“Now, this is one heck of a big fish!”

hown above is an enormous catfish. Even my Thai colleague was flabbergasted by the image on my monitor. My strict diet relies on fish so I could not resist posting this picture which demonstrated the size of the very unusual ocean salvage. Unfortunately, it will end up on somebody’s table.

Fishermen in northern Thailand have netted a fish as big as a grizzly bear, a 646-pound Mekong giant catfish, the heaviest recorded since Thai officials started keeping records in 1981. The behemoth was caught in the Mekong River and may be the largest freshwater fish ever found.

Source: Science Blog

ZDNet Australia writes (on behalf of Secunia) about potential phishing attacks which affect all major browsers.

How does this exploit work?

• A user arrives at a malicious site
• The site re-direct the user to a trusted site while opening a pop-up
• The user gets fooled into entering a password in the pop-up
• While the user believes that the password reaches the trusted site, it actually reaches the malicious one

Pop-up windows, JavaScript and their nasty siblings again take the blame, but if someone is foolish enough to log in via pop-ups, perhaps the flaw lies within the user. Very few sites, if any, will use child windows to request details. It is understandable that many surfers are unaware of that, but they probably ought to stay away from malicious sites to begin with, or at least disable some browser functionality.

ry comparing news feeds from CNN against those from the BBC. I am subscribed to various feeds from both and in CNN no descriptions are bound to the titles. Why even syndicate if the subscriber gets 2-word provocative titles? The BBC is different, possibly because it has no commercial interests. It also opened its news API to the public recently, which was inarguably a wise step.

The ‘greedy feed’ attitude will possibly change due to Google’s embedment of adverts in feeds. This, in turn, is likely to set a precedent and motivate competitors (e.g. Overture) to do likewise. The official Google Factory Tour includes a preview of AdSense in feeds; see the picture at the bottom-right corner of the page.

The BBC published an article about a model which solves the “I’m my own Grandpa” paradox in the context of time travel. The model is based on laws of quantum mechanics.

Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is “complementary” to the present.

In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind…

The world’s leading search engine breaks through boundaries and continues to expand, diminishing many smaller companies in its path. Google have already acquired many small companies; Among the list:

• Blogger
• Deja News (for Google Groups)
• Picasa (Photo organiser)
• Applied Semantics (for AdSense/AdWords)

Slashdot have just unveiled the fact that Google Maps now cover the entire world . There has been no formal announcement from Google, yet. Google Maps must already be gnawing at the share of giants like MapQuest, MapBlast or even more localised mapping sites like Streetmap in the UK. Google’s equivalent is simply by far better in terms of technology and hence its usability.

Only yesterday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Google might put PayPal and eBay under threat by introducing Google Wallet.

Many of us are fond of Google, but it is worrying how much power they can gain so rapidly.

According to The Enquirer, Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has purchased an iPod.

Hurray to iPod mentality!

I have been following the writings of John Dvorak for several months and in his column, he expresses the main difficulty that Microsoft are now facing.

All we hear about Longhorn, though, seems to be about the removal of one promised feature after another…

…These were the fancy file structure, the new presentation manager, and a communications system—things that were going to make the OS a platform for what were described as Service-Oriented Applications (SOA).

Longhorn is often characterised as Service Pack 3 and it can motivate a large proportion of Windows users to seek alternative platforms. One might add the statistic that half of all businesses still use Windows 2000, so can Longhorn give a compelling reason to upgrade? Clearly this will be a serious hurdle to Microsoft.

After Apple’s recent switch to Intel, let us see if Mac OS becomes available to third parties. This can easily balance the cost of hardware with the added value of security.

Longhorn: screenshots of prototypes