The Case of the Argentine Waiter and the Korean Supper Club

“I’ve got one for you,” the waiter said in a stagey whisper and handed me a cafe chit upon which he’d written “casamun.com,” the Web site of the hottest new puerta cerrada, or private supper club, in Buenos Aires. It was the fifth morning in a row that I had had coffee at the elegant Las Violetas cafe. There I earned a warm “Buenos Días” and a courtly half bow from the same distinguished, leonine, white-jacketed waiter I’d had the mornings before. We’d discovered our mutual passion for good food when he saw the French newspaper I’d been reading the first day I came in, right off the plane from Paris. The paper prompted a moist-eyed reminiscence of a trip to France he’d made as a young man; he had told me he hopes to eat a black truffle omelet again before “God drops the curtains.” He asked me where I ate yesterday, and I mentioned a good lunch I had at El Almacén de Los Milagros in the chic Recoleta neighborhood — freshly baked empanadas, orecchiette with an arugula pesto, a terrific apple tart. The meal was also something of a relief for being mostly meat free: after 96 hours in Buenos Aires, I was pretty certain I’d eaten almost as much beef as I might during a year at home in Paris. It wasn’t, I hastened to add, that I didn’t appreciate the pride of Argentina’s pampas, but rather that I also love seafood, Asian cooking, vegetables. … “Go,” he said, nodding at the note he’d just handed me. “It’s wonderful, run by a Korean-American man, delicious food, a good time, my daughter took me for my birthday.” So I booked a place at one of the biweekly (Friday or Saturday) group dinners online — the only way you can reserve — and was intrigued to read the brief bio that the mysterious chef Mun offers on his Web site. It turns out that Mun Kim, 44, had thrown over a career as a banker in Los Angeles and New York to do what he really loves: cook. He mentioned the Korean short ribs his mother would make when he was growing up in an immigrant family in Honolulu, and also how he’d studied at the Sushi Chef Institute before working for the chef Makoto Okuwa, a regular on “Iron Chef,” at Sashi in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Having fallen hard for Buenos Aires during vacations there, Kim, according to the site, decided to make it his home and introduce his own version of Asian-California cuisine to a city “dominated by a mix of parrilla (red meat) and pastas.” The day of dinner, another e-mail arrived with a link to the evening’s mouthwatering menu and the address of the loft in the hip Palermo neighborhood where Kim does his dinners. Arriving, I joined a friendly food-loving international crowd who were drinking Argentine sparkling wine. Before we sat down for dinner, I fell into conversation with a couple — an Australian-born, California-based software developer and his Mexican-American wife, whose passion for the tango had brought them to Buenos Aires. Like the chef himself, almost everyone at the three tables of 10 had a great back story. When our first course — a “bento box assortment of Korean favorites: haemul pajeon (scallion-and-seafood pancake), oseu-pyeonchae (marinated filet mignon and vegetables), tofu jeon (pan-fried tofu with seasoned ground beef) and gochu jeon (seasoned ground beef on Korean green pepper)” — was served, the ingredients were so fresh, the flavors so bright, that I was already looking forward to thanking Agustín, the courtly waiter who’d both moved and startled me by inviting me to call him by his first name, “like people do in America.” The next course was a dish I knew I’d never forget: imjasutang, the summer soup of the Korean royal family, a cool, concentrated but refreshing ginseng-spiked chicken stock garnished with shredded chicken, shiitake mushrooms, eggs and sesame seeds that was bliss on an Indian summer evening. How curious, I mused, that I’d traveled all the way to Buenos Aires to taste something so heartfelt and Korean, but what a relief to feel my palate racing again. The shrimp and California maki sushi and spicy tuna on fried rice sticks and “Momofuku style pork buns” with cucumber kimchi that followed were brilliant, too, as were the wine pairings all through the meal. To my disappointment, Agustín wasn’t at Las Violetas the next morning or the following one; he had a cold. But when I saw him on my last day in town, I raved about Casa Mun. Not only was it a great time with delicious food, but it. … And here he cut me off with a raised index finger: “It gave you the context you needed to appreciate some good Argentinean cooking.” Si, señor, and muchas gracias, Agustín. Article Src: nytimes.com

99 High Paying Keywords Paying From $2 Up To $100 Per Click!

High Paying Keywords! Everyone is trying to somehow find a way to incorporate High Paying Keywords into their content. as you all know, keywords play a big part in how much you earn from your google Ad sense. of course you can’t just stuff your blog with high paying keywords that don’t have any relevancy to the subject of your blog or the content of it, and expect to get thousands of clicks on them. relevant high paying keywords used with quality content is the key to getting the most out your Ad sense. here are some of the Best High Paying Keywords With Payouts Of $2-$100 Per Click! Expect to get paid for each click on any one of these high paying keywords, anywhere from $2 up to $100. yes $100 us dollars for a click. if you can incorporate these high paying keywords into your content, where it will be relevant and meaningful, you can expect to make a lot of money from even just one blog with a couple of pages filled with quality and informative content which have some of these high paying keywords incorporated into them. 1. Structured settlements 2. Mesothelioma 3. Acne 4. Life Insurance 5. Asbestos 6. Bextra 7. Bankruptcy 8. Car Insurance 9. Dental Plans 10. Private Jets 11. Debt Consolidation 12. Credit Cards 13. Canadian Pharmacy 14. Online Trading 15. Equity Line Credit 16. Loans 17. Mortgages 18. Pay Day Loans 19. Cash Advance 20. Equity Loans 21. Reduce Debt 22. Refinance 23. Jet Charter 24. Rehab 25. Wrongful death 26. Legal Advice 27. Taxes 28. Investing 29. Bonds 30. Vioxx 31. IRA Rollover 32. Refinance Quotes 33. Adult Education 34. Distance Learning 35. Alcohol Treatment 36. Depression 37. Drug Rehab 38. Extra Money 39. Cell Phone Plans 40. Calling Cards 41. VOIP 42. Weight Loss 43. Homeowner’s Insurance 44. Rewards Cards 45. Spam Filter 46. Lasik 47. Facelift 48. Teeth Whitening 49. Annuity 50. Anti Virus Protection 51. Adult Diaper 52. Free Credit Report 53. Credit Score 54. Satellite 55. Anti Spam Software 56. Dedicated Hosting 57. Domain Name 58. Need Money 59. Bachelor Degree 60. Master Degree 61. Doctorate Degree 62. Work at Home 63. Quick Book 64. Spyware 65. Eloan 66. Malpractice Lawyer 67. Lenox China 68. Cancer 69. Payperclick 70. Personal Injury Attorney 71. Lexington Law 72. Video Conferencing 73. Transfer Money 74. Windstar Cruise 75. Casinos Online 76. Laptop Computer 77. Online Banking 78. Borrow Money 79. Low Interest Credit Cards 80. Personal Domain Name 81. Cellular Phone Rental 82. Internet Broker 83. Term Life 84. Cheap Hosting 85. University Degrees Online 86. Online Marketing 87. Consolidate 88. Business Credit 89. Web Host 90. Death Insurance 91. Yellow Page Advertising 92. Travel Insurance 93. Register Domain 94. Credit Counseling 95. Email Hosting 96. Trans Union 97. Consumer Credit 98. Blue Cross 99. Helpdesk Software Don’t forget, the more relevant quality content you have on your blog, the higher your chances will be for making more money with such keywords. after building your high paying keyword incorporated content, focus on driving traffic to your blog. the more traffic you generate, the more money you will make. but not just any traffic will work for you. you need to drive quality targeted traffic to your blog, where you have your high paying keywords waiting to be clicked on. since google Ad sense shows ads that are made of keywords related to your content, obviously a person(targeted traffic) who comes to your blog trying to find such information is more likely to click those ads which are made of high paying keywords,thus making you more money.

Is online shopping ever secure?

Few websites meet industry standards when it comes to storing our credit card details. So, asks Danny Bradbury, is e-commerce in the UK fundamentally flawed? If you use an e-commerce site in the UK, how safe are your personal details? Not as safe as you might think, according to SecureTest, a security consultancy that specialises in "ethical hacking". After testing 100 UK websites, it has accused the UK e-commerce community of fundamental flaws in the way it handles customers' details. Ethical hacking is normally done with the target's consent: paid security experts look for holes in the system. In this case, the tests were not sanctioned, and so SecureTest was careful not to breach the Computer Misuse Act (CMA). Instead, its team signed up for customer accounts on each website, and then walked through the standard procedures all customers have access to, drawing conclusions about how those sites handled customer data. For example, almost all sites use a customer's email address as a username, which they ask for when helping customers with a forgotten password. Of those tested, 60% responded to forgotten password requests by explicitly stating whether the email address was in the database or not. "That's a fatal mistake," says SecureTest's managing director, Ken Munro, arguing that it lets attackers verify that a particular email address is registered on an e-commerce site. An attacker could then create lists of addresses with which to start testing targeted attacks. "If I wanted to deliver a cross-site scripting attack via email to steal their customers' account details, I now know the email addresses of their customers," he says. Pass the password The sites surveyed recovered user passwords in one of three ways, all via email: sending a link to a web page where users enter a new password; generating and sending a new password; or simply sending the original one. Sending account credentials over an unprotected network is a bad idea, says Michael Owen, head of security management at security consultancy and penetration tester IRM. "I wouldn't recommend any system that mailed back passwords," he says. "You're assuming that you can trust all of the machines that it will pass through, and that the customer definitely has control of his email at the time you're sending it out." Even sending a link to a password reset page is insecure unless the page also asks the user a secret question when they arrive there. Only 14% of sites took that approach, Munro explained. Tom Kellermann, vice-president of security awareness at security firm Core Security Technologies, goes even further. "Passwords themselves are obsolete. It is shocking to me that the standard in e-commerce is pushing people towards stronger passwords," he says, arguing that they're notoriously difficult for consumers to manage securely. "We should be moving towards two-factor authentication". Some banks have started to adopt this approach (which generally combines something you know, such as a pin, with something you have, such as a smart card). Few, if any, e-commerce sites do it, though: the cost of giving away hardware tokens to every user would put most of them out of business. The contention over these basic security issues raises an important question: how can e-commerce companies walk the line between usability and security? These decisions seem to be based on a mixture of de facto approaches to the problem and gut instinct, says Owen: "At the end of the day, it boils down to the risk appetite of an organisation." Compliance complaint The credit card industry has imposed its own regulations on the storage of credit card details. The PCI-DSS standard governs the security with which companies store credit card information. Unlike most security regulations, it was imposed by the private sector, rather than the government. The credit card companies which designed them have promised to fine companies that don't conform to the guidelines, but most still fall short. LogLogic, which makes software that analyses security logs, commissioned a survey last week of 65 UK firms with at least 500 employees that handled credit card transactions. Only 14% were PCI-DSS compliant. Littlewoods, which also manages the website for Adidas, isn't yet compliant, says spokesperson Anthony Taylor. But they are "well on our way to achieving compliance within the agreed timescales". Nor is retailer New Look, says Shaun Wills, strategy and business development director, who admits that newlook.co.uk doesn't encrypt its customers' passwords either. He's not that worried, though, because the company doesn't hold customers' credit card data. Like some other sites, it forces customers to re-enter their credit card details for each transaction - thus dodging the PCI bullet. "It's a big disadvantage," he says. "But for the time being until we're absolutely confident that we have robust systems in place; we think that's probably a better way to go." For Donal Casey, principal consultant at systems integrator Morse, the most trustworthy websites don't take credit card information at all. "I'm more interested in sites that use things like PayPal or Google Checkout because I don't necessarily want to give my card details out," he says. The LogLogic survey didn't say what level of certification the handful of compliant companies had attained. The PCI standard has several, based on the volume of transactions a company processes. Only tier one (the highest) is externally audited, says James Cronin, CTO of tier one-compliant e-commerce platform provider Venda. "Anyone who wants to can be level two, three or four compliant just by filling in questions on a web form. It's not really a validation," he says. But PCI only addresses the handling of credit card data. Today's websites face other problems. For several years, one way for criminals to infect victims' computers with malicious software was by using shady websites serving porn and pirated software to covertly deliver malicious scripts. Once infected, the computers became part of a botnet, remotely controlled by online crooks. Recently, criminals have refined their tactics, hacking into legitimate websites and turning them to the dark side. A survey by security firm WebSense in January found that 51% of all sites serving up malicious scripts were legitimate sites that had been hacked. "Our figure is 83%," says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at anti-virus firm Sophos. Every 14 seconds, Sophos finds a site delivering malicious scripts, and eight in 10 are legitimate sites that were hacked, he says. On Valentine's day, the company found an e-commerce site selling flowers that was unwittingly infecting customers' machines. "The florist wasn't really interested, and didn't understand what we were talking about. He was into flowers, not websites," recalls Cluley. Some sites using databases to serve up their content have been attacked using SQL injection, in which criminals manipulate the web server's database by typing carefully crafted text into a web form or the address bar. Another attack involves stealing FTP passwords from an infected PC, says Joe Stewart, senior security researcher at managed security services firm SecureWorks. "Someone gets infected with a bot, it's stealing their other passwords, and so it steals FTP passwords as well," he warns. Web advertisements are another attack vector, warns Stewart's colleague at SecureWorks, senior security researcher Don Jackson. E-commerce companies may have control over their own content, but if banners display advertising content from third parties, how do they know they're not serving malicious scripts? A question of trust Such trust relationships often extend to a third-party web host looking after a company's e-commerce site, says Kellermann. "Those who host websites, portals and e-commerce engines are not being effectively tested and forced through contracts to remediate exploitable vulnerabilities before the enemy does," he warns. These issues are worryingly real. Last October Fasthosts, a UK web hosting company, was forced to ask all of its customers to change their FTP and email passwords (stored unencrypted) following a data breach. And many e-commerce websites hosted by third parties share servers with other companies' code, so one infected application can affect others' software. All of this makes it difficult for e-commerce customers to know who they're trusting, let alone how secure they are. And with criminals now operating in stealth mode so that they can milk compromised computers of their data for as long as possible, how will we ever really know? E-commerce: the facts 14% Proportion of websites tested that ask users a secret question to reset password 51% Proportion of sites serving up malicious scripts that are hacked legitmate sites 14 seconds The time it takes Sophos to discover a new website with malicious scripts

Online shopping frustrates customers

by Tom Diederich IDG Electroniccommerce Web sites may be losing enormous amounts of potential revenue every day simply because online consumers, frustrated by efforts to find goods on their shopping lists, are clicking away from virtual stores and, in some cases, never return, according to a new report from Zona Research, Inc. in Redwood City, Calif. Zona surveyed 239 people who use the Internet regularly and found that one in three had trouble finding products they were looking for. They also said they had abandoned online searches for merchandise at least once during the past two months. MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE n IDG.net home page n Computerworlds home page n Computerworld Emmerce n Get Media Grok and The Industry Standard Intelligencer delivered for free nReviews indepth info at IDG.net n IDG.nets personal news page n Questions about computers Let IDG.nets editors help you n Search IDG.net in 12 languages n Subscribe to IDG.nets free daily newsletter for IT leaders nNews Radio n Computerworld Minute n Fusion audio primers n n n We were not expecting to find these kinds of numbers because this was basically a group of savvy computer users, said Jack Staff, chief economist at Zona Research. And when you have almost onethird of them saying Web shopping was extremely difficult or somewhat difficult, we think the average population is having even more difficulty. The results are significant, Staff said, because they suggest a significant loss of potential revenue. If you get 100 hits a day and onequarter of them are dropping off and especially if its related to your bottom line then that could have a lot of impact. And if shoppers consistently cant find what theyre looking on a site, they may leave and never return. To reverse this trend, online merchants must bring the product to the customer in a way that is more like a brickandmortar situation, Staff said. Web vendors need to concentrate on making it easier for Web shoppers to quickly and painlessly find the exact products they want, the report said. One problem is the way Web sites have set up their search capabilities, he pointed out. Right now, if you go online to a sites search area and hit coat, you might get coat of paint, you might get dress coat or you might get sports coat, when what youre looking for is a purple and orange cashmere coat in a 42 long, he said.

Online shopping boost expected

Some observers say e-commerce Web sites could see a traffic boost this holiday season as shoppers browse online rather than at the malls. That's because of a perceived reluctance on the part of many to travel and personally deliver gifts following the September 11 terrorist attacks. "You're going to have people who had to cancel travel reservations to see their relatives, but instead they're going to be ordering online," says analyst Christopher Kelley, of Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I think you're going to have people calling (relatives) and giving them a heads-up, about packages that will arrive." In addition to the nation's newfound reluctance to travel, online shopping also may benefit from Internet-based charitable efforts pertaining to the terrorist attacks, Kelley says. Charities, he says, "made it so easy to contribute online, I bet there were a lot of people who never made purchases online who were moved enough to contribute on the Web." In doing so, they realized they would not have their credit card numbers stolen or receive spam as a result of online contributions, Kelley says. "They finally got over those hurdles that kept them from buying online in the past and they'll continue to buy in the holiday season," Kelley says. At Walmart.com, a company spokeswoman cited reports pertaining to the population's reluctance to fly. "Based on those reports, it appears travel will be down this holiday season," says spokeswoman Cynthia Lin, in Brisbane, California. Regardless of whether people travel, they will not be able to carry as much onto planes, thus making shipping gifts a more viable option, Lin says. Walmart.com recently added access to gift registries started at the company's brick-and-mortar stores. A streamlined checkout process also has been added, Lin says. Discount merchandise vendor Costco already is seeing strong online sales, a company executive says. "Gift sales are off to a very strong start," indicating either that people will not be traveling, or that the company is offering the right items, says Doug Schutt, senior vice president of Costco's e-commerce business centers, in Issaquah, Washington. Costco recently added an order-status checking feature and the ability to send messages, such as a birthday wish, to its site. Eric Bauer, CFO at Costa Mesa, California-based tickets.com, says the nature of his company's business does not change during the holidays. But the combination of the faltering economy and the terrorist attacks appears to have people buying tickets for sporting events or concerts instead of traveling on vacation, Bauer says. "Rather than taking a longer trip or taking a more expensive indulgence, even if the economy's in a tight spot, I can allow myself to go to a nice Christmas show," he says. Forrester is projecting that United States consumers will spend $11 billion online this holiday season, a 10-percent increase over last year. Research firm Gartner, meanwhile, predicts worldwide online holiday sales of $25.3 billion, a 39-percent increase from last year. But e-tailer Amazon.com, in a financial release, says it expects net sales for the fourth quarter to be flat or increase as much as 10 percent over last year.