User talk:Datapt

Eradicating Software Piracy

Changing the mind set of people. Making them think that original is orginal, it help sustain big software industry. Today the sofware is like a water / electricity, Any student would need have PC / Software. because it part of his syllabus, he has to use the software for his studies.

Psychology to Pirate :

Type 1. : Normally young enthusiastic people pirate, showing off to their friends, that they have more knowledge, more than the creator of the code.

Type II. : People pirate to earn extra money.

If software is available at low cost / low license fee, I think people will be ready to buy the original. Actually no one wants to use pirated software.

The Software creators also make the code simple for other to pirate actually back of their mind they also feel that more people use it, understand it and then ofcourse they may buy it one day. That is how more and more test / trail /demo softwares are made available to people so that they can test the utility. At some soft wares we feel wonderful but we actually can do without them, we don’t need them.

Stopping the Piracy : For software developers like Adobe, Microsoft and others it is not really a big thing they can always protect the code, which is unbreakable but they also leave it loose so that more and more people can use it. Actually they do not know that what they are the doing ? they are corrupting and encouraging the young minds to get into piracy.

Habit : We actually have to work on people ‘s mind set, they must feel from within that in the civil world, if they can’t buy some product , they should not steal it. So we must create the environment for them to use the original. Here I would like to give small example.

In Delhi we have Delhi Transport Corporation that runs the buses, see when students in groups use to travel on these buses they use to travel with out ticket and the plea was, we are students and we can’t afford. Some intelligent mind created a bus pass @Rs.12.50 giving student privilege for traveling after paying small fee, however the small fee, it inculcated the habit within them to pay for their travel. It is actually a cost of one day travel, so every one gets pass and get it renewed every month after standing in long queues. Once they grow up they understand the time of taking benefit has gone and they have enjoyed enough, now they need to pay for it and so they pay for all their travel because now they have habit of paying for their travels.

Similarly we must create a student license and for a small fee we must include all the softwares, he/she has to use for his /her studies , training and they are good for his course. When he pays his fee and understand the benefit to him for low fee is that he is a student and when he cease to be student he knows software is not free, if he needs to use it , he has to pay for.

Today the student see the software is actually free and not pirated and it is no crime to use this software, when he goes to school / college he find pirated software loaded in all the PC’s, he has a PC that is also loaded with the pirated software, his friends PC is also same. All the more when he joins the Job / business, again he see all the pirated software in use. Now tell me, when he would learn that software has to be bought and since it is available in loadable format and also he thinks he has not done any thing wrong, he has just bought from street and loaded it , he has not pirated it neither he worked on it but just installed in his machine, he sees no crime in it.

Now to show you some calculations:

Let us say we have 10,000,000 students in India those who use PC.

Today the software purchase collection from them is = 0 ( Big Zero) Let us say we keep a license fee of Rs. 50/- a month chargeable annually i.e Rs.600 from one student per year, it is affordable fee our collection will reach Rs.6,000,000,000 with in no time. Rs. 10/- per month should go to the reseller, this will encourge the resellar community also to get thier clients and will help in renewing the licence, also they will educate the young generation not to use pirated software.

I think this will be a win-win situation as we are now training young mind that the software actually need to bought, so when he grows, he understand that the software is a licensed item and not FREE thing. He will grow as a responsible citizen, but this needs a brain storming session to reach at the exact implementation plan and I am not only ready but open to this.

HACKERs TRACKERs and CRAKERs
HACKERs TRACKERs and CRAKERs

I have come across a TV serial “Mano Ya No Mano” where a person worship Ravana, Lankesh the great emperor of Lanka and he used one sentance through out the serial “ VIDYA TO VIDYA HAI YE SAMNE WALE PER DEPEND KARTA HAI KE WO ISKA KAYA ISTEMAL KARTA HAI.” The knowledge is knowledge it depends on the person what use he put it to. No doubt Ravana was a great knowledgeable person he had a boon that he will never die, if you really look up him Ravana is up again every year and we have to go through the same procedure, bring in the same Shri Ram Chander ji to kill him year after year. There is RAM and RAVAN both exit in a man ,and both these powers are equally balanced, by adding little weight on either side makes the person RAMA or RAVANA. It is the man’s self conscious that keeps fighting within, Man by nature is RAMA and wants to remain, but some time due to some circumstances he gets in to thinking mode and if his RAVANA is strong enough than he becomes RAVANA. Similarly, whenever the word ‘Hacking’ or ‘Hacker’ comes to our mind, the image gets created within our mind that is of an intelligent being who’s RAVANA is strong. He who attacks other computer systems, corrupts the data, break codes and passwords, send viruses etc. These type thinkers are called ”computer criminals” or “e-criminals. They have a completely negative attitude towards the good use of computers, they appreciate the technology but try to find loop whole and penetrate.

You might have heard of Doctor who injected his own developed medicine into his own blood to test the validity and effectiveness of the medicine which he had designed. Similarly I saw a program on Discovery in America, the fire fighting personals had used controlled fire to extinguish uncontrolled fire in Jungles. To understand the same concept we have learn to get into our own computers and use all HANKNING TECHNIQUES i.e we need to learn ethical hacking, it is like to combat crime we need to learn to do crime, without actually doing it, we have to understand the technology in use, how and where it can be breached and do the patch work to achieve our goal to maintain security, but actually have to play the same Psychology of a “Computer Criminals” we call him e-criminal.

The world is developing so are our systems and so are the e-criminals. To reach their level of intelligence we need to generate big chunk of intelligent ethical hackers to over power and out smart the crackers. The need will arise in corporate houses, CBI, Police departments, investigating agencies , banks and other financial institutions.

The fact is that the terms ‘Hacker’ and the so called ‘Computer Criminal’ i.e e-criminals are absolutely two different terms and are not linked with each other in any respect. For this. Whenever any cyber crime occur by unauthorised use of systems, the Media passes on the big message to public and use the term ‘hacking’. So we can say that it is because of media, people have hatred or have negative feeling for the ‘hackers’. Now if such cyber criminals i.e e-criminals are not hackers then who are they ?

1. Who are Hackers 2. Who are Trackers? 3. Who are cyber criminals or e-criminals ?

Actually, ‘Hackers’ are highly intelligent people, who use their expertise in a constructive manner. They help the government / corporate / investigating agencies etc. to protect documents of strategic importance, help other organisations to protect documents and company secrets, and even sometimes help justice to meet its end by extracting out e-evidence. There are actually two types of works our hackers have to do Hackers have to take preventive measure – where they keep scanning the networks and keep looking for intruders and save them from any type of attacks. They protect the networks from being cracked. Tracker generally use reverse Engineering – This is done when the crime has already taken place and they have to Track the way back to see, what the criminals have done to breach the security or crack it and also suggest the way, how to protect them. Actually, these are people who help us to keep computer criminals on the run. The Hackers are normally Trackers also.

Now let us see, what are such cyber criminals called? We actually don’t call them ‘hacker’ but they are called ‘cracker’ or e-criminals they have the same skill set, same knowledge level but RAVAN in their mind and distinguishes the Hackers Trackers and Crackers.

Death of an OS
Gone are the days when we use to put floppies to boot up our Disk Operating System popularly known as DOS. I am of the era when computers used to boot with out the floppy / Hard disk the OS use to be so small that it was able to reside in the ROM (Read Only Memory ) chip of 8 MB capacity. There were no problems like can’t find boot sector / disk is corrupt and so many other. You switch the system on and it is up and running saying Hello! / Ready > with a blinking cursor ready to accept any of your command and the language it understood was BASIC (Beginner’s All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code).

The computers were great, simple machines there use to be a CPU with keyboard attached to it and instead of Monitor we used TV set and for storage we used normal Tape Recorder, using the system was a real pain in the neck. One, it used to take lot of time for down loading program and second it used to get disconnected number of times, so keep trying it for number of times , since time was not big deal , we were happy using it. Back up was never a problem, since it had large Capacitor installed inside so once the program is loaded then it wont wipe out for many days, as it used static RAM.

After the introduction of DOS in Apple the IBM’s PCDOS made great progress. The evolution took with various versions of PCDOS and further MSDOS by Microsoft, once Mivrosoft took over and brought a storm into the filed of OS and the versions started flowing one after the other and we saw many 1. , 2. 3.01, 3.2, …….6.0 and finally MSWINDOWS , Windows Me , Windows XP, Windows Vista and now finally Windows 7. You think it is the end of final OS, or beginning of a new era of new OS. It has been selling and being circulated as pirated but believe it or not defiantly more than 90% system on this earth use Windows as their first choice OS.

The Linux as a desktop has come long way trailing with very low percentage but choice of many computer phreakes and technocrats. Linux as Server OS has been the choice of more number of users. With the Internet coming up like storm, the Linux Server OS have become a standard and over 60% servers are based on Linux and show major difference in their security issues. The Linux’s base Kernel has more sethan Windows. The Windows take security as a secondary way and is configurable from open to Close, curity where as Linux is close to open , it has a close security and with configuration you may allow permission to use.

There are many other companies who tried the best knowledge and resources to create thier first OS, but only few of them made some success in the venture. No other OS could become 2nd Choice, only freely available Linux with the power and distribution over the net has made its presence felt. Mac has worked very hard creating its own OS but it has very low penetration.

Now with new ear of OS. Unless otherwise Microsoft plans properly the era of OS is on the verge of taking a big leap. The future OS will not be residing in the system but the systems will connected to main servers to get to the same page where you left them last night, no UPS, no Backups, all will be done at the server. No software will sell, they can only be hired on time bases or subscription bases. All the other required program will be available on pay per use bases. Good all the Virus and anti virus will be taken care by servers. Yes If you try and imagine the situation it is going to be quite relaxing as compare to today. There will be no data loss because of virus or hard disk corruption also because you did not have UPS. The new era of OS will definitly be subscription based and operations will be most likely like TATA SKY or Dish-TV. You will be able to get one, uninterrupted use without the advertisements and second use them almost free with various offers and or advertisements. Best part will be that you will not have carry data around your office and home as the same systdem resources will be available all around from any where in the world. We will only have keep our self intact from the Cackers, lot hackers will have to emplyed for keep the security intact do that there is no data theft takes place. Yes ! there will be new chalanges………..New Ideas … new thoughts….new end and new begnings …

Hope things will be alright and work better than this present era of OS. Mr. Bill Gate followed the policy of passing through gate himself and welcomed every one through the window like thieves to. Kept open all windows allowed people to play with it as they liked it, techies were allowed program access and they modified codes, left the wholes open through which various virus could enter into system allowed people to crack the code and play with it, lot of people enjoyed the use of this OS at the cost of others. Created Virus and then anti virus and generated business worth billions of Dollars.

Once Mr. Bill gate was taken to Hell by Yamraj, on the way he explained Yamraj that he is one who has created the OS with clear choice of Yes and No, so he should also get the same offer. The Yamraj told him that he does not have permission to allow him to have choice but he can put his case with the seniors. On reaching the Durbar he explained his point of view and the senior Yamraj agreed to it and told his junior to take him to hell and then to haven and then we will ask him where he wish to stay. The Yamraj took him to haven first and there he found people are busy doing their work, they are very calm and no one seems to enjoy his life. He said let us move to the Hell now. When he reached at the hell, he saw people having real fun enjoying the walks having their drinks and were really looking very happy. He immediately said this is the place where he wish to be. He was granted the hell by senior Yamraj. Once he started living their, he was made to slog, do lot of work every day (most the time was wasted is booting the system and cleaning up the virus), what not and what not all dirty work he was made to do, he requested the Yamraj for time with the Senior, which was granted to him, there he explained them that this is not what he wanted, because he was shown different hell. Then senior Yamraj told but what he was shown was a Demo version, but now this is the real version which you he have got. This is what you have been offering to people down there and making their lives worse then hell.

Now with this we are going to see the Death of an OS (DOS), we are very hope full that the new era will be great and have better offerings then the present one. Make our life worth livable and we will be able to concentrate on our actual work then cleaning viruses and formatting our systems, getting rid of corrupt data etc. etc. I sincerely wish that Mr. Bill Gates may be shifted from hell to haven, to live in real world and Non Demo world.