O d y s s e y

Moving

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:05:03 GMT

to continue from nikunj@WordPress... CYa.

The White Botnet

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:35:36 GMT

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to reality is entirely unexpected. All similarities (like pigs can fly) are coincidental. Of course, all trademark names used here (starting right from the next line) are property of their owners.

As the first quarter of 2009 ended people had mixed feelings about the Conficker worm (aka Downadup, Kido). It was simultaneously not a joke or an immediate disaster. But, very few knew that this was a beta run of what would eventually be a White-Hat vulnerability-patching network. It was clear that the botnet could only hit systems that were not patched for a long known vulnerability. The infection smartly started protecting the systems it conquered and made them safe from further malware. It moved on to become a server of protection that located other weak hosts and propagated towards them in a race against other malware.

The Microsoft Windows machines that are not patched against known attack vectors are usually because of pirated software or Overworked IT Administrators. Is that a good enough reason for malware to propagate towards unprepared legal users? That is where the Open Group came together to build a distributed protection system. This system had to work as a secondary solution in tandem with the existing anti-virus and anti-spyware securities. It had to be disconnected — and, by that reason, at crossroads — with these solutions.

The solution is to propagate a neutralizing white-botnet across the Internet. It is maintained by a group that partly consists of people from the AV/AS, OS vendors and search engine companies; though most of these vendors are themselves not yet directly associated with it. Google has tweaked its search algorithms to locate and assimilate zero-day vulnerability information quickly. These public postings are verified (coz, they might be poisoned) and associated patches are pushed through the white botnet to manage the 'compromised' machines. The window of attack reduces again to the time a patch is found for a zero-day exploit. All hosts will be patched one-way or the other.

...and Pigs will Fly!

a quick short note

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:58:54 GMT

Code is reality. Comments are just assumptions.

PicasaWeb and Flickr

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 05:34:14 GMT

I use Flickr to keep my pictures online and refer them from my photoblog. This is not a very high-frequency usage; very like this blog. Yet, I have managed to hit Flickr's 200 photos ceiling very quickly in about 3 large sets of pictures. Yeah, I am giving thought to the 'Pro' subscription option. But, there is a slight resistance in my mind, and a feeling that if this were a Google service, things could have been different.

A short search found PicasaWeb in its 'test' phase. This is no Flickr competitor yet. But, needing some alternative to Flickr a little urgently I decided to check this out. As of this writing PicasaWeb is less than 100 days after launch and not even in Beta, needless to say this is too early for a review and I am by no means berating it.

What follows is a short comparative negative-points analysis (for brevity) -- so, if there is a point about some limitation on one service, the other service has a (at least relatively) better option on the same.

Problems with PicasaWeb.
1. You seem to need a gmail account to use the album -- not a very strong negative now.
2. You need Picasa installed to upload pictures in bulk -- this could be quite restrictive. Though, there appears to be a downloader for Mac users. There is also an ActiveX upload-plugin if your browser supports ActiveX else you are limited to uploading single picture at a time.
3. Not very friendly to collaboration -- uncomfortable comment handling, single tag for a picture, complicated tracking of friend albums, no multi-resolution storage of pictures. There is EXIF tracking for pictures though.
4. 250MB limit in free version -- with high resolution pictures you can quickly hit the ceiling. But, this is better than the 200 picture limit by Flickr. Google is restricting by space rather than number.
5. A Bulk subscription storage limit of 6GB. If I pay, this is too small a storage size.
6. All extrage storage is eliminated if your subscription expires. This is inline with the pay-for-storage policy, but as a user I am not happy to loose my pictures just because I stepped down from the subscription. Maybe that is because I know Flickr will not delete my pictures.

Problems with Flickr.
1. Does not handle EXIF tags -- this kills half the fun with digital photography.
2. Downloading pictures in bulk is not easy -- its multiple clicks to reach the right resolution for download of every picture.
3. 20MB upload limit per month -- could be uncomfortable for some people.
4. 200 picture tracking limit -- thats a very short memory! But, the fact that even without subscription all your uploaded pictures are always retained in all resolutions supported is a powerful plus point.

While Flickr has moved to (what they call) the 'Gamma' stage, PicasaWeb is still in its early 'test' stage; there is still a chance for Google to clean its act up.

The Internet has not yet reached the critical-mass point for on-line photo services like it has for e-mail services today. Check the advantages for allowing people to keep good high-resolution digitial pictures online -- thats for another post.

Edit: A Terms-of-service issue with Picasaweb is highlighted by Greg Reinacker in his weblog Why I can't try Picasa Web Albums earlier.

lateral thinking

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:18:19 GMT

An excellent observation by Dr. Debashis Chatterjee in today's Times Ascent.

Most Indians are lateral thinkers. This means that we all think sideways. Just observe our behaviour in high traffic. Everyone is moving non-linearly like pieces on a chess board. The motto is: mind the gap. In many countries you drive on the left. In India you drive on whatever is left!
Thinking sideways is the way our government machinery functions. Most officials are trying to make some money on the side. Files move from one side of the table to another rather than vertically up the decision making chain.
Bollywood is where lateral thinking co-exists with zero thinking. Most movies are musicals where the story is stretched to break into a mind-bending song. Plots and tunes are poached laterally and literally from Hollywood. Side heroes and heroines infuse quantity in place of quality.
Our visionary leaders in India Inc. behave as though they are the only ones with vision. The rest are patients of cataract. In the Company of the blind the cock-eyed eventually becomes the CEO.