I had mentioned earlier in one of my blogs about phishing attacks with the example of an attack that steals your Yahoo! id/password.

Firefox (in conjunction with Google) has launched a Phishing Protection (a.k.a. Safe Browsing ) tool to protect against these attacks. It appears that the tool currently maintains a list of black-listed sites and shows up a warning message when a hit occurs. Now that is something which will keep people from losing their credentials. And yes it works, a hyperlink took me to this page, and bang came the warning.

I was looking forward to the movie, The Da Vinci Code. Having enjoyed the book to its fullest, I hope the movie maintains the thrill and the pace, as the book does. Some stills and the trailer are released now.

The third edition of UTLK is now available. It covers the 2.6 kernel, but I am not sure which particular kernel.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time.”

Gandalf replies,
“So do I and so do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide. All we have to
decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Greasemonkey is probably old news by now. I recently installed it, just to checkout how it works, and I have found it a lot useful so far. If you want customisability for your web browser, this is the thing for you. I have been using the following scripts so far :

गेले अनेक िदवस मी Linux मध्ये मराठी िलहायचा असफ़ल प्रयत्न करत होतो. आता शेवटी ते जमले. इथे पहा. :-)

Courtesy : Amey Inamdar.

Recently, I have been getting a lot of messages from people in my Yahoo list, which reads something like this :

http://www.geocities.com/bisxybiotch/

Strange, I thought. The geocities homepage shows up similar to the Yahoo Photos page, prompting me for a loginid/passwd. I thought something was not right. On downloading the page, and reading through the HTML source, I could see something like this :

I was recently looking at Andrew Morton's Patch-scripts. I found them working pretty good for me. When you are working on a problem, you solve it by attacking a set of logical sub-problems along the way. These scripts allow you to manage such set of patches in your local repository, which can later be sequentially committed. That way, it is not only easier for you to keep track of things, you make the life of the reviewer a lot simpler as well. Because he can now look at the logical set of patches sequentially and understand (in a better manner,) where you are going.

Last weekend, the 15-Aug-weekend, I was at my home. I managed to watch a lot of TV over the weekend. I was absolutely bored with the same old borring and dragging themes of the Saas-Bahu serials. The number of such serials has increased quite a lot, Hindi/Marathi all types, at all times. Targetted toward the housewives, and hence focusing on the Saas-Bahu relationship, the serials find a lot of viewership.

My article, "Sleeping in the kernel", is published in the September 2005 issue of Linux Journal. It is available online here.(Subscription required. Available freely at the end of September).

Edited 1 Oct, 2005 : It is freely available now.

Whenever I visit the ATM centre, this thing always comes to my mind, its time it goes in my blog. I think it is quite a common thing to find out how much of a balance you have in your account and then do the withdrawal. The point is, why should I perform two steps to do this. Wouldn't it be quite logical to show the balance amount that I have, when I am typing in the amount to be withdrawn? But that doesn't happen.

Wouldn't it be better if this gets fixed?

Gele kaahi diwas ithe itka paus challa aaahe, sagli agdi vaitagun gelet. Arthaat richshaawaale sodun, jyanna ha mausam dhanda karnyaaas ati pratikul asel. Mumbai wa baaki poor grasta thikannan baddal apan aikalech asel. Punyache irrigation department, mahat prayaas karun punyala pooran pasun wachawta aahe (asa aiklay).

In the drama, that by now all of you would know, Cisco and ISS do not come out very good. The news has received a lot of air. Threatening the conference (Black Hat) organisers, tearing pieces of information from the conference program, ordering destruction of a lot of CDs, taking legal action against the security researcher involved, and finally, publishing data about the flaw themselves. Well, this may be only one side of the story, but Cisco could have dealt with the issue in a better manner.

Here is Bruce Schneier's blog : Cisco Harasses Security Researcher

The cliff protruded up in the sky like a big raised thumb. The ravines that extended from the cliff lay under a lush green thicket. The sun was hiding behind the clouds. Whirls of mist surrounded the cliff. And the slight drizzle made sure the effect was complete.

He was standing at the edge of the cliff. Gusts of cold wind blew the water droplets in his face. He peeped into the abyss that lay in front of him, and he could feel a knot swelling in his stomach. He couldn't believe he was really going to do it. He raised his foot, to take a step forward. He thought he was insane. "Why in the world am I doing this? Am I so crazy to walk into this valley? Should I back out? ", thought he, "But I can't go back, they are still prodding me to take the leap.".

My Friend goes to the office early in the morning. Switches on his computer, checks his email, checks his tasks to be done for the day. He goes to have some coffee to freshen up his mind for the daunting task that stands ahead of him.
After the coffee he comes back and starts playing one of the online versions of poker. Before lunch, his boss peeks into his cubicle, expecting my friend to be sincerely engrossed in his work. My friend's back is toward the door...