Statue of morality…

Amen! Sitting at my desk, this guy goes well with the book I’m reading these days - O’ Jerusalem by Lapierre and Collins. A tale of how people have killed each other for centuries over that unfortunate patch of land. All under the pretext of religion and some invisible creature called God…

The day is not too far when Bombay (yes, Bombay) will have it own colossal landmark - the statute of Shivaji. The days of liberty aunty are over. Here comes our very own… It worries me.

• Shivaji on a horseback. In the middle of the ocean!

• I always thought French women were supposed to be hot. How come he gets to be 4 feet taller?

• If they don’t find a suitable island or if they don’t have an environmental clearance for one… they might build the statue on the Haji Ali island!

• Marine drive would no longer be a romantic place for lovers. Sitting by the promenade, would we dare hold hands.. The beaming statute would remind us of a namesake terrorist organization!

• Why do we have to compete with them like this? Manhattan has 13 metro lines, Bombay has 3 water clogged ones. NY boasts of a world class airport. We, of a slum ridden one. My flight was once delayed by an hour, as dogs were running loose on the runway at the Bombay airport. No kidding. This happened again two days ago - as my mum tells me.
• Can we not use those 100 crores to build something else? What about the century-old ailing drainage system of this city. Can’t we fix that? Or buy 300 new BEST busses; Get thousands of private cars off our streets. Ah no, thats too boring a way to blow off tax-payers money.

• Remember Michael Jackson and liberty aunty? As a kid I was in awe of that video. Esp for the CG effects where they morph people’s faces towards the end of the song. Is Rajnikant going to do a song-n-dance atop Raje Shivaji?

• Why an icon from the past to inspire us? Why can’t we build something futuristic instead. Like a replica of our PSLV? It saddens me to see how little coverage such items get on our news. We put 10 satallites in space and Khali steals the show!

A few recent books [1] [2] left me with the impression that India and Hinduism has always been more tolerant, argumentative and imaginative. If the recent incidences of intolerance [3] [4] are any indication, we are going backwards…

Finally, this picture adorns my desktop these days. Cute eh!

Alleys in cyberland

This is obviously a copy-paste. Well, learnt some important lessons.

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Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.

I don’t much care where, said Alice.

Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.

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Smlles liek fshi….

Just received a phishing email from someone claiming to be HDFC bank. This is a text-book example of phishing attacks. Here is the verbatim text of the mail:

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Dear Value customer,

For online banking customers,we want to update new operating system that will cover and protect your personal data from unauthorized access and from all illegal transaction and to reduce the rate of instance fraudulent website, you can join the services by updating your online account with the link below.

Update Your Account For 2008 Year Ended Summary

Be warned if you do not participate in this exercise, you have no right or whatsoever to hold HDFC Bank responsible, if you encounter any error in your online banking system.

Thanks.

—

Clues?

1. The mail is addressed as “Dear valued customer”. Genuine e-mails from banks usually use your real name.

2. The mail potrays a sense of unnecessary urgency:

>> Be warned if you do not participate in this exercise…

3. The link provided in the email points to a stupid URL:

http://studio621.com/logs/Upload/netbanking.html

Its a mockup of the bank’s website. Sigh! Its such a cheap mockup that too. See the original one:

http://www.hdfcbank.com/personal/default.htm

Wikipedia tells me that the worlds largest Phishing crime was orchestrated by some Valdir Paulo de Almeida by netting about USD 37 million! Well, he was arrested later…

HSBC now has this secure-id like device which is used, in addition to the username, password. The device they give is not from the original RSA corp though. This one seems more like a cheaper china-made version. (Yeah well, not politically correct to say perhaps, but still).

There are some rules I would recommend:

1. Do not keep all your eggs in one basket. Distribute your total savings in at least 4-5 different holdings - mixture of public sector and private sector banks.

2. Use Internet banking, but make sure you have paper records for each (say monthly or so). One person I know had a obscenely large amount of equity credited to his online demat account once with a leading bank. It went away in a couple of days though… Anyways, the point is, mistakes can happen. You need to have a risk-management plan.

Bone marrow transplant…

Trying to suck some marrow out of life,
Sometimes choking myself,
Sometimes wondering if your marrow tastes better than mine,
Sometimes wondering if any marrow is even worth it…

Bay area sights…

An effective way of job hunting here is to carry your resume and hit the streets… A tech company lurks around every corner. Here are some sights and ramblings from the silicon valley…

Netgear and Citrix Semiconductors on the Great America Parkway

BEA Headquarters - Downtown San Jose. If Larry Ellison has his way, this would soon be Oracle.

AMD…

Foundry networks…

The Tech museum of innovation..

Yahoo!

The VTA light rail…

… and it’s laptop trotting commuters.

The Bombay local railway is far more efficient But the ride on the light rail is quite comfortable… There are not many takers of this service as most people here drive to work.

Some things you cannot miss about this country:

* Their city planning and organization

* The humongous portions of their food

* The courtesy of most people (holding doors, yielding to pedestrians, profusely apologizing if they invade your space, no staring etc..)

* The civic sense of most people (no littering, no jumping signals, no jaywalking) .

* The higher need for personal space amongst people.

* The size of their stores and movie theatres (20 screens!), size of their parking lots.

* “How you doing?”, they don’t really care to know your answer though…

* Weird movies on television (mostly about aliens, zombies, chopped human bodies etc.)

* War propaganda and nationalism on news channels…

Tremendous planning, investment and nation-building has gone into what we see today. No wonder they are so protective of their borders… A dream we should aspire as Indians is to evolve our nation into a organized and mature society like this…