Revolution

With Internet comes a revolution. With revolution comes a change in fundamental rules. The virtual world overshadowed many users' physical realms as online gaming, blogging, or more conclusively, communication, are fed through an electronic box known as the computer. Essentially, a whole new electronic society began forming on the forefront of the revolution that extracted from the real society instead of coexistence.

Time passes and addiction feeds ambitious individuals who link the real and virtual societies in the monetary sense. Moral or not, a market was formed in between existence and lack thereof. Under the new concept of cloud computing, these individuals have extended their control over us.

As we rely more on computers and the Internet, naturally, more conversations are held through the same media, whether they be instant messaging or live chatting. How much of our daily communications have been redirected into online chatting?

There are points in time where I wanted this simple communication tool to not exist. With every inch of a second, I feel that not only am I failing to talk correctly, but I am also failing to hear with average precision. Additionally, without body gestures and facial expressions, I am not able to tell how a phrase was said, or in terms of the old society, 'typed'.

Naturally, under long-term association, writing styles and responses can change drastically, as do the expressions during chatting. Unfortunately, when responses from individuals become stoic and unresponsive, it is difficult to see whether the change had been natural to the prey or whether the victim had caused sufficient disturbance for the prey to care less. Or maybe the prey is the victim and the victim is the prey.

Have I done something wrong? Is this how others are treated? No one knows except the counter-party that fails to disclose anything at all. Despite condemning this sort of action, I exercise it as well up to a bound.

Posting and blogging can further worsen the situation. To globally inform others of your daily endeavors and extensively elaborating on it defeats the purpose of others asking about it.

"So I see you have failed your exam..."
"Yes."
"Was it really that hard?"
"Read it in my blog."

Moreover, it is not guaranteed that people would read it... or this.

=(

I don't believe in extreme superiority, yet I am witnessing one =(

The Tree of Life and Love

***inspired by a stump with a scar on it... went past it while biking (I think it was on a somewhat rainy day?). Another from my archives***

I am a part of Everest’s steps,
The blizzard forming more of me.
A chunk of me could drown Earth’s steps,
Soon, I will rule and walk round free.

I stand erect on Flanders Field.
The peaceful wind erode my cross,
A memorable slab on Flanders Field,
So stuck, so clean, but what a loss.

I sit as sediments on a land,
The grass protruding through my skin,
And mammals kicking me through land,
Do not they think that it is sin?

I cover grounds across terrains,
I build on top of self with self,
‘Til break, I fall to all terrains,
Then light to shatter grounded shelf.




I stood on top of Everest’s steps,
The blizzard blowing on my head,
Was brought about by snowman’s steps.
He saw me dying on my bed.

I stood beside my Flanders Field,
My crested reds encircled grass.
The tears of misery splashed my field,
Artillery locking on my mass.

I knelt before the knees of lions;
They hid behind my safety blades.
They leapt; the ox was caught by lions.
No pity; nature, lost in raid.

I saw barbarous sky diffused.
Against my twigs, through networked roots,
My birds confused, my squirrels diffused,
The special spot became black soot.




I stood on top of Everest’s steps,
The blizzard howling through my ears,
Was brought about by Heaven’s wish,
Turned back, stared, caught by brownish claws.

I stood on top of Flanders Field,
My knees collapsed and eyes o’erfilled.
Remembrance! Please respect the Field
For spirits—corpses dead: o’erkilled.

I trotted through some golden swords,
Was fooled by ears that told me silence,
Was ambushed, killed with natural swords.
As ignorant ghost, I swore for vengeance.

I sensed the sky’s immediate lapse,
Which shocked my soul of song and fear.
I had no choice but jump and lapse,
So close I thought that death was near.




I stood above Mount Everest’s steps,
Forever smiling down at them.
A storm, big fall, mistaken step,
For me to dictate life and men.

I napped below the crusted knees,
My spooky shade destroyed my strife.
Now I can get up from my knees,
And not regret a wasted life.

I stood beside my son’s good soul,
Protecting him from any harm.
But witnessed death of second soul,
His lack of feelings lost his charm.

I saw the course of dying tree,
I granted it a mercy death,
But things went wrong around the tree.
I closed my eyes and sighed a breath.




I feed on nothing.
I live on nothing.
I love nothing.
I hate nothing.
I am not dead.
I am around.
I am all Is.
I am nature.
I am peace.
I am war.
I give everything.
Nothing gives me back.
I am all.
All am I.

On me, there exists The Stumped Arc,
That of the tree, the man, and God.

The Nature of Euthanasia

***found from my archives. I am particularly happy about this sonnet =) Nothing particular inspired me to write this piece, but I felt the topic was "significant" enough to be a sonnet. I remember I was at YES and spent lots of time on the sonnet there XD***

Atop the brown elixir once of life,
Now smelt of sea gull’s recourse–filthy feast,
Lies Lily who protrudes like dullest knife,
In need of one to grant her life deceased.

Our Mother hugging on its rotten roots,
Our water holding life for hanging stems,
Our light rays breeding blighted, yellow shoots,
Become the torturous acts that one condemns.

To nature: halt! Let one consume her time.
For if she lingers on thy weary gift,
Her static home will offset with its grime.
Oh end it clean! Oh end it quick and swift!

So let her breathe and jest a final breath,
And stop her suffering with a mercy death.

Blank Passwords

The following is something I discovered while at PlateSpin. It is really an awesome company =) The message has been modified to censor out any PlateSpin-relevant content.

In Windows XP, 2003, and higher, you can change your password to a blank password easily. However, this can ironically increase security for your computer! By default, you cannot remotely access your computer over the network or the Internet if your password is blank! Hence, hackers would not be able to use this method of remotely connecting to your computer to hack it. Hence, setting a blank password is good if the computer is physically secure, and you only have 1 computer or computers that do not to access other computers.

However, if you are desperate to allow remote access on a computer with a blank password, you can allow it… Open gpedit.msc and go to Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options. Then disable Accounts -> “Limit local account use of blank passwords to console login only”. After that, you can remotely access the computer.

Note: These settings are not available in Windows 2000, ME, and earlier.

In Linux, login to root and go to “/etc/shadow” and look for your username. Let’s say you have “root:$1$aA9RiNmC$0NlogMx3oslqiHtPuPnqL.:14203:0::7:::”. Remove the second field so that it becomes “root::14203:0::7:::”. Now, you have a blank password (you do not have to go through all the steps above to allow remote access for blank passwords though)! Unfortunately, you are not able to merely change the password by simply using “passwd”, since the validation does not allow blank passwords. There are discussions in which you can find the encryption it uses in order to encrypt NULL, which, theoretically, leads to a blank password as well. These machines could be discovered without a problem.

Furthermore, interestingly enough, by default, ESXi servers have a blank root password!

What I have been doing

Now that MFE is over, there is suddenly so much time in my hands. Hopefully, I can make use of this time to learn more about Linux; an advantage of learning Linux is that I can use it for my work report.

I am reading a book on ethics. Although I can write many arguments to counter the author's arguments (even using the basis of analysis proposed by the author), I can at least get a feel of how others define ethics, since this can be very useful later on. The book is not any in-depth analysis, but merely an introduction to a variety of simple topics.

And I am still on my way to master piano pieces to hopefully play professionally in the future. I have high expectations on this, but it is very hard to achive the level I want to achieve. Currently, still learning the concerto and vigorously polishing up my etude.

One-handed cubing is a nice "brief" show to random people all over the place. Seriously, those people in the subway needs to be more productive, though I have little hope that they would obey. Other stuff that I can hopefully master is: clear perfect pitch high speed whistling, produce high-tech useful gadgets for everyday use, contact juggling, anything simple that only requires hands... (other stuff I am contemplating includes violin, flute, piccolo... those are all small enough to bring on board anywhere)


I realize my first-person shooter skills on PC have failed me really badly. I am now always last in online matches... This is a skill I need to achieve back; losing a skill is never good. Every week, my cousin comes over to play video games with me. It is a useful experience, because most games involve eye and hand coordination, but most importantly, the reaction time or the "clock that ticks inside me".


I am also reading Go books. Again, this is something I have abandoned and was thrown into the dump, so I have to dig it back out. Now, I shall see how far I can go into books before making a surprise attack into the world of Go... I hope.


And of course, there is a infinitely-long list of what I intend to do in the future...


Random quote from my co-workers:
A: So you are worth 60 billion yesterday and then you are worth 30 billion today. How would you feel?
B: I would feel happy. Come on, half of infinity is infinity!

And so I was fooled

Is there another person in the world who cherishes knowledge?