We everyone or most of us must be having our social account on very known world’s number 1 social networking webiste i.e. FACEBOOK. It has evolved so way that now users are sick of using it badly or meanfully. I remember the news which was on top of tech channels that Facebook even challenged GOOGLE directly in means of most visited website in UNITED STATES OF AMERICA for an entire week at a stretch. No doubt, facebook’s growth is phenomenal.

Now the thing of what we should we worried for is security of our and our friends personal contents. However, the site has also lately being receiving lot of excessive criticism for its privacy policies. Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online, claims marketing efforts by the company often results in a compromise on account holders’ privacy, reports CBS News. This makes the scenario more clear.

Some of the risks explained by him are as following.

1. Your information is being shared with third parties.

According to Facebook policy as on April 2010, “When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. … The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” … Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.”

2. Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign.

In March, private e-mail according to a Gawker report, private email addresses that many Facebook users wanted to keep hidden were revealed publicly on a multitude of Facebook profiles. The glitch was later resolved by Facebook.

3. Facebook ads may contain malware.

Recently, a Facebook event invitation was reportedly sent to some over 2,300 friends of Jim Breyer, Accel Partners venture capitalist who sits on Facebook’s board of directors, asking “Would you like a Facebook phone number?” However, the message was actually a scam and the users who entered their passwords in response to the message in turn sent the whole thing to their friends lists too.

“This was a phishing scam and Jim’s account appears to have been compromised,” read a statement from Facebook as provided to venture industry news site PEHub.

4. Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable.
On May 6th, the popular social network patched a major security bug that allowed users to snoop on their friends’ private chats, and view their pending friend requests. The exploit forced Facebook to temporarily disable chat.

5. Scammers are creating fake profiles.

Earlier this week, 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the site manipulates privacy settings to make users’ personal information available for commercial use. (ANI)

Here are some of the popular portable OSes for you to choose from and get going.

1. Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux is an open source operating system based on GNU/Linux. With a size of around 93MB, Puppy Linux supports Live booting from a CD, DVD, USB flash drives and other portable media.


System requirements include 64MB of RAM (depending on the version, up to at least 256MB of RAM). Small in size Puppy Linux is around 93MB. The OS claims a boot time of less than a minute, on most systems 30-40 seconds. Puppy Linux includes a range of applications: wordprocessor, spreadsheet, browser, games and image editor. There is also extra software in the form of dotpets.

Puppy Linux comes with AbiWord, which supports .doc files, and Gnumeric, which supports .xls. Actions that require a double clicks in Windows, such as opening a file, require only a single click in Puppy.

Puppy Linux was first released in June 2003 by Barry Kauler The community. However, the OS does have some limitations, like absence of Hibernate or Sleep option as well as power management support.

2. Slax

The owners of Slax describe it as a pocket operating system. The open source operating system has a modular approach and provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use.

The OS can boot and runs from either a CD or an USB drive. There is also an option to run Slax from RAM. Under 200MB, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software including a graphical user interface and recovery tools for system administrators.

If a user is missing his favourite text editor, networking tool or game, he can simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax, no need to install, no need to configure.

3. Ubuntu

One of the popular community-developed operating systems, Linux-based Ubuntu packs a host of applications including a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software and instant messaging.

Available for free, the OS also offers additional software which are available online. There are separate versions of Ubuntu available for laptops, servers and desktops. There is also free security updates for at least 18 months on the desktop and server.

The Ubutu community claims to release a new desktop and server release every six months.

The most recent version of Ubuntu comes installed with a wide range of software including OpenOffice, Firefox, Pidgin, Transmission, and GIMP. Users can install the OS from a Live CD. By booting it, a user can first choose to Test drive the Ubuntu OS, providing the opportunity to test hardware compatibility and driver support.

The CD also contains the Ubiquity installer which guides the user through the permanent installation process. Installing from the CD requires a minimum of 256 MB RAM.

4. CrunchBang Linux

An unofficial branch of Ubuntu, CrunchBang is a Linux OS which uses the Openbox window manager. Openbox works with applications and makes the desktop easier to manage.

Though not designed for old systems, CrunchBang Linux is reported to operate well where system resources are limited like in case of netbook ASUS Eee PC.


With few exception, CrunchBang Linux is built entirely from packages available from the Ubuntu repositories. This means if users miss out an application or tool, they can fetch the software from the Ubuntu repository.

The OS has the ability to play most popular media formats, including MP3, DVD playback and Adobe Flash. CrunchBang Linux also comes with many popular applications installed by default, including Firefox 3 web browser, VLC media player, Skype, Deluge BitTorrent Client, Gwibber microblogging client and GIMP for image and photo editing.

5. Damn Small Linux (DSL)

Another free operating system, Damn Small Linux was designed to run graphical applications on older PC hardware. Minimum system requirements include a 486 processor and 8MB of RAM. The system requirements are higher for running Mozilla Firefox and optional add-ons such as the OpenOffice.org office suite.

As the name suggests, DSL is quite small with a size of 50MB. It can be installed from USB flash drives, memory cards and Zip drives. In fact, it is said to have been originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD.

An experimental project to see how much software could fit in 50MB, Damn Small Linux includes Firefox, a VNC viewer, file managers, instant messaging clients, and even a web server.

As for what all DSL has: XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, Netrik web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, word-processor (Ted), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano ), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox and JWM window managers, games, system monitoring apps and a host of command line tools.

6. Knoppix

Knoppix, or KNOPPIX is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a CD/DVD. The OS boots and runs completely from CD or DVD and can be used to read and write Windows. There are two main editions of Knoppix: Compact Disc (700MB) edition and DVD (4.7 gb) edition.


It includes programmes such as OpenOffice.org, Abiword, The Gimp, Konqueror, Mozilla, Apache, PHP, MySQL and many other open source programmes. Though Knoppix is designed to be used as a Live CD, it can also be installed on a hard disk. USB devices can load Knoppix from a USB flash drive or memory card.
The system requirements include, Intel-compatible processor (i486 or later), 32MB of RAM for text mode, 96MB for graphics mode with KDE (at least 128 MB of RAM is recommended to use the various office products), bootable CDROM drive, or a boot floppy and standard CDROM (IDE/ATAPI or SCSI) and standard SVGA-compatible graphics card.

In fact, according to the scientists, the software can take a live video feed of a person talking and make them look and sound like somebody else could actually change that, the ‘New Scientist’ reported. In their research, the scientist recorded video of volunteers performing 30 different facial expressions such as frowning, smiling and looking surprised. For each expression, the positions of key facial features, such as the eyes, nose and corners of the lips, were manually labelled.

That annotated footage was used to “train” software to recognize the face of each individual featured in the set. Once trained on a person in this way, it can closely track every move of their face in video footage.

Those movements can then be transferred onto the face of another “known” person by calculating how the recipient’s features need to change to take on each new expression.

This is a dream coming true effort by Indian computer scientists for the society who were  unable to hold their fingers on the laptops. Yes, now we have the world’s cheapest laptop developed at scientific institutes located in Veloru, Bangalore and Madras. This will surely boom the information technology movement in the vast country like India and abroad.

India has developed and released it some days back with costing max to 10$ to 20$ (  500 to 1000 INR). That will be surely a butter bite for the IT enthusiasts. The laptop, jointly developed by University Grants Commission, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was released by honourable Union Minister for Human Resources Development. This product is in beta testing stage and will be available in markets by next 4-6 months.  It is named as “SAKSHAT”.

It is a naked truth that high prices of Laptops have blocked the spread of computer and IT revolution to the large rural and student areas of India. So this is an initiative taken to solve this problem of high cost effect. Surely it will be a boon for Indian students who wish to have computers in their personal hand. It will be a crucial medium for “National Mission on Education through Information and Computer Technology”.

The low priced  computing device is 10 inches long and 5 inches wide hand-held device, resembling a palmtop or a modem, helps e-learners access the Web easily. Priced versions of e-content available on the Net can be accessed through this device. It comes with 2 GB of memory, which is expandable. It has Wi-Fi and fixed Ethernet capability and will consume just 2 watts of power. Thats really a plus point as it saves lot of power.

The so-called laptop actually turned out to be a storage device containing megabytes of data info which can be accessed by a user by connecting this device to a laptop. It meant that unlike the internet, this device can display that information that has already been stored.

Some delegates at the exhibition claimed that with the help of this device a laptop costing about $60 can eventually be manufactured. But for now at least the $10-laptop turned out to be damp squib.

Indian Minister of Education, said that the actual cost of production of this computer is 15.50 euros, but that the costs will be reduced with bulk production in future for maximum human reach.

Salutes to the Indian scientists and student developers behind this great work.

Guess what if you are aware of what one is thinking at present! What thoughts are going on in one’s mind! And finally you are able to read other’s mind. These all talks seem to be if we are having chit-chat from any sci-fi movies and it would be a fascinating new technology, bringing some scenes from sci-fi movies closer to reality.

But dear readers, you will be amazed to know that this talk is no more futuristic as the scientists namely associate professor of psychology Jack Gallant and two researchers, Kendrick Kay and Thomas Naselaris, have made it possible. Dr. Jack Gallant is a neuroscientist at the University of California in Berkeley. They first worked on a computer program to recognize which of a set of 1,750 photos Kay and Naselaris were looking at while their brains were scanned by an FMRI machine (functional magnetic resonance imaging) of the sort ordinarily used in hospitals.

To do this, they made unique mathematical models of each photo, most of which were black-and-white images of familiar objects scaled down to only 64 x 64 pixels, not much bigger than the thumbnail images you see in the photo box to the left.

They also took functional MRI images of blood flow in Kay and Naselaris’ visual cortices, the areas in the back of their brains that process visual information, while they looked at each photo — and then made unique mathematical models of the brain images as well.

Kay and Naselaris were each shown 120 new photos they hadn’t seen before while their brains were scanned.Using the pre-established patterns, the computer was able to match the new scans to the new pictures with an amazing degree of accuracy. The program then picked the most likely match from a set of previously unseen pictures with an accuracy of 92%.

“You can imagine using this for dream analysis, or psychotherapy. This research makes clear that there’s a huge amount of information, way more than we have expected and that we can dig out of fMRI signals to get a better understanding of brain function.”

Soon Yukiyasu Kamitani at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan has gone a step further. His team has used an image of brain activity taken in a functional MRI scanner to recreate a black-and-white image from scratch.

“By analyzing the brain signals when someone is seeing an image, we can reconstruct that image,” says Kamitani.

This means that the mind reading isn’t limited to a selection of existing images, but could potentially be used to “read off” anything that someone was thinking of, without prior knowledge of what that might be.

Working of Project-The Dream Catcher:- Kamitani starts by getting someone to look at a selection of images made up of black and white squares on a 10 by 10 square grid, while having their brain scanned. Software then finds patterns in brain activity that corresponds to certain pixels being blacked out. It uses this to record a signature pattern of brain activity for each pixel.

The person then sits in the scanner and is shown fresh patterns. Another piece of software then matches these against the list to reconstruct the pixels on a 10 by 10 grid.

The quality of images that were recreated is quite crude. However, the word “neuron” and several numbers and shapes that people were indeed being shown (see image, top right) could be observed in the reconstructed images. It is an important proof of principle, says Haynes.

As fMRI technology improves, Kamitani adds that an image could potentially be split into many more pixels, producing much higher quality images, and even colour images.

The next step is to find out if it is possible to image things that people are thinking of – as well as what they are looking at – Haynes says it may be possible to “make a videotape of a dream”.

Positive and Negative Potential:- So this technology can have some very positive as well as negative potential. On positive, it can be used to assess damage from strokes, the effect of drug treatments or to help diagnose conditions such as dementia. It can be helpful in queries with criminals. But as well taking the negative it could have a very serious impact on our privacy and other issues if the research goes on very fine flights with possibility to have colorful imaging outputs.

So just wait and watch what more these scientists and researchers are having to give up.

Reference :- http://www.newscientist.com http://www.foxnews.com