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Indian Einstein - The "Ethical Hacker" PDF Print E-mail

The twists and turns of dingy lanes in Old Delhi's Kasab Pura take you to a one-room rented

accommodation where one of the country's youngest cyber wizards and "ethical hacker" Sahil Khan lives.

He is now getting ready for the release of his fourth book.



Sixteen-year-old Sahil has achieved a lot. He has invented nine computer games and written three books

on computer sciences, making him one of the youngest people in the country to have published on the

subject.



"My fourth book Tricks of Email Hacking is ready for release this month," Sahil told IANS.

Sahil, who calls himself an "ethical hacker", lives here with his younger brother and mother.


His mother gives tuitions to schoolchildren to carve out a modest living, while his father is a hakeem

(practitioner of Unani medicine) in Mumbai. The family hails from a small village, Bugrasi, in Bulandshahr

district of Uttar Pradesh.



Sahil, nicknamed 'Indian Einstein' by a section of the electronic media, invented nine computer games

when he was 13 and wrote his first book on computer hacking a year later.



"When I made my first game at home I told mother, but she was not excited, thinking it would just be a

petty thing. Later she realised when my teacher told her. Soon the school formally announced it and I got

 an award from Newspapers in Education (NIE)," Sahil told IANS.



Sahil, a humble and soft-spoken teenager, did not attend any professional course in computer science and

 he also did not own a personal computer until recently. His first interaction with computers began when

he learnt internet chatting with his father who stays in Mumbai.



"Since then he got interested in gaming on computers and though we did not have enough money to

buy a computer, soon somehow I managed to buy him a PC on instalments," said Sahil's mother Atiya

Suleman.



Sahil, a student of Class 10 at Harcourt Butler Sr. Secondary School, however, doesn't bask in his

achievements and feels that every person has some special quality which needs to be pursued at the right

 time.



What are his plans for the future?


"For now my main focus is on board examinations and then I will try to get into an Indian Institute of

Technology (IIT) and become a cyber expert of repute," Sahil said.

Sahil's first book Hackers and Crackers, which was published by ABC, was launched by Science and

Technology Minister Kapil Sibal.



The second part of Hackers and Crackers was published by Diamond Publications and was launched by

Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury.



"We have published two editions of Hackers and Crackers in 10 months. This is a very helpful book and we

 have been getting an overwhelming response; so now we are translating this book into Hindi, Gujarati,

Marathi and Tamil. The other book The Anatomy of Computer Viruses has been a favourite among

people," said Narender Verma, owner of Diamond Publications.



Sahil has also come in for praise from computer experts.

"Sahil's books give great grounding for any common man to understand the problem of computer viruses

and computer hacking. This book can be a great help for the readers to protect their computers from

virus attacks and hacking. Computer viruses are, however, a very vast area of study which has a number of

 complex aspects and some of them are not included," said Ahmad Kamal, a lecturer in computer science

 at Jamia Millia University.

 
The perfect computer gift? E-mail

A leading Swiss manufacturer, Pat Says Now, manufactures the most exquisite individual computer mice.

They design and produce mice in all shapes and colours. Pat Says Now combines Swiss quality with innovative ideas and creative designs – they bring colour into office life and make working truly fun!

 

Their innovative design makes Pat Says Now mice a perfect gift for anybody working with a computer.

Attractively wrapped in a specially designed box, these trendy “desk pets” are a temptation not many can resist. Cast from 18 carat white gold and set with 59 brilliant cut diamonds, with a price tag of about $20 000, this is arguably the most expensive computer mouse in the world.

 

If you got the dough and want the bling, then head on over to Fabstuff.net and pick one up - they just

happen to be in stock.

 

 
Japanese Super Computer cost $400,000,000. PDF Print E-mail

The Japanese government estimates the Earth Simulator cost $400,000,000, making it the most

expensive computer ever built. The budget for the Earth Simulator project was authorized for the National

Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development

Corporation (PNC) in 1997, and NEC Corporation made the winning bid for the Japanese project.

 

 

By May 2002, the 640 processor node supercomputer was benchmarked with Linpack as having 35.86

TFlop/s performance. This gave it the top spot on the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites list until 2004 when

IBM’s BlueGene/L supercomputer took its place using an architecture that cost less than half as much to

implement.

Each processor node in the Earth Simulator contains 8 vector processors running at 500MHz with 16GB of

shared memory, and the total main memory in the machine is 10 terabytes. The operating system running

on the supercomputer is NEC’s UNIX-based OS called “SUPER-UX” which is used on NEC’s SX Series of

supercomputers.

 

This expensive computer is used for a wide variety of international projects, most of which are related to

atmospheric, climate, and oceanographic simulation.

 
Is the customer always right? PDF Print E-mail

We have to take our hats off to the IT support techhies, ever so often they receive a phone call from the

most ignorant user. Here is just such a story:

 

One time I got really frustrated with a caller who had claimed that "the Internet had changed the color to

black." Eventually I worked out that her computer had switched off.

  • Me: "For the last time, could you please turn the computer on?"
  • Her: "But I don't have the file!"
  • Me: "What file!?"
  • Her: "You know, the file."
  • Me: "Could you please press the button with the circle and the line on it, please?"
  • Her: "Don't you talk like that! I still need to download the file! I know what to do. I have friends who are computer experts!"
  • Me: "Just press the button even if the file still hasn't 'downloaded' yet."
  • Her: "Ok. Well, nothing's happ-- oh, it's got some gibberish written over it now. It's blue, and there is one thingie that says my name! Wow! My husband taught the computer my name!"
  • Me: "Yes, that's what happens when you turn it on. Ok, I'm happy the problem's fixed. Bye!"
  • Her: "But--"

Click.

 
IT Support - is it all that it is suppose to be? PDF Print E-mail

Some times we wonder if the IT support really is worth the call.... have fun reading this!

I was having a problem with my Internet connection a week ago. It would go off, but both the modem

and router said it was on. I first called the manufacturer of the router, who guided me through some

steps, and we came to the conclusion it was the modem. I noticed it happened more often when I

started my new game Battlefield 2, so I called EA Games, and they told me to open ports.

Then I called my ISP.

  • Tech Support: "How may I help you today?"
  • Me: "Hi, I was wondering if you could open some ports on my connection. I need them open for this game I have, and I've opened them on my end, but the game says that you should also open your end as well."
  • Tech Support: "So you want to stick your game into the modem?"
  • Me: "No, I want you to open some ports so I can play the game."
  • Tech Support: "Sir, you cannot stick a game into your modem, you need a computer to stick the game into--"
  • Me: "Ummm, I don't want to stick the game into my modem, I want you to O-P-E-N P-O-R-T-S!!!"
  • Tech Support: "There's a cdrom drive on your computer. If you press the button that is next to or says 'cdrom drive,' a thing that looks like a cup holder will come out. Stick your game--"
  • Me: "!@#$*!@%"

Some shuffling sounds on their end.

  • Supervisor: "Hello sir."
  • Me: "Would it be possible for you to open some ports on my internet connection so I can play a game. I've already done it on the router I have."
  • Supervisor: "Sir, you cannot put a game into your modem. It doesn't work."
  • Me: "!@#$*!@%"

So then I called the company's business center, and I was told that opening ports would cost a LOT of

money.

I called tech support again, and finally got routed to their site in Texas. I told him my problem with the

modem and ports and relayed to him the story. After laughing and apologizing, he told me (after I gave

him the modem model number) that my modem was out of date.

The new modem took five minutes to configure, and it worked fine.

 
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