Alchemy - Sacred Secrets Revealed

Alchemy is an ancient philosophy full of secret and mystery that flourished in Europe, Asia and Africa. The practioners of alchemy were believed to have power to convert any metal into gold.

The knowledge of alchemy was not just limited to scientific intentions but was also used in religious traditions. Though it is not clear whether the alchemy practioners used their skills to purify human souls or just convert lead into precious gold. But this ancient tradition played a vital role in fostering inventions in the field of chemistry and medicine.

In this video we can take an in-depth look at this most Sacred Science, what are some of the myths, and how it relates to consciousness and spirituality. This video focus primarily on the spiritual aspects of Alchemy:

Secrets of Archimedes (a great mathematician and founder of Pi)

Archimedes (287 BC - 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors.


Archimedes is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. He used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi. He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulae for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers.

Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Cicero describes visiting the tomb of Archimedes, which was surmounted by a sphere inscribed within a cylinder. Archimedes had proven that the sphere has two-thirds of the volume and surface area of the cylinder (including the bases of the latter), and regarded this as the greatest of his mathematical achievements.

Unlike his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity. Mathematicians from Alexandria read and quoted him, but the first comprehensive compilation was not made until c. 530 AD by Isidore of Miletus, while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the sixth century AD opened them to wider readership for the first time. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance, while the discovery in 1906 of previously unknown works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results.

Tips to get more out of Google

Google's home page may look simple, but don't be fooled. Behind that solitary search box lies the power that most of us never tap - not because we don't want to, but because we don't know about it.

But with the right commands and shortcuts, you can start using Google in ways you never imagined: as a calculator, a weather forecaster, a travel agent, a movie locator, search places, and much more.

Search prefixes
One powerful way to refine your searches is by using search prefixes: words that you follow with a colon and then the search term itself.

For instance, use the prefix 'site' to specify that you'd like to restrict your search to a particular site. The search phrase 'site:microsoft.com windows XP downloads,' for example, tells Google that you'd like it to retrieve links to downloads applicable to Windows XP from Microsoft's web pages.
 
File prefixes
You can use the 'filetype' prefix to search for specific types of documents or files. This is very useful if you're searching for, say, Excel files - or for PDFs that you can download and print out in an attractive format. Let's say, for example, that you'd like to search for a PDF of Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises. The proper search phrase would be 'sun also rises filetype:pdf.'

Other handy prefixes include 'define,' for searching for definitions, and 'related,' to search for sites that are similar to ones you like. The 'define' prefix is especially nice for students, young and old, who can instantly retrieve definitions of a word from a wide variety of sources.
 
Trigger words
You can also perform targeted searches by using what Google calls 'trigger words' - or words that tell the search engine to return specific types of information, such as the local weather or local showtimes for currently running movies. Like search prefixes, some of these trigger words work best when they are followed by a colon and then by the relevant search phrase.

There are a couple dozen trigger words. Some of the more useful include 'weather,' 'movies,' and 'tracking.' For instance, a search for 'weather:Berlin' will quickly return the five-day weather forecast for Berlin, Germany, as well as dozens of related links to weather in that city.

Use the trigger word 'movie:*** it will ask you for your location if you haven't registered it already with the search engine. Once you provide that information, Google will instantly return a listing of movie theatres where the film is playing, along with showtimes. The triggers 'film' and 'showtimes' work identically, by the way.
 
Math genius
The Google search field is a veritable math genius as well. In fact, if you simply type a math equation in the search box, you'll get nothing but the (correct) answer in return. Try it with a simple math problem first. Type 5 * 7, click Search, and Google shows you the result: 5 * 7 = 35.

Math lovers can take the Google search field to the next level, too, with complex problems such as 5*9+(sqrt 10)^3. The answer, 76.6227766, is returned in the blink of an eye.
 
Conversions
Simpler conversions -- such as for currency and temperature -- are a cinch for Google, too. Need to find out how many pounds you can get for a certain number of dollars? Easy. Just type, for instance, '1 GBP to USD' .

Similarly, if you want to get a quick conversion from Fahrenheit to Centigrade, just type, for instance, '98 f to c.' Again, you'll get the answer before you can finish typing.
 
Add words at the end of the search phrase
You can add certain words to the end of search phrases in Google to unleash additional features. If you need a quick map, for instance, just type the word 'map' after the name of any country, city, or town. Google will display a thumbnail map, which you can click to explore in a larger, scrollable format using Google Maps.

Similarly, to find an image of a search phrase, just add the word 'image' at the end of the phrase. For example, typing 'Jefferson image' brings up images of Thomas Jefferson. And adding 'time' to the end of the name of a city or country will result in Google's telling you what time it is in that place.

Click here to explore more options to refine your search.

Analyze website quality using W3C tools

Though the content in your website is rich in content even then it may not appear in the first five pages of the search engine. This can be because this site hasn't passed the quality checks executed by search engines.

Have you ever checked whether your website has passed all the quality checks? If you think that your website is perfect and of good quality, then better assure yourself before nodding YES.


Few online tools provided by W3C can be used to assure the website quality:


Search engines will start considering the website once it passes all the above W3C quality checks. Website quality is also measured using several other parameters like page description, keyword density, page speed, unique content, content update, etc. 

SEO analysis tools are just a click away that can be used to perform rigorous quality tests online without paying a single penny. You can also explore through search engine optimization tools available online.

Search engines fetch results based on the parameters passed. Learn more on the understanding of the combination of parameters to get desired results.

Reason for curly hair

Straight hair is due to the follicles that produce round strands whereas curly hair is due to follicles that produce oval strands. Curly hair is oval in cross-section while straight hair is round. Some people have curly hair and some have straight hair because we are different. Our eye colour, hair colour, skin tone, and if our hair is curly or straight are genetic.


One theory also tells that straight or curly hair is due to the temperature in which their ancestors have lived. Straight hair is a sign that the person has lived in a cooler climate because it will lay flat to conserve body heat. Curly hair is known as a heating coil, meaning that it disperses heat more rapidly. People from arctic regions have straight, oily hair. People who live in desert regions like the desert or in Africa have curly hair to disperse the heat.

Difference between 32 bit and 64 bit processors

Computer technologies are constantly evolving and this evolution will continue to grow for many decades. This evolution is not only happening in software but also in hardware as both of them has to go hand in hand.

x86 is a very old technology that started with the 8086 family of processors. It has now evolved into the x86-32 version which is the most common version and its successor the x86-64 or more commonly known as x64. Its move towards a gradual shift to x64 has started quite early while there were still no major drawbacks seen in the pc market. This is because the first market to experience the problems related to x86 was those who run high-end servers.

Running a system that has 32bit architecture means that you are always limited to what 32bits can point to. A 32bit long pointer could only point to a maximum of 4.2billion addresses which is just about 4GB of memory. This means the processor can only allocate up to 4GB of memory to a certain program even if 16GB of memory is available. This limitation may not be a problem for a home setup but in a server environment, it presents a huge problem. That’s why x64 processors appeared very early for the consumers.

The x64 architecture still follows what x86 has but it improves on it by having 64bits in every address. This means that the memory capacity of the x64 architecture is the square of 4.2billion, which for now is an unimaginable amount of memory. That coupled with certain enhancements makes the x64 architecture a certainly great processor to replace its predecessor.

The advantage of x64 architecture is that it has backward compatibility with x86. So even if your operating system is 32 bit, users won't notice any difference in functionality. And once the 64 bit OS or software arrives you can just update it without upgrading hardware.

What is OpenID and how it works?

Many websites offer features that are only available to users who first log-in to the system. In a typical application, user identity is confirmed ("authenticated") upon entering the username and password for the account. This approach is straightforward and works, but there are drawbacks. Users are usually required to remember a username/password for every website they use, which can be problematic.

OpenID is an open standard that defines a way that web-based applications can authenticate users by delegating the responsibility of authentication to identity providers. With OpenID, users have a single identity that can be used on any OpenID-enabled application, and they only need to remember one password.
In this article, I describe the OpenID authentication system and show how a web application built with Ruby on Rails can use OpenID to authenticate its users.

How OpenID works?
OpenID relies on the HTTP protocol to exchange messages between users and "identity providers." Consider a user named Bob, whose identity provider is my OpenID (www.myopenid.com). Bob uses the Drupal content management system that happens to be an OpenID consumer. Here's the general workflow when Bob logs into his Drupal account through OpenID:
  1. Arthur visits any OpenID-driven website.
  2. Arthur enters his OpenID identity URI, "arthur-id.myopenid.com," in the login form and clicks a Submit button. That's his OpenID identity URI, which looks like a website address but identifies Bob and his identity provider.
  3. Arthur's web browser is redirected to a web page served by myOpenID, where he is prompted for his password.
  4. Arthur enters his OpenID password and clicks a Submit button.
  5. myOpenID confirms Arthur's password, and his web browser is redirected to the website he opened with automated log-in.
Arthur entered his password only on the identity provider website, and never on the consumer website. The user's password is not shared with the consumer and only needs to be submitted once by users to the identity provider, preferably over a secure connection.

The following diagram best explains how OpenID works:

What is OpenID and how it works


Benefits of using OpenID:
OpenID is an open standard that defines a way that web-based applications can authenticate users via a single identity. OpenID provides several benefits to users and developers. Users only need to remember one username (their identity URI) and password to access multiple applications. With a simple cookie and Remember Me checkbox, an OpenID identity provider can act as a convenient Single Sign-On (SSO) solution for someone who uses multiple OpenID consumers.

OpenID identity providers are responsible for the authentication of users It's nowadays common for web apps to offer OpenID support as an alternative to traditional authentication methods, but letting experts handle password security reduces the risk of accounts being compromised.

You will be glad to know that Google also provides OpenID. Use http://openid-provider.appspot.com to know your OpenID provided by Google.

Reference: Dr Dobb's