IPv4 Goes IPv6

What is exactly an IP address? The term is the short for Internet Protocol Address and it is the logical address of a network adapter. IP corresponds to the network layer (layer 3) responsible

for end-to-end (source to destination) packet delivery. It works with TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) which deals with the transporting the packages. The term TCP/IP is used when referring to both of the protocols and makes possible network communications where TCP transport is used to deliver data across IP networks.

The concept is pretty easy to understand if you come to think of it. In order to communicate to another computer, you need an address (IP) and means of transportation of the data (TCP).

An IP address can be either private or public. Private addresses are assigned to computers in a LAN (Local Area Network) while public ones are used for the Internet or WAN (World Area Network). All the private IPs are communicating outside the local network through a public IP that is the gateway (the door to the Internet and WAN).

To make an idea on how important are IP addresses, you should know that network routers, web browsers, IM applications, mail clients rely on IP and other network protocols layered on top of the IP. This means that without an IP, there is not much to do. The IP technology started in the '70s and its purpose was to support the first research computer networks.

Nowadays, there are two IP technologies available. IPv4 is the version all home computer networks are currently using. Ipv4 consists of four bytes (32 bits) and for readability purposes, we work with addresses in a notation called dotted decimal. The range of addresses is from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. This means that between each of the four numbers comprising the IP address, there will be a dot. The maximum number of IPs given by version 4 of the Internet Protocol is of 4,294,967,296 addresses. For some of you, it may seem large enough to cover today's requirements. However with the continuous expansion of network capabilities of all sorts of mobile devices, the demand will grow and v4 will become insufficient.

A couple of solutions have already been found for increasing the number of possible addresses. Developing IPv6 is one of them. The improved version will use 16 bytes addresses (132 bits) and this translates into an increased number of available IP addresses for the users. The total augmentation will reach 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That should cover our needs for the next few years (the space is sufficient to cover 1030 addresses per person on the planet).

Another method also based on IPv6 is adding an extension of IPv4. This way, the IP address will consist of a combined notation (the last two bytes pairs in the right will be written in the normal IPv4 dotted decimal notation).

IPv6 or IP Next Generation (IPng) has several advantages compared to IPv4. Scalability is one of them (IPv6 has a 128-bit address while IPv4 has a 32-bit address). The next Generation Internet Protocol version comes with built-in security of the source). The “plug and play” mechanism featured by IPv6 eases the connection of equipment to a network, no manual configuration being needed or through DHCP servers.

The current solution adopted for extending the IP addresses is NAT (Network Address Translation). This is a networking protocol that allows LANs to be set up using a single public IP. It allows setting up a LAN with no special configuration of the Internet connection. Adopting this solution permanently is not too good of an idea as some peer-to peer applications will not work properly if NAT is being deployed in a network.

Also, multimedia applications (video conferences included, VoIP) cannot be used on NAT enabled devices as the protocols of these applications use UDP with dynamic allocation of ports and NAT does not provide the necessary support.

Addressing and routing hierarchy is also improved in the soon to be new IP standard. A larger address space allows allocation of larger address blocks to the ISPs (Internet Service Providers). This way, the ISP can aggregate the prefixes of all the customers into a single prefix and announce it to the IPv6 Internet.

NTT DoCoMo Achieves Data Transmission of Almost 5Gbps

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Japan's leading mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo came close to hitting another data transmission milestone while researching the next-generation cellular phone systems during an experiment conducted last year, on December

the 25th in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

The company managed to transmit data at almost 5GBps to a receiver that was moving at 10km per hour, according to Yoshiki Kakuda, a spokesman for the Tokyo Company.

He also said that the company's public relations department didn't know the exact speed that was achieved, but that it was quite close to 5GBps. NTT DoCoMO has been working on the 4G technology for almost 10 years but they've still got a long way to go before it is launched.

The company is currently planning to launch 4G in Japan by 2010 but also indicated that it first plans to speed-up its WCDMA 3G network before switching to a new technology.

Approximately a year ago, NTT DoCoMo managed to transmit data at 2.5GBps, and this time they managed to double that by increasing the number of MIMO transmitting and receiving antennas from six to twelve and using better signal processing in the receiver.

As compared to the test in December 2005, the frequency spectrum efficiency was also doubled from 25bps/Hz to 50bps/Hz.The mobile operator also plans to launch a 'Super 3G' service by 2010 that will offer data transmission at approximately 100Mbps. NTT DoCoMO will present all the details on this recent experiment next week at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

The company has also announced that it is looking forward to contributing to the global standardization of 4G through its ongoing research and development.

Linux to power super-router

By Matthew Broersma, Techworld

A group of networking experts has launched a project designed to give Cisco's routers some open source competition.

The project, called the Open Linux Router, joins some other efforts at bringing open source into the world of routers, notably the Extensible Open Router Platform (XORP) sponsored by Vyatta, but aims to add features such as a file-sharing server and a firewall.

It is the brainchild of four Michigan university students, who acknowledged Vyatta as an inspiration but saw the need for a more expandable, easier-to-use system. The system, like XORP, is intended to run on off-the-shelf hardware, with enough modularity to allow it to run on anything from an embedded device to an enterprise server.

"These tools are wrapped up in such a way that the user does not need to know or fully understand their inner workings, only how to implement them," the developers said on the project's site.

Core to the project, announced late last month, is a simple interface that allows users to configure the device and add new features without extensive technical knowledge. One criticism of devices like the XORP or Asterisk's open source PBX is that the companies buying them don't necessarily have the technical knowledge to deal with maintenance.

While the Open Linux Router project is at an early stage, it is part of a growing interest in using open source to compete with companies such as Cisco in the realms of routers and PBXs.

For now, the movement is largely limited to small and midsize organizations and is focused around the Asterisk open-source private branch exchange and Vyatta open-source routers. Cisco and other old-time networking vendors certainly aren't yet shaking in their boots over it. But it's a growing movement that they ignore at their own peril; lower-cost, higher-function technologies have a way of replacing existing architecture far faster than vendors realize, open-source vendors say.

A tentative feature list for the Linux router includes SSL web interface, serial console, wireless support, VLAN support, packet filtering and other features. It is based on the Webmin configuration tool and initial code is available via Google Code.

The first substantial release of the project is scheduled for May or June, developers said.

Other Linux-based projects targeting firewall and network server include ClarkConnect, IPCop, m0n0wall, and Smoothwall.

Computerworld's Phillip Britt contributed to this report.

A New Approach to Mutating Malware

"CBC is reporting that researchers at the Penn State University have discovered a new method of fighting malware that better responds to mutations. From the article: 'The new system identifies a host computer with a high rate of homogeneous connection requests, and blocks the offending computer so no worm-infected packets of data can be sent from it.' This is a change from previous methods, which compared suspected viruses against known signatures. Mutations in malware took advantage of the time-delay between the initial infection and the time taken by the anti-virus system to update its known signatures. This new system claims to be able to recognize new infections nearly instantly, and to cancel the quarantine in case of false alarm."

7 Deadly Sins and Their Combinations.

Found at Bits & Pieces Original Link - via Miss Cellania.

Jakarta - Banjir - Januar Sudharsono

Mungkin anda akan berpikir “Mengapa Posting kali ini bejudul demikian?”. Tidak seperti biasanya saya menaruh artikel dan news tentang Komputer dan Dunianya, kali ini saya akan bercerita (lebih tepatnya Curahan Hati . red:Curahan Hati).

Mungkin anda telah banyak mendengar, membaca atau melihat berita sejak Jumat 2 Februari 2007 Jakarta kembali terendam dan banjir di berbagai wilayah. Banyak yang mengungkapkan hal ini sebagai siklus 5 tahunan Jakarta, dalam hal ini Ibukota NEGARA REPUBLIK INDONESIA.

Mengapa kali saya ingin curhat? Karena terhitung sejak Jumat 02 Februari 2007 saya bisa dikatakan mengelilingi, dan “belingsatan” dengan Jakarta dan Banjirnya. Baik kita mulai petualangan kita.

Jumat, 2 Februari 2007

Pukul. 08.00 WIB; Keluar kantor saya harus menjemput orang di Bekasi (tepatnya di daerah Kalimalang-Jatiwaringin). Perjalanan lancar terlebih lokasi kantor saya di Slipi, sehingga saya langsung masuk Tol Dalam Kota Jakarta dan Langsung meluncur menuju Cawang. Karena bensin mobil kurang memadai saya keluar di Pancoran untuk mengisi bensin. Terlihat kemacetan mulai terjadi disana sini akibat genangan air di beberapa lokasi. Setelah mengisi bensin kami langsung meluncur kembali dan masuk kembali ke Tol.

Tiba di Cawang mulai terjadi antrian yang tidak terlalu panjang karena hari hujan deras sekali dan tepat di bawah jembatan cawang air sudah tergenang. Terlihat di kiri dan kanan jembatan sebelum jalan menurun ke arah bawah jembatan cawang, daerah cawang dan UKI mulai terlihat banjir. Untung saja genangan air di bawah jembatan cawang saat itu belum terlalu tinggi sehingga kami dapat melintas (kebetulan saya menggunakan mobil kijang). Selepas tol cawang di dalam tol Jakarta-cikampek masih lancar dan tanpa hambatan (walau sedikit banyak melewati genangan air) kami pun dapat tiba di lokasi,kalimalang-jatiwaringin pukul 09.05 WIB.

Setelah tiba kami langsung berangkat kembali menuju jakarta karena harus tiba di Jakarta tepatnya di Hotel Millenium, Sirih-tanah abang pukul 10.00 WIB. Dalam perjalanan balik ini kami mengambil jalan lain untuk masuk ke dalam Tol Jakarta - Cikampek, tetapi kami harus memutar arah karena jalan yang kami tempuh ditutup karena banjir. Saat itu pula kami sudah melihat kemacetan yang terjadi di Jalan Tol Jakarta - Cikampek. Karena melihat hal tersebut kami memutuskan kembali ke jakarta tidak melalui tol. Kami mengambil jalan ke arah Kampung melayu, Pulo gadung.

Tanpa di sangka di tengah jalan terjadi kemacetan yang luar biasa karena ada bagian jalan yang terendam air karena melintasi kalimalang. Tidak hanya sampai disitu di bawah jalan layang untuk menuju ke pulo gadung jalan banyak ditutup baik ke arah kampung melayu maupun ke arah pulo gadung karena banjir. Kami pun memutar kembali ke arah jatiwaringin dan memutuskan untuk melewati tol jakarta - cikampek yang macet karena tidak ada alternatif jalan yang menjamin. Sebelum memasuki tol, kami terjebak macet kembali yang cukup lama dan panjang. Karena tidak menentunya keadaan dan hari yang mulai siang sekitar pukul 10.30 WIB kami menyempatkan beli makan “Bakwan Malang” yang panas karena dari pagi belum mengisi perut kami.

Akhirnya setelah perjuangan menyalib dan memotong banyak kendaraan di kala macet (hingga menyebabkan banyak pengemudi ngomel dan marah) kami dapat memasuki tol yang “macet” itu untuk menuju jakarta.

Tol padat dan macet sampai dengan Cawang karena di bawah tol Cawang ke arah tol dalam kota yang tadi di ceritakan di atas banjir sudah semakin tinggi. Dan hanya kendaraan besar dan tinggi yang dapat lewat. Sedangkan untuk ke arah tol Lingkar luar jakarta berhenti total karena banjir yang sudah terlalu tinggi. Saya memaksakan mobil untuk menembur banjir yang cukup membuat hati ketar ketir. AKhirnya kami dapat melewati banjir dan kemacetan di cawang serta masuk tol dalam kota jakarta yang lengang.

Lalu apa yang membuat kami tercengang adalah pada tol dalam kota untuk arah yang berlawanan dengan kami terlihat antrian mobil yang ‘berhenti’ karena tidak dapat melintasi banjir dan terjebak di dalam tol tersebut. Karena banjir pada arah yang berlawanan lebih dalam daripada yang kami tempuh, hal ini karena sungai berada tepat di sebelahnya. Yang lebih mengejutkan antrian kendaraan terjadi dari Cawang hingga setidaknya semanggi (karena saya hanya melintasi hingga semanggi untuk berbelok ke arah ke sudirman dan thamrind) dan tanpa adanya terlihat pergerakan sama sekali.

Kami sempat melihat di daerah mampang terjadi kemacetan karena di Gatot Subroto ada bagian jalan yang tertutup banjir. Pada saat melintasi sudirman kami melihat di daerah bendungan hilir terlihat banjir, walau jalan masih dapat dilewati saat itu. Begitu juga di depan Kampus UNIKA ATMAJAYA, kendaraan terlihat mengantri karena banjir.

Akhirnya kami tiba di Hotel Millenium Sirih-Tanah Abang tepat Pukul 14.13 WIB. Setelah tiba saya beristirahat karena lelah sepanjang hari menerobos kemacetan dan banjir.

Pada Sore harinya tepat pukul 17.00 WIB, kami harus pergi ke daerah kedoya - jakarta barat untuk mengambil beberapa dokumen. Kami mengambil jalan lewat Kawasan tomang, tetapi tepat di jembatan sebelum tomang kami terhalang oleh banjir dan terpaksa mengambil jalan lain. Lalu saya berbelok ke arah Roxy untuk memutar, kembali kami mengalami penutupan jalan karena banjir yang juga terjadi di daerah itu.

Akhirnya saya harus memutar arah kembali ke arah sirih untuk mengalihkan tujuan kami ke semanggi, tepatnya Plasa Semanggi dan BEJ. Saat tiba di Casablanca tepatnya di flyover Le Meridien terjadi kemacetan dan nyaris tidak bergerak. Lalu saya memutuskan untuk keluar dari kemacetan dan kembali ke jalan sudirman (untungnya belum sampai di atas jembatan). Karena waktu yang sempit kami membatalkan perjalanan dan kembali ke Hotel Millenium untuk hadir di acara berikutnya. Sebelumnya kami singgah di McD Sarinah untuk makan. Saat tiba di Hotel waktu sudah menunjukkan pukul 19.00 WIB.

Karena begitu pentingnya dokumen yang perlu di ambil di daerah kedoya dan BEJ serta membayar tagihan telepon selular di Plasa Semanggi, Saya kembali pergi, kali ini tidak menggunakan Mobil karena saya berpikir akan lebih aman dan praktis.

Dengan menggunakan ojek saya langsung meluncur ke arah plasa semanggi sebagai tujuan awal. Kami tertahan sedikit di Casablanca pada flyover le meridien (tapi karena keunggulan motor) saya dapat menembus kemacetan yang ada. Tak disangka di casablanca tepatnya sebelum mall ambasador juga tertahan karena tergenang air yang cukup tinggi sehingga banyak mobil terlihat mogok. Tanpa pikir panjang saya bersama tukang ojek mengangkat motor untuk menyeberang Pembatas jalan/ trotoar di tengah jalan untuk mengambil arah berlawanan, karena kami tidak dapat mencapai puteran yang tertutup banjir. Kami lalu melewati belakang Atma Jaya, apa yang saya temui adalah jalan benar2 terhenti karena dalamnya banjir yang terjadi di Daerah Atmajaya tersebut. Saya terpaksa berganti kendaraan untuk melintas banjir, kendaraan apa yang paling tepat? “gerobak” yah gerobak yang ditarik penduduk sekitar untuk menyebrangkan orang dan kendaraan roda dua.

Akhirnya saya dapat tiba di Plasa Semanggi dan langsung membayar tagihan telepon karena waktu sudah menunjukkan pukul 20.30 WIB. Sedangkan toko tutup pukul 21.00 WIB. Setelah selesai saya langsung bergegas berjalan ke arah BEJ untuk mengambil dokumen selanjutnya. Setibanya disana saya baru sadar saya tidak memiliki kode akses. Langsung saya beralih ke tujuan berikutnya …. Kedoya.

Dengan kesabaran menunggu kendaraan umum atau apa saja yang ada, di Halte Komdak bersama puluhan karyawan yang pulang kerja dan terjebak di antara kemacetan dan banjir jakarta. Akhirnya saya dapat bis untuk menuju ke arah slipi, itu juga bergelayutan di pinggir pintu yang hanya sebelah kaki dan tangan saja berada di dalam bis.

Sepanjang jalan dari semanggi sampai dengan Gedung DPR/MPR RI lancar, tetapi setelah itu keadaan berubah total dan terjadi kemacetan panjang. Akhirnya saya memutuskan berjalan kaki sampai dengan Slipi Jaya. Di Slipi Jaya saya kembali menggunakan ojek sebagai transportasi untuk menuju kedoya. Dengan melewati jalan di samping tol Kebon jeruk - Merak, keadaan jalan lancar dan lengang. Lalu apa yang saya saksikan saat melintas di atas jembatan untuk menyeberang ke sisi lain Tol, terlihat kemacetan yang panjang dan padat sehingga kendaraan total berhenti dan terjebak di dalam tol. Ada satu hal lagi yang menarik yang saya pun terkejut karenanya, Jalan tol jadi satu arah ke arah merah dari arah Tomang.

Setibanya di Apartemen Kedoya kembali terlihat kemacetan dan banyak juga mobil yang memutar arah. Saya harus meneruskan perjalanan karena lokasi yang saya tuju berada di belakang apartemen yaitu kompleks perumahan kedoya baru. Dengan berjalan kaki, perlahan tapi pasti saya tiba di depan kompleks Kedoya baru. Lalu apa yang saya temui, lautan air di seluruh kompleks, sehingga saya harus menembus dan ber’banjir’ ria. Karena cukup dalamnya air tidak ada kendaraan yang dapat melintas.

Setibanya di lokasi tujuan, langsung saya bergegas merapikan dokumen yang diperlukan. Tetapi sebelumnya saya menyempatkan diri untuk mandi karena begitu gatalnya badan akibat air banjir.

Setelah semua dokumen siap, saya pun berpakaian dan berkostum ala minimalis untuk bersiap kembali menembus banjir.

Sabtu, 3 Februari 2007

Waktu menunjukkan pukul 00.30 WIB saat aku meninggalkan lokasi. Tak enak sekali rasanya karena harus berbanjir ria kembali dalam keadaan badan yang bersih. Terlebih saat itu kembali turun hujan yang sangat deras dan lebat. Perjalanan dirasa semakin berat karena hari sudah malam dan badan sudah terasa lelah, ditambah lagi arus air yang lumayan kencang. “Apa itu ketus ku …. “ Ternyata ada truk yang ‘nekat’ menembus banjir, walau cukup tinggi tetap saja ban truk itu pun sudah tak terlihat karena ketinggian air sudah semakin bertambah. Yang aku kesalkan adalah karena truk itu gelombang air semakin terasa kencang dan bergejolak.

Akhirnya aku dapat tiba di daerah yang tak terkena banjir. Kulihat badan ku sudah basah karena banjir dan hujan deras yang menghujam bumi di tengah malam itu. Tampaknya payung yang ku gunakan sudah tidak berguna, langsung saja kucari kendaraan umum untuk melanjutkan perjalanan kembali ke hotel. ‘Ojek’ itu yang terlihat dan terlintas di kepala ku, karena begitu simple, cepat dan dapat di usahakan untuk segala keadaan.

Langsung saja ku tunggangi ojek itu, dengan nego harga tentunya. Akhirnya kami pun melaju, ‘Awas …. ‘ Teriakku karena jalanan di depan banjir. Langsung saja ojek itu spontan mengurangi lajunya. Tapi tampaknya kecepatan kami cukup tinggi sehingga akhirnya kami menabrak banjir dan mesin motor pun spontan mati karena busi basah terkena cipratan air. Tanpa pikir panjang daku turun dan mendorong motor ke tepian yang lebih tinggi agar mesin motor tidak terendam air. Patut dimaklumi juga karena malam itu gelap akibat listrik yang dipadamkan karena banjir ditambah lagi hujan lebat yang mengurangi jarak pandang.

Segera mungkin ‘tukang ojek’ itu mencari kain kering dan membuka busi motor dengan perlengkapan yang ada. Tidak lama kami pun sudah dapat berjalan kembali untuk mencapai tujuan, Hotel Millenium – Sirih. Dengan melalui jalan belakang slipi jaya, lalu terus langsung melintas kawasan jati baru dan berbelok ke arah thamrind. Tanpa terasa kami sudah tiba di Hotel Millenium pada pukul 01.00 WIB

Badan sudah terasa letih dan basah kuyup karena hujan lebat di tambah dinginnya udara saat itu. Tapi saya harus kembali bergegas kembali ke BEJ karena dokumen yang tadi belum diambil harus segera diambil untuk keperluan pagi harinya.

Berhenti sejenak menghisap sebatang rokok terasa begitu nikmat dengan badan yang basah dan lelah. Sehabis mengeringkan badan dan berganti pakaian di Parkir Basement Hotel Millenium, kami pun melanjutkan kembali perjalanan kami. Karena saya sudah tau keadaan jalan yang banjir, macet, dapat dilewati atau tidak maka kami pun tiba di BEJ pukul 02.00 WIB. Saat itu kami melewati jalan Jati Baru lalu memutar lewat slipi dan langsung lurus sepanjang jalan S. Parman menuju semanggi, Turun ke bawah semanggi dan langsung masuk Kawasan SCBD. Setelah beres dengan dokumen, kami pun bergegas kembali ke hotel.

Untuk jalan pulang kami mengambil jalan lain yang lebih cepat. Melewati jembatan semanggi lalu turun ke Jalan Sudirman lalu langsung terus menuju Thamrind, Sebenarnya di Sudirman terjadi kebanjiran yang mengakibatkan terperangkapnya mobil mulai dari depan Atma Jaya sampai dengan Jembatan Thamrind sebelum Bunderan HI. Tapi untuk arah berlawanan yang kami lewati jalan kosong dan lengang. Dan juga untuk jalur lambat di kawasan bendungan hilir. Kami hanya mengalami rintangan di depan Sarinah yang terjadi genangan yang cukup tinggi. Tetapi sekali lagi karena saya menggunakan kijang maka rintangan itu tak terasa begitu merepotkan.

Setibanya di Hotel kami pun segera istirahat karena sudah lelah dan mengantuk, tentu saja dengan membersihkan badan terlebih dahulu.

Launch of open source stack for mobile phones

Linux Mobile Phone Guy writes "Members of the open source GPE project (GPE Palmtop Environment) today announced a new offspring project to create a fully open source software stack for mobile phones, GPE Phone Edition. GPE Phone Edition is a fully open source project based on developments from the GPE project adding necessary components for mobile phone usage. Based on standards defined by the LiPS Forum a complete application software stack is built. The current implementation is based on code contributed to the LiPS Forum by Orange/France Telecom's research and development lab located in Beijing China in collaboration with GPE project members. The result is now an open sourced software stack which can handle a GSM compliant mobile modem for making voice calls, handling the SIM address book and sending and receiving SMS. Also some additional application exists e.g. for media playback, instant messaging and email. They have some screenshots there and even a downloadable VMware image using which you can try the whole thing in a virtual phone on your PC — if you connect a GSM Modem (like an existing phone) to /dev/GSM-Modem you should probably even be able to use the full phone functionality (access SIM card, send/receive SMS, make a call!)."

Black and White Twins

Meet my twin sister

A double take in black & white

A mixed-race British mom gave birth to twins recently - one of each. No, not a boy and a girl. Two girls - one black, the other white.

The odds of such a birth are about a million to one, experts said.

"It was a shock when I realized that my twins were two different colors," Kylie Hodgson, 19, told London's Daily Mail. "But it doesn't matter to us - they are just our two gorgeous little girls."

Hodgson and her partner, Remi Horder, 17, were both born to mixed-race parents.

Little Kian and Remee share a love of apples and the Teletubbies, their proud mom says.

Fertility experts speculate that a sperm containing all-white genes fused with an egg with all-white genes, and a sperm with all-black genes fused with an all-black gene egg to produce the fraternal twins.

Jose Martinez

(Photo credit: Gary Roberts)

French schools swamped by books challenging evolution

AFP/UVA-HO/File Photo: This undated image received 30 November, 2004 from the University of Virginia shows Charles Darwin....

PARIS (AFP) - Tens of thousands of French schools and universities have received copies of a Turkish book refuting Darwin's theory of evolution and describing it as "the true source of terrorism."

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The education ministry said Friday that it had warned school and university directors that the textbook is not in line with the recognized curriculum and that they should disregard it.

Entitled "The Atlas of Creation," the 770-page book by Turkish author Harun Yahya quotes several passages from the Koran and asserts that "human beings did not evolve (from another species) but were indeed created."

"We believe that there are lots of resources behind this campaign and the mass distribution, but were are not alarmed as the book has not reached the classrooms or documentation centers," said the education ministry.

The book features a photograph of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center with the caption: "Those who perpetuate terror in the world are in fact Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy that values and incites conflict."

The theories of Charles Darwin are "the true source of terrorism," it said.

The books sent by post from Germany and Turkey began arriving in French schools and universities about 10 days ago.

The Figaro newspaper quotes an education official from Lyon as saying that this is not the first time that schools are swamped with controversial material.

The official said that the Church of Scientology had also embarked on a mass distribution of literature to schools a few years ago.

MS Office Zero-Day Under Attack

"Microsoft is warning users to be on the lookout for suspicious Excel files that arrive unexpectedly — even if they come from a co-worker's e-mail address. In an advisory, Microsoft confirmed a new wave of limited "zero-day" attacks was underway, using a code execution flaw in its Microsoft Office desktop productivity suite. Although .xls files are currently being used to launch the spear phishing attacks, Microsoft said users of other Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, etc.) are potentially at risk."

Microsoft late Friday warned users to be on the lookout for Excel files that arrive unexpectedly — even if they come from a co-worker's e-mail address.

In an advisory, Microsoft confirmed a new wave of limited "zero-day" attacks was underway, using a code execution flaw in its Microsoft Office desktop productivity suite. Although .xls files are currently being used to launch the spear phishing attacks, Microsoft said users of other Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, etc.) are potentially at risk.

Confirmed vulnerable: Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Office 2004 v. X for Mac.

The vulnerability cannot be exploited on Office 2007 or on Works 2004, 2005, or 2006.

This is the fourth known zero-day attack against the ever-present Microsoft Office suite since early December 2006. The three previous attacks, all aimed directly at specific targets, used rigged Microsoft Word .doc files.

Anti-virus vendor McAfee has issued an alert explaining the attack characteristics, which require than a specially crafted .xls file is opened:

* Unpack the XOR-encrypted shellcode in memory

* Load KERNEL32.DLL using a hardcoded address specific to Windows XP Service Pack 2. On other versions of Windows, Excel will simply crash.

* Create a new fiile in %Temp% op10.exe using API calls - GetTempPathA, and CreateFileA

* Seeks the opened file handle of the XLS file in memory using API call GetFileSize to match a specific filesize.

* Extract the payload from the XLS file and write it into %Temp% op10.exe

* Execute %Temp% op10.exe

Linux Kernel 2.6.20 Released

"After two months of development, Linux 2.6.20 has been released. This release includes two different virtualization implementations: KVM: full-virtualization capabilities using Intel/AMD virtualization extensions and a paravirtualization implementation usable by different hypervisors. Additionally, 2.6.20 includes PS3 support, a fault injection debugging feature, UDP-lite support, better per-process IO accounting, relative atime, relocatable x86 kernel, some x86 microoptimizations, lockless radix-tree readside, shared pagetables for hugetbl, and many other things. Read the list of changes for more details."

In a widely anticipated move, Linux "headcase" Torvalds today announced
the immediate availability of the most advanced Linux kernel to date,
version 2.6.20.

Before downloading the actual new kernel, most avid kernel hackers have
been involved in a 2-hour pre-kernel-compilation count-down, with some
even spending the preceding week doing typing exercises and reciting PI
to a thousand decimal places.

The half-time entertainment is provided by randomly inserted trivial
syntax errors that nerds are expected to fix at home before completing
the compile, but most people actually seem to mostly enjoy watching the
compile warnings, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, scroll past. 

As ICD head analyst Walter Dickweed put it: "Releasing a new kernel on
Superbowl Sunday means that the important 'pasty white nerd'
constituency finally has something to do while the rest of the country
sits comatose in front of their 65" plasma screens". 

Walter was immediately attacked for his racist and insensitive remarks
by Geeks without Borders representative Marilyn vos Savant, who pointed
out that not all of their members are either pasty nor white.  "Some of
them even shower!" she added, claiming that the constant stereotyping
hurts nerds' standing in society. 

Geeks outside the US were just confused about the whole issue, and were
heard wondering what the big hoopla was all about. Some of the more
culturally aware of them were heard snickering about balls that weren't
even round.

                      Linus

---
Shortlog since 2.6.20-rc7. Fixes, fixes.

There's a full ChangeLog together with the tar-ball and patches, but let 
me just summarize it as: "A lot of stuff. All over. And KVM."

I tried rather hard to make 2.6.20 largely a "stabilization release". 
Unlike a lot of kernels lately, there aren't really any big fundamental 
changes to some core infrastructure area, and while we always have bugs, I 
really am hoping that we fixed many more than we introduced. 

Have fun. And remember: the thousandth decimal is, of course, 9. There 
*will* be a test on this afterwards.

Adrian Bunk (1):
      [NETFILTER]: nf_conntrack_h323: fix compile error with CONFIG_IPV6=m, CONFIG_NF_CONNTRACK_H323=y

Al Viro (12):
      netxen patches
      fix frv headers_check
      mca_nmi_hook() can be called at any point
      ide section fixes
      endianness bug: ntohl() misspelled as >> 24 in fh_verify().
      fork_idle() should be __cpuinit, not __devinit
      __crc_... is intended to be absolute
      efi_set_rtc_mmss() is not __init
      sanitize sections for sparc32 smp
      radio modems sitting on serial port are not for s390
      uml-i386: fix build breakage with CONFIG_HIGHMEM
      fix rtl8150

Alan (3):
      pata_atiixp: propogate cable detection hack from drivers/ide to the new driver
      pata_via: Correct missing comments
      libata: Fix ata_busy_wait() kernel docs

Andrew Morton (2):
      pci: remove warning messages
      revert blockdev direct io back to 2.6.19 version

Auke Kok (1):
      e100: fix napi ifdefs removing needed code

Avi Kivity (1):
      KVM: fix lockup on 32-bit intel hosts with nx disabled in the bios

Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz (1):
      via82cxxx: fix typo ("cx7000" should be corrected to "cx700")

Bob Breuer (1):
      [SPARC32]: Fix over-optimization by GCC near ip_fast_csum.

Brian King (1):
      libata: Initialize nbytes for internal sg commands

David C Somayajulu (1):
      [SCSI] qla4xxx: bug fixes

Evgeniy Dushistov (1):
      MAINTAINERS: ufs entry

Frédéric Riss (1):
      EFI x86: pass firmware call parameters on the stack

Guillaume Chazarain (1):
      procfs: Fix listing of /proc/NOT_A_TGID/task

Haavard Skinnemoen (1):
      Remove avr32@atmel.com from MAINTAINERS

Jean Delvare (1):
      via quirk update

Jeff Garzik (1):
      x86-64: define dma noncoherent API functions

Jens Osterkamp (1):
      spidernet : fix memory leak in spider_net_stop

John Keller (1):
      Altix: more ACPI PRT support

Kai Makisara (1):
      [SCSI] st: A MTIOCTOP/MTWEOF within the early warning will cause the file number to be incorrect

Ken Chen (1):
      aio: fix buggy put_ioctx call in aio_complete - v2

Lars Immisch (1):
      [NETFILTER]: SIP conntrack: fix skipping over user info in SIP headers

Li Yewang (1):
      [IPV6]: fix BUG of ndisc_send_redirect()

Linus Torvalds (3):
      Revert "[PATCH] mm: micro optimise zone_watermark_ok"
      Revert "[PATCH] fix typo in geode_configre()@cyrix.c"
      Linux 2.6.20

Magnus Damm (1):
      kexec: Avoid migration of already disabled irqs (ia64)

Matthew Wilcox (1):
      [SCSI] Fix scsi_add_device() for async scanning

Michael Chan (1):
      [BNX2]: PHY workaround for 5709 A0.

Mike Frysinger (1):
      alpha: fix epoll syscall enumerations

Nagendra Singh Tomar (1):
      [SCSI] sd: udev accessing an uninitialized scsi_disk field results in a crash

Neil Horman (1):
      [IPV6]: Fix up some CONFIG typos

Patrick McHardy (5):
      [NETFILTER]: xt_connbytes: fix division by zero
      [NETFILTER]: SIP conntrack: fix out of bounds memory access
      [NETFILTER]: xt_hashlimit: fix ip6tables dependency
      [NET_SCHED]: act_ipt: fix regression in ipt action
      [NETFILTER]: ctnetlink: fix compile failure with NF_CONNTRACK_MARK=n

Peter Korsgaard (1):
      net/smc911x: match up spin lock/unlock

Randy Dunlap (2):
      [MAINTAINERS]: netfilter@ is subscribers-only
      sysrq: showBlockedTasks is sysrq-W

Tejun Heo (1):
      ahci/pata_jmicron: fix JMicron quirk

Vlad Yasevich (1):
      [SCTP]: Force update of the rto when processing HB-ACK

XML::Simple for Perl Developers

"XML has become pervasive in the computing world and is buried more and more deeply into modern applications and operating systems. It's imperative for the Perl programmer to develop a good understanding of how to use it. In a surprisingly large number of cases, you only need one tool to integrate XML into a Perl application, XML::Simple. This article tells you where to get it, how to use it, and where to go next."

Open Source Advocacy Group Quiet About Launch

"Yet another open source advocacy group is in the offing, but trying to keep the lid on until its official launch at LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit. Robin 'Roblimo' Miller ferrets out a few details of the nascent Open Solutions Alliance on Linux.com: 'Our anonymous interviewee says 'at least 10' companies have signed up, and that they are 'talking to dozens more.' While he refused to name any participants, Linux.com has confirmed that SpikeSource and JasperSoft are both involved.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Fedora Core 7 Test 1 Released

---

Fedora Core 7 Test 1 has started appearing today on the mirrors worldwide, just as I am writing this:

"Just a quick blurb. Fedora 7 Test 1 has been released today. For this particular release, we only did a Desktop spin of the package collection. We are still fine tuning targetted spins of the collection as part of the merger of Core and Extras. We also produced a LiveCD that has the ability to install to your harddrive should you wish."

Fedora Core 7 is promising new features like:

• Rock solid wireless networking support;
• Wireless firmware;
• Pungi will be used for tree building;
• Fast user switching;
• RandR 1.2;
• KVM virtualization support;
• Boot and shutdown speed-up;
• New init system;
• rpm and yum enhancements;
•

libata will be used for PATA support;
• syslog to be replaced with syslog-ng;
• Improved firewire support;
• Real-time kernel;
• Tickless kernel support;
• Fix wakeups across the distribution;
• Encrypted file systems.

The Fedora Core 7 Schedule:

• 23 January 2007 - F7 Test1 development freeze
• 1 February 2007 - F7 Test1 Release
• 20 February 2007 - F7 FEATURE freeze / F7 string freeze / F7 Test2 development freeze
• 27 February 2007 - F7 Test2 release
• 19 March 2007 - F7 translation freeze / F7 Test3 development freeze
• 27 March 2007 - F7 Test 3 Release / Continual freeze. Only critical bugs fixed
• 5 April 2007 - Final devel freeze.
• 26 April 2007 - F7 General Availability

About Fedora Core:

The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.

The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community in order to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule.

You can download Fedora Core 7 Test 1 now from Softpedia.

You can download Fedora Core 6 now from Softpedia.

Vagina, Not so Well Protected by Its Shield

Gels containing microbicides have been praised as the miracle weapon against catching HIV infection, as they could have been used by the women in the third world by themselves, without the man's agreement, to protect themselves against infection during the sexual act.

The gels are applied intravaginally.

Now, trials of a new type of gel developed to help women protect themselves from HIV were stopped on Wednesday after women employing it got infected by HIV at a higher level than women not using it, as investigators discovered.

The experiments were made on 1333 women in South Africa, Benin, Uganda and India.

“The microbicide gel apparently made the women more vulnerable to the virus, not less vulnerable as intended,” said its makers Polydex Pharmaceuticals, based in Toronto, Canada.

The microbicide gel was

branded with the name Ushercell, and is a cotton-based product that had been checked in more than 500 women without any adverse effect about the risk of HIV infection.

A second testing experiment for the same product has also ceased its checks in 1700 women in Nigeria, out of concern for the women's life, even if in this case, the analyses did not point a higher-than-expected virus infection.

Women who got infected during the trials will receive anti HIV medication, as announced by the researchers.

"While the findings are unexpected and disappointing, we will learn scientifically important information from this trial that will inform future HIV prevention research," said Lut Van Damme, who was leading the trial of the Polydex product.

This is the second time when trials with a microbicide anti HIV vaginal gel or cream suffer spectacular failure.

The other failed product is spermicide nonoxynol-9, although it is still unclear why the product did not work and moreover, increased the risk of infection.

There are other three products in advanced trials, the last one being based on a seaweed chemical called carrageenan.

10 Years of Pushing For Linux — and Giving Up

boyko.at.netqos writes "Jim Sampson at Network Performance Daily writes about his attempts over a decade to get Linux working in a business/enterprise environment, but each time, he says, something critical just didn't work, and eventually, he just gave up. The article caps with his attempts to use Ubuntu Edgy Eft — only to find a bug that still prevented him from doing work." Quoting: "For the next ten years, I would go off and on back to this thought: I wanted to support the Open Source community, and to use Linux, but every time, the reality was that Linux just was not ready... Over the last six years, I've tried periodically to get Linux working in the enterprise, thinking, logically, that things must have improved. But every time, something — sometimes something very basic — prevented me from doing what I needed to do in Linux."

Biodata

Sebenarnya posting ini terilhami posting dengan judul sama di blog teman ku Arthur Renaldy . Jadi pengen naruh deh biodata ke salah satu postingan.

Berikut biodata ku dengan detail dan keterangan sesuai dengan blog temanku Arthur Renaldy

Nama : Raden Mas Yohanes Januar Sabbathano Sudharsono Saputra
Nama Panggilan : Ari, Januar, kake, Kambing, Mbing, kaleng, kuleng, last but not least sayang
TTL : Balikpapan, 21 Januari 1984
Zodiac : Aquarius
Hobby :Traveling, adventure, dan tak terlupakan Ngopi di warung kopi pinggir jalan ama rokok plus kacang ampe pagi

Cita-cita : Jadi Pilot (standart anak2)

Makanan fav. : Apa aja sikat
Minuman fav. : Apa aja sedot
Aktor fav. : Jarang nonton TV, sekalinya nonton TV nonton gosip

Warna fav. : biru
Motto : Achtung (Jangan Lupa berdoa)
Status : Complicated

Binun apa lagi yang mau dibilang, sama ajah kayak inspirasi nulisnya. Kata orang sih "Guru kencing berdiri, murid kencing berlari" (ndak nyambung gitu, lebih bertolak belakang) Apa seh gw jadi ngelindur.

Microsoft Tops Corporate-Reputation Survey

"Microsoft beat out Johnson & Johnson for the top spot in the annual Wall Street Journal survey of the reputations of U.S. companies. Bill Gates's personal philanthropy boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft, helping to end J&J's seven-year run at No. 1. From the article: 'Mr. Gates demonstrates how much the reputation of a corporate leader can rub off on his company. Formerly chief executive officer and now chairman of Microsoft, he contributed to a marked improvement in the company's emotional appeal. Jeanie Cummins, a survey respondent and homemaker in Olive Hill, Ky., says Mr. Gates's philanthropy made her a much bigger fan of Microsoft. "He showed he cared more for people than all the money he made building Microsoft from the ground up," she says. "I wish all the other big shots could do something like this." To be sure, some respondents still complain that Microsoft bullies its competitors and unfairly monopolizes the software business. But such criticism is less biting and less pervasive than it was just a few years ago.'"

Google (and Yahoo) Using Email to Profile You!

A family member (who we’ll call Bob) sent an email to my wife on the subject of Health. It was one-link to a nutrition-site product (sunflower oil and other vitamins). My wife uses Gmail for all her email needs. Bob uses Yahoo for his needs.

The email contained a single link with no other information and not even a signature. The one-link email was flanked on its right side with sponsored links from Google. Ok, this is normal.

What was not normal, and was terrifying was that the ads where for Illuminati, deep secret governments, and a whole host of underground conspiracy ads. My wife was puzzled by the ads because they had nothing to do with nutrition. She knows how the ads should work because she has an Adsense account.

Our curiosity of the misinformed ads grew quickly.

For the heck of it we decided to call Bob and ask him if he was into these types of websites? He said, “That’s where I mostly visit. And how would we know this intimate information?”

We explained; Google reads email content with electronic robots and delivers ads based on ‘The Emails’ content. So if your email is about cats, ads should appear on the subject of cats. Google has always claimed it does not track content of users email. It simply provides content-based ads.

This came as a shock to Bob! He said he spends his life investigating threats to the U.S. constitution and expects that to remain ‘private’ to his household.

With that, we all felt a chill down our spine. How is it that emails from Bob now reveal where he surfs to his recipients?

This is no mistake on Google’s part. They are beginning to profile its users through toolbars, email content, collaboration with Yahoo databases and where we visit frequently. Then targeting our associates to see if they too are interested in the same subject matter? Or is that all its for?

I have never been into conspiracy before, but this smells rotten. We have clear evidence that Google and Yahoo somehow track our behavior “Personally!”

Look at the facts:

1) Bob only uses Yahoo for all his needs. This includes email, surfing and purchases.
2) My wife received the email from Bob in her Gmail account.
3) Yahoo and Google are two separate company’s right?
4) Bob has never revealed to my wife his personal Internet life.
5) Ads about where Bob visits frequently appear where content ads should have under Google sponsored section in Gmail email.
6) Bob confirmed that these are the primary sites he visits.
7) Gmail ads should only be focused on email content.

It is becoming ever clearer to me that we are heading towards George Orwell’s 1984. By the way, I can thank Google for those conspiracy ads, which lead me to this book. What a freekin’ irony!

Google is becoming the threat that so many predicted. I guess I am just starting to wake up.

~ BigD of reflexologynation.com

How To Taste Beer

Tasting beers may seem simple to many: buy beer and drink it. However, there are an increasing number of people who understand that craft beers can be just as complex as some wines. Because so many brewers are starting to put more thought and effort into brewing beer, we as beer drinkers should also think more about what we taste when we drink beer.

Just like tasting wine, there are a few steps that one must go through to fully appreciate what one is consuming. There are many aspects to beer that makes it what it is - appearance, aroma, flavor, and body - and a beer enthusiast should be able to identify many traits of a beer within these components.

The following four steps aren’t that difficult to implement and can make your beer drinking experience a million times better, especially if you like to drink craft beers. On the contrary, these steps could quite possibly make you hate your favorite macrobrewery’s best offerings.

Observe
There are a few things to note when looking at a freshly poured beer. It is very important to pay attention to a beer’s color, clarity, and head retention. Knowing these characteristics of a beer can give you a pretty good foreshadowing of what the beer will be like when you actually taste it.

Disturb
This is obviously the easiest step but nonetheless important. By gently swirling the beer you can disturb it just enough to allow its aromas to be amplified for a moment. Before swirling your beer make sure you have your nose ready to do some analyzing.

Inhale
Many people don’t think of beer as aromatic (except once you’ve had a few too many and you begin sweating) but a beer’s smell is actually pretty important. When inhaling pay attention to whether the beer’s aroma is sweet, floral, spicy, or otherwise - these aromas often hint at what types of malts, hops, and yeasts were used and how it was brewed.

Taste
Obviously tasting the beer is the most fun and first impressions usually mean a lot, so do your best to get the most out of this step. It is important to figure out what is flavoring your beer so take notice to whether the beer is sweet, bitter, or balanced - do this by intentionally forcing the beer over your taste buds. Within a beer’s balance one can typically identify many sub-characteristics. Don’t forget to note what type of feel or texture the beer has. Along with a beer’s overall taste, body is probably one of the only things most people seem to care about, for example: America’s obsession with “light” beers. Much like a beer’s aromatic characteristics, the different parts to a beer’s taste can also tell you much about the beer’s ingredients and how the beer was made.

Hopefully these beer tasting methods will help the next time you drink a beer. I know that when I was first told about them around a year and a half ago I started noticing so much more about my favorite beers and especially beers I was trying for the first time. Once you have started using these four steps, you will eventually be able to break down each step even further, identifying more and more small details about the beer you are tasting. Good luck on your next beer tasting adventure - make sure you put your new knowledge to good use! Cheers!

Creatine Helps Muscles Grow Back

---

Creatine is an organic acid, found naturally in the body, where it helps supply energy to muscle cells, being commonly used as a popular nutritional supplement by body-builders and sprinters to improve muscular performance.

Now, creatine was found to help strengthening muscles in patients with muscular dystrophies.

Countless studies led to the same result: in subjects who practice sports, muscle strength was 8.5 % higher among patients using creatine, compared to sportsmen who did not take this supplement, and the gain of lean body mass was an average of 1.4 pounds (0.56 kg) higher. “Studies show that short- and medium-term creatine treatment improves muscle strength in people with muscular dystrophies and is well-tolerated,” said lead reviewer Dr. Rudolf Kley of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.

Creatine

is used by athletes looking for short bursts of intense strength, but it turned more popular after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when sprinters, rowers and cyclists recognized their creatine including regimens. “Although creatine has been widely studied as a performance enhancer, it’s still not clear if the supplement makes a difference,” according to Roger Fielding, Ph.D., of Tufts University, who made recently a review of creatine treatments for neuromuscular diseases.

Patients suffering from muscular dystrophies usually have lower-than-normal creatine amounts, associated with increasing progressive muscle weakness as their condition advances.

As creatine increases muscle performance in healthy people, scientists supposed it could also help in treating diseases involving muscle degeneration.

Cochrane researchers made a meta-analysis of 12 studies realized on 266 people suffering from various types of muscular dystrophy. The volunteers took creatine supplements for three weeks to six months.

Muscular dystrophies usually emerge as the proteins that build the muscles themselves are either lacking or impaired. In metabolic myopathies, the compound important for muscle function is damaged.

Creatine seems to be beneficial for many patients with muscular dystrophies, but were not proved efficient in the case of metabolic myopathies.

But by now the results are not very consistent and more research needs to be done.

That Hot 'Terminator' Chick Would Like Some Sperm, Please!

---

Some may not know who Kristanna is by name, but seeing her face certainly brings up memories of how she totally kicked Arnold Schwarzenegger's ass in 'Terminator 3: Rise of

the Machines', she playing the bad guy. Sure, the part didn't require that much acting skills on her behalf, seeing that most of the time she was chasing Arnie and beating the crap out of him.

She might not have had too many lines, but her 'performance' was more than mind-blowing, especially in that naked scene. In fact, Kristanna's case is just another one of model-turned-actress for the sake of saying that she has something new to dedicate herself to. The perfect example in this sense is none other than the horror/thriller 'Bloodrayne', a movie one would go and see only out of sheer boredom.

Anyway, Kristanna is also the one who outed 'Lost' and 'The Fast and The Furious' star Michelle Rodriguez, in a November interview with 'Advocate' magazine. At the time, the gorgeous model spoke for the first time about romancing Michelle, hinting that what began as a flirt on the movie set soon became a serious relationship.

In a more recent interview, Loken said that she plans to start a family really soon, which means becoming a mom and committing herself to someone she loves, be it a man or a woman. Seeing that she's a bisexual who's dating a lesbian, that means she would have to find the perfect donor. And that she did! 'I would definitely like to have a family, and whether that's with a man or a woman doesn't really matter to me. I've already got my friend who's going to be the donor, so that's taken care of. Just give me a few years and we'll go from there', Kristanna explained.

However, her current life partner may not be aware of her intentions. Various media outlets inform that Michelle was partying in Hollywood these past days... with another woman! Eyewitnesses say that the actress was at a nightclub, where she treated the guests with a pole dance (like a professional, they say), after which she began kissing one of the women from her entourage.

'She took lemon wedges and greased the pole so she could slide better. She didn't get naked, but she was hanging upside down and twirling around. It was wild. She then made out with this woman who she came in with.', the source says, adding that the woman in question was definitely not Kristanna.

Strong Passwords

Usually, when creating an account you will have to provide a user name and a password. I say “usually” as sometimes these are generated automatically and sent to you. Most users choose a regular ID (username), something representative (in the case of automatically generated IDs, it will usually be your email address).

With passwords, things are a bit more complicated as the protection of a sensitive content is one feature that should be available.

When it comes to cracking a password, hackers use two methods: password recovery and “brute force” repetitive. The first one consists in making the system believe that the hacker is an authorized user or administrator. Brute force is actually a software that repetitively processes letter, number and symbol combinations for finding the right elements of your password (it can try hundreds of passwords per minute). Given the adequate dictionary (sometimes the hacker may know a little about your habits and way of thinking) and enough time, any password can be cracked.

So why password protection if it is impossible to keep your data safe by simply applying a countersign? The only element that will discourage hackers from cracking your password is time. A weak password can be learned in just a few minutes (that is something any hacker has) while a very strong

one can take up to days. The stronger the password, the more time will be needed to crack it. After a couple of hours, most criminals give up if the "pot" is not important enough.

A weak password is actually any word or expression. But the key to an excellent countersign is for it to be lengthy and incorporate as many symbols (“@”, “#”, “*” etc.) or special characters, period, comma, hyphen, space bar) and letters (both upper and lower case) as possible. The difficulty resides in the fact that one has to use all of these elements in a password that is easy to remember.

Creating a weak password is easy, as you can choose any word you want. Browsing over the Internet I learned that a six characters password is only OK, which in my opinion means it is fallible. A ten characters pass key is considered to be good by the majority, while a 15 characters long countersign is unanimously considered to be the best (at 14 characters and less Windows passwords are scrambled as hashes and stored in hidden Windows system files, but Windows will not store hashed passwords of 15 or longer characters). Even Microsoft acknowledges that a 15-character password with only random letters and numbers is 33,000 times stronger then an 8 characters pass with elements from the entire keyboard.

Unfortunately, some computers or online systems have a limit in what concerns the length of the countersign and a 15-character password is not supported. However, you can use all sorts of tricks for creating a strong, memorable countersign with less then 15 characters (you have the keyboard and your imagination to use).

First of all, think of a word or multi-word phrase that is meaningful to you. It doesn't matter how lengthy it is, but don't turn it into a paragraph. In my example, I will stat from “softpedia”. This password, despite the fact that it has 9 characters, reached only weak level on the strength scale provided by Microsoft. By making different combinations of characters on my keyboard, I will try to pump it up to strong level.

The first step is combining upper case letters with lower case ones, so the result should look like this: “SoFtPeDia”. This simple trick already pumped it to medium level. Combining and replacing the letters with symbols and special characters will contribute to enforcing your password. Changing “e” with “3”, “a” with “@”, “1” or “i” with “!” or turning “g” into “6”, “s” into “$” and “o” into “0” (zero) can result in creating strong passwords.

By following the above mentioned strategy and replacing the letters with other characters I should now get “$0FtP3D!@”. It looks good and the effects of the changes brought my password to strong a level of security. And to get it to best security level all I have to do is add “eez#1”. This way, I have turned a phrase (“Softpedia is number one”) into a very hard to crack password (“$0FtP3D!@eez#1”). There are 14 characters, but by adding spaces between the words, you can ensure it not to be hashed and deposited in Windows hidden system folders.

Generally, you should avoid creating passwords by using repetitive (1111) or sequential numbers (123456). It has been proven that a blank password (no password at all) is more effective. Just misspelling a word or typing it by replacing the letters with symbols or numbers will not fool a good hacker, but used together will definitely concur to creating a strong countersign.

Contrary to the popular belief that passwords should not be stored on paper, it has been proven that countersigns saved this way benefit from a better protection then if stored in password managers or somewhere on the computer. Of course, writing the password on a piece of paper and not keeping it in a safe place will also result in weak security and all the trouble of making it strong will be useless.

7 Ways to Be Mistaken for a Spammer

"The "This is Spam" button popping up on many service providers' email services can be empowering for a user, but it can also be the kiss of death for a legitimate business that gets canned with a click of that button. Dark Reading has a story on seven common missteps that can lead to a case of mistaken spammmer identity for a legit business trying to send its marketing email, newsletters or other correspondence."

Why Is It Beneficial to Have a Stable Sex Partner?

---

Living in couple means investing your genes in just one variant, and, like a gambling, he/she may be the best, right, not right or the worst.

But there must be an advantage in forming a monogamous pair, besides securing a sex partner, because animals have sex just during the mating season. Otherwise, they wouldn’t exist.

This is a scene not very rare in the African reserves: a herd of lions is devouring a zebra corpse, when suddenly, in the middle of the feast, a female jackal appeared, right under the nose of one lion.

The pissed off lion charged roaring towards her, but the little thief avoided it. At the same moment, another jackal appeared, stole a piece of meat and ran with it. A few hundred meters away, the male jackal shared its prey with its partner, which helped it in this diversion. On the way to their den, an eagle attacked the male jackal, thrusting its claws into its back. Then the female rushed, jumped and hit the eagle with such a power, that the eagle released its claws from the jackal’s fur and rolled over the ground.

Few days later, the male was turning back from a hunt while he found a hyena, three times his size, trying to dig up the den and eat the female.

Only the back of the hyena was visible and the male inflicted to powerful bite to the hyena’s bottom.

The hyena jumped like it would have been

burnt and turned around preparing to attack.

The next moment, the female leaped out of the den and together with its partner managed to chase away the hyena.

It’s clear: a pair achieves more food and survives better than the bachelors. That’s why the jackals spend every morning about 30 minutes grooming each other (photo above), an activity that strengthens the bond between the two.

The “married” jackals were found to live on average 3-4 years more than the solitary ones.

Of course, this is available for other mammalian species forming couples, too.

Amongst the monkeys of the Old World, only the gibbons form stable monogamous pairs (photo center).

After the age of 18, for the “married” gibbons the retirement period starts.

They can no longer produce offspring, losing the parents quality, but they are accepted by the “family” of one of their offspring, as grandparents.

This way they profit from the community protection and when it’s about feeding, they can get some scraps.

The solitary gibbons do not pass the retirement age, as they won’t be able to defend and feed themselves.

Couple life is rather rare amongst mammals, being found amongst some carnivores, monkeys and antelopes (dik-dik). In birds is something much more common.

The families can form colonies, which can be huge in the case of the marine birds (like gulls, albatrosses, petrels, penguins, auks and others), but not necessarily (crows, weavers).

In the case of the gulls nesting on steep rocks in the Northern Atlantic, the advantages of a marriage are huge.

There are many gulls looking for the best spot, but only the stable couples manage to keep their nest: while one is gone searching for food, the other remains guarding.

Lone gulls often lose their sleeping place, and the worst places are those where there is the risk of being hit to the rocks during the storms and die.

Some gulls simply can’t find the right partner.

In this case, the marriage is a continuous quarrel and the partners die at an early age.

Growing offspring would be less costly than family fight.

Researchers found that “married” gulls reach the age of 26, while the bachelors and the quarrelsome barely overpass eight.

The macaws (photo below) not only marry, but they also plan raising offspring.

A pair that lives harmoniously can reach 45 years.

Macaw females lay just 2 eggs, once every five-seven years.

This way, a density of three macaw pairs at five square kilometers is maintained naturally.

They are equally peaceful with their neighbors as they are inside their family.

And their croaking, which can last for hours, is not a fight but simply their way of making love declarations, declarations that last till they die.

Why "Yahoo" Is The #1 Search Term On Google

"Google Trends indicates that over the course of the past year the search term "Yahoo" became more popular than "sex", making it the #1 query on Google. Yahoo apparently faces a similar dilemma with roles reversed: When you search for "Google" on Yahoo, Yahoo thoughtfully displays a second search box as if to tell you, "Hey cutie, you have a search engine right in front of you!" A puzzling phenomenon? An strange aberration?"

A New Cyclic Anti Big-Bang Theory

A team at the University of North Carolina has proposed a new theory that shows the universe can endlessly expand and contract, contradicting the Big Bang theories and responding to a thorny modern physics problem.

The new cyclic model is made of four key parts: expansion, turnaround, contraction and bounce.

During expansion, dark energy, the mysterious force provoking the universe to expand at a speedy rate, expands until all matter fragments into patches so far apart that there's no matter to bridge the gaps and everything from black holes to atoms disintegrates, a phase called turnaround.

At that point, each fragment contracts individually instead of pulling back together in a reversal of the Big Bang, turning into an countless number of independent universes that contract and then start bouncing outward, reinflating in a manner similar

to the Big Bang.

Our universe would be one of these patches. "This cycle happens an infinite number of times, thus eliminating any start or end of time," said Dr. Paul Frampton, professor of physics. There is no Big Bang."

“Cosmologists first offered an oscillating universe model, with no beginning or end, as a Big Bang alternative in the 1930s. The idea was abandoned because the oscillations could not be reconciled with the rules of physics, including the second law of thermodynamics,” Frampton said.

The second law says entropy (a measure of disorder) can't be erased; instead, it grows from one oscillation to the next and the universe increases with each cycle. "The universe would grow like a runaway snowball," Frampton said. "Extrapolating backwards in time, this implies that the oscillations before our present one were shorter and shorter. This leads inevitably to a Big Bang," he said.

As this theory says each "causal patch" turns into a separate universe, then each universe would contract essentially empty of matter and entropy. "The presence of any matter creates insuperable difficulties with contraction," Frampton said. "The idea of coming back empty is the most important ingredient of this new cyclic model."

"I suddenly saw there was a new way of solving this seemingly impossible problem," he said.

"I was sitting with my feet on my desk, half-asleep and puzzled, and I almost fell out of my chair when I realized there was a much, much simpler possibility."

The new theory also changes the model about the dark energy's equation of state, describing its pressure and density, assuming for it always a value below -1, in contrast to a 2002 similar cyclic model which stated an equation value never below -1. The negative value of the equation stops the universe from blowing itself apart irreversibly in a "Big Rip."

This way, the density of dark energy is similar to the density of the universe and the expansion phase ceases just before the Big Rip. “New satellites currently under construction, such as the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, could gather enough information to determine dark energy's equation of state,” Frampton said.

Charge your Mobile Phone with your Bike

 

Now this is one to talk about and it comes in the form of pedal power, think about this you are out and about on your bike and you stop for a little while for a break you then get your phone out and the battery is low you get annoyed and you have to pedal all the way back home because you need to charge your phone up, well not any more you can still stay out and enjoy your ride.



Motorola have just recently designed a docking station for your bicycle which attaches to your bike and by pedalling like you do when your out will then charge you mobile phone up. Now that is cool and that is a gadget.

Would you buy one?

The Road to KDE 4: Kalzium and KmPlot

Since not all of the development for KDE 4 is in base technologies, this week features two of applications from the KDE-Edu team: Kalzium, a feature-filled chemistry reference tool, and KmPlot, a powerful equation graphing and visualization program. Read on for the details.
These educational tools have received a lot of work for KDE 4. In particular, Kalzium and KmPlot developments are happening at an amazing rate.
Kalzium (the German word for Calcium) has been a part of KDE since version 3.1 and is now one of the most useful applications developed by the KDE-Edu team. Initially it was just a program that displayed the periodic table, alongside some useful numbers like atomic weights, boiling points, etc. It was later extended to include a lot of background information on the elements, and more detailed chemistry information (such as emission spectra) which made it a very useful chemistry reference.

In KDE 3.5.5 (which I used for these screenshots, even though 3.5.6 was released last week), Kalzium looks something like this when first loaded:

Click for fullsize.

You can see that the interface is pretty simple, and presents a lot of information. If you click on an element it brings up even more information on its properties.

The main user interface in KDE 4 does not look that different, except for the fact that Qt 4 introduces some appearance changes, and there are some more icons (some that haven't been drawn yet) in the toolbar. Here's a peek at Kalzium in the KDE 4 development series:

Click for fullsize.

So Kalzium is visually quite similar between versions at this point. However, the important thing to note in the KDE 4 screenshot is the tools menu. In KDE 3.5.5, this menu contains only Plot Data and Glossary.

Plot Data shows the elements plotted in a variety of useful ways, such as mass, radius, electronegativity, etc. while the Glossary shows definitions for many of the more common chemical terms. It is apparently missing the above mentioned electronegativity, so evidently there is still room for improvement here. Making improvements to the Glossary would be a great opportunity for a chemistry-inclined person to contribute to Kalzium in KDE 4 without having to be a programmer.

Anyway, back to the new tools. I'll focus on a few of the newly developed tools that will make Kalzium even more useful in KDE 4:

The isotope table will display a list of isotopes and their decay methods - as a geologist for example, it is important for me to know that Potassium-40 usually decays by electron capture.

The new equation solver is also quite useful, as seen in the following screenshot provided by Kalzium lead developer Carsten Niehaus:

You basically just punch in a chemical equation leaving letters in place of the numbers you are looking for, and it spits out a response. In high school chemistry, students are expected to be able to solve these sorts of equations manually, but like most equations, once you solve enough of them, it simply becomes tedious. This equation solver can save a lot of time for complex equations.

And finally, the most visible change to Kalzium is the inclusion of the Kalzium 3D work, which turns the program into a 3D molecule viewer. Initially, it was developed by the Kalzium developers for use in this application only, but some collaboration has since happened and it will now be using libavogadro a library jointly developed by the Kalzium and Avogadro developers.

According to the Kalzium developers work is progressing on porting the 3D modeller to use libavagadro, an effort led by Donald Curtis, providing a more general/powerful framework for rendering/manipulating molecules with Qt and OpenGL library. It is shared between Kalzium and Avogadro (and more). Avogadro is a much more advanced molecular modelling programs, useful for creating the actual molecule files, and doing quantum chemistry. Kalzium 3D will simply act as a viewer for files constructed using these programs.

Kalzium developer Benoît Jacob submits the following screenshot showing the 3D molecule viewer in action using the new Kalzium 3D functionality. This functionality is already SVN as this article goes to press, however work continues with libavogadro integration.

Click for fullsize.

Kalzium will likely ship with a library of common molecules ready to view provided by the BlueObelisk project. Thanks to the OpenBabel library, it should also be able to open molecule files in a huge variety of formats (I counted 62 file formats that it already supports).
On to our next KDE-Edu feature: KmPlot. For a while already, this application has had the ability to plot regular functions, parametric functions, and polar functions, as well as show derivatives (or regular functions) and a few other goodies. It has been useful as an equation visualization tool, but the interface has been awkward, with many little cluttered dialogs to fight with.

Below is KmPlot in KDE 3.5.5 with it's default settings, and three functions plotted, one of each type:

The dialogs used to plot these equations look something like this, except there is one unique dialog for each type of plot:

Here's a quick look of the new KmPlot interface with the same three functions plotted. No more dialogs to mess with, and the plots can be in shapes other than square! Plus Qt 4 gives everything a nice anti-aliased touch.

Click for fullsize.

KmPlot has received a huge amount of work, and should be one of the KDE 4's killer apps for students, engineers, and more. It plots differential equations now, has a new equation editor, and (as seen in the above screenshot) gives tips as to how to correct your equations.

The new equation editor is shown below with a differential equation being edited:

As you can see, it's much easier to enter an equation when you can design the functions in a nice syntax checking editor like this one. There is a lot more work going into KmPlot than I can describe in just this article, so if you are interested in more information, check out its development status page.
KDE-Edu is a growing project, with many great applications being developed for a wide variety of age groups. They will have support for Windows and Mac as well, thanks to the improved QT 4 and KDE 4 libraries, and should become more popular programs as a result. Since there is so much great work happening here, expect some other KDE-Edu applications to show up in future articles.