The war against SAM - part 1

It all happened, when a dumb retail assistant "accidentally" changed the password of the system. Windows XP refused to log in the next day, coz the same retail assistant forgot to remember the password, Do'h!!

So, they tried they tried, but they couldnt put the password right together. They tried from dawn to noon and from noon to dusk. Night fall was upon them, but the system refused to let them in. So they called a someone called Bugs, who does computer "stuff" for free. Taking the advice of Bugs, they changed the username to administrator and tried again, but the retail assistant's manager forgot the admin password too. Do'h, Do'h!

Again they tried, all sorts of combinations known to the human mind, but couldnt get into the system. A second call, then the third, then the fourth went to the PC guy, no help recieved. And when they were about to do what any1 can do best, format the system, Bugs came back.

Like the first rays of light after a cloudy and stormy night, like the pleasant breeze on a hot summer day, like the first drops of rain on a scorching ground, he came. When you stay in Melbourne long enough, the description reminds you of the weather. So he came, and saw them huff and puff over the problem.

He smiled and said, am sleepy lets fix it later. The retail assistant and his manager heaved a sigh of relief, even though it maybe the retail assistant alone, coz his head was on the line. They trusted him, like they always did. For them, he was the only hope. Bugs went upstairs, logged into his system, and did a bit of research and some linux kernel code. A shell script was prepared too.

The PC was alone, no one could access it, it remained proud, tall, thinking its secure and no one can break the password. It gleamed like a dark fortress in the night, those two LEDS like two lamp posts guarding the gates of hell. Inside the fortress, the data slept, peacefully, not knowing the battle thats about to begin at its gates. The SAM was haughty, proud of its security and encryption. It should be, it was designed by the evil incarnate, Bill Gates and his dark domain, Microsoft. The SAM was designed to endure, stay untouched, keep its secrets, and protect the fortress.

Bugs was silent, he was pondering. He knew he was against a strong enemy, an enemy he has met on different battlefields. He has won the skirmishes, but attacking the fortress was another issue. He needed man power, he needed his close friends, he needed time. But none came. He was alone, all alone, standing up against the evil ruler of the fortress, the SAM. The time has come. The battle lines were drawn, the PC was rebooted. Then the unthinkable happened.

More of this...coming soon!!

Update on FAT!

A new study has come up recently which says that a virus which causes flu is the main reason for obesity. Now we know why so many people are fat, eh! They had too many bouts of flu! And the the irony is that we have pills for everything except for the flu. Now the scientists can blame the lack of progress on the fight against obesity, to the common cold.

We cant fight cold, so we cant fight obesity. This is the stupidest thing I ever heard.

I heard they use monkeys to do the testing, but I didn't know that by "testing" they meant that the monkeys run the labs! I thought they were test subjects! Now I know we are the test subjects, and the monkeys run the labs!

If the scientists cant come up with solutions to obesity, then don't! But, honestly, a flu, causing obesity? What do they think people are? Ignorant??

I hope i dont see the day, when they will start blaming Wookies for obesity, who knows!

Ethics, morals and watnot!

Ethics - (from Greek ἦθος meaning "custom") is the branch of axiology, one of the four major branches of philosophy, which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to define that which is right from that which is wrong. The Western tradition of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy. – Wikipedia.

Humanity is based on some very fundamental and basic guidelines of which “morals” is a major component. Morals can be defined as “that which is right from that which is wrong”. But how do we define by whose morals should we adhere?

To further confuse the issue most people take guidance from different fields, like religion, politics, race, community, gender etc. Since no man belongs to just one of these field the outcome was total and disastrous complications and misunderstandings.

For example: - In India, a father, Muslim by religion who religious morals did not allow the consumption of alcohol was forced to save his daughter’s life by allowing the doctors to use medicines with alcohol content. Being the resident of a very old and conservative community and a Quazi or religious cleric, he was shunned by his community for this humane and moralistic act.

To understand or differentiate the various morals, man introduced the concept of ETHICS or “That which attempts to understand the nature of morality.” Or “that which tries to understand what composes moral behavior” There are many different fields and institutions that make up the human world. Some fields can be categorized as personal and some professional, therefore the divisions of ethics into professional or work ethics and personal or individual ethics.

Personal Ethics:

That which a person’s heart feels is right or wrong towards his friends, family etc based on a personal and intimate level. For example: - Britain, in the olden days, held strong ideas of moral behavior by women. Such as, it was considered immoral for a woman to show her ankle in public or to be seen dancing more than twice with the same man. Such moral ethics are still based on societal rules. As we have seen, over the decades since that time, it is no longer immoral for women to attend nude beaches or wear bikinis that show off nearly all of their bodies. This again is rules by society’s laws.

Mona Lisa Smile greatly captured the progression of women in the early 50’s in America. A free-thinking art professor teaches conservative 50's Wellesley girls to question their traditional societal roles. According to the movie, the women of that era were taught to be good housewives and how to please their husbands. Julia Roberts, as a new age progressive thinker, shows the girls how to live life, though it was against the rules or societal morals of that time. As the tagline famously goes “In a world that told them how to think, she showed them how to live.”

Another kind of personal ethic can be regarding True and False. For example: To a sibling it is unethical to speak out against his brother or sister no matter what lies he needs to adopt. However for the same person it is ethical to advise his parents that another has lied to them.

Examples of personal ethics in different situations:

A friend would try to respect and adhere as much as possible to his friend’s different religious ideas.

For example, I share an apartment with my friends, and they are vegetarians and I am not, so I respect and adhere not to cook anything in their vessels, as it would be a breach to their religious morals.

Professional Ethics:

That which a worker feels is right or wrong in his work environment on a professional level.

For example: In a company that pays on commission basis, it is unethical or wrong professionally to try to interfere and take a colleague’s sale as your own. On the other hand it is ethical to advise your employer that an action taken by a fellow colleague is affecting the company’s reputation or business.

Most professionals can feel uncomfortable in making decisions that might affect their colleagues’ employment status negatively. The dilemma for them is whether to adhere to their professional ethics or morals or to adhere to their personal ethics or morals.

Examples of Professional Ethics in different Fields:

Artistic Ethics: - An artist would consider it deceitful and unethical to copy fellow artists’ ideas.

Musical ethics: - A musician would consider it unethical to copy or insert a fellow musician’s individualistic song or tune.

Similarly a writer would not write a story that hints a connection or similarity to another author’s writing.

An architect would not like to build using another colleague’s idea.

All these fields have defined ethics or morals based on their profession and their individualistic need to create that which is characteristic to their personality or unique ideas.

Ethics, as defined, refers to the rules and standards governing the conduct of an individual with others. As technology and computers became more and more a part of our everyday lives, we must understand that the problems that have always plagued business and conduct will continue to be a problem. In fact, a new medium can provide even more difficult questions of judgment. In other words, since the introduction of the World Wide Web, the definition of ethics has evolved, too. A new type of ethics known as computer ethics has emerged. Computer ethics is concerned with standards of conduct as they pertain to computers.

Computer ethics has come a long way, ever since it has emerged. The most pressing of them are the ones related to Privacy, Copyright and censorship. And there are other issues like Internet piracy, Big brother (a term which means the organization is snooping on the employees), file sharing, pornography, SPAM in a broader prospective.

Some years ago, the file sharing site, Napster, was sued and the creator taken to court by some well known music companies. The creator of Napster was just creating a technology or a program for users who connect to his network to share files among them selves. He was slapped with huge fines and jail sentence, while the main culprits, the seven hundred thousand odd users, went scot-free. But have they been able to stop it? The answer is NO; Napster gave way to other file sharing programs like Ares, kazaa, Limewire and many others.

Another ethical issue is Music sharing. I know and am a member of many forums and sites which give free music downloads. How ethically correct is banning sharing of music? It is true, the artists are losing money, but how far are they correct is trying to stop it? Their music is good, listen-worthy; hence many people are sharing it or downloading it. And the artists earn enough when they go on the big stage shows, more than enough I can say. To quote from a well known television series, South park, “…because that’s what real artists do, people are always gonna find a way to copy our music or swap it for free..if we were real musicians we should play and make songs so that people can listen…….”

Privacy, from the basic system administrator to the large amount of data the government has about us, everyone has some way of getting into users data, their personal details, their professional data, and a lot of other stuff. How do we decide how much of it is ethical and how much of it is not? How safe are our bank details, our shopping tastes, our private lives and we ourselves?

While I was working as a system administrator, I had full access to everyone’s files and information including their passwords, secret questions, answers, and company data. How much of it am I supposed to know, as part of my job? And how much of the information that I now know should I not have known?

Computers are taking over millions of jobs, as we speak; they are used in place of people in the form of ATM’s, aircraft controls, machine operators etc. Is this ethical? Computers do work faster and more efficiently than humans, it doesn’t mean we fire our employees and rely totally on computers.

Censorship is a big concern and an ethical issue which needs to be addressed. Much of the shady part of the internet, which is banned from hosting in many countries, is being hosted by other European countries. How ethical are the country’s laws in hosting such material?

What about SPAM? A good amount of advertisement is always good, but where do we draw the line? And spam spreads because, the companies whom we trust with our email addresses, and the programs which we trust and use, contain bots and snoop ware, which finds out our lifestyle and sends advertisements in bulk to our mails.

A Spam mail which promises the user some millions in money are considered unethical where as a random pyramid system or network marketing which fools people by promising them the same is considered ethical by law.

When Bill Gates included Internet Explorer in the new versions of windows, most of the computing community considered it unethical of him to do it. His decisions drove Netscape towards bankruptcy and further more towards its extinction. For him it was a strategic business decision, for others it was unethical.

Computers are a great way of using technology, but where does morality come into picture? Morality must play catch-up to technology that has leap-frogged ahead. Without knowledge about computer ethics, we are not fully equipped to enter the new world of online society – and you will need to enter that world, whether you choose a career in art, business, programming or anything else.

Viva la liberte!!

Freedom!, the last words uttered by William Wallace before he was hanged. The word has so much symnbolism all over the world and means different things to different nations. But, history was made because of something the world craved for - freedom. Recently I was watching The Patriot on DVD, I am not a fan of Mel G, but the essence of the movie captured my imagination and I kept pondering over it. The American Revolution, which was the base of the movie and how USA gained its freedom, all in all, history was made.

From the Indian revolution, to the French, to the American, and to Israel's struggle for their God given inheritance, everything is for freedom. What is in that word that makes people give their lives for? Is it that important? Are we really free? Can we ever be free?

We might be free in terms of getting to vote the next person to rip us off, or we can be free to go where we want in the country, we might have freedom to say what we want, but is man really free?

Our forefathers fought and gave us a land, a country, a bright future, and abolished slavery. But we ourselves have become slaves. Yes, slaves in a free land. We are slaves to money, slaves to greed, slaves to gossip, and slaves to everything that can and will come up. Are we really free, then?

Now then, as I think about this, I feel man can never be free. Man is not free from the love of money, from the love of acquiring more assets, from greed, from jealousy, from covetousness, from gluttony, name anything, we are not free from it. And we think we are free men! All we have done is,we built up this notion that we are free, while we are still under bondage! Reminds me of the Matrix, really.

I pity the world I live in, and I pity the generations to come! I have come to realise and embrace that man can ever understand the true meaning of Freedom. I hope we realise our folly before its too late. I hope for the day we can look into ourselves and find ourselves truely free. And then, on that day, I will proudly shout "Viva la Liberte"!!

New theory on obesity

Scientists claim to have recently found that if you have a obese friend of a fat friend or a "big boned" friend, then chances are that you will become one, your self!

So, I said to my room mate, dude we gotta change rooms! I dont know who's having an affect on whom, but we both sure are, well how can I say, without sounding racist..."big boned"!

whom do we blame?? I think we ought to blame the scientists for coming up with ridiclous theories on why people are fat! I mean, cmon!! fat friends make you fat?? wat sort of a silly notion is that, something like a black cat crossing your way gives u bad luck! we dont need a scientist to tell us that a black cat can give us bad luck, our great grandmas can say that.

we need scientists to find a solution for some of the evils plagueing our world and all they can come up with is a silly looking notion saying, fat friends make you fat!

No wonder, the worlds going to the dogs!!!

Welcome to my blog

Hi, I am Bugs and this is where is rant about all things gud n bad, and maybe write one of my quips on daily life, world, ppl and everything else in general.

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All work being posted in this blog is free to be plagarised and the work produced here may or may not be fiction and might be a figment of the author's imagination! All characters, events potrayed in this blog, even those based on real people, - are entirely fictional. The following blog contains the anguish, and rants of the author and probably should not be viewed by anyone.