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.

Hmm… there’s nobody on YM anymore. I’m guessing not all my pears have the latest magic stick that gives one the power of mobile internet from RDS with only 3 EURO per month.

A few months ago I was going over my picture archive from the 2008 edition of InfoEducatie. I found one picture that captured me with its imperfection and mystery and I think it fills the current darkness that took over this small urban teritory.

There you go

It wasn’t taken by me. I don’t remember who took it. It’s a girl playing with a lit up branch at the camp fire last year. She calls herself “Ana from everywhere”, she’s an excellent guitarist and the proud owner of a beautiful voice, the voice of Hotel California. She’s a mistery, a an independent soul living through music and photography, living free unlike so many of us today.

Power back on

Years and years of hard communism have turned Romania into what it is today. The key words of the regime were fear, division, betrayal and lie which changed the mentality of many Romanians. Now the dictator’s gone. The electricity is constantly flowing into our homes, there are supplies in the stores and we even have warm water now and then, but it still seems as cold as in the stories that I hear about the old regime and the good music, which no longer enjoys the priviledge of being forbidden is being replaced by products of pure stupidity.

After the communism fell, some former communist politicians made their way into modern “democracy” what we’re presumably having now. Today I voted for a change. I voted a liberal president, a president who, despite being part of a party that has lost its former strength has managed to touch the hearts of many Romanians that are tired of the old ways. I voted a person that did not bribe anyone with free meals, money or other presents to assure his seat in the presidential palace, a president whose campaign banners were constantly being taken down off my building to make room for other, more important candidates.

Unfortunately, the communist way is still deeply rooted into the minds of many Romanians, particularly old people. For many communists, a vote is worth roughly 12EURO. They “sell” their right to make a choice so that others will make the “right” choice for them. People are uncaring and will vote for anyone who will provide a good price, a good present. This does not have to be in the form of bribe. These are the same people that live off social aids and expect the state to give them what they need, instead of working for the right of getting it themselves. I am not good at politics but I am pretty sure that’s not the way to get out of a severe economic crysis. No, we must work, we must encourage competition. This is capitalism.

I voted for the first time and I voted with hope and pleasure. I voted for Crin Antonescu, who, according to the latest, pre-election polls, was second in the race for the president with a high chance of entering the second round. Right after I got out of the voting center, with hope in my soul, I encountered a large group of old people who were complimenting themseleves on the street for making the right decision, for voting with the social democrats and that’s when I realized that the majority of the people who vote, are old people.

A few hours ago, the estimated results came in. As expected, we are going to be “communists” for 5 more years.We will be run by a bunch of people who will, once again, take advantage of the poverty in which many old people live, people who are attracted by promises of higher social aids.

There were frauds in the voting process, some insanely obvious. Many were reported, announced on TV, but not much can be done now. I have lost all hope that this country will reach its former glory in the near future. Communism, indeed, leaves deep prints.

In this competition, students from all over the country showcase their own personal projects which consist of software applications or web pages that they developed at home over the last year. I participated with Xpression News 3, the latest version of my news publishing script that was not yet officially launched.

This is the third time I participate at InfoEducatie. I also participated at the 2007 and 2008 editions but this edition was the most important for me.

I had my software evaluated by top professionists (doctors, professors, Google engineers, Microsoft representatives)

I had the chance to discuss everything IT related with lots of smart and enthusiastic people. I learnt a lot of things that will help me develop better products and I also made new friends that know how to have fun (yes, programmers).

I learnt how important it is to know how to sell your ideas.

I learnt how an AntiVirus works from a kid that’s 3 years younger than me.

I found out how some members of the jury got to be successful computer engineers at companies such as Google or Microsoft. I realized that if I’ll stay in Romania PUB is the university that I must go to.

I learnt a new song on guitar: “Falling Slowly” (Thanks to the Sanctus3D dude)

I learnt that the real poets are the ones that travel around the country or even around the world, with a guitar, a digital camera and a cheap car and not the ones that write childish poems about things that they never experienced (for those who know).

I remember the weak sound the guitar playing Hotel California, echoing in the dark, on the hills… she got the Mercedes Benz… such a lovely face bathing in the rays of the full moon, such a beautiful voice. I remember laying there just listening to her, watching her faint red light held between the guitar strings and the smoke that blew in the cold night.

Overall, this was an amazing experience, both professional and social. Also, it was the perfect way to unplug from the stress that surrounds me at home. I came in 7nth.

And so we went on a 11 hour bus journey from Constanta (Romania) to Istanbul (Turkey).
Of course, the actual journey was quite hard to take. We left my hometown at about 2pm and headed for the southern border with Bulgaria. Outside it was extremely hot (around 38 degrees Celsius) and the AC was barely noticeable. The good thing is that we had no traffic jams until the border.

At about 5pm we left Romania through the checkpoint “Vama Veche”. The first 20-30KM in Bulgaria were made on a completely empty road with at least as many bumps and holes as the Romanian road. For 30 minutes or so we didn’t encounter a single other car. It looked to me like the country was deserted. Also, 30KM inside Bulgaria, Romanian radio channels could still be received. One thing that I did like when I entered Bulgaria was the field of Wind Turbines. Dozens of them producing clean green energy. I like that. In my entire country I saw only ONE wind turbine. Quite sad…

After an hour in Bulgaria the road started to get a little more circulated. We passed through a region known as Southern Dobrogea or The Quadrilater which, for a brief period, was part of Romania. I enjoyed the sights of the mountains that were along the Black Sea. Varna looks like a nice city as seen from the mountains but when we descended into it, it had a shade of grey to it that reminded me of how Constanta used to look right after the fall of communism.

We continued our road through Bulgaria following the shore of the Black Sea towards the south, towards the Turkish border. At 8pm we stopped at a Bulgarian gas station. This was the ONLY stop we had in 11 hours! Not a good thing if you need to use the restroom more than once a day. At the place where we stopped, a few hundred kilometers into Bulgaria, we paid in lei (the currency of Romania) and the staff spoke Romanian which is no way an international language. I was impressed.

After that, we departed again. A mountainous road full of tight turns followed. The driver we had was a mad man or stupid so to speak. With one hand on a bottle of soda, one on a juicy tomato dripping on the floor and an elbow on the wheel, he ran through that area at 110KM/hour. About 4hours out of 11 were spent driving on the left side of the road.

At 11pm we reached the border with Turkey, somewhere in the heart of the mountains. Because we were exiting the European Union, I was expecting a more severe checkup at the checkpoint. We spent about 30 minutes in there. I got my visa and finally, we were aligned in two separate lines with our luggage in front of us so that the customs officers can check the contents. What a joke that was. They made us go to all that hassle but actually, no real control was made. Just some guy was going from person to person and briefly looking at the contents of the bags (that were opened) and at bags themselves (if they were closed):

“What do you have there?” – “Notebook computer!” – “Oh, ok”

At about 2am the next day we reached Istanbul. From here I will continue in a future article.

Disclaimer:  Apply these settings at your own risk! I strongly suggest backing up your apache and ispcp configuration files before following the directions stated in this article.

There are several causes for this error. In most cases, this happens when your Apache web server tries to serve certain PHP scripts and fails because of a malfunction of the components required to execute the PHP scripts. When you install ispCP, it automatically configures your Apache web server to run the PHP interpreter via FCGID or FastCGI (it is recommanded that you leave it run via FCGID). When a request for PHP script is received, Apache links itself to a FCGID process. If no such processes are running, it creates one and links to it. After that, it commands FCGID to run PHP and execute the web script. So basically, the scheme of things is this:

User Request for PHP script -> Apache ->FCGID -> PHP: script.php.

It is important to know that, once created, a FCGID process will not terminate after it serves the first script. It remains started and will handle future requests from Apache, even multiple requests at the same time. It will eventually terminate after a number of served requests or after a defined time. Also, multilple FCGID processes can be started, each serving multiple requests. These numbers can be configured.

Cause of the error

One cause for this error is the improper configuration of FCGID which exists or fails before PHP finished parsing the requested web script. The Apache web server then returns the error 500, also known as Internal Server Error.

There is generally a 40 second limit for which an FCGID process will execute a particular PHP script. After that time passes, even if PHP has not finished its job, the process will terminate causing the error in Apache. This happens when PHP tries to parse a web script that takes longer to execute. No matter what execution limit you set in php.ini, if it’s larger then 40 seconds, it will be ignored.

My approach to this problem

I will explain how to fix this issue for websites that are already added in your ispCP panel. In the end, I will explain how to apply to correct settings to future websites that you will add.

First, you can find FCGID related settings in multiple configuration files but not all settings are applyed. PHP generally does its process management internally and ignores your FCGID settings. It does that badly. With the default configuration, you may experience some other problems such as too many FCGID processes that forget to “die” and sapp your memory. You need to disable PHP’s internal process management.

Step 1 – disable PHP’s FCGI process management

Go to /var/www/fcgi/yourdomain.com/

Edit the file php5-fcgi-starter and comment (prefix with #) the setting that have _FCGI_ in their names.

Note that all settings are individual for each domain. All configurations that are treated in this article are local. To apply these settings to all your future web sites you will have to edit ispCP’s template files that are used to generate the configuration files for every domain.

Step 2 – Global FCGI settings from Apache

All Apache related settings are ussually found at /etc/apache2

/etc/apache2/mods-enabled contains links to the configuration files of the modules that will be loaded by Apache. All the configuration files linked from this directory will be parsed but that doesn’t mean that all settings will be applyed. Like I said, the settings are individual for each VirtualHost (for each domain that you add) .

Edit /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/fcgid_ispcp.conf and set higher timeouts. Here is a page that explains these settings.

Configure this file according to your needs. Here’s how my file looks like:

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>

AddHandler fcgid-script .php .php5

SocketPath /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/sock

IPCConnectTimeout 900

IdleTimeout 600

IdleScanInterval 120

ProcessLifeTime 900

MaxProcessCount 200

DefaultMinClassProcessCount 1

DefaultMaxClassProcessCount 10

IPCCommTimeout 900

BusyTimeout 300

BusyScanInterval 320

ErrorScanInterval 3

MaxRequestsPerProcess 500

ZombieScanInterval 3

</IfModule>

Now, the problem: These settings will be parsed but will not apply to your web sites (yourdomain.com) because these are defined as VirtualHost’s and global settings are ignored in these directives.

Step 3 – Force Apache to apply the above settings

The file /etc/apache2/sites-available/ispcp.conf contains all the VirtualHosts (domains) defined by ispCP. To apply the global FCGID settings to yourdomain.com, you must edit this file.

Open it and search

# httpd [yourdomain.com] dmn entry BEGIN

This is where the VirtualHost directive for yourdomain.com begins. Within this VirtualHost, search

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>