GTA Online Details: Game Day Access Info and More

With just hours remaining until the initial launch of Grand Theft Auto Online, here’s some more information to share to help get everyone ready for tomorrow. You can also look forward to plenty of GTA Online game tips and other community support features to roll out at the Rockstar Games Social Club website tomorrow as well  – expect tutorial tips to be updated regularly as new content is added to GTA Online.

 

Access to GTA Online

• Access to Grand Theft Auto Online is free with your copy of Grand Theft Auto V. On October 1st there will be a small downloadable Title Update released on PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE. Upon installation of that Title Update, direct access to begin GTA Online will be unlocked in your GTAV game menu. You will be able to jump right into GTA Online via the 4th (bottom) slot in your GTAV character wheel. We’ve received many questions asking for a specific confirmation of what exact time GTA Online will be available but of course this is contingent on both Title Updates becoming available on each console’s network. As a general timeframe, we do expect the Title Update to become available on PSN and Xbox LIVE starting around 7AM ET tomorrow morning, and your best bet is to stay tuned throughout the day here at the Rockstar Newswire and by following us on Twitter and Facebook where we will be keeping everyone updated.
   

When does GTA Online Take Place?

• Some people who’ve been playing through Grand Theft Auto V’s Story Mode have been inquiring how the narrative of GTA Online correlates or crosses over. Grand Theft Auto Online is set a few months prior to the events of Grand Theft Auto V’s single player story.
   

 

Home and Garage Security

• There’s plenty of havoc and treachery you can cause out in the open world of course, but in order to prevent some really annoying “griefing”, we’ve designed house party invitations specifically to be a friendly social affair where players can visit each other’s pads without fear of having them ruined or losing their hard-earned vehicles in the process. If someone invites you into their property, then it is considered a friendly visit and you will not be able to shoot up their place or steal their cars from their garage. By the way, in any given lobby, if you and another player own the same piece of property, you will each be able to enter your own personal instance of that property at any given time. You will also be able to enter each other’s instance of that property if you exchange and accept an invite. This way, multiple instances of ownership of the same property within a lobby can co-exist.
   

 

GTA$ and Fair Play

• To allay some concerns we’ve heard on this subject, we can assure you that the game is designed such that the option of purchasable GTA$ should not disrupt the playing field – and there are a few mechanics in place to help ensure that. All players still have to rank up with Reputation Points (RP) in order to get access to purchase high-end items.  No one can begin GTA Online and simply spend a lot of money out of the gate to get a leg up. You will have to earn your stripes and play to unlock access to the aspirational clothes, guns and other items. Please also remember that in GTA Online, hustling to afford the finer things by earning GTA$ doing robberies, stick-ups, winning races and other profitable activities is a fun gameplay experience rather than ever being a ‘grind’. As we mentioned on Wednesday, we will constantly tweak all areas of the game to make it play fairer and iron out any balancing problems (while fixing all the other problems we encounter!), but we really need your help in figuring out what those issues are. So please work with us on that!
   

 

An Ever-Growing Collection of Jobs

• Grand Theft Auto Online is a long-term GTA experience that you can expect to be built-upon, to grow and to evolve in many ways in the coming weeks, months and beyond. As part of that, there will be a massive amount of Jobs available to play over time as we will be regularly adding new ones for you to enjoy. Additionally, you will soon be helping to add content to the game world yourselves, by creating custom Race and Deathmatch Jobs through the Content Creator tool which we plan to release this fall. Grand Theft Auto Online is a collaborative project between Rockstar and all GTA players worldwide, so expect that we’ll effectively be working on it together from day one. As a very small example, the Crew Hierarchies feature that was introduced a few weeks back on Social Club was a direct result of popular fan feedback from last year – and we’ll be looking at the GTA Online community’s feedback, input and ideas constantly to help inform how the game itself will grow and evolve. As mentioned last week, we’ll be looking closely at your feedback emails sent to GTAOnline@rockstargames.com and in the GTA Online Suggestion Box board at the forthcoming Social Club Forums. We’re very much looking forward to welcoming you as active participants in the world of GTA Online starting tomorrow.
   

 

The Character Creation System

• The hereditary-based character creation system of Grand Theft Auto Online allows for a multitude of options to create your avatar that will then inhabit the online world of Los Santos & Blaine County.  Choose your gender then decide on your mother and father.  From there, you can choose to give one parent genetic dominance or leave them more evenly matched. The choice is yours. Next, you adjust a set of lifestyle variables which help determine your character’s appearance and starting stats. Decide how much sleep he/she gets, how much partying they indulge in, how much honest work versus illegal activity, and more. Essentially, you can adjust the genetics to wind up with a fresh faced lad or lass or a grizzled, haggard degenerate or anywhere in between! You’ll also be able to preview your end result in real time all throughout to ensure you’re satisfied before putting your character on a direct flight to LS. Of course, once you’re out and about in the open world, you can further customize your character with haircuts, clothing and accessories to suit your tastes.
   

Exclusive Social Club Features

 

 

• In Grand Theft Auto Online, Social Club members get access to weaponry and vehicular unlocks, a whole new suite of Crew features to represent and coordinate with your squad, and special tools to get the most out of Rockstar Jobs and user-created Jobs when the Content Creator tool launches this fall. Check out the updated www.rockstargames.com/V/socialclub for an overview of GTA Online Social Club features including new Crew customization possibilities like Crew colors and Emblem vehicle decals, Crew messaging options, and Open or Closed Crew Sessions. Plus unlocks like the Sawed-Off Shotgun, the Annis Elegy RH8 and the John Marston Parent option to do the Marston family proud in the modern day West. Also stay tuned for info later in October about the very first GTA Online Social Club Events which will have special Event Playlists curated by Rockstar, reserved in-game license plate awards for top players, and more. So, if you haven’t joined, we recommend doing so!

Expect that we’ll be keeping you up to date here at the Newswire tomorrow as the Title Updates become available on PSN and Xbox LIVE. We’re very much looking forward to seeing you and your Crews hit the wide open world of Los Santos and Blaine County in GTA Online tomorrow.

Movie Review: Besharam | Suhani says even Ranbir can't save the film

Besharam
Director: Abhinav Kashap
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Pallavi Sharda, Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Kapoor
Rating:
With Barfi! And Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Ranbir Kapoor has had two back-to-back Rs.100 crore hits. But Besharam is the only one of his films which screams, or should we say begs, for that tag. Kapoor so far has stayed clear of loud action comedies which has kept Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar in the top league. This year, Shah Rukh Khan took to the genre with Chennai Express. Shahid Kapoor gave it a shot with Phata Poster Nikhla Hero. One succeeded, the other tried but couldn't. Like these two films, Anubhav Singh Kashyap's Besharam is a formulaic entertainer with humour, romance, little drama and plenty of action. Unfortunately for Ranbir fans, it only succeeds in being formulaic and not entertaining.

It is a crass and vulgar film, says Faheem
It's a pity because does Ranbir give it his all, stooping to levels we have never seen before. This is Ranbir as Babli playing to the gallery, trying to strike a chord with audiences in small towns and those who frequent single screen cinemas. It's Ranbir's way of saying that he is not a hero solely for the urban populace in metros but has mass appeal. He can punch guys and perform high-flying stunts. His energy, verve and commitment to his character are noteworthy. Ranbir's face is always animated as he essays the role of Babli, an uncouth car thief, who frequently adjusts his underwear in public and even stuffs a sock in it to give his crotch an enhanced effect. Yes, there is a healthy dose of crude humour but credit goes to Ranbir who manages to make the cringe-worthy often amusing.

Besharam fails to impress, at all, says Rohit Khilnani

It's the reason why you are able to laugh off the cheap antics of Babli especially when he tries woo an educated, working girl, Tara Sharma (Pallavi Sharda). The first half of the film, like Kashyap's Dabangg, is spent with Babli persistently following Tara around in the hopes that she will return his affection. His approach involves making embarrassing, often vulgar, statements and being unapologetic about it. But his cheap demeanour and tacky ways and his job don't impress Tara one bit. You wouldn't blame her for spurning a guy like Babli. However, this is a formulaic Bollywood film and we know that the irritated and angry Tara will subsequently fall for him, even though they don't seem a match at all.

While Dabangg's emotional quotient came from a father-son conflict, here it comes from the absence of parental figures in Babli's life. Babli is an oprhan. The supporting cast includes a pair of police officers, Chulbul Pandey (Rishi Kapoor) and his wife Bulbul Pandey (Neetu Kapoor), who are married and constantly bickering. The few scenes in which the real-life couple are at each other's throat, making disparaging remarks and wounding each other's pride adds a fun touch to the proceedings. But Kashyap fails to make most of his trump card - having Kapoor sharing screen with his parents for the first time. There are only a handful of scenes, which are the highlights of the film.

It is a novel idea wasted, says Vinayak
 
Ranbir's earnest performance alone can't rescue a film which has a wafer-thin story and where the structure is predictable. It goes like this: a song, a scene with Chulbul and Bulbul Pandey, some banter between Babli and Tara, a scene with Babli and his sidekick (underused Amitosh Nagpal), back to a song, some more banter, some action, another song and on and on. The soundtrack is a huge disappointment with none of the songs barring the title track holding your attention. It doesn't help that Kashyap shoots all of them in a typical manner: a huge ostentatious set packed with an army of background dancers hopping about. We could hear the audiences sighing in the theatre whenever a song emerged especially in the second half.

Javed Jaaferi makes fleeting appearance as the antagonist and his menacing act fails to really inspire any sense of threat. With no real competition until October 16 when Akshay Kumar's Boss makes its way to cinemas, Besharam will hit the Rs.100 crore mark easily. But it lacks the ingredients to keep the audiences engaged. Only Ranbir's uninhibited performance makes Besharam worth a watch.

Blogger vs. WordPress.com: A Complete Comparison

Not long ago I wrote a two-part series about the main differences between a self-hosted blog and the other option of using a “free” blogging service. Opinions were split but there’s no arguing that the two undisputed kings of the free blogging sphere are Google’s Blogger and the content management system-turned-host WordPress.com.
While both offer what every free-thinking democracy-guzzling thought-cannon wants – a place to express themselves – there are some core differences in each service. Both WordPress.com and Blogger are workable free solutions, but which is the right one for you?
This detailed breakdown of each service should hopefully help you decide.

What You Get For Free

WordPress.com is a commercial venture. It’s a way for the kind souls who have put time, money and a whole load of effort into the open source and free-to-download WordPress blogging engine to make some money back. They do this by making it stupidly simple to set up and maintain a blog, while introducing some rather hefty limitations for experienced users.
A free WordPress.com account offers:

• A blog, which you can turn into a full-on static or hybrid (part blog, part static) website.
• 3GB of free storage for posts and media.
• Publicize, a tool for connecting your blog with social networks.
• Free statistics for tracking visitors.
• Access to hundreds of non-premium themes, many of which can be customised further.
• WordPress.com access from mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry.

WordPress.com designates the following as premium upgrades:

• Custom Design ($30 per blog, per year) adds custom CSS (not PHP editing) and fonts.
• Custom Domains ($13 per domain, per blog, per year) removes the .wordpress.com part of your URL.
• Guided Transfer ($129 one-off payment) for transferring your WordPress.com site to your own web-host for greater independence and freedom.
• Ad-free ($30 per blog, per year) removes any possibility of WordPress.com showing adverts on your blog to non-logged in visitors.
• Premium themes (priced per blog for the lifetime of the blog).
• A redirect ($13 per blog, per year) for redirecting traffic from yourblog.wordpress.com to your new domain.
• Additional space (priced per amount) for storing more posts and media.
• VideoPress ($60 per blog, per year) for uploading, hosting and embedding your own videos on your WordPress.com blog.

Conversely, Blogger is not a commercial service. It was acquired by Google in 2003 who have since kept it ticking over, with a few redesigns and some recently-added new templates. The rather ancient Blogger features page (ancient because it explicitly mentions uploading to Google Video and easily accessing iGoogle, two of Google’s many dead projects) promises users access to all features. There are no upgrades, no fees for adding a custom domain, and all the customization options thrown in that Blogger has available.
Included features worth noting are:

• A template designer for customizing your blog’s appearance.
• Free hosting, free Blogger (or Blogspot) sub-domain and option of using a custom domain (either registering through Blogger or using one you already have).
• The ability to add media to your posts, with no quoted maximum storage space.
• Quick access to Google’s advertising schemes.
• Pages static content on your blog.
• Mobile access via iPhone and Android apps, as well as SMS or email blogging.

It would seem that despite WordPress having the plugins and themes markets sewn up, Blogger still offers more for those looking for a free service.

The Sign-Up Process

WordPress.com allows you to register for an account with an email address, username, password and URL. Blogger is a Google service, and just like YouTube, requires a Google account. If you already have a Google account then this makes signing up a painless affair, but if you don’t (highly unlikely, unless you have something against Google), you’ll have to register for the whole package. This also means if you do have a personal Google Account but want to distance yourself from the topic you’re blogging about you’re going to have to create a new account, and also deal with Google’s messy multiple-account management.


Google’s sign-up process doesn’t indicate that you do not need to supply a mobile phone number or an email address, despite asking for one. Conversely WordPress.com only asks to fill out four fields but will also run a check for the URL you enter and try to sell you a premium domain (which costs to register, and requires an account upgrade to use on WordPress.com) as well as pointing out the flaws in the free account
you’re about to register.


Once you’ve got yourself an account it’s time to start creating one or more blogs. With a Google Account you’re free to establish multiple blogs on the Blogger service. Each new WordPress.com blog you decide to create can also be linked to your existing account, so neither service will require a lot of user switching in order to maintain a stack of blogs.

Creating Your First Blog

WordPress.com users will be thrown into the blog-creation process as soon as they have confirmed their email address with the service. Click the Activate Blog link in your email and you’ll be invited to give your blog a name, subtitle, and language before choosing a theme. WordPress is famously customizable, earning much of its good name for the huge number of themes and plugins available in the standalone open-source release.

The WordPress.com team has definitely tried to retain that same feeling, with new customizable themes in the latest WordPress release making an appearance here allowing you to customize the theme you’ve chosen immediately.

This really helps to separate your blog from the rest of the WordPress world, so you should seize the opportunity to quickly stamp your mark on your patch of WordPress.com.

Google’s process is a little different and first requires you choose (or create) a profile. This is part of Google’s big push to get us all to start using Google+ and our real names on YouTube. If you’re not interested in Google+, a real name or picture, you can opt to create what Google is now calling a “limited Blogger profile” which is essentially a display name of your choosing, so go wild.

Once your profile is set (you can change it by clicking your name in the top-right) you’ll see the rather clean and attractive Blogger back-end. There will be a list of your blogs (which will be empty) and an area below for adding other blogs to follow. Create a blog by clicking New Blog.

The window that appears looks very similar to the WordPress.com variant, asking for a blog name and URL to be associated with the blog and offering a few templates to choose from. Click Create Blog! and you’ve just created your first blog – no more work required. Using this method you could set up a whole string of blogs in a matter of minutes.

Managing Your Blog

Both WordPress and Blogger have centralized areas from which to manage your blog empire, which are separate to the settings for the blogs themselves. The two areas are equally attractive and usable, with both services featuring an area to read blogs you follow as well as the various outlets under your control.

On WordPress this takes the form of a deep attractive blue theme with a tabulated layout that allows you to quickly switch between reading, overseeing blogs and managing analytics in addition to a quick post button.

Blogger houses all of this on the one page, with a quick compose button found next to the blog title itself. Beneath this are new posts from the blogs you have chosen to follow on the service. It goes without saying that you can’t follow Blogger blogs on WordPress.com and vice-versa, though it would be nice if we could all get along.

I’d be surprised if there are many people reading this who aren’t familiar with the screenshot above, which is the WordPress dashboard. Aside from a lick of paint and the odd facelift this UI hasn’t changed for years, and that’s because it’s great. Everything is compartmentalized, making it easy to find settings, compose a new post or page and mass-edit your content.
There’s one addition here that you won’t see on standard, self-hosted WordPress blogs and that’s the Store tab. Here you will find all those upgrades I mentioned earlier, as well as a few bundles that promise to save you money. This is another reminder of the big divide between the two services – one’s going to eventually cost you while the other will remain free (and probably slightly more limited).

Blogger’s back-end closely mirrors the WordPress look, with a similar menu bar floating to the left of the page. Straight up you’ll see statistics (this is also true for WordPress) and an overview of incoming posts, comments and new followers. Much like WordPress this is a very effective and responsive UI that does everything you could (probably) ever want.
The Blogger back-end hides a few features that might take a small amount of hunting to find – like adding users to your blog. On WordPress this has its own menu item, but on Blogger it’s hidden in the Settings menu. Both systems support widgets, though WordPress has a lot more to offer (with your theme dictating just how many widget areas you can use). This is a recurring theme, with WordPress feeling like the more mature blogging platform.

Customization & Themes

Both services offer a range of themes, though Blogger’s range is understandably more limited than that offered by WordPress which has benefitted from years of third-party theme development. With a free WordPress account you get access to hundreds of free themes which you can enable on your site in a click. Blogger’s limited range is split between fluid “dynamic” themes that will scale for larger and smaller screens, and older simple fixed-width blogs. You’ll probably want to choose one of the eight dynamic themes and their many different layouts which are highly adaptable depending on your content.

Each service comes equipped with a theme customizer for further fine-tuning your chosen theme. Oddly enough the Blogger customization options seem to run deeper than WordPress, allowing you to add your own custom CSS and edit the HTML without exchanging money first. You can even use a slider to change the width of your layout in pixels, at least for the dynamic layouts.

I was surprised to see that the WordPress.com theme customizer is different to that in the latest open source release. The new layout uses a touch-friendly sidebar that runs down the right-hand side of the screen and looks like it has fallen straight out of a Windows Blue developer preview. It looks good, but it’s really not that powerful, allowing you to change only a few variables like background, colors, header images but no additional CSS (that’s a premium feature) or the ability to change your site’s favicon.
The real difference here is minimal, after all if you really want to change your WordPress.com site’s look and feel you can choose from hundreds of ready-to-go themes. Blogger doesn’t have that depth, but instead favors those who are willing to take the time to carefully modify it. WordPress feels clipped by comparison, while Blogger isn’t dazzlingly complex it retains some advanced customization that WordPress.com sticks behind a paywall.

Both services also come with basic mobile theme support, which can be enabled or disabled as you see fit. WordPress takes the one-theme-fits-all approach, offering little in the way of customization while Blogger gives you a chance to choose a completely different mobile theme to your main blog theme, if you really want to.

The fact remains that both are effective and look great on my iPhone 5, scrolling fluidly and making excellent use of the limited space.

Expandability & Monetization

WordPress has traditionally been the blogging platform of non-bloggers the world over. By this I mean you can turn a simple WordPress blog into a static website, an ecommerce website, a photo gallery, promotional site and even your own microblog. It’s a workhorse that is adaptable in its open source, downloadable form.
This functionality does not carry over to the WordPress.com hosting service, and it’s a real shame. There are plugins, but they’re curated premium packages that are charged yearly for every blog you use. This means you might find yourself paying out more in upgrade prices per year than what it would cost you to host and manage the website yourself. This would be fine, but WordPress.com hosting severely limits you – there’s no direct editing of the code itself (even with an upgrade) and you don’t have webspace for other non-WordPress projects.

Of course, Blogger isn’t much better and has no plugin support whatsoever. Both services do however support pages, which can include HTML, text and various media. You can also redirect to a website of your choice using this method.
The only platform that will allow you to make a bit of money out of blogging is Blogger. You can choose to enable Google AdSense on your blog which will show targeted adverts based on your content. You’ll need to get some content up first, before choosing the option from the Earnings menu entry. This is in contrast to WordPress.com which has a “remove ads” upgrade to remove adverts shown to your non-logged-in visitors but has no option for opting into a monetization scheme of your own. This is not to say you can’t implement your own rudimentary adverts using widgets, but it’s far from an advertising scheme.

Free blog platforms aren’t the best way of monetizing your writing, particularly for WordPress users who will be interested in the many SEO and advertising-based plugins used by many successful websites. For more information download and read our detailed guide about monetizing a blog.

Social Media & Sharing

WordPress definitely takes the crown when it comes to social media integration, with the Publicize feature (found under Settings > Sharing) allowing you to connect to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr for automatic sharing. This menu also allows you to turn on and off sharing buttons, with big names like StumbleUpon, Pinterest and Reddit appearing alongside the option to email or print the article. These tools are very powerful and make up for a lack of plugins, as many WordPress users would add this functionality that way.

Blogger seems to only play nicely with Google+, which is a real shame because it’s the most deserted of the big three. Twitter and Facebook integration at the least would be nice, but you do get +1, Tweet and Like buttons on each post. There is luckily one workaround and that’s through the use of the excellent IFTTT web service.
IFTTT allows you to automate online tasks, like recording status updates and receiving notifications about new items on Craigslist. It can also be used with Blogger to trigger social media updates like Facebook statuses and Tweets when you publish new posts, and can even be used to create new blog entries from other actions, like Instagram photos saved or images added to Dropbox.
Check out what Blogger and IFTTT are capable of when paired together at the IFTTT website.

Writing A Post

WordPress uses two composers – the quick composer accessible from the main blog hub (above) and the traditional “everything including the kitchen sink” WordPress post editor which has always been a joy to use. I’m not overly impressed with the quick editor, but it’s a personal preference and probably works for quick posts that don’t need to be scheduled. The main editor (below) is as fantastic as ever, with a few extra features.

Here you can compose, edit HTML, add media, format text, add tags and schedule your posts. The WordPress composer actively scans your post and suggests tags to help you better categorize your content as well as the related content pane which suggests news stories and images based on the contents of your post.

You can also choose to categorize your post using WordPress custom post types and depending on the theme you have installed these various content types will appear differently on your blog. Choose Standard for text-heavy blog posts, Quote for a brief quote formatted accordingly or Image to post a photo that displays prominently. One thing you can’t add to your posts without paying is video. It’s fine to embed a video from YouTube but you can’t host the video file on your blog without a $60 per year upgrade.

The Blogger composer is also very dynamic and powerful, and actually looks like the Google Docs word processor with more orange. This allows you to edit HTML on the page, format text, upload and embed videos and other media as well as add tags, a location, edit the permalink and choose to schedule or not.
There’s no tagging help or related content to speak of in Blogger, and while it’s a nice feature on WordPress.com, for me it’s not really a deal-breaker.

Front-End & Mobile

The appearance of each blog, and each post, depends entirely on the theme and layout you end up choosing. For the purpose of this article I’ve left the default dynamic Blogger layout on and the Twenty Twelve WordPress.com default theme, neither of which have been tweaked at all.

Above is a WordPress.com blog, below is a Blogger blog.

Both will require a certain amount of work in order to get your blog looking sharp and unique, but both are also good to go from the beginning. Both look great on a mobile device, with dedicated mobile themes. Both allow you to build a static website. Both are visually quite pleasing, but only one is completely free to use.

In Conclusion

I could write another article to draw a conclusion from these findings, but the fact remains that each is suitable for different purposes. Blogger is highly attractive for its completely free model – there are no restrictions, if Blogger can do it, so can you. WordPress however will frustrate, particularly if you have used WordPress on a self-hosted blog in the past. The fact also remains that if your blog is the success that you probably hope it will be, that 3GB of space will eventually fill up, or you’ll want to add your own domain name or you’ll encounter another reason you suddenly need to upgrade. At this point you’d probably be better off with your own hosting package, at least in terms of value for money.
Blogger will scale – there will be no nasty surprise a year or two down the line when you suddenly need more space or decide to start hosting video on your blog. Blogger is arguably more customizable with its core template HTML editing abilities and the ability to add CSS. The result is more of a tweaker’s platform, something the standalone open source version of WordPress has long been but that the hosted WordPress.com variant avoids entirely. My only concern about Blogger is Google’s recent wave of closures including iGoogle and Google Reader. If they decide to pull the plug on Blogger then the service and its users will be forced to find new homes. It’s unlikely because Google is currently using Blogger for its own press purposes, but then again a switch to Google+ seems to be creeping ever closer.
Blogger is the platform to choose if you’re after a free product that might allow you to make a bit of money back. WordPress is there for those who are in love with its huge variety of themes, excellent UI and post composer and the user-friendly approach. Each is a viable blogging platform within five minutes of registering an account, but you are the person who will have to decide which one is right for you. That, or choose something different entirely.
Let us know what you think in the comments – are you a Blogger or WordPress.com user? Would you ditch it all and go for a standalone WordPress website? Add your input in the comments, below.

This Actually Might Be The Best Mistake That Bill Gates Ever Made

It’s really inspiring when powerful, intelligent and very rich people admit to making mistakes because it helps make the rest of us feel a little better about all of our bad decisions. So when Bill Gates came out saying that he regrets Ctrl+Alt+Delete there was this collective AA-like pat on the back, with the general Internet response being “that thing you did was shitty, but since you owned up to it we’ll forgive you.”
But even though the multi-key combination is so associated with system freezes and misery and general malfunction, defenders have come forward to remind us of its usefulness. In an article in PCWorld titled “Thank you Mr. Gates, CTRL-ALT-DEL was the best mistake to happen to PCs,” Tony Bradley points out that

“…as insecure as some perceive the Windows operating system to be, it could have been a thousand times worse if there were no keyboard interaction required to log on. That physical interaction tells the computer that you want to interface with the Microsoft Windows operating system, and ensures that rogue or spoofed software can’t dupe users into typing usernames and passwords.”

I’ll also step in line to thank Gates for this mistake, if only because those three keys helped define my experience of computing in the 90s, for good and ill.
(via NPR)
(image via BusinessInsider)

WARNING: According to the manufacturer, this product WILL NOT jailbreak iPhone 5/4-series phones with Apple iOS 6.1.3-7.0. The products mentioned in this post are not endorsed by our website. This article is published for information purposes only. Contact the author directly at service@unlock-jailbreak.net to request a refund.

PWN Jailbreak iOS 7, 6.1.4/6.1.3 Untethered Factory Unlock iPhone 5,4S

In other words the jailbreak iPhone 5,4,4S iOS 7 6.1.4 / 6.1.3 jailbreak iPhone owners will be able to switch between carriers while traveling around the world and also, if interested, the ability to download thousands of apps, mp3s, wallpapers available through the Apple Store replica Cydia brought to you by the famous hacker Saurik.
The new software is compatible with iPhone 5S/5 iPhone 4S/4, iPhone 3GS being capable of jailbreak iPhone 5,4S,4,3GS iOS 7 or 6.1.4 / 6.1.3 and of course lower versions are also supported.
To download the software visit the official website: www.Unlock-Jailbreak.net
Another good thing about Unlock-Jailbreak.net’s software is the fact that any baseband are now supported by the latest version, the tool being able to easily jailbreak and unlock iPhone 5, iPhone 4S running on iOS 7.
Over 500 happy customers are thrilled to say that they successfully unlocked/jailbreaked their iPhone’s as stated on the www.Unlock-Jailbreak.net reviews page, confessing that the tool and the instructions were easy to follow and even those who don’t know much about the unlock / jailbreak process will be able to use it.

The jailbreak process is presented through video instructions, 5-10 minutes average for completion, after jailbreak iPhone 5,4,4S iOS 7 6.1.4 / 6.1.3 jailbreak is successful the black market of the jailbreak community – Cydia – can be downloaded which makes the next step possible.
iPhone 5S/5 iOS 7.0.2 Unlock comes next, a “smart guide” presenting the process through 10 steps instructions with the help of this newly released tool.
The tool powered by Unlock-Jailbreak.net is available for both Mac and Windows users allowing to unlock / jailbreak supported devices within 15 minutes.The app has been in beta testing for almost 2 weeks and after successful results on various firmware and baseband versions the software has been made available to the large public with more than great results according to a recent study and customers testimonials.
All the features initially brought to you by the latest iOS 7 are also available after the iPhone 5S/5 iPhone 4S/4 jailbreak / unlock process, a feature that has been merely made possible by competitors software and if the guarantee part is a concerc you must know that if the jailbroken/unlocked iDevice is connected to iTunes or Wi-Fi with a simple update the iDevice will be brought to its previous state, therefore will be no guarantee loss.
Many crave for a working iOS 7 jailbreak/unlock solution but only few are capable of developing an application which really works with various baseband versions like 4.12.01 so be aware of fake claims and software’s.
The tools has been approved by the iPhone jailbreak/unlock community so you can leave your concerns at the door and if not there is a 30-day money back guarantee for those who fail to complete the unlock/jailbreak process.
The jailbreak tool is based on a recent discovery made by their team of hackers which exploits a flaw in the Apple’s latest version of the famous mobile operating system – iOS 7 . As stated on Unlock-Jailbreak.net’s twitter page the soft was “easier to develop than the previous version compatible with the previous version of iOS 7.1.1” .
Those who want to free their iPhone’s should go to www.Unlock-Jailbreak.net, purchase the software, login into members area, follow the instructions on how to jailbreak/unlock iPhone 5S/5, iPhone 4/4S, 3GS iOS 7 and that’s it, enough with the restrictions it’s a free world.
WARNING: According to the manufacturer, this product WILL NOT jailbreak iPhone 5/4-series phones with Apple iOS 6.1.3-7.0. The products mentioned in this post are not endorsed by our website. This article is published for information purposes only. Contact the author directly at service@unlock-jailbreak.net to request a refund.

NVIDIA Cutting Video Card Prices in October to Compete with AMD

With every new launch one thing all users agree on is that dropping prices generates sales and for NVIDIA they make be just what the doctor ordered to help them keep selling in the wake of AMD’s new card launch. AMD has just announced their entire new card lineup the R7 and R9 series that will put a dent in NVIDIA’s sales and in an effort to combat that NVIDIA is rumored to be lowering their prices on many of their video cards.
This new rumor comes from tech site DigiTimes who claims to have sources in the industry that are saying this may become a reality in the near future. I have no problem believing it as that is a logical move for them in this situation.  A lot of the card that are being released from AMD seem to be just re-branded cards with only the R9 290X being the sole totally new card of the lineup and depending on how the cards actually do in testing will determine how determined NVIDIA is to lower the cost of their products.
NVIDIA as of now has the following four cards in their GeForce 700 series: The GTX 760, GTX 770, GTX 780 and GTX Titan, all priced more than $249, with older GeForce 600 cards still on the market for lower price segments. It’s possible that NVIDIA will release a new GK104 or GK106 based graphics cards for the $149-249 price segment, to compete with AMD’s Radeon R9 270X and R7 260X, but for now that is still up in the air.  NVDIA and AMD play off each other as the battle between them goes back and forth and on again, but at the end of the day that only helps the end-user get a better price.
NVIDIA is never one to just sit around on their laurels and await the bomb to drop so you know they will have something up their sleeve to keep them competitive in the sales game. NVIDIA has already been rumored to be working on 2 new cards as you read this article. NVIDA has already leaked that they will have a dual-GPU card based on GK110 cores, with a proposed nomenclature of the GeForce GTX 790. The GK110 silicon has also yet to be fully ‘unlocked’, with the GTX Titan using 2,688 of 2,880 CUDA cores on the die, meaning theirs is always room for a new high-end single-CPU card. As the holiday season is right around the corner it will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but lowering their prices can never be a bad thing for us so lets keep our fingers crossed. Thanks for reading Tech Of Tomorrow, where we love for you to interact on the site. Let us hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments down below.

How To Be A Hacker

Most of the students, who are interested in computers, want to learn hacking or want to be a hacker. But they always find it difficult how to start and what to learn to be a hacker. Before thinking too much, you need to know that there is a big difference in between hacking and computer tricks. If you can apply 2-3 computer tricks, it does not make you hacker. I have seen many people who can apply some VLC tricks, some registry tricks and then claim to be a hacker. Hacking is beyond the computer tricks. You should know what is hacking. You should also know how to think different and how to analyze things. In this post, we will discuss all aspects of hacking and how to be a hacker.

How To Be A Hacker

What is Hacking?

Hacking is the practice of getting unauthorized access of a system, network or resources. Hacking is the breaking authentication and authorization.
Person involved in hacking is called hacker. Hacking is not always illegal. Companies hire hackers to break their security to know the security holes in their security systems. This kind of hacking is called Ethical Hacking which is not done by legal cause.
There are few possible characteristics that makes one a hacker

• Person who thinks different
• Person interested in hacking and cracking
• Person who can learn programming quickly
• Person who enjoys doing programming rather than its theory
• Person who is loves computer and Internet
• Person interested in how computer things, website and network devices works
• Person who only use tools to break system or network and limited to the scope of tools is called cracker.

How to Start Learning to Be a Hacker

First of all, you need to know that there is no trick or overnight process to be a hacker. I have got so many requests for Ethical hacking tricks, Hacking tricks and tools but Hacking is beyond the tricks and tools. Tricks and Tools are the small part of it. If you really want to know how to be a hacker, you should follow many things with dedication and practice so many things a lot.
Follow these things to be a hacker:

Decide What Hacker You Want to Be

Hacking is not a small area. You should decide your area of interest like web hacking, network hacking or system hacking. You can learn all but you can be master in only one of these. Computer hacking was most popular form of hacking. But, now people are more interested in web hacking because all want to hack Gmail and Facebook. You can also find easy to use automatic tools for website hacking. So, people generally turn to web application hacking.

Learn Programming

Programming is the most important thing which you should learn. You can learn C, Java, PHP, Python, JavaScript or other programming languages.  If you are good in programming, you will be able to create your own scripts to help you while hacking. It also helps you in analyzing things. If you are a good programmer, you can easily understand how web application or software works. It helps you in breaking it.
You should also learn Linux which is the favorite OS of hackers. Either you are interested in network hacking or system hacking, Linux helps a lot. After learning Linux, switch to BackTrack. BackTrack comes with all latest penetration testing tools and hacking tools.

Tools Have Limits, So Learn How Things Work

Before hacking an authentication and authorization, you should know how it works. If you do not know how it works, you cannot break it. Hacking tools have a limit. It can work only for the pre-defined cases. Suppose an XSS tool, it can only find limited cases of XSS, for complicated XSS, you should know how web application and JavaScript works.
If you are into network hacking, you should learn how packet transfers in network, how protocol works and how network devices works. Similar cases are with web application and system. So, start exploring how stuff works.

Buy Some Books to Help You in Initial Stages

There are many nice books are available which you can buy to learn hacking. These books will guide you step wise step. You can follow these books and start learning things.
Hacking books worth to buy
Books can only guide you. You should also try it in your system and practice things to be a master in it.

Subscribe Monthly Magazines of Security

You should also be interested in what is new in security world. For this, you can either subscribe to security magazine or follow security blogs. There are many popular blogs which can help you.

How Long it Takes to Be a Hacker

It depends on your talent. It depends on how quickly to start learning things. You cannot learn things in a night. You need to have patience and dedication. Learn things, apply and see how it works. Take reference of books, join good forums and ask experts. In general it takes 1 year to 2 year to be an expert in hacking.
Practice is the key factor. You cannot be a hacker just by reading books and learning about tools theoretically. You should try to focus on practical things. But never try things on big websites or private networks. You may create trouble for you by doing this.

Do Certifications to start Career As Ethical Hacker

If you want to be an ethical hacker to start your career in hacking, you can join some good security certifications curses. CEH is the most basic certification by EC-Council. Other certifications are ECSA, CHFI, CISSP and many others. There are many good institutes to help in building career as security professional.
I am sure now you know how to be a hacker. Follow the above mentioned things with dedication. Start learning things. If you have any question, you can ask in comments.

Radeon R9 290X Accidentally Priced at Online Retailer

Retailer Newegg let the cat out of the bag for the R9 290X pricing.

Though we still don't have a release date, Newegg has priced AMD's upcoming Radeon R9 290X at $729.99 before tax. TechPowerUp reports that an MSI reference design got its own store page with redacted pricing but that the HTML page for the page revealed the pricing. This means the high-end R9 200X will likely carry a $699 price tag.
 

AMD unveiled its new Radeon R9 290X last week in Hawaii, describing the R9 and R7 series as 'the new GPUs for a new era in graphics.' The press NDA is scheduled to expire on October 15, just over two weeks from now. This expiration date was noted on the slides that AMD showed during a recent press event. Even though it's possible the NDA expiration date doesn't align with the date when the first cards will be hitting the market, it's possible AMD would want units available the same day consumers are reading reviews. Newegg's page doesn't offer any indication as to when the R9 290X will launch.
If you missed out on our coverage of AMD's GPU14 Tech Day, hit up our recap here, watch the full presentation here, or scroll through our live blog for the most important moments.

Update Facebook Status with Fake Names

So guys here is a very Interesting and amazing Trick to make your friend Jealous.

This is Trick is to make Fake status With anyone name on Facebook and Take Photographs and amaze your Friends.

How to make Fake Status Just Follow these Simple Steps:-

1.Go to this Website from here.

2.Then Click on Connect button after then allow the apps to connect to your facebook account.

3.Then the wall machine box appear. This box is customizable edit names and Photos.

4.After the all steps are completed then click on save button.

5.Then open your save file in new tab and take a photo by print screen.