Things up and running

Finally got things working. A chat server is up and running. Also, an audio streaming server is up. Its giving problems due to the proxy server, but once the audio is up and running, it streams like a sailboat at 64 kbps.

Next up is a video stream server. (Maybe we could feed it the security camera feeds that my college 'apparently' has).

In other news, the dollar has hit a new low against the euro BBC Link , and

SCO shares plunge

Things to do

Well, since the holidays have started, not much has been achieved. Partying almost everyday. Things started with a LAN party at friends place, where they installed windoze on my machine.

Trying to install a jabber IM server in the college, but it just won't start. I fooled around with the manuals with 3 hours and installed the server(jabberd2) and it fails to start. So, I have to start all over again tomorrow. Testing my patience...

Its damn peaceful in the lab now a days, with nobody around and full freedom.

Oh well, another day at the college lab.

How to become a hacker

First and foremost, differentiating between a 'hacker' and a 'cracker' is important :

A 'hacker' is a person who loves to 'hack' code. Here, 'hack' is to be taken into sense of 'hacking wood'. This has nothing to do with computer security.

Here is an excerpt from a hacker (ESR) :
[QUOTE]
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
[UNQUOTE]

Then, there are 'crackers' who break into computers, usually illegally. These people most of the time don't know much, or are 'script kiddies.'
Unfortunately, the media didn't distinguish between the two, and labelled crackers as hackers.

Here is the howto :
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

and A brief History of Hackerdom :

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/hacker-history/hacker-history.html

The above document has been written by Eric S. Raymond, who is the president of OSI. His site is interesting, and his blog is even more interesting, lots of subjects, some better left unmentioned.

FreeBSD

Well, just completed installation of FreeBSD 5.2.1 on my computers, and it rocks...

It boots in quarter of time required to start Mandrake. System shutdown is even faster. The installation is text based, but if you have installed Debian or Slackware before, it will be a breeze.

There is some things with partitioning though. fdisk only showed my primary partition of 10 GB and the rest of the block as extended of 27GB. So, I had to transfer everything from my primary partition to other partitions. I had done this a couple of days ago, but I didn't want to unnecessarily mess up my system.

Today, I downloaded its full manual, and went through its installation procedure. Basically one has to allocate a full partition to FreeBSD, and then create multiple partitions within that partition. Also, there is an option of not installing the boot record, which meant that I could do installation without worry. I also had for backup MDK Cd's, and I wasn't going to touch the extended partitions.

After answering millions of questions from package management to X11 configuration, the installation was finally complete. Onto configuration of LILO. Added 'other=/dev/hda1 label="freebsd"' crossed my fingers and restarted.

And FreeBSD started with a snap. Some problems with graphics card and monitor. KDE was running fine, but the refresh rate was to low. Changing the settings from the Control Center had no effect. Then, after changing the monitor type, the refresh rate was correctly set, although the resolution is still wrong(even when I set 800x600, it still uses 1024x768). I think that maybe the problem with the graphics card driver, as I had used generic i810 driver.

Armies and War

I like history about the Great Wars. I watch films and read books whenever I find time. I have read Winston Churchill's three volumes, starting from the events that led to the Second World War, the political climate in England which led to his appointment as the Prime Minister and Naval Chief. The steps that he took are explained elaborately, along with all the official letters that he sent to other member of the Cabinet and to the armed forces with detailed maps. After the third volume, I started losing track of things... There are six volumes I think. On each volume, his famous quote:

In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will

Well, now a days wars are fought on the economic battleground. Even the 'real' wars have some political twist. Many believe that the war in Iraq is just a spoof. Those who have watched Moore's documentary (Fahrenheit 9/11) may probably agree.

In films, I cannot understand the American forces. Here you are in a gunfight, bullets zipping by, with American soldiers advancing. Some of them get shot at and fall down. And almost immediately someone goes to help this wounded guy. There are calls for evacuation. Its almost
like the priority is not fighting, but saving lives of the wounded. Well, this goes on in films, I don't know how actually troops fight.

America has never actually seen a war homeland(9/11 was nothing as compared to wars in Europe) , unlike European countries, which were tremendously scarred by the Great Wars. Especially France,
which had to suffer in both the wars. So, it was not surprising that they vehemently opposed war in Iraq. Well, only time will tell which side was correct, but time seems to be running out for America, and personally I think that the post-war Iraq is going to be a big burden on America.

Exams

Well, blogging after a long time now. Since my exams are going on I was reading stuff.

Well nothing much to do. I find exams one of the most boring time of the year. For one month or so, I am cooped up in my home, no interaction with people, surrounded by books, trying to mug things up(at which I am very bad....)

Well, this PL's(Preparatory Leave) are like a vacation for me. No boring college. I can do what I want. No sleeping early in order to attend practicals in the morning. I sleep almost all day morning, evening and night. Exercise the brain a bit and try to understand things.

I have stopped expecting good marks in my exams. There is no point in raising expectations. I have given four exams, and I absolutely believe that they just don't look at the papers. The subjects in which I have the minimum knowledge I get maximum marks. This started from my
Civil paper. I asked a friend from TE Computer, how was his TOS paper. HE replied that it was ok, but not scoring , he would not get 70-80 marks, only around 60. I laughed out aloud. 70-80 marks? Not a chance in IT. Not unless you had insider information or you have a very good memory. And believe me, people do have insider information.

But what are exams for? They are to show one has not learned anything rather than to show that one has learned something. Things that seem impossible before get cleared by just one reading in the exams.

I want to do a tons of things. One of the thing that puzzles me is that during exam times, I feel like doing a million things, but during college time, somehow the brain just freezes...

P.S. Thanks to Dinesh for asking me to blog again.