Last week was exceptionally exciting in the technology world, with so many events that i would say, shook many subjects and fields of discussion that could herald more exciting events in the near future.

One such and much talked about event is that US-based ISP Verizon is revealing subscriber's private details for anti-P2P organizations such as the infamous RIAA. In fact, after reading some articles that have beed posted on blog sites and news portals, such a deliberate act by the ISP was actually orchestrated by the law of United States itself. Justice courts actually allowed anti-P2P organizations to fish out users who are alledgely trading copyrighted media files. This would enable these organizations to go on to file lawsuits against those users as in the example of the few college kids who was sued because they were "overdoing" file trading. I personally am completely AGAINST such acts by ISPs. I personally believe that we as consumers, retain certain amount of freedom in what we can do with the service or product that we pay for. If we are not granted such freedom from our purchase, then why buy at the first place? Buying means, that service or product that we paid for is technically ours and whatever that we're going to do with it is ultimately our business. Imagine buying a fish at a supermarket that has a label on it which says you can only steam cook it and nothing else, that's plain violation of personal freedom and free speech. How disgusting! What I personally believe is that when one buys something, one retains the power to do what ye will with it. No questions asked. To hell the DMCA and all copyright advocates. Period.

The news that Grokster and Morpheus won the case of copyright infringement was a triumph for the file-sharing industry, but there are some obscure questions about what this win might do to the file-sharing community. One possibility remains high on the list - anti-P2P organizations will appeal and appeal further to bring P2P services down, no matter the odds; second, recording artists would come up with funny ideas to put P2P to rout, such as introducing fake song files that would in the end either be an empty file or say something real nasty to put P2P users off, like what Madonna has done. The file-sharing method that currently empowers networks like Grokster and Morpheus is the distributed computing style. This is considered one of the most effective method to foil the intrusion of court laws, so far so good, but i personally have a faint feeling that it won't hold long enough before the armies of corporate recording companies come bursting into the networks and shut them down for good. They successfully pulled Napster's plug(whose biggest weak point is the fact that it uses centralized servers to control user activities) and they will, one day do the same to distributed networks, somehow. How did Grokster and Morpheus won over the judge? No, they didn't pay the court a lump sum or slept with the judge, the judge felt that the networks are firstly not in the control of their parent companies, Grokster and Morpheus, because they were simply - distributed. So, let's wait and see what will happen next in the industry the next few weeks, and i hope the networks would survive this one.

Apple recently launched their latest service to entice future Mac users and especially Windows users to make that "switch" to the Mac platform that Steve Jobs has been working his ass off for - the introduction of downloading media files for only 99 cents per piece. Apple has also come up with a witty idea to even coax the unsuspecting average user into their service, the "Rip, Mix and Burn" motto. It simply means you can download your favourite songs and keep it in whatever form you like them to be, in your iPod or CD player. This is catalyzed with the new iPod that is slimmer, lighter and more feature packed compared to the existing iPod. It can contain about 10, 15 or 20 gigs of songs so you can imagine how much songs you can take with you. The new iPod also has the red light feature that lights up the buttons when you're using it in the dark which makes it so bloody attractive to an average user. Currently Apple is backed by 5 major recording companies among them Sony Music, Universal, and etc. They are offering about 200,000 songs right now but are expecting to offer even more later this year. Personally, I think Apple is trying real hard to expand their user base to those who are currently in the Windows domain. Their strategy is in line with current Windows users needs and wants. Music is one of the many things, and i believe they might just succeed in this campaign. M$ might just lose out on this one. Pity.

Moving away from Apple, I have another sad story from Microsoft. M$ recently launched, with lukewarm atmosphere, its latest Windows Server 2003 platform. What I saw at Neowin was pathetic. Neowin did a great job in taking several snapshots of what went on in the launching. The launch went on simultaneously at the UK, US and also somewhere else. The launch was absolutely a disaster. The campaign was cold and uninteresting, the actual platform was not demonstrated during the launch, instead they showed petty slide shows that says only the features and good things about the platform, something that you and I can do at home in less than 15 minutes. Worse still, is how the presenters attempted to answer some specific questions about the system. When one of the audience posed a question, the presenters were actually passing the mic from one colleague to the other, in a desperate attempt to answer the question. They are not ready, as i can tell, and I got a funny feeling M$ has again done a horrible job that could offer more troubles than solutions. While Apple is rising to the top of the stage, M$ is slowly fading out of the scene, how pathetic.

Yesterday on TSS, Kevin showed a nifty tool called LC4 that could "audit" (the more crude term would be 'crack') passwords that are encrypted in a Windows system. I downloaded it, got the Brute Force feature come on and tried to crack my own password. Having done that i'm quite pleased with the result. My password was actually quite difficult to crack, the proggy said that it would require about two days to crack my password, which i think is a long time. Although my password isn't exactly that powerful, i've heard some passwords that require about 2 weeks to crack. Having done that i'm more at ease with the protection that i'm under.

I was really intrigued by the recent defacement made by a "cracker"(mind the correct term used) who brought legendary singer Madonna's site, www.madonna.com down to its knees about a week ago. Right now the site is back to business but the site in its defaced state could be viewed at Zone-h and if you look carefully, a line at the bottom says "Morgan Webb, would you marry me?", a clear proposal made by the cracker to TechTV's The Screen Savers's staff Morgan, who does mainly Windows segments. The point is, who made this proposal and could it be Kevin Rose who is also Morgan's colleague and housemate? I wonder, but wonderings aside, this cracker has made a clear disapproval against Madonna's latest anti P2P movement, which could cause unsuspecting P2P users dismay after downloading Madonna's song file which ultimately contains only Madonna saying "What the f--- you think you're doing?" This, I think is a great way of protest that all fervent P2P users could relate to. It's like saying "Madonna, you can eat my ass for putting up fake songs, take that!" Great job done by the cracker and the rest of P2P audiences would like to thank you for that.

School's gonna start real soon, next Monday actually, so i'm back to busy schedules and all that shit again. I am so phucked up lazy to get my ass back to school again, but what can i do. Take care and i'll be back with something stupid to say next time.

Melvin, here are the proxies that you might need to get going.

These are just a few basic addresses that u could try. For a more complete list, go to www.proxy4free.com. Bear in mind that free proxies change all the time, so u need the updated list all the time.

> DarkDaemon > .