New PC for Martin

Last week a friend decided that he wants a new PC. Therefor I looked up a possible configuration and sent him details.
He liked it, so he ordered it and finally last weekend I assembled it.
The Thing cost 496€ and its components are:

• AMD Phenom X4 9550 Sockel-AM2+ boxed, 4x 2.20GHz
• Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Single-Slot, 512MB GDDR4, 2x DVI, TV-out, PCIe 2.0
• Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4, 790X
  
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB 16MB
• Kingston KIT 2048MB DDR2 1066
• Power supply 500W

The components are not the most expensive one, but also not the cheapest one. That was one of the challenges. Some will ask, why AMD? The answer is simple. First of all, AMD Quadcore is a real Quadcore, not like Intels 2 * 2 Core. If you want details on that, Google it or visit Parallel Computing at LUT *g*.

But I'm a nice guy, so here are some infos in form of pictures,
first the picture of the real Quadcore of AMD:

And here is the Intel "Quadcore":


Do you see the difference?
Correct! In Intels Quadcore 2 cores always share one Level 2 Cache. And thats why it is not a real Quadcore, it is a 2 * 2 Core.

I know that AMD is at the moment 10% slower than compareable Intels, but I trust in AMD to solve this with a bios update.
Another advantage is the new platform. It supports PCI-e 2.0 and Hyperthreading 3 and it is the only platform which does at the moment.
So, why did I choose ATI card? AMD == ATI, so ATI is best supported on that platform, including Crossfire.

You don't know what Crossfire is, crossfire is the "same" as Nvidias SLI, you can combine the graphical power of two or even four graphic cards, here some pictures for a better understanding:




I wanted to build the components in the old case, but unfortunately the old PC was a microATX board, so was the case. So we used one of the older cases he got. Normally there are not really problems in putting together components, but there have been some in this example.

First the PC booted and the XP Setup started, but I had no Sata driver disk, so I had to start again with the driver floppy. But from there on, it didn't boot anymore, always stopped at startup. So I tried a lot of stuff including a bios update. It worked again and the Setup started, but only until "Windows checks the hardware configuration ....". I again tried some configuration in the bios and in the end it worked.

We installed all the necessary software and very important for Martin, his racing games. The graphic was awesome, it really makes hell lot of difference to before. In the end all took us from lunch at 13 until 23 in the evening....... nice waste of time ;)
I want a QUADCORE TOOOOOOO !!!!! ;(

Security Forum

Every year, the Hagenberger Circle hosts the Security Forum. I'm a member of this organization and therefor I was there too, of course.

This year I was a bit late, because I thought it will be on the next day *gg*. But finally I arrived, ready for the lunch break. I met a lot of nice people and I talked a lot. Actually I liked those conversations more than the presentations. This year the mix of the presentations was not that good. Too much management presentation, but not security management, I mean business economics. (my opinion)
And I think the topics have been too shallow. That was also some feedback I got from some other visitors. But next year it will get better, that's for sure.

However, I visited the OSSTMM and the Business Malware presentation. In the first presentation the time was way too short to get an impression. The presenter always said how important Security Performance Indicators are, but unfortunately he never showed how this indicator looks like. So there where more questions marks afterwards than before. The Malware presentation from Kaspersky was interesting, but one of those presentation with to much economics in it.

To get an impression how this years Security Forum looked like, here some photos:




You can find more pictures and the presentations on the Homepage of the SecurityForum.

Work - Life Balance

Hei folks,

sorry that I didn't write for so long, but I'm kind of busy right now and when I have free time, I'm not always motivated to write ;).
However, today I have some posts for you.

Some days ago I updated my CV and therefor I needed a better photo. Before that I used a private photo from the Koli trip in Finland.
Ok, so I put on my business suit and made a photo. As result from the photo shooting, there was also a funny photo, which I call "Work - Life Balance". You wanna know why, take a look on your own...



In my opinion, it is art *ggg*

Discovery Career Fair

After two years I visited yesterday again the career fair discover at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz.
I went there with Hannes, who joined me. He was a bit uncertain if it will make sense. In the end he was convinced.

We visited nearly every stall at this fair and asked "it security jobs available??". *gg* Some said things like "it-security is in our firm not a topic"..... no comment from me ;)

But mostly the reaction was very friendly and nice, even with no actual open vacancy they gave us addresses and contacts to ask for it.

Some other seemed very interested, because they have jobs in that area. Names like Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst and Young, PricewaterHouseCoopers and other big players in the consulting and auditing area do have positions in some kind of the it-security area. But also "normal" industrial firms do have positions or think about positions, so keep your eyes open.

In the end I can say that it was worth it, we left with good contacts and some nice presents ;)

News from my flatmate

As I mentioned earlier in a blog entry, I have a new flatmate *g*
However, living with me must be very satisfying, because my new flatmate seems to enjoy it a lot.

Here is how "she" looks like after the last couple of days:



Nice isn't it? It's not even finished yet. Damn, living with me must be a pleasure *ggg*

My private Shelter

Last week I tried to focus more on my master thesis. At home it is quite hard, because there is always some kind of distraction. So on Sunday (30.3) I decided to "flee" to the families garden cottage in Carinthia. It was that immediate, because I wanted to finish the In- Outputs chapter for Risk Management until Friday.

On Monday I left at 9 in the morning and arrived between 12 and 13. I was the first this year, so we (my uncle and I) had to bring it out of hibernation. The main thing was to turn on the water. As usual not everything went fine, so we had to repair the angle valve. But finally it worked and in the late evening on Monday I already started to write.

It was sunny every day. I really like it to have my breakfast on the terrace in the sunny morning and every morning it was like that:



I spent nearly every day with writing. I left only for lunch and one time for shopping and one time just to cruise. For shopping I went to the Atrio Shopping centre.
And my cruise took place around the Millstätter lake. Where I took this picture:



On Thursday I finished my work and went home in the late afternoon. I have no Internet in the cottage and no printer, that was the main reason. I would have stayed longer. I sent the document on Friday between 12 and 13 and I hope my adviser was still at work, if not I would be displeased.

It's quite funny how much I can work on my thesis without all of those interruptions. So I will look for a location not that far away here, but maybe I will go again to our cottage, just to be more productive.

Alumni Party

On Friday (28.03) we had our yearly alumni party. This year again Michi organized it. It was again a very nice evening, even when a lot of people left quite early.

There were about 70 alumni from "Computer and Media Security (CMS)" and "Secure Information Systems (SEC)". At the beginning we saw a presentation about news from our University and our organization, the HagenbergerKreis (Hagenberg Circle).

Nothing really new for me, because I'm still in Action. Yet so far I'm "just" an alumni for CMS and not for SEC. The only really interesting news came from Robert, our boss of those two degree programs. He was not allowed to say much, so I have just a clue what it can be. If it is like I think, it will become big ;)

After the presentation we had a buffet. And spent the rest of the evening with celebrating and talking. I like to see, because it is really interesting, what the other alumni become, in the economy. Such an event is always good for networking, especially at the moment.

For me this evening ended at 5 o'clock in the morning.

Michi can handle the organization of the party, but unfortunately he can't handle his camera *gg*. He made a lot of photos, but the memory card was broken and even recovery didn't help. So there are no photos at the moment, sorry.