Be Simple

How to Clean Your Apps Permissions Easily

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 06:57:24 +0000

Many of us might have authorized permissions for various free apps to access our private information in our online accounts, such as in Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Yahoo, LinkedIn, DropBox, Instagram, Flickr, etc. As matter as fact, it has become common that not all those apps were useful. However, we just left them there, keep being authorized to get our private data as much as they want

Wanna recheck and clean those permission? Try visiting mypermissions.org. They have provided useful links for you.

“My Resolution”

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:03:59 +0000

“My resolution will always be resolving the network layer addresses into link layer addresses, because it is a critical function in multiple-access networks.

I will provide the means for the asking host by forcing it to ask its neighbors who has the certain network address, then soon it will receive the reply. Thanks to me”,

says the ARP.

Blogsome is Shutting Down

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:13:41 +0000

A sudden notification came, a little shocking, but reasonable:

Hello Fariz,

We regret to inform you that Blogsome is going to be closing down permanently. We’ve enjoyed hosting your blogs, but all good things must come to an end. After the 7th December the admin interface of your blog may no longer be accessible and the blog content may be removed.

If you would like to backup your content you can do ……………

……………

We are sorry about the inconvenience and wish you good luck in your future blogging endevours.

Cheers,
The Blogsome team.

It was obvious that Blogsome hasn’t have and significant update in years. Without any improvements or innovations, you won’t be able to be the real contender in the rivalry.

Now I’ve migrated to WordPress. But thanks anyway, Blogsome. You have given an unforgettable valuable experience of my first days of blogging

Bismillaah

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:57:28 +0000

Bismillaah..

Always begin doing everything in God’s name, to get blessed and maximized benefit of your efforts..

This is the first post of this blog –officially. I just moved to WordPress few minutes ago. I migrated here because of two reasons:

My Former Blog‘s provider is shutting down
I have used WordPress before, and I think it’s simply easier to use and has better layout

Let’s hope this would bring better things in the future.

How to Download Facebook Video from Google Chrome

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 06:31:02 +0000

Sometimes you may want to keep the videos shared in some friend’s Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t provide any simple button or hyperlink to download its videos. There are some freewares or browser add-ons/extensions offering simple ways to download videos from Facebook, but I’m not discussing about them as you can easily Google it

For you who wants to download Facebook Videos in a “geeky way“, here you go . Basically you must know that every single online shared video you watch (in YouTube, Facebook, etc.) has actually been downloaded first by your browser (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc.) to its cache. So if you want to keep the video to be able to watch it later without going online, you simply have to copy or move it from the cache directory.

Here are the steps, in details, using Google Chrome browser in Microsoft Windows 7 operating system (OS):

Open the video page.
Click the “Play” button and let the video stream until finished. You may click the “Pause” button if you don’t want to watch the video at the moment. The browser will still download it to its cache.
Right after the video playback finishes, open this location using Windows Explorer or any other file explorer software:
C:\Users\[YourUsernameHere]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache\

* NOTE: [YourUsernameHere] should be replaced by the user name you use to log on to your Windows OS.
In “details view“, sort the files by their “last modified date“, to place the recent files on top of any older files.
Open your video player (Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, VLC Media Player, etc).
* NOTE: The video player has to have appropriate video codec installed, to be able to play MP4 videos.
Test any “suspected” latest cache file (usually named like this: “f_0013b7″), by drag-and-dropping it to the video player.
If the video player can play the cache file smoothly, you may close the player, and then Copy/move the cache file to any desirable location, and rename it with any *.mp4 extension (e.g. My_Downloaded_Video.mp4).
Now you can play the video using your default player, no Internet connection needed!

Book: Strategic Cyber Security

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:44:21 +0000

Knowing from a mailing list I’m following, this book’s content looks good. Here’s what the CCDCOE said about it:

The book argues that computer security has evolved from a technical discipline to a strategic
concept. The world’s growing dependence on a powerful but vulnerable Internet – combined
with the disruptive capabilities of cyber attackers – now threatens national and international
security.

Strategic challenges require strategic solutions. The author examines four nation-state approaches to cyber attack mitigation:
• Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
• Sun Tzu’s Art of War
• Cyber attack deterrence
• Cyber arms control

The four threat mitigation strategies fall into several categories. IPv6 is a technical solution.
Art of War is military. The third and fourth strategies are hybrid: deterrence is a mix of military and political considerations; arms control is a political/technical approach.

The Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is used to place the key
research concepts into an influence matrix. DEMATEL analysis demonstrates that IPv6 is
currently the most likely of the four examined strategies to improve a nation’s cyber defence
posture.

There are two primary reasons why IPv6 scores well in this research. First, as a technology,
IPv6 is more resistant to outside influence than the other proposed strategies, particularly
deterrence and arms control, which should make it a more reliable investment. Second, IPv6
addresses the most significant advantage of cyber attackers today – anonymity.

Download the book as a PDF or as an ePUB.

NB! The author will give a keynote at HITB2011KUL in October 2011.

About the Author
Kenneth Geers, PhD, CISSP, is the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Cyber Subject Matter Expert. He was the first U.S. Representative to the NATO CCD COE in Tallinn, Estonia.

The World’s Most Blocked Websites

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:35:59 +0000

OpenDNS, one of the most popular DNS services on the Internet, is frequently used by parents and organizations to block websites that they think are inappropriate for children or may hamper productivity at the workplace.

OpenDNS, which claims to handle DNS requests for 1% of Internet users worldwide, has released a report detailing a list of top 10 websites that are most frequently blocked by home users and business users.

The list includes social sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) and adult websites (Redtube, Pornhub and Playboy) as usual but the presence of two major advertising networks on that list suggests people do have their share of privacy concerns.

Here’s the complete list of frequently blocked sites from OpenDNS. Percentages indicate the proportion of OpenDNS networks using blacklisting that reference a given site.

1. Facebook.com —14.2%
2. MySpace.com — 9.9%
3. YouTube.com — 8.1%
4. Doubleclick.net — 6.4%
5. Twitter.com — 2.3%
6. Ad.yieldmanager.com — 1.9%
7. Redtube.com —1.4%
8. Limewire.com — 1.3%
9. Pornhub.com —1.2%
10.Playboy.com — 1.2%

Top Websites Blocked in Offices

When it comes to organizations, a surprise element in that list is Meebo – it’s a web app that lets you chat on Google Talk, Facebook, etc. simply using the browser and a popular workaround when you cannot install the regular chat clients on your desktop.

The fact that Orkut made it to the list seems to indicate that OpenDNS has a strong user base in India. You can read the full report below or download it from OpenDNS.com.

Source: digital inspiration

Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:19:21 +0000

Have you seen the movie “Einstein and Eddington“? It’s a good movie about the beauty of science. It tells us how and when exactly Albert Einstein became famous..

Many of us have no idea who Arthur Eddington is. Yes, he was a scientist, just like Einstein. He was an English observer, while Einstein was a German theorist. During their time, Eddington and Einstein had some difficulties in research since their countries were enemies at World War I.

However, Eddington was less happy in the spotlight. He spent the rest of his life trying to unite his scientific knowledge with his religious faith. And today, his work is largely forgotten..

IMO, in science, self-publication isn’t everything. The most important thing is how we explore the science for the sake of human kind, without defying God’s existence

Anyway, the fun fact is: the actor playing as Einstein was the same person who became Smeagol/Gollum at The Lord of The Rings!

(Picture taken from IMDB)

Microsoft compares OpenOffice.org Writer and MS Word

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:07:22 +0000

By Bruce Byfield

Until now, I had somehow missed Microsoft’s "Why Microsoft" videos, explaining why users should choose Microsoft Office over OpenOffice.org. The title of the series alone warns you to expect bias, but you might not expect are the high number of errors, omissions and misleading statements in the videos. In fact, there are so many that it took me over twenty minutes to view the six minute video on Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer, since I had to stop after almost every sentence to take notes about my problems with what was said.

The video’s narrator, Jake Zborowski, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, starts by explaining that he is going to show you "a few of the many examples of what you miss when you choose OpenOffice.org over Microsoft Office." He goes on to compare Word and Writer in five areas: styles, visuals, search, spell-checking and grammar, and sharing documents. To make the video more personal, the narrator focuses on the experience of two users, Dave, an OpenOffice.org Writer user, and Holly, an MS Word user.

Styles

Styles are a strange area for the video to focus on, because, on the whole, Word is designed for manual formatting, while Writer is designed for styles. Not only does Writer have far more categories of styles than Word, but each style also contains far more options.

Unsurprisingly, though, these inconvenient facts are not mentioned in the video. Instead, it shows a few seconds of Dave using the Styles and Formatting floating window, and then moving to the toolbar to change a font size manually — something that most people using styles would rarely do.

Then the video moves to Holly, stating that in Word she can apply styles without opening separate menus or toggling between separate screens. Actually, so can Dave in Writer, although the video doesn’t acknowledge that. Other alleged advantages of Word include style previews (which are useless except for the most basic of character styles, and do not help with paragraph styles), and no clicking back and forth (never mind that the amount of clicking is roughly equal in both applications).

Another alleged advantage are document themes. It is true that Writer doesn’t use the term, but themes are simply another implementation of templates, which do not come with most versions of OpenOffice.org, but are readily available for the download.

Visuals

Moving on, the video shows Dave in Writer struggling to customize the creation of bullet points along a curve. At least, that is what I think he is trying to do, but I can’t be sure, because his efforts are given only a few seconds, and he seems to be doing something far more complicated on screen. Moreover, since he doesn’t use list styles or wordart to make his life simpler, I can only conclude he is unfamiliar with Writer.

By contrast, Holly uses clipart to complete the task more quickly. What clipart has to do with the task is unclear. However, I am surprised that Microsoft misses the chance to point out that OpenOffice.org doesn’t come with much clipart, or that the little that it includes is mostly useless. Perhaps Microsoft doesn’t want anyone bringing up the fact that, although it has numerous pieces of clipart, they are mostly useless as well.

Searching

The video talks about only two options for OpenOffice.org’s Find & Replace window, ignoring the obvious fact that more than two buttons in the dialog. According to the video, you can either move to each instance of a search one at a time, or highlight all the instances. No mention is made whatsoever of Writer’s Navigator, which allows you to search by every object imaginable.

Switching to Word, though, you can be sure that praise is lavished on its Navigation pane, and its preview pane. Since Writer’s Navigator isn’t mentioned, there is no need for the video to mention that it doesn’t need a preview, because it deals directly with the document.

Spell-checking and Grammar

The video accurately states that Writer lacks a grammar checker, and you have to download an extension if you want one. Strangely, it doesn’t add that those extensions are not very good so far.

The video continues by praising automatic grammar correction. That may sound ideal to those who lack confidence in their command of the language, but in practice, it can lead users to accept mistakes unquestioningly. It also suggests that this feature can "save hours" of proofreading, although copy editing is mostly a matter of minutes given the size of the average documents people write, and always needs a manual scan no matter how sophisticated the tool — and the MS Office grammar checker is so primitive as to be clumsy.

Sharing Documents

As the video is quick to point out, OpenOffice.org has no built-in email client. What it does not mention is that OpenOffice.org simply uses whatever your desktop’s email client happens to be. In other words, sharing documents in Writer is not nearly as difficult as the video hints.

The narration is on safer ground when it adds that Writer is not automatically connected to a cloud for sharing documents, although these days that is easily overcome. The latest versions of Ubuntu even come with a menu link to Ubuntu One.

Admittedly, Writer lacks Microsoft Office’s browser collaboration tool. Yet the narration is flagrantly inconsistent, stating that Microsoft Office does not lock you out of documents while someone else is editing, then seconds later saying that it locks you out of a section that is already being edited. Why it does not say instead that its locking is more flexible is beyond me.

Omissions and missed opportunities

Obviously, the video’s script cherrypicks its points. Areas such as stability, the handling of long documents, or desktop publishing capacity are deliberately avoided — which is hardly surprising, since MS Word does poorly in all these areas.

Yet the points that are chosen are somewhat baffling. It is true that grammar checking, out of the box clipart, and collaboration in the cloud are winning points for MS Word, yet neither its advantages or OpenOffice.org Writer’s omissions are emphasized or detailed as strongly as they could easily be. Perhaps the reason is that, in practice, relatively few users care about such features. Is Word really so poorly designed that the video can find no stronger points to persuade people? I think it is, not just because I am biased in favor of free software (which I am), but because I am genuinely unable to find any.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader (as they say) to detail the problems with the other videos in the Why Microsoft series. However, I can tell you that they are no better. In general, the videos are so full of misinformation and misdirection that they can only convince someone who has never tried OpenOffice.org.

Apparently, Microsoft still hasn’t heard all the jokes about its products and the ill-concealed hostility towards its policies. How else could the company imagine that, at this late date, it has even a scrap of credibility that would make its unsuppo
rted word convincing?

Source: Linux Magazine

7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook

Fariz Andri Bakhtiar — Thu, 13 May 2010 23:18:06 +0000

Using a weak password

Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word, such as this variant on the word "houses": hO27usEs!

Leaving your full birth date in your profile

It’s an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you’ve already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.

Overlooking useful privacy controls

For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Restrict access to photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. You can give only certain people or groups access to items such as photos, or block particular people from seeing them. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don’t want anyone to have access to that information anyway.

Posting your child’s name in a caption

Don’t use a child’s name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn’t on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.

Mentioning that you’ll be away from home

That’s like putting a "no one’s home" sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.

Letting search engines find you

To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook’s privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn’t checked.

Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised

Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities. "What they think is nothing can actually be pretty serious," says Charles Pavelites, a supervisory special agent at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. For example, a child who posts the comment "Mom will be home soon, I need to do the dishes" every day at the same time is revealing too much about the parents’ regular comings and goings.

Source: www.consumerreports.org