The True Gamification Of Advertising.

This multiple award-winning advertisement from the 1980s indicates that it's promoting Silk Cut cigarettes solely by use of packaging colours and the visual metaphor of slashed material.

It left the reader/viewer to work out the rest and thereby engaged them with a form of extrinsic gamification at a time before any marketers had heard that word.

That's quite a contrast with yesterday's unsubtle approach that scans as poorly as the ubiquitous obtrusive QR codes which are flavour of the month right now.

You can have engagement or you can have a shotgun wedding - we all know which is most likely to develop into a lengthy, meaningful relationship.

Make Marketing More Subtle.

Ah the festive season. Family fun and a sense of bonhomie. Not in the hands of the marketers behind Ann Summers - UK high-street purveyors of "lingerie" and adult toys.

"It's the dirty thoughts that count."

Isn't Christmas the time for giving? So why not give your customers the opportunity to join the dots and engage with you a little rather than shoe-horning that dirty in there? It avoids the risk of appearing cheap and having a low opinion of your customers' literacy and, after all, don't they say subtle is sexier?

How To Make XFCE Looks Like Gnome 2 Desktop Interface

Editing Application Menu Desktop Configuration file

Adding Launcher items to the panel with 'Show Label Instead of Icon' option

XFCE 4.8.3 looks just like our lovely Gnome 2 Desktop :)

Gnome 3 has released their latest version (3.2 when I wrote this post), but they still not get good acceptance yet. So many people still love the old and simple Gnome 2 desktop interface and experience. As reaction, many user decided to switch to another DE that looks similar to Gnome 2 like XFCE and LXDE (like Linus Torvalds has switched to XFCE). Another reaction is more radical came from user who love Gnome 2 so much and has made a fork of Gnome 2 that later called as MATE.

I, as an Gnome 2 lover, of course have been impressed by MATE, and after I tried it in my Ubuntu 11.10 system, I realized that MATE still too premature and brings some fundamental bugs. So, as an alternative I run XFCE 4.8 by installing Xubuntu 11.10 and I just can say : It is amazing !! All stuffs in the XFCE 4.8 just almost identical to the Gnome 2 interface. The panel, the Thunar file manager that now has ability to show harddisk partitions in the sidepane, and very similar to the nautilus do. One thing left to make XFCE exactly identical to Gnome 2 is the Applications-Places-System menu :D

After tried and explored, I've found an idea to bring Gnome 2 Applications-Places-System menu to XFCE 4.8. The main foundations of the idea is about :

1. Use launcher applet of XFCE panel to be used as Places and System menu.

2. Use one application to be used as Places menu, I choose Thunar. And use one application to be used as System menu, I used xfce-settings-manager.

3. The menu will not appear dropdown menu as Gnome 2 menu. The menu will just brings Application-Places-System look to brings the gorgeous and familiar memory of such Gnome 2 look. The Places and the System menu, then, when clicked, of course, will just directly launch the application that we used as the menu :)

Here is the ways to bring them all :

1. The most fist way to do this is change the XFCE panel into double 24-pixels panel. In top panel, right click and select Panel>Panel Preferences. Delete the default bottom panel and recreate one new panel as the bottom panel. Set the size into 24 pixels and the length into 100 %, drag the panel into the bottom screen and then lock the panel. The last thing, add four fundamental items in order to resemble the Gnome 2 bottom panel. The items are Show Desktop, Window Buttons, Workspace Switcher and Trash Applet.

2. Rename “File Manager” menu into “Places”.

Open terminal and edit File Manager menu by this command :

sudo leafpad /usr/share/applications/exo-file-manager.desktop

Find the entry Name and change the entry into this :

Name=File Manager → Name=Places

Save and exit.

3. Rename “Settings Manager” into “System”.

Open terminal and edit Settings Manager by this command :

sudo leafpad /usr/share/applications/xfce-settings-manager.desktop

Find the entry Name and change the entry into this :

Name=Settings Manager → Name=System

Save and exit.

4. Edit the items of the top panel. Right click and select Panel>Panel Preferences>Items. Remove all default items and left 8 eight items : Applications Menu, Separator, Notification Area, Indicator Plugin, Separator, Clock, Separator and Session Menu. Now we get top panel with those items get close each other. To make them arranged similar to Gnome 2 top panel arrangement, set the separator between Applications Menu and Notification Area to be Expand by click the item, and click edit item by select Edit the currently selected item button at the bottom of Panel Preferences menu. Then, add two Launcher items and move them to the position after Applications Menu item. Set those launcher items to Show Label Instead of Icon, by click Edit the currently selected item>Advanced> Show Label Instead of Icon. Last, edit each launcher and add the two main applications we have edited into Places and System. For first launcher, add the Places items by click Edit the currently selected item>General>Add new item, search and scroll down to get the Places item. For the second launcher, do the same but put the System item (that we have edited before from the xfce-settings-manager desktop menu). Now, we get perfect double panel with perfect looking resembles to Gnome 2 panel.

5. Very last things, download and install ambiance-xfce-theme HERE. You can simply install it by typing sudo dpkg -i *.deb. Then, of course, install ubuntu-wallpapers and humanity icon theme (or faenza icon theme as we wish) by Synaptic Package Manager. Switch the desktop wallpaper and icon theme by accessing xfce-settings-manager that now renamed as “System” :D

6. And voilaa, we've brought The Great Glorious Gorgeous GNOME 2 desktop looks into XFCE desktop :)

System comparison :

1. Xubuntu 11.10

2. xfce-panel 4.8.6.0ubuntu1

3. xfce4-session 4.8.2-1ubuntu1

4. thunar 1.2.3-0ubuntu1

Linux Driver for 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter

SiS VGA Driver for Linux, taken from CDLinux 2008

The Driver works perfectly to play any videos

The Driver works good and recognizes the monitor maximum resoulution

Linux now has revolutionary grown into a modern operating system. Now, Linux has been used widely from web server, supercomputer into personal desktop, laptop, and even now, Linux has been very popular to be used in many tablet and smartphone devices. These radical changes indicates that Linux has grown into an ultimate operating system that has ultimate capability to handle any recent and most recent computer hardwares. This is of course a big deal for us to be celebrated.

But in one another rare case, I've found an ironic thing : Linux has left few old hardwares into more less usable hardwares. In my case, my old onboard SiS 661FX VGA controller, since the release of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, “hasn't ironically been maintained” to works as well as in the previous Linux releases. Since then, my SiS vga controller can't shows maximum monitor resolution although I know that there is still a SiS vga controller driver in the system. I really had no idea how to fix that suck thing till I've found one stupid way that magically worked. The way is I run any previous Linux release that still has good capability to handle my SiS vga. My purpose to do such thing is to generate and get the xorg.conf file configuration to be injected in the newer Linux release. And yes, my old SiS vga works well again by using the xorg.conf from the old Linux release.

I used that way to the next Linux releases and always worked well until the release of Ubuntu 11.04. I injected the xorg.conf file and after rebooting, the system can't load X. And so I google to look around what happened to the new Linux system in handling old SiS vga controller, and I got the fact that newer Xorg do not need any xorg.conf file anymore to work with any vga controllers. You just need to get the most appropriate driver of your vga controller and your vga will works good. And later I sought another more appropriate SiS vga driver and I've found some. In the last, I've found a driver at the launchpad called xserver-xorg-video-sismedia but after I installed the driver, I'd found a crappy thing : every I play video using gnome-mplayer and using X11 video output, the video runs very slowly. I had no idea so I rolled back into default SiS driver of the Ubuntu 11.04 release and although I couldn't get my maximum monitor resolution, I got maximum performance in playing videos.

I sought another driver and finally, I've got the most appropriate driver. I've found the driver in an old Chinese Live Linux distribution called CDLinux 2008. The driver works very good in my Ubuntu 11.10, almost perfect. I've got maximum monitor resolution and also I've got maximum performance when I play videos using Mplayer. So then, because of this good thing, I packed the driver into a DEB package and I store it in the internet so any user outside there who has the same old SiS vga controllers will get the most maximum performance with newest Linux releases. The driver can be downloaded HERE.

As usual, as a technical comparison, here is the system I used to test this :

OS : Xubuntu 11.10 kernel default 3.0

CPU : Intel Pentium IV 2,4 GHz

Memory : 1,5 GB RAM

VGA : Onboard SiS 661FX

Monitor : Acer AC711 CRT Monitor with max. resolution 1280x1024 pix.

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Mate Desktop Environment (Gnome2 Fork) Review

Linux Mint 12rc, with MATE 2011.11.03 (click to enlarge)

Since its release, with gnome-shell as default session, Gnome3 has uttered so many controversies. Many people said that gnome-shell is too complicated, less functional, and as my personal opinion, I can say that Gnome3 is "just changing" but with less attention in usability and simplicity.

As a reaction of all the less satisfying Gnome3 release, there is an Arch Linux user, has decided to make a fork of the old Gnome2 Desktop into the new independent brand Desktop Environment, with hope, that will be usable to the too many Linux users who still love Gnome2 desktop interface. He alone has forked the latest Gnome2 packages (2.32.x) and renamed them as MATE Desktop Environment.

Of course, I've been surprised and so fond of, but, as an Ubuntu user, I just can follow the newsletters from the internet forums. And finally, just like dream, Linux Mint developer has decided to take part to maintain MATE and import them as a new another Linux Mint desktop derivative.

And Holy God, finally, Linux Mint developer has finally finished import MATE packages into Linux Mint 12 repository and will be included as an DE choice in the Linux Mint 12 release. Because of I can't wait for this great news, I'd almost never left behind followed the news of Linux Mint 12 development, and finally, after the Linux Mint developer released Linux Mint 12rc, soon, I quickly downloaded, and tried it in my machine.

In the first look, MATE looks so familiar, so lovely, so humble and so romantic--and also, quite fast and reactive. But, then later I've found some crappy behaviors, and soon I realized that these are bugs. These are the bugs I've found in Linux Mint 12rc MATE packages :

1. Mixer / Volume Control applet couldn't run.
2. When I change the gtk themes (widget, window border), immediately the desktop will be very crappy broken : the icon theme lost, and when later I logout and login back, MATE panel was lost.

The only way to bring back MATE desktop normal is deleting MATE configuration directories in home folder and so if we logout and login back, MATE will come back to the its default theme settings :D

But, overall, I must say that MATE is a great project that maintained by Mr. Perberos alone. Highest appreciation I give for his job, and I will always follow the further maintenance, improvements, and bug fixes. As a person with less skill of coding, all I can do to take part in this project is just in technical review (and bug report) :D Long live MATE !

As a technical comparison, this is the machine I used to run Linux Mint 12 with MATE :

1. Intel Pentium4 2,4 Ghz
2. 1,5 G Memory
3. 40GB HDD
4. Onboard SiS VGA with no 3d acceleration support
5. 1280x1024 generic monitor

THC SSL DoS/DDoS Tool Released For Download

A German group of Hackers known as Hackers Choice have released a program they assert will allow a single computer to take down a Web server using a secure connection

THC-SSL-DOS is a tool to verify the performance of SSL.Establishing a secure SSL connection requires 15x more processing power on the server than on the client. THC-SSL-DOS exploits this asymmetric property by overloading the server and knocking it off the Internet.

This problem affects all SSL implementations today. The vendors are aware of this problem since 2003 and the topic has been widely discussed. This attack further exploits the SSL secure Renegotiation feature to trigger thousands of renegotiations via single TCP connection.

Usage:
./thc-ssl-dos 127.3.133.7 443
Handshakes 0 [0.00 h/s], 0 Conn, 0 Err
Secure Renegotiation support: yes
Handshakes 0 [0.00 h/s], 97 Conn, 0 Err
Handshakes 68 [67.39 h/s], 97 Conn, 0 Err
Handshakes 148 [79.91 h/s], 97 Conn, 0 Err
Handshakes 228 [80.32 h/s], 100 Conn, 0 Err
Handshakes 308 [80.62 h/s], 100 Conn, 0 Err
Handshakes 390 [81.10 h/s], 100 Conn, 0 Err
Handshakes 470 [80.24 h/s], 100 Conn, 0 Err

Comparing flood DDoS vs. SSL-Exhaustion attack:

A traditional flood DDoS attack cannot be mounted from a single DSL connection. This is because the bandwidth of a server is far superior to the bandwidth of a DSL connection: A DSL connection is not an equal opponent to challenge the bandwidth of a server.

This is turned upside down for THC-SSL-DOS: The processing capacity for SSL handshakes is far superior at the client side: A laptop on a DSL connection can challenge a server on a 30Gbit link.

Traditional DDoS attacks based on flooding are sub optimal: Servers are prepared to handle large amount of traffic and clients are constantly sending requests to the server even when not under attack.

The SSL-handshake is only done at the beginning of a secure session and only if security is required. Servers are _not_ prepared to handle large amount of SSL Handshakes.

The worst attack scenario is an SSL-Exhaustion attack mounted from thousands of clients (SSL-DDoS).

Tips & Tricks for whitehats

1. The average server can do 300 handshakes per second. This would require 10-25% of your laptops CPU.
2. Use multiple hosts (SSL-DOS) if an SSL Accelerator is used.
3. Be smart in target acquisition: The HTTPS Port (443) is not always the best choice. Other SSL enabled ports are more unlikely to use an SSL Accelerator (like the POP3S, SMTPS, ... or the secure database port).

Counter measurements:

No real solutions exists. The following steps can mitigate (but not solve) the problem:

1. Disable SSL-Renegotiation
2. Invest into SSL Accelerator

Either of these countermeasures can be circumventing by modifying THC-SSL-DOS. A better solution is desireable. Somebody should fix this.

You can download THC-SSL-DOS here:

Windows: thc-ssl-dos-1.4-win-bin.zip
Linux: thc-ssl-dos-1.4.tar.gz