Multi Level Marketing. Scam or a Genuine Opportunity? Part 1

So, here I am, writing about one of the most interesting topics I have come across in recent times. I am sure many of you might have come across at least one Network Marketing scheme or the other by now.

I have seen many blogs - mostly with opinions heavily biased against Network Marketing. Most of these authors, lack objectivity in their posts mainly because, right from the start, they are against the entire idea of people joining an MLM (Multi Level Marketing) or question its effectiveness. They also call those people who are involved with an MLM to be under some kind of spell. Some even call them greedy, money minded people! These same people work hard for what? Money. How then is an MLM-er more greedy than say, an employee or a self employed individual? I for once do not think aspiring to be financially free constitutes greediness. In my opinion, anything has be be scrutinized, analysed and all sides of the entire thing be looked in detail before dismissing anything away or calling it a scam. Same is the case if one believes an MLM is a great way to earn perfectly legal passive income. Present objective facts before claiming it is a genuine opportunity.

I want this blog post to clear some misconceptions regarding this controversial topic. Before I begin, let me take this opportunity to clarify the reason for writing this post. I have been associated with Networking Marketing since its early days in India. I am talking about the late nineties here. I guess a 10 year "hands on" experience should be a good qualification for me to write fairly authoritatively about this topic. I will do this post in a QnA format. Before that, I wanted to talk in brief about the perception this industry has in the world. Almost everyone knows the Amways, the Oriflames, the Tupperwares the RMP's and the Herbalifes. But this knowledge is mostly "their perception" of the thing. Most people have been told different things about these companies which might be true or false. Most of these opinions are from folks who actually do not know what happens behind the scenes eventually become their so called knowledge about the entire thing. Your friends friend might have been in Amway, continued it for say two years, , didn't earn a penny out of it. Naturally, it would be seen as a loss making venture and for the same reason, a thing that doesnt work (for him/her). He is absolutely correct when he says it doesn't work! However that necessarily isn't the case for a few others for whom the idea worked.

Let's begin the QnA section now.

1. What is an MLM/ Network Marketing System?

An MLM is a way of marketing products directly from the manufacturer to the consumer - removing the middlemen who are involved in the traditional marketing system.There are companies who have their own products (Amway, Oriflame and Tupperware for example) and some who simply markets products made by other companies. (RMP for example).

2. Is MLM Legal?

This is a very controversial section. In most countries globally, it is legal. The US Government for example differentiates MLM system to be different from Pyramid and Money Circulation schemes. In India however, any company that sells directly to consumers and also offers them an opportunity to earn commissions on future sales through them are wrongly put in the same bracket as illegal, pyramid schemes. If we are to go by the Indian Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (Banning) Act,1978 in which MLM companies according to me are wrongly put, it indeed turns out to be illegal. In my opinion, there is a need to pass a law that legalizes genuine business opportunities and bans illegal "schemes" that masquerade as "MLM opportunities". Simply put, if we are to go by the Indian law, MLM giants like Avon, Amway, Herbalife and even Max NewYork Life Insurance (All Billion plus Dollar Corporations) turn out to be illegal!

3. Does an MLM actually work?

Depends. If you joined an MLM due to constant persuasion, it is highly likely that you will quit the business by the end of the very first year (and for the same reason, didn't work for you) :). It is simply foolish to expect returns from a business that you joined because someone wanted you to join. You joined for them, not for you. It is no less similar to you opening a shop because your neighbor asks you to open one. Any business will only work if you treat it like a business. If you happen to be an ex MLMer, there could be multiple reasons for your failure. Like any other business, an MLM needs constant attention. You need to learn how to approach people (the art of prospecting). You also need to identify people who would be an asset to your "group". An MLM is something that CANNOT be done by each and everyone. If you are in an MLM, your idea should be to form a strong down-line with people who could be leaders to their down-lines- and so on... in the future. Going in for quick gains by sponsoring as many people as you come across simply doesn't work.

4. How can you claim it works?

Well, I don't claim it works. When someone says something doesnt work, he is conveying his experience or something which he has heard from someone. If a Maruti 800 that you owned constantly failed, that car doesnt work for you. At the same time, there might be M800 users who have used their cars for ages without any issues. So, if you say it doesnt work for you, you are right! It doesnt! I have been involved with MLM since 1999. I had joined it because of the same reason as most people end up in an MLM. Force, coercion. As expected, it didn't work for us! One thing that was different in me (and my dad) was that we researched quite a bit to figure out why it din't work for us - instead of blaming the entire MLM system to be a farce. We figured that an MLM business is by no means an easy thing to do. It takes relentless effort to create a sustainable MLM business platform that can provide you with a decent passive income. Like I said before, you HAVE to treat it as just another business that needs constant attention. The investment required to start an MLM business is considerably lower than any conventional business. Sometimes, it is this very reason that people fail to treat it as a traditional business. The rate of failure in an MLM business is just a tad higher than the rate of failure in a traditional business .. BUT the former seems to be blamed more even though its financial implications are hardly a blip on the radar as compared to a traditional business.

Apart from all this, I have also seen/met/personally know MANY MLM leaders who are leading very comfortable lives - with a steady, above average income. These people, whom some blame to be money minded people (some actually are) comprise of many people who in spite of reaching a very comfortable income level continue to help others achieve what they did. In short, I wanted to convey that while it did not work for me, I refuse to blame an MLM for my failure.

I think this post might turn out to be boring if I make this any longer.. so I guess we would need a part 2 in the weeks to come. Till then!

Adios!

Agyaat: What You Really Want To Know

Watched Agyaat over the weekend. RGV's latest magnum opus has been ridiculed, torn to shreds and dismissed as (one of) the most pointless movies ever made by the so called film critics. I Disagree! It's ONE brilliant piece of work I say. Actually, if you have seen the movie, very carefully, it will of course come to you what RGV has actually intended to convey. Not getting still? I'll try again.

See, If you watched Agyaat and came out banging your head, it's just because you ain't bright enough to understand the concept. Thats it! C'mon not everyone has the same IQ levels! We're different people! For example, not everyone is as brilliant as me. So, I hereby proclaim whoever found this movie pointless, they possesses the IQ of a dingbat. I would go on to say that this work of art should be scrutinized (by intelligent people) and be kept as reference material. If you still haven't got the point, let me reveal it to you anyway.

The entire film is nothing but a trailor for Agyaat 2 that RGV is making. What? Agyaat 2? (Those who don't know, you miss vital pieces of information if you do not stay till the end of the movie). So, you see, what RGV is trying to do here is to create this huge aura about this Agyaat killer thats lurking in the jungles. Its scary, it's scared of water and it doesn't help if you pray when its in front of you and about to kill you because its stupid and doesn't know God exists. Oh and those who said "they should have at least revealed what killed Setu, the director and the producer", bummers, the film is titled Agyaat. So, even RGV doesn't know what killed them. Its Agyaat for gods sake!

And this is for those who said "What a pointless movie?". Have you ever thought what your purpose in life is? Think about it. You get up every morning, go to work, return home, watch TV, spend time with friends, worry about why he/she hasn't called you yet, fret about tomorrows commute to work.. and so on? Isn't THAT pointless? And you call this movie pointless? Bloody Hypocrites.

Go watch the movie. If you ain't scared by it, it will at least make you laugh.

Singers: Get Your Pronunciations Right!

As I type this, the popular Malayalam Reality musical show, Idea Star Singer is underway. The show is extremely popular amongst Malayalees, across the globe. Starting off on a very modest scale back in 2006, the show returned the next year in a bigger format promising contestants a flat worth Rs. 1 crore. The next year the prize money was doubled to 2 crore each for one male and one female contestant.

Now to the facts as to why am I talking about this program here on my blog. To start off, I am a big fan of this show. The contestants are high quality singers and the judges are by far the best ones in the business. I have never found the judgement "biased" or anything like that. The judges go out of their way to point out mistakes and other issues with "sangathis" as they call it!

But when it comes to Hindi songs some contestants sing, I see lots of scope for improvement. Some of the contestants need more training to "shrug off" their Malayalmised Hindi accents. While some contestants do manage to shrug it off (Hats off to them! It's NOT an easy thing to do, mind you), some others need to do a lot more. Some songs sound outright ridiculous and embarrassing if you happen to watch it along with your North Indian friends.

I have no complaints against the show, but if there is one thing that needs to be done to improve the quality of the show, it should be ensured that the contestants should get their pronunciations right. It's not just about Hindi. If I sing a Marathi song, (I am a Malayalee), it may sound awesome to a Malayalee, but a Marathi manoos listening to it should not feel like kicking my butt off because I ruined his favorite song. I am a singer myself and I “know” how bad it sounds when you do not sing a song correctly (as in, with the correct pronunciation). The worst part is that performances like these are given high marks because the judges might have not heard the original song.

I am not against Malayalees (I am one too, after all and proud to be one!) or the mallu accent, but in some situations, the accent can do more harm than good. Additionally, in my experience, it is quite not an impossible task to work on your diction. You just need to listen to the original song very carefully and learn it. I would rather not sing a song at all, till I get the pronunciation right. And, this is not just limited to a Malayalee singing Hindi songs, the rule to get the pronunciations right can be extended to all languages.

Mistakes while singing is OK, but this is not! I don't know how many people agree with me on this here! Just my 50 cents worth. :)

PDC 2008 Coverage: Windows 7 Previewed

As reported by me on Techtree earlier, it was expected that finer details of Windows 7 would be known to us by the end of the Professional Developers Conference(PDC) that is underway at Los Angeles. And true it was. We now have a fair idea of what and how the Windows 7 really is all about. The PDC also answers the biggest question people had in their minds... (and its not over yet!). Is Windows 7 just a "spruced up" Vista?

This is what it was considered to be, when we had a very restrictive initial look at the leaked screen shots that appeared few weeks ago. Well, that argument has been laid to rest now with Microsoft offering a "hands-on" to the journalists who attended the PDC. They had on offer a Dell Laptop loaded with a Windows 7 pre-beta Build 6801 to have a first detailed look at it. These are the initial impressions of what the Windows 7 is all about -- and what it is not.

To start with, it is not just another Vista rehash. Yes, it retains the "family look" but there are many underlying changes that makes it a far better OS than its predecessor. Although I still think they should have opted for a full design-change to alienate itself from Vista, Microsoft chose not to do so and I believe they have valid reasons for that decision. So, whats new? And what is not? Read on.

First off, the build 6801 that was showcased during the PDC is reportedly an older version. This meant that several of the new features that were seen in some screenshots were not present in this build. For the record, screen shots have revealed newer build versions; namely build 6926 and 6933 which seems to be a more complete package - albeit unstable ones.

Networking -the Windows 7 way
To start off, connecting to a wireless network is now far easier. In fact, it is just one click away from the task bar -- another Windows component that has more or less remained the same over the years. Not any longer! The good ol' taskbar "text" has given way to icons (which does impart a somewhat gaudy look to it). More on the taskbar improvement later. As for choosing a wifi network to hop on to, it is just a click on the icon on the task bar and you get a list of all the networks available. Click on the one you wish to hop on to and you're done! Now that’s nifty and was this not possible earlier? -- is all I wish to ask.

UAC remains; but subtler now
The dreaded UAC (User Access Control) pop ups still loom large. Yes, you had the option to turn them off.. However, Microsoft thinks there are folks who would still want their computers to be a bit more proactive and let you know what your background programs are up to. So what do they do? Give you a slider control and now you decide whether to turn UAC off completely or let it pop up only when a program (and not you) makes a change to the system settings. Nice! But they could have dropped that pop-up idea altogether.

Sidebar: Killed
I am unsure how many of you found the Vista sidebar irritating. For people with lesser screen real estate, it was a pain if you wanted to use the gadgets -- but without the accompanying sidebar that eats up your precious screen space. Now you have relief the sidebar has been officially shown the door but guess what? The gadgets remain -- and now, you are free to place them anywhere on your screen.

HomeGroups
This is one of those networking things that you might have been “oh so much" used to. You run the wizard and nothing actually works according to plan. Let’s hope this one does. Now, the Homegroup does what it says and is supposed to be a tool to share files and stuff over a small home network. Apart from sharing printers, it can also help share other hardware and make for seamless inter-machine connectivity along with added security: You decide what to share and what not to. Sounds familiar?

Device Stage
I had discussed about this earlier --when not much was known about this. We now have more details emerging. As expected, Device Stage is just an enhanced "auto play pop up" when you connect an external device to your computer. The only difference now is that, you have different interfaces for supported hardware. By supported hardware, I mean the devices which provides content for the Device stage will show up with "extra features" when connected instead of the plain jane auto play window that is seen now. It remains to be seen how device manufacturers pick this up.

Taskbar
Yes we're back at it. As mentioned earlier in the article, the taskbar has undergone a complete transformation after having been left unchanged since eons now. The quick launch has been discarded and now we have icons replacing the text that displayed running programs. The right click offers greater features and flexibility now -- giving options like opening recent files and related goodies.

Multitouch
Finally we have multitouch on the PC and prima facie, it seems to work pretty well. While you might need a slight learning curve to start off with it, it won’t take an user significant time to master it. And yes, it supports all the gestures you have in mind -- pinching, stretching and the others. Happy?

User Interface:
Ok, nothing revolutionary in here. It still looks like Vista (which most people might not like). But there have been changes. The Flip 3d remains along with the new taskbar (already previewed) Notable additions include the new windows resizing feature which has managed to turn some heads. And yes, the system tray has been "upgraded" as well. It now offers you more control over the (annoying) pop ups -- allowing you to decide if you want to display an item on the tray permanently or not.

Mac Users Boo (as usual)
While many have welcomed the changes, Mac users claim most of the new "features" on the Windows 7 are simply Microsoft’s version of existing OSX stuff. Yes, we have been hearing this ever since the Vista launch and now it has rather become a norm. Windows 7 is arguably the biggest change to the User interface that Windows have been through since XP and from what I see, it is a far cry from a rehashed Vista. With an expected 2009 launch it remains to be seen how it fares against the OSX SnowLeopard 10.6 due mid 2009.

A faster Windows?
Windows 7 will also aim to be leaner, faster and it won't crib for system resources -- a lesson well learnt from the Vista debacle. Remember the "Vista capable" labels? To prove this, Windows SVP Steve Sinofsky showcased his personal laptop duRing the keynote which ran the OS smoothly. The netbook reportedly ran at 1Ghz with 1 GB of RAM. Now that’s nice. There’s already a talk of frwsh set of system requirements for the Windows 7. This just might be the trump card for Microsoft!


Via: Gizmodo

Techtree Link

Optimizing Photo Sessions from Camera Phone

Camera phones are not a simple Point-&-Shoot digital camera that has standard & sophisticated features. While they are essential for a prized shot, camera phones have become the one only ever-present option to capture moments which are essential and of value.
Will you run for your Olympus DSLR when u see your Kid taking his/her first steps OR when u see your cousin slipping candy in his/her pocket when he/she is banned to eat anything Sweet??

One of reason why person erases photograph taken from phone's camera is because of the unsatisfactory end-results. These "results" include: blur, over bright or dark, also its object is partially cut. Here in this post, are common, but hereto ignored "tricks" to result a optimal qualified image:


1. Utilize largest Mega-Pixel measure available, The greater measure (pixel) photo, the greater detail it will get visually.

2. Use all objects in the vicinity, Many-A-times Camera-Yielding person (hereto referred to as Shooter) just focuses on its Primary photography object only, neglecting the environment around it.

3. Don't place object on the in the middle of the photograph, since with place object not in the middle image, making your more photograph "Mask" a lot of other objects that may be caught & enhance the effect.

4. Don't Utilize "Zooming" Facility as it surely will reduce image quality, notably to photograph distance object. This is because a Mobile-Camera uses a Optical Zoom, which only "Appears" to bring the image closer, which is not so in reality. Look for a Camera-Phone which has "Optical Zoom" preferably 3X & above.

5. Photograph at Close Distances, since phone's camera utilizes lenticular focus length (distance among center optical on lenticular with object) one that is regular. Long distances fall short (Pun unintended) & focus very short.

6. Before taking image, determine the line of falling light. If you have your Back to indigenous light object, it will cause the object to appear dark, & will fail to dazzle. Still, the best is if a luminous source is placed at Shooters back the Object will appear bright.

7. In many cases, you don't find desirable lighting condition. In such cases change the "White Balance" Setting to "Auto".

8. If image that is featured in phone's camera display appears over dark or over bright, try "Brightness Ruler" before taking image, specifically for object which has rich colors.

9. Avoid insufficient Lighting , since phone's Camera is hard to catch detail object in Poor Light condition. Even with aided flash, Many-A-Times its results are not optimal, since flash's average on phone just effective on semi distances up to one meter. Use an external source of Lighting if Possible to fill in the Gap & remember to keep the Object "Facing" the Light.

10. The Phone usually "Names" the shots in default name (Usually Date_Time). Hence make it a point to move photo to computer & rename to desired name. Thus you will save space on Camera & your Phone will be clutter free.

11. Maintain Exposure Value until –2.0. exposure's appreciative excelsior draws that resulting getting brightness. On the contrary if its point getting little minus, the image will get dark. Manage exposure's appreciative suiting with available object. Not all Phone-Camera have all the settings as above, but as always there are better setting that "ARE" available & rules corresponds to tips given above.

Happy Shooting.

Security ramblings: Sarah Palin's ID hacked

If you have been following the 2008 US Presidential campaign, you sure might have heard of Sarah Palin, the beauty queen turned Vice -Presidential candidate for the Republicans. Right? No?

Before I proceed, no -- this has nothing to do with Ms. Palins chances against Mr.Biden (The Democrat VP candidate!). And we do intend to remain a tech oriented blog for the foreseeable future.



The reason for the sudden interest in Ms. Palin is due to the recent "shocking invasion of privacy" that she and her family were subjected to -- In simple terms, two of her e-mail IDs were "hacked" by some miscreant(s). So, even the potential Vice President remains at the mercy of a bunch of wayward hackers. The group behind this security breach was said to be the somewhat famous "Anonymous" group which seems to have lost their interest for anti-Scientology activities and are looking for innovative ways such as this for grabbing attention. However, recent claims from a Forum member based in Tennessee might throw some light on how the ID was actually hacked.

That said, the e-mail account that were hacked into were Yahoo! accounts with no special features and according to the recent confession, the hacker did not have much of a trouble getting into both of Ms Palin's IDs (Yes! Two of them were hacked!). All he needed was some basic biographical information regarding her and it was as easy as using her Birthday, Zip Code and answering the security question which in this case was " Where did you meet your spouse". Palin being a public figure, all these information was freely available in public and all the hacker needed to do was to reset the password!


Here's the actual forum post which is now offline for obvious reasons...

"Hello, as many of you might already know, last night sarah palin’s yahoo was “hacked” and caps were posted on ----, i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story.
In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.
after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)
the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.
I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…"

...........And that brings me to my main concern here. I am sure nobody has life threatening data stored in their e-mail accounts but yes, it is always a good idea to be just extra cautious. In these days of online banking and NEFT money transfers, you better be. As much as possible, avoid monetary transactions on a Public PC. As for e-mail accounts, there are people who do use their unofficial accounts for office work (Palin too!) and this could be potentially dangerous if your ID indeed gets hacked (say by a competitor?). Apart from the competitor getting to know what happened behind closed doors at the last meeting, you also face the risk of being unemployed all of a sudden! So... yes, as much as possible, avoid official e-mails through unofficial channels and please do not make your IDs easily crackable. Trust me, it's very easy to do that. I am sure you do not want me to go into details. Do you?

Have a hack free extended weekend!

Chat excerpt from:WIRED

Future watch: Nanoantenna Skins

How many times have you been left stranded in the middle of nowhere when your top of the line gizmo went limp as soon as the battery dried up? We have had groundbreaking developments on almost all fronts except that ubiquitous little black cylinder called the battery. While cell phones have evolved from specimens having a single line display that only displayed the caller’s number, to the stage where you watch You tube videos on the iPhone, batteries have remained more or less the same. So, what do we do to in a situation where you have squeezed out every ounce of battery life and there is no charger in sight? You take out your cellphone out of the pocket! That’s it!

Sounds far fetched? Could be – however, if researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) are to be believed, a new, special kind of flexible solar cell is under development which can collect and store energy from various sources – sources like the sun, light from a bulb. Infact, every potential energy consumer is a source of energy for the nano antennae. This microscopic antenna has been designed to capture energy left behind by existing processes and targets a certain wavelength range of mid-infrared rays. These rays are constantly emitted by the earth, thanks to the solar energy absorbed by the earth during the daytime. Steven Novack, the lead member of the team behind this initiative says "Every process in our industrial world creates waste heat. It's energy that we just throw away."

The most important fact to notice here is the anytime availability of this “waste” energy. It does not matter if its day or night, this leftover energy is always around us. The researchers have also found a way to mass-produce these nanoantennae skins on a flexible sheet of plastic. Say, if you have a coating of these cells on your cell phone, the moment you take it out of your pocket, it can be potentially charged!

Apart from helping you charge your gadgets, these nano antennae have another possible usage. Cooling! These antennae has the capability to absorb the infra red radiation and re-emit them at a harmless wavelength which sort of cools things down. This technology Can be used to cool PC components that require active cooling.

The INL foresees a future where we will have cars and electronic goods covered with the skin. However, obstacles remain. The main obstacle here is to convert the alternating current to DC current. The device produces alternate currents –but it alternates at trillions of times a second –making it impossible for modern rectifiers to detect it –let alone convert. Additionally, they will need to mass produce nano sized rectifiers, which is not possible on a large scale with existing technology.


Source: Dailytech

Intel, Microsoft killed the $100 laptop?

Times Online reports that Nicholas Negroponte’s dream of building a 100 $ laptop for underprivileged children around the world was broken by giant corporations in various ways. Times says, “Microsoft tried to kill it with words while Intel tried to kill it with dirty tricks”

The 100-dollar laptop was the idea of Nicholas Negroponte, who first mentioned about it at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2005. It was a solar powered device, low cost; to be made available to underprivileged children around the world. The idea was to spread enlightenment and freedom of information. Large, cash rich corporations were gung ho about the project and pooled in with money and support. Then later, as Times puts it, “some of them tried to kill it” and they succeeded. Well almost! The following quote from Negroponte sums things up “I had wildly underestimated the degree to which commercial entities will go to disrupt a humanitarian project.”

Three years on, the OLPC foundation (One Laptop per Child) has managed to produce one cheap laptop. It still costs $190, only 370,000 has been sold – a far cry from the numbers actually envisioned, it is called the XO and yes, it is solar powered. So, what went wrong?

First reason. This was going to be cheap. Microsoft had objections because they go to enormous lengths to ensure their products are expensive and necessary and this laptop certainly held their cause. Reason number two was the involvement of AMD. Being a cheap product, the 100$ laptop was always a mass product, produced in large numbers. Market leader Intel definitely did not want millions of cheap AMD chips out in the market, which could also have significant bearing on its unchallenged market share. Another reason was the software. No Microsoft or Apple here. The XO uses Sugar, a custom based interface for the Fedora Core. Ethan Beard, a former OLPC board member representing Google says, “This was a project that could operate outside the regular business world, and that’s not an unreasonable expectation.”

However, when there are some things that could hurt your business, large businesses -- the big boys will react in ways that could hurt badly. Intel went ahead and made their own cheap, laptops, the Classmate while Bill Gates was heard saying, “Jeez, get a decent computer”

The article points that the stand taken by Intel and Microsoft is similar to the stand by large drug companies who instead of working for the illnesses that plague the poor, (Malaria for example,) are still concentrating on low volume, high margin drugs for cancer, heart ailments and diabetes – usually diseases of the rich.

DNS flaw explained at Black Hat conference

DNS vulnerability has been the talk of town since early July when Dan Kaminsky revealed that a flaw in the DNS software can allow a form of attack called DNS cache poisoning.

On Wednesday, at the Black Hat conference held at Las Vegas, Dan Kaminsky addressed anxious attendees and explained what the fuss is all about. He revealed that the DNS,which acts like the on line version of the 411, is the component which decides and controls how and where on line information gets routed. Say, you type in www.google.com and hit enter, it is the DNS that takes care of the request and opens up the web page you wanted. This holds true for any similar requests you make. (For those who do not know, 411 is a local directory number widely used in the US and Canada)

That was just a basic example of what DNS does.



What DNS cache poisoning can do is to alter the association between the domain names and IP addresses. This is an alarming scenario. A simple example would be like hitting www.google.com and the website that opens up maybe www.yahoo.com – or any other website that the hacker chooses to -- as they now have control where on line information gets routed. Although the example above is a tad far fetched, what can happen is that the hacker could flood a DNS server with multiple requests for similar-sounding domain names -- confusing the server into querying a root server for name server/s handling lookups for these domains.

After the July 8 announcement, Kaminsky had requested security researchers to not reveal details about the vulnerability so that affected entities could have enough time to patch . However, security researchers Halval Flake and an analyst from Matasano Security on July 21 did post details about how the flaw worked.

Kaminsky estimates that there are about 35 known and unknown ways to execute this attack. After the announcement, almost 80 technology vendors have been working overtime to fix the bug – and it seems to be working. Information Week reports that the percentage of vulnerable unique name servers that subjected themselves to self –test on Kaminsky's blog has come down from a scary 85% to about 50%. However, that still isn’t enough – as even Fortune 500 companies have had issues patching the bug due to issues with NAT (Network Address Translation)

As for the bug being actually exploited by hackers, a reported incident from AT&T suggests that its Internet Services DNS cache server was altered to replace the cached entry for www.google.com with another web page that served advertisements. Although not a critical security flaw, it did highlight the dangers about the bug and that Kaminsky's concern is warranted.

For more, you may check Dan Kaminsky's blog where your DNS server can also be subjected to a vulnerability test.

The Mojave Experiment – Vista ain’t that bad afterall!

If there is one Operating system that has been loathed, snubbed and has had the worst reviews, it has to be Windows ME. That said, what could have been the reason for those kind of responses? Was the OS really that bad or was it just the reviews that made it look so bad and unusable? Can’t really say! That was then.

We have had similar reactions in 2007, when Vista was launched. It was said to be too resource consuming, needed super computer like hardware to run, had annoying pop ups asking you for confirmation even if you wanted to change your font. To add insult to injury, arch rival Apple had the super slick Mac OSX Panther which not only offered the eye candy, but was also easy to use out of the box – or so said the reviews. And, with boot camp, you can run Vista as well--If you really wanted to. So what does big M do?

They come up with this thing called the Mojave Experiment where unsuspecting users who had “stereotyped” Vista and wouldn’t touch the OS with a one mile rod, were asked to watch a video demonstration of what they were told was its forthcoming "Mojave" operating system. What the subjects weren't told was that they were actually watching a demo of Windows Vista in action -- an OS that most had previously said they wouldn't purchase under any circumstances.

Respondents were chosen from the focus group (Mojave Experiment) organizer's database, called at random, but then selected based on having a low perception of Vista (<5 rating on a scale of 1-10).The 120 odd participants on average, gave Vista a rating of 4.4 out of 10 prior to participating. The average rating jumped to 8.5 after the subjects watched the demo. Responses ranged from "It's awesome" and "The speed is incredible" to "I'd give it a 10"

So is it really all in the head?

The popular Apple ads depict Vista as a slow, buggy unfashionable OS compared to the hip and younger OS X. Apart from the reviews and the ubiquitous Apple ads, implementation of Vista in commercial environments too have not taken off and there have many reports about organizations asking OEM computer suppliers to actually “downgrade” the OS to XP prior to shipping. This means, it is not just the average Joe who is uncomfortable with the OS – even professionals who aren't as impressionable as consumer users, are bitten by the “vista sucks” bug. We can’t really say.

As for the Mojave experiment, many users are complaining about the method used to survey. The respondents did not actually use the OS but were shown only a Video of the UI and the speed. This method according to many is crude as the USP of any OS is the way it interacts with the user. A video showing some parts of the OS certainly is not the way to go if you want a complete picture. Others, however, said the subjects' reaction to Vista was consistent with their own experience with the software.

The debate continues..