Reconnecting... Finding Answers to One of Life's Simple Questions.

Life is harder when you're expected to do something according to your age but you can't because you believe you can't.

I'm not even good at programming or fixing the effing computer...

And, so I read a handful of self-help books to my delight, it didn't help a little.

Today was Friday meaning a day off from school. So I was reading a book, again, this time it's a memoir. Too bad, I was interrupted by a pile of house chores so I stopped. It was siesta time when I decided to watch The Social Network 4 years after I first saw it.

4 years ago.. the era when I was still naive and a moron...

I remember, back in a day, I felt like I was Mark Zuckerberg, that I could be like him who doesn't need college. Who needs college when you're better than anybody? That's what I thought. Silly. I know.

I mean, I was kind of rebellious too. I blamed my parents. I blamed my family especially with what happened to my mother. It stopped my world. It ruined my life. I thought.

I could've been studying at a state university where I was accepted but I haven't because of the mishap. I believe that I don't deserve any of this. Why do we need to suffer? Why do we need to endure this pain? A pain that felt like a lifetime.

Yeah. That was so me 4 or 5 years ago.

I don't simply believe that things happened for a reason. They happened because I chose it to happen. I took the risks. Now I'm facing the consequences.

And to be honest, I'm writing what will only comes out from my mind. I have no time to correct the grammar and yes, I'm overwhelmed right now. My mind is racing  because I was so driven. I was like the  Mark Zuckerberg version of Jessie Eisenberg because he was the one I saw in the movie, not the real Mark. I've seen videos of Mark and he's way too different from Jessie. I included this because at the first place, according to the movie, Mark was drunk and stupid and angry while blogging. And here I am saying my thoughts only I'm not drunk and angry. Stupid, maybe.

I started writing this after I've watched the movie (like 20 minutes ago). Here I am, taking my 10th paragraph, if I'm not mistaken.

I do not know where this blog will go to but, here, let's try to get back to the movie..

I watched it because part of me wanted to "see" Rooney Mara's role again since I started "fan-girling" over her a few weeks ago. Then, I needed some motivation. I need to really know what would be my "future" as a programmer and perhaps, as an inventor. And part of me wanted to reconnect with the past... on why I've dropped out of college (not to mention I also took a gap year, a year that I could've spent in a state university... the issue I mentioned earlier.) and honestly, the thought of it frightened me a little.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any motivation from it. I still hated Rooney's character for the same reason, she was so good at it and I'm kind of jealous. She made me cry a little, though. In short, it didn't really help me. But here's the thing I won't deny.. it really reconnected me to/from the past.

I wasn't kidding with the State U thing. I took that exam way back in senior HS and I passed, as far as I can remember. I've missed a lot of opportunities back in the day. We were supposed to take UPCAT, MSU-CATs and plenty more entrance exams but I haven't. Again, I blamed my parents. But that was just all in my head. Because we're penniless I just thought that I didn't deserve those kind of opportunities. I thought those were just a waste of money and I already knew that I couldn't passed any of those, so...

Circumstances like that made me angry with myself. Every time I remember those, I could feel how weak I am.

There's a line in Black Swan, the movie I watched 2 days ago that said, "You can be brilliant but you're weak!" I swear, as much as possible, I do want to forget it but I'm having the hard time. It lingers through my senses every now and then.

Connections, friends, strangers, detachments.. I'm like on a journey that aims to reach the peak of a mountain except I'm alone. I'm the only one taking this journey. No one could ever understand this. But, you know what, even if I go this way, I don't feel so lonely. It feels so weird. Hah. I guess, in the end, I learned a little from those freaking books.

Back to the movie, again. When you're wired, you're wired. You're not allowed to do anything. You're focused. But in my reality, it's not a thing. I live in a family that's always in a rush. Most of the members of the family have Type-A personalities. Imagine the struggle! I have no choice but to adapt! And honestly, until now, I believe I've failed to adjust. I guess, I wasn't really good at adapting situations even if it's just my family that's involved (I might even fail my Physics class because of this. Did I just mention that?). So instead of wrapping this up in less than 30 minutes. I need an hour or two to do so. In fact, right now, I'm juggling from one chore to another. Did I mention that I do a lot of sitting jobs such as babysitting, store-sitting, sick mom sitting? And it's for free?

From the very start, I wasn't very sure what's the purpose of this. The only reason was I was overwhelmed and that's it. Now, it has reached it end and I'm expected to come up with a conclusion...

Straightforwardly, the only purpose of this is if my parents or my siblings and even the people I've met that I considered friends happened to read this... I'd like to say that I have no regrets. I've chosen what I have chosen. It might not have a good result however, I could simply begin again at my current disposition. As simple as that and I'm ready to go. Maybe at the other end, it would be sweet when the time comes.

And also, from all the years that "I have wasted", there's one certain thing I've learned and will always believe since I started believing on it. That fame, name of the institution, job, career, reputation aren't the most important things in the world. It's love. You can take everything away from me except love.

Through the years, I've learned to love myself and I realized that I've just started to live my life. And here's the thing, I'm not kidding when I said that. Love is everything. Love will heal the world.

Cyberbulllying

My little history of bullying

I’ll never forget that experience when I was in grade school; I was bullied with one of my classmates. We were classmates for some time and on that duration; she never missed a day without bullying me. She always yells at me for no reason and says whatever she wanted to say. She loved to pinch me and judged every mistake that I made. And then we became classmates again in high school, and on our first meeting, I didn’t understood why I was so scared to be near with her. The thing is, until now, I still don’t understand why she did it. I never asked her why; I never knew what her back story was. Later on, she admitted that she really bullied me before. I considered that admission as a sorry, I forgave her and we just moved on but there’s like a huge effect of it on me. It was a traumatic experience, although I’ve noticed that some of my classmates back-stabbed me but it was nothing compared to what she did. I really tried to forget it but it became part of my whole personality and image in life right now, it shaped me. Although, I quite possibly learned to be scared and isolate myself to others because of it but I also realized that it has a positive impact on me, I learned that it is bad to bully others and that I need to take responsible of myself on what I say or comment whether on cyber-world or on reality.
 

When bullying goes high-tech

“Unless and until our society recognizes cyber bullying for what it is, the suffering

of thousands of silent victims will continue.” - Anna Maria Chavez

We’ve always heard about it, on news or on social media, it is present everywhere and yet we still do it  and sometimes we don’t know that we’re doing it… Bullying whether at school or online is serious and shouldn’t be taken for granted. 

I became aware about bullying since I was in elementary because I myself was a former victim of it. I recalled upon the memories and it wasn’t easy.  It wasn’t the best feeling in the world. People made fun of you or physically hurt you and figuratively pushed you to the ground.  It will have your self-esteem torn apart. It will make you question about yourself and let your weaknesses exposed. But one thing that I’ve learned about the experience is it will make you stand up by your own feet. 

“When people point out your weaknesses, that’s just another

opportunity for you to rise above.” – Zac Efron

At the present, I use social networking sites such as Twitter to express my thoughts about the current events and public issues including cyberbullying. Every day, several bullying incidents occur on Twitter alone and most of the targets are celebrities.

Singer Adele was targeted by internet trolls following the birth of her son. She was abused by several Twitter uses who posted disturbing and hurtful messages about her baby, just minutes after news broke that she had become a mom.

Australia's Next Top Model host Charlotte Dawson committed suicide after bombarded by several abuse and attacks on Twitter. The former model's appearance and personal life was criticized and many wished her dead. Before the incident, she had suffered long history of depression and made the target of an organized online campaign of harassment in part due to her involvement with an anti-cyber-bullying initiative, Community Brave. The tragic news led to an immediate outpouring of grief on social media networks.

Here are some of the comments received by Dawson on Twitter:

So what is an internet troll? According to YahooAnswers, it is the one who hides under the bridges of topics, eagerly waiting to pounce on meek or unexpecting individuals and shower them with opposing opinions or ideas (generally derogatorily). In other words, a troll usually remains anonymous unless someone could trace their identity and will depend based on the intensity of their internet behavior.

Alex Masters stated on his article, “Anonymity”  has been used to people’s advantage years before the birth of the internet. Authors of books often write under a pen name to protect their reputation. Being anonymous on the web makes it possible for people to discuss sensitive subjects, such as medical conditions, physical abuse and sexual orientation, without these actions affecting their everyday lives in a negative or potentially harmful way.

Anonymity also protects people who are in fear of persecution.

There are many positive ways to use anonymity on the web, but there can sometimes be very destructive side effects too, such as bullying, racism, accountability, impersonation of an individual or individuals, even stock market manipulation.

I have been a regular user of the internet for years and what I have noticed about being anonymous particularly in the blogging world is that it often comes with having no identity. They’re like creating their alter-ego, sometimes they based it on their favorite fictional characters or sometimes trolls or simply anonymous. Most of them are harmless, they love to engage on social networking sites and connect with people that have the same interests as them. They used their anonymity to praise the work (such as amateur novel or artwork) of the people they’ve met on the internet. Generally, I don’t think that being anonymous is a bad thing as it is often hard to enforce any laws on the internet. I think that people will always want the right to be anonymous, not just online, but offline too. It promotes freedom and privacy which are the two things we all want while using the internet.

The first and the best way to prevent and reduce any forms of bullying is parental guidance. Sometimes, it can be difficult to tell if your child is being bullied but there are ways which you can get involved as a parent. Every act of a child is nurtured from his home and family. There is no bullying if we teach and guide our children properly. Remind your child to stay away from strangers both in the playground and online. Also define to your child what you mean by “stranger” which is anyone they don’t know.  It is always important to monitor our children’s social activity online. Let your children gain confidence by knowing they can take care of themselves.

IT'S NOT A SIMPLE ISSUE. WE MUST NOT BE IGNORANT. LET'S SHOULD ACT ABOUT IT.

References:

Identity on the Internet: The pros and cons of anonymity. Alex Masters. September 19,  2011.

 

Celebrities Who Were Cyberbullied.  BullyVille.com. May 03, 2013

How to Keep Your Child From Harm’s Way. Business Mirror. March 21, 2014

http://www.lepetitemania.com/uploads/1/1/9/0/11901180/5008148_orig.jpg.
Lepititetamia.com/Twitter.com

Melissa and ILOVEYOU: 2 of the Most Notable Computer Viruses and Worms

What is Melissa Worm?

The Melissa Worm, also known as “Mailissa”, “Simpsons”, “Kwyjibo”, or “Kwejeebo”, is a computer worm that also functions as a macro virus. On March 26, 1999, Melissa was put in the wild by David L. Smith of Aberdeen Township, New Jersey. Melissa came to be one of the most infamous computer worms the world has ever seen. It shut down Internet mail systems that became clogged with infected e-mails propagating the worm. Melissa affects only users of Outlook + MS Word 97 combination on Windows 9x and NT; much less likely Word 2000 users.

Description

• distributed via the infected attachment — a MS Word document that lists Internet pornography sites
• can spread on word processor Microsoft Word 97 and Word 2000
• can mass mail itself from e-mail client Microsoft Outlook 97 or Outlook 98
• does not work on any other versions of Word, including Word 95
• cannot mass mail itself by any other mail client, even Outlook Express

Uses

The Melissa worm targets MS Outlook. It will try to send e-mail to first 50 entries in the Outlook address book. If any of these email addresses are mailing lists, the message will be delivered to everyone on the mailing lists. Therefore actual number of messages can be more than 50.
This macro virus can successfully propagate only on PCs with Microsoft Outlook installed as it uses Outlook specific calls. In short, this virus proved that Microsoft is a very virus-friendly company. It totally harmed Microsoft’s image in the society.

How can this be detected?

Like any other macro viruses, the virus try to disable the possibility to look into the list of macros via Tools/Macros. That makes detection easy — if you cannot get the list, you are probably in trouble — but for Outlook users in this particular case the worm probably already managed to send 50 messages using addresses in the user address book. So detection in this case can be a little bit late and we need prevention.
The e-mail message send by the virus is also easy to detect. It usually contains the following header:

Subject: Important Message From <name>

Where <name> is the name of the user sending the message. The body of the message consists of two sections.

• The first section of the message (Content-Type: text/plain) contains the following text.

  Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-)

• The next section (Content-Type: application/msword) was initially reported to be a document called “list.doc”. This document contains URLs to pornographic web sites. As this macro virus spreads we are likely to see documents with other names. Some analysts pointed out that, under certain conditions the virus may generate attachments with documents created by the victim.

i.g.;

When a user opens an infected .doc file with Microsoft Word97 or if security level in Word 2000 is set to medium or low, the macro virus is immediately executed, if user will ignore the warning from MS Word that document contains macros of customizations.
Upon execution, the virus first lowers the macro security settings to permit all macros to run when documents are opened in the future. Therefore, the user will not be notified when the virus is executed in the future. It also disable Tools/Macro list.

Prevention/Solution

If you receive this Melissa worm, do not open the attachment and you won’t get infected. Just don’t open the attachment and you will be perfectly safe.
In order to make absolutely sure that Melissa has not infected your computer, you have the following options:

1. Carry out a full scan of your computer using antivirus which will quickly detect any possible viruses.
2. If the antivirus detects Melissa during the scan, it will automatically offer you the option of deleting it.

In order to keep your computer protected, bear the following tips in mind:

• Do not handle or open any Word documents you receive without first checking that they are virus free.
• Install a good antivirus in your computer.
• Keep your antivirus updated. If automatic updates are available, configure your antivirus to use them.
• Keep your permanent antivirus protection enabled at all times.

What is ILOVEYOU?



The ILOVEYOU virus is a computer worm that spread through email attachments in 2000. The ILOVEYOU worm was written in Microsoft Visual Basic Script (VBS) and exploited the fact that the scripting engine system was enabled by default in Windows. ILOVEYOU spawned many variants carrying payloads that could overwrite data, change files, download other malware and email themselves using Microsoft Outlook.

ILOVEYOU is also known as the love letter virus and the lovebug worm.

ILOVEYOU was created by Onel de Guzman of the Philippines. It was one of the first worms to effectively use social engineering to prompt victims to open the files, an innovation that was copied by many later forms of malware. ILOVEYOU was also one of the most virulent worms, purportedly infecting 45 million machines worldwide, leading to more than $8 billion in damages.

Description

• was written in Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting (VBS) which run in Microsoft Outlook and was enabled by default
• scans your computer’s memory for passwords, and then sends your passwords to a Web site that no longer exists.
• mails itself to all of your contacts in your Outlook address book.
• can also damage files with the following file extensions: .vbs
  .vbe
  .js
  .css
  .wsh
  .sct
  .hta
  .jpg
  .jpeg
  .mp2
  .mp3
  
• creates messages by iterating through all of your addresses in the Outlook Address Book

Impact

• the worm originated in the Pandacan neighborhood of Manila in the Philippines on May 5, 2000 
• then it spread westward across the world, moving first to Hong Kong, then to Europe, and finally the United States
• have caused US $5.5-8.7 billion in damages worldwide
• estimated US $15 billion to remove the worm
• estimated 10% of internet-connected computers in the world had been affected
• to protect themselves, The Pentagon, CIA, the British Parliament and most large corporations decided to completely shut down their mail systems
• affected over 45 million computers and was one of the world’s most dangerous computer related disasters

Detection

After you open a file with “FW: ILOVEYOU” in the Subject box, you may not be able to locate .jpg or MP3 files on your computer, and your Microsoft Internet Explorer home page may have changed.

The ILOVEYOU message contains the following text:
kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me.
The message also has the Love-letter-for-you.txt.vbs file attached to it.

If you open the message, it does not open the worm virus. However, if you run the attached script, the file infects your computer.

This virus can also be transmitted through infected files and chat programs.

How To Tell If Your Computer Is Infected With The Virus?

Search all of your hard drives for the Love-letter-for-you.txt.vbs file:

1. Click Start, click Search, and then click Files or Folders.
2. In the Named box, type love-letter-for-you.txt.vbs.
3. Make sure that all of your hard drives are selected in the Find in box, and then click Find Now.

Prevention/Solution

To prevent this worm virus from infecting your computer and spreading further, install an Antivirus software in you computer and update it from time to time. (Same with Melissa Worm’s Prevention/Solution).

REFLECTION:

Melissa worm and ILOVEYOU had caused great impacts not just in computers but on a lot of industries including Finance and government agencies such as Pentagon, CIA and British Parliament. They’ve caused catastrophic damages worldwide that shut down a lot of sectors and affected millions of computers and lost billion worth of affluence. These kinds of doings are immoral and considered to be one of the most notorious and wildly incongruous act humans could do to their society.
Although Melissa and ILOVEYOU virus might totally harmed Microsoft’s image and made lost some of the company’s credibility, these viruses also became the gateway for Microsoft to develop and make their products more secure. These viruses were the reasons why other users are switching their OS to Linux or the boost of the sales of Apple computers.
At the time of Mr. Onel de Guzman’s (together with Mr. Reonel Ramones) arrest, there were no laws in the Philippines against writing malware. Both Mr. de Guzman and Mr. Ramones were released with all charges dropped by state prosecutors. Because of the incident, the Philippine Congress enacted Republic Act No. 8792, otherwise known as the E-Commerce Law, in July 2000, just two months after the worm outbreak.
For me, in order to prevent these kinds of unethical computer activities, experts should implement precautions and spread knowledge about these concerns. In our fast-paced world today, everyone should be computer literate and will no longer be ignorant about these. The Philippine government should make more laws concerning the issue that are constitutional and fair.

A quote to ponder: Ignorance is the root of evil.

As an IT student, I must make an effort to learn and understand VBS  language (at least for beginner’s level) to help fight of prevent these viruses.



References:
"Melissa (computer virus)". Wikipedia.org.
"Melissa Worm/Virus - a Worm Parasiting on Ms Office 97 Architectural Problems and Ms Word Users’ Ignorance". Nikolai Bezroukov. Softpanorama.
http://www.jrwhipple.com/virus_melissa.html
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"ILOVEYOU". Wikipedia.org.
"OLEXP: How to Detect the ILOVEYOU Virus". Microsoft.
"What is ILOVEYOU virus?". SearchSecurity.
"ILOVEYOU Virus". Techopedia.
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