The Key

January 13, 2009 at 5:54 pm | Posted in community, History | 15 Comments
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I was wandering on #freebsd and #openbsd some days ago and was pretty much amazed when people did not like GNU way. Then I read FreeBSd and OpenBSD FAQs and foud that BSD folks are very keen on replacing any GPLed code in their system with newly written BSD licensed code. OpenBSD even says that GPL is acceptable as last resource.

what the heck ?

I was very much interested in installing OpenBSD and using it as my daily OS but after this I was literally hurt. I decided not to spend any time on BSD, rather using that time to understand the GNU software. The current situation of software demands proper attention, commitment and dedication to copyleft ideals, otherwise proprietary software companies will keep on getting stronger and stronger and will keep on eating the society in the name of business and it will affect the Free Software community as whole, whether BSD or whether GPL or whether Apache people. It will affect all of us, after all we make together free software community). Free Software is about our responsibility to help society grow better , to make technical innovations that will help removing misery and pain from this planet while proprietary software people are totally committed the other way, make money on the cost of society. Earth is the place where out kids grow, where our loves ones and friends live, and where we see people like us trying to help each other, proprietary software supporters, intentionally and indirectly do not want, they want control of economy and by writing BSD code BSD people help them in gaining control over society and hence themselves (Windows has some BSD code), BSD license is like giving someone a sharp knife, telling him that he can use it to cut vegetables and fruit so that he can make his health better but that person uses that knife to stab you , in the face…

What people like me do, we don’t give such people the knife, we give them GPL, they can’t attack us back. Whose responsibility this society is ? Who wants to stand for his country, for people need to grow out of misery and pain and lower level of poor life to get better education, better health and a better future. if software is the tool then who will accomplish this ? If software is the key in creating a society of liberated, educated and technical people who can take leadership and responsibilities in their own hands then what will you do ? .. Now don’t say “Oh.. please, we write software, don’t include politics here”..

Well, why Niels Bohr (if you have read Science then must be knowing him), a great scientist was flown in a small and risky 2 seat airplane from, IIRC, Denmark to Britain. He literally stopped breathing because of some of technical problem in the plane. British people have to revive him when the airplane landed. It was one of the operation of World War 2. Now why a non-violent scientist came under the World War 2 plan. Its because he was extremely technical when it comes atomic science. If Hitler could have him then Atomic Bombs would have fallen on USA and UK, not Nagasaki and Hiroshima and your people, your friends, your loved ones will be saying “Heil Hitler” instead of “this time I’m free“. Niels Bohr has the tool to a Free Society and same way in year 2009, the Free Software is the key to a free society where no one is judged on the basis of his religion, his race, his color or his cast. In the world of free software we judge people based on their programming skills and we believe that Information needs to be free for society needs to grow and remove the pain and misery from the lives of their fellow people.

I think writing BSD licensed code means helping the greedy business to establish the control over us. Don’ do that, if you love your freedom. I Love the Hacker’s ideals and from experience I can say that Hackers can become great politicians, and great Leaders who can turn the direction from where human lives are heading today to a better and prosperous future where the government will support people to help themselves and then will get out of their way to let them grow. Its the Free Society, where anyone can assume his responsibility for his countrymen then he will lead, GPL is the key in doing that, if you loose it, you loose the quality. you loose the peace that a man wants in his entire life. Accept the truth and truth will set you free.

 

 


Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are

Way of Life

November 15, 2008 at 12:11 pm | Posted in community, Hacking, History | 1 Comment
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People are wrong when they say GNU (FSF) is just a collection of free softwares, GNU is a way of life. This way of life transcends itself from software profession into one’s personal and social life too. The truth is not that when people come in the GNU community then they become good, that they become the ones who think of society first instead like others who think of their selfish business interests based on the proprietary softwares.

The actual truth is GNU is a place which attracts people who work in the favor of the society, in the interest of humanity. GNU is nothing less than unicef , helping both kids and mature people who have a common interest in making technology better so that that technology can be used to put humanity on the forefront of innovations. When GNU was founded it gave a platform to all the people who were working on different places all across the different nations, to come under one umbrella, the Free Software Movement.

For me, GNU worked liked Red Cross. I have worked for 5 years with Windows, 3 years in college plus 2 more years at home and when today I compare my learning in Windows with just 2 years of working with Linux I see, I am much more of a man with common-sense about software. Windows is an Operating System which kills your senses, and so are all the other proprietary Operating Systems. They kill your senses. It is like you purchased a Motor Cycle and you don’t know where are its spark plug and Petrol Tank. When it stops working, you go to the Manufacturer and he charges you $100 and then tells you that your Petrol Tanks is empty, please fill it and then it will work. It is exactly same in the case of support from Proprietary Softwares. GNU gives you the complete Motor Cycle like as it exists today, you can see where is the engine, where is the spark plug and when trouble happens, you can open them and look for the solution. You can think of the fully-covered machines and then can imagine where our development have been gone if it was like that. The technology must remain open for everyone to study , so that they can spend their time on understanding problems and offering solutions. This is what exactly Free Software community does and I think this is what exactly GNU does. Making money and keeping technology patented are two very-very different things. Corporations are making money on both GSM and CDMA technologies while GSM is open and CDMA is patented. In fact, 82% of the Mobile market is owned by GSM, an open standard. I don’t understand why companies making proprietary software get so baffled when someone talks about Free Software in front of them. For becoming the leader of the market and #1 in business, your competitors need to go out of business. You do that by solving some problems which are unsolved yet, by changing your way of doing business, by offering some service to your customers, services that seem very simple and general but never done, by looking at the domains that are not understood by pointy-haired bosses. Google did that same, it solved the problem of searching, it solved some problems of e-mail. If you will look at the history of corporate you will find many examples conforming my viewpoint.

Business means making money, by either hook or crook. Unfortunately, general public does not want to understand this, an average man avoids an understanding of his surroundings all the time. He spends 30 years in his job, yet never tries to understand why he is there doing his boring job. He never asks himself what will happen to the company if no one does his kind of job. He never tries to understand his place or the place of his seniors in the company. If one tries to do so, he will get fed up by the so less power he gets in his current job, he will get impatient by thinking if his job and comparing it with what he can do, what he could have accomplished in last 5 years. Many people are afraid of doing business in first place, that fear is nothing, the fear of loosing is just plain nonsense because if you don’t get any risks, if you don’t have any insecurity, you won’t get anything worthwhile (e.g. having 10 million dollars in your bank account is one worthwhile thing, while the other worthwhile thing from my view point is I can buy nutritious food and make my body strong) . One can also make money by not harming the society. One can make money by making the society, the surroundings a better place to live. There is no need and there is no point in using political tactics to gain power in business. It is like that we have create a different type of business-model while keeping it more-profitable than current models. Besides that when one works in interest of his people, he will not know, how many people will be helping him. There will be communities working day and night to support such a business. One of those organizations is GNU.

GNU is not only about software. Its about making lives better. The people from the Free Software Community are not the onle ones who can become great Hackers (a.k.a great programmers), they are also the ones who can become great politicians, innovative businessmen and global leaders. I know most readers will not understand that. GNU uses software as a primary way to express itself. How do you express yourself ? GNU is about living for a cause, GNU is about Freedom, GNU is a about living your life the way you want, the way you truly are, not the way some boss thinks you are. GNU is the way of life, GNU is inside you, GNU is a mirror all you see in GNU is just own reflection. GNU is not only about software, its about Freedom of your inner self from all the chains. GNU just hands you a tool that sets you free. GNU is a way of life.

 

 


Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

Do you have Loveware ?

October 16, 2008 at 6:32 pm | Posted in community, Hacking, History | 1 Comment
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Its been a longer time since I read about The GNU Project or The Conscience of a Hacker. In year 2005, in the month of March, my life was hit to a great degree by a piece of text I found on some weired, strange and difficult to learn text editor knows a Emacs. I hit some combination of keys to get help and got a project description including autobiographic expressions instead of help page. I read it, I read it and I read it again and again and it took me. I was enlightened . It had to be 4 more days and then next 6 months before I was going to be enlightened again 2nd and 3rd time, again by 2 piece of text respectively. I can’t forget these 3 days for all of my life. GNU Project and GNU manifesto showed me something I never knew existed and Hacker’s Manifesto showed me my own reflection, the beliefs, the fundamentals of life I was living for. As my responsibility to fellow Hackers . I am posting the complete text of GNU Project and A Hacker’s Manifesto here. They were not written by me and hence I don’t own the copyright of them. If you want to do something with them, please do some Googling ask the appropriate persons. I call them Loveware, a word I invented myself, primarily inspired from Infoware as for people who oppose love there is nothing more fatal than a man in love who has taken the stand and same way these 2 articles are revolutionary in Software. Great Programmers do software because they love programing, they love Hacking, they love information. Same way many of them love these articles, including me. I call it Loveware, for it is the only Love I found except of my family and Martial-Arts. Hacker say Impeach God and May be the source with you. I go one step ahead, God is an unpractical concept and Lets only live with the source, why we need to “may” ?

If you really are a programmer and live and breathe software, you need to go ahead and spend next hour in reading these 3 articles. It is the only reason I have provided their links. So, now I should ask, what exactly is Loveware ?

The GNU Manifesto is Loveware, The Conscience of a Hacker is Loveware. The Hurd is a Loveware. When Paul Graham writes about Lisp, it is Loveware. When Bruce Sterling authored The Hacker Crackdown. It was Loveware. Love lies inside a Hacker’s heart, it lies inside everyone who loves programming, who loves to explore. It sets you free and Loveware is which makes the environment surrounding software folks different from all other professions.

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

“TAKEDOWN” by Tsutomu Shimomura & John Markoff

June 16, 2008 at 4:21 pm | Posted in community, History | 1 Comment
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I just finished reading TAKEDOWN by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff. The book is based on a true story where Shimomura claims that he did catch the Kevin Mitnick himself and he was the centre point of this whole cat and mouse run but trust me he was not and I found that out just by reading his book. I have watched both movies titled Takedown and Freedom Downtime and trust me I am writing a review purely out of the experience with his book only and even when I stand against the over-prosecution of Kevin Mitnick, this reviews is totally unbiased and is written only in reference to Shimomura’s book. I have reviewed by writing down the points I noticed while reading the book, so, here we go:

  • Kevin cracked the Shimomura’s computer in San Diego Supercomputer Center. Shimoura is the USA’s Top-Security expert and his computer is cracked and he says this: “He must be sophisticated and lucky”. I really don’t understand it, if someone brakes into the USA’s top security-expert’s computer then he is lucky but when I trace him with the help of other security experts then I am the master. “I am the computer expert” attitude keeps on appearing throughout the book.

  • From his writings it seems that he wants us to believe that he is the only computer-security expert out there.

  • He is listing his academic details and technical achievements while telling us that how much technically-competent he is and he sheds light on this fact of his throughout the whole book without mentioning any details of his opponent, Kevin Mitnick. He talks about Kevin Mitnick in just 8 pages and those also do not say much, just light overviews of things we did not need to know about. Hundreds and hundreds of pages for himself and his progress and achievements but nothing much for his opponent, Now I have to say this guy is full of himself. The book does not tell us anything about Kevin Mitnick, except the list of crimes(as the author says) he did in his teens.

  • In the beginning of this post I stated that Shimomura’s was not responsible for catching Kevin Mitnick. Actually, a team of technically competent men is assembled who have access to powerful computers and some of the most expansive hardware. Along with them is also the FBI team, the facilities they provided, some well known UNIX hackers and U.S. Marshal Service, not to mention the consultancy and help of the well known security-experts in the field of networking and computing and then they together compete with an unaware single man carrying an average laptop. Tell me who is going to win ? When it comes to technically-brilliant people, 1 + 1 is always == 11. So we had full team of those folks here, you can figure out yourself what will happen next. I am sure Shimomura could never get to smell Kevin Mitnick’s socks if he could have worked alone but Mitnick worked alone and well. As compared to Shimomura, Bush have done a lot of work himself to lead USA to wars. At least Bush is not claiming that he started anything, it is war on terror. We have found Weapons of Mass Destruction :-0

  • At some place he says: “I began to wonder how good he was” and then after 2 or 3 sentences he calls him ans anklebiter. What I am trying to say he never says this that he himself did anything stupid, he never explains anything about it but when he uses a word like sophisticated for his opponent then after some sentences he surely uses some word to show that his opponent has stupidity as one of his habits. This pattern of his writing keeps on emerging in every chapter.

  • The subtitle says: “The pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnick, America’s most wanted computer outlaw – by the man who did it”

    I don’t buy it, he never did it. He did not do much. The book shows that Kevin Mitnick was the victim of an intelligent team of system programmers, SysAdmins, Security Experts, FBI teams and Shimomura and then press helped him a lot. His work behind the capture constitutes only 20% of the story. FBI could have caught Kevin by himself without any help from him. At least now I know how important is to have a Journalist on your side. John Markoff kept on printing on front page that Kevin Mitnick is the biggest threat while everyone in FBI reading his book Cyberpunk to know about the history and exploits of Kevin Mitnick and then Markoff does not even know Mitnick was caught and jailed a long time ago. It also shows that he wrote a book and even wrote articles about a man for whom he did not even care to Google ( oops, sorry, Google did not exist at that time ;)

  • Shimomura is networking, networking and networking all the time, to get to the very impressive, intelligent and quite experienced officials whether in government or in private firms. He continued doing it like he did it with the logs, information and back trace of his Ariel.

  • Mitnick somehow cracked into other secured-networks. Okay, well, ..uhmmm….. erm….. when Shimomura back traces the Mitnick’s logs to get the information then he is intelligent security expert but when Mitnick cracks the networks, becomes a root user then he is just lucky … I am sorry but .. cough…cough…. …aye.. I don’t agree.

Now I have rubbed the Shimomura and his story well, may be the way looked biased but it is not. It is just the interpretation and feelings I got from book written by himself. In the end, I encourage you to read the book. He is a brilliant security expert, I agree and I also agree that Kevin is also the one, better than him, that fact he tried hard to erase form reader’s mind but he failed. Read his book and then watch Takedown and then Freedom Downtime documentary. A man who does not care or ignores to read about his opponent’s views is the man who does not even understand the fundamentals behind his own views, not my words but they sum up neatly what I want to say. Listen to all:

Tsutomu Shimomura –> Takedown
John Markoff –> Cyberpunk
Bruce Sterling –> The Hacker Crackdown
Jonathan Littman –> The Fugitive Game: being online with Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick –> Art of Deception & Art of Intrusion
Takedown ( the movie)
Freedom Downtime (the documetary)

Listen to the words carefully when girls who acted in movie Takedown say that Shimomura is a man with 4th class mentality. Regarding John Markoff’s book Cyberpunk, Markoff threatened Mitnick that unless he gives his side of story for free, he will take everything as fact, no matter from which resource it comes. Read all and decide yourself. My finding says Mitnick was the best while the worst part is that, his side of story was never told.

————————————————————————————————-

Someone, who has very much hatred for Kevin Mitnick, and out of pure hate he commented here on my blog for this specific blog-post. Eh.. I don’t really understand why the truth always has to be shit for such kind of people. I approved his comments and included them here , did not delete his false claims but I am standing in front of him daringly and firmly and honestly, so that you people can see how he deduced the things that I did not even mention, directly of indirectly, in my post and how I blew away the non-sense he is claiming. He insists that he is right I am wrong. And this Mr. right (oops, I mean Mr. fake-right ;) ) gave here a fake name, a non-existing website and possibly a fake email ID too. Look for yourself here:


Name: Kevin Mitnick
e-mail: kevin@well.com
Website: http://www.areyouforreal.com/

I tracked down his IP address: 76.126.87.119, geobytes tells me that this Mr. Right has commented from San Francisco, California, USA ;)


Seems like my post had irritated him to a much larger extent because the truth is exposed and thrown in front of his face and he is scratching his ass on how he can falsify the truth using his fake claims:

Claim #1: Kevin was arrested five times from the time he was sixteen.

Well, this is not false and I did mention that in context of John Markoff at the end of my post that he did not even know that thing when he was writing article on NY Times regarding Kevin Mitnick. So this punk-ass stupid moron did not even took time to read my post till the end. Heck, who knows he even read it. He is just a cuberpunk-blinded donkey. Huh!

Claim #2: he had few technical skills, he was just good at being dishonest to exploit people who were trying to help him.

:D , that’s really funny, my whole post centres around some themes and this is one of them that Kevin Mitnick did an excellent quality hacking on exploiting and cracking networks and OSs and I did prove that in a totally unbiased way by only referring to the Shimomura’s book. Hey… funky .. you did not have a clue about what you are writitng because you did not even read the TAKEDOWN properly.

Claim #3: many many people wasted countless hours cleaning up after his juvenile behaviour.

Thats even funnier. Those people, so called security experts, who wasted their countless hours did not even know that someone has broken into their network and logged in as root into their systems and doing this from countless months. These security-lamers call themselves security-experts and draw millions of salaries every year and don’t have a clue about their systems being cracked fro months :P . It was Shimomura who told them and he did write that in his book.

Claim #4: he stole software and gave it to a foreign country, probably to their intelligence agency.

I knew he will speak it for he will try to prove by hook or crook that Kevin Mitnick was a terrorist. Eh… chip-chop monkey I don’t buy your nonsense.


Claim #5: he has written a book describing how to be a good liar. why should you believe him?

He wrote a book on Human-Nature exposing some typical and fundamental points of Human-Behaviour. Many psychologists and doctors do that. Why do you believe doctors ?

BTW, In my whole post, I never said that Shimomura is not s security expert. I said he is an expert and being technically competent and being an honest and humble man are 2 very different things and Shimomura is a kind of security-expert who is too full of himself. Of Course Kevin Mitnick has done crimes. Then putting a thief into prison, not because he did steal some things but on the false-basis, for example, like he murdered 5 people and he is also drug-addict and he is planing to take control of nuclear missiles, is just nothing more that confusing some people’s personal opinions with the real-judgement and then bending the judiciary according to the way some high-profile people want, is not the justice either. It is also a crime. Punish the man for the deeds he has done. Don’t punish him because some people in powerful places don’t like his pants or moustaches. So you, retarded undertaker, are burnt. You cyberpunk focussed mummy of with 3000 years old mentality have been fried in the pan of truth and oil of unbiased-judgement.

okay, enough of rants ;) . I think people should read my original article fully before commenting

Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

A message for Warez d00dz Culture

April 12, 2008 at 7:02 pm | Posted in community, Hacking | 7 Comments
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It has been a long time since I have Googled for warez culture or read anything about Hackers. I hope you heard about Warez, Crackers and Hackers , every savvy internet user know about it [1]. Ever Heard of Erik Bloodaxe, Kevin Mitnick, Electron, Phreakers, l33t, alt.2600 ?

I read somewhere that warez folks exist mainly to break the copyright protection ( I don’t agree with this statement). My experience says that Warez d00dz share their software without thinking anything about license It does not matter whether your software is proprietary or Open Source, l33t(s) will share it whereas Hackers (like Richard M. Stallman, Ken thompson, Keit Bostic, to name a few) create and share software while respecting the copyright. NO, Richard M . Stallman (RMS) is not against the copyright, he is against the Software-Patents ( Corporate companies use Software-Patents to create Proprietary Softwares). RMS respects copyright as much as I as the author and copyright holder of this article does.

Warez d00dz just share their music CDs and movies DVDs like you share them with your friends. Say, you have the movie “Chak De India” or “The Matrix HD-DVD collection” and if your friend wants to see it, you will not give him the DVD, instead you will reply this:

“No, you are my friend but this DVD is copyrighted and sharing is prohibited so please by your own copy. I do not want to give it to you. I am sorry, I do not want to end up in jail for violating copyright.

I never ever heard a phrase like this from anyone. All of my friends share my songs on their hard-disks but the above sentence is exactly what corporate wants you to say. When you give that DVD to your friend because he wants to watch it on his computer then you are a pirate, the thief, you stole the money company could have made by selling one more DVD but since you *intentionally* did not want that, so we must prosecute you.

Warez culture is same except that they will intentionally warn you that you will not use this DVD for monetary or commercial purposes or sell it to someone else, even if he is your friend. Warez culture primarily exists like our friendship exists. Monetary gains are strictly prohibited in Warez culture and then FBI raids their houses and arrests those d00dz and calls them pirates.

Now come to the Warez culture itself. Warez l33t(s) share DVDs by ripping them to AVI format 99% of the times. All the music they share is in mp3 format. These days they are also sharing movies in H264 and HD formats. Now all of these technologies are patented [2] :

I want to ask to Warez Community: “what are they doing from last 2 decades ?” They are not sharing movies/music alone, they are sharing software-patents along with movie/music. When you rip your HD-DVD in H264 format, you give the burden of that software-patent to your friend too.


Why you need to share the patented formats ?

What forces you to do so when there are better alternatives exist ?

Do you do it unintentionally ?

Do you do it because of the software you use to ecndoe/decode ?

Do you do it because you want to ?

Do you do it because this is the tradition and you don’t want to change it ?

If the reason is 1st, 2nd or 4th then you are plain idiot. Only the 3rd reason needs more questioning, rest show your stupidity as a warez-d00d. If you do it unintentionally then that means you never think about what you do, thats a bad way of living-life. Its like you will marry and will have children unintentionally, your woman will get pregnant and have kids unintentionally ? .. WOW… great reason

If you do it because the software you use to encode/decode does not input/output anything except patented technology. Then please have some better piece of software. Most warez folks use Windows. Bill Gates is not putting any gun on your head and saying “Use Windows, otherwise get ready to die”. you install Windows and you install that software and you can change it to make your life and hence warez-community a better place to live.

but many of you will say “Why should I care ? Our community is going strong since the inception of computers and it is so because patented or free is of no concern to us”. Well here is my answer:

Kevin Mitnick was jailed for 4.5 years, plus 8 months of Solitary Confinement [5] and he was not even offered a trial for that amount of time. FBI just grabbed him and put him into the jail and he remained there for 5 years and 8 months , he was never allowed to see court. Kevin was a Cracker/Hacker/Black-Hat-Hacker or whatever you call him and the Warez culture is accused of the same crimes by the corporate, the acts for which Kevin was thrown into jail.

So what exactly it has to do with warez-d00dz ?

The Government is owned by corporate and they don’t like you, worse, they hate you and do anything you make your life a worse place to live. You spread their technology, by sharing pirated copies of Windows and sharing H264 format rips of DVDs and you are doing this since the inception of those technologies, for all of your life. You become the Salesman of their patents and when their patents have reached every home, penetrated nearly every computer on the planet, then they raid your houses [3] and tell your parents that you will have a hard time in court, lots of expanses and other tensions, so it is better if their son pleads guilty in the court in the 1st place and this is what every Hacker/Cracker/Black-Hat-Hacker has done [4] since the inception of these patents. They kick you in the back and they are doing it since the inception of their patents and they want everyone of you, every single of you get eroded and live a life of misery and after the very next day of the raid, other members of community are still the same salesmen of those patented technologies.

Why the heck so ? why you help them when they have threatened your friends, your parents and in next decade they will threaten your kids, may be put them in jail too ?


Why you are helping them to put your loved ones in jail ?

The Crackers who crack the original Windows 98 CD, the WindowsXP and now Windows Vista so that they can run it on every computer without paying any money to Microsoft, are responsible for making Microsoft strong enough to push the US government to raid your homes. It does not matter the software you are using is proprietary or Shareware or Free Software. All it matters is that how many users you have got. You cracked Windows and you become salesman of Microsoft by sharing it with your friends and then it spread like Fire spreads in a Jungle and you pushed that cracked CD to every home you could in the end you saw your beloved ones getting raided and ending up into the jail. Who is responsible ?

So how we can stop this endless and painful acts (at least to me, it was extremely painful to see the over prosecution of Kevin Mitnick). The anti-social activities like raiding Crackers/Hackers/Black-Hat-Hackers homes and at the same time warez community is accused of those same acts ?

How we do it ? by spreading the free software, by sharing the audio-video encoders that are copyrighted using GPLv3. By using codecs like Vorbis and Theora instead of mp3, AVI and H264. When every home will have patent-free codecs then those evil men will loose grip and will no longer be powerful enough to push the government to attack you. Don’t crack Windows Vista, Don’t rip your Audio CDS to mp3 and DVDs to AVI. Use Linux or BSD. Rip your Audio CDs to Ogg Vorbis and rip your DVD to Ogg Theora and when you will do this there will be much better and excellent replacements for HD-DVDs too because then you will own the market.

Much better is to start helping develop Free Software and OpenSource software. Help in any way you can, whether by coding or by writing docs or by funding the non-profit organizations supporting Free Sharing of softwares. Don’t disassemble the Proprietary Softwares. Instead assemble and compile GPLv3 based softwares.

If this blog article helps any of the d00ds to change his mindset and he starts using Free Softwares, I will consider it successful. I am sure It will start with one man and others will just follow.

A man named “saurabh” commented on my blog with some problem my approach has. The reply went so long that I decided to include it in the post itself. BTW, “saurabh” is my friend :)

original comment:

The biggest problem I see in that is many people use proprietary formats because they want to enjoy that music/video on TV screen using dvd/vcd players,for example someone’s marriage cd/dvd. Now AFAIK there are no such players available for free formats. we need to consider this issue too. what say?

Everyone, including me wants to enjoy music and movies :) . Regarding example of marriage DVDs that reminds of one incident when my relatives from Italy came to my home, they recorded some DVD on a Digital Camera of SONY, which writes to a DVD. The problem was that they were not able to play the DVD using their PHILIPS DVD player. So when a problem arises the only solution is “arnuld” :P . They showed their DVD to me, I checked it, it was all in avi format and every DVD player plays only standard NTSC/PAL VCD, SVCD, DVD only, nothing else. So SONY was useless :D , its format of decoding onto a DVD are proprietary and have the same problem of the free formats. I just fired up my BLAG installation, ran rxvt-unicode and punched in ffmpeg -blah- -blah- -blah- and after 1 hour we were watching it on a DVD player :) . My relatives are not the only ones who had this problem. I have met many people with the same problem.

What I am trying to say that problem is not that its free or proprietary, problems is who owns the market, the ones who have largest user base, who else can be. DVD player are nothing special, they are Data CD/DVD player , their software plays a Data DVD of specific resolution of specific audio/video bitrate and of specific color depth. Actually there are 2 types of resolutions they understand 325×240 and 352×288 knowns as NTSC and PAL standards respectively [6]. There is nothing called Video CD or Video DVD or even Audio CD – all of them are Data CDs/DVDs which is why they are easily playable on a computer. A VCD is same as the CD you use to store files from your computer. What companies do is that they put a software to play that Data onto a rectangular box which has nice covers and operates using a Remote and call it a DVD player :D . The thing you call mp3 CD is basically a Data CD containing audio files instead of text files or word files. If you don’t agree with me then tell me why a CD of a movie with 672×236 resolution can’t be played on a DVD player while a CD of 325×240 can ?

Regarding VCD and DVD formats, the video quality you get on VCD is very poor. 2 hours of movie in VCD quality fits on 2 CDs, where as if you make a data CD of 2 hours of 2 times the resolution of a VCD ( equal to 4 CDs) it will fit on single CD of 700 MB . Surprise ? The only problem is that the company has not put any software in their DVD player to read that higher amount of resolution intentionally because that is not their goal, their goal is to make money, not to advance technology, software technology is just a medium to make the final product called money, they don’t manufacture DVD players , they manufacture dollars and they do so at the cost of your life and this is what this blog is about. They can easily put just 1 program to play Ogg format or play an avi data of 672×240 resolution but they don’t. You can rip a 4.4 GB of Video DVD to just 2.2 GB with exactly same or better quality, the only problem is it is not recognized by the corporate as a standard to manufacture money.

you are right in saying that people can not play most free formats. Recently, some competitors of iPod have released their players of same physical size that play Ogg and FLAC too. Google for them but they are much less in numbers. That’s why I say “use Free formats” because once you spread them, you will own the market and then you will also get all DVD players playing those formats because otherwise companies will loose business. Every company wants to have largest amount of user base but an average user does not give a damn about this and thats why it is still same from last 50 years.

I, at nowhere in this blog, promote the sharing of Movies or Music Albums. All I say and claim and promote is that we must use OpenSource and Free Software. Better, I strongly promote the use of softwares copyrighted using GPLv3. Except previous 2 sentences I am not promoting anything at all.

 

[1] http://www.df.lth.se/~triad/papers/Raymond_D00dz.html

[2[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264#Patent_licensing

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Deception

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/phonmast.htm

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Realm_of_the_Hackers

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_mitnick

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_CD

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.

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