Saturday, December 29, 2007

Oracle income jumps on software sales

Oracle fared far better than analysts anticipated in its fiscal second quarter, easing worries that the sagging U.S. economy will curtail corporate spending on technology and drag down the business software maker.

Relieved investors drove up Oracle's (ORCL, Fortune 500) stock price by more than 6 percent late Wednesday after the results were released.

The Redwood Shores-based company it earned $1.3 billion, or 25 cents per share, for the three months ended Nov. 30, a 35 percent increase from net income of $967 million, or 18 cents per share, at the same time last year.

If not for stock option expenses and the costs incurred in recent acquisitions, Oracle said it would have earned 31 cents per share - four cents per share above the average estimate among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Revenue totaled $5.31 billion, a 28 percent improvement from $4.16 billion last year. Analysts, on average, had projected revenue of $5.04 billion.

Even more important to Wall Street, Oracle's sales of software licenses climbed by 38 percent to $1.67 billion. Analysts had predicted gains in the 20 percent range.

Software sales are closely watched because new licenses establish a pipeline for future revenue from product upgrades and maintenance.

"The strength of the quarter comes down to the fact that we are selling more products to more customers in more industries," Safra Catz, Oracle's chief financial officer, said during a conference call with analysts.

Signaling that its recent momentum will carry into 2008, Oracle forecast software sales will rise 15 percent to 25 percent in the current quarter, which ends in February. Oracle made the same projection for the second quarter and then soared well beyond it.

Excluding stock option expenses, Oracle expects to earn 29 cents or 30 cents per share in the fiscal third quarter. The average analyst estimate for the quarter was 29 cents per share.

Oracle shares fell 49 cents to finish Wednesday's regular trading at $20.76, then rebounded by $1.37, or 6.6 percent in extended trading after its quarterly results were released.

"It was a very strong quarter, based on just about every metric you can think of," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.


Larry Ellison on Bill Gates, potential purchases, and the good old days


Oracle has been on a roll through most of the past two years, reaping the benefits of a shopping spree that has turned it into a one-stop shop for database software and applications that automate a wide variety of business operations.

By spending more than $25 billion snapping up its smaller rivals since 2004, Oracle has created the software industry's equivalent of a Costco warehouse, said Cowen and Company analyst Peter Goldmacher.

"Oracle looks to be better positioned than just about all its competitors," Goldmacher said. That list of rivals includes other technology heavyweights like IBM Corp., SAP AG and Microsoft Corp.

Larry Ellison, Oracle's hard-charging chief executive officer, remains on the prowl for other takeovers. In October, he offered $6.7 billion for another Silicon Valley software maker, BEA Systems (BEAS), only to be rebuffed. Echoing recent public comments, Oracle reiterated it's unlikely to buy BEA unless there's a change in the makeup of the San Jose-based company's board of directors.

Oracle's second-quarter showing and upbeat outlook may revive hopes that the technology sector will be able to overcome the threat of a looming recession and grow solidly next year.

With informal surveys indicating that a substantial number of companies plan to spend less on technology next year, some analysts are bracing for a downturn and their only question is the depth of the drop.

But there's a theory that Oracle and a few other industry leaders won't be hurt if the economic uncertainty causes businesses to concentrate their tech spending on products made by well-established vendors.

"Customers are going with proven technologies with proven value," Chowdhry said. "That bodes well for Oracle and Microsoft. It doesn't necessarily bode well for the rest of the software industry." To top of page

Opera complains to EU about Microsoft

Web browser developer Opera Software ASA said Thursday it had complained to the European Commission about Microsoft Corp., calling on regulators to make the company give users a choice of Internet software with its Windows operating system.

The small Norwegian company also alleged that Microsoft was holding developers back from making programs that work with each other "by not following accepted Web standards."

Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500) said its Internet Explorer browser had been a part of Windows for over a decade and supported a wide range of Web standards.

"We will of course cooperate with any inquiries into these issues, but we believe the inclusion of the browser into the operating system benefits consumers, and that consumers and PC manufacturers already are free to choose any browsers they wish," Microsoft said.

A complaint can - but does not always - trigger an antitrust investigation by EU regulators.

Some of the claims echo complaints from years ago, when Microsoft was accused of using its monopoly position to wipe out Netscape by bundling its free Explorer browser with Windows.

Google to press feds on public records


Opera said it was asking EU regulators to apply the principles of their landmark antitrust ruling against Microsoft - upheld by an EU court in September - to Internet software.

That ruling required Microsoft to market a version of Windows without its media player program, even though there were few takers when it went on sale a year after the antitrust order.

EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes had warned Microsoft that the order set a precedent for its future behavior in other areas - such as its Office software and its new Vista operating system.

"Microsoft should bear this in mind," Kroes said. "The shop is still open, I can assure you ... there are a couple of other cases still on our desk."

EU officials last year cited possible problems with Vista's integrated security software, Internet search, and digital rights management tools used to protect copyrights and software that would create fixed-document formats comparable to Adobe Systems Inc.'s Portable Document Format, or PDF.


YouTube opens ad program to amateurs

Opera is claiming that Microsoft abused its monopoly power as the supplier of software to most of the world's personal computers by giving away its Internet Explorer with Windows and not offering alternative programs.

It "requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers preinstalled on the desktop," it said in a statement.

Opera also said it was asking Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support open Web standards. It said the European Commission should require Microsoft to follow "fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities."

"Microsoft's unilateral control over standards in some markets creates a de facto standard that is more costly to support, harder to maintain, technologically inferior and that can even expose users to security risks," Opera said.

This touches on an earlier complaint filed by a group of Microsoft rivals, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, that alleges that Microsoft's XAML markup language - which it said was positioned to replace the current Web page language HTML - was designed "from the ground up to be dependent on Windows."

Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said the company was championing open Web standards and "cannot rest until we've brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide."

The company now focuses on making browsers for mobile devices, an area where Microsoft is not a major player.

ECIS endorsed the complaint. "Browsers are the gateway to the Internet. Microsoft seeks to control this gateway," said its legal counsel Thomas Vinje.

The group has made complaints of its own against Microsoft, alleging that the new Vista operating system is the company's attempt to extend its monopoly to the Internet and the company uses Windows to extend its market dominance into other areas, including Web-based computing.

Tech Predictions for 2008

Every year at this time I venture forth with my predictions for the New Year. Early in my career, I would foolishly try and predict as much as ten years out, but in a world where technology changes so fast, ten-year predictions are almost worthless these days.

I have become more pragmatic in my old age, and now I try to focus on what I think will be the key industry issues or trends for the next year or two. How accurate am I? Check out my predictions from last year or the previous year or for 2005.

If you read any of my previous predictions, you will notice that they are relatively accurate. This is not to brag, but to point out that the technologies I research typically have their biggest impact 12 to 18 months out.

With that in mind, here are my predictions for 2008:

1. Smartphones Get Smarter and Gain Market Share.
This is not a new prediction, as I have mentioned it in one form or another for the last two years. However, there are two key changes in 2008's prediction. First, we now believe smartphones will get even smarter, thanks to increased processing power, mobile operating systems that gain more functionality (including full Web browsers), and connections to faster wireless networks. Apple has already shown us that you can put the Internet in your pocket via something as small as a smartphone, and the competition is going to school on Apple—big time. In fact, when we look back at 2008, I believe one of the major industry themes will be how the creation of mobile devices that deliver the Internet in your pocket caused a paradigm shift in mobility and drove major changes in the way even mainstream consumers view personal mobility.

The second key change is that even mainstream cell phones will gain more intelligence and help expand the market share of smartphones. Thanks to Google's Android platform, as well as vendors like Palm, RIM, Motorola, and others making their mainstream cell phones more intelligent, we believe that by the end of 2008 smartphones will represent as much as 15 percent of the overall 1.2 billion cell phones sold worldwide in the course of the year, up from a market penetration of around 8 percent today. And by the end of 2009, we now believe smartphones will make up as much as 25 percent of all cell phones sold.

2. Flash-Based Laptops Arrive.
There are a lot of rumors swirling about Apple introducing a flash-based laptop at MacWorld in January. While I have no clue if that is actually going to happen, I do believe that we will see at least one flash-based laptop of some type come from each of the major PC vendors. More important, these new clamshell laptops will introduce a new concept in ultraportables. Although flash memory is coming down in price, I believe most of these new flash-based ultraportables will have only 16GB, 32GB, or, at best, 64GB hard drives on them to keep prices down. This means that people will have to use them differently, and we could see a new class of laptop computers emerge that I call mobile companions. Hard drives in most of today's laptops start at 80GB, although many now sport 120GB and even 180GB.

Given the capacities of these new flash-based clamshell laptops, it's unlikely that they will provide access to full applications or provide rich Web browsing—they'll have limitations much like those of today's BlackBerrys or smartphones. They will require some type of UI that lets you tell your main PC what files you want to take with you, and then enables syncing each time your laptop and your main PC are reconnected. To make this work, you will also need a built-in GoToMyPC-like Internet connection to your PC back home in case you need something while on the road. Look for at least five new flash-based mobile companions to be on the market by the end of 2008, and expect them to be one of the industry's hot topics in the coming year.

3. The Introduction of the "Basic PC."
Next year we will see a real push to create "basic PCs," bare-bones computers priced around $275 to $350 and targeted at emerging markets. We've already seen similar products, such as the XO-1 laptop by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative and the ASUS Eee PC 4G, but they represent the tip of the iceberg in this category. And don't be surprised if this type of PC gets serious attention as a second, third, or even fourth PC for consumer homes.

4. Social Networks Are Targeted by Botnets.
As social networks gain in popularity, I expect them to become the next major target for security threats. Botnets will find their way into these networks and inflict all kinds of new security problems, including identity theft. McAfee, Symantec, Microsoft, and even Apple are aware of these threats and are working hard to prevent them, but social networks will suffer invasion.

5. Smartphones Become Targets for Viruses and Identity Theft.
As smartphones gain market share, become more popular and powerful, and deliver greater Web access, they will attract the criminal element. I believe that in 2008 they will also become major targets for botnets, viruses, and identity theft. This will be a big problem, as there aren't a lot of great security tools for these smart mobile platforms. All of the security software vendors see this coming, but right now they're creating their tools only for use within the Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac environments. Soon they will have to deal with at least five major smartphone OS platforms as well.

Computer Tricks

Hide File In Image

1. Gather the file you wish to bind, and the image file, and place them in a folder. I will be using C:\New Folder
-The image will hereby be referred to in all examples as fluffy.jpg
-The file will hereby be referred to in all examples as New Text Document.txt

2. Add the file/files you will be injecting into the image into a WinRar .rar or .zip. From here on this will be referred to as (secret.rar)

3. Open command prompt by going to Start > Run > cmd

4. In Command Prompt, navigate to the folder where your two files are by typing
cd location [ex: cd C:\New Folder]

5. Type [copy /b fluffy.jpg + secret.rar fluffy.jpg] (remove the brackets)

Congrats, as far as anyone viewing is concerned, this file looks like a JPEG, acts like a JPEG, and is a JPEG, yet it now contains your file.

In order to view/extract your file, there are two options that you can take

a) Change the file extension from fluffy.jpg to fluffy.rar, then open and your file is there
b) Leave the file extension as is, right click, open with WinRar and your file is there



Speed Up Ur PC

Cleaning Ur RAM
U may recognize that ur system gets slower and slower when playing and working a lot with ur pc. That's cause ur RAM is full of remaining progress pieces u do not need any more.

So create a new text file on ur desktop and call it .. uhm.. "RAMcleaner" or something...

Type

FreeMem=Space(64000000)
in this file and save it as RAMcleaner.vbs [ You may choose the "All Files" option when u save it ]

Run the file and ur RAM may be cleaned :>
Of course u can edit the code in the file for a greater "cleaning-progress".


FreeMem=Space(128000000)

just try it out.. it worked for me



Block websites without any software

Steps

1] Browse C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

2] Find the file named "HOSTS"

3] Open it in notepad

4] Under "127.0.0.1 localhost" Add 127.0.0.2 www.orkut.com , and that site will no longer be accessable.

5] Done!


example :

127.0.0.1 localhost

127.0.0.2 www.yahoo.com-


www.orkut.com is now unaccessable


For every site after that you want to add, just add "1" to the last number in the internal ip (127.0.0.2) and then the addy like before.


ie:

127.0.0.3 www.yahoo.com

127.0.0.4 www.msn.com

127.0.0.5 www.google.com


This also works with banner sites, just find the host name of the server with the banners and do the same thing with that addy.

Hope this small tutorial could keep you going in simple way of blocking websites..



Start a movie in paint!

Start movie in Paint!
* First start a movie in any player.

* Then open Paint.

* Now, in the player when the movie is being played, press "Print screen" button on your key board.

* Now, Press ctrl+v in Paint

* Leave the movie player open and don't minimize it.

* Open Paint now and see the movie in the Paint!




Hacking Rapidshare:

Tired of waiting for another few minutes after downloads try dis
It works


While waiting for download, type javascript:c(countdown = 0); in the browser addressbar to eliminate the rapidshare countdown (waiting) feature. If this trick doesn't work, try the alternative below:

javascript:var%20counta=0;var%20countb=0

;var%20countc=0;var%20countd=0;var%20countd=0

(Just copy and paste this code in your address bar)

another method(Works only if u hv dynamic Ip)

Then, follow the steps below to get a new IP:

1. Go to Start->Run and type in "cmd" without quotes to bring up the command prompt. Hit Enter.

2. Type in "ipconfig /flushdns" without quotes and hit Enter.

3. Type in "ipconfig /release" without quotes and hit Enter.

4. Type in "ipconfig /renew" without quotes and hit Enter. You should now have a new IP address. Check your IP address at IP Chicken again and compare it to the one you got earlier.

5. Now, erase your browser's cache and cookies.

6. Try downloading the Rapidshare


Now enjoy unlimited download from rapidShare..





Yahoo with multiple login IDs

Multiple Login in Yahoo! by regedit

Follow these steps : ->

* Go to Start ==> Run ==>> Type regedit,hit enter

* Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Yahoo -> pager -> Test

* On the right pane ==>> right-click and choose new Dword value .

* Rename it as Plural.

* Double click and assign a decimal value of 1.

* Now close registry and restart yahoo messenger.

* For signing in with new id open another messenger .





See who is invisible in Yahoo:

See who is invisible in yahoo messenger.


download this[100% working]

http://
rapidshare.com/files/61785563/BuddySpySetup.exe

If you r scanning for a person be sure that he/she is in your friends list
If he/she is not in your friends list then you may not get right result

enjoy




Lock Computer

we'll make a "Lock Computer" Shortcut on your Desktop so you can lock your computer by simply double-clicking on an icon.
On an empty space on your desktop, right click and select "New" then "Shortcut".
You'll see this shortcut wizard Server.
Paste the following line into the "Type the location of this item" box. Click "Next".

%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
This next dialog box will ask for a name for this shortcut. Type in "Lock Computer" or something that makes sense to you. Click "Finish".
Now you'll have an icon on your desktop that allows you to quickly lock your computer without having to go through the process of "control-alt-delete" -> "Lock Computer".




Useful Shortcut:
Start + M: Minimizes all open windows
Start + Shift + M: Maximizes All Windows
Start + E: Runs Windows Explorer
Start + R: Open the RUN Dialog Box
Start + F: Open the Search Results Dialog box
Start + CTRL + F: Opens the Search Results-Computer dialog Box (if the computer is connected to a network)
Start + Pause (Break): Opens the System Properties Dialog Box


Windows System Key Combinations:

F1: Help
CTRL + ESC: Open Start menu
ALT + TAB: Switch between open programs
ALT + F4: Quit program
SHIFT + DELETE: Delete item permanently

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Email Templates

If you have creating email templates use this.


function Merge_template($message,$temparray) // merging function.
{
$melen=strlen($message);
$k=0;
for($j=0;$j<$melen;)
{
if($message[$j]=='#' && $message[$j+1]=='#')
{
$j=$j+2;
while($message[$j] != '#')
{
$test=$test.$message[$j];
$j++;
}
$pattern[$k]=$test;
$test='';
$k++;
}
$j++;
}
$length=count($temparray);
$i=0;
$outputtem=$message;
while($i<$length)
{
$pattern[$i];
$replacement=$temparray[$pattern[$i]];
$test= '/##'.$pattern[$i].'#/';
$outputtem=preg_replace($test,$replacement,$outputtem);
$i++;
}
return $outputtem;
}




$message = "The following account status changed by ##staffname#. Please take necessary action.
##description#
Reference No: ##ref_no#
Customer Name: ##customer_name#
Date : ##date#";


$date=date("d-m-Y");
$staffname="Thomas";
$description = " Test Description";
$ref_no = "238764";
$customer_name="Arnold";

$temparray=array("date"=>$date,"staffname"=>$staffname,
"description"=>$description,"ref_no"=>$ref_no,"customer_name"=>$customer_name);


$mail_body= Merge_template($message,$temparray);

?>

Output

The following account status changed by Thomas. Please take necessary action.
Test Description
Reference No: 238764
Customer Name: Arnold
Date : 17-12-2007