New Blogs and Sites

The past days I created a new blog called Chesswitch which is dedicated to my efforts of learning chess!

Also there is another new project with Indeterminacy, Young at Heart and me. A new blog called Another Galaxy which is going to host microfiction after the Indeterminacy style (a short story on a picture). The difference to the Indeterminacy blog is that it is written *mostly* by women, as an effort to peep into the male psychology and hopes to become a smaller but representative counterpart of The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy. I am glad Young at Heart is there because she can take care of the more err.. bold subjects, whereas I plan to take over subtler stuff. I think :)). I hope(d) more female (sorry guys) Indie Fans will join this project.

My first story in Another Galaxy.

Last, I created new site today on my fathers greek wine and vineyard.
More content will be available in due course, in english as well. His wine is admired all over Corfu island as the most delicious one (no exaggeration!).

The Problems of (the Greek) Wikipedia

Wikipedia is great as long you are not part of its community. As long as one uses it just as a reference point or information source and does not try to edit it, wikipedia is fantastic!

What happens when one starts to edit this free encyclopedia is that one is bound to read its guidelines, rules, policies, come in contact with friendly or not so friendly users who help one out and becomes part of a community. I have met some great individuals through it.

Wikipedia owes its success to its freedom. Anyone can edit it, that means you and me and anyone can contribute in various ways, through personal research, ideas, suggestions, medias and translations. And thats what made wikipedia so great in so little time.

Unfortunately, no matter what the wikipedia slogan wants to declare, nothing is free in this life and wiki has to pay a big price for all its positive aspects. The price is a chaotic community, chaotic discussions, inaccurate information and insults. "Anyone can edit" means that anyone can use its pages for promoting hatred and insulting people. And that is a major matter where the greek wiki let me down. The admins inability of recognizing insulting content and removing it, makes me believe that even greater things are about to be tolerated in the same way, making wiki not trustworthy and unreliable. And that is not the wiki I want to be part of.

I came across a wiki-userpage of a very clever individual who describes the problems of wiki in a brilliant way. As he pointed out in an email to me

"I do feel that Wiki has a lot to offer and a lot of useful information; I also feel that Wiki is hitting a point where the original policies no longer work; a new set of policies need to be implemented or Wiki will degenerate in to the morass that Usenet is."

His userpage and blog with some interesting entries. Read this one, this one and this one.

Understanding Women - Beauty - Sexuality - Psychology

I invite everyone to read this beautiful posting on the Indeterminacy Girls.

My comment to this was:

"With this article you are showing how mutual apreciation and dialogue among the sexes can lead to a harmonious and promising co-existence. I cant imagine any woman reading this and not being flattered, but then again your whole blog is an ode to the female, to the creative, to the aesthetic; your Synchronicity is obviously about ART."

The most interesting part of it is that it is the honest confession of man who derives inspiration and creativity from the female gender in all its expressions (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual). A posting worth of nomination for the "Carnival of Feminists".

How to uninstall the eXtreme Styles mod 2 for the phpbb2 MorpheusX style template

How to uninstall the eXtreme Styles mod 2 (MOD Version: 2.2.1) that is necessary for the phpbb2 MorpheusX style template.

I am writing this in the hope of saving others from a major disaster.

Before doing anything, regardless how confident you feel, computers are unpredictable. TAKE A BACKUP! Back up the database and the files of your forum.

The ONLY way to uninstall this mod, is to upload a certain template.php file in the directory includes/ of your forum (it will overwrite the existing one). This certain file is included in the directory xs_mod.221\contrib\uninstall in the zip file you downloaded before installing it.

The eXtreme Styles mod will make some modifications in the sql database by adding a few entries to the 'phpbb_config' table. These entries will be ignored when the mod is no longer installed but I am trying to find out now if we can safely remove them. Also the mods files should also logically be removed, don’t do it, unless I confirm here that its safe. And after doing it, I can confirm that it is safe to remove/delete them.

New Year Resolutions - edit 2

Oh well I actually didnt have any... But I will have some now because I desperately need motivation.

I wont write any other posting in my blog unless I (OK I cant stick to that so I ll just keep it here as a reminder of the things I must do):

- find a way to uninstall the mods in my forums and then update to the current version.
* Taken care of. Forum 1 was destroyed and deleted, Forum 2 survived (upgraded) and the precious knowledge will be posted in a new not-real-after-resolutions-posting.

- start the translation I promised last october of that free program.

- order my cds, dvds and papers.

- delete the files I dont need, reorder my sites' files, make backups that have an order, add a new hard disk.

- format the pc.

- find out how to make a decent pdf.

- get a network cable.

- get a bluetooth thing for the pc.

- make a new site with my photographs.

- complete the article on hackers and publish the new design of my site

- enter some content in the ballet site

I cant think of anything else now but if I do I will add it here.

Full Moon Effects

Statistically it is proved that more crimes occur during the nights that have a full moon. I will never forget an incident, where I was in a traditional german open air party and I saw someone hit a guy on the face with a bottle just two meters away from me. Of course I cannot prove that this is related to the fact that it occured during a full moon, but there is also another thing in life called instict, in which I deeply believe. So I have this suspicion that the full moon has a peculiar emotional effect on people's minds. This effect does not necessarily have to express itself in a violent way, it can be any extreme emotion that can twist your reason. Tradition is not always the result of superstition. Sometimes one can discover interesting stuff in it. Like in the word lunatic, he who turned mad from the moon.

Luckily the full moon is over and I have escaped its deadly effects safely this time!!! :))

Daily Obsessions

There are two things that have conquered my daily life completely lately: maths and chess. They seem to develope into a weird kind of obsessions that will even deprive me from my main addiction: the internet.

I was on a street in front of a door and a guy came talking about a very special kind of calculation. It was nothing like I have learned so far and he was trying to explain it to me by solving it. I was looking at his way of solving it with awe and stress at the same time because I was struggling to follow his solution. A priest stopped by asked for something and then went into that house. Thats when the equation spread through my whole visual field, it had entered my mind! I started trying to solve it but I knew every time I made a wrong calculation. Whenever that happened the numbers turned into knights and bishops that were not supported and were captured. Frustrating. And then I woke up.

Numbers, Maths, Computers and India

We were having a very exciting discussion about mathematics in a greek forum lately. This discussion started as a result of my recent mathematical questions, related mainly to its philosophy and not to its technique.

I am trying to develope a fascination for mathematics since I am going to have to learn it extremely well and this discussion really helped solve and raise questions that need to be answered. Mysteries always emit a certain magnetism and fascination, so the more of them.. the better.

And as if this werent enough I just bumbed into a very informative but also extremely funny and simple documentary on tv about the origin of numbers!

Its hard to believe that even though the alphabet has been invented many thousand years before the birth of Christ, numbers, in the form that we know them today, were invented just a couple hundred years BC!

The Romans had invented their own way of depicting numbers producing the Roman system, but the Indians were the ones that created the numbers that we know today as in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0. What is known as Arabic Numeral System is actually the Indian Numeral System that spread to the arabic world, to Africa and finally to Europe. The Indian System is a much more accurate system and it also included the number 0 which the Romans had not invented. The documentary showed an Indian Temple out of stone that had a writing on the wall about the size and the number of the flowers of the garden. It also contained the number 0 in it. It is said that the greatest invention of the Indians was the Zero!

Hilarious was the fact that the Romans were scared of Zero and they called in zifer=> cipher=>a mysterious code.

This documentary went on to introduce 2 great men of mathematics to the audience. Firstly, Fibonacci and secondly Leibnitz. I had heard about Fibonacci before only once, when I was reading Dan Brown's Davinci Code. Dan Brown was talking about the Fibonacci sequence in his book. Well, it seems that this guy was an excellent mathematician that brought and spread the indian numeral system to the west. Leibnitz was a german guy who made another extraordinary invention, the binary system. He wanted to build a system that would eliminate the possibility of human error and planed a machine that would fulfill that. He never managed to really built it but his knowledge was used to create the first electronic computer in Germany (I thought the first computer was built in the USA?). The name of that computer was Colloseus. Maybe it wasnt really a computer but an electronic calculator? Anyway, that documentary guy in the end went on to say that nowadays our life is ruled by the binary system since its what computers mostly use.

Are you an INTP? Whats your MBTI type?

I will dedicate this posting to the MBTI test, surprisingly I have not yet blogged about it but its high time I did! The reason to that is a wonderful greek forum we set up for all fellow INTPs and INTP friends.

Dont know if you are an INTP? Take the TEST. And let me know your type!

The MBTI test and Jung's typology is the most brilliant and accurate way I have ever found to describe the personality of a human. It is amazing in its uniqueness and used all over the world in serious institutions such as universities. HERE you can read more on this test.

Mobile Phone Spies in Greece :: National Security Scandal

100 mobile phones that belonged to the prime minister, politicians and important persons had been spied with software that had been legally installed in the headquarters of Vodafone Greece.

The spying had taken place for more than a year, it started before the beginning of the olympic games in Athens and kept on until a few days ago. There are many unsolved questions related to it, like the "suicide" of one of the highest members of the security team of vodafone. Although the company denies any relation between the two facts, reporters have found evidence and indications that are creating chaos in the media and in the system of justice. The case has been reopened and is being reinvestigated.

Initially there were rumours that the "Americans" were spying on the greek government. Now its quite obvious that this was the work of a small local team with limited technical knowledge and equipment compared to the American potential. The information though, could have been sold to secret agencies.

I am looking forward to what the results of the investigations will finally be. This proves to be a very interesting case related to electronic crime and fraud. A well-known greek IT professor claimed that other mobile phone networks and the internet, as well, are being spied. He is considered a genious in IT matters but he mysteriously stopped informing people about this case. He refuses to talk any further or show up on TV and the media talks about him being threatened.

This is not the first time that such a spying scandal bursts in Greece. There have been similar situations in the past.

Journalists claim that possibly an insider from vodafone co-operated with the spying team that set mobile-shadows throught Athens. What made everyone suspicious is the fact that it deleted the illegally activated software from its network making it impossible to track the spies. Some claim that the logs still exist but I guess time will show. Another surprising fact is that the company had found out about the spying more than 4 months ago but had not informed the victims. Also the government knew.

Questions... questions... questions...

A Virus Thriller

I posted about this on saturday but it got deleted as blogger had some problems during that time (see post on technical problems.) It was about a possible new virus which proves to be quite controversial.

On friday night, I received the information about a virus that does not get detected by any known antivirus software. I naturally became very curious about this file and had it sent to me. This virus is supposed to infect the computer with a great number of spyware and malware but it also infects the BIOS. My information-source almost had his complete pc ruined because his bios was infected and could start the pc. Finally he managed to find a way to write an operating system before the BIOS. I didnt quite get it how he did it, but he is also a pc genious.

I uploaded the file in www.virustotal.com and no antivirus found it (and it still doesnt). Only Panda and Fortinet report that this is a suspicious file. An upload to http://virusscan.jotti.org/de/ produced the same result. Specifically:

"Status: EVENTUELL INFIZIERT/MALWARE (Es ist verdächtig, dass die Sandbox-Emulation lange dauerte und/oder die Datei gepackt war. Normalerweise sind Programme nicht gepackt und zwingen die Sandbox nicht zu einer langwierigen Emulation. Beachten Sie, dass kein Scanner eine Warnung gegeben hat, d.h. die Datei kann sehr wohl harmlos sein. Wir raten allerdings zur Vorsicht.) Entdeckte Packprogramme: UPX"

Which means that this COULD be but NOT necessarily IS a virus because it is a file packed with the program UPX and strains the system to open it.

I sent the file to Antivir.de for a check and of course they dont work during the weekend :P... I knew this and because I couldnt wait any longer I sent it to the Kaspersky analysts as well. The Kaspersky analyst replied within an hour saying that the file is clean! How is this possible? Unless of course the file interacts only with the program it is supposed to patch (crack). But isnt that very unlikely? I was almost sure that it was not a virus but did not execute it risking my reputation as a brave antivir-girl (hello carlus :D ).

Soooooo, antivir replied today!

"Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your recent inquiry.

In the attachment you have sent us we found an virus.
The current version of AntiVir already detects this virus.

We thank you for your assistance."

Now is it a virus or not? The updated antivir still does NOT detect it, regardless what the analysts said.

The essential point of this whole situation is that IF this file REALLY is a virus, there has been an unknown malware on the internet for more than 6 days, without any antivirus software detecting it! And if there has been one, who can guarantee us that there have not been 2, 3, 4 or 5 or more of them?!

This means that our data are not safe and that noone can guarantee security no matter what.

I think our operating systems need still a lot of work to become secure, and I personally would not trust important information and files to electronic systems.

Which reminds me.. In the past week, a new technological scandal was revealed in Greece. But this topic deserves a separate posting.

There was a person in antivir forum who suggested a very interesting way of scanning the computer so that rootkits could also be detected by antivirus software. He suggested that it should not scan separate files but bytes on the hard disk! This technique was apparently used in the Amiga Technology.

It is scary but I believe we are still in the prehistoric era of computers, something proved also by the fact that technology advances extremely quickly. The internet is a fairly new invention and we should expect totally new and innovating operating system in the future that can promise a better security.

Blogger Support Reply

The Blogger Support Team replied to my email about my techlical problems:

Hi there,

We had a number of unplanned outages over the weekend, resulting in various problems accessing Blogger and BlogSpot, as well as publishing blogs. The full details can be seen on our status page:
http://status.blogger.com

We apologize for the problems this has caused, but please be assured that we are actively working on preventing this from happening again, and on improving the reliability of Blogger and BlogSpot. Thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

8 Qualities of the Perfect Lover

Miles to go tagged me and here we are. (although I am not sure I can find 8 people to tag, seems the whole web has already been ... tagged :D!!!)

Some of these qualities are related to the technical and practical nature of a relationship and some of them to the general aspect.

The perfect lover has to be:

1. a veggie and straight. Its an energy thing, bi-s dont qualify for the same reasons. :))

2. serene, calm, relaxed and cool. I hate it when people get angry and agitated.

3. self-confident. I hate it when people get jealous. It is the biggest plight of the human personality.

4. pleasant and well-mannered. With a sense for the beautiful things of life and the beautiful ways to communicate with people. With a sense for art.

5. wise as a result of intelligence, understanding and a spherical way of observing the world. Good ability of combining and processing information (in his head not in his computer!).

6. like me when it comes to hobbies. We should share at least two common loves for computers, chess, ballet, yoga and the occult (friendship).

7. able to experience deep emotions without being controlled by them.

8. value my freedom of thought and movement. I dont like being critisized for what I do, where I go and what I think and believe.

So...Honestly now, is that much to ask for ???????

TESTing the System

Just a test to see if this blog works again.

My Blog has a techical problem :(

This post will be published, but as soon as I republish my blog it will disappear. I posted something yesterday and republished because some new comments were not showing up. Then it disapeared. I sent an email to the blogger support and I am waiting for a reply. So I will not republish the blog hoping this posting will remain here for everyone to see. Sorry that I cannot publish your comments :(.

The truth is I did something stupid which might have caused the whole chaos in the database.. But I didnt intend to do it, I am just confused with all the passwords, sites, usernames etc..

If anyone wants to contact me use the email viruswitch(at)gmail(dot)com

What is this? Guess..

Frustration creatively expressed. I did this in Photoshop and decided it looks like a ... Can you make out what it is? Even better.. can you guess its title?



It is here in a gross form, but it became the basis of something wonderful, on which I am still working on. :)

The beautiful thing I was working one is this one http://www.viruswitch.com/

It will be my new personal site in english, with bits translated from my greek sites and other stuff.

Why I like the Abstract

because:

- an abstract expression lets space for a correct interpretation of the subject

- abstraction can (but not necessarily will) be right even if its wrong

- a specific expression will never tolerate anything else apart from the exact thing it illustrates, it will not even tolerate what the writer actually meant


Now, how will you abstractly describe the abstract?

:))

Why I hate Politics

because:

- it has lost its original meaning and essence

- it is abused by individuals to promote their own selfish goals

- it does not promote the common good

- it is the embodiment of greed, meanness and inhumanity

- it is against any universal ideal

- it turns people against each other

- it is insincere

I wonder when people will learn the worth of selflessness and generosity. The funny thing is that life proves, it is much more easier to develope and fulfill one's own interests and goals, through avoiding hurting the interests of others, if not offering selfless help.

"Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds."

Henry Brooks Adams

"There are no true friends in politics."
Alan Clark

"It is more than a crime; it is a political fault."
Joseph Fouche