Improve website Quality and Performance

LONDON (AP) — Hackers on Sunday claimed to have stolen a raft of e-mails and credit card data from U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor, promising it was just the start of a weeklong Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

One alleged hacker said the goal was to use the credit data to steal a million dollars and give it away as Christmas donations.

Members of the loose-knit hacking movement known as "Anonymous" posted a link on Twitter to what they said was Stratfor's tightly-guarded, confidential client list. Among the list: The U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and the Miami Police Department.

The rest of the list, which Anonymous said was a small slice of its 200 gigabytes worth of plunder, included banks, law enforcement agencies, defense contractors and technology firms such as Apple and Microsoft.

"Not so private and secret anymore?" the group taunted in a message on the microblogging site.

Anonymous said it was able to get the credit details in part because Stratfor didn't bother encrypting them — an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment for any security-related company.

Stratfor said in an email to members that it had suspended its servers and email after learning that its website had been hacked.

"We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites," said the email, passed on to The Associated Press by subscribers. "We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained."

The email, signed by Stratfor Chief Executive George Friedman, said the company is "working closely with law enforcement to identify who is behind the breach."

"Stratfor's relationship with its members and, in particular, the confidentiality of their subscriber information, are very important to Stratfor and me," Friedman wrote.

Stratfor's website was down midday Sunday, with a banner saying "site is currently undergoing maintenance."

Wishing everyone a "Merry LulzXMas" — a nod to its spinoff hacking group Lulz Security — Anonymous also posted a link on Twitter to a site containing the email, phone number and credit number of a U.S. Homeland Security employee.

The employee, Cody Sultenfuss, said he had no warning before his details were posted.

"They took money I did not have," he told The Associated Press in a series of emails, which did not specify the amount taken. "I think why me? I am not rich."

One member of the hacking group, who uses the handle AnonymousAbu on Twitter, claimed that more than 90,000 credit cards from law enforcement, the intelligence community and journalists — "corporate/exec accounts of people like Fox" news — had been hacked and used to "steal a million dollars" and make donations.

It was impossible to verify where credit card details were used. Fox News was not on the excerpted list of Stratfor members posted online, but other media organizations including MSNBC and Al Jazeera English appeared in the file.

Anonymous warned it has "enough targets lined up to extend the fun fun fun of LulzXmas through the entire next week."

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, as well as others in the music industry and the Church of Scientology.

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Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd
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SOURCE: http://news.yahoo.com/hackers-target-us-security-think-tank-123046257.html

Hello friends, "How to improve Software Testing skills" - this is the question raises immediately in your mind after succeeding in getting a Software testing job. Before we get into this part in detail, let us see what are all the precautionary steps, one must have to become a Basic tester. Here are some fundamental ethics to become a professional software tester.

• Ask questions about the software to the corresponding programmer / tester.
• Attend meetings with your peers (Who are involved in the project)
• Sharing of application knowledge makes you feel little more comfortable.
• Do not get anxious about setting-up a Test environment.
• Write testcases as per the requirement; as well as maintain your own testcase (Unofficial) which will have some in-depth concept testcase which might not be covered in testcase requirement.
• Create your own technical test datas (Positive & Negative)
• Create your own rules on testing the application including crashing it with some ASCII data inputs. .
• Assume as if you have paid money for the company to build this project.
• Once you complete the testing, share the modules with your peers, so that they can find some bugs if you have missed any and do it vice-versa.
• Try to understand the application codes, so that this can be helpful for you to raise the bug.
• A programmer really wants “bug list”, but it will be easier for programmers if a bug is raised with the following details in clear manner:
  

a. Bug summary
b. How to reproduce the bug?
c. What would be the reason for this bug?
d. How this can be fixed? (Use this only if you have understood the code)


• Learn the new concepts in software testing, but do not force it into your work environment until it is needed.
• A tester should play around with the Test datas to find the bugs. (As simple as that)
• A professional tester should not get upset if an issue is missed, instead he/she should able to root-cause the bugs.
• A software tester should enjoy testing the web applications, standalone applications, or even some ad-hoc applications.
• Testers should spend some time everyday on puzzle-solving games to sharpen their brain.

Android vs iPhone

Advantages of Android

• SMS delivery report - for the IPhone you need a third party apparently
• Notifications without INTERNET - one of the biggest drawback of the IPhone is that you cannot have notifications without Internet -> the notifications are stored on the Apple servers
• Can install applications from any site - IPhone applications can only be installed from the Apple store (unless the phone is jail broken)
• Multiple physical menu buttons - used for navigation and quick shortcuts, allows greater screen size (no more software menus)
• Physical menu button allows recent 6 tasks (like ALT+TAB in Windows) - absolutely useful
• The Home screen is organized in 3, 4 or 5 virtual screens, the rest of the applications lie in a list - usability, quick to access most used apps - on the IPhone there are "limitless" virtual screens on Home
• Can install on the Home screen - widgets, shortcuts, folders
• Physical keyboard - on some models
• Open source OS
• Can install different/homebrewed firmwares
• Can install home brewed apps
• Background apps/ multitasking
• can make own application to hook into anything - calling, traffic, media, encryption, etc
• Dev SDK is free and cross platform. IPhone is for $100+ and only works on MAC.
• Programming is done in Java, bridges exist from J2ME, C#, etc. IPhone uses Objective C
• Programming - can run interpreters. IPhone only allows running Objective C byte code
• Easy access to the SD card (both from computer and from the phone). can copy MP3s, read ebooks, etc
• Cheaper than the IPhone
• Easy removable/replaceable battery.
• 5 mega pixel camera + blitz/flash + More

Hi friends,

A website favicon will not play a major role for improving website quality. But though, many like to play with it just as an design representation when our website browser is minimized to 'Start bar'. Lots of questions raised by many people for the solution.

Website Favicon will be displayed in Mozilla Firefox by just uploading it in the root path. But in Internet Explorer browser, the website favicon will not be displayed until the favicon dimension, favicon size, and the favicon format is accurate.

Here is the solution for making your website favicon to be displayed in Internet Explorer (IE) browser too.

Steps to display Website Favicon in IE browser:

1. Create your website logo in .jpg/ .gif/ .png image type.

2. Dimension of the logo should not exceed 50 x 50 size.

3. http://www.prodraw.net/favicon/index.php - Open this website and convert your logo as favicon.

4. Download the converted logo. (favicon.ico)

5. Upload the 'favicon.ico' into the root path of your website.

6. Clear the stored cookies and delete the cache of your IE browser and check the favicon.

That's it. You are done. Your favicon will be displayed in any browser including IE browser.
Hope you are now resolved your Website Favicon issue in Internet explorer.

For any other queries, please leave me a comment.

Have a great day ahead friends.

Drupal is in fact great for administration web sites, setting up web logs, and wide-ranging web-pushing bits and pieces. Regrettably, we cannot use it entirely for Content Management System because of advanced thinking of Users, but as a special tool or clerical tool for public who primarily interact in the course of the website quality and performance improvement.

Advantages of Drupal:

• Macintosh and Windows support for content editing.
• Content authoring with flexible access controls.
• User Registration and Profiles modules.
• Forums, Blogs, Newsletters, Wikis, Quizzes, Polls, Sweepstakes, and etc.
• Calendar / Event module.
• Gallery / Slideshow module.
• Built-in caching.
• Out-of-box RSS feeds.
• Role-based permission system.
• Browser-based Administration rights.

Also over 1,500 more modules, more features can be added!

In addition, Drupal offers strategic capabilities for search engine optimization and infrastructure flexibility which is designed to be standards compliant helping not only to boost your search engine rankings but be accessible as well.

* Friendly URLs – Drupal uses Apache’s mod_rewrite to enable URLs that are both user- and search engine-friendly, which can help your search rankings.

* Permalinks – All content created in Drupal has a permanent link or “permalink” associated with it so users can link to content freely without fear of broken links.

* Taxonomy and Tagging – Drupal enables you to define hierarchical categories that can be used to tag and organize content, as well as fields for content authors to apply free tags. Tagging content can help enhance your site’s organization, enable related content linking, and assist in the definition of meta-keywords that can boost search rankings.

* Google Ajax Search Module - The main googleajaxsearch module allows the addition of inline searches over a number of Google services (Web Search, Local Search, Video Search, Blog Search, and News Search).

* Platform Flexibility – Drupal was designed from the start to be multi-platform. Not only can it can be installed on either Apache or Microsoft IIS, it can also run on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OSX platforms.