A treasure lays buried deep at the bottom of an ocean. There are many people who want to get there by risking life, be it theirs or someone else’s.
‘Blue’ is touted as Bollywood’s first underwater, action adventure thriller. Directed by Anthony D’Souza , the movie is inspired from Hollywood flicks like ‘The Deep’ or ‘Jaws’, but it is not a copy.
The film is about a lost treasure, which three friends try to find undersea. Akshay Kumar , Sanjay Dutt and Zayed Khan play the respective roles.
But in this hunt for the treasure, there’s deceit and betrayal by someone in the group.
Lara Dutta is paired with Sanjay Dutt in the film. The actress did not know deep sea diving before signing the film and underwent a rigorous Scuba diving training to prepare for her role.
The movie’s second heroine Katrina Kaif doesn’t have a big role. But director D’Souza says Kat will surprise the audiences with her role. Sunil Shetty also has a brief role in the film.
Most of ‘Blue’ has been shot
in the Bahamas. Akshay, Sanjay and Zayed swam with real sharks while shooting their stunts in the film.
While shooting one such stunt under water, Akshay Kumar had a narrow escape when he accidentally hit his head against the metal of a sunken ship and began bleeding. Blood attracted the sharks, but before any mishap could happen, the actor was safely pulled above water.
To tone up his muscles, Sanjay Dutt hired the services of a special body building trainer from the US – Lawrence Gonsalves, who guided the actor on losing his former beefy body and developing a leaner physique.
Special water-resistant make-up was required for the film’s leading lady Lara Dutta. For that the producers roped in Hollywood make up artist Nikoletta Skarlatos.
‘Blue’ also feature a special appearance by Australian pop sensation Kylie Minogue who has not only sung for the film but also shot a sizzling video with Akshay Kumar.
Oscar winner A R Rahman has composed the tunes of the film’s songs. In fact, Kylie Minogue agreed to sing and dance to her song in the film because she was captivated by Rahman’s composition.
The movie apparently also has an underwater song picturized on the entire cast.
With a budget of over Rs 100 crores, ‘Blue’ is touted as Bollywood’s most expensive film to date. Made under the banner of Shri Ashtavinayak Cinevision, the movie is set to release in May, 2009.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Conficker: Experts from all over the world fail to defeat internet worm
Till now no one can even think that a worm could knock down global internet. Even tech experts have failed to conquer this deadly worm called Conficker, which has already infected five million computers, and may soon crash the internet in all countries.
So dangerous is the threat, that the world’s largest computer security companies have joined together with governments around the world in an unusual alliance to pool their resources and solve the problem. So much so, that a group (Conficker Working Group) to defeat the worm has also been created.
The worm, which was first detected in November, last year, spreads rapidly to computers through a flaw in the Windows operating system. Infected machines are co-opted into a “botnet” army, which can be controlled and used by the hackers to launch unprecedented cyber attacks.
“The general agreement in the security world is that Conficker is the largest threat that global internet is facing from a cyber crime point of view. It has proven to be extremely resilient. It’s almost impossible to remove,” Rodney Joffe, a Director of the Conficker Working Group, told Sydney Morning Herald. “The best minds in the world have not managed to crack the code behind this yet.”
Microsoft has offered a 250,000 dollars reward for information leading to the identification of the individuals – or rogue governments – behind Conficker. But so far international effort to find a solution has yielded few results.
The creators of the worm can do anything they want with the infected machines including stealing users’ banking details or flooding government servers to knock them offline. The worm has a built-in mechanism to prevent people from scanning their computers with anti-virus software, says Joffe. Unfortunately, even for those who wipe their computers clean and start fresh, if they back up any important data on a portable hard drive, the clean machine is re-infected when the drive is connected to the computer.
The worm also spreads automatically between computers on a network and infects machines without the user having to do anything other than switch their computers on. While majority of the botnets can be destroyed by disabling the server used to issue commands to infected machines, but with Conficker the location of this sever changes every day and state-of-the-art cryptography means it’s almost impossible to crack.
So dangerous is the threat, that the world’s largest computer security companies have joined together with governments around the world in an unusual alliance to pool their resources and solve the problem. So much so, that a group (Conficker Working Group) to defeat the worm has also been created.
The worm, which was first detected in November, last year, spreads rapidly to computers through a flaw in the Windows operating system. Infected machines are co-opted into a “botnet” army, which can be controlled and used by the hackers to launch unprecedented cyber attacks.
“The general agreement in the security world is that Conficker is the largest threat that global internet is facing from a cyber crime point of view. It has proven to be extremely resilient. It’s almost impossible to remove,” Rodney Joffe, a Director of the Conficker Working Group, told Sydney Morning Herald. “The best minds in the world have not managed to crack the code behind this yet.”
Microsoft has offered a 250,000 dollars reward for information leading to the identification of the individuals – or rogue governments – behind Conficker. But so far international effort to find a solution has yielded few results.
The creators of the worm can do anything they want with the infected machines including stealing users’ banking details or flooding government servers to knock them offline. The worm has a built-in mechanism to prevent people from scanning their computers with anti-virus software, says Joffe. Unfortunately, even for those who wipe their computers clean and start fresh, if they back up any important data on a portable hard drive, the clean machine is re-infected when the drive is connected to the computer.
The worm also spreads automatically between computers on a network and infects machines without the user having to do anything other than switch their computers on. While majority of the botnets can be destroyed by disabling the server used to issue commands to infected machines, but with Conficker the location of this sever changes every day and state-of-the-art cryptography means it’s almost impossible to crack.
Chrome Frame: Google Offering plug-in to convert IE into Chrome
Google has developed a plug-in for Internet Explorer (IE) that will allow Chrome to run in IE. Chrome Frame is a new browser plug-in developed by Google which will give user a chance to feel Chrome browsing experience inside Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Many experts have claimed that IE has fairly low web standards and is susceptible to virus attacks and lacks in performance as well. Many users are turning to Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or even Apple Safari for safe browsing. But that does not change the fact that IE is still the largest used web browser (as it comes integrated with Microsoft operating system).
Many corporate houses still run IE. But after the launch of Chrome Frame things will change dramatically. Chrome Frame creates a new frame inside IE and with this frame Google packs all the essential data in a lightweight plug-in to convert IE into Chrome. Chrome Frame also injects the latest versions of Chrome’s Webkit and JavaScript engines into IE. Google claims that its goals are noble and they just want to provide users with better performance browser.
While it is true that running two browsers in one will take more resource from computer but Google says that Chrome is designed to give resources back to the machine when users are not using them with the browser.
Google claims that it won’t be explicitly advertise Google frame in IE but will use subtle methods to alert users of its existence. For example, if users browse to a Google app in Internet Explorer that may render better in Chrome, Google might have a message on the page informing about the plug-in.
Chrome Frame is still in testing stage and will work with IE6, IE7, and IE8 on any Windows-based machine. Microsoft has still not made any comment on this but there are chances that Microsoft will ban Google Frame.
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