photography | mac | lego | open source | sap | gadgets
Archive for February, 2010
MPH 2010
Last night, we checked out the now institutionalized Top Gear Live show at the Northgate Dome. This is my third visit, and I must say that the show is somewhat formulaic. Instead of Hammond, Clarkson had Captain Slow in tow, as well as local petrolhead wannabe Martinengo.
Let’s say my five year old enjoyed the show immensely. Here are some photos of the performance and the display area, starting with the interior of the Nissan GT-R.
The Koenigsegg.
Clarkson‘s here. And so is Martinengo…
Car on fire.
James May on his front-wheel drive motorbike. The front wheels are driven by two weed eaters.
James May inside the cage of death with a motorbike. Later on, four motorbikes would be whizzing round and round. Minus May, of course.
Clarkson riding a model jet engine powered bicycle.
Car display. Better than in years gone by. This time, a McLaren Mercedes made it to our shores.
A crowd favourite. Car football.
Finally. The Stig.
The colours of Lego
For the first time, Lego has publicized its official colour palette. All elements in the Lego range can now be identified by their official colour code and colour description. The palette covers solid, transparent and so-called effect elements.
If you want your Lego building experience to include the difference between transparent bright orange and transparent reddish-orange, the colour palette details for the 2010 Lego range may be of interest to you. Get the PDF from the Brothers Brick.
Schwarz. Und etwas Rot und Gold.
Germany’s away jersey for the 2010 World Cup tournament has been unveiled by the Deutscher Fussball Bund and Adidas. In a break from the red strip the team wore in the past when playing away from home, the new shirt is black. An interesting colour choice for a rather warm South African winter in the months of June and July…
Red and gold complement the base colour, whilst the badge contains the DFB logo and three gold stars, one for each World Cup win (1954, 1974 and 1990).
White shorts with black and red strips round out the away wear.
Germany will test their Adidas kit against Argentina in Munich on 3 March 2010. The announcement can be read in more detail at the DFB site.
The Mascom bug
2 years ago
by manfred
in Connectivity
Sometimes honesty is the best policy:
An error has occurred
Sorry, this site is not available to render the service you requested. A bug in the system has caused an error to occur.
Honesty may not be the best way out when you’re dealing with a product that is IT-based.
Thankfully, the activation and recharging of a Mascom data-enabled SIM worked without too much of a hitch. Better than paying the hotel about BWP 50 for one hour’s use of their crappy wireless network. The MiFi is doing quite nicely…
Reduce bank charges. No choice.
By providing your logon credentials to this version of the ABSA banking site you’re likely to reduce your banking charges quite significantly. Once the scum behind the email address onirekedouglasdale@webmail.co.za gets hold of your logon details, there’ll be little in the way of cash left in your account to charge banking fees on…
Documenting these scams is a bit boring, since they all rely on the same mechanisms: an end-user’s blind trust in technology, the promise of quick and easy transactions and an ability to dupe many people by showing them something that looks just like the real thing. I add this one here simply because it adds another twist to the usual provide your password routine. Played through, the spoof site indicates that an RVN (one-time password) has been sent to the user and that that message may, or may not, arrive due to an apparent system congestion.
The obvious play is that the RVN is never sent, requiring the user to click on a link to the actual ABSA site to retrieve a valid RVN.
I assume onirekedouglasdale@webmail.co.za next sends an email to the user requesting confirmation of the true RVN. Since an RVN is valid for a reasonable time period and because the user has already been duped once into providing personal data, it’s no stretch to believe that the RVN may well be sent to the scammer.
Like most modern scamming methods, the fake website looks like the real thing. A few things to notice: the address indicated in the browser is http://207.204.1.180/log/, not https://ib.absa.co.za/ib/ib.jsp. The image for some embedded content in the logon button indicates that something is amiss.
The message at the bottom right indicates system downtime scheduled for November 2009, most likely the time the real ABSA site was initially scraped and deployed for the fakery.
The site is not yet marked as a scam in Firefox, but has been reported to ABSA. Regardless of whether or not this site is blocked, continued vigilance is an absolute key in online system use. The sophistication of such enterprises is on the increase. Take care, check at least twice before entering anything into any website and as always, contact the organization if you have any doubts.
One way of verifying the veracity of the site is to initially enter incorrect logon credentials on purpose. Since a fake website can’t tell you whether or not your user name and password isn’t valid, the lack of an error message is one indication that may be used as a protective measure.
Recent Comments