Want To Be A Hacker?

Remember the 90's classic movie "Sneakers"?

The story was that 6 very talented programmers were hacking the security of big companies and afterwards they informed them of the holes/disadvantages of their network in order to be fixed.
Once again a case of life immitating art immitating life. Since then a lot of people go by the occupation "Professional hacker" and do exactly the same thing. It shouldn't come as a surprise when I read that in Los Angeles there is a Hacking boot camp, where for only(?) $4000 you can learn how to penetrate every kind of security imagined...link
Great stuff! I wish I could attend this seminar too. But, it makes me think. How can the professors teach how to break security that is supposed not to break? Do they know how? Is there a key behind every encryption method just waiting to be taught at a seminar? Do they teach people how NOT to crack systems UNLESS they are allowed to?
I am confused. As much as I admire hackers I can't stop thinking of another movie: "Outbreak". After all the virus that nearly destroyed the world was supposed to serve humanity...

Mongolians need surnames!

Monogolians, who have customarily used only first names, are now required by law to have last names as well. Unfortunately, most people are choosing "Borjigin," Genghis Kahn's tribal name. The director of the State Library is attempting to fix this by publishing advice on historically accurate surname choices for potential Borjigins. Mr. Besud has spent years poring over the dusty archives of the state library to compile a book of possible surnames for the nameless. He obtained access to the highly secret archives of the country's Communist Party, which included detailed lists of the names of noble families who were prohibited from party membership. link

It ain't easy finding your surname..!

Pixies Live in Athens

I just came back from the PIXIES concert in Rockwave Athens 2004. The band was great, everybody had a wonderful time and I remembered how much I like their music. As you may have noticed my BLOG nickname comes fron the title of one of their albums. I believe that Pixies' music is very powerful and sophisticated. It's like everybody on stage is playing a different tune, but together they sound like a wonderful multi-layered formula that needs to be decyphered. It is wonderful, powerful, mind-boggling and raw music with true feeling. I just love them.

Opening with "Bone Machine," and traversing a crowd-pleasing set list that was weighted toward material from their first three releases--the 1987 EP "Come On Pilgrim, the 1988 album "Surfer Rosa" and its 1989 follow-up "Bossanova"--the quartet sounded as if they'd never gone away.

Black's voice remains an incredible instrument, one that seems specifically designed for the loud-soft-loud dynamics that the Pixies perfected long before the style was appropriated by the likes of Nirvana and Radiohead. While he can hold a pitch-perfect note indefinitely--as he proved this night on "Caribou"--his steely vocal cords can still belt out the best scream in the business: he didn't hold back at all on "Debaser," and seemed no worse for the wear when switching gears to "Monkey Gone to Heaven."

If only they had played "Where is My mind?" Where was theirs?

What happens when a blog goes out?

A fine example of the effects of the digital culture on our lives.

Last Sunday Blogging pioneer Dave Winer unexpectedly closed Weblogs.com, his free blog-hosting service, leaving thousands of bloggers without access to their blogs. (Article)

The content of this Blog-site (just like the one you are reading right now) was just plain-type texts written without special significance or purpose. They were ideas and thoughts expressed on the free time of 3000 people. The buissnes world and the stock market didn't collapse. Nobody heard it on the news. Nevertheless, these blogs were valuable for the people who created them. Because a blog is common-knowledge. A blog is alive...

"I just have my fingers crossed that my girlfriend gets her blog back," said software programmer Tom Gortell. "She feels like someone just sucked out her brains. I don't get it, it's just an online journal, right? But she feels like her entire life has been stolen."

Are e-mail viruses really alive?

Evolution requires:

• A genetic code, such as DNA
• Replication
• Mutation
• Natural Selection

These elements can be found in e-mail viruses. The ones with the best fake letters, e.g., the ones that persuade the most people to open the attachment, will survive and reproduce. The ones that aren't very convincing die out. The next stage, which may have already happened, would be for the virus to modify a couple of words at random in the text of the message before sending it out. Instead of blasting a million people the same message, blast groups of 100 people the same message with a different random change. Eventually random mutation will improve the ability of these messages to survive and reproduce by fooling people into opening the attachment.

 

 

SPAM his G-mail

I have to admit, this guy has a lot of patience.
Prattboy ha made a site that he checks how efficient in stopping spam is the new G-mail account. (link). He welcomes every spammer in the world to send him his junk in order to see if the new Google mechanism will stop it. He even publishes weekly statistics of the progress and up-to-date he has received 300 MB's of mail with about 50% success of junk recognition.
So, e-mail him with every kind of useless, trash, junk, virus, spam, promotional, fw, DOS-attack mail you can think of! Admirable mazochism if you ask me...

Man beats Horse!

Recently I am feeling really proud to belong in the human race!
We have seen man fighting with various animals, or winning over artificial intelligence in a chess game, we have seen man conquering over mother nature or overcoming himself.
This time man won a 22-mile race against horses! Here is the story. What will they think of next?

Why spam?

The word spam has recently been added to our language. Each one of us recieves daily tons of unwanted mail. But why "spam"? Who baptized this phenomenon?
SPAM, was the label of a conserved meat can made in England, which was very popular in the army during the Second World War. It's circulation was so overwhelming that very soon people got really tired of it.
During the 70's, Monty pythons made a scetch on their show (entitled "Spam") where a couple was trying to order a spam-less meal in a restaurant-with no success. The menu listed: egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam
With unbelievable foresight, the Pythons made it clear that the words Spam! Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! wont be heard again in our time...

And I quote...

Somebody said that everything has been said before. (I wonder if it was the first time this was said...)
Human wisdom is spread over millions of written words and unwritten acts. Sometimes there are few words that stand out and deserve more attention. QUOTES! I like reading quotes. They are like condensed knowledge - fun, easy to read and intelligent. You can use them to make a point, back-up your thoughts or enrichen your texts. And it's a great way to spend your time reading pieces of wisdom from great minds.
I suggest having a look at site#1, site#2 or site#3 and for the movie freaks to take this test.