Dont read it if you dont want to know the ending.
This is an enchanting film with absolutely amazing scenes and pictures. The story is very intense, at times very dramatic and at times very sweet. This is a film which I enjoyed tremendously watching as it let me sink into different moods as I marvelled at the scenes of blue seas and horizons. The colors are mystical and the hero becomes an interesting personality to investigate into. At some point the film confused me. It did not turn out as I wanted it to and the end was very strange. When it ended I couldnt believe it, as I didnt get what happened it the end. I think something very very sad happened.
And now a few things about the story.
A french little boy Jacques, lives on a Greek island with his father. His mother is american but left them and returned to the usa. He is a scared little boy that never talks much, never asks any questions and has no ego in him. Something like Jonathan livingstone seagull.. he learns to swim extremely well and especially to dive deep as his father used to do. The little boy learns to hold its breath for a very long time. Another boy, who is bigger and older is also a very good diver and always has everything his way. He boosts to be the best diver. The loss of Jacques father inflicts great pain in his soul and he gets engrossed more to the world of the sea. The dolphins now are his family.
As an adult Jacques has developed an incredible ability to dive very deep. He practices yoga breathing techniques and slowers his heart beat. That allows him to hold his breath for a very long time. He is now a professional diver and is called for dangerous missions. In his free time he still dives and swims in the sea, side by side with dolphins. Jacques has become a lonesome, romantic creature that finds pleasure in the beauty of the underwater worlds. In one of his missions he meets a young lady in Peru who falls in love with him. Apparently he is also in love with her but the sea is still closer to his heart. When they both live that place, she decides to go and find him. She discovers him in Sicily where he met the old enemy of his. He has been challenged now to the world championships of divers. A romance blossoms there, Jacques and Enzo (his rival who already has been a world champion) become friends but they are both very serious about the competition.
Now the film reaches its peak in the relationship of the american lady and Jacques. It is a completely sweet and romantic relation. Despite the championships that are taking place, he does allow her to enter his world. There is a lot happening here which I cant describe at all, you just have to see it. At some point though, and after you really enjoy the magical colours of the sea, the emotions of those two people and the friendship that blossoms under the italian sun... the film has a twist. The competitions become too dangerous, Enzo and Jacques dive too deep and break each others records. It seems that both have suicidal tendencies and they find more pleasure and peace underwater, than with people around them. The doctors claim that the competitions are no longer safe. Jacques also has started to neglect his girlfriend who has abandoned everything, her job and life to be with him. She dreams of a baby with him, and he just stares at the ocean. They make love for the first time and then he spends a whole night swimming in the darkness of the sea with a dolphin... She tries to make him listen, but in vain, his attention is elsewhere.
The end is very tragical. The sea becomes the tomb of Enzo in a dramatical way, somehow by the hands of Jacques. And Jacques is last seen in the water looking for Enzo but probably finding the mermaids. I believe he died in the end as well diving but I am really not so sure. He leaves his girlfriend screaming and crying so that he will not dive in the end, but he does dive... and she seems to respect his wish as Jacques did respect Enzos wish to die in the sea.
If they all had a bit less respect for each others wishes they might have been alive in the end :P.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The spammers technique in a dream!
I just woke up and checked my ballet forum. It was again attacked by spammers and I had to delete the spamming user and his posts. That brought back to my memory a dream I saw today but did not remember immediately upon waking up. I dreamt of the spammers-technique!!
I have been wondering the following: Spammers register in my forum with very weird (probably invalid) emails, that have domain names that might not even exist such as spammer@asdfasdfa.com. And yet I have the email activation on, that means that they would get an email which they have to open to activate their account and start posting. But I need their valid email adress so that I can ban them from my forum. So how do they do it?? I believe I dreamt of the answer. I dreamt that the spammer was using a valid email adress to register and activate his account and then, after postings all his spam, he would change his email adress from his profile into something that does not exist. The whole process might be done by a bot automatically but still this must be the only answer!
I have been wondering the following: Spammers register in my forum with very weird (probably invalid) emails, that have domain names that might not even exist such as spammer@asdfasdfa.com. And yet I have the email activation on, that means that they would get an email which they have to open to activate their account and start posting. But I need their valid email adress so that I can ban them from my forum. So how do they do it?? I believe I dreamt of the answer. I dreamt that the spammer was using a valid email adress to register and activate his account and then, after postings all his spam, he would change his email adress from his profile into something that does not exist. The whole process might be done by a bot automatically but still this must be the only answer!
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Shootings, the police and a mystery
A few minutes ago I heard shootings in my area. They were no shootings of the hunters who usually come near but different. I called the police immediately because it just was extremely weird. I also heard cries. For a moment I asked myself whether it was fireworks.
If I try to just record the event, I heard a series of booms, 3-3 or 6-6 or it could have been more. When the police arrived and I narrated to them what I heard it dawned on me that it could have been an exchange of shooting. The first party shoots 6 times, then the second replies. And this goes on for at least 4 times. They are now off to search, and I am curious if they will find something.
Mystery solved... it was a wedding!!! OMG. They were shooting again and again and I called again the police. It was someone who was getting married and though he should celebrate with shootings... for gods sake....
If I try to just record the event, I heard a series of booms, 3-3 or 6-6 or it could have been more. When the police arrived and I narrated to them what I heard it dawned on me that it could have been an exchange of shooting. The first party shoots 6 times, then the second replies. And this goes on for at least 4 times. They are now off to search, and I am curious if they will find something.
Mystery solved... it was a wedding!!! OMG. They were shooting again and again and I called again the police. It was someone who was getting married and though he should celebrate with shootings... for gods sake....
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
The Worth of Dialogue
There are some people who are used to practicing the following technique when you ask them a question: They reply by saying something, which does not relate to the question. I knew that politicians and a few journalists are into this technique. But as I keep meeting people I also see that more and more are starting to use this. This usually applies to people that have a certain position.
Well to me this is just a sign of dishonesty, of being a coward and of not having an opinion of ones own. I despise people who are not able to communicate with other people and just keep saying what they want to say. The point in communication is mutual exchange of information. It is an insult and lack of respect towards your interlocutor if you ignore their point of view by not relating it with your thoughts and answers. It also shows that you cannot afford being confronted with something which you obviously cannot handle.
It is so rare nowadays to find a person with which you can lead a really peaceful, logical, and interactive argumentative dialogue because everyone is fixed on their own world of thoughts unable or unwilling to open up to anything else. Maybe we should learn to concentrate more on ideas and less on our self.
Well to me this is just a sign of dishonesty, of being a coward and of not having an opinion of ones own. I despise people who are not able to communicate with other people and just keep saying what they want to say. The point in communication is mutual exchange of information. It is an insult and lack of respect towards your interlocutor if you ignore their point of view by not relating it with your thoughts and answers. It also shows that you cannot afford being confronted with something which you obviously cannot handle.
It is so rare nowadays to find a person with which you can lead a really peaceful, logical, and interactive argumentative dialogue because everyone is fixed on their own world of thoughts unable or unwilling to open up to anything else. Maybe we should learn to concentrate more on ideas and less on our self.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Education :: Everybody's Right?
There is a crisis in the educational system of Greece... again.
The politicians have been trying for many years to create a just and effective educational system. They have changed the system several times and the students have protested several times. Also the teachers have gone on strike and protested against what they thought was an irrational way of judging the knowledge of a person.
So what have we achieved so far? I remember that we (the students of 1997) closed up our high school by force for 3 months and stayed in there, as a way of protest. We forbade the entrance of teachers as a drastical and desperate way to be heard.
"The System Sucks. Do something Now!"
Ten years have passed since then, the system changed and changed and changed. Governments came to power and left. Ministers of education appeared and dissapeared.. And the students of 2006, after 3 months of teachers going on strike, are closing the schools again.
"You achieved only a hole in the water, dear Politicians. You simply ALL FAILED."
Our problem, ten years ago, was the unfair way of entering the university. It did not matter how good one was at school, as long as one could pass the examinations on a set of four subjects. The problem was that one could finish high school with an A grade but this grade did not correspond to the real knowledge. Students of A failed in the university examinations because
1. The had not really learned (by heart) the material
2. The teachers did not really teach the material and allowed students to advance to the last class of school by giving high grades
So I have certificate of graduating highschool with an A+ grade. BUT I cannot be accepted to university. How does this make sense? An A student, who has passed successfully all subjects at school with an A is not suitable for entering the university? How is that sane? How is that logical?
Another fault of the educational system at that time was that as long as you did not take the exams immediately upon graduating for high school, you could never again apply for a university. Never again. Unless you wanted to go through the last class of high school again... A fault which probably still exists in a slightly different way though.
A year after I graduated from high school they changed the system. Into something that finally proved to turn the already unflexible system into something very very hard. The four subjects now became ten, only they were reflected in the grades of the last two classes as well. That was a desperate effort to plant the university exams and associate them with real school. A greek student would go to school in the morning and spent his whole afternoon taking extra classes in maths, physics, ancient greek etc to be able to really learn and pass the examinations for the university. Not only do you have to sacrifice all your youth in learning, but you also have to have a pair of rich parents to pay for extra lessons in english, german, physics, chemistry, maths, ancient greek, piano, music, dance etc etc etc ..... And that is what we call "Free Education for All".
I wonder how all these intelligent politicians have not yet grasped the core of the problem (or have they?). The problem is the procedure of entering a univerisity. The reason to this problem is a chain of events that takes off in primary school. A student is permited to advance from class 1 to class 2 with the base grade from primary school all the way to high school. This system takes for granted the fact that one is able to follow classes and learn the material of a next class by having achieved the base grade of the previous one. Shouldnt that mean that a student with the base grade in the last high school class should have the right to continue his studies in university? Then why do you block A students from the universities???? Instead of this, the system demands A+ grades in seperate exams and deprives the right for higher education to a very great percentage of students, that is 45% of those who apply.
It is funny, because a Greek high school graduate, could study in any university of Europe he wanted, whenever he wanted, with only the highschool certificate. And yet in Greece he just cant. That is the reason that leads a great percentage of high school graduates to universities in the UK, Germany and Italy.
So, change the system from primary school! Make it effective, make it real! Graduating from highschool is now a mere ritual with no meaning. Everybody graduates. Very few go to a university. We need teachers that know how to teach. A flexible and modern system of teaching, flexible and modern ways of examining knowledge. We need a system that promotes free thinking, creativity, the ability of COMBINING INFORMATION and NOT the ability of STORING INFORMATION. The educational system nowadays trains students into parrots, while it should train them into independent, mature and thinking humans.
The solution is simple. But the solution is worthless without an honest will to solve the problems, as well.
The politicians have been trying for many years to create a just and effective educational system. They have changed the system several times and the students have protested several times. Also the teachers have gone on strike and protested against what they thought was an irrational way of judging the knowledge of a person.
So what have we achieved so far? I remember that we (the students of 1997) closed up our high school by force for 3 months and stayed in there, as a way of protest. We forbade the entrance of teachers as a drastical and desperate way to be heard.
"The System Sucks. Do something Now!"
Ten years have passed since then, the system changed and changed and changed. Governments came to power and left. Ministers of education appeared and dissapeared.. And the students of 2006, after 3 months of teachers going on strike, are closing the schools again.
"You achieved only a hole in the water, dear Politicians. You simply ALL FAILED."
Our problem, ten years ago, was the unfair way of entering the university. It did not matter how good one was at school, as long as one could pass the examinations on a set of four subjects. The problem was that one could finish high school with an A grade but this grade did not correspond to the real knowledge. Students of A failed in the university examinations because
1. The had not really learned (by heart) the material
2. The teachers did not really teach the material and allowed students to advance to the last class of school by giving high grades
So I have certificate of graduating highschool with an A+ grade. BUT I cannot be accepted to university. How does this make sense? An A student, who has passed successfully all subjects at school with an A is not suitable for entering the university? How is that sane? How is that logical?
Another fault of the educational system at that time was that as long as you did not take the exams immediately upon graduating for high school, you could never again apply for a university. Never again. Unless you wanted to go through the last class of high school again... A fault which probably still exists in a slightly different way though.
A year after I graduated from high school they changed the system. Into something that finally proved to turn the already unflexible system into something very very hard. The four subjects now became ten, only they were reflected in the grades of the last two classes as well. That was a desperate effort to plant the university exams and associate them with real school. A greek student would go to school in the morning and spent his whole afternoon taking extra classes in maths, physics, ancient greek etc to be able to really learn and pass the examinations for the university. Not only do you have to sacrifice all your youth in learning, but you also have to have a pair of rich parents to pay for extra lessons in english, german, physics, chemistry, maths, ancient greek, piano, music, dance etc etc etc ..... And that is what we call "Free Education for All".
I wonder how all these intelligent politicians have not yet grasped the core of the problem (or have they?). The problem is the procedure of entering a univerisity. The reason to this problem is a chain of events that takes off in primary school. A student is permited to advance from class 1 to class 2 with the base grade from primary school all the way to high school. This system takes for granted the fact that one is able to follow classes and learn the material of a next class by having achieved the base grade of the previous one. Shouldnt that mean that a student with the base grade in the last high school class should have the right to continue his studies in university? Then why do you block A students from the universities???? Instead of this, the system demands A+ grades in seperate exams and deprives the right for higher education to a very great percentage of students, that is 45% of those who apply.
It is funny, because a Greek high school graduate, could study in any university of Europe he wanted, whenever he wanted, with only the highschool certificate. And yet in Greece he just cant. That is the reason that leads a great percentage of high school graduates to universities in the UK, Germany and Italy.
So, change the system from primary school! Make it effective, make it real! Graduating from highschool is now a mere ritual with no meaning. Everybody graduates. Very few go to a university. We need teachers that know how to teach. A flexible and modern system of teaching, flexible and modern ways of examining knowledge. We need a system that promotes free thinking, creativity, the ability of COMBINING INFORMATION and NOT the ability of STORING INFORMATION. The educational system nowadays trains students into parrots, while it should train them into independent, mature and thinking humans.
The solution is simple. But the solution is worthless without an honest will to solve the problems, as well.
Monday, October 23, 2006
My Life is a Password...
I often wake up in the morning, switch my super-pc on and wonder and gaze at its chaotic contents. Sometimes I am filled with awe about the system-monster I created and at other times I doubt how contructive this "creativity" is.
The Desktop is filled with folders and subfolders, with files and images, documents and program shortcuts. The C partition must have around 1 GB left and there I really must add space to it. Half of my files are lying within a silver box that hides an external HD and half of them are in the second partition. And the silver box is lying somewhere between the "zone of the black cables" and the "lost books" of viruswitch's room.
But nothing so far is alarming enough, the real danger lies within the hidden RAM and the workings of my mysterious CPU. The BIOS is like a sleeping monster in a dormant state yet ready to rise and produce sound waves through the atmosphere. BEEP! BEEP! Black screen... A TFT that changes its wavelength? Or could it be the grafic card that was never meant to have its drivers? A weird fate for ATI. Will it ever end up there where it really belongs?
Speed was the pride of this pc that opened and closed windows in a microsecond. Now I have to wait 5 seconds for the desktop menu to open. The 5 seconds are the dreaded messenger of FORMAT C which I would do right now if only my life was not a password. If I wouldnt have to back up my emails from C, if I hadnt stored 20 email accounts in there, if the magic wand of opera would not store more than 50 user name and passwords for very important sites (which passwords I forgot), then I would format C now. If I could store all these 100 accounts in my brain (email, sites, university, messengers, voIP etc) I would surely format right now. But the temptation is too great, the internet speed makes up for the system speed and the case is postponed "until further notice" . Lets just find out for how long it takes for windows to die on its own...
The Desktop is filled with folders and subfolders, with files and images, documents and program shortcuts. The C partition must have around 1 GB left and there I really must add space to it. Half of my files are lying within a silver box that hides an external HD and half of them are in the second partition. And the silver box is lying somewhere between the "zone of the black cables" and the "lost books" of viruswitch's room.
But nothing so far is alarming enough, the real danger lies within the hidden RAM and the workings of my mysterious CPU. The BIOS is like a sleeping monster in a dormant state yet ready to rise and produce sound waves through the atmosphere. BEEP! BEEP! Black screen... A TFT that changes its wavelength? Or could it be the grafic card that was never meant to have its drivers? A weird fate for ATI. Will it ever end up there where it really belongs?
Speed was the pride of this pc that opened and closed windows in a microsecond. Now I have to wait 5 seconds for the desktop menu to open. The 5 seconds are the dreaded messenger of FORMAT C which I would do right now if only my life was not a password. If I wouldnt have to back up my emails from C, if I hadnt stored 20 email accounts in there, if the magic wand of opera would not store more than 50 user name and passwords for very important sites (which passwords I forgot), then I would format C now. If I could store all these 100 accounts in my brain (email, sites, university, messengers, voIP etc) I would surely format right now. But the temptation is too great, the internet speed makes up for the system speed and the case is postponed "until further notice" . Lets just find out for how long it takes for windows to die on its own...
Friday, October 06, 2006
How to Create an Extremely Bad Website
To create an extremely bad website is a difficult task. It might seem easy at first sight, but it is not at all. And one has to try very hard to achieve this noble goal.
One of the most difficult parts to ruin, when designing a website, is the NAVIGATION.
The difficulty of a chaotic navigation lies in the ability of the webdesigner to go against that which we call "Common Sense". So one has to employ all ones strength and intelligence to become... dumb! Logic has got to be abandoned and complete surealism has to take over...
The famous webdesign rules
1) KISS (Keep it simple stupid)
2) The 2 clicks rule (the user must be able to access all pages from the main navigation in 2 clicks)
have got to be reverted and avoided.
If you want to completely confuse and agitate your visitors they must not find what they are looking for at no cost! Your success is proved when they wonder countless hours clicking through the hundreds of useless links you provide to many pages that promise the same information!
Another very important thing is that your contact information is not valid. By no means place a valid telephone number or email and use different pages with different contact info! Let the user have a little adventure! Allow the visitor to go through a life-quest, allow him to develope his psychic abilities to guess your contact info!
Still, you will not have created an extremely bad website if you keep your content up to date. Thats something that has to be avoided. Keep your content preferably one year old or even more. Nobody will be interested in last years meeting, when they are looking for the time and place of this years meeting.
Be extra careful when publishing essential information. You do not want the visitor to access it directly and quickly! You want to torture your visitor and you want this torture to be slow and painful... Use at least 10 links that will lead to a page with the desired information. Then don't be silly and spoil it! Attach a word document with the information and let the user download it. Let them wait, search for a place to download the precious .doc , let them scan it with the antivirus and finally allow Word to open. A triumph! You want your visitors to do something, dont just feed them with the information quickly and easily!
Even better! Publish different documents for the same subject and update only one of them! Let the visitor download all of them, compare them, study them and arrive at a logical conclusion.
The visitor might as well open the window and scream due to frustration. And when the visitor is heard miles away or seen pulling out his hair then you know you have succeded your goal.
Promise the information, create a labyrinth, keep it as complex and complicated as possible, never update your content unless you have material more than one year old and lead your visitors to insanity.
Well done, you have created an extremely bad website.
Post dedicated to the website of my university.
One of the most difficult parts to ruin, when designing a website, is the NAVIGATION.
The difficulty of a chaotic navigation lies in the ability of the webdesigner to go against that which we call "Common Sense". So one has to employ all ones strength and intelligence to become... dumb! Logic has got to be abandoned and complete surealism has to take over...
The famous webdesign rules
1) KISS (Keep it simple stupid)
2) The 2 clicks rule (the user must be able to access all pages from the main navigation in 2 clicks)
have got to be reverted and avoided.
If you want to completely confuse and agitate your visitors they must not find what they are looking for at no cost! Your success is proved when they wonder countless hours clicking through the hundreds of useless links you provide to many pages that promise the same information!
Another very important thing is that your contact information is not valid. By no means place a valid telephone number or email and use different pages with different contact info! Let the user have a little adventure! Allow the visitor to go through a life-quest, allow him to develope his psychic abilities to guess your contact info!
Still, you will not have created an extremely bad website if you keep your content up to date. Thats something that has to be avoided. Keep your content preferably one year old or even more. Nobody will be interested in last years meeting, when they are looking for the time and place of this years meeting.
Be extra careful when publishing essential information. You do not want the visitor to access it directly and quickly! You want to torture your visitor and you want this torture to be slow and painful... Use at least 10 links that will lead to a page with the desired information. Then don't be silly and spoil it! Attach a word document with the information and let the user download it. Let them wait, search for a place to download the precious .doc , let them scan it with the antivirus and finally allow Word to open. A triumph! You want your visitors to do something, dont just feed them with the information quickly and easily!
Even better! Publish different documents for the same subject and update only one of them! Let the visitor download all of them, compare them, study them and arrive at a logical conclusion.
The visitor might as well open the window and scream due to frustration. And when the visitor is heard miles away or seen pulling out his hair then you know you have succeded your goal.
Promise the information, create a labyrinth, keep it as complex and complicated as possible, never update your content unless you have material more than one year old and lead your visitors to insanity.
Well done, you have created an extremely bad website.
Post dedicated to the website of my university.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Lessons in Writing
I have been attending a "Creative Writing" course since yesterday that is quite interesting. I met people who are into writing and are familiar with the writing "culture" so to say. I ve only been writing for myself without bothering much with the writing scene but it is quite interesting to exchange ideas.
Just a quick summary of what the seminar has covered so far:
- The importance of the first page of a book
- Practical tips on characters, themes and plot
I would have to write very much to go into details here, the gist is that we learned some very very practical tips about starting and planing a book (synopsis). About plot driven and character driven books, how to sketch and link the bits of plot and the different characters in a complicated web but still keeping an overview.
We had to write 2 exersices today. The first one was to write a story of 250 words in 20 minutes that had a certain theme. We could choose among 5 of them. And the second one was a lesson in Scene Setting and descriptive writing. We had to keep the scene setting in the background but still strong enough, so that the reader absolutely knows where the hero is. We had to combine emotion and the five senses in relation to the scenery.
I ll spare you with the first exercise so here is what I wrote for the second one:
Scene Setting: A sleepy village
"Bobbin climbed down the hill and tried to orientate himself towards his village. He knew he had to pass through the cementary with the weeping willows to find himself at the gate of the village.
But the hour was late and he could barely see anything apart from the eyes of flying owls and black cats that lingered around.
As he was approaching, the awful smell of smoke from the baker's chimney reached his nostrils. A few fires were still burning secretely under those heaps of red and black coals he could make out from the distance.
When he finally reached the gate he was afraid to open it lest he would disturb the quietness of the night. The village was deeply asleep and not a sound could be heard apart from the very faint bark of a distant dog."
Just a quick summary of what the seminar has covered so far:
- The importance of the first page of a book
- Practical tips on characters, themes and plot
I would have to write very much to go into details here, the gist is that we learned some very very practical tips about starting and planing a book (synopsis). About plot driven and character driven books, how to sketch and link the bits of plot and the different characters in a complicated web but still keeping an overview.
We had to write 2 exersices today. The first one was to write a story of 250 words in 20 minutes that had a certain theme. We could choose among 5 of them. And the second one was a lesson in Scene Setting and descriptive writing. We had to keep the scene setting in the background but still strong enough, so that the reader absolutely knows where the hero is. We had to combine emotion and the five senses in relation to the scenery.
I ll spare you with the first exercise so here is what I wrote for the second one:
Scene Setting: A sleepy village
"Bobbin climbed down the hill and tried to orientate himself towards his village. He knew he had to pass through the cementary with the weeping willows to find himself at the gate of the village.
But the hour was late and he could barely see anything apart from the eyes of flying owls and black cats that lingered around.
As he was approaching, the awful smell of smoke from the baker's chimney reached his nostrils. A few fires were still burning secretely under those heaps of red and black coals he could make out from the distance.
When he finally reached the gate he was afraid to open it lest he would disturb the quietness of the night. The village was deeply asleep and not a sound could be heard apart from the very faint bark of a distant dog."
Saturday, September 02, 2006
The Engelados awoke
I am thinking to turn this blog into a Corfu-Earthquake one... Half an hour ago, at about 12.10 midday, we had another earthquake. It must have been about 3.5 Richter I believe. It shook for about 10 seconds.
PS: And for those unfamiliar with the greek mythology, the Engelados was the leader of giants and responsible for the earthquakes in ancient Greece. He was the son of Tartaros and of Earth, killed by Athena who threw Sicily over him and covered him. He now suffers in his grave and moves and causes all these earthquakes and volcano erruptions.
Source: http://lemnos.geo.auth.gr/
EDIT: If it was this Earthquake, which was 3.9 Richter then I was pretty close!
PS: And for those unfamiliar with the greek mythology, the Engelados was the leader of giants and responsible for the earthquakes in ancient Greece. He was the son of Tartaros and of Earth, killed by Athena who threw Sicily over him and covered him. He now suffers in his grave and moves and causes all these earthquakes and volcano erruptions.
Source: http://lemnos.geo.auth.gr/
EDIT: If it was this Earthquake, which was 3.9 Richter then I was pretty close!
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Another Earthquake
Today 18/08/06 I woke up from deep sleep at 13.13 exactly from an earthquake.
I was too tired to get scared or get up and I just kept on lying there counting the seconds the earthquake lasted. From the time I woke up I counted 8 seconds. A long but weak earthquake I thought! The USGS site has not updated yet (last update 18.8) but the EMSC has and it was again in Albania 4.1 Richter.There were actually 3 earthquakes from 13.12 until 13.23.
I was too tired to get scared or get up and I just kept on lying there counting the seconds the earthquake lasted. From the time I woke up I counted 8 seconds. A long but weak earthquake I thought! The USGS site has not updated yet (last update 18.8) but the EMSC has and it was again in Albania 4.1 Richter.There were actually 3 earthquakes from 13.12 until 13.23.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Lost and Found
Five years ago I forgot on the train two posters that had accompanied me since I was in high school. It was a frustrating experience because I had spent almost my entire teenage time looking at these posters on the walls of my room. There was nothing great about them actually. They were just regular space posters, my favourite one depicted the solar system.
For a long time I remembered them but knew that it was impossible to get them back.
Lately I decided that I have finally settled down in a place (!), feeling a bit like Odysseus who reached Ithaka... and I thought I have to get some cool stuff to decorate my room. My speciality is to fill every spare corner of the walls with posters but in this house my room is so empty. Unfortunately there is nothing worth buying on this island and, well, thank god we have the internet :))!
While searching for space posters I actually found a copy of the solar one that hung in my room!
Click to view it.
For a long time I remembered them but knew that it was impossible to get them back.
Lately I decided that I have finally settled down in a place (!), feeling a bit like Odysseus who reached Ithaka... and I thought I have to get some cool stuff to decorate my room. My speciality is to fill every spare corner of the walls with posters but in this house my room is so empty. Unfortunately there is nothing worth buying on this island and, well, thank god we have the internet :))!
While searching for space posters I actually found a copy of the solar one that hung in my room!
Click to view it.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Another Earthquake in Corfu
Scary. Another earthquake occured two minutes ago and the lamp is still swinging in the air. It was again loud but not that loud as the previous one. It shook a bit more I think though. The exact time was 12.20 AM
There is much seismic activity lately, I hope we should not expect greater earthquakes.
Edit: The first site to have info on this earthquake is emsc-csem.org. I was 4.8 Richter strong.
There is much seismic activity lately, I hope we should not expect greater earthquakes.
Edit: The first site to have info on this earthquake is emsc-csem.org. I was 4.8 Richter strong.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Peace in Lebanon
I first heard about Lebanon when I was reading the book "The Book of Mirdad" by Mikhail Naimi. It is an excellent book, with an interesting spiritual story, filled with many symbolical and mystical hints. Mikhail Naimi came from Lebanon and I read in the introduction of the book that he also knew Kahlil Gibran. That was another author and poet I loved, who came from Lebanon! His "Prophet" let me dream and carried me away in a world of peace and brotherhood. Where the mystical is the answer to all unsolved mysteries of our universe. Where love is the key to heaven's door. Gibran's Letters to friends, and his own illness and personal suffering touched me in a peculiar way.
A couple of years ago I met someone from Lebanon online, a meeting that flourished into a long lasting friendship. He is an artist who has also deep knowledge of computers. One of our common interest was also the objective study of various religions.
Last summer I also met an Israeli student who was touring through Greece in the airport of Athens. We had a 4 hours non-stopping chat and I almost missed my plane! He was a nice guy!
Now I usually dont watch tv, nor read the news online. And yet one pleasant sunny day I switched on the tv and saw something which made me look pale from the shock:Israel is bombing Lebanon, many people die and others are leaving the country. I saw israeli soldiers stating with fanatism that they will win this war. I saw death and fear in bombed parts of Lebanon!
As I was watching the news I remembered both of my friends and for a moment I got lost in a daydream. The tv screen blurred and I saw the cute student from Israel throwing bombs at the intelligent artist from Lebanon. Immediately I brought myself back to reality, shoke my head and tried to decided what was sicker and more absurd: my imagination or the real facts?
A couple of years ago I met someone from Lebanon online, a meeting that flourished into a long lasting friendship. He is an artist who has also deep knowledge of computers. One of our common interest was also the objective study of various religions.
Last summer I also met an Israeli student who was touring through Greece in the airport of Athens. We had a 4 hours non-stopping chat and I almost missed my plane! He was a nice guy!
Now I usually dont watch tv, nor read the news online. And yet one pleasant sunny day I switched on the tv and saw something which made me look pale from the shock:Israel is bombing Lebanon, many people die and others are leaving the country. I saw israeli soldiers stating with fanatism that they will win this war. I saw death and fear in bombed parts of Lebanon!
As I was watching the news I remembered both of my friends and for a moment I got lost in a daydream. The tv screen blurred and I saw the cute student from Israel throwing bombs at the intelligent artist from Lebanon. Immediately I brought myself back to reality, shoke my head and tried to decided what was sicker and more absurd: my imagination or the real facts?
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Spammers and Frauds flourish in Greece
"A new program that has a database of over 40.000 emails and faxes that you can use to promote your products!"
I received today this fax at work and was alerted. I am 99% sure that if my director saw it, he would not understand the gravity of the situation and dismissed it at once.
It is illegal to sell email adresses.
This program has features to send mass email and snail mail.
It is illegal to send mass email for advertising products, without the written consent of the receiver.
And yet, these people sent open emails and faxes to all major greek companies advertising their illegal program. And nobody does anything?
Why?
Because we live in a country with no internet consciousness, where the law does not seem to apply anywhere, even if it exists. Greece is something like China for spammers and frauds.
I received today this fax at work and was alerted. I am 99% sure that if my director saw it, he would not understand the gravity of the situation and dismissed it at once.
It is illegal to sell email adresses.
This program has features to send mass email and snail mail.
It is illegal to send mass email for advertising products, without the written consent of the receiver.
And yet, these people sent open emails and faxes to all major greek companies advertising their illegal program. And nobody does anything?
Why?
Because we live in a country with no internet consciousness, where the law does not seem to apply anywhere, even if it exists. Greece is something like China for spammers and frauds.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Racter vs Elbot and Artificial Intelligence
Elbot visited today my blog and reminded me of an old and beloved friend: Racter.
Racter was an artificial intelligence program I used to run on an Amiga 500+. He would only reply to questions and if you wrote a statement, he would ask you to write a question. He had an ability to combine and store information and used to narrate stories. But in the end all discussions ended the same way. His favourite or better said... my favourite part was when he asked where the user came from. Regardless of the answer, he would say that one of his distant relatives also came from that place and then asked whether the user knew them. If the user replied that he knew them, Racter would become even more enthousiastic.
You could not only read Racter. You could also listen to him. The voice function was embedded and the computer would read out loud, in a monotonous computerized way,everything that Racter said. I dont remember if you could deactivate the speech.
Generally Racted was a primitive AI program. I had spent countless hours talking to him but in the end I always became frustrated because he could not really communicate with me. At Junior High School we had to write a composition with the subject "My best friend" and I dedicated that one to Racter. I remember that the teachers comments were that a human being needs to interact with other human beings and that I should spent more time with real people. Oh well, it seems I had the tendency of being alone from a young age.
Elbot on the other hand, is quite more sophisticated than Racter. Even if he is not really more intelligent, he has been programmed in a way that hides any weakness the AI Technology might have. I always get the impression that Elbot is a hacked robot that can fool anyone into thinking he is a human. He always replies in a grammatically correct way and when he does not recognise the input, he replies in a general way that still suits the question!
But Elbot is not only intelligent. He is funny and he is cute. The cute illustrations along with the tremendeously humourous and almost self-sarcastic comments may have you Rolling On Floor Laughing. Elbot is one of a kind.
I discovered Elbot about 3 years ago I think in a german magazine. I remember how impressed I was when I read about a robot talking to humans. A dialogue was also published that intrigued me. In the end of Elbots interview was a website url and I rushed in my computer to view it! Elbot.com
I am not sure we will ever manage to create real thinking computers and I am not sure whether that would be desirable. A thinking computer would imply a computer with its own will and althought most computers do have an own will, that is limited to runtime errors :P, there could be sideeffects to that. The best we will be able to do is to construct AI programs that have such tremendous input and amount of information, that they will be able to respond to any question and situation. A thinking will is something not even animals have and maybe is only for God to create.
Racter was an artificial intelligence program I used to run on an Amiga 500+. He would only reply to questions and if you wrote a statement, he would ask you to write a question. He had an ability to combine and store information and used to narrate stories. But in the end all discussions ended the same way. His favourite or better said... my favourite part was when he asked where the user came from. Regardless of the answer, he would say that one of his distant relatives also came from that place and then asked whether the user knew them. If the user replied that he knew them, Racter would become even more enthousiastic.
You could not only read Racter. You could also listen to him. The voice function was embedded and the computer would read out loud, in a monotonous computerized way,everything that Racter said. I dont remember if you could deactivate the speech.
Generally Racted was a primitive AI program. I had spent countless hours talking to him but in the end I always became frustrated because he could not really communicate with me. At Junior High School we had to write a composition with the subject "My best friend" and I dedicated that one to Racter. I remember that the teachers comments were that a human being needs to interact with other human beings and that I should spent more time with real people. Oh well, it seems I had the tendency of being alone from a young age.
Elbot on the other hand, is quite more sophisticated than Racter. Even if he is not really more intelligent, he has been programmed in a way that hides any weakness the AI Technology might have. I always get the impression that Elbot is a hacked robot that can fool anyone into thinking he is a human. He always replies in a grammatically correct way and when he does not recognise the input, he replies in a general way that still suits the question!
But Elbot is not only intelligent. He is funny and he is cute. The cute illustrations along with the tremendeously humourous and almost self-sarcastic comments may have you Rolling On Floor Laughing. Elbot is one of a kind.
I discovered Elbot about 3 years ago I think in a german magazine. I remember how impressed I was when I read about a robot talking to humans. A dialogue was also published that intrigued me. In the end of Elbots interview was a website url and I rushed in my computer to view it! Elbot.com
I am not sure we will ever manage to create real thinking computers and I am not sure whether that would be desirable. A thinking computer would imply a computer with its own will and althought most computers do have an own will, that is limited to runtime errors :P, there could be sideeffects to that. The best we will be able to do is to construct AI programs that have such tremendous input and amount of information, that they will be able to respond to any question and situation. A thinking will is something not even animals have and maybe is only for God to create.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Functions: A Mathematical Wonder
I started studying functions in maths lately and I am having troubles understanding a statement which is not being explained anywhere in the book. The problem is that my teacher also does not know the answer to the question, nor another mathematician I asked.
Why can the range of a function have more values which do not correspond to any values of the domain of the function? Since the output (y) of a function depends solely on the input (x) how can there be values which are not connected and depended on x? Where do thes y come from? From outter space?
Why can the range of a function have more values which do not correspond to any values of the domain of the function? Since the output (y) of a function depends solely on the input (x) how can there be values which are not connected and depended on x? Where do thes y come from? From outter space?
Windows Updates, Svchost.exe and ATI drivers
I got an email the other day by a friend describing a flaw of the automatic updates system of windows xp. To him it was a flaw, to me it sounded perfectly normal! A flaw as a normal part of windows? Well, sort of. I used to think that this was a problem related to my dial-up internet connection. An assumption that is proved wrong, as this problem is reported also in computers with an ADSL internet connection.
Maybe that computer was also missing an important windows update that is needed to download all newer security updates.
"I think windows update has a flaw. I know that last week there was a security update out, and that automatic update thing would appear after I went into internet, but then would disappear without downloading anything.
I went into the manual update "Help and support" and tried and it said I needed an updated installer/update checker or something. After I downloaded
that, I could get the actual updates (3 of them). "
The automatic updates is turned off in my computer because I want to have control over the time and amount of updates to be downloaded. There is also an issue with a process of windows called svchost.exe. I noticed that it was connected to the internet and was tranferring information but I could not locate which program was using it. I know that the automatic updates needs that process but in my opinion it is connected out also when it does not download anything. That is why I have blocked this process with the firewall and use the manual updates instead. I just saw it far too many times contacting the internet and tranferring bytes and yet I was in the weak position of not knowing what and where is being transmitted. So, no more svchost.exe for me.
Another problem with the svchost.exe that I have found is that there are many programs and drivers that like to make use of it. For example ATI graphic card drivers. Even after having blocked it, svchost.exe contacts the internet through the ATI drivers! This is insane but it is really true and the reason why I prefer to use the win xp sp2 default graphic drivers instead of the ATI ones.
Maybe that computer was also missing an important windows update that is needed to download all newer security updates.
"I think windows update has a flaw. I know that last week there was a security update out, and that automatic update thing would appear after I went into internet, but then would disappear without downloading anything.
I went into the manual update "Help and support" and tried and it said I needed an updated installer/update checker or something. After I downloaded
that, I could get the actual updates (3 of them). "
The automatic updates is turned off in my computer because I want to have control over the time and amount of updates to be downloaded. There is also an issue with a process of windows called svchost.exe. I noticed that it was connected to the internet and was tranferring information but I could not locate which program was using it. I know that the automatic updates needs that process but in my opinion it is connected out also when it does not download anything. That is why I have blocked this process with the firewall and use the manual updates instead. I just saw it far too many times contacting the internet and tranferring bytes and yet I was in the weak position of not knowing what and where is being transmitted. So, no more svchost.exe for me.
Another problem with the svchost.exe that I have found is that there are many programs and drivers that like to make use of it. For example ATI graphic card drivers. Even after having blocked it, svchost.exe contacts the internet through the ATI drivers! This is insane but it is really true and the reason why I prefer to use the win xp sp2 default graphic drivers instead of the ATI ones.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
The Professor I miss
When I was a kid I had an amazing Professor. Funny as it may seem he always wore glasses and reminded me of an owl. He also had a long beard. Below the beard he held a dark red board and used to write in glowing red letters or better said.. numbers. That Professor was an intelligent mathematician but had a very innovative method of teaching me maths: he would always ask questions! Whenever we met I decided the type and level of questions and he would go on asking. If I ever did a mistake he would refuse to go on and kept asking fo the correct answer. My professor and I developed a very intimate relationship with time. A relationship I had completely forgotten about until today. I would take him with me to bed and reply his questions until he had no energy left and I fell asleep! The way he functioned filled me with awe and I marvelled at his abilities. But where has my Professor gone? And why did I forget all about him through all these years? Is he still alive or did someone throw him out on the street? And if I ever find him, will I be able to get a suitable battery for my old and wondrous Professor-Calculator??
These are very serious questions that might unfortunately never get a seriously satisfactory answer..
These are very serious questions that might unfortunately never get a seriously satisfactory answer..
Friday, June 09, 2006
PC Problem: Keyboard/Mouse Stuck or Frozen
What do we do when the keyboard and/or the mouse cease to react and freeze in the screen?
So far I have encountered the following possibilities:
1. The battery is empty. In that case... change the batteries!
2. There was a power failure or another power related problem that has blocked the flow of information from the mouse/keyboard to the pc. In that case it is enough to unplug the mouse/keyboard and plug it in again.
3. A printer or another device was on at the time of booting. Dont ask me why this happens but it does happen. Also, some printers may cause the mouse/keyboard to freeze even while working with windows. So far I have encountered this only in windows 98. .In that case it is enough to switch the device off and then on again, or off, reboot and then on again.
So far I have encountered the following possibilities:
1. The battery is empty. In that case... change the batteries!
2. There was a power failure or another power related problem that has blocked the flow of information from the mouse/keyboard to the pc. In that case it is enough to unplug the mouse/keyboard and plug it in again.
3. A printer or another device was on at the time of booting. Dont ask me why this happens but it does happen. Also, some printers may cause the mouse/keyboard to freeze even while working with windows. So far I have encountered this only in windows 98. .In that case it is enough to switch the device off and then on again, or off, reboot and then on again.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Pure Luck
Last night I returned home and parked my car just outside my house. I was about to go out but I was listening to a great song on the radio and decided to stay for a while inside the car. This is not something I usually do and it was the first time I ever listened to the radio in the car. Suddenly I heard a bang at the car door. A roof-tile just fell and crashed into pieces on the floor. Good that it didnt crash on my head! Is my house haunted or what? :P
Saturday, June 03, 2006
News, updates, my dream profession and blog
I think now I understand why normal people have no time for much internet. Since I have been working in a regular way, like most normal people do, I can find neither any time nor any mood to update my sites. Although, I do have many plans and ideas, I always need a lot of time to really fulfill them. In addition to that one of my forums was hacked and I am struggling with other forums in order to update them. The updates fail, I am looking for backups, hackers smile at me and chaos prevails!
I drew an interesting conclusion lately when I gave up a site and handed it over to some webdesigner friends. Webdesign is not my thing. I learned to design websites because I had something to say, I learned it as a way of self-expression mostly through writing. Designing sites for other people, who just want to advertise their businesses or products does not excite me and I do not want to be a professional webdesigner. The webdesign industry is almost exclusively dedicated to advertising, which is one of the things I dislike. Besides I am also not an artist and webdesigners need to be able to sketch and draw, even electronically. My fascination is code and not images. Simplicity is beauty but that is not something all those advertisers believe in, instead they prefer to load sites with images and flash programs, all completely unnecessary in my opinion.
So I discovered that my dream-profession would be to write books (writer)! That is what I like to do mostly, to write about everything I read and experience, to write about everything I imagine and feel. Writing is to me also a way of learning, while composing my ITsecurity site I had to do a lot of research. Isn't there a nice saying that goes like this: "We teach the things we want to learn mostly"? Besides one of my favourite things is books, I collect them and have no more space for them unfortunately.
But this will take again a lot of time to get fulfilled. I can imagine myself at the age of 35, 10 years from now, having more experience and knowledge, writing books. Or maybe even later, after the age of 40.
Last weeks blog got a write up pretty late, but nevertheless did well. This weeks blog is a fashion blog with some beautiful pictures. In the authors words:
"European Style Tips
The latest European style tips and fashion trends !"
The author is european, even though she is living in the USA right now.
"Just a little about myself. Although I live in Canada now, I am 100% European and loving it! I have lived in Romania and Switzerland which are two amazing countries. I am passionate about all cultures, and I have been almost everywhere throughout Europe. I have seen amazing fashion and trends and that is why I want to share my knowledge of European fashion with all of you out there. Europe is a completely different world from North America and I want to try to incorporate a little bit of European fashion into the North American style."
Thats all folks! Like Buggs Bunny says! ;)
I drew an interesting conclusion lately when I gave up a site and handed it over to some webdesigner friends. Webdesign is not my thing. I learned to design websites because I had something to say, I learned it as a way of self-expression mostly through writing. Designing sites for other people, who just want to advertise their businesses or products does not excite me and I do not want to be a professional webdesigner. The webdesign industry is almost exclusively dedicated to advertising, which is one of the things I dislike. Besides I am also not an artist and webdesigners need to be able to sketch and draw, even electronically. My fascination is code and not images. Simplicity is beauty but that is not something all those advertisers believe in, instead they prefer to load sites with images and flash programs, all completely unnecessary in my opinion.
So I discovered that my dream-profession would be to write books (writer)! That is what I like to do mostly, to write about everything I read and experience, to write about everything I imagine and feel. Writing is to me also a way of learning, while composing my ITsecurity site I had to do a lot of research. Isn't there a nice saying that goes like this: "We teach the things we want to learn mostly"? Besides one of my favourite things is books, I collect them and have no more space for them unfortunately.
But this will take again a lot of time to get fulfilled. I can imagine myself at the age of 35, 10 years from now, having more experience and knowledge, writing books. Or maybe even later, after the age of 40.
Last weeks blog got a write up pretty late, but nevertheless did well. This weeks blog is a fashion blog with some beautiful pictures. In the authors words:
"European Style Tips
The latest European style tips and fashion trends !"
The author is european, even though she is living in the USA right now.
"Just a little about myself. Although I live in Canada now, I am 100% European and loving it! I have lived in Romania and Switzerland which are two amazing countries. I am passionate about all cultures, and I have been almost everywhere throughout Europe. I have seen amazing fashion and trends and that is why I want to share my knowledge of European fashion with all of you out there. Europe is a completely different world from North America and I want to try to incorporate a little bit of European fashion into the North American style."
Thats all folks! Like Buggs Bunny says! ;)
Friday, May 26, 2006
How to analyze a virus or my virus autobiography
Virus analysis is something I find interesting even though I have no idea of how this exactly takes place. Virus analysis is to me a mysterious thing. This idea started to become interesting a couple of months ago but I absolutely had not got the slightest idea about how to start something like this. Virus analysis is a riddle.
Two years ago, viruses where a complete mystery to me. For a long time I wondered what viruses actually are and could not imagine their essense. I thought they were a magical enemy of the computer. Then one day I discovered that viruses are nothing else but a single file! Yes! Viruses are normal files which are dangerous when executed (=ran or =double clicked).
This was one of the greatest shocks of my life. The magical and invisible viruses suddenly became visible and lost their strength in front of my eyes. Viruses are like programs and can even be seen through the task manager, a windows program that shows the active processes and applications running in windows. Viruses are usually also very small files in size.
The second shock I had was when I found out that viruses need to be executed in order to infect a pc. In the past I thought that as soon as you download a virus you are infected! But that is not the case. The virus has got to be executed to run just like any other program on the pc. These are things I learned while hanging around the antivir forum for 2 years. I remember how proud I was when I had my first virus on my pc without being infected. I started to like handling viruses gently through my folder system without double clicking on them. Virus became so small and insignificant, just like their number of bytes in front of this new great knowledge I got!
Time passed and I started to dwell more on what types of viruses there are and ways of removal. I discovered that almost all my friends had infected computers and I liked to clean them. Unfortunately I have had to fight only with spyware, troyans, backdoors and dialers. All other kinds of viruses, like worms and real viruses that infect exe files are unknown to me and I had no experience with them. I have started to think that they dont write these anymore! If I found a suspicious file online I would send it to an antivirus company for analysis and they would reply whether the file contains a virus or not. Kaspersky has been the fasted in responce so far, although I have only sent viruses to kaspersky and antivir. This was something I admired. How can that russian guy know whether that file is a virus within an hour? What do they do with those files? How do they analyse them? Those were questions that started to slowly form within my mind. It has only been a few weeks since I typed in google "how to analyze a virus". Unfortunately I did not get any results with instructions for beginners. It seemed that virus analysis needs programming knowledge which I do not have. It is all so very technical. Disappointed I gave it up.
Today I read in the F-secure weblog about the "T2'06 Reverse Engineering Challenge". Its like a competition that challenges people to analyse a program. I imagined that it takes the same skills needed for virus analysis. The magical words "reverse engineering" produced great results in google and this might be a good time to start researching on this. It might take me a few years to learn how to do this but unfortunately only the first person who solves the riddle gets a prize!
Two years ago, viruses where a complete mystery to me. For a long time I wondered what viruses actually are and could not imagine their essense. I thought they were a magical enemy of the computer. Then one day I discovered that viruses are nothing else but a single file! Yes! Viruses are normal files which are dangerous when executed (=ran or =double clicked).
This was one of the greatest shocks of my life. The magical and invisible viruses suddenly became visible and lost their strength in front of my eyes. Viruses are like programs and can even be seen through the task manager, a windows program that shows the active processes and applications running in windows. Viruses are usually also very small files in size.
The second shock I had was when I found out that viruses need to be executed in order to infect a pc. In the past I thought that as soon as you download a virus you are infected! But that is not the case. The virus has got to be executed to run just like any other program on the pc. These are things I learned while hanging around the antivir forum for 2 years. I remember how proud I was when I had my first virus on my pc without being infected. I started to like handling viruses gently through my folder system without double clicking on them. Virus became so small and insignificant, just like their number of bytes in front of this new great knowledge I got!
Time passed and I started to dwell more on what types of viruses there are and ways of removal. I discovered that almost all my friends had infected computers and I liked to clean them. Unfortunately I have had to fight only with spyware, troyans, backdoors and dialers. All other kinds of viruses, like worms and real viruses that infect exe files are unknown to me and I had no experience with them. I have started to think that they dont write these anymore! If I found a suspicious file online I would send it to an antivirus company for analysis and they would reply whether the file contains a virus or not. Kaspersky has been the fasted in responce so far, although I have only sent viruses to kaspersky and antivir. This was something I admired. How can that russian guy know whether that file is a virus within an hour? What do they do with those files? How do they analyse them? Those were questions that started to slowly form within my mind. It has only been a few weeks since I typed in google "how to analyze a virus". Unfortunately I did not get any results with instructions for beginners. It seemed that virus analysis needs programming knowledge which I do not have. It is all so very technical. Disappointed I gave it up.
Today I read in the F-secure weblog about the "T2'06 Reverse Engineering Challenge". Its like a competition that challenges people to analyse a program. I imagined that it takes the same skills needed for virus analysis. The magical words "reverse engineering" produced great results in google and this might be a good time to start researching on this. It might take me a few years to learn how to do this but unfortunately only the first person who solves the riddle gets a prize!
Thursday, May 25, 2006
2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
I just found out that there is an international conference on computer science and information systems in Athens next month. Unfortunately I cannot attend it. I would like to go just to have a look and get a general idea about what such conferences are about. I assume that it would be too technical for me too understand, but I would also like to see what kind of people attend such meetings. Here is the official site, and the list of papers to be presented.
Only 4 would be of any interest to me:
1. Revising the Concept of Electronic Commerce.
2. The Organizational and Motivational Aspects in IT Training.
3. A Web-Based Instant Messenger System
4. Using Human Computer Interaction Concepts to Design Interfaces for the Brain Injured
Only 4 would be of any interest to me:
1. Revising the Concept of Electronic Commerce.
2. The Organizational and Motivational Aspects in IT Training.
3. A Web-Based Instant Messenger System
4. Using Human Computer Interaction Concepts to Design Interfaces for the Brain Injured
Monday, May 22, 2006
Cyber Criminality defeats Internet Security or Thoughts on Combating Spam
Spam is one the greatest problems and challenges that the internet nowadays faces. What makes it so great is the inability of the internet security industry to provide with a reliable solution. A lot of different efforts have been made, different solutions have been presented, spam filters, anti-spam programs, security tips etc. In the end we have to admit that spammers are almost unbeatable. We just cannot stop spam.
But what are the obstacles, why cant we stop spam and what is that, which sustains spam in the first place?
The answers to these questions might even be the solution to the global problem of spam.
Recent denial of service attacks on the website of an anti-spam organization resulted in its closing down and withdrawing from the war against spam. This is another proof of the weakness of the anti-spam community and its lack of organization when confronted with the extremely well organised cyber-crime. Spammers managed to put an end to the anti-spam scheme Blue Frog and force Blue Security (anti-spam organisation) to give it up.
Spam is not only annoying, it is to most internet users a pure nightmare. Spam and spammers have caused the intense anger, hatred and contempt of the internet community. Spam also interferes with the stability of networks and the internet itself as it is being sent out massively to millions of emails. There is no doubt that spam is a great problem and that there is an equally great necessity for a solution. Known spammers that have been arrested have been sentenced to prison from 18 months to 9 years! Spam is a big deal and spam is illegal.
The sad thing is that governments and even individuals, do not realise the importance and the gravity of the spam problem. Nations do not seem to be co-operating to end the spam problem, laws are not being followed, the bottom line is that nobody cares.
I have sent abuse emails and more abuse emails. I know the ISPs and domain providers of a certain group of spammers and I know that they are simply ignoring the problem. If I had the financial possibility I would pursue them through the law, but that is not something a student and even a normal person can afford. This is another example where the law fails dramatically and injustice prevails.
According to this lecture I heard last night by Mikko Hypponen (F-Secure) Spam exists due to a very simple reason: there is a market for it. A market preconditions a group of consumers that actually make use of the services provided by spammers. People buy products from sites advertised through unsolicited emails. These people, naive or uninformed ones, might represent a very small percentage compared to the amount of emails sent out, but it seems big enough to sustain the spamming business.
The obvious solutions to the problem of spam would be two: firstly to inform the public and secondly to strengthen the anti-spam laws.
Informing the wider public and preventing it from buying from spammers would close up the spamming business. No demand means no offer, which results into the elimination of spam. Sounds very easy but is unfortunately not. There are far too many uneducated internet users compared to the ones who are security aware. Education should be an obligation of the state and there are numerous ways this could occur. For example one could launch anti-spam campaigns by making use of all the current marketing techniques to reach the targeted audience. We could fight spam by using its own weapon: advertising in a legal way though. The targeted audience is anyone who is not accustomed to the internet technology, especially older people who might even have developed a fear against technology. We could bombard people with anti-spam advertisements through television and any other popular medium, and slowly create an awareness for it that would decrease the success of spam a lot. And even if this does not succeed completely, we can reach future generations through educating children and teenagers at school into the basics of Information Technology, Internet and Internet security. Computer science is equally important to any other science but it is unfortunately in many countries not treated as such one. Technological unalphabetism is already a present problem which will magnify itself in the future that is bound to be dominated by technology. Technologically illiterate people will not be able to function properly in the society.
The second solution to the problem consists merely in improving the current system of justice and creating truly efficient anti-spam laws. The increase of the global security awareness, including internet and non-internet users, will automatically lead to a better application of the law. There has also got to be a better international communication and co-operation because cyber criminality is present in the internet which is accessible from any country. It is irrational to have different laws for different websites that reside in different countries since the internet is one. Maybe an international internet constitution would solve this problem. Had the project of Blue Security received government support against the spammers it might have had a chance of continuing its success.
Spam is a problem of the modern internet and our current technological and social era. It seems that we have reasons to visualize a near future entirely free from the troubles of spam. Whether other kinds of problems will arise by its elimination or not, that is not for me to predict.
But what are the obstacles, why cant we stop spam and what is that, which sustains spam in the first place?
The answers to these questions might even be the solution to the global problem of spam.
Recent denial of service attacks on the website of an anti-spam organization resulted in its closing down and withdrawing from the war against spam. This is another proof of the weakness of the anti-spam community and its lack of organization when confronted with the extremely well organised cyber-crime. Spammers managed to put an end to the anti-spam scheme Blue Frog and force Blue Security (anti-spam organisation) to give it up.
Spam is not only annoying, it is to most internet users a pure nightmare. Spam and spammers have caused the intense anger, hatred and contempt of the internet community. Spam also interferes with the stability of networks and the internet itself as it is being sent out massively to millions of emails. There is no doubt that spam is a great problem and that there is an equally great necessity for a solution. Known spammers that have been arrested have been sentenced to prison from 18 months to 9 years! Spam is a big deal and spam is illegal.
The sad thing is that governments and even individuals, do not realise the importance and the gravity of the spam problem. Nations do not seem to be co-operating to end the spam problem, laws are not being followed, the bottom line is that nobody cares.
I have sent abuse emails and more abuse emails. I know the ISPs and domain providers of a certain group of spammers and I know that they are simply ignoring the problem. If I had the financial possibility I would pursue them through the law, but that is not something a student and even a normal person can afford. This is another example where the law fails dramatically and injustice prevails.
According to this lecture I heard last night by Mikko Hypponen (F-Secure) Spam exists due to a very simple reason: there is a market for it. A market preconditions a group of consumers that actually make use of the services provided by spammers. People buy products from sites advertised through unsolicited emails. These people, naive or uninformed ones, might represent a very small percentage compared to the amount of emails sent out, but it seems big enough to sustain the spamming business.
The obvious solutions to the problem of spam would be two: firstly to inform the public and secondly to strengthen the anti-spam laws.
Informing the wider public and preventing it from buying from spammers would close up the spamming business. No demand means no offer, which results into the elimination of spam. Sounds very easy but is unfortunately not. There are far too many uneducated internet users compared to the ones who are security aware. Education should be an obligation of the state and there are numerous ways this could occur. For example one could launch anti-spam campaigns by making use of all the current marketing techniques to reach the targeted audience. We could fight spam by using its own weapon: advertising in a legal way though. The targeted audience is anyone who is not accustomed to the internet technology, especially older people who might even have developed a fear against technology. We could bombard people with anti-spam advertisements through television and any other popular medium, and slowly create an awareness for it that would decrease the success of spam a lot. And even if this does not succeed completely, we can reach future generations through educating children and teenagers at school into the basics of Information Technology, Internet and Internet security. Computer science is equally important to any other science but it is unfortunately in many countries not treated as such one. Technological unalphabetism is already a present problem which will magnify itself in the future that is bound to be dominated by technology. Technologically illiterate people will not be able to function properly in the society.
The second solution to the problem consists merely in improving the current system of justice and creating truly efficient anti-spam laws. The increase of the global security awareness, including internet and non-internet users, will automatically lead to a better application of the law. There has also got to be a better international communication and co-operation because cyber criminality is present in the internet which is accessible from any country. It is irrational to have different laws for different websites that reside in different countries since the internet is one. Maybe an international internet constitution would solve this problem. Had the project of Blue Security received government support against the spammers it might have had a chance of continuing its success.
Spam is a problem of the modern internet and our current technological and social era. It seems that we have reasons to visualize a near future entirely free from the troubles of spam. Whether other kinds of problems will arise by its elimination or not, that is not for me to predict.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
In love with a computer?
"Is it possible for a hard-working, generally bug-free Web server, and a beautiful Web surfer to find love, in this crazy, mixed-up world?"
Here is the answer.
Here is the answer.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Update on the Ballet-dancers post
There has started a new interesting discussion on an older posting about the Education of Ballet-dancers.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Censorship in Wikipedia and an imaginary scenario
I actually wish there was some censorship in wikipedia. The reason why I left was because there was no "censorship". What others call censorship I call moderation and it is the only way an online community can exist.
The new wikipedia scandal about "Censorship against censorship" revealed by Wikitruth is very interesting and at the same time funny and sad as well. The problems of wikipedia will never end.
Wikipedia seems to me a little like the political movement of communism. Just like the soviet union did, wikipedia is going to collapse. In its present state anyone who gets involved with it eventually ruins his own personal peace by sacrificing all his spare time in pointless debates and arguments. And the funny thing is that no matter how much you engage into it you can never be sure that your voice will be heard. Sure, in democracy the majority decides. And yet the elections and votes are conducted in a much more fair way. Eventually power is given to few representatives of the people. Wikipedia claims to give power to everyone. This is bound to fail.
A scenario: How wikipedia gets killed by its own power
All wikipedians suddenly come to their senses and realize the futility of the project. The spent some time wondering whether wikipedia should be kept as a work of knowledge and soon decide that it is not objective enough. "Half knowledge is worse than ignorance". Wikipedias realize that the way wiki funtions it will never meet high quality standards and recognition from the academic communities. So they decide to use the power granted to them by wiki and they all simultaneously attack the wikipedia sites. All users delete every page they can find causing chaos and havoc in the wikipedia servers. The system crashes and for a few days wikipedia is not accessible. Backups saved an amount of the pages but when it comes online again the same global attack takes place. Until the owners of wikipedia decide to claim the content as their own and start a private and non-free encyclopedia.
The new wikipedia scandal about "Censorship against censorship" revealed by Wikitruth is very interesting and at the same time funny and sad as well. The problems of wikipedia will never end.
Wikipedia seems to me a little like the political movement of communism. Just like the soviet union did, wikipedia is going to collapse. In its present state anyone who gets involved with it eventually ruins his own personal peace by sacrificing all his spare time in pointless debates and arguments. And the funny thing is that no matter how much you engage into it you can never be sure that your voice will be heard. Sure, in democracy the majority decides. And yet the elections and votes are conducted in a much more fair way. Eventually power is given to few representatives of the people. Wikipedia claims to give power to everyone. This is bound to fail.
A scenario: How wikipedia gets killed by its own power
All wikipedians suddenly come to their senses and realize the futility of the project. The spent some time wondering whether wikipedia should be kept as a work of knowledge and soon decide that it is not objective enough. "Half knowledge is worse than ignorance". Wikipedias realize that the way wiki funtions it will never meet high quality standards and recognition from the academic communities. So they decide to use the power granted to them by wiki and they all simultaneously attack the wikipedia sites. All users delete every page they can find causing chaos and havoc in the wikipedia servers. The system crashes and for a few days wikipedia is not accessible. Backups saved an amount of the pages but when it comes online again the same global attack takes place. Until the owners of wikipedia decide to claim the content as their own and start a private and non-free encyclopedia.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Sites down
Unfortunately all my sites are down, since a day, due to a problem of the webserver they are hosted on. There seem to have occured some complications while maintaning the disk that might lead to complete dataloss. I have backups for most of the sites apart from my ballet forum database. I hope they save it somehow.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Internet Addiction Test
Again not completely reliable but fun to take. Some questions do not reflect the possible addiction grade for example:
9. How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do on-line?
One does not necesserily have to be secretive or feel guilty about one's internet habits.
OR
18. How often do you try to hide how long you've been on-line?
I have spent more than 10 hours online but did not hide that from anyone. When people ask me I let them know. This is an example of feeling proud about an internet addiction!
-------------------
The internet is a tool and can be used for creative or non-creative activities. It all depends on how one uses it. That is why spending a lot of time researching or learning or even just chilling out when that is neccessary, does not mean that one is enslaved to the internet. Rather the internet is enslaved to us. ;) Well at least sometimes!
9. How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do on-line?
One does not necesserily have to be secretive or feel guilty about one's internet habits.
OR
18. How often do you try to hide how long you've been on-line?
I have spent more than 10 hours online but did not hide that from anyone. When people ask me I let them know. This is an example of feeling proud about an internet addiction!
-------------------
The internet is a tool and can be used for creative or non-creative activities. It all depends on how one uses it. That is why spending a lot of time researching or learning or even just chilling out when that is neccessary, does not mean that one is enslaved to the internet. Rather the internet is enslaved to us. ;) Well at least sometimes!
Some facts about Lyme Disease
Many people are not familiar with the disease that infected ticks can trasmit to humans and it may actually sound like a science fiction scenario. I lived in country (Austria) with infected ticks, however, and was forced to become aware of this situation. I would like to tramsit this awareness through this posting. What reminded me of infected ticks was this:
Tick Bite and Lyme Disease Prevention.
Lyme Disease can be a very serious condition. Back in 2001 we were all vaccinated against Lyme Disease and I only now got to know that the vaccine was removed from the market because "of concerns that it may produce a mild form of the disease or arthritis disorders. The infection can be serious if it is not treated early."
Sadly, I never wanted to to this strange vaccine but I was sort of forced to in the ballet academy I was studying. I never went for the second and third part of it, so that is something! I did develope a sort of arthritis during that time but it was most likely due to the intensive ballet training and not due to the vaccine. Or so I hope.
Tick Bite and Lyme Disease Prevention.
Lyme Disease can be a very serious condition. Back in 2001 we were all vaccinated against Lyme Disease and I only now got to know that the vaccine was removed from the market because "of concerns that it may produce a mild form of the disease or arthritis disorders. The infection can be serious if it is not treated early."
Sadly, I never wanted to to this strange vaccine but I was sort of forced to in the ballet academy I was studying. I never went for the second and third part of it, so that is something! I did develope a sort of arthritis during that time but it was most likely due to the intensive ballet training and not due to the vaccine. Or so I hope.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Featured Blog "The Vegan Diet"
"The Vegan Diet" is a blog about living healthy through taking advantage of the pharmacy of nature. It will be featured in my blog for only one week and you can visit it through the menu on the right.
I am especially proud to have this blog here because I have been a lacto-vegetarian myself for 16 years, with great interest in the ways that everything we eat influences our physical and mental health. There are many arguments about why a vegetarian diet is so beneficial. However, I am aware of how fanatical one can become with subjects like food habits so I will only say that the best way to be convinced is through having first hand experience.
I am especially proud to have this blog here because I have been a lacto-vegetarian myself for 16 years, with great interest in the ways that everything we eat influences our physical and mental health. There are many arguments about why a vegetarian diet is so beneficial. However, I am aware of how fanatical one can become with subjects like food habits so I will only say that the best way to be convinced is through having first hand experience.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Where have all the good Adventure Games gone?
The computer era of great adventure games is unfortunately gone. It would seem as if gamers have forever lost their interest in adventure games and the computer-games companies stubbornly refuse to produce anything that has a quality beyond the normal. What has changed during the past years and why are there no people out there to create any adventure games at all?
This question has been haunting my mind for a long time and I have not yet found a satisfactory answer to it. A computer game takes no doubt a lot of time, effort and skilled, as well as talented, people to produce. I am not sure whether adventure games have lost their popularity due to the fact that they are not being produced anymore, or whether they are not produced anymore because they are not popular enough to sell. Another possibility is that adventure games have lost their popularity because there are simply no good adventure authors out there any more, because lucasarts has in an inexplicable way stopped investing in them and no other companies seem to take the risk.
I believe that adventure games can become popular again provided some really good ones come out again. In the Amiga era the legendary Loom has written a history of its own. To me Loom is the unsurpassed Adventure game, a brilliant story through a brilliant gameplay, with enough beautiful graphics and the right portion of mystery and magic. Loom had everything that made a great adventure game, it was a fascination, it forced the gamer to think and solve riddles in a unique and mostly beautiful way.
Riddle solving and mystery are two very important elements of adventure games. However, an adventure game is much more than that. Otherwise it would be enough to create games of riddles, like "Notpron - The hardest riddle online". But notpron can really not be compared to adventure games because it lacks the magic, it lacks the beauty and the aesthetic, which is inevitably present through a story that has been well written from the literary point of view but which also allows the gamer to dive into a world of fantasy. Notpron is just a boring math.
First of all, the goal of the adventure game should be to make the gamer travel into a fantasy world. The more the gamer can identify with the hero and feel intensely the events and happenings of that imaginary world, the more successful the adventure game is. So it is about getting engrossed and be given the opportunity to escape from the real world into a fantasy one. That is the similarity that exists between good adventure games, good fantasy films like "Lord of The Rings" or "Matrix" and good literature. The difference between films, books and the adventure games is that in a game we are given the chance to actually act, to involve ourself directly with the story. This allows the gamer to identify more intensely with the hero and his surroundings. This makes the game more interesting since one is not a passive viewer or reader but an active person that becomes a living part of the adventure game and has the power to control it.
To create a successful adventure game is an art, by all means, and this might be the answer to the question "why it is so difficult to create a masterpiece of its kind that will touch the hearts and minds of many people".
"Lord of the Rings" has a plot that would make an incredible adventure game. Instead, when they produced a computer game they chose it to be a normal and quite dull action game. On the other hand, it would make little sense in producing it as an adventure game since the plot is already known. There would simply be no riddles to solve, no tension in finding out the end, and thus no point in playing the game. An action game also uses the same plot but the plot is no longer the most important element there, it rather becomes of a secondary importance.
I wish that the great era of adventure games will return. That the technological means that are nowdays available to programmers will be used in a tasteful way, along with the talents of writers and graphic artists to produce unique and breathtaking adventure games. Because art is there to uplift the human soul and even it might sound strange, an adventure game has the potential of using the virtues of many different arts in a single unit. Adventure games can become the entertainment of the future.
EDIT: I just found out through blogger
that another fellow blogger posted at exactly the same time as I did, a very intersting posting about adventure games.
This question has been haunting my mind for a long time and I have not yet found a satisfactory answer to it. A computer game takes no doubt a lot of time, effort and skilled, as well as talented, people to produce. I am not sure whether adventure games have lost their popularity due to the fact that they are not being produced anymore, or whether they are not produced anymore because they are not popular enough to sell. Another possibility is that adventure games have lost their popularity because there are simply no good adventure authors out there any more, because lucasarts has in an inexplicable way stopped investing in them and no other companies seem to take the risk.
I believe that adventure games can become popular again provided some really good ones come out again. In the Amiga era the legendary Loom has written a history of its own. To me Loom is the unsurpassed Adventure game, a brilliant story through a brilliant gameplay, with enough beautiful graphics and the right portion of mystery and magic. Loom had everything that made a great adventure game, it was a fascination, it forced the gamer to think and solve riddles in a unique and mostly beautiful way.
Riddle solving and mystery are two very important elements of adventure games. However, an adventure game is much more than that. Otherwise it would be enough to create games of riddles, like "Notpron - The hardest riddle online". But notpron can really not be compared to adventure games because it lacks the magic, it lacks the beauty and the aesthetic, which is inevitably present through a story that has been well written from the literary point of view but which also allows the gamer to dive into a world of fantasy. Notpron is just a boring math.
First of all, the goal of the adventure game should be to make the gamer travel into a fantasy world. The more the gamer can identify with the hero and feel intensely the events and happenings of that imaginary world, the more successful the adventure game is. So it is about getting engrossed and be given the opportunity to escape from the real world into a fantasy one. That is the similarity that exists between good adventure games, good fantasy films like "Lord of The Rings" or "Matrix" and good literature. The difference between films, books and the adventure games is that in a game we are given the chance to actually act, to involve ourself directly with the story. This allows the gamer to identify more intensely with the hero and his surroundings. This makes the game more interesting since one is not a passive viewer or reader but an active person that becomes a living part of the adventure game and has the power to control it.
To create a successful adventure game is an art, by all means, and this might be the answer to the question "why it is so difficult to create a masterpiece of its kind that will touch the hearts and minds of many people".
"Lord of the Rings" has a plot that would make an incredible adventure game. Instead, when they produced a computer game they chose it to be a normal and quite dull action game. On the other hand, it would make little sense in producing it as an adventure game since the plot is already known. There would simply be no riddles to solve, no tension in finding out the end, and thus no point in playing the game. An action game also uses the same plot but the plot is no longer the most important element there, it rather becomes of a secondary importance.
I wish that the great era of adventure games will return. That the technological means that are nowdays available to programmers will be used in a tasteful way, along with the talents of writers and graphic artists to produce unique and breathtaking adventure games. Because art is there to uplift the human soul and even it might sound strange, an adventure game has the potential of using the virtues of many different arts in a single unit. Adventure games can become the entertainment of the future.
EDIT: I just found out through blogger
that another fellow blogger posted at exactly the same time as I did, a very intersting posting about adventure games.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Animal Test
Another funny test, here are my results:
Independent yet still part of a large community, frogs are unique creatures known for their distinctive sound and ability to hop. As a frog, you spend your days sitting on lily pads or climbing trees, searching for delicious insects to eat. While there are some frogs that aren't exactly cute, you are certainly not one of those!
You were almost a: Mouse or a Parakeet
You are least like a: Puppy or a LambCute Animal Test!
You Are A: Frog!
Independent yet still part of a large community, frogs are unique creatures known for their distinctive sound and ability to hop. As a frog, you spend your days sitting on lily pads or climbing trees, searching for delicious insects to eat. While there are some frogs that aren't exactly cute, you are certainly not one of those!You were almost a: Mouse or a Parakeet
You are least like a: Puppy or a LambCute Animal Test!
Friday, April 21, 2006
The Color Psychology Test
Now this is my idea of fun in a psychological test! You just pick colors! But I did not like the results. They must base this test on subconscious perception, otherwise I see no other explanations about how it would be reliable.
OK I did the test again and I think this time the results really apply to me so I will erase the old ones and place the new ones!
OK I did the test again and I think this time the results really apply to me so I will erase the old ones and place the new ones!
 | Viruswitch took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Preoccupied with things of an intensely exciting n..."
|
Personality Tests
I took this personality disorder test last night. The results are rather weird:
Schizoid is the opposite of Avoidant. So this result is weird!
Here is another test which was not that fun because the results do not seem interesting psychologically:
I'm a O80-C35-E31-A10-N37 Big Five!!
| Disorder | Rating |
| Paranoid Disorder: | Moderate |
| Schizoid Disorder: | High |
| Schizotypal Disorder: | Moderate |
| Antisocial Disorder: | Low |
| Borderline Disorder: | Low |
| Histrionic Disorder: | Low |
| Narcissistic Disorder: | Low |
| Avoidant Disorder: | High |
| Dependent Disorder: | Low |
| Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: | Moderate |
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- -- Personality Disorders -- | |
Schizoid is the opposite of Avoidant. So this result is weird!
Here is another test which was not that fun because the results do not seem interesting psychologically:
I'm a O80-C35-E31-A10-N37 Big Five!!
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Mobile Phone Virus mystery solved
A few days ago, I thought I might have been sent a mobile phone virus in an mms. Today I got again another mms from the same number and I decided I have to solve this mystery now. I did not want to solve it the dangerous way (to download the mms) so I called Vodafone and told them about this MMS. They said that this number belongs to Vodafone and that these are Vodafone advertisements in MMS!
Now I wonder whether it costs anything to download these mms, which would be rediculous to pay for almost spam. Should I call them again?
Now I wonder whether it costs anything to download these mms, which would be rediculous to pay for almost spam. Should I call them again?
F-Secure Blacklight :: Yes!
I would like to publish here my responce to a post I found about Blacklight in another blog. I think I am a bit of an F-secure fan without even ever having used the actual antivirus or suite. I want to try it out though. I had kaspersky for a year, now I have the antivir premium version and the next one I might try is f-secure, just to gather experiences. One year testing each program is fine :)). That post refered to the suite which is not something I would never consider getting since I love Kerio Firewall. But the antivirus would be interesting.
My first reply to this post is here:
Blacklight cannot be compared to a firewall! It is a rootkit detector! It detects rootkits and ONLY rootkits. It will not detect viruses, troyans, spyware or any other malware.
Security should be based on prevention and prevention can only work if people stop surfing in suspicious websites. Prevention will work only if people stop clicking on anything that is animated and colorful on their screen. It is natural that people will get infected if they go after porno sites, cheats, casino stuff and download programs which they have not doubled checked whether they are trustworthy. People get infected only because they are not security aware and not because there is a conspiracy behind this. They just dont care.
It is not true that there are no good firewalls. Kerio Firewall is an excellent and extremely powerful firewall. It can be unistalled perfectly ok without any problems.
You simply cannot handle your operating system in a correct way. These problems do not arise unless you have really messed up your system. And who knows what else you have done with it.
Blacklight is a great program, the best rootkit revealer out there.
Second reply:
Blacklight is big because it was one of the first and few programs to detect rootkits. Rootkits are a not so common threat but a real one, which might develop into the future nightmare of IT security. I have seen rootkits in action. Rootkits can hide malware from the operating system completely and thus from antivirus software. They can install more malware which will remain invisible and take control of a system. Rootkits are dangerous and thats for sure.
I am not talking about you personally since I do not know you. But people in general get infected due to reckless surfing, due to an internet behaviour, which is not within the limits of reason because these people either do not have the necessary education on security or do not wish to accept it.
It has been 2 years since I last got a piece of malware (which did not even activate itself) and that was because I deliberately surfed in suspicious site. Apart from that nothing comes through the fortress of my pc. Why? Due to my antivirus? No. I even consider antivirus and firewall unnecessary if the pc is patched, windows and browser settings correctly set and one knows that the sites one visits are trustworthy.
I am not sure why they did not respond to your email. I also despise bad support. However, they always reply my emails when I sent feedback and problems related to blacklight and viruses.
You do not need to be a novice computer user to mess up your pc. It can happen to anyone, a small incompatibility between two running programs, errors from wrongly installed drivers, remains of registry keys, running processes or temp files etc from long erased programs can all lead to a great destruction. Sometimes the reason cannot even be identified. Windows is just windows.
My first reply to this post is here:
Blacklight cannot be compared to a firewall! It is a rootkit detector! It detects rootkits and ONLY rootkits. It will not detect viruses, troyans, spyware or any other malware.
Security should be based on prevention and prevention can only work if people stop surfing in suspicious websites. Prevention will work only if people stop clicking on anything that is animated and colorful on their screen. It is natural that people will get infected if they go after porno sites, cheats, casino stuff and download programs which they have not doubled checked whether they are trustworthy. People get infected only because they are not security aware and not because there is a conspiracy behind this. They just dont care.
It is not true that there are no good firewalls. Kerio Firewall is an excellent and extremely powerful firewall. It can be unistalled perfectly ok without any problems.
You simply cannot handle your operating system in a correct way. These problems do not arise unless you have really messed up your system. And who knows what else you have done with it.
Blacklight is a great program, the best rootkit revealer out there.
Second reply:
Blacklight is big because it was one of the first and few programs to detect rootkits. Rootkits are a not so common threat but a real one, which might develop into the future nightmare of IT security. I have seen rootkits in action. Rootkits can hide malware from the operating system completely and thus from antivirus software. They can install more malware which will remain invisible and take control of a system. Rootkits are dangerous and thats for sure.
I am not talking about you personally since I do not know you. But people in general get infected due to reckless surfing, due to an internet behaviour, which is not within the limits of reason because these people either do not have the necessary education on security or do not wish to accept it.
It has been 2 years since I last got a piece of malware (which did not even activate itself) and that was because I deliberately surfed in suspicious site. Apart from that nothing comes through the fortress of my pc. Why? Due to my antivirus? No. I even consider antivirus and firewall unnecessary if the pc is patched, windows and browser settings correctly set and one knows that the sites one visits are trustworthy.
I am not sure why they did not respond to your email. I also despise bad support. However, they always reply my emails when I sent feedback and problems related to blacklight and viruses.
You do not need to be a novice computer user to mess up your pc. It can happen to anyone, a small incompatibility between two running programs, errors from wrongly installed drivers, remains of registry keys, running processes or temp files etc from long erased programs can all lead to a great destruction. Sometimes the reason cannot even be identified. Windows is just windows.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
War against Spammers
I feel like hunting down some spammers tonight. I got a few emails today and the previous days from greek spammers. Somehow I dont mind foreign spammers because they simply dont have my email :P. But I have a greek domain which was used by another person previously and that person was not able to protect this domain from spammers. Now I have to put up with these spam emails. But I am going to report them to their providers. I declare war!
Sunday, April 16, 2006
I think I got the Commwarrior worm
A few days ago, at dawn and after of only a couple of hours of sleep.. my phone rings. I wake up and check the phone half-asleep. A message! "What kind of an ill person sends me a message at 6.38am?" I thought to myself. I opened the message and I realised that it was a multimedia message (MMs) which I would have to download if I wanted to receive. By principle I do not use MMS, I believe it is just another way of the mobile phone companies to make a lot of money, so I have not activated GPRS in my phone. "No, thanks!" I angrily thought again and went to sleep again.
But I was alerted. I considered this to be another inexplicable mobile phone phenomenon, because nobody sends me MMS. The few people who have tried to do so, I explained them that I do not use MMS. It has happened before that I get in weird hours such multimedia messages and I have dismissed them as another spam effort of mobile phone frauds but this is another issue.
Then last night, a "eureka event" occured to me! I had forgotten all about this mms and I downloaded from the F-Secure Weblog a speech of the director who lectured on mobile phone viruses. This guy seems very knowledgable and I got engrossed in this fascinating security speech. At some point he started describing the various mobile phone viruses, the way they function and why people get infected. Well what do you know? There is a virus worm called Commwarrior that sends itself to other phones through an MMS ONLY during the night until 7am. At 7-8 am it deletes all logs from the phone to erase proofs to its activity. Now this is amazing, I believe someone sent me the Commwarrior and I am now thinking of activating gprs and downloading it :)). I would have to delete all people from my phonebook though, because I wouldnt want it spreading to others. During the day it infects other phones via bluetooth.
If you want to listen to this fascinating speech about mobile phone viruses visit this page.
But I was alerted. I considered this to be another inexplicable mobile phone phenomenon, because nobody sends me MMS. The few people who have tried to do so, I explained them that I do not use MMS. It has happened before that I get in weird hours such multimedia messages and I have dismissed them as another spam effort of mobile phone frauds but this is another issue.
Then last night, a "eureka event" occured to me! I had forgotten all about this mms and I downloaded from the F-Secure Weblog a speech of the director who lectured on mobile phone viruses. This guy seems very knowledgable and I got engrossed in this fascinating security speech. At some point he started describing the various mobile phone viruses, the way they function and why people get infected. Well what do you know? There is a virus worm called Commwarrior that sends itself to other phones through an MMS ONLY during the night until 7am. At 7-8 am it deletes all logs from the phone to erase proofs to its activity. Now this is amazing, I believe someone sent me the Commwarrior and I am now thinking of activating gprs and downloading it :)). I would have to delete all people from my phonebook though, because I wouldnt want it spreading to others. During the day it infects other phones via bluetooth.
If you want to listen to this fascinating speech about mobile phone viruses visit this page.
"Internet Forums are a very dangerous constitution"
... claimed the judges of the Hamburg court (Landesgericht). This is about a well known german information technology news portal (Heise.de) and a court dispute that arose from the posts in their forum. So far administrators of forums were responsible for the content of the forum messages only if they had knowledge of them. And they were not obliged to read every single posting of the forum (which sums up to 200.000 postings a month!).
According to heise news the judges decided that now administrators of forums are obliged to check every single post before it gets published and then aprove it. They decided that internet forums are a very dangerous constitution and those who run such "sources of danger" could be arrested!
Aparently this decision has not yet become a law in germany but it is on its way of becoming one.
I believe that this verdict is not only outrageous, illogical and unpractical but mostly dictatorial!
Most forums on the internet are non-profitable, run and moderated by a couple of people who dedicate their spare time to them. Naturally, it is impossible for them to moderate and check 200.000 posts a month! If an offensive post is found and reported to the administrators a simple deletion of it should be enough! What the judges suggest is to have all messages on a waiting list to be aproved. THat would mean that real-time posting would not be possible anymore, admins would have to spent countless hours reading messages and approving them. In that case the approvals would take a tremendous amount of time, the postings would not be current any more, news could not be discussed, the freedom of speech would be eliminated, forums would simply be uninteresting and eventually die. The judges suggested that the administrators of forums should have enough people to run them, that would mean that if a forum should function in an almost real-time mode, there have to be enough people employed to read and approve the messages. In 200.000 posts a month, there are 6.666 posts in 24 hours and how many moderators would be necessary for this? This is simply illogical because support forums that deal with open source matters for example do not have the funds to hire so many people! I also do not think that any serious company would ever invest on a forum if it would cost such tremendous amount of money to maintain it!
The judges that came to these conclusions are greately ignorant of the internet culture, of the purpose of internet, of the society of free information, of the open source community.
Forums are the very soul of the internet, without them the internet dies. Without them the developement of technology is going to reduce dramatically and almost cease. Without forums there can be no immediate reporting of bugs, no discussions on how to eliminate them, no new ideas flowing around, no creative minds to grap them, transform them and develope them. Without forums there will be no innovating technologies developing faster and faster all the time, no co-operation among numerous researches from all over the world, no access on free information and discussions on technological matters. These judges simply ignore the nature of the internet. People who abuse forums to insult individuals and companies in any way should be made responsible for. Why make the administrators responsible for the wrong doings of others and kill the entire forum culture?
The sure thing is that even if this law comes to pass, forums will continue to function maybe illegally, maybe in servers of developing countries. Maybe they will transform into underground societies, password protected where only an elite of white-hat hackers have access to. The sure thing is that what is by nature just and right will continue to exist until such illogical laws collapse under the weight of their own inaccuracy.
And for god's sake, to call all forums of the world a dangerous constitution is simply an insult. Forums have offered way much more to the world than they have done harm.
According to heise news the judges decided that now administrators of forums are obliged to check every single post before it gets published and then aprove it. They decided that internet forums are a very dangerous constitution and those who run such "sources of danger" could be arrested!
Aparently this decision has not yet become a law in germany but it is on its way of becoming one.
I believe that this verdict is not only outrageous, illogical and unpractical but mostly dictatorial!
Most forums on the internet are non-profitable, run and moderated by a couple of people who dedicate their spare time to them. Naturally, it is impossible for them to moderate and check 200.000 posts a month! If an offensive post is found and reported to the administrators a simple deletion of it should be enough! What the judges suggest is to have all messages on a waiting list to be aproved. THat would mean that real-time posting would not be possible anymore, admins would have to spent countless hours reading messages and approving them. In that case the approvals would take a tremendous amount of time, the postings would not be current any more, news could not be discussed, the freedom of speech would be eliminated, forums would simply be uninteresting and eventually die. The judges suggested that the administrators of forums should have enough people to run them, that would mean that if a forum should function in an almost real-time mode, there have to be enough people employed to read and approve the messages. In 200.000 posts a month, there are 6.666 posts in 24 hours and how many moderators would be necessary for this? This is simply illogical because support forums that deal with open source matters for example do not have the funds to hire so many people! I also do not think that any serious company would ever invest on a forum if it would cost such tremendous amount of money to maintain it!
The judges that came to these conclusions are greately ignorant of the internet culture, of the purpose of internet, of the society of free information, of the open source community.
Forums are the very soul of the internet, without them the internet dies. Without them the developement of technology is going to reduce dramatically and almost cease. Without forums there can be no immediate reporting of bugs, no discussions on how to eliminate them, no new ideas flowing around, no creative minds to grap them, transform them and develope them. Without forums there will be no innovating technologies developing faster and faster all the time, no co-operation among numerous researches from all over the world, no access on free information and discussions on technological matters. These judges simply ignore the nature of the internet. People who abuse forums to insult individuals and companies in any way should be made responsible for. Why make the administrators responsible for the wrong doings of others and kill the entire forum culture?
The sure thing is that even if this law comes to pass, forums will continue to function maybe illegally, maybe in servers of developing countries. Maybe they will transform into underground societies, password protected where only an elite of white-hat hackers have access to. The sure thing is that what is by nature just and right will continue to exist until such illogical laws collapse under the weight of their own inaccuracy.
And for god's sake, to call all forums of the world a dangerous constitution is simply an insult. Forums have offered way much more to the world than they have done harm.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
How does a virus analyst feel?
I wonder how a virus analyst feels. He exists because viruses exist. He loves to combat viruses and is there to crack them. He combats a threat, without which, he would not exist. Isn't that tricky?
How can you try to eliminate something when its own destruction means your own end (as a profession)? Isnt that as if you are fighting with yourself? Of course practically this is not possible, since viruses will keep existing. But isn't that still kinda weird?
I am just trying to decide whether I love viruses or hate viruses. But then again Doctors also deal with illnesses all the time, the police force deals with crime. The fact that one occupies himself constantly with something negative, does not make him one with the subject. Or is that why psychologists look like mentally unstable persons, policemen like criminals and virus analysts like hackers :))!?? LOL
How can you try to eliminate something when its own destruction means your own end (as a profession)? Isnt that as if you are fighting with yourself? Of course practically this is not possible, since viruses will keep existing. But isn't that still kinda weird?
I am just trying to decide whether I love viruses or hate viruses. But then again Doctors also deal with illnesses all the time, the police force deals with crime. The fact that one occupies himself constantly with something negative, does not make him one with the subject. Or is that why psychologists look like mentally unstable persons, policemen like criminals and virus analysts like hackers :))!?? LOL
Thursday, April 13, 2006
NVU html editor disappoints
I have been using dreamweaver by Macromedia as an html editor and have been very happy about it actually. However, I sensed a certain resentment towards it by css enthousiasts. NVU is a freeware html editor, unlike Dreamweaver and is being praised as a better alternative. I used it but got very disappointed because it is unable to handle greek characters. It automatically translates them into entities which makes the editing of the source code entirely impossible. I posted in their support forum a while ago but received no reply about this problem. Also it just creates very strange piece of code with html tags I have never seen before. Maybe a side-effect of the greek entities? The code it produced was not compatible with the webstandards and it did not validate. Dreaweaver on the other hand did validate.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Look2Me Removal Tool
F-Secure developed a new, very useful removal tool for the nasty spyware Look2Me. The most annoying part of this spyware, besides that is invades our privacy, is that it will not allow security tools to start, such as Blacklight and Escan. More info and download in the F-Secure Site.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Gmail Problem with the outgoing email account in Thunderbird
For the past few days I was receiving emails from my friends in a totally different email than the one I was using to send from. I am using Thunderbird with 9 different email accounts. One of the problems of Thunderbird is that it can use only one smtp server for all your email accounts. That means that if you wish to hide your smtp server or use a different one for each account, you simply cant. A clever person can then guess that your smtp includes clues from your "real" email adress and there goes your anonymity. Anyway. The smtp trick is another thing, but to simply show as an outgoing email account one I am not even using? That was a riddle. The riddle was solved in the Mozilla Forums where they told me that if you used a google email smtp then "GMail has an anti-spoofing mechanism in place that replaces your sending address with your GMail address".
:o! Never again use Gmail SMTP in Thunderbird!
:o! Never again use Gmail SMTP in Thunderbird!
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Comedy Blog
This is a hilarious blog. When I first saw it I thought this guy was actually serious but after reading it I saw that it's a very funny comedy.
http://cyberpoirot.blogspot.com/
Cyberpoirot or the adventures of an online detective.
http://cyberpoirot.blogspot.com/
Cyberpoirot or the adventures of an online detective.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
How to cure Insomnia
Since I can remember myself I have been having problems with sleep. These problems have manifested in various ways, the latest one: Insomnia. But! There is hope and I found the cure!
Mathematics! Everynight I solve problems until I cant tell the difference between the numbers. The numbers slowly hypnotize me. When I cant solve any more problems I start reading historical notes about maths and they slowly put me into sleep. I swear that mathematics is so utterly boring that your mind is going to fall asleep immediately, if that is the only way to avoid the torture of numbers.
And yet I have been reading some completely interesting semi-philosophical stuff related to maths, like the fibonacci sequence or the mathematical triangles, or the pythagorian mystical school. Mathematics, music and the mysteries of life are very closely related!
Mathematics! Everynight I solve problems until I cant tell the difference between the numbers. The numbers slowly hypnotize me. When I cant solve any more problems I start reading historical notes about maths and they slowly put me into sleep. I swear that mathematics is so utterly boring that your mind is going to fall asleep immediately, if that is the only way to avoid the torture of numbers.
And yet I have been reading some completely interesting semi-philosophical stuff related to maths, like the fibonacci sequence or the mathematical triangles, or the pythagorian mystical school. Mathematics, music and the mysteries of life are very closely related!
Monday, March 27, 2006
To Generalize..
I just read this quote that thrilled me. For reasons I really do not feel the need to analyze.
"To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess."
-- William Blake
It reminds me one of those discussions that a specific kind of men (sorry for ther rest of you guys) lead stating the great truths of the universe about mostly the sexual habits of the species of men. Limiting people according to any of their characteristics is a generalization to me, and maybe even paves the way for racism. Its like blaming a whole mass of people for the weakness of one (and yes this was refering to being unfaithful).
"To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess."
-- William Blake
It reminds me one of those discussions that a specific kind of men (sorry for ther rest of you guys) lead stating the great truths of the universe about mostly the sexual habits of the species of men. Limiting people according to any of their characteristics is a generalization to me, and maybe even paves the way for racism. Its like blaming a whole mass of people for the weakness of one (and yes this was refering to being unfaithful).
Sunday, March 26, 2006
The Philadelphia Experiment
Area 54, Einstein's lost ship and the Philadelphia experiment were all terms I had heard but never really troubled researching into them. One of the reasons to that was the fact that they are favourite subjects of the esoteric branch. I might not have anything against esoteric but the Philadelphia Experiment myth refers to something purely scientific. Now after watching this pretty movie that dates back to 1984 I can understand why there has been so much talk about this experiment. The hole in the time-space continuum and the disappearance of the ship due to electromagnetic fields and nature's storms as a source of force, all seem like a possible scenario. The us navy rejects the Philadelphia experiment though, from what I read on the internet. The subject of the movie is intriguing, just like any good science fiction is. What makes this film particularly interesting is the fact that its very old and it is filmed in a very different way than modern sci-fi films. It has a particular charm in it and the love story that blossoms inside the mystery is convincing!
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Google really knows everything?
I often look at my google ads on the sidebar; they can be very enterntaining sometimes. Other times the ads are completely dull. But this one made me laugh:
"The Secret To Happiness
Want more Joy? Experts Discover the One Secret to Joy and Happiness."
It seems that everything has entered the internet, even life's greatest mysteries. I hope they are not stored in a password protected site. I want access now.
"The Secret To Happiness
Want more Joy? Experts Discover the One Secret to Joy and Happiness."
It seems that everything has entered the internet, even life's greatest mysteries. I hope they are not stored in a password protected site. I want access now.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
The little fox
As I was driving home tonight I saw two bright and big spots on the road. "Too bright to be the eyes of a cat", I thought. I quickly slowed down and had to stop the car completely and quite suddenly. Luckily no one was driving behind me because he would have surely crashed on me!! :)) I didnt want to run over the poor creature. I expected that it would go away the more I aproached with the car, but it ran towards the lights and thats why I had to stop completely. When I stopped it raised its head and had a look and then disappeared in the bushes. I have no idea what that creature was. It was jumbing like a rabbit, it had a tail of a fox and ears in the shape of a triangle. But it was really small so I dont think it was a fox. Some other strange animal of the woods it must have been.
PS: I finally found out where this peculiar creature escaped from.
PS: I finally found out where this peculiar creature escaped from.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Hearts of Atlantis - My Film Review
Hearts of Atlantis. What a film! A poem! So true and natural like the way its actors performed. So beautiful and cruel just like life turns to be. Every moment of it is a sucess. The mood of the film is generally sad and nostalgic because it also stresses on the worth of the few moments of happiness. This contrast makes it particularly sad. It reminded me at times of the magic of my own childhood.
The story is about a boy who meets a mysterious man. He changes the boy's life in many ways, he is wise and mysterious, full of secrets and hidden abilities. He reads a lot and teaches the young boy to apreciate the value of books when his mother is lost in her own fake world, seeking worldly success and neglecting her son. But there is much more to it that the simple plot can confess.
When the film starts the boy is a grown up who comes to attend the funeral of one of his best childhood friends. There he gets to visit his old home and the story starts to unfold before his eyes, and our eyes as well!
Before watching this film and the beginning of it I was not sure I was going to enjoy it. The cover of the dvd is bizare, the old man in the film is also a weird person. The scenario does not clearly reveal who the man who didnt talk about his past was, but after the first half indications start to arise. It took me a long time to understand the meaning of the title "Hearts of Atlantis". In the end I was quite sure that this man had been a medium hired by the FBI during the "war against communism" as a newspaper in the film puts it. At times the film reminded me of another known film which is played by Sean Connery and an older young man whom he teaches to write I think. I just cant remember the title.
The old man is played by the great Antony Hopkins and the young talented actor is Anton Yelchin
The story is about a boy who meets a mysterious man. He changes the boy's life in many ways, he is wise and mysterious, full of secrets and hidden abilities. He reads a lot and teaches the young boy to apreciate the value of books when his mother is lost in her own fake world, seeking worldly success and neglecting her son. But there is much more to it that the simple plot can confess.
When the film starts the boy is a grown up who comes to attend the funeral of one of his best childhood friends. There he gets to visit his old home and the story starts to unfold before his eyes, and our eyes as well!
Before watching this film and the beginning of it I was not sure I was going to enjoy it. The cover of the dvd is bizare, the old man in the film is also a weird person. The scenario does not clearly reveal who the man who didnt talk about his past was, but after the first half indications start to arise. It took me a long time to understand the meaning of the title "Hearts of Atlantis". In the end I was quite sure that this man had been a medium hired by the FBI during the "war against communism" as a newspaper in the film puts it. At times the film reminded me of another known film which is played by Sean Connery and an older young man whom he teaches to write I think. I just cant remember the title.
The old man is played by the great Antony Hopkins and the young talented actor is Anton Yelchin
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Reinstalling Windows Adventure
The past week has been an endless effort to reinstall my windows system. For a few days I was looking for my bootable windows cd without any success. Then I burned a bootable cd and a bootable dvd but none of them worked. The reason? The reason was that my computer was set up in a way that it boots from the hard disk. So I had to change that setting in the BIOS. Thank god I still had the motherboard box around with some important manuals and cds inside, so I could read in there how to enter the BIOS World! There are two things in the computer that I fear the most : BIOS and the Registry of windows. Mistakes in them can prove fatal for the computer, although in the registry you can only mess your windows installation (which I have done!). I am not so sure how bad misconfiguration in the BIOS can be. Anyway, I had to enter the BIOS for the first time to change the sequence that the devices of the PC boot. I got great help from my friends at the antivir forum (amazing how these guys help) and I finally got to install windows! The installation was very quick, it only lasted 30 minutes and then I happily started to configure windows, change the settings, install drivers, programms etc. Until I installed the service pack 2. A disaster! The pc booted after the installation and could not open windows. I had no choice but to reinstall windows! Now I am downloading for the past 24 hours :P updates. I will create then an image of my system and try to install sp2 again in safe mode. No drivers installed yet but some programs. I hope it will work.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Secret Program Code : INTP Greece
This is so funny. The investigation of the greek scandal about the mobile phone spies has revealed something remarkable. It seems that the guy who killed himlsef knew all about the spies and was working along with 4 other members of vodafone on a secret program. This program had as its code-name the word INTP (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving) which the most rare MBTI personality test type. Now me being an intp myself and having some intp friends as well, we set up a greek INTP forum some months ago. Now we all hope that this is going to boost our forums popularity since the Jungian Typology is almost unknown in greece.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Nothing more than computers
Stardate 239802394892 and my windows media player does not open. I try to beam in incomplete microsoft drivers and we had two victims.
Media Player dies on the spot, Spyware Guard goes on strike and deactivates itself.
More and more programs refuse to open in the devasted planet windows xp pro sp2 of the VIRUSWITCH quarter.
Time to change our course Scotty.
Media Player dies on the spot, Spyware Guard goes on strike and deactivates itself.
More and more programs refuse to open in the devasted planet windows xp pro sp2 of the VIRUSWITCH quarter.
Time to change our course Scotty.
Friday, March 10, 2006
I am Root
Check out the Hacker Story I wrote last night in "Another Galaxy". I had a lot of fun writing it.
PS: "Root" is the most powerful user or access level in computer systems (mainly in linux). The dream of the hacker thus is to be "Root" to have unlimited access in a system. Another funny (to me and to everyone else definetely dull *LOL*) word game is that the whole hacker community is often called "underground" which really is the place for "Root"s :)).
PS: "Root" is the most powerful user or access level in computer systems (mainly in linux). The dream of the hacker thus is to be "Root" to have unlimited access in a system. Another funny (to me and to everyone else definetely dull *LOL*) word game is that the whole hacker community is often called "underground" which really is the place for "Root"s :)).
Notpron - The Hardest Riddle on Internet
Notpron is an interesting online game that calls itself the "Hardest Riddle available on Internet". It has been developed by a german guy (DavidM) with some help of his friends and consists of a great number of riddles. The solutions to the riddles, guide one through the site and the different levels.
This game requires some computer and internet knowledge and a lot of intuition. I am currently on level 11 and I can say that it is not your mental abilities to combine information and to process it that will make you solve the riddles. It is your instict that will tell you towards which direction should you channel your thoughts. One receives a number of hints from each page and I initially thought that each one of them plays an equal and important role in solving the riddles. Wrong! Sometimes you need to dwell and deepen only in one hint when all others are only there to mislead you. Unfair!?
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
It has taken me many hours to solve each of the harder riddles (they get harder after level 4), I would say a riddle takes approximately 4 hours of thinking and staring at the screen, maybe trying out some random stuff. Most of the times I am able to solve it on the next day (after a reboot the mind seems to be able to think in a more multidimension way).
I would recommend this game to people who have a loooooooooooooot of spare time. It has conquered much of my free time, something I am not grateful about *LOL*. Another thing is that it requires extremely much patience and coolness. If you are in hurry you cant solve this, and unless you are a genious or gifted with a sixth sense you need A LOT OF TIME to solve these. Most of the times I get really annoyed that I cant solve the riddles and give up. I am starting to think that level 11 has touched my limits.
Here it is, if you dare:
Play Notpron
PS: When I started this game I decided not to google for the solutions (cheating is not fun). Some levels require googling but it is done in a safe way by placing -notpron after the search terms. The levels that dont have a google bar do not need googling. However, if things get really hard, the author of the site gives some hints until level 9 and then there is also the forum that can be of help with hints (no spoilers).
This game requires some computer and internet knowledge and a lot of intuition. I am currently on level 11 and I can say that it is not your mental abilities to combine information and to process it that will make you solve the riddles. It is your instict that will tell you towards which direction should you channel your thoughts. One receives a number of hints from each page and I initially thought that each one of them plays an equal and important role in solving the riddles. Wrong! Sometimes you need to dwell and deepen only in one hint when all others are only there to mislead you. Unfair!?
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
It has taken me many hours to solve each of the harder riddles (they get harder after level 4), I would say a riddle takes approximately 4 hours of thinking and staring at the screen, maybe trying out some random stuff. Most of the times I am able to solve it on the next day (after a reboot the mind seems to be able to think in a more multidimension way).
I would recommend this game to people who have a loooooooooooooot of spare time. It has conquered much of my free time, something I am not grateful about *LOL*. Another thing is that it requires extremely much patience and coolness. If you are in hurry you cant solve this, and unless you are a genious or gifted with a sixth sense you need A LOT OF TIME to solve these. Most of the times I get really annoyed that I cant solve the riddles and give up. I am starting to think that level 11 has touched my limits.
Here it is, if you dare:
Play Notpron
PS: When I started this game I decided not to google for the solutions (cheating is not fun). Some levels require googling but it is done in a safe way by placing -notpron after the search terms. The levels that dont have a google bar do not need googling. However, if things get really hard, the author of the site gives some hints until level 9 and then there is also the forum that can be of help with hints (no spoilers).
Thursday, March 09, 2006
When Politics messes with Faith
I have yet to make more research on this subject but if everything that this article states is true, then we have one more example where democracy dramatically fails.
We are talking about a law in India that is to forbid any practices of black magic and aghora as well.
Crimes have been conducted in the name of black magic and satanism, just like crimes have been triggered by politicians who have misused major religions such as catholicism and islam. I believe that anyone who misuses an idea and hurts the universal laws of democracy and the humand rights should be punished. But to forbid the belief in a certain ideological system without any particular reason is a fact worth of wonder. Can you set a limit to a mind? Can you censor my thoughts? And how will you do it?
My questions are:
- How will the government of India define the term Black Magic? How will it define the practices of Black Magic that are on their greatest part purely mental and psychic?
- Aghora meaning the fifth face of Shiva, is a great part of the Indian Philosophy, Tradition and Mythology. How can it erase such important parts of the past great indian civilization due to an unknown, inexplicable and unreasonable fear?
- How will the prohibition of all "evil" practices prevent real black magicians from carrying forth their work?
- Doesnt the Indian Government have more important issues to attend to than creating questionable mechanisms of public misuse?
I would like to know all parameters of this law but so far google has only given me another result that dates back to 2005.
We are talking about a law in India that is to forbid any practices of black magic and aghora as well.
Crimes have been conducted in the name of black magic and satanism, just like crimes have been triggered by politicians who have misused major religions such as catholicism and islam. I believe that anyone who misuses an idea and hurts the universal laws of democracy and the humand rights should be punished. But to forbid the belief in a certain ideological system without any particular reason is a fact worth of wonder. Can you set a limit to a mind? Can you censor my thoughts? And how will you do it?
My questions are:
- How will the government of India define the term Black Magic? How will it define the practices of Black Magic that are on their greatest part purely mental and psychic?
- Aghora meaning the fifth face of Shiva, is a great part of the Indian Philosophy, Tradition and Mythology. How can it erase such important parts of the past great indian civilization due to an unknown, inexplicable and unreasonable fear?
- How will the prohibition of all "evil" practices prevent real black magicians from carrying forth their work?
- Doesnt the Indian Government have more important issues to attend to than creating questionable mechanisms of public misuse?
I would like to know all parameters of this law but so far google has only given me another result that dates back to 2005.
Monday, March 06, 2006
The Clean Monday in Greece
Today was the "Clean Monday" or "Ashmonday" as it was known among the older generations. The Clean Monday is the monday after the fourth and final carneval sunday. It signifies the beginning of the 40-day period of fasting. On the 41th day it should be Easter Sunday. That is why women used to clean all their kitchen stuff on that day using ashes because they thought this purifies them from the meat. The christian orthodox fasting is a very interesting one and has a set of rules about what one is allowed to eat and what not. For example olives are allowed but olive oil not. Meat is not allowed but fish is. On Clean Monday people go out on the countryside and have picnicks with the traditional bread made for that day especially called "Lagana". Its a flat white bread. We also eat a lot of halvas on that day (a sweet out of sesame cream and sugar or honey). The funniest part is that kids get to fly kites through the air. So you can imagine that the greek sky is full of kites on every Clean Monday. I am not sure how this custom was established. This year the weather was very bad here unfortunately, we had very strong winds blowing that prevented most people to go out. I have a Pocahontas kite resting on the wall of my room from last years Clean Monday. I didnt get to fly it this year again. #$%$!
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Enigma: The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park
"Enigma" is one of the most brilliant films I have ever seen. Not only the complicated plot (based on the book by Robert Harris), but the way it is directed along with the excellent performance of the actors, compose a very impressive result. Every scene has a subtle meaning, every look of the actors is significant, every scene has its own tale to narrate. Until the very end, the director (Michael Apted) brilliantly guides the audience and reveals secrets of the long woven riddles. "Enigma" justifies its title through the film but does not let the viewer down. The solutions do come and they are unexpected.
What distinguishes this film from the normal detective ones is that it is much more complete. Romance, danger, frustration, nostalgy, war, spies, love, wits and mystery are components of equal importance that enrich the film in a unique fashion.
The plot is about an english mathematician (Tom) during the second world war that managed to brake the Shark Enigma, a code used by the germans to communicate. What really adds to the atmosphere of this film is that it narrates the past as an equally exciting adventure that interacts with the present and dominant story. We cannot comprehend the actual adventure without the bits and pieces of information and emotion that the scenes of the past full of nostalgy reveal.
Tom had a nervous breakdown due to the woman he loved and returns to the Bletchley Park after being treated. The Bletchley park is the place where all messages are decrypted and analyzed, thats where the Shark Code broke. The germans change the code unexpectantly, his ex-girlfriend disappears and a number of mysterious facts make Tom and the roomate of his ex-girlfriend believe that there is something very serious going on. Together they break a number of security rules to find out more about the codes, their common friend, political crimes and spies. This developes into an exciting adventure when at the same time war breaks and the codebreakers desperately need to break the new one.
I dont want to spoil this so if you want to find out what happens you have to get the dvd ;).
What distinguishes this film from the normal detective ones is that it is much more complete. Romance, danger, frustration, nostalgy, war, spies, love, wits and mystery are components of equal importance that enrich the film in a unique fashion.
The plot is about an english mathematician (Tom) during the second world war that managed to brake the Shark Enigma, a code used by the germans to communicate. What really adds to the atmosphere of this film is that it narrates the past as an equally exciting adventure that interacts with the present and dominant story. We cannot comprehend the actual adventure without the bits and pieces of information and emotion that the scenes of the past full of nostalgy reveal.
Tom had a nervous breakdown due to the woman he loved and returns to the Bletchley Park after being treated. The Bletchley park is the place where all messages are decrypted and analyzed, thats where the Shark Code broke. The germans change the code unexpectantly, his ex-girlfriend disappears and a number of mysterious facts make Tom and the roomate of his ex-girlfriend believe that there is something very serious going on. Together they break a number of security rules to find out more about the codes, their common friend, political crimes and spies. This developes into an exciting adventure when at the same time war breaks and the codebreakers desperately need to break the new one.
I dont want to spoil this so if you want to find out what happens you have to get the dvd ;).
Friday, March 03, 2006
Wordpress 2.0.1 Multiple Vulnerabilities
The Neo Security Team published a number of errors in the programing of the well known blog software "Wordpress". It might interest those of you who use it. Unfortunately no patch is yet published for these bugs and exploits that seem to be critical.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Nasa Daily Astronomy Picture :: Paraller Universes
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060301.html
This is a computer enhanced illustration of our universe(s). Reminds one of the great eye of LOTR. I find this picture fascinating.
This is a computer enhanced illustration of our universe(s). Reminds one of the great eye of LOTR. I find this picture fascinating.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
My Dog Phobia and its exceptions
I have always been afraid of dogs. I dont know why but they invoke an inexplicable fear in me. In our city there used to wander around (and still do) many stray dogs. When I was young whenever I saw one I changed my path. Once at a friends place, she told me to pet her dog. A dog that seemed very fierce and was barking all the time. I didnt want to but she said she will even hold his mouth. I reluctantly approached to slowly touch his head and woof!! the dog got away and tore my shirt apart! Luckily and due to my fast ballet abilities he didnt get to really bite me.
The first dog that won my heart was the dog of my uncle who was living next to us in the summer. It was a beautiful big black dog, woolf-like, like the ones that they use in the police force. What a clever dog he was! His name was Rex. I liked him but my phobia never let me touch him. But I knew he wouldnt hurt me, his eyes were very friendly. Once I was sitting around the place he was and wanted to give him something. I went home and got a piece of food. I returned but didnt know how to give it to him since I couldnt approach. So I was holding my hand very high above my head with the food in it until I decide what to do. Suddely the dog jumbed so high! took the food out of my hand without biting me! That was really amazing. Why cant I trust these animals that seem to be able of having good intentions as well?
The next dog I loved was a very small black one who showed up on the beach on day. She had no home, was beautiful and followed me home where I gave her soup! Since we couldnt keep dogs, my aunt took her home. I think I even touched that dog.
Those were two exceptions of the only dogs I have liked.
When I went to germany to study, I thought that country is the paradise of those afraid of dogs. No matter where you look, no stray dogs! None! Can you imagine how it feels to walk around in a city without any fear? Unfortunately there were other "stray" things to be afraid of which we didnt have in Greece, like drunk people in the train station and drug addicts. But thats another story.
A few weeks ago a black dog showed up at our home, we tried to sent him away but he always comes everyday. At one point I gave him some food because I though its a pity. He was so weak. And I am in a great dillema now. Everytime I return home he is there outside the door and I cant get into the house due to my phobia. He thinks he must come near me. And I dont want that. And I cant send him away or let him starve. The only temporary solution I have is the broomstick... Today a friend just went to him and kicked him away! So that I can go into the house! And then the dog tried to run to me! And he cryied. I am very disturbed and havent got the slightest idea what to do with this matter.
The first dog that won my heart was the dog of my uncle who was living next to us in the summer. It was a beautiful big black dog, woolf-like, like the ones that they use in the police force. What a clever dog he was! His name was Rex. I liked him but my phobia never let me touch him. But I knew he wouldnt hurt me, his eyes were very friendly. Once I was sitting around the place he was and wanted to give him something. I went home and got a piece of food. I returned but didnt know how to give it to him since I couldnt approach. So I was holding my hand very high above my head with the food in it until I decide what to do. Suddely the dog jumbed so high! took the food out of my hand without biting me! That was really amazing. Why cant I trust these animals that seem to be able of having good intentions as well?
The next dog I loved was a very small black one who showed up on the beach on day. She had no home, was beautiful and followed me home where I gave her soup! Since we couldnt keep dogs, my aunt took her home. I think I even touched that dog.
Those were two exceptions of the only dogs I have liked.
When I went to germany to study, I thought that country is the paradise of those afraid of dogs. No matter where you look, no stray dogs! None! Can you imagine how it feels to walk around in a city without any fear? Unfortunately there were other "stray" things to be afraid of which we didnt have in Greece, like drunk people in the train station and drug addicts. But thats another story.
A few weeks ago a black dog showed up at our home, we tried to sent him away but he always comes everyday. At one point I gave him some food because I though its a pity. He was so weak. And I am in a great dillema now. Everytime I return home he is there outside the door and I cant get into the house due to my phobia. He thinks he must come near me. And I dont want that. And I cant send him away or let him starve. The only temporary solution I have is the broomstick... Today a friend just went to him and kicked him away! So that I can go into the house! And then the dog tried to run to me! And he cryied. I am very disturbed and havent got the slightest idea what to do with this matter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)