fayax.info

Please spread the message. A recent phishing-like e-mail is going around and if users aren’t careful, their MSN account can be hacked! I recently received some e-mails on my MSN account which read:

Sender: xyz@hotmail.com (where xyz is in your MSN Contact list)

Subject: A friend deleted you from MSN Messenger!

Message:

I have just logged with my hotmail to www.MuyMSN.com that is a website where you can find WHO DELETED YOU from the MSN Messenger.
It´s incredible to find out that trusted friends deleted you
You might find out the same!!
Check it at www.MuyMSN.com

I think all of you know about Food Bank (http://www.foodbankmaldives.com).  We go to eat Pizza, Tandoori, Fried Rice…. It sounds a like a good restaurant… isn’t it? yeah, its a restaurant. But… visit their site and view the source code to find the META TAGS. They described as like a night club or a bar in the META TAGS. Look at the screen shot above..

The FALCON undersea cable disruption involved damage to at least five high-speed Internet submarine communications cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East from January 23 to February 4, 2008. Three of these disruptions were initially attributed by officials to accidents involving ship’s anchors; however, reviews of surveillance footage of the area by Egyptian authorities revealed no ships in the area.

Some have suggested something more sinister is afoot as the only two countries in the area not affected were Israel and Iraq  sparking conspiracy theories that are spreading through the Internet. Telecommunication companies fear more cable disruptions in the future. The incident has also called into doubt the safety of the Internet cable system. Others have said that cable cuts occur frequently, and the later outages are merely coincidence with no great effect on internet traffic.

Cables damaged

January 23

Although it was not reported at the time, there was a cut off FALCON on January 23. The FALCON cable system connects several countries in the Persian Gulf and India.

January 30

On January 30, 2008, news agencies reported Internet services were widely disrupted in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent following damage to the SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG Telecom cables in the Mediterranean Sea. The New York Times reported that the damage occurred to the two systems separately near Alexandria and Marseilles.

While the respective contributions of the two cable systems to this blackout is unclear, network outage graphs show anomalies at 0430 UTC and again at 0800 UTC. The cause of the damage to SEA-ME-WE 4 or FLAG has not been declared by either cable operator. A number of sources speculated these were caused by a dragging ship anchor near Alexandria. The Egyptian Maritime Transport Ministry reviewed one day of complete video footage beginning 12 hours before and through 12 hours after the service disruption, concluding the cause of damage was not surface craft as no ships were traced sailing through the area of the alleged wire damage. The Kuwaitis also do not directly charge sea-faring vessels, instead referring to “weather conditions and maritime traffic.”

February 1

Two days after the initial break, it was reported that the FALCON cable was cut between Muscat, Oman and Dubai, UAE. This cut was between different landing points than the January 23 cut, FLAG Telecom issued a press release later, stating the “FALCON cable is reported cut at 0559 hrs GMT on February 1, 2008. Location of cut is at 56 km from Dubai, UAE on segment between UAE and Oman.”

February 3

On February 3, 2008, Qtel reported that a cable called DOHA-HALOUL connecting Qatar to the United Arab Emirates had been damaged, causing disruptions in already damaged Middle Eastern communication networks. It became the fourth cable to be damaged in 5 days. The location of the break is between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das. The problem is said to be related to the power system.

February 4

On February 4, 2008 the Khaleej Times reported that SEA-ME-WE 4 had also been damaged at another location, near Penang, Malaysia. The date of this damage was not given.

 from wikipedia

If you’re someone who prefers to get tech help from real humans, using open-source software can be frustrating. Most of the support for these free programs is Web- or community-based, meaning you’ve got to know where to look for information or be skilled with Google searches.

And even those who do well with once-removed support need help from an expert occasionally.

Those who seek handholding will be glad to know that Mozilla, the folks behind Firefox, have started offering a live-chat support service that lets you interact with a knowledgeable volunteer. From the Firefox Support Blog:

We’ve set 3 hours a day, Monday through Friday, when our current volunteers can commit to being online to take questions.  As more people can commit to being around at other times, we’ll expand our hours.  This is when we encourage new volunteers to help, but you may find someone available to help at other times — we just can’t promise it yet.

Because it’s volunteer-staffed, the hours are limited. When it is available, you’ll see the graphic above that announces “We’re Open!”. English is the only available language for now.

The hours are:

• Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 12pm PST (GMT -8)
• Tuesday and Thursday: 1pm to 4pm PST (GMT -8)
• For Saturdays, Sundays and holidays see our after hours policy.

I was able to conduct a chat this morning a volunteer, asking about ways to make Firefox 2 and the beta version of Firefox 3 co-exist better. The two can be run on the same computer, but each time you start one after using the other, the version you launch acts like it was just installed, checking for extensions and importing settings.

And as you can see, the chat window even works in Internet Explorer 7!

The answer to my question, by the way, is that there’s no simple way to fix the problem. Fuzzyfox recommended using the portable version of Firefox 3b2. My solution: Only use Firefox 3b2, which I prefer over Firefox 2.

Firefox help is also available via a beta forum and a knowledge base.

Microsoft offers free phone support for Internet Explorer 7, but only for setup and installation. A fee is charged to solve other types of IE7 issues. There is, however, a step-by-step troubleshooting guide. You can also ask a question in the IE discussion groups.

UPDATED: Microsoft has quietly pushed back the third official service pack for Windows XP to 2008. Whether or not this is an issue seems to be one for debate.

This isn’t the only service pack that’s pulling a Godot, according to Microsoft’s Service Pack Road Map. The second service pack for Windows Server 2003 has been pushed back from late 2006 to Q1 of 2007.

Service Pack 3 for Windows XP was long-believed to be planned for mid- to late-2007 release. It was largely going to be a collection of cumulative fixes and patches, IE 7, and .Net 3.0, although its contents were still up in the air.

Microsoft was not available for comment at press time.

Pushing the third service pack to 2008 leaves a four-year gap since Service Pack 2 came out. That’s not a good practice or message for business customers, said Mike Cherry, analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

“I don’t understand how on one hand Microsoft says it wants predictable releases of operating systems but on the other hand doesn’t see that the predictable release of service packs would be equally valuable,” he said.

Microsoft has refined its patching system through auto update, but there are still a lot of fixes to install since SP 2 was issued, he points out. “Granted, it’s done automatically, but it would be nice if it was all rolled up into one package and tested against each other,” said Cherry.

But Michael Silver, senior analyst with Gartner, said organizations are generally not in a rush for a new service pack.

“Support on SP1 just ended and there are a lot of companies that have not been able to get to SP2 yet because of application breakage issues or because it was low priority and they just haven’t gotten around to testing their apps,” he said.

Waiting longer for SP3 won’t bother most organizations, Silver maintained. IE7 just shipped and they’ll be more concerned with deploying that and the forthcoming .NET Framework 3.0.

There could be another reason, according to Rob Enderle, principle analyst with The Enderle Group: Microsoft doesn’t want to promote XP.

“They want to put all the focus on Vista and not have an XP service pack come out in a Vista launch year,” he said. “If they do a major refresh during the launch of a new OS, then people will get confused. They want the message to be clear, to move the customer to Vista and not patch XP.”

Microsoft seemed to confirm Enderle’s suspicion regarding priorities.

“Right now our priority is Windows Vista. We’ll have more information to share about the next service pack for XP after Windows Vista ships,” said the company spokesperson. He did confirm that a third service pack is planned for the first half of 2008.

Enderle said there hasn’t been a huge rise in demand for a third service pack, and he notes that by the time SP 3 ships in 2008, new machines will be coming with Vista installed.

=internetnews.com=

Do you need fake Viagra? Fancy having your privates enlarged? Perhaps you’d be more interested in donating an unscrupulous amount of money to an unknown Nigerian national? What? No? Not Interested!? Unfortunately that won’t stop faceless people from all over the world asking you, often repeatedly.

SPAM (junk e-mail) probably wouldn’t be half as bad if it were properly targeted, yet sadly a 12 year old girl is just as likely to receive such messages as a 40 year old man. Unfortunately an even greater problem is the quantity of messages, with some people receiving upwards of 1000 junk e-mails per day!

For many, dealing with the constant influx of junk e-mail has become a nightmare. Until laws are strengthened and legal action taken then little is likely to change. So what can ‘you’ do? ISPreview has pooled information from around the Internet and come up with a few helpful tips. While nothing can completely prevent SPAM, some of these should at least help to cut it down. Read more »

Surf Junky is a SCAM!

Surf Junky Bans Those Near Payout!

Yeah, so you like Surf Junky. You won’t like it any more when you reach a $25 balance. Once you get to that amount of money, Surf Junky will mark your account for deletion.

That’s right, deletion. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Surf Junky will accuse you of using illegal programs to inflate your payout rate regardless of whether or not you actually used them. You will be blamed for this no matter what you do, even if you are following all of the rules. This is how they plan to silence everyone.

Ok a lot of you heard about SurfJunky here, well apparently Surfjunky might not be paying out as promised.. You might want to check this out, if this is the case we need to do something about it.

PC-industry watchers have long speculated that struggling Gateway would eventually be purchased -- it was just a matter of time.That time has come. Taiwan’s Acer is buying Gateway for $710 million, which will make Acer the No. 3 computer maker, behind HP and Dell.

From the Associated Press:

Acer said Monday it is offering to buy Gateway for $1.90 per share in a deal expected to close by December, pending regulatory approvals in Taiwan and the U.S.

The offer price amounts to a premium of 57 percent to Gateway’s Friday closing price of $1.21. Gateway traded at $81.50 in 1999.

The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both Gateway and Acer and is subject to standard closing conditions, it said.

The deal will create a multi-branded computer company with over $15 billion in revenues and shipments in excess of 20 million units per year, Acer said in the statement.

You can read the official news release here.

And while that’s going on, Gateway separately will move to buy Packard Bell.

Computer maker Gateway Inc. on Monday said it will exercise its right of first refusal to acquire the parent company of Packard Bell BV, a European computer vendor based in Paris.

The shares are held by Lap Suhn Hui, who sold eMachines Inc. to Gateway in 2004.

Gateway acquired the right of first refusal as part of an agreement with Hui that waived some non-compete arrangements when he bought Packard Bell BV.

Acer is succeeding where Compaq Computer Corp. failed in the late 1990s.

Struggling to compete with the direct-sales model of Dell, Compaq tried to buy Gateway at one point. The companies had reached an initial agreement, and their respective PR staffs had drawn up news releases and were preparing for a big announcement.

But Gateway founder Ted Waitt walked away from the deal at the last minute, reportedly because he decided he didn’t want to work for Compaq’s management team.

Gateway also owns the eMachines brand, which it bought in 2004.

Gateway, now based in Irvine, Calif., began as Gateway 2000 in a Sioux City, Iowa, barn in 1985. It often played on its agrarian roots, with marketing and packaging the evoked Holstein cattle.

Update: Looks like Gateway will keep its familiar black-and-white packaging. The brand stays, says Acer.

People fearing they might miss Gateway’s signature black-and-white dairy cow PC boxes after the company is acquired by Acer Inc. have little reason to worry: Acer not only plans to keep the Gateway Inc. brand just the way it is, the Taiwanese company hopes to expand it.

“A strong U.S. brand such as Gateway’s can be expanded overseas into other markets,” said Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer, in a video feed at the Taipei news conference to announce the deal.

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, has, along with others like Richard Stallman, literally changed the world of software forever. Linux-based distributions seem to pop up every day, while more and more devices now run Linux at their core, from mobile phones to inflight entertainment systems, to the world’s mission critical server infrastructures. Linux-based distributions seem to pop up every day, while more and more devices now run Linux at their core, from mobile phones to inflight entertainment systems, to the world’s mission critical server infrastructures.

The development of the kernel has changed, and Linux is just getting better and better. The development of the kernel has changed, and Linux is just getting better and better. However, with a community as large and fractured as the Linux community, it can sometimes be hard to get a big picture overview of where Linux is going: what’s happening with kernel version 2.6? However, with a community as large and fractured as the Linux community, it can sometimes be hard to get a big picture overview of where Linux is going : what’s happening with kernel version 2.6? Will there be a version 3.0? Will there be a version 3.0? What has Linus been up to lately? What Linus has been up to lately? What does he get up to in his spare time? What does he get up to in his spare time?

Complete Interview

If you’re an amateur to the web world specially web hosting then there are many decisions you have to make. Hosting provides the concrete base on which every E-business works as well as blooms. There are numerous choices available in the market but it’s the Linux and Windows hosting which heads the list. Everyone has their own knowledge bag according to which they govern their business but which is profitable to you may not be profitable for someone else. That’s why majority of the people are in trouble waters while choosing the hosting server for their business. Let’s delve into each hosting and get the clear picture. The usual cost involved in running a server generally doesn’t affect the cost of complete web hosting package. Windows Hosting is owned and developed by Microsoft whereas Linux is an open source and free too. The crux is that using Windows Hosting can be more expensive at times but it has its own benefits too.

According to the common myth people assume that because their computer runs Windows they too have to buy Windows hosting package. But this myth is absolutely wrong. You can normally access your web account through FTP or a control panel and both the servers support these methods. But the major difference lies in the FTP commands that are somewhat different in Linux and Windows. In short, occasionally when you try to get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message. Still, this won’t happen very often. Linux and Windows Hosting provide same features that include PHP, mySQL, POP3 and many more. The major difference arises when you want to create your site using Access, Windows Streaming Media, ASP, .NET environment, FrontPage or any other Microsoft technologies. Then you’re bound to use a Windows as your hosting server. However, in Linux there is a limited support for these technologies and what all are available are very expensive. That’s why it’s wise to think twice before selecting a hosting server as shifting from one server to another can be very hard.

The next points to argue are the reliability and stability of the servers. Windows is far more insecure in comparison to Linux. Windows is widely used operating system for home PC’s but not Linux. However, Linux is equally insecure as whooping number of successful hack attempts have been made on it till now. Thus, in the end we can say that the security of both the servers usually depends upon the competency of the system administrators. Herein, if you’re security minded then you’ll choose the best and secured hosting company irrespective of the chosen server. Now discussing the performance there isn’t much difference between the two. Linux is faster than Windows as Linux is loaded with extendable implementation. Whereas Windows tries to provide “’all in one” package which isn’t fruitful at times. There isn’t much difference between both the servers but in terms of performance Linux outshines Windows.

Thus, if you’re hunting for the server for your E-business then think before you jump on any conclusion and don’t leave any stone unturned.