LMMC/Router configuration file decompression

Almost all routers store their configuration in an XML file and then convert them to a “new format” which is part zlib deflate. There is no tool which I could find that would extract the XML file from the binary file generated by those routers. The way to recognize these files is to open them in a text editor and you will see that the first four characters are LMMC.

I have written a small tool which will extract the xml configuration you can download it from http://www.nasirghaznavi.com/LMMC.zip

1 comment February 10th, 2008

Digg Traffic - Useless Traffic

Would you like over 70,000 Digg users hitting your site at once? Maybe you will like over 1,00,000 users from Slashdot.

Everyone these days is trying to get traffic from these social media sites, the fever to get listed on these sites is gripping the Internet. On Digg for example people try to submit news stories as they happen and link them through their blogs, hoping to get to the front page. Most of the stories on Digg is made up of this kind of blog spam.

But the question is does it really work for the people who finally make it to the front page?

To answer this question we have to first ask ourselves what we wanted to achieve by being listed on these sites. If the reason was to get direct visitors then what we get in return are useless hits, people who just spend seconds on our site and then leave never to return. But if our goal was to get better search engine rankings then it may work in our favor.

If you are hoping that many of these people will click on the many ads that you are running on your site then do not bother. Traffic from social media sites like Digg and Slashdot is not organic traffic. So hoping that these people will click on ads or browse other pages on your site is wishful thinking. I will go further and say that if the traffic surge is the reason then it is not worth the effort when you factor in the bandwidth cost.

The analysis of the traffic is as follows:

Most of this traffic will

• simply go back

Very few

• will spend time on the page they visit
• will visit other pages on your site
• will sign-up to your newsletter
• will click on any ads
• will bookmark your site

So the only reason to get your site listed on these social media sites is to get good search ending rankings. Once your site is mentioned on these sites you will start getting new links to your sites as other people blog about your article/new story etc. These links will grow strongly in the first few days and will in turn increase your site rankings in search engines.

1 comment January 3rd, 2008

Bilawal will lead PPP after Benazir’s Demise

As far as I know Benazir and by looking at the current state of affairs, Bilawal Bhutto(who is just 19) will be appointed to lead Pakistan People’s Party in Pakistan. I can say this because Benazir has left behind a will which will be read by none other then Bilawal himself and as family politics go I am pretty sure it has his name in it.

Another party leader will probably run the day to day business of the party and will act as an advisor to Bilawal, this will most probably be Amin Faheem. This kind of arrangement will also allow Zardari to have an indirect influence in the party which is all what he wants and needs.

Political pundits who are saying that Zardari will be chosen as party chief are dreaming. Zardari will never want to be in forefront. He likes power but he does not want the attention.

Amin Faheem can never be a chairperson of PPP as he lacks the Bhutto name. Sanam Bhutto and others Bhutto’s will never be allowed by Zardari to come into limelight because that will ultimately break his dynasty.

Add comment December 29th, 2007

DNSStuff.com Alternative

Since DNSStuff.com became a paid service i have been searching for a decent alternative. Search led me to despair and I decided to build one of my own. You can check a version under active development at DiggIP.

Suggestions are welcome.

Add comment December 28th, 2007

Internet Censorship in Pakistan

There has been a wave of website censorship going on in Pakistan, the list which included a select few Balouch nationalist sites, some anti-government sites mainly blogs on blogger.com and a Hindu fundamentalist site is now exploding. Here is a new example http://www.islam-watch.org that I stumbled across recently. The site earns a link from me for just being censored.

Add comment July 26th, 2006

Pakistan Loves "SEX" - Google Proves it

Click here to see for yourself. Click on Regions when you reach that page. Top Ten Countries interested in Sex according to Google.

1. Pakistan
2. Egypt
3. Vietnam
4. Iran
5. Morocco
6. India
7. Saudi Arabia
8. Turkey
9. Philippines
10. Poland

There is a very prominent religious trend here, you can ignore it if by any chance your religion is named Islam ;).

18 comments May 24th, 2006

Calling MySQL .NET Provider from Partially Trusted Code

Many Web Hosts are facing this issue of trying to provide access to MySQL .NET provider from medium trust or custom trust code. For example using MySQL.Data objects in ASP.NET 2 from partially trusted code results in the following error.   Exception Details: System.Security.SecurityException: That assembly does not allow partially trusted callers. The solution to get around this problem is easy because the source code of MySQL .NET provider is included in the download. The following steps need to be followed.

• Locate AssemblyInfo.cs and open it in your favorite editor.
• Add [assembly:AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] at an appropriate place in the file and save it.
• Recompile and Re-Deploy MySQL.Data.dll

 Good Luck!

1 comment March 19th, 2006

Asteroid 2004 MN4, are we Doomed?

It is for the first time that a Near Earth Object 2000 MN4 has been give the rating of 4 in Torino Impact Hazard Scale. Since its launch in 1999 no other NEO has achieved this scale and the chance of impact on earth now stands at 1 in 63.

This was reported on Slashdot as having a Torino Scale rating of 2, but since then more observations have come in and the rating has doubled. It is to be noted that at this point no major news networks are carrying this story. It has to be kept in mind that the ratings are being updated in real time as more and more observations come in. So the chance of an impact may go up or down as soon as NASA has more observations.

This impact date is Friday the 13th April 2029, and you know what 2+2+9 =13. Freaky!!!

Add comment December 24th, 2004

IP and URL Blocking hack for Shoutbox

This post is no longer relevant and is available only for archive purposes.

Well my site was getting some Spam in the shoutbox, so i decided to write a small hack to block the spammers.

Here i am sharing it with other Webfroot Shoutbox users who could be facing the same problem. To install it just download the zip file and unzip it into your shoutbox directory, you need to edit two variables on top of shoutbox.php to reflect your web environment.

$ipbanfile = "/home/mysite/public_html/shoutbox/ip.txt";
$urlbanfile = "/home/mysite/public_html/shoutbox/url.txt";


These two variables should point to IP.txt and URL.txt file respectively or this will not work. You may also need to chmod IP.txt and URL.txt to atleast mode 766.

Thats it. Your admin section will now include a link to ban a ’shout’, remember this script will ban both the IP and the URL assosiated with the shout.

Happy Shouting.

PS: Remember its purely alpha code i call it version 0.01. So reply if you have any problems with the code or want something more. Tested with ver 2.37 of shoutbox.

PS2: The download has been removed because i am not using shoutbox anymore and they have updated their code which now includes this functionality.

Â

Add comment December 16th, 2004

Cinderella an Antithesis

She was not herself anymore, standing in front of the mirror she looked at herself again, nothing changed she still looked foreign to herself.

“Is it me?” she asked herself.

In olden days when time was slow, she flowed with it, never challenged it a bit. Time started shaping her; she didn’t resist because she didn’t have the power to resist. She knew nothing could go wrong as long as she flowed with it and as long as there was someone who could guide her. She left this guidance to “him”, and he, made her “Cinderella”.

Cinderella was beautiful, Cinderella was adorable and Cinderella was cute, she was everything that he wanted her to be. She did everything to please him to tease him, to feed him. Her “role” was defined, her “identity” destroyed. He even gave her the name, the name with which she was known at that time, her new identity i.e., Cinderella. Cinderella was her destiny as written by him, nothing less nothing more, Cinderella is what she had become nothing less nothing more.

For him she was an object, which should remain where he had left her, at all the right places that he had set for her. He loved her as a lover, but at times even sold her as a businessman. He adored her in dreams but at times even raped her in reality. He respected her as a mother, but at times even killed her on her birth.

In time even God lost interest in her, she lost her importance, she lost the respect, “He” never made her a prophet, she was not even considered for the post. He was trusted with this responsibility; He always overtook her and she stayed behind.

He made the rules, he made the morals, for her it was simple she had to follow, she allowed herself to be molded as much as he wanted.

Today she is known as (wo)man and he a man. Is it a change? Nothing has changed. She is still defined by man, why? Because she is still a (wo)man. Nowadays she thinks that she has got over it, that she has the freedom to speech, the right to divorce. Does it matter, when she is still a (wo)man.

The time when knowledge is power, and muscle has lost its value. She had the ample opportunity to take the lead; to go beyond the rules written for her, to make her own rules. But she is losing it because she has become her own enemy, by not breaking the rules.

She is happy with what she has; she doesn’t know that she has been molded into accepting those things as happiness. She doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know what lies beyond them, she is afraid of breaking the rules, and is again trying to flow with the tide, will she lose another opportunity?
Today from the simple things in life to the complex one she can find examples of being just a follower. He can be polygamous but she cant, she goes to live with him on her marriage he doesn’t, her name is changed from time to time, he sticks to one. She has to play cute, she has to be nice, and she has to look adorable and appealing to him. She is the dumb; unquestionably she is because it’s written in the religious books, no matter what science says he will always find a good quote from the religious books. She is the one who has to surrender, she is the one who makes him think evil, and in bed it’s almost always “man on top”.

Today for once more she looked at her face, it was kind of sketchy, there were lines everywhere; on her lips they were red, on her eyebrows they were black. It looked artistic but it was not original. She had been drawing all over her face for quite some time now, so it was becoming more and more rustic; it was not the old face anymore. She thought once more.

“Is this what I was destined to be?”

1 comment December 9th, 2004