March 19th, 2008
Default password for ZTE ZXDSL 831D Modem
I really annoys when there is a problem with the modem settings and you realize that you have forgot the admin password for your DSL Modem.
Along with a Zoom Modem I also have a ZTE ADSL modem, ZXDSL 831D. The default or the factory set password for this modem is
USER = ZXDSL
PASSWORD = ZXDSL
remember it is all in CAPS and you can access the settings page by point your browser to this local address http://192.168.1.1/
the imax | 9:21 pm | Uncategorized | No Comments
March 18th, 2008
Seagate VS Western Digital hard drive
I had a 80GB Seagate SATA 2 drive with 8MB cache, I thought that it would be more than enough when I bought it about 2 years ago , however due to downloading junk stuff from torrents and lots of Linux ISOs my Seagate drive had filled to capacity and I yesterday bought a new Western Digital 250GB SATA drive with 16MB cache . Before buying I had done a lot of research that hard drive from which vendor is better and after going through numerous forums, message boards and articles I came to the conclusion to buy a Western Digital drive instead of Seagate.
Opinions @internet regarding the performance of hard drives of these two companies are almost evenly poised with people giving a slight edge to Western Digital in reliability, Maxtor had really bad reviews.
So If you are looking to buy a new hard disk than I would suggest that you go for a WD hard drive, the prices for the two are almost same.
TIP: Also make sure that you have free SATA power cable in your PSU available otherwise also order the
SATA power cable along with the hard drive 
the imax | 9:38 pm | Uncategorized | Comment (1)
March 18th, 2008
SecureCRT a nice piece of terminal software
I had a requirement in which I wanted to open SSH sessions with multiple hosts from Windows , execute some commands and than save the output in a log file. I was looking for some software to automate this and found SecureCRT . It has some very nice logging and automation abilities, with the ability to over write a log file or to just append to it, similarly there is also the macros feature and you just give the required commands once and than afterwards just rerun the macro by a single click.
At startup you can select multiple connections to connect and don’t have to individually login to each host , this is a real blessing If you have to connect to 20+ hosts at a time
the imax | 9:16 pm | Linux/Unix | No Comments
March 18th, 2008
LPI 201 Exam
Just want to share that I took the 1st exam of the LPIC 2 series i.e. the LPI 201 paper last week and have fortunately passed it . Now just one more exam to go in the LPI series , hopefully I will also take it in 3-4 months.
This time to paper was not very difficult as after clearing the level one exams I had an idea of what to expect .
the imax | 9:04 pm | Linux/Unix | No Comments
February 1st, 2008
Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo!
For the amount of 44.6bn dollars Microsoft has offered to take Yahoo! , there has been no comment from Yahoo! on the offer .
If the deal goes through than it will mean a lot more competition for Google in the Search Engine industry and the market share of Microsoft search will come at par with Google .
Following is the text of letter sent to Yahoo! board of directors from Microsoft
January 31, 2008
Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Roy Bostock, Chairman
Attention: Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer
Dear Members of the Board:
I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft’s closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.
Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use - EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices - this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.
We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!’s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft’s share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.
Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.
In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that “now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction.” According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo! Board’s confidence in the “potential upside” if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment. A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.
While online advertising growth continues, there are significant benefits of scale in advertising platform economics, in capital costs for search index build-out, and in research and development, making this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers. Synergies of this combination fall into four areas:
Scale economics: This combination enables synergies related to scale economics of the advertising platform where today there is only one competitor at scale. This includes synergies across both search and non-search related advertising that will strengthen the value proposition to both advertisers and publishers. Additionally, the combination allows us to consolidate capital spending.
Expanded R&D capacity: The combined talent of our engineering resources can be focused on R&D priorities such as a single search index and single advertising platform. Together we can unleash new levels of innovation, delivering enhanced user experiences, breakthroughs in search, and new advertising platform capabilities. Many of these breakthroughs are a function of an engineering scale that today neither of our companies has on its own.
Operational efficiencies: Eliminating redundant infrastructure and duplicative operating costs will improve the financial performance of the combined entity.
Emerging user experiences: Our combined ability to focus engineering resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platforms is greatly enhanced.
We would value the opportunity to further discuss with you how to optimize the integration of our respective businesses to create a leading global technology company with exceptional display and search advertising capabilities. You should also be aware that we intend to offer significant retention packages to your engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.
We have dedicated considerable time and resources to an analysis of a potential transaction and are confident that the combination will receive all necessary regulatory approvals. We look forward to discussing this with you, and both our internal legal team and outside counsel are available to meet with your counsel at their earliest convenience.
Our proposal is subject to the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and our having the opportunity to conduct certain limited and confirmatory due diligence. In addition, because a portion of the aggregate merger consideration would consist of Microsoft common stock, we would provide Yahoo! the opportunity to conduct appropriate limited due diligence with respect to Microsoft. We are prepared to deliver a draft merger agreement to you and begin discussions immediately.
In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning.
Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the Yahoo! Board to engage in a full review of our proposal. My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience. Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.
We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to create significant value for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees, and the combined company will be better positioned to provide an enhanced value proposition to users and advertisers. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to a prompt and favorable reply.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer
Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation
the imax | 1:46 pm | Google | No Comments
January 30th, 2008
How to delete search history in firefox
Thankfully as compared to Internet Explorer, managing and clearing the private data including the search history and URLs of visited sites is very simplified in Firefox.
Just select Tools > Clear Private Data
There’s also a shortcut (shift+ctrl+delete) for the same purpose , a dialog box will open giving you options for the level of data you want to delete
On a public computer you can safely select all the options and click on “Clear Private Data Now” and all the browsing information from firefox will be deleted.
The is another very neat option in Firefox by which you can set it to automatically delete the private data on the closing of browser, select
Edit > Preferences > Privacy and check the box of “Always clear my private data when I close the browser”, here too by clicking on Settings you can customize the things which are automatically deleted.
the imax | 2:40 pm | Uncategorized | No Comments
January 30th, 2008
Yahoo! Go Mobile 3.0.
Installed it a few days ago, Yahoo! has done a good job with the interface and functionality of its new mobile bundle product , Unlike the Google ’s email client for mobiles Yahoo Go Mobile also integrates Flickr, Weather updates and the oneSearch feature.
The screen navigation, rendering and scrolling is a bit slow as compared to the Gmail’s mobile client, however the features of Flickr and the option to add your selected widgets is good, when I checked there were not any widgets available other than the official one’s from Yahoo! but this collection will definitely grow over time.
Localized versions of Yahoo! Go 3.0. are also available for many countries.
the imax | 2:14 pm | Uncategorized | No Comments
January 20th, 2008
Slow Speed from LAN Card
I have a two PC setup at home, one has a on-board realtek network card ( running windows XP) and the other one has a D-link Lan card ( running RHEL 4), I have been using internet from Linux machine by configuring Win XP as a gateway with out any problem
Few days back I bought a new 3Com LAN card for my XP machine (as I wanted to connect to the DSL modem with a Ethernet connection instead of a USB connection) and on connecting the computers via the new card I found that the Internet browsing on the Linux machine had become extremely slow, and there was a high packet loss when pinging the computers , that was something really odd for LAN connection of two computers sitting right beside each other
I suspected that there was some fault with the new 3Com card , however after a bit of tweaking the problem was resolved by setting the media type of the LAN card to 10 Mbps , apparently by default the type was set to auto causing the windows to try to use the full 100 Mbps duplex mode which the other (D-link) card in linux machine did not support, resulting in a conflict and data loss over LAN.
So If you are facing a similar problem than make sure to check that the data transfer speeds on both LAN card are set to match each other.
In windows you can configure the parameters of a LAN card by opening the device manager and selecting the advanced tab in the dialogue box for the properties of the appropriate LAN card or Ethernet adapter.
the imax | 6:48 am | Uncategorized | No Comments
January 19th, 2008
Using Mobile as Computer Memory Stick
It has been a few months since my old Kingston 128MB USB drive finally gave up, leaving me without any portable way of transferring data till I found that that my nokia mobile phone , having a microSD card ,could also act as a full-fledged USB or memory drive.
I have a Nokia 5700 Mobile loaded Symbian S60 that also came with a 1GB microSD card.
When you connect the mobile via the USB cable to the computer than a prompt pop’s up at the Mobile screen asking the mode than you want to use and here if you select the “Music or Data Transfer “mode than your mobile’s memory card is detected by the computer as a regular Thumb or USB stick appearing as a removable disk in “My Computer” supporting all the function of normal memory sticks, however you will notice that the data transfer from this card is pretty slow as compared to the regular USB sticks, specially the part of writing onto the card ( May be this setup is not USB 2.0 Compliment ??)
Your Mobile keeps functioning as usual with just one limitation that during the connection with computer you cannot access the things that you have stored in the memory card from the mobile phone itself.
The Mobile Memory card already has a folder structure however you can store just about any file at any place in the memory card (as long as the space permits you) and it wont have any issues when you use the card in normal mode via the mobile, just don’t store any viruses
This would also work with other Models of Nokia having similar OS ( Symbian S60 in my case) and having a micro card.
the imax | 5:28 pm | Uncategorized | No Comments
January 3rd, 2008
How to exit music player in Nokia 5700 Xpress Music Mobile
Once you open the music player than even after you stop playing the music the Music player in Nokia 5700 keeps on running in the background and hogging the memory (you can check this by holding-on to the menu button and it will show the music player as a running application)
The option of exiting the music player is hidden deep behind the menus (and no rational person can find it )
So here is the procedure of shutting down the music player in Nokia 5700 mobile without restarting your phone.
1. Open Now Playing
2. Open Equalizer
3. Highlight any equalizer other than ‘default’ and select options -> edit
4. From edit choose options -> exit
I wish /hope that Nokia puts the option of exiting the music player at a bit more easily accessible place in future upgrades.