Mobile Number Portability (MNP) steps

The most awaited mobile service MNP (Mobile Number Portability) has been introduced in India. Now mobile phone users will be able to switch their service providers for network coverage, service quality, customer support and price related issues. The cellular service providers will be able to to switch to another operator who can offer better network coverage, service quality, customer support or price. As of MNP launched, the largest service providers in India like Idea and Vodafone may get new faces as they were promoting MNP since long time.
Some Mobile Number Portability FAQ’s are here to process or switch service provider under MNP

Step1
- Send a SMS to 1900 using syntax below in your SMS
PORT for example PORT 8254782XXX
After sending the sms You will receive a sms having a unique porting code you can use that code in communication with new service provider for MNP switching.

Step2
- Visit your current service provider office/franchise and clear your outstanding dues or bills if any.





Step 3

- Visit the new service provider’s office/franchise, apply MNP service. Here you would need to provide the unique porting code you received in step 1.
*Remember, unique porting code has some expiry time, you should complete the process ASAP.
After you apply to New Service provider, they will take some time for the approval process from your old service provider. This may takes 4-7 days approx for completion. During this time current mobile number will remain operative as Government said to them MNP mobile number service should not be discontinued until procedure completed by both service providers, However a domain time up to 2 hours may occur during technical process of MNP.

Step 4
- Your old service provider will surely tell expected date and time they will switch off your number, while new service provider will start your service thereafter.

Step 5
MNP charges are Rs.19, these charges are for porting your current mobile phone number from one operator to another. MNP charges should be paid to new service provider only. You will get the New SIM Card from your New Service Provider.
Now all you need to do is, change your SIM card to new after MNP is completed.


Instructions for Prepaid and Postpaid Users
Both Prepaid and Postpaid can avail MNP service, infect this program is for everyone.
Prepaid account balance will not be forwarded to new service provider. All current balance will lose when you will switch to new service provider, you better consume it before.
Postpaid users should clear all outstanding bills before porting the number.

Service Portability For CDMA and GSM
Yes now CDMA numbers can be ported to GSM service or vice-versa as well. As an example, It is now possible to shift from Reliance CDMA to Idea GSM.

MNP Program Rules and Limitations
-You can’t switch the service provider second time within 90 days of first portability.
-Circle Limitations is there, MNP does not work in inter circle portability.

Google start censoring Torrents, Rapidshare & more

 
The entertainment industries’ quest to root out piracy on the Internet has yet again resulted in commercial censorship. A few weeks ago Google announced that it would start filtering “piracy related” terms from its ‘Autocomplete‘ and ‘Instant‘ services and today they quietly rolled out this questionable feature.
Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.
Among the list of forbidden keywords are “uTorrent”, a hugely popular piece of entirely legal software and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and the name of San Fransisco based company BitTorrent Inc. As of today, these keywords will no longer be suggested by Google when you type in the first letter, nor will they show up in Google Instant.

Naturally, the companies and services that have been removed from Google's instant searches are angry. "We respect Google's right to determine algorithms to deliver appropriate search results to user requests. That being said, our company's trademarked name is fairly unique, and we're pretty confident that anyone typing the first six or seven letters deserves the same easy access to results as with any other company search," said Simon Morris of BitTorrent Inc. 

RapidShare also shared its sentiments. "We embrace that certain search suggestions will not put a wrong complexion on RapidShare anymore, but we are concerned that at the same time the legitimate interests of our users will also be affected," the service said. "RapidShare is one of the most popular websites worldwide. Every day hundreds of thousands of users rely on our services to pursue their perfectly legitimate interests…Google has obviously gone too far."

The change shouldn't significantly affect your daily browsing, but it shows that Google will serve the entertainment industry when pressured and it's only fair to question how far the company is willing to go. TorrentFreak also notes that the current blacklist appears somewhat random. Although uTorrent and Xunlei are excluded from results, BitComet and Vuze aren't. Likewise, other filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay, 4shared, HotFile and MediaFire are still visible. 


http://torrentfreak.com/

How to Hide Hard Disk Partitions in Windows ?

Sometimes our Hard disk contains private data, which you don't want to share with someone, who use same computer. Want to hide your hard disk partition fully in windows operating system? then this trick is helpful to you.

 There is a command available to do this task. It is “diskpart” command which needs to be used in command prompt to get the job done. This technique works only in windows operating systems.

Using this command you can hide the hard disk volumes such as C:\ ,D:\, E:\. Here is the step by step method to carry over it.

1.Type “diskpart” in run command box without quotes. (A command window will get opened)

2.Then type “list volume“. (Your hard disk partitioned volumes will be listed)

3.Now type “select volume ” – (Volume number is the numeric variable which is shown in the volume listing)

4.Type “remove letter – (Volume letter is the alphabetic character of the drive such as C,D,E,F…Z)

Thus your hard disk partition is hidden. If you need to resume it then follow the first three steps as usual and

in the fourth step replace “remove” with “assign“. 

this trick is helpful for parents, who want to hide games & movies from their kids.

Hacker offers full control of military and government websites

If you're a criminal looking for full control of the web used by the US Army's Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM), you can get it for just under US$500.
At least that's what one hacker is offering in underground forums. Security vendor Imperva found the black market sales pitch Thursday and posted details of the incident on Friday.
The hacker says he has control over a number of websites, including other military sites, government sites, and those belonging to universities, said Noa Bar-Yosef, Imperva senior security strategist. Prices range from $33 to $499, depending on how important or widely used the website is. "You can actually buy the capability of being the administrator of the website," she said.

The hacker is also selling databases of personal information he's stolen from the websites for $20 per thousand records, she said. That data could be used by spammers, or by fraudsters to break into online accounts.
Bar-Yosef saw evidence that administrative privileges for 16 sites were for sale. In one case, the hacker is selling data on 300,000 people, taken from the site.
Whoever is selling this stuff probably broke into these websites using a common web attack called SQL injection, Bar-Yosef said. For years now, hackers have been scanning the web looking for poorly written Web pages, specifically ones with search boxes or data-entry forms that connect with back-end databases. Then, they try to sneak database commands in through those pages.
With automated tools it's easy for even non-technical hackers, sometimes called "script kiddies"  to pull off this type of attack.

When SQL injection works, the results can be devastating. It's what notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez used to break into companies such as Heartland Payment Systems and 7-Eleven.
Imperva redacted the names of the victims from its blog post, but security blogger Brian Krebs has posted more details of the incident, including the names of many of the hacked sites. They include the US states of Utah and Michigan, the government of Italy and the Department of Defense Pharmacoeconomic Center, which analyzes the military's use of drugs and helps the Department of Veterans Affairs procure drug contracts.
"Amid all of the media and public fascination with threats like Stuxnet and weighty terms such as 'cyberwar,' it's easy to overlook the more humdrum and persistent security threats, such as Web site vulnerabilities," Krebs wrote on his blog Friday. "But none of these distractions should excuse U.S. military leaders from making sure their Web sites aren't trivially hackable by script kiddies."

http://news.techworld.com 

Watching 3D films bad for health?

Now a days 3D movies are popular, because 3D movies provide feel of real word, But It can affects our health by affecting eyestrain, blurred vision, dizziness, headaches.

But There is still no scientific evidence which proves whether the eyestrain, blurred vision, dizziness, headaches or nausea reportedly caused by watching 3D content, will cause long term damage, according to experts.

As 3D content and 3D-enabled devices become more mainstream, the health warnings are on the rise.

For example, consumer electronic giants, such as Samsung, have issued several warnings relating to the consumption of 3D.

However, eye experts have questioned the validity of these warnings, and believe that these electronics companies are erring on the side of caution to avoid any potential lawsuits, just in case there are any unexpected side effects of 3D technology.

"There is no decent scientific evidence or research at the moment to show that 3D technology cause any harm to children's or adults eyes...I think at the moment it is more a case of these technology companies covering their backs in the current world of regular litigation," the Telegraph quoted Gail Stephenson, head of the Directorate of Orthoptics and Vision Science at Liverpool University, as saying.

"As with any type of activity done for a long period of time, such as sitting on the sofa while watching TV for hours on end, people may suffer some symptoms after wards - such as headaches, blurred vision and disorientation. So I think the message to people using 3D technology is not to enjoy it without regular breaks.

Whenever we put any of our bodily systems under stress, they react unusually but there is nothing to say there is anything specifically harmful about 3D technology to the eyes of children or adults," she added. 

Microsoft launches WebMatrix, a free Web development tool for beginners

Dev tools debut along with ASP.Net model view controller

Making multiple moves in the web development space, Microsoft is introducing this week both a website building tool for neophytes and the third major version of its MVC (Model View Controller) technology.
Due Thursday, WebMatrix is "a new tool to make it easier for people to build websites," said Microsoft's Brian Goldfarb, director of web platform and tools. Geared for students and new developers, WebMatrix is a text-based tool for writing code.
The free tool supports ASP.Net and PHP development. Users could write applications like a Facebook Like button or a Twitter search capability, or start an application from scratch.

Microsoft Vs Google in HTML5 war

 

The tool, however, lacks more sophisticated capabilities of Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE, such as debugging. "People get started [with] WebMatrix, and when and if they're ready, [they can] begin using Visual Studio to take advantage of more advanced features," Goldfarb said.
Developers can start with an open source application, such as WordPress, Joomla or DotNetNuke, and use WebMatrix to download and configure these applications. Also, tools are provided for building a website, including a web server, database and framework.
WebMatrix has been downloadable in preview form at the WebMatrix website.
Microsoft also is releasing on Thursday ASP.Net MVC 3, which offers web development based on MVC.
"The key, simple way to think about [the tool] is MVC provides you with a solution that's more customisable," offering dependency injection for example, said Goldfarb. With dependency injection, developers can plug in dependencies into an application and perform functions like switching out the database.

"It open ups ASP.Net MVC such that anything can be swapped out," said Scott Hanselman, community architect for web and platform tools at Microsoft.
ASP.Net MVC 3 is a free, open source technology that can work with Visual Studio or any text editor. Version 3 has been in development at Microsoft for a while, with a release candidate offered in November. Among the features of ASP.Net 3 is Razor, providing a compact view engine for ASP.Net, as well as the NuGet open source package manager.
Also featured is "unobtrusive JavaScript," providing an approach to JavaScript that avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML marketup and enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML5 data convention.
Microsoft has offered ASP.Net MVC downloads at the ASP.Net website.


news.techworld.com

IBM supercomputer defeats human champs in quiz show

In a major achievement for artificial intelligence, an IBM supercomputer beat two human champions of the popular U.S. quiz show Jeopardy, IBM said.

Thursday’s victory is significant because it came in a contest of non-linear thinking and natural language questions at which computers have generally lagged far behind their human inventors.

The contest took place at a computer lab at IBM’s research headquarters, which was decorated to appear as the set of the long-running U.S. game show, in which the host gives contestants an answer to which they must formulate the question.

The event was a practice for a real live TV contest between two human contestants and the supercomputer named Watson, which is due to air in February with the first placed contestant winning $1 million.

The room-sized computer was represented on the blue set in between the two contestants by a black screen with a glowing globe. The computer correctly answered about half the 15 questions quicker than either of its competitors to claim victory.

The competitors were no duds. One had previously won 74 consecutive matches, while the other had won a record $3.3 million as a contestant on the show.

The milestone is considered analogous to the famous victory of IBM’s Deep Blue Computer’s victory over World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov in 1996.

IBM said that Watson’s victory showed its ability to parse complex questions and sort through tons of data in order to find the relevant answers.

The computer, which is built from 10 racks of IBM servers, has 15 terabytes of RAM and has access to over 200 million pages of content. It did not have the advantage of internet access.

“After four years, our scientific team believes that Watson is ready for this challenge based on its ability to rapidly comprehend what the Jeopardy clue is asking, analyze the information it has access to, come up with precise answers, and develop an accurate confidence in its response,” said David Ferrucci, a scientist who leads the IBM Research team that built Watson.

An open platform for innovation

Over the years ‘Open Source' development has become a very powerful philosophy and an engineering paradigm. At the very core, it represents access to the source code for everyone in the developer, as well as the users, community. This underlying philosophy encourages concurrent development, peer reviews and collaboration. These core characteristics of open source movement can be leveraged to nurture collaboration and collaborative innovation within an enterprise.

Today, most IT services companies have a technology group that is primarily responsible for innovation. But with a limited number of geeks and architects, how does a company keep pace with the rapid changes and advances taking place in the technology landscape? One way to address this is to create an internal open source platform that addresses multiple issues that plague the much commoditised IT industry today.

How does a company create an environment that forces innovation and intellectual property creation? How do you create an environment that provides opportunities for continuous learning? How do you ensure that your employees' time is used optimally?

These are some of the issues that we have tried to tackle through this initiative. Every project and every individual should try and create (and consume) assets that can be used and reused multiple times. This is the only way productivity and quality can be improved while maintaining competitive advantage.

Seamless

Open source initiative is a platform that makes creation and consumption of assets quite seamless and integrated with the project lifecycle. Regardless of what project someone is on, what kind of technology he/she is working on, everyone will want to make sure that they are constantly learning and keeping up with the technology trends.

By participating in projects in this platform, it is quite possible that someone working on a Java maintenance project is able to participate and learn something quite different, say cloud computing using Amazon EC2! Employees who are in between projects get to spend their time more productively by participating in any of the open source projects.

Key steps

The process revolves around three primary ‘actors' and four key steps for each of the hosted projects. The ‘Project Owner' manages a specific project and sets up the required environment and repositories for that project. He/she is also responsible for ensuring that various steps in the open source development lifecycle are adhered to. The ‘Contributor' could be anyone in the company and could play the role of a developer, reviewer, or tester. He/she works collaboratively with the rest of the contributors and the project owner.

The ‘Consumer' could be anyone who wants to use assets from a particular project in his/her own area. The ‘Consumer' also raises issues and possible enhancements for the assets, and creates the feedback mechanism that is essential for the continuous improvement of all assets.

‘Idea Space' is where all ideas are born. This is a discussion forum where anyone can create/share an idea for taking up as an open source project. Everyone chips in and after pros and cons are discussed and debated, some of these ideas will get into the open source platform as projects. This is the ‘Ideation and Initiation' phase. At this point a project owner is identified. During the next phase of collaborative development and review, contributors can start collaborating on this project as developers, reviewers, or testers. During the review phase, apart from ensuring code quality, extra focus is given to make sure that there are no IP infringements.

Integration

During the ‘Integration' phase, source code and assets from various contributors are integrated into a deployable build which is then tested as a single unit. Issues are logged, fixed, and retested, all in the open source platform. The ‘Implementation and Improvement' phase closes the loop and provides feedback to the entire lifecycle.

It is very easy for such initiatives to fail, unless awareness and a culture is cultivated amongst the community.

Therefore it is important to have a pilot phase for such an initiative, where adequate branding and internal evangelisation is done to popularize the concept and to get people familiarised with the process, platform and its benefits.

A platform of this sort that enables collaborative innovation can bring tremendous value to the company and its employees. From a relatively small dedicated innovation group, a platform such as this taps into a resource pool of the entire developer community of the company for ideas, assets, and components that can add to the collective IP and improve productivity quite dramatically.
    
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Reports_of_Google_acquiring_Slide_emerge-nid-70410-cid--sid-.html

IT will hire one crore people: Nasscom

If figures tell a story, the technology services' tale has been spectacular: less than $4 billion in 2000 to $62 billion today; an average of 22% yearly growth; from less than 100,000 to over two million employees; an almost non-existent domestic market has grown to $10 billion-a-year opportunity.

Technology bellwether Infosys was 3,000 people in 2000. At the close of the decade, it has grown manpower 40 times to more than 1,25,000. Next 10 years will strengthen India's position as global technology services hub, with Nasscom projecting the industry size at $225 billion by 2020.

"IT will employ one crore people," says Nasscom president Som Mittal. Global tech giants such as IBM, Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, HP and Google have their largest employee base outside the US, in India -- tweaking code, developing software products, filing patents and now eying the local market.

Homegrown companies such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS and HCL, which never found a mention in global technology and business reports, are now on 'top quadrant' of Gartner, Forrester, Everest, BCG and others.

"We started with a narrow set of applications, development and maintenance services, and now do pretty much everything," says Infosys Technologies' co-founder & CEO, S Gopalakrishnan. And 'everything' includes aerospace design, re-doing global retail and pharma, maintaining and improving banking systems and systems integration for the manufacturing sector.

TCS signed a $250-million contract with ABN Amro in 2005 and followed it up with Pearl Assurance deal worth $847 million. In a $250-million deal, Infosys acquired captive centres of Philips in 2007. The same year saw 66 PE deals in the technology space.

In 2008, HCL bought out UK-based SAP consultant Axon for $658 million. Growth has been "unstoppable," says Gopalakrishnan, despite the dotcom bust and economic slowdown. The business case was compelling and the sector weathered all anti-offshoring noises as well.

"Over the decade, there has been a greater acceptance of the global model of working at a distance," says Mittal. However, the only bad patch was the Satyam episode. "That was an aberration,' says Mittal.

With the industry set for a more than four-fold growth in the next decade, it will have to gear up with new business models. "80% of the opportunity will be in new areas -- new markets, new technologies and from smaller companies as well," says Mittal. 

Read more: The Times of India