TechBytes | Technology Bytes

A little while ago (approx 2 weeks) I read a story online which claimed a person has downloaded a compiled 100m Facebook users’ personal data. I searched online and found this torrent on thepiratebay.org

I downloaded this torrent and to my surprise, its almost NOTHING personal. Just names and Facebook IDs. Anyway, I also found a BBC Story on the same topic which is pathetic! They sounded this as if Facebook is HACKED, which is not the case.

Anyway, anyone who does not want to download via other file-sharing services or torrents can download this from the following VPS locations

• Location 1
• Location 2 (monthly allocation of 1TB bandwidth consumed)

P.S. If, for some reasons, you cannot download this file, leave a comment with a valid email address in this post and I will get back to you with the valid link.

The Planet just jumped in to the cloud computing announcing the launch of Server Cloud Hosting.

Cloud computing gives you more reliability, computing power with the advantage of seamless scalability in terms of resources but at the same time its pretty expensive, in my opinion.

The minimum package starts from $49 with just 60GB space and 512MB ram with 1TB bandwith (transfer). The bigger packages cost $99 and $179. All prices are per month in USD. One thing that amazes is why there is just 60GB in the core packages?

I wonder if a XEN from LINODE.COM is better then this cloud offer? LINODE has been very very stable with almost no downtime or issues. XEN512 from LINODE costs $20 per month.

Since The Planet is new, I cannot comment on their reliability but The Planet is one of the best data centers in the US so I expect it to be nothing but the BEST.

Facebook is unblocked as per latest verdict from Lahore High Court but I find many people not using the popular social networking website. I have even seen many foreign friends leaving facebook and publishing email addresses to stay in touch via email.

Updated at: 1027 PST, Monday, May 31, 2010
LAHORE: A Pakistani court on Monday ordered authorities to restore access to Facebook, nearly two weeks after the popular social networking website was blocked nationwide in a row over blasphemy.

Justice Ejaz Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court issued the directive, reversing a May 19 order on the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to block Facebook over “blasphemous” drawings of Prophet Mohammed on the website.

“Restore Facebook. We don’t want to block access to information,” Chaudhry told the court.

A contest organised by a Facebook user calling on people to draw the Prophet Mohammed to promote “freedom of expression” sparked a major backlash in the conservative Muslim country of 170 million.

Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and even moderate Muslims were deeply offended by the drawings that appeared on a Facebook page in an answer to the call for an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day”.

A group of Islamic lawyers petitioned the Lahore court, which had ordered Facebook blocked until May 31 and the PTA then banned YouTube and restricted access to other websites, including Wikipedia.

Chaudhry on Monday asked the government to develop a system to block access to “blasphemous” content on the Internet, which he said was already in place in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“It is the government’s job to take care of such things, which spark resentment among the people and bring them onto the streets. They should take steps to block any blasphemous content on the Internet,” Chaudhry said.

The court Monday adjourned until June 15 the petitions from the Islamic lawyers.

Mudassir Hussain, an official from the information technology ministry, told the court that all links to “blasphemous” content on the Internet would remain blocked in Pakistan.

via Geo.tv

I got this in my mailbox today (since I am a Wateen consumer since Dec 2007)

Dear Valued Customer,

Wateen Telecom is a group company of Abu Dhabi group. Abu Dhabi Group is one of the largest business groups in the Middle East and the one of the largest foreign investor in Pakistan. Abu Dhabi group owns Wateen through Warid Telecom International and Bank Alfalah Limited which hold 79.8% and 20.0% shares respectively.

Wateen’s successful four years of operations in the telecom industry of Pakistan speak for itself, as it successfully deployed the largest commercial and first nationwide 3.5 GHz WiMax network rollout in the world covering 22 cities and 1,100 sites with over 160,000 wireless broadband customers (60% of wireless Broadband market), 12,000 Broadband customers over fiber and 2,700 corporate links (including 26 commercial banks) as well as major GSM and telecom operators as its customers. Wateen Telecom is also the largest operator of satellite services in the country and now offering services to a few telecom operators in Afghanistan. Additionally, optic fiber network spanning over 10,000 KM (7,000 KM deployed and 3,000 KM under deployment) across Pakistan and in all major cities provides a solid backbone for Wateen’s offerings. Wateen also has been acknowledged as the largest alternative LDI operator in Pakistan (with over 1 billion minutes of traffic volume) duly acknowledged by the regulating authority PTA.

Wateen Telecom Limited is now offering 110m shares with an additional Green-shoe option of 90m shares amounting to PKR 2 bn. The IPO will be offered to institutional investors and general public at par value of PKR 10 per share and subscription will be open on 20th & 21st April 2010.

To subscribe, fill the IPO form and submit it to designated banks along with Cheque/PO/Demand Draft in favor of “Initial Public Offering of Wateen Telecom Limited”. Subscription can be made in PKR 5,000 or multiples of it.

Forms and details are available at www.wateen.com, all Wateen Business Centers and Franchise in addition to designated banks or call us at 111-365-365

Best Regards,

Wateen Telecom Limited

The first thought that comes to my mind is … is Wateen really wrapping up?

Courtesy: Youtube, WikiLeaks

For more info please visit WikiLeaks.

Two new features introduced in Webmin 1.5 that really attracts me are

1. Software Package Updates module, it notifies about new available updates and optionally can send email and/or install security or all updates
2. System Status, collects system information by running a background cron job on your system

The interface has also improved a little, and its slower while loading (figures!), but gives more information in the dashboard.

Facebook is rolling out its redesign to some of its users and they are somewhat like this, claims Om Malik on gigaom.com. Here are some of the screen shots of the new sleek look

Read the rest of this entry »

Just found out this morning that WordPress has released 2.9 so I click-updated my blog to the latest version. Thank you WordPress for the one-click-update feature

This may be an old news for some since I am late in getting this on the blog. Nero has introduced a FREE version of Nero 9 for Personal Use only. Nero is one of the most widely used CD/DVD burning software in Home and Offices (plus commercially) alike.