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Temasek Polytechnic on Google Earth

I located Temasek Polytechnic on Google Earth today. Read this post for details.

Most Efficient Base

What is the most efficient base for a digital computer? This article from the book Hacker’s Delight by Henry S. Warren Jr. answers the question.

Criticism
He assumes that the cost of a b-state circuit is propotional to b. But in reality it may depend on many other factors like the technology used to implement the computer and the economy of the civilization that implements it. For a truly almighty entity like God, a base-n (where n is large number) is the most appropriate for a digital computer.

Digression
The movie Independence Day depicts one of the heroes deploying a computer virus into the alien mother ship computer to destroy it. At first, I laughed at the idea because an alien notion of a computer could be entirely different from ours. But now I feel, I could be wrong. There can be engineering solutions and truths that ubiquitous and exist( or derived) in totally different environments.

Harangues of a Misanthrope

I remember that day when I learned the meaning of the word “misanthrope”. I learned it for my SAT Test. I thought, how could anyone ever hate everyone?

Little did I know of the real world. I was a mama’s boy in a way. I knew that, so I chose to be here and be street smart. I like to think I am more shrewd now. But that came with a price.

In my struggle to achieve perfection, I have become what I never wanted to be before: a misanthrope. May be it is because of my superior intellect. May be not. But one thing is for sure, I simply can’t like anyone anymore. A stolen quote of Immanuel Kant is the most appropriate to express my feelings: He said “Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made”.

I don’t know how God manages to so meek. Believe me, if I were God I wouldn’t have waited an instance to destroy mankind. Unless, I saw a greater good at the end of everything.

People have been messing with me my whole life. I learned a long time ago there’s no sense getting all riled up every time a bunch of idiots give you a hard time. In the end, the universe tends to unfold as should.

(Tarik from the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle)

Kevin Mitnick Resurrected

I learned VNC Server DLL Injection today. It is a technique used by hackers to gain access to the dektop of an OS. I gained access to my friend’s Windows desktop in the next room from Linux PC.

It was possible because of the Microsoft LSASS MSO4-011 Overflow in his PC. This stack overflow enabled us to write arbitary executable code into the memory. Hackers usually use this overflow to spawn a shell. ( see figure on the above )

But yesterday I read about a new technique that let hackers to upload a Win32 DLL. And guess what, I uploaded an entire VNC Server to my friends PC. I can see & interact with his screen and I got a shell! TADA! (see figure above).