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A look at Blue-ray

Posted on October 19th, 2006 by Vishal.
Categories: New Technology.

What is a Blu-ray Disc?

Official Blu Ray Logo

A current, single-sided, standard DVD can hold 4.7 GB of information. That’s about the size of an average two-hour, standard-definition movie with a few extra features. But a high-definition movie, which has a much clearer image, takes up about five times more bandwidth and therefore requires a disc with about five times more storage. As TV sets and movie studios make the move to high definition, consumers are going to need playback systems with a lot more storage capacity.

Blu-ray is the next-generation digital video disc. It can record, store and play back high-definition video and digital audio, as well as computer data. The advantage to Blu-ray is the sheer amount of information it can hold:

* A single-layer Blu-ray disc, which is roughly the same size as a DVD, can hold up to 27 GB of data — that’s more than two hours of high-definition video or about 13 hours of standard video.
* A double-layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 50 GB, enough to hold about 4.5 hours of high-definition video or more than 20 hours of standard video. And there are even plans in the works to develop a disc with twice that amount of storage.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVDÂ±R, DVDÂ±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it’s possible to fit more data on the disc even though it’s the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB.

Blu-ray is currently supported by more than 170 of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer, recording media, video game and music companies. The format also has broad support from the major movie studios as a successor to today’s DVD format. Seven of the eight major movie studios have already announced titles for Blu-ray, including Warner, Paramount, Fox, Disney, Sony, MGM and Lionsgate. The initial line-up is expected to consist of over 100 titles and include recent hits as well as classics such as Batman Begins, Desperado, Fantastic Four, Fifth Element, Hero, Ice Age, Kill Bill, Lethal Weapon, Mission Impossible, Ocean’s Twelve, Pirates of the Caribbean, Reservoir Dogs, Robocop, and The Matrix. Many studios have also announced that they will begin releasing new feature films on Blu-ray Disc day-and-date with DVD, as well as a continuous slate of catalog titles every month.

For further reading, check Wikipedia’s great artile on blue ray at the below URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

Cheers!

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How to decrypt encrypted files on Windows XP

Posted on September 4th, 2006 by Vishal.
Categories: Operating Systems - Windows.

Need to decrypt encrypted files on Win XP? Just follow the below steps:

1. Login as Administrator

2. Go to Start/Run and type in cmd and click OK.

At the prompt type cipher /r:Eagent and press enter

This prompt will then display:

Please type in the password to protect your .PFX file:

Type in your Administrator password

Re-confirm your Administrator password

The prompt will then display

Your .CER file was created successfully.
Your .PFX file was created successfully.

The Eagent.cer and Eagent.pfx files will be saved in the current directory that is shown at the command prompt. Example: The command prompt displays C:\Documents and Settings\admin> the two files are saved in the admin folder. (For security concerns, you should house the two files in your Administrator folder or on a floppy disk or any removable disk).

3. Go to Start/Run and type in certmgr.msc and click OK.
This will launch the Certificates Manager.
a) Navigate to Personal and right click on the folder and select All Tasks/Import. The Certificate Import Wizard will appear.
b) Click Next. Browse to the C:\Documents and Settings\admin folder.
c) In the Open dialog box, change the Files of Type (at the bottom) to personal Information Exchange (*.pfx,*.P12).
d) Select the file Eagent.pfx and click Open. Click Next.
e) Type in your Administrator password (leave the two checkboxes blank) and click Next.
f) Make sure the Radio button is active for the first option (Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certifcate). Click Next. Click Finish. (You’ll receive a message that the import was successful).
g) To confirm the import, close Certificates Manager and re-open it.
h) Expand the Personal folder and you will see a new subfolder labeled Certificates. Expand that folder and you will see the new entry in the right side column. Close Certificate Manager.

4. Go to Start/Run and type in secpol.msc and click OK. This will launch the Local Security Policy.
a) Expand the Public Key Policies folder and then right click on the Encrypted File System subfolder and select Add Data Recovery Agent… The Wizard will then display. Click Next.
b) Click the Browse Folders… button. Browse to the C:\Documents and Settings\admin folder. Select the Eagent.cer file and click Open. (The wizard will display the status User_Unknown. That’s ok). Click Next. Click Finish.
c) You will see a new entry in the right side column. Close the Local Security Policy.

You, the Administrator are now configured as the default Recovery Agent for All Encrypted files on the Local Machine.

To Recover Encrypted files:

Scenario #1

If you have completed the above steps BEFORE an existing user encrypted his/her files, you can log in to your Administrator account and navigate to the encrypted file(s). Double click on the file(s) to view the contents.

Scenario #2

If you have completed the above steps AFTER an existing user has already encrypted his/her files, you must login to the applicable User’s User Account and then immediately logout. Next, login to your Administrator account and navigate to the encrypted file(s). Double click on the file(s) to view the contents.

Warning: Do not Delete or Rename a User’s account from which will want to Recover the Encrypted Files. You will not be able to de-crypt the files using the steps outlined above.

Hope this is helpful to you!

Cheers!

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How to have a ‘FavIcon’ for your website

Posted on January 18th, 2006 by Vishal.
Categories: Hosting - Windows, Hosting - Linux.

Hello there!

You must have come across many sites that have a small icon right before the beginning of the URL. See below:

Icon in address bar

The same is also displayed in the ‘Bookmarks’ menu if you are using FireFox (’Bookmarks’ is to FireFox as ‘Favorites’ is to IE). See below:

Menu Icon

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to have such an icon for your own website. To begin with, you will need a small icon that you wish to set as the ‘FavIcon’. It should be 16×16 in size. If you don’t have an icon with you, I suggest you try Google to find such icons. Once such site from where you can download these types of icons is mentioned below:

http://www.clickfire.com/content/graphics/favicons/

If you have images on your local system which you wish to use as icons then you can download converters available on the web to accomplish this. IrfanView is one such free graphic converter that I would recommend.

Once you have the icon ready, rename it to favicon.ico and upload it to your wwwroot folder if you are having windows hosting or public_html if linux.

Next, you will need to add the below line of code in between the and tags in your pages. You should include this line in at least the default page of your website:

<link rel=“shortcut icon” href=“/favicon.ico” />

Below is a sample code:

< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html xmlns=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ />
<link rel=“shortcut icon” href=“/favicon.ico” />
<title>My WebSite</title>
</head>
</html>

Believe it or not, you’re done! Try visiting your site, the icon will be displayed now.

Notes:
1. Make sure that you specify the name of the file in the same case as the original file or it will not work on linux servers.
2. There have been instances where the icon does not get immediately displayed. This is a know issue of certain browsers.
3. Please read the terms and conditions of any website carefully before downloading any content.

Cheers!

2 comments.

How to display your Awstats publicly

Posted on January 6th, 2006 by Vishal.
Categories: Hosting - Linux.

You may have come across situations wherein you need to make the statistics of your website publicly available. Though, there is no direct way of displaying statistics of your domain on your website, you can use the below method to accomplish this:

1. Create a php file on your site, let’s call it ’showstats.php’.
2. Paste the below code into it and save.

<?php
$user = ‘username’; //your cpanel username
$pass = ‘password’; //your cpanel password
$domain = ‘website.com’; //do not include ‘http://’ or ‘www.’
/*
NO NEED TO TOUCH ANYTHING BELOW HERE
*/
//retrieves the file, either .pl or .png
function getFile($fileQuery){
global $user, $pass, $domain;
return file_get_contents(“http://$user:$pass@$domain:2082/”.$fileQuery,‘r’);
}
//it’s a .png file…
if(strpos($_SERVER[‘QUERY_STRING’],‘.png’)!==false) {
$fileQuery = $_SERVER[‘QUERY_STRING’];
}
//probably first time to access page…
elseif(empty($_SERVER[‘QUERY_STRING’])){
$fileQuery = “awstats.pl?config=$domain”;
}
//otherwise, all other accesses
else {
$fileQuery = ‘awstats.pl?’.$_SERVER[‘QUERY_STRING’];
}
//now get the file
$file = getFile($fileQuery);
//check again to see if it was a .png file
//if it’s not, replace the links
if(strpos($_SERVER[‘QUERY_STRING’],‘.png’)===false) {
$file = str_replace(‘awstats.pl’, basename($_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]), $file);
$file = str_replace(‘="/images’,‘="’.basename($_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]).‘?images’,$file);
}
//if it is a png, output appropriate header
else {
header(“Content-type: image/png”);
}
//output the file
echo $file;
?>

3. Voila! Simply browse the php page you created and you will see the Awstats for your website.

The above script is courtesy of URL: asmallorange forums

Warning: This script requires that you save your cpanel username and password in the php file which is a security risk. A safer alternative would be to store the ‘username’ and ‘password’ variabes into a seperate file and then include it in the above file.

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How many visitors on my website?

Posted on August 25th, 2005 by Vishal.
Categories: Hosting - Windows.

Here’s an easy way to know the number of active visitors on your website at any given moment. To accomplish this, we are going to use traditional ASP.

Let’s begin!

1) First of all, we will need to create a file that keeps the track of active users. For that, create a file called ‘global.asa’.
2) Paste the following contents in it and save it:

<script LANGUAGE=VBScript RUNAT=Server>
Sub Application_OnStart
Application(“ActiveVisitors”) = 0
End Sub
Sub Session_OnStart
Application.Lock
Application(“ActiveVisitors”) = Application(“ActiveVisitors”) + 1
Application.Unlock
End Sub
Sub Session_OnEnd
Application.Lock
Application(“ActiveVisitors”) = Application(“ActiveVisitors”) - 1
Application.Unlock
End Sub
</script>

3) Upload this file to your webroot, typically it will be ‘wwwroot’.
4) Okay, we’re halfway there. Now we need to create a simple ASP file that will display the number.
5) Create an ASP file with any name, I’ll use the name ‘visitors.asp’.
7) Paste the following contents in it and save it:

< %@Language=VBScript%>
< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
<title>Active Visitors</title>
</meta></head>
<body>
<h3>Number of users visiting this site currently: < %=Application(“ActiveVisitors”)%></h3>
</body>
</html>

8) Upload this file anywhere on your website.
9) You’re done!

All you need to do now is to browse the ‘visitors.asp’ page and it will give the number of active visitors on your website!

Your feedback is welcome!

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How to send Emails via ASP using SMTP Authentication

Posted on August 2nd, 2005 by Vishal.
Categories: Hosting - Windows.

There are several ways through which emails can be sent via ASP. The method which I am going to demonstrate will use CDOSYS and will use SMTP authentication. Secondly, I will encapsulate the code in a general function so that it can be used in any of your ASP pages by just including this file. The salient features of the code which I have demonstrated are:

1) Usage of a function, thus expanding portability.
2) Optional usage of fields like ‘Cc’ and ‘Bcc’ as per the senders discretion.
3) The sender can skip the ‘From’ email address if it is same as the SMTP user.
4) The sender can decide whether the content of the mail is to be send in text or html format.
5) After the mail is sent, an error number, if any, is returned. Thus, the sender can write proper error handling code, if required.

So let’s begin!

A. Implementation

1) Create a file called ‘EMail.asp’, or you can choose any other name as per your preference.
2) Paste the below code into it:

<!–
METADATA
TYPE=“typelib”
UUID=“CD000000-8B95-11D1-82DB-00C04FB1625D”
NAME=“CDO for Windows 2000 Library”
–>
< %
Function SendMail(SMTPServer, SMTPUserName, SMTPPassword, EMailFrom, EMailTo, EMailCc, EMailBcc, EMailSubject, EMailType, EMailContent)
Dim cdoConfig
Dim cdoMessage
Dim intErr
Set cdoConfig = CreateObject(“CDO.Configuration”)
With cdoConfig.Fields
.Item(cdoSendUsingMethod) = cdoSendUsingPort
.Item(cdoSMTPServer) = SMTPServer
.Item(cdoSMTPAuthenticate) = 1
.Item(cdoSendUsername) = SMTPUserName
.Item(cdoSendPassword) = SMTPPassword
.Update
End With
Set cdoMessage = CreateObject(“CDO.Message”)
With cdoMessage
Set .Configuration = cdoConfig
If Len(Trim(CStr(EMailFrom))) = 0 Then
.From = SMTPUserName
Else
.From = EMailFrom
End If
.To = EMailTo
If Len(Trim(CStr(EMailCc))) <> 0 Then .Cc = EMailCc
If Len(Trim(CStr(EMailBcc))) <> 0 Then .Bcc = EMailBcc
.Subject = EmailSubject
If EMailType = “text” Then
.TextBody = EMailContent
ElseIf EMailType = “html” Then
.HTMLBody = EMailContent
End If
.Send
intErr = Err.Number
End With
Set cdoMessage = Nothing
Set cdoConfig = Nothing
SendMail = intErr
End Function
%>

3) Save the file. You’re done!

B. Usage

Using this function is extremely simple and just a matter of including the above file and calling the function. Let’s take an example where you have to send mails from an ASP file called ‘MailMembers.asp’. Follow the below steps to implement this:

1) Move the ‘EMail.asp’ in your ‘includes’ directory. Typically this directory is called ‘includes’ itself, personally I use that name for the sake of convenience.
2) Open the ASP file, in our case it would be ‘MailMembers.asp’.
3) Scroll to the top and insert the below line at the top of the page, but below the ‘@Language’ or ‘Option Explicit’ or any other directives, if you are using them:

< %@Language=VBScript%>
< % Option Explicit %>
<!– #include virtual = “/Includes/Email.asp” –>
‘Other Include files follows…
—————–
—————–
—————–
‘Your regular ASP code follows…
< %
—————–
—————–
—————–
%>

4) Finally call the ‘SendMail’ at the point in your code where you need to send the mail. The below example demonstrates error trapping as well:

< %
‘Declare Variables
Dim intError
Dim strResult
intError = SendMail("mail.mydomainname.com", "mail@mydomainname.com", "mypass", "admin@mydomainname.com", "john@accuwebhosting.com", "", "", "New membership!", "text", "Welcome to our club!")
If intError = 0 Then
’No errors, mail sent
strResult = “The mail has been sent successfully”
Else
strResult = “There was a problem sending the mail”
‘Error Handling code follows
—————–
—————–
—————–
End If
‘Inform the user
Response.Write(strResult)
%>

That’s it! Happy mailing.

Your comments and/or suggestions are welcome.

Cheers!

no comments yet.

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A look at Blue-ray

How to decrypt encrypted files on Windows XP

How to have a ‘FavIcon’ for your website

How to display your Awstats publicly

How many visitors on my website?

How to send Emails via ASP using SMTP Authentication