Counterstrike

Counterstrike is a very interesting online game. I got to know it a couple of days ago and it seems that it is quite popular. Its not its plot that is interesting, the goal of the game is very simple. What I found interesting is the skills that it requires to play. Such skills are observation and extremely quick reactions.

I decided this game is something I have to learn to play well, not only because its very popular but because I wanted to prove myself that I can do it. Nevertheless, some people might think its very violent. It simulates two teams, the terrorists and the counter-terrorists. One of the most typical scenario is the following: You are a member of the counter-terrorist group that consists of 5 members. You have to hinder the terrorists from placing a bomb in a marked area. To do this you have to kill them and be careful not to get killed. It takes extremely quick reactions and extremely sharp eyesight to recognise in miliseconds where the terrorists might currently be. You have to have a hundred eyes in all directions!!!

There is a lot of shooting, blood shed and killing in this game and in the beginning it was a bit weird to play it. Such games have been accused of being the inspiration of murderers and killers. After having played it for 4 days intensively, I frankly dont believe so. I havent noticed developing any aggressive behaviour. On the contrary, the speed of my reactions and my self-confidence have increased.

I believe such games cannot be the cause of psychologically ill behaviours. The human brain is in position to tell what is real and what is not. Passive people can use agressive games as a way of developing their reactions and coordination, increasing their self-esteem and releasing subconscious and unexpressed stress. However, I think kids and extremely sensitive people should not play such games.

My Magical Christmas Adventures

On christmas day I climbed up a huge mountain



and entered an enchanted forest.




There I met a talking Snowman



who told me that this is where Goethe wrote Faust.

I didnt pay much attention to him but soon afterwards I saw witches




flying over the canyons.

I should have stayed home because they cursed me with having an eternal cold!

Christmas!

Happy christmas and a great new year to everyone!

Merry Christmas in over 350 languages!

Blogs exist because..

Freud said that if you can get the patient express all of his thoughts loudly, he will then be cured of any mental problems. I wonder if that is valid for writing down all thoughts as well.... Maybe thats they reason blogs exist!

To celebrate or not to celebrate?

Doh! I should be celebrating, jumbing up and down out of joy right now because I got accepted in the open university of greece for Computer Science. I am among the 1000 lucky ones that got accepted. But instead, I am staring at the subjects, looking at the contents of the books over and over again, hoping that if I look too hard, the nightmare of mathematics might even disapear from the papers.

Oh no, there are 12 sections of subjects that I have to pass and 3 of them are related to very very very very very difficult and high mathematics. The rest of the subjects are extremely interesting and I am going to study with great interest, such as, programming languages (C, Java, pascal), databases, operating systems, artificial intelligence, networks, computer and network security, internet. But mathematics??? Why? It is not enough that the studies are already extremely, and at times unnecessarily, theory orientated? After all this should be about computers and not about learning to lecture on computers, these maths are just going to kill me.

Unless I kill them first!

So in my old age, I decided to learn all the mathematics that I had DELIBERATELY skipped and never learned at school. Why should I learn maths and chemistry when philosophy and psychology played an equal role in the final grade for passing the class? After all I couldnt study everything at school.. who studies everything at school anyway??? :)) I studied only to get grades and after that all knowledge was erased from my memory... This was something the system encouraged.

But now I need the knowledge no matter what... !?!$#****!?!$# (cencored).

At least I have 7 months to do some preparation, get a maths teacher and start learning...

Uff!

Interpreting the Signs

Today I opened my window and saw a bird with very long wings flying about ten meters away from my spot. It must have been a proud and dangerous eagle. Then I turned my head to the north and saw a colorful butterfly flying in a nervous rythm. She also had very long wings with black and orange colors. At that moment many thoughts passed instantly through my mind and developed. Isnt this an impressive quality of the human brain/mind to be able to perceive and process thoughts and whole series of mental relations by merely thinking in images in such a short period of time? It is a process that strongly reminds me of the way the computer functions. A single function might take an hour to explain but can be performed in less than a second. To return to the thoughts which took place at the same time:
Thought 1:
I thought butterflies exist only in the summer, how strange that she is still alive. Or maybe she was just born today, a day that pretty much reminds a summer one with this heat and sun.

Thought 2:
I wonder if she is of a rare species any crazy scientist would like to have. Or a crazy collector would want her dead. How cruel.

Thought 3: But I have been cruel too when I was a kid. I havent forgotten how I had developed a whole technique for hunting butterflies with my bare hands. I would aproach them silently from behind and catch their wings folded together. I didnt kill them but sometimes they werent able to fly afterwards. They used to leave on my fingers a dust with colors.

Thought Parallel to 1: I wonder what it means to see a butterfly. According to the Alchemist of Paolo Cohelo, the signs of nature can be interpreted. What is this sign trying to tell me?

Thought Parallel to 2:The butterfly is beautiful. Should I value beauty more? But butterflies live for such a short time, so beauty is mortal. Is that what nature is trying to tell me?

Thought Parallel to 3: Then again, the butterfly is extremely playful. Maybe todays lesson is to be more playful with people. Or is it trying to show me that I am being too playful and should at last get serious?


Now I realise that this whole process of trying to interprete something is useless. There are just too many possibilities in this world. I must have wasted my time thinking all this and even analyzing it.

Pictures of my cats

Here is Hobbit:





Here is Hobbbit with his girlfriend:



Here is one of the kids now:



and younger:



a sister:



a sister with a tragical end, disappeared after the attack of two dogs. Unfortunately my swearing frantically in german language at the owner of the dogs (tourist) did not bring the cat back.



Two wild step brothers, they looked harmless when they were still kids. This is an old picture.

My cat

Just a normal blog entry today, I dont want to loose touch with my electronical diary. On the other hand I dont find it meanigfull to post personal things. I am not sure why. It feels as if they loose their original significance when I write them down. The following ones are harmless though (until I decide otherwise and delete them :D).
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

We have 7 wild cats living around our house. One of them, the Hobbit, is my favourite one, he has been around since many years and has a history behind him that would take too long to describe. Two of the other cats are his girlfriends! and the rest their kids! But he is the master of the cats. He is the most serious cat I have ever met. He doesnt fool around like the other ones, he has a steady gaze when he is looking at me and has the ability to concentrate for a long time on one situation or subject. The rest of the cats seem restless, unable to concentrate. They just care for food. They even fight. The 3 of them, all of them white (a mother and the 2 kids) have wild instincts. I hate it when they make war to get the food from the other cats. Thats why I stay there and supervise them, making sure they all get a fair share. The Hobbit might not even go to eat, he will wait until all have eatten and eat what is left. Maybe he is not that special. He knows that I favour him and give him secret pieces of cheese. But what am I talking about? Is food really a way of showing affection? On what is based an affection towards an animal? Regardless of my existential problems, fact is that this cat is different than any other cat, and I see this in his eyes. I see wisdom in his eyes, I just hope it is not old age. In the past I used to spend a lot of time with him, he still knows our old tricks. If I keep my hand about 20 cm higher than him, he jumbs and touches it with his head. Today I was playing with him too, but after a while he scratched my hand. He jumbed and scratched it with his two feet. I know he was just playing but I felt dissapointed that he had forgotten how to behave with my hands. All these cats are wild, so one has to be very careful, they have no sense for what they do with their nails. Hobbit has forgotten and its my fault, because I have stopped playing with him. I talked to him about this, maybe he understood. Who knows.

Violation of Copyright

There is a first time for everything they say and right now I found accidentaly out that a certain person has stolen two of my itsecurity.gr texts and published them on his website as if he wrote them. I was shocked to see my texts there, firstly because they were not only some quotes, there were whole pages of my site!!! And not even one reference to my site or to the author!!!

I still cannot understand how someone can do such a thing. I worked very hard to create all these texts related to various IT security matters. It has taken a tremendous amount of my time to do research and experiment, and finally publish my conclusions.

Why did I bother actually? I could just copy and paste texts like this person did and look! I have an ITsecurity site within minutes and not within months!!

Of course I will not let this continue, I have sent him and his webhost a warning and consulted my legal advisor. If these texts wont disappear immediately, then he has gotten himyself into really big trouble, for I will pursue my rights in every legal way there exists!

Blogspot Servers down?

It seems that the blospot servers were down for a couple of hours today. All blogs were unreachable for an unusually long amount of time. Following that an error 405 apeared to finally let us know that an engineer is investigating the matter regarding the fact that the servers of blogspot were inaccessible. Now its up and running again, and lets hope that it was just a hardware problem. Is it high time we backed up our blogs?

Thoughts on the education of ballet dancers

Dancers have a different relation with their body than normal people. Maybe they dont identify themselves so much with it, they use it as a tool to express themself. However, ballet education nowadays lays too much stress on the athletic aspect of it and less on the creative one. This makes dancers focus too much on the body and they loose the contact with their soul. No doubt, the classical technique has got be acquired, but this happens sooner or later. In the end the strick, army-like discipline, the endless hours of rehearsing and training, wipe out any creative impulse that the dancer may have and maybe even the wish to dance. The ones who get through this training might get rewarded when dancing in ballet companies, it seems that one minute on a big stage with a warm audience makes one forget all the hardships and difficulties that one had to go through to reach there. But even then, the creativity of the dancer is limited to the opinion of the choreographer and the artistic director of how a certain piece should be performed. Again you have to discipline and limit your creativity to the one of the group or to the one of your artistic director... Some companies do give their dancers the chance to choreograph which I find great. This doesnt happen very often though and most of the time dancers are mere clerks that have to execute tasks on stage.

I insist that the creativity of the dancer has got to be promoted and cultivated when he is still undergoing the academic training. That is the time where the mind and soul blossoms, when its much easier to dive into the depths of the human existence, and discover the limits of the body and the intensity of emotions. Actually dance and maybe any other kind of art has to do solely with the emotions. Its the expression of intense emotions sometimes magnifying them, sometimes beautifying them, that depends. Still, the main subject is emotions. Students of dance have got to be encouraged to read literature and poetry, so that they can relate to these emotions. In fact, I believe there should be a subject in ballet schools where literature and poetry is being analysed, in the same way we did that at school. There are so many librettos available, students should start with getting to know the stories behind all ballets and analyze them. I am amazed when I meet students of ballet that dont know the stories behind most important ballets of our century. It seems that theoretical analysis and knowledge of the history, technique and concept of dance is a priviledge of those who want to study as dance teachers or movement analysts. The education of a dance teacher though, is deprived with the most important priviledge that professional ballet dancers have: to really know how to dance!!! and not to merely talk about it.

Sunbelt buys Kerio Firewall !

Its true, the best personal firewall ever will continue to be developed by the software company Sunbelt.

We liked the product so much we bought it

The computer is a living organism...

A computer system is a living organism, you get its original DNA along with its operating system and then it starts to evolve. Every day that you add a new program to it, it grows and becomes bigger and better. The more programs you have, the more tasks you can accomplish. Like a flower, you water it every day so that it can flourish. You might need also some entertaining programs like web-messengers, browsers, games and so the living organism that you have created keeps growing and growing. Your computer is very powerful now. You could conquer the world with it if you wanted.

But what happens if the living organism starts to develop into a monster?

All those programs install much information on the pc. They not only install themselves, they might install an updater, some registry keys, start up information, information… information… information… Some of them though, go that far, to become one with your operating system. As if they were in love with it, they merge into it and it becomes impossible to separate them. Even if you decide one day that you don’t need them, you will never be able to delete them forever. Some pieces will always remain back. With all those programs that you have loaded on your pc it has now become a monster. Especially when you downloaded those hijacker programs that took over your browser, now that you have some much garbage in your temp folders, so many tracking cookies, spy-ware, old unknown registry keys that load for ages when you start your pc.

The power is starting to turn against you.

Then one day, you install a new program that will change your life forever. It will crash your pc, it will make the system instable, and it will finally KILL your living organism. You had of course no idea that such a thing could happen, but some tiny little piece of … past installed and present orphan information, created an invisible but existing incompatibility with the program and killed your pc. Even if the monster survived, it now has become old and lost its swiftness and power, injuries of war with other software can be seen on its body. There is but one solution now, put it to an eternal sleep so that does not suffer anymore… FORMAT C …. And rest in peace…

Who is number one in google?

ME!!! :)) I am not kidding. If you type computer viruses (oh well in greek) my internet security site comes first!

* Click HERE *

I dont know how long it will last, I ve noticed that the places change. But I am sooooooooooo happy and have to do some crazy blogging-celebration now. Everyone is invited.

Hunting: A Perversion

Hunting is something I cannot tolerate with unless of course the object of hunting are spammers :D. But seriously, even if hunting is legal, hunters in my area break all kinds of laws and have no respect for anything, be that other people, rare animals, nature or the law.

It is forbidden to hunt near houses and yet today about 100 meters away from my house I saw two ruthless hunters who started shooting again and again. This is not the first time something like this happens but they ve never been that close before. Furious I opened my window and shouted out loud at them that here are homes and its not allowed to hunt here, they should go away. But they kept coming towards my house! So I threatend to call the police. At that moment I heard whistles, this is a sign of the forest police. This finally made them run away.

I managed to make a picture of them with my digital camera, but it was as they were leaving, from the back. Next time they come here, I will make so great pictures with my super duper digital camera that can zoom so much, that the faces are clearly visible.

Beware hunters, for I am not afraid of you.

Needless to mention that I consider hunting as a sport an immoral activity. Killing for fun is actually perverse.

Another thing is that the area I live in is on the countryside in the middle of a meadow and about 100 meters from the sea. Very close is a lake that is a protected area due to the rare kind of birds it attracts. The past days arrived some rare and beautiful birds from some other country and the hunters were definetely after them. In such cases one wonders: where is the state? Why doesnt anyone care for the protection of these species and if we, the inhabitants, dont do something about it, none will.

Fantasy

One of the things I really like are fantasy stories with supernatural elements and science fiction. I m not sure if one can relate them together but to me they are all fairy tales :P.

I visited a website with an interesting atmosphere, the design is just superb and the images may have an interesting impact on the visitors. The website looks as if it came out of a book with fairy-tales. I like it.

http://www.duirwaighgallery.com

Webmasters description: A fine art gallery and publisher specializing in mytho-poetic art. Mermaids, Fairies, Dragons and all manner of magic fill our gallery. We carry original sculpture, vintage animation, storybook illustration, fantasy paintings and contemporary doll art.

Everyone blaims the hacker

The law doesnt really like the hackers... Of course there are good hackers and bad hackers. Bad hackers are mainly the professional ones, those hack to get a financial profit out of it. The good guys dont want any money for it, they just do it for the knowledge, they do it for the kick, they just want to see if they are able to discover the security weakness that a system might have. They are after the knowledge, these are the "great scientists", the discoverers, the innovators, the guardian angels of security, the gods of IT. :))

But the law unfortunately does not disciminate among the good and bad guys. You did it, then you are guilty. We dont care why you did it, we dont care what made you do it, you are guilty and there is nothing you can do about it.

What if someone/something provoked you to do it?

Say you visit an unknown island, nobody has ever been there before. There is a city and near the beach you discover something that looks like a house, the door is wide open and you hear a native from the inside talking about you and your book. You see people coming out and going to a bookstore buying your book. Then they return into the house and continue talking about your book. The door is stil open, you know they wont notice you, your book-sales have increased dramatically and you are so curious to find out what they are talking in there!

Slowly you decide to make a step towards the house so that you can listen to them better. Are they loving or are they hating your book? You notice on the door a notice that says "Entrance only to members allowed" but your curiosity is greater than a silly notice and you take another step. You really need to know what kind of consiracy is taking place in there. Now you are IN! You go through some doors, following the light and the voices that keep talking about you. And finally you are in the main room. You mix with all the guests and none notices your presence. What a delight! You enjoy your incognito stay there, listen to all you have to listen and slowly disappear out of the house, without taking or damaging anything.

Just tell me, who would be the criminal one in this hypothetical story!

How to H(a)unt the Spammer - Instructions

I was working on a greek guide about h(a)unting the spammers last night but here is a short one in english. It might look a bit complicated but once you understand the mechanism it gets very easy and fun.

First of all before h(a)unting the spammer we should know some basic stuff about internet.

- A website needs webspace to be online. It needs a WEBHOST.
- A website needs a domain name to be online. It needs a REGISTRANT.

When we get a spam email, usually it says that we should visit a website. So THAT website is the guilty one, that website is responsible for the spamming.

That website enbodies THE SPAMMER himself :)).

Now that we know who the spammer is, all that is left to do is find out who their registrant and host is. Usually the host is more important for the termination of the spammers account. The registrants are slow to reply and sometimes dont even care. Stil, I send spam complaints to both.

How can we find out the host and the registrant?

Its very simple. By making a whois query. This information is public, its no secret and anyone can view it through a whois query. I usually use the Computerbetrug site for my whois queries. Its the best I have found. Its in german but that doesnt matter, the results are in english anyway.

Once we have identified the host and the registrant, all we need to do is send them an email with our complaint. This email should include the original spam email and its FULL HEADERS. The full headers come along with the email. In outlook express all you need to do is highlight the spam email, right click on it, click on properties, click on details, highlight the headers, copy them and paste them into the email.

Here is a picture-guide.

---

Now I will show an example with the spam email that Indie got HERE .

We identify the spammer as h**p://www.rightvisitor.com/

1. I visit computerbetrug and make a whois query (dont forget to tick the ip whois box, the IP belongs to the WEBHOST, and this will lead us to tracking the webhost)

2. So they have spoofed their contact emails, thats ok. We dont mind. We dont want to contact the domain owner anyway. We want to contact their provider!

3. The ip belongs to ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc. so we get the abuse email
abuse(@)theplanet.com this is where our complaint email will go with the full headers and the original spam email.

4. The registrant is enom.com, so lets visit their site and try to get an abuse email in their contact pages. I find this email in their site info(@)enom.com. So our complaint email will go there are well.

Now in Indies case, this is not about email spam, its about blog spam, so we have no original email and headers to send them. But we can send them the link to the spam entry, it should be proof enough.

Any questions? :D

---

Here is the email I sent:
Subject: Unsolicited email/blog abuse

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to report a spam send in a blog by one of your clients. The spam is from ***.rightvisitors.com posted in this blog http://indeterminacy.blogspot.com/2005/08/new-delhi-office-was-kept-dark-to-save.html:

"Anonymous said...

Hey, you have a great blog here!


I have a buy targeted web site traffic site. It pretty much covers ##WEBSITE TRAFFIC## related stuff.

Come and check it out if you get time.

I'm new to blogging so sorry if it's not right for your blog.
Hope to see your blog grow.

Thanks again
9:29 PM, October 11, 2005"

Please take the necessary action to prevent spammers from spamming our blogs.

Sincerely

H(a)unting the Spammer

Today I was feeling like hunting down some spammers again... ITs a delight to do it. Especially when the spammer is silly enough to have a non-asian host and domain registrant. This way I can get all the abuse emails I want. Amateur spammers are easy to track down and report, the big problem are the professional ones. Another problem I come across often when reporting spammers to their isp and registrants, some registrants (including a german one specifically) just dont care about spamming. They ignore spam complains and keep on offering spammers the freedom to carry out their illegal activities. I wonder if we can report the registrants themself, when they dont take the necessary actions. (?)

Anyway, I have a good feeling about todays ha(u)nting. Sometimes its fun to send the spammer an email and threaten them but... today I thought it will be more fun when their host just shuts down their account. Hehehehehe... I am mean I know. But if you consider the tons of spam we receive, the violation of our privacy, the violation of the laws that take place, and the millions of dollars that these spammers earn in an illegal way, then you are bound to have a thing for them. :))

I have started to make a comprehensive guide about tracking and reporting spammers but I have a problem with the email program, its in german... err and I need it in greek or english. Maybe I should consider installing the english office but oh! I have a greek office in my old pc, I can make screeshots there. Great.

Non-blogged becomes Viruswitch

I ve changed the url of this blog, so some people will have difficulty finding their way back here. The ones who will notice it, please change your links. I will create another blog with the old url, just because I find the name cool :D.

The Programmers Revenge

This is a hilarious article I discovered today in the dotnet zone forum. It is about how to write code in a way that nobody else will ever be able to maintain it. Even though I am not in the position to judge whether these pieces of advice are really applicable (a real programmer could enlighten us about it), they are written in a very funny way. A must-visit.

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

My favourite part:

"Randomly intersperse two languages (human or computer). If your boss insists you use his language, tell him you can organise your thoughts better in your own language, or, if that does not work, allege linguistic discrimination and threaten to sue your employers for a vast sum"

:))

Humility

I read this in another blog and I dont even remember where. It was a saying going like this "Dont be so humble, you are not that great yet." I am not sure the logics in it are perfect but it is interesting indeed. I d like to comment on it by rephrasing it a bit "Dont pretend to be so humble, you are not that great yet". :D I think this settles the logic in it. :))


Here are some more cool quotes I found:

"Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them."
Abraham Lincoln

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
Albert Einstein

"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."
Mahatma Ghandi

The philosophy of Programming

I m currently trying to learn PERL. For a specific reason actually. But this is a secret! No its not something illegal. Its just something original! When its ready I will post it here.

I m basically trying to learn the philosophy of programming. Finally after so many years of aimlessly wondering in the internet trying to understand some things on my own, I am starting to understand what programming is about. I am stil not very comfortable with the way it functions, it will take me a lot of time but I will eventually learn. Right now I know html, css, basics of javascript. I have started to cast freightend glances on php and mysql. My goal is perl, java and python. I think I will be happy then :D. And if I could become an expert in oracle.. and a network administrator... a security advisor... dreaming on...

Is the image gone now?

Seinfeld

One more posting to push the posting with the picture downwards :D that it doesnt spoil the template :D.

I know I wanted to say something but I forgot. Oh! Yes, a friend from Israel send me a couple of cds with "Seinfeld". This is completely hilarious american comedy show. Its very interesting, reminds me a bit of the german "kabbaret" (with 2 t?).

I love Kerio

Kerio is being discontinued and this is a time of mourning for many people who have loved this program like me. Kerio is the only program ever that has managed to make a fanatic out of me.



image created by viruswitch

Give us back the internet!

200% more expensive internet in Greece from December! The greek union of internet users set up the Black Webpage in memory of the simple net user. It is being investigated whether the action of the greek ISP is legal or whether it is abusing its monopoly.

Blogs I read

I decided to remove the links from the sidebar and place them all in a single post due to aesthetic reasons.

Blogs I Visit

• The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy: Found Photo Stories: Life and Art Linked by Photographs


• OpsanBlog: Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist


• Road Blogger: Reflecting on the richness of our lives!


• From 0 to 42


• Slip of the Pen


• Inspiration


• Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds


• Sam's Blog


• F-Secure Blog


• Young At Heart in San Diego


• The Kurt Tucholsky Project


• http://cyberpoirot.blogspot.com/