Viva Amiga is an upcoming film about the worlds most wasted opportunity in computing, the Amiga. As an owner of one of the very first Amiga A500 in the UK I was captivated by the computer more than any other before or since. It was way ahead of all the competition at the time and inspired many young people (myself included) to get involved in graphics, programing and real computing.

I cannot wait to see the full film and urge you all to watch the trailer now for a teaser. The Amiga always will be a pivitol point in home computing.



This is their website : Viva Amiga

Thsi si their facebook fanpage

Jarrod McKinney's iPhone 4 -- a notoriously fragile device -- cracked when his 2-year-old knocked it off a bathroom shelf.

"I was like, 'Man! That's all it takes to crack the glass?' " he said.

So it's easy to see why McKinney, a 37-year-old in Minnesota, would be "just absolutely shocked" when that same phone survived a fall from his pocket -- while he was skydiving from 13,500 feet.

He found the gadget, its glass surfaces shattered, on top of a building about a half-mile away from where he landed with his parachute.

Joe Johnson, a skydiving instructor, said he and a few friends watched from the ground below the two-story building as McKinney raised the phone above his head in triumph after he located it using a GPS tracking app.

Just to be funny, Johnson decided to call the busted phone.

He didn't expect the call to go through. But it did.

McKinney felt the phone vibrate and started laughing.

"They were all like, 'It works! It works!'" he said of his friends watching his rooftop search from the bottom of the building.

That's especially amazing since the iPhone 4 can suffer from cell reception issues. When the Apple smartphone debuted in 2010, a saga the tech media called Antennagate followed. Consumer watchdogs claimed a design flaw on the phone's antenna caused it to drop calls unexpectedly. Apple gave out free phone cases to address the issue.

Mike Gikas, a tech editor at Consumer Reports, the nonprofit group that tests phones and other gadgets for their reliability, jokingly said that McKinney finally found a way to fix the phone's reception woes, by dropping it from a plane.

"That's the proved method for fixing the antenna problem," he said, laughing.

Gikas said it is possible a phone could survive a major fall. "I think that can happen," he said. "I think water is harder to deal with than shock."

McKinney, who first submitted this story on CNN iReport, the user-generated news site, said he's not sure when the phone slipped out of his pocket during his fall from the plane.

He was in a rush to "get out the door" (of the plane), he said, and forgot to zip the pocket of his baggy skydiving pants, which are designed to be loose-fitting so they catch air and slow him down as he falls from the sky.

The iPhone had protective gear of its own -- an Incipio-brand phone case that was broken after the fall but still was on the phone.

Even though the phone still makes and receives calls, it isn't very practical to do so because the touchscreen is shattered. IPhone users must use the gadget's screen to dial numbers and to answer incoming calls. The only way McKinney can use it is with a Bluetooth connection in his truck.

He plans to get the screen fixed, though.

Johnson, the skydiving instructor, was so impressed with the whole ordeal that he plans to pick up one of the phones sometime soon.

"It goes to show you if I crash land and need an ambulance, they can still track me down with the GPS," he said.

Some Android phones -- Apple's main competitors in the smartphone field -- are perhaps better known for their durability. As CNN's Mark Milian reports, Google, which makes the Android mobile operating system, launched several of its phones into space, tied to balloons.

Also, in case you were wondering if it's weird for a skydiver to take his phone on a jump in the first place, apparently it's not.

There is a host of online videos of skydives filmed on smartphones.

McKinney said he always takes the phone with him so he can call someone if he gets lost after he hits the ground. Sometimes the wind blows skydivers away from the intended destination, he said.

He noticed his phone was missing after he was on the ground. He reached into his pocket, wanting to take a video of his wife, who had jumped after him.

"I was actually really bumming because I've lost a phone in the past and I usually just have a ton of photos and videos of my kids on the phone," he said.

"I just knew it was gone. Falling from that height? (What are) the chances of you finding something like that or even knowing where to look?"

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/07/18/iphone.skydive/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

The rumour of EA wanting to buy PopCap has been going around for quite some time and now finally that can be put to rest and we can confirm that EA have in fact picked up the Plants and Zombies developers for a cool $750 million.

The deal is part cash and part stock but surprisingly the stock is a pretty small part of the deal with EA handing over $650 million in cash.

But what does PopCap get from teaming up with EA? Well according to EA they have an army of zombie developers who can do all the menial work while the geniuses at PopCap keep on creating. Okay that’s not how they officially put it but how else can I interpret this

Riccitiello said since PopCap currently has around 450 personnel, most of the firm’s designers are stuck working on individual format carriers such as Andorid, and doing unproductive work for designers. EA has personnel who can do all the localization work, so “creators can create,” instead of being stuck doing menial work.

It’s an interesting tie in really and I think PopCap are big enough to be able to ensure they keep the same culture and avoid falling into the EA trap of horrible yearly franchise refreshes.

But really don’t be surprised to see a flurry of themed Zombies vs Plants titles coming out because EA knows that there are a lot of people out there (like me) who would happily pay for a Liverpool themed Plants vs Zombies… where our little Liverpool plants can destroy Man Utd zombies.

To celebrate the merger PopCap sent that awesome card above over to the EA offices, you have to love their humour.

Source: http://www.lazygamer.net/pc-gaming/ea-buys-popcapplants-and-zombies-fifa-edition-rumoured

If Theoldcomputer.com were a country, it would be larger than British Virgin Islands


Nr. Country Population
206
Gibraltar
31,000
207
San Marino
30,800
208
theoldcomputer.com
27,224
209
British Virgin Islands
23,000
210
Cook Islands
20,000

Based on daily visitors, this website is a rising empire, already larger than:
British Virgin Islands

1 in every 63,694 internet users visit Theoldcomputer.com daily


More than 20,000 people gathered at Sun Moon University campus in Asan, south of Seoul for mass wedding ceremony. The photo above illustrates what theoldcomputer.com meetup would look like if all 27224 of theoldcomputer.com daily visitors met in one place, fell in love and decided to have a mass wedding ceremony. In addition to that, since theoldcomputer.com has more than 20,000, this meetup would also set a new world record.

Theoldcomputer.com demographics

This part of visualisation tells you where most of theoldcomputer.com visitors come from.
Note: this part of the page is not completed yet. We're working on character icons for every country.


Theoldcomputer.com demographics. The picture above shows where most of Theoldcomputer.com visitors come from.
http://www.sharenator.com/w/theoldcomputer.com

The the late 1960s and early 70s, there was much talk about "generations" of computer technology. This photo illustrates what were commonly known as the three generations:

First generation: Vacuum tubes (left). Mid 1940s. IBM pioneered the arrangment of vacuum tubes in pluggable modules such as the one shown here on the left. The IBM 650 was a first-generation computer.
Second generation: Transistors (right). 1956. The era of miniaturization begins. Transistors are much smaller than vacuum tubes, draw less power, and generate less heat. Discrete transistors are soldered to circuit boards like the one shown, with intereconnections accomplished by stencil-screened conductive patterns on the reverse side. The IBM 7090 was a second-generation computer.
Third generation: Integrated circuits (foreground), silicon chips contain multiple transistors. 1964. A pioneering example is the ACPX module used in the IBM 360/91, which, by stacking layers of silicon over a ceramic substrate, accommodated over 20 transistors per chip; the chips could be packed together onto a circuit board to achieve unheard-of logic densities. The IBM 360/91 was a hybrid second- and third-generation computer.
Omitted from this taxonomy is the "zeroth" generation computer based on metal gears (such as the IBM 407) or mechanical relays (such as the Mark I), and the post-3rd generation computers based on Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghis ... tions.html

Top 10 Most Infamous Black Hat Hackers of All Time
POSTED BY JUN AUZA ON 12/03/2010


In the world of information technology, black hat hackers (also known as crackers or cyber-criminals) are known as the bad guys or villains. Most of them break into computers or networks without authorization to steal money and classified and sensitive information, while others are doing it simply for the challenge or the thrill of hacking. To accomplish their sinister work, crackers often create malware (malicious software) like viruses and worms to gain control of computer systems.

I have gathered here a list of ten of the most popular cyber-criminals the world has ever known. These evil geniuses were involved in high profile hacking that possibly caused millions, if not billions of dollars in total damages. However, some of them have now turned to the good side and are using their talents for the benefit of mankind.

Without further delay, here are the top 10 most infamous black hat hackers of all time:

10. Jonathan James
At the age of 16, Jonathan James (also known as c0mrade) became the first juvenile imprisoned for cybercrime in the United States. James carried out a series of intrusions into various systems including the computers of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) of the US Department of Defense. James had installed an unauthorized backdoor in a computer server in Dulles, Virginia that he used to install a sniffer allowing him to intercept over three thousand messages passing to and from DTRA employees while collecting countless usernames and passwords. This intrusion caused NASA to shut down its computers for three weeks costing them $41,000 to check and secure their systems. Jonathan James committed suicide in 2008.

9. Kevin Poulsen
Kevin Poulsen (also known as Dark Dante) is a notorious black hat hacker in the 1980s. One of his popular hacks was a takeover of all of the telephone lines for Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM, assuring that he would be the 102nd caller, and the likely winner of a brand new Porsche 944. Poulsen went underground as a fugitive when the FBI started pursuing him, but was finally captured in 1991. He pleaded guilty to seven counts of mail, wire and computer fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and for obtaining information on covert businesses run by the FBI. Kevin Poulsen was sentenced to 51 months in prison, which at that time was the longest sentence ever given for cracking. He is now a free man and is a senior editor at Wired News.

8. Albert Gonzalez
Albert Gonzalez is a cyber-criminal accused of masterminding the biggest ATM and credit card theft in history. From 2005 through 2007, he and his group have allegedly sold more than 170 million card and ATM numbers. Gonzalez's team used SQL injection techniques to create malware backdoors on several corporate systems in order to launch packet-sniffing (specifically, ARP Spoofing) attacks, which allowed him to steal computer data from internal corporate networks. When he was arrested, authorities seized $1.6 million in cash including $1.1 million in plastic bags placed in a three-foot drum buried in his parents' backyard. Earlier this year, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

7. Michael Calce
In February 2000, Michael Calce (a.k.a. MafiaBoy) launched a series of highly publicized denial-of-service attacks against large commercial websites. His victims include Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Dell, eBay, and CNN. He hacked Yahoo! when it was still the web's leading search engine causing it to shutdown for about an hour. Calce exploited websites primarily for pride and to establish dominance for himself and his cybergroup named TNT. In 2001, the Montreal Youth Court sentenced him to eight months of open custody, one year of probation, restricted use of the Internet, and a small fine.

6. Markus Hess
Markus Hess is a German hacker in the late 1980s that was recruited by the KGB and was involved in a Cold War computer espionage incident. All the way from Germany, he was able to access computer systems from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) located in California. By using LBL to “piggyback” to ARPANET and MILNET, Hess attack 400 U.S. military computers including OPTIMIS Database (The Pentagon), Anniston Army Depot, U.S. Air Force (Ramstein Air Base, West Germany), Fort Buckner, Camp Foster (Okinawa, Japan). He went to trial in 1990 and was found guilty of espionage. Hess was sentenced to a one to three year prison sentence but was eventually released on probation.

5. Vladimir Levin
Vladimir Levin is known for his involvement in the attempt to illegally transfer 10.7 million US dollars via Citibank's computers. In 1997, Levin was brought into U.S. custody, and he admitted to only one count of conspiracy to defraud and to stealing $3.7 million. The following year, he was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, and ordered to pay more than $200,000. Of the stolen $10.7 million, Citibank claimed that only around $400,000 had been recovered. At the moment, Levin is free and now lives in Lithuania.

4. Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris is an 'accidental' black hat hacker infamous for creating the first ever computer worm on the Internet known as Morris Worm. In 1988, he created the worm while he was a graduate student at Cornell University with the original aim of measuring the size of the Internet or counting the number of computers connected to it. The Morris Worm spread rapidly and infected thousands of computers. The cost of possible loss in productivity caused by the worm at each system ranged from $20,000 to more than $530,000 as estimated. Without serving jail time, Morris was sentenced to community service, probation, and a fine of $10,000. He is currently a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the Institute's department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

3. Adrian Lamo
Adrian Lamo is widely known for breaking into a series of high-profile computer networks that include The New York Times, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and MCI WorldCom. In 2002, he added his name to the The New York Times' internal database of expert sources and used LexisNexis account to conduct research on high-profile subjects. The Times filed a complaint, and a warrant for Lamo's arrest was issued, followed by a 15-month investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. After several days in hiding, he surrendered to the US Marshals, and then to the FBI. Lamo was ordered to pay around $65,000 in damages and was sentenced to six months house arrest at his parents' home, plus two years probation. In June 2010, Lamo disclosed the name of Bradley Manning to U.S. Army authorities as the source of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video leak to Wikileaks. At present, he is working as a threat analyst and donates his time and skills to a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization.

2. Gary McKinnon
Gary McKinnon has been accused of what one US prosecutor claims is the "biggest military computer hack of all time". Between February 2001 and March 2002, he reportedly exploited 97 United States military, Department of Defense, and NASA computers. McKinnon allegedly deleted critical files from operating systems that shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours. He supposedly deleted US Navy Weapons logs, causing a naval base's network of 300 computers unusable after the September 11th terrorist attacks. McKinnon is also charged with copying of sensitive data, account files, and passwords onto his own computer. He expresses that he was only looking for evidence of free energy suppression, a cover-up of UFO activity, and other technologies that may be useful to the public. At present, McKinnon is awaiting extradition to the United States.

1. Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick was once considered as the most wanted computer criminal in United States history. He was involved in a highly publicized pursuit by authorities that his misadventures were depicted in two hacker films: Takedown (a.k.a. Hackers 2) and Freedom Downtime. While he was a fugitive, he cracked dozens of computer networks and copied valuable proprietary software and stole corporate secrets from some of the largest cellular telephone and computer companies in the US. Mitnick also intercepted and stole computer passwords, altered computer networks, read private e-mails, and cloned cellular phones to hide his location. In 1999, he confessed to four counts of wire fraud, two counts of computer fraud and one count of illegally intercepting a wire communication. Mitnick was sentenced to a total of 68 months in prison and was incarcerated for 5 years that included 8 months in solitary confinement. He was released in 2000 and is now a well-known computer security consultant, public speaker, and author.

7 Most Notorious Computer Hacker Groups of All Time
POSTED BY JUN AUZA ON 7/08/2011


With the recent attack on PlayStation Network and a bunch of high-profile websites, computer hackers are back in the limelight again. Hackers and hacker groups were quite famous in the 80’s and 90’s but their popularity started fading since the Y2K days. Today, we are once again witnessing hackers threatening to take on giant corporations sending chills down everyone's spine.

We have already featured here some of the most infamous black hat hackers of all time. This time, we will take a quick look at some of the most notorious computer hacker groups that ever existed:


Masters of Deception
This New York-based group was responsible for notorious acts such as downloading confidential credit card histories of stars like Julia Roberts, breaking into AT&T’s computer system and stealing credit card numbers. Founded by hackers Acid Phreak, Scorpion and HAC, Masters of Deception or MOD, was a mockery of LOD (Legion of Doom), its archrival and a hugely popular hacker group at that time. MOD claimed that Legion of Doom had lost its direction, which also resulted in the famous hacker Mark Abene (a.k.a Phiber Optik), a former LOD member, jumping ship and joining Masters of Deception. The group operated during an era where C64s and TRS-80s where the hottest gadgets around, that is the late 80s. MOD’s days of glory however, ended when FBI and Secret Service forces arrested their members and put them behind bars.


Legion of Doom
MOD’s biggest enemy Legion of Doom was a famous hacker group founded by a hacker called Lex Luthor (real name: Vincent Louis Gelormine). Apart from hacking, LOD was renowned for publishing Legion of Doom Technical Journals consisting of hacking knowledge and information. In 1990-91, this Texas-based group went on war with MOD resulting in a conflict so famous and epic that it is known as The Great Hacker War. The war consisted of both sides attacking each other across the Internet, X.25 and telephone networks. Such was the rivalry that LOD launched a security firm to assist corporations that were victims of attacks by Masters of Deception’s hacks. As for the great hacker war, Masters of Deception emerged victorious in the end.


Chaos Computer Club
Chaos Computer Club or CCC is a hacker organization based in Germany and other German-speaking countries. CCC has been active since 1981 and it describes itself as -- “ a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information.” Contrary to what its name suggests, the aim of this group is not to create chaos but to bring more transparency in governments and promote freedom of information, and human right to communication. CCC was founded in Berlin in 1981 and it has since then gained itself a lot of popularity. Its most prominent activities include hacking into U.S government computers and selling their operating system source code to Soviet KGB. Its most famous attack however, is Project Blinkenlights wherein a building in Berlin was changed to a giant monochrome computer screen. The attack was to celebrate the group’s 20th anniversary and similar attacks have been carried out in France and Canada. In 2008, the group came into limelight again when it acquired German interior minister’s fingerprints and posted them online. The group regularly publishes a quarterly magazine and hosts a two-hour radio show that is aired on a local radio station.


Milw0rm
This hacktivist group’s shot to fame was perhaps the most debated moment ever in hacking history. In 1998, Milw0rm hacked into Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), the main nuclear research facility in India. They managed to obtain email and data on recent tests, and destroyed all data in 2 out of 8 servers. Milw0rm, a group of teenage hackers had managed to download about 5 Megabytes (this was 1998) of information from BARC. The attack was part of their anti-nuclear agenda, which warned the world that placing nuclear power in the hands of India and Pakistan could result in World War 3. This attack received a lot of international coverage with debates being broadcast questioning the morality of the attacks. The fascinating part of the attack was that it was carried out by a bunch of teenagers with the youngest member being merely 15 years old. After BARC, the group managed to carry out further high-profile attacks on sites of World Cup, Wimbledon, Ritz Hotel, Drew Barrymore and the Saudi Royal family.


Red Hacker Alliance
This is the largest group of hackers in the world boasting about 80,000 members. Red Hacker Alliance was started in 1998 by a group of patriotic youth opposed to the ethnic riots in Jakarta, Indonesia. They operated under the alias China Redhackers thus giving birth to a new type of hackers called red hackers. The group, mainly consisting of Chinese hackers, is responsible for carrying out attacks against CNN.com in 2008. The group has a huge following and reach with more than 250 websites linked to Red Hacker Alliance. Also, a prominent hacking group called Honker Union has recently merged with Red Hacker Alliance making the group even stronger.


Anonymous
Anonymous is not technically a hacker group but is in fact an Internet meme that originated on 4chan boards. Perhaps, the most feared group of hackers today, Anonymous has gained notoriety for hacking into Sony’s PlayStation network. The attack on Sony, called #opsony was a part of Operation Payback which was a coordinated attack on opponents of Internet piracy. The motive behind this attack was to protest the lawsuit filed against a hacker named Geohot who hacked or rather unlocked the PS3 system and posted the process on YouTube. Sony, apart from filing the lawsuit, also demanded YouTube to hand over the IP addresses of all the people who watched Geohot’s videos or visited his social links. This infuriated not only hackers but also many Internet users who deemed it as a violation of privacy. As for the damages of the attack, Sony is still busy licking its wounds.

Operation Payback on the other hand, was in retaliation to the Decentralized Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on torrent sites carried out by anti-piracy organizations. The massive attack also consisted taking down websites of banks that had cut ties with Wikileaks. Apart from Operation Payback, a lot of attacks have been carried out under the moniker Anonymous. The more famous ones include the attacks on the Church of Scientology websites, HB Gary Federal and Westbro Baptist Church. The group’s protest against the Church of Scientology, called Project Chanology received a lot of media attention. The unrest began when the Church of Scientology decided to take down a video by Project Chanology citing copyright infringement. This led to massive protests outside Scientology that centers along with the hacking of their websites. As of now, the Anonymous group is going strong and big media companies are on the edge of their seats wondering who’s next.


LulzSec
Lulz security, more commonly known as LulzSec is a hacker group responsible for carrying out several high-profile attacks recently. The group, consisting of six members, was formed on 15th May 2011 with a motivation of having fun by causing mayhem. The word Lulz is a neologism derived from the Internet slang LOL, which stands for laugh out loud. LulzSec’s first attack was on Fox.com’s website which included altering several employees’ LinkedIn profiles, leaking passwords and contact information of 73, 000 X factor contestants. The major attack however, came when they infiltrated PBS’s website. PBS had earlier aired a documentary about Wikileaks and Bradley Manning. LulzSec hacked PBS’s web page and changed the main story to Tupac being alive in New Zealand. They also attacked Sony and Nintendo’s websites. In the Nintendo attack however, no user data was affected.

The group is also responsible for routing telephone numbers to various support lines like World of Warcraft support and FBI Detroit Office. On 20th June, LulzSec announced that it had teamed up with Anonymous group and launched a new operation called Operation Anti-Security. The operation consisted of hacking into, stealing and publishing classified government information from sources like government websites and banks. The operation was declared successful when the group took down the Chinese and Brazilian government’s websites using DDoS attacks. LulzSec’s other prominent attacks include the ones on sites of Bethesda Game Studios, Minecraft, League of Legends and The Escapist (online magazine). The group finally broke up on June 26, 2011 and released a final ‘50 days of Lulz’ statement.


Written by: Abhishek, a regular TechSource contributor and a long-time FOSS advocate.

The Hacker Manifesto

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986
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 willing 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.

Post Script by crusty:
I personally do not think they are damn kids who are and that they are all alike. Or that they are damn under achievers either. and most certainly non of the damn attributes cited in this story.

Hacking has been around since the beginning of computing, in many ways innovative and productive, some harmful and destructive, and others just plain criminal. The hacker chooses the road he follows, and I believe most start because they have vivid concepts of computing and that itself puts them a few steps ahead of the average computer user.

Is it wrong, I refuse to judge that, although some of the final concepts of hacks in my opinion is wrong. My personal opinion is that most hacking is more of an expression of in your face, I can do it! Or aboost to the hackers ego, of oh my god, look what I have accomplished.

Maybe some of the large companies who have been hacked of late should be offering rewards to those that hacked them, to make themselves more secure.

Growth Opportunity for Hackers Today?
While Wikibon doesn’t advocate creating worms and viruses, the skill of hacking can be put to good use. Everyone can’t end up an MIT professor, but hacking is also a necessary skill for data scientists. Many hackers find it thrilling and love the challenge, but end up where they don’t want to be. Be smart and put your valuable skills to good use, not evil.

Just my own scrambled thoughts.

I found these beautiful inspirations using StumbleUpon, and think they deserve to be re-blogged:


This amazing mousetrap of a water pipe plays music when it rains.


Via : http://sprki.com
Artist site: http://www.mosaicart-sast.com/

When you think of fiber optics and high speed internet the last thing you likely think of is… horses. Yet horses have been put to use rolling out fiber optics to remote rural locations.

In Vermont a Belgium draft horse named Fred, seen in the photo above being tended by his handler Claude, is a distinctly 19th century solution to a 21st century problem; how to run fiber optic cable through remote areas where trucks cannot easily pass.

The man and animal are indispensable to cable and phone-service provider FairPoint Communications because they easily can access hard-to-reach job sites along country roads, which bulky utility trucks often cannot.

“It just saves so much work – it would take probably 15 guys to do what Fred and Claude can do,” said Paul Clancy, foreman of a line crew from FairPoint. “They can pull 5,000 feet of cable with no sweat.”

You can read more about the use of draft horses to draw lines and the roll out of broadband to rural Vermont at the link below.

Vermont Uses Draft Horse to Lay Cables for Internet Access [Reuters]