I know my blog was a little inactive over the holiday break. Well I am back and Will be posting some game reviews and sharing some resources I found during the weekend.
If anyone is looking for anything in particular leave me a comment and I’ll see if I can digg it up and share it.
I Spotted this article on Digg.com check it out
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It looks that spammers and other cyber-criminals are increasingly trying to deceive potential victims by providing them fake warnings. Recently we have informed you about a new Federal Reserve spam campaign that “warns” recipients of a new phishing scam. This time researchers from Trend Micro have released a report about fake PayPal messages claiming that users’ accounts may have been compromised.
PayPal is a P2P (person-to-person) payment service, allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. A P2P payment service allows anyone with an email address to transfer funds electronically to someone else with an email address.
Due to its popularity, it’s not the first time when PayPal is used to trick Internet users. However, according to researchers of Trend Micro, this time it is not “the typical PayPal phishing email that everyone is accustomed to.” Previous attacks asked recipients to provide personal and financial information, whereas these new fake emails ask users to open a .ZIP attachment.
Below you can see a screenshot of a sample email:
As you can see, this email informs the recipient that his or her PayPal account has been hacked and some fraudulent activity may have occurred. Spammers claim that the attached file includes the “report” that the potential victim is prompted to download and contact the company if anything unusual is found.
However, as you may already expect, the attachment contains neither a report, nor any similar important information. When executed, the attached file will infect user’s computer with a worm, identified by Trend Micro as WORM_POISON.LA.
Here you can see the screenshot of the attachment which appears to be an executable file:
The malicious WORM_POISON.LA executable has routines that are related to the peer-to-peer file-sharing application Kazaa. This worm drops copies of itself in the folder Kazaa\MY SHARED FOLDER. To be more precise, the following copies are dropped:
Check out this interesting this I spotted on flickr, see below
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Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.
The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.
Here’s a little story about my health over the past 2 years, and how one life style change, changed everything.
I am a programmer - I sit at a computer everyday, and I program. For the past two years I’ve been tired, exhausted, and unable to focus. I would eat a bagel for break fast every morning, a sandwich for lunch, and normally a pasta for dinner. So I was taking him a huge number of carbs. I would walk all the time, and drink plenty of water, but at around 9pm everyday, I would be completely exhausted. I was like a sloth. On weekends I couldn’t keep up with my friends - even with 12 hours of sleep, I’d wake up tired and I couldn’t get out of it.
I started drinking energy drinks to make for my sloth-like state of mind, and all it did was make me gain weight and possibly shortened my life. After nothing worked, I just gave up and accepted that I was just tired because I worked hard.
2 weeks Ago I started a diet, just wanted to lose some pounds, I didn’t really expect anything, I just needed to do it. I started eating small portions of lean meet and lot’s of vegetables. I’ve been eating about 1200 calories a day. There was an incredible transformation. I am awake, aware, and focused. I am able to stay up much later, and wake up feeling refreshed with only 5 hours of sleep.
I feel better now than I have in a long long time, so if you work at your desk, and you feel like a sloth, try eating healthier - if you like to eat a ton of food- try eating seasoned veggies - you can eat huge portions of veggies and still lose weight.
Anyway - Just thought I’d share.
Having trouble deciding what to charge your client? Here is a little guide that I made up to help out people new to charging for web services.
1. The cost of your past projects.
In your portfolio you will display past projects, they play a factor in price of future costs - Normally this works because - if you are working for “mom and pop shops” - they will pay very little - and the website will normally be simple, the more expensive sites, seem to be bigger and more impressive.
therefore you end up working uphill - the bigger the project is, the easier it will be to get another big project because you will have something in your portfolio that shows that you have experience.
2. Technology.
Depending on what the client wants, you can charge them more. A common example is charging larger amounts of money for flash elements, or if you need to write a custom ajax script for the website.
The way I handle this is by charging by time - and the cost is different depending on what technology I’m building in.
Here is an example :
The Client - “Build me a 5 page website, you need to design a logo and a template, a flash header, and I want to be able to update the page content.”
Basic Design - 9 hours * $20/hr = 180
Flash - 5 hours * 35$/hr = 175
HTML work - 12 hours * 15/hr = 180
PHP - 5 hours * $30/hr = 150
mysql - 2 hours * #30 /hr = 60
Documentation and client communication - 4 hours * 12/hr = 48Total Cost = 793
3. Bigger Clients = Bigger Money
Sometimes you get lucky and land a client that is huge. Bigger clients are trying to buy the best they can get and are expecting to spend a certain amount of money - Under charging them might even make them think less of you - so when working with a company grosses a large income a year, make sure you adjust your pricing accordingly.
4. Experience and Contacts
The more experience you have, the more you are worth an hour. Normally it is because you will be more reliable and have more capabilities than those less experienced than you are. Also having contacts and resources, that are beneficial to your clients, could also be a factor.
If you know a developer who has 4 years of flex experience - you could outsource to him for ( example ) 500, and charge the client 1200 - you get the project done - make money - and have a new technology on your portfolio.
5. New Clients with Long Lasting Projects
Sometimes you will get a client that is looking for a developer to fill a role in a long lasting project. Sometimes it’s appropriate to charge less on the first project for these clients - once the first part of the project you would charge them normally - this will help start a good client relationship with them that could last years.
I hope you find this little guide helpful - Good luck out there
This guy is known on youtube.com as “Scary Dave” I don’t even know how I stumbled across this guy, but I found him quite entertaining.
This video is called “Don’t let the bastards get you down”. Under neath all the profanity and rough references is a good message “Don’t let others stop you from being creative and trying new things”. I got a kick out of this video so here it is.