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I am seeing quite a number of these today in Facebook (see screen capture). First, it appears as some of my friends status message, and subsequently these friends start spamming my wall with the message. And when I checked back with these friends what’s so interesting about this site, they first expressed surprise and ignorance, before they disavowed of having done so. In fact, in all cases, they are adamant they didn’t log-on to Facebook to send those messages. (i.e. the status will show it was update 30 minutes ago, but this friend hasn’t even log in to Facebook for days!) |
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Out of curiosity, I clicked on the URL in Firefox and it led me to a site selling some kind of dried plant and I suspect it’s probably some kind of weed like marijuana. However, please refrain from visiting the site (especially with IE), not because of what it is touting, but a simple precaution against any possible ActiveX ‘niceties’ and malware that might be hiding behind it. Anyway, I am not very sure if those friends’ accounts were hacked to send these messages. The one friend I managed to convince to check out his Facebook account, said his password was not changed and he could still access his Facebook account. For good measure, he changed his password and I see that those messages have stopped. But for some of the others, I see an increasing number of walls of mutual friends getting spammed with this message. I could think of one possibility how something else can gain access to your password for whatever nefarious purposes. A scam which says it could reveal those blocked you on MSN Live Messenger has been making its rounds on the net previously and many have been fooled. Once a person tried checking on who has blocked them through this site, those on their contact list will receive a message touting this site, or links to dubious and questionable sites at random times. I suspect that if one has used the same ID – usually one’s Hotmail / Microsoft Live Mail email address – and password to sign up to Facebook, and have not changed their password since, then that same information could now be exploited by the same scammers. Whatever the case is, I would suggest that if you have been using a simple alpha-numeric password to login to any kind of online services, to change it and increase it’s complexity. A password like Passw0rd is definitely not good enough. You might want to consider a complex password like P@s5w0Rd+ instead. Of course, the most important thing is to remember not to sign on to some completely unrelated site on the wild Internet with a password belonging to another service, simply because the site appears to offer you something in return. In short, if www.kennasai.com says it could reveal to you who has blocked or deleted you on MSN Messenger, it’s simply common sense to ask just how www.kennasai.com is going to obtain that information from one of Microsoft’s servers. |
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Category: Info
Donation Appeal
I am overwhelmed when I looked at all the photos coming out of the disaster zone in Sichuan, China on the newspapers. My only comfort was that the Chinese government has responded with utmost urgency, and put aside her pride to accept help from those who have offered.
China is indeed blessed to have a Prime Minister like Wen Jiabao, who is more or less directly involved in the rescue operations. Even though the fact that he has to be there personally to whip the local cadres into shape reflects badly on the command and control aspects of the Chinese government, the people will remember what is done right, and thus re-affirm the Communist Party’s right to govern the nation.
At the same time, Myanmar’s government response to her own cyclone disaster is appalling. It is a pity the cyclone did not drown the bastards in the junta first, as they have demonstrated they are completely unworthy to govern the people. (Much like a certain deputy of this country who not only can’t sing, and the arschloch who says China beer promoters help retained jobs for Singaporeans, are unworthy of their positions!)
It further disgusts me when I read that leaders lea-duhs in the junta put their names on the boxes of material given as aid to the people of Myanmar. This shameless attempt to fool the people into being grateful to them shows they appear to be more concern with politics instead of the well being of the people. That can be further seen in how much harder they are pushing their stupid little sham of a referendum while they continue to refuse help from the other countries.
Anyway, I am not really helping anyone by wacking away on my keyboard. The main objective of this post is not so much to rant, but rather to increase awareness on one of the avenues you can use to provide monetary aid to those affected.
The following link was found on the Singapore Red Cross website, a reputable non-old NKF kind of charity organisation. It contains instructions on how you can donate to help those affected and you will be guided to choose between giving to Myanmar or China.
My personal opinion is that no matter how you feel about charity organizations or the political conditions of the countries affected, do not forget giving money is the least we can do to help. It is just way better than doing nothing, and personally I would prefer to go to China to dig people out of the ruins if I can.
One last thing: While I understand that it is your right and your prerogative to donate or not to donate, I would generally prefer you keep your reasons to yourself if you do not intend to give. It is unwise to present an image of selfishness and heartlessness apathy – even when you aren’t such a person – and even more so when the reasons are made available on the public domain so some irresponsible jerks can now use to justify their own lack of empathy.
My thanks to everyone who heed this call to donate.
Sub-Prime Primer
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We have heard a lot about the upheavals in the financial markets recently, including the recent Bear Stearns collapse and especially about the ‘sub-prime’ crisis. This came through the emails at work from friends working in the financial sector and if you are wondering what this is all about you might want to look through it and get a rough idea what the ‘sub-prime’ crisis is all about. It is best to click on the full size version to view it since the text is too blurry at this resolution. |
You need to click on it to progress to the next slide. The text is blurry at this resolution. Click here for full size. |
Feb 15 – Humble Pie Day
Today I ate the humble pie twice, though the ‘cheese pie’ Edison Chen EdipR0n Chentuk ate would have been slightly more appealing…
Round 1
I have always thought I had a lot of knowledge about the automated workstation build and remote program installation process in the office. I felt there’s probably few things that I don’t know about after working here for a good 7 long years. And as they always say, “Pride goes before a fall” and “God opposes the proud.”
So it was a little annoying today when I failed to get a software reinstalled on the system by simply removing the registry keys at the usual location. For the better part of 15mins, I was fuming at the system and wondering what has gone wrong. Took me a long time to notice, that the FQDN [Fully Qualified Domain Name] of the applications package & system build server has changed, and I had * gasp * deleted the registry entry referencing the old FQDN. 他妈的，阴沟里翻船！！(Fxxk, it was a dumb mistake!!)
While that didn’t have any adverse effects at all, this is the kind of mistake I don’t expect myself to make. It was supposed to be a task that would take no more than 2 minutes, unless the system itself really had a problem – e.g. the kind along the lines of a broken MSI Installer.
I was wasting precious time doing a really simple task. I am glad I spotted the mistake and I reminded myself to always remain humble before I end up making a major mistake.
Round 2
And if you thought that was just a small episode in my usually mundane and boring life, it wasn’t over yet, because I had the cheek to tell my friend that getting hit by a malware is small matter and it’s easily cleared.
So I picked up my friend’s Lenovo X61 laptop at Change Alley some time before lunch. What I didn’t take into consideration was I had no clue what the malware was and as I have been in a well protected corporate environment, where malwares are a distant memory. In other words, I had not considered that malware has evolved and are now way more formidable than the last time I cleared them. To make matters worse, the laptop is loaded with Windows Vista and the elevated security along with the irritating system restore combined to give me one of the most annoying afternoons I have experienced for a long time. Consider it the second humble pie of the day, one that last long enough to serve as dessert for my tea break.
After sort of pulling my hair out for the better part of the afternoon, I finally managed to at least figure out what the malware was – File Secure and iedefender. It is also known as the unknown trojan. They are one and the same and they masquerades as an advanced spyware removal program.
I can only suspect where this might have come from… probably while someone was using my friend’s laptop to surf smut and to look for EdipR0n Chentuk pics, since I could see them all over the browser’s history. The most likely scenario would involve a false message popping up in Internet Explorer saying that the system is infected. No matter what the user clicked, be it ‘OK’ or ‘CANCEL’, it would have allowed the malware to be installed. The only way to avoid this would have been to close the window without clicking on any of the buttons on that message at all! Damn EdipR0n, Internet Explorer System Exploder and ActiveX to hell!
Either way, I also come to learn of some anti-spyware tools like Super Antispyware, which is quite handy and useful in clearing these kind of shits. While I wasn’t originally convinced that it is a genuine malware detection and clearing too when I looked at the website, I soon discovered that it is indeed legitimate, because I also find it available on download.com. (The current released version is 3.9 as of Feb 15, 2008. I personally won’t trust those so-called v4.0 beta copies found on Google, until I have verified that those sites hosting the files are trustworthy.)
So, after a combination of automated and manual clearing, the malware appeared to be vanquished as the symptoms are gone for good. However, I still decided to restore the entire laptop to factory default in the end as I am not quite convinced that the kind of defenses I am going to put on the laptop (the sames ones I have on my own system) would be sufficient for this laptop in its post-compromised state.
So, I conceded defeat and sourly boot the Lenovo laptop into recovery mode using that ‘Think Advantage’ button, and let it do a restore. I reminded myself I should humbly turn down any request for assistance with clearing malware in the future… as I realized I ain’t that great with dealing with this kind of problems at all.
But nevertheless, all glory be to God. At least I learn something today, and as it always goes, I know this experience is going to come in useful someday… soon.
Yes, We Can…
I heard about Senator Barack Obama a long time back from an old friend, Chris Ng (also known Modeus among a certain circle of friends), way before Obama made his bid for President. At that point of time, I have never thought how Obama could hope to compete against the Hillary Hilarious Clinton.
Even after the Iowa Caucus, I would thought his win was just the bloom of the Morning Glory, where it would fade when the sun sets. New Hampshire seems to support that view, even though I talked about Obama often with a few friends, and we generally root for Obama. Then Senator Obama bounds back in South Carolina, and one of my friends sent me several videos of his speeches, and I begin to pay more attention to the Senator of Illinois. The video demonstrates that Senator Obama is a powerful speaker as he is definitely doing right what has been taught in some of the ‘How to be an effective communicator’ courses I have been to, though I have not given his speeches a more serious thought. After all, the context is more suitable for audiences in the U.S.
Yesterday, Feb 6, is Super Tuesday in the U.S. (Feb 5 over that part of the world). And since I had to work in spite of it being the Chinese New Year Eve here in Singapore, I began to ‘tune in’ to the news coming out of the U.S. and keep track of the progress of Senator Obama in the primaries going on across 20 over states. And as I was looking through the news coming through the Reuters Kobra software on one of my traders’ (who has gone on leave) workstation, I came across a report of the following video.
Yes, we can.
As I watched the MTV, and listened to the snippets of Obama’s speeches in the background, it dawned upon me that being an effective communicator isn’t what Senator Obama is all about. Hilarious can accuse Obama on being short on policies and plans (i.e. ‘You campaign on poetry, but you govern in prose.’ ), but Obama offer more than just policies. He offered hope, and something for the people to believe in, the ability to be bigger than themselves, and to do more in spite of what they are. Never since listening to the speeches of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, have I seen a politician who can inspire so much. Now I believe he stands a chance, and I’ll glady cheer on Senator Obama, even though whether he becomes President of the United States or not, it probably wouldn’t have much effect on me over here in this country.
Hilarious may claim she’s more experienced, may have been more savvy and ready to rule, but in the last 150 years, one of America’s greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, has hardly the experience of some of his peers when he campaigned for President. And if Hilarious talks about experience, then we need not look further than the White House in the person of Dick Cheney. ‘Nuff said!
The MTV reminded me, that in the movie ‘Enemy At The Gates’ , when Khrushchev ask what else can be done now that intimidation and execution has failed to rally the people of Stalingrad, and one of the cadre replied: We give them hope, comrade.
Yes, hope, and something to believe in. That is what Senator Obama offers to the American people.
Sadly, as I watched the MTV, I also felt that if Obama is a Singaporean, then he would fail dismally. Because for a speaker to be successful, you need an audience of similar capacity. I do not think I would find a receptive audience in Singapore, much less politicians of this calibre, who would probably come with a lower price tag.
Lyrics here:
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can. Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores
and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can. Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized;
women who reached for the ballots;
a President who chose the moon as our new frontier;
and a King who took us to the mountain-top and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality.
(yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can…)
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can. Si Se Puede
(yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can…)
We know the battle ahead will be long,
but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way,
nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
We want change!
(We want change! We want change! We want change…)
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant.
We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check.
We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. We want change!
(We want change! I want change! We want change! I want change…)
The hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA;
we will remember that there is something happening in America;
that we are not as divided as our politics suggests;
that we are one people;
we are one nation;
and together, we will begin the next great chapter in America’s story with three words that will ring from coast to coast;
from sea to shining sea – Yes. We. Can.
(yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can…)