The bubbles are not reality but it's inside your mind

The bubbles are not reality but it's inside your mind, originally uploaded by sheetal_shundori.
We live in a bubble baby.
A bubble's not reality.
You gotta have a look outside.
Listen

Social network and Privacy

Presentation: The real life social network
How much information a Fake profile can gather: Getting in bed with Robin Sage

Facebook hates me :(

Latex resume templates: http://www.rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/resumes/

Girls Scout and my incoherent ramblings

Last month I attended the Girls Scout Saturdays event,  arranged by Drexel Ischool for introducing high school girls to Computer Science. I must say it was an amazing experience. When I was a high school student in Bangladesh, my school had an educational program where the high school students had to teach uneducated female garments factory workers. It was a highlight of my high school years. I love these sorts of events because I live in a tiny bubble of people who are like me, and mostly have the same educational/social background. These events give me a sneak peek of the rest of world which is completely different and remind me of a world, which I hardly think, exists. Also they remind me that I might seem really dumb in a world full of intellectuals but I am still useful to some other part of the world :-D.

Anyway, I was talking about my experience with the girls scout. I was invited to this event because I was once a software developer and I was supposed to talk about my experience. The event was for 6-12 graders. I had 12 graders in mind when I was preparing my presentation. But to my surprise, I saw that my audience was a group of 6-12 years "old" girls and I don't know how to talk software engineering with the people so tiny!  They all have facebook accounts and they use youtube, skype, emails. In someways, they know more about internet and games and softwares than I used to at that age, (I had my first computer at 20 and snails are faster than internet in Bangladesh). And the scary thing was that when I showed them a real site and a phishing site, no one could detect the fake site. They use internet everyday but they don't know the basic rules of security that why a webpage that looks real might not be real, why it's not good to download every attachment and click on every link in an email that is apparently coming from a friend and why it's not okay to click "Accept" every time your browser gives you a choice. These security decisions are hard even for the adults! How it is possible to make them understandable for these kids? Now I think I understand what Ross Anderson was saying about security and usability that most systems are not designed to consider all kinds of users. Just imagine that you let your kid (or your old parents or anyone) to check emails using your laptop and she downloads every attachments her friend sends and thus installs trozans and keyloggers on your laptop that you use to check your bank accounts. All that encryption and SSL on your bank site won't save your credentials to become a product in the hackers' market. One weak link in the security-chain completely breaks the whole system.

In these days everything I see or read or do or think, brings back this insecurity complex. On another note, the outside world just seems to be getting too interesting to disregard.

Security research is making me skeptical and paranoid about everything. Is that a good thing or bad?

--
[Update] Yes, I do think it is a good thing because it makes me question about the security concerns of the seemingly innocuous choices we make everyday, like giving my email address to win an ipad or installing a browser extension "for a cause" that would donate for every tab I open and also will track my browsing behavior for targeted advertisements (which they do anyway though) or giving an "anonymous" handwritten review which is "obviously" anonymous just because it doesn't have my name on it! There is this fine line between being paranoid and being precautious, of which I am kind of aware of but do not understand, yet, where the line lies.

My photography practice

My photostream on Flickr: sheetal_shundori

PHP file upload

http://php.about.com/od/advancedphp/ss/php_file_upload.htm

Today is the day

, originally uploaded by sheetal_shundori.

Today is the day to be Happy
Today is the day to be Free
Today is the day that will change everything

Social Business

Social Engineering and Koobface virus

Koobface, whose name is an anagram of the word "Facebook", is a special worm that spreads through messages in social networking sites like Facebook and myspace. One of the ways it affects users is:

1. One of friends writes a message on your wall with a video link saying "Funniest video ever!" or "My Home Film;)"

2. When you click on the link, it asks you to install the "Adobe flash player" to see the video.

 which is actually the Koobface worm.

3. You download it and become a zombie.

More on KoobFace:
The Real Face of KOOBFACE, analysis by Trend Micro.
Koobface virus hits facebook
Koobface scam by Berkeley researchers
Wiki has some good links

Some days are so b e a u t i f u l
that they make all the other days worth living! :D

I love to read good things people say about Bangladesh.

I was reading Prof. Justine Cassell's interview, who is the director of CMU HCI research. She traveled 40 countries, yet when asked about them she mentioned wonderful things about Bangladesh.

This is what she said:

What countries have you traveled to?

Well, I’ve probably traveled to forty countries… In 2002-2003, I was on sabbatical, and I had a grant to study young people and the Internet. In one year, I went to twenty-one countries. That was the best year of my life. I spent two weeks in each country. It was so great. As you can tell, I don’t mind being uprooted. I love foreign countries and places I haven’t been before.

I was in really exotic places. I was in a country that was the smallest self-governing country in the world, called Niue. It’s a tiny little island near New Zealand. They only have 562 families in the country. They actually have a lot of people outside the country who are Niuean. But it was so tiny. There was one store in the capital of the country. Well, there was one grocery store. I love that place. I kept extending my stay. First I was supposed to stay only four days, then I stayed seven days, then I stayed ten days. I would’ve stayed longer if I could. It was just so different.

I also love going to Bangladesh. I’ve been there three or four times now. I’ve really enjoyed it each time. Once again, it’s really different from anywhere I’ve lived. I’ve been very warmly welcomed, with a tremendous amount of generosity, by people who don’t have a lot of material possessions. I was privileged to hang out with a group of young people who had grown up in the slums of Dhaka and through the innovative thinking of a Bangladeshi photographer had become photographers themselves. Those young people had so much to say about being the subject vs. the object of their own experience – being behind or in front of the camera. It’s a country that floods severely every year, and yet a significant segment of the population is too poor to move from the flooding areas – and so they take their stuff and move to the top of the hill. The young photographers I spent time with – who call themselves “Out of Focus” – took me around the country to see the effects of the floods, and talked to me about the ways in which Bangladesh gets used in the world press as what they called “poverty porn”. And I’m upset when the 7-Eleven doesn’t have whatever I want. It just really gives you a perspective on things.

Read Full Interview

Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
~Albert Einstein

Fear is the Mind Killer

Fear is the Mind Killer, originally uploaded by Terra Kate.

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

Stanford Prison Experiment

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

{explored Front Page}, originally uploaded by Siréliss.

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

Listen

Am I smart enough?

Yet another phd advice :D, but I loved it. I try to remind myself of this from time to time, it's nice to hear the same thing from a professor.
Excerpt taken from here

Am I smart enough?

That's the wrong question. There is no such thing as ``smart enough''.

If you love playing the piano, play it. You don't expect to be Alfred Brendel or Vladimir Ashkenazy. But you are doing something productive for yourself and those around you. Research is the same. If you enjoy doing it, pursue it. You will usually find that you can contribute something. As you go on, you will discover your strengths and find you have something unique to offer. Maybe there are others who are smarter in some way; they can compute complex probabilities in their head faster than you can, or whatever. But your contributions may be valuable in other ways.

As discussed above, research has many components. Problem solving, identifying issues, presentation, modeling, and criticism are amongst them. See what aspects best suit your abilities and personality. There is probably a niche for you somewhere.

What is written above about kidding yourself does NOT refer to ability or perception of ability; it refers to motivation and honesty about motivation. I want to be sure you are pursuing research for the ``right'' reasons.

Toys for photographers

If you are thinking about buying new toys to try out photography, check out this awesome site of Ken Rockwell.
It contains almost every bit of details about camera models, glasses, flashes or anything related to photography. It also provides you comparison of popular models so that you can decide for yourself.

Normally I spend too much money on gazettes that I might never use in my life!
This site really helped me to concentrate more on "real photography" that consists of thinking about composition, looking for interesting ideas than buying new things which are not necessarily going to make me a good photographer overnight.
So, do all the research you need before buying new things and only buy new toys after you are an expert of the current ones.

P.S.: The last line is actually "a note to self". I seem to having hard time remembering this.