Sorry, Bucharest, I will try to release a patch this evening.

I have been using Internet Explorer as my main browser since IE 3.0 and usually I have no problem with it. I know the rendering engine is a piece of crap, but I got used to the feel of it and the developer tools in IE8 are nice and FireFox just rubbed me the wrong way, so that was that.

But since Internet Explorer 7 upwards, and especially with IE8, the first loading of the browser got slower and slower. So slow, in fact, that I have to wait several seconds for the browser to allow me to use the address bar. No wonder I have been slowly using Chrome for searching and reading the news and all that.

Today I got kind of annoyed with it and started looking into the Internet Explorer options. An advanced one was Enable third-party browser extensions and I removed it, just to see what it would do. Suddenly I had no Google toolbar (but I don't use it anyway, since I enter all my searches in the address bar), Flash worked, the pages worked, the internal IE8 developer tools worked. The only difference is that Internet Explorer would load instantly!

Ok, that would work as a last option, but I got intrigued so I enabled the option again and went into the Manage Add-ons section. I haven't being paying attention before, but each add-on in the list also has displayed the loading time. I looked around and I found Groove GFS Browser Helper that loaded in ... 8.2 seconds! Disabled it: almost instant browser loading. Two other addons had over one second load time, both of them from Sun and related to Java (which almost no one uses anymore in web pages). Disabled them and now I have my browser back! Just for the sake of it I googled for Java Applet and went to a site with a Java on it. Amazingly, the applets all worked! So the addons themselves were not responsible for loading Java, they were just useless junk.

But what is this Groove thing? Is it some malignant Microsoft rival that purposefully makes its browser addon load slower as to sabotage Internet Explorer (hint! hint!). It appears not. As it usually happens, the greatest enemy of Microsoft is Microsoft itself: Groove comes from Microsoft Office 2007!

What does Groove Syncronization do? Microsoft Office Groove was designed for document collaboration in teams with members who are regularly off-line or who do not share the same network security clearance. In other words: nothing useful. Even better, the whole groovy thing can be easily uninstalled, which I also did.

To uninstall Groove go to Add or Remove Programs, look for the Microsoft Office entry, click on Change, remove Groove. That's it!

Just two month ago I was blogging about the cracking of 768bit RSA and now 1024 was cracked by using only 81 Pentium4 CPUs in 104 hours. There is a catch and that is they needed to fluctuate the power to computer CPUs. Here is more detailed information.

Update: Web security attack 'makes silicon chips more reliable'

Oh, man, what a book this is. Steven Erikson uses a pattern in his epic Malazan Book of the Fallen series, with books that are standalone(ish) and others that continue the humongous story arches started in previous (or, indeed, later) books. The Bonehunters was heralded like a separate story, however that cannot be said to be true in any way. Old characters, patterns that evoke old stories, as is the birth of the Bonehunters, reminiscent of the Bridgeburners, and the sheer number of new characters, races and even gods make this book more of a hinge rather than a singular pillar in the epic. The number of open ended threads and unexplained new characters paves the way for the next four books. I am already starting to fear for the ending of the series.

What the book is about is difficult if not impossible to explain. It starts with a military campaign of punishment against the remnants of the Seven Cities army, but it ends suddenly and quite strange. The leadership of the elder Tavore sister unites the Malazans and binds them to her, in truth becoming hers and not merely an imperial army. There are strange machinations and moves from all the gods one can imagine, most of them hidden and quite hard to understand. What is even harder to explain is the way the empress allies herself with Mallick Rel and Korbolo Dom and starts rumours that make the Malazan population hate the Wickans, in truth war heroes of impecable honor. The ending is explosive but in no way final, leading the path onwards in the story.

I haven't posted a music entry in quite some time, but this will compensate. Here are three female singers and some very good songs:

Cosmic Love from Florence and the Machine. You might also want to listen to The Drumming Song



The Girl you Lost to Cocaine from Sia. You might also want to listen to Buttons, with a fun video.



Hollywood from Marina and the Diamonds. She is a very prolific song writer and I like many of her songs. Not to mention she has a voice I love and she's cute as well. You might also want to listen to Mowgli's Road

The fifth book in the Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Midnight Tides is separated by the previous four in location, characters and, I would say, quality. We are witness to a battle between a lost enclave of the Tiste Edur and a lost enclave of The First Empire. From the perspective of the Malazans (which have no involvement at all in this book) both peoples would have been seen as ignorant savages, their conflict merely a petty squabble. The only characters we can recognize are the Crippled God, who is indirectly manipulating things, and Trull Sengar. Trull is almost the main character in the story, explaining his tortured past, although little connects this story with his freeing from the fragment of the Shadow warren in the forth book.

The end, another convergence of characters and stories and gods and magical powers, only opens avenues for further development, rather than actually explaining things. There are some interesting parts to the story, mostly the description of the Letherii culture, so much alike the Western culture today, which Erikson is criticising at every opportunity. He has similar ideas in House of Chains, but he really lets himself free in this one.

Aside from that and from the history of Trull Sengar which is surely to have an impact in the next books, the story was not really that captivating compared to previous chapters in the saga, almost like it all was a prop to describe Trull's way of thinking and to berate capitalism; like one of those TV show episodes that happen in the past so that we can understand what the character will do in the next episode that happens today. Still a good book, though.

Dear God of the Internet, please grant me this one gift, the perfect way to cancel out the world around me and concentrate on Your work!

Another great Malazan book, the fourth in the series, House of Chains starts with the personal history of Karsa, the Teblor, previously known to us as Shai'k's Toblakai guardian. His tale is both brutal and inspiring, as he evolves from a mindless brute to a ... well... slightly minded brute. At the end of the book there is another battle, like I have been already accustomed by previous reads, only it must be the weirdest one yet. You have to read it to believe it.

Since it started with the singular story of Karsa and because of the many characters that were both introduced, developed from the previous stories or simply clashing at the end, the book felt fragmented (like Raraku's warren :) ). That wasn't so bad, however it opened to many avenues that need to be closed in following books.

At this point it is obvious to me that the Malazan Book of the Fallen is not really a series, but a humongous single story with many interlocking threads and characters. Like chains dragging ghosts of books read, I feel the pressure to end the series so I will probably start hacking away at the fifth book this week.

My friend Meaflux mentioned a strange concept called polyphasic sleep that would supposedly allow me to spend less time sleeping, thus maximizing my waking time. I usually love sleep, I can sleep half a day if you let me and I am very cranky when forcefully waken up... as in every day when going to work, doh! Also, I enjoy dreaming and even nightmares. Sure, I get scared and lose rest and there are probably underlying reasons for the horrors I experience at night sometimes, but they are cool! Better than any Hollywood horror, that's for sure. My brain's got budget :)

Anyway, as I get older I understand more and more the value of time, so a method that would give me an extra of 2 to 6 hours a day sounds magical and makes me reminisce of the good times of my childhood when I had time for anything! Just that instead of skipping school I would skip sleep. But does it work?

A quick Google shows some very favourable articles, including one called How to Hack your Brain and the one on Wikipedia, which is ridiculously short and undocumented. A further search reveals some strong criticism as well, such as this very long and seemingly documented article called Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths. Then again, there are people that criticise the critic like in An attack on polyphasic sleep. Perhaps the most interesting information comes from blog comments from people who have tried it and either failed miserably or are extremely happy with it. Some warn about the importance of the sleep cycles that the polyphasic sleep skips over, like this Stage 4 Sleep Deprivation article.

Given the strongly conflicting evidence, my only option is to try it out, see what I get. At least if I suddenly stop writing the blog you know you should not try it and lives will be saved :) Ok, so let's summarise what this all is about, just in case you ignored all the links above.

Most people are monophasic sleepers, a fancy name for people who sleep once a day for about 8 hours (more or less, depending on how draconic your work schedule and responsibilities are). Many are biphasic, that means they sleep a little during the afternoon. This apparently is highly appreciated by "creative people", which I think means people that are self employed and doing well, so they can afford the nap. I know many retired people have a biphasic sleep cycle at least and probably children. Research shows that people normally feel they need to sleep most at around 2:00 and 14:00, which accounts for the sleepiness we feel after lunch. The mid day sleep is also called Siesta.

Now, poliphasic sleep means you reduce your sleep (which in the fancy terminology is called core sleep) and then compensate by having short sleep bursts of around 20 minutes of sleep at as fixed intervals as possible called naps. This supposedly "fixes" your brain with REM sleep, which is the first in the sleep lifecycle, however it is a contested theory. The only sure thing seems to come from an italian researcher called Claudio Stampi who did a lot of actual research and who clearly stated that sleeping many short naps is better than sleeping only once at the same number of hours of sleep. So in other words six 20 minutes naps are better than one 3 hour sleep.

Personally, I believe there is some truth to the method, as many people are actually using it, but with some caveats. Extreme versions like the Uberman (six naps a day, resulting in 2 hours of actual sleep) probably take their toll physiologically, even if they might work for the mental fitness. Also, probably some people are better suited than others for this type of customised sleep cycles. And, of course, it is difficult for a working man to actually find the place and time to nap during the afternoon, although I hear that it has become a fashion of sorts in some major world cities to go to Power nap places and sleep for 20 minutes in special chairs. No wonder New Yorkers are neurotic :) On a more serious yet paranoid note: what if this works and then employers make it mandatory? :-SS

So, in the interest of science, I will attempt this for a while, see if it works. My plan is to sleep 5 hours for the core, preferably from 1:00 to 6:00, then have two naps, one when I get back from work (haven't decided if before or after dinner, as there are people recommending not napping an hour after eating) and another close to 8:30 when I go to work. So far I have been doing it for three days, but it seems all this needs at least a few weeks of adjustment.

Now, with 5 hours and 40 minutes of sleep instead of 7 I only gain 1.33 hours a day, but that means an extra TV show, programming a small utility, reading a lot and maybe even writing... so wish me luck!

Update: I did try it, but I didn't get the support I needed from the wife, so I had to give it up. My experience was that, if you find the way to fall asleep in about 5 minutes, the method works. I didn't feel sleepy, quite the contrary, I felt energized, although that may be from the feeling of accomplishment that the thing actually works :) Besides, I only employed the method during the work week and slept as much as I needed in the weekend. I actually saved about 40 hours a month, which I could use for anything I wanted. If one works during that time, it means an increase in revenue to up to 25%. That's pretty neat.

From all the animes that I've watched, Cowboy Bebop must be in the top three or five. It was an imaginative mix of space sci-fi and film noir, jazz and fight movies. The director of said anime, Shinichirō Watanabe, also did another anime called Samurai Champloo that I just finished watching. It is an imaginative mix of samurai era and Tarantino movies, hip hop and gangster movies. Even if it is sort of formulaic, this recipe for animes produced some pretty cool results. I thoroughly enjoyed the series and, at the end of the 26Th and last episode, I was crying for more.

The story revolves around three characters: a young girl looking for a mysterious samurai that smells of sunflowers, a samurai looking for purpose in life and a low life thug with an unconventional but deadly style of sword fighting. In the end, they meet some very dangerous people, thus ending the whole story arc. I have to say that, even if the fights in the main story arc were better and the emotions stronger, I enjoyed the other stuff, the episodes on the side, a lot more, even if most of the time they did not take themselves seriously... or maybe perhaps because of that very reason.

I completely recommend this to any anime lover, it is a nicely animated, with a cool soundtrack, and with an ingenious story.

I did a service on Linux for a friend of mine, mainly a script that he was supposed to execute. He tried using it, but failed every time. I was logging in, tried it and it ran perfectly well. We scratched our heads a little until he noticed some error messages from when he executed the script, saying that a specific command could not be found.

So, this is what happens: he logs in using SSH with credentials that are not root (as it should be) then he executes su (super user) to gain root privileges. He then executes the script and the commands inside the script are not found by the system. I do the same thing, and it works.

It took a while until I realized that he gained super user privileges using just su while I was using su -. Leave it to Linux guys to have a single minus sign as an important command line parameter :) su - executes the complete shell environment for the root user and changes the PATH variable and the home directory (to root). su gives you root privileges, su - makes you root.

Third book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Memories of Ice is another masterpiece of epic fantasy from Steven Erikson. What Deadhouse Gates had in shere scope of military strategy, this book has in number of people and characters as well as levels of magic. If in Gardens of the Moon the characters would avoid gathering too much power in a single place, Memories of Ice practically heaps mages and powerful creatures.

I enjoyed the book a lot, even though I think the multitude of important characters and the magnitude of their powers was a bit overwhelming. Also, the battles seemed more chaotic, less strategic, considering they came after the impressive story of Coltaine's campaign in Deadhouse Gates. All this was compensated by troop numbers in the hundreds of thousands, major magic users in the tens, an alliance of the T'Lan Imass allied with Caladan Brood and the Tiste Andii and the Barghast and the Malazans and the Rhivi and so many others against the cannibal army of a Jaghut manipulated by a god and so many other gems.

I started reading the fourth book in the series and I will be reviewing it as fast as I can.

Ever wanted to leave your office and go see the world? Well, here's your chance!

In previous entries I have described how I got hooked on the The Teaching Company courses and especially on the ones lectured by the mathematician Edward B. Burger. After Introduction to Number Theory and The Joy of Thinking I only had one such math course to watch and that was From Zero to Infinity: A History of Numbers.

At first I thought it was a tame version of the course about number theory, only a bit more historical. It started up with how people moved from counting thing to an abstract understanding of numbers, then the evolution of the concept of the number with the advent of zero, negative numbers, rations, irrational numbers, complex numbers, Π, etc. However, at the end, the story split quite a bit and became a course in its own right so now I am pretty glad I watched it as well.

It did start to bother me that the level of understanding required for these classes is pretty low and as such the lecturer is forced to repeat and over-exemplify things and avoid as much as possible math notation and equations. The model makes no sense to me. If the people watching were to be uneducated, would they really want to watch the courses? If they did, would they have the money to spare for them if they were stupid? And if they were not stupid or they would be young people interesting in the basics of science, wouldn't they be smart enough to raise the bar a bit? I mean, it's not TV. People actually have to make an effort to purchase and then watch these courses.

Anyway, Mr. Burger was cool as always, but I had issues with some of the concepts presented in the course and how they were presented. After a plethora of information about Pythagoreans and natural numbers and Π, the lecture about the number e was really basic. No real proofs, no examples of use, it was like it didn't belong in the course at all.

Then there was the thing about 0.(9) being equal to 1. I understood the theory behind it, but it just got me wondering what about integer part of 0.(9)? And, if one could use the reasoning behind the idea, then how come S=sum(x^n) with n=0..infinity is not always 1/(1-x) regardless of x? And how come it is considered possible for a real number to have different decimal expansions? Shouldn't it there be a theorem about the uniqueness of said decimal expansion for a specific number just as it is about the prime factorization in order for some of the proofs in the course to make sense? I intend to write an email about it to Burger himself and if (with a godly voice from the sky :)), he answers me, I will be able to complete this entry.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the course, although the one about number theory remains my favourite from this lecturer.

Update: Mr. Burger was kind enough to answer my questions. Here is his reply:
You are correct, there are examples for which the decimal expansion is not unique (and it only happens when we have an infinite tail of 9s). Here are two quick ways of convincing yourself about 0.(9):

1) I bet you feel very comfortable with the identity: 1/3 = 0.(3). Now multiply by 3: 1 = 0.(9)! Fun.

2) Suppose that 0.(9) does NOT equal 1. Then I'm sure you would guess it would be SMALLER than 1. Now recall that if we have two DIFFERENT numbers and we AVERAGE them, then the average will be larger than the smaller number and also smaller than the larger number (the average is in between them). So let's find the average: add: 1 + 0.(9) = 1.(9). Now divide by 2 and we see the average is 0.(9)... but that's one of the numbers we were averaging! Whoops.. therefore the numbers must be equal.

Using RSA encryption means you base your security on the lack of resources of people trying to break your code. Well, that's saying very little, as the required computational power is indeed not accessible to most individuals, yet the same is not true for some organizations. And when we are talking about "organizations trying to break your code" we are, of course, going above the few hackers that employ a few thousand bots and that normally would have no reason to crack your communication, and going directly to the more likely culprits, mainly governmental organizations. And given their propensity for secrecy and paranoia, maybe even 1024 RSA is not really safe. After all, in "lands of freedom" there are laws against exporting software that employs too powerful an encryption, like 1024bit RSA. And that's an old law.

Anyway, here is a news link about the 768bit RSA cracking and, for the math inclined, a link to the actual paper. A list of the different RSA bit lengths and the known efforts to break them is found here.

A little quote from Wikipedia, showing that the limit is not really 768: As of 2010, the largest (known) number factored by a general-purpose factoring algorithm was 768 bits long, using a state-of-the-art distributed implementation. RSA keys are typically 1024–2048 bits long. Some experts believe that 1024-bit keys may become breakable in the near term (though this is disputed); few see any way that 4096-bit keys could be broken in the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is generally presumed that RSA is secure if n is sufficiently large. If n is 300 bits or shorter, it can be factored in a few hours on a personal computer, using software already freely available. Keys of 512 bits have been shown to be practically breakable in 1999 when RSA-155 was factored by using several hundred computers and are now factored in a few weeks using common hardware. A theoretical hardware device named TWIRL and described by Shamir and Tromer in 2003 called into question the security of 1024 bit keys. It is currently recommended that n be at least 2048 bits long.