M G Harish

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Solution for Orkut worm Bom Sabado!

Today orkut users were flooded with scraps telling Bom Sabado!. Unlike other malware, this doesn't need you to click a link. Just by opening Orkut profile of the affected user, you will be affected. So I suggest you not to use orkut till this problm is fixed. However, if you are already affected, you can get rid of this using the following steps. (This is applicable only for Firefox users. If you are using any other browser, see below):
  • Download AdBlock Plus add-on for Firefox and install it.
  • Restart the browser to enable AdBlock.
  • You will see a red icon with ABP on the right hand side of the search box in Firefox.
  • Click on that, and select Preferences.
  • Click Add Filter and enter *tptools.org/*.

Now you can safely open orkut.

You may have to remove yourself from the communities added by the worm, such as saadzin, meu miguxinho, O vírus que contagia, Eu tenho um grande AMOR, Juizo eu TENHO, só não USO!, Dino ♥ etc.

Note: The "Old Orkut" users are not affected by this worm, and are safe.

If you are not using Firefox, then you can follow the following steps:

Update: The website tptools.org is down now. Orkut is beautiful, again :-)


If you have a browser other than firefox, or to ensure that site won't get accessed by any other way, you can edit hosts file and adding the following lines:

127.0.0.1 tptools.org
127.0.0.1 www.tptools.org

hosts file is found in:
  • C:\Windows\ - Windows 95, 98, Me
  • C:\WinNT\system32\drivers\etc\ - Windows NT, 2000, XP Pro
  • C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\etc\ - Windows XP Home, Vista, 7
  • /etc/ - Linux

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Human Brain and the CPU

When I was going through some of my old mails, I came across a self-sent mail. I had written it one year back as a comment to an article written by my friend Suri about the multitasking ability of the human brain. But due to some reason, I had not posted it. Here is a modified version of that comment:

Brain in all essence, acts as the central processing unit (CPU) of the body. It can perform calculations, control various organs of the body, process the inputs from different organs. However, the question is, can it handle multiple tasks at the same time?