Archive for April, 2005
As usual, I got this email at my hotmail account saying that I have message from another eBay member. Even though I knew that this was “one more” of those phishing mails, just out of curiosity I opened the mail. The mail was one of the most authentic looking mails!. Anyway, the reason why I am writing this here is, this particular phishing attack is the new variant and is one the the smartest one that I have seen. No doubt that the phishers are using newer and newer techniques to fool the users.
On clicking the button provided in the mail (Yes. no link., but a graphic button), I was taken to a site which look like the original eBay site. Check the screen shot given below (click to enlarge).
What is new here is, this site has a DHTML layer with a proper E-Bay URL (text). For some reasons, the placement DHTML layer is not very proper in my case or else, it would have perfectly placed over the actual URL.
Also, if you look at the enlarged image, it also tries to convince the user that this is a true eBay site by giving some “Account Protection Tips”
So, keep a watch next time you come across something like this!
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April 13th, 2005 at 09:39pm
While browsing, I came across this article (Indian outsourcers may have diddled bank) on the Inquirer.net. This particular topic is in news for the past couple of days, and has been featured on quite a lot of popular sites including slashdot.
I am really wondering why it has been blown out of proportion by these people. Ok. Agreed that there was one incident of a some scam involving some money.
But, what about US ?
- People around the world are targets of spam from US.
- People around the world get tons of phishing mails from US.
- People around the world get tons of mails from US asking them to buy Viagra and what not!
- People around the world get tons of mails from US on making fast money.
Just imagine the amount of time and money involved in just reading/clearing these spam mails. Also, just imagine the amount of money individual corporations have to spend on setting up spam filtering mechanism. Its a very well know fact that majority of the scams online are based out of US. May it be marketing scams or chain-mails or some pyramid scheme scam or something else.
The point is, its *some small group of bad guys* in US doing the bad stuff. We all know that *not* all Americans are the source of spam *nor* are all of them scammers. And it would be really *UNFAIR* on one’s part to make a generalization and say that all Americans spam or are scammers.
Yes. Scam is a problem, and it can happen anywhere., and I strongly feel that this particular story has been blown out of proportion.
The same article also talks about two Indian companies (Infosys and wipro) being evacuated for bomb hoaxes by terrorists, and that too has been portrayed negatively…. What’s wrong in evacuating a facility because of a bomb hoax? Yes. India too faces terrorists threats just like US. One should really appreciate the fact that these companies were *ready* to handle the situation, and that too without any effect on normal operations.
Outsourcing is here to stay. Its profitable for all. Its a kind of win-win game. Start living with it.
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April 11th, 2005 at 06:52pm
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Yes ! Believe it or not, Mangalore city is running shot of water! Its really surprising and a shameful thing given the fact that Mangalore is located just below the western ghats, which receives major rainfall. Infact, last year, it started raining earlier, and it continued to rain till late October., and still, we have a water scarcity.
Possible reasons for the water shortage:
- Abnormal usage of water by factories and industries around Mangalore
- The water tanker lobby -> Yes. this is a major business in Mangalore
- Pathetic water management by the authorities
- Leakage in water tanks/vented dams
- Wastage of water by the people
- All of the above
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The Hindu had reported the problem way back in Sep 2004., and still no one took it seriously!
The current status :
We get municipal water once in three days and only for a few hours!
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April 11th, 2005 at 06:19pm
Well, my Nokia 6600 kind of got a new life. I had lot of applications, which I could not remove. So, I formatted it. Its pretty simple to format the cell. Just hold *, 3 and the Green (call) key together, and switch on the phone!… Make sure that your battery is fully charged before you try this. Also, back up all your data!
After that, I also formatted my MMC card. So, my cell was kind of factory fresh. The only problem is, the firmware is a bit old. And, it has all T-Mobile settings in it. So, I need to reflash it (upgrade the firmware) some day. After doing some search, and doing some trail and error stuff, I am now able to connect to the phone using Nokia PC Suite. The connectivity is kind of tricky, but it works fine now. So, now, I can install applications on the phone directly from the PC.
Anyway, the weekend was pretty boring. Was @ home both the days. Got up at 10.30 AM on Saturday and was browsing for most of the day. There was a birthday party in the evening at 4 PM at my uncles house. My cousin had turned 4 a couple of days back, and the party and the cake-cutting ceremony was pending!. Its real fun and excitement for the kids. Cutting the cake, and then getting all the gifts… and the then the best part of opening the gifts got! :). cute. :) Then some other relatives had come down to our house in that evening…
On Saturday, I enabled automatic updates on my home pc, so, right now, its downloading some major stuff at the background. I normally keep the automatic updates turned off since it downloads tons of stuff in the background. I am not too keen on installing sp2, but no other go. :( Its a huge download I guess, around 450 MB+ I am not sure when the download will stop. Anyway, I read somewhere that Microsoft will push sp2 downloads from April 12th onwards. Its kind of compulsory from then on.
Sunday was again kind of a lousy day. Got up late… then net..sleep.. net.. and so on. In the evening, we went out, and @ night ..one more party at one of our relatives house. Kind of get-together. The only problem is, I have been attending quite a lot of parties of late, and my weight is also increasing by the day. Need to start some exercise…………soon.
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April 11th, 2005 at 11:59am
At office we used outlook 2003 as our mail client. I normally don’t delete any mail that comes into my mailbox, unless its a spam mail or some kind of a notification mail. Each and every mail is important to me!. Some may call this stupid, but that’s ok !!. You never know when you need ‘that’ mail from ‘that’ person. But this stupid habit of mine creates some problems. Problem of archiving the mails.
I am *not* a kind of person who has a folder called official and another called personal, and dump all the mails in these two categories. No. I simply can’t do that. I have quite a lot of folders/categories, based on various parameters. But, the only problem that I am facing is, it takes hell lot of a time to categorize the mails that come in, and then to move the mails to the respective folders in PST.
Our mail servers at office are Microsoft exchange 2003 servers and we have a 10 Mb limit on our mailbox on exchange server, which in my case, take around 2 to 3 days to fill up. So, what I end up doing is, move all the mails in my inbox and sent items to a temp folder in a PST, and from there, I archive it into various folders, when I get time. In spite of my best efforts, as of now, I have a backlog of around 2000 mails in the temp folder, which needs to be archives, and it would take considerable time to archive them!
I am looking forward for some good approach/tool that can do this. Yes, I do use filters to the max extent possible. Kindly comment here if you know if any good approach.
Would love to have some kind of a tool similar to gmail, which will let me label the mail, and on click of a button in outlook, all the mails should be moved to respective folders!.
I think its high time Google release a outlook plug-in which would take over the job of mail management in outlook.
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April 8th, 2005 at 10:33pm
Welcome to ‘The World‘ ! :)
This is just too much. A must see !.
Check out their official website. The video is too tempting.!
Earlier projects from the same folks : ‘the palm‘
Isn’t it a great investment opportunity?
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April 8th, 2005 at 04:29pm
Check this out !..
Silicon Valley Watcher: Scoop! Brit chip designers score coup as Apple picks chips for next gen mobile multimedia device…the m-Pod?
Whats up at apple next ?
The gPod (similar to sony psp) or mPod?
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/226
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April 7th, 2005 at 06:32pm
Try this one out!. I feel its cool. Link :
jux2
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April 6th, 2005 at 10:19am
Now that the wordpress episode is come into the limelight (and gone..)… I would like to ask this question that I have had in mind for sometime now.
What do you think of the search results from google?
Is it spammed ? or, Do you get exactly what you want..right on the top ?
I personally have seen some major changes in the past one year. I find that the results are not very accurate and, most of the time, I get lot of irrelevant things.
Is the page-rank algorithm flawed ? Have people found a way to totally fooled the system ?
Do write your comments here!
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April 4th, 2005 at 11:56am
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