I keep a gratitude journal and update it almost daily. It wouldn’t be hard for me to list out the things I am thankful for. But let’s give it a try, anyways.

I’m thankful for the family I was born into. The closest relatives I have in Houston is my mom’s first cousin, Tita Edith’s, family. Tita Edith’s kids, Anthony, Joanne, and Gino, are the cousins I grew up with and the cousins I will be connected to in the future. They’re pretty awesome human beings. Seeing them this past Thanksgiving was amazing and I’m thankful for them. We don’t see each other a lot, but I’m trying to change that and become more involved.

I’m thankful for the family I chose. I was able to see my great friend Chloe. Her mom and step dad were Mr. and Mrs. Clause for the Uptown Park Lighting Festival. Her husband, Chris, couldn’t go, because he recently had surgery on his collar bone and  going through crowds wouldn’t have been smart. Chloe’s great Uncle George couldn’t go either, because of the crowds, as well. He has a walker and it would have been hard to navigate through the crowd. So Chloe invited me. I hadn’t seen her in awhile, since school has been taking up my life. And it was awesome to see her. She is one of the nursing school friends I am working hard to keep.

At the VIP section in front of Maggianos having appetizers. yum!

The fireworks after the Christmas trees were lit. Absolutely beautiful!!

Afterwards, I spent the night at Jackie’s. Her family was having a late Thanksgiving dinner. Jackie has a sister, Eva, who I love dearly. She is the type of person who has such an open heart. She knows that I am important to Jackie and has welcomed me in their family whole heartedly. Jackie’s mom and dad have made me feel welcome as well. I’m glad I was able to spend time with them, too.

I had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. I had more than enough shares of turkey! And got to spend time with loved ones. The only time I spent alone was when I was driving.

I got my replacement phone today. It didn’t come with a SIM card, which defeated the purpose of getting my phone, but I just bought one at the TMobile store. I was able to get ahold of my loved ones through Google Voice. I had this phone number for my side business as a photographer. But it came in handy because I was able to text and make calls through the internet. If anyone needed to get ahold of me, they could text my Google Voice number and all the texts would go straight to my email. Pretty cool!

My great friend Lizzie’s wedding is tomorrow and I cannot wait to celebrate her and Nelson’s union. I asked many people to keep Lizzie and her baby in their prayers. And with the grace of God, she and her baby girl are doing well and are healthy! If that isn’t something to be thankful for, I don’t know what is.

When I woke up this morning, the first thing I saw was this angel’s face.
And having her in my life is absolutely a great blessing that I thank God for everyday. She has changed me in ways I could not fathom. I hope the start of the holiday season has treated you well.

The latest release of Ubuntu, Karmic Koala has been nothing short of impressive. Aside from its fast booting and optimized performance, it also now works with more hardware by default, namely, the Huawei USB dongles that Zain, Wataniya and Viva provide. It used to be a hassle to search and tweak drivers, but not anymore! Take a look at the screenshots to see how easy it is to get running:

Note: Sometimes the profile won’t provide a DNS address. To fix this, just modify the connection and select your favorite provider, or use OpenDNS.

The SIM card of a mobile phone used by 26/11 terrorists to talk to their Pakistani handlers during the attacks last year has been traced to a Delhi resident whose whereabouts are still not known, a witness informed the trial court here on Thursday.

Deposing before Judge M L Tahaliyani, a former Airtel nodal officer Sunil Tiwari said that on a request made by Mumbai police, he had made inquiries about the SIM card number used in the phone number 09910719124 and found that it was issued in the name of Suresh Prasad, a resident of Masoorpur in New Delhi.

The SIM card was issued on October 5 last year to Prasad who had given a fake address, the witness said in response to a query by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam.

The witness said, on November 27, while the attacks were on, then Additional Police Commissioner Parambir Singh had forwarded a written request to his company to inquire about the SIM card and also to divert all calls from the number to 022-23053162. Accordingly, his request was complied with, the court was told.

Another witness, Govinder Singh Bakshi, who owns “India Communication” shop in Delhi also deposed saying Prasad had purchased the SIM from him and personally collected it.

Bakshi further told the court that Suresh had signed the application form and affixed his photograph besides furnishing electricity bill as residence proof.

Investigation Officer Vilas Wankhede informed the court that his team had visited the Delhi address given by Prasad and found it to be fake.

… contd.

Today I was fingerprinted, had the names of my father and grandfather recorded, required to sign a sheaf of documents, charged Rs. 1100, made to sign a document attesting to my future good behaviour, had my photo taken, and handed over a copy of my passport.

No. I was not arrested. The Nepali government has not looked on Travels in my Drawing Room as seditious. In fact the only reason I was put through this thorough examination was that I had the temerity to ask for a Nepali phone sim-card.

It started so well. I arrived and found no queue and a fully manned counter. I was handed a form to fill in by the guardian of the sim cards: a small, stout Nepali woman, with the look of Atilla the Hun and the attitude of Ghengis Khan. This was where I encountered my first problem. I do speak a fair bit of Nepali, and I have just started to learn the intricacies of writing it. However, I have never tried to manage bureaucracy with it. It wasn’t so much that the entire form was in Nepali script that was difficult, it was that they wanted all the answers in the same style that caused problems. In the end I wrote a vague approximation of my name in Nepali at the top and then put various bits of English in what seemed like the right place. I was hard to judge whether I was right though- although it didn’t seem logical writing out my address twice, this might have just been a bureaucratic idiosyncracy- I am slightly concerned however that my DOB may have been recorded as London and my home city as “John Mirifield Cohen”- ah well, on the plus side it will give the officials something to untangle.

At this point an ink pad was produced. The woman behind the counter took an alarming relish in siezing my thumb, dragging it under the glass screen towards her (nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process), and ramming it onto the indelible purple ink. I now look like I’ve voted. Several times. She repeated this process for both hands before putting my fingers on the form in various boxes. Ironically whilst her counter is now covered in my fingerprints, the form (being made of the equivalent of loo paper) simply wicked up the ink into various round blotches).  According to this official record, my fingers have the appearance and consistency of sausages. Having had her suggestion that I should wipe the ink off my hands on my hair rejected this gallant defender of the Nepali phone network then set to work on my identity.

I handed over ID documents etc which the charming lady took great delight in laughing at. Then she summoned her colleagues. They all had great fun laughing too. With my ego feeling really pumped, my form was returned to me complete with several stamps and signatures. I was then sent to another desk to collect my card. Another Atilla the Hun lookalike gazed at my form, eyed me suspiciously, took my money, eyed it suspiciously, got some change, eyed it suspiciously, produced a sim card with a look the could have curdled butter and applied several more stamps before, OH JOY!, handing me my sim card.

Ah well, as long as I can string out the credit for a while all should be well- I just hope they don’t require a DNA sample to use it…

11/5  a/noon-I noticed upon activation it was required (by apple personnel devotee), Murray shuffled over to encourage salesman (Robby) to perform a boot on newly purchased 3 g s. This was necessary, evidently, that the “ATT Character Set” would initiate in a download enabling (thereafter) to actuate the attachment option with SMS and MMS texting. Same keys involved as taking a still off an i-movie via PRINT-screen; yet, to hold  down on/off + home key down longer until it reboots. It seems like there is no option with the iphone to pop open the back cover and remove the battery and then replace it again like so often is the case with other cell phone models for a hard reboot (re-set); whereas, most do a soft boot by inserting stylus into a small pin hole.

Apple is typically a sealed deal when it comes to open design hardware; in fact, large warning was given at a “10/11-a/noon apple 3 gs class” to be very careful with the pokey tool in removing the SD card or was it the SIM CARD? (actually they prefer we defer to the techs to do this little operation very delicate procedure it was described as) or was it the SIM CARD that ejects? Does apple iphones even use sim cards? Please share and add further would be appreciated. Thank You!

I know it has been more less about half month since the ending of the Nordsec 09 and I was supposed to update about the last two days. However, after the conference (and some days off at the Belgium coast) I had a lot to catch up at work. Anyway, one good new is that the talks which does not correspond to paper presentation had their slides uploaded at the Nordsec Program Webiste.

The second day had some quite more technical (sometimes even more mathemathical) presentations. The ones I was most interested was the one about the usability of petname systems and the one about widget security.

Though due to the presentation on “A Parallelism-Based Approach to Network Anonymization” from Igor Margasinski, I got to know more about network anonymization which is a topic that I must admit not have heard before. It was nice to know that there are some options such as the tor project that tries to completly protect user privacy and enable users to bypass some content filters from some countries, therefore raising the freedom of communication.

However, the people that discussed about TOR said that in practice this anonimity routing, make the traffic flow pretty slow. Still, on the same day, Heiko Roßnagel discussed how the porn industry could in fact sponsor the development of TOR networks, as they correspond to users that would like the service and that are also willing to pay for it. On the other hand, this is a delicate topic as the porn industry can have some complex legality and ethic borders.

In the presentation of Karsten Peder Holth around widget security, the author points several of the security flaws that can be introduced when installing a widget. However, as he says, this is somehow a consequence of the simple development model of widgets and in fact it is this simple development model taht makes widgets so popular.

Audung Jøsang presented the paper his students have written about usability of petnames. He defended the need of making Identity Management more user centric with the usage of petnames and it makes a lot of sense. However, it looked like the Identity Selectors, as the ones part of identity schemas such as Geneva (“new name” of Microsoft Cardspace) and Higgins, already provide the user an alternative for the memorizing problem towards identities.

In the following day, we had another presentation around SIM cards and Identity. This one was given by Do Van Than, and although it also touched the aspects of the possible positioning of operatords towards IdM, it showed a bunch of cases on how this could be done and they have already tested. It is somehow sad to see that we could be already using the SIM as an IdM device with the EAP-SIM protocol and the federation standards (such as the ones from Liberty Alliance, which seem to have changed its name also, but I dont remember the new one), and unfortunatelly due to protective interests from several players in this heterogeneous market, we don’t.

Besides that we had more two SIM related presentations. One, where Heiko Roßnagel discuss the potential of the SIM as a the most suitable tool for delivering real-time information services. And my presentation covering the usage of high-end SIM cards enabling the possibility of sensing and chategorizing user relation. I’ll discuss my presentation a bit better in a next post (which hopefully wont take that long), but if you are interested in check it out the paper here is the springer link for it or you can see a 100% free preview at this googlebooks link. In fact, Ill verify if I can put it here in the blog as well.

It was really nice to present the paper and although I was a bit nervous before, the presentation went really well. I think I kind of have the knack for presentations.

Later (hope not much), I come back for talking a bit more about my paper, my master thesis and maybe also some frustrations and experiences with the N97 =)

This day was meant to be a very nice day at the park with some friends. Turned out 3 chavs steal my phone then deny they have it. It started when a couple weeks before the summer holidays me and five friends went to the park that is for ages 12 and under. At that time, we were the eligible age so we walked in and started messing about and laughing, nobody else was there. We went and sat at the swings gossiping and swinging but my phone kept falling out of my pocket, so I took it out and left it on the floor. Then we decided to go to the climbing frame. I completely forgot about my phone, then 3 female chavs, aged around 14-15 came in, we walked to the other end of the park sitting on some benches. I then remembered my phone.. I knew it was still by the swing, so me and my friends walked over to the swings where they were and looked for the phone. Nothing. We asked them if they had it, they said no. So we went and sat back down and thought “Where else could it be?” Then those girls kept looking at us.. we said “We know you’ve got the phone, can we have it back please?” they shouted in our faces; “No, we aint got no phone, you can check our bags!” Obviously.. we were scared. We backed off. Then they left the park, we knew 99.99% that they had my phone. So we followed them, about 10-15 minutes. They saw us following them then when they got to the corner they started running because they saw my friend get her phone out and call 999. Being younger and more energetic, we ran too. They then stopped outside a house, one of them went inside and the other two stayed out saying “Check our bags! Check our bags!” We were till terrified of them and keeping our distance.

After about five minutes the police finally came. One of them went inside the house while the female officer stayed and talked to us about what happened. The male officer came out and said that they didn’t know anything about a phone and that they didn’t have one. We told him about what happened so he went in with more information, he said he was going to arrest all of them on suspicion of theft then one of them owned up to taking the phone, she got the phone and gave it to me and had to sit in the police car, her friends walked out the house and down the road smirking. My friends looked at them and started muttering, ‘they think they’re hard.’

The police asked me if I wanted to press charges or just leave it, I tried turning my phone on to ask my mum what to do. Asked for a pin number to get into my phone, I opened my phone up at the back and I had no sim card. The man asked her about it and she said that she destroyed it. At the time I was thinking; ‘Great. No phone.’ I decided I wanted to press charges because I’m not paying for a new sim card. She is. So this and that happened and the police were at my house later asking for a statement. It was a long boring day. Then I got my sim and I was happy again because I could use my phone and all the credit on it. I say that because I borrowed my sisters sim temporarily so I could have contact in an emergency.

The girl got in trouble for:

1. Stealing my phone
2. Destroying my sim
3. Lying to the police

I’ve now been banned from that park and now I’m afraid to walk past that house that they walked into. They might recognise me then… Shudder.

Oh come on! I know you can relate!

This was an image that I reblogged some time this week. I just made a Tumblr account last week and as much as I hate spammers, I think  I have become one myself.

I have a total of ten different online accounts–Facebook,  Twitter,  Plurk, Blogger,  YouTube,  Friendster, two Multiply (personal and that of LMS) accounts, WordPress (of course!), and the latest addition yet already “overly used” account **drum rolls** Tumblr.

Don’t ask me about my email address because I have four–two in Gmail, and another two in Ymail. For instant messaging, I also do Skype, Chikka, and Yahoo Messenger, of course.

All these basically have the same features–profile customization, security or privacy settings, networking, photo and video uploading, and the search box. Some are simply better than the rest.

1. Facebook

Facebook

Unlike Friendster, Facebook implements a better privacy feature. Also, it is easier to decide whether to confirm or ignore a contact invite because you can readily see if you have any mutual friend/s. In Friendster, it’s necessary to open first the profile of that person trying to add you as contact.

Others may not like this restricting feature of Facebook but actually, it’s what I like most about this SNS. I think the purpose behind this is that what Facebook wants is that people share an online experience with people that they already knew–whether it’s a close friend or a friend of a friend.

The applications such as the quizzes, trivia, quote finders, and games are equally interesting and fun. Currently, aside from trying to maintain a spot in the Topblogs top 20, I’ve also been trying to increase my rank in Cafe World.

For someone who wants everything colorful, I think what’s lacking in Facebook is that you can’t customize your profile. Not that it’s a bad thing for Facebook because with the variety of applications that they offer, having a uniform layout and setup is an advantage for them.

2. Friendster

Friendster

My Friendster account is 5 years old (and I wouldn’t have known this fact if I hadn’t checked my Friendster profile saying I was a member since July 2004.) This was my first SNS account.

I used to like Friendster because it was where everyone was. We just changed residence then and I lost my SIM card so this was the only means for me to be in touch with my elementary friends.  It’s funny thinking about those times when I would ask people to make me a “testi” and in return, I’ll make one for them too. HAHAHA

Now, all I do with Friendster is to check the upcoming birthdays. For this reason, Friendster is most reliable because everyone I know has a Friendster account, be it active or inactive.

Despite the evident change in people’s taste or interest (which I think is the reason behind the shift or transfer of the audience to other SNS), I don’t think Friendster is dying. I know a lot of pre-teens who are still signing onto their Friendster accounts, actively answering surveys in the Bulletin, leaving testimonials of course, and changing their shoutouts and layouts every now and then. However, Friendster is not thriving either because the new and improved Friendster is actually a make-up of bits of ideas from other SNS like Facebook and Twitter.

3. Plurk

Plurk

Of all my SNS accounts, Plurk was something I joined to due to the bandwagon.  The higher your karma points is, the more flexible and interesting Plurk becomes because new features becomes available for your use. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that trying to achieve Plurk Nirvana was that tedious. What makes Plurk unique is that it makes you curious “what’s new?” everytime you advance to a higher level of karma points. As time progresses, “what’s new?” becomes “what now?”. Once a plurker achieved the highest possible karma points, what can Plurk still offer?

Three things I love most about Plurk are: (a) the emoticons, especially the dancing bananas; (b) the verb change feature (is, likes, thinks, wishes, etc.); and (c) the “mark all as read” option because sometimes, you just can’t read all those plurks and comment on each. What I usually do is I choose the interesting ones and mark all the others as read. HAHA

However, when it’s the same thing over and over again, you can’t help but lose interest. The appeal through aesthetics doesn’t really last, at least for someone like me. Unlike Facebook which always has something new to offer, Plurk before and now is as ease.

While trying to search which came first between Plurk and Twitter, I saw this article that explains the origin of “Plurk” as a term.

• People + Lurk = Plurk
• Play + Work: Play-Work.
• Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, Karma
• Verb potential: “Oh I googled this -> Oh I plurked it”

Source:http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/plurk_unique_or_just_another_t.php

4. Multiply

LMS Multiply

Multiply (personal)

I had my Multiply account back in Freshman years. So yes, that was the only time I started blogging. Aside from its blog feature, I also like it that I can label my contacts based on my relationship with them because it makes choosing or selecting the readers and viewers of my blogs, photos, and videos easier.

I don’t upload much photos then because unlike Friendster where I can select all the photos at once before I click the Upload button, Multiply requires you to click those pictures one at a time. Now, Multiply (just like Friendster) redesigned their system, but then again, it wasn’t all that unique. Still I must say that Multiply TODAY is better. They now have a chat feature. Also, the current set-up is easier to operate. The Multiply Autouploader really uploads automatically. HAHA. It made photo and video uploading effortless.

5. Blogger

Blogger

Unlike other children who hesitates to tell stories to their parents, I was always like reporting what happened to me from the time I left the house until the time I got home. I was just too talkative. My dad told me to maintain a journal when I was in grade school. He didn’t say the reason but probably because he got tired of listening to me. Anyway,  I think that was the time when I lessened the storytelling habit. I will just leave my diary besides my bed and if they’re curious what happened to my day, they’re free to read it.

Of course, things changed when I grew up and matured. My journal is now locked in a very secret place not even a rodent can find. HAHA. I just made a Blogger account last last month, and my blog posts are already thrice the number of my commblogs I posted. This Blogger account serves as my online diary.

Blogger’s features are light; it is easy to use and it’s very simple. My Blogger account used to be open for public to view but when we talked about online reputation, I realized that not all my posts may be self-redeeming in the eyes of other people; and of course, I wouldn’t want my future employers to see that. HAHA

6. Twitter

Twitter

I was first a Plurker before a Twitterer. The way I describe Twitter before was “parang Plurk lang.” However, judging by the number of plurk counts and tweets I’ve made, I’m enjoying Twitter more.

Despite Plurk’s etymology, I must say that people lurking is more of a Twitter feature. Also, Twitter is proven to be more useful as it is being used as a platform for news updates, advertising, marketing and promotion by other companies and sometimes, people such as celebrities and bloggers.

Re-tweet (RT) and hashtags are  Twitter’s unique features. I’ve observed this during the height of Typhoon Ondoy’s attack. With re-tweet, it’s much easier to spread the news without owning it. For hashtags, all I have to do is to type #Ondoy on the search box above trending topics and all tweets regarding Ondoy fill the screen.

#Ondoy search results

Another thing that I like about Twitter is that same as Facebook, I can update my status using the first-person point-of-view. In Plurk, most of the time, it’s the third person because of the use of some qualifiers.

There are also a lot of Twitter applications that allows me to tweet even when I’m not on the Twitter Web page. I’ve used Tweetdeck before. Now, I’m using Twhirl, which is basically like Tweetdeck, only made more organized and not space consuming. The only difference is that it’s specific to Twitter, unlike Tweetdeck which allows you to update even your Facebook status.

There are only two problems I see on Twitter: (a) you only get to build relationship with those whom you follow and follows you in return. For celebrities whom you follow, or for strangers who follow you, it’s a one-way, linear communication; and (b) it;s hard to maintain or follow the conversation because comments are to be made as separate tweets. Retweeting the ‘tweet’ that you would like to comment on is not really an option since there is a 140-characters limit (just like Plurk), unless of course your comments are basically “HAHA” or “LOL” or “Agree!.”

7. Tumblr

Tumblr

Tumblr is the recent addition to my online accounts. If Plurk has “karma points”, Tumblr has “tumblarity.” If Twitter has “retweet,” Tumblr has “reblog.”

Reblog allows you to easily copy content from other Tumblr users, but of course, credit is given to the original user who uploaded or found the content. Unlike all the other online accounts I have, Tumblr does not allow photo or blog comments so a comment or interpretation of a photoblog may be done through reblogging.

Tumblr basically has the same features as a blog. You can make a blog post, upload photos and videos, and place links. Following Tumblr postings is as easy as following a blog in Blogger. Liking a post is just the same as liking an update in Facebook, only with different icons.

What sets Tumblr apart from the others is that it’s somehow concentrated on the artistic side of people. What’s even nicer is that the more I encounter creative Tumblr posts–whether it’s a picture of a cookie or a Photoshopped image–the more inspired  I strive to become creative myself.

—

If you think I haven’t been updating all these accounts, you’re wrong. #7 in my 2009 New Year’s Resolution says that I have to “regularly update all online accounts.” Actually, even if this is not in my resolution,  nothing would have changed. I didn’t even know I had that in my NYR until last week when I sorted out some files in my desktop.

Also, updating each of those online accounts is not very stressful and confusing at all due to some applications that allow you to post status updates in only one account, and it will be automatically posted in some of your other accounts. For this, I’m using Plurk. If I simply want to greet everyone “good morning,” I will just have to post that to my Plurk page and it will be copied to my Facebook and Twitter page. This helps build consistency over ones thoughts online. But of course, Plurk allows its users to toggle this option. I just have to include !TW at the end of my plurk if I don’t want it to appear in my Twitter page; !FB is the code for Facebook.

—

Bottom-line:

So what really is the joy of having 10 online accounts (not that I’m encouraging anyone to be online as much as I do)??? Maybe it’s the limitless possibilities for human interaction.

With all those accounts, I get to reestablish relationships in a whole new environment, and the fact that whatever it is that’s happening online continues offline doesn’t make these relationships virtual (i.e. of course if we will not count the relationship I have with the celebrities I follow in Twitter.) at all.

The ability to publish content, whether it’s a must-know information or just ranting, without restriction is actually just a plus factor for me. The other bonus features of course will be the various applications that make the online experience easier and more fun.

]]> http://tcarlyle.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/first-day-of-nordsec-09/ Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:32:15 +0000 tcarlyle http://tcarlyle.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/first-day-of-nordsec-09/

I’m bloging directly from the Nordsec 09 conference here in Oslo. So far it has passed one day and a half and the programme has been quite interesting. There has been a more strong focus on identity and privacy, and, moreover more “high-level” presentations than the conference last year. As the conference programme has been quite extensive I must assume not having payed full attention to all presentations and specially the ones that didn’t have slides as supporting material. I’ll cover in this post just a bit of my impressions around the first day.

The first day was mainly about identity and privacy.  We started with a great presentation from Drummond Reed from the Information Card Foundation. He end up spending some of time explaining IdM as the concept was not familiar for the whole public, then he talked a bit on the challenges to using the open ID standards by the governments, in special in the USA. He also mentioned the issue of having a branding competition on the websites towards the several OpenID providers. It was pretty interesting to see that the US government is going for an exisiting open IdM standard and also to know that apparently a lot of the companies that seemed to be competing for IdM ownership seem to be cooperating more. At least, as far as I got there are several new players joining the OpenID (although it is not clear if they are just offering authentication tokens or if they are also accepting other OpenID tokens) and the Information card has become a common format shared between Cardspace, Higgins and other selectors.

There was a presentation about Identity Theft from the Ministry of Justice and the Police of Norway. The presentation was mainly on how biometrics could help to prevent Identity Theft. As the usage of biometrics in his speech was not characterized if it was for identification or authentication as I mentioned in a post in the blog, it generated a lot of questions around the dangers of impersonating someone using a copy of the biometric template which could be gathered through a fingerprint left in a glass for example. This generated some discussion around storage of the biometric template and issues around biometrics in unsupervisioned scenario which the speech could have maybe addressed and made itself even more interesting.

Later we had a presentation of Tor-Hjalmar Johannessen from Telenor presenting arguments towards having an e-ID centric model on the SIM with very logical arguments. He bases it in the massive presence of sim cards, its security, the fact that they already represent an excellent working case of IdM (roaming is single-sign-on), new enhacements to the SIM as a hardware and software platform and others. I had already seen other of this presentations on the topic and I’ve read a few of his papers for my Master Thesis. Therefore, it was not something completly new for me, but it already introduced the audience in the topic which will be good for my presentation on Friday =)

Other 2 presentation that specially called my attention were the one about “Privacy risks in Web 2.0″ from Roar Thon from the Norwegian National Security Authority and the one about the future e-voting system in Norway. The first one was a bit more on the need of creating awareness around how much private information we are publishing and distributing. It was interesting to see tha the  Norwegian National Security Authority is interested in that and also on some numbers presented. In fact the presentation opened the point of the lack of attribution of social networks relations which is something Ill discuss in my presentation.

I think I’ve never stopped to think so much about the complexities around e-voting and the presentation from Christian Bull gave a great overview. There are issues on the fact that you are not over a supervisioned environment and this could lead to vote selling or coertion, or on making sure that every vote is counted but it is not possible to trace who voted in who, and there it goes. He presented a few neat features to counter some difficulties of the e-voting and the system sounds very promissing. It was also nice to see that they plan to make it open source so the system security can be assessed and they will submit it to common criteria evaluation (or a similar one, I dont quite remember).

I’m not sure if the presentations are going to be published in the conference website, but in case it will I write it here.

]]> http://izyfc.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/bonjour-paris/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:31:51 +0000 Isabelle http://izyfc.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/bonjour-paris/

It’s been a whirlwind month living in Paris, but I’m still alive!

Settling in was a big cultural shock. I had no problem navigating the city or figuring out the metro system, coming right from Tokyo (Paris is TINY in comparison!), but I now understand how stressful it is to be homeless without any luggage,  in Paris.

To be short, I stepped out of my plane in Charles de Gaulle airport and found out that my two suitcases didn’t get transfered to the connection flight quick enough in Dublin. I provided the hotel address and was told that the luggage would be delivered within three days.

And of course, I soon learned that everything takes three times as long as it should or promised in France.

In addition to the lost luggage, Sorbonne didn’t recognize my registration in the system, and I had a hard time finding housing. It was not a pleasant feeling waking up in the morning not knowing where I would be staying after checking out of the hotel and running around  in fear of the luggage getting shipped back to the US because I was only staying in the hotel for a limited of time.

It seemed like everything I hoped to go smoothly had gone wrong. But I will say, I am glad that everything happened the way it did. The learning experience was priceless. This was exactly what I wanted – being completely out of my comfort zone and NOT have everything taken care for me. I wanted to experience living in a foreign place, not vacationing or being babied by a university study abroad program.

10 tips for y’all out there who want to do the same:

1. Bring a passport photo to a metro station and get the metro monthly pass. Zone 1-2 covers basically all the places you need to go, unless you decide to live in the suburb. The zone 1-2 pass is 56.6 euros and lasts until the end of the month. The metro system in Paris doesn’t count the distance between the stations – each way is 1.6 euros. So if you take the metro at least twice a day, you get your money’s worth. If you are not sure if you would be using the pass regularly, you also have the option to purchase the weekly pass instead.
2. If your luggage is lost, call the airline everyday. [Or, if the internet technician didn't show up as scheduled, go into the store]. Customer service workers in Paris don’t call to update you on the status of, um, any problem. You just have to take the initiative.
3. If your apartment or room does not have internet, like mine, first try to see if you can detect any wifi from the city gardens or parks nearby – the whole city is supposed to have free wifi. If all fail (like my case), check with your neighbors and see if you could share the internet access (and split the cost) with anyone. Warning, some internet companies don’t allow the use of routers and disconnect the internet when two computers access the internet. It seems ridiculous just because routers are so commonly used in the US, but I’m not kidding.
4. If you still have no luck with an internet access, after all the attempts, the common package is 30 euros a month for internet, telephone, and TV. You would need to have a French bank account though. In order to open a bank account, you need to have a proof of residence (an electricity bill will do) and passport. I didn’t personally open a bank account just because my stay is short and many banks require signing contracts for a year, but a friend graciously offered to use her bank account for the internet company with me paying her cash. SFR and Orange may be the only companies that doesn’t require a 12-month contract (at least out of the major companies I have compared). However, Orange doesn’t allow you to use someone else’s bank account. So in my case, SFR was sort of my only choice.
5. Perhaps it’s because I don’t look like a typical “American”, but I don’t know where the myth of French people treating Americans badly came from. Almost everyone I’ve met is nice! Of course there are some rude or cold people, but they exist in every city in the world. If you don’t feel very confident with your French, remember the basic courtesy and at least greet people in French – you’d be surprised with the difference that “Bonjour” makes.
6. Eating out is very expensive, but if you don’t have a kitchen, not to worry!  There are student restaurants scattering around the city. A meal costs 2.9 euros (equivalent to 6 points): entree is 3-4 points, dessert is 1-2 points, and salad is 1 point. You get a full course meal (with big portions). You may find the locations of these student restaurants on the student association webiste: http://www.crous-paris.fr
7. I knew BNP Paribas is affiliated with Bank of America, so withdrawing money there with a BoA debit card doesn’t cost a conversion or a flat transaction fee (just a fee for 1% of the transaction). I also found out that Societe Generale does the same with a WaMu (or Chase) debit card. This comes in handy when you need to withdraw more than the daily limit.
8. There are many libraries throughout the city. Note, “librarie” is NOT the library. Bibliotheque is. Bibliotheque Sainte Genevieve is right in the heart of 5th district (latin quarter), right next to Pantheon. Other public libraries can be found at: www.bibliotheques.paris.fr. The library doesn’t have a time limit on using the computers, which is nice – for me, with the time limit at school, it was the most stressful hour of the day trying to get everything done (checking on flight/train schedules, looking up maps/directions/guides, school, replying to emails, catching up on life, etc). One of the public library, located near the metro station Trocadero, is dedicated to traveling and tourism. There is a whole room filled with all sorts of guidebooks. I carried 7 lonely planet guidebooks home after my first visit.
9. Virgin has the best rate out of all pre-paid SIM cards (SFR, Orange, etc). You also have different choices like more text messages with fewer minutes, or vice versa depending on your mobile phone usage habits. You can buy recharge credits at tabac shops. I originally had a pre-paid SIM card with Mobiho, but I learned that you’d need to send in a copy of your passport for registration (or else the company deactivates your number), and the only way to recharge is using a credit card (which costs money due to the conversion rate).
10. Enjoy Paris! It is a beautiful place with great food, arts, and many more going on. Aside from the Louvre (which students can get a pass for unlimited visits!), I recommend Musee d’Orsay – it has a huge collection from the impressionism (Degas, Monet, van Gogh, etc). Wine is cheaper than water or juice (and 6-7+ euros can get you a bottle of wine that would cost $40+ in the US), and I like Camembert cheese.

What are some crazy stories you have settling down in a new place?

After more then one month without posting, I’m finally writing. I guess the absence was a bit cause I’ve had a few days with abunch of work and during this period I alswo broke my hand, and it is extremelly annoying to type with just one hand. Anyway, now I’m back and hopefully I’ll be updating the blog quite often.

At work I’ve been mainly working in the wlansim project of telenor and I’ll be starting as well to help on writing a proposal to a SIM related EU project. Outside of work, I’ve been discussing with my friend Tommy about the possible creation of a ride sharing application. We are not so satisfied with the existing ones and we are brainstorming a bit what could be done better. As soon as we have a better concept we will start implementing it. It is a side project I’ve been wanting to work since some time as hitch hiking is an environmentally friendly win-win method for traveling and meeting people (two tings that I particulary enjoy). So far the best ones I know are the roadsharing (great user interface) and a german option which I have in fact used in Germany twice and it was fairly easy to find a ride (I guess it is probably one of the ride sharing with the biggest number of register rides in relation to its context – mainly Germany).  Recently, I’ve read also about a mobile ride sharing application in which the Fraunhofer institute is working and which looks quite promising. Unfortunately the website is only in german. Anyway, if you have seen any nice articles about ride sharing or some other interesting applications in the domain, please forward me.

Changing a bit the topic, next week I’m going to the NordSec 2009 Conference in Oslo. I’ll present a paper named:”Advanced SIM capabilities supporting Trust-based applications”. I’ve written it during my Master Thesis last semester (and by the way, I promise that after the conference, I’ll make it availablle here). In fact there seem to be a lot of presentations (and publications) around e-identities and another related to SIM cards in the program.It seems quite promissing and I hope I can manage to make some free time and  find out a bit more about some presentations before the conference. Anyway, if you have specific questions you would like to ask the speakers based on the theme of their presentations, you can forward me and I’ll try to ask them and publish the answers afterwards.

Ngomongin soal HaPe, saya hampir ga pernah denger orang ngomongin HaPe jenis ini. Yang saya tau, ada HaPe Nokia, Blackberry dan teman-temannya. Sampai suatu ketika, perjalanan hidup ini membawa saya kepada Mas, pria beruntung yang mendapatkan kasih dan sayangku. Wkwkwkwkwkk, ampuuunnn Mas!! kekasihmu ini PeDe sekali.. xixixiii..

Ini bermula dari kekhawatiran bahwa setahun kedepan saya ga akan bisa berkomunikasi dengan Mas tercinta, ya benar! tuntutan pekerjaan membuatnya harus berada di daerah pelosok nun-jauh disana. Yang mana ga ada signal HaPe, mau pake telkomsel kek, Indosat Kek! apalagi XL.

Barulah, saya mendengar Mas menyebut HaPe Satelit sebagai satu-satunya alat komunikasi yang mungkin digunakan dari tempat terpencil tersebut, tentunya selain menggunakan pos dan burung merpati. Wkwkwkkwkwkkk..

Jadi ingat percakapan kami sebulan yang lalu,

“Mas, setahun itu ga sebentar loh. Lama banget. Nanti kalo kelamaan ga komunikasi, bisa lupa lagi”

“Ya kan kita bisa surat-suratan setiap minggu”

*** sebentar sambil mikir, hari gini masih jaman ya? surat-suratan? ***

“Apa Mas? surat-suratan? mendingan lupa deh kalo punya pacar disana. wkwkwkwkw”

“oh! jadi gitu ya?” ***sambil pengen jitak kepala saya

*** ya habis, ga ada yang lebih jadul apa ya?? ***

“Mas, masa HaPe Blackberry tapi pacaran pake surat-suratan?? apa kata dunia persilatan??”

*** Mau nangis ***

“Ya ada sih dek, HaPe satelit. Tapi mahal”

*** dengan gaya sok pengertian dan perhatian *** saya akhirnya memberanikan diri berkata:

“Mas, kalau ada rezeki, mau ga pake HP satelitnya?”

“Ah, ga usah dek” ***dalam hati sih mupeng***

Nah, dari situlah akhirnya saya mendatangi mbah Google untuk mencari tau, apa sih tuh HaPe satelit. Kaya apa sih bentuknya, dan ga lupa berapa sih harganya. Beli dimana? trus dan lain sebagainya.

Akhirnya setelah membuka berbagai forum jual beli, akhirnya saya mendapatkan mas-mas yang menjual hape satelit tersebut. Harga dibandrol 7 juta. OH MAI GOT!! duit darimaneeeee mpokkkk?? huft, dengan berbekal nekad dan ga tau malu, akhirnya saya menelfon mas-mas tersebut untuk menanyakan harga HaPe Satelit Penyelamat Dunia Percintaan. Dan, semoga ga salah denger, dan saya ternyata ga salah dengar bahwa dia menawarkan barangnya dengan harga HANYA/ONLY/CUMA 2,5 juta rupiah. Syukur Alhamdulillah. **sekedar informasi, harga HaPe tersebut di dealer resminya dibandrol pada harga 12 juta** mau beli pake apa? rambut?? wkwkkwkww

alhamdulillah kini, HaPe Penyelamat Dunia Percintaan sudah sampai dengan selamat di tangan Mas tercinta, dan sayangnya itu hape baru bisa Mas pakai untuk sms-an aja. Sampe sekarang Mas belum bisa menggunakannya untuk menelfon.

*** harga simcardnya juga bikin bengong.. 1,5 juta aja!!! memang bukan simcard biasa ***

Mas sayang, Kamu kok Gaptek Sekali

Ada fakta yang cukup menarik bahwa masyarakat Indonesia biasanya membelanjakan uang dalam jumlah cukup banyak selama bulan Ramadhan dan untuk merayakan Hari Lebaran.

Barang-barang yang dibeli termasuk handphone, SIM Card baru, dan berbagai jenis peralatan entertainment lainnya seperti Ipod, Iphone, dll.

Namun ada juga kecenderungan dimana setelah Lebaran, barang-barang tersebut bisa dijual atau digadaikan.

Apa sebenarnya yang mendorong masyarakat untuk melakukan hal tersebut ? Dan berapa besaran pergerakan barang sebelum dan setelah lebaran ?

SIM CARD anda kami blokir krn disinyalir srg dipakai u/ mengirim SMS porno. Pencet TITIT anda 3x u/ mengaktifkan kembali. Ingat! titit ANDA! Jgn titit org lain!

Respect and worth adheres always for the traditional standards and among them one of the device which is inevitable contemporary days is Mobile phone and in this device a new innovative and welcome able process has been worked out.., read more>>>

By Michael MacLeod

A DOZY drug dealer was caught throwing heroin and mobile phones over a prison wall for inmates – after lobbing a fresh orange over too “as an afterthought.”

Unfortunately for David Hyland, 25, the fruit almost hit a prison guard who in turn alerted police who raced to the scene.

Hyland tried to escape on a bicycle, only to find himself cornered in a nearby street.

In a bid to get away, he peddled the bike directly at a female police officer before leaping off and launching it at her.

And although the bike slammed into her body, desperate Hyland was captured by other officers.

Hyland was jailed for two years today (Tuesday) at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for supplying the class-A drug and assaulting the WPC.

Court heard how he had emptied the fruit’s mesh bag and loaded it with three phones and four wraps of diamorphine – which were worth £70 at street value, but double the amount inside prison.

He claimed he was trying to help his brother who was being held inside Edinburgh Prison to get his fix because he was “severely addicted” to the drug.

And while Hyland said the phones were also for his brother, Sheriff James Scott pointed out: “You don’t need three phones to phone your mammy.”

Fiscal Depute John Kirk told the court: “Shortly before 8pm on June 24 prison staff became aware that he had been seen throwing packages into the secure ground of HMP Edinburgh.

“The packages were seen by prison staff and while they were doing that an orange came over the wall and landed close to one of the officers.

“CCTV cameras were trained on the incident and Hyland and another man were seen on the outside of the prison.

“I am told that oranges are often used for introducing SIM cards but not in this occasion.

“It was a particularly stupid act on the part of Hyland, given he has previous convictions.”

His defence lawyer Vincent Belmonte said: “It was an act of charity on his part, but an act of criminality as far as the wider public is concerned.

“The orange was I think an afterthought having wrapped in the mesh used to throw the package.

“His brother was in prison and severely addicted to heroin.

“As a result he made contact with Mr Hyland saying he was suffering very bad withdrawal.

“It had been hoped these packages could help him to contact relatives. Had it not been a close relative, he wouldn’t have done it at all.”

His sentence was back-dated to his arrest in June.

最近剛去電信公司辦理 2G 轉換 3G ，所以拿到一張新的 SIM 卡。

然而舊 SIM 卡裡面還有一些資料是需要丟到新卡裡面的，像是儲存在 SIM 卡裡面的通訊錄，以及簡訊。雖然這年頭很多人都把通訊錄放在手機的記憶體裡面，鮮少有人還存在 SIM 卡中的。

在做這項操作之前，你必須要擁有一台讀卡機，可以參考我之前的文章。

如果你的手機可以從 SIM 卡把通訊錄和簡訊移動到手機，那可以考慮直接用手機移轉。

—

首先，你要找到讀卡機的 SIM 卡電話簿編輯工具。我使用的 EZ100PU 官方提供程式下載，但我不清楚是否能應用在別的機種。

載完之後，把 SIM 卡透過轉卡插到讀卡機裡面：

接著把電話簿編輯工具打開來。按一下「讀取」

會問你 SIM 卡的密碼，就輸入吧：

接著會把你的電話簿讀進來，問你要不要丟到編輯區（不會刪掉 SIM 卡裡面原有的），按一下「是」

然後切換到「簡訊」分頁，一樣按「讀取」，然後也要輸入密碼。

這樣會把儲存在 SIM 卡裡面的簡訊讀進來。

這時候有一件重要的事要做：

按一下左上角的「關閉」，然後把 SIM 卡從讀卡機抽出來

接下來，插入新的 SIM 卡。如果你的卡還沒從電信公司給你的卡片上拔下來，應該可以直接插入讀卡機

然後可以做一件不一定要做的事，就是把電話簿做重新整理。你可以透過程式的功能進行新增、編輯或刪除，甚至移動它的上下位置。（雖然有些手機會直接用姓名排序）

我只要保留其中 7 個號碼，就刪掉其他的了：

整理完成再按左上角的「啟動」

接著當然是寫入新卡囉。

按一下「寫入卡片」，會要求你輸入新的 SIM 卡的密碼。

這個時候，會跳出一個訊息告訴你，卡片裡面的通訊錄會完全被蓋掉（程式以為還是原本那張卡）。按一下「確定」

切換到簡訊的頁面，一樣按一下「寫入卡片」，輸入密碼，按下「確定」就行了。