And now that the sermon is over, lemme write some tricks to bypass evil administrator’s evil policies to access what they think is bad for you .. :

1: The domain that you want to access is blocked ..? No problem .. most administrators block the domains by their domain names and they forget there is something called IP Address … .. Find out the IP address of the site that you want to visit and put it in the address bar and viola .. You can access it .. How to find out IP address of a website ..?? Just Whois it .. . .. You can use services like DomainTools or NetworkSolutions , Robtex… This works for websites which are on a dedicated server .. So sites like ICICIDirect can be accessed like this ..

2: First trick not working for you ..?? Try WorkFriendly .. It will let you surf the website you want in a Microsoft Word like interface to save you from your boss’s peering eyes .. Or try these language tools :

• BabelFish

• Google Language Tools

• FreeTranslation

One more site that I may recommend is Google Mobile Search .. This one is useful when you are dying to find out the score and all cricket sites are blocked ..

3: Second tip is useful for static pages but if you want to dynamic websites like Orkut, you need to use a proxy site… : These are proxy sites that I’ve used and liked :

• KProxy : This is the most famous and most used proxy website .. .. Goto KProxy and type in the address that you want to surf and click on Surf .. ..
   It wont be long before KProxy will be blocked .. So afterwards try their secure connection.. Most cocky administrators do not block secure sites as they do not know how to block them.. ..

• Y11: Y11 is another secure proxy which isnt blocked by many filters .. Use it while it lasts ..

• Fumo2 : Fumo2 is a nice and fast proxy .. And as its url doesnt contain word “proxy” it has less chance of getting blocked .. Fumo2 has some more aliases like BakaAdmin and IpSite.net which you can find on their home page itself ..

• IceKeeper : IceKeeper is another great proxy that used to help me surfing Blogspot when it was blocked in my office .. Very fast too ..

• LuckyCRM : Found this one searching for proxies online .. Turned out to be a nice one ….

• Melap : Recommended by one of my friend .. Nice and fast too ..

• CountryCodes : Another proxy that has a deceptive name so less prone to be blocked ..

There are many more .. Believe me, I’ll tell you how to find a new proxy .. .. First check the next tip :

4: Most of these proxy sites have aliases so you can use the alias in case the main domain is blocked.Here are the aliases to KProxy .. So if KProxy is blocked, try any of their aliases such as wpc1964.amenworld.com … To find alias of proxy sites, goto Robtex , type in the web site that you want to search alias for, click on Go .. In the results page, the address that are listed as ‘a’ are aliases to this domain .. So use these aliases ..

5: Actually this is combination of first and third trick .. Find out the IP address of the proxy website and then use it for surfing .. Simple ..

Now the last one .. How did I get all these proxy websites ..?? .. I used a simple query on Google which does not include any keywords that will make your system administrator think that you are searching for proxy sites .. .. But you will get a list of proxy sites that are using PHProxy which is the most common proxy software used on web servers .. and do not worry .. this list is huge .. and will keep on increasing .. ..

.. .. . . ..

Now that I’ve found a way to vent my anger on evil system administrators I feel relaxed .. I dont see logic behind blocking Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo which are default email address for most people .. To my readers, I’ll like to request .. : If you are benefited by this write up and / or you know some more proxies or tricks that you use, please leave your comment so that others can benefit .. And book mark this page so that you can find out more updated content .. .. And if you are one of those evil administrators whose job I just made a bit more difficult, how about sharing some tips on how you are going to stop users from accessing blocked sites ..? This will improve both of us .. …

Over and all .. !

     So necessity is the mother in law of plagiarism ( Heheh … that was a good one ) .. I wanted to goto Lamington road to get some computer parts .. But Lamington road is so far from here as Andaman n Nicobar are far from New Delhi .. Some desperate calls to my longtime friend Ashish yeilded some results but that included changing trains or taking train to CST and then coming back by bus .. So much for a lazy brat like me ..

   While this was happening I remembered about a link that was stored in my bookmarks since ages .. Some good guys at IIT Bombay had created a database of train and bus information on Mumbai .. Though it was outdated, I decided to give it a chance .. So I opened the page and while I was reading about the authors, I found that they’ve updated the software and added a map to it also ..

    So with Mumbai Navigator , you can need to put Origin and Destination, and it will tell you how to get there showing possible routes which included train and buses. The database has extensive data on locations across Mumbai. And in the new Navigator2, a map will be visible alongside the area you chose. The interface is very simple and easy to use.. So I put Nerul as origin and Grant road as destination and it gave me two routes to go through … Total time of journey : 1 hour 45 minutes .. sucks …

     Mumbai Navigator is very useful if you know that Lamington road is actually near Grant road .. but if you dont know where the you have to go .. then another site, may help you here .. It is Mumbai’s Worst Transport service .. (or is it BEST transport service .. whatever) .. Here you can search for area (here the location list is very detailed so you can find out easily) .. Or if you know the bus number, you can find out where it goes .. or whether it will go where you wanna go ..

    So using a combination of both these services, you can find out how to reach somewhere in Mumbai easily .. Both of these have helped me on several occasions and I hope they’ll be useful to you also .. Ciaoo ..

Mumbai Navigator 2

Best Undertaking

The problem this guy had was this: He had an Airtel connection and Huawei MT880 Adsl router. His ISP username and password is saved on the router and it gets connected when he turn on the router. Now he forgot his password and wanted to change it. And couldn’t because it was saved in the router. Using those asterisk removing utilities didn’t work too. So he was stuck there. Now if you have the same story, you could try this too :

You will need your router password to reset your ISP password. This is different from your ISP acount’s password. On most routers, the default username / password combination is admin/admin or admin/1234 . If you have changed your router password and forgot it too, then I cant help you. You can though reset router password with Reset slot in your router.
I’ll be using HyperTerminal for Telnet as it has got some nice functions. You can use other telnet utils too… So lets start:

• Run HyperTerminal by Start > Programs > Accesories> Communications > HyperTerminal.
• Enter any name for the Connection. Click on OK.
• In the Connect Using combo box, select TCP/IP (WinSock) and enter 192.168.1.1 as Host address. (192.168.1.1 is usually your router’s address ). If you have customized your router’s ip address then enter the customized address. The Port Number 23 is fine, no need to change it. Click on Connect.
• You will get a login prompt. Enter your router username and password here. If all goes allright you will get a prompt saying “Login Successful”.
• Now on the console, type this:
•       console enable {Press Enter}
• You’ll get a prompt like this:
•       Quantum>
• Now on the prompt, type this:
•       Quantum> fm {Press Enter}
• The prompt will change to Quantum fm>.
• Now in HyperTerminal, click on Transfer > Capture Text. Enter a location to save the settings file. For example My Documents\mysettings.txt .
• Click on Start. You will be back to the router prompt.
• Now type this:
•       Quantum fm> cat im.conf {Press Enter}
• This is quite a big file and it will take a while to list. Just wait until the listing is complete and you get back to the prompt.
•       Click on Transfer > Capture Text > Stop.
• Now the tough part is over.
• Type these commands on the console to quit telnet:
•       Quantum fm>home {Press Enter}
•       Quantum>exit {Press Enter}
•       >user logout {Press Enter}
• Now you can quit HyperTerminal .

Now open the file we saved in Notepad and press Ctrl F.
Enter weLogin in the string to find.
And here you can see your ISP login details in clear text. …

I have tested this on Huawei MT880 and MT 882 routers. I cannot guarantee that they work on other routers too. But Atmos commands are usually same on all devices so they should work on other routers too.. And finally, you shouldn’t try it if you aren’t comfortable with command line usage. Don’t hold me accountable if you screwup doing things you shouldn’t be doing. Hope this helped… !

This is a long overdue post .. I was busy with CCNA and some other things so I could post it earlier.. Anyways, Here it is.

Being a Yahoo Messenger user for years, I am used to Yahoo Messenger emoticons. And after some of my friends decided to shift to MSN messenger, I had to become a regular on MSN Messenger too .. But I missed Yahoo’s emoticons. And add to it that MSN Messenger’s emoticon looks ugly to me. So I decided to utilize MSN Messenger’s Custom Emoticon feature to add Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger.
I have released it as a custom emoticon pack, and if you want to import Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger, you have two choices. The first is to manually copy and paste custom emoticons to your messenger folder OR Use MSN BackitUp. I’ll explain both methods one by one:

• Method 1: Manual Copy Paste:
• 1. Download and extract the archive. You will get a folder called CustomEmoticons with around 80 .dat files. Right Click on the folder and select Copy.
  2. Now in your Windows drive ( C: on most systems), navigate to Application Data folder. For ex: C:\Document & Settings \ YourUsernameOnTheComputer \Application Data\ Microsoft\ MSN Messenger\ ARandomNumberString\.
  3. There may be more than one folders in your MSN Messenger directory if you have multiple MSN IDs on the same computer. You have to open the folder which corresponds to the ID that you wanna have Yahoo Emoticons.
  4. Paste the CustomEmoticons folder here that you downloaded.
  5. Run MSN Messenger .. .. You have YMSN Emoticons as your custom emoticons.

• Do NOT use this method if you already have many custom emoticons as this may overwrite your existing Custom emoticons.

• Method 2: Use MSN BackUp:
• 1. Download and extract the archive. Note that this one is different from the archive above.
  2. Download and install MSN Backup. Its a great program to backup your MSN Messenger settings. We’ll use it to import custom emoticons.
  3. Run the program and enter your MSN Id in the textbox given. You will need to be running MSN Messenger too.
  4. In the right hand pane, navigate to the folder where you extracted the downloaded archive.
  5. It will take a while to load all the custom emoticons. After they have loaded, Enable the checkbox next to Emoticons in the right side pane.
  6. Click on the Install Objects button. The custom emoticons will be imported within in a minute.
  7. You may get one or two errors and two or three emoticons out of total 82 wont be imported. (I have no idea why some of them does not get imported..)

• Most emoticans use the same format as Yahoo Messenger but for some emoticons you will need to put an extra : to make them work. For example use ::| for .

  I’ve tested it with Windows Live Messenger and I hope they work with previous version of MSN Messenger too. I hope you will like it. …

  And yeah .. These emoticons are copyrighted by Yahoo. So you should agree to their terms of use if you wanna use these emoticans. ….

      So here I am, with my life before me … So much time seems to have passed .. I have lived my life as it came .. played, laughed, cried, teased, run, fell, got up, hurt, got hurt, learned, unlearned , forgot , remembered .. I have done it all .. and I liked it … If I’d given chance to life again, I’ll still make the decisions I made, I’ll go from those paths that I went ..

      So what did I learn from all my life’s experiences ..? When I compare myself from what I was 10 years ago, I find many changes in myself … The most prominent one: becoming deliberate from being spontaneous .. Now I think before I act .. and I am no more impatient ..I am now more content then I was ten years ago .. and I am more aggressive .. Perhaps those are the signs of maturity … I now know that maturity isn’t something you’d gain just by being old .. You’ll have to interact… think .. feel … act .. I now know that world isn’t perfect — it was never meant to .. I don’t expect perfect outcomes now .. because if you become perfect, you wont have any chance to improve — which is imperfect in its own .. Over the years I feel becoming more self centered .. which I think is a by product of maturity – or vice versa .. Here too I am talking about myself from the start .. I now feel more confident in being honest about things I feel .. which is a nice thing as I have said everything about myself without any hesitation and without any lie .. Over the years I have seen people’s expectations from me growing .. sometimes I find it choking me .. sometimes I find it very stimulating … I have learned that if you fear something it will keep you haunting for ever .. and if you face it firmly you will conquer it .. .. Be it a memory of someone …

      I stopped celebrating my birthday long ago as I don’t see the logic in people congratulating you on something to which you have no credit .. I’ve been very less emotional from start and I feel birthdays are just like other days .. But I still love the surprise feeling of answering some long lost friends’ call .. Hey .. thats the reason I remember all my friend’s birthdays .. ….I dont believe in making resolutions becuase I don’t need any resolution to do something …

      Hmm… I wanna end this monologue now .. So when I look at my 11 year old cousin who now dreams to become a pilot, I get reminded of myself … One can draw his inspiration from anywhere .. and thats why I believe that this is a continous process .. I have yet to see more .. and experience and explore …. Life is meant for learning .. and growing up .. these years will keep coming and going … what counts in the end is how you utilize the time alloted to you …

• First feature that I will like in any program is it to become less bloated. For messenger clients, having the programs as modular will be a good thing. Although I dont use Gaim but I still like its modular features. If you dont use Voice and Video chat that frequently, why load those modules into memory and increase the resources usage ..? The best thing about Gaim is that you add the modules that you use and the ones that you dont, just dump them ..
   So, (Apropos YIM)  photo sharing is a good feature but how many people actually use it ..? Or how many people use it on regular basis ..? Wont it be good if  you can turn off certain “features”  that you dont frequently use ..? (I turn off Nudge and Wink the moment I install MSN Messenger and IMvironment and Audibles in Yahoo Messenger.)  I would love if I could decomplile that radio from Yahoo messenger somehow .. 
• Centralised customization: I am not sure what to call this ..  Its just that whatever customization I make to the messenger program, that is, my font settings – my avatar settings – configuration – all that should be saved to the central server so that whenever I reinstall or log in from a different computer, I get my customized settings and I dont havt to configure it everytime .. Yahoo saves some of this already  like ignored list, mobile settings but I have to manually configure the options about disabling the YIM from Windows Startup or fonts or webcam and all that .. When the installer run or when I log in from a different computer, the program should check for my customized settings on the IM Server and configure itself like that automatically .. that will be kewl .. 
• Advanced contacts features: Such as I dont know how many people have me on their contact list.. There should be some option to find this out and an option to deny friendship (whatever) would be as welcome. Many people have added 4 of my profiles in their list .. If they group message, I get 4 copies of the same message .. There should be an option where I could delete myself from their contact lists .. Some of my friends will also want to find out who has put them on ignore but I can live without this feature .. 
• More functionality in chatrooms: The conference starter should have some advanced rights such as kick user or disable posting links in the conf window .. These features can be directly ripped off from IRC (Don’t look at me like that .. File sharing was also ripped from there ) .. The features of ICQ can be a source of inspiration to messenger developers .. 
• It will be good if that photo sharing feature can be extended to conferences too ..So that I can show an image to many people at once .. As Yahoo has purchased Flickr, I am sure they will add it to YIM some day … So it could work if I can upload a picture to Flickr and share it with my friends directly from the Conference window .. Just like the simple photo sharing thing in YIM works ..
• I hate it that I cant set nicknames for my contacts on MSN Messenger .. This is the only feature I liked in Msnplus so that I can name my contacts in a way I can remember them .. ~ ~ I have found another way ~ ~ is one of my friend’s display name .. It takes half of the messenger window’s width and I always forget who is it .. And then when someone changes his display name .. You are lost .. So please .. MSN people .. give us the option to edit contact details ..
• I like that s: keyword search in Yahoo messenger .. I’ll be glad if they add it to conference windows too . .And some extensions to the features like Image search or blog search ..  Although I am skeptical that they will let the users to configure which search engine to use .. .. But still I like Yahoo Search too .. ..
• I have always wondered why MSN people havent yet added the support of Media Player to MSN Messenger… That is changing the status to whatever song is being played .. Although you can use plugins for that why isnt its being natively supported when both WMP and MSN are Microsoft’s products .. I use Foobar and a plugin for changing Yahoo status but how kewl it will be if the messenger will let you configure your media player and lets you choose if you want to show what song are you listening to and all that ..

Hmm.. Thats all I can think of now .. I have deliberately left out encrypted connections because I feel its more bane than boon … I’ll add more when I think of them .. You people too contribute to the list ..  ..

A preliminary

The instant messeging has been around for quite a long time now. What started with Unix’s chat program and slowly matured into IRC and then ICQ, was soon to become big business. I wont talk about the Irc’s history or how it matured but come straight to point .. The instant messenger users can be
classified into two types.. First, who are new to instant messeging, or email or the Internet itself and the second one who have been here for a long time . ..
The first type of people- who have just found out chatrooms, take pleasure in chatting in open chatrooms … Where they meet new people, befriend them, flirt with them, flame them and et all .. They are in process of increasing their contacts over the net .. Now the second type , since they’ve been around for some time now, they have many contacts on their lists .. Most of the time when they come online, they talk to their contacts and create closed chatrooms where the participants are invited and not everyone can join .. They may occasionally goto the open chatrooms for time pass but more often this is the case ..
My journey with Internet started long time ago .. Those days they had Yahoo’s Java chat and a program called Cheetah Chat for people not using Java chat .. As I enjoy chatting, my contact list soon grew big enough .. And now these days, for most of the time I am online, I am conversating with my existing friends and I seldom get time to goto chatrooms and flirt and all that .. So you see these closed chatrooms or just “Conferences” from here on (in YIM’s syntax) are as important as Open Chatrooms (Chatrooms from here on) …

Features

Now the Instant messengers have graduated from just being text messengers to Voice messengers, they support live webcams, you can send and recieve files with them, share photos and more (?) … The nuisance have also grown, the popular clients are bloated with many un necessary features, there are security threats, software called booters to crash your client. The resource usage have since increased manyfold …

Comparison

I will compare two popular clients here .. Yahoo Messenger and Msn Messenger. I have deliberately left AIM out because I dont use it .. And I am sure everyone on the Internet have atleast a Yahoo Id and a Msn id .. So the majority of the users wont be left out ..

What I like in Msn Messenger

• 1. First thing that I like about it is its integration with my operating system .. (This is a nuisance to most people though, sometime to me too ) .. It will integrate very well with Outlook or Outlook express and tell you if your contacts are online or if you have any unread messege (if you use Hotmail) ..
• 2. Application sharing and Whiteboard is another nice addon .. It can be very useful sometime ..
• 3. One good thing about Msn is Passport .. The Passport Network is one of its biggest strengths .. Passport enabled website will show if you are online, and you can use a single Passport Id accross all supported websites (Liked it ? Read on, you will hate it ) .. And yeah .. you can choose your Passport Id anything as you want .. If can be admin@yoursite.com too ..
• 4. As Public chatrooms were closed by Microsoft, only Conferences are left .. and in Conferences, you have the basic set of features .. .. ( I dont seem to find any other good thing about Msn )

What I dislike in Msn Messenger

I wont be very considerate here >:) ..

• 1. The first deterrent in using Msn Messenger for me is sharing my email address .. So if you are in some conference, and a new person joins, he will know your email address .. I simply hate this ..
• 2. Then there are those ugly emoticons and nudge (ewww) ..
• 3. When you are online and someone invite you to a conference, you get added without your consent .. it never asks you .. what a crap .. I dont understand what is the logic behind this “feature” …
• 4. I hate those ugly advertisements in every part of Messenger .. You need a pack of winks ? Pay for it .. You need dynamic avatar ? .. Pay for it .. Eww ..
• 5. [Edit: This was added later] I just found out that I cannot ingore a person when I am in conference .. I am sure this is a bug and it wont be there in the final version .. When I tried to block a person, it said “Your block of xxx does not apply to this conversation” ..
• 6. Whenever I click on any link in Msn Messenger .. say to check Hotmail , a new window of Internet Explorer opens and not my default browser .. And for the fact that Maxthon can handle DDE messeges for other programs too, it seems that it is hard coded in the Messenger to call Internet Explorer, so even Maxthon can not install hook on the new window The newest version of Maxthon 1.5 takes care of this..
• 7. Having one set of lock and keys is dangerous .. So if your Passport account is compromised by any way .. say someone installed a keylogger on your system and got hold of your Passport account info, then all the sites which you access with Passport are compromised .. This is a grave security threat ..
• 8. The messege archive is saved in text format, without any encryption .. So anyone can look whats inside them ..
• 9. The interface of Msn Messenger conversation window is such that number of messeges that come in a window is very less .. A typical “Your friend says: ” and then a newline before the messege .. This takes so much space …
• 10. No offline messeges support

What I like in Yahoo Messenger

• 1. The best thing in Yahoo Messenger is support for multiple profiles. You can have as many as six aliases to your default Yahoo Id and when you login to Yahoo Messengers, you can select which profile you use when talking to anyone .. This takes care of sharing email address problem .. No one can find out your email address lest you tell them ..
• 2. Offline messeges support. A weakness in MSN Messenger is YIM’s strong point .. This together with Mobile support makes a great combination .. Your contacts can reach you even when you are not online too ..
• 3. Stealth settings: Another great feature, you can set whom you want to appear online or offline .. Comes very handy when you are talking to your friends and not want to appear online to office people .. There are more utilization too
• 4. I like the Yahoo Search integration in YIM since version 7 onwards .. The s: searchword shortcut is very usefull for me ..

What I dislike in Yahoo Messenger

• 1. The offline messeges support have been made somewhat jerky since version 6. All the offline messeges are deleted when you see them and they are not saved even when archiving is enabled .. The only way to save all offline messeges is to reply to them .. Bad point ..
• 2. Less features in Conferences .. The Conference starter should atleast have power to kick users out of the room .. Photo sharing and Yahoo Search integration should also be done in Conferences too ..
• 3. What is the use of “hidden emoticons” ..? I mean what is the logic behind making some emoticons hidden from user ..? They can always find them out .. “Hidden emoticons” should be also added to emoticon list ..
• 4. Resource utilization: Yahoo Messenger is slowly becoming a bloatware .. The resource usage for YIM 7 is around 42 Mb on my system .. further open IM windows add to that .. MSN Messenger 7.5 on the other side takes very less resource .. It takes around 18 Mb with a conf window open ..
• 5. So many booters around .. I have to run antibooter software most of the time to discourage booters .. This also adds to resource usage of YIM .. Most of the time Antibooter + Yim (1 Conf and around 3 IM windows generally) takes around 74 Mb of Ram .. .. I remember 64 Mb was sufficient for Win 95 (an operating system) and this is a software .. Eek ..
• 6. What is the point of Online Installation ..?? If you want to upgrade Yahoo Messenger, you have to run the installer which downloads the files from Yahoo servers to install .. If network connection fails (very frequent for me), installation fails .. And you cannot run Yahoo Messenger while its downloading new installation files .. I dont see the logic behind this .. Anyways, you can find out the installation file by checking your firewall log and then download it with your download manager ..:P
• 7. I dont understand why Voice Chat was replaced with complicated Call feature .. Only addon that I see is you can now save voice messeges as archive ..
• 8. That advertisement frame in chatrooms .. It irritates me a lot ..Sometime when it gets refreshed, it changes it size and takes more than half of the chat window .. Ewww

Hmm.. So those were some of the issues that I notice daily while using messengers .. I havent added many bloat things to dislikes as you can disable them through preferences .. As most of the time Audibles and IMVironts are disabled on my system … In the next part I will talk about features that I want to see in my favorite IM Clients .. So .. keep a watch ..

Now coming to second point .. The report states that China is facing a shrinking workforce due to one child policy .. And by mid century, India will have around 200 Million more workers than China .. Oh yeah .. Considering the rate of unemployment in India and low rate of literacy, this huge population will become a burden .. Having more population does not mean that you have more workers .. It mean you have to support more people … So if not the government gets serious about unemployment and illiteracy, we on the roads of doom … And btw .. I believe that making people self employed is much easier than creating jobs .. Although, they have taken some measures in this regard but they arent enough ..

The report further states that “China’s lack of innovation and its tendency to be wasteful” can be a major drawback in next couple of decades .. Did I hear “lack of innovation” ..? I remember reading about China having world’s biggest ethanol plant and is building another equally big .. China like most developing countries import oil for its consumption .. With the soaring prices and increasing dependibility, most countries are looking at alternate sources of energy .. Bio diesel is one of them .. While China is doing well in this regard, India (which has a strong potential with Jatropha) is on backfoot with it .. This lack of foresight isnt good for India …

Another thing is that while most of the people depending on agriculture for their living, but the contribution to GDP by agriculture is very low .. A reason for this India’s agriculture being dependent on monsoon .. So if monsoon fails, agriculture fails … So creating infrastructures so that farmers become less dependent on rains will be an optimum decision …

Anyways .. I dont disagree with everything in the report …. There are many things which are really a must read .. You can read it here …

I conclude this with the last words of the article .. : What holds India back are red tape, rigid labor laws, and its inability to build infrastructure fast enough. With Beijing now pushing software and pledging intellectual property rights protection, some Indians fret design work will shift to China to be closer to factories.
Food for thought …?

Conception :
The President of India signed and approved the Information Technology Act (IT Act) on 9 June 2000. It’s a fine piece of legilslation which recognize digital signature and ebusiness.. It also supports e governance. But many things have changed since then and it is needed to accommodate those changes in the IT Act.. These are some of my humble findings :..

Expansion scope :
      With the technology and communication boom, the mobile phones have quickly made their presence inevitable in today’s life. While the IT Act ‘s definition of computers can accommodate mobile phones too, but I still think making explicit declaration of mobile phones and handhelds to be covered under this act will be fine. .. So the offences involving mobile phones be also covered under this act… So if any case happens like Paris Hilton’s cellphone hack, it could also be covered with this act. ..

The need for Anti Spam policies :
      With email and sms becoming such popular, unsolicited mails and sms have also grown rapidly .. We should make an anti spam law apropos CanSpam Act which will ensure that these unsolicited mails or sms are dealt with .. There should be a national “Do not email” and “Do not call” registry and the address listed there shouldn’t be sent spam emails or sms …

The need for Privacy policies :
      With camera phones becoming more common, events like Kareena & Shahid kissing video mms will increase too .. Now without getting into voyeurism debate, I would like to point out the digital aspect of the problem. Any information can be distributed or shared over the Internet without the concerned parties being unknown… More people downloaded the clip from Mid Day website than people who read that particular issue of the tabloid… This was a complete breach of privacy and a new Privacy Act should be devised.. It should also cover digital privacy so that the netizens can have the right to control their personal data — who uses them and how ..

Now alongwith these three main recommendations, there are some more which I have learned using the Internet over the years …

Cyber Squatting :
      Cyber Squatting is simply registering a domain name for exploiting it later.. Although ICANN can resolve the disputes but we should have a law that covers this here … And as now we have started issuing Country level top domain ( .in ), the registrar should have more responsibilities …

Spoofing :
      I was surprised to learn that the IT Act doesn’t specifically cover spoofing .. Spoofing is disguising your identity over the Internet ..It can be anything from spoofing the IP address or spoofing the email address to send fake mails .. Although it can be held as fraud but it would be difficult to cover it under IPC … So it should also be included in the IT Act …

Mail or Forum bombing :
      After being a moderator of a forum for such a long time, I have learnt what tactics people use to disrupt and to bother the forum admins .. The best and most used method is using Bots .. Bots are computer programs that post automatic replies on websites and / or send automatic emails just to create havoc or spam .. Although the IT Act covers malicious software under Virus but the definition of virus is complete only when it causes any damage .. Bots don’t do any damage … they just create problems for admins and site owners ..So Bots (be it forum bots or chat bots or email bots) should also be covered in the Act …

Misleading search words :
      Now this is a trivial issue … Like this search query for Failure, the first result is Autobiography of George W Bush .. So .. Pages can be created to cajole searchers to direct to some page that has no relation to the search terms .. Now this was a derogatory attempt, but there can be other uses too .. Like users searching for a specific products are redirected to products of competitor’s site .. So steps should be taken to minimize such search hijacking …

Pornography & Derogatory sites :
      While pornography has been covered in the IT Act but sites that contain derogatory or misleading information about respected persons should also be covered .. I didn’t found any mention to this regard in the Act … Maybe it collides with Right to Freedom of expression .. But still I found it quotable ….

Hmmm …. I hope I covered the topics I had in mind … In last something Yours Truly always wanted to say .. Having a law isn’t just sufficient .. There should be proper implementation of it too .. Consider the case of DPS MMS scandal .. It resulted in jailing of Bazee CEO Avnish Bajaj .. On what basis ? .. If it was because that he was the owner of the site which hosted the clip, then why don’t we jail CEO of BSNL or other telephone companies when terrorists use their network for their business ? … There are a million other reasons on why he shouldn’t be convicted but Police thought otherwise … So .. Their should be a proper policy on what to do and what not to .. and proper implementation of that policy .. Not like the famous case of a cop pinning the floppies (which were used as evidence) in a string like all other files are pinned .. When the people are having decent knowledge of computers, police should also have …

The recent announcement of doing away with Common Entrance tests for admission in Professional Courses by Tamil Nadu has rose many questions .. According to the new system, the admissions in professional courses will be made solely on the basis of performance in Plus Two exams and reservation system ..

Who will benefit ..?
   According to Ms Jayalalitha, it is aimed at benefitting students from rural areas. .. As the students from rural areas are unable to attend coaching classes which are specifically focussed on entrance exams, it will play as a levelling system .. Also as now students will have to concentrate only on their exams only, it will reduce the stress from both the students and their parents …

What can be the problems ..?
   The first thing that comes to mind is what will they do when there are many students with same marks ..? How will they decide the gradings then ..? Another problem is with CBSE students.. as the CBSE and local board have different systems, there must be a system that will correlate the performance of CBSE students with local board students ..
   Earlier students used to take a year drop for preparing for entrance exams but as now there will be no entrance exams, the students will have get only one chance in their board exams as there will be no grade improvement exams ..

So ..? Will it help or make the system worse ..?
   Umm… As most of the problems that arise are related to grading system, it will need immediate improvements .. When the student’s apprehension are removed, most of the people will consider the system favorably .. I myself liked the idea .. Cauz these entrance exams make students so much stressful .. Their concentration is diverted between board exams and entrance exams .. And entrance coaching centers have grown like mushrooms who have made this their business .. When there will be no entrance exams, the students will concentrate on their school syllabus .. This is the main point of the system .. What are we encouraging ..? These coaching centres teaches “tricks” to solve the questions in less time .. Most of the time, they focus only on sections of syllabus that are considered “scoring” .. This results in students who knows 100 formulas but dont know the basics of the subjects .. Getting rid of entrance exams will surely help in students taking more interest in the curriculam studies .. But there should be grading improvement exams too .. When you are putting so much on one exam, there can be chances when some unfortunate thing happen and student not performing well in the exam .. So it will be a lost chance for him .. If there will be grading improvement then they can try again …

I hope more States follow the lead and accept this system .. It will help reduce the stress burden from both students and their parents .. And it will give more credit to school exams too ..