Life beyond earth?

A big YESSSS. There is so much space & matter in this world that is beyond comprehension. It has no boundary. It’s infinite. Very hard to imagine there could be no life elsewhere. Who created all this stuff around us. When did it all begin? What is the future like? Lets consider a few examples.

Lets imagine a terrorist outfit, hell bent upon total destruction, detonates the Annihilator and the whole earth is blown to million pieces. What then? Is that the end of life as we know it? NO. There is already life out there some where in some form. Maybe it’s much more intelligent than we are or just evolving. As i always say, ‘Life is balanced!’. It has to or else we will have a chaotic world.

So, maybe we ought to be destroyed, to give way for a new kind of species. Just like dinos disappeared and gave way to us humans. But what if there is no more planet earth? Hence i think there has to be life elsewhere, with conditions just right enough for life to sustain.

Fiddler – http debugging proxy (http/https)

FROM www.fiddlertool.com
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What is Fiddler?

Fiddler is a HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP Traffic, set breakpoints, and “fiddle” with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language.

Fiddler is freeware and can debug traffic from virtually any application, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and thousands more.
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Was able to monitor raw data including passwords being sent as clear text! , verify ssl state, post data, etc.

Create multiple websites on XP Pro

XP PRO IIS Admin is a free IIS Management tool that can be used to create more than one website in IIS 5.1 under XP Pro. It can be downloaded from here. This tool somehow creates multiple websites but at any time only one website can be in running mode.

DiskState – disk analysis tool (4/5)

No windows computer should be without one. This is a fantastic utility that scans your harddrive for duplicate, temporary, large files and many more so you could manage the drive. It has very useful report feature that lets you customize the type of files you want diskstate to search and report on. The interface is very intuitive & the help manual is sufficient.

Got lots of mp3 or video files that’s scattered all over? No sweat, use DiskState to search in a jiffy! I sometimes feel Microsoft should just buy this company and give the tool for free. So, before you purchase that new hard-drive, you might want to give this a try.

http://www.geekcorp.com/

Antivirus better than Norton (4/5)

I have come across many software programs and utilities in my lifetime. Some i have beta tested and others i have played with. Many times i can tell which one is a winner. Recently, i came across “Avira AntiVir” personal edition anti virus program that i am currently running on trial basis and very happy to be doing so.

It is fast, doesn’t slow my system & has a very low RAM requirement which is a big plus & i get to try it for a full 6 months. Available directly from www.antivir.com. The current version of Norton Antivirus doesn’t work well alongside ZoneAlarm firewall & i can’t imagine surfing without ZA. So getting rid of this issue was another reason to go with Avira. Besides, Avira has more detection rates than many leading brands out there including norton or mcafee. So be sure to give Avira a try & did i mention it is German made?

Life

“Everything in life is balanced!”

- BigIdea

Network Protocol Analyzer

Recently, a colleague of mine asked me if there was a way to monitor queries to SQL SERVER without using Profiler. He was thinking on the lines of a packet sniffer. I found ‘Wireshark’, a network protocol analyzer that does the job. It is an opensource product available from here.

This tool has plenty of choices for analyzing protocols. We used ‘TDS’ tabular data stream for SQL Server and were able to monitor sprocs, parameters, etc. This is a good tool to use in case you do not have permissions to execute SQL Profiler.

Netflix turns on WatchNow – YoHoo!

If you have an netflix account & a decent broadband, you can watch movies instantly right now. My test was on an IE7 although it works on IE6 as well but not on firefox. You need to download and install an Netflix Movie Viewer installer, a small file and should take less than a minute to install. Depending upon browser configuration you might need to upgrade a few components but that was a breeze as well. Upon completion, you can watch most movies instantly.

I had to go through the WatchNow link to watch the movies though. I couldn’t watch a movie that was in the queue already. There are a list of FAQ’s which answers most common questions.

You get to watch 1hr for every $1 of your plan amount.

Oh, be sure to get your own bag of popcorn, sitback & enjoy the movie

Firefox – funny error message

This one speaks for itself thanks to Microsoft’s exceptional exception handler!

Best & Worst

“I believe the Worst in a man’s life brings out the Best in him!”
- BigIdea