Harbin day 1

Transit in Beijing. 

April playing an ice piano along Harbin's famous, Zhong Yang Da Jie. Sun setting along the shopping district. Fabulous Russian architecture well preserved from Harbin's colonial days. 

Harbin Ice Festival.

Another Monster breach

Monster.com has its users' details breached again. Not the first time this has happened. Have you had your account removed yet?

Mac attack!

I've heard of Trojans being included in pirated copies of Windows and M$ Office but Apple software? Can't afford expensive commercial software... opt for trusted open source then.
Security researcher discovers a way to hide malicious activity on systems running Mac OS X.

Format != erase

"!=" represents "not equal to" in programming btw. I apparently failed to educate my friends that the act of formatting a drive does not destroy data previously stored on it. I've conducted a personal experiment where I formatted my own desktop and reinstalled the OS on it. I discovered that files previously stored on the drive could still be recovered using file recovery tools.
What's the proper procedure you ask? You can opt for Dban to wipe your drive before installing your OS. Alternatively... you can format and install your OS then use Eraser to securely wipe all unused space.

Scum

Belkin employee pays people $ to fake reviews on Amazon's website. Disgusting!

Trailblazers

Google does it again! They added a feature that none of their competitors offer. Gmail is still the only webmail that permits you to utilise HTTPS for the full session (from login to checking mails and logging off) but you had to manually type in https://mail.google.com when accessing your mailbox previously. They now make it automatic if you enable "Always use https" in your mailbox settings. How freaking cool is that?

Left anything behind?

Research conducted by a security vendor that hypothesizes how many USB drives were left in the pockets of clothing sent to dry cleaners. The solution? Encryption of course.

Dirtiest restaurants in WA!!!

Published list of filthy restaurants in WA. Some I am familiar with... others I am not. Yikes!!!

Dracula

David James was once nicknamed "Dracula" because of his prior fear of crosses. Geddit? Hahahaha.

Single pass is adequate

Active computer forensic guru conducted independent research and arrives at the conclusion that a single drive wipe makes data impossible to recover.

Have you seen this man?

Being a wanted* man is one matter... but to be published online with this photo? Priceless.

* For luxury watch theft.

Collateral damage

Latest Windows worm claims 8.9 million machines and prevents victims from using "System Restore" to revert to an uninfected restore point. The worm also installs its own HTTP server onto the victims' systems to download more malware. Talk about collateral damage!!!

Wengernomics

Arsene Wenger analyzes the state of the transfer market. He is more than qualified to talk about money because he is armed with a Masters in Economics.
On the topic of Economics, I am starting to feel the heat from the fallout. My pay was cut yesterday and my prata went up by another 20 cents this morning. Is there no reprieve arriving?

Top 25 programming errors

Experts compile a list of 25 common programming errors. The errors are broken down into the following categories:

• Insecure interaction between components
• Risky resource management
• Porous defenses

More needs to be done to educate programmers to avoid these mistakes.

Pidgin fixed?

Blog entry stating that the Pidgin crashes have been fixed with the new release, v2.5.4. It also highlights that disconnections faced by MSN users have been addressed.
Note: If you are performing an upgrade of Pidgin, you do not need to reinstall OTR. New installs would require OTR to be installed after Pidgin.

100

I know that Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a competitive NBA game. It seemed like a rare accomplishment but it has been done at various levels of competitive Basketball. That's pretty impressive. My personal career high in a competitive game is a paltry 9 points. I compiled that total from 1 3-pointer, 2 free throws and 2 jumpers.

Self portrait

Blogger self portrait in "Comic Book" style.