…Clueless

The last time I reported, Airtel Broadband was redirecting the erroneous traffic to a partnered website (onspeedsearch) where they displayed advertisements.

Just five minutes back, I noticed that erroneous traffic is now being redirected to a page hosted by OpenDNS. Now, I have no clue if Airtel has in some way partnered with OpenDNS to monetize this kind of traffic.

Another theory that is currently running through my brain is that maybe Airtel is redirecting its customers to the OpenDNS servers. This could be because of the recently disclosed vulnerability by Dan Kaminsky which makes all DNS servers prone to attacks. OpenDNS has already stated that it’s servers are patched. What I feel is that Airtel is unable to patch it’s own DNS servers at this point of time so they redirected their customers to OpenDNS. Obviously, there is no way to verify this and obviously this means that OpenDNS is the party that is profiting here.

I am still using the same DNS servers as mentioned in my previous post but this time I am redirected to :

http://guide.opendns.com/?url=badbadurl.in

badbadurl.in is used as an example here.

More discussion about this can be found at IBF.

Airtel has started redirecting traffic from dead links, non-existant domains and typos to a website of its own where it displays advertisements and a search box surrounded by some categories.

The search box is just a dummy form element because if you type in another term it yields no result. Airtel is in partnership with a website called onspeedsearch.com for this and a quick search on Google revealed that many other ISPs have also partnered with onspeedsearch to display advertisements for erroneous traffic on their networks.

Here’s a screenshot of the said redirected page :

The DNS currently in use are :

• 202.56.215.55
• 202.56.215.54

Seems Airtel is trying to earn from it’s customers’ mistakes. Sweet.

Update : For further discussion on this subject, check out this thread on IBF.

I was surfing the Internet when I came across another piece of news which suggests that iPhone will be launched in India on the 18th of August, 3 days after the Independence Day.

Vodafone will be joining the iPhone bash earlier than Airtel. The iPhone wll be available exclusively on Vodafone for the first fifteen days.

Source :

• India to Get iPhone 3G on August 18
• Vodafone To Beat Airtel To iPhone 3G Launch; Expected Next Month

One of my friends went over to the Vodafone store in Sector 19, Chandigarh yesterday. He wanted to book the iPhone. They asked him to send a message to a number (Airtel and Vodafone have been playing this stupid booking game since long) which I think is kind of an alert service since they have not asked for any booking amount.

Now, on to the main news. The sales representive told my friend that the iPhone would be priced at INR 8000. Yes, Rs. 8000 which almost equals to $199. Airtel hasn’t confirmed anything about their pricing. I highly doubt what the Vodafone people are saying. The iPhone has to be imported. Where do they include the duties etc in the price? And what use is a 3G device which mainly boasts of a rich internet experience when even their existing EDGE network is shitty and expensive with no good unlimited browsing plans.

But if it does indeed launch at Rs. 8000 then there’s nothing like it in the market. I would definitely not be one of the early adopters. I’ll just fiddle with the iPhone that someone buys and make up my mind if it’s really worth getting into a contract that would surely be expensive.

My only motive of buying the iPhone would be the rich Internet browsing it’s browser offers. I’m not in for the memory, the iPod etc. It’s just the phone and the Internet on the move.

Another news that was given to my friend was that the phone would be launched when the next month commences, i.e. August.

That’s all the news I have about the iPhone due to be launched on Vodafone and Airtel in India. Gotta hand it to Apple, they manage to create an amazing hype. People don’t even know what the iPhone is and are already dying to own one.

UPDATE: iPhone to be launched on August 18th, 2008 in India. Vodafone gets a head start over Airtel.

I would prefer this movie any day over Jaane Tu … Ya Jaane Na. Simple, light story well shown. Probably the most interactive and useful use of animations in any Bollywood flick. Rishi Kapoor = Morgan Freeman. The story seemed to be an amalgamation of different Hollywood movies.

My rating : 4/5
One of the most sensible movie to have rolled out from Bollywood.

Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na - The movie everyone’s going crazy over. Atleast a dozen people I met told me what a splendid movie it was. But somehow, I had this gut feeling that the movie is just pure hype and nothing more. And I must say my gut does a real fine job of prediction!!

The movie is just watchable. The director tries real hard in the first half to try and differentiate the movie but somehow the magic doesn’t work for me. Unlike the others, I found the first half boring, loaded with unneeded songs. There was a direction to the story but it still seemed incomplete. You know, the kind of feeling you get when you’re running for the examination hall and you fear you might have just forgotten your admit card.

The cast was fresh, young and really talented. The two leads, Genelia D’Souza and Maamoo Jaan ka baccha, Imran Khan did justice to their roles to quite an extent. The female must really work on her dialogue delivery - it’s not cute, it’s IRRITATING. The only other newcomer that manages to impress me is Prateik Babbar. For me, he was the finest actor in the movie amongst the newbies. His expressions, his dialogues… everything was very amusing and didn’t fail to impress the audience which was in spilts whenever he said a word. On top of that, he looked very handsome - better than Imran Khan in my opinion. Imran Khan looks a tad bit too sissy. But, that’s the way he is supposed to look in the movie I guess.

Naseeruddin Shah, Arbaaaz Khan, Sohail Khan and Paresh Rawal went about their work in an impeccable manner. Ratna Pathak Shah was also good in her role as Imran’s mother.

The movie does not fail in the acting department. It fails in the storytelling department. Somehow, I could not relate to the movie. The characters, the environment and the situations seemed unreal to me. Even though the way the actors were made to dress up, the way they looked was very real. They did not look like a million bucks all the time. In fact, some of them were down right ugly.

The music is also not really something to cheer about. Only two songs, the Aditi one and the Pappu one have some life. But even they don’t seem to be from A.R. Rahman. They sounded more like Vishal and Shekhar or Pritam compositions.

The story seemed strange and weird in the first half to me. Everything went about too fast. It was like some random stuff pieced together. The second half, even though slow made more sense. It had a definite direction. One more thing to be commented upon is the chemistry between the lead couple. Genelia and Imran look good together. They look young, spunky and bubbly. The depiction of two doting best friends was perfect.

The movie is a good enough effort for a first time director with an almost inexperienced cast. I would give the movie before the interval 2 out of 5. This rating increases by another point by the time the movie is over. So, my final rating would be 3/5.

Last but not the least, don’t go to the theatre expecting another Rang De Basanti or Jab We Met. Expect a movie which has a clichéd theme which is shown in a new avatar. Expect nothing more. Does not live up to the hype for me.

Oh my God!! This is so epic! They are actually screening a preview of that uber cool sci-fi-love-dance-etc-etc bollywood flick - Love Story 2050!!

Now seriously, have they lost it or what?! I mean, who would actually go and pay to see a “PREVIEW” of a movie which seems to be total crap?

Here’s the email I got from Fun Cinemas :

So, for those of you eagerly awaiting the release of this movie (God help you), go book your tickets. Some like me, have plenty of reasons to stay away from this piece of shit.