So I decided to some investagative work to find out who is behind this phishing scam

Two domains have been registered which are very similar to the official St George Bank web site and can easily mislead St George Bank clients in to believing they are being directed to the St George web site.

Details of the domain names

1. stgeorgeaustralia.com was created on the 26 Feb 2008 and is gosted At&T Internet Services. There is no website at this address.
http://whois.domaintools.com/stgeorgeaustralia.com

2. stgeeorge.com was created on the 26 Feb 2008 and is gosted At&T Internet Services.
http://whois.domaintools.com/stgeeorge.com

Registrant Details

Registrant:
Domain Discreet
ATTN: stgeeorge.com
P.O. Box 278
Yarmouth, NS B5A 4B2
CA
Email:

Created on..............: Tue, Feb 26, 2008
Expires on..............: Thu, Feb 26, 2009
Record last updated on..: Tue, Feb 26, 2008

Screen Captures

Whirlpool forum posts about MD Web Hosting
MD Web Hosting Down
MD Webhosting issues #2
MD Webhosting issues #3

Web Server Downtime Redundancy

While many small companies rely on the net to conduct everyday business, what effect would 2 to 3 weeks of server downtime mean to them? Also, more importantly, how can a small business protect itself and minimise downtime?

Imaginge you were running an online florist. Valentines day (14 Feb) is one of the busiest days in the year. Your website has been down since early Feb. You lose thousands of dollars in sales. Loyal customers take their business elsewhere - or even worst, loyal customers think you have gone out of business and find another florist.

This got me thinking. Web hosting is reasonably cheap. You can get shared web hosting from $10 - $20 per month.

Using two different web hosts (ideally in two seperate geo locations or datacenters), you can create two mirror websites. You can even backup each site remotely. If one hosting company goes down (for technical, financial or other reasons), an update of your sendonary servers DNS details will get you back online within hours. Just remember to use a third party for your domain name registar.

This may sound a little technical to the average person, but any half competant web designer/developer should be able to set this up.

Season 2008 - Official Website of the Australian Football League
This site may harm your computer.

When visiting the AFL site, Google shows the following message

Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!

You can learn more about harmful web content and how to protect your computer at StopBadware.org.

Suggestions:
Return to the previous page and pick another result.
Try another search to find what you’re looking for.
Or you can continue to http://www.afl.com.au/ at your own risk.

If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google’s Webmasters Tools.

I wonder what the AFL has done for Google to block the site?

A source from Toshiba, quoted by Reuters, said “We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business”.

Large retailers in the US they would cut their support for HD DVD by stocking Blu-ray disks. Wal-Mart who has a 40 percent market share in home DVD sales is one of the major retailers to cut HD DVD from its shelves.

This is a good thing for high definition home entertainment, as the format wars created uncertainty with consumers.

The first story I read, The Snot Queen, was about a woman with a runny nose who became a superhero. A great read that has been well written.

Ingredients

• 2 Bags of raw washed cranberries
• 2 oranges. Quartered, one peeled and one left with the peel
• 3 medium red apples skin left but quartered
• 1 to cup chopped pecans
• 1 to 2 cups sugar (depends how sweet you like it)

Method
Using a food processor, process fruit separately to a medium fine chop and mix together with nuts. Stir in one cup of sugar and allow to sit in the refrigerator a few hours. Add more sugar to taste. It has to sit for awhile for the sugar to do it’s magic on the fruit. Stir it occasionally in the fridge until desired sweetness is obtained.

It can be made a day or so ahead. I find it interesting because the cranberries aren’t cooked.

—

Cranberry, port and rosemary sauce recipe
A more tradional cranberry sauce, perfect for Christsmas turkey.

Ingredients

• 25g butter
• 1 very small onion, finely sliced
• 125ml ruby port
• 200g unrefined light muscovado sugar
• Leaves from 1 fresh rosemary sprig, finely chopped
• 500g fresh or frozen cranberries

Method

Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, stirring, to soften. Add the port, sugar and rosemary leaves and cook for a few minutes, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 3-4 minutes.

Add the cranberries, bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes, or until the cranberries have softened. Set aside to cool.

Transfer the sauce to a serving bowl. Serve at room temperature.

Serves 8
Takes about 30 minutes to make, plus cooling

Sauce (excuse the pun) Source: Wedding Central Forum :: Recipes

Prefer to eat out? See Gourmet Restaurants for restaurant reviews around Australia

It came pre-installed with Microsoft Vista Home Basic which worked fine. With one small tweak, it worked even better - I downloaded Fedora 8 as a live CD, booted up and it auto detected everything, including the sound, so I hit install. Now I’m running linux on the laptop.

Now I have a full featured office suite, with openoffice.org which can read and write Microsoft Word files, and can save documents as PDF files. The perfect solution. The price - FREE.

But it gets even better. I had to do some network trouble shooting on a different network, so I plugged the laptop in to the network and now I have a full set of network utilities at my disposal - sometimes the command line is just faster.

I really am enjoying using the laptop. It’s just like windows but with the power of unix when you need it.

TRUST ME, I’M AN AGENT & POLITICIAN
http://www.jenmangroup.com.au/news_item.php?id=368
Allegedly, Mark Forytarz of Castran Gilbert pressures a mentally disabled man to sell his family home.

AUCTION CRIMINALS UNEMPLOYED TODAY
http://www.jenmangroup.com.au/news_item.php?id=170
Allegedly, Paul Castran of South Yarra real estate agency Castran Gilbert employed dummy bidders at auctions.

——-
Newspaper articles related to Castran Gilbert

‘So sue me’ taunt to agents over ‘defamatory’ web articleshttp://www.theage.com.au/news/web/so-sue-me-taunt-to-agents-over-defamatory-web-articles/2008/02/08/1202234210693.html

Jenman Taunts Estate Agents To Sue
http://australianrealestateblog.com.au/blogs/australian_real_estate_blog/archive/2008/02/09/jenman-taunts-estate-agents-to-sue.aspx

Dumbest Lawsuit Ever
http://members.optusnet.com.au/stevet015/web/2008/02/dumbest-lawsuit-ever.html

In front of a concert crowd of 40,000, The Police rocked the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

Before The Police came on stage, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas provided the support entertainment.

Fergie came on stage around 8pm with here band and support dancers. The acoustics during Fergies set was very ordinary. I don’t whether it was the engineers behind the sound desk or sound refracting through sun light, but something was very wrong. Fergie too, sounded a little off key on most of her songs. To her credit, she did some great one handed cartwheels on stage.

The Police came out shortly after Fergie to perform. The stage was quite plain, with three video monitors at the back of the stage which showed cut away footage of the band members performing. Simple, yet very effective for The Police. There was only the three band members on stage performing. No backing singers or additional instruments.

Sting was great on lead vocals and bass. He was full of energy and gave his all on vocals. Dressed all in black, Sting put on a powerful performance for 57 year old.

Andy Summers looked great for a 66 year old. Not quite as active as sting on stage, Andy did a pretty good job on guitar. He was a little out of time on a couple of songs early in but recovered to come back strongly finishing the song. He looked a little tense, like he was just over concentrating rather than enjoying himself and playing with feeling. I doubt if many of the fans noticed, except maybe other musicians in the crowd.

Stewart Armstrong Copeland, the youngest band member at 56 looked like an aging hippy with long gray hair and a headband. He reminded me of Tommy Chong from Cheech and Chong Fame, less the beard. On drums, Stewart performed like a man in his prime. After watching him closely, I understand what a drummer means when he talks about “chops”. Stewart’s got some great chops. It was a real treat to watch and hear Stewart on drums. Together with Sting on bass, they were really tight playing together.

Overall, the show was fantastic. The Police played all their greatest hit songs starting with Message in a bottle, Roxanne, Walking on the moon, Don’t stand so close to me, Wrapped around your finger, Invisible sun, Everything she does is magic, King of pain, Can’t stand losing you, Every breath you take and many other songs from their albums.

Some of the songs had been re-arranged, and slowed down, noticeably Don’t stand so close to me and Wrapped around your finger. Both songs sounded great. I really liked what they did with them. Many of the other songs were re-worked with strong finishes particularly from Stewart on drums.

From the beginning, The Police have always very good musicians. With age and experience, these guys have only gotten better.

Having grown up in the eighties listening to The Police, I feel privileged to have seen them live in concert. Hopefully they will release a live concert DVD from this tour. Fingers crossed.

I purchased three tickets the day they went on sale and promptly forgot about them. Now, hours away from the concert, I’m wandering.

I’m wandering how the band will sound. Will Stings voice still hit those high notes he is famous for in the song “Roxanne”? Can Andy Summers stretch his finger to play those freakishly difficult chords? Does Stewart Copeland, on drums, have the chops, of days of old?

I read recently that The Police have re-arranged some of the songs they are performing. Notably, most songs have been slowed down. I wonder again if the songs have slowed down because the band members are slowing down.

There support act for Australia and New Zealand will be Fergie aka Stacy Ann Ferguson, from the Black Eyed Peas. I wander if they included Fergie as a support act to help them sell seats for Australiasian leg of their tour?

Also, supporting The Police will be Fiction Plane. The band is fronted by Joe Sumner, the son of musician and The Police frontman Sting (Gordon Sumner). The band consists of Joe Sumner (lead vocals, guitar, bass), Seton Daunt (guitar), Pete Wilhoit (drums). An almost identical line up (excuse the pun) of The Police.

Read my review of The Police concert.

Other reviews of The Police Concerts in Australia:
Concert Review: The Police - Live in Brisbane
http://chaosmerchant.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/concert-review-the-police-live-in-brisbane/