The Most Hated Company

Picture 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 :

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).

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

I 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…

FOSS.in 2007 is HERE !!!

The best event of the year - FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) India 2007 is here.

Venue - National Science Symposium Centre, IISc, Bangalore, India 

Dates - December 04-08, 2007 (Tuesday-Saturday) 

 

See you there …

Thought For the Week - 24 Sep 07

“It is no longer enough to be smart — all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart…” - Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman

Technology at this age is used altogether for the wrong reasons and to make us lazy by the day. Leave alone the enhancement of the core values, we dont even go out to enjoy a nice stroll in the park, what do we do instead, get on the thread mill.

The most mundane tasks getting automated, and we not even beading as sweat, technology, in most of the examples that can be sited, all together stands for the wrong reasons.

Techie 106, Not Out!!!

Wondering how far the IT (Information Tech. not Income Tax ) sector in India has grown? If You felt, it left a deep impression on the Indian society, doubt not, you’re right .

Meet Rosakutty from Kerala.

No idea which tabloid/news-paper reported this, so cant back on the authenticity of the news, but its interesting enough.

Hail India !!!

7#3 31337 741x … (The Eleet Talk…)

l33t What is it?
Ans : An Evil Programming Language By Stephen McGreal and Alex Mole

Thats the info given in the site, before getting into the details what exactly is an Leet? Or what is this 31337 or 1337 or l33t ??? Confused.
It was a form of language based on english developed so that the ‘elite’ geeks can have their way around on chats …

Wikipedia has a sample chart -

A	B *	C	D *	E	F	G *	H	I *	J	K	L *	M	N	O *	P	Q	R *	S	T *	U	V	W	X	Y	Z *
4 /\ @ /-\ ^ aye ∂	8 6 13 |3 ß P> |: !3 (3 /3 )3 ∞	[ ¢ < ( { ©	) |o [) I> |> ? T) |) 0 ð	3 & € £ ë [- |=-	|= ƒ |# ph /=	6 & (_+ 9 C- gee (γ,	# /-/ [-] ]-[ )-( (-) :-: |~| |-| ]~[ }{ ? }-{	1 ! | eye 3y3 ]	_| _/ ¿ </ (/ ʝ	X |< |{ ɮ	1 £ 7 1_ | |_ lJ ¬	|v| ]V[ //\\//\\ |\/| /\/\ (u) (V) (\/) /|\ ^^ /|/| //. .\\ /^^\	^/ //\\// /\/ [\] <\> {\} []\ // [] /V ₪	0 () oh [] ¤ 􏿿 Ω	|* |o |º |^(o) |> |” 9 []D |̊ |7 þ	(_,) ()_ 0_ <|	2 |? /2 |^ lz ® [z 12 l2 Я |2 ʁ	5 $ z § ehs es	7 + -|- 1 '][' †	(_) |_| v L|	\/	\/\/ vv ‘// \\’ \^/ (n) \V/ \X/ \|/ \_|_/ \_:_/ Ш ɰ	% >< Ж }{ ecks × )(	j `/ Ψ φ λ Ч 7 ¥	2 ~/_ % >_ ʒ 7_
0 can be used for O or D 1 can be used for I, L or T 2 can be used for Z or R 6 can be used for B or G £ can be used for E or L 7 can be used for T, L or Y Please note this table is to be used as a guide and not a full translation tool. Leet is ever changing and not all replacements will, or can, be included.

Now talking about the Programming Language. Here is something ripped off right from the site which, errr explains almost everything needed.

l33t is an esoteric language based loosely on BrainF***, and influenced by Beatnik. Like other languages of its ilk, it was designed to be as brain-melting as possible to code in whilst still being Turing complete. The language has some interesting distinguishing features, such as the possibility for self-modifying code and for connectivity - it’s theoretically possible to use it to write viruses and other such antisocial software but the actual logistics of trying to write such a program put it well beyond the cognitive capabilities of the average script kiddie. Look here for the full language specification, here for some sample programs, and here for some interpreters and links to related sites.

1ph +#4= \X/a$ /\/0+ 3/\/0(_)6#, The following is the first ever functioning program written in l33t. It loops forever, printing all 255 ASCII characters, and takes the form of a short insulting rant about geeks:

ph34r my l3Et 5kIlLZ!!!!!!
nErDs 41n’t cool 3v3ry1!!!
y0u b1g g33kS r teh g33kY sux0rs!
PHE4R! LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!

Adding on here is the snapshot of Google’s H4×0r page

What’s in a SWAP?

Can we do with out SWAP partition on a linux machine? asked a friend of mine to me. The answer is simply YES, if you are ready to accept degraded system performance. He wanted me to elaborate and just one word summarized it - caching

Well a good explanation lead me to this article, which i recommend.

Why swap on Linux is always good, even with tons of RAM

Enjoy!!!

Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC (Vista or XP)

One thing that is good about Linux is that, it can run for a long time with out ever restarting. The same doesnt apply to windows.Given a good PC in a decent condition., it takes 2 min for the PC to boot up.

The article -Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC (Vista or XP), says that 30 sec of the time is for the BIOS to boot up, but why do you need that in the first place to reboot. So restart the PC with out restarting the BIOS - just hold down the Shift key while invoking Restart<Codejacked - Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC (Vista or XP)

Windows Vista: Select Start, then hover over the right arrow that is to the right of the padlock icon until the pop-up menu appears that contains “restart” as one of it’s choices. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “restart” choice.

Windows XP: Select Start. Select “Shut Down…”. Change the drop-down combo box under “What do you want the computer to do?” to “Restart”. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “OK” button.

Top 10 Bad Things That Are Good For You

(Title and Content - Live Science)

10 - Beer

9 - Anger

8 - Coffee

7 - LSD

6 - Sunlight

5 - Maggots

4 - Marijuana

3 - Red Wine

2 - Chocolate

1 - SEX