hackers.
Go up to a random person in the street. Ask them what a “hacker” is, and 9.9 times out of 10, they will say “someone who hacks into computers/steals your personal data/gives you viruses”.
The popular press has done nothing to help this, every other week in some red-topped tabloid there’s a story claiming “Hackers break into x”, but the thing is –
We aren’t the ones breaking into your bank account and siphoning off money for their own personal gain. The names for the people who do that kind of stuff are “computer criminals”, “Nigerian 419ers” and many other terms, but not hackers. For this we have only mass media to blame, people believe what they see on TV and, unfortunately, take it as gospel.
A hacker is someone who hacks things. Hackers wrote Apache, the software this blog is running on, because many people added “hacks” to make Apache better. Hackers wrote ModSSL/OpenSSL as a “hack” to Apache, without which you wouldn’t be able to conduct secure purchases online.
So for those of you still unconvinced, I urge you to watch a documentary called “Hackers are People Too”, by Ashley Schwartau, a Def/Toorcon regular and somewhat talented film-maker. It portrays us in a light that the general public usually don’t see us in, which is a welcome change.
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lrhCuofqw]
Remember guys: Hug a hacker today! =3
poweriso.
Anyone heard of PowerISO? (Yes, that includes you, reaper)
Of course you have.
If you’ve ever come across DAA images, you’ll have run into the same brick wall I have many a time. The only program that’ll easily mount these is PowerISO. I had the displeasure of having to install this suckware a couple of days ago. BAM! Instant problems.
Where do I start?
- It’s slow. Like, REALLY SLOW. Every right-click is now accompanied by a ~10sec delay as PowerISO’s context menu integration kicks into life. Even on the system tray icon.
- Constant bluescreens. I’m under the impression that it’s because PISO is chewing through kernel memory like it’s going out of fashion.
So, I have these precious few nuggets of advice to share with the world.
- DON’T buy it! You’re throwing your money away.
- If you download .daa images via BitTorrent, don’t seed them.
- Finally, if you do end up with a .daa image, use daa2iso to convert it to an ISO, which you can then mount using something far superior like WinCDEmu. daa2iso is an open source utility that will convert .daa images (which are really just renamed .iso.Z files, compressed using zlib, no more) to ISO’s. Windows version here, unix users can simply (iirc) zcat whatever.daa > whatever.iso for the same effect.
Remember folks, open standards are the future! Badly written crapware most definitely isn’t.
photography.
That was madness =3
I kicked off the new year with some friends in Central London, watching the new year countdown & fireworks, preserved for posterity on Youtube…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzCVjXN3zIY]
I’ve also taken up photography, a pastime I’m starting afresh after an 8-year hiatus… I’ve grabbed myself a Fujifilm Finepix S1000fd, a good camera if a little on the limited side. Although I’ll manage :p Specs as follows:
- Fixed Fujinon 12x zoom lens, with normal (DOF=66mm-iinfinity) macro (DOF=20-66mm) & supermacro (DOF=1-20mm) modes
- Aperture: f/2.8 – f/5.8 (… see what I mean by limited? T_T)
- Shutter: 1/1000 – 80/10 (… a little better, but you’re screwed for night sky photography)
I’ll be uploading pics to my [edit: screw deviantart, Flickr ownz it for photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmn_ownz_j00/]
The best of which I’ll be posting on here and I’ll also be doing tutes on Youtube for certain techniques, such as HDRI, depth of field, and suchlike.
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