MailChannels, an anti-spam company, did some research and found out that O2, a UK-based mobile operator, allowed unprotected access to private MMS messages sent on its network via a simple web search. MailChannels made O2 aware of this flaw and O2 has since fixed it.

However, things get uglier. Slashdot did similar research further and found that Sprint and Boost, an MVNO, also has similar flaws. In fact most of the other operators also had such flaw in their systems but a lot of them have been patched recently.

So, next time you send a picture to your friends, will it truly reach the eyes it is meant for or will the whole world get to see it?

Benefits:

• We could do the computation at runtime instead of compile time. By doing as much work as possible before the resulting program starts, we get faster programs. The result of the computation can interact more deeply with the target language. This is possible because the actions are processed during grammar compilation and passed to the target C/C++ compiler.
• Once the metaprogram is written, its benefits of convenience can be spread across a community of other programmers. (For a metaprogram that will only be used once, different alternatives might be more efficient)
• Regardless of how many times it's used, a metaprogram enables its user to write more expressive code, because the result can be specified in a form that corresponds to programmer's mental model.
• The resulting program is more likely to be correct and maintanable.

Why C++ Metaprogramming?

• User can enter the domain language directly, without learning a foreign syntax or interrupting the flow of the code
• Interfacing metaprograms with other code, especially other metaprograms, becomes much smoother
• No additional build step is required
• Metaprogramming moves the computation required for expressivity and correctness from runtime to compile time

When Metaprogramming?

• The code needs to be expressed in terms of the abstractions of the problem domain
• When it is needed to write a great deal of boilerplate implementation code
• When it is needed to take the advantage of valuable properties of generic programming in C++ such as static type checking and behaviour customization, without loss of effiency
• The code needs to be written in C++ language, without an external tool or custom source code generator

[summarized from this book]

Conclusion:

• For my case, I don't have to understand about metaprogramming to utilize the templates (which is good ;) )
• This writing about metaprogramming really helps me to move on without worrying about less prior tasks. Thx buddy ;)

Got the feeling that once I advance metaprogramming then it will come in handy when I need it.

The library is using template. Need to learn more about it. Maybe from this book. Now reading this and this.

Next task: developing a representation of simple grid-map in graph.

What we're going to do is building the framework and start to implement the algorithm we've discussed and agreed.

Every minor progress will be reported here ;)

The exercises are an increasingly popular way for people of all ages to keep their minds alert.

It has been suggested before that Sudoku number puzzles improve memory, while crosswords expand the vocabulary. The elderly are also said to benefit from a new generation of computer exercises played on video consoles to improve recall.

However, for the first time, scientists have proven that mental exercise really does limber up the brain and make it more quick-witted.

Your brain is the most important thing you have so take good care of it.

Original link.
WOG out.

Quanta Computer gains in the first quarter of 2008 a world market share of 31 percent, followed by Compal with 24 percent and Wistron with 16 percent. Together with Inventec and the Asus spin-off Pegatron they made in Q1 2008 about 91 percent of the global laptop production. Asustek (Asus) has sold for the first half of 2008 about 2 million Eee PC. Asustek (Asus) expects for the year 2008 altogether 5 million Eee PCs out of about 10 million low-cost netbooks.

The industry-wide notebook battery shortage will delay UMPCs getting into the hands of buyers, but should be over in Q3 2008.

Scientists say they have found evidence that meditation has a biological effect on the body.

A small-scale study suggests it could boost parts of the brain and the immune system.

Meditation has been practiced since ancient times, mainly in the East.

"There is increasing evidence that meditation is a useful and, for some people, a powerful therapy."said Dr Adrian White of the department of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter.

It is now catching on worldwide as a means to reduce stress or to help with pain caused by various illnesses.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States enrolled 41 people in a trial of so-called "mindfulness" meditation.

It is a technique developed by an American stress reduction specialist - Jon Kabat-Zinn - for helping hospital patients deal with pain and discomfort.

Encouraging

Twenty five of the subjects attended a weekly class and one seven-hour retreat during the study; they were also given exercises to carry out at home. The others did not receive meditation training and acted as a control group.

After eight weeks, the researchers measured electrical activity in the frontal part of the brain. They say this region was more active on the left side in the individuals who meditated and was associated with lower anxiety and a more positive emotional state.

Participants were also given a flu jab at the start of the study and those who meditated had higher levels of antibody, say the researchers, led by Dr Richard Davidson.

"Although our study is preliminary and more research clearly is warranted we are very encouraged by these results," he said.

SurfCash - That's the website's name. I will be honest, first time i visited it, i felt disapointed. A very simple layout and a quick description about traffic exchange system - just like any other website of this kind. And like any other website, i decided to try.

Unlike many traffic exchange websites, SurfCash has a serious website approval. Even if you try pop up, redirect or script websites, they will reject. This is awesome because many sites like this have huge amount of websites with excessive pop ups, active x scripts and redirections.

Earning credits is pretty easy. A 12 second timer rotates websites, giving you 0.75 credits per website visited. Everytime someone visits your website from the rotation you lose 1 credit. If you pay attention to your surfing you can earn additional credits!

If you simply don't have time to visit websites, you can buy packages of credits really cheap ( 1$ per 1000 visits!). 

You can also use the manual surfing to receive manual credits. I'll recommend you the manual surfing to receive manual credits if you want to promote a product of want visitors to pay some attention to your website. If you just want to boost you website traffic, stick to the automatic surfing.

Getting your website approved takes 1-2 days, unlike other websites who take about 1 week. From my experience, i can say they can deliver you 3000 visits in 5 hours. So if you are thinking about boosting your website/blog traffic and optimizing it into search engines, i strongly reccomend you surfcash.

Surfcash Website - Register Now

During his visit to Bulgaria from June 21-26, Minister of Justice Ha Hung Cuong held working sessions with his host Miglena Tacheva, where the duo reached a consensus on principles of negotiation on the accord.

Host and guest shared a view that the two countries have much in common in legal and judicial reforms while shifting the national economy from centrally planned to market oriented.

“The two countries may share experiences in this field,” they emphasised.

During his stay in Bulgaria , Cuong also met with leaders of a number of key executive agencies such as the National Assembly’s Legal Committee, the Supreme Judicial Council, the Supreme Court, the General Procuracy, the National Institute of Judiciary, and the National Lawyers’ Association.

During these meetings, the Vietnamese justice chief informed the Bulgarian side of the nation’s recent socio-economic achievements and progress made in legal and judicial reforms.

The Bulgarian side appreciated Vietnam ’s increasing prestige in the regional and international arena.

The two sides were of the view that with Vietnam being an active member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Bulgaria a member of the European Union, opportunities for multi-faceted cooperation are ahead for the two countries in both bilateral and multilateral spheres.

Zuerst benötigt man bjam, das Build-Tool. Man kann es herunterladen, oder man erzeugt es sich eben mal aus dem Sourcecode. Im Verzeichnis tools\jam\src (vom Boost-Hauptverzeichnis aus) ruft man die Datei build.bat auf. Voraussetzung ist, man hat die Compiler-Umgebungsvariablen setzen lassen (z.B. über "vcvarsall.bat x86" o.ä.). Es wird die Datei bjam.exe im Unterverzeichnis "bin.ntx86" erstellt, die man getrost ins Boost-Hauptverzeichnis schieben kann.

bjam-Kommandozeile

Zurück in diesem Verzeichnis kann man bjam nun aufrufen. Folgendes Format sollte der Aufruf haben:

bjam toolset=msvc --with-{library-name} {weitere-optionen} stage

das Toolset kann für alle Visual C++-Versionen auf msvc belassen werden, das Build-System findet selbst die passende Version heraus. Die --with-{library-name} -Option kann öfters vorkommen. Folgende library-names sind gültig (die Liste kann sich auch jederzeit mit dem Aufruf "bjam --show-libraries" angezeigt werden):

• date_time
• filesystem
• function_types
• graph
• iostreams
• mpi
• program_options
• python
• regex
• serialization
• signals
• system
• test
• thread
• wave

Die Angabe stage gibt an, daß die Dateien ins Verzeichnis "lib/stage" kopiert werden. Nach dem Kompilieren kann man das Verzeichnis "bin.v2" entfernen, es enthält die intermediate-Dateien für die einzelnen Libraries.

Build-Optionen

Für die {weitere-optionen} -Option können folgende Optionen angegeben werden:

• --build-type=(single|complete)
  Gibt an, wie viele der verschiedenen Targets kompiliert werden. single kompiliert nur die release-Versionen mit shared linking (also DLLs)
• debug, release bzw variant=(debug|release)
  Bestimmt, welche Variante kompiliert wird. Wie im Visual Studio.
• stdlib={standard-library}
  Gibt die Art der Standard-C++-Library an. Möglicher Wert, z.B.: stlport (siehe weiter unten)
• link=(shared|static)
  Gibt an, ob eine DLL oder eine statische Library erzeugt wird. Standardmäßig will boost durch den autolink-Mechanismus die statischen .lib-Dateien dazulinken.
• define=THIS_DEFINE=1
  Praktisch, um Defines an der Kommandozeile festzulegen, z.B. _SECURE_SCL=1
• threading=(multi|single)
  Gibt an, ob die Bibliotheken multithreaded kompiliert werden. Bei single fallen u.U. mutexe und locking weg und entspricht dem Compiler-Schalter /ML
• runtime-link=(shared|static)
  Gibt an, welche C und C++-Runtime-Bibliothek zu den erzeugten Bibliotheken dazugelinkt wird. shared linkt die msvcrXY.dll und msvcpXY.dll, static linkt je nach threading-Option die libc.lib/libcp.lib oder die libcmt.lib/libcpmt.lib dazu. XY steht für die interne Visual Studio-Version, fürs 2005er für 80, fürs 2008er für 90.
• optimization=(on|off)
  Schaltet Optimierungen an bzw. aus.
• architecture=(x86|ia64|sparc|power|mips(1|2|3|4|32|32r2|64)|...?)
  Prozessorarchitektur
• address-model=(32|64)
  Gibt das Address-Modell an; die 64 wird benötigt, wenn man unter Visual Studio >= 2005 für AMD64-Plattformen kompiliert.

Es gibt natürlich noch mehr Optionen. Bei Bedarf werde ich das Blog-Post entsprechend erweitern.

STLport

Um Bibliotheken erstellt zu bekommen, die mit STLport zusammenarbeiten, reicht es nicht, stdlib=stlport zu übergeben; man muß einen Schritt weitergehen. Die Datei user-config.jam ist anzupassen und ist in tools/build/v2 zu finden. Folgende Zeile sollte man hinzufügen (bzw. man braucht sie nur einzukommentieren, sie ist schon da):

using stlport : : {Pfad-zu-stlport-include-Folder} {Pfad-zu-stlport-lib-files} ;

Die Zeile könnte in etwa so aussehen:

using stlport : : D:\devel\STLport-5.1.4\stlport D:\devel\STLport-5.1.4\lib ;

Verwendet man mehrere STLport-Versionen, so gehört die Versionsnummer zwischen die ersten beiden Doppelpunkte (z.B. "stlport : 5.1.4 : pfad pfad"). In der bjam-Kommandozeile ist dann stdlib=stlport-{Version} anzugeben (z.B. "stdlib=stlport-5.1.4").

Die erstellten Bibliotheken enthalten im Dateinamens-Suffix zusätzlich den Buchstaben p, der die Abhängigkeit zu STLport signalisiert. Endungen sind dann z.B. "vc80-mt-gdp-1_35" oder "vc80-mt-p-1_35".

Noch ein Hinweis für den Debug-Modus: Boost wird mit definiertem _STLP_DEBUG kompiliert, seine Debug-Targets sollte man also besser auch mit dem gesetzen define kompilieren.

Is this the end as we know it, or will we rise to the challenges of our U.S. economy? I prefer to be an optimist and suggest that we will indeed rise to the occasion.

How did we get into this economic mess? Frankly what is transpiring today should be of little surprise as the laissez-faire approach of those in power did little to inspire change or leadership to move us forward. When I say "those in power," I refer directly to Washington and all houses of government. No one is beyond reproach as there is plenty of blame to throw around.

Not far behind in the blame game is our own Federal Reserve. Not wanting to face the consequences of a recession, the central bank’s attempt to smooth out the business cycle has contributed to the current mess.

Unfortunately blaming anyone for what ails us does little to help solve the current problems. Instead we need to look to the future, learn from the past and move on. We need leadership.

The U.S. Economy: CEOs Need to Lead the Charge

Where will we find that leadership? A good place to start our search is in the executive chambers of many of our most dominant corporate entities. Specifically, Chief Executive Officers have the skill sets and platforms to lead us out of the morass.

I know, CEOs have been out of favor due to wage controversies and other shenanigans, but for the most part this group of leaders is more good than bad.

There is a very real reason why they get paid what they do, and it is more about talent than it is about manipulation and abuse.

While I could go on and on about how it's faster and more secure and just plain better than anything else :P , but since anyone can go to firefox's website and figure this out for themselves I will focus on the little details that make my life more enjoyable.

1. My biggest irk when using a password saver while logging in is that I am unsure whether or not I typed in the correct password. I mean if I save the wrong password then every time I come back I have to erase the auto-filled one and replace it with the correct one. With Firefox 3.0 you can now wait until AFTER you have logged in to save your password. This may seem like something small and insignificant but it really is a timesaver to not have to cycle through my ten+ passwords I use for various things.

2. The new favorites (Bookmark) system. While slightly bored and unimpressed with it when reading about this new feature it is now eaily one of my favorites (No cheesy joke intended). Now instead of having to type out entire addresses or open up my favorites I simple type in a letter or two or a tag word. Think of it like Google but for every page I've been to lately. If I want to find that digg article about aardvarks I looked at earlier all I have to do is type "aardvark" and it brings up a list of everywhere related to that word that I've surfed recently. Is this a sign of laziness? Yep. I don't want to waste time trying to figure out where in the world I saw that really cool t-shirt online.

3. What would Firefox be without add-ons? Pretty much like IE, Safari, and Opera.... boring (At least to me)! I know this isn't exactly new but what is new is the fact that I can now search for new add-ons right in the add-ons manager instead of having to go to a webpage. Again seems small but really is very convienent

4. It shows me where a page is from. This saves me the time of pulling out my tin-foil hat to be sure that I'm safe. Is there really any point to it for the day to day user? Not really except that it's interesting to see where some content is from. Also with this is a new phishing security. The little guy has a name but I forgot it and don't feel like looking it up....It might have been Bob.....or Sam.....one of those mundane three letter names.....Tom?

I would keep listing things I like about Firefox but that could take awhile and then I'd have to rename the post "1001 reasons Firefox is better!". So I think I'll publish this post, remove my tin-foil hat (Have to be careful these days :P ), and go to sleep! Anyway this post is just for those paranoid people who are waiting to switch to Firefox 3 because they aren't sure if it's safe. Trust me, the only complaint I have so far is that my facebook add-on (Boost) from Firefox 2.0 no longer works, but that should be fixed by the Boost developer soon and is no fault of Firefox. So don't worry about switching to the best web browser there is, in my opinion, and getting to your internet pages faster and more enjoyably.
*Update!!!!*
My Facebook Boost add-on finally got with the program and updated itself. So now I am content in blissful webby-ness

-JD

I forgot all about these flower photos until tonight. I was sitting here trying to decide what I wanted to work on for tonight and I knew it wasn't wedding photos or portraits (for tonight) so I looked around in the mass of unedited work and realized I forgot all about these beauties from May 5th.

They were all taken with the Nikon 50mm 1.4. It's not just for portraits! LOL!

I adore the sunlight illuminating the background here...

Looking at them makes me remember how beautiful this May day felt to me when I laid under the tree in my front yard to take this photo.

A little antique action...who said flowers can't be antiqued? Not me!

And a favorite edit for this session.... (yes, yes, yes it's texture!) LOL!

Spurred on by the thought that such a simple tool was available to me, and at no extra cost which is rare, I asked son 1 (aged 11) to make the Rhubarb Crumble for dinner. He not only made it, (without me poking my beak in!) but was absolutely pleased as punch with the outcome, and of course boosted by the praise.

The recipe I have is for 900g (2lb) Rhubarb but the recipe also says that you need 10g sugar for every 100g Rhubarb, so he was able to adapt because we only had 600g of the famous rhubarb mountain left!

900g (2lb) rhubarb - chopped into bite sized chunks
3 tbs demerara sugar
2 tsp ground ginger

Mix these together in a dish (do not cook the rhubarb first or it will turn to mush!)

For the crumble topping you will need:

150g (6oz) plain flour
75g (3oz) butter
75g (3oz) sugar - preferably demerara

Rub together the fat and the flour until it resembles crumbs
Add the sugar and mix together
Spread over the rhubarb mix and cook in a moderate oven (gas 4 / 180 c) for about 30 mins until golden brown

Serve with ice cream, custard, cream or all of the above!

My friend later told me that her son had made cookies the same day, and with the same, entirely predictable, results! Let's cook and let's let them cook!

However, almost all these types of articles contain a disclaimer of sorts that mentions that not all systems are alike and so certain services that are unnecessary for one user’s Vista configuration might be required for another user’s Vista configuration. In addition, there are differences between the Vista versions. As such, you are essentially on your own when experimenting with disabling services on your particular Vista system

In most cases, disabling a required service won’t harm your system — it will usually yield some type of error message. However, in some situations disabling a required service may prevent Vista from starting up. While this sort of problem may cause your heart to miss a few beats, it’s usually not a fatal condition. You’ll just need to start the computer in Safe Mode. When you do, any core services that are required by the operating system are started, regardless of any changes that you have made to the service settings. Once in Safe Mode, you can then re-enable the required service(s).

Even with this built-in safety net, you can save yourself some pain by creating a snapshot of the current state of the Vista services on your system.

In this edition of the Windows Vista ReportI’ll show you how to create a snapshot and explain how you can take advantage of this technique when tweaking Vista services. Along the way, I’ll pass on some other valuable information.

Creating a snapshot

Before you even touch one setting in the Services tool, you should create a snapshot of your system’s existing service settings in a spreadsheet. Fortunately, doing so is easy.

To begin, launch the Services tool by pressing [Windows]+[R] to access the Run dialog box. Then, type Services.msc in the Open text box and click OK. When the Services tool launches, right-click the Services node in the console tree and select the Export List command, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

Select the Export List command from the menu.

When you see the Export List dialog box, leave the Save As Type option set at Text (Tab Delimited) (*.txt), as shown in Figure B. Even though there is a Text (Comma Delimited) (*.csv) setting, which is easier to import into your spreadsheet application, the CSV option doesn’t produce a clean listing of the services –the descriptions bleed over into adjacent cells.

Figure B

Make sure that the Save As Type option is set to Text (Tab Delimited) (*.txt) in order to get a clean listing.

Once you export the file, open your spreadsheet application and import the text file using the tab-delimited setting, as shown in Figure C. Once you save the file, you’ll have a record of the current state of all the services on your Vista system. This allows you to be able to return your services to their current state if you run into a glitch or are unsatisfied with the outcome of your changes.

Figure C

Use the tab-delimited setting when importing the text file into your spreadsheet application.

If you save a second copy of the file, you’ll have a version that you can work with as you investigate which services you want to experiment with disabling. For example, you can sort the list, use color coding to highlight specific services, and take notes, as shown in Figure D. I call this the Vista Services Log Book.

Figure D

You can use color coding and notes to help you keep track of changes that you make to services.

No hardware profiles

In Windows Vista, Microsoft decided to do away with hardware profiles, which came in handy when experimenting with disabling services in Windows XPSo, if you used this technique in Windows XP, don’t bother looking for similar hardware profiles in Vista — they aren’t available.

Hardware profiles were designed to provide you with a way to work around non-Plug and Play systems (standard HAL), which were unable to query the system for information about hardware. The current crop of ACPI systems on Vista-capable systems can interact with the hardware dynamically. As such, hardware profiles are no longer needed.

A few no brainers

Even though I began this article by telling you that there are countless articles on the Web that tell you that you can improve Windows Vista’s performance by disabling unnecessary services, I thought I would share with you some of Vista’s automatically running services that you can easily determine whether or not to disable.

If you decide to disable these services, be sure that you document the changes in your Vista Services Log Book spreadsheet.

1. Windows Error Reporting Service

This service allows errors to be reported when programs stop working or responding and allows existing solutions to be delivered. It also allows logs to be generated for diagnostic and repair services. If this service is stopped, error reporting might not work correctly and results of diagnostic services and repairs might not be displayed.

If you never again want to be prompted to send an error report to Microsoft, then you can disable this service.

2. Tablet PC Input Service

This service enables Tablet PC pen and ink functionality.

If you’re running Vista on a desktop or a standard laptop, then you can disable this service.

3. Offline Files

The Offline Files service performs maintenance activities on the Offline Files cache, responds to user logon and logoff events, implements the internals of the public API, and dispatches interesting events to those interested in Offline Files activities and changes in cache state.

If you’re not saving your data on a file server, then you can disable this service.

4. IP Helper

This service provides automatic IPv6 connectivity over an IPv4 network. If this service is stopped, the machine will have only IPv6 connectivity if it is connected to a native IPv6 network.

Unless you’re connected to an advanced network, chances are that you only need IPv4 connectivity and you can disable this service.

5. ReadyBoost

This service provides support for improving system performance using ReadyBoost.

If you’re not using a USB device to enhance performance, then you can disable this service.

6. Remote Access Connection

Manages dial-up and virtual private network (VPN) connections from this computer to the Internet or other remote networks. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.

If you’re not using a dial-up or a VPN connection, then you can disable this service.