The Hacker’s Code of Ethics

hacker The Hackers Code of EthicsThis was an interesting find on the net. Steven Levy in 1984 had a code of ethics for Hackers

The ethics goes as -

  • Access to Computers – and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
  • All information should be free.
  • Mistrust Authority – Promote Decentralization.
  • Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
  • You can create art and beauty on a computer.
  • Computers can change your life for the better.

Interesting … icon smile The Hackers Code of Ethics

The Most Hated Company

11 1 07 eee The Most Hated CompanyPicture this about a laptop

It comes for as low as $299, ie Rs. 12K. Most expensive is $499, ie Rs.20k
Fully-featured laptop costs $69 less than the 16 GB Apple iPod Touch.
It’s $100 less than an Amazon Kindle e-book reader
It runs Linux (Xandros running KDE)- which is $30 less than Amazon.com’s discounted price for Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
They first in market with flash based storage.

Now thats a laptop that i would buy soon. (Just dont ask how soon ‘soon’ is, as i’m known for procrastinating)
This makes ASUS Eee PC hated by, well lets just say every major company. Now that includes – Microsoft, Apple, Dell etc. and Azuztek a.k.a Azuz the most hated IT company as of now.
Intel loves them coz they are running a Celeron processor.
Is this going to hurt OLPC after the Intel back-out? I dont know and frankly i cant just about predict or speculate anything about the OLPC project. Their $100 laptop is now priced at $200 and now without Intel … i just cant make out anything.
[Source of news - http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/]
[Image source - engadget]

DOMPlayer and the Doom.

Creativity has no limits and the fact that people can go to any extend to infect you machine with malware, let me say comes as a total relief. After people has spend dollars securing their machine with the latest spyware remover, anti-virus, pop-up blocker and all the shit that you can get you hands on, there is no stopping a curious browser who downloads some thing and authorizes it to do some operation and ends ups in a deeper shit that he was before.

We all love torrent. The countless torrent files that you looked up on the net to download your favorite movie, would have at least made you thin, what you would have done with out those torrent sites. Its the same feeling you get when you thank George Bush for the oil that he is bringing in from Iraq and Kuwait.

So when some thought of the idea of infecting your machine with the help of torrent download and get paid $3 for doing so , has to be credited with the ingenuity of the idea. Here is the whole scenario.

You download a movie (most of the reports came up with the latest movies like Hitman, Beowuf, National Treasure : Book of Secrets) or an episode of your favorite series on TV. When you try to play it it says

This video can only be played in DomPlayer, Visit Download.Domplayer.Com

Like any other desperate downloader you visit their site :

dom3wplayer image002 DOMPlayer and the Doom.

Pretty neat site of a movie player, compared to VLC Player and Real Player. So you go and download the player, the Download button is right in front of you. So whats the big deal. Go ahead download the file… At this point i got suspicious and thought hey i never heard any of my friends talk about such a player, instead of installing it at the home PC (Windows XP), let me try to get an installer/player for Linux. That way its safe and its my Laptop, if anything gets screwd up i can just install all over again. Big Deal!!!

Web searches got me to couple of forums here and here. They talked about another player 3wPlayer by Wildman Productions(i have no idea who the hell they are).

dom3wplayer image004 DOMPlayer and the Doom.

bst DOMPlayer and the Doom.In fact the real deal here is as reported from Best Security Tips is DOM Player says its clean but you call them up and pay them to activate the attack on your P. If that doesnt work they ask you to download 3wPlayer. Which is another piece of shit and load the malware to the PC free of charge.

Now that is a cool idea. You get paid to get infected like the way you paid to get protected. Over that you download movie files (AVI files) which might be renamed porno movies.

SMS Gupshup – Its just a message

logoGupShupB1 SMS Gupshup   Its just a messageI met at Abhishek Thakkar at Barcamp Bangalore 5. A guy i got to know better only on the second day. We were the two guys who came early for a BarCamp on a Sunday. So what we went to the canteen and were the first to start the breakfast for the day.We chatted on, he a Mumbaikar, big fan of north-indian food and a real techie. Infact he wants to shift the office to Chandigarh for two reasons – the food and the girls. I couldn’t agree more. Food and Girls what a combo. What a combo!!!

Now thats not the topic here.

We happened to talk about SMS Gup Shup, the company that he represents, and the amazing idea that they have. So the stats goes like this -

April they go Alpha
May they go Beta
Nov they are close to a million (if you dont know what a million is … its 1’000’000 users)
The number of users doubling every 40 days

Now thats a growth. What makes them click? What is so great about SMS Gup Shup? What made we mutineers start a Mutiny group in SMS Gup Shup as soon as he told us what it is?
The whole idea behind SMS Gup Shup is to get connected via SMS, its a blog, its a mobile orkut and its much more. It works like this.

You create a group
Invite friends to join in or they subscribe to you
You post SMS-es and it reaches all your friends
Whats you cost? 3rs
How many you reach? That many people, who have joined your group.
Catch? – No catch!
How to do it? – Just SMS for all the above steps

Now how does that sound??? Its cool i say. Imagine you want to tell all you friends how good or how shitty a movie is, right after you saw it? You start messaging and goes on adding people to the list and then you send.

By the time the last message is sent. They would have as well seen the movie.
Instead what if you can send in one message … cool isn’t it …

Here are the steps straight from the site…

GupShup from Mobile

Start a Group – 3 simple steps to start a Gup Shup from your mobile phone:

  • Create your group by sending an SMS to 567673434. Example:
    CREATE mygroup123
  • Invite friends to your group:
    INVITE 98200XXXXX 99203XXXXX
  • Send group messages to 567673434. Example:
    Hi, am Arun and this is my group for movie reviews.

Join a Group – Get messages from your favorite groups on your mobile phone

  • To subscribe to group, sms JOIN followed by the group name to 567673434. Start your GupShup now! Example: JOIN GupShup

Come lets start GupShupping – Staying in touch is now just a message away
icon smile SMS Gupshup   Its just a message