O!polis is here !!!

Posted March 30th, 2010 in News by Gevork

opolis

During this month O!polis e-mail service went “online”. In my point of view, it is the most promising service for protecting important e-mail messaging from “third party” eyes. If you want to get some deep understanding on the technological stuff  you can check this Press Release

Just a quote from it , which shows the problems of e-mail messaging , that exists now

Email systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which Email computer server systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users. Originally, Email was transmitted directly from one user’s device to another’s; nowadays this is rarely the case. In such an environment, Email privacy can be compromised because:
•   Email messages are generally not encrypted;
•   Email messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy to intercept and read messages; and
•   Many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of Email messages on their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain for up to several months on their server, despite deletion from the mailbox.

So  as we  see our emails are naked in any public e-mail message service, and they could be easily accessed from a third party force which can have or have access to intermediary servers , where the emails are passing before to arrive to the final destination.

Writing this post about Opol!s, I just  decided to make a small test. I want to see how many intermediary servers exists between me and yahoo.com web-site first server which will answer to the ping. Here are the results between me and mail.yahoo.com

Traceroute mail.yahoo.com (69.147.112.160)
Hop IP Address Hostname Average RTT1
1 192.168.1.8 192.168.1.8 1.23 ms
2 4.78.152.97 ge-6-3-187.car1.Philadelphia1.Level3.net 11.39 ms
3 4.69.133.162 ae-7-7.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net 15.05 ms
4 4.69.134.150 ae-72-72.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net 19.77 ms
5 4.68.17.131 ae-31-89.car1.Washington1.Level3.net 14.77 ms
6 4.79.228.2 4.79.228.2 33.15 ms
7 216.115.108.61 ae2-p150.msr2.re1.yahoo.com 32.00 ms
8 68.142.238.67 te-9-2.bas-a1.re3.yahoo.com 31.75 ms
9 Time-out

Funny that minimum 4-5 big servers are in Washington, and they can reach any given mail sent by yahoo, before even it will reach to it adressee.

Another traceroute for information between me and pochta.ru. This is another russian free email provider

Traceroute pochta.ru (82.204.219.251)
Hop IP Address Hostname Average RTT1
1 192.168.1.8 192.168.1.8 1.29 ms
2 4.78.152.97 ge-6-3-187.car1.Philadelphia1.Level3.net 11.52 ms
3 4.69.133.162 ae-7-7.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net 14.40 ms
4 4.69.137.61 ae-44-44.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net 103.68 ms
5 4.69.132.137 ae-2-2.ebr1.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net 106.08 ms
6 4.69.142.169 ae-1-7.bar1.Copenhagen1.Level3.net 119.85 ms
7 4.69.140.197 ae-1-5.bar1.Stockholm1.Level3.net 134.79 ms
8 213.242.110.34 213.242.110.34 131.77 ms
9 195.34.59.97 may-cr01-po1.spb.stream-internet.net 142.58 ms
10 195.34.59.29 oct-cr02-po3.msk.stream-internet.net 214.88 ms
11 195.34.53.222 shep-l3sw-1-te6-4.msk.stream-internet.net 152.63 ms
12 212.188.1.73 shep-l3sw-1-te6-4.msk.stream-internet.net 149.69 ms
13 212.188.1.70 shep-l3sw-3-po1.msk.stream-internet.net 152.12 ms
14 82.204.219.219 css.pochta.ru 154.40 ms

I extremally don;t like, that information flow at first goes to  Filadelphia, then to Washington,then Frankfurt, D?sseldorf, Copenhagen,Stockholm, and then just pass to Russian servers…

What you think how many security services filter our messages in that case?  :(

It was a quite rhetoric question… But imagine you are an inventor , or a lawyer, or a governmental worker, or some other profession owner, and need to communicate in a manner, when you can with 99% kick off the third person from your  e-mail messaging .

I am sure if you are lawyer, you wouldn’t like if somebody will reaad a message regarding to a will of your client , which regards to 300mln Euros, if you are an inventor, you wouldn’t mind, that the concept of innovation, which you discuss with your scientific partner, or a friend of yours will be  accessible to others. Or let’s say if you are an investor, you would not like if your competitor finance group hackers, by putting some sniffer in the intermediate server could read your forecasts, or investment project documentation, which  you share with your partner. It would be very big mistake , if you would want so!

So what we should do? Answer comes to itself. Use O!polis.   After a quite simple sign-up process and downloading a small client  which natively run in Windows and Mac , you would be ready to go. Your messages between you and another O!polis user would be  in a way protected , that you will like .

Some quote from the web-site of O!polis.

Opolis is directly addressing these concerns – among many others – by shifting “Power to the Sender“, in particuar to the originator of a message. Hence, Opolis considers all messages and attachments as strictly confidential and hands the ultimative authority over all messages to the sender. In implementing this, the philosophy of Opolis is based on three principles: “I Protect”, “I Decide” and “I Control”.

I Protect“: Secure Transmission and Storage of Opolis E-Mails

  • Opolis E-Mails are immediatly encrypted when sent and can only be decrypted and read by the authorised recipient. Hence, Opolis E-Mails cannot be read by anyone else whilst these are transmitted or safely stored on the Opolis server system. Opolis uses Public-Private Key technology for encryption and the services of iTrust as a registry of public keys for Opolis Users. Opolis also ensures that neither message content nor information in relation to the message flow can be manipulated or falsified

    I Decide“: What a Recipient can do with my Opolis E-Mail

  • Due to its unique architecture, Opolis offers its Users the I Decide feature: The Sender of an Opolis E-Mail decides simply by a mouse-click whether the Recipient is allowed to copy, forward, respond to or print the message.

  • Opolis E-Mails can also be retrieved (i.e. pulled back) as long as the Recipient has not already opened the message. Further, the Sender of an Opolis E-Mail can also set a certain maturity for a message (i.e. from when till when a message can be read).

  • I Control“: Monitoring an Opolis E-Mail once Sent.

  • The Sender of an Opolis E-Mail can constantly and live monitor its status once sent.

  • Hence, the Sender can – among others – just by mouse click see when an Opolis E-Mail was safely received by the Recipient, when the Recipient has actually opened the Opolis E-Mail or – if allowed to do so – to whom the Opolis E-Mail has been forwarded. This feature also extends to all attachments of an Opolis E-Mail

    What to say more? From start of the project I am so fascinated,that   registered and I am using it and  I am sure , despite some comments in response of my russian post in famouse Habrahabr.ru, that all this functions are already realised in Lotus Notes, I am sure   in the future it will be very very popular especially in EU, and will become such a common communication tool for buisness people  like Skype. If you don’t use O!polis, just think over and go on.

    It’s free !

  • Клон Одноклассников. Скоро…

    Posted March 29th, 2010 in News by Gevork

    Делаю клон одноклассников. Так как в нем не хватали такие сервисы как видео, музыка , и кое что еще пришлось интегрировать пару функций и элементы с vkontakte.ru

    Буду продовать. Пока не решил ценевую политику.

    Цель: Сделать его продуктом, достойным конкуренции Делфину и phpfox

    bad day…

    Posted March 28th, 2010 in News by Gevork

    Today is one of the very bad days I have ever had… Totally disordered. There is some pain inside me, and my throat is killing me .Maybe some art of homesickness?
    Or becuase of…  Can’t say totally, but I hope I will sleep today, and tomorrow would feel better….

    To feel better, I made some new avatar for me. A gentlemen , with victorian suite, and a dalmatian, in Shanghai… Would give a lot to be 5 minutes iniside this picture…

    Continue Reading »

    Mafia Forever?!..

    Posted March 27th, 2010 in PhD-M: Study Stuff by Gevork

    al_capone_1930

    Just had today meeting with our KCT. Johnny was ill , so I had to meet only  with Patrick Hippmann. From the very start very bright and interesting person. If you are reading this Patrick, just  wana say “cheers!” :) We have discussed a little bit, about this and that,here and there, and came to the idea that we should narrow the theme of “hierarchies and climbing up” to the mafios hierarchies. The idea is that we would have here pretty much material to make observations. We would have a lot of documentary films, books, pictures to research on.The main should be “entry barriers”  and relations between a new-comer and group/group-leader(s).I think would be very interesting on an example of mafia groups to make an observation how the group accepts or rejects the newcomer, and how newcomer can/should identify  and position himselve inside the groups. The idea to narrow on Mafia and to observe on films was Patrick’s , I just added that we should use not a usual holiwood films, but would be better to use  documentary things, which are quite real.

    Anyway let’s see what will come out .

    Friday: Holiday from Tomorrow

    Posted March 26th, 2010 in News by Gevork

    From Monday there will be no lessons. We have holidays :”Ostern”.

    Hurra! :) Thinking about a pair of not sleepy days…

    How girls choose sexual partners , hierarchies and Theory of 100 Points

    Posted March 23rd, 2010 in PhD-M: Study Stuff by Gevork

    Just inspired with a dialogue with Jane yesterday I decided to finish this article today.

    So how you think girls choose sexual partners for them?

    Actually If you will think over, it’s obvious that  men offer and  girls decide. They decide “to take or not to take” the offer. In very very very seldom cases boys choose or boys decide. So the natural mechanism of our society is that “girls decide”.

    If you have already mentioned , our society consists from many pyramidal organizations and society itself is a pyramid. The base of the pyramid is common people. They are the working power and they supply the main customer and tax base for the government. On the top of the pyramid are 2-3 dinosaurs . There is a lot of place on the bottom of the pyramid , but on the top there is in much cases just one person.So lets asume that a  common girl “in vacuum”

    What you think if a girl has a choice between 2 men which are

    Continue Reading »

    KCT:Hierarchies and “climbing up”

    Posted March 23rd, 2010 in PhD-M: Study Stuff by Gevork

    KCT-Knowledge Creation Team

    We made some clustering stuff today on the seminar of

    PhD-M: Philosophy of Science

    Foundations and Practicing Collaborative Knowledge Construction and Design Thinking in Science and Technology

    .

    Here are the slide of that day

    We should at first divide in 2-3 groups of 5-6 persons, and each one should tell about the “question that matters for him/her” .

    First of all Sasha made me sad with his “ladies first” concept.  Strange, have you ever thought how much are we boys descrimitated by the girls? Have you ever questioned why “ladies first”? They prove hardly that they are smarter than us, they can bear much more than us boys, then why when it comes to let’s say standing in the line , or some other staff, I should give a turn to a girl, becuase “she is a girl” ?

    Somebody thinks that girls are better than boys, becuase they are girls?  B…,s..t!

    Continue Reading »

    Presentation

    Posted March 15th, 2010 in News by Gevork

    Today we made a presentation on Kuhn. Topic was “Science as process: dynamics of scientific knowledge and its social embedding” .

    Some photos .

    Our group

    Our Experiment

    And Finally our presentation

    Meeting in AAI . Afro Cafe

    Posted March 15th, 2010 in News by Gevork

    Cafe Afro

    Cafe Afro

    Result:  Some minor changes in slides.

    a) Oksana gave 1 slide about icommensurability to Gevork

    b) Johnny added some notes to his slides

    c) I was pointed to get more into “crisises”

    d) Hanieh decided to finish the “game” after the meeting

    Yesterday’s Discussion with Dr. Martina Hartner

    Posted March 9th, 2010 in News by Gevork

    Yesterday on 8th of March 2010 we meet with the group 3 where I am also a member with Dr. Martina Hartner to duscuss our  presentation for the course  PhD-M: Philosophy of Science: Foundations and Practicing Collaborative Knowledge Construction and Design Thinking in Science and Technology.

    We showed her our concept , this one.

    We discussed a lot about Paragidms, Their Meaning, and made some suggestions, regarding the way , we could make our presentation better.