Software Free

Often we get stuck with the Windows Safely Remove Hardware Icon, trying to stop the device which just doesn’t stop. In such scenarios, the question most of us ask is ” Now, how do i remove this device safely, without losing any data? “

This post, describes two methods of removing USB Devices safely from your Computer, even if the Windows Safely Remove Hardware program gives off with a message ” The device cannot be stopped right now”

Kill the Process

This is the first way to go, try opening your Task Manager ( Pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL or Right Clicking on the Task Bar and selecting Task Manager from the menu)

In my last post, i wrote about Windows XP SP3, in this post, i shall be explaining the process to identify the version of Windows and Windows Service Pack installed on your computer.

In the good old days of DOS, we used to enter ver at the command prompt to get the version number of the Operating System being run on the PC. You can use the same command in Windows as well to identify the Operating System version.

Anthony Liguori has an excellent blog post up taking a very honest/hard look at Xen and what likely lies ahead (KVM).

I think we can finally admit that we, the Linux community, made a very big mistake with Xen. Xen should have never been included in a Linux distribution. There, I’ve said it. We’ve all been thinking it, have whispered it in closed rooms, and have done our bests to avoid it.

He makes a very valid point that the Xen kernel will never be upstream and therefore it will always be an extra layer. The difference between Xen or other packages around the kernel is that Xen is at the core its own kernel. This is what makes KVM so attractive - you don’t need that extra layer (which creates complexity no matter what).

Quite simply, Xen is not, and will never be, a part of Linux. Therefore, including it in a Linux distribution has only led to massive user confusion about the relationship between Linux and Xen.

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Source: Michael Dolan Dot Com

This is really cool - Toshiba is putting Cell processors into its 2009 laptops.  It looks like they’re targeting video decoding similar to what they’re doing with the Cell processor in TVs, but I’m sure some crafty Linux developers will have a lot of fun using it to power 3D graphics. The Toshiba cell chip will only use 4 SPEs vs the 8 used in the PS3 but it should be quite powerful nonetheless. This could be a huge step forward for video editing and it looks like they’re already partnering with Corel (could we see VideoStudio accelerators?).

I’d like to see Toshiba sell a desktop card now…

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/09/toshiba_cell_strategy/

If you are a blogger, who keeps looking for fodder for the next post(s), Google Alerts can bring quite a relief.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Google Alerts can help you keep updated with information of interest. All you need to do is create an alert for that information.

Some common uses of Google Alert are

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Source: Technofriends

Yesterday someone asked me the process of downloading Videos from Youtube and i was kind of surprised to hear that question. Its surprising to know that many people still are unaware that they can download their favorite videos from video sharing websites like Youtube, Google Videos, MetaCafe, Blip.tv, Dailymotion, Spike etc.

Technological advancements in the field of Medicine and Surgery have certainly helped the human race fight against a lot diseases thereby leading to longer lifespan. However, the key to health and fitness is lot dependent on the individual lifestyle. To help you enhance your fitness and enjoy the benefits the healthy living, i am sharing with you 4 websites which shall help you stay healthy and fit.

The websites mentioned below have useful tips on staying healthy. Healthy and light cooking, Benefits of Aroma Therapy, Water Exercises and cycling stand out as the focus of these websites.

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Source: Technofriends

Earlier in my post you learnt how to clear the BIOS password using various tools. It needs to be understood that though the CMOS battery present on your motherboard has a life of 5 yrs approximately but it certainly can drain out if your PC has not been used since long. The lifespan of a battery also depends on parameters like Temperature inside the cabinet, quality of the battery etc.

As a rule, its always better to change the CMOS battery every 2 yrs. CMOS Battery is used to power the BIOS while your PC is switched off, this gives the BIOS power to keep the system clock and date settings along with other information like boot device priority, overclocking settings etc intact even while your PC is switched off and is not being used.

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Source: Technofriends

Often it happens that while browsing some website we keep diving into design and programming ideas for our own websites, A train of thoughts run into our thought process sending signals that with a little customization we can make the same stuff look good on our own website as well. For this to happen in reality, all we need to know is which scripts, files and style sheets has the designer of the particular website made use of.

All the information that we access on the web and displayed on the browser is locally stored in the cache memory of your computer and can be accessed directly through your browser. In case of Mozilla Firefox, type about:cache in the address bar and hit the Enter key to access information stored in browser cache.

A noticed a very interesting developerWorks article today on the ext4 filesystem.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ext4/index.html?ca=drs-

There’s a great summary table of the new features. Remember though, ext4 is still labeled experimental.

Ext4 is the latest in a long line of Linux® file systems, and it’s likely to be as important and popular as its predecessors. As a Linux system administrator, you should be aware of the advantages, disadvantages, and basic steps for migrating to ext4. This article explains when to adopt ext4, how to adapt traditional file system maintenance tool usage to ext4, and how to get the most out of the file system.

Good direction for Adobe - I’d like to say there was more, but for now, this is a good direction.

http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

Just notice Cote covered the action: http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2008/05/01/adobes-open-screen-project-a-plan-lower-barriers-to-using-flash-checking-up-on-the-ria-wars/

Sadly, the MacBook Pro was duely returned to its owner this afternoon. The MBP was with me for over 3 weeks now. He had ‘dumped’ it with me for me to learn it and teach him how to do ‘stuff’ with Mac OS X. But even after I did tweak around the OS and had my share of fun with the world’s most sexiest OS, I still think GNU/Linux is what suits my tastes – perfectly.

The MacBook Pro 17” with a

Often, we wish to Format the Date and Time information into a given format, either for displaying the same to the end user or for further processing. Java contains formatting classes which can be used to format a date into a desired format. The most commonly used class for formatting dates is the SimpleDateFormat class.

The SimpleDateFormat class takes format string as input to its constructor and returns a format object which can then be used to format Date objects. Calling the format() method of the SimpleDateFormat object will return a string that contains the formatted representation of the Date that is passed into the method as a parameter.

The table below contains Time and Date Format Codes which can be used to format the Date Object.

Very interesting article over at eWeek. There’s all kinds of “quirks” in the details for any of these comparisons, but it’s an interesting overview nonetheless.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government/Clinton-Obama-and-McCain-Vote-ForAgainst-Tech/?kc=EWKNLGOV043008FEA1

Recently one of my friend got a mail from his bank, asking him to update his account information. He clicked on the link to fill out the information, and just a few days later, his bank account was emptied. Does this story sound familiar to you? This is called Spoofing / Phishing. In this post, i will explain you the process as to how this works and how you can ensure that you don’t end up revealing your online identity to phishers.

[Image Source: Flickr]

Email spoofing definition as obtained from the Wikipedia goes like this