The Danesh Project

How does Gmail get your email to you

How does Gmail get your email to you?

The people at Gmail want you to come up with your own short video depicting how your Gmail message travels around the world before it reaches you or it’s destination.

Submit your creations by August 13th at Gmail: A Behind The Scenes Video. Your videos will be regularly rotated on this page.

3 steps to get you video submitted.

1. Print out the M envelop.
2. Make your short 10 second movie.
3. Upload your video.

I am thinking of working on a short video myself.I have a good line-up of casts I can use. I use Gmail everyday so it’s time to give back.

Temporarily disable user logins in Linux

As a Linux administrator it is sometimes necessary to stop users from login in to your box. This scenario is typically seen during system maintenance cycles, critical updates or scheduled/unscheduled software installs.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply create a nologin file in /etc/ .

To stop users from login in run the following command.

# touch /etc/nologin

To reverse the effect and allow users to log in run the following command.

# rm /etc/nologin

The above commands work fine on my CenOS5 and openSUSE 10.2 machines.

Cows Crossing

Ran into some cows during lunch near Batu Maung in Penang today. You never see this in KL anymore.

They had the roads to them self

PayPal phishing

Received this mail in my Gmail yesterday. Supposedly from PayPal. The pretend PayPal wanted me to update my credentials by login into a fake PayPal lookalike page.

Too most unsuspecting users the mail would have seem 100% legitimate as seen In the screenshots below. They would have given up their user names and passwords without even knowing what they had done.

Imagine the damage if IE, Firefox and most newer browsers have no phishing protection built in to alert the user about possible phishing alerts. You can see the alert in the screenshots below.

My Advice: Be very cautious when working on your financial sites. If you havethe slightest hint of suspicious activity, abort what you are doing and get in touch wiht service provider.

Remember, almost all financial and secure service providers never send out emails to their clients to verify user credential. If you do receive one then chances are it’s a phishing attempt.

Spotted Dick

Seen any weird names on food products lately. Check out what my colleague Elvin found in Tesco yesterday.

Spotted dick, damn!!

Had your laugh? I did.

Ok, now the truth. Spotted Dick is actually a dessert. It’s a steamed pudding with dried fruits made popular in the UK. The popular dessert also goes by other names. Spotted Dog, Plum Duff, Figgy Dowdy, Plum Bolster and Spotted Richard.

Spotted Dick at WikePedia