EMail Spam December 19, 2008
Posted by devdude in General.Tags: fight spam email, spam
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Occasionally I dissect spam emails that find their ways through the spamfilter. Very oftenis some kind of paypal or ebay info saying that the account expired or they suspect some problem information with the account and ask you to login and verify. The login link is always in the email. It always looks ok on the first sight but if you look at the spelling of sender, words and so on you can see the spam.
Todays dissection (original is german): Paypal Security
Wichtige Sicherheits-Hinweise Ihr Konto Zugriff hat nur begrenztem Umfang (Transl: Important security note, limited account access)
Sender: sicherheit_@_paypall_de (see, the double ll at the end) paypall.de is registred by (check here)
Text: PayPal arbeitet ständig an der Gewährleistung der Sicherheit durch regelmäßige Screening/Kontrollen der Konten in unserem System. Wir haben vor kurzem Ihr Konto überprüft, und wir brauchen mehr Informationen, die uns helfen sollen Sie mit sicheren Service anbieten. Bis wir diese Informationen sammeln, Ihren Zugang zu sensiblen Konto-Funktionen werden begrenzt oder beendet werden. Wir möchten Ihren Zugang Wiederherstellen so schnell wie möglich, und wir entschuldigen uns für die Unannehmlichkeiten.
The german text contains quite a number of errors.
Paypall.de points to merchntaccount.com which is a misspelled version (missing ‘a’) of merchantaccount.com (a creditcard/online commerce service provider). merchntaccount.com is registred by (check here), same person or organziation.
The fake login page is not accessible (anymore ?) at this bogus address (some characters removed to stop anyone from stumbling upon it)
http: / / smokylake. com/www. paypal .de/de/_xxxxxxxxxxx_ = _login-submit/webscr.php
Why does spam work ? Because someone sends out this email to 100.000 recipients. If only 1 falls into the trap it worth his effort to fake everything.
Spam per Skype ? August 27, 2008
Posted by devdude in General, Humor.Tags: skype, spam
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I occasionally get skype-invitations or contact-attempts from totally strange people in all kind of languages, but Skype never before opened by itself with a chat from someone NOT on my contact list.
Randy Pausch passed away August 3, 2008
Posted by devdude in General.Tags: alice, cmu, randy pausch, the last lecture
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Some days late, I read Professor Randy Pausch passed away on July 25th. Even I was never able to meet him or to join his classes, he was a inspiring person. His famous last lecture “Really achieving your childhood dreams” at CMU (link) in September 2007 you can see here (link). I wont comment or try to summarize because it would never be close to his very own word. Please read more about him and also his work on Alice (link).
Another way of loosing data June 13, 2008
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You dont want to stick postit notes on a CD to label the content ! Lucky this backup was redundant !
Apple’s polite Bluescreen June 7, 2008
Posted by devdude in General.Tags: apple, blue screen, crash, mac os
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I use a 12″ powerbook for 4 years now, during that time it served me well and I replaced only a faulty harddisk and a battery. It hardly will crash in the Windows way. A blue screen staring at you right in the middle of doing something, but MAC OS also has a nice message in 4 languages that it needs to restarted due to an error. It dont bombard you with a memory dump that no one can read anyway.
And its gone June 6, 2008
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Seems as fast its “in” Google, as fast it disappears. Found after 6 hours, another 12 hours after removing the word it cant be found anymore.
Experiment closed. Maybe I am too paranoid.
You want to go back history lane ? Check out webpages at the WayBackMaschine (link) ! Look at early versions of some websites. “Where you want to go today ?” Remember the sloganby MS in 1996 (link).
Google found it again ! June 5, 2008
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6 hours after placing the non-existent word “XYZ” (replaced original word to virtually remove its existence) on the blog, google lists it already. Now I removed it, will see how fast it disappears again. To be honest I am pretty impressed how fast google crawls the web with trillions of pages !
Google on Google June 5, 2008
Posted by devdude in General, Humor.add a comment
Did you ever google for “google” ? You will find all activities and projects they do (images, news, groups, earth, map, lab,..). The first non-google source is from stanford.edu followed by finance.yahoo.com on page 4 !
The first not-so-google result is “Google Fight” (link) on page 7. You can compare which word out of 2 has more results in a cartoon style.
Google found it ! June 5, 2008
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Yo remember my technology creation 2 days ago ? The Retraxiom Intrubator (link). No search engine could find the word or term. Now it is on, within 48 hours Google found it, even on a non-Google run platform.
Check it out at http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=Retraxiom+Intrubator
The next experiment would be: How long does it take to get rid of it ? Is that possible ?
OK, lets start with a new word: XYZ (no matches in google now)
Please note I will remove the word after they found it and will re-check its virtual existence.
Edit:
I replaced the original word with XYZ in order to find out how fast the word disappears from the search engine.
Windows XP lifespan extended until 2010 June 4, 2008
Posted by devdude in General, Software.add a comment
According to a Microsoft Press release (link) you still can buy XP until 2010 (first plan was to stop it in 2008!) because an increased demand in UMPC’s and low-budget desktop PC’s. They also say the hardware vendor are still running behind VISTA requirements.
a) Why does MS continues to deliver OS with ridiculous hardware requirements and resource greedy software ? XP is stable and can run on Intel Atom chipset. Why can Apple implement smooth screen features on an iPhone while Vista needs 2 GB to get Aero running ?
b) 2010 ? You can buy XP until Windows 7 is supposed to be out. Then skip Vista !?
Terminology Hype June 3, 2008
Posted by devdude in General, Humor.add a comment
Spending a couple of year in IT project management, I started again to get my hands dirty with sourcecode and I really enjoy this pioneer work. Since about one year I am refreshing my developing skills, specifically in Java, since in earlier times I was coding in Visual C++, Visual Basic, more or less in a Microsoft world. I try to keep an eye on frameworks, engines or any news about enterprise development. As a regular visitor of TheServerSide.com I am bombarded with truckloads of frameworks and tools.
Who is inventing all this ? Who creates this titles and names ? You know everything about …
- Apache Tuscany
- Atomikos
- JEXIN
- OSGi
- Terracota
- Allatori Java Obfuscator
Not me ! But maybe I am going to add some…
- Misatori Confuscator
- Apache Terminator
- J Chianti
- Retraxiom Intrubator
Btw, this is a test. The last technology I just invented (Retraxiom Intrubator) does not exist, even the words dont exist. A search on google, altavista and metacrawler doesnt show any results. Lets see how long it takes until the search engines will list this blog as result. I made the same test on blogger.com and it took not even 1 day !
Another blog? June 3, 2008
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How many blogs are out there ? Millions, Trillions ? Countless blogs about technology and even more about personal interests, which seem to attract sometimes more readers than the first category.
I will add another blog into the this virtual world, this time using wordpress instead of blogger.com, I think gooogle aready knows enough about me ! I will talk about technology, about IT, programming, books, tools and gadgets, anything around bits and bytes. Its my personal experience, so dont rely on information found here. Dont bother to spam attackme or send me letters from a lawyer. If you cant take sarcastic or ironic statements you might want to surf on. I wanted to use the address itdude but it is taken by someone else.
