Some Facts and Tips About How to Contribute to a Green Earth

By making seemingly small changes to our habits, we can contribute in a major way to making this Earth green and drastically reduce greenhouse gases emission.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1672224/some_facts_and_tips_about_how_to_contribute.html

Rajesh Pandharpurkar's Source Page - Associated Content

http://www.associatedcontent.comuser/487273/rajesh_pandharpurkar.html

A dangerous Virus called 'Conficker'.

The Conficker worm, also called the Downadup or Kido has already affected millions of computers worldwide.

What does it do?
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It is not clear exactly as to what it actually does but the security analysts are of the opinion that its main aim is to create a safe haven for cybercrime. Some kind of a secure infrastructure
for running botnets. It will of course steal Credit Card information, and a host of other personal information, if your computer is compromised. However if you are running a Windows XP based system and if the Automatic Updates are turned on, then you are automatically protected. But if your system is compromised then you will not be able to visit, Microsoft, Symantec and a lot of other Anti-virus websites. Also it deletes all the previous System Restore points besides opening doors for all sort of Malware.

How does it infect?
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It spreads through USB memory sticks, networks and of course the Internet. This Conficker virus takes advantage of a Windows vulnerability and once infected, then the first thing it does is to
disable Automatic Updates, stop all the security update services (like that of your Anti-Virus's), blocks Internet access to most of the security websites. And after it has established base and contacted its author, then it remotely installs all sorts of Worms, Trojans, Backdoors, and Malware besides redirecting your browser phishing sites and scam websites.

What is the cure? - The healing touch
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Visit the Microsoft website from a clean computer and download 'MS08-067' security patch. If your Windows Automatic Updates service is turned on, this patch is already installed and your
computer is not compromised. The next step is to download to Symantec's Conficker removal tool. The link is given here.

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-011316-0247-99

If you want to download and install the Windows Security Patch and the Symantec Conficker Removal Tool on your own system then do the following :

1.  Go to the command prompt by either pressing 'Winkey + R' or Click : Start>Run>and type 'cmd'.

2.  Go to the root level (meaning : going to the drive letter where your operating system is loaded. This letter is most of the times 'C') by typing the following : 'cd\' and hitting 'Enter'.

3.  You will now be at 'C:\'.

4.  Now type 'net stop dnscache' and press 'Enter' This command will stop the domain blocking feature of the Conficker virus.

5.  Now type 'net start dnscache'. And now you should be able to go the security websites.

6.  Now download the following Windows security patch MS-08-067. Here are the links : 

For Windows XP :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0d5f9b6e-9265-44b9-a376-2067b73d6a03

For Windows Vista :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=18fdff67-c723-42bd-ac5c-cac7d8713b21

7.  If you still want to be sure, then download Symantec's Removal Tool here :

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-011316-0247-99

Tips : Always remember to Turn on the Automatic Update feature of Windows operating systems. Also regularly update your Anti-virus database. Have a good Malaware Removal Application. I personally recommend 'Spybot Search & Destroy'. This is available for free. Keep the Registry healthy by removing unused & unnecessary entries left over by previous uninstalls. There's a good free software available called 'CCleaner'. Also have a good Uninstaller installed on your system and make sure to use this when you want to uninstall. It provides a step-by-step interface which is easy to understand. What it does apart from cleanly uninstalling an unwanted software, is remove any entries left behind by the program from the folders and from the registry as well. When you uninstall a software cleanly then  you are stopping any conflicts arising in the future. No conflicts means a healthy system! I recommend 'Revo Uninstaller', which again is free. And PLEASE do not fall prey to some really impressive websites offering a 'Free Virus/Security Scan'. All it does is install spyware even while it appears to be scanning for infections! You will be issued with a 'dire' warning as to how several 'infections' have been found on your system and how you can get rid of them by buying their Anti-Virus.

My Article 'Planet Earth Must Be Saved' got published on Associated Content

Planet Earth Must Be Saved
There is an immediate need for the G8 countries to sit across a table and seriously start thinking about how best they can help to save our dying planet.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1632905/planet_earth_must_be_saved.html

Death smiles at us all......

"Death smiles at us all....the only thing we can do is smile back" says Russel Crowe in The Gladiator, when Ceaser asks him if he's not afraid of death.

So why is it that we dread death?

I cannot talk for others but i can surely tell you that i am scared to death of DEATH! It's not the fear of death itself that i am scared of. It has got to do with the fact that i shall never ever be able to meet all my loved ones. I cannot even imagine what my wife would do without me. Ahem..a bit of a bold statement there, you think?? Well, we are like that! We cannot think of a life without each other. What about my little daughter?? Well, she's too small to understand all this. My mother, brother & sister??? I am sure they will be shattered beyond repair. But LIFE moves on. You got to move along, otherwise it will leave you far behind.

This thought has been bothering me from the past 2 weeks. And i have been meaning to unload the burden of such thought via this blog. Can't tell wifey. Her blood pressure will shoot up to the moon. So i figured the next best thing to a wife is ...... my BLOG! Who else??!! They weren't kidding then, when they said blogging is addictive. It's a little slow in the beginning but catches speed later on. After that you can't get off.

How true then, that we cannot do anything when death beckons. Yea, we should smile. Sure! Smile... when the light in front of you is fading and darkness is blanketing your vision! Smile....when you are holding your dear ones hand and know that you won't be able to feel again! Smile.....when your heart's breaking into a zillion tiny pieces. Man!!! How can anyone do that? Can anyone do it...??? Smile??

They say in Hindu lore that our soul stays back on earth for 10 days. It (the aatma) keeps begging the soldiers of Yama to please, please let it stay back and see to its heart's content its loved ones for one LAST time. It cries and cries along with its beloved ones down there. It does not want to go to Yama, but His soldiers are relentless. They unleash the Paashaan (the whip) and drag the aatma. It keeps looking back again and again for whatever glimpses it can see of its loved ones. How for one last time it wants to go and hug its people! The unbearable pain it endures when it is made clear to it that there's no going back!

Can any living being survive that? No wonder they are as dead as DEAD when they have to go through such harrowing time.

Does somebody believe in afterlife? Is there indeed a place called an afterlife? What do souls do there? Do they exist there in the same human form they had when living on earth? What activities go on there? Are there any cars, buildings, roads, phones, water, food, sky, wind, fire ..... etc...in the city of afterlife? If there ever was an afterlife, it must be a very crowded place! Think of all the civilization who died. How do the GODs manage such humongous traffic! Really, this concept of afterlife starkly opposes the Hindu theory of re-birth. I mean, if i was to be reborn on this earth again - not necessarily as a human though - then there will be no place called the afterlife. The cycle of being reborn again would just have continued without any interval - how temporary it might be. Then why did our wise talk so much about afterlife? Surely there must be something concrete to it. Otherwise our wise - who had the concept of TIME and DIMENSION long before our Western counterparts learned to speak - were not such fools. Then the only explanation of justifying the existence of afterlife will be that it is a temporary resting place where a person's deeds and misdeeds are calculated, punishments served accordingly, and then dispatched back to earth again with some form of a living thing's 'body', of course with all the previous memory deleted! It runs like a well oiled machine, does the God's machine. It has to ! Imagine taking birth as a PIG with all your previous human life memory intact. You would be looking at SHIT and telling to yourself 'I can't eat that SHIT.....PIGS do' !!!! Some fun the onlookers would have watching the poor soul.

It's really amazing how quickly i shift gears from all serious and grim talk to stomach splitting comedy!

Now back to being serious. Well, it all looks so strikingly similar to the Wachowski brother's epic movie 'The Matrix'. I mean, look here closely and what do we got? A near perfect similarity to our Hindu theories of afterlife and Karma. Our aatmas are nothing but some global Programes whose core structure never changes (the soul never dies), into which various functions are written. Now the programs run according to the functions which are placed in it. If the function of a chimpanzee is written into the program then it displays the character of the above animal. If the function of a dog is written it happily wags it's tail and fetches!. So on and so forth for various other animals and various other humans. Here's the legend, if you like it, for those who do not know a damn thing about afterlife, aatma and karma.

Aatma == Global Program; Body == Function written in the program; Life == Matrix; World == Mainframe; God == Universe's most genius PROGRAMMER !!.......& Rajesh == A bloody fool ..!!!

.....more later on the subject which prompted me to blog.

Rajesh G Pandhrapurkar

A Worm called the I-Worm Generic/CJR

There are a lot of times when even we, who call ourselves 'Advanced Computer users', find ourselves upto our eye-balls in, not muck, but embarrassment! Embarrassment coz of the small problem we could not 'fix'. This is for all those then, who want to avoid that funny feeling of being a misfit in the computer fiefdom.

The first issue i'd be addressing is the worm called the I-Worm Generic/CJR.

The I-Worm Generic/CJR copies itself into the \Windows\System32 folder as a dll. Your Anti-virus also catches the worm and refers it to a dll file. Now, this worm tries to send mass mails from your system. It sometimes blocks the browser from connecting to the Internet and Anti-virus websites. This also does an irritating thing : it disables you to view 'hidden' files. Try as many times as you want to, but you just cannot view the hidden files even after several attempts to un-hide them from the Tools>Folder Options>View menu.

This worm can be normally removed by a majority of the Anti-virus programs. But it leaves the above anomaly behind.

Here's the solution then :

1. Use any antivirus to remove the virus first.

2. go to Run menu (winkey+R).

3. type regedit.

4. go the path : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL

5. Look at the CheckedValue key (on right side). This should be a DWORD key. If it isn’t, delete the key. Create a new key called “CheckedValue” as a DWORD (hexadecimal) with a value of 1. Also most of the times it leaves the 'CheckedValue' as it is but it changes the value to 2. So all you have to do is change its value back to 1.

You can now make the Tools>Folder Options>View>show Hidden files and folders function normally.