Foul play: Your Google Video will play on any player but Windows Media Player

Google Video as you know lets you download the video to your system.

So the file downloaded(*.gvb) is not the video file but the URl locator to the actual media file which Google Player (VLC) use to download the actual *.gvi ( actually avi ) file.

This file you can play on any system any media player provided that they have required codec. But google wont let the Windows Media Player play this file (healthy competition huh)

So they changed the fourcc code of the avi sorry gvi to some junk so that WMP wont play it but as other player have their own parser for reading the header of the media file they just ignore that code and not worry about it......................................

Google knows it of course so they became evil and dint let Windows users with WMP see their vids. Is it fair to say Google is no evil any more

Read the original story at

• http://techoncrack.blogspot.com/2006/08/everything-about-google-video.html
• http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2006/09/20/playing-google-videos-in-windows-media-player/
  

Top Business schools

Michigan has retaken the top spot this year. But the winner's circle also includes two newcomers.

Reference : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115860376846766495.html

Download the complete ranking from WSJ.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/MB_06_Scoreboard.pdf

 

[Quoted from Wall Street Journal]

The lead in The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive ranking of America's top National business schools seesawed again this year, with the University of Michigan reclaiming the No. 1 spot from Dartmouth College.

Michigan and Dartmouth are clearly the schools to beat, with Dartmouth having achieved a first-place finish in three of the Journal's six annual rankings and Michigan now having scored two wins. (The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School is the only school that has succeeded in besting Dartmouth and Michigan.)

Our other two rankings produced some surprises, as two less prominent newcomers placed first in the Regional and International categories. Arizona's Thunderbird moves up from No. 4 last year in the ranking of regional U.S. schools, while ESADE in Barcelona, Spain, leads a group of European, North American and Central American schools in the International ranking.

Michigan owes its first-place showing in part to its emphasis on practical experience in its M.B.A. program. Recruiters say they prize Michigan graduates because they can connect theory with practice. As for Thunderbird and ESADE, they share an international focus and even happen to be partners through a dual-degree program of study at both schools.

A commitment to ethics and corporate social responsibility also distinguishes all three of the top-ranked schools -- from Michigan's student projects in developing countries to ESADE's "Christian humanism" tradition of management education to the oath of ethical conduct signed by Thunderbird graduates.

Looking Beyond Academics

The three rankings measure how appealing business schools are to the corporate recruiters who hire their M.B.A. graduates. What differentiates each ranking is the type of recruiters the schools attract. But the ratings of all 85 schools across the three rankings are based on how recruiters evaluated them on the same 21 attributes, as well as the recruiter's intention to return and hire a school's graduates over the next two years. In addition, the rankings include a "mass appeal" factor, which is the number of recruiters that the National and Regional schools attract. For the International ranking, the mass-appeal measure was changed this year so that schools can qualify for it only if they attract recruiters who place a large number of their graduates in jobs outside the U.S.

Harris Interactive conducted the online survey of 4,125 recruiters (up from 3,267 respondents in 2005) from Dec. 13, 2005, to March 16, 2006 -- with respondents rating only schools where they said they had recent recruiting experience. To qualify for any of the three rankings, a school had to receive at least 20 recruiter ratings.

The rankings aren't necessarily a reflection of the schools with the most celebrated academic reputations. Although the 21 attributes include the curriculum and faculty, academic quality isn't the primary concern of most survey respondents. Instead, they care most about the M.B.A. students' interpersonal and communication skills, teamwork orientation, personal ethics and integrity, analytical and problem-solving abilities, and work ethic.

That helps explain why some of the most renowned schools, such as Harvard and Stanford, don't rank as highly in the survey as their academic stature might suggest. While recognizing the brainpower of their students and faculty, recruiters complain that they often find graduates of some of the most prestigious institutions more arrogant and less collegial than the M.B.A.s they meet at other schools. Some of the large, elite schools also don't seem to enjoy as many close, personal relationships with recruiters as smaller M.B.A. programs do, and their career-service offices tend to receive lower scores for customer service.

Overall, the survey respondents appeared happier with the schools this year, giving generally higher ratings on the 21 attributes and indicating that they plan to continue recruiting at the same schools. More than half of the recruiters said they believe the quality of M.B.A. graduates is the same or better today compared with past years.

[/Quoted]

 

Read the full story at : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115860376846766495.html

Bachelor

 

It seems so dreadful to stay a bachelor, to become an old man struggling to keep one's

dignity while begging for an invitation whenever one wants to spend an evening in

company, to lie ill gazing for weeks into an empty room from the corner where one's bed

is, always having to say good night at the front door, never to run up a stairway beside

one's wife, to have only side doors in one's room leading into other people's living rooms,

having to carry one's supper home in one's hand, having to admire other people's children

and not even being allowed to go on saying: "I have none myself," modeling oneself in

appearance and behavior on one or two bachelors remembered from one's youth.

That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with

a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand. 

 

Franz Kafka

Live Search engine can do math for you

So http://www.live.com has a math engine working behind the scene. Give it a BODMAS equation and you have the answer.

Give it a try...

type 25 * 5 + 45 / 78 - x + 9.2 = 56.7769231 on ur favorite search engine...

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=25+*+5+%2B+4... and find out the answer

where as google gives you no result.

 

So LIVE is more intelligent and smarter than google. Isn't it? ;)

No more youtube Just msn SoapBox

Microsoft launched a new service called SoapBox to compete with video uploading service like youtube and Google Video.

So be ready with your cameras to shoot the video and upload it to the SoapBox

Wearing hemets 'more dangerous'

Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be knocked down by passing vehicles, new research from Bath University suggests.

The study found drivers tend to pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than those who are bare-headed.

Dr Ian Walker was struck by a bus and a lorry during the experiment. He was wearing a helmet both times.

But the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said tests have shown helmets protect against injuries.

To carry out the research, Dr Walker used a bike fitted with a computer and an ultrasonic distance sensor to find drivers were twice as likely to get close to the bicycle, at an average of 8.5cm, when he wore a helmet.

The experiment, which recorded 2,500 overtaking motorists in Salisbury and Bristol, was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Dr Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University's Department of Psychology, said: "This study shows that when drivers overtake a cyclist, the margin for error they leave is affected by the cyclist's appearance.

This study suggests wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely

Dr Ian Walker

"By leaving the cyclist less room, drivers reduce the safety margin that cyclists need to deal with obstacles in the road, such as drain covers and potholes, as well as the margin for error in their own judgements.

"We know helmets are useful in low-speed falls, and so definitely good for children, but whether they offer any real protection to somebody struck by a car is very controversial.

"Either way, this study suggests wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely in the first place," he added.

Dr Walker thinks the reason drivers give less room to cyclists wearing helmets is because they see them as "Lycra-clad street warriors" and believe they are more predictable than those without.

He suggests different types of road users need to understand each other.

"Most adult cyclists know what it is like to drive a car, but relatively few motorists ride bicycles in traffic, and so don't know the issues cyclists face.

"There should definitely be more information on the needs of other road users when people learn to drive and practical experience would be even better."

Wig wearing

To test another theory, Dr Walker donned a long wig to see whether there was any difference in passing distance when drivers thought they were overtaking what appeared to be a female cyclist.

While wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14cm more space when passing.

In future research, Dr Walker hopes to discover whether this was because female riders are seen as less predictable than male riders or because women are not seen riding bicycles as often as men on the UK's roads.

However, a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents insisted: "We wouldn't recommend that people stop wearing helmets because of this research. Helmets have been shown to reduce the likelihood of head and brain injuries in a crash.

"[The research] highlights a gain in vulnerability of cyclists on our roads and drivers of all types need to take more care when around them."

Pirate in jail

The owner of one the US's largest Internet software piracy Web sites www.iiBackups.net was sentenced yesterday to more than seven years in prison.

Story (Reference) : http://www.courttv.com/news/2006/0911/piracy_ap.ht...

Nathan Peterson, 27, of Los Angeles, sold products copyrighted by companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc. at a huge discount on his site, iBackups.net, prosecutors said. The site began operating in 2003 and was shut down by the FBI in February 2005.

In addition to Friday's 87-month sentence, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III ordered Peterson to pay restitution of more than $5.4 million and to forfeit the proceeds of his scheme, which included homes, cars and a boat.

Peterson pleaded guilty in December in Alexandria to two counts of copyright infringement.

Justice Department and industry officials called the case one of the largest involving Internet software piracy ever prosecuted.

Last month, Ellis sentenced a Florida man to six years in prison for selling illegal copies of computer programs on another site, BuysUSA.com.

Microsoft IDC celebrated its 8th Anniversary on 19th August 2006

On Saturday,19th August we all at MS IDC were Rocking over the beats of Euphoria. We celebrated 8th anniversary of Microsoft India Development Center. Organized @ International convention center, Hitex, Hyderabad it was a spacial occasion for all of us to celebrate as the IDC has been expanded to the the 1K brilliant engineers.

 

Party Pics will be posted in the coming days...

Where will you host your project ? SourceForge or Google Or Microsoft

Seems like everyone wants to host the open source projects.

SourceForge is no doubt one of the biggest and oldest host of open source softwares. Google and Microsoft are also following the trend with the launch of CodePlex from Microsoft and Google Code.

Just a thought if they could ever compete Source Forge. All the best to both of the projects. Developers are ultimately gonna accrue something from the competition.

 

 

[Published and written Using Windows Live Writer]

Planet is no more undefined. We've 12 of them now

There never was a formal definition of Word "Planet" in the astorology books so IAU decided to fill the void and came up with the proposal that increases the tally of planets in our Solar System to a dozen..

This is what International Astronomical Union defined what is a plant :

 

(1) A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape¹, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.²

(2) We distinguish between the eight classical planets discovered before 1900, which move in nearly circular orbits close to the ecliptic plane, and other planetary objects in orbit around the Sun. All of these other objects are smaller than Mercury. We recognize that Ceres is a planet by the above scientific definition. For historical reasons, one may choose to distinguish Ceres from the classical planets by referring to it as a "dwarf planet."³

(3) We recognize Pluto to be a planet by the above scientific definition, as are one or more recently discovered large Trans-Neptunian Objects. In contrast to the classical planets, these objects typically have highly inclined orbits with large eccentricities and orbital periods in excess of 200 years. We designate this category of planetary objects, of which Pluto is the prototype, as a new class that we call "plutons".

(4) All non-planet objects orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".⁴

---

¹ This generally applies to objects with mass above 5 x 10²⁰ kg and diameter greater than 800 km. An IAU process will be established to evaluate planet candidates near this boundary.

² For two or more objects comprising a multiple object system, the primary object is designated a planet if it independently satisfies the conditions above. A secondary object satisfying these conditions is also designated a planet if the system barycentre resides outside the primary. Secondary objects not satisfying these criteria are "satellites". Under this definition, Pluto's companion Charon is a planet, making Pluto-Charon a double planet.

³ If Pallas, Vesta, and/or Hygeia are found to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, they are also planets, and may be referred to as "dwarf planets".

⁴ This class currently includes most of the Solar System asteroids, near-Earth objects (NEOs), Mars-, Jupiter- and Neptune-Trojan asteroids, most Centaurs, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), and comets. In the new nomenclature the concept "minor planet" is not used.

 

As a result of this definition we have 12 planets now which includes :

• The asteroid Ceres, which is round, would be recast as a dwarf planet in the new scheme.
• Pluto would remain a planet, and its moon Charon would be reclassified as a planet. Both would be called "plutons," however, to distinguish them from the eight "classical" planets.
• A far-out Pluto-sized object known as 2003 UB313, currently nicknamed Xena, would also be called a pluton.

Read more at

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14364833/

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060816_plane...

I love this company

I Love this company. See the enthu of the guy..

You know who he is ??

Microsoft Re-Designs the Ipod Packaging

Funny video LOL

Krrish caught the attention of western blogs

One of the most viewed blog talks about a blollywood movie Krrish in their blog. This is a huge success to the bollyowood.

I still didn't get a chance to see the movie, but I still dont think that it should be anyway comparable to the hollywood's productions.
Read more at
the NYT.com link

Orkut is down

Orkut is down tonight............

Duet Release

Ah!
Finally we released something..........

Old memories

old_tehri_
Originally uploaded by Neeraj Rawat.

This is the place where we use to go some weekend.

Reservation Issue

On the burning issue of reservation someone came up with the following idea.

I think we should have job reservations in all the fields. I completely support the PM and all the politicians for promoting this.

Let's start the reservation with our cricket team.

We should have 10 percent reservation for Muslims. 30 percent for OBC, SC/ST like that. Cricket rules should be modified accordingly.
The boundary circle should be reduced for an SC/ST player.
The four hit by an OBC player should be considered as a six and a six hit by a OBC player should be counted as 8 runs.
An OBC player scoring 60 runs should be declared as a century.
We should influence ICC and make rules so that the pace bowlers like Shoaib Akhtar should not bowl fast balls to our OBC player.
Bowlers should bowl maximum speed of 80 kilometer per hour to an OBC player.
Any delivery above this speed should be made illegal.

Also we should have reservation in Olympics.
In the 100 meters race, an OBC player should be given a gold medal if he runs 80 meters. There can be reservation in Government jobs also.
Let's recruit SC/ST and OBC pilots for aircrafts which are carrying the ministers and politicians (that can really help the country.. )
Ensure that only SC/ST and OBC doctors do the operations for the ministers and other politicians. (Another way of saving the country..)

Let's be creative and think of ways and means to guide INDIA forward...
Let's show the world that INDIA is a GREAT country.
Let's be proud of being an INDIAN.. May the good breed of politicians like ARJUN SINGH long live... So, what do you think, huh???

Protest against the reservation should be continued. These bloody politicians are trying to break the unity of India as a nation. They are the persons who make people of India fight with each other and play their election game on top of this.

Evil vs. Good cont.

Something from the blog post of Brian Krebs from Washington Post

In the following snippet from an online conversation Reshef had with a sponsor known as "ATM," the spam operator reluctantly acknowledges that scrubbing his lists of Blue Security users' addresses is the most expedient solution.

ATM: We want to understand, who is attacking us? You? Competitors? Or both? What do you want, to stop your attack? My tech people till now was able to stop your attacks, but I and you want to solve this problem peacefully.

Blue Security: We don't want to harm to your business, we only want you to stop sending spam to our users.

ATM: Who are your users? List of emails, to pass to my affiliates to stop spamming? But first, answer my question - botnet of 15k IP addresses is it yours?

BS: This is not botnet, this is 15,000 of our users from about 500,000. We have program (free/open source) which can automatically clean your email list.

ATM agrees to use the e-mail list-scrubbing program, and asks Reshef for a copy of his customer list. Reshef requests ATM's e-mail address, but the spam sponsor suggests other means of communication, ending the conversation with this priceless quote:

"I'm sick with the spam in my mail boxes, so I don't use email any more."

But one pharmacy spam sponsor who calls himself "Pharma Master" didn't exactly appreciate Blue Security's tactics, and launched a volley of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the company's Web site that eventually cascaded across the Web, knocking dozens of sites and thousands of blogs offline for hours.

Pharma Master: i am discussing daily with 10,000 of people and the biggest companys in the world. i know one thing which i already told you, u started with my and my people and my staff, you shall get hurt first to feel who we are. and when i'll make sure you got the point of who we are then we can talk but i dont feel like you guys really in mood of something. Bleusecurity.con is down now that's not bad how bout to keep all your system down for few months? How bout each time you play games i'll hit your company?

Here the spammer is saying he's willing to cover the costs of his sponsors being knocked offline after they send spam to Blue Security's members: "How bout each time you trying to screw someone i'll pay to sponosrs the money they loosing if they do?

Reshef didn't have much more to say to Pharma Master, and later decided he had lost the fight against the spammers. As of today, Blue Security will no longer be offering its services. Reshef said the company made the decision not to continue with the service out of fear of even more crippling attacks against his company that could further affect other sites. He said the spammers threatened to increase the volume of their attacks, and to write computer viruses that seek to attack security weaknesses in his company's software, thereby targeting the company's individual users themselves.

I can't say I'm surprised. It was only a matter of time before some spammer decided it was worth paying a few thousand dollars to rent out a botnet of 20,000 hacked home computers and take this company offline. The fact that a spammer can hold millions of Web sites hostage just because he is upset that someone is meddling in his business is disturbing.

Still, this saga is yet another reminder that while the Internet is an incredibly versatile, resilient and adaptive network, the underlying framework that the commercial Web rests upon was never designed with mutual trust and security in mind. As such, it will take a lot more than clever gimmickry to give businesses and consumers the upper hand over Internet hucksters, spammers and criminals.

Courtsey : http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/05/legal_antispam_vigilante_compa.html

Evil vs. Good : Evil won the war this time

A company that was protecting its customer from spammers by spamming them and making a denial of service attack has been thrown in the towel following a massive attack by a Russian spam organization.

Here is the story from Washinton post .

Eran Reshef had an idea in the battle against spam e-mail that seemed to be working: he fought spam with spam. Today, he'll give up the fight.

Reshef's Silicon Valley company, Blue Security Inc., simply asked the spammers to stop sending junk e-mail to his clients. But because those sort of requests tend to be ignored, Blue Security took them to a new level: it bombarded the spammers with requests from all 522,000 of its customers at the same time.

That led to a flood of Internet traffic so heavy that it disrupted the spammers' ability to send e-mails to other victims -- a crippling effect that caused a handful of known spammers to comply with the requests.

Then, earlier this month, a Russia-based spammer counterattacked, Reshef said. Using tens of thousands of hijacked computers, the spammer flooded Blue Security with so much Internet traffic that it blocked legitimate visitors from going to Bluesecurity.com, as well as to other Web sites. The spammer also sent another message: Cease operations or Blue Security customers will soon find themselves targeted with virus-filled attacks.

Today, Reshef will wave a virtual white flag and surrender. The company will shut down this morning and its Web site will display a message informing its customers about the closure.

"It's clear to us that [quitting] would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don't have the authority to start," Reshef said. "Our users never signed up for this kind of thing."

Security experts say the move marks a disheartening development in the ongoing battle by computer users, online businesses and law enforcement against those who clutter e-mail inboxes with a continuous glut of ads for drugs, porn and get-rich-quick schemes. According to Symantec Corp., maker of the popular Norton antivirus software products, more than 50 percent of all e-mail sent in the latter half of 2005 was spam.

Alan Paller, director of research for the Bethesda-based SANS Institute, a computer security training group, said extortion attacks have exploded in the past few years. With Blue Security, Paller said, the attackers' extortionist demands were that the company merely stop interfering in a multimillion-dollar spam operation.

"We're hearing from federal law enforcement that they are getting more than one new case of online extortion each day," Paller said.

The spammer's counterattack generated so much Internet traffic that it also affected other sites, including Six Apart Ltd., a San Francisco-based company that runs millions of Web sites through its TypePad and LiveJournal blogging services. The attack also shut down operations for roughly 12 hours at Tucows Inc., a Toronto-based Internet services company that helped manage Blue Security's site.

Tucows chief executive Elliot Noss called the attack "by far the largest the company had ever seen," and said that only a handful of companies have the infrastructure in place to withstand such an assault, much less a more powerful one.

"This attack really was like trying to take out a mosquito with an atomic bomb," Noss said.

The FBI is investigating the attacks, according to Six Apart, but agency officials would not confirm a federal investigation yesterday.

Todd Underwood, chief of operations and security for Renesys Corp., a company that monitors Internet connectivity, called the attack against Blue Security "unsurprising but sad."

The innovative approach in the fight against spam caught the attention of investors in 2004, when Blue Security received more than $4 million in venture capital, but critics questioned whether the company could win such a massive battle.

"When the company's founders first approached the broader anti-spam community and asked them what they thought of the idea, everyone said this was a terrible idea and that they would eventually cause a lot of collateral damage," Underwood said. "But it's also extremely unfortunate, because it shows how much the spammers are winning this battle."

Courtsey : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/16/AR2006051601873.html

Symantec sues Microsoft

Surfing round the net I found this information.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Symantec Corp. sued software rival Microsoft Corp. on Thursday, accusing it of misappropriating trade secrets to develop its own competing features and products, including the next version of Windows.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Seattle charges the world's biggest software maker with misappropriating intellectual property and breach of contract related to a licensing deal with Veritas, which Symantec acquired last year.

It also seeks an injunction that would block the further development, sale or distribution of Vista -- the already- delayed next version of Windows -- and other products until all Symantec intellectual property is removed.

"Microsoft's pervasive and continuing disregard of Symantec's intellectual property and contract rights has irreparably harmed Symantec and constitutes trade secret misappropriation," the complaint said.

Microsoft said in statement it worked hard to try to resolve the dispute and that it acted within its rights in the contract.

"We are confident that our actions are wholly consistent with the legal agreements between Veritas and Microsoft and that these claims will be shown to be without merit," Microsoft said.

The dispute pits two of the biggest consumer software makers against each other and centers on a Symantec product called Volume Manager, which allows operating systems to store and manipulate large amounts of data.

The complaint accuses Microsoft of improperly incorporating the technology into its own operating system products and seeks compensation as well as the removal of the intellectual property from the company's offerings.

Copyright 2006 Reuters

Link : http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=OBR&Date=20060518&ID=5733228