Xmas Getaway Day 2

So it was rise and shine the next day and what other best way to start the day then a early breakfast? The breakfast was also provided by Swiss Garden and luckily there were some variety instead whats being left over from last night's dinner. Basically we were too tired to go crazy on Silent Night and we seemed to had missed quite a bit of fun here. So after a nice and quiet breakfast, we headed out for KLCC.

We took the subway there and I notice Avira Antivrus is actually quite aggressive in their promotion in KL. Here is photo of one of the ads in the train where the whole train is basically Avira's ads:

Notice how the ads is targeted at multi racial community.

Another strange thing we realized was this sign:

Wow, it must be really bad that they had to setup a sign for it. I paid double attention to my belongings while I was taking this photo. The joke will be on me if I get mugged while taking this photo. :)

One of the place we always loved at KLCC is, well the Kinokuniya book store. In the last trip I actually bought too much magazine, so I controlled myself this time and only buy what I can carry comfortably. There were a lot of good Japanese stuff here too, but I seriously could not buy all of them back. J bought a Magazine which gives free Sanrio product inside. I think this is the trend in Japan. People usually do not buy the magazine, they just want the "free" gift inside. It was also too bad that my Digital Camera magazine did not realized the new issue in time and I already bought the current issue before I started the trip.

There were the Christmas tree display at the central area as usual. Here are a few of my shots:

I wish I could put up more, but that will make the blog load too slowly.

We also checked out the movie theater just before lunch. Since we did not ended up with a good time for any movies, we decided to pass and go straight for lunch at Sushi King. Sushi King is very much just a store inside the good court now, but its is still tasty. Now I am not saying it is good sushi because the sushi does fall apart etc. In terms of true to Japanese style, it fails miserably. But it is still cheap and tasty. The sushi is nice to eat. Come on, what the most important thing about food? The taste. And this, Sushi King still has it. There were a promotion which allow us to claim 2 more plates of sushi for free on the next trip, but obviously we will not eat Sushi King AGAIN in the next 2 days. I thought of passing the receipt to someone else so that they can enjoy it, but the receipt does contain something which I find sensitive, related to the credit cards, so I skipped it.

We tried to take a cab back to the hotel and as usual, it was hell. The cab outside did not want to run meter and the cab inside who wanted to run meter, but you have to pay RM2 to take those cab. Its a lose, lose situation. But at least the metered cab seems newer and you do not need to queue. So it was marginally cheaper and we managed to get back to the hotel to rest and put down our stuff. We did not waste too much time before we decided that we should go for Sungei Wang as well on the same day.

Sungei Wang was the place for shopping for IT stuff, but actually the Low Yat Plaza besides it was even more so. It was separated nicely into levels which sells cameras, notebooks etc. I wish I had more time to spend here, but I had to move on and I do not have something really in mind to buy. Sungei Wang was the place to stop for dinner and after walking for a long long time, we finally kinda narrowed down to the Malaysia (Ben Zheng) Wantan Noodle or the Toilet Theme Cafe next to it. Judging from price, I went for the Wantan Noodle and it was damn good. The even had FREE Wifi. BTW, I do not know its the the same vendor that setup the Wifi in the whole KL, but everyone uses a1b2c3d4e5f6 for their WEP password. Fantastic! The noodle was nice, but they kinda run out of Char Siew (roasted pig). I guess its ok.

We swing by Lot 10 and the other shopping malls on the way back and we spot Parkson was having a display for Sanrio characters in their windows. We took some shots of it.

I admit I was playing with the lightings in these shot. Only a few of them had the correct lighting actually :)

We took a short trip back to the hotel and took some shots along the way. One place we actualyl saw a 3D (As in a real cube) TV. It has 4 faces. The Christmas lighting was ok, nothing I had not seen before. Its still pretty crowded for Xmas day.

Notice on the last photo that law enforcement did not have a break even on Xmas day. Well, I guess thanks to them, we had a peaceful Xmas.

Although we had a heavy dinner, Jane ordered hotel room service at night anyway. But I was too dead tired and I missed all of it. Jane took some photo of it though.

Anyway, that concludes our Day 2...

(To Be Continued)
Previous Posts:
http://nemesisv.blogspot.com/2011/02/xmas-getaway-day-1.html

A visit to the Toilet Concept Restaurant in KL

I visited one of those "toilet" theme restaurant when I was in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. I thought it was quite interesting, so here are some photos.

Live Messenger 2011 Error - wlsetup is not a valid win32 application

It is such a weird error message I bet you will not guess what caused it... This error only occurs when you run the Live Messenger 2011 installer in Windows XP and below.

Well, the reason is Live Messenger 2011 is ONLY for Vista and above. Why can't they just put a message indicating so instead of such a cryptic message?

Onee loves his food

Onee loves his food. Especially the full of protein diet which consist of meat and milk.

Onee and his pinky straw hat

Onee likes to play with the paper straws I gave him. Here was once he somehow got it onto his head and it look like a straw hat.

Why AVG Internet Security 2011 is so strong

I suddenly realized AVG IS 2011 had been detecting quite a fair bit of the malware accurately recently... Little did I know why, until I had a look at:
http://www.avg.com/us-en/internet-security

It turns out that AVG IS 2011 is actually leveraging on the cloud to perform the scanning. No wonder it had been improved greatly. So the question remain is : Is Cloud Scanning the way to go?

In a not so long ago conference, I got a presentation from representatives of Symantec to present on their Cloud technology which is essentially based on ranking more or less. Was it really effective? I did not test it out because to me, Norton class of AV is basically bloated-ware and the Symantec Class is too expensive to even try (ya, I recall you need to pay for the 90 day trial as well, which is crap). More on Symantec:
http://www.symantec.com/business/endpoint-protection-cloud

So you think more and more of the AV should move to the cloud?

Xmas Getaway Day 1

This post had been delayed and delayed, so I decided that I should finished it once and for all. That's the trouble with not having a laptop or mobile device to document the events on the spot...

Anyway, it as 23 Dec 2010. Xmas Eve. We choose Xmas Eve because that's Silent Night after all. There was a small hiccups because I made a mistake when I booked the tickets regarding the time in AM and PM. The original ticket was for the night bus. Fortunately, it was found out early and we managed to fix it with a little additional money. But the boarding location had been changed and so we had to really rush. We were right on time and managed to clear everything night and easy. Ok, except the overhead bridge. Damn it is really challenging to carry the luggage over one.

The bus trip was straight forward and we had the usual lousy TV with the pirated movie. It was showing Apocalytica I think. In any case, it would had been a bad movie even if it was on Bluray. We stopped at the usual bus rest place and we tried to cut down buying anything there because we know how much cheaper it will be when we go to ChinaTown later. But I also remember the lesson that we didn't have food and were damn hungry last year, so I bought something to munch on just in case. Fortunately this year, we did not have to go through that.

After we changed our tickets, we should be stopping at the Palace of the Golden Horses. However, the bus actually went all the way in to KL and made a stop nearby our hotel. I thought that was the perfect time to get off. It saved us some time and money to get back into the city from the Palace. But once again I had missed the chance to go to the Palace because I had always wanted to. Since the days of its glory, until its decadents today.

We arrived at our Hotel and were told that our room will not be read yet, so we had to drop our luggage and grab some food instead. We went to a vegetarian store across the road last year and it was good. I wondered if it will still be there. Surely, when we approached it, we notice the same old stores and owners. I am almost happy in a way. Miss the cheap and good food. We ordered something simple and good. Fried Rice and Ice Milo.

It was really cheap and I can't help myself telling the shop owner that we actually came back from Singapore all the way just to taste his food. He told us he also serve night dishes for dinner. I thought I might drop by one night to try it out, but alas, I did not manage to find a dinner slot this trip.

After lunch, we passed by the 7-11 like store which was there last year too. I bought some basic stuff such as the shaver (which was a mistake since I actually brought my electric shaver and I forgot) and herbal tea. The herbal tea was something rather unique which we dun see around much. The herbal tea are actually small packets of actual herbs which you can put with hot water and drink. No fake stuff. All real ingredients. Here is a photo of it:

Because of this, we had a great time eating all the hot stuff and did not suffer any heatiness this trip. 

We went back to the hotel and we were still unable to check in. Well, I am really going to give a Negative for Swiss Garden this time. They offered us a welcome drink, which was essentially a small glass of orange juice. We finished it and start looking around in the lobby. I noticed that the cake shop was still around. We did not managed to buy any cake last time, maybe we would this time. But unfortunately, we missed all the timing for the discount cakes for the next 3 days. But here is one which I thought looked a little bit like Angry Bird, the Red color one anyway...

Anyway, our room eventually was ready and we went up for a rest, unpack and plan. Of course, before we forgotten, we booked the free shuttle to China town for the night as well. 

Now, that was Silent Night. And of course, who would miss a Xmas Party / Dinner. Strangely when I arrived, I found that there were already reservation for the both of us. I thought that was rather strange. And it turns out that it was actually a mistake which the staff made. It was made by someone else, but its not like its free either. We were one of the first to reach (because we wanted to go to ChinaTown) and we were surprised by the stuff on the table.

There were party hats and other fun stuff in the boxes. We were almost glad we "made" the reservation (which of course we din't). Anyway, we started to dig in. Now Swiss Garden is really famous for their pasties. There were so many of them at the buffet. Here are some of them:

And of course, how can we miss out the Turkey!

We had a fun and full meal and we proceed to ChinaTown to basically buy some cheap stuff, enjoy the view and made a short trip to the book store (and bought nothing). We were dead tired by the time all that is over because we had a long day getting there... So it was a good and sound sleep on the first night.

(To be Continued...)

Microsoft to patch 22 bugs, 3 zero-days today!

Yes, Microsoft will be doing some major patching. And 3 of them are 0days!
Be prepared to grab and reboot your systems tonight.
Read more on:
Microsoft to patch 22 bugs, 3 zero-days next week

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9208038/Microsoft_to_patch_22_bugs_3_zero_days_next_week?taxonomyId=17

Last Block of IPv4 Allocated

Yes, just had just been allocated... As predicted from a previous post.
Read more from:
http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=10342

BullGuard 10 Released

The Internet Security Suite based on BitDefender Engine had been upgraded to v10.
Here are the improvements list:
www.bullguard.com/why/bullguard-internet-security.aspx

The most significant change is the addition of a new module : Inspector. Basically this is a vulnerability check (based on version) for applications installed on the system. If there are vulnerabilities found with these application, it will be flag and you will be informed to make a upgrade. While it doesn't seems much, it is a good addition, without additional cost.

Malware Stats Screensaver

I am going to introduce 2 pretty cool screensavers you can install to display updated stats of malware around the global.These are NOT AV scanners and does not provide any form of protection. It just act as a stats board and make your dull boring corp PC looks cool.

The first is from Kaspersky. It is call Irida. There is not much information on it, except than being linked from a blog post:
http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/370/The_smart_screensaver

The look and feel is fantastic, but I find it just very confusing as well, like in a SyFy movie. However, it look damn cool.

You can download it via:
http://irida.kasperskyclub.com/scr.zip

Next, there is one from Symantec. Full details here:
http://go.symantec.com/screensaver

This provide a rather more static view. Less 3D but more scrolling text. However, I find the purple a bit gay, so I went for the Kaspersky one instead.

You can download the PC version from:
http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/downloads/win_symantec_threat_monitor_setup.zip
and the Mac version from:
http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/downloads/mac_symantec_threat_monitor_setup.zip

The first virus Brain is now 25 years old!

Remember the good old days...
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002087.html

IPv4 may be fully exhausted on 11 Feb 2011...

According to this calculation anyway...
http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html

Better grab it while you can... I see 2% IANA left, I bet you its less when you see it now.

THC Hydra 6.0 Released

http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-hydra/


CHANGELOG for 6.0 (development and new features)
================================================

• Added GPL exception clause to license to allow linking to OpenSSL - debian people need this
• IPv6 support finally added. Note: sip and socks5 modules do not support IPv6 yet
• Bugfix for SIP module, thanks to yori(at)counterhackchallenges(dot)com
• Compile fixes for systems without OpenSSL or old OpenSSL installations
• Eliminated compile time warnings
• xhydra updates to support the new features (david@)
• Added CRAM-MD5, DIGEST-MD5 auth mechanism to the smtp-auth module (david@)
• Added LOGIN, PLAIN, CRAM-(MD5,SHA1,SHA256) and DIGEST-MD5 auth mechanisms to the imap and pop3 modules (david@)
• Added APOP auth to POP3 module (david@)
• Added NTLM and DIGEST-MD5 to http-auth module and DIGEST-MD5 to http-proxy module (david@)
• Fixed VNC module for None and VLC auth (david@)
• Fixes for LDAP module (david@)
• Bugfix Telnet module linemode option negotiation using win7 (david@)
• Bugfix SSH module when max auth connection is reached (david@)

Geohot release PS3 Test Homebrew

From : http://geohot.com/
There is a sample homebrew created as a real signed SELF.

Download the SELF :
http://www.fileserve.com/file/4QTEugw

PS3 Tools from fail0verflow

Team fail0verflow release some tools for packing / unpacking PUP and PKG files. It also enable you to sign / unsign SELF which is essential what people are using to patch Grand Turismo 5 etc. You can download a copy of the tools from my mirror below:


Linux : http://www.fileserve.com/file/mkRkupZ
Windows : http://www.fileserve.com/file/F98bEaA


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