Posts Tagged ‘look’

How to remove the meta generator Content (Joomla! – Copyright) in Joomla 1.5

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

Joomla-remove-meta-generator-content-to-hide-joomla-site-install
Do you wonder How to change <meta name="Generator" content="Joomla! – Copyright (C) 2005 – 2007 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved." /> in Joomla 1.5

If yes, Here is how I've just found to remove the:

 

in my Joomla installation.

I need to remove that as a part of making my website not to leak out that it runs on top of Joomla.

So here is how:

1. Go to your Joomla website main root directory
2. Edit /libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php
Look for line: 83 in the /libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php
There you will notice the code:

$strHtml .= $tab.'<meta name="generator" content="'.$document->getGenerator().'" />'.$lnEnd;

In order to remove the <meta name="generator" content="Joomla …." /> change the above code to something like:

$strHtml .= $tab.'<meta name="generator" content="My Custom Web site Generator name" />'.$lnEnd;

That's all now next time you refresh your website the content="Joomla! – Copyright (C) 2005 – 2009 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved." will be no more.
Cheers! 🙂

Tightening PHP Security on Apache 2.2 with ModSecurity2 on Debian Lenny Linux

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Tightening-PHP-Security-on-Apache-2.2-2.4-with-Apache-ModSecurity2
In this article you'll learn how I easily installed and configured the ModSecurity 2 on a Debian Lenny system.
First let me give you a few introductionary words to modsecurity, what is it and why it's a good idea to install and use it on your Apache Webserver.

ModSecurity is an Apache module that provides intrusion detection and prevention for web applications. It aims at shielding web applications from known and unknown attacks, such as SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting, path traversal attacks, etc.

As you can see from ModSecurity’s description it’s a priceless module add on to Apache that is able to protect your PHP Applications and Apache server from a huge number of hacker attacks undertook against your Online Web Application or Webserver.
The only thing I don’t like about this module is that it is actually a 3rd party module (e.g. not officially part of Apache). Some time ago I remember there was even an exploit for one of the versions of the module.
So in some cases the ModSecurity could also pose a security risk, so beware!
However if you know what you'rre doing and you keep a regular track of security news on some major security websites, that shouldn’t be a concern for you.
Now let'ss proceed to the install of the ModSecurity module itself.
The install is a piece of cake on Debian though you'll be required to use the Debian Lenny backports

Here is the install of the module step by step:

1. First add the gpg key of the backports repository to your install

debian-server:~# gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys C514AF8E4BA401C3
# another possible way to add the repository as the website describes is through the command
debian-server:~# wget -O - http://backports.org/debian/archive.key | apt-key add -

2. Install the libapache-mod-security package from the backports Debian Lenny repository

debian-server~:~# apt-get -t lenny-backports install libapache2-mod-security2

Now as a last step of the install ModSeccurity install procedure you have to add some configuration directives to Apache and restart the server afterwards.

– Open your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and place in it the following configurations


<IfModule mod_security2.c>
# Basic configuration options
SecRuleEngine On
SecRequestBodyAccess On
SecResponseBodyAccess Off

# Handling of file uploads
# TODO Choose a folder private to Apache.
# SecUploadDir /opt/apache-frontend/tmp/
SecUploadKeepFiles Off

# Debug log
SecDebugLog /var/log/apache2/modsec_debug.log
SecDebugLogLevel 0

# Serial audit log
SecAuditEngine RelevantOnly
SecAuditLogRelevantStatus ^5
SecAuditLogParts ABIFHZ
SecAuditLogType Serial
SecAuditLog /var/log/apache2/modsec_audit.log

# Maximum request body size we will
# accept for buffering
SecRequestBodyLimit 131072

# Store up to 128 KB in memory SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit 131072
# Buffer response bodies of up to # 512 KB in length SecResponseBodyLimit 524288
</IfModule>

The ModSecurity2 module would be properly installed and configured as an Apache module.
3.All left is to restart Apache in order the new module and configurations to take effect.

debian-server:~# /etc/init.d/apache restart

Don’t forget to check the apache conf file for errors before restarting the Apache with the above command for that to happen issue the command:
debian-server:~# apache2ctl -t

If all is fine you should get as an output:

Syntax OK

4. Next to find out if the Apache ModSecurity2 module is enabled and already used by Apache as a mean of protection you,
you might want to check if the log files modsec_audit.log and modsec_debug.log files has grown and doesfeed a new content.
If they’re growing and you see messages concerning the operation of the ModSecurity2 Apache module that’s a sure sign all is fine.
5. As we have the Mod Security Apache module configured on our Debian Server, now we will need to apply some ModSecurity Core Rules .
In short ModSecurity Core Rules are some critical protection rules against attacks across almost every web architecture.
Another really neat thing about Core Rules (CRS) for ModSecurity is that they are written with a performance in mind.
So enabling this filter rules won’t be a too heavy load for your Apache server.

Here is how to install the core rules:

6. Download latest ModSecurity Code Rules

Download them from the following Code Rule url
At the time of writting this article the latest code rules are version modsecurity-crs_2.0.6.tar.gz

To download and install this rules issue some commands like:

debian-server:~# wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-security/files/modsecurity-crs/0-CURRENT/modsecurity-crs_2.0.6.tar.gz/download
debian-server:~# cp -rpf ~/modsecurity-crs_2.0.6.tar.gz /etc/apache2/
debian-server:~# cd /etc/apache2/; tar -zxvvf modsecurity-crs_2.0.6.tar.gz

Besides physically storing the unarchived modsecirity-crs in your /etc/apache2 it’s also necessery to add to your Apache Ifmodule mod_security.c block of code the following two lines:

Include /etc/apache2/modsecurity-crs_2.0.6/*.conf
Include /etc/apache2/modsecurity-crs_2.0.6/base_rules/*.conf

Thus ultimately the configuration concerning ModSecurity in your Apache Server configuration should look like the following:

<IfModule mod_security2.c>
# Basic configuration options
SecRuleEngine On
SecRequestBodyAccess On
SecResponseBodyAccess Off

# Handling of file uploads
# TODO Choose a folder private to Apache.
# SecUploadDir /opt/apache-frontend/tmp/
SecUploadKeepFiles Off

# Debug log
SecDebugLog /var/log/apache2/modsec_debug.log
SecDebugLogLevel 0

# Serial audit log
SecAuditEngine RelevantOnly
SecAuditLogRelevantStatus ^5
SecAuditLogParts ABIFHZ
SecAuditLogType Serial
SecAuditLog /var/log/apache2/modsec_audit.log

# Maximum request body size we will
# accept for buffering
SecRequestBodyLimit 131072

# Store up to 128 KB in memory
SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit 131072
SecRequestBodyInMemoryLimit 131072

# Buffer response bodies of up to
# 512 KB in length
SecResponseBodyLimit 524288
Include /etc/apache2/modsecurity-crs_2.0.6/*.conf
Include /etc/apache2/modsecurity-crs_2.0.6/base_rules/*.conf
</Ifmodule>

Once again you have to check if everything is fine with Apache configurations with:

debian-server:~# apache2ctl -t

If it’s showing once again an OK status. Then you’re ready to restart the Webserver.
debian-server:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

One example goodness of setting up the ModSecurity + the Core rule sets are that after the above described installationis fully functional.

ModSecurity will be able to track if somebody tries to execute PHP Shell on your server .
ModSecurity will catch, log and block (forbid) requests to r99.txt, r59, safe0ver and possibly other hacked modifications of the php shell script

That’s it! Now Enjoy your tightened Apache Security and Hopefully catch the script kiddie trying to h4x0r yoU 🙂

ASCII PacMan (Pac-Man) for Linux and FreeBSD / Play online ASCII Pacman

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

ASCII Pacman image

Since just few days ago it was the birthday of Pac-Man game (The abolute classic game among ’80s arcardes).
I decided to try to look if there is an ASCII Pacman available somewhere.
Luckily there are number of ASCII versions of the classic arcade PacMan for both Linux and FreeBSD, I thought,it doesn’t worth the time to check if ASCII Pacman is also available for Windows OS.
For all the ASCII game fans out there I’ve installed ASCII PacMan FreeBSD version on the Play Cool FreeBSD ASCII games free page From there you can play a number of cool ascii art games online via telnet, the reasons I took the time to add the ASCII Pacman to the list of possible games to play is that it’s a shame that the list misses one of the most notable games if not the most notable ever made.

For Linux I’ve found three version of ASCII Pacman:

1. The best looking one is probably ASCII Pacman Linux clone game available on sourceforge.net
You can download ASCII Pac-Man 0.9.1 from here

I’ve included 2 files with instructions on installation and usage of the game. I saw that as a completely necessery since,the game controls of the elsely nice looking game are hard to get. To play the game you will need to use the game controls:
z,x – to move right and left and m,k for up and down .

2. A bit more ugly and less interactive is another version of ASCII PacMan called:
Pac-Man for Console or simply Console Pacman

This two compiled without any troubles on my Debian GNU/Linux squeeze/sid Linux .
Unfortunately the up-mentioned ascii version of pacman won’t work on FreeBSD

3. The ASCII Pacman that is running and compatible with FreeBSD is called Pacman ASCII and herein is it’s home page

PacMan ascii is a way less sophisticated, so don’t expect too much of it. Originally Pacman ASCII was a project by some French guy in with the main task to learn C++.
Anyways he did a good job, since his little ascii pacman game is compatible with FreeBSD as well.
You can download ASCII Pacman for FreeBSD here

I did some minor modifications to few of the ASCII Pacman .cpp files in order to change the default help and game language from French to English, since French would be cryptic to most of the non-french users.

How to pass ITIL preparation – Dumps, PC and Mobile Android software to prepare

Wednesday, April 30th, 2014

ITIL-service-design-serice-operations-service-transition
I'm just coming from my ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Foundations Exam. ITIL Certification is mandatory for all HP employees and everybody in my team already passed it. Thanks God I passed the ITIL as well with 87.5%.

To prepare for the exam I used Dump files (files with questions and answers given to people on previous exams) and software that simulates testing Avanset Visual CertExam Manager on PC as well as VCE Exam Simulator for Mobile.

VCE Exam Simulator is a test engine designed specifically for certification exam preparation. It allows you to create, edit, and take practice tests in an environment very similar to an actual exam.

ITIL exam was held here in Sofia in Technologica EAD Study Center. ITIL exam is kindly paid by HP and costs $250. ITIL Foundation is first level of certification next one is ITIL intermediate.

In order to prepare for ITIL it took me about half a day reading the ITIL Dump files (you can download them here) and 2 days of actively simulating the exams mainly with VCE EXam Simulator on my Android based mobile.
For those who want to become ITIL professionals and are going to certify further in ITIL Intermediate I recommend check all the ITIL Books covering the ITIL v.3 exam (here).

If you have the time and you want to have in depth understanding on ITIL also download and watch this ITIL Exam preparation Videos.

Here are also ITIL Foundation v.3 Dumps for Visual Cert exam manager. By the way ITIL exam is nowadays is required for almost anyone employeed in middle or large sized IT companies so if you still don't know anything about it and you're working or you will be working in the IT field take a look at. Lastly when I was looking for job offers I've noticed there are already plenty of companies who either require the candidate to have an ITIL passed or count ITIL certified candidates advantageous.

find text strings recursively in Linux and UNIX – find grep in sub-directories command examples

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

unix_Linux_recursive_file_search_string_grep
GNU Grep
is equipped with a special option "-r" to grep recursively. Looking for string in a file in a sub-directories tree with the -r option is a piece of cake. You just do:

grep -r 'string' /directory/

or if you want to search recursively non-case sensitive for text

grep -ri 'string' .
 

Another classic GNU grep use (I use almost daily) is whether you want to match all files containing (case insensitive) string  among all files:

grep -rli 'string' directory-name
 

Now if you want to grep whether a string is contained in a file or group of files in directory recursively on some other UNIX like HP-UX or Sun OS / Solaris where there is no GNU grep installed by default here is how to it:

find /directory -exec grep 'searched string' {} dev/null ;

Note that this approach to look for files containing string on UNIX is very slowThus on not too archaic UNIX systems for some better search performance it is better to use xargs;

find . | xargs grep searched-string


A small note to open here is by using xargs there might be weird results when run on filesystems with filenames starting with "-".

Thus comes the classical (ultimate) way to grep for files containing string with find + grep, e.g.

find / -exec grep grepped-string {} dev/null ;

Another way to search a string recursively in files is by using UNIX OS '*' (star) expression:

grep pattern * */* */*/* 2>/dev/null

Talking about recursive directory text search in UNIX, should mention  another good GNU GREP alternative ACK – check it on betterthangrep.com 🙂 . Ack is perfect for programmers who have to dig through large directory trees of code for certain variables, functions, objects etc.

 

luckyBackup Linux GUI back-up and synchronization tool

Wednesday, May 14th, 2014

luckybackup_best-linux-graphical-tool-for-backup_linux_gui-defacto-standard-tool
If you're a using GNU / Linux  for Desktop and you're already tired of creating backups by your own hacks using terminal and you want to make your life a little bit more easier and easily automate your important files back up through GUI program take a look at luckyBackup.

Luckibackup is a GUI frontend to the infamous rsync command line backup  tool. Luckibackup is available as a package in almost all modern Linux distributions its very easy to setup and can save you a lot of time especially if you have to manage a number of your Workplace Desktop Office Linux based computers.
Luckibackup is an absolute must have program for Linux Desktop start-up users. If you're migrating from Microsoft Windows realm and you're used to BackupPC, Luckibackup is probably the defacto Linux BackupPC substitute.

The sad news for Linux GNOME Desktop users is luckibackup is written in QT and it using it will load up a bit your notebook.
It is not installed by default so once a new Linux Desktop is installed you will have to install it manually on Debian and Ubuntu based Linux-es to install Luckibackup apt-get it.

debian:~# apt-get install --yes luckibackup
...

On Fedora and CentOS Linux install LuckiBackup via yum rpm package manager

[root@centos :~]# yum -y install luckibackup
.

Luckibackup is also ported for OpenSuSE Slackware, Gentoo, Mandriva and ArchLinux. In 2009 Luckibackup won the prize of Sourceforge Community Choice Awards for "best new project".

luckyBackup copies over only the changes you've made to the source directory and nothing more.
You will be surprised when your huge source is backed up in seconds (after the first backup).

Whatever changes you make to the source including adding, moving, deleting, modifying files / directories etc, will have the same effect to the destination.
Owner, group, time stamps, links and permissions of files are preserved (unless stated otherwise).

Luckibackup creates different multiple backup "snapshots".Each snapshot is an image of the source data that refers to a specific date-time.
Easy rollback to any of the snapshots is possible. Besides that luckibackup support Sync (just like rsync) od any directories keeping the files that were most recently modified on both of them.

Useful if you modify files on more than one PCs (using a flash-drive and don't want to bother remembering what did you use last. Luckibackup is capable of excluding certain files or directories from backupsExclude any file, folder or pattern from backup transfer.

After each operation a logfile is created in your home folder. You can have a look at it any time you want.

luckyBackup can run in command line if you wish not to use the gui, but you have to first create the profile that is going to be executed.
Type "luckybackup –help" at a terminal to see usage and supported options.
There is also TrayNotification – Visual feedback at the tray area informs you about what is going on.
 

 

 

Religulous – An Atheist movie preaching false ideas about Christianity – Religulous Orthodox Christian perspective

Thursday, July 31st, 2014

Religulous-anti-Christian-movie-Psalm-14-vers-1-the-fool-said-in-his-heart-there-is-no-God
Most of my colleagues at work know I am Christian and as we have our lunch  together almost daily, have a friend talks in our rest time etc. … it is quite normally we have talks on topic of philosophy and religion.

Most of them (like a lot of IT people have atheistic views as most people nowdays, even though I'm sure they believe deep in their hearts in good and wait / search for God's salvation and mercy.)
In that short talks often, I've been pranked, questioned and probably even thought crazy for believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Gospel. That's okay as this is normal as in almost all ages Christians, were mocked for their faith by skeptics and disbelievers.

In our talks often, my colleagues try to convince me their believe "There is no God" and they think in a way that religion is only for old fashioned and stupid people, because they think the modern dilusion that science and religion are controversial.
Since some time one of my colleague tells me about an atheistic movie of an atheist who made a movie called Religulous. After, I've been told about the movie about 5 times, I decided to spend some and research on it, because I firmly believe it is the next "holywood" style easily digestable movie made "the holywood way". Below is my rationalization and findings about the movie.

The movie title Religulous is selected as a prank from the word "Ridiculous". Before you further read I warn you if you're an Orthodox Christian to not watch it for it is not worthy to spend 1:40 minutes of your wife watching such a nonsense.

Religulous is American documentary film from 2008, directed by Larry Charles and starring comedian Bill Maher. In the Movie Bill Maher travels to different religion holy places (Jerusalem, Vatican, Salt Lake city) and pranks interviewing believers from variety of religions believes. Uneasy questions misleading questions are asked to different people and he makes prank of answers. Of course it is very easy to make someone a fool who doesn't have idea about basics of world religions and present your arguments in a convincing way among people who doesn't have deep understanding on Christianity branches and history.

If one takes a quick time to research on who is Bill Maher, he finds he is a ardently liberal who has deep disrespect and hate for Christianity based on a personal bitter experience in Catholicism (curiously his mother is Jewish) and one finds Maher disregards Christianity not based on facts but on personal bitter experiences from Roman Catholicism.
In religulous it is preached, that religion must die to liberate the family from unneeded slavery which is pretty much what the communists in the bolshevik revolution believed – meaning his idea is nothing new but rebranded atheism. Just for information, there were people with such hatred and ideas during the last 2000 years, so somehow this guy, reinvents the steel.

In the movie Maher travels the world with director of  Borat Cultural Learnings of America for  Make benefit Glorious notion of Khazakstan – Larry Charles (which is another mockery "commedy" movie).
Even by reading IMDB movie description gives you idea the movie is not serious and it is highly ridiculous to use such non-sense to attack Christianity, along which civilization gravitated and thanks to which we have a well developed modern civilization.  What Maher claims is about  1/3 of population on earth – 2.5 billion are stupid and inferior to atheists).

Here is IDMB's storyline quote:

Bill Maher interviews some of religion's oddest adherents. Muslims, Jews and Christians of many kinds pass before his jaundiced eye. Maher goes to a Creationist Museum in Kentucky, which shows that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time 5000 years ago. He talks to truckers at a Truckers' Chapel. (Sign outside: "Jesus love you.") He goes to a theme park called Holy Land in Florida. He speaks to a rabbi in league with Holocaust deniers. He talks to a Muslim musician who preaches hatred of Jews. Maher finds the unlikeliest of believers and, in a certain Vatican priest, he even finds an unlikely skeptic.

It is obvious from this description that the movie is not to consider serious and what the people on this movie would say is not to be considered authoritative as they're not even theologians, but random people. Also what Maher did in this movie is to select weak and mixed people to mock intentionally Christianity.

Even though in the movie various religions are mocked the accent of his mockery is christianity and this is not a coincidense but because, Christianity has most adherents.
The movie is highly manipulative, just like another openly anti-Christian movie Zeitgeist.
The guy opens the movie with a scene on Megiddo, Israel with a false claim that the end of the world is going to happen on this place.

I have heard some protestant Christians took Revalation chapter of Holy Bible and interpret the written there about an End of the World all world armies battle. Actually I'm not aware that this idea is ever preached by any orthodox Christian priest, monk or elder but it is more a "free interpretation" of the holy scriptures by some protestant denomination.
Actually an interesting thing about Megiddo is on Megiddo is located the earliest Christian Church, so I guess it is a not a coincidense movie criticism starts from there. The first half of the film is mostly focused on evangelical Christians, how they believe in things like a 5,000-year-old earth, etc. Maher takes a trip to the Creation Museum in Hebron, Kentucky, where he interviews creationism guru Ken Ham against the backdrop of animatronic dinosaurs with saddles (for humans to ride on).
And he also interviews young-earth evangelical Mark Pryor, a democratic senator from Arkansas who creates some of the funniest moments of the film. To be fair, Maher also interviews Christian evolutionist Francis Collins, but he too comes out looking a bit buffoonish.

All along the journey, Maher and Charles jazz up the images with achingly sardonic voiceovers and music, and some very clever quick-cut editing (inserting 2 seconds of Charlton Heston-as-Moses at opportune moments, for example).

To show off his openness Maher, smokes pot on camera obviously preaching "freedom" the american way and live quickly and die rock'n'roll culture message. The movie is quite agressive and made in a way to make converts. The movie presents the so called self-fulfilling prophecies, believed and preached by people involved into experimental psychology (which nowdays uses early occult and shamanistic magical methods and whose practices are not based on science but on believe).

Of course to make such a movie look authentic, any connection with real historic facts in the movie are omitted.

Maher's thesis that all things evil and destructive are a result of religious delusion simply does not hold water historically!
There are already thousands of recent proofs, that lack-of religion is not panacea for all problems, take for example communism in Russia and the disbandlement of the USSR, Communistic China and the countraless atheistic regimes throughout history leading to violence and calamity in the world, totally outside of any religious motivation.

To make the non-sense movie more fun and convincing, the psychologic method of mockery is heavily used,  everything in the movie is presented in a commedy form.

Religulous a movie meant to make religious people look stupid, to "prove" that religious belief and intelligence are mutually exclusive.

Maher spends the second half of the film undermining religions and cults of every shape and size. He goes to Utah and skewers Mormonism, interviews Puerto Rican cult leader Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda (who claims to be the Antichrist), and even gets high with a leader of a religion based around marijuana. He goes to the Vatican and interviews some crazy Catholic priest, and Jerusalem to deconstruct Judaism and Islam. Maher is particularly hard on Islam, offering somewhat surprising pronouncements about the inherent violence and barbarism of that most touchy of all world religions. At moments like these, Maher might actually find allies in conservative Christian circles??

In the movie, during a debate with a Christian, Maher repeats a version of Christ myth theory derived from Gerald Massey's 1907 thesis that the myth of the Egyptian deity Horus was the source of the story of Jesus. He makes riduculous connection between the Book of the Dead and Jesus Christ.

It is pretty interesting that we Christians are often being blamed for evangelism and because of that most of Christians, fear to talk about their faith, just because true Christian faith and modern society living in confort does not align well together.

The inner essence of man is very similar in both atheists, christian, muslims, jewish, buddhists hindu etc. we are all looking for a higher meaning in life sooner or later in life. We all live by certain believes daily (I know atheists would ignore it but, a lot of the actions even the hardest atheist takes are pushed by certain belief system and faith in something (disbelieve in God is also a faith just like believe in God). Actually being an atheist is a tough thing, because atheists just like us christians spend time to reinforce their disbelieve with, stories, question and answer sessions, scientific facts.

Most of atheists fall in the trap of disbelieve either because they're dishonest in their research on is there God? or because events in their life turned in a way they didn't wanted too (because of lack of what saints call humility) or because they want to justify their bad deeds. Anyways for good or bad most of people who define themselves as atheists and follow the "spiritual wind of the times" are nowadays living in the well developed high economies world and it is interesting that in this parts of the world, people have as heritage to live with general Christian mentality and Christian mindset. Christian understanding of life in most countries full of atheists is so strongly rooted in society and culture, so even the biggest anti-christ or atheist has a tendency to do goo. That a lot of those atheists who disbelieve God actually do Christiain deeds not realizing a lot of their deeds paradoxally are deeds of people who actually believe there is God.

I've noticed there are at least 3 types of atheists:

  • Passive
  • Indifferent
  • Militant (Active)

My personal observations on Atheism (as an ex-atheist), is that atheists have minimal or wrong understanding on different religions and know nothing about Orthodox Christianity and most even didin't hear about its existence, from the movie I got the impression Maher also doesn't have

I think it is not righteous to criticize Christianity without even taking full time to study it. As Orthodox Christianity is hard to grasp and unpopular faith, often the image of modern Christian is made up by protestant Church denominations and even in best cases by Roman Catholic church, so most people in even officially christian protestant / catholic countries does not have the opportunity to see true Christian ascetic faith which is still present in the Orthodox Church.

The most common attack of an atheist against Christianity is using arguments about the Roman Catholic's Crusades and Inquisition, which were conducted by the Roman Catholic Church. Most Atheists however does not knowthat in Orthodox Church, there was no inquisition and no Crusades.
Even worse Roman Catholic crusaders came and invaded and killed orthodox christians in the same way they killed anyone who rejected to accept their faith, this act never happened in Orthodox Church.

Passive and indifferent atheists often, keep calm and either haven't thought whether there is God or don't take position when one talks about faith.
Often passive and indifferent atheists are amazed to learn things pointing them that there is God and that the holy writtings are true.

The Militant (active) atheist is a rare thing to see nowadays as people are tought to be tolerant and respectful to others, however if you start talking on topic that has to deal with faith, somehow a lot of atheists start being agressive and blame you and your faith for responsible for all the evils that happened in the world.

Often active atheists are such because of some personal problem or disappointed connected to Christianity just like Maher. 
Maher and other atheists like him start developing blaming attitude to the Lord and the Church. The fact that Christianity doesn't fit someone's desires doesn't mean it is true.

In the movie one sees quite of crazy people and religious leaders, which are either uninformed about their faith or suffer from some mental problems, as with most movies to discredit Christianity, Orthodox Christianity stand point on faith is not shown. Maher suggests, as a alternative method to faith, the method of doubt actually by creating such a movie with the aim to discredit religion, he demonstrates totally the opposite, as all his findings are based on his personal faith that "There is no God" and Christianity is based on fairy-tales.

Faith has difficulties, there are a lot of sick people in the Church, things are not ideal in christian-dome, and we have to be careful not to believe or follow blindly everything we hear, but I think Maher's attitude is seriously disrespectful to things and people's believe.

In the movie, a lot of the people to be interviewed were radical and the movie makes an image of Christianity as very radical, but Maher and his movie is just like as radical as them. It is fact that there is radical things in many of protestant christian denominations and many start-up (newly believed) Christians, have the tendency to be radical, however to make his point solid  I think, Maher should have interviewed stable and educated theologian and not look for the weirdiest individuals and places in the world.

And often try to look for arguments to approve their disbelieve (finding such arguments is a tought think and this is why a lot of people who try to look for arguments against Christ and Christianity – like me some 10 years ago often end up Christian). There is not one or two movies made on topic of "Scientific Atheism" in same spirit as Religulous, if one research on the facts presented in this movie he quickly understands a lot of the presented movie facts are either untrue or are true but have nothing to do with authentic Christianity which one can find in the most ancient of Churches Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches (like for example Syriac Orthodox and Copts).

Religulous and atheistic movies from its genre are not based on true facts either historical or scientific and even often doesn't follow strong rationalism  but more or less on particular person believe. They're looking to disprove God looking from answers in a very biased way.

I would close the post with a quote from the Holy Bible Psalms chapter, clearly addressing atheist people like Maher.
 

The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.
Psalm 14:1

Schindler’s List – A must see classical movie about the terrible Jewish Holocaust during World War II

Wednesday, September 10th, 2014

schindlersList-a-classical-movie-about-the-terrible-jewish-holocaust-during-world-war-ii
A very little is known in these days especially among young people of Europe about the terrible attrocities of the Jewish Holocaust and the concentration camps like Auschwitz organized by Hitler's Nazi Germany in World War II.

Schindler's List is a very good American movie (from 1993) retelling a true story about how enterpreneur Oskar Schindler managed to save about 1200 Jewish people from extermination in the camp of dead – Auschwitz during WWII.
Schindler's List is a movie that shows how even a deeply business oriented money obsessed man like O.

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Schindler was before the beginning of war could grow in the love of Christ and Christian faith to risk his life and well being in order to be liable and honest with himself in a years when most of Nazi's Germans become totally unhuman and obsessed to wipe out existence of Old Testament God's Choosen People – The Jewish.

The movie is based on a popular novel Schindler's Ark by Canadian Thomas Keneally about how the German Shindler saved lifes of thousand Polish-Jewish refugees by creating an own business (fabric) run in Nazi's Germany before WWII and later inside a concentration camp. The movie is shot by the the film legend Steven Spilberg (who is also a Jew) intentionally Black and White to put an extra artistic impact and is very much made to look like a documentary.

The movie is 3 hours 28 minutes of Drama and has multiple awards for  Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score. The movie plot starts from how the anti-semitism in Germany started and how it progressed a little time before the emerge of war and the start of Jewish persecution. The main actors are Oscar Schindler a member of German Nazi Party whose dream is to make a big fortune out of the war. By using bribes and his bright manipulative personality he manages to bribe Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) and WWII SS (German special forces). Schindler uses the local Jewish Itzhak Stern who has plenty of contacts in Jewish Business community and black marketers to form a cheap-hand jewish labour force for his factory for metal vessels to be used within Germany Nazi's Army. Many high qualified jewish was more than happy to be hired in his "Fabryka Oskara Schindlera" fabric, because this was quite a better alternative than being in one of the deadly concentration camps.

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The movie shows, how jewish were forced to obey an always changing and unclear criterias in order to convince them they're no good for nothing and thus for Nazis to find reason to kill as many as possible of them. At a certain point the situation gets out of control and Jewish peoples who are forced to live in Jewish ghettos start being randomly mass murdered for missing reasons in Płaszów concentration camp. SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) Amon Goeth is responsible to oversee the Plaszow camp , once the camp completes its construction by jews, he orders getto liquidated.

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As the Germans start loosing the war, an order is made to sent all surviving jews to the most deadly Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.

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Oscan Schindler (also known by all jews as the director), witnesses the jewish massacres and in being profoundly affected, makes full effort to convince the Nazis the his company jews are important as a workforce and he needs them to produce ammos and military weapons in order to make full profit.
He has to pay almost all his earned money in early prior war times and first 2 war years in order to ransom the jews and sents him to work in another established factory of his (he manages to convince Nazis that even children and handicapped are useful for his company thus managing to save a multitude of doomed innocent people. As the train carrying women and children is accidentally redirected to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Schindler bribes the commandant of Auschwitz with a bag of diamonds to win their release.

In his new factory Shindler forbids the SS guards to enter the factory and orders the production of ammos and weapons to be produced defective by his workers. Letting them to even to observe their Jewish Shabbath (Sabbath). In the next 7 months Shindler bribes multiple Nazi officials and runs out of money in 1945 exactly when the War in Europe is over with  Germany surrender. The SS Guards are being ordered to kill the Jews as the red-army is advancing and soon liberate the concentration camp, however Shindler succesfully convinces SS's to let Jews alive and go to their families and homes.

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As a sign of thankstfullness his jewish workers give Schindler a signed statement attesting to his role saving Jewish lives, together with a ring engraved with a Talmudic quotation: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.". Schindler is deeply ashamed for not doing even more to save more Jews from extermination. Schindler has to flee the concentration camp to escape being killed by the approaching red-army. On next morning Soviet soldier comes and announces liberation of Jews. The evil Hitler follower Goeth is executed for his crimes against humanity and his unwillingness to refuse his Nazis ideas.

The movie is quite hard to grasp, so prepare for a lot of bloody scenes, nomatter that it is one of the best movies I've seen and has good spiritual elements. It is also good to see for it shows that the Good always triumphs victoriously over the evil.
Happy Watching!
 

Useful VIM editor tip colorscheme evening – make your configurations look brighter in VI

Monday, February 24th, 2014

I just learned about cool VIM option from a collegue:

:colorscheme evening

What it does it makes configurations in vim edit look brighter like you seen in below screenshots.

– Before :colorscheme evening vim command

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– After :colorscheme evening

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The option is really useful as often editing a config in vim on a random server is too dark and in order to read the config you have to strain your eyes in long term leading to eye damage.

Any other useful vim options, you use daily?

Evening service and Holy Liturgy in Russian Church st. Nicolas and marriage preparations

Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

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Last Saturday evening I and my future wife Svetlana went to get train tickets (Sofia Dobrich), cause next week me and Svetlana will be travelling to Dobrich. Afterwards we went to Russian Church in center of Sofia – St. Nicolas for the evening service and confessed. The evening service was led by Archimandrite Philip who is currently Russian Church's prior.

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At the end of Church service there was an oilment, as always being on a Russian Holy Liturgy is astonishing experience. On Sunday morning 2nd February we were in Russian Church again for the Russian Liturgy and we took the holy sacraments as it is proper (according to Orthodox Church tradition the marrying couple should confess and receive the sacraments before marrying in Church). After Church service we went to Church crypt to venerate holy relics of Archimandrate Seraphim Sobolev. A big thing is happening in my life nowdays as I will have marriage this week  on Friday 7-th of February:)

We prepared so far almost everything for marriage. My parents helped with finding a marriage resturant and finding musicians for post marriage restaurant celebration. We also travelled to Asenovgrad to look for Svetlana's  wedding dress and we got one  I bough a marriage suit 2 weeks back and we ordered a marriage rings. There is already agreement with a priest father Vasilij – who will merry us in Church St. Trinity this Friday. Father Vasilij serves in Church "Dormition of Virgin Mary" in Kavarna . We choose father Vasilij to make the Marriage vows for the reason he is nativily Russian speaking (like Svetlana) plus the father is a good example of a true Christian priest. Today the parents of Svetlana (mama Vera and papa Alexander) arrived in the airport in Varna for the marriage (thanks God they had safe flight). Sunday night I send Svetlana to Train Station here in Sofia to make latest preparations for marriage. I will be travelling to Dobrich on Wednesday night 1 day before marriage. The rest of things happening around are not so interesting. In y job in HP work is complicated as usual. On my job I'm learning HPSM (HP Service Manager) and how to open new Changes in system and that's mostly my life these days. When I have time I'm playing OpenTyrian and a couple of nice arcade games on my ZTE Android mobile phone and reading some saint livings on mobile.