FMA Brotherhood

Full Metal Alchemist. The anime that achieved the Best anime award for 2005.
It's now back as FMA Brotherhood and instead of a second season, it is a so called remake as the plot will follow the manga version more closely.

This is the first time I'm watching FMA [thank you animax :)] as I only heard of it.
So here is a trailer.




The anime opening theme. Again by YUI. It rocks.



The anime ending theme."Uso (Lie)" by SID



For those of you who want to know more of the story, go to wikipedia (warning:spoilers).
Those who want to watch, subscribe to animax or fan sub(not recommended)

Enjoy!

Earth Day

Earth Day .

What are you going to do about it?

LOL.

or

Do something?

If you could afford it,

#set up a solar panel and generate electricity for free
(there are companies in Malaysia who sell these...Yellow Pages for info)

#use only energy saving light bulbs (very common)

#reduce plastic bag usage (use reusable bags)

#be a vegetarian

#start a garden to grow your own food
(note: use organic compose if possible and do not use
pesticides...you will defeat the purpose if you use them)

#switch off electrical appliances when you don't use them (includes the pc...)

#start using a modified exercise bicycle so you can generate electricity when you exercise.

#recycle whenever possible (the usual aluminium can, glass, old newspapers...you get it)

#Lastly, go here http://www.earthday.net/

Hope you can try this. Peace out.

BOred?

Something to do when your bored.
http://www.techcult.com/the-150-best-online-flash-games/

Free online games....

Something funny

Just something random I watched recently after a long time.

Crime

Something that I stumbled upon for people who live in BSD and is quite relevant.
http://www.sridamansara.info/index.php?topic=38.0

Do not worry. The link is clean and is not spam or ad related.
This is due to a string of break-ins happening in where I live.
I was one of the victims and my new laptop*sob* less than half ayear with me has been stolen.
Another thing that was stolen is my Canon MV850 camcorder.

Laptop
Acer Aspire 4530-721 G6MN
AMD Turion X2 2.1Ghz
4GB RAM 800Mhz
160GB HDD
Nvdia Geforce 9100M
Blue black colour
Serial no. : LXAREOC039840251392500

Hope you can contact me about the whereabouts soon.

Lost Laptop

(Image from http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/laptop_security.jpg)

In the age where mobile computing becomes more and more widespread, one thing that comes to mind is that the laptop you bought may one day get stolen in a multitude variety of ways. Search Google with 'stolen laptops' as tag and you find laptops commonly taken from vehicles,homes etc...


A better post on how to

Protect Lost or Stolen Laptop

(http://www.solutionheaven.com/mobile/protect-lost-or-stolen-laptop/)

However, in the event that your laptop is stolen, go to this link:

http://www.ccmostwanted.com/report/serial.htm

Register here and pray that your laptop will come back...About 97% of stolen laptops never get back to their owners....So if you do get back your laptop, buy a lottery.

Some extra info:

(http://www.absolute.com/resources/computer-theft-statistics.asp)

Computer Theft & Recovery Statistics

Business Practices

Seven in 10 government mobile devices are unencrypted.
Government Accountability Office (GAO), IT Security: Federal Agency efforts to encrypt sensitive information are under way, but work remains, June 2008

53% of mobile professionals carry confidential company information on their notebook PCs and, of those, 65% don’t take steps to protect the data.
Dell & Ponemon Institute, Airport Insecurity: the case of lost laptops, June 30, 2008

66% of US employees write down passwords in unsafe places.
IT Facts, 66% of US employees write down passwords in unsafe places, March 21, 2008

34% of the businesses have no tools/procedures in place to detect identity fraud.
Ad-hoc News, Business Owners Have “False Sense of Security’’ When It Comes to Data Breaches, May 27, 2008

85% of privacy and security professionals had at least one reportable breach in the past 12 months.
Deloitte, Enterprise @ Risk: 2007 Privacy & Protection Survey, 2007

63% of privacy and security professionals experienced multiple reportable data breaches – between 6 and 20 breaches – in 2007.
Deloitte, Enterprise @ Risk: 2007 Privacy & Protection Survey, 2007

Data Loss & Costs

66% of breaches involved data the company did not know was on their system.
Verizon, 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report, 2008

The cost of recovering from a single data breach now averages $6.3M - that’s up 31 percent since 2006 and nearly 90 percent since 2005.
Ponemon Institute, U.S. Costs of a Data Breach, November 2007

Computer & Handset Loss & Theft

Laptop theft accounted for 50% of reported security attacks.
CSI, The 12th Annual Computer Crime and Security Survey, 2007

Lost or stolen laptops and mobile devices are the most frequent cause of a data breach, accounting for 49% of data breaches in 2007.
Ponemon Institute, U.S. Costs of a Data Breach, November 2007

12,000 laptops are lost in U.S. airports each week, and two-thirds are never returned.
Dell & Ponemon Institute, Airport Insecurity: the case of lost laptops, June 30, 2008

Recovery Stats

Fastest recovery by Absolute was 47 minutes.
Absolute Software, 2008

Absolute recovers 3 out of 4 missing computers.*
Absolute Software, 2008

Internal Theft

62% of breaches were attributed to significant internal errors.
Verizon, 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report, 2008

The majority of data breaches (61%) originate from internal sources, as a result of enterprises’ inability to enforce their IT policies or due to problems with the policies themselves.
Data Monitor, Mitigating the Risks of Data Loss, August 2007

Hope you learnt something. And here are some must have laptop recovery software. Install before it gets stolen. Adeona from http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/ is an example and also make sure you have a built in webcam for proof of the the person who stole your laptop.They track the ip address and your laptop sends a distress signal when it is online after you report it missing.

You can also buy insurance for your laptop. Some vendors offer them (saw one in acer's website).

Depending on the premium, you can get a replacement if it gets stolen on broken.

That concludes this week's post and thanks for reading

Chimera

Picture taken from http://mmadnd.chat.ru/chimera.gif


Something to share before I begin....

"The Chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that terminated in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her spine.

The Chimera was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and a sibling of such monsters as Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra. The term chimera has also come to mean more generally, an impossible or foolish fantasy." (wiki)




After reading the description above, you would think it was impossible for this to occur...But,think again!

There is a field in genetics which study this type of condition albeit in a different way that the chimera is proclaimed.

"Typically seen in zoology (but also discovered to a rare extent in human beings), a chimera is an animal that has two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes; if the different cells emerged from the same zygote, it is called a mosaicism.

Chimeras are formed from four parent cells (two fertilized eggs or early embryos fuse together) or from three parent cells (a fertilized egg is fused with an unfertilized egg or a fertilized egg is fused with an extra sperm). Each population of cells keeps its own character and the resulting animal is a mixture of tissues." (wiki)

Further reading tells you about some strange cases that happen in humans....

"EXPLAIN this. You are a doctor and one of your patients, a 52-year-old woman, comes to see you, very upset. Tests have revealed something unbelievable about two of her three grown-up sons. Although she conceived them naturally with her husband, who is definitely their father, the tests say she isn't their biological mother. Somehow she has given birth to somebody else's children...."
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18024215.100-the-stranger-within.html)

Further reading tells you that this is common but less seen in life due to unspecific screening.[cells in your arm may be composed of cells of different DNA(small number) that comes from your mom or your twin which was never born(talk about scary)]

However, on a positive note, you can really say that your mom still lives in your heart (some of her cells are sometimes transported there from the womb) and you must respect her cause there are some parts of her in you and vice versa. So remember the mother's day gift and treat your mom nicely.

Hope you enjoyed this.

Parking woes

A note to DBKL who do not have people that can do a proper town management plan.

A trip to KL usually means jam, jam and more jam especially during peak hours.
Well, this cannot be entirely their fault but one thing that seems to surprise me that most of the time there are no or little parking spaces for the less prominent parts of the city.

And to add insult to injury, they had to think laterally and set up parking meters so that people would leave as soon as they finish their business.

It sounds effective but mind you there are people who drive to work and need to park their cars for more than three hours.(they are working and helping the economy)

One of the solutions I can think of is to make a building block for parking (I know it sounds quite impossible given that the development is still going).But maybe it is already drafted in the City Plan so I would not know.

Another thing is maybe improve the transport system? I know that numerous efforts have been done but some traffic jams are caused by big buses blocking the road. (can't really blame them because the bus stops are small) I think we can bring back the mini buses instead of the big buses as the road in some places are fairly cramped and only allow a vehicle to pass through at a time.

So I hope the DBKL will hear this and improve efforts to help the city.