A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA…

as written by a Class – X schoolboy, with all the original spellings.

This guy is a genius!!!
The original inhabitants of ancient India were called Adidases, who lived in
two cities called Hariappa and Mujhe-na-Darao . These cities had the best
drain system in the world and so there was no brain drain from them. Ancient
India was full of myths, which have been handed down from son to father. A
myth is a female moth. A collection of myths is called mythology, which
means stories with female caricatures. One myth says that people in olden
times worshipped monkeys because they were our incestors.

In olden times there were two big families in India. One was called the
Pandava and the other was called the Karova. They fought amongst themselves
in a battle called Mahabharat, after which India came to be known as Mera
Bharat Mahan.

In midevil times India was ruled by the Slave Dienasty. So named because
they all died a nasty death. Then came the Tughlaqs who shifted their
capital from Delhi because of its pollution.

They were followed by the Mowglis. The greatest Mowgli was Akbar because he
extinguished himself on the battlefield of Panipat which is in Hurryana. But
his son Jehangir was peace loving; he married one Hindu wife and kept 300
porcupines.

Then came Shahajahan who had 14 sons. Family planning had not been invented
at that time. He also built the Taj Mahal hotel for his wife who now sleeps
there. The king sent all his sons away to distant parts of India because
they started quarrelling.

Dara Seiko was sent to UP, Shaikh Bhakhtiyar was sent to J & K, while
Orangezip came to Bombay to fight Shivaji. However, after that they changed
its name to Mumbai because Shivaji’s sena did not like it. They also do not
like New Delhi, so they are calling it Door Darshan.

After the Mowglis came Vasco the Gama. He was an exploder who was
circumcising India with a 100 foot clipper.

Then came the British. They brought with them many inventions such as
cricket, tramtarts and steamed railways.

They were followed by the French who brought in French fries, pizzazz and
laundry. But Robert Clive drove them out when he deafened Duplex who was out
membered since the British had the queen on their side. Eventually, the
British came to overrule India because there was too much diversity in our
unity. The British overruled India for a long period. They were great
expotents and impotents. They started expoting salt from India and impoting
cloth.

This was not liked by Mahatma Gandhi who wanted to produce his own salt.
This was called the swedish moment. During this moment, many people burnt
their lion cloths in the street and refused to wear anything else. The
British became very angry at this and stopped the production of Indian
testiles.

In 1920, Mahatma Gandhi was married to one wife. Soon after he became the
father of the nation. In 1942 he started the Quiet India moment, so named
because the British were quietly lootaoing our country.

In 1947, India became free and its people became freely loving. This
increased our population. Its government became a limited mockery, which
means people are allowed to take the law in their own hands with the help of
the police. Our constipation is the best in the world because it says that
no man can be hanged twice for the same crime. It also says you cannot be
put in prison if you have not paid your taxis. Another important thing about
our constipation is that it can be changed. This is not possible with the
British constipation because it is not written on paper.

The Indian Parlemint consists of two houses which are called lower and
higher. This is because one Mr Honest Abe said that two houses divided
against itself cannot withstand.

So Pandit Nehru asked the British for freedom at midnight since the British
were afraid of the dark . At midnight, on August 15, there was a tryst in
Parlemint in which many participated by wearing khaki and hosting the flag.

Recently in India, there have been a large number of scams and a plaque. It
can be dangerous because many people died of plaque in Surat. Scams are all
over India.
One of these was in Bihar where holy cows were not given anything to eat by
their elected leader. The other scam was in Bofor which is a small town in
Switzerland. In this, a lot of Indian money was given to buy a gun which can
shoot a coot.

Presently India has a coalishun government made up of many parties, left,
right and centre. It has started to library the economy. This means that
there is now no need for a licence as the economy will be driven by itself.
India is also trying to become an Asian tiger because its own tigers are
being poached. Another important event this year was the Shark meeting at
Malas Dive. At this place, shark leaders agreed to share their poverty,
pollution and population.”

Cyberspace is increasingly a war zone. If it’s not a criminally minded hacker (there’s good ones out there too) trying to bring down your website or email server, there’ll be a spammer blasting tons of crap at you through common email service providers. There are some tools that can help us figure out the shades of gray into more discrete forms – I’m not going to cover all of them, just the ones I use most often.

Have you ever travelled or organized an event? Do you just jump right into the middle of the event/trip or do you plan for it, and ensure you’re covered for most risks? I’d wager you do the latter; so why is it that using the internet and working over the net are not considered with equal fore-thought and planning? After all the risks on the internet are usually minor, but the more major risks of identity theft and credit card fraud can be far worse than the worst car breakdown or wardrobe malfunction. Fortunately there are simple ways to keep a check on internet related risks, and I’ve covered 3 of the most common ones here.

1. Firewalls: There are a lot of there out there now; you get free software firewalls and then there’s Windows Firewall (which is pretty good too) – and of course hardware/external security appliances (like the excellent Sonicwall appliances I’ve worked with).

If you’ve noticed your internet suddenly slow down when you’re in office, and it stays slow for ~2-3 hours specially around lunchtime, chances are someone could be downloading stuff. When I say “stuff” – I mean videos, games – or stuff that’s not directly connected with office work. One of the most common methods to download these days is by the use of torrents, or via web services like rapidshare (Note: there are many legal uses for these services – if you do catch someone using these to download illegal stuff you should fire them first and then use the firewall :-)). However if just two people start large downloads, it’s likely to block off your internet to the point nobody else in the office can use it.

That’s where the firewall comes in. Many firewalls have what’s called a “QoS” – Quality of Service – that can allow you to throttle the rate at which a certain service runs. So while you may want official VOIP calls to run at full speed, large downloads and torrents could be throttled to use a 5% or 10% of the bandwidth.

Further, firewalls are able to detect the type of traffic flowing through the network, and can give you a pretty good idea of whether it’s someone trying to gain access to something they shouldn’t, or if someone’s watching a movie online, or downloading music or suchlike – and based on what you see you can block or throttle the activity. It’s also possible for the external appliance firewalls to detect spam sources and they can help block it and reduce the load on your email servers.

2. Spam filters: If you’re using Gmail, you probably could go directly to #3 – however if you’ve got a 3rd party mail server or manage your own email services, read on.

Spam is identified in 2 ways – blacklists and the email contents. Firewalls will help you with the blacklists aspect, but what about the contents of the email? The best way to check this automatically, using a powerful learning algorithm, is SpamAssassin. Most email servers have plugins for SpamAssassin and you can then configure the settings to filter out the kind of spam you see the most. Voila! Your private mailbox is as clean as, or cleaner than your Gmail account.

Client-side spam removal tools: If you use Outlook, you should probably look through client-side spam removal tools as well. These would double-check your mailbox and eliminate the residuals of any spam attack that made it through your filters.

3. Virus/Malware protection: In my book this is either AVG (the free edition) or Windows Defender. I’m starting to prefer Windows Defender over all of the others because of the ease of use and accuracy of detection. Also the fact that it doesn’t slow down my system as much as the Norton’s or Symantec products do means I can continue my work unimpeded.

Often while browsing websites or downloading useful documents/tools for our work, we may come across virus infected files that we just don’t want on our system. These anti-virus measures ensure that your system remains safe from infection.

Ideally you should also scan your system once a week to ensure you don’t have any unwelcome “friends” occupying space on your hard drive.

Important: Remember to always update your anti-virus/anti-malware and other software on your PC. If you have limited internet bandwidth and need to do this later – do it later but as much as possible do NOT delay! You never know when you’re the next target.

What happens if we don’t do this (points 1, 2, 3 and the ‘important’ note above)? The answer is not as simple as it looks. If there’s a virus/malware on your PC, chances are the malware is using your PC to attack others on the same network, or even others around the world via the internet. If there’s spam in your email service that looks appealing/genuine, you may end up on a phishing site and victim to an online fraud.

Vigilance is the key to ensure this doesn’t happen – however it’s not practical for a human to be vigilant 24/7 – which is where these tools come into play. The sooner you adopt and use tools that keep you, your identity and your computer safe, the better set you are to explore the world of the internet, with little or no risk.

Be safe!

How can I minimize the impact of this ongoing Cyber war – WW 3 – on my services and website? It’s up here.

The world has been on the brink of WW 3 for a long time now – ever since the 1990s there’s been attacks and bombings and everything – and in the back of their mind everyone knows that sooner or later something big is going to break out.

In the 2000s specially after the movie “The Matrix” – cyber warfare has been considered a very real and very possible threat. In this latest Spamhaus vs Spammers match, who will emerge the winner?

If the Spammers end up victorious – which would mean Spamhaus incurs major losses and is forced to shut shop – does that mean we’ll suddenly get 500x the usual amount of spam?

If Spamhaus ends up victorious – which would mean their resources and support far outweigh the Spammers’ capabilities – will the spam cease and Spamhaus become redundant?

Who wins and who loses?

Is this a World War? Definitely yes – all we need to do now is see the outcome.

Ref: http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/security-it/spam-dispute-becomes-largest-cyber-attack-in-history-of-the-internet-20130327-2gtw1.html

Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/technology/attacks-on-spamhaus-used-internet-against-itself.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Further, PCH’s Bill Woodcock has put up this really brilliant explanation of the DDoS attack that happened on Spamhaus: http://youtu.be/Vlhu8_Aa7J8

So over the past week I’d requested an evaluation by CIO Excellence, and here’s the result!! I’m planning to enroll for their CIE certification (I’ll probably start with one module – the costs are quite prohibitive – so will need to do this over time)

Our Senior Analyst has reviewed your answers and provides the following evaluation.

Based on our observations and our experiences in teaching CIOs how to be more effective strategic value creators over the last decade, we conclude the following:

1. You seem to have the business value creation perspectives of a CIO in a very competitive multi-billion dollar corporation.

2. You seem to recognize your need to improve your acumen and influence as a business strategy leader in the corporation. This is a very good sign.

3. It is also a good sign that you are very interested in improving a well-defined process for using IT resources to increase your company’s profits and grow your company’s customer base, although you already have one.

4. The fact that you are only getting occasional participation by most people who should be in your IT Governance meetings is an indication that the other Senior Corporate Leadership questions your relevance to the marketing, sales, and finance aspects of your business, but the fact that you are very interested in learning how to improve their participation is a good sign that you have the right attitude to improve in this area.

5. You seem to recognize the need to improve your leadership skills and have reported a strong desire to do so.

Next move => Large org (5~7 years).

Next move after that => Fortune 500.

Yes people, I’m definitely a Fortune 500 CIO in the year 2020. See you there.