Technology

In the context of computer software, a Trojan horse is a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software. The term is derived from the classical myth of the Trojan horse. In the siege of Troy, the Greeks left a large wooden horse outside ... the city. The Trojans were convinced that it was a gift, and moved the horse to a place within the city walls. It turned out that the horse was hollow, containing Greek soldiers who opened the city gates of Troy at night, making it possible for the Greek army to pillage the city. Trojan horse programs work in a similar way: they may look useful or ... (view more)

An exploit is a common term in the computer security community to refer to a piece of software that takes advantage of a bug, glitch or vulnerability, leading to privilege escalation or denial of service on a computer system. There are several ... methods of classifying exploits. The most common is by how the exploit contacts the vulnerable software. A 'remote exploit' works over a network and exploits the security vulnerability without any prior access to the vulnerable system. A 'local exploit' requires prior access to the vulnerable system and usually increases the privileges of the person ... (view more)

AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text and image advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis. Google utilizes its ... search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads ... (view more)

In computer engineering, hard disk drive partitioning is the creation of logical divisions upon a hard disk that allows one to apply operating system-specific logical formatting. Disk partitioning is a simple technique which can be viewed as a ... precursor of logical volume management. The purpose of partitioning is to allow a user to have multiple file systems on a single hard disk. Active partition The Bootable Flag determines the active partition. Only one partition can normally be active at a time. The active marker is used during boot: after the BIOS loads the MBR into memory and executes ... (view more)

MP3 is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented and standardized in 1991 by a team of engineers working in the framework of the ISO/IEC MPEG audio committee under the chairmanship of Professor Hans Musmann (University ... of Hannover - Germany). MP3 was designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. In popular usage, MP3 also refers to files of sound or music recordings stored in the MP3 format on computers. MP3: Overview In the simplest ... (view more)

Gmail (Google's free email) is now available on your mobile phone! A dream come true - at least for me! I never want to go too long without checking my Gmail (yes, I have a slight addiction). To get Gmail on your mobile phone, just go to m.gmail.com ... on your phone to access your inbox. Even cooler is the fact that it can handle attachments like pictures and .pdf files. I downloaded an attached picture today, but haven't had a chance to test .pdfs yet. Gmail going mobile is just one of the many new features added to the Gmail service lately. Web clips (RSS feeds that scroll at the top of your ... (view more)

Murphy's law (also known as Finagle's law or Sod's law) is a popular adage in Western culture, which broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation. It is most commonly formulated as "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." In ... American culture the law was named after Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr., a development engineer working for a brief time on rocket sled experiments done by the United States Air Force in 1949. Murphy's Law: Variations Murphy's law has taken on many different formulations. In 1952, the proverb was phrased "Anything That Can Possibly Go Wrong, Does" in ... (view more)

An application programming interface (API) is the interface that an application provides in order to allow requests for service to be made of it by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between them. For instance, a computer ... program can (and often must) use its operating system's API to allocate memory and access files. Many types of systems and applications implement API's, such as graphics systems, databases, networks, web services, and even some computer games. API: Description One of the primary purposes of an API is to provide access to a set of commonly-used ... (view more)

A plugin (or "plug-in") is a computer program that interacts with another program to provide a certain function. Typical examples of plugins include: a web browser plugin (such as "adobe acrobat reader"), a program to display specific graphic ... formats (such as "video codecs" for Windows Media Player), and the like. Plugins are slightly different from program extensions, which modify or add to existing functionality. The main difference is that plugins generally do not change a user interface and run within well-defined boundary; comparatively, extensions generally ... (view more)

A new service is available that helps you to keep track of online information as it changes. It sends you an instant message whenever any RSS or Atom feed you want to monitor changes. The URL is http://immedi.at . Get it? Immedi.at? Immediate? Cool ... domain name, huh? (".at" is Austria's country code extension). Great idea, I must say. The immedi.at website itself is a little boring. I expected something a little more web 2.0-ish, but that's okay. I don't need all that fancy AJAX stuff ... Anyway, back to the service itself. It's really easy to use - all you have to do is add a "monitor this" ... (view more)