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Isn’t it a proud moment to see that we got nominated  to Oscars many times and now we did it!

Here is the list ;

http://www.academyawards.com/oscarnight/winners/

I got this following video forward from work where a fellow Indian Kid selling peacock feathers to tourists, What is so great about it? Well he doesn’t have any formal education but he can speak in German, Arabic, Italian, Japanese, Irani, Chinese and the list goes on; Check out the Video;

Our team just started working on technology involving MPLS and stuff, so we were talking about MPLS networks, then came a question as to why do we always see loopback addresses in examples and is it like a strict requirement? We couldn’t find a solid answer or answers, owing to the fact that we are a bunch of security experts just landed into this MPLS

So the question is, Is it a must to have Loopback addresses for MPLS to work? Well, I got the following from  [Here]

Is there any other reason that you think should be there? Would appreciate if you could comment.

After much of looking around, talking around I finalized my house and got it registered. Well it was an experience as well. I decided to get it registered on a Tuesday, see there is a reason that people say Tuesday is not a good day to get something done important like this and of course then I’d want to get it registered only on a Tuesday. Why? Well that is a long story and in a short word lets call it “Communism spoilt youth-hood”

So my friend and myself went to the registrar office, waiting there for the bank guy to show up with the checks that I owe to the builder and he finally comes. Guess what? He doesn’t have the check for the registration, instead the bank had issued checks completely for the builder! I was imagining, had it been with a guy who believes in ‘good time’ and have decided to register on that day since it is auspicious and also have the people close to god tell even the timings. I got mad and this bank is HDFC (an establishment opened only for Housing Development), they’d have done this, what, a thousand times? I made couple of phone calls and yelled every damn guy without even caring for. Guess what, I was given an assurance that they can give me the check the very next day. So I went there the next day which is Wednesday (supposed to be a good day to get things done ).

It took me about 45 minutes to rush through all the formalities and I didn’t do anything, everything was done by the builder guy and I just had to sign. All fees paid, officially I became the owner of a flat in Bangalore. Then there was this other fees, which I don’t know what it is for and of course I don’t want to name what they called it!, 20,000 Indian Rupees, gone in couple of minutes (you also don’t get a receipt for it , hours/days of hard earned money turned into black within minutes).  Apparently seems that you need to pay this amount from the head of the office (you know who) to even the attender there.

So moral of the story is that something made me register the house only on Wednesday Do I care, nah! but ain’t it funny?

Now this is something not new and in today’s world, if it takes you to block a country itself to avoid issues in your network then you’d have to go down that path. I read an article lately on SecurityFocus on blocking based on Countries. The author basically blocked the whole of China and his spam hits came down to 80% it seems.

For sure if the business I’m running has nothing to do with a country then I think it is not a bad idea considering the fact that you can’t let bad guys come in and do the damage, then you take an action on it. While this has mixed reviews I believe it is justified for the sole reason that it is my network and I choose what to come in here.

One of the commenter posted this site, http://www.countryipblocks.net/index.php

Beauty is that you can choose the entire ip data pertaining to a country. For example;

This is the list of IP range of IRAN. Just select and country and click to get the list of that country.

However, it still remains a challenge for your router/firewall to take a list of all rogue ip addresses and start blocking it for the mere horsepower that is required to process through it. Attributed to this if people start doing away by only allowing the country they are in (nowadays you can see every business have an internet connection, and the business is only to that country), then internet would be not be the internet we perceived in the first place!

Say an interior decorator working in a small state, doesn’t have to allow everybody in the world to see his site/resources, does he?

It’s been a while I wrote anything or even thought about it owing to the process involved in owning a house in Bangalore Finally I put a rest to the decision making dilemma on whether or not to buy a house in Bangalore, finally having decided to go for one!

One of the key things that I wanted to have was, if I buy a house it outta be big. I’ve seen 2 bed rooms here for a whopping 30 Lakhs and I’m sure they’ll run out of room there in no less than 6 months. I went for a 1751 Sq.Ft house, the biggest in the block.

So I’ve been running around to getting the process done, financing the house etc. It is indeed a tedious process. First approached SBI and they have this amazing 8% interest, which is less that the interest offered by SBI itself in 2003, 6 years ago! Government wants to lend money but the policies around this system doesn’t let every guy take a loan from them. The total cost lets say is 40 Lakhs, the base building cost would go to 30 lakhs only, the rest of the 10 lakhs includes taxes, khatha, Electricity, water, registration etc. SBI funds only 85% of the basic cost. Which means the buyer would have to shell out around 11 to 13 lakhs from his pocket at once. Not quite a situation that everyone can afford to. So I approached HDFC, took a loan for 10.75%, which is too much but at least they fund.

So I’m going on with the work and getting it registered. Dailies say that the prices have come down and I don’t see where. It has come down indeed, say like a rented apartment which used to be 15K per month to 12K per month but that isn’t a great deal of coming down. The guy who gets the interiors done is saying prices are high, so where did the money come down, infact?