Macintosh OS X

Step1
Start your computer and wait for Mac OS X to load.

Step2
Choose ‘About this Mac’ from the menu located on top left corner of the screen.

Step3
Open ‘Activity Monitor’ from the Utilities folder.

Step4
Click on the System Memory button located at the bottom of the window. You will know the amount of RAM installed and the current usage.

Step5
Note that RAM testing in Mac is not very common as the system is comparatively safe.

Step6
Use the software memtest 86+. Download the free memory testing software memtest 86+ from Microsoft (see link below). It runs on most of the configurations. You need to download the diagnostic and read the details.

Step7
Testing the RAM with this software in the first phase that will take less than 30 minutes.

Step8
Reboot your computer with the disk or CD-ROM on which you installed Windows Memory Diagnostic. You will view the interface and the first test pass will be conducted. This will be followed by a second test until you exit. It will identify if there is hardware problem of RAM or the motherboard.

Step9
Use the ‘Rember’ test if you are using a lot of graphics. This is more of an auto-run test after you launch it. In a few minutes you can view the results in the Rember Log screen.

Tags: age, boot, cd, cd-rom, computer, diag, disk, download, Free, Hardware, IDE, MacOS, memory, memory diagnostic, Motherboard, mount, RAM, Software, wait, Windows

Information security, or lack of, may have been actor Edison Chen’s downfall when his bedroom antics hit the Internet circuit. But for companies dealing in data security tools, it’s been one satisfying ride (pun intended) since it’s exposed a vulnerable issue that strikes fear into the hearts of PC users, not to mention Edison’s lower extremities.

In the worst-case scenario, failure to secure your personal or critical information on your computer can result in serious fallout not only for yourself, but involved parties, as we’ve witnessed in a very public way. While companies know it’s plain good business to safeguard their sensitive data, the Average Joe is less primed against data theft or loss. So EasySafe has been, as its name implies, attempting to make it easy and safe for the home user. Its computer data security USB key has been upgraded with drivers to allow the user the option to duplicate file security onto a second key, since this sells in a dual set, or pass the other key to a trusted party.
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While this isn’t the most elegant hardware encryption tool in the market, usage is almost idiot-proof. You install the software driver one time, insert the key into a USB port, and a a pop-up box will prompt you to create a virtual drive, how big a storage capacity you want, and where the drive will sit. The information stored in the drive is secured using a military-standard encryption algorithm (3DES, AES) and PIN protection built into the device.

Pulling out the key causes the virtual drive(s) to be hidden, although there’s still a trail left behind if you happen to specify the PC as your destination. When we combed through our computer, we found the root file within the C drive. So while the virtual drive is inaccessible without the USB key, this won’t stop the most determined hacker once he’s clued in to the EasySafe.sdf file which is a dead giveaway.

For the truly paranoid, we’d suggest setting up the virtual drive on an external storage such as a USB thumb drive, portable HD, or flash media card. While it’s more tedious managing your data from different sources, at least your sensitive data won’t be residing on the laptop. Plus the EasySafe.sdf file now outside of the PC.

The water-resistant easySafe is now retailing in Europe, Malaysia and Singapore at S$99 ($71.40) a pair. We’d have liked the drivers (which come on an installation CD) to be pre-loaded on the drive for a more convenient setup, and Singapore developer Fast and Safe Technology is at least addressing the issue of a cap in a later edition.

EasySafe is compatible with only Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. So ironically, poor Edison’s Mac laptop will still have to get its data security remedy elsewhere.

(Source: Crave Asia)

Tags: age, ark, cd, computer, dev, Hardware, IDE, image, Internet, iso, option, Plugins, PROM, Security, Security, Setting Up, Software, Storage, technology, Windows

To provide access to file systems on diskettes and CD-ROMs, the Solaris OE provides users a standard interface referred to as Volume Management.

Note – The Solaris 9 OE includes support for additional removable media such as DVDs, Jaz drives, Zip drives, and PCMCIA memory cards. (PCMCIA stands for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association.) For more information on using these devices, see the resources available on the Solaris 9 Documentation CD.

Volume Management provides two major benefits:

l It automatically mounts removable media for both the rootuser and non-root users.

l It can give other systems on the network automatic access to any removable media currently inserted in the local system.

The Volume Management service is controlled by the /usr/sbin/vold daemon. By default, this service is always running on the system so that it can automatically manage diskettes and CD-ROMs for regular users.

Volume Management features automatic detection of CD-ROMs. However, it does not detect the presence of a diskette that has been inserted in the drive until the volcheck command is run. This command instructs the vold daemon to check the diskette drive for any inserted media. Volume Management can mount ufs, pcfs, hsfs, and udfs file systems.

Using Volume Management

To make working with diskettes and CD-ROMs simple for your users, each device is easy to mount and mounts at an easy-to-remember location.

If the vold daemon detects that the mounted device contains a file system, then the device is mounted at the directory location.

Table 4-1 lists the directory locations of mounted devices that contain file

systems.

If the vold daemon detects that the mounted device does not contain a

file system, the device is accessible through a path.

Media Device Access File Systems On

First diskette drive /floppy/floppy0

First CD-ROM or DVDdrive /cdrom/cdrom0

First Jaz drive /rmdisk/jaz0

First Zip drive /rmdrive/zip0

First PCMCIA card /pcmem0

Media Device Access Raw Device On

First diskette drive /vol/dev/aliases/floppy0

First CD-ROM or DVD drive /vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0

First Jaz drive /vol/dev/aliases/jaz0

First Zip drive /vol/dev/aliases/zip0

First PCMCIA card /vol/dev/aliases/pcmem0

When Volume Management is running on the system, a regular user can easily access a diskette or CD-ROM by following these basic steps:

Insert the media.

For diskettes only, enter the volcheck command.

Use the cd command to change to the directory of the mounted volume.

Work with files on the media.

Unmount the media.

Eject the media.

File Description

/etc/vold.conf The Volume Management configuration file. This file defines items, such as what action should be taken when media is inserted or ejected, which devices are managed by Volume Management, and which file system types are unsafe to eject. /etc/rmmount.conf The rmmount command configuration file. The rmmount command is a removable media mounter that is executed by the Volume Management daemon whenever a CD-ROM or diskette is inserted.

Tags: age, cd, cd-rom, computer, dev, disk, etc, IDE, memory, mount, Solaris, Solaris

The Issue at Hand
Websites that utilize databases which can insert content into a webpage by way of a dynamic script like PHP or JavaScript are increasingly popular. This type of site is considered dynamic. Many websites choose dynamic content over static content. This is because if a website has thousands of products or pages, writing or updating each static by hand is a monumental task.

There are two types of URLs: dynamic and static. A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a database-driven web site or the URL of a web site that runs a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML, dynamic URLs are generated from specific queries to a site’s database. The dynamic page is basically only a template in which to display the results of the database query. Instead of changing information in the HTML code, the data is changed in the database.

But there is a risk when using dynamic URLs: search engines don’t like them. For those at most risk of losing search engine positioning due to dynamic URLs are e-commerce stores, forums, sites utilizing content management systems and blogs like Mambo or WordPress, or any other database-driven website. Many times the URL that is generated for the content in a dynamic site looks something like this:

   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date

A static URL on the other hand, is a URL that doesn’t change, and doesn’t have variable strings. It looks like this:

   http://www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htm

Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages, and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs, if dynamic URLs get indexed at all. Static URLs are also easier for the end-user to view and understand what the page is about. If a user sees a URL in a search engine query that matches the title and description, they are more likely to click on that URL than one that doesn’t make sense to them.

A search engine wants to only list pages its index that are unique. Search engines decide to combat this issue by cutting off the URLs after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =).

For example, let’s look at three URLs:

   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=67890&sort=date
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=13579&sort=date

All three of these URLs point to three different pages. But if the search engine purges the information after the first offending character, the question mark (?), now all three pages look the same:

   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php

Now, you don’t have unique pages, and consequently, the duplicate URLs won’t be indexed.

Another issue is that dynamic pages generally do not have any keywords in the URL. It is very important to have keyword rich URLs. Highly relevant keywords should appear in the domain name or the page URL. This became clear in a recent study on how the top three search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, rank websites.

The study involved taking hundreds of highly competitive keyword queries, like travel, cars, and computer software, and comparing factors involving the top ten results. The statistics show that of those top ten, Google has 40-50% of those with the keyword either in the URL or the domain; Yahoo shows 60%; and MSN has an astonishing 85%! What that means is that to these search engines, having your keywords in your URL or domain name could mean the difference between a top ten ranking, and a ranking far down in the results pages.

The Solution
So what can you do about this difficult problem? You certainly don’t want to have to go back and recode every single dynamic URL into a static URL. This would be too much work for any website owner.

If you are hosted on a Linux server, then you will want to make the most of the Apache Mod Rewrite Rule, which is gives you the ability to inconspicuously redirect one URL to another, without the user’s (or a search engine’s) knowledge. You will need to have this module installed in Apache; for more information, you can view the documentation for this module here. This module saves you from having to rewrite your static URLs manually.

How does this module work? When a request comes in to a server for the new static URL, the Apache module redirects the URL internally to the old, dynamic URL, while still looking like the new static URL. The web server compares the URL requested by the client with the search pattern in the individual rules.

For example, when someone requests this URL:
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.html

The server looks for and compares this static-looking URL to what information is listed in the .htaccess file, such as:

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule thread-threadid-(.*)\.htm$ thread.php?threadid=$1

It then converts the static URL to the old dynamic URL that looks like this, with no one the wiser:
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345

You now have a URL that only will rank better in the search engines, but your end-users can definitely understand by glancing at the URL what the page will be about, while allowing Apache’s Mod Rewrite Rule to handle to conversion for you, and still keeping the dynamic URL.

 

If you are not particularly technical, you may not wish to attempt to figure out the complex Mod Rewrite code and how to use it, or you simply may not have the time to embark upon a new learning curve. Therefore, it would be extremely beneficial to have something to do it for you. This URL Rewriting Tool can definitely help you. What this tool does is implement the Mod Rewrite Rule in your .htaccess file to secretly convert a URL to another, such as with dynamic and static ones.

With the URL Rewriting Tool, you can opt to rewrite single pages or entire directories. Simply enter the URL into the box, press submit, and copy and paste the generated code into your .htaccess file on the root of your website. You must remember to place any additional rewrite commands in your .htaccess file for each dynamic URL you want Apache to rewrite. Now, you can give out the static URL links on your website without having to alter all of your dynamic URLs manually because you are letting the Mod Rewrite Rule do the conversion for you, without JavaScript, cloaking, or any sneaky tactics.

Another thing you must remember to do is to change all of your links in your website to the static URLs in order to avoid penalties by search engines due to having duplicate URLs. You could even add your dynamic URLs to your Robots Exclusion Standard File (robots.txt) to keep the search engines from spidering the duplicate URLs. Regardless of your methods, after using the URL Rewrite Tool, you should ideally have no links pointing to any of your old dynamic URLs.

You have multiple reasons to utilize static URLs in your website whenever possible. When it’s not possible, and you need to keep your database-driven content as those old dynamic URLs, you can still give end-users and search engine a static URL to navigate, and all the while, they are still your dynamic URLs in disguise. When a search engine engineer was asked if this method was considered “cloaking”, he responded that it indeed was not, and that in fact, search engines prefer you do it this way. The URL Rewrite Tool not only saves you time and energy by helping you use static URLs by converting them transparently to your dynamic URLs, but it will also save your rankings in the search engines.

Tags: age, apache, ark, code, computer, content management, Google, IDE, Linux, Module, msn, page, PHP, ping, ranking, search, Search Engines, SEF, SEO, server, Sites, Software, WordPress, Yahoo

Gartner has embarked on a wide-reaching new study of Google and its potential impact on IT, enterprise businesses, and society in general in the coming years. On April 10 at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Las Vegas, Gartner Vice President Richard Hunter revealed some of the first data points from this study.

The two most interesting points were:

1.) The best way to think of Google is as a disruptive technology.

2.) Disruptive technologies create big losers and big winners, and one of the biggest losers in the Google disruption could be traditional IT departments.
Google as a disruptive technology

This new study is being conducted by a team of 15 Gartner researchers, led by Hunter, and the full report will be published in mid-2008. The title of Hunter’s presentation at ITxpo was “What Does Google Know?� The answer to that question was even more sobering than I expected, as the slide below demonstrates.

Hunter added that Google will know a lot more about what’s sold on the Web if Google Checkout takes off, and could soon know a lot about medicine and health patterns if Google Health Records gets adopted.

The Gartner researchers have estimated that Google technology can address 100 exabytes of data (an exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes). “Their infrastructure has unprecedented scale,� said Hunter, “and what is even more impressive is their ability to connect vast quantities of information… Google is sitting on the biggest pile of information that has ever been collected in the world.�

The reason why Gartner chose to characterize Google as a disruptive technology - rather than just an Internet search engine company - is due to the ambitions that Google has for all of that data and the potential impact that those ambitions could have on the technology industry.

“Where the previous [computing] paradigm has been about my computer, my technology, my stuff … Google is trying to deliver any information, anywhere, to anyone in the world, on any device,� said Hunter.

“Google’s paradigm is a different paradigm. It’s an open source paradigm… We’re about to see a war of paradigms.� Clearly, the leader of the “previous paradigm� and the counter-movement to Google is Microsoft.

However, we also can’t forget that the Google paradigm includes massive privacy concerns. Hunter noted that Google continues to struggle to find the right balance between privacy, security, and its legitimate business interests. The more data Google collects, the bigger and more valuable target it becomes for electronic criminals. That will also make it a bigger target for governments, politicians, and citizen groups.

Hunter stated, “We believe Google’s information security will be a political issue worldwide by the end of the year in 2010.�

Here are few other interesting quotes from Hunter’s presentation, based on the study:

* “Google transcends the limits of the traditional OSI stack.�
* “We don’t know how good Google’s information security is.�
* “Google doesn’t worry about resources. Google’s always got more resources.�
* “Ask not what Google will do to you. Ask what you can do with Google … Ask how much of your business you want to expose to Google.�
* “Above all, move fast, because Google is moving fast.�

Google’s disruption to IT

“Google is disruptive and disruptive technologies produce big winners and big losers,� Hunter said, “One of the big losers is potentially traditional IT departments.�

As part of his presentation, Hunter specifically noted a number of ways in which the Google revolution would disrupt the IT industry in general:

* Traditional database management vendors would be marginalized into handling only high value transactions
* Enterprises will co-opt Google’s approach to data management and Google could host the data
* Proprietary applications such as Microsoft Office would be “deeply threatened�
* Many application builders could start developing on top of the Google platform
* Collaboration services will take a big leap and Google could provide the platform
* Companies will take major parts of the IT infrastructure (e.g. e-mail, storage, and business intelligence) and source it to Google.

However, after the presentation I followed up with Richard to get further clarification on how IT departments could be significant losers in the Google disruption. Here was his response:

“Google has the potential to be the first-choice provider of many services that are now handled by internal IT organizations, starting with non-competitively-differentiating services such as email (which Google already provides to a number of enterprises), and ultimately including high-value-added functions and services such as business intelligence, mobile sales support, and others. Some IT organizations might consider it a boon to pass these functions on to Google so that the IT department can concentrate on very enterprise-specific competitively differentiating applications. IT organizations that measure their worth in terms of how much of the company’s IT needs they supply themselves will be less happy to see Google move in on their turf-and I do mean specifically that in many cases it will be an argument about turf, not enterprise value.

“An important question is: can Google provide the quality (e.g. reliability, availability, security, etc.) that enterprises-a more demanding market compared to individual consumers-require from their suppliers? Consumers are satisfied when the potential provider says ‘Of course!’ Smart enterprises demand certification from someone besides the provider. Providing that certification will be something new for Google. On the other hand, many IT organizations aren’t mature enough to provide proof of their own capabilities in terms of value for money, and so will have a difficult time proving superiority over any external provider, whether or not it’s Google�.
Bottom line for IT leaders

What Gartner is arguing is that Google’s database and data center magic is creating a massive cultural movement and a competitive advantage that is going to sweep away businesses and industries and transform the technology world. In fact, Gartner sees Google becoming so large and powerful from a data storage and access standpoint that it is going to attract scrutiny - and potential regulations - from governments.

While these predictions have legs, several of the trends are larger than Google. As far as IT departments go, there are two related trends that will transform IT over the next decade: utility computing and managed services. The utility computing model will allow IT departments to deploy only the computing capacity that is needed and to track it and charge it to the appropriate business unit, department, or project. That will allow IT to tie the value of technology much more closely to business decisions.

Some businesses won’t want to handle that type of IT internally and so they will outsource it to providers like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, and Verizon Business. It’s unclear whether Google will want to get into the managed services business, but it might make sense for them partner with vendors like the four mentioned in order to offer services such as e-mail, storage, and business intelligence.

In terms of Google’s technical advantage - part of which is tied to its sheer data center capacity - let’s not forget that the other two big data center builders, Microsoft and Yahoo, could tie the knot soon and became a much more potent threat to Google’s vision. That could especially be the case if Microsoft allows its new technology leader, Ray Ozzie, to drive Microsoft in a much more Google-like direction centered around cloud computing. It’s also not a given that what Google has created in the world’s largest and most effective database isn’t something that Microsoft will eventually catch up to and co-opt.

Nevertheless, Google is obviously on the leading edge many of the trends that are powering the next breaking waves in the technology industry, and the effects of these trends will fundamentally change the way corporate IT departments are organized, operated, and financed over the next decade.

Tags: computer, disruptive technology, Google, Google’s always, Nevertheless, search, Uncategorized