Get Smart. Resist Phishing Scams.
December 18th, 2007 by 5cents
Mal-aware is a portmanteau meaning being aware of malicious activity on the internet. In this article I’ll be tackling phishing scams (as relevant to Myspace accounts, though the general concept is applicable to eBay, Paypal and various other internet communities). I’ll try to be thorough yet simple enough for the layman to understand. Why? Because of a flood of bulletins from Myspace friends apologizing for their account being hacked (which isn’t what’s happening). So if you feel your account is being constantly hacked, you might want to take a look-see (this is a long article but an easy-read with most of the important points illustrated).
Now a lot of what I mention may be common-knowledge for the web-savvy but since most of the internet’s population is web-happy, not web-aware, it’s important to understand the basics. Indeed, just a rudimentary understanding of web addresses Read On! »
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A lot of the xenophobia sweeping the world these days stems from the simple fact that it is hard to understand what the hell that towel-head/spic/wop/sand nigger or chink is saying. This aside from all the obvious cultural differences. Still, just knowing how to say a few phrases in someone else’s language is a huge step towards understanding, tolerance and a moving rendition of Kumbaya.
The United States military has just decided to prohibit access to 13 social networking sites for all currently deployed personnel. These sites include Myspace, Facebook, YouTube and the like. So far, I’ve been unable to get the complete list of 13 banned sites. The military claims it’s an issue of bandwidth, namely, that with all the traffic the soldiers are generating with their emails, comments, pictures and videos, they are clogging the network and adversely affecting operational readiness and communication.
There’s a lot of noise these days about alternative fuels. Most of it is due to the fact that people are finally realizing the weather is changing rather drastically and that we humans might be responsible for it. In the US, there’s is a big push for bio-fuels, primarily distilled from grains such as corn (ethanol or E86). Elsewhere, it is created from other crops (that usually are inedible). There is also a big push to harness wind energy, hydropower and to a lesser extent, tidal energy. Does anyone else think these are stupid ideas? We’e practically making the same mistakes we made with fossil fuels in that we’re being short-sighted. I don’t know what asses came up with these ingenious alternative fuels, but here’s my limited (and perhaps uninformed) take on the aforementioned choices. 
iPod users will know that getting music off your iPod and onto any random computer is not allowed per se. On the surface, there is no apparent way to make such a transfer. This “limitation” has naturally been engineered into iTunes and the iPod to prevent mass music piracy. So without further ado, I’ll list my preferred workarounds.
We always joke about the rise of the machines. The Matrix trilogy reinforced that for the current generation. Apparently though, other worldly and informed people actually dedicated their valuable time (and I assume considerable resources) to do what stoners do on the couch with the fellas/gals. This made it to the BBC front page no less, article 
A little something Papa 5cents sent me from the sub continent.