Apple & McGraw Hill's row

http://gizmodo.com/5458528/apple-punishes-mcgraw+hill-for-msnbc-gaffe

@ McGraw Hill's row with apple, It’s amazing to see how much hype-power Apple has.

Personally, I think iPad is a crap device, without any innovation and real use. But as a marketer Steve Jobs/Apple is genius. Last night the iPad’s launch was literary showing up live on all the news channels…. If nothing else, arrogant stunts like this McGraw Hill one, gives them free pass to millions of $$’s of air time.

As for the tablets and slates… if anyone can create a market for them, its Apple. Let’s see how the sales figures go, it will be interesting.

Making firefox browsing faster

To really enhance the browsing speeds in firefox do the following. After this small hack I feel its faster than Chrome, you can do and check for yourself.

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and press enter (yeah its there!). Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries by double clicking on them

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to 30.

This means it will make 30 connection requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer

Copy-paste the variable “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″.

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

voila!!, the firefox is faster now, try opening a really heavy page with images etc. (like yahoo music), you will notice the browsing is much faster now.

Reference: forevergeek.com

BOOK: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

BOOK: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Came across this book, was a good read; relates to many aspects of my life. Recently I have been juggling with a lot of stuff; my PhD, job, long distance relations & every day tasks…. The feeling that since we diluted attentions importance of prioritizing is imperative.

http://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People/dp/0671708635
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Excerpt from the book
The chapters are dedicated to each of the habits, which are represented by the following imperatives:

1. Be Proactive! Here, Covey emphasizes the original sense of the term "proactive" as coined by Victor Frankl. You can either be proactive or reactive when it comes to how you respond to certain things. When you are reactive, you blame other people and circumstances for obstacles or problems. Being proactive means taking responsibility for every aspect of your life. Initiative and taking action will then follow. Covey also argues that man is different from other animals in that he has self-consciousness. He has the ability to detach himself and observe his own self; think about his thoughts. He goes on to say how this attribute enables him: It gives him the power not to be affected by his circumstances. Covey talks about stimulus and response. Between stimulus and response, we have the power of free will to choose our response.
2. Begin with the End In Mind! This chapter is about setting long-term goals based on "true north" principles. Covey recommends formulating a "Personal Mission Statement" to document one's perception of one's own vision in life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop this. He also deals with organizational vision statements, which he claims to be more effective if developed and supported by all members of an organization rather than prescribed.
3. Put First Things First! Here, Covey describes a framework for prioritizing work that is aimed at short-term goals, at the expense of tasks that appear not to be urgent, but are in fact very important. Delegation is presented as an important part of time management. Successful delegation, according to Covey, focuses on results and benchmarks that are to be agreed upon in advance, rather than prescribed as detailed work plans.
4. Think Win/Win describes an attitude whereby mutually beneficial solutions are sought that satisfy the needs of oneself, or, in the case of a conflict, both parties involved.
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Covey warns that giving out advice before having empathetically understood a person and their situation will likely result in rejection of that advice. Thoroughly reading out your own autobiography will decrease the chance of establishing a working communication.
6. Synergize describes a way of working in teams. Apply effective problem solving. Apply collaborative decision making. Value differences. Build on divergent strengths. Leverage creative collaboration. Embrace and leverage innovation. It is put forth that when synergy is pursued as a habit, the result of the teamwork will exceed the sum of what each of the members could have achieved on their own. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
7. Sharpen the saw focuses on balanced self-satisfaction: Regain what Covey calls "production capability" by engaging in carefully selected recreational activities. Covey also emphasizes the need to sharpen the mind.

A neat desktop customization for XP & Vista. Sits on the desktop nicely, kind of sticks to the wallpaper, you can right click normally through it & almost none resource usage. Very cool! (100 times better & sleeker than vista native stuff)

http://lifehacker.com/5087956/customize-your-own-killer-enigma-desktop

Firefox: Google Search in the Address Bar

How to do enable Google search with Firefox’s address bar









1. On the address bar type: about:config
2. Press Enter
3. Access the about:config page.
4. Find the keyword.URL preference name, by writing in "Filter:” field
5. Double-click on it to change the string value to http://www.google.com/search?&q=
6. Click OK and close the about:config page/tab
7. Voila, it works perfectly, very convenient

How to delete cygwin folder

The other day I spent sold 2 hours trying to delete the annoying cygwin folder for installing a cleaner version. :p

every time I deleted it gave me access denied error until I used calcs in command prompt to reset the permissions. (Equivalent to chmod *.* 777)

CACLS c:\cygwin /E /T /C /G "wahmed":F

where wahmed is my user account in windows. After that just right clicked the folder and poof, deleted. Phew!

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I suppose before you get to the above point, you already have done this small bit

Complete Method
First kill the cygwin services, by either going to Start>RUN>services.msc or type these lines in cmd prompt/Run
1 - cygrunsrv -E sshd
2 - cygrunsrv -R sshd

3 - Delete the folder c:\cygwin and all its sub-folders (if it doesn’t get deleted follow the above guide)

4 - Remove the Environment Variable CYGWIN (by right clicking My Computer->Properties->Advance-Environmental Variables) edit the Environment path accordingly

5 - Start>Run>regedit and delete these two registry trees
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER_Software_Cygnus Solutions"
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_Software_Cygnus Solutions"

6 - Go to Control Panel>Category View>Performance and Maintenance>Administrative Tools, Computer Management.
or click Start>Run>compmgmt.msc
delete the sshd user if it exists in the "System Tools" - "Local Users and Groups" - "Users" section.
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Three UK and Ireland broadband Latest Drivers for USB E169G Modem

Latest Drivers for Three USB modem (Huawei 169G Drivers). Got them directly from Three Ireland. Data speed does seem to be increased after this one, and the interface also seems to be better. The drivers are for Microsoft windows XP, Vista and MAC OS-9 onwards.

http://rapidshare.com/files/158006757/Huawei_169G_USB_3G_Modem_Drivers.zip

For Linux (ubuntu): to make E169G working on linux Ubuntu and Debain, please follow this guide, its quiet comprehensive

http://blog.tech-pro.net/entry/38/Linux_and_the_Huawei_E169G