Creating American Psychological Association (APA) Style documents

For a book that I am writing for, I have to submit a .doc file (ugh!) which follows the American Psychological Association (APA) style. Just getting the 70+ references to follow this style was a nightmare for me. With no help from APA and the MS Word community (if there existed one!), I had to turn to Latex to help me out.

The Apacite package was what I used. I thought that as usual it would be relatively a simple task to use Latex, but this time Latex really took away a lot of my time.

I had forgotten how to install packages on a Linux machine and so first had to re-learn that from here. Once I had that working, it just seemed impossible to get the references working!

Firstly, I had to see that all the URLs were enclosed with the \url tag (before that I realised after many hours that I had forgotten the \usepackage{url} directive in the tex file and Latex had not specifically complained about that!), then I added the \bibnodot{.} command to the end of each URL.

After these steps of making my .bib file look as similar as possible to the .bib file provided at the CTAN's site for Apacite, I still was not able to get it working. The worst part was trying to debug the "Runaway argument"!

I got an error which was similar to:

Runaway argument?
\bibitem
! File ended while scanning use of \@tempa.

\par

After some googling and after finding some useful sites for debugging common Latex errors (this one), I still was not making any progress. I had this idea of replacing all the indents (hex09) in my .bib file by good old space (hex 20), thinking that it would help. I don't know if that helped or not, but by this time, I was able to get a few references.

Simply rewriting some of the bibtex entries (at places where Latex complained) helped ultimately and the invisible errors were at last gone!

At the end of hours and hours of working on the format of the document, at last I got a pdf file which followed the APA style guidelines.

((UPDATE-START))
A lot of errors such as this:

?
! Undefined control sequence.
l.1072 ...ves/sum2005/entries/turing-test/}\bibnodot
%

were flagged both by the CUI and GUI (Kile). Just ignoring them produced the .pdf file nevertheless.
((UPDATE-END))

BUT, Latex's promise was the EXACT OPPOSITE!

Latex promises that the writer does not have to worry about the style and can concentrate on the content only. It promises the flexibility of different styles just by changing a few lines or so. Well, Latex did not deliver that promise to me in this case.

But if I had taken the other route of working on the style while using a Word document, surely I would have gone mad by now and would not even have got close to finishing the task.

Now I have a few more simple steps:

1. convert pdf to text (pdftotext)


2. copy the text to MS Word (or Open Office)


3. do the final edits since pdftotext would not have done a neat job


4. paste all the figures and create tables and


5. that is it!

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Mails from the future

I wonder if anyone else has noticed this. Some of the spam that I receive is dated years away from now. For instance I received spam mails dated with the year as 2037, 2030 !

Some bug in the spammer's engine?

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Well, I'll see you in a few minutes, ol' buddy!

27 March, 2007 (9:43am)

RIP dear Kuku.

--------------------------------------------------
Hobbes: I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night!
Calvin: Hey, yeah.

Calvin: Well, I'll see you in a few minutes, ol' buddy!
Hobbes: I'll be right there!
--------------------------------------------------
Bill Watterson.
Released on: Sunday, Oct 22nd 1989.
The Calvin and Hobbes Searchable Database

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Dining in and around Fairfax

To make it easier for me, let me keep adding URLs to interesting places to eat in and around Fairfax city.

This website lists a lot of interesting places in Herndon where one could try different tastes.

Vegetarian places from the 'Veggilicious' website.

Friendly Reminder: "Eat to live, do not live to eat!"

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This is no longer a 'beta' product !

Just noticed on the dashboard - Google's announcement that this is no longer a 'beta' product!

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Cool Web Tools - creating a Google map of the route you walked/hiked/biked/ran/swam/etc.

Found this at a posting on a birding forum. (oops seems that the 'return' key is no longer supported by Blogspot and so this might end up being one long line!) Will return back later.....

I do not know what the problem is and where it is. Anyways I thought this would be a good reason to blog in HTML rather than plain English.

The problem: You walked/hiked/biked some place and want to know the distance that you travelled.
The Solution: this website!
It displays a UI which is the same as what you see in Google Maps and allows you to chart your route on it while displaying the total distance covered so far. Problem solved!!!

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Firebug

Firebug is an excellent tool to debug website code and also to analyze websites. I recently found some nice video tutorials at their documentation site.

From there I got to know about this PHP/Ajax programmer's blog which seems pretty interesting.

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Networking Cars !

This would be a big paradigm shift in our day to day lives. The idea is that all cars should be able to communicate with each other and to roadside Tx/Rx stations.

This month's IEEE's newsletter "The Institute" describes the standards for "car talk".

In the new world of networked cars this will be the scenario, your car will be aware of all the cars around it, their speeds, acceleration, deceleration, braking etc. If the car in the other lane tries to move into your lane, your car being in its blindspot, both the cars will recognize that situation and avoid the collision (by alerting the drivers perhaps).
As your car passes by a roadside information pole, it will be updated with the traffic conditions up ahead. Accidents on a road, major blockages and all such related information will be beamed to your car and you will be able to take a decision on an alternate route.

Sounds great !!!

To enable this scenario new standards have been developed and are called the IEEE 1609 suite of WAVE standards. WAVE here stands for Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment.

One of its promises is a simple technology change about which I think a lot (I almost led myself to believe that it was my new idea.) This simple idea is the idea of the traffic light signals being more than visual. Directional radio waves emitted by the traffic lights can "speak" to one's car and inform about whether it is ok or not to cross the intersection. WAVE will enable this simple idea.

If the system is integrated with the engine controls, the police might be able to over ride the car controls completely and take over the car of the runaway driver and stop it safely.

There is always a price to pay for new changes. This system will not only mean that a monetary price will have to be paid to have all that infrastructure in place but there will also be a loss of privacy, perhaps.

Security of the data will have to be a key concern. It must not be possible for one car to purposefully mislead the other car; or for some prankster to interfere with the waves of traffic lights.

The possibilities seem endless and so does the abuse. But nevertheless it sounds exciting.

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The visitor

Not once did he flap,
the visitor who came to check by.
while hundreds of pigeons took off,
flapping, turning, circling and restless,
all exploding into flight.

Between one ledge and the other,
a thousands flaps were heard.
but not once did he flap,
the visitor who slowly disappeared in his soar.

(c) Deapesh.

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Spam and Weather Advisories

Noticed recently that pump and dump spam was using text from some weather advisory.

The IP address I got it from was 67.199.231.212 (no information available on this IP address) and then relayed to 24.150.209.12 the address of which is Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada. The address matches the weather advisory. Perhaps this content was cached on the computer.


The particular one that I received used the following weather advisory content.

ONE OF THE COLDEST AIR MASSES OF THE WINTER SEASON HAS SPREADSOUTHEASTWARD FROM CENTRAL CANADA. A LATE SEASON ARCTIC BLAST ARRIVING IN WESTERN MAINE ANDNORTHERN. THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PADUCAH, KENTUCKY HAS ISSUED AFLOOD WARNING FOR THE FOLLOWING RIVERS. THIS LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL STARTSPREADING SNOW INTO THE REGION WEDNESDAY MORNING AND SHOULD ENDBEFORE WEDNESDAY EVENING. STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS BEHINDTHE FRONT WILL PREVAIL OVERNIGHT. STAY TUNED TO NOAA WEATHERRADIO OR YOUR LOCAL MEDIA FOR FURTHER STATEMENTS AND POSSIBLE UPDATEDFORECASTS. THIS LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL STARTSPREADING SNOW INTO THE REGION WEDNESDAY MORNING AND SHOULD ENDBEFORE WEDNESDAY EVENING.
AVOID SERIOUS CONDITIONS SUCH AS FROSTBITE AND HYPOTHERMIA BYKEEPING WARM. A SNOW ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM EST TUESDAY. LIGHT SNOW POSSIBLE WEDNESDAY. SEVERE WIND CHILL VALUES WILL SET IN LATETONIGHT AND TUESDAY MORNING.
A WIND CHILL ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN WIND WILL COMBINE WITH COLDTEMPERATURES TO CREATE DANGEROUSLY COLD CONDITIONS FOR EXPOSEDSKIN.
THE GREATEST IMPACT BASED ON THE CURRENT TIMING IS FORTHE SNOW TO AFFECT THE AFTERNOON AND EVENING COMMUTE ON WEDNESDAY.
A WINDCHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 6 PM EST TUESDAY.
A LATE SEASON ARCTIC BLAST ARRIVING IN WESTERN MAINE ANDNORTHERN. IF YOU MUST GO OUTSIDE. COUPLED WITH THE STRONG WINDS, THIS SHOULD PRODUCE WINDCHILL FACTORS REACHING AROUND ZERO COME TUESDAY MORNING. ONE OF THE COLDEST AIR MASSES OF THE WINTER SEASON HAS SPREADSOUTHEASTWARD FROM CENTRAL CANADA.
WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 6 PM ESTTUESDAY. A DRY COLD FRONT IS MOVING FROM NORTH TO SOUTH THROUGHTHE MID ATLANTIC REGION.
THESE STRONG WINDS COMBINED WITH BITTERLY COLDTEMPERATURES WILL PRODUCE WIND CHILL VALUES FIVE TO TEN DEGREESBELOW ZERO LATE TONIGHT INTO TUESDAY MORNING.
CENTRAL AND SOUTHEAST NEW HAMPSHIRE THIS EVENING.
SNOW ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM EST TUESDAY.
THE CORE OF THE COLDEST AIRWILL BUILD OVER THE REGION TONIGHT AND TUESDAY.
WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 6 PM ESTTUESDAY. WIND CHILL VALUES WILL FALL TO 25BELOW ZERO OVERNIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY. LIGHT SNOW POSSIBLE WEDNESDAY.
THE HEAVIERSNOWSQUALLS WILL CONTINUE TO DIMINISH OVERNIGHT BUT STRONG WINDSWILL STILL PRODUCE POOR VISIBILITIES IN BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW.
THE HEAVIERSNOWSQUALLS WILL CONTINUE TO DIMINISH OVERNIGHT BUT STRONG WINDSWILL STILL PRODUCE POOR VISIBILITIES IN BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW.
TO THE LOWER AND MIDDLE TEENS IN URBAN AND COASTALAREAS. LAKE WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM EST TUESDAY.
IF YOU MUST GO OUTSIDE.
SEVERE WIND CHILL VALUES WILL SET IN LATETONIGHT AND TUESDAY MORNING.
A WINDCHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 6 PM EST TUESDAY. WEST TO NORTHWEST WINDS HAVE GUSTED TO 35 MPH. A WIND CHILL ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN WIND WILL COMBINE WITH COLDTEMPERATURES TO CREATE DANGEROUSLY COLD CONDITIONS FOR EXPOSEDSKIN. OHIO RIVER AT CAIRO AFFECTING ALEXANDER. LAKE WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM EST TUESDAY. SEEK MEDICAL HELPIMMEDIATELY OR CALL 911. EVEN COLDER LOWS WILL BE ON TAP TUESDAY NIGHT INTO WEDNESDAYMORNING AS WINDS DECREASE AND LOWS DROP INTO THE SINGLE DIGITS.

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Long days are back....

It no longer is dark when I reach home. Noticed it for the first time this Monday.

The winter retreats back slowly into the dark corners of the forest. While over the meadows the sun shines bright.

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Pathetic Greed - scam mails

I received the following pump and dump scam email in my inbox:

============
Subject: The answers are ``it depends,'' ``no, definitely not,'' and ``yes and no.'' O'Reilly and Associates do take a risk in publishing the Networking Guide,

Train cars derail, catch fire in KentuckyMassive fireDare to be stupid.
In fact, idea! Whencounselor that convinced me that I thought I was I
was 12 years old I had a guidance University bombings

XXX XXXXX ENTERPRISE (XXXXX.PK) new share for YOU!!!
We PROVIDE U ADVANTAGEOUS METHOD to earn a lot of money.

This XXXXX.PK share increases with every hour !!!
It has CONSTANT GROWTH POTENTIAL.

For more info about XXXXX.PK check broker web-site!!!
Hurry up YOU need get this XXXXX.PK stock on TUESDAY: 02/13/07

--WARNING--: Tomorrow will be more expensive!!! Do it!!!

TV Wants You. I thought I was Need fresh faces shows all major networks
ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX Now But seasons 1-5 have already
============

where I have replaced identifying information with "x".

My point: how greedy must a person be, to accept an email with a subject line as:

"The answers are ``it depends,'' ``no, definitely not,'' and ``yes and no.'' O'Reilly and Associates do take a risk in publishing the Networking Guide,",

with content as:

"Train cars derail, catch fire in KentuckyMassive fireDare to be stupid.
In fact, idea! Whencounselor that convinced me that I thought I was I
was 12 years old I had a guidance University bombings "

and some advice about investing money in it to be true?

Is there ABSOLUTELY NO sense in people? It would be REALLY interesting to know the kind of people who will accept such an email to be good advice!

This brings us to the question, to what levels of distortion can the scammers stoop to, while still ensuring that the stupid greedy people will neglect ALL warning signs in the scam email?

I hope there is some level of distortion and obfuscation, below which even the most greediest person will become suspicious of the intent of the scam mail.

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General Knowledge Quiz

Attending and winning quizzes was great fun during my school years (especially if the team you are on is the best team in the city). The questions in the quizzes during my school days were pretty much like the questions below, simple GK based question. But then during my college years, the quizzes became intensely "trivia" oriented. If you had not seen the third episode of a series, you would not know the answer kind of question, like the most important question below.

Answer these questions:

* When did Columbus discover the Americas?
* The first shot of American Revolutionary War was fired here ______.
* Which Bolshevik played a key role in the October Revolution along with Lenin?
* What did Eli Whitney invent in 1793?

(I could remember the answer to the last question only!)

and the most important question is:
what is the common theme between these questions?


Hint - He is the 'Defender of freedom', 'Advocate of liberty', the 'champion of liberty and justice', "it's a bird, it's a plane, no its not ...it's ..."

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Sometimes...

when you look back you wonder IF....

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iMac, Canon Camera and an argument lost

One of my friends had an iMac and late last night we got into a contest regarding the super-powers of an iMac (why do all such experiments have to begin late at night always?).

He said that we could get any device and his iMac will instantly recognize the device and without the need for any drivers to be additionally installed, make the device usable.

The first device we got, as starters was a wireless mouse. We plugged it in, and in a few seconds the mouse was working. Wow! my other friend said while I was still unimpressed.

The real test would be, I declared, if it recognizes and downloads photos from my camera.

I was certain that it was not possible. On my Linux machine, certainly the OS did not recognize the camera and rightly so, 'cause Canon was using a proprietary protocol to download the images. I had googled it up and read elsewhere too, that this was a task still not possible.

I had previously taken a look at gphoto2 and now, from what I recall, it was said that this task was not possible yet.

So, I went and got my camera and with a smile attached it to the iMac's USB port. iPhoto came on, it went into some searching mode, my smile got wider, the iMac owner showed some restlessness and my smile got even wider.

Ha, I said, it is not possible!

It had been a few minutes now, the software had only recognized the camera make and the number of photos in the card.

It is over, I said and started to explain about the proprietary protocol and why definitely there was a need for a driver to be installed.

Lo and behold then, iPhoto started displaying the photos ! (we had clicked on the "import" button by then).

Another late night argument, this one I lost.

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Historical Note

So shall it be noted, that on the 21 of January, 2007 at 13:04 hours, the city of Fairfax, VA had its first snowfall for this winter.

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Two 21 winds

It happened at last. The wind made its way into my room shattering the glass panels. I used many devices as I grew up to keep it out of my room and every time it had come knocking, begging to be let inside, I flatly refused it.

Every man has his room and so would I. It screeched, howled and spoke at lengths to me. But I persisted, every man has his own persistence and so did I.

We ended up speaking so much with each other, that I started looking forward to meet it. I would wait for it to knock and bang on my windows. As one eager child waiting for his Dad to get back home from work, I would leave every thing which I might be involved in, and would rush to the window to hear it speak.

At last it managed to convince me. To my credit, it took two winds to convince me. And they were not just any winds, they were the catch 21 winds (in a catch 22, one has two options, while in a catch 21 situation, (which is as you would have already noted, one less than 22) one has to choose just one option).

These two winds teamed up and convinced me at last that I should let them in so that they could explain everything to me. I had always been very curious and I really wanted to know. So I did let them in.

It was then that I realized that I had never asked them any question. What then would they explain to me? Well, it was too late, I had already decided to let them in. They broke the glass panes and came in.

I waited for them to settle down. They finally did settle down but did not speak anything.

Well..I said, so what is it?

"The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, The answer is blowing in the wind" they said.

(c) Deapesh.

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TED Conferences - II

Found that TED conferences has an interesting blog here and the video/audio files can be found here.

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TED Conferences

Thanks to Kiran T, that I was made aware of these brilliant short presentations from renowned people. The presentations I am talking of are of the presenters in TED conferences.

From their website, they describe this annual gathering as:

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration.

Some of the videos are available on Google Videos. Listen to a great talk by Richard Dawkins about how we perhaps have been evolved to live and rational in the middle world.

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Subject - Biography

Just as we have different subjects such as languages, social sciences, science, maths etc in schools, we should also have biographies as a subject. Every year students can learn about some great people. I guess students won't have this subject for all the 10 years or so of school life, but having such a subject during the formative years will indeed be valuable.

Who then will the students read about? Here the state and the education board will have a say. Such a scheme is prone to political/religious propaganda by the state/government, but then there is no other way. Surely depending on which government is in power, the definition of 'great people' will change.

Nevertheless, I think it will have a considerable impact on the students and will help shape their personality.

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Happy New Year

Another year passes while another starts.
Time you old friend and enemy, what do you hide for me in the folds of your robes?

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How convincing !

Got this in my inbox. The spam filter must have thought that it was helping me by not flagging this as spam ;)

============
Subject: Hey you ! Blind date on hold fw

Hey there bad boy! !! !!!


Hope you remember me! Erika!!!!
It’s been a while I know , but how funny, here I am again hehe!
Well well , I left to South America for 3 months. Me and the girls did a bunch of crazy stuff. Wanna see my pics, I’ve only got about 1000 of them!. Three of us got implants hehe!.

Ok OK!

See search for nickname: WetDesire
============

The link was to a website on geocities.com

Almost believed it ;)

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Where is clean comedy?

Androidparanoid complained that most stand-up comedy shows do not have any clean comedy in them here

This is what he says about one particular show:
* 60% of it was on sex or sex related.
* 35% of it was on the race, origin, ethnicity... most of it derogatory.
* remaining was what I would say normal jokes.

I agree completely. My issues with comedy not being clean and above the belt started in my undergrad years. Being very active in the inter-college competition scene, I would take part in numerous public speaking competitions and also would try to participate (and try to win) in stage competitions like 'Mad-Ads' etc.

But...but ...but alas, to win in stage competitions like MadAds, one HAD to be dirty. All the jokes had to be below the belt or at best on the belt. No clean funny jokes! And the worse part is that the audience and the judges enjoyed such stuff ! The fact that the judges were also students or from a comparable age group segment did really influence the way these competitions were judged and what it took to win in them.

I believed that to be able to be above the belt required real talent and a great sense of humour. To make jokes which were not clean was the easiest thing to do. I tried at times to win a prize based on clean jokes, but that never happened. I also grouped up with the best teams of other colleges to learn how to go about this whole thing, but would then drop out since all their jokes would be dirty.

For example, lets take the popular humourous stage event 'MadAds'. During my college days, the other colleges and their jokes for MadAds can be categorized as follows:

* my college - NIE -> we did not participate a lot in such events. (so did not win prizes in such events, so missed being the overall winners) I was personally against making dirty jokes on stage and wanted badly to believe that the event could be won based on clean jokes alone (talent where are you?).

* our rival college - SJCE -> they wouldn't mind being dirty on the stage. In fact they would go to such extents that their quiz teams would have explicit/dirty words in them, just to sound 'cool'.

* the medical college - MMC - well, what to expect from my Doctor friends, who read about human anatomy day in and day out!


And my BIGGEST complaint and point of frustration with MadAds was that the majority of jokes made would be based on feminine hygiene product advertisements !

I don't know what the scene in such inter-college competitions is these days. But I sure do hope, a bunch of really talented guys have changed the direction and steered it away from being dirty to good clean homour. I believe to be able to do so requires real talent. I hope the competitions are not swayed by the antics of the less-talented ones, who will always take the short-cut to success.

Or should humour be always dirty to be fun?
No, we just have not seen much of real talent. Most of the chaps have just followed the crowd.

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He feared the night - 1

He feared the night, really really feared it.

He would get into the safety of his bed early, as early as he could once the sun had set and would step out of his bed only when he was sure it was daybreak.

This had started out a long time back. As a kid his teacher had tried to explain about the stars that we see at night and what struck him was the falsity of the whole view. His science teacher had told the students in the class that the stars that we see today are the stars of yesterday and we could never see the stars of today, today. The star that he saw in the night, might not even exist at that moment. As a kid he was learning to believe in what he saw, now he was told that it was not always true. This scared him a lot.

This was the first instance which sowed the seed for the fear of the night. As he grew up and as he learnt and experienced more, his fear only increased.

He had asked his parents, questioned the many times to know if they too feared the falsehood of the sight of the stars. His Mom and Dad would get irritated and would brush him off. They would only say that it was nothing to be worried about. His little kid sister was too little to know the answer to his question. She had not learnt enough truths, that she could start recognizing the lies.

He had to find the answer himself and so many a nights he would go to his rooftop and would gaze at the stars for minutes. He would try hard to convince himself that what he saw was untrue. But that would be impossible, how could what was visible be untrue? It was visible, he could see it, others could also see it, then how can it be untrue?

It was the night, he assured himself, that was evil and untrue. It was when the bad magic would rule the world. It was a dangerous time, yes that is what the night was. In the darkness, when warm light was missing, the untruths would come to life. Magic, mystery would reign while logic and reason would die. The night which mocked at his sense of reality was a scary beast. He learnt that and he grew to scare the evil dark night.

(c) Deapesh.

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Securiteam's new terminology for a CAPTCHA!

The author (Gadi Evron) blogs on the Securiteam's website about what he has named to be a 'Reverse CAPTCHA'! The author in this blog states that images used in spam can be called a 'Reverse CAPTCHA'.

There are some problems in using this terminology!

The definition of a CAPTCHA by the CMU team is thus:
====
A CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade tests that most humans can pass, but current computer programs can't pass.
====
Somehow the tests such programs generate has also got the name 'CAPTCHA'. We shall accept such a nomenclature. Thus the distorted letters that we see and try to recognize have also been called CAPTCHAs.

CAPTCHAs are a kind of 'Reverse Turing Tests' (RTT), this is also noted in the Securiteam Blog.

Thus then, is a 'Reverse CAPTCHA' a 'reverse-reverse-Turing test' == 'Turing test'?

Turing Test -> (reversed) --> CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA -> (reversed) --> Turing Tests

No, the author rightly mentions that, his definition of a 'reverse CAPTCHA' is based only on the intent. CAPTCHAs were designed to stop the bad guys and allow the good guys, while image based spam uses the same concept to allow the bad things in.

The reversal in this case is only in the intent. Calling that a 'reverse CAPTCHA' is not the right thing causes it only confuses and muddles up the terminology.

Image based Spam is also an example of a CAPTCHA. Humans can pass it while machines can not. It is just an abuse of the original concept of CAPTCHA.

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Google, Worms and CAPTCHAs

At the recently held WORM 2006 workshop, Niels Provos (Google) in his presentation, informed us that CAPTCHAs were used by Google in preventing worm attacks.

Some worms (I don't recollect the details and don't have my notes handy now) use Google to search for email addresses to mail themselves to. Google used CAPTCHAs to prevent such automated web attacks.

Will update this post with more details soon.

UPDATE 4/29/2007:
Found the details. It was the Slaty Worm against which CAPTCHAs were used by the Google team. The research paper detailing this is titled "Search Worms".

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Technology Watch - Google Checkout

This holiday season, you would have noticed at websites, the offer of $10 off if one paid for the merchandise using 'Google Checkout'.

I was curious about it and clicked that extra link to know more about the service. Google is trying to make inroads into the web payment business.

Using 'Google Checkout', the customer pays the merchant through Google. Google stores the transaction information, the credit card details and forwards money to the vendor.

Advantages:
* One account for all the monetary transactions
* No more reliance on the vendor to keep the credit card details safely (we can surely assume that Google will do a better job of keeping the details safe)

Disadvantages:
* One more level of invasion of privacy by google. Google will now be able to keep tab on what one buys apart from all the information it already knows about us.
* Further helps Google to become one big company which wants to control everything

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Technology Watch - Yahoo email and maps

Yahoo is doing pretty well IMHO in providing competition to Google's gmail. I was able to check their latest feature in Yahoomail today.

I received an email with an address in it. Yahoo recognized the lines which had the address and with a click of the mouse allowed me to see it on their new Yahoo maps. Not only that, in the same map page, I could type in the starting location and Yahoo would give me the driving directions.

Pretty neat !!

And if you receive a phone number in the email, Yahoo also allows you to save the number in your contacts list.

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Spam and Wikipedia

If you read the post prior to this, you would know about the strange error message that I got on Samspade.org.

This was the strange error message:

============
ERROR: Unable to connect to for Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=f8a38150b440dab4e5aa41b8e373d75a X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (WinNT; U) Subject: mushrooms have more cc: fioday@aol.com cc: lacutepoet@aol.com cc: k0enig@aol.com cc: misstress22@aol.com cc: livvybird@aol.com cc: dinotto2@aol.com cc: catrice351@aol.com cc: sportstar3tk@aol.com This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --f8a38150b440dab4e5aa41b8e373d75a Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain pickle cured and coated in yellow cornmeal. his variation is also known as = peameal bacon, because in times past a mixture of ground yellow peas was us= ed for coating to improve curing --f8a38150b440dab4e5aa41b8e373d75a-- . for 70.167.151.46 ... Aborting
============

What did I do next? The very very obvious, I googled for the following sentence (without the quotes) "plain pickle cured and coated in yellow cornmeal. his variation is also known as".

The first hit was Wikipedia ! This Wikipedia article on Bacon has the exact sentence.

The other hits are also quite interesting. For instance on this site http://www.typotect.com/a/pix/pix-Pages/images.php?id=0 a similar piece of text appears. It appears as comment spam and the text is:

============
posted by: dry Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Grocery: 00637cad6139c633d2962282ef73ea86 Content-Type: text/plain X-Mailer: Eudora [Macintosh version 6.0a15] Subject: the ham in a brine to: jimmydy2j@aol.com to: print4u2@aol.com to: sndbutler02@aol.com to: gantwo@aol.com to: mpcbfamily@aol.com to: iynchwise@aol.com has been sweet pickle cured and coated in yellow cornmeal. his variation is= also known as peameal bacon, because in times past a mixture of ground yel= low .he9808@typotect.com
============

On this site http://www.joesportsfan.com/column.php?storyid=102
we again see comment spam, the text being:

============
Posted By t8241@joesportsfan.com :: September 14, 2006 @ 12:06:07 AM
often
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Evolution/1.0-5mdk
Content-Type: text/plain
Moked: 62f25a15e7aef27d13ad6ff229dbddd6
Subject: curing suitable
bcc: marciec67@yahoo.com
bcc: hazeltwinkle19@yahoo.com
bcc: ltcaohf@yahoo.com
bcc: michaelbutch@yahoo.com
bcc: bluedog420@yahoo.com
bcc: iynchwise@aol.com
bcc: jpjones@yahoo.com
bcc: maromar@lycos.com
bcc: dbanks@qwest.net
bcc: parchment@yahoo.com
bcc: titsnhips215@marten.com

anada, where it is simply called back bacon, or peameal bacon. n anada,
anadian bacon is traditionally unsmoked back bacon that has been sweet
pickle cured and coated in yellow cornmeal. his variation is also known as
peameal bacon, because in times past a mixture
============

We have seen very recently how spam messages were making use of English classic texts to pass through Spam filters.

Question Time:
* Is this attempt of using text from Wikipedia along the same lines?
* Why is email spam being seen in comment fields?
* Why is Samspade displaying email spam?

, ,

Samspade Problems

I wonder if I am a good story teller. I hope I am, 'cause I am going to tell you one.

Late evening today, when I was too tired to do any technical work, I was browsing around the web when a firewall alert, alerted me to the fact that my web browser wanted to accept connections from 70.167.151.46:5004.

That having piqued my curiosity, I immediately proceeded to www.samspade.org to find more about this IP address. It is another story that this IP address belongs to Cox Communications and that I still have no clue why my browser wished to connect to it.

At Spamspade.org another story was unfolding. As you might know the site has been experiencing some difficulties lately. It was down for some time and then came up with limited functionality.

I was quite surprised to note that my query for the IP address lead to a strange error message from Samspade. The error message being:

============

"ERROR: Unable to connect to for Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=f8a38150b440dab4e5aa41b8e373d75a X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (WinNT; U) Subject: mushrooms have more cc: fioday@aol.com cc: lacutepoet@aol.com cc: k0enig@aol.com cc: misstress22@aol.com cc: livvybird@aol.com cc: dinotto2@aol.com cc: catrice351@aol.com cc: sportstar3tk@aol.com This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --f8a38150b440dab4e5aa41b8e373d75a Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain pickle cured and coated in yellow cornmeal. his variation is also known as = peameal bacon, because in times past a mixture of ground yellow peas was us= ed for coating to improve curing --f8a38150b440dab4e5aa41b8e373d75a-- . for 70.167.151.46 ... Aborting"

============

I went back to their main page and again ran the query which again resulted in the same error message. I happened to notice that although I was querying for the 70.167.151.46 IP address, the results page on Samspade would have a different IP address in the title.

This can be seen in the image below.


I ran the query 3-4 times and every time I would get the strange error message and the title varied as follows:

Whois tr12g05.aset.psu.edu
Whois mailgate5.sitestar.net

Some sanity returned and now I started receiving an error message:

============
"ERROR: Unable to connect to this7587@samspade.org for 70.167.151.46 ... Aborting ..."
============

while the title on the results page varied as follows:
Whois 74.6.74.44
Whois 205.188.116.139
Whois 72.236.205.249
Whois 72.236.205.249
Whois 70.167.151.46

You would note that the last title in the list is the right one and that is what should have been displayed right from the beginning.

Wonder what is going on with Samspade ?

============
PS: Due to some bug in Blogger, after the first usage of any html tag, the line spacing goes for a toss. Thus after the first time I used the blockquote tag, the line spacing went for a toss and did not default back! bugs...

, ,

Fountain Pens

Not many use a fountain pen these days, at least not for daily writing.

I found this great web site which had a lot of suggestions and advice.

, ,

CAPTCHAs at Internet Storm Center

ISC ran a story titled 'Form Spam: Increasing the Attacker's work function'

To deal with spam they implemented a CAPTCHA. This was some home made CAPTCHA solution. They report that this led to a decrease in the number of submissions:

Our somewhat ugly home made captcha solution caused submissions to drop by about 30%, which wasn't acceptable.

Kinda interesting to note that the highly-technical geeky chaps did not want to solve a CAPTCHA !

, ,

Turn Indicator Colour

Simple Question:
what is the best colour for the turn indicator on vehicles?

I was used to seeing vehicles which had orange coloured lights for turn indicators and red coloured lights for brake light and tail light.

But now I see and get irritated by turn indicators which are ALSO red in colour! Isn't it better not to confuse the driver behind and simply keep the colours separate?

Worse than this is, the concept of using the brake light itself as a turn indicator!!! At least once I almost FAILED to notice that the car in front of me was signaling to turn since in that car, one of the brake lights turns into a flashing light (to indicate the 'turn') while the other remains a solid red.

I am not sure how much research has gone into this GREAT IDEA!!!!!!

, ,

Borat, Borat, boRAT

You must see the movie "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan". It is really really hilarious like all the millions of zillions of people are saying about it.

The theater I went to, had the audience laughing almost throughout the movie. Some people were laughing out so much that they started stamping their feet on the ground!! Claps would be heard every now and then from segments of the crowd. A must-watch movie to get great laughs.

The Question: How many of the people in the movie knew that this was for a movie?
A lot of websites are following up on this question. A good source for answers is "The Real Stories behind Borat". This site has collected various local news articles which report on the reactions of the people who were duped into being part of the shot.

Yes, duped is the word. Most of them reportedly had not read the fine print of the consent forms they hurriedly signed. There is also speculation on the internet that one of them will definitely sue the actor and his team.

About whether there was a script or not, this MTV article has this to say:

"There was no script. The movie is an experiment — a new form of filmmaking for an age in which reality and entertainment have become increasingly intertwined. Real events with real people push the film's fictional story, and when scenes played out in unexpected ways, Baron Cohen and his colleagues had to rewrite the outline."

Surely the whole shooting would have had a lot of hiccups. The team had a lot of problems with the law enforcement authorities reports the same MTV article:

In real life, the legally questionable activities of Baron Cohen and his colleagues often attracted the attention of local authorities. A warrant was issued for the actor's arrest in New York, and Baron Cohen was advised by police to leave the state when he tried to secure a room in a fancy hotel while his underwear was hanging out of his pants. Through it all, the actor remained in character as Borat - even when the Secret Service detained him outside the White House.

, ,

Solving CAPTCHAs

A Slashdost post indicated that humans are ready to solve CAPTCHAs for a very low price.

Somebody asked for a quote to solve CAPTCHAs in a 50 hour week on a freelancer recruitment website.
The average asking price to solve CAPTCHAs in 50 hours was 57$, which makes it almost a dollar for an hour. The least asking quote was 30$ (0.6$ for an hour).

The description for this job type is really vague. The number of CAPTCHAs to be solved is not specified. What is specified is the number of hours for which the human will have to work on solving the CAPTCHAs. I would expect a spammer to rather tell the number of CAPTCHAs that need to be solved.

Also there is somehow an implicit assumption that the CAPTCHAs are from a database or are generated by the software. It could very well be that they are relayed to the software application, in which case, the concept of 'finished the job' would not exist. The person who won the bid would have to be available for 50 hours, during which there could be high activity to no activity.

, ,

Guns - primitive solutions?

Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Guns - primitive solutions?

An interesting conversation with my Prof. led to the realization that guns are such primitive solutions to defense!

Many many generations back taking a life out, eliminating a life form was the solution to any defense or self preservation related problem. And unfortunately this primitive solution is used even today!

Most of the people with firearms reason out that self defense is the reason why they are in possession of one. But if this is true, then it is also worthwhile considering that the elimination of another life form for the self preservation of one is a solution which dates back to time immemorial and is thus an extremely antediluvian form of a solution!

Isn't it strange that better tools are not there? And if you reason out that there is research going on for such weapons, even then I am surprised that it has taken this long to even realize the need for such non-killing weapons.

I guess it can be accepted that taking the life of any life form should be the last resort in any case, in any developed society. For it guarantees everyone that basic right and fundamental right of life. Take this right away from some life form/s and it might be taken away from you too. The best way to guarantee that you always have this right is to ensure that every other living form has the same right without any kind of exception. (For it could be that as you treat some life form/s as an exception to this rule, you might be considered to be an exception by some other life form/s.)

So if we have agreed upon that, then the next step is to realize the primitiveness in the idea of taking away a life in order to defend oneself. Surely there are better ways to guarantee self preservation than this extreme step.

To attack is not the best defense in this case, surely not for an advanced society.

UPDATE:
The recent episode of the UCLA police using Taser, has brought a lot of focus on the usage of 'non-lethal' weapons. Wikipedia article on Shock Guns highlights the advantages and disadvantages of such weapons.

UPDATE:
The movie 'Lord of War' is about an arms dealer, Yuri Orlov, who is cold and cynical to the point that he says:
"They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails." ".

The movie ends with Yuri saying:
"You know who's going to inherit the Earth? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other. That's the secret to survival. Never go to war. Especially with yourself."

Guns, do we need them?

The lobbyists for guns say "Guns do not kill people. People kill people". Which has been countered by a similarly illogical statement: "Fingers do not kill people. Bullets do".

, ,

From the archives

Tuesday, August 31, 2004
The Thousand whispers of the Banyan leaves

they whisper softly to me...what I don't know.
and now, I don't go to the tree anymore.........


Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Brrrr....its cold again !!!!

Well the cold season has arrived !! Some were waiting for it some don't like it.
Last night I recorded 15C on my little thermometer key chain. I was wearing the jacket to school for the first time too. Late in the night it was really cold. The unprepared were shaking and shivering while the ones with the jackets were doing better.

That means from today onwards there will be more winter wear out in the school. That also means that soon I wont be able to cycle to school anymore and will loose my much much valued independence!!!!

, ,

nsl-school IM Worm

I recently received some messages with malicious links through Yahoo messenger from a friend.

These were the messages:
(I have replaced nsl-school.org with NSL-LINK and myglobal-news.com with MYGLOBAL-LINK.)
DO NOT RECONSTRUCT NOR CLICK ON THE LINKS

(10/27/2006 4:10:33 AM): never click into the links like something in this image http:// /dontclick.jpg !!!
(10/27/2006 4:11:12 AM): Screenshot of new windows version _ Windows Vista http:// /vista.jpg so cool
(10/27/2006 4:11:55 AM): Screenshot of new windows version _ Windows Vista http:// /vista.jpg so cool
(10/27/2006 4:12:42 AM): 1 of my vacation pictures http:// /vacation1.jpg
(10/27/2006 4:13:55 AM): Miss World 2006: http:// /MissWorld.jpg !!
(10/27/2006 4:15:09 AM): My pics http:// /mypics.jpg << (10/27/2006 8:50:59 AM): wtf is this ? wanna give me a shit ? http://NSL-LINK/?id=news Breaking news : school girls are kidnapped by the terrorists !! http://MYGLOBAL-LINK/?news_id=18388 (10/27/2006 9:04:21 AM): damn, she is so cute http://NSL-LINK/?id=miss_world After googling this for sometime I found out that this seems to be the activity of a worm which is affecting Asian users of Yahoo Messenger. Trend Micro calls this worm as WORM_SOHANAD.C.

Among the messages I received, you would notice that some were incomplete. Perhaps Yahoo is blocking these links, but I am not too sure if that is true.

=====================================
Trend Micro in their report on this worm mention:
In addition, when an Internet Explorer window having the title bar Mesothelioma, Asbestosis & Lung Cancer Information - Microsoft Internet Explorer is opened, this worm changes the said name with null.

(Rare Cancer + Google AdSense + Litigations + advertisements) Fraud:
Following the lead of 'Mesothelioma' I got to know of the findings of FaceTime Security Labs on their blog 'blog.spywareguide'. Their article on the very sophisticated KMeth worm can be read here.

This analysis caught the attention of a large number of news portals on the web and the story was splashed almost everywhere. The article shows how sophisticated the malcode writers' business model is. A real complicated fraud. If you read and understood the complicated fraud model, you would recall that depending on the country the affected user is, the page will display differently.

I guess that is what Trend Micro was describing when they said that Mesothelioma related page titles are changed to null. This of course is my attempt to link WORM_SOHANAD.C and Worm KMeth together. A google for 'nsl-school' revealed that most of the people who complained about this worm were Asians. If KMeth was designed primarily for the US then, why aren't there complaints/rants from US users?

=====================================
Anti-Virus Vendors and blocked URLs:
The only way an user affected by a virus/worm can know more about the virus/worm is by using a search engine. In this case, of all the words in the messages that I received, "nsl-school" is a characteristic word. So searching for this word on the web seems the best option. But alas, anti-virus vendors do not specify the link completely in their pages! As in this instance the anti-virus vendor has deleted the complete links. How then will an affected user know more?

Trend Micro's English language page on this worm does not mention "nsl-school" at all. While in their Chinese Version (Google translated Chinese version) for the same worm they forgot to block the URL in one instance which luckily allowed me to confirm that the messages were indeed sent by the SOHANAD.C worm.

, ,

The far away moon

In a far off world a moon shines.

I believe that it has the softest lustrous white glow. But it is very far away, so far that I will never be able to reach it. I have never seen it nor heard stories about it. But I believe that it exists and I sit and imagine about it when I am sad and disappointed.

The more I imagine about its beauty the more beautiful it becomes. The only problem with that is, that the more beautiful it becomes, the farther it drifts away from me. But I don't mind that because I like to imagine its beauty, its soft shine and the solace its beams provide.

, ,

what?

The boat gently rocked.

He drew out his lighter and lit his cigarette. I noticed for the first time that he was wearing gloves. Perhaps he was hiding some old scars from his violent Hungarian past. He had lost his family there I knew. So I preferred to stay mum and let him do all the talking. He was a good story teller I must admit. He went on and on and on with the story. My legs were beginning to go numb. I was sure I would walk with a limp for ever, after this long ordeal and my thoughts drifted to how my life would be if I was to become a cripple. Meanwhile he spoke of Guatemala.

I thought it would be good as the police surely would not line me up and I wounld not be their usual suspect for every felony that happened in my area. Yes, that would be great. I was getting tired of being taken to the police station every time some crime happened to be interrogated. No don't get me wrong, I like cops. I would've liked to have been a fed myself but.... Anyways then I was thinking about the next logical step when he interrupted my thoughts.

"Have you ever seen him?" he stared into my eyes intently and asked me, as if I was the key to the mystery. I shook my head and replied "No".

He repeated his question "Have you ever seen him?" and this time stared into the space. Nevertheless I again answered that I had never seen him but had heard a lot of stories about him from people. He simply smiled at me. I did not think too much about his smile but now realize that I made a mistake. I should have understood its implications, but you see I was almost blinded by my own reasoning, which I had no reasons to doubt. And don't tell me that you have never committed the same mistake, come on, we all have. The only difference is in the number of times we commit the same mistake.

He continued, "I hate tension. Tension is a killer."
"It killed my wife and my kids once. I was really tensed.", I wondered what he meant by that. I thought maybe he was getting delirious, it was easy to become so you see.

We were there in that small room and the violent shaking of the choppy waters shook everything inside the stomach so wildly that all one would want to do is to throw it all out. The blazing hot sun and the hunger added to the whole mess.

He mumbled something next. I strained my ears to hear that and I soon realised that he was singing a Turkish song. He wasn't speaking to me though he was looking at me. I didn't know what to do. I for sure thought he had flipped it, flipped it for real.

Luckily for me, he regained his senses. He asked for another cigarette. I gave him one. I was dying to ask him some questions. I thought this was the best opportunity to do so. And before he could go ahead with his story I asked him "Have you ever avenged a death?".

He laughed, he laughed for a good few minutes and then calmly answered "No".

I asked him if he was in prison before.

"You do some time, they never let you go. You know. They treat you like a criminal. I'm not a criminal."

I murmured that I agreed to that.

(c) Deapesh.

, ,

The Lake near my house

Sometime in the middle of cold cold February, when the moon is half full, a white horse takes off from the middle of the lake. People who were at the lake at such times have seen the horse and swear that it was not their imagination.

The faint moonlight adds to its splendour and to its whiteness. With a head that is bent it appears from the lake and without turning around or even moving its head, it slowly takes off into the sky. It is said that if one mounts the horse, then the horse takes the rider to the land of the rider's dreams. In such a land, the rider will find all his/her dreams come true.

Far far away beyond the clouds, it is said that such lands exist. Riding the white magical horse of the enchanted lake is one way to get there.

, ,

Credit Card Number Input - Web Design

We shop on the internet very often (though there are some who fear online shopping yet). Atleast I do shop often.

And everytime I shop (or even pay bills online) I get irritated with the web design for accepting the credit card expiration date details. All of my credit cards state the expiration year using numbers only. E.g.: 05/02 standing for the fifth month in 2002. But almost everywhere (online shops, online bill payment web sites) I am asked to enter the name of the month when my card is due to expire.

This is reason for irritation to me, since I now have to covert the number to the month name and I am not too fast at that!! I wonder if this irritates other net users too or is it that I am growing old and lazy ?

WHY, WHY do online web forms need to know the name of the month when credit cards display the month's number?

I can't understand the rational for this design!

I was happy to note that meritime.com, an online shop, provided the shopper with a drop down list which stated the name of the month and also the number, e.g.: Feb (2), Mar(3).

Simple and nice design !

, ,

Orkut and CAPTCHAs

Aha, Orkut is now using CAPTCHAs.

Their scheme:
If you scrap someone with a URL such as www.google.com, you might be an automated malicious entity and thus should prove that you are a human. The way to do that is by passing a very simple CAPTCHA.

If you get the CAPTCHA wrong, you are given another CAPTCHA to break.


They have been having problems with malicious links. I guess this is their way to solve that problem.

Great to see one more example of CAPTCHA !

, ,

UPnP, Firewall Alerts and Wireless Router

After recently having configured the new netgear wireless router for our home, there was a huge increase in the firewall alerts that I started getting. Every 2 seconds there would be a new alert. I withstood the annoyance for some time and then after fantasizing that this might be some malcode related activity, I fired up Wireshark and logged all packets from my computer.

I must add that the firewall alerts had a pattern. All alerts blocked were from a specific port on my computer to the router. The port which was associated with the alerts on my end was running svchost.exe. My firewall would block a Syn packet from my computer to the router's port x and then after a second or two would block a similar packet to port x+1 and so on.

Looking at the packet capture files, I noticed that these connections had something to do with UPnP. Once I determined that, the rest was easy. I realised that I had to turn off the UPnP feature on the router to stop all the unecessary alerts. After doing that my poor stressed out firewall had some relief at last !!

, ,

August Phishing Trends Report - US and number of phishing sites

"August Phishing Trends Report" (http://www.antiphishing.org/reports/apwg_report_August_2006.pdf) released by APWG recently, states:

In August, Websense® Security Labs saw a continuation of the top three countries hosing phishing websites. The United States remains the on the top of the list with 27.88%. The rest of the top 10 breakdown is as follows - China 14%, Republic of Korea 9.59%, France 4.07%, Japan 3.66%, Germany 3.23%, Australia 3.06%, Russia 2.46%, Canada 2.22%, Sweden 2.04%.

I find this surprising because I expected that it would be the easiest to shut down phishing sites in the US when compared to any other country and thus US would host the least phishing sites.

Any insights?

, ,

Lakes Around Fairfax - Lake Thoreau

Lake Thoreau:


This pretty lake is surrounded on almost all sides by communities. Houses on its shores thus have their own private entrances to this lake. This lake in Reston is well maintained. Because of all the houses that are on its shores the trail that surrounds this lake is not exactly on its banks. Now and then the trail touches its banks and then looses itself amidst very pretty houses with landscaped mini gardens. The whole place is very well maintained.

, ,

Lakes Around Fairfax - Burke Lake

Burke Lake:


A unusually warm weekend afternoon in late winter saw us (roomates) on the green lawns of this lake. That was my first encounter with this lake. It is a pretty lake with a trail that runs around its shores. Some day I will go boating here, some day.

, ,

Lakes Around Fairfax - Lake Fairfax

Lake Fairfax:

A pretty small lake in Reston city. The lake provides grounds for camping. I saw many RVs parked in the camp grounds. It made me wonder if there was any fun at all to camp in a RV and have many other RVs as neighbours !

, ,

YouTube, Google and "the beta mystery"

Google has acquired YouTube. I am interested in knowing as to how long it would take for the successful YouTube to be labelled as another Google "beta" product !

As of 23:25 EST, 10/10/2006, YouTube is yet not beta. Would be interesting to notice it changing to YAGBP.
(YAGB -> Yet Another Google Beta Product)

I really don't understand this "beta mystery". Should use google itself to search for answers. Do you know something?

, ,

Lazy Dreamer

This was so stupid, that I had to delete it !

Gosh, when will I learn to write a few lines.....

, ,

Social Networking Sites and e-mail harvesting

It must surely be every spammer's dream come true.

On Orkut, a social networking site, I noticed in some of the special interest forums, a person would post a message which would be similar to:
"I have this . If you want it, reply with your e-mail id to this post."
(On one forum I saw such postings, wherein the person promised to send a mp3 file of an advertisement which ran on TV years back.)

And all the people interested in receiving a copy of this file would post their e-mail ids ! What a way to harvest some email ids, if a spammer uses this idea.

People posting their email ids openly, beats the system of being able to control who can view the email ids which has been incorporated in Orkut.

People......!!

, ,

LisaNova - Competition

It was once said (and perhaps believed in) - "The means are more important than the ends". That meant that the action was more important than the fruit. But something killed that....and that was this world's definition of "competition" !!

Watch this hilarious youtube video on competition:



Personally, I feel the "Harvard guy vs. the Yale girl" is exceptional !

What about you, do you believe that the end is more important than the means?
Have you won even though you played by the rules? Or in today's competitive world, players who play by the rules never win?

, ,

Dawn

From the archives...
====================

With a cup of tea in her hands, she opened the drapes covering the passage to the balcony. It wasn't morning yet. Just a faint glow was visible, foretelling the onset of the daily wonder, the breaking of dawn.

She got outside onto the balcony to watch this drama unfold. She had seen it a number of times before but since she liked watching the sun slowly appear and spread its light all around, here she was early in the morning looking at nature's canvass again.

"Brrr,....its cold" she thought. She drew her dress closer and sipped her tea.

This pre dawn cold is different. It washes the slumber away and refreshes the mind.

A gentle breeze played with her hair strands.

Out far there, the gentle orange had spread. It was seeking to wipe out the black sky. And slowly light was expanding its domain. It was the end of a night and the beginning of a new day.

She was looking at all this with great intent. She failed to notice him behind. Suddenly she felt his arms around her waist. He was there to join her and watch this spectacle.

They spoke nothing, not even looked at each other. Both looked at the skyline, at the unfolding drama. The play of colours, the birth of light, the soft cold breeze and the silence of the night being replaced with the day's activity filled their senses.

And of course they had each other too.
It was a new day.

(c) Deapesh.

, ,

Zen Poetry

From the book: "Ryokan Zen Monk poet of Japan", translated by Burton Waston.

In this village
coming and going
there are so many people -
but when you are not among them,
it's lonely.

---

When you are busy
you send word that you can't come
because you are busy
and when you are not busy
you send no word at all.

---

Though travels,
take me to
a different stopping place each night
the dream I dream is always,
the same one,
of home.

---

Wow !!

----------------------
Tag: Literature Poetry

, ,

Sad Parking

Across my window is a parking lot. It is spacious and there is never a need for more space in it. Consequently it also has parked cars that have been parked from a long time, though a few cars are of the daily kind.

It is a sad parking lot.

It is the dead end of a road which connects the apartments in the apartment block. Most of the cars which come to this parking lot, dont come to park here. Most of the cars come here to back up, to change their direction and it is this which makes the parking lot sad. It feels sad that people use it more like a road, a piece of tar on which destinations are reached and not use it as a destination, as a resting place for the cars. It was intended that way, as a resting place as a destination. But people drive in and then turn back and leave immediately, without stopping. It feels bad, it feels used in a way it was never meant to be used. And thus also becomes lonely, sadness trusts loneliness as a friend, they usually travel together in silence for long times.

And that is the reason why the parking lot across my window is sad and lonely.
---------------------
Tag: Literature Prose

, ,

Something...

Would you say 'bye' if I were to go out
through that door?

Would you say "hi" if I were to walk in
through that door?


Would you, would you?
Would you say something to me at all?
Would you, would you?

----------------------
Tag: Literature Poetry

, ,

Harvesting emails and chain mails

This Sophos post reveals an interesting hoax !

The new spam campaign asks for chain letters to be forwarded to the spammers (who are posing as a researcher called Gemma). However, Sophos warns that rather than conducting a study of chain letters, the recipients are actually planning to gather innocent peoples' contact details for the purposes of spam and identity theft.

I used to be amazed by the email ids that would be accessible to me through chain mails. Seems like the spammers have got a nice idea here.

A better twist would be to send an email with the following text:

"(whatever-service-name) has decided to stop its (whatever-free-service-name) as many people are using it, which is more than what was expected. So (whatever-service-name) is going to close down the free service and will make it a commercial product. If you want to stop this, please forward this email to as many friends as you can and send a copy (CC) of the mail to (whatever-spammer's-email-id). Thank you"

What is the bet that such a mail will get mass circulated and each person will send a CC of the mail to the spammer !!!!
People !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Tag: Technical

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LonelyGirl15 again...

Excerpts from this news item:

There's a formula for YouTube "stardom": video camera, bedroom, cute young woman, confessional style.

The most important ingredient being the "confessional style". If one does not fool the viewer into believing that all that is being communicated are the innermost feelings, the viewer would not want to watch more. Serials on TVs and movies are for that.

The fact that viewers believed that LonelyGirl15 was being truthful to the medium and was sharing her real day to day thoughts made them all value her conversations. If they knew that this was all made up, they would not hear her out often.

LonelyGirl15 was an enigma wrapped in a mystery disseminated via e-mail, hyperlinks and RSS (a format that sends news to websites Web sites) feeds. Yet her story, which few of the hundreds of thousands who made her "channel" a YouTube top 10 destination seemed to notice, was kind of a bore, as it had been with Brookers and Emmalina before her: a little bit of teenage ennui and rebellion, a lot of charm and intimacy, real or fabricated, and, always, the gentle suggestion of sex.

I wouldn't agree that it was a bore though I agree with the other points made above.

And to end this post:

But most of the fans, it seems, weren't buying the removal of the line between probably-fictional-pretending-to-be-real and definitely-fictional. The LonelyGirl discussion areas were full of the kind of anger that people display when, for instance, they learn that a girlfriend is not who she pretended to be.

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Tag: My Thoughts

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X-Men 3, Ramayana, Mahabharata and the definition of power

Know what the X-Men 3 reminded me of?

Mahabharata/Ramayana Serials I saw as a kid on Doordarshan !!!

In one of the scenes the mutant who can control "coldness" and the mutant who can control "heat" fight it out. This scene reminded me of the picturization of the Indian epics in serials. In those serials, fights between the big and mighty warriors was pretty similar. One would shoot out an arrow which would spit out fire and then the other warrior would shoot an arrow which would neutralize the first arrow. Such a fight would go on until one of the them would be able to shoot an arrow which the other warrior could not neutralize and thus would be killed.

It is very interesting to note that that in these epics which are very very old (Ramayana - 7323 B.C, Mahabharata 1900 B.C. - according to particular references which I got after a quick google search ) and in the future depicted in X-men 3, the one who is the most powerful is the one who can control the 5 elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water ).

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Tag: My Thoughts

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Yahoo and phishing - Sign-In Seal

New idea by yahoo to prevent users from getting "phished" !

Sign-In Seal FAQ.

The idea is:

* on my PC, I will create a special tag/seal/mark/sign and this will be stored on my PC
* whenever I go to the genuine Yahoo site, it will be displayed to me
* if I go to a fake yahoo website, the website will not be able to display the sign to me and I will thus know it is a fake yahoo website.

Three concerns:

1> I guess this will be via a cookie which will be persistently stored on the user's computer. That will mean that users should not clear their browser cache of cookies to have this scheme work everytime. This IMHO is not a good practice to get the users to get used to.

2> What if the fradulent web site owners are able to decipher this cookie (reverse engineer) and display the same?

3> All yahoo portals will now be able to track the particular individual. It would mean that users will leave a trail of their presence across yahoo portals. What if I am just browsing through Flickr (not having logged on)? Surely yahoo will be able to track this visit of mine across the website while I am under the impression that I not being tracked.

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Tag: Technical

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Will 'lonelygirl15' ever act again ?

You surely must be following Youtube. The latest scandal is that lonelygirl15 is a FAKE !! An actress who was just playing her part too well !!!!!!

Now the question which I am interested in is, will she be accepted as an actress on TV/movie?

Will the internet-youtube-savy world forget this and accept her on the idiot box? Or is her career as an actress doomed since she was a key role in this faked up reality?

will the common man remember or will he soon forget?

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Beerwah Railway Station

This photo is undoubtedly one of my favourite sign board shots !!



I wonder if people are really so honest that they would buy their tickets at their destination station. And we were even more surprised when we got to know that neither in the train nor at the destination station, were people checked for tickets !

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Tag: My Thoughts

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Steve Irwin is no more

The world struggles with this sad news. Croc Hunter, the human face which endeared a lot of spooky, creepy, crawly and dangerous animals died while filming a lesser dangerous animal than what he has handled in the past.

A sad day indeed. He brought the animal world closer to us. With his television shows he had influenced millions of humans' opinion towards crocs and the rest of the animals he dealt with.

It will take a long time I guess, before the animals find a new friend in someone who is as effective as he was.

I had visited the Croc hunter's zoo in 2004. It was a nice place. My favourite being the walk through aviary which had a huge number of birds which were extremely exotic to me. To see the Otters have fun in the water enclosure was great fun too. I was taken aback when I got close to a snake handler and saw that she was handling a Corn Snake! The reason for my surprise was that the Corn Snake was from the US and is found in Virginia. I told her that it was really a coincidence that the snake which I get to see very close is the one that was found in the place I lived thousands and thousands of miles away.

I posted some photos from my trip here

Here is a photo of a croc in the enclosure:

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International "o" day

oToday ois ointernational "o" oday. oTo ohonour othe ocontribution of "o" oto our oliterature otoday oevery oword ohas oto ostart owith "o".

oWe othank "o" ofor oits ocontribution.

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"Responsible Disclosure" and "Responsible Behaviour"

The latest Microsoft attempt to hide a serious IE related bug from its users in the pretext of "responsible disclosure" is outrightly pathetic !!

This is from their blog entry:

Shortly after the release of MS06-042, independent security researchers responsibly disclosed to us the fact that they had discovered the crash was exploitable. We worked with them responsibly during the creation of the update. As soon as we knew we would have to halt the re-release, we informed the third party researchers. Due to the fact we did not want to communicate the existence of the exploitability of the crash prior to an update being available, we also began the process of holding our communication on the issue so that attackers would not have clear public information available that the current problem was exploitable.

This was another difficult decision on our part. There was no intent here to misrepresent the issue as not being exploitable. Often times however, we find ourselves in the position of having to strike a balance between providing information equally to users who would use the information to protect themselves, and attackers who, history has proven, will immediately use the information for criminal purposes. In this case, we felt that, due to the fact the platform and specific vector of the crash was known, publicly disclosing that it was an exploitable security vulnerability prior to our being able to provide customers with an update to address it would have breached our position on responsible disclosure and would have put customers at increased risk.

Unfortunately, one of the security researchers who reported this to us disagreed with our decision to hold communications and has publicly pointed out the exploitability of the specific crash and the affected platform. ....SNIP.... Since the exploitability of this is public now however, there is certainly increased risk of attack. We have issued a security advisory detailing workarounds and mitigations for the vulnerability while we have our teams working at full speed to resolve the quality issue and release the update as soon as it meets our quality bar.

It seems that responsible researchers and security analysts have a huge burden of this one-sided responsibility, due to which they are not supposed to tell the general public of the extent of damage that a faulty/buggy software can do and should rather let the company decide when and how the information about its faults will be released!

The company which produces the software has no responsibility however towards the numerous users of their software to tell them about how critical the bug really is.

While "Responsible Disclosure" is expected, "Responsible Behaviour" is not guaranteed.

At the very least, the users of a particular software have to be informed at all times of the bugs which are serious and can be dangerous to the user of the software product. This is what the customer would expect in return for the trust that the customer puts in the company's advisories. But Microsoft did not do this and instead now are faced with this situation wherein they are forced to reveal that they knew of a serious bug and were hiding its presence from their customers who trust them.

eEye in their advisory stated:

This information is already known in various research circles and also with exploit writers. So it is important that IT administrators understand the true threat of this problem that this is not simply a crashing bug as Microsoft has been incorrectly misrepresenting it but in fact that it is an exploitable security bug. Researchers and exploit developers know this, therefore it is extremely important that IT administrators are told what really is going on.

eEye did a commendable job in disclosing this vulnerability to the public.

Microsoft seems to think that the public should and will continue to use a bug ridden product and thus to save the user from harm, it is advisable to not reveal the bugs. They forget, that users will move to other products in case they loose trust. Microsoft itself should responsibly accept the problems in IE and suggest that users use a more secure web browser. That would be real responsibility !


UPDATE: Here is a link to what vendors define as Responsible Disclosure.
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Tag: Technical

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World's end and MS06-040 Exploit

Just after Microsoft released their patch for MS06-040 and in the few days before that, there was a huge hue and cry as to how the world will end due to a worm outbreak !

But things happened otherwise. LURHQ has a nice article on this titled: "MS06-040 Exploit: More Hype Than Threat".

Interestingly the bot exploiting this vulnerability is using the compromised machines for relaying spam ! Business minded hackers/crackers are here. This might be the trend of things to come. There is nothing gained in releasing a worm and crippling the internet to a great extent. Business savvy hackers/crackers can instead make some money out of the exploits if they release it in small quantities out in the wild to avoid detection. The more the impact the more the attention and more would be the prevention measures. Instead an attack which targets relatively few machines rather than the whole internet, would at the least assure of some financial gain.

As it is said, it is futile to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs.

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Privacy and Google

Google is making so many inroads into our daily lives that it must be pretty easy for them to know a lot of stuff about each individual.

Using the search engine itself leaves a trace. If Google wishes, then for a given fixed IP address, it can gain a whole lot of personal information on the person/people who use that IP address to search stuff on the web.

Recently we had the AOL blunder which showed how much of data on an individual these service providers can collect over time. And the fact that we can't assume that this data will be safely guarded by the company.

Now there is this new idea of google, of offering shopping coupons (discounts) to customers who used local google maps to search for a store/business establishment. Given the fact that the person using such a service will have to give the home address to get the route to the store, Google will get one more critical piece of information on the user. Combining this information with the IP address and all the search engine logs, will almost open up the life story of a net savvy individual.

blogger.com is also a google product. Anonymous blogs are really not anonymous. What are the odds that a person writing an anonymous blog at blogger.com will not use google as the search engine? What if this anonymous author then decides to use google maps to get directions?

As google gets more and more involved into our daily 'on-the-internet-lives' our privacy is at stake.

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Tag: Technical

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Such small small answers...oof !!

"..kitne chotte chotte ans oof..."

The bigger the question is, the smaller is the answer. Isn't that true?


(?) What time will the train arrive?
(ans) Its running late. It is expected to arrive .....

(?) Did he pass or fail?
(ans) ...silence....

(?) Is it going to rain today?
(ans) This weather is killing me. Yesterday it was too......

(?) Is it a boy or a girl?
(ans) girl

(?) How do I get to the beach?
(ans) Oh, take the second right and then keep following until....

(?) Is he recovering now?
(ans) He is no more.

(?) Can I date you this weekend?
(ans) That would be great! But you know there is this...

(?)Will you marry me?
(ans) yes.

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Tag: My Thoughts

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The 'So' Problem

"So", American English somehow seems to demand that each sentence should start with 'so', even if it is the first sentence. This problem plagues the speakers to such a great extent that once one starts looking out for it, it is tough to control oneself from being amused ! The average speaker will use it a great many times having started the conversation with a 'so' and ending it also with a 'so' sentence.

Dictionary.com defines it thus:
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so
adv.
1. In the condition or manner expressed or indicated; thus: Hold the brush so.
2. To the amount or degree expressed or understood; to such an extent: She was so weary that she fell.
3. To a great extent; to such an evident degree: But the idea is so obvious.
4. Because of the reason given; consequently: She was weary and so fell.
5. Afterward; then: to the gas station and so home.
6. In the same way; likewise: You were on time and so was I.
7. Apparently; well, then. Used in expressing astonishment, disapproval, or sarcasm: So you think you've got troubles?
8. In truth; indeed: “You aren't right.” “I am so!”

adj.
1. True; factual: I wouldn't have told you this if it weren't so.
2. In good order: Everything on his desk must be exactly so.

conj. Usage Problem
1. With the result or consequence that: He failed to appear, so we went on without him.
2. In order that: I stayed so I could see you.

pron.
Such as has already been suggested or specified; the same: She became a loyal friend and remained so.

interj.
Used to express surprise or comprehension: So! You've finished your work at last.

Idioms:
so as to
In order to: Mail your package early so as to ensure its timely arrival.

so that
1. In order that: I stopped so that you could catch up.
2. With the result or consequence that.

so what
Used to express contempt or lack of interest.

Usage Note: Many critics and grammarians have insisted that so must be followed by that in formal writing when used to introduce a clause giving the reason for or purpose of an action: He stayed so that he could see the second feature. But since many respected writers use so for so that in formal writing, it seems best to consider the issue one of stylistic preference: The store stays open late so (or so that) people who work all day can buy groceries. ·Both so and so that are acceptably used to introduce clauses that state a result or consequence: The Bay Bridge was still closed, so (or so that) the drive from San Francisco to the Berkeley campus took an hour and a half. ·So is frequently used in informal speech to string together the elements of a narrative. In most cases, this practice should not be carried over into formal writing, where readers need connections to be made more explicit. ·Critics have sometimes objected to the use of so as an intensive meaning “to a great degree or extent,” as in We were so relieved to learn that the deadline had been extended. This usage is most common in informal contexts, perhaps because, unlike the neutral very, it presumes that the listener or reader will be sympathetic to the speaker's evaluation of the situation. Thus one would be more apt to say It was so unfair of them not to invite you than to say It was so fortunate that I didn't have to put up with your company. For just this reason, the construction may occasionally be used to good effect in more formal contexts to invite the reader to take the point of view of the speaker or subject: The request seemed to her to be quite reasonable; it was so unfair of the manager to refuse.

Regional Note: New England speakers often use a negative form such as so didn't where other varieties would use the positive so did, as in Sophie ate all her strawberries and so didn't Amelia. Since this usage may confuse a speaker who has not previously encountered it, it is best avoided in writing.
====================================

Some of this was new to me!!

Wiktionary has something to say about this word too: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/so

One example of the American use of 'so' spilling out to a blog (which is generally informal) is a recent entry in the Microsoft Security Respose Center Blog.

"So", let me end this now.


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Tag: My Thoughts

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Emails, IMs, scraps and blogs

A long ago, it started out as emails. The person you knew and wanted to contact with, would be sent an email which would be answered in return and thus both sides would communicate with each other and share the happenings of life.

Then it was the Instant Messenger (IM) craze. Everyone would be hooked onto chatting and hours and hours would pass by in typing furiously into the IM client window. It was a completely new thing. There would be so many people to chat with, one could also search for like minded people and add them to the buddy list and thus communicate with total strangers. Social interaction through the internet was reaching new heights.

And now the latest thing is writing 'scraps' in Orkut or writing 'Friends Comments' in myspace (which by the way is missing an apostrophe after 'Friends'). This is again a completely new behavioral pattern. Now not only do people want to get in touch with their friends, but also do not mind others reading their conversations! It seems people would rather engage in frivolous talk with a big group of others rather than send detailed personal emails to close friends. Personal life is all on the web and everybody knows about everybody's life.

Of course then there are blogs, such as this and many many others, which are another way of expression (what I do here) and communication (what I don't do here).

Pick your way of communication and expression. The menu card is big, thanks to the internet !

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Tag: My Thoughts

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Have you?

Have you patched it yet?
a restart much needed,

crawling every where quick,
you won't know when you are hit!

Have you patched it yet?


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Tag: Literature Poetry
Tag: Technical

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The Map

"Hey, we lost the map", he told me.

I stopped dead in my tracks, I had not expected that. He seemed pretty scared too. This was an unexpected situation, we had to take a few things for granted right?

Then I realized and it dawned upon me that it really did not matter. So I told him, "hmm...I think that is ok".

"What? How is that ok? How will we find the treasure now?", he almost screamed.

I told him in a calm voice, "you want to find the treasure, right?"

"yes", he softly replied.

"Then go and search it, find it all by yourself. Isn't it possible that you will get something much more valuable? And what if the map was wrong?"
"And then, what is the point of searching for someone else's treasure?"

"If you want your treasure, then go find it yourself, make a map for yourself."

I turned towards him but he had already gone, I heard him whistling some tune as his steps merrily fell on his journey.

(c) Deapesh.

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Thunder storms......

I wait all afternoon for the thunder storms, after having read in the weather site that they were to pass through my city. In few moments, the whole weather changed, from a hot sunny afternoon to a dark overcast stormy late evening. The change is very dramatic.

And then, in another few minutes, it starts raining with a vengeance. As if, it was some revenge. My thoughts drift to a different time. At the same place, where now I watch the storm through the open windows, might have been natives a long long ago. What they would have felt at this sudden change? To what would they have attributed this sudden outburst? Something for which I eagerly awaited all afternoon to watch from the confines of my room, would surely have elicited a completely different response from them.

I see them running around...trying to get into shelters that won't protect them from this fury. There huddled up, I see fear in the face of the family head. I sense wonder and fear, mixed with the smell of the wet earth.

And as soon as it had arrived, it passes away. As if nothing had happened at all. What would they have attributed to be the reason for the abatement of the storm? I don't know. But for me a storm seems to be beautiful and exciting.

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Tag: Literature Prose

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I had...

I had Come....

I had dropped by, you were sleeping and I didn't want to wake you up. There was a smile on your face, perhaps a dream, a nice one. You had wrapped the bed sheet around you completely. Yes, the room was a little cold. So, I closed the windows shut.

After looking at you for some more time, I left...just the same way as I had come, quitely.


I Had Listened to Every Word that You Said....
And your laugh, that brought a smile to my face every time. I ended up smiling throughtout your conversation. Gosh, how many things you find funny !
Your friend did not speak much. She too listened to your "little stream down the mountain" talk. So many things you had to say. I didn't interrupt either. I just stood close by pretending to read the newspaper. And then you both said bye to each other and parted. I waited there for some more time, expecting to hear your laugh and talk again. I was just hoping, somehow, someway it would come back or become a part of me, so that I could carry it around with me, wherever I went.

After some time, I got up and wondered where to go. Maybe I should have just waited there.

(c) Deapesh.

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Too close windows

(Posted on a special request)

She said to me in a very dull tone, "ooh, these windows".
I wondered what about them. I had them in my room too. Real good that one was and then there were a few on the other wall too. They were windows of a different kind, they were posters.
I didn't hear from her again for some time. I got worried and asked if things were right.
She replied, "oh, yes, I just had been to close the windows".

I asked her "Are they far off now?"

"What ?" she asked.

"Oh the windows, they were too close. I hope they are far away now", I said.

Ohh what a pity I thought. I understand very well, that close relatives could be a pain, but close windows, ooh that would be such a pain. Why if you ask, I would rather ask you "Would that be any fun?".

Well, NO right ? Windows should be far off, just imaagine them being next to you all the time, that would invade into your privacy. You would then need curtains and what use are windows which are curtained !! It is better not to have them at all then.

The fun is in walking to the window and looking out. There is no fun at all if they are so close that one is always looking out. Everything would then be a window.

"Yes", I agreed.

"What?" she asked me again.

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Tag: Literature Prose

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Alice !!

Take me there, to your wonderland,
where trees grow bare in spring,
and flowers in winter bloom,
oh Alice, take me to that wonderland,
this world seems so full of gloom !

Someone called, and I got to know,
that your wonderland was there,
where I wanted to go,
Alice, I wish I was there !
lazily on a boat, which we 3 were to row.

playing games that we all did,
asked the crocodile if we could cross the river,
while some hide and some seek,
amidst the flower fields, inside the rabbit holes,
yes, that is where I lived.

and the moon did shine,
the rain did flow in rivers,
while I collected sticks,
you swam in the river.

Alice, take me there,
to your wonderland.

(c) Deapesh.

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Ruskin Bond's "Tales of the Open Road"

Was glad to know that Rusty has a new book to his credit:

Tales of the Open Road; Ruskin Bond, Penguin, Rs. 200

Must be interesting I suppose. It reminds me (rightly or wrongly) of an anthology of travel writings which he had edited. Did this idea take its birth there?

My impression of his writings is that his stories are not of the wanderer, it is of a story teller who is at great ease searching for human drama in and around his place of residence, like some curious kid who spends his summer holidays, exploring the garden...peering into tree holes, lifting stones to see what lies beneath and climbing the wall to see further.

It would be interesting to see how Rusty fares as a wanderer. Won't his stories be sad without the Deodars ?

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Tag: Literature Prose

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The Final Four

EXCITING STUFF !!!!!

GMU plays their FIRST FINAL FOUR basketball match in a few hours from now !!!

GO MASON !!!

More:
GMU Patriots
GMU Basketball Digital Memory Bank

GO MASON !! GO !!!

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Tag: Miscellaneous

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