loadntxt.com blog

Scams are all over us so take extra caution when you receive a text message from an unknown sender (that is, their cellnumber is not on your phonebook) asking you for a share-a-load, pasaload or whatever favor in kind or in cash. Like the Love Bug virus that uses social engineering, these scammers are clever in that they may address you with titles of endearment like ‘hon’ (short for honey). If you’re not careful, you may fall from their trap.

That being said, scams are everywhere, be it in email, blogs, websites, organizations, even in Wall Street which is taking the global economy on its feet. Not to mention identity theft, phishing and the like…

One Inquirer columnist described the current US economic meltdown as akin to a "pyramid scheme". He adds:

The sad part of it all was that the financial players involved—the banks, the mortgage companies, the investment houses, and even the credit-rating agencies—must have understood this and realized that the whole situation just wasn’t sustainable. They all knew that something had to give at some point, and yet they just kept on going. Why? Because fat profits and huge salaries were being made all throughout the process, of course. That is the nature of this huge industry that thrives on “playing with” and growing other people’s money. But more than that, they also had faith that Uncle Sam would not let the industry down when the inevitable day of reckoning comes. The financial system, after all, is too vital to be allowed by the government to collapse. The White House’s most recent moves once again reinforces this faith that time and again has moved people to do irresponsible things—what economists call “moral hazard” that is so prevalent in free-market systems. The same moral hazard led to the Asian financial crisis 10 years ago, and the many other financial crises the world has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. And so once again, it is ultimately the common taxpayers who end up paying for the excesses of the market players.

Meanwhile, the two US presidentiables agree that it’s the result of corporate greed and US financial policies. Americans believe that banking deregulation is part of the problem.

Pyramid scheme. Moral hazard. Banking deregulation. Corporate greed. Weak financial policies. All rolled into one creating the biggest challenge so far for Uncle Sam. But we are forgetting that those Americans with blemished credit history are to be blamed too because they are the receiving end of the bait put up by the financial players involved in this crisis.

The party is over. Now the Americans are waking up to the sobering effects of their own monster creation. Meanwhile, the corporate wolves in suits are relishing their kill. Maybe they are tamed for now. But this time around (hopefully), Uncle Sam will be vigilant and will make sure the corporate wolves will not carry out their dirty tricks again. Or so we thought…

Here’s a quick lowdown of SMS usage in the US, accurate up to first half of 2008. Source: CNET News

• 75 billion SMS text messages were sent in June 2008, averaging about 2.5 billion messages a day, according to CTIA survey
• This represents an increase of 160 percent over the 28.8 billion messages reported in June 2007
• SMS usage spiked in spite of the fact that text messages skyrocket 100 percent over the past two years to 20 cents a pop. Sprint Nextel was the first to introduce the new 20 cent per text message rate last year. And other major carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile USA, soon followed.
• The new wave of price hikes came just one year after all the major carriers raised individual text messaging rates from 10 cents a message to 15 cents per message.
• Data services, which primarily consist of text messaging service, generated $14.8 billion in revenue for the first half of 2008, or accounted for about 20 percent of total mobile carrier revenues. This represents a 40 percent increase over the first half of 2007, when data revenues totaled $10.5 billion.

Despite price increases, SMS usage hits record high which prompted Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) to send letters to the Big Four (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint-Nextel and T-Mobile USA) and asked for justification for the SMS price hike. Will there be a price cap for SMS as in the European Union? Well, that remains to be seen as the operators will duke it out against the regulators as long as possible.

As Mr. Vince McMahon of the WWE would say, "It’s all about the MONEY"!

So you think that global warming is one serious threat to our survival. Well, think again. According to Discover Magazine:

The Global Extinction Awareness System, a supercomputer that accurately predicted the extinction of red squirrels several years ago, has run the numbers for our own species through the computer, and our odds of survival aren’t good. According to GEAS, Homo sapiens may go extinct by the year 2042.

The latest GEAS simulation harnessed over 70 petabytes of environmental, economic, and demographic data, and was cross-validated by ten different probabilistic models. The GEAS models revealed a potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats”, which represent a collision of environmental, economic, and social risks (Source: Institute for the Future or IFTF).

To help solve this crisis, IFTF invites you to play Superstruct, the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. By playing the game, you’ll help IFTF chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. The game starts September 22, 2008, and it will last for six weeks.

Internet disconnections are really annoying especially when you’re in the middle of research, about to save a blog post, or simply can’t connect to your favorite website. Simply pinging your DNS server will do the trick but if the DNS server itself of your ISP is down, what are you going to do? Fortunately, there’s OpenDNS and you can simply replace the DNS IP address on your router (192.168.1.1 on Linksys routers). That is, you can point your DNS servers to these IP addresses 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. That’s all there is to it. Once you get your internet connection back up and running, you may use Down for Everyone or Just Me link to verify if the site you want to visit is really down or if it’s simply your ISP.

For now, OpenDNS is working great for me. I’ve been using it for a week now and so far, so good. I have yet to see if it’s really reliable but so far, I have never looked back at the DNS IP addresses given by my ISP.