Computer games for Kids - things to be aware of

Computer games can become a staple diet for the children of today. We often are aware of and take care that children do not over consume junk food and ruin their health. It is obvious in case of the food because we can also eat that which we allow our children to eat. But it is not the case with the computer games that we allow children to play.

I would like the parents to be aware of the games that you allow your children to play, because the games can impact their minds, and can make them addicted to them before you realize. Often parents can not spend time with their children to accompany in the computer games nor they are aware of what the games are about. I think as responsible parents you should invest some time to learn what your children are playing, and how it may or may not impact them.

The same question was faced by me, as a non gaming person myself, I though computer games to be a time wasting activity and was never much interested in.

I had to share my computer with my 5 year old nephew to let him play computer games online and offline, who within a span of an year became proficient in computer games, that I had to concede my inability in helping to get around a particular game he was playing. Moreover when he seemed knowledgeable in games that had theft, robbery and violence in the gameplay, I became a little concerned.

As a society we allow and do not allow a certain things. For example we do not go and steal someones vehicles or crash them, but how come children are exposed to such ideas in computer games?

Let me put it this way. In course of talking to our children do we ever mention stealing, crashing, shooting and so on. We do not talk about them because we do not do such things nor do we think about them. So something that we don't do, nor we intend to ourselves nor allow our children to do them, then how come we allow children to engage in simulations of such things.

I feel upto a certain age children should be kept away from even the ideas of those things which would put them in harms way. That is where I decided to look at the games that I had installed on my computer and online games that I was allowing my nephew to play.

I would make a list of the games that I came across, and put them in perspective so that you can make an informed judgement whether to let your children play them or not.

Virus Removal Guides site is gone

One fine morning I got tired of the Virus Removal Guides Blog. Although it was the blog with maximum number of posts compared to my other blogs, and has maximum viewership. I felt that it was time for it to go.

Some of the events that triggered this decision are as following.

There was no internet connection at my place for more than 2 months now. The broadband Internet connection was disrupted due to the feud between the Municipal Corporation and the Internet Service Provider. I was offline for more than a month, after which I resumed basic connectivity using a mobile broadband connection with limited data throughput.

I noticed that the site http://comprolive.com/remove was displaying an error with a message having connection denied to the database. This made the site as well as the back end inaccessible for days.

I contacted the Web Hosting Provider but there was no real help coming from them in identifying the cause.

After logging in my web hosting account, I noticed that there was a maximum allocated space of 300 MB for the MySQL database. Although my account can have a maximum of 50 such databases, and I had been using only 5 MySQL databases, the maximum allocated size was not increased unless I had to pay extra 50 dollars per year to expand the database to 1000 MB. I did that and my site resumed.

However even after the database space upgrade my troubles did not end. I was unable to even simple tasks on the site to write a new article, as that would result into allocated memory size exceed error. So I resumed to write on one of my dormant Blogger blogs (security.comprolive.com) You can read my latest articles on this blog now.

Another disturbing thing that I observed was that even without being able to write anything on the site, the database space seemed to be automatically filling up. I recorded an increase of 13 MB of filled up space just within two days.

This made me worried, there was something wrong with the Joomla installation 1.5.9 which my site was using. I was waiting for years hoping that the Web hosting provider would upgrade the Joomla some day, but they didn't. I even posted my question on the forum on their site, but got no reply about How to upgrade/ update the Joomla 1.5.9 to the latest versions.

So you will continue to listen from me on this blog.

The Email address support@comprolive.com and pr@comprolive.com are no more functional. If you have been trying to contact me on the above email addresses the mail would bounce. Please contact me on my gmail ID sanjayrajure@gmail.com

D Link routers at hacking risk

A vulnerability researcher named Craig Heffner has found out that some of the D-Link ethernet and wireless broadband routers  can be logged into via their web interface using a certain text string as a browser user agent.

It is being guessed that this particular backdoor was created and left intentionally by the software developers at D-Link as a feature that may come handy some day.

Beware of fake GooleToolbarNotifier.exe

Google settings notification (GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe) Toolbar Notifier protects your Google search settings and notifies you if a website or program attempts to change your default search settings. Google Toolbar notifier is installed in your computer as part of Google Toolbar for your browser. Google Toolbar can be downloaded from toolbar.google.com .
The Google Toolbar is installed in the folder
%ProgramFiles%\Google\Google Toolbar along with other folders and files - see report

Whereas the Toolbar notifier is found in its own sub folder located at
%ProgramFiles%\Google\GoogleToolbarNotifier\GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe

A proposal for a banking solution to hacking

A banking solution to limit the damage from hacking of banking accounts.

I think there is a simple but effective solution for limiting the financial losses caused to a person's bank account in case it has been hacked through internet or through the hacking of his debit card/ ATM card etc.

The traditional way of withdrawing money was to go to a bank personally, fill up the withdrawal form, and submit it to the clerk along with your bank passbook. This method requires the account holder to be physically present in the bank, and hence is the most secure and effective against any modern types of banking fraud.

Essentials of Home Computers

I have been working on computers and connected to internet since 1999 when a friend of mine started an Internet Shop or a Net Cafe in Koregaon Park in Poona where the Rajneesh Ashram or Osho Commune was located. We had 15 computers in the shop connected to the internet, all running on Windos XP Sp2. We had antivirus programs on them, but hundreds of clients using the computers for browsing the internet, and watching every conceivable thing, the computers were abound to crash with viruses and I was the one who would try to detect and remove them everyday. It went for almost a year.

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