Idle/Random/whatever Thoughts of a Demented/Idle/Whatever Mind

The follwing mail just landed on my inbox spam folder(thanks to Google). I could not resist but laugh at the infinite stupidity hidden in the phishing mail. I wonder how much more stupid the person who falls into that trap has to be. Subject:  Confirm your ip address Dear Value Customer, True our promise to keep your HDFC netbanking account safe and secure from fraudsters, our online security team has discovered some foreign ip Log Ons to your account from the following IPs : 812.164.72.212 ,195.93.21.10, 195.93.21.34 Due to this,your netbanking has been blocked for your safety until you confirm your IP address . Click here to confirm your Ip. Please understand that this is a new security measure brought into HDFC Netbanking for the security of your internet banking activities. Best Regards. The HDFC Netbanking Security Department Team. © 2008 HDFC Bank Ltd. All rights reserved. Ok Now that you h...

Barcamp Bangalore is one of those events which I just wait for. Its a time when I rejuvenate my thought process which is drained thanks to the often hectic work at office. Also this is one place where geeks can feel at home and talk about anything under the sun. Its pretty cool that its not just Tech thats discussed but also other topics close to us, like politics and life. Like most times, the paper wiki was filled completely as soon as it was put up. I actually saw a few people going disappointed with not being able to put up their talk. And like most other times, it started with the intro session for the first timers. This time it was Pradeep BV taking charge and explaining it to the first timers, what barcamp is all about. After that it was realized that one of the four rooms were actually not available for Barcampers. Anyways another great thing that happened was that an Impromptu Sessions paper wiki was put up. Amazingly it too was filled in a matter of minutes, it was put up...

Well there has been a lot hoola hoo over the recent releases of Firefox and Opera. But here are certain things that still suck and would like them to be removed. 1. Better plugins and make them such that they dont hang that tab or window. 2. Download accelerator be integrated in the download manager of the browser itself. Hardly makes sense keeping them dumb. 3. Super fast start is not possible for various technical reasons but a preloader program would definitely be kind of must have. 4. Get more screen real estate to the page and make rest of the things like toolbar, menubar and optionally even status bar visible on a need basis like the playbar in video players in full screen mode. 5. Subscribing to an RSS feed to Google Reader or iGoogle is  a dumb two step process now. Google Reader or iGoogle be made two different options. 6. Tabs must have a 3D effect or something really cool. Switching like pages is so yesterday. 7. Make download dialog unobtrusive. Make it so...

Wow this was something I did not expect. But this surely did hit me hard the first time I got through it. It seems like I could access most Airtel Broadband users routers using simple telnet. Once I was connected, all that was required was username and password. Boy and I am in. I have access to the router now and I sure can do a lot of crazy stuff with it. Wait a minute, did I say you need username and password. How would I get the username and password. Well actually not very difficult. Is it. No one ever changes the username and password of their router. Actually no one expects anyone to be able to access the router without their knowledge. But the sad fact is, anyone on the internet can access their router. Most people do not even realize that their internet connection can be easily compromised. How? Well simple steps to follow 1. Press Window Key + R  to open the Run Command Dialog 2. Press cmd (Enter) 3. Enter 'telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' Where 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx...

There has been much said about Firefox3, good and bad. People have stayed away from the beta and RC builds because the real power of Firefox, the extensions is not there yet. But still I got hooked to it since its Beta 3 release, which I found was more or less stable. So heres my fav feature list in no particular order. I actually love all of them. 1. The new location of the Home Button.    I think this is something which is one of the most normal thing to be done. But some product manager probably of the first browser wanted it that way or the dev said that if you want it someplace else, then more time is needed. Since then everyone has been putting that home button next to Refresh. Seems stupid now, doesn't it.  2. Most Visited Button. True of late what I do most of the time is that I visit the same pages. Its not all that often that I need to find new stuff or am bombarded with links. So this most visited button is just cool. 3. Smart bookmarks - Tagging, mos...

Believe it friends around 20% Americans have never used email . What is even more mind boggling is that some 30% of households dont have access to internet service. Consider this that in India we have just 27.5% of people living below the poverty line. Rest are above. The number of people who have never had food is nearly 0%. This is one of the greatest achievements of Indian government over the 61 years of independence from the blood sucking Britishers. Its a real sham that US has more people with broadband than we have without food. A pity on those obsese americans who are the wasting around 3,770 calories of food energy per day . Well you think its crap. Well I never said this is intellectual.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Obviously simplymarry.com went overboard with the ad campaign.   Common yaar every body knows there are no beautiful girls in Software. By the way never heard anyone say Software Engineering as their qualification. What do you think of simplymarry.com now??   A few other ads which they may have A hunk describing himself as havaldar or constable. A hottie posing as PhD in science. Another hottie posing as Women Welfare executive Can u think of any other situations??

Whats started as a small idea in the last Blogalorean Meet, snowballed into a big one during the mailing group discussions. Finally it was planned that all interested people would meet at Koshy's on a fine Saturday evening. It was 19th of Jan around 4:30 that I entered Koshy's to find five of them there, busy discussing and finalizing how it should be done. I jumped into that whole thing and soon their infectious enthusiasm got into me. After some random bakwas of mine. Then that waiter was like pushing us out. So last round of discussion happened across the street on the footpath. Finally we decided on something which were worded right by Sandil and put up on the Big Bangalore Blogathon . There are still a lot of things to be done for it. I am right now not in Bangalore to be physically involved but will be providing all possible support virtually and ofcourse by blogging during the Blogathon. I hope this event generates a lot of positives. Some of the people working behind th...

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has come out with the status paper on broadband speeds . It unlike other government agencies does not show lethargy of the ultimate kind. But still the paper leaves a lot of things unanswered. Though I have mailed to the authorities as indicated in the paper, but I suggest more people do so to build a stronger case. Here are my points 1. The definition of minimum speed must be changed radically. It should not be 'the last mile' speed, but a function of the the bandwidth the ISP has reserved for each of the 'always on' broadband connection. This is adviced because its seen in common parlance that ISPs provide actual download speeds with are considerably lower than what is expected. http://speedtest.net does  a good test of it. TRAI should also spell out fines for faltering in providing this service since most places its seems do it at will. 2. Speed provided does not depend on usage. The fact remains that the internet charges fo...

Well I dont know if accidentally I had made some correct statements in this post about sikhs. I was so sure that it had no intellectual value but then I read this story . So here its says that Mr Anil Ambani is at fault for 'allegedly' circulating derogatory jokes against the Sikh community through its mobile Internet services. The masterminds again are from Lucknow, Lucknow Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee(LGPC). Seems like Lucknow is fast turning hub for all kinds of religious intolerance and communalism. I would like the LGPC people to first read the classics by Khushwant Singh. His jokes are the best of their kind. He is one guy which really made the sardar jokes reach out to the market. Then came the MTV and Mr Cyrus Bakara. They took these jokes to the masses. Each one of the young generation waited to hear these jokes. The final death nail was the Great Indian Laughter Challenge and Great Indian Comedy Show. Both of them literally taking humor and sardars to new height...

Om Malik had asked a very valid question. What happens to people when a service shut. He could see telephone numbers being lost. He could see people loosing their business. I say what happened when people forget to login to their accounts for a 30 days period. What would happen to those 2.8GB of data in gmail accounts. What would happen if google while trying to bail out gives off all the private data it has collected till date. What about AOL releasing user data, by mistake. What can be done about them My take nothing. Yes nothing. You cannot really expect to have a cake and eat it too. Once you are using a free service, that pretty much it. You are not paying them anything so they are not really obliged to provide you any guarantees. Its upto them what they want to do. Yes if you have paid them, then you have right to ask for anything. Better still I say back up all your important data on you hard disk and never trust some naive startups. Hopefully google will be there for a long lon...

You might have heard of an old joke called Is Windows a Virus? If not then let me refresh your mind No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do: They replicate quickly - okay, Windows does that. Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so - okay, Windows does that. Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk - okay, Windows does that too. Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh... Windows does that, too. Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that's with Windows, too. Until now it seems Windows is a virus...but there are fundamental differences: Viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature. So Windows is not a virus. It's a bug. A sim...