Song Review:Stranger by Hilary Duff

The music is really good.Hilary Duff has outdone herself again,with her new song "Stranger".The tone has a melancholic tune that I really like.This just shows us ,how she has grown from being a teenager to a responsible adult.

Checked out the video also.No so cool though.I like the Audio,much more than the video.The video does not have the impact that the audio has.

Pretty lame though.The song talks about her boyfriend,whom she has spent a long time with,but later turns out to be a stranger,even though she has lived with him for a long time.She does not really know him... :)

I guess that sums up her song.If you have not listened to it,I suggest you do.

-Alphy

Airport Security!

If you have travelled in a plane post 9/11,you would have been surely frisked in the airports,and bags poked around to check for any liquid stuff that could be dangerous.I do agree with their security measures.It is there to save lives...

We are not allowed to take liquids and semi solid stuff on the airplane,but what about the food or the water that comes through the caterers.Are they scanned.what if some one pays one of these workers to look the other way,while some prick plants a gun,or some liquid flammable stuff that could look like water,but explode at the hands of a extremist.

What kind of measures are taken to avoid this?No one seems to know.A extremist determined to take lives will look for all possible options,so we need to think and be one step ahead of them.It is a hassel for the passengers,but nothing is much more important than security.

But man oh man clearing airport security on the first attempt,is much worse than like clearing a class test :)

phew...

-Alphy

Rational Developer Conference 2007

I recently attended the Rational Developer Conference 2007 in Bangalore.Man Oh Man was it a Bang.Truth be told,this is my first conference and it was interesting,especially for the goodies that they gave way :) made me happy to be part of the Conference.Hmmm...Jokes aside,they did talk about a lot of technical stuff,which made my head tizzy.

Rational has lined a lot of new version of all its product with version 7.1.0 to be released in the first quarter in the next year.They products being released are CC,CQ,BuildForge,RAM and a lot of other stuff also.Pretty amazing as what they are doing with Software!!.They explained the case studies as how they use CC in house to main the CC code itself.

They have this new CC Multisite Global Monitoring SW,which is like a God given gift for a CC Multisite administrator.This tools at present allows the administrator to Monitor the sync up,status of the scheduled jobs and every thing that a local admin can do remotely.Moving on to the future,they will be supporting even remote changes,that could make the job really easier for the admin and also reduce the admin task,so that the admins can focus on other really important issues,rather then remote login and try to debug the outputs.

BuildForge,it is really a tool to be used.If you have like 100 builds a day with each build on different platform and each teamlead hanging on your head with a reaper's blade,then BuildForge is the tool for you.It has the dependencies,distributed make and all the other stuff packed to the rim.It makes a real big bang with its introduction....

The Two day conference was a technical hurricane,with a lot of info but very hard digest in the short span of time....

Hoping to attend the future conferences toooo.

If you want any info regarding this conference,contact me....

One more thing,had a chance to visti Leela palace,which was the location for this conference :)


-Alphy

Busted wide open!!

Did you know that Google archives all your web search data.They never delete it from their archives,thanks to their cheap Hard drive storing capability.

They can pinpoint the exact content that you were searching,with your unique MAC id and bust you for anything.Just consider this information in the wrong hands and we are literally screwed.Why would they want to store so much data?

Their answer is that they want understand the requirements of the users and provide better customer solution.Hell yeah they do that,but they are bound by law to provide these informations to the local governments,I do not know,the extent to which they can procrastinate,but still this would be serious breach of privacy violation.Isn't? Why would I want anyone to store my search history and use it for any illegal activity.The most serious of them being,Identity thefts....

Check out this website http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/google-privacy.html ,this provides more information.

Informative.

-Alphy

My Computer HACKED!!

Have you ever faced a situation,when you PC becomes really sluggish,while accessing the network and you wonder what program was consuming so much CPU.you find that there are hardly two browsers open and the most CPU intensive program that was run,was in my brain trying to figure out,what the heck was happenin with my PC??

Then realization sets in,some one or some thing is accessing my PC :( .I do not know,how to trace the origin as to ,who was doing this but I had the presence of mind to go offline immediately.once I did that my computer just froze for sometime and returned to normalcy.Phew man I am glad that i do not use Internet banking and stuff that involves money,since I am wary person.

Now I had to find out,if the program still remained on my hard drive to intiate the activity again,if I went online.So I ran my antivirus and found some malicious program running on my PC.I did not have a firewall,so it is easy for even a rookie to access my PC.Man am I dumb?

Have to disable all the ports on my PC,else I am in for trouble.

I assumed that my PC was safe to a certain extent,since my IP cannot be seen on the public Network.NAT(Network Address Translation)Check out more info on this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation It has to do with exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and security stuff.So unless I initiate the connection ,the hacker would not have been able to access my PC,so I must have accessed some site or a pop up ,for this to happen.


check out this site http://www.auditmypc.com ,on how to find your private ipaddrees,even if you are behind a firewall(badly configured)

So I am still thinking,how should I go ahead with this.try to setup a firewall on my PC,or find something else....

So long,I reckoned,it would not happen to me,but now,It has happened to me....

CSI:Crime Scene Investigation

This is a new thing that I am doing here.Writing columns on the television serials that I watch.Don't fret,it ain't about the any long perrenial series,which cover crying mugshots for about an hour.I watch series like CSI and her sisters CSI:MIAMI & CSI:NY.They are really interesting,cos they make you think.

Have you ever watched Dr.House MD series in AXN?He is one of the most abnoxious person ever,but I like the way he works.He motivates in me the fact,always do the right thing and never ,ever feel sorry for what you have done."It should be that you think through before you act". Implusive actions,face the music at all costs.....

You must be thinkin,that I am not any different from a house wife rambling on what happened on yesterday nite show,with the neighbours.Well you are rite,we all do it.Only the topic varys.


Coming back to the review on the CSI series,well if you have not watched.it's time you watched the serial,to understand how science can be used to catch crooks .heh...

I am thinking that crooks would be watching this more keenly,than other,cos they would wanna avoid leaving clues in the crime scene... ;)

Load off u 'r Mind!!

When I started this blog,my friend said that I was toooo lazy to maintain even this.Truth be told,there are times that I am lazier than a donkey.But it seems that I like writing about abstract topics ,that evoke no meaning,but just occupy plain old space on my brain.It is good way of taking it off my mind,so I can think about other stuff..Phew takes a load of my chest right now!!!

Writing is a good remedy for those who think chaotically,It gives us a chance to show much required attention on important matters at hand,rather than focus on trivial thoughts.Some time I ramble ,so much here,that one my fnds had called me up and asked "Are you okay? cos your writing is like a drunk driving a lorry!!".

One even suggested yoga to get my thoughts in place,Yeah,like that is gonna help me.I don't like things to go slow,it has its up's and downs though!!!.So coming back to the topic in hand does writing help me to take a load of my mind.Yeah it Does!!!

-Alphy