Ada Lovelace – was the first programmer

Very few people are aware about history’s first programmer.

Ada Lovelace is popularly credited as history’s first programmer. She was the first to express an algorithm intended for implementation on a computer, Charles Babbage’s analytical engine, in October 1842. She really did write a program, one for calculating Bernoulli numbers. Ada, a computer programming language, is named for her.
Ada Lovelace photo picture  - was the first programmer
According to wikipedia :

She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine.
Ada was the only legitimate child of the poets Lord Byron and his wife, Anne Isabella Milbanke. She was named after Byron’s half-sister, Augusta Leigh, whose child he was rumored to have fathered. It was Augusta who encouraged Byron to marry to avoid scandal, and he reluctantly chose Annabella. On January 16, 1816, Annabella left Byron, taking 1-month old Ada with her. On April 21, Byron signed the Deed of Separation and left England for good a few days later. He was never allowed to see either again. Ada was born on December 10th, 1815.

More information and photo credit at wikipedia article.

Dell opens new R&D center in Bangalore India

Dell inaugurated Thursday a new research and development (R&D) facility in Bangalore, India, that can house up to 1,000 staff. The new facility is in line with Dell’s plans to make India a hub for the development of enterprise products such as servers, storage, and software.

Its manufacturing plant in Chennai in south India is scheduled to start production in July, which will further bring down the cost of Dell computers in India.
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What steps should be taken when upgrading an operating system from Windows 98 to Windows Vista / XP?

A friend of mine emailed me a question:

What steps should be taken when upgrading an operating system from Windows 98 to Windows XP?

The first and most important step is backup your data to Pen drive, DVD or external hard disk. You should backup
a] Your emails and settings
b] Your Browser bookmarks and settings
c] Your documents and other personal files

This step-by-step article describes how to prepare to upgrade from Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition to Microsoft Windows XP. The information in this article may be useful to help you avoid some common upgrade-related issues.

Read more: How to prepare to upgrade Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition to Windows XP

What Year Was The First Car Made?

I was just thinking about when was the first car made? After some research I was able to gather some data:

1672 – First internal combustion engine which was fueled by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and develop the world’s first vehicle to run on such an engine.

Where Was The First Car Made?

=> 1770 – The Cugnot steam traction engine was built this year. This is considered as the year when the first car was made.

=> Around 1860 – The first powerful car dream came true around 1860 with the invention of the internal combustion engine by the Belgian Etienne Lenoir.

=> 1885 – Karl Benz built an automobile powered by an Otto gasoline engine. He received a patent in the 1886 for the same. Mr. Benz is generally credited with the invention of the modern automobile.

=> Around 1890 – Companies or group of people started to building cars for public. For example, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler in Germany, and Albert de Dion and Armand Peugeot in France were busy building cars.

By todays standard almost all early cars considered as primitive and expensive. These early cars produced in limited numbers. The first cars were hand assembled and required skilled engineers or mechanics to build cars. So cars were very expensive as compare to todays technology and standards.

Mass production of cars credit goes to Henry ford in America. In 1908 the first mass-produced car was introduced – the Ford Model T. By 1920, 50-60% care in the world were Model T from Fords. However these days the design of modern cars is handled by a large team of designers, scientists and engineers.

vBulletin forum change or edit subject titles for individual post

If you need to change post title login as admin or as mod, open individual thread. At the top of each thread, you will see thread tools

Task: vBulletin edit titles

a) Click on Thread tools

b) A small popup will open (see image below)

c) You will see the list of Moderation tool

d) Select Edit thread

vBulletin forum change or edit subject titles for individual post

e) Click on perform action

f) Now you can edit post title as follows:
vBulletin forum change title

Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone, Researchers Find

According to Washington Post article a team of American and Irish researchers have discovered that some female sharks can reproduce alone. Scientists say that the female hammerhead shark kept in a Nebraska zoo for three years without any contact with a male shark had given birth to a pup:

A team of American and Irish researchers have discovered that some female sharks can reproduce without having sex, the first time that scientists have found the unusual capacity in such an ancient vertebrate species.

Their report that sharks can reproduce asexually through the process known as parthenogenesis is being published online today in the British journal Biology Letters. Researchers have observed parthenogenesis in certain species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and bony fishes, but the new finding suggests that vertebrates’ ability to reproduce without sex evolved much earlier than scientists had thought.

Read more…

Howto play OGG file under Microsoft Windows XP / Vista with VLC player

The name “Ogg” refers to the file format which can multiplex a number of separate independent free and open source codecs for audio, video and text (such as subtitles). Files ending in the .ogg extension may be of any Ogg media filetype. The term “ogg” is often used to refer to audio file format Ogg Vorbis, that is, Vorbis-encoded audio in the Ogg container.

You can use VLC player to play ogg files under Windows XP or Vista.

1. Visit VLC site to download VLC player

2. Save the file on your desktop.

3. Next double click the VLC file to install VLC on Windows computer.

4. When the install options present themselves, make sure that the “Install Firefox Plugin” is selected so that you can view streaming media in Ogg format while browsing the web.

5. After the install completes, restart Firefox.

6. If you see video and hear audio it is working.

See also: Getting started with Ogg and installing Ogg plugins

Free Download High resolution wallpapers for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X desktop

InterfaceLIFT website provides graphical user interface enhancements for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

You can download desktop wallpaper, icons, themes, and news with a focus on community. New content is posted virtually every day on this site.

All you have to do is visit their website

Select wallpaper

Select Size and click on download

You can view, sort or select wallpapers date wise or size wise. Currently they are offering 1,236 desktop backgrounds in widescreen and standard format for use with all operating systems. New wallpaper is posted daily!

Visit InterfaceLIFT website to pimp your desktop :)

Largest Treasure Haul Ever Found worth $500 million

Deep-sea explorers said Friday they have mined what could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history, bringing home 17 tons of colonial-era silver and gold coins from an undisclosed site in the Atlantic Ocean. Estimated value: USD $500 million i.e. half billion USD.

The richest ever shipwreck haul was yielded by the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. Treasure-hunting pioneer Mel Fisher found it in 1985, retrieving a reported $400 million in coins and other loot.

A lot of the details are still being kept secret, but they have the coins in hand and the haul appears to have come from just off the UK coast.

It is believed that this recovery constitutes the largest collection of coins ever excavated from a historical shipwreck site. They were recovered in conformity with Salvage Law and the Law of the Sea Convention, beyond the territorial waters or legal jurisdiction of any country. The Company does not believe that the recovery is subject to sovereign immunity by any nation pursuant to the Law of the Sea Convention.

The work accomplished to date on this site has diligently followed archaeological protocols using advanced robotic technology, and the artifacts are now undergoing a meticulous conservation process by some of the world’s most experienced coin conservators.

Shipwreck Yields Estimated $500M Haul