Posts Tagged ‘store’

How to store username and password permanently in Weblogic Application server – boot.properties

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014

oracle weblogic proprietary webserver logo make server user and password permanent

I'm following a training intensive 5 days course for Oracle WebLogic. Some of exercises included stopping / starting Weblogic App server for security reasons Weblogic is designed to always propmpt for password. I remember similar behavior in Apache configured to use SSL certificate.
Whether a new Weblogic server is configured and a frequent restart of server is needed having to write the password each and everyime is mostly annoying. Thanksfully there is a file called boot.properties in which username / password can be hardcoded and later red on Weblogic start. As boot.properties contains security credentials its very important to keep the file as secured as possible. boot.properties files can be set-up for each different configured separate Weblogic server instance.

For my training sessiion boot.properties is in locations:

/home/oracle/wls11g_advadm/work/domains/MedRecDomain/servers/MedRecAdmSvr/security/boot.properties

/home/oracle//wls11g_advadm/work/domains/MedRecDomain/servers/MedRecSvr2/security/boot.properties

cat /home/oracle/wls11g_advadm/work/domains/MedRecDomain/servers/MedRecSvr2/security/boot.properties
username=weblogic
password=Welcome1


Depending on how Oracle Weblogic is configured its possible values in boot.properties (username / password) to be encrypted after first server boot-up.
 

Lastpass – store and manage website passwords plugin for Firefox

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

lastpass entry screen firefox browser screenshot picture
Lastpass is a handy plugin allowing you to save and manage website passwords. As with other password manager programs, it is necessery to set one Master password which allows you to view all other website login passwords. Of course for people very concerned of security LastPass might not be the best choice, as it can reveal a possible malicious person all passwords by stealing just one. Besides that lastpass plugin sends and stores password on lastpass.com, so anyone who might hack into their server will get your account details and password. Anyways, still for the casual web user which is very lazy and less security concerned it nice.

As I see on the Lastpass's website it even was mentioned in Forbes  Business Magazine 🙂

The quickest way to install it in Firefox is to follow menus:

Tools -> Add ons -> Search (type lastpass) and click Install

After the usual browser install the plugin loads up, it is necessery to create account with lastpass.com and tick the Agreement to send encrypted password data to LastPass.

never forget password lastpass dialog

Once it is configured interesting feature of LastPass is automatic filling up of Forms.
You know how much often it is nowdays to create new registration with websites. If you have to create new registrations too frequently and fill up the same data again and again you start to get very irritated. Here LastPass will be mostly helpful as it can fill up around web-forms automatically with a predefined Form data (Fork Skele).

configure form fill automatic form filling lastpass screenshot automatically fill web page forms in Firefox

Configure automatic form filling about bank accounts, credit card information etc. LastPass Mozilla Firefox

After filling up all data, you will be redirected and automatically logged into LastPass's website Vault. This is a webplace, giving you access to see and manage all password via lastpass.com. You can put different identities inside have numerous pre-filled forms to be used as a samples for automatic form filling, add notes, create groups etcetera.

The plugin's idea is good and useful and as I said most people might have no objections using it still I don't like  fact that a 3rd party site (Lastpass.com) stores my data is very so though it was fun to test it I doubt to seriously use it in future.

Tricks of the supermarket trade or how supermarket lie to you to buy more than you need (My few memories on government food stores in communism times)

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

I've personally always hated super markets from the very early days I entered one. Here in Bulgaria we've been somehow partly lucky not to have supermarket due to the different philosophy of the communistic regime in which we lived until 1991. The philosophy of then governing communist back then was to distribute food in local middle size or small stores owned by the government. The food has to be approved by governmental body and heavily checked if it matches the governmental set standards. The variety of food we were offered in the stores was very little. Most of the small stores (which were owned by the government) only contained basic products like;;;

bread, youghurt, milk, meat, butter, lemonade, beer and few more,

This was done probably intentionally and was a result probably of our long years Orthodox Christian faith which (has saved us and preserved over the centuries). Orthodox Christianity has always teached for simplicity. Even though the communist party rejected the faith and even did severe persecution against the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The people on the top elite who were planning the communism had been a descent of an orthodox christian raised up living and therefore the philosophy of simplicity was inherited (even genetically) so the way the COM party behaved based on its leaders and the governing decisions about the nations belonging to communism (Russia, (Yugoslavia) – Serbia Koso , Bulgaria, Greece, Egypt etc.) were in a material expression in conjunction with the Christian tradition of simplicity (i say material because Orthodox Christian Church even visiting back then in the countries was usually prohibited and the Com. party did their best to ruin up the believe in Christ in people).

In communism the local suburb grocery stores, were the only "points" of distribution of food. Since buying and owning a car took at least few years of waiting and big money for it. Not more than 10 to 20% of families owned car and owning a car was considered to be granted mostly to people belonging to the then governing communistic elite or the Communist Party.

The public transportation was encouraged because according to communism so called "geometry" which was a main drive for how the systems in communistic countries should work it was estimated public transportation is cheaper and more environmental friendly than if a car is given to anyone, also public transportation (trains, bus-es) etc. did a good thing in the aim of the party to exersice higher control and surveilance over the population.

Because of that existence of big super-market was scarce and the culture to go and buy from a shop with your own family car was not existing.

The equivalent of nowdays mall shops (big retail stores) was usually located on the city center and the size of this shop was much smaller and the variety of products one can find there was only few. Hence the customer didn't have so much options to choose between, neither had to spend too much of time on choosing, the com party wanted the people to work more and buy less, so spending time in stores was not encouraged.

With the entrance of democracy and the moving up of large super-market food and good retails shops like Metro was among the first ones which entered the "freed" market. It was really a bizarre experience for us the ex U.S.S.R belonging people to enter such a large sized stores and to face such a big variety of choice.

Before that in communism we never saw such stores even on the TV, since the TV was governed by communistic party and only information which was useful for the establishment and protection of the regime was projected on the only available National TV channel.

Sorry to distract a bit from the major topic of this post, but I thought this is necessery to explain before continuing because it is important to understand that unintentinonally the communist gave us an advantage to have a different view on things than Western free world, a view which is in many things contrary and more correct (in terms of hard logic) than to Western Europe.

My first encounter with a super-market was only about 8 or 10 years ago and I believe many people who lived in the province of Bulgaria and other ex-communist countries did for a first time experience super-markets approximate 10y. ago.
Though all looked so nice inside the shop and the shop emploees were so nice I always felt something very cold dead inside this big stores. Ptonsnlu my intuition (spirit) if you want has always pointed me out that there is something very wrong with this super markets.

With the increase of products on the market for us people who lived up to our 8 to 12 years (young age) in communism it was a great shock, since we were raised in a society based on some communist false ideology and suddenly the markets were opened and the products variety to choose between become extremely high.
All previously said to be good and true in communism time was said to be anti-freedom and many people did their best to destroy as much as possible mostly everything somehow connected with previous communistic time.
My homeland Bulgaria as a result of this become a very hard to live place and we were forced to adapt in fast paces and learn things on how we have to live like democrats for a very little short of time.
One severe "damage" most of the growing people in Bulgaria in communism had was the hardness and inability to make choices.
For many people between the age of 25 to 35 it is very hard to make choices even for small things.
This was a direct consequence of a long years (45 years) of communist propaganda, and few generations who lived in a non-freedom respecting regime which conditioned and prepared a specific plan and place for every individual living in the country.

Seeing communism as the ultimate evil and manipulation to make us dependent we didn't know that in the free democratic world the manipulation and conditioning in society was heavy too.

"The Programming" of western society through institutions, stores and order in society was a fact and in a sense the only difference between the Democratic world and communistic world was one of the worlds seemed to have a larger frame in which the individual can work and live, whether the communistic regime seem to be more restrictive.
One main thing used to condition people choices and buying behavior and make them over-consume to make the democratic economy constantly growth was big super-markets. Though they were privately owned and not like in communist country, the only drive behind each shop was PROFIT, PROFIT and agian PROFIT.

Higher profits would mean higher consumptions, higher consumptions means higher production and more work places opened as well as more expenses for working individuals would mean bigger necessity to work more and earn more, because though the sallaries incomes were high in the free world. The individual necessities there were even increasing too.

Since the about 1950s 1960s the super-markets started entering the "free" democrat countries world. As a result the small shops which were prior a main food and beverage distribution source started closing, because they couldn't be a concurrence to the big "brothers" super-markets which were able to buy higher quantities of goods in lesser price and therefore sell many of the goods in much lower prices than the little grocery stores.

The result with the years was a huge shift in people buying behavior from local groce and open markets to buy everything from the big super-markets. The big store chains had to be in a fight for customers all the time, so businesses involved started customer wars and tried their best to "steal" customers from each other. In this financial wars a main thing that most super-market chains and malls did was constant optimization of efficiency of both buying and reselling to the end customer. This is a 3 step business process actually.

1;;; They buy from the commodity producer
2;;; They prepare the food for the store (packaging, cleaning up whatever)
3;;; They put it in a certain way in the store and organize the store in a way to always sell more and more

As a result a huge number of tricks were employed by each and every super-market aiming to deceive the customer to ever buy more
The deception of the client in store is very tricky and smart organized so it cannot really be called a lie but its rather a tricky smartness.

Since the super-markets entered in my country too and the tiny grocery stores are mostly closing unable to compete with the large super-market 'money making machines'. Even I am sometimes forced to buy stuff from super markets. Since here in Bulgaria the culture of purchasing from super-markets is not so strong yet. In order to be able to consume the little grocery stores. Many large super-markets started investing in making the little groceries their retail shops with their brand or (sometimes a new make up brand).
By doing so the little grocery stores loose their authoritarity and independance and become dependant on the big super-market on the type of products they will sell, this obviously means this strategy of the big super-market in the long run will lead the little grocery stores we still have to ruin up. This is obvious because if the small grocery stores start selling the exact same products (brands) of the big super-markets, there will be nothing left to make the little grocery unique. Neither the variety of products choice inside or pricing will be any different from super-market. This will mean the tiny grocer will be no different from the big super-markets in terms of product and prices and therefore. The clients which now are loyal to small grocery stores like me will then have not such big motivation to buy from small super-markets, since everything inside is somehow similar (not to say) the same as with big supermarket the only difference would be the lesser variety which is obviously a good reason why the customer would definitely prefer to buy from the large supermarket …

On the videos you're about to see below, they explain some of the probably thousands of tricks nowdays existing the super-market chains employs to trick us to exponentiolly consume their goods.

Old Tricks of the SuperMarket Trade

As you can see the video is presenting a reality of the tricks which was used in the 1960 and now technology and knowledge in the field has largely increased and since they there are surely many new trick 'developments' which are working for the masses of customers daily.
There is even a whole science centered on buying behaviour already existent called buyology!

Here is a short introduction to buyology to give you an idea what its purpose is:

Short introduction video on buyology – The Science of buying part 1 of 2

Short introduction video on buyology – The Science of buying part 2 of 2


Seeing all this is very precious information, since being informed one can escape the bad "tricks and traps" pawn in the markets.

All the information about the communistic regime and the 'shopping system' there was mentioned priorly because I wanted to explain a bit of the difference of then and now to point you to my opinion that the Western buying model and expectation to sell more based on the tricks are probably not working very well here in the ex-communistic countries, especially with the older generations and the one like me which somehow grow a small part of their youth in communism.

The reason is we have a different 'social programming' than westerners. Also the different spirituality (The orthodox Christian faith) plays another role. Also there is a difference in the type of buying behaviour. In Bulgaria there is no culture to buy once or twice per week. People have culture to buy daily, though this is starting to change slowly these days.

For a bit more of videos and a bit of my thougths on my research on Super Market Psychology check my previous post containing educational videos on how the supermarkets cheat you to buy more

The topic is actually very huge and I'm sure what I'm saying is just the 'tip of the iceberg'. As I'm a firm opponent of big industries and large business I'm firmly against the buying from big stores any goods. The reason is that simply by doing so one makes the already RICH people even more RICHER. By increasing the richness of a certain small group of people daily, we as society are un-consciously somehow involuntarily letting them increase the financial control that is already there in some degree to the society.
As democracy's main drive is money this means that by helping the large business-es marge and become even BIGGER, we're doing something against ourselves and our interests as society.
I don't think that any ordinary citizen in the free world want to live in a fully controlled one World State (one world country), similar to the ex-communism I lived through, so I think people concerned about our freedoms should oppose the big businesses according to the society level they're in. Even if we're not in position to change things with money, we as society are in a position to change ourselves and our understanding of world, our desires and our behaviour. If we change our value system in a way, where money are not a top priority and the highest value the outcome will be positive in both spiritual terms and overall world state.

The modern day however wants us to falsely believe that we're divided, helpless and money dependent. This is a big delusion which we're constanty repeated. Just like with the super-market this big super-market company owners were able to convince us through time that super-market is better than the grocery stores, because of the less money spending advantage. Even if in the past there were possibility to spend less via supermarket nowdays spending less by using the supermarket instead of the small groce-store is a BIG LIE. Even if one spends less in super-market on certain products, the amount of related products he is cheated* to buy in store highly exceed the simply money one would spend on even higher priced products in the small groce.
The outcome results from the super-market is also a big waste, as I lived in the west I've seen most of the households are buying more than they need, spending more than they need, cooking more food and more frequently than necessery and throughing large portions of food in the garbage (e.g. a huge amount of food waster).

If it was possible that people were aware they are buying all this non-sense food because of deception, they would have bought less, the super-markets would bought less and distribute less and the food (waster) remaining could be distributed to poor-er countries to help the starving kids and suffering people in Africa.
Helping the suffering and starving, we would have helped each other as it is a nowdays well known that even on molecular level the whole world is connected, therefore helping our poorer brothers and sisters is actually helping ourselves ***

Color Psychology – Color Mind Programming or how big companies boost their sales and make up your mind

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

Colors Programming Color mind Programming, how big companies boost their sales and make up your mind

As I've pointed earlier there is plenty of "secretly" kept and less known by public research on how colors influence us daily. The biggest companies are heavily taking advantage of what is found and known for colors impact on our minds (psyche). Actually there is a whole branch in psychology which deals with impact of colors perception on us.Besides companies, many modern governments are well aware of the many facts on how citizens percept colors and use this in color 'installment' in government offices and government institutions.

There is no universal knowledge on how colors completely affect us as every human on earth is very unique and saying this or that color has this or that impact on indivirual or group is not 100% accurate. However there are general traits nowdays formed especially with globalization and unification of TV ads and big companies corporate image, a unification started on how different nationality people perceive colors.

Nowdays in developed countries there are more and more people who perceive certain colors in similar fashion. Therefore every serious top marketer should carefully study colors and their relation with ancient time people believes and understanding on what each of the 'rainbow' colors symbolize. Most likely because there is no completely unified understanding of colors between various individuals may companies like Google and Microsoft started using all the rainbow colors in their basic company logos and branding for more on this topic please check my previous blog post Color trick Microsoft and Google use to keep their users loyal

Another large industry area, where color programming is very heavy is Computer and Video Games. You certainly still remember large portions of the games like Sega’s Sonic the HendgeHog or Mario Super Bros. or even the old arcade machines with games like Punisher or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Street Fighter etc.
All this old arcade games have a big portion of Color programming embedded in and this is one of the main reasons we remember them for a long time and playing them evoked such a strong feelings in youth.

This trend of using colors to make up our minds is being observed for many other physical goods as well as is starting to get more and more heavy adoption by websites branding on the internet.
Actually those with most succesful businesses on the internet have already integrated some kind of color programming scheme. An example for this would be the Internet top domain names seller GoDaddy. The have adopted a green scheme as a primary color combined with some other ones to create in the customer a feeling of ecology, naturality, peace and solitude.

The study of color programming is one major field to be known by anyone truly willing to understand why certain big store chainslike Carrefour, Lidl, Billa, MediaMarkt – in western europe or TechnoMarket, TechnoPolis (MediaMarkt copied tech equipment by shops here in Bulgaria) are decorated inside the way they are. I personally didn't like the concept of color programming since from Spiritual point of view it is a big evil. Trying to manipulate people perception to do something you would like to in general is very evil from spiritual point of view. A mixture of rainbow colors in a natural environment for example flowers in the wood or wild mountain place is one thing, but making it artificial and placing it in certain pre-desired order is totally another. Besides that the colors in the natural environment are natural and therefore the impact on us even if colorful is very much better than if it is done with a certain intention like in the big supermarkets stores, fast just food companies – McDonalds, Burger King etc.

The research on color mind influcence – Color mind programming is a controversial science. Nowdays many big businesses however use this as a granted science, even whole business sects with some mambo-jambo believes universities, children garden and schools in modern countries have employed the use of some type of color programming aiming to influence their pupils, students (organizational members – you call it).
Color mind programming and heavy use on advertisements on the TV, the Internet, Stores and mostly everywhere are however starting to took their tolls. The high increase in mental problems and dumbness in developed and some undeveloped countries as well as the increased number of people who go insane because of too much color programming is reality. The believe that mental programming is one of the ultimate tools to influence somebody and push him to do things you want like consome more of a product or generally consume (buy) more goods creates another severe issue it makes people to constantly over-consume (eat more than the body needs) and this increases the number of over-consumption evoked diseases …

But color programming doesn't stop with just the material (physical) surrounding world it is a concept highly employed in online based marketing. Online business is seen on so many top used websites, social networks like take for instance (facebook). It is so spread that even the software primary vendors like Microsoft, search engines Google Inc. have already heavily employed the color programming as a basis of their products.

There is another reason why most vendors nowdays issue their physical or 'virtual' products so colorful using all the colors of the rainbow. The reason is the fact that as a kids through animation, cartoons, toys and surrounding environment we have been exposed already even from our very youth age to a kind of color programming through kids toys we've been given by our parents). Hence the young years color programming became a basis for a future time color programming. The colorfulness of our kids years are already sub-consciously stored in our minds, so almost naturally there is a feeling of joy to pop-up once we see something childishly colorful.
 

A Sunday in the Netherlands

Monday, September 1st, 2008

I woke up, washed my teeth, did my regular morning excersises then Ina came my room and we went out shopping. In Sunday all shopsare closed in the netherlands thus the near food store we usually shop from Alberheim is closed too. That’s why we moved to the center.We first ate in a place called “Subway”, the vegetarenian sort of hamburger costed 2 EU, then we walked through the shops in the center andresearched where is what and how the prices vary in the different stores. Ina bought sunglasses, a blouse and ear-rings. We were also happyto find 24 hours opened shop right in the center. It seems that usually in Sunday the only place where the shops are opened is the center.We took some beer and went and stood along a little lake enjoying the swan and the ducks and crows which moved and flewer aroud. Then we catched the way for home looking around for unlocked bikes which we may take (it’s common here in the Netherlands to just take unlocked bikes and make them yours even I heard a lot of people leave the old unusused bikes on the street unlocked so you can just take it and use it.On our way home Ina saw left old Zanussi fridge next to a trash bin with a note on it saying something in Dutch containing the Dutch word “wekrt” which literally translated means works. So we hoped the fridge is a working one. We called Koko and Sali to come end help us with the fridge. Then Koko and Sali came and helped us move the fridge to the Honigkamp 2 which is the building of the dormitory I live in. LaterI collected the dry laundry and went to take a shower, then I moved to the 5th floor’s kitchen (My room is in the 1st floor). Wherewe gather with Ina for breakfasts, lunch or dinner. It’s a common thing the last few days that all the Bulgarians that we live in Honigkamp just gather together with the laptops and listen to a different kinds of music and talking about stuff. Although is’s so nice in the Netherlands I’m homesick a little. I also feel like going in no concrete direction. It’s a common thing temptations come that tempt me to smoke again. Also a really terrible temptation I face is a one I faced a dozen of times. You know there are some girls that really are my type of girls unfortunately every time I look at that girls I start falling in love. This is just fine the bad thing is that I’m usually too “different”, unconventional etc. to fit nice with the girls I like. Day by day I search for truths and I’m not sure I’m able to reach them .. the poor man I’m ehh…END—–

Jesus is Risen song (Easter in Lebanon Mall Store)

Friday, May 13th, 2011


Here is how Easter is being celebrated in Lebanon Mall.
No Comment 😉

Recovering long lost website information (data) with wayback machine

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Wayback machine, see 2 years old website from cache service

I needed a handy way to recover some old data of an expired domain containing a website, with some really imprtant texts.
The domains has expired before one year and it was not renewed for the reason that it’s holder was not aware his website was gone. In the meantime somebody registered this domain as a way to generate ads profit from it the website was receiving about 500 to 1000 visitors per day.
Now I have the task to recover this website permanently lost from the internet data. I was not able to retrieve anything from the old domain name be contained via google cache, yahoo cache, bing etc.
It appears most of the search engines store a cached version of a crawled website for only 34 months. I’ve found also a search engine gigablast which was claimed to store crawled website data for 1 year, but unfortunately gigablast contained not any version of the website I was looking for.Luckily (thanks God) after a bit of head-banging there I found a website that helped me retrieve at least some parts from the old lost website.

The website which helped me is called WayBack Machine

The Wayback Machine , guys keeps website info snapshots of most of the domain names on the internet for a couple of years back, here is how wayback machine website describes its own provided services:

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine puts the history of the World Wide Web at your fingertips.

Another handy feature wayback machine provides is checking out how certain websites looked like a couple of years before, let’s say you want to go back in the past and see how yahoo’s website looked like 2 years ago.

Just go to web.archive.org and type in yahoo and select a 2 years old website snapshot and enjoy 😉

It’s really funny how ridiculous many websites looked like just few years from now 😉