FCHouse

SuperGrillo!

Posted by Carlo - 31/07/05 at 03:07:30 pm

Venerdi’ sono andato in posta a ritirare la mia grande spesa: il DVD di Beppe Grillo!

Per 10,14€ piu’ spese di spedizione mi e’ arrivato un DVD carico di verita’!
Guardare il suo show e’ stupendo, anche se fa incazzare, se ti fa capire che certe schifezze non sono solamente l’immaginazione di qualche persona che crede troppo alle cospirazione, ma e’ la Verita’.
Personalmente lo farei vedere a tutti e sebbene lo stesso Beppe Grillo, surante la presentazione del DVD, chiarisca che ci sono gia’ copie gratuitamente scaricabili da internet, vi esorto a comprarlo per fare in modo che quel po’ di soldi che gli rimangono possano finanziare altri suoi spettacoli.
Come sempre vi invito a guardare il suo stupendo blog al sito www.beppegrillo.it, in quanto potrebbe farvi aprire gli occhi, potrebbe aiutarvi a capire quale enorme schifo ci attornia, partendo dai nostri politici per arrivare alle celebrita’ della nostra economia.
Un po’ di sana autocritica fa bene a tutti e cercare di leggere i duri commenti astraendoli da ogni pensiero politico potrebbe farvi trovare della mia stessa idea, con la mia stessa domanda:

Ma alle prossime elezioni chi cazzo voto?

mah, se si candidasse lo voterei anche… meglio un “cabarettista” che un ladro pagliaccio! (di chiunque si parli!)
Spero che grillo non se la prenda a male se l’ho chiamato cabarettista, ma al momento non mi vengono termini piu’ indicati!

Boring Idiots, Anonymizers and Anonymous Remailer…

Posted by Carlo - 30/07/05 at 10:07:22 am

Preface
When you surf in the net, when you send an e-mail, when you are connected, everyone can locate you thanks to your IP.
What is an IP? It is a sting given you by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) in the fomat xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx that identifies you.
This IP is your Public IP, that everyone can see. There shold be more IP on the same machine (localhost, LAN IP…) but for this post just think about the string that is given to you by your ISP and is public (for example, every computer refer to itself with the IP 127.0.0.1 (localhost).)

Hiding to remain Anonymous
If you need to surf the net without being tracked your pulic IP should be a problem. Everyone who access a site (or any other things that require a network protocol to be connected… ftp, remote desktop, ssh…) send this IP for his identification. How can you do to remain anonymous to the eyes of the sites you are visiting?
Easy? You search for an unprotected computer on the network that should readdress your call! Do you need it in an easy view?
Immagine two people. Mr.A and Mr.B.
When Mr.A talks to Mr.B, Mr.B know that he is talking to Mr.A.
Now add another character: Mr.C.
If Mr.A hides itself behind Mr.C and suggests him what to tell to Mr.B, Mr.B will think to talk to Mr.C, not to Mr.A!
How can you do it? You can use an open anonymizer (not safe enough… the anonymizers are well known) or crack a computer in the net and install a little application that will do the same thing for you. The only thing to do is to access a computer finding its passwords and the game is done!

Remailing to remain Safe
Another interesting feature of a computer that is “open” to some cracker is the possibility to Earn Easy Money with SPAM!
The example is the same of the one I’ve told you before: if you send 1.000.000 of mail, every receiver that knows how to get the starting point of the mail (IP, not the fake sender you can read in the “FROM” field) can denounce you for spamming (or can attack your computer to let you without it).
So, what can you do?
You install on the “open computer” another little application, then you send your 1.000.000 mail specifying that they must pass trough your Anonymous Remailer (always that computer).
The result is that if I receive one of that million spam e-mail, I’ll be able to reach only the remailer, not the real sender!
Of course the applications I’m talking of does not only remail your mail or hide your real IP, but also clean up the system to remove forever your trails!

All of this to tell that…
…there are some people that are trying to connect to my server using the ssh (Secure SHell) protocol to install into it an anonymizer or an Anonymous Remailer!
HEI! My SSH is not OPEN, please, STOP BUGGING ME!. My Authorization logs are full of your shit! There are no Adam, Alice, Jack, John, Mike, MySql, Oracle users, and even if you’ll find some correct usernames you’ll find that SSH does not allow passwords!

Come on, guys, go get some sun, go to the seaside, but STOP BUGGING ME!!!!

C.S.I.: End of season 5!

Posted by Carlo - 29/07/05 at 12:07:17 pm

If we could have some doubts, after the end of the latest episodes of the 5th season of C.S.I. the things is clear:
Quentin Tarantino is really a deviant genius!

Please, Mr. Tarantino, if you will read this (?) take my word like they are: a respectful view of a man that can do what others fear only to think!
Yeah!
The almost 2 hours show was one of the best season finale I’ve seen in the last years. Even the latest weeks grant us the season finale of Lost, Desperates Housewive and other tv series, I have to admit that this time the winner is undoubtfully CSI!

Great direction, great story, Great! Every character has its space in the episodes, it is the perfect ending for this season that have seen many crumbles in the group.
The hand of Tarantino is a sign, well visible in some ideas (something remembers me Kill Bill Vol.2) and in the deviance of some terrific moments.
If you can watch it!

winmail.dat: the Curse of Outlook

Posted by Carlo - 29/07/05 at 09:07:22 am

Information spreads through the world freely. Messages are sent from Rome to Sydney, from Tokio to Caracas in a matter of seconds. The toughts travels at the speed of light and nothing can stop them!
Uhm…
Well..
This is true as soon as you don’t decide to switch your e-mail client!
As you know (do you? read some posts before this one) I am evaluating Linux for everyday use, with the exception of some windows-linked development things. I love the ideology of the Free Software.
So I decided to move all my e-mail into my new IMAP server.
Why?
Because doing so I should have all my mail in my server, being able to access it from everywere, with every e-mail client, with every operating system and with my browser too. Obviously I can take the copies of my mail directly on my laptop if I’m offline!
The solution seemed perfect so I started moving my 1.3 GB of mail into my server. Yes, moving all that space requires long time, but in the end Outlook was perfect: as I wished!

Then I rebooted my laptop in Ubuntu, logged in, opened my Thunderbird client, set up my IMAP connection and voila’ all my 5 years mail was there!
Yes, everyone with its own attachment!
What? Every mail have an attachment? No, impossibile!
Analyzing some of them I found that every e-mail had a unknown winmail.dat attachment, and no other files (even if in the original mail there were some). Making a long story short I’ve found that this one is a superb feature of Outlook: putting a property attachment to all the files when moving it into a server that is not Exchange!
Nooo…. AHRGH!
So, this solution is not available!
There are two different solutions still available:

1. Changing my e-mail client also under Windows
2. Importing my new mail from Outlook to Thunderbird every day and then uploading them into the IMAP server

Uhm… none of them are good solutions.
For the first one I will miss a lot of features that Outlook have. The synchronization with my PDA/Phone, the functionalities of my office’s Exchange Server and so on. I have to admit that Outlook 2003 is Very Good , but after having discovered this new feature, I like it less.
For the second options I think I’ll stop updating the mail in my IMAP server in some days, resulting in a complete mess of my mail, I know this and I want to avoid it! Of course you have to know that if you import your mail from Thunderbird (under windows you have the features to get them from Outlook) you can have everything you need, and then you can upload everything to the IMAP!
So, I’m still analyzing my problem, trying to find a solution that will help me with my Operating System Mail Crossover…

Microsoft have confirmed, another time, that its way of conquering the market is to tie their customers to them, putting more than some difficulties for those outcasts who decide to move away from their domain!
Another time Microsoft has shown that even if they have the best software on the market (Outlook, Visual Studio and many more… I have to admit this) they try to retain their customers not with the power of the software, but with some annoying features embedded in their software!

If someone of you have some good ideas to share, you are welcome!

Daily Frustration in a Land of Speculators! (Subtitle: Again)

Posted by Carlo - 28/07/05 at 08:07:59 am

Oh God, I think that I should call this fucking Blog something like the title…
Yes, today I’m pissed off. “Again“, you should tell, but Yes, Again!
Again until this mentality changes!
Again the bad habit of the human speculators changes.
Again until our life have some safety for the future!

I’m talking (Again) of the Job in Italy.
I’m talking (Again) of those employers who squeeze the workers until they are useful.

In today’s telling off I’m talking about getting married when you do not have a good job, when you are one of the millions “Temporary Italians” who have to follow some unruled employment status that can be decided day by day.
Yes, I’m talking also of the status of life Fabiana and I are living, the wishes to get married and the wishis to have children. I’m talking about the many employers that are discriminating the role of the women in the Italian society.
Trying to get less angry and clearer (even if I’m listening to Skunk Anansie right now… that doesn’t help my restlessness) I have to tell you something…
In Italy (for those who doesn’t know), when a woman gets pregnant, the employer must pay her almost one year of salary, even if she never be at work in that period. I think this is correct, but I can understand that for the employer this should be pure expence.
The law, fortunately, is very clear and tell that if you are an employer you cannot make differences betweek women and men, because they have the same rights. Hey, but we are italians and when a law is written the deceive is found! (Yes, we are intelligent…)
So, with those Temporary Jobs any employer can tell you that your contract is not renewed, and this is permitted by the law. Now, no one can forbid someone to decide not to renew a contract, but many of those are bastards that don’t renew the contract to the Just Married women!
Why?

This image explains everything!
They fear that the Just Married women will get pregnant with the obligation, for them, to pay the maternity.
Well, as I told you before, the italian maxim says “Made the law, Found the Deceive”.

Yes, because some of us are so fucking intelligent, capable of crushing their neighbors, friends or workers.

(I have to stop listening this music or someday I’ll start screaming my toughts in the face of the wrong jerk.)

To Fabiana: we will reach our dream, we will make them come true and we will tell the other the reality, our reality and I’ll wait for the right astral connections for you, even if I had to wait for my entire life! I Love You! (and I want to see your belly like the one in the photo!) :)

English cybercops ask for more!

Posted by Carlo - 27/07/05 at 11:07:10 am

Terrorism is granting our nations more freedom to look in our private life than I am expecting…
Latest news tells us that the English cybercops have asked Tony Blair, their Prime Minister, more freedom for attacking different kind of sites.
If you don’t belive in conspiracy (I do belive), you should say “What’s wrong with this? They are trying to save us!”, but reading more deeply the news you can find that the cybercops are attacking the cryptography, requiring the power to get username and password to get into cryptographed data.

It seems to me that we are sailing to a world where our privacy will be the latest interest of our governments, that these acts will grant “someone” the possibility to surf freely through my data, through my informations.
NO
Sorry, man, I don’t agree. I don’t belive in your Good Intentions!
Billy Idol, in the Preface of his 1993 Cyberpunk told that in the near future the money will be the Informations, and this is true: those who control the information, control the world! (of course I belive in this and I do not want anyone to use my information for itself!)
I’m not against the war to the terrorism, this must be clear, but I think that too many things has been done using the coverage of the “War against Terrorism”. I ask myself when the police will be able to come into my house searching for something without a paper signed by a magistrate, or when they will shut down my web site because of my ideas…
I don’t belive this is not Paranoia.
I do not belive in 9/11, I’m REALLY SORRY for those who died and for those who lost someone in the twin towers, but I do belive that the truth has not been told!. And what does the 9/11 caused? War in Afghanistan, War in Iraq and I do not know if this is all over.
SHIT, our rights must be retained, the police must get the informations, but after being tracked with the phone, sms and e-mail messages for years now they ask for more: they ask to receive the power to break in whatever computer they want to do whatever they like to our data!

Tell me: am I SO wrong?

The Circle of Idealists

Posted by Carlo - 27/07/05 at 10:07:45 am

I am stubborn!

Damn I am, but in the past I have been more than today. Time I’ve spent, people I’ve known and met, errors I’ve done and target I’ve reached has changed me in a more balanced person. Once if I found a wall I tried to make it collapse with my head, without even searching for a door. Now I’m still tempted, but before breaking my bones I try to find a door (and then I break it with my skull…)
Time changes everything, time has changed me, even if in my heart I’m the usual Idealist I’ve ever been.
Fabiana, like me, is another Idealist that bring the Justice as her first ideal. Justice with the Capital Letter, not our justice, not the justice laws, but what is Right against what is Wrong. Yes, she is another one that has been changed by the life.
We seldom find people like us, idealists and dreamers, that hope for a better world, but yesterday we met Lizzie, Katy’s sister, that in her being young, has shown us something we were forgotting: if you want something to change you have to work hard to change it, nothing changes by itself.
I told you she’s young and probably she will have to meet the continue obstacle life put in front of you every day, but in her I’ve seen tre power of the ideas we have and the power of the actions we are loosing.
It’s hard to find someone that tells you that you are a creep because you don’t let the action following your ideals (even she never told me I’m a creep I know I am) but the strength I have received is high: Never sit down if the world can be a better place, but fight everyone of your battles.
I know who I am, but like everyone sometimes I lie to myself to keep my life easy.
Mea Culpa
Probably I’ll never run for politics, but probably I’ll not give up with my book, with my dreams.
Years ago I was used to tell that the corpses of the adolescent are called adults, and in this case I have seen that a part of myself is following this maxim.

Think Different, says this old commercial, and shows a Great Man that have changed the world… in All Alone.
Another commercial says “Impossible is Nothing”, and it’s damn true!
So, I think I’ll wake up again, like I’m used to when I deeply understand myself, like a Phoenix (have you ever asked why that logo in the website?) and I’ll get my (s)words and I’ll really try to change my world! Probably my crusades will be little, at least in the very beginning.

I have to say thank you to Fabiana, that always support me, always had and always will, Lizzie, that have reminded me that being a creep doesn’t solve anything, Frank, for remembering me that you have to start from the small things, Katy, for remembering me that sometimes the silence is Gold and also “Granny” (whose name is missing :( SORRY GRANNY), for showing me that age doesn’t affects the ideals!

Of course, Thank You to Fabiana for the Love she always give me. I Love Her and I always will!

Working in Italy

Posted by Carlo - 26/07/05 at 09:07:09 am

When I thoughts, years ago, that Italy should get some of the american’s laws, I never meant to take the worst!
In Italy there is thre dream of the Indeterminate Time Job (ok, the translation can be wrong…) that means that you have your job and, unless you are not a complete idiot that doesn’t do anything from the morning to the afternoon, no one will ever touch you for the rest of your working life. This had caused a lot of problems during the ’70s and the ’80s, because some italians (not only some) took their job like a hobby, doing the minimum needed to keep their job, with obvious loss of competition of the companies that employed them. Of course the best examples of this are the public jobs, those offered from the Italian State.
In this scenario we have grown thinking that we should choose our job, take care of doing quite nothing and taking our money home. Am I exaggerating? Not so much, most probably less than you can think!
Let’s return to the main idea: copying a successful lifestyle!
In USA jobs are not so armored and no one is sure to keep it till the pension, the market is very dynamic and so on…
One last notation: while when in America when you loose your job you simply loose it, in Italy if you loose your job you are a looser! Loosing your own job, here, is seen as a big shame!

It resemble me the difference between the turtle (we) and the rabbit (them) …

But in this case I think that the turtle will not win… it is too much tied to the skeletons of its past

Ok, but Italy has decided to copy, to import the American lifestile, their dynamic job martket. Yes, some years ago the Job War started. It doesn’t matter who started it (Left Wing, Right Wing) because it seems to me that everyone has decided to put their Brilliant Brain at our service.
So, Italy has copied the Temporary Jobs.
Yeah!
Wait… USA is known as the Land of Opportunity, and if you loose your job you can find another one if you want.
Wait… Italy can be known as the Land of Opportunists, where finding a job is not so simple and easy.

HEY, Government! You are trying to apply a very dynamic Job Market format in a land where the job dynamism has never been kept in mind!

Our Goverments hadn’t tought about the difficulties, they have simply implanted a 4 GHz processor in a motherboard that supports only 1 GHz processors… and even if you don’t know what I mean, you will be easily understand what I mean!
Now our young women and men will find an incredible number of agencies that will propose them Temporary Jobs, without sureness for the future, without giving them the hope to be able to create a family in tranquillity.
Why?

1. the contracts are time framed, without mutual renewal.
2. With the new laws someone could work for her/his entire life with temporary contract.
3. The companies has decided to take this opportunity and employ only with temporary contracts.
4. In Italy if you want to buy a house you have to demonstrate that you will pay it, and with temporary jobs this demonstration does not exists
5. The rights of the temporary workers are completely different from those of the normal workers

All of these things are creating a Young Italy that tomorrow will lead our nation that is not capable of buying a house, of requiring thier rights… What nation will we became? What culture will receive our children if their parents wouldn’t be able to grant them the security they need?

Dear Politicians,
instead of thinking to yourself, think about this Italy that is slowly slipping down.
Grant the youngster the capabilities to reinforce our nation, to give a helping hand one each other.

Am I shouting at the wind?

NHL Again!

Posted by Carlo - 25/07/05 at 11:07:40 am

After one year of stop the NHL (National Hockey League) is ready to start again! Friday there was the lottery for the draft, but my two preferred teams are quite in the end of the list!
Both New Jersey Devils

and Toronto Maple Leafs

are quite far from the top of the draft, but I think they are two good teams and thay can reach the Stanley Cup!!!

Last year I was ready to pay some euro each month for a subscription to Sky Sport, but the only sport I was interested in was Ice Hockey, and the season was suspended. This year I will make this 5€/month investment for some fun! :)

Obviously my dream is to get a ticket and attend a real game in the USA or in Canada! (The price of the ticket does not impress me too much, is the flight that is not so cheap… :)

Have a nice flight!

Posted by Carlo - 24/07/05 at 07:07:32 am

Yesterday Fabiana and I went to Guadalupe and Lorenzo’s home, slept a couple of hours and bring them to the airport.
With a merciless call at 3 in the morning (Night?) we drove to Venice airport to get my brother and her wife to catch the plane.
They will fly to Mexico City for a 4 weeks vacation…

Did I tell you that Fabiana has already found another job?
Well, if I didn.t I let you know that taking that new job she has lost her vacation period (planned for august) and so do I!
:(

So, I’m happy for my brother an my sister in law, but I am envious of them… sun, relax…

DOH!

well, today we have a lot of things to do and we wouldn’t be in bed til this evening. But I think that we wouldn’t reach 9 in the afternoon awake!

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Carlo Nicora is at home in London.