The Conscience of a Hacker

This is my side of the story, with The Mentor's words thrown in, for the most part.

We aren't evil.
We do not revel in destroying.
We believe in building.

Please do read it with an open mind ...

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

Goodnight
A.G

Homecoming

It is I who is back. I have just lived through one of the greatest weeks of my entire life. The reasons, of course, are unknown to anyone. An hour or so really can change a year or so of the past. Easily. Thank you. You won’t read this, I know, ever.

I can now safely conclude, with my own experience serving as a judge, that it is far better to be a slave of the future than a prisoner of the past.

Moving on … I have wasted yet another weekend and I do find myself repenting for it. I do not know what will become of my projects just yet but I’d like to bet that things shall seem brighter this week.

I’d like to mention here that we now have an official F.L.I.R.T Youtube account.

Search for FLIRTBhaddal (That’s our user name – cocky but it was one of the few ones still available).

You could also go to the mentioned link :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zvlUQx56dk

So much for that.

Much has happened over the past week but I cannot discuss it owing to my laziness, unwillingness to type much further and other factors beyond description. I hope to be more regular at devoting my attention to this page next year. Please do not take the previous sentence at face value though. I have much to do next month and very limited time and resources to do it in. A miracle just might be the need of the hour.

If you’re still reading this post then you had better go and absorb yourself in more germane matters.

Goodnight
A.G

Paradise Regained

It is 4:40.
I am happy.
The world seems like a beautiful place to be in.
God bless us everyone.

Goodnight

A.G

Just Another Day in My Life

I’ve been through a rough day. A pretty rough day.

I have some more comments on java. I’m not through though. I never will be actually.

I HATE JAVA, I HATE JAVA, I HATE JAVA …

Only idiots pursue it in great detail.

Out of the two hours spent at class today one hour and another fifteen minutes were spent by our teacher trying to remove errors from an EJB program. We (Mani, Sobby and I) were either sleeping, looking around blankly or, in an extreme case, talking on the phone.

Nothing was explained to us during the time our teacher wrestled his brain cells with the errors. At 5:00 P.M, finally, he exclaimed that the program was ready and assumed we already what was going on. We were too tired or found it too cumbersome to ask questions after undergoing a grueling session of doing nothing. That was the end of that.

This was followed by the scooter breaking down.
An hour and a half and Rs.150 later we found ourselves heading back for home.

Anyway, I’m expecting to watch the original IIT Elixir video on the 21^st if everything goes according to plan. Other than that … you might say I’m working on a project.

No further comments.

Oh and did I mention that I hate Java?
I don’t think so.
I hate Java.
There.

I’m smitten by the PS3’s architecture. Actually it’s its Cell processor that makes me skip a breath. It’s actually a really amazing chip if you ask me. I’d like to explain a little more about it but I’ll leave that for another time maybe.

Oh and before I forget. If anyone reading this is interested in technology or something related to it. Please do let me know. I’d love to have a conversation over absolutely anything.

Umm … That will be all for now.

Goodnight
A.G

Idiotic Truths

I’m back. Yet again.

I would’ve said I’ve been busy but I cannot justify it completely so pretend you didn’t read this.
Anyway now that I am back I would like to share some truths of life …

Java is crap.

Everybody who’s anybody wishes to pursue Java. I personally believe it is meant for idiots who have too much free time on their hands. Not only is it illogically complicated but it tends to confuse you even more if you try to understand it.

I am almost through with Core and advanced Java and I can tell you from experience that almost nothing is repeated. By this I mean that every new topic in Java has a totally new concept and has absolutely nothing to do with the previous one. This, in effect, means that once you begin to understand to finally get the hang of a particular module you find you have you have to move on to the next one, which, of course, is something completely new and that leaves you feeling as if you’re studying a whole new language. Now imagine doing this every single day for two months straight.

I can now believe that people can actually pull their hair out with their bare hands.

Now, I know most people (esp. Java fan boys) would say that it’s got so and so features but … why the HELL does it have to be so … so … so damned weird/frustrating/complicated?

C++, by contrast, applies many of its concepts in various modules. For example, Friend functions may find use in Inheritance. Something like servlets (Java), however, have absolutely nothing in common with something like RMI. I know this was probably a one sided example but you don’t get it … I HATE JAVA. I’d rather spend time banging my head against a wall or attending lectures at college.

Sun Microsystems wanted to torture students like me so they devised an evil scheme and called it Java.

I can go on and on but I shall be moving on now. Oh and don’t bother defending Java. I absolutely refuse to listen to any pro-Java comments. Justified or unjustified. If you think Java rocks then I don’t like you.

Sigh … liberating …

Maninder’s Card Playing Strategies:

Mr. Arora rarely, if ever, graces us with his presence when we’re playing cards. When he does he prefers choosing Hearts as his colour, which, in most cases, proves to be his undoing. He prefers playing cards for the sake of playing them which can best be described in his own words – Ena dimaag kaanu laana? Mein taan bas patte sutti chalne ne.

No wonder he loses on most occasions.

Maninder’s Cricketing strategies:

Mr. Arora , again, rarely, if ever, graces us with his presence when were playing cricket in the basement, which, by the way, is a bushel of fun ! 6 commas in one statement. Nice !

Anyway, he has a knack of breaking his spectacles when he bats, bowls or fields. That, I shall admit, is a talent possessed only by a chosen few. Mr. Arora, ergo, would have to be their king.

He normally bowls slow spinning deliveries which are mostly good enough to get Arneja out.

Downloading movies and then deleting them without watching them:

This is one of the hot favorite pastimes here:

We always have multiple movies on downloading here but we never get to see them. You see in order to accommodate the new movies we need to delete stuff. That stuff also happens to be movies since they are in the same league size wise. So we delete previously downloaded movies which haven’t been watched in order to make room for the new ones. This is one vicious cycle.

Having soft drinks approximately 3 times a week:

It is, by now, a well established fact here that once the clock is about to strike 12 at night at least one scooter with a Punjab registration number will be seen exiting from the main Sector 40 gate and will be seen coming back 15 minutes later.

I suppose the reason is already clear.

Maninder’s one inch punch:

Since Mr. Arora seems to be on my mind right now ( Don’t get any wrong ideas here !) I’d like to mention a little about his one inch punch. He saw a Bruce clip that showed him executing the above said punch and he has been trying to perfect the same punch by practising it on me.

Mr. Arneja is … Chicken !

Mr. Arneja cannot watch a Chicken being slaughtered. He can cook it without any qualms. He can wash it without any qualms. He can eat it without any qualms but he won’t watch it being slaughtered. Hmm … Weird …

Half of Punjab is blatantly copying us:

This is with reference to dancing. I was fortunate enough to be at the Rayat fest this time around as well and I thought I’d be able to get ideas for our own dances in the near future. What I saw, though, was more of a copy of our own selves up on stage there. More than half the teams performed the robot. Some of them took our steps. Some took our routines, formations, music etc etc.

KML were last year’s MOOD INDIGO Group Dance Winners:

This fact had been brought to my knowledge only yesterday and quite frankly none of us think KML is that good a team. No offence to KML but even WE are better than them !

I would love to state a few interesting points here but I have just found out, much to my amazement, that Mr Inderpreet Sing (GRE Vaale) Is finally online after a gap of almost five months.

I must leave in order to pay homage.

Until next time

Goodnight
A.G