Halloween's Christian History

What is All Hallow's Eve, Why Halloween is October 31, and More
© Melissa Roberts

Halloween, a popular holiday, comes from All Hallow's Eve, an early Christian holy day, and has Christian roots in a celebration to honor the saints, living and dead.

Today’s popular Halloween holiday takes it’s name from All Hallow’s Eve, the vigil of the Feast of All Hallows, known today as All Saints Day. A series of decisions by Catholic popes in the early and late Middle Ages gave Halloween the name and date.

What is All Hallow’s Eve?

All Hallow’s Eve literally means the eve, or day before, all hallows, or "holy ones." The Lord’s Prayer, used by many Christians, contains the phrase, “hallowed be thy name.” Medieval Christians hallowed, or honored, not only God, but also all the saints who worked for God’s work in the world and glorified the Church with their prayers and service.

For centuries, Christians celebrated the eve before a major feast or holiday, also known as a vigil, with prayers, candles, and offerings to the saints. Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas, is an example still relevant today. All Hallow’s Eve was the vigil for Hallowmas during that time.

Hallowmas, also known as All Hallows, is literally translated as “Mass of the Holy Ones.” All Hallows is celebrated as All Saints Day today by Roman Catholics and several Protestant sects.

Christian History of All Hallow’s Eve or Halloween

Skeletons decorate walls and scenes for Halloween today, but the original Halloween skeletons were bodies of holy Christian men and women.

Early Christians gathered bones and remains of their dead and honored them with special prayers and devotions. Christians began celebrating the Feast of All Martyrs and its vigil during the fourth century to honor all Christian who had died for their faith (martyrs).

Pope St. Boniface IV (608-615) dedicated pagan Rome’s Pantheon temple as a church in 610. He had the bones of many Christian martyrs buried there and dedicated the church to the Mother of God and all the Holy Martyrs. Pope Boniface IV declared that all Christians celebrate the lives of the saints on the date he dedicated the church, May 13, and the vigil the night before, on May 12.

About a hundred years later, Pope Gregory III (731-741) dedicated a new chapel in St. Peter’s, Rome and moved the Feast of the Holy Martyrs to that date, November 1. Regionally, Christians still celebrated their own local saints on specific days, however.

Why Halloween is October 31?

It took another hundred years for the entire Catholic Church to celebrate the saints on one single day. Pope Gregory IV (827-834) declared November 1 as the new date to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Martyrs and expanded it to include all saints, not just those who died for their faith. All Hallow’s Eve, the vigil, was celebrated on October 31.

Pope Gregory changed the date of Holy Martyrs and expanded it to include all Christendom at the suggestion of King Louis the Pious of France.The timing of November 1 for a major Christian feast is no coincidence.

Louis the Pious worked to eradicate local religious diversity and bring a pure, uniform Christianity to his kingdom and all of Christendom. The end of October and beginning of November is the pagan festival of Samhain, known today as the Pagan New Year, and it's possible Louis hoped to eliminate pagan festivities during this time of year with a huge Christian celebration.

Halloween Today

Despite King Louis and Pope Gregory IV’s intentions, Samhain traditions such as trick-or-treating, dressing in costumes, and pranks continue to be a part of Halloween celebrations.

Catholics and other Christians observe All Saints Day on November 1, and some honor the vigil of this feast, All Hallow’s Eve, with prayer and reflection for the saints.

Articles taken from http://catholic-mass-holy-days.suite101.com/article.cfm/halloween_all_hallows_eve_and_the_saints

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~xoxo~

All About JoEtheL

sharing is caring... hehe...

First of all let me introduce my new page that i just tried out. Visit my page : http://www.netvibes.com/joethel

I tried my best to simplify my browsing activity... also to keep track on my bookmarks... and to get as many latest updates from the net as possible... Atlast, after searching and comparing all top personal homepage available on the net... I choose Netvibes. Netvibes allows me to customize and publicize my page besides giving variety options to bookmark my favorite websites.

PageFlake, I rated as second best personalized homepage... I almost signup to this in the first place though... but then, I don't choose this just because I'm not sure whether it allows me to publicize my page...

My Yahoo!... My first homepage... Everyone who signed up for Yahoo have this.. I guess.....

Others like iGoogle, Microsoft Live and Alot.com are also good...

Here are some of the images of my homepage:

I share my page... I share my bookmarks... means I care for you...yes, YOU!! you read this.. muahx... *wink wink*

~xoxo~

Hardware hacking a cat and mouse game

By JO TIMBUONG

TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Grand showing some of the tools hardware hackers use, which are available at affordable prices. He was one of the speakers at this year's Hack in The Box Security Conference.

IF YOU ask Joe Grand, president of Grand Idea Studio — an R&D and product design company, he’ll tell you that no piece of hardware can ever be safe enough from hackers.

“If something has electronics running inside, it can easily be tampered with, and many such products are susceptible to being compromised by even simple attacks,” he said.

According to him, hardware hacking has recently reappeared on hackers’ radars because of the plethora of easily available tips and tools available on the Internet.

He said the tools of the trade are very affordable and for a paltry sum experienced hardware hackers can have a die made of the circuit board they wish to hack.

This form of outsourcing is something new in the hardware hacking world, Grand said in his keynote address at the recent Hack in The Box Security Conference (HITBSecConf) here.

“Things that used to be difficult to do for hardware engineers and hackers have become so easy that there really isn’t any excuse now for hackers not to hack into hardware,” he said.

A mix of new and old methods can also help with the process of hacking hardware.

Citing an incident where he hacked into parking meters in San Francisco, Grand applied social engineering techniques to learn how the meters worked. “and the officials were only too happy to tell me everything.”

With that information and some software tools, he managed to confound the system running the parking meters into granting him US$999.99 (about RM3,600) worth of parking time.

“I didn’t use it, of course. I informed the city council about it and they are currently doing something to fix (the loophole in the) system,” he said.

Another trend that is making the job of a hardware hacker even easier is product enthusiasts disassembling a product and then posting detailed pictures of its components on the Internet.

“This shows hardware hackers what kind of components are used to build the product, which can clue them in to its vulnerabilities,” he said.

Good and bad

Just like with any other hacking activity, hardware hacking can lead to detrimental consequences, such as service theft or having your product cloned by unscrupulous parties.

But there is a silver lining, Grand said. If product developers make an effort to understand the skills of hardware hacking, they will be able to build a more secure product.

He said hardware designers usually leave a lot of clues on how to hack into a product because they are always in a hurry to put the devices on the market and place little emphasis on security.

Grand said hacked hardware is probably a more costly problem to solve than hacked software.

“In the software world all it takes is an inexpensive patch but it’s not that simple when it comes to hardware. A lot of times, it requires the companies to issue a new version of the hardware which can be a costly fix,” he said.

Having said that, Grand believes that it is impossible to devise a totally secure hardware product, no matter how much a company chooses to spend on this. The trick is for the company to keep staying ahead of the hackers.

“It’s a cat and mouse game. Hardware developers will try to make their products secure but there’ll always be an unplugged hole somewhere,” he said. This keeps everyone on their toes.

How Safe are Facebook Applications?

How Safe are Facebook Applications?

Written by Sarah Perez / October 16, 2009 7:21 AM / 4 Comments

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Recently, Roger Thompson, chief research officer at security firm AVG, discovered over half a dozen Facebook applications that had been compromised by malicious hackers. Although the apps' reach was small with relatively few users being affected, Thompson was concerned because it was the first time he had seen apps themselves hacked as opposed to something like Facebook profile pages, a common target for the still-spreading Koobface worm.

While this incident alone wouldn't generate much excitement given the low-profile nature of the applications affected, it's not the only example of unsafe applications on Facebook. Another researcher just spent an entire month scouring Facebook apps for security vulnerabilities and what he found is disturbing: six of the hacked apps were in the top ten, 9700 applications were affected, and the potential victims totaled 218 million users.

Hacked Apps Found Forcing Malicious Software on Users

In the case of the hacked Facebook apps found by AVG, the apps had been compromised by the use of "iframes," which are bits of code embedded in the applications themselves. The iframes were able to load content from malicious websites into the applications' pages on Facebook.com, directing app users to install software on their computers by purporting to be an update for an out-of-date Adobe Reader product.

At first, Thompson thought the apps had been hacked by the developers, but as it turned out, it was the developers who were the victims. After looking at the source code for the apps in question, Thompson found that the iframes had been injected into the apps' code due to infected software on the developers' PCs.

Facebook quickly reacted to the situation and took down the compromised apps while also contacted the developers to warn them of the issue.

Thousands of Apps Vulnerable to Attacks

While hacked Facebook apps may still be a bit of a rarity today on the popular social network, security vulnerabilities that could lead to malicious attacks are not. After spending a month on Facebook looking for application bugs, another security researcher made some disturbing findings.

Specifically, the researcher, who goes only by the handle "theharmonyguy" online, was looking for a specific vulnerability he referred to as a "FAXX Hack." FAXX stands for "Facebook Application + XSS + XSRF" or, in other words, a cross-site scripting vulnerability - a certain type of security hole that could allow a hacker to access profile information, including personal details, status updates, and photos of a victimized user and their friends.

The findings showed that many Facebook applications, even those that were widely used and considered trustworthy, lacked basic security precautions. There were some 9700 Facebook applications which were affected by vulnerabilities and over half of the applications in question had passed through Facebook's "Verified Application" program, a sort of "stamp of approval" designed to assure Facebook users of an app's general trustworthiness. Among the apps, six were ranked in the top ten by monthly active users including FarmVille, Causes, LivingSocial, Movies, Farm Town, and YoVille. The collective monthly active users counts for all the hacked apps totaled 218 million. However, that previous figure does include overlaps. Also, seven of the top ten application developers on Facebook were found to host at least one vulnerable app.

While discovering the bugs, the researcher contacted each application developer to make him or her aware of the hole. For the most part, developers responded quickly and took the situation seriously. However, several developers took a while longer to respond. Nine took over a week to patch their application and one even took two weeks. And those delays were not due to the complexity of the required patches - these were, in terms of coding, simple fixes.

What's most concerning about these findings is how widespread the problem was. Unlike the apps AVG discovered, this wasn't a minor, isolated incident affecting a small handful of users. Although the apps in question here were just vulnerable to attacks as opposed to being comprised themselves, it shows how risky it is to use any application, Facebook Verified or not.

Is Any App Safe?

On top of all these security issues, in August many Facebook users were surprised to discover the vast amounts of personal information they were revealing by their use of Facebook quizzes. Even if you limit access to your profile through privacy settings, Facebook quiz applications can see everything on your profile page when you take a quiz...or even when your friend takes one. To make matters worse, Facebook does not screen developers for trustworthiness nor do they require developers to comply with a privacy policy.

With hacked apps, security vulnerabilities, lack of privacy policies, and apps that can read your private profile information, one has to wonder if using any Facebook application is appropriate and safe these days.

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Photos of Ladies Gathering

YuUhhoo... Ladies Gathering was awesome... beautiful... and white...

Simple... our edibles... happened to had theme too~GREEN

Angels... all the gurls in white except Jenn aka carldeana~she missed out the theme info :)

October Baby... the birthday gurls ~ Mona and Mavis

Yummy... eating time..

Fun... a cruise passes by... and guess what.. the tourists from inside the cruise waved at us... and of course we waved back.. haha

Hello world, I love you... aiya... some didn't do the love sign...

Photogenic... picture-taking-time..!!

ME & ME... edited via facebook apps~buddypoke

~xoxo~
JoEtheL

Invitation to Ladies Gathering

Received this invitation from all-girls-chained-email about two weeks ago. Then, for the whole week before the meet-up, we're all so excited and keep tweeting about this gathering ~ reminds and can't wait to meet each other..

Copied from original e-mail message by miss Gna Ebie

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HI Ladies,

You’re cordially invited to meet up; mini gathering & roaming at Putrajaya. & of course strictly to the beautiful ladies ONLY. No handsome guys allowed!!. (*grinned) & theme of the day is WHITE.

Venue: Putrajaya Lake

Date: 11-Oct-2009/Sunday

Time: 4.00pm

Activities for the day, having a pleasant evening with beautiful ladies who’re attending the evening event; High tea, chit chat tanya khbar. Don’t forget to mentioned taking photo with beautiful scenery is a must. Get yourself dress pretty for the day. Ihik..ihik..Please bring your camera along.

Cheers! Yg menurut perintah. Don’t hesitate to contact undersigned. :P Through email yerr. J

Gna Ebie.

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~xoxo~
JoEtheL

Hari Raya 2009

Here are some pics during Mimos Hari Raya Gathering

My colleagues

Took some pics b4 makan²

That's me... Eating time... :)

Unfortunately I went back in to office at this time *all bcoz rushing 4 toilet ;p*... so i missed out the chance to take pics with boss and other staffs

~xoxo~
JoEtheL

Reblog: Hello World, I Love You

I don't have tumblr so i reblog/share through blogger.

This was posted about a month ago... hope it is not too late to continue this...
we girls planned to do this during our ladies gathering@putrajaya this weekend.. with our white theme ^_^ can't wait to be an angel meeting the other pretty angels... *jump in excitement*

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Hello World, I Love You from Tyler Knott Gregson on Vimeo.

Ok all of you amazing people out there, I need your help! I have this idea that I want to put together a video of as many people, in as many different languages as possible, saying “Hello World, I Love You.” So I need your help! If you can record video, please do it, if all you can do is record the sounds, that is fine too just send a photo with it, but I need your help, here’s how:

Please record a video or soundclip of you telling me anything you feel like telling me, I won’t include that in the video but I’d love to just hear from you too, but at the very end, if you could just record yourself saying “Hello World, I Love You,” in whatever languages you know how to speak, I would appreciate it more than I can express. I want to take all the video and sound clips and put them together with as many languages as possible and put them into one video, with all of US saying something so positive and unifying.

I need our help, so please, click the link above which will open up an email to me, or email me at: tylergregson(at)gmail(dot)com and just tell me what language you’re saying it in. “Hello World, I Love You.” Again, feel free to tell me anything else, I just want to hear all your voices.

Thanks and reblog away to spread the word!!

I'm dumbemployed??

Thursday - October 8, 2009... This lately, I seems to be lacking my spirit to work.. always complaining... and got bored easily... oh yea, I'm bored of doing and the same thing since 8 month ago..keep changing and reworking on the same project..no sign to end in this short period of time..

Last week, if I'm not mistaken.. a lady *whom i dont really know* from tweeter share a website that she thought funny..and yeah, something really fun to read:

RT @suenami3: @JoanEtheL lmao hah - you will prob find this pretty funny as well...http://bit.ly/XaeuD?3997

~ http://dumbemployed.com/ - The job you love to hate.

What Is Dumbemployed?

We all have jobs (well, some of us do). And unfortunately, some of those jobs are pretty dumb. If you have to put up with idiotic bosses, clueless customers, morons for coworkers, and just plain annoying, weird, and freaky work, welcome to the club. You're dumbemployed.

Dumbemployed is the place where you can share your story. You can read and submit short stories about your hilarious (and painful) dumbemployment. Stories start with "At work today," and conclude with, "I'm dumbemployed." Because let's face it- you are.

What's The Inspiration Behind Dumbemployed?

We're inspired by a lot of things here at Dumbemployed.com- bosses with bad breath, The Office UK, chairs with squeaky legs, coffee stains on your teeth, The Office American version, hot coworkers, angry janitors, FMyLife.com, stealing office supplies and, of course, The Office Germany, which we've never seen, but are pretty sure is amazing. And German. And stuff.

- from http://dumbemployed.com/about.php

Fun to read though. Thought of sharing mine too:

~ At work today, it is my first time wearing baju kurung to work and my everyone looks at me with 'wah' expression as if I'm a new girl in the office. I'm dumbemployed. ~ O.o'

~xoxo~
JoEtheL

Plan for Lady Ethel

Wednesday - October 7, 2009... another bored day at the office... so i stole a lil'bit of my working time to blog.. :)

It has been a long time I've been using this diary theme on Lady Ethel...I had a thought of changing the look of Lady Ethel since few months ago...but i'm so in love with this design and feel so dear to discard it... ermm...what should i do..? I'm so eager to try out other beautiful themes...

besides that i decided to create another blog with my mother tongue ~ iban.. since there are lots of iban bloggers...and most of them are interesting to read with words that I, myself wouldn't thought of..*(~.~') im not good in any language - english, malay..even my own mother language..so embarrassing*..therefore, i wanna join them blog in iban too... the problem is...i'm not sure if i had time to update all blogs...even Lady Ethel is seldom updated..

decision...decision...decision... *sigh*

~xoxo~
JoEtheL

New Month

Hello October..! see you next year September *waving*...

Here's update for this month...

*wondering* Can I say... I've made my own life more difficult?? Here's the story...
Almost everyday... or most days..ermm well I seldom 'online' [**any other terms for this??**] on weekends if I have some other things to do...ok, when I'm online [**normally facebook is the priority ;p**] I surf on things *anything*... if i found something interesting..i normally try it out...

Ok..this lately... I try connecting all 'my-web-things' [**couldn't find better words for this at the moment**]... Firstly, *I actually did this last month or few months ago~couldn't recall when exactly*, I connect my facebook with twitter... which my facebook status can be auto-update via twitter (except direct message and @reply)... Then, recently I connect my emails, IMs, social network thingy, *etc...with Digsby [**copycating Jonybr ;p ~ jony I know you'll read this..i can bet u're gonna be da 1st person to read and comment on this post..**]... finally just now, I sign-up on twitterfeed and connect my blog [**yeah, this blog**] to my twitter account...which will update my twitter status with my recent post daily..which will also auto-update my facebook status...so that means... LadyEtheL needs daily updates...that's the purpose of twitterfeed I guess...

Oh well...just wait for my next updates..hopefully tomorrow ;p

~xoxo~
JoEtheL