The flaw, named “Curse of Silence” was demonstrated on Nokia’s Series60 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition phones (FP1 included).  It worked this way: People sent a carefully and very very painstakingly typed series of messages to an E-Series / N-Series phone.  And voila, the affected device would stop communicating  with the outside world using SMS.  You could only make / receive voice calls.  And the only known way out for this hack was to hard reset the phone.

What happened as a result of this was the noise in the Nokia forums, which obviously happens…  And then, F-Secure chose to act.  They released a patch for the flaw saying that they could protect the devices if users agreed to shell out 60$ USD for it.  Crazy!

And then the noise level in the forums grew even further, and people started to blast Nokia for making such a mistake in their production devices and then Nokia chose to act.  They just released a free application download which would clean up your phone if your device is infected. And keep you secure.  This also probably answers the various firmware upgrades Nokia has been pushing out for most of its models lately.

What I particularly wanted to point out with this post are the following:

1. The fact that Nokia actually listens to its users.  The security flaw is not major.  If you take a look at the video from the link posted above, it shows how strenuous it is to actually hack into the system.
2. People will always complain.  Listening to the complaints and having to put up with all that noise AND take what is important for both an organization and its customers (loyal and otherwise) is real mastery!
3. It shows one straight thing from the management perspective: You may have the first mover advantage for a situation.  But, when the playground is not yours, you dont get to play according to your rules. F – Secure!
4. F-Secure sucks!!! Nokia needs to stop teaming up with F-Secure and stop listing them in their Download! application.
5. Nokia rocks!
6. Nokia rocks! and, lastly
7. Nokia rocks!!!

So yeah, all is well in the Nokia and Symbian and Smartphones world!   You can continue to send out confidential mail, love-ka-mail and all other sorts of yeee-mail… and listen to “?? ?????? ?? ???? ???…” or any other song of your choice on your cool Nokia phone while getting traffucked in any city that you are in.

But do remember, you do need to periodically backup your phone.  There is the software part that Nokia and its team of hard-working, dedicated, engineers can take care of… And there’s the “idiot using the box” that you can choose / not choose to be.

And, in other unrelated news, Apple’s multitouch patent got through…  I feel really sorry for the Palm-Pre!!! They need some really awesome magic from the Harry Potter world to rewire the stuff!

Last, but definitely not the least, thanks to Ricky Cadden of SymbianGuru for the update / info.

There! Another lovely blog post done!

Cinque Terre was 3 days of awesome holidaying on one of the most amazing coastlines I’ve ever seen in my life!  Awesome treks along the coast.  Again…  Some of gods best art executed in total true colour…  Enough of explaining… A small sneak preview of the photos that I’ve uploaded on Flickr! here.

A small sneak preview, if you could call it… is here:

So many colours in a single photograph

My Kodak camera can do this??? Whoa!!! :-0

The Cinque Terre — five picturesque fishing villages perched on Mediterranean hillsides, splendidly brushed in sun-washed colors.

Or so say websites and it truly a paradise on earth…  Ever since I saw this place on the way back from Rome, I’ve been soo wanting to come here and spend a couple of days and trek along the cliffside.  And this petty dream has come true today… with my generous PM offerring to give tomorrow off!  Friends heading to Rome and I’m headed to the Liguria province where Cinque Terre is located.

For those that’re not really comfortable with Italian, heres what Cinque Terre means: Cinque (Chink – kweh) meaning 5, and Terre (Therre) meaning land.  And it is… the paradise consisting of 5 small villages from south of the coast to north namely: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Cornigilia, Vernazza, Monterosso al Mare.

I’ll be spending 3 days at Riomaggiore and covering as much of the rest of the coastline by foot and by train.  This is gonna be an awesome trip!!!  Expect some good photos when I get back.

’til then… Ciao!!!!

A few snapshots:

The rest of the innsbruck story is here on my flickr stream.  Its a quick and small post, but then yeah, Pictures would be better in explaining the experience!!!  I’m at a complete loss of words!!!

Image Courtesy stetre76 on Flickr.

No Euro 2008 matches happening this weekend! Nevertheless, its gonna be a cool B-) weekend! Pics will be uploaded to Flickr after I get back!

Until then, Chao…

Week 1: Rome, Pisa

Week 2: Basilica di Superga, Torino

Week 3: Venezia

That has been it! A lot of touring, some very interesting places, Some cities held back in time (Roma), Some interesting incidents, Some very lovely people for Company!  It has overall been 3 awesome, out of the world quality weekends!!!

Some of the photos are here.  The rest are at home… and I will upload them as I find time!!!

And oh! I’m visiting Innsbruck, Austria this weekend!!! B-)  And sadly, I dont have the tickets to any football match of the Euro 2008 cup!!!

The Colosseum, Pic courtesy tjsuresh

Off to Rome tonight! I will be spending 2 full days at rome and then visiting Pisa on Monday on the way back to turin.  Lucky us, Monday is a National Holiday for Italy on occassion of Foundation of the Italian Republic (I) .  So, advance wishes for a Happy Birthday, Italy!!

Thanks to colleagues at work, we got the Trenitalia tickets at dirt-cheap rates! 65€ per person for the entire Turin->Rome->Pisa->Turin trip! Thank you guys! Grazie!!!

Thejesh a.k.a. @thej pointed us to Youth hostels in Rome which was again a total boon! Dirt cheap rates for quite decent accomodation!  Thankyou dude…

The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Pic courtesy dgmfotos

Thanks to @Netra, who patched me up with @hanisha who stays in Pisa, we have a guided tour in the works!  This is going to be a good weekend!!!

God bless Social Networking!!! Roma, I cometh!!! Let the Race begin!!! B-)

After 2 failed and futile and lossy attempts to get here, I finally got to Turin last friday (16-May-2008) after a 10 hr flight to paris, 6 hours of wait and another 2 hours by air to the Casselle International Airport, Torino.

I’m here for the next 2.5 months and am gonna definitely enjoy every single moment of it…  Oh, but the language is a serious PITA issue… Its very very very rare to find an italian that speaks english!  This goes for situations in the office too…  With your manager saying “I go take dump and mail you!“, ROFL’s and LOL’s are always around

And then there’s italian women!  Ooh! Mama!!! Whoa!!! w0000000000t!!! Bling!!!  There… that says it all!!!

Oh! Oh!!! There’s pizza vegetariana… 10 inch radius of awesome goodness!!! Shmmmmmack!!! I just luuuuuuuuuurvvvve it!!!  Oh yeah!!! The best part, getting up in the morning, and having a fight with your roomies on what to make for breakfast and lunch and then deciding that we’ll cook only for lunch and have conflakes for breakfast. Everyday! Thats’s definite fun!!!

And… a truckload of sight-seeing, no… not the women part! the historical monuments, churches, architectures part!!! Sheeesh!!! you dirty people!!!   We’re already done with the women part!

Had the chance to attend a rock-concert by a local band from Torino called Supsonica… And they played some of the best electro-rock that I’ve heard!!! Loads of electronic, Loads of Guitar and Awesome percussion!

Yeah, its turning out to be a whale of a trip! Plans are on to go to Rome this weekend… Probably to venice the next and the to Hokkenheim for the F1 race thats scheduled next month. And then come back and attend 3 continuous nights of rock-music! This is gonna be loaded.

As far as work goes, the “thing” that I was sent here to do… we’ll I cant work if I cant login to the servers can I???  So that pretty much sums up my stay so far in Torino, Italy.

For quick updates as I feel them, check them out on my twitter page here.  For photos, check out my flickr page here.

And till then, Grazié, and Chao!

Nisarga is organizing a backpacking program called “Trek to Clean” to Kumaraparvatha with the intent of enjoying nature in the best way possible and also cleaning up the place enroute…

This is happening on 15-16 December, 2007. Participants will leave from bangalore on 14th night and be back in bangalore on the morning of the 17th so that they can get back to work…

As I mentioned previously, the trek is a complete backpacking trek, so, everything is taken care of by the participants… From Cooking, to cleaning up the vessels to cleaning up the route and dumping the garbage collected. We will be providing the the tents and carrymats for you to rest yourselves during the night… So, rest assured, you will sleep with a satisfaction of having done something good… Oh! And, Nisarga will also provide you with the ration, vessels, the stove, gas and the likes for you to get your hands into the cooking department…

We expect each participant to pick up approx. 2kg of garbage in bags provided and we will ensure the safe disposal and cleanup of garbage once we touch the town limits… The collection of garbage is on you, the cleanup and disposal is on us…

The total cost of the trek inclusive of travel will be Rs. 1600 /-.

Those interested in the trek call me at 99453 94216 / Rajendra at 94480 38220 / karthik at 99800 17105 or mail us at info (at) nisargaindia (dot) com for more details.

The post is a bit late on the page as I’ve been quite caught with a lot of stuff to organize and lot of camps to take care of… But then, here it goes, Trek to clean!!! Keep your environment clean. And as we say at Nisarga, we have one planet! Lets not dig graves for our own future…