30 Apr
The daughter of orthodox Sikh rebels against her parents’ traditionalism by running off to Germany with a football team (soccer in America).
Directed by
Gurinder Chadha
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance, Sport
Cast
Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Anupam Kher, Archie Panjabi, Shaznay Lewis, Frank Harper, Juliet Stevenson, Shaheen Khan, Ameet Chana, Pooja Shah, Paven Virk, Preeya Kalidas, Trey Farley, Saraj Chaudhry
—————–
Keaven’s Rating: 7/10
I’m not sure why IMDB mentions the Germany game in their plot outline. That was actually only one of several games played in the movie [shrug]
This is a story of a young woman who is an extreamly talented soccer player. Throughout the movie she tries to balance her parents’ culteral expectations of her, with her love of the game. While knowledge of and interest in the game is not nessesary for the viewer to enjoy the movie, it sure helps 
There were very few slow moments, i thought, and they were relativly short. The cinemetography wasn’t that great, and some of the sets left much to be desired, but the acting made up for most of it.
One of the things that i really liked about the movie was the way the main character, Jess (Played by Parminder Nagra), showed real signs of struggle. This wasn’t mearly a movie about a child rebelling against her parents or culture, this was a very obvious internal conflict of Jess trying to reconcile her devotion to her culture and her love of soccer. Not every teenaged child hates their parents and culture, and this was a great movie showing just that. Jess sinsearly loved her parants and chaireshed her Indian culture, and she wanted nothing more than to simply integrate soccer into that. It was wonderful and moving to watch.
Watching this movie also made me realize what a culturally difficient society we live in, as Americans. There are those who have looked into their herritage and have kept alive in their families the traditions and culter of their ancestors, but some of us (myself included) are SO “american” that we don’t really have a deep, ritch culture. I could take my pick of course; American Indian, Irish, Dutch, Sweedish… i could trace my roots to any of them and pick which traditions i wanted to redescover. But it’s not the same. Sometimes a deep ritch culture can be like handcuffs when you live in such a free society as America… but it also offers community and structure, and a link to the past that some of us don’t have.
This was a great movie.
28 Apr
Review: Mac Os X Steps Ahead of Windows
[yawn] I get tired of all the MAC vs PC hype. The fact of the matter is that both are usefull, and both are powerfull, and both have their place in the computing world. If you don’t care about how your computer works and don’t ever -plan- on caring, then fine.. get yourself a mac and stay in the dark. You will not be disapointed. If you’re someone who likes to fiddle and tweek and do your own thing, then get yourself a PC. You, also, will not be disapointed.
The problems come in when people who don’t care, get themse;ves PCs. I will admit that PCs running Windows are apt to strange behaviour. And if you are already a person who dosn’t care about how a computer works and have been frustrated with the Win family, there’s no way your going to be able to stomach installing Linux on your PC (so you think… but that’s a different rant).
If you want your PC to look and act like a mac, news flash: it can be done. There is nothing that the mac can do that the PC can’t… it’s just a matter of putting the time and effort into it, and knowing which fantastic programs to get a hold of (like Stardock’s Object Desktop collection of programs). But who wants to do that when you can just go out and buy a mac? i know.. i understand [pat's head]
Life will go on, and in the grand scheme of things, no one really cares about what kind of computer you have… the jokes and condicending comments asside 
My boyfriend uses macs exclusivly, and i use PCs exclusivly, and we manage to get along just fine.
Personally, i would rather deal with the headaces of Windows than be spoon feed my computing by Apple. But that’s just me. I know that there are plenty of people fed up with Microsoft, and who really just don’t care how it all works. And for them.. hey, it’s okay.. pass the spoon, Steve.
27 Apr
My Way News
[gasp]
I’m speachless. I just don’t know what to say about this. I think it is absolutely absurd. But that’s just me… and i’m a devout PC person, so perhaps my opinion is too biased.
The whole pulling books from the shelf thing seems a bit dramatic to me, however.
“Pulling books off the shelf is a little draconian,” said Rob Frankel, a brand consultant. “It reeks of repression.”
“This is not the first time anybody has said anything good or bad about Steve Jobs,” Frankel added. “He has a much better public brand image than one book could ever dispel.”
That dosn’t stop them from over-reacting.
27 Apr
Phishing
(fish’ing) (n.) The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.
–Webopedia
This morning i recieved a notice from “eBay” letting me know that my account wasn’t working propery… actually, here, let me just copy the body of the message:
During our regulary schedule account maintenance and verification we have detected a slight error in your billing information on file with eBay. This might be due to either following reasons:
– A recent change in your personal information (i.e. change of address)
– Submiting invalid information during the initial sign up process.
– An inability to accurately verify your selected option of payment due an internal error within
our processors.
Your credit card on file with eBay
Card number: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-4322 (Not shown for security purposes) Expiration date: 11/05
Please sign in to your eBay account and update your billing information:
http://signin.ebay.com/eBayXXXXX.dll?SignIn&ssPageName=h:h:sin:US”
If your account information is not update, your ability to sell or bid on eBay will become restricted.
Thank you,
eBay Billing Department
[Roll Eyes] looks legit enough, “signin.ebay.com”, but if you roll over it with your mouse, you will see something much different show up in the location bar: http://XX.XXX.XXX.XXX/.signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayXXXXXdllSignIn.php
Yeah, this is deffinatly a phishing attempt.
(Please note: I have used ‘X’s to mark out actual IP address and parts of file names. There’s no need for one of my readers to accidently get cought up in something)
In this case, whoever it was that sent the message, wasn’t very good. Most of these phishers are going to spoof their IP address and/or email addresses. In this case, i looked at the full message header (In Thunderbird its View Message Source) and got all the info i needed:
From – Wed Apr 27 08:08:52 2005
X-Account-Key: account3
X-UIDL: bb30d4c115e1675a71d21ce086a69026
X-Mozilla-Status: 1201
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Return-path: [tina @hac3.XXXXaustralia.com.au]
Envelope-to: keaven@keaven.com
Delivery-date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:45:23 -0400
Received: from kcom by quest.securenet-server.net with local-bsmtp (Exim 4.44)
id 1DQfML-00016E-Vr
for keaven@keaven.com; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:45:22 -0400
Received: from [XXX.XXX.XX.XX] (helo=hac3.XXXXaustralia.com.au)
by quest.securenet-server.net with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256)
(Exim 4.44)
id 1DQfML-000161-3L
for keaven@keaven.com; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:45:17 -0400
Received: from hac3.XXXXaustralia.com.au (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by hac3.XXXXaustralia.com.au (8.13.1/8.12.8) with ESMTP id j3R5jG0t007897
for [keaven @keaven.com]; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:45:16 +1000
Received: (from tina@localhost)
by hac3.XXXXaustralia.com.au (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id j3R5jG0O007893;
Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:45:16 +1000
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:45:16 +1000
Message-Id: <200504270545.j3R5jG0O007893@hac3.XXXXaustralia.com.au>
To: keaven@keaven.com
Subject: Your Final Warning From eBay
From: “aw-confirm@ebay.com”[aw -confirm@ebay.com]
Content-Type: text/html
This tells me all i need to know. First, i know where the message actually came from now (at least.. a better idea, anyway). The second ‘recieved: from’ line even has an IP address. It looks like i may even have a user name, ‘Tina’.
What happens next is a two step process. First you must find out who these IP address belong to (which can sometimes be a multi-stop process itself) and then you start emailing.
So, I did a whois on both IP address (the one from the link where they were trying to send me, and the one in the header from where the email really came).
WhoIs
An Internet utility that returns information about a domain name or IP address. For example, if you enter a domain name such as microsoft.com, whois will return the name and address of the domain’s owner (in this case, Microsoft Corporation).
–Webopedia
Using whois can be like following a trail. Not all whois utilities will give you all information. Even though it dosn’t hold as much clout as it once did, a good place to start is still the InterNIC WhoIs. They continue to be a public access point for domain reginstartion information. Another good starting point would be the Network Solutions, Inc WhoIs. NSI has their fingers in many, many, many internet pies.
Using these serveses got me the following information:
OrgName: RIPE Network Coordination Centre
OrgID: RIPE
Address: P.O. Box 10096
City: Amsterdam
StateProv:
PostalCode: 1001EB
Country: NL
ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43
NetRange: XX.0.0.0 – XX.255.255.255
[SnIp]
This tells me a few things. It tells me that the IP address i entered is part of an IP Pool. It also tells me that this IP Pool is owned by a company (RIPE Network Coordination Centre) who maintains their own internal whois directory service. That’s good.
Remember when i said this could be a multi-step process?
Going to the RIPE homepage, i find their whois utility and, again, enter the IP address. This time i’m given better, more relavent, information. I’m given a company name, address, phone numbers, the works. Remember, this is the information for the people who own the IP address, not nessesarily people part of the scam. Included with all this information is also this:
remarks: ************************************************
remarks: * Pay attention *
remarks: * Any communication sent to email different *
remarks: * from the following will be ignored! *
remarks: * Any abuse reports, please send them to *
remarks: * abuse@business.XXXXXXXXX.it *
remarks: ************************************************
Brilliant. So now i have an abuse email that’s just what i was looking for. I forward the original email i got to this abuse email, allong with a copy of the full header.
***********************************
Important
It is always important to include the FULL header information when you report spam/phishing/abuse. The full header will look similar to what i have in this post. Most email programs will not show you the full header by default… you have to go looking for them. In the case of Thunderbird you have to View->Message Source. For Microsoft Outlook, you right click on the message and go to Options; at the bottom is a box labled ‘Internet Headers’. IT guys will use the full header in order to trace the path of the message, and bring the culprit to justice!
***********************************
I went through the same process with the IP address i got from the message header. I eventually found an address and phone number for the company where the email originated. I forwarded them the email as well (again, including the FULL header).
Last but not least, i sent a copy of the message (didn’t just forward it, i added it as an attachment to a new message) to the Anti-Phishing Workgroup. See the end of this post for more information on the workgroup and how you can help!
Now… we just wait and see. Most likely i will not hear back from anyone. I can only hope that justice is served and that my actions may help to stop them before one of their intended vicims becomes an actual victim.
[cross fingers]
Anti-Phishing Workgroup
For more information on what’s being done, and what you can do to help, visit the Anti-Phishing Workgroup website.
Report Report Report!
The Anti-Phishing Workgroup has a repository for phishing scams. If you recieve a scam, send it over to the workgroup to help them better fight phishing!
- Create a new mail to reportphishing@antiphishing.org.
- Drag and drop the phishing email from your inbox onto this new email message
- In Netscape drop it on the ‘attachment’ area
- Do not use “forward” if you can help it, as this approach loses information and requires more manual processing. The exception is when you use the Web interface to outlook: in that case forward is the only solution.
Fight back!
