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OpenDNS July 11, 2006

Posted by Owen in : Internet , 2comments

My good friend from junior high school, David Ulevitch, has just launched his new business venture, OpenDNS. OpenDNS is a service that corrects typos and disables phishing sites when you type in a domain name. So if you typed, www.iconator.comm by accident, it would automatically correct the spelling of .com. It’s easy to install and works perfectly. I think this will add a good safety net for internet beginners and help people who make lotts of typoz. He’s a good guy, so there’s no worry about a repeat of Verisign’s Sitefinder and there’s absolutely no privacy implications.

I changed my DNS and it works perfectly. I can’t wait to see what new additions are in the pipeline!

Cross-Cultural Exchange June 22, 2006

Posted by Owen in : Internet , 7comments

PowerBook G4I’ve been trying to sell my old PowerBook on Craigslist. It turns out they really keep their value. I received this email from a prospective buyer yesterday:

Hello,
How are you doing?i was came across your advert today concerning the item you posted for sale. am really intresting and this item is perfectly specification requested by me. i like to know if the item is still available and the details of the present condition and the last price you are willing to sell it to me.looking forward to hear from you …….. thanks stay bless.
Regards

Ok, no problem. It’s a little suspicious, but maybe he (or she) doesn’t speak good English well. I wrote back with the requested details and get this response:

Thanks for you quick responce i will be buying,i will like to tell you that i will be paying with a cashier check in us dollars and as for the shippinpment my shipper will come for the pick up at your location upon your confirmation of receiving the payment and i dont want you to look for anyother buyer.i would have love to come down for the pick up.but am not chance to do that now but am satisfy with yourh your discription of the item i will like you to give me the following so that your payment can be send……………..
1….your full name to be on the check
2..your full contact address to send the payment to
3..your zip code
4.your mobile nad land nunmber to reach you.i will expect your
mail.asap

Ok, now I’m fully suspicious. Cashiers check, shippinpment, US dollars. This is starting to sound like a real scam. I look at the email headers and find the IP address of the sender. What do you know? The email was sent from Lagos, Nigeria. (For those who don’t know about Nigerian scams, take a look at Wikipedia.)

Like Magic March 3, 2005

Posted by Owen in : Internet , add a comment

I was recently downloading something from BitTorrent, and it was really slow.
I was playing around with the options and I noticed a few things:

  1. Azureus supports UPnP (universal plug and play).
  2. My router also supports UPnP.
  3. BitTorrent works faster when there’s an open port

Sure enough, when I enabled UPnP in Azureus, my router forwared the BitTorrent port to the appropriate computer. And when I quit Azureus, the port was closed. Now this is how easy everything should be. :-)

I Wrote This January 3, 2005

Posted by Owen in : Internet , add a comment

Here’s some pretty funny political cartoons.

Bush and God

Also, on an unrelated note, I was walking up the stairs in my apartment building and I noticed that someone dragged their Christmas tree down four flights of stairs instead of putting it in one of the three elevators. How do I know? There was a carpet of pine needles left on the floor in their wake.

Google October 19, 2004

Posted by Owen in : Internet , add a comment

Google Desktop is the coolest thing yet from Google.

Fonts February 3, 2004

Posted by Owen in : Internet , add a comment

The fonts used in this blog (and on OP-Design.com) are CODON for the large header, Epilog for the subheads, and Tombats Smiles for the dingbats in the top-left corner. You can get them, and many other great fonts, from the very creative Tom at Divide By Zero. (My original revision of OP-Design had a note at the bottom thanking him, but it was lost in the redesign. I’ll have to find a way to re-add it.)