The first part of my journey did not last long but it gave me plenty of time to fully wake up and by the time the bus finally reached the A2 highway, I was already doing the final test in my TOEFL book. That book, a set of clothes, a bottle of Cola and a pack of parlies were the only things that I was carrying with me in my back pack. I don’t remember ever packing so light for a journey to the other side of the country.

I had a feeling of freedom and excitement. That journey was the first potentially life changing decision that I had made for myself. Reconsidering an eight year old plan, I had that childish enthousiasm of change, change of which I could be entirely responsible of. The idea of studying abroad had occured to me many times but I had never thought of it seriously because of the many obstacles involved. However, a chat with a friend over a beer in my favorite rock venue had made me reconsider. Immediately after getting home, I registered to take the TOEFL test, the first step that needs to be taken in order to apply abroad. That was the last day of registrations. I got a place at a testing center in Craiova and that’s where I was heading that morning.

The bus dropped me off in front of the north train station. I grabbed my back pack, entered the building that remained unchanged for years and headed towards the ticket point trying to remember the number of the train that I was planning to take for the second part of the journey. I bought the tickets and made my way through the many beggers that had been eyeing me ever since I entered the ticket booth hall, striving for a part of my change.

After I got on the train, heavy rain started to pour, covering the dirty window with hundreds of small droplets.Inside the car it was nice and wram. People were trying to squeeze their oversized bags into the minuscule luggage compartments. Back in Germany, these trains were not made to travel 3 hours continuously as they were meerly built for commuters.  However, the Romanian government had brighter ideas and put them to cross the country – because it can. Detached, I watched the passengers as they stuggled with this inconvennience, enjoying the fact that the only bag that I was carying can easily fit under the chair.

As the other passengers were beginning to settle down and take their sits after managing to compress their luggage, a faded horn echoed from outside. I directed my glimpse through the window as the many droplets were now slowly transforming into horizontal lines. The train was catching speed as it was exiting the large station, leaving behind, to its side, segments of broken track, ruins of old monitoring cabins and abandoned platforms covered in vegetation. The station disappeared behind us at a turn taking with it the skyline of Bucharest with its cracked buildings blending in perfectly with the grey sky. The great mountains of trash flanking the main railroad marked the capital’s thick border line.

As I was travelling through the country side, I saw the sad ruins of a  mighty kingdom that has faded long ago and probably won’t rise again anytime soon. Abandoned train stations, piled up houses and segments of broken railroad track thrown carelessly were soaring past my window as they did 1,2,3,4… years ago. In this setting, only the track that I’m on, built over a hundred years ago by The Great King Carol I survived the indifference. I hope it will take me where I need to go.

That means, your contact list is the same whether you log in with your alias or with your account name. You will be able to receive IMs directed to both your main account and your alias. If you have an ID that you don’t like anymore but have a lot of contacts associated with it, you don’t need to abandon it. You can just create an alias for it and pass that as your contact information for future friends.

Now, the procedure….

• Log in to your account at http://pulse.yahoo.com
• Just beneath the top Search button, you should see a navigation bar with a link – “Account Information”. Click on it.
• You will be able to confirm your identity by logging in again. Do that
• Locate the link “Manage Your Yahoo! Aliases” under the “Account Settings” group box and click on it
• You should now see a page called “Manage Your Yahoo! Identities”
• Click the Add an alias link and create your alias

That’s it! You’re done. You will now be able to log in with your alias and your old password and use the Yahoo services just as if you were logged in with your main account.

A few more things to remember:

Once you create an alias, you will be able to select which identity you want to use every time you start a conversation in Yahoo Messenger, before the first line is written.

The identity selected by default is your main account. Be careful with this. If someone from your contact list that has you recorded in his/her list with your main account and has the option “Ignore Anyone Who is not on my Messenger list”, contacting that person as an alias will result in your message not being received.

This is part of a school assignment that I’ve had in Literature class four years ago.

–

It was half past seven in the evening  and the Sun was finally setting, casting a pale yellow light over the old windmill which was standing still, without a single breath of wind to give it a purpose. Its massive wooden structure, blackened by the many years that had gotten behind it dominated the hills and the nearby village which seemed frozen in time. In the distance, an old car was slowly making its way through the many bumps of the country road that was descending from the main National Road 87 towards the dormant settlement.

“God, you can feel every bump in this piece of crap” – said the driver grumpily after what had probably been an entire day of driving.

“Hey, cheer up…” – responded his passenger while trying to hunt for satellites with his  GPS enabled mobile phone, unbothered by the bumpy ride – “We’re the newcomers in the trust, we got here last so we’re only getting this Dacia for now. Live with it.”

“Yeah, either that or they don’t give a damn on our little story here… just a little something to fill in for the 5 o’clock news.” said Jack, the driver, to his cameraman, Michael.

Jack Darrington was a journalist, a reporter who recently graduated a renowned media academy with top grades but whose ideals prevented him to keep a job for more than a few months and kept him moving over from trust to trust. He and his partner Michael had been sent to this remote corner of the country by their TV station to investigate a series of unexplained disappearances among the villagers.

“Turn that thing on. If we’re lucky, it might actually work.” – said Jack, pointing at the radio while trying to steady the wheel after the left tire went over a slightly larger mound.

“Hey, Metallica!” exclaimed Michael after managing to get the radio to sound on the right speaker, the only one still functioning. “They rarely put this on the radio these days…”

“I saw them live back in high school. That was my first real concert, the first article that I’ve ever written.” – said Jack thoughtfully – “Hey, any luck with that?” – he added referring to Michaels GPS phone while the first chords of a lasting ballad, older than the car itself, were beginning to echo.

“Nope… and this thing never let me down until now” he answered.

“Never mind, I think we’re here” Jack said after the windmill appeared in their sight with its static reflection shining in the nearby lake.

No doubt, you can have a small glimpse of someone’s personality by knowing his favourite places for hanging out. Each bar has its own decorations, its own playlist, a stable client base and a certain theme that does not usually change (at least in my city).

The two pubs where I hang out the most are both decorated with paintings, guitars and various objects. Each table is framed by a different set and hides its own story. You just have to see it. So call your best friends, head over to your favourite pub, grab some beer and some smokes and while you’re relaxing and having a good time, take a look around you! What do you see?

Now, where do you sit?

A common method used by computer viruses to protect themselves from being deleted by your  antivirus solution takes advantage of a feature of the Windows operating system. Windows doesn’t allow programs that are opened (even in the background, invisible to you) to be deleted. If you try to delete an executable that is running at the moment, you will get an error like “File in use”. The same thing happens when your antivirus detects an infected file that is already running and tries to delete it.

This method only works with files that make up the virus, not with the files that were infected by it  (it will not work with system files that were once useful and are now infected with their structure altered by the virus). BE VERY CAREFUL WHAT YOU DELETE!

Here’s what I suggest you to do:

1. Do a scan with your antivirus software. Note down the path of the infected files that your antivirus is unable to delete. Do not delete system files! (located in C:\Windows)

2. Download the Ubuntu ISO image from here. Ubuntu is an operating system, like Windows. It is  a Linux distribution.

3. Burn the image on a blank CD using software like Nero.

4. Reboot your computer, and keep the Ubuntu CD inside. Make sure you configured your BIOS to boot from the CD before booting from the HardDisk.

5. When the Ubuntu logo appears, select “Start or Install Ubuntu”. The Ubuntu operating system will start. There’s no need to install it. It will run from the CD

6. When the Ubuntu desktop loads, open the file browser and locate your Windows partitions.

7. Navigate to the locations where your antivirus has detected the malicious files and delete them by hand.

8. Now reboot back into Windows and see if your antivirus detects anything.

I use this method to get rid of the Conficker autorun worm that keeps copying itself onto my external HardDrive at my school (where the responsable IT genius installed DeepFreeze without cleaning the computers first)

There is a solution to this problem and it won’t cost you hundreds.In my long search for a powerful and affordable PHP source code encoder I stumbled upon IonCube which satisfied my requirements.

IonCube converts your script to bytecode and is one of the two leading solutions on the market. Aside from the many features it offers such as the possibility of locking your scripts to certain IP addresses or hosts, IonCube trashes the competition with its small price and flexibiliy.

I used the Online Enconder from the IonCube website which allows you to take advantage of the encoder’s features without even downloading it. You pay as much as you encode. I paid 5$ to encode 10 large PHP files for which I instantly received the bytecode after payment was confirmed.

It goes like this:

• You create a member account on the IonCube website (free)
• You access the online encoder and you upload your files (archives are also supported)
  When you upload your code, you can check “Test encoding” to obtain a free download. Be careful, the free encoded files expire after 8 hours!
• After uploading and encoding is done, when you click Download, you will be redirected to a page asking you to purchase credits. Encoding jobs are paid with “credits”: 5 credits per file costing 0.5$
• After payment is confirmed (your first payment will take longer to confirm, after that, confirmation won’t be needed), your credits are added to your account and you can download your script. It’s easy as that.

Ultimately, if you don’t want to keep uploading/downloading files, you can buy a basic license for 200$, which is still, quite a fair price concerning the features provided.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

18 and life…

The alternative that I found is Pidgin, a free messaging client that can connect to multiple chat networks at the same time.The good news is that a portable version of Pidgin is available and can be downloaded from here. After you download it, run the executable. A setup wizard similar to that of a non-portable application will show up. “Install” the portable app to a folder on your memory stick. The entire messaging application will be copied there and nothing will be written to the registry. There you go! You have a portable chat application on your memory stick. From now on, you will be able to use it from any computer without executing the setup process over again.

Pidgin can connect simultaneously to multiple chat networks (Yahoo/MSN/ICQ). Therefore, it works with “accounts”. The first time you start it, you will be asked to configure your first account (enter your log in information). There you go! A messaging application for Yahoo, MSN and lots of other chat services available anywhere you go.

Google describes the “Chrome OS” as an extension to their already popular browser – Google Chrome, which was introduced in September, 2008. Most of the applications will run on the internet inside the integrated browser. You will use Picassa for managing your images, GTalk for instant messaging and Google Docs for your office needs. Basically, Chrome OS will be a web browser that requires no operating system. You will start your computer and it will boot directly into the Chrome web browser.

Chrome OS is said to bring consistent improvements in security and reliability. The OS will run on two partitions, one of the two being mounted as read-only, where essential system files will be stored, thus reducing the risks of a virus attack. And if that ain’t enough, the boot loader will also check the integrity of the OS before booting up to identify unusual modifications in the code. Chrome is based on a Monolithic Linux Kernel optimized for faster boot times by eliminating hardware checks for devices that are no longer present in many of today’s computers (such as floppy disk drives). The entire user experience will take place inside the browser window.

Chrome OS will be free and it will be integrated into your Google Account. Basically, along with unlimited e-mail storage and countless free services, you will also have access to your free copy of Chrome OS. Does it look like history repeating itself? It looks to me.

A few decades ago, when PC’s did not exist, there were “terminals” – dumb computers with no processing power of their own which used to send their tasks via a network to a server where the required calculations would be performed and the results returned to the terminals. The terminals used the resources of one big server, or of a group of servers to do their jobs. Is it me, or does Google plan to offer/sell something more than just software products in the following years? Will we really need to have the latest processing technology when we will be able to “rent” Google’s processing and memory resources to work in the place of our computer?

The Google Headquarters in Mountain View

According to Google sources, there were two types attacks targeting their network. One attack was internal and consisted in intellectual property being stolen from the company. Most likely, the theft consisted in source code and technology. Some of you might laugh at how sophisticated this attack really was.

Various voices on the Internet, including Wired.com, described how the attackers infiltrated the Google network by sending e-mails with a malicious PDF attachment to the GMail accounts of a few Google employees that had access to the network! The attackers took advantage of a Zero Day Vulnerability in Adobe Reader to install a trojan on the victim’s computer in the form of a DLL. The sad thing is that although this happened in December, Adobe only recently published a patch. By the way, I highly recommend that you upgrade you Adobe Reader application, or use Foxit PDF as a replacement which is more lightweight than the Adobe application.

The internal attack also targeted several GMail accounts of human rights activists. According to Google sources, only two accounts have been breached. However, the attackers only got access to information about the accounts such as date of creation and to the subject names of several e-mails. The content of the e-mails remained undisclosed.

The external attack was not performed explicitly on the Google network but was directed against it and its users. Several GMail users have been targeted and tricked into revealing their login data by means of phishing. The attackers also took advantage of yet another vulnerability in Internet Explorer. Microsoft said that it only affects IE6 but Elinor Mills says IE7 and 8 are also affected. My advice to all Internet Explorer users: switch to Chrome.

According to Google, these attacks targeted over 30 companies, the main objective being source code theft. Among these companies there are notable names such as Yahoo, Adobe or the antivirus producer – Symantec.

As a response to these attacks, the Internet Giant announced that it will stop censoring search results as required by the communist regime and will discuss the issue with the Chinese Government in the context of the recent attacks. The authorities clearly stated that anyone is welcome to trade in the country but within the restrictions of the law. Considering this fact, I am almost certain that negotiations on the matter of displaying uncensored results will be pointless.

If they won’t reach a consensus with the Chinese authorities, Google even considers the possibility of closing their offices in China and cease to operate in the country. Allow me to laugh at that. Currently holding over 360 million Internet users, China represents a highly attractive market for Internet companies and Google works with money, just like any other corporation and China, with its flourishing economy and huge population is one country than can afford to remain in the communist era.