Views of a Patzer!

Benny, one of my favorites (!?) from 29A has got a day job. He was hired by Zoner Antivirus team (Czhech). This has become such an issue, which I don't understand at all. The argument against hiring virii coders is that the employers will lose credibility as their software is developed by an ex-malicious code developer. WTH? We have a saying in my country, which, to paraphrase, says "Only a thief can *find* another thief"...True, isn't it? An ex-virii coder knows the tricks of the trade, he understands how his former-peers think, how they try to find vulnerabilities and how their polymorphic engines tick! This is crucial information, IMO.

If a security firm is not hiring a seasoned hacker, it is akin to a country's intelligence agency refusing information from an opponent's intelligence agent! Antivirus companies say that the skills needed for writing security software is completely different from that needed for writing malicious code. This may be true in some cases, but I cannot accept the statement as such. C'mon, if I know how to exploit a vulnerability, surely you can make use of that knowledge to fix that vulnerability, in the first place, right?? You write your software, give it to the fellow, whose job is to crack it somehow....He will be pretty effective at it than a 10 man testing team & a Quality assurance expert!! It all boils down to how you make use of the talent, IMHO. Anyhow, congrats & all the best, Benny!

If you are still using Kazaa, Morpheus or one of those old, obsolete software, I have news for you....wake up, things have changed!! eDonkey n/w was the coolest one, till sometime back, not anymore. It still is the best source for complete CDs, though. eMule, an open source client for edonkey network, is still one of the most downloaded programs off sourceforge. The main advantage of eDonkey network is, it provides quality CD dumps, while Kazaa & Gnutella (most of the time) provide you only the rips. Rips include only the bare minimum that is needed for running the software, while a CD image, obviously, allows you to make an exact copy of the original CD :) Mind that, many of the things available in these networks are illegal. But, because of its P2P nature, it is pretty difficult to shut down these networks, unlike Napster which was inherently non-p2p and so was easy to shut down. The original Gnutella network doesn't have good content, but gnutella2 seems to be good.

The latest *hot* thing is BitTorrent. Torrent network doesn't have that much data, when compared to some of the other networks. That doesn't mean a thing, as it is still pretty much a newbie to the p2p arena. At the current rate, Torrent is going to be a biiiig one soon. If you are in to category III films (CAT III is the certificate for those Chinese films that contain gore, high volume of sex blah blah blah. I think you get the point, click here if you don't!), the best Torrent source for these kinda movies is CrazyMazey. This has a forums + its own tracker. So, the download speeds are amazing and you get all those "Cannot-see-without-puking-atleast-once" films from here :) [WARNING: This is not for the squeamish. If you are new to these and are curious to know more about these, read this review of one of the Cat III classics, "The Untold story"]. Some other Torrent sources are LokiTorrent & Youceff

[Update (22/12/04) - Due to the legal actions being taken, many torrent trackers are shutting down. I have removed all the links to these sites, but you know how to get there, dont ya?! ;)]

Here are some of the macro-mode shots I took with my Canon Powershot A80. Since I am totally new new to these, I chose not to fiddle with the manual controls. All these pictures were taken in Portrait setting, with Macro-Mode on.

Click on the picture to see it in 1024 x 768.


Some more details:

Horizontal/Vertical Resoultion: 180/180 (dpi)
Bit Depth : 24
sRGB color representation
Shutter speed: 1/40sec
Lens Aperture: F/2.8
Focal: 8mm
Metering mode: Pattern (If I change this to Center weighted average, will I get more clear pics?)
Exposure compensation: 0 step.