I found this story at nola.com. It’s quite interesting as some lawmakers are studying a plan to stop poverty by sterilization.

Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.

Do you think people here in the Philippines would welcome such an idea?  I would think this would be a big issue here since the Philippines is a Catholic Country and artificial birth control is already a big issue between the Church and the government.  However, some might believe that parents that can not provide their children with basic necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, and education is committing a more bigger sin.

If you pass by some poor areas in our cities, you would very well know that most of those areas have hundreds of children ages 0 to 12.   In spite of the fact that they already know that they cannot support a family, they still go and give birth to a couple more kids.

I think poor people would agree even for a couple of thousand pesos (ie PHP2000-PHP4000) just to have their fallopian tubes tied.

I don’t say I agree or disagree if such plan takes place in our country.  But  I know this will be very controversial.
So what’s your take on this?

I wrote before that Paypal has already a facility to withdraw funds to a local bank account.   I used to withdraw funds to my HSBC credit card account as I usually use my credit card on almost anything (Sayang ang Miles/Points).  However, I noticed that each time I withdraw funds to my credit card,  my bonus points decrease.

Paypal withdrawal to HSBC’s credit card functions like a Credit Memo to the account.  Credit memo is seen as a credit transaction and such transaction negates my spending for that month and therefore, I don’t get credited for the points I should have earned from my purchases.

I therefore have no choice but to try the other route which is from paypal directly to my bank account.   I have some reservations about doing this as I know that if somebody hacks your paypal account, they can ultimately withdraw funds from your bank account by funding your paypal account from your bank account, then from there,  send money to their own paypal accounts.

I’ve also heard stories that paypal itself initiated funding of  their paypal account thru their respective bank accounts in case they need to “reverse” transactions.   I think paypal does this to protect buyers and sellers in case there are fraudulent transactions,  however,  some buyers from ebay dispute some transactions saying they didn’t receive any product even if they did.

To minimize such headaches,  I logged in to my trusty old HSBC internet banking account and just open up a new savings account. I was able to setup a new savings account in just a minute or two.   Yup, no need to go to a branch unlike other banks where you still need to be physically on site if you want to open another account.

Once I opened my new savings account,  I use this new account to link to my paypal account.  Then I just maintain a balance of about PHP1k on this account.   This means, whatever happens, the only money I can potentially lose is the money already in my paypal account, and the PHP1k I left on the new savings account.

So that’s a tip for paypal users.   Use a bank account that doesn’t have a lot of money in it.  Don’t use your main bank account where you keep your savings.  It’s not a good practice.  You might end up losing everything if a hacker/phisher got hold of your paypal account.
Ok, back to my new savings account.  I did a test run and transferred about PHP2k from paypal to my new HSBC bank account.  It worked flawlessly!  I did however got deducted PHP100 service charge.  I then checked the rates for local inward remittances and it seems like it is a flat fee of PHP100 regardless of amount.  Not bad if you ask me.

After a few days, I then proceed to transfer a bigger amount just to see if the service charge will stay PHP100.   Yes!  The charge really seems to be a flat PHP100.

After verifiying the funds,  I did transfer the paypal money from my new savings account, to my main bank account.  No charge for this type of transfer since it’s within the same bank.  And that completes the withdrawal of paypal funds to my HSBC bank account.  So now,  withdrawing from paypal to my HSBC bank account is now my first choice.

Bank Codes of Major Banks in the Philippines

In the Philippines, to complete your PayPal withdrawal, you will need to enter the name of your bank, your bank account number and the corresponding 9-digit bank code, which identifies your bank.

I read at pinoyblogosphere that a joomla 1.5xx site was hacked.   I check out the guy’s website  cebubusinessforum.com and found out that the words “the.bilen” on the defaced website.  I checked google to see what other sites has been hacked by this hacker and found out that the forum area of Philippine Stock Exchange has been hacked.

The above is a screen capture of  http://www.philippinestockmarket.com/Forum/default.asp  as of today Sept. 11, 2008 9:00am.

Based from the other sites, it seems that it a lot of the defacing and hacking was done by turkish hackers.  I think “the.bilen” is a script that is being used by these hackers as well as RootHack.

My VPS disk usage is already 96% so I have to find a way to search for the largest files/directories in Linux and check if they should be deleted or not.   I’m sure I can find files such as web log files which I can delete.

There isn’t any 1 linux command to do this but you can string a couple of commands to do the job.  Here’s what I use.
# du -a /home | sort -n -r | head -n 300

• du : Estimate file space usage
• sort : Sort lines of text files or given input data
• head : Output the first part of files i.e. to display first 10 largest file

Better yet, you can run it in your background using this

# du -a /home | sort -n -r | head -n 300 >  spacehog.txt &

This will create a text file called spacehog.txt which you can review later after the background process finished.

Someone forwarded an email to me with the following image.   Let me quote the content

If you see this lady turning clockwise, you are using your right brain. 
If you see her turning counterclockwise, you are using your left brain. 
Some people do see both ways, but most people see it only one way.

See if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain’s current.
BOTH DIRECTIONS CAN BE SEEN!

Experimentation has shown that the two different sides, or hemispheres, of the brain are responsible for different manners of thinking. 

Most individuals have a distinct preference for one of these styles of thinking.  Some, however, are more whole-brained and equally adept at both modes.

In general, schools tend to favor left-brain modes of thinking, while downplaying the right-brain ones.  Left-brain scholastic subjects focus on logical thinking, analysis and accuracy.  Right-brained subjects, on the other hand, focus on aesthetics, feeling and creativity.

At first glance, I saw the lady turning counterclockwise.  But after a few seconds of staring, I can see her turning clockwise.  I can’t do it on demand immediately but once I force my brain to “see” the lady turn the other way, in a few seconds, I can.

I can probably do this because I’m left handed when I write but right handed when I do other tasks

Things that I can do left handed:

Write, paint, play table tennis, use a knife, use chopsticks, badminton

Things that I can do right handed:

Bowling, shoot a basketball, billiards, eat using spoon/fork, badminton

First, some of us survived being born to mothers who did not have an OB-Gyne and drank San Miguel Beer while they carried us.

While pregnant, they took cold or cough medicine, ate isaw,and didn’t worry about diabetes.

Then after all that trauma, our baby cribs were made of hard wood covered with lead-based paints, pati na yung walker natin, matigas na kahoy din at wala pang gulong.

We had no soft cushy cribs that play music, no disposable diapers (lampin lang), and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, no kneepads , sometimes wala pang preno yung bisikleta.

As children, we would ride in hot un-airconditioned buses with wooden seats (yung JD bus na pula),or cars with no airconditioning & no seat belts (ngayon lahat may aircon na)

Riding on the back of a carabaoon a breezy summer day was considered a treat.(ngayon hindi na nakakakita ng kalabaw ang mga bata)

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle purchased from 7-11( minsan straight from the faucet or poso).

We shared one soft drink bottle with four of our friends, and NO ONE actually died from this.Or contacted hepatitis.

We ate rice with star margarine, drank raw eggs straight from the shell, and drank sofdrinks with real sugar in it (hindi diet coke), but we weren’t sick or overweight kasi nga……

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, and get back when the streetlights came on. Sarap mag patintero, tumbang preso , habulan at taguan.

No one was able to reach us all day( di uso ang cellphone , walang beepers ). And yes, we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our wooden trolleys (yung bearing ang gulong) or plywood slides out of scraps and then ride down the street, only to find out we forgot the brakes! After hitting the sidewalk or falling into a canal (sewerage channel) a few times, we learned to solve the problem ourselves with our bare & dirty hands .

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 100 channels on cable, no DVD movies, no surround stereo, no IPOD’s, no cellphones, no computers, no Internet, no chat rooms, and no Friendsters. …… …WE HAD REAL FRIENDS and we went outside to actually talk and play with them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no stupid lawsuits from these accidents.The only rubbing we get is from our friends with the words..masakit ba ? pero pag galit yung kalaro mo,,,,ang sasabihin sa iyo..beh buti nga !

We played marbles (jolens) in the dirt , washed our hands just a little and ate dirty ice cream & fish balls. we were not afraid of getting germs in our stomachs.

We had to live with homemade guns ” gawa sa kahoy, tinali ng rubberband , sumpit , tirador at kung ano ano pa na puedeng makasakitan. Pero masaya pa rin ang lahat.

We made up games with sticks ( syatong ), and cans ( tumbang preso )and although we were told they were dangerous, wala naman tayong binulag o napatay.paminsan minsan may nabubukulan lang.

We walked, rode bikes, or took tricycles to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them to jump out the window!

Mini basketball teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t pass had to learn to deal with the disappointment. Wala yang mga childhood depression at damaged self esteem ek-ek na yan. Ang pikon, talo.

Ang magulang ay nandoon lang para tignan kung ayos lang ang mga bata, hindi para makialam at makipag-away sa ibang parents.

That generation of ours has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, creative thinkers and successful professionals ever! They are the CEO’s, Engineers, Doctors and Military Generals of today.  The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had failure, success, and responsibility. We learned from our mistakes the hard way.

You might want to share this with others who’ve had the luck to grow up as real kids. We were
lucky indeed.

And if you like, forward it to your kids too, so they will know how brave their parents were.

It kind of makes you wanna go out and climb a tree, doesn’t it?!

PS – The big letters are because your eyes may not be able to read this if they were typed any smaller(at your age =).

[taken from forwarded email]

I was going to prc.gov.ph and then suddenly, google blocked me with this message

Then  I clicked on  “Why was this site blocked” and gave me this

I checked the URL and google.com redirected me to

http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-US&site=http://prc.gov.ph/

If you can’t see the pic.   Here’s the exact message

What is the current listing status for prc.gov.ph/?

This site is not listed as suspicious.Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 5 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 479 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 116 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 07/27/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 07/25/2008.

Malicious software includes 125 trojan(s), 100 exploit(s), 72 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 4 new processes on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 11 domain(s), including o7o8gm.cn, heiheinn.cn, hiwowpp.cn.

7 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including hiwowpp.cn, heihei117.cn, loveqianlai.cn.

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, prc.gov.ph/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

Next steps:

• Return to the previous page.
• If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

It seems like prc.gov.ph was hacked and it is trying to infect people who browse that site.  By the looks of it,  the hackers have used china domains  (chinese hackers???).  I don’t even think the guys at prc.gov.ph are aware of this.
So everybody beware.

I’ve posted a new post at searchengineherald.com about the above topic and I would like to give an indepth example of this one complete with screen caps so you can fully understand and see how to do this.

This is exactly the same techniques some SEO’s use and they DON’T WANT you to know about it.   I’m spilling beans right now so better bookmark this webpage so you can get back to it later as a very good reference when you do your keyword research.

So here’s one actual example of how to do this in detail.
If for example, I am into real estate and I would like to find keywords for “condominium”,  I’ll probably type this at Google.

inurl:awstats.pl intitle:”Statistics of” condominium

Google returned this page

I tried clicking the first one and got this

Oh…what lovely keywords.   These are the actual keywords people use to reach that specific website.

Think about how powerful this technique is!  It saves you tons of money and time on keyword research.   Now go out and use it!

If you were wondering what’s inside a laptop battery, you’re just like me. Fortunately I have an old, defective laptop battery. Just like the show “Mad Labs”, smash labs, and mythbusters, I opened it up and here’s what it looks like.

There are 4 Li-ion cells and at the center is some sort of a charge controller.

The main chip of the laptop battery

This seems to be some sort of temperature monitor which senses the temperature of the cells.

This one, I don’t know. A diode perhaps that senses temperature also?