Posts Tagged internet

I feel like I am in rehab

Posted by Nalin in General on September 16th, 2006

I just shifted into my new place… which is going to serve as a shelter for the next couple of months. November end, I will look for a new place again seeing how things work out for me in the near future. Got a pretty good deal… good big 2 bedroom 2 bath house and I get to keep one of each… :-)

Anyway… getting back to the issue… I am being treated here for addiction to Internet. I don’t have a wireless network to call of my own and that is taking the life out of me. As a friend mentioned, my state is like that of a fish out of water. I am sharing this place with a working professional and he goes to work Monday thru Friday, 7 to 7. He doesn’t really need net access at home and I totally understand that.  I on the other hand, sit at home all the time as I am currently unemployed. I am used to the luxurious life where I checked mail when I woke up, when I came out of bathroom, when I left for work, when I came back home, when I went to sleep… I am used to spending all my time online and now I have to go around looking for a place where I can get online.

This place I shifted is an apartment building complex and I have a few friends already staying here… I have been running around asking everyone if they know anyone who stays near my place, but nothing seems to be working out.

Hence, I feel like I am in rehab right now. There is always a nagging feeling that something is wrong. I am trying to look at the better side. Maybe, now I will start doing more worthwhile things offline.

Whatever be it, I hope I get well soon… :)

p.s. Made this post using Windows Live Writer (Beta) which seems to be way cooler than BlogJet.

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I got suckered… :-(

Posted by Nalin in General, WWW on June 17th, 2006

A nice (well… no more…) friend of mine sent me a link http://www.geocities.com/joke_of_the_day_3_4/ . I unlike usual, followed that link thinking that it was what it said.

What you see there is a Login Page for using the Yahoo! Flickr service. I didn’t understand why it was there, but cause my brain wasn’t working after studying for hours, I simply put in my login and password. And guess what ??? I got suckered… It took me to some weird page…

Then I realized what a dumb thing I had done. I actually mailed my login and password to someone sitting in Japan. Had to kick myself for a while and then change passwords for all the accounts that had the same password.

Going though the page source I found that the email address getting all this info was accountshere_2@yahoo.com. Guessing by that, I am sure this nice human being has more such pages set up. Also saw that (s)he is using a CGI script hosted at www2.fiberbit.net. Checked the WHOIS Db and found it is registered to some F Bit Communications Corp in Kyoto, Japan. Anyways… have sent a few nice words to the email address above… X-(

Just to show what how the whole thing works… I have copied the source and you can goto it here on my site. I have changed the form a bit. Just enter any email (full email, not just the user-id) in the username textfield and any text you want in the password text field. After hitting submit, you can go and check the email address you provided. You will see the exact info that you provided.

I feel like such a jackass right now… Having spent almost all my time for the last so many years online, I still fell for this one… People around the world, keep getting suckered every freaking day… one really has to be very careful while browsing the www. It’s a bad bad world out there. I did go ahead and fill up a form on Yahoo! to let them know of this page. There’s a lot of shit on Geocities and Yahoo! isn’t doing anything about it… this and the fact that it took me sooo much time to find that General Abuse Form, really pissed me off.

UPDATE: my friend didn’t send it. I got it as an offline, so I assumed that he had. It is actually some sort of a virus… I am sure many people others got it too then…

ANOTHER UPDATE: Got a reply from people at Yahoo!. They have taken the necessary action, i.e. removed the site within 3 hrs of notifying them… hmm.. nice..

Thank you for informing us of possible abuse on Yahoo! GeoCities.  We have investigated the site and taken the necessary action.  We appreciate your concern and thank you for reporting this incident to Yahoo!.

You can still see what the page was like here.

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Watching the Future shape up

Posted by Nalin in Thoughts, WWW on August 30th, 2005

5 years back I had no idea what the whole deal about the Internet was and now I have reached a point that an hour without it makes me sick. I have come from a point where these things didn’t matter to me, to a point that I like to (need to) keep a track of all the happenings.

It’s really nice and exciting to see the future shape up in-front of my eyes. As everyone knows, last few weeks have been very exciting for the Internet community as a lot of new softwares, applications and web services were launched. Every major company has been coming up with new products, updates to existing products and new start-ups have also come up with good products.

Microsoft has introduced new version of it’s messenger and updated it’s search engine. It’s coming up with Vista and newer versions of MS Studio. Latest are the talks of Microsoft’s plans to invest big time into VOIP. Well… there must be much more it is up to….

Yahoo! came up with Yahoo! 360 and a newer version of it’s messenger which enabled voice calls over the Internet. Also, Yahoo has been busy buying start-ups like Konfabulator and Flickr. They have lost the popularity they enjoyed 4–5 years back because of Google.

Google… it is on fire…. red hot…. Google Earth, Blogspot, Google Talk, Google Desktop, Picasa, Hello etc…. I mean like…. u name it and they are there….

Then there are some other companies like the new startup Slide.com for sharing photos in a real innovative manner. del.icio.us and Digg are changing the way people bookmark links.

On the whole, it’s just a kewl experience to see all these new developments take place now, knowing that these are going to have major impact on the world as a whole in the coming decade.

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Internet

Posted by Nalin in Thoughts, WWW on June 27th, 2005

There is a wealth of data online…. The last month or so of inactivity in my social life as well no work on the professional side, has suddenly left me with a lot of time to explore the net.

I am surprised to have come across so many things that i never thought and could never have tought exsisted online. The WWW is a great place to just spend hours and hours and not even notice the time fly by.

StumbleUpon toolbarOne of the most addictive tools is by the site www.stumbleupon.com. They have this toolbar using which one can just carry on visiting new sites. One just has to specify the kind of sites they want to visit and they can get a whole lot of sites on that area.

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