The closest thing to a Full House reunion

Anyone remembers Full House?


More importantly, anyone cares? I kinda do! Though I'm not really star-struck on the actors, way more on the characters. (DJ is such a sweet girl and she's the eldest, like me!) But to some people, that's no difference. (A friend of mine shares his name with a fictional character from a TV show and a fan found him on Skype recently.)

Well, anyway, the cast is kinda trying to reunite (and one of the guys is supposedly trying to make a movie out of it), and they are almost succeeding on twitter. Te following are tweeting together:

• Andrea Barber (Kimmy)
• John Stamos (Uncle Jesse)
• Dave Coulier (Joey)
• Bob Saget (Danny)
• Candace Cameron Bure (DJ)

According to Dave Coulier, Jodie Sweetin (Stephanie) is thinking about tweeting and Lori Loughlin (Becky) will join. He's kinda clueless about the Olsen Twins (Michelle), though, as he's pointing to a fake Mary-Kate account, when Mary-Kate uses (or technically, does not) this one and Ashley is on this one.

All of which leads to a long and interesting discussion on Twitter and authentication. But that's a different topic. Way more fitting to this blog than stalking celebs on-line, I know, but still a different subject.

[Picture source]

[Update] Jodie has joined on the 5th of August and already has over 2000 followers.

The dilmena of updating Windows

Once again, I am confused by Windows. Where's the talking paperclip when you need him to share his wisdom with you?

Updating Windows has always been a tough decision. Once a friend updated Windows and then he could only have three explorer windows opened at the same time. Once a friend updated windows and then he had to recover his data with the help of a company specializing in burned drives. And of course, once you've updated, you'll be constantly nagged to reboot until you reboot.

While none of the above is pleasant, the alternative has just gotten unimaginably worse as a new vulnerability has seen the day:

On Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability without authentication to run arbitrary code.

See the Microsoft Security Bulletin for more details. And update your windows now. Or wait for arbitrary code to be executed on your computer. Or congratulate yourself having chosen a safer operating system.

TV is dead because the web is way too cool

I almost don't watch TV. Sincerely, with all the great stuff the web has to offer nowadays, it's really hard to make time for something as primitive as TV.

First, I'm learing Java. So, both my Firefoxes (one under Windows and one under Ubuntu) have a dozen of tabs with Java documentation opened.

Second, I'm learing Spanish. I only spend about 10 minutes a day on Babbel, but I know that any other language course is close at hand (and I miss my dear Arabic).

I think you can see a pattern emerging here: I love learning. I think one ofn the greatest things to have is a cool skill. I wish I was able to do a cartwheel for example. Well, for skills like that, there's WikiHow.

I'm interested in security, but never had a class about it. My school now has a new program in computer science and there is a security course. Reason for jealousy? Absolutely not! There also is a new site with all the content of all the classes, so I just downloaded and printed some pdfs and here we are - the security knowledge is mine!

Still hungry for knowledge? Check this Metafilter thread for tons and tons of cool educative videos.

Now I'm set for at least a dozen of lifetimes of browsing the web. TV is dead.

Off my wishlist: Amy Studt's "My Paper Made Men"

I finally managed to get Amy Studt's new album "My Paper Made Men" I mentionned a few days ago. Man, was that a journey!

iTunes didn't let me buy because I'm from Poland. HMV (link works in IE only, sorry) didn't validate my card. No Polish mp3 store had the album, as it has only been released in the UK. 7digital was tricky because the album didn't appear on Amy's page, so I went there quite a few times, throught it wasn't avaliable and closed the page before finding it. But I finally did, paid with PayPal, and got wma files. While I was there, I also downloaded four b-sides.

The wma files turned out to be DRM-protected and Winamp wouldn't let me validate them. Windows Media Player did, but didn't let me burn a CD. Well, as it turns out, DRM removal is way easier than coping with DRM. That's the type of security I adore - the one that causes more problems to honest paying users than to pirates. But, there's no point in ranting, the point is that I got the album legally, contributed to its charts positions and most of all, that the music is simply delightful.

This just in: new great master seminar for the CS major!

My third year of computer science studies is ending soon, which means I have to choose one of about 20 master seminars. I was thinking "Logic, Computational Theory and Cryptography", as it has "crypto" in its name and I take all the courses that have "crypto" in their names. But, logic and computational theory... not really my thing, so I was wondering if there was a seminar about security. After all the crypto-classes in math, it would be great to learn something more practical. However, Boyfriend, who picked his CS master seminar two years ago, said there was no such thing.

So, yesterday, I decided to check what security courses my school offered, and I found this:
Course name: Security and Cryptography - interesting...
Academic year: 2008/2009 - very interesting...
Course type: master seminar - whoah!

Imagine this luck! Two years ago, when I had to choose a math master seminar and took interested in number theory (I finished both number theory courses with the best grades), "Number Theory and Cryptography" was created! (And I got in! Students with better grades have priority, so choosing a seminar doesn't mean you'll attend it yet.) And now, again, the seminar of my dreams appears! How amazing is that!

Now my only concern is to get in. Wish me luck!

Bruce Schneier facts

You've all heard the Chuck Norris facts and you're all fed up with them. I recently came across
Bruce Schneier Facts. They're all crypto-related and I've spent hours browsing them.
Here are my favourites:

Bruce Schneier puts the "cry" in "cryptography"

Bruce Schneier uses a different salt for his soup every day.

When Bruce Schneier counts, you can't predict the next number he's going to say.

When Bruce Schneier uses double ROT13 encryption, the ciphertext is totally unbreakable.

Bruce Schneier isn't saying what you think he's saying.

Bruce Schneier mounts chosen-ciphertext attacks without choosing the ciphertext.

Bruce Schneier shaves with Occam's razor.

"Who's this Bruce Schneier anyway?" you might ask. He's a cryptographer and he owns a blog about security. His most famous book is Applied Cryptography, which of course, is on my bookshelf. (Although it's not mine but my friend's, but I'm buying my own as soon as she wishes it back.)

Just a little security reminder

I hope most of you, dear readers, don't need to be reminded to double-check every e-mail that asks you to update your account information, especially from sites like eBay or PayPal. But I got a spoof today and I just wanna make fun of it.
Imagine that, from service@paypal.com:

Activate Your Account!
Update Your Information,
To complete your PayPal account, you must click the link below and enter your password on the following page to confirm your email address.

Plus such useful security tips:

Protect Your Account Info

Make sure you never provide your password to fraudulent websites. To safely and securely access the PayPal website or your account, open a new web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape) and type in the PayPal URL (https://www.paypal.com/us/) to be sure you are on the real PayPal site. PayPal will never ask you to enter your password in an email. For more information on protecting yourself from fraud, please review our Security Tips at https://www.paypal.com/us/securitytips

Whoah. Too bad my e-mail account wasn't the PayPal one. And the links didn't lead to PayPal.com. And once it says to activate your account, and once to update your billing information. But, to wipe my tears, I just got another e-mail from the real PayPal:

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking emails.
The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security team
is working to disable it.

So guys, be careful, we don't wanna end up like this guy from bash:

Ben174: fuckin paypal.. they need new databases or something.. seems like every other day i get an email and have to go update my account information.

[Source]

What geeks do according to xkcd

My bro sent me a link to xkcd yesterday. It's a great comic site and describes geeks really accurately.
First, what does xcfd mean?
1. My boyfriend did it a few days ago, but to the left.
2. I did it with my boyfriend a few days ago (the phone was next to his glasses). I did it with a friend recently... I don't think that's really geek though. Normal people do it too.
3. I'd never do that. That's sick.
4. I did that a lot when I was a kid. I've moved on to bigger and geekier things.
[Source]
Here are some social issues geeks face. Oh, how well I can relate!
[Source, source]
These illustrate the science obsession well. Really true.
Yep, I've caught myself thinking about math in romantic situations. That's why I only date geeks - then we can talk about it together. [Source]
Factoring time, I've never done it. But when you leave your coat at school, you can always hear a "Hey, mine's prime!". I always factor the number I get. [Source]
Geek on Wiki:
That's totally an everyday situation. [Source]
This one is really funny:
I've caught myself fantasising about SQL injection a lot recently. Too bad it's mean and illegal. [Source]

Back to basics: read books people!

I love good motivational stuff. It's amazing how a simple string can make your life better sometimes. So I'm gonna post some good stuff here, I hope the blog doesn't get like a copy-cat of LifeHacker.org.

So, motivational article of the day: The 26 Major Advantages to Reading More Books and Why 3 in 4 People Are Being Shut Out of Success by Brad Isaac.

It's a shame to admit, but I almost don't read any books. I read a lot of magazines and professional blogs, though. I guess I didn't realize what I was missing until I read the article above. It lists vocabulary, discipline and concentration improvement, self-esteem raise, skill building, creativity improvement (wow!), money saving and many more advantages - who on Earth, when offered all those things for free or almost, would refuse??? Well, looks like many people do, starting with me.

Well, the books about hacking I borrowed from my boyfriend last week (after the meeting with the ABW, I realized that my security knowledge was way too theoretical and decided to do something with it) have drastically increased their chances of being opened during the Christmas break, and the poetry books I asked for for my birthday should be reopened soon!

By the way, LifeHacker just posted about an Amazon Discount Finder. I'll check it out and go improve my vocabulary, discipline, concentration, creativity, skills and everything.