Hi all,

Typing a quick post from the free wifi access at The Forum Mall (Bangalore) to wish you all a very happy Republic Day! I know its kind of late, but still, better late than never.

I would like to, on this occasion, to reciprocate Dr A P J Abdul Kalam’s message on this day, like Sandil on Mutiny.in

1. Wherever I am, a thought will always come to my mind - What can I give?

2. Whatever the mission I will do, my motto will be to work with integrity and succeed with integrity.

3. I will always remember that my winged days, be not spent in vain.

4. I realise I have to set a great goal that will lead me to think high, work and realise the goal.

5. My greatest friends will be great human beings, great teachers and great books.

6. I will firmly believe that no problem can defeat me; I will become the captain of the problem, defeat the problem and succeed.

7. My National Flag flies in my heart and I will bring glory to my nation.

Published at Rediff.

Signing off, since my battery is low. Have a great year India!

Tags: India, republic day

getting stuck in traffic…

i want live traffic
reports!

im new to the city…

i want
directions!

i want auto fares, bus routes, and car
pool information as well!
Yes, and now its possible.

If you don’t know about it already, its high time you knew Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re from Bangalore, Hyderabad or Chennai, you can get directions, you can get live traffic reports, and you can get them as SMSes on your mobile!

Bangalore Transport Information System, or BTIS, gives you live traffic reports - where’s busy, and where’s not; whether its offpeak time, or peak time; whether there is a road block, or not. It can also provide directions, along with bus routes. It can also help you to carpool. And best of all, all this can be accessed by SMSing! Apart from these, the website also provides information on the city traffic, safety regulations, rules and so on.

A project by Mapunity and Airtel, the online Transport Information System concept began with their pilot project in Hyderabad. Immediately, BTIS was launched, and now Chennai is in the beta stages.

When Live Traffic is clicked, you get a map wherein the roads are marked with green, orange, or red buttons. Green means that the traffic is ok. Orange means that the traffic is moderately high, and Red means that the traffic is very high, and most probably blocked.

If you want traffic directions, go to Directions, and enter the place from where you want to travel, and you destination. Then click Go and you’re in business. The map shows a line, which is the path you must take. It also displays the distance, average auto fare, and bus routes. You can zoom in on areas. You can get the directions by SMS as well.

Best of all, if you have GPRS enabled on your mobile, you can get all features of BTIS on your mobile. Like a semi GPS!

Currently, Mapunity has these information systems for Bangalore (BTIS), Hyderabad (HTIS), and Chennai (CTIS). Well,
next time you’re in doubt about directions, or if you want a quick check on traffic before you go, or if you want to research side streets to use, you know where to go

Technorati Tags: BTIS, HTIS, CTIS, bangalore, hyderabad, chennai, traffic, bangalore traffic, traffic problems, directions, car pool, auto fare, bangalore traffic information system, traffic information system

Hi all,
There has been a mail circulating with the title “must see slideshow ….world is ending” and the mail body goes like this -

As per Nostradamus world will end in 2012 and the start of the end is march 2008, look at the slide show to unreveal the future events. click on the link below and login with your gmail.
http://www.freewebs.com/venkateshshenoi/index.html
regards

Do not click on the link

Do not provide your email id or password in the fields mention in the site, if at all you open the site

This is a phishing attempt against your Google account. It looks like the popular Google owned social networking website Orkut and asks for your Google account id and password to log in. Even the mail says “login with your gmail”. Once you enter your email and password, you are redirected to a page which looks like the Orkut-About Us page. And the information you provide (email and password) is sent to this guy’s email address.

Since I whole heartedly disagree with such stupid, hopeless and desperate phishing attempts, I hereby declare this phisher’s email address for public abuse

The email id of this phisher is kart_willshire@yahoo.com

This can be obtained by viewing the page source code.

Feel free to hurl abuses at him Also hoping that a few thousand spam bots will gather his email address from here.

Anyway, I’ve already reported this site to a few anti-phishing directories, and Google. Hopefully, his site will be removed in a couple of days. But until then, please spread this message. Stumble and Digg

Technorati Tags: phishing, google phishing, google account, hacking, phishing attempt, must see, slideshow, world ending, nostradamus

Hello all,

One of my blogging pals forwarded this YouTube video to me, and I thought that it conveyed a very important message, rather than just being hilarious. Go ahead, and watch it, and scroll down for my comments, and after reading, please do add your own comments.

Yes, I know it was damn hilarious. It was fun to relate to most of the stuff said in the video, and glimpse back like baboons and exclaim "Oh my God, thats pretty amazing true!".

But did you get the final point? The video, like many of its predecessors, are questioning whether Web 2.0 is a bubble which could just break like that. From what we’ve seen so far - the rapid expansion - it could certainly be a bubble which could break at any moment. But how could it break?

Either, something major like a 9/11 could happen again, bringing about a paradigm shift of technology and cause the bubble to burst. Or, Web 2.0 might give way for something more radical and dynamic. Or even a massive discovery in terms of hardware could bring about a shift.

What do you think? Is what we see and use everyday, Web 2.0, a bubble? If so, what will cause it to burst - economy? War? Development? Technology? Post in your comments through the comments field.

Adios until ma next

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, new media, web 2.0 bubble, video, fun

Files missing?
My Computer not opening?
Programs not opening?
Installations not occurring?
Task Manager not opening?
System deadly slow?

If your case can be matched with the conditions given above, in all probability, you’ve got the Autoit.BD worm, better known by a file it deposits in your C:\ drive, Funny UST Scandal.avi.exe. Pretty annoying. Almost nothing you can do. Only NOD32 v3 with updates can detect this trouble maker worm. Kaspersky can detect, but cannot remove. AVG, Norton, Avast! - all don’t even detect the virus.

Wait! Don’t format your system yet! Its a pretty simple virus to remove, and won’t take more than 10 minutes. It is recommended that you start up in Safe Mode before you do the following steps to remove the virus -

[scroll down for a file which automates all this]

1. Download and install TaskKiller (326 KB freeware). We’re doing this because we need to remove a few tasks running, and Windows Task Manager (Alt + Ctrl + Del) gets killed by the virus
2. Run Task Killer, and a red skull icon will appear on the system tray
3. Left click it, and click Processes
4. Select to kill these processes -
   • killer.exe
   • lsass.exe
   • smss.exe
5. Now open up Command Prompt (Start>Run>command). Type each command and press Enter to run it -
   • cd\
   • attrib -h -s smss.exe
   • attrib -h -s autorun.inf
     [NOTE : Type each command exactly as its given here]
6. Open My Computer and go to C:\ or whichever partition in which you’ve installed Windows.
7. Delete the following files -
   • smss.exe
   • autorun.inf
   • Funny UST Scandal.avi.exe
8. Go to Command Prompt again. Run this command -
   • attrib -h -s smss.exe
9. Go to C:\Windows or wherever else you’ve installed Windows, and delete the file smss.exe.
10. Now, go to C:\Documents and Settings\All users\Startmenu\Programs\Startup and delete the file lsass.exe.
11. Open Registry Editor (Start>Run>regedit)
12. Delete the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\
    Microsoft\WindowNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon=shell(killer.exe
13. Delete the key  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\
    Microsoft\windows\Currentversion\Run=runonce(c:\windows\smss.exe)
14. You’re done!

OR, you can just download a remover file : Download Autoit.BD remover

• After downloading, unzip, and run the exe file.
• Then, do the steps 11, 12 and 13 as mentioned above.
• You’re done

Thanks to fs6519 for recommending these steps, and making the remover file.

I hope that this post was useful. Cheers

Technorati Tags: autoit.bd, worm, funny UST scandal, fs6519, removal, worm removal, virus removal, installation stopping, task manager not opening, smss.exe, Funny UST Scandal.avi.exe