Reduced activity

Yeah .. even i know my love for this buddy looks deteriorated. But i would say thats not the case. I am on task to bring in a new entity in world. Nah … no family planning stuff. Not so soon.

Am working on a ‘blogsite‘, been working late nights after office hours. Designing it. Filling sections up with interesting contents, interesting enough to read. Though not sure when i will be drafting the final version. But soon i will. To grab the peek in the site, you can surely find the link at this page itself. Open your search glasses and come visit me there.

Till that time, its reduced activity at this blog.

Earn security, but at a price…

Just after a striking connection between “Security and Privacy“, here’s another great image depicting what security really asks for. True you are secure, but what needs to digged is the cost that security comes at. To put it simply:

“Burn Entirety, Earn Security”

A Commute through Orkut Communities…

Here is another slippery weekend sliding beneath my feet. As i sit acting idle, with feeling rather unsuccessful with my attempts to follow “Operation Afraid“, i start scanning my social appearance at Orkut. (P.S. I did succeed in beating one dreaded task. Successfully washed the clothes, a task no less than a feat. Though the fear of uncompleteness did keep me away from taking a bath and shaving. You see victory ask for persistent efforts ) And along my stroll, I again dashed into a place i find the most meaningless. The Communities.

I always thought that it should be wrong to say that i completely hate them. The fact that i myself have joined around 50 communities should signify that. But then it was today i thought to drill into my communities’ choice. And then rose the truth. All the communities i have joined can largely be divided into following categories:

• Ones i joined as a newbie, similar to a kiddie thrown into a toy shop picking random toys
• Ones which i was forced to join with an ultimatum of sort “Join now” (‘or you will be hanged alive’ was always silent )
• Ones wherein you just feel great to be part of. It hardly matters how much sense it makes in you joining them

And it was then i realized that communities are indeed quite a boring and meaningless places to be in. More meaningless than boring. Include one more of ones which i created and I guess we have the categories generic enough to include the whole ‘orkut’ers. First, it hardly has any sensible activity going on. (One can surely not mark people proving themselves to be superior by posting last or naming there predecessor or playing jokers as sensible.) Secondly, thanks to the first point and the second and third category, it hardly reflects what the person’s interest really are. So a weirdo playing a “Rate the person above you” game in C++ community places him straight into the third category just in for senseless fun.

Moreover mostly are the occasions wherein the common interest projected itself is quite confusing. There are majority just to display one’s liking for blah blah singer, writer, director, actor, books, sports-persons, nations, places and every such namable entity. For each one mentioned above there is an anti-community of haters. Each one of these have various levels of followers: country wise, state wise, city wise, university wise and the digging just goes on. Then there are those which say they exists for common purpose like “spreading happiness”, “cutting sorrows”, “making healthy”, “shit happens: you are not alone” and bhah blah. And finally those which are quite weird which do make you raise your eyebrows. Few to mention “I hate orkut” (wouldn’t it be a good idea to group such interesting people in Facebook) or “Announce new orkut communities” (Community with a goal to promote other community?? how innovative) or “Absurd Communities” or “I hate orkut communities” (need i say anything??). How i wished to be innovative enough to come up with something so fascinating and new. No wonder each community has atleast a single copy with equal number of members.

Anyways whatever i say, they do exists and exists with thunderous activities. I know i do have missed to crown many others which indeed need a mention. But then considering the vastness of this community world, i dare you try that out!

Security and Privacy!!!

Just found this amazing image depicting how security and privacy are inter-related in todays web-world. I guess its pretty simple.

“You won your security. But they own your privacy”

Update: Apologies to all those who indeed saw quite a supposedly “private” image here. All thanks to the dynamic image whose contents were “weirdly” played with. Now that was quite an experience, something worth learning from.

Google and Firefox drowns me in a mystery !!!

On my way while crawling the web, I noticed something which may be I was inadvertent to. I saw a time stamp next to the link which I opened. The screenshot below displays what i mean by that. I remember reading something along the same lines. But as i tried searching for a reference for the behavior, the efforts didn’t throw success.

However, the story doesn’t end at this stage. When I tried to playback the same in Internet Explorer, I was stunned to see no such behavior. So thinking that this has to do something with Firefox, I tried scanning other search engines for the display of time stamp, nothing really happen. So bulged a question. Is this behavior related with Google searches in Firefox? If so, whats so different in Firefox than IE? Moreover I am using the latest updated versions of both. I even tested it on a fresh version of Firefox. So i assumed it has least to do with mozilla extensions.

As if these questions weren’t enough, something more happened that assisted the assumptions. As i deleted the cookies, I wasn’t that hoo-haa seeing no stamp. But what baffled me was I was unable to redraw the same behavior.

So another question popped up in my mind. Does Google have some playing hours on internet, when they just put in some behavior into there search and pop it out as soon as they test it? Mozilla couldn’t do that because thats something that resides on my system. And if it does put something without my consent, I see some good time ahead of me. Anyways currently I have employed myself to demystify this abruptness.

Update: One thought each one gets first is about add-ons in mozilla. But as i mentioned, I tested it out with a fresh version of firefox without any extensions too. So addons have zilch part to play. Moreover the abrupt display and hiding of the time stamp continues now too.

Update2: After a lot of trial and errors and with the help of a very useful comment by whoblah, i was able to understand the behavior. Rather i shouldn’t call it a mystery as it really wasn’t. It was just an ignorance on my part. Thought let me reveal the solution because there is possibility that there would be many others ignorant enough. In nutshell, the issue has to do with Google’s web history, where in for the above behavior to work, one needs to be logged into his Google account. If you are, you can see the complete history about when and how many times have you opened a particular link from Google search. So don’t panic if you ever see a time stamp next to the search. Thats Google history at work!!!