to be won ?

Get paid $4,500 USD to work on your favorite open source project this summer. Its not just for $4,500 .. the real big thing is - the competition is conducted by Google and the award too.. ! what more does anyone want ? 

Apply Here :

Guide to the Google Summer of Code Web App for Student Applicants 

PS : WordPress is among the 131 accepted to Google Summer of Code, of more than 300 projects that applied.

Note : Google Summer Code is no longer accepting applications from open source organizations. 

[ Apply ] via [ Google Summer Code ] 

Indian youth are witnessing a mix of Indian and Western ways of life. Noticed this fusion of cultures lately? Show CNN what you've seen; Upload your videos/images on this fusion of Indian and Western styles; Share your experiences on the CNN  I - Report.

We want to hear from the youth of India. Tell CNN about the most important issues in your lives. Share your view points with us on being young in India, your opinion on arranged marriages, how important is religion to you. Click here to share your stories.

This event is organized by CNN in association with Aditya Birla Group,Kirloskar,Tata Consultancy Services(TCS) and ITC-WELCOME GROUP

What to do to Win Nokia N73 ?

Explore the youth's changing values and attitudes.

Upload your Videos/Images ( theme : Fusion of Indian & Western Styles )

Validity :  March 17th to March 24th 2007

What is E8 : E8 is a complex structure with 248 dimensions. It took 4 years of prep work by 18 mathematicians and computer scientists and 3 full days of computer time to solve a matrix with over 205 billion parts that contained 60 times more data than the Human Genome Project.

Math team solves the unsolvable E8. The researchers behind the work explain in a press announcement:

Lie groups come in families. The classical groups A1, A2, A3, … B1, B2, B3, … C1, C2, C3, … and D1, D2, D3, … rise like gentle rolling hills towards the horizon. Jutting out of this mathematical landscape are the jagged peaks of the exceptional groups G2, F4, E6, E7 and, towering above them all, E8. 

Professor of mathematics Peter Sarnak at Princeton University said of the team’s result: “This is exciting. Understanding and classifying the representations of Lie Groups has been critical to understanding phenomena in many different areas of mathematics and science including algebra, geometry, number theory, Physics and Chemistry. This project will be valuable for future mathematicians and scientists." [See: http://aimath.org/E8/.]

David Vogan, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, is one of the team of mathematicians that worked on E8. He described their work as: “…as complicated as symmetry can get.” [BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6466129.stm]

The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1994 by John Fry and Steve Sorenson. Its goals are to expand the scope of mathematical knowledge through research projects, sponsored conferences, and the development of an on-line mathematics library. The home Web page of AIM is http://www.aimath.org/.

A brief mathematical description of E8 appears at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_%28mathematics%29.

More information about E8 appears at the article “Mathematicians Map E8”: http://aimath.org/E8/ 

On March 13, Dell announced that all Dell and Alienware customers who purchase select gaming desktops will now be able to increase their storage space by adding the world’s first one terabyte hard drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Dell is the first computer system supplier to ship 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) hard drives targeted at users needing to store large amounts of digital media.

The first Dell PCs to use the drives will be its own Alienware-branded gaming PCs. 

According to Neil Hand, vice president, worldwide consumer marketing consumer product group, “Digital content use is exploding in the consumer market – with this 1TB hard drive, a lifetime of memories, music and other information can be made, stored and shared with others. This type of capability used to be available only to the largest corporations. With the spectacular advancement in hard drives and the engineering in our systems, we’re now able to bring it to consumers.”

How different is it ?

Dell will use Hitachi GST's 1TB Deskstar 7K1000 drive spinning at 7,200rpm with a 3GBit/s serial ATA interface. The drive uses perpendicular recording, has five platters, a read access time of 8.5msecs and a write time of 9.2msecs. It has a cache of 32MB and an 8.7ms average seek time.

Pricing : Dell's 1TB drive is priced at $540.

Extras : 

Users can upload videos to Video Time Capsule Service  (www.studiodell.com) where Dell will store them, initially on the 1TB drives, for a claimed 50 years.

via [ StudioDell Website ]

They won't divulge their real names, they call their project a "whiny, attention-seeking ploy," and they appear to take their fashion cues from Beastie Boys music videos.

They won't divulge their real names, they call their project a "whiny, attention-seeking ploy," and they appear to take their fashion cues from Beastie Boys music videos.

But two hackers going by the names of Mondo Armando and Müstaschio promise to begin disclosing security vulnerabilities in MySpace, News Corp.'s popular social networking site, every day next month.

"The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites," wrote Mondo Armando in an e-mail interview.

"We could have just as easily gone after Google or Yahoo or MSN or IDG or whatever. MySpace is just more fun, and is becoming notoriously [obnoxious] about responding to security issues," he said.

These "Month of Bugs" projects have become a way for hackers to bring attention to both themselves and to security problems in certain types of products. Well-known hacker HD Moore kicked off the craze last year when he published one browser bug per day for the month of July. His effort was followed by a "Month of kernel bugs," a "Month of Apple Bugs," and a "Month of PHP Bugs."

The MySpace hackers launched their project late Thursday expressing simultaneous enthusiasm and disdain for the task ahead. "If it ends up being just as lame as the Month of Apple Bugs, then we haven't really missed the mark. If it's funnier, then great," they wrote on their project's blog. "If it kills this Month of Whatever fad, then hurray for everyone, it's over."

They intend to primarily publish cross site scripting bugs, which can allow an attacker to execute malicious script within a victim's browser, but they may also publish bugs that affect browsers or technologies like Flash or QuickTime.

[ Whiny,attention-seeking ploy ] via [ pcworld ]

Microsoft always says it opposes "software pirates" who sell thousands of unauthorized copies of Windows.

A security expert says Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, but Microsoft calls the process an antipiracy 'hack'.

Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end run around one of Microsoft's key antipiracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said Thursday.

Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secret newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.

"The [activation] demands that Vista puts on corporate buyers is much more than on XP," said Livingston. "Vista developers have [apparently] programmed in back doors to get around time restrictions for Vista activation."

Brian Livingston describes the Registry key that's involved and the steps :

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