Skype is Evil

Well, actually it is not evil, it is tricky (I'm just being a populist). If you are not a computer geek I will try to explain you why it is so.

First, it hides its network traffic: the ports are randomly generated and the network packets are encrypted without an obvious signature. Someone might consider it as a feature, because your network administrators have a little chance to know that you are running skype or to block your skype connections. link (in Russian)

Second, skype is peer-to-peer and it uses many different protocols (not just TCP). This means that any active skype client can be used as a gateway to the network. For instance, if you don't have the internet access, but you are in a local network with internet access and someone else is running skype, you will be able to use your skype as well. It might sound again like a feature, if you ignore some viruses that use skype network. link (in Latvian)

Third, skype client is very well protected against cracking and disassembling. It is not easy to track what kind of information skype is reading from your computer and what kind of information it is sending to the network. link (in Russian)

Fourth, skype consumes more system resources than other messengers. By this I encourage most of my friends to switch back to icq/msn/yahoo.

Active Weekend

This weekend went extremely peasant for me, since I spent it mostly doing sports in a good company.

On Friday I participated in a running race for 5.2km together with my university colleagues. Everyone of us liked it so much that we decided to promote the organization of a similar race within the university (I still have to write to the university's sport club today).

On Saturday-Sunday, thanks to Mr.Janes, I went again windsurfing to the Garda lake and after it - to see the international climbing competition RockMasters 2007 in Arco. It was veeeeeeery spectacular. Sorry guys, but watching soccer is boring.

Definition of Freedom

There are two main definitions of freedom can be found. One defines freedom as an ability to act and think without any restriction. Another adds that this acting and thinking should not limit the freedom of any other person.

From the modelling point of view, the first freedom is very simple. Some persons can be free until their acting and thinking are not in the conflict. This makes everyone free only when they are synchronized in their intentions which is a little chance from the probability theory point of view.

The second definition enforces you to respect the boundaries of your freedom and it gives 100% probability for everyone to be free. It is again a synchronization, but this time it reduces the entropy of the system i.e. the amount of chaos, which is necessary for the evolutional development through natural selection.

Being more chaotic, I prefer the first definition. So if you ask me if I am free, the answer is unfortunately "NO".