MySQL Tutorials – Blueber

Have you ever wondered what’s behind the most popular social network in the web (friendster). Friendster is been up for many years and has made its name to the top. But aren’t you wondering if what database are they using. Well, I hope you have that kind of question in your mind everytime you login. And one of the most popular and well-known RDBMS or Relational Database Management System is MySQL. SQL is widely used in the web and most of the applications are using MySQL as their backend database system.

Last July I made a site for our assignment in my major subject which is CSIT 70. This site aims to teach MySQL to users. So basically, this is a MySQL tutorial site. Feel free to browse and learn. http://blueber.uni.cc

Computers will never take the place of books. You can’t stand on a floppy disk to reach a high shelf. – Sam Ewing

CMS – content management system

I haven’t posted for 2 days and I was wondering what to post next. Well, this may seem a little bad post just like any other  post of mine but  read it though. hayzz.. I guess I’ll have to make some good posts in the future. For now just bear with me.

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system used for content management. Content management systems are deployed primarily for interactive use by a potentially large number of contributors. For example, the software for this website is based on a wordpress, which is a particular type of content management system. For the purposes of this page, Content Management means Web Content Management. Other related forms of content management are listed below.

The content managed includes computer files, image media, audio files, electronic documents and web content. The idea behind a CMS is to make these files available inter-office, as well as over the web. A Content Management System would most often be used as archival as well. Many companies use a CMS to store files in a non-proprietary form. Companies use a CMS to share files with ease, as most systems use server based software, even further broadening file availability. As shown below, many Content Management Systems include a feature for Web Content, and some have a feature for a “workflow process.” (wikipedia)

But for me, I prefer to use Joomla because it has a lot of functionalities and you can customize your own site that way you want it to be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

Organize yourself as a student

As a student, it’s really hard to organize things like your assignments, reminders, to-do lists, projects, etc. And its going to be messy if all of these things gets unorganized. Well here are some steps that might help us organize our busy and hectic life as a student.

• If you have a USB Flash Drive then you can easily organize your schedule without using any software. All you need to do is create a notepad file(.txt) and add your reminders, to-do list, etc there. Be sure to add a date on top of the file or you could also make the date as your filename. You can also opt to put those reminders on folder (Reminders). But I advise you to put it on your root directory for you to be able to read it as soon as you use your USB.
• And if you are just an ordinary student who doesn’t know anything about technology or computers then don’t worry. You can still organize yourself. Here’s the thing, every student has a notebook therefore you can use your powerful notebook to list all your reminders, to-do lists, etc.
• If you find the above steps to be hard and if you have a laptop with a internet connection then you can visit this cool site. It lets you organize all the things you need to do. http://notely.net

Notely is a collection of online tools designed to help all you crazy busy students out there to organise your hectic lives. Whether you’re in University, College or High School Notely has the tools to help you get organised and achieve better grades. [from Notely]

“If brute force doesn’t solve your problems, then you aren’t using enough.”

Spam Paint

Spamming is very evident in the web. You can’t imagine any email without a spam. Even in comments there are a lot of spams too(spam comments). And some of them may have a link to a malware and could attack your system. Man, I hate those. Anyway, I’ve found this cool web application. It’s written in PHP and makes use of GD Library. The most interesting part is that he makes this spam comments into an art. Can you believe that? Spams are now art. Well, I can’t really explain the whole process of transforming this spam into art ‘though I have some ideas on how it works. Just visit the authors website on spampaint. I guess that will explain everything. [link]

The only way to make your PC go faster is to throw it out a window.

Power up your USB with PortableApps

Having a hard time installing some softwares that you really want? well there is a solution to that problem and that is to use Portable applications. You can just put it on your USB Flash Drive and have it installed on other PC’s with a breeze. A portable application, or portable app for short, is a software program that does not require any kind of formal installation onto a computer’s permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device such as a CD-ROM, USB flash drive, flash card, or even a floppy disk, enabling it to be used on multiple computers. This does not mean that it can be taken and used on a different operating system, processing platform, or another computer with completely different hardware (i.e., those that are not compatible with the software as stated by its requirements), so it is not to be confused with the concept of software portability, which is the ability for software to be run or compiled with little modification on diverse computing platforms. Ideally it can be configured to read its configuration files from the same storage location as the software program files.

Most software are not designed to be portable but there are also some applications that you can use instead of using the old software that isn’t portable. Here would be a list of Portable applications that you may use.

List of portable softwares

http://portableapps.com/ - is a community site devoted to the development, promotion and use of portable applications.

 

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don’t. ~Author Unknown

The other side of autorun.inf

Autorun.inf is the primary instruction file associated with the Autorun function. Autorun.inf itself is a simple text-based configuration file that tells the operating system which executable to start, which icon to use, and which additional menu commands to make available. In other words, autorun.inf tells Windows how to deal open the presentation and treat the contents of the CD.

The autorun.inf defines the following:

• The process or application that will automatically run when a disk is inserted
• Optionally, one can define the process or application that will run for specific Operating environments.
• The icon that will represent your application’s CD or DVD when the drive is viewed with My Computer or Explorer.
• Menu commands displayed when the user right-clicks the CD-ROM icon from My Computer or Explorer.

read more about autorun.inf here

Autorun is intended as a convenience feature: software distributed on a disc can automatically start an installer when the disc is inserted. However, autorun can pose a security threat, when the user does not expect or intend to run the software.
For instance, an attacker with brief and casual physical access to a computer can surreptitiously insert a disc and cause software to run. Alternately, malicious software can be distributed with a disc that the user doesn’t expect to contain software at all — such as an audio compact disc. Even music CD’s from well known name-brand labels have not always been safe. – wikipedia

It’s always been a hassle for us students who are using computers with a lot of malicious software. Some of these software are really getting into my nerve. (Ravmone.exe, Vundo, imgKulot, RECYCLER, more..) These malicious softwares use the power of autorun.inf to be able to gain access of the PC and propagate their selves by sticking their files to the system folders. But usually they reside on USB Flash Drives and infect other PC’s. And recently I’ve been experimenting some ways on getting rid of it. Here are some steps in deleting these malicious softwares.

Precautions:

• Do not enter directly to your USB Flash Drive. Use [right click] -> open or explore
• Make sure there are no running malicious software in the background
• Be sure to have a cmd.exe on your USB. You can copy the cmd.exe from you X:windows\system32\ folder and put it to your Flash drive

General Steps in removing these softwares:

• run cmd.exe
• type in dir /a
• if you can find the autorun.inf delete it by typing del autorun.inf /a /f
• But before you can do this you must first know what are the accompanying files of the malicious software that is in your USB
• Then delete the files that are not yours that you believe to be malicious using
  del <filename> /a /f
• But this files can’t be deleted if its running on your system. Be sure to kill the process before trying to delete it.
• If you can encounter some malicious programs who uses directory such as RECYCLER. First download the eraser portable from the net. [link to download]
• Use the Eraser Portable to delete the directory and its subdirectories. (proceed to help if you need some help in using the program)

If you need more help on removing these softwares please feel free to to contact me at boting_231@yahoo.com .

How would a car function if it were designed like a computer? Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine, and the airbag system would say, “Are you sure?” before going off. (Katie Hafner)

Learn on your own

When I became a CS student I was aware that learning in school isn’t learning at all. You’ll have to explore the world of CS on your own, thus “spoon-feeding” is not an option for any CS student. Some argue to why teachers are just introducing topics and not tackle them very eagerly or should I say teachers are not doing their work. But I told myself, they’re wrong because students should not be dependent on their teachers as well as to other students. We should learn on our own and let ourselves explore the world of computers. (Hilas man paminawon pero tsada nang kita makaexplore kaysa i-introduce ra sa ato. dba?) I am posting this article not because I want all of you to be angry at me but because I want to help my fellow classmates or students to better understand this unexplored cyber-reality. In so doing this I am sharing some links on free e-books that you can use in your study. By the way. ” e-book (for electronic book: also eBook, ebook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printedbook. Such documents are either read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book devices or e-book readers”. – from wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book)

I just want to share this link I have found while I was searching the net for good e-book providers. Hope you’ll like it. [link to a list of free e-books]

“Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more user-friendly… Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, ‘user-friendly‘ on the cover.”