As always, I’m actually a supporter of people using VPNs to protect themselves when on the internet. Although a VPN is never completely anonymous, it does go a long way towards protecting your identity and computer from people who want to hack and steal your data. For those of you interested in how a VPN can help you or hurt you, I thought I’d compile a list of benefits and problems I’ve run into with my 3 years of VPN experience 🙂
Continue readingA number of Asian governments – among them Indonesia and Malaysia – are concerned their citizens who study abroad in the Middle East could become exposed to Islamic State doctrine, or, due to the proximity of Turkey to Islamic State strongholds in Syria, could be recruited from Turkey.
Reports from Jakarta, Indonesia, suggest students returning home from the Middle East have been monitored by the Indonesian government for evidence of radicalisation.
However, a wide-ranging study of Indonesian students studying in Egypt and Turkey over the past five years has found the students are not being radicalised, even though many of them, particularly those studying in Egypt, are religious students.
The just-released report by the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia in collaboration with the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Jakarta, examined the effect of political unrest in Egypt and Turkey, and the rise of Islamic State – variously known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh – in Iraq and Syria on Indonesian students’ views on democracy, religion, political leadership and terrorism.
“Religion is only one criterion by which they [students] judge political events,” the report’s authors said.
“What came through in this study, in common with others [other studies], is that people are not radicalised, by and large, in the Middle East,” said Anthony Bubalo, deputy director of the Lowy Institute, launching the report in Sydney, Australia, on 15 April. “People tend to go to the institutions and study with Islamic scholars that reflect their existing outlooks in Indonesia. They are not suddenly exposed to extremist ideology.”
Students saw events in countries like Egypt – such as the overthrow of former president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in what some called an ‘Islamist coup’ – as having “only limited relevance to the situation in their home country”, he said.
‘Firmly against IS’
Indonesia is particularly concerned about the threat from returning students, after major terrorist attacks by groups linked to al-Qaeda, notably the 2002 Bali bombing which killed over 200, including foreign tourists.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a shopping mall in Jakarta on 14 January that killed eight and injured two dozen.
From the research, and interviews with some 47 Indonesian students in Egypt – mainly at Al-Azhar University, an Islamic university in Cairo – and Turkey, “there was no sense at all that any of the Indonesian students would change the system they already have [in Indonesia] even though they were critical, in some cases, of the political system in Egypt”, said Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Jakarta.
The students interviewed were “very firmly against Islamic State”, she said, noting Indonesians known to have joined Islamic State had not come from universities and schools in the Middle East.
“Overwhelmingly the people that have joined [Islamic State] have come from Indonesia and not from studying abroad,” Jones said. . . .
For the past year and a half, my oldest child has been studying at a university in Amsterdam. He’s majoring in physics and — if all goes according to plan — he should be earning his bachelor’s degree in 2017. He comes home summers and over Christmas and I visit him there at least twice a year. So far, so good. But on the heels of this morning’s news of terrorist attacks in Belgium, he said something that rocked me to my core: “It seems as though the bombings are getting closer.”
Only last November, terrorist attacks in Paris — 316 miles from Amsterdam — killed 129 people. One of those killed was a 23-year-old California State Long Beach student, Nohemi Gonzalez, who had gone to Paris for a semester of study at the Strate School of Design. Not only did her death horrify her classmates, but it also made many parents of study-abroad students wonder whether kids should still be taking college classes overseas.
Now it’s Brussels — 108 miles from Amsterdam — that’s under attack, with at least 34 people killed and many more injured today in blasts at the airport and a subway station. Only a few days ago, the suspected mastermind behind the Paris attacks was arrested.
Upon hearing of the attack, I immediately messaged my son in Amsterdam on Facebook. Although he’s alarmed — and has commented that the attacks are indeed too close for comfort — he’s not going anywhere. He’ll continue living his life and attending classes this week, just as he has been. He noted his certainty that his professors will discuss the issue today with students, just as they did in the days following the Paris attacks.
But this latest incident has given me pause, and when friends ask me what I think about whether American students should continue studying abroad, I’m no longer sure exactly what to tell them.
My husband and I raised our three kids in London, and lived there for seven years before moving to the States in 2000. I’ve long been a proponent of kids studying abroad, and even wrote an article a few months back about the advantages of getting a degree overseas. At the time, I asserted that the advantages to earning a degree abroad are many, but one of the main ones is the money saved by students and families. Many programs in Europe offer bachelor’s degrees after only three years, and often at a fraction of the price charged by U.S. institutions.
Currently, more than 46,500 U.S. students are pursuing degrees overseas, roughly 84 percent of whom are enrolled in bachelor’s or master’s degree programs, according to the most recent data from the Institute of International Education. The United Kingdom is the most popular destination, followed by Canada, France and Germany. . .
Ever have that frustration where you want to enter something into your WordPress Post single-spaced, but WP keeps changing it to double spaced? Single-Spacing on WordPress is necessary sometimes! For example, entering an address:
Mr. Hades & Co.
000 Styx Street
Halloween Town, End of Nowhere 66666
See what I mean? The default when typing in WordPress is for the computer to add a line every time you hit “Enter.”
Its annoying, especially with things like poetry, literature, quotes, addresses, etc.
So how do you type in Single Space without a space between each line? There are two ways
Easy !
Just hit the “Shift” key when you hit “enter.”
Yep, usually, we just type “Enter” when we want to go down a line. But that will give you an extra space. So instead hit the “enter” button while holding down “Shift.”
Mr Hades and Co.
000 Styx Street
Halloween Town, End of Nowhere 66666
The New York art world was shocked when the city’s oldest gallery abruptly closed its doors more than four years ago. A few days later, news broke that Knoedler & Company was accused of selling paintings it now admits were forgeries for millions of dollars each. The gallery and its former president face several lawsuits by angry collectors and the first trial began this week.
The forgeries at the center of the scandal look like masterpieces by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other prominent abstract expressionists. They were good enough to fool experts, and even Ann Freedman, then-president of Knoedler & Company, says she was duped.
Her lawyer, Luke Nikas, says, “Ann Freedman believed in these paintings. She showed them to the whole art world. She showed them to experts. And she has piles and piles of letters from all of these experts informing her that the works are real.”
Nikas says Freedman even bought some of the paintings for her own personal collection. But the plaintiffs in this case and other pending lawsuits say Freedman overlooked glaring problems with the paintings’ backstories. The art dealer who sold the paintings to the gallery, a woman named Glafira Rosales, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges in 2013. According to Freedman, Rosales told an elaborate story involving a European collector (known only as “Mr. X”) who bought the paintings with cash in the 1950s, when he was having an affair with an assistant at two top New York galleries.
“It’s quite a tale, and people bought it,” says Amy Adler, who teaches art law at New York University. “I suppose the temptation would be there — not just for buyers, but, yes, even for sellers — to think they’d happened upon these magnificent, undisclosed masterpieces.”
In the end, Rosales admitted to selling Knoedler 40 counterfeit paintings over more than a decade. The plaintiffs argue that Freedman knew — or at least should have known — that something was amiss. It’s hardly the first time an art dealer has been accused of deliberately looking the other way.
Ken Perenyi is a professional art forger who wrote about his career in the book Caveat Emptor. “From over 30 years’ experience with art dealers,” he says, “I would say there most certainly are individuals out there in the trade that will turn a blind eye.” . . .
The Queen is NOT amused. In fact, I’m pretty down-right Pi**ed (pardon the language). After all the trouble I’ve had, I thought it pretty necessary to update all future China-Travelers to the dangers of buying/using Apple products here.
I don’t remember if I told you all this, but Lawrence the Laptop has had another revolt. He attempted going on strike via a broken LCD screen; I cut him off at the start via a nice HDMI connection to my television. Unfortunately, he laughed in my face and promptly refused to work without the HDMI connection. No need to get into it, it was a whole thing.
So last November, I bought an Ipad 2 during China’s version of Black Friday. I’ve had an I-Pod for several years, which lasted pretty well and I figured I’d give their tablet a try. YES, I checked and it is a legit Apple I-Pad; had it tested by the real Apple Company in Zhengzhou (it’s on the apple website as a legit seller).
WRONG! BAD! Stupid Olivia!
Price: 1800 RMB (approx. $300)
Review: The price was a little expensive for my tastes (almost all of Apple is), but I figured it was worth the bargain. Apple products in China tend to run a bit pricier than products in America. Go figure given that they are literally produced about 10 miles away in the city I live in. They have their own personal runway at the international airport they ship so many Apple products out of here. Yet we still get charge at least 50% again as much as American buyers. So, I had to wait until 11/11, China’s Black Friday shopping day to pick one up from Hong Kong.
Initial Purchase: Semi-Good; Semi-Problematic
Review: The first shipment I got was not too terrible. It came with the charger, a cover, a screen protector, and ear plugs, pretty sweet all together. The I-Pad itself was unmarked and undamaged, it seemed like everything would be okay.
It worked for about 2 hours, and then problems started. The swiping part of the screen wasn’t working. It would stall up, like the screen was locked. You could go up about half an inch and down about half an inch, but otherwise nothing was happening. Buttons wouldn’t click, etc. So we tried turning it on and off again (the answer to most issues), which revealed that the lock screen was not working either. Once again, I couldn’t swipe from the screen saver to the unlock screen. When I did finally get to the lock buttons, it froze and wouldn’t click them. Tried a hard reset and several other options, nothing worked.
So we called the seller and sent it back. They kept it for about two weeks and finally sent me a new version. This one seemed fine, so life moved on.
Use: Final Product
The final I-Pad I got worked fine soft-ware wise. Sometimes it would randomly shut down songs or the internet would stop working, and none of the VPNs like it at all. Otherwise, it was great and I was happy.
Hard-ware wise, the screen cracks like crazy. Literally, press to hard on the screen when punching a button and the whole screen cracked. I put on a super duper safety case on it intended for toddlers, took it off and the whole edges were broken. I asked the computer fix-it people and they said it sounds like I was sent a re-furbished model that had a cheap screen put on it. The screen supposedly should not have cracked like that, but they verified the computer was really apple so they think the screen was just replaced with a cheapo version.
I was not happy, especially knowing it takes 300 RMB to fix the screen. Furthermore, they admitted that if the top screen breaks the second lower screen there may be no fixing it at all?!? 0_0 Don’t you think that’s something they should have told me about before I bought the I-Pad? I did a ton of research into I-Pads, I asked questions, and this never came up.
ERROR: Blue Screen of Death
Anyways, along I go using my ipad for about 5 months, when suddenly the screen goes blue and the whole thing just shuts off. Black. Off, no charging, no connecting to the computer, no nothing. Reset doesn’t work. Plugging it in to the computer doesn’t work. It is dead as a doornail for no apparent good reason. No warning, that would be too nice. Just stops in the middle of a show. Takes with it my calendar, contacts, messages, photos, videos, notes, everything. So off I go to the computer store to have it fixed.
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I’m usually pretty excited about new updates to technology. New website versions up and running? I’m willing to give them a chance. Of course, Facebook is driving me nuts (especially with the Messenger updates), but I’m typically happy with the new options most programs offer when advancing further into new designs and offerings.
WordPress has been one of those websites I really, really love. I love the simplicity, I love how I almost instantly figure out what I need to do to accomplish my websites’ goals. I love that it looks nice, and that my websites reflect that. I love that it stays up-to-date.
But I’m really, REALLY not enjoying the new “New Post” and “New States” pages they are unveiling. It’s much worse than the old pages for a variety of reasons. Most of these issues are things I’ve lost with the new layout – maybe I’m missing something, but if so then so are a lot of other people. I always liked how easy it was to find things, and now I feel like a lot of stuff is just gone. For example: Continue reading
“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city” ~ Roman Payne
Language Translation
Deceptively Blonde 