Skip to main content

Posts

Whats really going on in the Middle East?

There is a complex web of political events happening around Middle East in this decade. It so complex that it even puzzles the political observers. I’d like to point out in this article some of the recent developments in Middle East in the year 2012. Syria – To start with Syria, there is an ongoing agitation by the Syria Rebels aka Free Syrian Army against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. The rebels want to end the regime of Assad. Its been alleged that the Western powers are supplying the rebels with weapons and other supports all in the name of Democracy to topple Assad. But why is US and her allies are so keen to remove Assad? Because the present Syrian Government is a key ally of Iran and Russia in the Middle East. So crippling Syria would be a huge blow to Iran and Russia. Iran – If US is opposing Syria for its alliance with Iran, what terrible thing did Iran do? Iran did what previously Iraq and Libya tried to do. Yes Iran stopped selling oil in US Dollar. US domina...

How to open a PDF file using ICEpdf Viewer from your Java Application?

Few weeks back I designed an application, where I wanted to display Help content through a PDF file rather than through a textbox in a JPanel, because the help content had complex formula stuffs. So I thought of embedding the PDF file with my swing application itself. But it was too tricky to learn in a short span of time. So I figured out two options to display the help content. By opening the PDF file using a native PDF Reader in the system, on click of the Help Button in my Java Swing application. By opening the PDF file using a PDF reader integrated with my application jar package, on click of the Help Button in my Java Swing application. I dont want to discourage the readers, but to be frank the above two methods didnt work for one bad reason. You need the absolute path of the PDF file to be used in the source code. One solution would be to load a PDF file from a Web link. Another solution would be to use an installation wizard (See here ) for your Java application to plac...

Have your pixelated portrait drawn by Google Sketchbots in London Museum

The geekheads at Google have taken web interactions to a new level. Yes Google has setup a 5 different social experiments in London Science Museum, which web users from around the world can control creatively and can see the live physical outcome. Try yourself at http://www.chromeweblab.com . This portal is based on WebGL and so you need Google Chrome to open it. When you enter the experiment you will be assigned a lab tag, something thats unique to you and is anonymous. You may sign in with your Google account and can associate the lab tag with your account. Lets have a look at each experiment. Universal Orchestra: Here you have two options to produce music along with other live users from around the world. Either you can make it by controlling actual musical instruments setup at London Museum by clicking on Play in Museum or you can do it so through virtual instruments by clicking on Play Online . But the latter lacks the flavour of real interaction. So once you enter in ...

A Simple Trick to Hack Unprotected Surveillance Cameras in Web

This is pretty much exposing post about the level of security issues in India. I’m not sure if this is practically being exploited to target broadband users in India. I’m going to show you the fun part here. Its up to the readers to act in an ethical way. First you need the Angry IP Scanner. Download it from here http://www.angryip.org/w/Download . This is a simple tool that scans for a range of Live IP Addresses and identifies user specified open ports. So I downloaded the 32-bit Beta version. This doesn’t require any installation. Just download and run it. When you open the tool you can see options to set IP ranges for scanning. I’m a BSNL Dataone Broadband user and I wanted to find out the vulnerable cameras in my locality. So I start with my IP Address. Just go to Google and Search ‘My IP’. You will get your IP address. By the way I’m not stopping you from find your IP using ipconfig command like a geek. Googling is pretty simple. I entered my IP 117.193.138.135 in the star...