Brain Contour

Carol Costello is The Steven Tyler of CNN

braincontour — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:29:34 +0000

Photos: Carol Costello and Steven Tyler were separated at birth.

While CNN morning host Carol Costello was bringing the updates of the latest news around the world, I was thinking of how her looks greatly resemble that of Aerosmith’s frontman Steven Tyler.

What do you think?

Amazon.com – Your Cancellation Email Scam

braincontour — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:52:20 +0000

Yes it is a scam. If you received an email with a title “Amazon.com – Your Cancellation (XX-XXXX-XXXXX) and wondered whether or not the email really comes from Amazon, think no more. The email is fake and it provides a link that directs to a scam website.

I finally decided to spare a space for this scam on this blog as I keep on receiving emails for the past three weeks now. The emails carry the same texts but with a different ‘XX-XXXX-XXXXX’ numbers in the title.

Here is one I received on May 2:

Dear Customer,
Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order:
You just canceled order 120-425-4893 placed on May 2, 2012.
Status: CANCELED
__________________________________
1 “Crooked”; 2007, Second Edition
By: Paul Williams
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
__________________________________
Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!
———————————-
Amazon.com
Earth’s Biggest Selection

http://www.amazon.com

And here the latest one I got today, May 7th:

Dear Customer,
Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order:
You just canceled order 17-9676-19762 placed on May 7, 2012.
Status: CANCELED
________________________________
1 “Letterer”; 2006, Special Edition
By: Lee Turner
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
________________________________
Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!
——————————–
Amazon.com
Earth’s Biggest Selection

http://www.amazon.com

——————————–

The emails seemed to be targeting Amazon book buyers. The thing is, I never bought any book from Amazon this 2012! That fact alone triggered a red-flag alert. I hovered the mouse on the “www.amazon.com” link and it showed the real destination site: “sp-moulding.com.pl” (warning: do not visit the link). So what’s supposed to be link that goes to Amazon, actually leads to a dangerous website, which may harm your PC or worse may mine your personal info.

Although the link looks legit at first glance, my advice is, be cautious in clicking. Always hover your mouse over the link and check if it really directs to the correct website. If you are doubtful, don’t click, instead try to Google the contents of the email. Most often than not, you will get results and confirm your suspicions.

Browse safely pips!

Filipinos Are One of The Least Rude Locals in The World

braincontour — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:09:51 +0000

Next to Brazil and the Caribbean, the Philippines has been voted as one of the countries having the least rude locals. This is according to the recently released survey conducted by the travel search site Skyscanner.com. Users of the site (which claims to have 11 million unique visitors per month) were asked where the locals never smile and where people are particularly unfriendly.

The world’s rudest nations for travelers is France, followed by Russia, UK, and Germany. The United States is ranked 7th.

Read: Why the Philippines missed the World’s Friendliest Countries List

Here is how the voting went:

Nationality – Percentage of votes
French – 19.29
Russian – 16.56
British – 10.43
German – 9.93
Other – 6.37
Chinese – 4.3
American – 3.39
Spanish – 3.15
Italian – 2.24
Polish – 2.24
Turkish – 2.15
Indian – 1.9
Swiss – 1.9
Greek – 1.74
Croatian – 1.57
Austrian – 1.41
Cypriot – 1.24
Egyptian – 1.24
Korean – 1.24
Norwegian – 0.99
Australian – 0.91
Dutch – 0.83
Irish – 0.83
Swedish – 0.83
Japanese – 0.66
Danish – 0.5
Canadian – 0.41
New Zealander – 0.41
Indonesian – 0.41
Portuguese – 0.33
Thai – 0.25
Filipino – 0.17
Caribbean – 0.08
Brazilian – 0.08

Do you agree with the results of the survey?

How To Remove Trojan Virus on Mac – Steps To Eliminate Threat

braincontour — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:13:51 +0000

Who would expect that a virus could hit a Macintosh system? Maybe that thinking is so 5-years ago. In this world of tech innovations, no computer system is safe anymore, everything is vulnerable to attack. Recently, the Flashback Trojan botnet reportedly infected over 600,000 Macs worldwide, targeting the unpatched security holes of the Java application. Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer, tweeted, “Assuming there are about 45 million Macs out there, Flashback would now have infected more than 1% of them.” Based on the figure above provided by a Russian antivirus company Dr. Web, 0.1% percent of the infected Macs are in the Philippines, while majority is in the U.S.

Apple acknowledged the threat caused by Trojan BackDoor.Flashback.39 and released the update to Java for OS X, called Java for OS X 2012-002. Apple encourages Mac users to update their devices.

F-Secure has posted steps on how to remove the Trojan virus on your Mac.

Manual Removal — Caution: Manual disinfection is a risky process; it is recommended only for advanced users. Otherwise, please seek professional technical assistance. F-Secure customers may also contact our Support.

Manual Removal Instructions

1. Run the following command in Terminal:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

2. Take note of the value, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES
3. Proceed to step 8 if you got the following error message:

“The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist”

4. Otherwise, run the following command in Terminal:

grep -a -o ‘__ldpath__[ -~]*’ %path_obtained_in_step2%

5. Take note of the value after “__ldpath__”
6. Run the following commands in Terminal (first make sure there is only one entry, from step 2):

sudo defaults delete /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

sudo chmod 644 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist

7. Delete the files obtained in steps 2 and 5
8. Run the following command in Terminal:

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

9. Take note of the result. Your system is already clean of this variant if you got an error message similar to the following:

“The domain/default pair of (/Users/joe/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist”

10. Otherwise, run the following command in Terminal:

grep -a -o ‘__ldpath__[ -~]*’ %path_obtained_in_step9%

11. Take note of the value after “__ldpath__”
12. Run the following commands in Terminal:

defaults delete ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

launchctl unsetenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

13. Finally, delete the files obtained in steps 9 and 11.
14. Run the following command in Terminal:

ls -lA ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

15. Take note of the filename. Proceed only when you have one file. Otherwise contact our customer care.
16. Run the following command in Terminal:

defaults read ~/Library/LaunchAgents/%filename_obtained_in_step15% ProgramArguments

17. Take note of the path. If the filename does not start with a “.”, then you might not be infected with this variant.
18. Delete the files obtained in steps 15 and 17.

Note: To those who do not know where “Terminal” on my Mac is located, just go to the “Application” folder, then “Utilities”, then click “Terminal”. Once the “Terminal” window is open, copy, paste, and run the commands above.

Riding Whale Sharks in Oslob / Boljoon Cebu, Philippines Must Stop

braincontour — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:38:06 +0000

The photos say it all! Local people and tourists are atop the swimming giants, riding on their backs like everything is all well and fun. The pictures below show how the whale sharks [local name: Butanding] visiting/stranded on the shores in Oslob, Cebu Philippines have been treated.

This has to stop. Proper authorities should intervene and educate the people, especially the fishermen in the area. Whale shark is supposed to be under the protection of Philippine laws since 1998. It is one of the vulnerable species listed by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

I really thought that the issue involving the whale sharks in Oslob Cebu has been resolved last month when a Technical Working Group was created by the Capitol through Executive Order No. 01-2012 to make sure the whale sharks are protected from human exploitation. However, the recent photos are telling otherwise. No law or policy has been followed. Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia should revisit this issue and look into a more stringent enforcement of the ordinance.

Look at the rest of the pictures and tell me what you think. Is this right?

The whale shark as a surf board? Are you kidding me?

According to a report, these are the guidelines that locals and tourists are supposed to follow:

– do not touch or ride the whale shark

– do not restrict the movement of the whale shark, or impede its natural path

– maintain a distance of 3 meters from the head or body of the whale shark, and 4 meters from its tail

– do not use flash photography

– a maximum of 6 swimmers per whale shark is allowed, and only 1 boat per whale shark.

Which guidelines have been violated? Without taking into account photography, everything!

Update 1: While concerned netizens are spreading the photos online and angry of the unlucky fate of the whale sharks, Oslob Mayor Ronal Guarin denied that the incident took place in their town.

Update 2: “Save Philippine Seas” posted on Facebook that the pictures were taken in Boljoon, a town very near Oslob.

Update 3: From “Save Philippine Seas”

Update re. whale shark that was tied up & used as a “surfboard” in Boljoon, Cebu last March 31, 2012: we got info from Physalus that it was indeed a stranding & the butanding was eventually released soon afterwards. Efforts are now being organized to educate the locals on how to deal with such situations. Physalus is putting together a report to clarify what really happened. We’ll post more info as they become available. Thanks to everyone for reporting this incident.

Credits go to the person who posted the pictures on Facebook.