Important news today

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Blogging, Life, Links

Microsoft to release Vista with a Linux kernel

After years of delays and months of rewriting code the Microsoft Corporation has taken a new direction with Windows Vista.  Microsoft will release Vista with a Linux kernel.  At the press conference Bill Gates had this to say "We are very excited at the new direction of Windows Vista.  With help from Novell and IBM we have leveraged the Linux kernel and have built our GUI as a Window Manager on top of X.org.

Microsoft Buys OpenOffice

For an undisclosed sum but reputed to be in the billions, Microsoft’s Bill Gates has personally bought the leading open-source desktop project. Saying he "was sick and tired of open-source eating away at his profits," the world’s richest man decided to put an end to the nuisance and simply buy OpenOffice.org.

Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google

With Google Romance, you can:

  • Upload your profile – tell the world who you are, or, more to the point, who you’d like to think you are, or, even more to the point, who you want others to think you are.
  • Search for love in all (or at least a statistically significant majority of) the right places with Soulmate Search, our eerily effective psychographic matchmaking software.
  • Endure, via our Contextual Dating option, thematically appropriate multimedia advertising throughout the entirety of your free date.

China Buys Google

The People’s Republic of China has acquired a controlling stake in the United States’ fastest growing technology company, Google.

Read More from the original sources:

Microsoft to release Vista with a Linux kernel

Microsoft Buys OpenOffice

Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google

China Buys Google

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How not to be a fish to phishers

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Email, HowTo, Network, Security, Technology, Windows

It’s very difficult to stay safe online today without understanding the security jargons.

Phishing is one of the most popular techniques used by criminals to fool the users (even quite experienced ones) in giving in their personal information.

Phishing – Fraudulent emails and pop-ups designed to fool you into revealing personal information, such as passwords, credit card details, and account numbers, for criminal gain.

Some of the latest phishing attacks in News:

Read more ›

Network Administrator’s Resignation Letter

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Life, Links, Random, Technology

Most probably the funniest resignation letter you’ll ever read. I laughed so loud that everybody was staring at me in office. Enjoy the World’s Best Resignation Letter

You wander around the building all day, shiftlessly seeking fault in others. You have a sharp dressed, useless look about you that may have worked for your interview, but now that you actually have responsibility, you pawn it off on overworked staff, hoping their talent will cover for your glaring ineptitude. In a world of managerial evolution, you are the blue-green algae that everyone else eats and laughs at. Managers like you are a sad proof of the Dilbert principle.

Seeing as this situation is unlikely to change without you getting a full frontal lobotomy reversal, I am forced to tender my resignation; however, I have a few parting thoughts:

Google’s new interface

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Blogging, Links, Reviews, Technology

Everyone is talking about the new interface that Google is testing. So, I decided to try and can confirm that it’s true. If you want to try for yourself follow this blog’s instruction. This is what I did:

Just Download the “Add N Edit Cookies” Firefox Extension e create a Cookie for your firefox in this way :

NAME: PREF
VALUE: ID=fb7740f107311e46:TM=1142683332:
LM=1142683332:S=fNSw6ljXTzvL3dWu
SERVER: www.google.com

Now you’re ready to check new google interfaces.

Note: VALUE should be in one line (ID=…:TM=…:LM=…:S=…)

Google mistakenly deletes it’s own blog!

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Blogging, Random, Technology

Google blog was unavailable for a short time few days ago and this is what happened:

We’ve determined the cause of tonight’s outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d’oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad.

DNS Amplification Attack

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Admin, HowTo, Network, Security, Technology

Recently a new type of DNS attack have been discovered. Attackers are exploiting the recursive name servers to amplify the DDoS attacks by utilizing IP spoofing. If you want to know the very details of how this attack works then you must read DNS Amplification Attacks (pdf) by Randal Vaughn and Gadi Evron where they analyze 3 real attacks. Also this Cnet news article have some details about the attack.

At the heart of this attack is the recursive function of DNS servers. This is a very serious threat because The Measurement Factory in recent survey found that:

There are an estimated 7.5 million external DNS servers on the public Internet. Over 75% of domain name servers (of roughly 1.3 million sampled) allow recursive name service to arbitrary queriers. This opens a name server to both cache poisoning and attacks.

Here I’ve drawn the diagrams to explain what is Recursive DNS Query and how DNS Amplification Attacks work.

Read more ›

DVD stuck and MacBook Pro opened

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Apple, HowTo, Technology

A dvd disk got stuck inside the optical drive of MacBook Pro and couldn’t be ejected. I tried to eject it from WinXp, without success. Pressed F12 and Eject button in OSX but the disk wouldn’t come out. The drive was responding with some sound and seemed like it was trying to eject the disk but with no success. So, we opened it and here’s how MacBook Pro looks naked.

The keyboard lifted up

Read more ›

Samba 4 Technology Preview 2 released

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Admin, Linux/Unix, Security, Technology, Windows

Samba 4 Technology Preview 2 is released today. Technology Preview 1 was released on January. Samba is an open source software that allows Unix/Linux system to serve as a file and print server in Windows network. The main feature in Samba 4 is the support for Active Directory logon protocols used in Windows 2000 and above.

The release notes emphasizes that this is a Technology preview to allow users, managers and developers to see how they’ve progressed and to invite feedback and support. They warn that this should not be run on production servers and is not secure.

Samba 4 Technology Preview includes basic Access Control List (ACL) protection on the main user database, but due to time constraints, none on the registry at this stage. We also do not currently have ACLs on the SWAT web-based management tool. This means that Samba 4 Technology Preview is not secure.

OnMac.net site down

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Apple, Technology, Windows

I regularly check OnMac.net to see if there’re any updates on video driver for MacBook Pro but from yesterday the site is down. Today morning when I came back to office the site is still not responding. I Googled and found from this blog that there’s some problem with the Apache.

Well, it looks like something has gone wrong again. The server that we’re hosted on is up and running but apache is not. The site went down around 6:00 pm CST 2006-03-22. I’ve only now 8:00 am CST 2006-03-23 been able to get a hold of the guy who can make things happen. I tried to get it fixed last night but was unable. Sorry for the downtime! We’re going to be back up asap.

Update: Good news! The site is up and seems they’d some configuration issue.

We have been experiencing downtime on the main server due to a configuration error. I have alerted the host and created a redirect to this page. When the site is back up, you should be able to go there by clicking the forum, wiki etc… Sorry for the inconvenience – the site should be up shortly

10 steps to a better IT support process

by niranjanPosted on Posted in Admin, HowTo, Links, Technology

If you’re working in IT Support for few years then most probably you’re already following similar steps. Geeks are Sexy have an excellent article 10 steps to a better IT support process. It’s refreshing and should be helpful to novice as well as veteran IT Support.

  • 1. Answering the call

    2. Asking the user to explain the problem

    3. Reproducing the error

    4. Identifying the problem

    5. Gathering technical information

    6. Determine possible solutions

    7. Fixing the problem

    8. Test and test again

    9. Documenting the issue

    10. Pat yourself in the back for a job well done.

I’d written a Productive Network and System Administration which you might find helpful as well.

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