The Taj
- By:Qwaider
- On:Saturday, November 29, 2008
- In:Thoughts
- Viewed:4910 times
- (7) Comments
I remember the day my driver pulled up at the parking lot of the Taj hotel in Bombay. How a weird looking guy, smoking "something" I couldn't readily identify asked me if I had interest in Hashish, Women, Boys, Men... And how upon entry I came face to face to some Bollywood movie star that I also didn't know at the time. Mainly because I don't watch a lot of Bollywood material.
I remember looking at the Indian ocean from my room, and overlooking gateway of India.
A picture from more glamorous times... (not mine)
Some thoughts on women...
- By:Qwaider
- On:Friday, November 28, 2008
- In:Thoughts
- Viewed:7484 times
- (6) Comments
I completely believe that women are better equipped to handle the loss of a husband than men losing their wives. Over the eons men have went and never come back. Be it to some other woman's bed, hunting, war or some other form of testosterone fueled stupidity.. Women appear to have adjusted to the role really well.
Society is founded on women. If there's no women, there is no society. You can call something an expedition, a journey, an adventure or whatever, but the minute women are involved it becomes a society. Have you ever seen an expedition -naturally- grow or settle? If there's no woman, there is no family, either.
Smelly products!
- By:Qwaider
- On:Wednesday, November 26, 2008
- In:Thoughts
- Viewed:7837 times
- (10) Comments
I can't make these up, let me try to explain .. Or better yet, a picture is worth a thousand words. Enjoy these Khari Biscuits
check out the others...
How to say Mab3oos in other languages!
- By:Qwaider
- On:Tuesday, November 25, 2008
- In:Humorous
- Viewed:6259 times
- (13) Comments
There, I said it. For once on my blog I said that word. Now for the masses out there who would like some alternatives to the foul word Mr Garfan uses for his name, please see the list bellow.. I'm not sure if I should categorize this under "blogging tips" or "Humorous" so I'll go with the later
So here you go .. Alternates ...
- Maf3oos (courtesy of Dr Hareega)
- Mat3oos (Jinxed)
- Mabsoot (Happy, AKA gay)
- Mam3oos (squeezed and twisted like trying to dry a wet mouse)
- Ma7boos (jailed)
Reputation based anti-spam
- By:Qwaider
- On:Tuesday, November 25, 2008
- In:Science & Technology
- Viewed:5243 times
- (27) Comments
As a new addition to the anti-spamming system that I'm using exclusively on this blog. I decided to incorporate a reputation based system that looks deeper into the reputation of the person submitting a comment before deciding whether or not that comment is more "likely" to be good or bad, then assigns a score for it.
The idea is really simple, it's based on fending off attacks by depending on social engineering techniques, here's how it works:
The user submits a comment.
The system evaluates the comment and IP address and decides whether it's spam or not. (this is old), a minor change was added to "score" each stage
The system looks at the identity of the person who commented. The identity is a union of the user's name, email, website, IP address and the history of names, and IP addresses. THIS is where it gets interesting
By looking back at the history of an IP, weighing the good vs the bad, we can know if the IP is more likely to be generating SPAM, that's part one.
Update:
For a limited time, you can see your comment SpamScore when you comment here. Red=Bad, Green=Good. But Unfortunately, I don't have these values for all the comments around here. So apologies if you don't see it
Double blogging!
- By:Qwaider
- On:Tuesday, November 25, 2008
- In:Blogging Tips
- Viewed:6672 times
- (10) Comments
It's been a while since I last posted any blogging tips so today, I'll be talking about a common mistake. The mistake many new (and sometimes old) bloggers appear undertake
And that would be, Double blogging... Here's how it goes
You're new to blogging. You discover that this thing is Amazing, you love it. You discover that you have "the blogging bug" you decide that you're too committed and too enthusiastic about it and you decide that one blog is not enough. What do you do?
You know that it's pretty much free to create a blog on Wordpress, Blogspot, Jeeran or many others and you run to that site, 15 minutes later you're the proud owner of your amazingly -empty- new blog.
You look around, and you decide that you have to fill some content and you actually start writing because, you're enthusiastic and passionate about blogging. Wonderful!
It all goes well until ....
Dear waitress
- By:Qwaider
- On:Monday, November 24, 2008
- In:Thoughts
- Viewed:9268 times
- (12) Comments
Dear Waitress,
Thank you very much for messing up my order and completely screwing my morning. Thank you for making me realize that having enough time before a very important engagement isn't really good reason why you would go and have breakfast in the hands of "professional" breakfast makers at your glorious institution.
At the same time, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you with a several things, that would make your life much easier, hopefully in a constructive manner
First, you are in this position, not because of your Mensa skills but rather for your lack of those specific, useless skills. Therefore, thinking 'outside of the box' isn't really something you should venture in. Keep it in the box, please. In other words, thinking that ham and bacon would go wonderfully well in my vegetarian omelet is really way outside that box.
Mr Backup and Mr Backup-Backup
- By:Qwaider
- On:Saturday, November 22, 2008
- In:Thoughts
- Viewed:5021 times
- (13) Comments
My good friend, L (a female) is a cute little girl in her early twenties and like everyone else on the face of this planet. She's looking for love, romance and Mr right. (Or Miss Right for the gentlemen out there)
But her approach to it is a little bit puzzling to me, as she claims that she's "unsure" if Mr Right is actually Mr right, so what does the nice well mannered lady do? She picks up a Mr Backup!
Now Mr Backup isn't as great as Mr Right. But he's close enough. The reasoning behind the existence of Mr Backup is: What if something happened with Mr Right? A girl needs backup. Just in case!
Mr Backup thinks he's Mr Right by the way. He's hanging by a thread. He thinks he has a chance with the lady. Works really hard at it, and feels hopeful. Thanks mostly to some double meaning, obscure but continuous subtle suggestive acknowledgements from L. I wonder why men stop getting "subtle-hints" after they get married! But that's for another day...!
The story gets more exciting and complicated when Mr Backup-Backup shows up...
Google/Blogspot warning!
- By:Qwaider
- On:Friday, November 21, 2008
- In:Blogging Tips
- Viewed:5958 times
- (13) Comments
Are you on blogspot? Is your favorite blog on Blogspot!?
Well, there's this rumor circulating in the Egyptian blogosphere that Google is closing down people's Gmail accounts and Blogs without prior notice.
I'm not sure of how accurate this is, but I wonder if it's going to catch up and spread!
Stop urging people to run Firefox
- By:Qwaider
- On:Thursday, November 20, 2008
- In:Science & Technology
- Viewed:4805 times
- (16) Comments
Tech Warning:
If you're not interested in Browser Security, Internet exploits, you may skip this article
Firefox fanboy warning:
This is NOT to bash Firefox or accusing it of being insecure, so read well before you explode. I personally think Firefox is great, same goes for Opera, Chrome and Safari. If you have a beef with that, bring it up with Saltzer, link provided below
In a very recent security related article by Larry Saltzer, he deconstructs the aging myth of how Firefox is impervious to attacks. Or at least, he shows shows that it's no longer safe from being a target. It's worth mentioning that his article is based on security findings reported by, Microsoft. But exactly as he notes...
With Microsoft and Adobe both doing a better job of fighting vulnerabilities in their own products, it's not surprising, as the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report also finds, that vulnerabilities in software across the industry are declining. This is why social engineering and malware are becoming the real problems. But in the meantime, it makes sense that some of our longstanding biases about product security are not as correct as they might have been at one time.
So shouldn't you.