internet
ePayment in the Philippines

in response to the clamor for better, faster and safer online payment,
it has been reported that payment gateways are eager to make Philippines reach the “cashless society.” inquirer.net reported that both Mozcom’s PayEasy and AsiaPay follow the same principle as that of PayPal (perhaps the most reliant online payment facility today). ECPay on the other hand would want to focus on overseas workers by linking their service with schools, hence parents will be able to directly pay their children’s school and hospital bills. “This is also a nifty service especially for OFWs since they will know where their hard-earned money is going,” Aguilar said. for those who don’t know with ePayment, we can use the Internet to communicate with other merchants and banks to allow for smooth transactions. what this means is that you don’t have to write a check, swipe a credit card or handle any paper money; all you have to do is enter some information into your Web browser and click your mouse! found this nice article about the state of efinance and epayments in the Philippines by Janet Toral of digitalfilipino.com, read it and be informed.Symantec Lists Top Threats in Internet History

At number 10: Morris (1988), Robert Morris claims that he wrote the worm in an effort to gauge the size of the Internet (duh!), unfortunately it had a bug that infected computer multiply times and thus came the “Denial-of-Service” attack.
9: Storm (2007), at the center of a denial-of-service attack was http://www.microsoft.com, where during Symantec’s test on an infected machine, it sends out almost 1,800 e-mails in a five-minute period.
8: Sasser (2004), this worm exploited vulnerable network ports, meaning that it could spread without user intervention.
7: Blaster (2003), just like storm, this caused a denial-of-service to windowsupdate.com, which included the message, “billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!”
6: Code Red (2001), Web sites defaced by the phrase “Hacked By Chinese!”
5: Nimda (2001), within 22 minutes, Nimda became the Internet’s most widespread worm (yeah that fast!).
4: Slammer (2003), a worm that was mistaken by some countries to be an organized attack against them.
3: Melissa (1999), i thought this story was quite amazing… see Melissa was an exotic dancer, and David Smith was obsessed with her (and also with writing viruses). this virus was so know it rocked the internet world between 1999 and 2005.
2: Conficker (2009), the newest kid on the block yet promising to be the worst. the Conficker worm has created a secure, worldwide infrastructure for cybercrime. the worm allowed installation of softwares to infected machines and many have yet to figure out what it would do!
last and the least, perhaps the most dear to us IT PINOYs, is the I Love You virus. who wouldn’t open an email from someone telling they love you. well, many got fooled! by May 2000, 50M infections had been reported, which included The Pentagon, the CIA, and the British Parliament. certainly nothing for us IT PINOYs to be proud about but, hey it landed us on the IT map!
read more [abcnews.go.com]
40 Years of Internet
Happy 40 Years – Internet!
September 2, 1969: two computers at the University of California, Los Angeles, exchanged meaningless data in a first test of Arpanet (an experimental military network). who would have thought that this first “connection” would eventually revolutionize the world?
i’m so glad there’s internet!
read more on [3news.co.nz]
A Call for Broadband Service Honesty

“They should be able to deliver minimum Internet connectivity at par with, if not superior to their advertised speeds,” said Santiago, who was also a former chief of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). he further added, “It would be totally unfair, even highly deceptive, for them to aggressively promote their services by assuring this or that Internet access speed, only to fall short of their promise.”
finally, someone has the guts to raise this concern…. hopefully they do something about these false marketing and broadband connection issues…
read more [inquirer.net]
Facebook/Youtube – a Perfect Excuse
the Univ. of Melbourne reported that surfing during office hours increases productivity (amen to that!)
that employees are 9% more productive than those who do not surf while @ work (amen again!)
Brent Coker, the study author says that Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB), helps sharpen workers’ concentration (yeah sharp minds, i have that!)
“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days’ work, and as a result, increased productivity,” Coker added. (i couldn’t agree more)
now, if i could only get my bosses read this post and approve our youtube and facebook access, i bet they’d get more out of me, hmmm i might be so productive i’d win employee of the year! haha
image and story more @ [reuters.com]
pinoy bloggers!
the somehow sad thing however is just like before, right now while searching through the web, i haven’t found a blog that focuses on the PINOY information technology (IT). i actually found one (PINOYIT) but it hasn’t been updated for two years now, sayang ‘tol!
so why an IT PINOY blog?
all PINOY programmers are still subscribed to newsgroups and forums to get their programming questions answered… up to now PINOY’s still doesn’t have it’s own major reference point for programming or computing concepts. what else have PINOY’s accomplished? how much have we contributed to this industry (which undoubtedly have been good to us) can we even contribute something?
i attended the SUN Tech Days held last june here in manila, and the sun peeps actually posted a question and a challenge to us IT PINOY’s. aside from the infamous “I LOVE YOU” virus a local created and put IT PINOY’s in the map, will a PINOY be able create the next google or a youtube? will it even ever happen? hindi yung gaya-gaya puto maya ha at gumawa lang giggle or youtsup?! i mean how can an IT PINOY help revolutionize this industry and not just mere consumers.
i hope this blog will be a good start to answer that question.
and i can’t do it alone, i believe there’s too many brilliant IT PINOY practitioners out there (even far better than me) so feel free to post suggestions for topics and let’s discuss it here.