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Till today I have been not few times in the situation where I had erased accidentally one or more files, even from my recycle bin... and probably there is an unwritten law that says that if you gonna need more one file, it will be a file that you had deleted accidentally. So this important file has disappeared and now we need it urgently. What do we do? Fortunately, the way that most file systems work, don't exactly delete a file from a hard disk when we click the "magic" delete command, but actually the file is marked as deleted in the allocation table of the file system. This happens even if we delete the file from the recycle bin. The allocation table markers just say the the file is not needed any more and that other data can be written on its place. What does it mean? That for several minutes after we delete a file, its data remain on the hard disk. And if we don't use enough our hard drive, the place where this file was stored may not be overwritten even after some days or months. This is where the most file recovery tools do the work: they try to find data that still exist on the hard drive, although the files that these data belong to, have been marked as deleted. Then they restore the file by marking the file as existent again, in the allocation table of the file system and... voila we can use the deleted file again. Due to my experience with lots of accidentally deleted or lost files, I have used several programs for recovering them: - File Scavenger ($49) - PC Inspector File Recovery (Freeware) - InstantFileRecovery ($2) Between them, I found slightly better working the last one (InstantFileRecovery). It is available at a very low price, so I decided to give it a try, although I had some thoughts that low price could mean low quality... wrong. It did a great job yesterday, when my little cousin deleted the whole folder with my work's documents (of course I will not let him sit in front of my computer again, at least not for the next months! ). It restored all the files that the folder contained, when File Scavenger managed to find almost the half of them and PC Inspector File Recovery only... 5. Anyway, in some situations one program may work better and in some other cases another one of them may do a better work. So it is always a good idea to have 2 or 3 recovery programs, just to be sure. Practically, the way these programs work is very similar. Typically you run the application, you select the hard disk or partition where your deleted files were stored and you hit the search button. After some minutes (total scan time depends on the size of your hard disk) it will display a list of deleted files that have been found and can be restored. You select the files and then you select the folder where you want them to be restored. That was all! The files are there again and you are happy... but next time be careful!

Over the last years PHP has become the programming language used for the development of millions of web sites. We see it everywhere: most of the sites we use everyday have files with a .php extension in their URL. Forums, blogs, video sharing sites, file sharing sites, photo albums... even some official company sites. Therefore, the knowledge of PHP is the key to the success for a professional web developer. In this article we will begin with the basics and most simple aspects of PHP. We will learn how we print a specific text and how we define variables. These are the most simple, yet the most essential functions that everybody must learn, before continuing to the development of content-rich and functionality-rich web applications. Like every programming language, PHP uses variables to define the values of items. A variable can contain a numerical or alphanumerical values or symbols. Variables in PHP have always a dollar symbol prefix. This sounds familiar to people who already have some knowledge of Perl. Here is an example where we define the value of a variable and later we print it on the screen using the print() function: <?php $text = "Hello world!"; print $text; ?> which will simply output: Another example: <?php $greeting = "Hello everyone!"; $text = "$greeting How are you?"; print "$greeting $text"; ?> The output result will be: When a variable is followed by the "=" symbol it means that we define its value for the first time or we redefine it and overwrite any previous value if exists. When it is followed by a ".=" symbol (notice the dot before the equal symbol), it means that the second value is appended to the first one. Here is an example which explains this better: <?php $text = "Good morning. "; $text = "How are you?"; // Notice that in the second line we used the = symbol // without a dot print $text; ?> The result will be the value that was last defined: Now we will see how the .= symbol works: <?php $text = "Good morning. "; $text .= "How are you?"; // Now we used the .= symbol // with a dot print $text; ?> Important When we print a variable using the echo or print command, it is essential that we use the double quotation marks or no quotation marks at all. Single quotation marks will not print the value of the variable, but the name of the variable itself. An example again, will give more light to this: <?php $text = "Hi there"; print "$text"; ?> Result: which is what we wanted to show. But if we use single quotation marks: <?php $text = "Hi there"; print '$text'; ?> It will print: In the second part of our PHP articles we will learn specifically about the usage of symbols within variables and when we need to use escape characters to avoid parse errors. We will also learn how we use data passed in a GET query (like file.php?id=1&item=this ) or POST query. Next parts will be published here on MSFN. You can also find more details on my blog: Learn PHP Online

The industry association for net providers said legal and technical barriers prohibit them from being anything other than a "mere conduit". The declaration comes as the government floats the idea of persistent pirates being denied net access. And in the US one net supplier has admitted to "degrading" traffic from some file-sharing networks. Traffic control Net firms have been stung into defining their position by the emergence this week of a draft government consultation document that suggests ISPs should be drafted in to the fight against piracy. It suggested that people who persistently download and share copyrighted material could have their net access removed. A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) said the 2002 E-Commerce Regulations defined net firms as "mere conduits" and not responsible for the contents of the traffic flowing across their networks. He added that other laws on surveillance explicitly prohibited ISPs from inspecting the contents of data packets unless forced to do so by a warrant. The spokesman said technical issues also made it hard for net firms to take action against specific types of traffic. For instance, he said, while some people use peer-to-peer networks to download copyrighted material many commercial services, such as Napster and the BBC's iPlayer, use file-sharing technology to distribute music and TV legally. In the US, Comcast admitted in documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission that it does "degrade" some traffic from peer-to-peer networks. The spokesman added: "We know that all ISPs are involved in traffic management but that is to optimise the service for all their customers." A spokesman for Virgin Media said its traffic management system came into play during peak times - between 1600 and 2100. Action was taken against any customer whose usage exceeded a limit associated with their tariff during that five hour window, he said. "If you exceed that threshold we will drop your speed for five hours from when the excess is recorded," he said. Andrew Ferguson, an editor at Think Broadband, said net service firms manage their bandwidth in many different ways. Almost all, he said, manage traffic but at certain times impose other systems to smooth out the peaks. "Some firms will happily let you use as much as you like but will charge you accordingly, and business products that are more expensive often allow unlimited use," he said. Others impose charges on customers who regularly exceed their download limits and a few manage their system so users cannot exceed a monthly download cap. The limits that firms impose can also vary widely. "Any ISP that does not do traffic management is not going to stay in business very long," said Gavin Johns, managing director of net management firm Epitiro. He said it was essential to ensure that services which have to be delivered in real time, such as voice and streaming video, were usable. "Different applications use different ports and have different payloads," said Mr Johns, "They look completely different from a network point of view." "If they didn't do traffic management we would all complain," he said. Mr Ferguson from Think Broadband said although traffic management was common, net providers imposed it in contrasting ways. "What varies is the degree it impacts users and the openness of providers in telling users it exists and what is and is not managed," he told the BBC News website. "Traffic management has a poor reputation as in many cases it is used to keep bandwidth costs down for a provider with little respect to the consumers' wishes," he said. Source: BBC News

Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil. The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health. "It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil explained. "But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us." Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said. Man versus machine "I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said. "We're already a human machine civilisation; we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that." Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence, predicted Mr Kurzweil. "We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons," he told BBC News. The nanobots, he said, would "make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system". Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering. The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter. The 14 challenges were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, which concludes on Monday. Challenges facing humanity: Make solar energy affordable Provide energy from fusion Develop carbon sequestration Manage the nitrogen cycle Provide access to clean water Reverse engineer the brain Prevent nuclear terror Secure cyberspace Enhance virtual reality Improve urban infrastructure Advance health informatics Engineer better medicines Advance personalised learning Explore natural frontiers Source: BBC News

Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is an important update for Windows Vista. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains many security, reliability, and feature updates for Windows Vista. A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1. This article lists programs that have been reported to experience a loss of functionality when they are installed on a Windows Vista SP1-based computer. Notes • This article should not be considered a comprehensive list of programs that experience loss of functionality when they run on a Windows Vista SP1-based computer. • If you are using a program that appears in this article, you may have to contact the software vendor for more information. More info: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;935796

Source: http://news.uk.msn.com AOL and Yahoo! are said to have held talks as the search engine considers potential deals to help it evade the clutches of Microsoft. Advisers from Time Warner-owned AOL met with representatives of search engine Yahoo! to see if a deal is workable, the Sunday Telegraph reported. The talks with internet firm AOL come after Yahoo!'s rejection last week of Microsoft's offer to buy the company for 42 billion US dollars (£21.4bn). Among the other suitors for Yahoo!, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is thought to have offered to buy a 20% stake in Yahoo! in a deal that would see Yahoo! swap shares for a clutch of online assets, including social networking site MySpace. Mr Murdoch has ruled out making a full bid. Details of the discussions involving AOL and Yahoo! remain unclear, although a potential sticking point could be Google's small stake in AOL. Anti-trust laws would make any deal involving Google and either AOL or NewsCorp difficult, the newspaper report said. Microsoft's approach came a year after the two companies held talks over a possible tie-up to challenge Google, although Yahoo! rejected the proposals at the time because it hoped to reap benefits from an overhaul of the business. But Microsoft warned on unveiling its offer that the competitive situation had not improved and that it believed a merger was the "only alternative" to challenging Google's dominance. The software giant wants to offer a credible alternative to Google through the tie-up, offering greater choice to advertisers, increasing research and development spending and stripping out overhead costs. It has also hinted at a hostile bid by reserving the right "to pursue all necessary steps" to win over the firm's shareholders if the deal is opposed

DANIA BEACH, FL (AP) -- Just 15 miles off Florida's coast, the world's most powerful sustained ocean current -- the mighty Gulf Stream -- rushes by at nearly 8.5 billion gallons per second. And it never stops. To scientists, it represents a tantalizing possibility: a new, plentiful and uninterrupted source of clean energy. Florida Atlantic University researchers say the current could someday be used to drive thousands of underwater turbines, produce as much energy as perhaps 10 nuclear plants and supply one-third of Florida's electricity. A small test turbine is expected to be installed within months. ''We can produce power 24/7,'' said Frederick Driscoll, director of the university's Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology. Using a $5 million research grant from the state, the university is working to develop the technology in hopes that big energy and engineering companies will eventually build huge underwater arrays of turbines. From Oregon to Maine, Europe to Australia and beyond, researchers are looking to the sea -- currents, tides and waves -- for its infinite energy. So far, there are no commercial-scale projects in the U.S. delivering electricity to the grid. Because the technology is still taking shape, it is too soon to say how much it might cost. But researchers hope to make it as cost-effective as fossil fuels. While the initial investment may be higher, the currents that drive the machinery are free. There are still many unknowns and risks. One fear is the ''Cuisinart effect'': The spinning underwater blades could chop up fish and other creatures. Researchers said the underwater turbines would pose little risk to passing ships. The equipment would be moored to the ocean floor, with the tops of the blades spinning 30 to 40 feet below the surface, because that's where the Gulf Stream flows fastest. But standard navigation equipment on ocean vessels could easily guide them around the turbine fields if their hulls reached that deep, researchers said. And unlike offshore wind turbines, which have run into opposition from environmentalists worried that the technology would spoil the ocean view, the machinery would be invisible from the surface, with only a few buoys marking the fields. David White of the Ocean Conservancy said much of the technology is largely untested in the outdoors, so it is too soon to say what the environmental effects might be. Source: nytimes.com

Trying to dodge a new controversy, Facebook Latest News about Facebook promised Tuesday to simplify procedures for deleting personal information from the social networking site -- on the same day news reports spread that the world's richest man had stopped using his account. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Webroot AntiSpyware 30-Day Free Trial. Click here. Latest News about Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates doesn't go to his Facebook account anymore "because he's just inundated by thousands of 'friend' requests everyday," Microsoft said. Gates' decision was unrelated to the latest controversy to dog Facebook -- that information in a user's profile is difficult to delete. In a brief statement released to the press, Facebook said it would "ease the deletion process for those who want their personal information removed." Supplementing Current Procedures The decision, which came in response to news reports of users encountering problems disposing of unwanted profiles, accompanied a vow to better explain the process to members. Facebook spokesperson Malorie Lucich said she had no details on how the process would change or when the changes would be in place. However, she said they would supplement current procedures, which allow members to deactivate profile pages without deleting them and seek to delete an account entirely by contacting Facebook's customer support department. Separately, users can delete information from a profile by hand and then deactivate it to keep others from seeing it. Experts said they didn't think many users would eliminate their accounts when the new procedures are adopted. However, they said Facebook needed to show it respects a user's right to control his or her personal information. 'Kind of Frustrating' "Facebook needs to respect the users' wishes," said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research. "If people want to be deleted, they need to be aware of how to do that." Some Facebook users said the process for deleting a profile is cumbersome. Melissa Saulog of San Francisco set up two profiles -- one in college and one for work -- and said she wanted to delete one of them. When she contacted customer support, she received no reply. "Both profiles exist," she said. "It's kind of frustrating." Other users have set up a Facebook page with information on how to remove an account. "I'm all for people deleting their Facebook or MySpace accounts as quickly and painlessly as they'd like," wrote member Shadi Salehi in an e-mail E-Mail Marketing Software - Free Trial. Click Here.. Still, the deletion controversy may not last long. "I suspect that while it might become a media issue for a minute, the overall clear demand to be part of the community is dramatically more valuable" than the potential loss of privacy, said Dennis Miller, a general partner at the venture firm Spark Capital. Source: technewsworld.com

Money Manager Bob Olstein, who owns about one million shares of Microsoft Corp, is urging the company to resist pressure to raise its $31 dollar per share offer for Yahoo Inc and to make it an all-cash deal. "Under no circumstances should you raise your price," Olstein said in a letter to Microsoft chief financial officer Christopher Liddell, dated February 12 and made public on Wednesday. "We believe your recent offer for Yahoo is materially above Yahoo's value as an independent company," Olstein said. The Microsoft offer is valued at about $42 billion. Source: activewin.com