More than two years after the proposal for LNP (Local Number Portability) was made, DoT has recommended it for implementation in a phased manner. Initially, it will be implemented in New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai by the end of 2008. So its still some more wait to see it in practice.

What does these all mean? :

* Now, you will be the (Read the rest of this story.)

IndiaTimes website (www.indiatimes.com)- part of India’s largest media and entertainment house, The Times Group has been reported to be serving up atleast 434 malacious files, directly or indirectly. Visitors can be infected even if they have up-to-date systems with anti-viruses installed on them as many of these viruses are not detectable by the anti-virus softwares. According to Mary Landesman -a senior security researcher at ScanSafe, who used to be a security researcher for Microsoft, India Times website has exploited multiple vulnerabilities and previously unknown flaws in Windows. She said, according to The Register, most pages on the IndiaTimes site are clean. Those that are infected, however, contain a potent cocktail of downloader and dropper Trojans and other binaries. Information Week informs that the size of the malicious payload is unusually large.They contain a script that points to remote sites, some of which link to still other sites. ScanSafe first detected and began blocking the malware on the IndiaTimes on October 25 itself.

India Times’ website receives very good number of visitors (its alexa ranking is 483 worldwide & 15th rank in India). Moreover, this was the busy festival season due to Diwali celebrations. So to save its visitors from the unnecessary trouble of virus and Trojan attacks, it should have closed down untill it was completely cleaned up and safe for visit. When some couple of days back Vodafone India’s website got partially hacked-up, it blocked its site completely and has resumed back functioning recently.

It should be considered illegal to continue such unsafe websites even after the threat is detected. Ignorant visitors suffer due to continued hosting of these kind of infected websites. Its really strange that ScanSafe had intimated the IndiaTimes office about this alarming issue on this Thursday itself. But it was told that no action could be taken till Monday because of holidays! Till then, as the rule goes Buyers Beware ….Visitors Beware!!!

Technorati Tags: Virus, infected, indiatimes, India Times, Times of India

I would like to outrightly admit herewith that I am no expert of any language whatsoever. But with this new theme to this blog, an added feature to translate this blog into French, German, Spanish and Italian is being provided by a third party and I have no role to play in the process of translation. Infact, I don’t know even a word in these languages! So please forgive and inform me about any kind of mis-interpretation or unintended meaning in the translated tag. Also note that Hindi being my mother tongue, sometimes Hindi words are used in my writings as well as by some commentators. These parts are not translated in other languages. So don’t try to extract any meaning on your own out of it. Whenever in doubt, you may hover your mouse on that text, you will see the original text posted by me for your reference. You may consult an interpreter thereafter. Thanks for bearing with me.

And PROST (this is the only German word I know ) for this new feature!!!

One of the greatest literary genius William Shakespeare once said “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Very true. But Shakespeare was a literary genius and not a marketing guru! He himself used to spell his own name in over a dozen way.

These days corporates are spending billions of rupees for getting a new name or brand-makeover. Smaller companies are taking undue advantage by frequently changing their names. Recently, in an attempt to crack down on companies that frequently change their names to dupe investors with dubious stock offerings, the Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has tightened norms for changing of names by listed Companies.

Well, but why I am talking all these here? The last month was full of activity for this blog. Though there were the least posts (only three) in October, the site received a record traffic. As much traffic that one morning I was surprised to note that almost all its allocated bandwidth had exhausted and required urgent upgradation of my hosting package. The October also saw the blog in a new look after quiet a long time, courtesy: pinkforoctober.org movement. Thanks to the blog action day, this blog saw a real action after an exclusive post was written for it. Due to the recent traffic surge, this blog notched up some 5 million places in a span of a single day at Alexa - the highest ever in its life span. Last week’s Google PR update also brought it a Page Rank of 1 from the zero earlier.

At this point, I noticed that some of the readers used to key-in CenturyTimes.com instead of the complete version www.TheCenturyTimes.com. It comes naturally to many as most will not assign any value to this valuable word “THE”. Even if they do, they would most likely ignore it when typing it in their address bar just to ease their efforts. How many of you type www.thetimesofindia.com or www.thehindu.com to visit timesofindia.com and hindu.com respectively? People naturally create an acronym or a short name as per their convenience when they frequently use those words. I won’t like to miss these loyal visitors to this blog. Hence this month onwards, readers will not frown after typing merely centurytimes.com And to greet them, I am going to upgrade the Word Press to its latest version …with a new theme ofcourse. So cheers!

Technorati Tags: Ashutosh blog, Ashutosh Mehta’s Blog