A blog by Awais Rauf.

Super VPN review

2011-09-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

The need for using private VPN networks is rising day by day. Netizens are becoming more and more aware of their online presence, security and the need to remain anonymous in the cyber world. There is though, one more reason for using VPN networks: for bypassing restrictions on one's work or school PC.

Realizing this need, many VPN service providers have sprung up in the market. There are many decent VPN providers with servers all over the world.

However, only a few of them stand out of the lot. One such provider is Super VPN Service:

Super VPN Service has a host of options that makes it one of the most fully featured VPN service providers out there. Let me enlist some of the salient features:

1. 100% liberty:
Super VPN offers you complete freedom to browse any site in the the world without any restriction and run any type of web application.

2. 99% uptime:
Another impressive feature is the almost round the clock up-time guarantee.

3. Absolute Anonymity:
Super VPN Service has servers all over the world that offer 100% anonymity for a tension free internet experience.

4. Reliability & Support:
Super VPN has a team of highly qualified support professionals who are available 24/7 to troubleshoot any issues that you might have.

5. Unblock Skype and other applications:
Using Super VPN Service you can unblock Skype in the countries that have blocked its usage. For example, China, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar

6. Security:
And of course, Super VPN Service offers world class security features:
A.) 1024 bit SSL military grade encryption.
B.) No provider logs.
Thus providing you 100% SECURITY.

These are of course, only some of the features that this superb VPN service has to offer. Super VPN Service offers many other cool features like VPN for iPhone VPN, Android VPN, VoIP VPN and Torrent VPN. It's very easy to use and the best thing of all is that it starts with only $4 a month!

So if you're considering buying a VPN service, Super VPN Service seems like a great choice and for a low price too.

You can access the product's website at http://www.supervpn.net/

Happy Surfing!!

Ever Wonder how pro-isreali comments swarm digg like forums?

2009-01-10T21:59:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how pro-Israeli comments swarm popular sites like digg, cnn within minutes of the article getting posted. Let me introduce to you the popular "Megaphone Desktop Tool". Yeah you heard it right its aptly named Megaphone Desktop tool. Some People call it Israel's newest PR weapon
The Jerusalem Post says

"An Israeli company developed a type of software that functions like a beeper from one central place. They send alerts and anyone who downloads the software gets a pop-up with links to an activity. It can be to vote for Israel in a CNN survey or react to an especially nasty article. We still have a long way to go, but this is our future."

This tool has people working at the back-end who search for news and articles that the pro-Israeli community can add 'their Opinion' to. The tool debuted during the Israel-Lebanon war in July the previous year.
This is how the pro-Israeli comments that you see rush to the forums like digg and other polling sites so as to digg or positively vote stories that are to their likes and to bury or negatively vote the ones that they don't consider to be good (like maybe this one).

Shocked? If yes, then you are like most other people :-)
One interesting thing more, they even link the vote now button to the actual pro-isreali vote option so the user doesn't even get a choice after once clicking the vote now button. Here is a comment of a user saying the same thing on the tool's own site.
Don't know whether the neutral audience will find my story first or the 'Desktop Megaphone Tool'.
Here is a link to wikipedia article about Megaphone Desktop Tool.

British Government Caught Pirating On Prime Minister’s Website

2008-08-20T04:59:00.000-07:00

While the British government puts huge amounts of pressure on ISPs to clamp down on file-sharers, it is doing some pirating of its very own. It seems that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website is in serious breach of copyright, as it is based on a ripped-off Wordpress theme.

Read More

Musharraf announces resignation

2008-08-18T04:37:00.001-07:00



	RAWALPINDI: President Pervez Musharraf announced in a televised address to the nation Monday that he had decided to resign after nine years in power to avoid the threat of impeachment. "After viewing the situation and consulting legal advisers and political allies, with their advice I have decided to resign," a grim-faced Musharraf said, backed by Pakistani flags and a portrait of the country's founder. "I leave my future in the hands of people." Musharraf made the shock announcement after denying that any of the impeachment charges against him could stand and launching into a lengthy defence of his time in power. "Not a single charge in the impeachment can stand against me," Musharraf said. "No charge can be proved against me because I never did anything for myself, it was all for Pakistan." He said that there was now law and order in the country, that human rights and democracy had been improved and that Pakistan was now an crucial country internationally. "On the map of the world, Pakistan is now an important country, by the grace of Allah," he said. The President dismissed the “false allegations” being leveled against him by the coalition government and said he was neither afraid of the charges against him, nor shy to face these through impeachment. “For me it is always Pakistan first”, Musharraf said and added that politics of confrontation must come to an end and instead a policy of reconciliation be pursued. He stressed immediate measure be taken to arrest the economic downturn and said the nation has the resilience to withstand any challenge. He said it was not a time to show bravado, but to get serious as country’s dignity was at stake, the office of Presidency would bear the brunt. “For 44 years I have safeguarded the country and will continue to do so.” “No charge sheet can stand against me. Not even a single charge can be proven against me as I have full trust in Allah Almighty and I did everything with the belief of Pakistan First.” The President said he took all decisions with consultation, took all stakeholders onboard, on the most difficult decisions. “All stake holders, whether they were soldiers, politicians, bureaucrats, members of civil society, Ulema were consulted in all decisions. “I have nothing to worry about the charge sheet,” Musharraf said.

Leaked Intel slides reveal 8-core CPUs, AVX instruction set

2008-08-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

Intel's upcoming processor generations will double the number of cores per chip and add a brand new language for specialized code, according to leaked slides obtained by CanardPlus

ReadMore

U2 Tracks Leak After Bono Plays Stereo Too Loudly

2008-08-16T02:58:00.000-07:00

U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who wants file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet, has something else to complain about today. Four songs from U2’s upcoming album ‘No Line On The Horizon’ have been leaked online after Bono played them too loudly on his stereo - and a fan recorded them.

Read More

IFPI Hijacks Pirate Bay Traffic

2008-08-16T02:52:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, Italian ISPs started to prevent their customers from accessing the Pirate Bay. Strangely enough, Pirate Bay traffic is not redirected to Italian authorities, but to the IFPI, the infamous anti-piracy lobby of the music industry. Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde is not happy, and says it’s a scandal.

Read More

The Pirate Bay Sees Boost in Italian Traffic Following ‘Block’

2008-08-15T04:08:00.000-07:00

Following the decision in Italy to block access to The Pirate Bay comes the inevitable announcement. Has the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker faded away in the face of media industry pressure? Hardly. Traffic from Italy to the ‘bay has actually increased this week and the site has jumped 10 places on Alexa in Italy.

Read More at TorrentFreak

Change Digg's Default page to Upcoming

2008-08-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought about the articles that forever reside on the digg's Upcoming page and never manage to get a digg from another digger. Do you think all of these articles are not worth getting diggs?

Think the impact that changing the diggs default to upcoming page will make. Alot of people will get to see the upcoming stories this way.

Do you think the default page should be the Upcoming page? Leave recommendations in comments below.

A Map of Global Undersea cables

2008-08-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a map of the Undersea Cables that fulfill our appetite for Communication.

12 People gunned down in Kashmir by Indian Troops

2008-08-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

12 People gunned down in Kashmir 4 of them by direct firing on a funeral.

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uTorrent 1.8 Released, Mac Version Coming Soon

2008-08-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

After months of hard work and more than six months since their previous stable release, the uTorrent team has released version 1.8 of their BitTorrent client, with significant improvements and updates. Adding to the excitement, we were told that a public Alpha of the Mac version will be released in the next few weeks.

Read more on Torrentfreak & Utorrent Forums

Dr. Afia Siddiqi torchered with her 3 children in Bagram Detention Center

2008-08-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

On July 6, 2008 a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years.

“I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her,”
Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

Dr. Afia has lost her senses due to excessive mental torture and the decrepet condition in which she is locked with male prisoners.

According to the BBC Urdu, the FBI has conceded that Dr. Afia Siddiqi who had vanished from Karachi over five years ago in March 2003 along with her children is in the custody of American forces in Afghanistan but sadly in a horrid medical condition

The information comes from BBC, when it received an email from lawyers based in the US hired by Dr. Afia’s brother to try and help influence the release of her sister who has been allegedly been in the custody of American forces. The lawyers claims that on Thursday an agent from the FBI came to Dr. Afia Siddiqui’s brothers house and admitted to the fact that Dr. Afia is indeed in solitary confinement within a prison in Afghanistan and in serious medical condition

It may be recalled that over five years ago Dr. Afia suddenly disappeared from Karachi along with her three children never to be seen from again, both the Pakistani and American forces have never acknowledged her disappearance until probably now, five years after her kidnapping. The admittance may well be attributed to the immense media pressure created when a number of human rights organizations presented evidence of a certain prisoner-of-war known as Prisoner 650 who was in terrible medical condition within an American prison located in Afghanistan and they had reason to suspect that Prisoner 650 was Dr. Afia Siddiqui

Her three children were also kept with her in Bagram detention centre but now only one is known to be alive. Maybe the other two children were slaughtered before her in order to facilitate the interrogation.

BBC Urdu reports that since Thursday’s development family members have been running from pillar to post in an attempt to wrangle more information on the whereabouts of Prisoner 650, but authorities have been tight lipped about the issue.

In all the frantic developments over the past three days the family within Pakistan has been on the receiving end, of anonymous threatening phone calls to try and subdue them to remain quite on the entire international issue.

Who is Dr. Afia Siddiqui.

Dr. Afia Siddiqui, who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, for about 10 years and did her PhD in genetics, returned to Pakistan in 2002. Having failed to get a suitable job, she again visited the US on a valid visa in February 2003 to search for a job and to submit an application to the US immigration authorities. She moved there freely and came back to Karachi by the end of February 2003 after renting a post office box in her name in Maryland for the receipt of her mail. It has been claimed by the FBI (Newsweek International, June 23, 2003, issue) that the box was hired for one Mr Majid Khan, an alleged member of Al Qaeda residing in Baltimore.

Throughout March 2003 flashes of the particulars of Dr. Afia were telecast with her photo on American TV channels and radios painting her as a dangerous Al Qaeda person needed by the FBI for interrogation. On learning of the FBI campaign against her she went underground in Karachi and remained so till her kidnapping. The June 23, 2003, issue of Newsweek International was exclusively devoted to Al Qaeda. The core of the issue was an article “Al Qaeda’s Network in America”. The article has three photographs of so-called Al Qaeda members - Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Dr. Afia Siddiqui and Ali S. Al Marri of Qatar who has studied in the US like Dr. Siddiqui and had long since returned to his homeland. In this article, which has been authored by eight journalists who had access to FBI records, the only charge leveled against Dr. Afia is that

“she rented a post-office box to help a former resident of Baltimore named Majid Khan (alleged Al Qaeda suspect) to help establish his US identity."

No one knows how many more such detainees are held without charges in the concentration camps of the so-called fighters against terror. If such prisoners are believed to be terrorists then why are they not trailed in court.

IBM Pushing Microsoft-Free Desktops

2008-08-06T04:29:00.000-07:00

IBM and Cannonical, RedHat and Novell to collaborate in delivering Microsoft-free Desktop to the masses.

"For the first time, IBM and leading Linux distributors Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell and Red Hat will join forces globally with their hardware partners to deliver Microsoft-free personal computing choices with Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony in the one billion-unit desktop market worldwide by 2009."

Readmore at marketwatch.com

55 Social Bookmarking sites to promote your blog

2008-08-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

Social Bookmarking sites are an easy way to make your latest blog post get easily noticed. You have to just post the link to your blog post on these sites and your post will come to the front page for some time then its upto the users to promote your story so that it gets rated and noticed by other users.

Most popular sites are Digg and del.icio.us.

Below is a list of 55 bookmarking sites.

A word of caution: Don't try to spam on these sites as the content is promoted by other users after seeing the content of your posting. So your spams will just get ignored and will be nothing else but a nuisance

Learn To Play Guitar

2008-08-02T02:58:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to learn how to play guitar but had no one who could teach you how. A number of very good online resources exist. Amongst one of the best is GuitarNationLive. They have Lessons ranging from how to buy a guitar to Hormonics to Song Analysis.

Another good source is GuitarPrincipals. Check it out.

Top Best 50 Ubuntu Opensource Applications For Design And Developing

2008-08-02T02:34:00.000-07:00

There used to be a time when linux was used entirely as a embedded system and had little or no tools for Design and Developing. But not anymore. Nowadays there is very rich collection of Tools one can use for Designing and yes all run natively. emmaalvarez has a excellent collection to top 50 Ubuntu Designing and Development apps.

Read more

33 Secrets to a good nights sleep

2008-08-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

A good night sleep is a blessing in todays busy world. Research shows that most people don't get adiquete nights sleep. Although there is nothing worse than the daytime after a sleepless night but the research shows that many longterm effects occour due to inadiquate sleep for example it can accelerate agging and can promote weight gain. mercola.com shows us 33 Secrets to a good night's sleep.

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Installing OFFICE 2007 on LINUX via WINE

2008-07-30T02:56:00.000-07:00

Wine, the implementation of Win32 API over linux, allows you to install win32 apps on linux with good usable speed.

In this guide we will show you how to install MS office 2007 on your linux box.

Requirements:

You need

Wine (Latest version: 1.1.2), don't use 1.1.1 coz it has issues with XML parser required for office installation.
A linux OS (Of course!!)
Decent internet connection (Which you already have if you are viewing this guide)
And LOTS of Patience.

Pre-installation Notes:

It would be better if you start with a fresh .wine folder in your home directory.

The Installation:
1) Run winecfg and set the windows version to Vista (Yep the latest).
2) Download winetricks (a compilation of scripts to install various needed components in wine), run "sh winetricks msxml3 dotnet20 gdiplus riched20 riched30 vcrun2005sp1". Then click through a number of next boxes.
3) Then rename ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/rpcrt4.dll to rpcrt4.bak
4) Now download a new rpcrt4.dll from http://www.mediafire.com/?njtut9aswdk (Found it somewhere). Copy it to wine system32 folder.
5) Run winecfg->libraries and add an override for rpcrt4.dll (Leave at Native, Builtin)
6) Run "wine setup.exe" from your office 2007 CD-ROM
7) Click through installer, add key, etc
8) Remove the downloaded rpcrt4.dll, restore the .bak. Open winecfg and remove the override. Set the windows version down to XP.
9) Start up office. Activation works through phone or internet. ("cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Office/Office12", then "wine WINWORD.EXE").

If all works well you will be having a nice fresh Office 2007 installed on your linux box.

Finally
say thanks to Wine Team (If possible, send them some donation, they deserve it).
If you liked this guide please help me by clicking on some adsense ads.

We Own YOU!!!...... Resistance is FUTILE

2008-07-23T09:54:00.001-07:00

Here is a small list of what aspects of our life THE GREAT GOOOOOOGLE controls:

They control Your Email (Gmail)
They control Your Money (Google Checkout)
They control Your Searches (Google Web Search)
They control Your Satellite views & Maps (Google Earth & Maps)
They control Your blogs (Blogspot)
They control Your site traffic analysis (Google Analytics)
They control Your schedule (Google calender)
They control Your Hard disk data* (Google Desktop)
They control Your Video Clips (YouTube & Google Videos)
They control Your Documents (Google Docs)
They control Your Social activities (Orkut)
They control Your Pictures (Google Picassa)
They control Your Friends and Family (Google Talk)
They control Your Health Records (Google Health)

and.

One thing to co-ordinate them all (iGoogle)

What is left......

Think...

Think...

.

.

Your Life

Wait for sometime, you are not far from seing the world being rolled into "a matrix" and your life being copyrighted by THE GREAT GOOOOOGLE

* Caption: * (A backdoor is all what is needed, think....... cough... cough... FBI, CIA)

Transition to Gnome 3.0

2008-07-11T02:24:00.000-07:00

Gnome the default desktop manager of many distros including the all favourate Ubuntu may soon be moving from v2.* to v3.*

http://blogs.gnome.org/lucasr/2008/07/10/gnome-30/

So, just after the Kris‘ keynote presenting the GTK+ 3.0 plans, we, your beloved release team, quickly presented our proposed plan for GNOME 3.0. There are still lots of details to discuss but the important thing is that our proposed mindset for 3.0 is in place for discussion now

Worst Windows uses Possible

2008-07-11T01:40:00.001-07:00

Nowadays even Windows desktop users are increasingly moving to alternative OSes due to increasing security weaknesses of Microsoft OSes, Networkworld shows us some worst uses of windows possible.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29644

I believe that "Windows Everywhere" is a strategy that benefits only Microsoft. Everyone else should pick the best overall solution for their application. Need to run DNS? Why use a big hairy operating system like Windows for such a simple yet critical application? Look for stripped down hardened solutions for mission critical apps.

FICTION TO READ BEFORE YOU DIE

2008-07-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

Chosen amongst some of the best works of the best authors who ever lived.

Catch-22
This was such a famous novel that its name became a verb. Words cannot explain the magical charm this spectacular novel has. A MUST read.

1984
A journey by a man to find real truth and freedom in a cruel society. This book will definitely change the way to perceive society and life.

Brave New World
When human existence gets controlled by the so-called rulers of the world, free thought not allowed. After reading this book you will spend hours trying to recosider your opinions about freedom, technology and religion.

To The Lighthouse
Revolving around adult problems like childhood, marriage, love, death this book is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf books. I must admit that this is not a book for starter in literature but is a must read.

The Great Gatsby
To mention in the authors words it is “something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned”. Scott Fitzgerald papers his awesome intellect in this novel. The novel is about love and the way character tries to get it.

Gone With The Wind
Believe it or not but you will definitely be sad when you reach the last page. This masterpiece novel tells love story Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler against the background story of American Civil War.

Animal Farm
After they get rid from the slavery of Human Masters and look forward to living freely a clever one amongst them enslaves them. This is a fairy story centers around the animals of Manor Farm. It describes political evil in a clever way while avoiding the scissors of censorship at the time.