My favorite 5 Games of all time – Part 1 – METAL GEAR SOLID

The most cinematic and epic game series I have ever played, Metal Gear Solid outshines every other game for me. Some IntegralWallmight argue with me that MGS is all about sitting on the couch, watching cutscenes and waiting for something to happen and then play minigames while dodging enemies who have quite limited (and sometimes stupid questionable) vision cones. And you are seriously wrong, an MGS purist like me enjoys it like the way it is meant to be. MGS blends some serious conspiracy theories with stealth elements and merges realistic action with believable setting. It’s an arcade stealth genre game in my opinion, and it’s the most enjoyable one. Games like Thief and Splinter cell are overtly dark and bland when compared to MGS and Kojima’s direction shines when it comes to cutscenes and ideology theories. No, I m not saying that I was able to understand MGS2’s overtly convoluted plot in one go, but when it made sense, it made for one of the most epic plots I have ever studied with such deep patience. Solid Snake is my favorite character, and my favorite game of MGS series is the original Metal gear Solid. I remember it renting out and playing it on my Playstation emulator and spending hours and hours of my 12th class playing that game (when I was supposed to cram Chemistry formulas and solve mathematical problems).

Metal Gear Solid

I still have it installed on my PC and I m still dishing and choking out soldiers and throwing chaff grenades at confused electronic devices. When it was released this was the most complete game on Playstation and pushed it to its theoretical limits. All the cutscenes happened in real time and though they did have to compromise with lip movement, the delivery is cinematic and represents the pinnacle of game direction for me. The graphics, the music, the action and the setting, everything was top notch and Konami revived the series with the touch of perfection.

Metal Gear Solid

The character development and the voice acting is something for which Metal Gear is hailed as the best ever, David Haytor and the team are the soul of MGS and without them, it would not have been a MGS. I remember the Sniper wolf death scene and still have a soft spot for her (I m dead serious) Harry Gregson Williams and Tappy Iwase composed the most theatrical score and the catchy music which celebrate the MGS the way it is meant to be. MGS is known for its gruesome and original boss fights;where else you can fight a Hind D,a psychic, a deadly sniper,a tank and a walking bipedal mobile death machine aka Metal Gear Rex ? All the boss fights require finding and exploiting a weakness and fighting your way off in the most original form.

In all, MGS represents the most complete gaming experiences for me and stands out as my one of the most favorite game of all time.

 

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Google GO – New programming front

Google Go is a new language developed by Google Inc which was first officially announced in November 2009. It’s a Google GO – New programming front compiled, garbage collected concurrent programming language. Language veterans Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson initially started to design Go based on previous work related to the Inferno operating system in September 2007. Go has been deployed to compile on UNIX and Linux platform however as of the launch, Go was not considered to be ready for adoption in production environments.

With ken co creating Go,it has a syntax closer to C except for the type declarations; other syntactical differences are the missing parentheses around for and if expressions. Go has been designed with an aim to have exceptionally fast compilation times, even on modest hardware. Some of the features missing in Go as of now are exception handling, type inheritance, generic programming, assertions, method overloading and pointer arithmetic.

Here is an example of a Hello world program in Go -

package main

import "fmt"

func main()

{

fmt.Printf("Hello, World\n")

}

Go can be compiled using 2 compilers as of now - 6g (and its supporting tools, collectively known as gc) are in C, using yacc/Bison for the parser and Gccgo,a compiler with a C++ front-end with a recursive descent parser coupled to the standard GCC backend.

The industry reaction for Go has been mixed, with some veterans raising its fast compilation and others who criticized lack of features in it. judging by the reaction,one can simply say that Go is just not mature enough to be deployed to industry ready environments and has some rough edges to smooth out.

 

 

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Google Buzz – Google’s new Buzzword

Google competing with other social-networking-media and sharing services (Read Facebook..) has launched its new Google Buzz – Google’s new Buzzword platform of sharing,named Buzz.Buzz is a social integration and messaging tool by Google, which is designed to integrate into Gmail and focuses on integrating photos, videos, and links as part of the "conversations" aspects of Gmail.Shared links and messages show up in the user's inbox and it allows users to choose to share content publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time they post.Currently Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and Twitter are integrated. Buzz has seemingly copied several interface and interaction elements from websites like FriendFeed, such as the ability to Like someone's message.Google Buzz – Google’s new Buzzword Google Buzz feature will be rolled out to Gmail accounts in the coming weeks and it will be possible to access the service from the Gmail inbox. A mobile version of the site optimized for Android phones and iPhones has also been launched.

You can checkout Google buzz here

 

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How to secure your PC in 11 steps

So you have just bought a new personal computer for your home (rather than for a workplace or as a server) and want How to secure your PC in 11 stepsto secure it (including protecting it from viruses and spyware). Privacy (including encryption, cryptography and  anonymity) is a part of security but broad enough to need covering separately. Think of Privacy as the flipside of the coin. Making backups of data, defragging, system restore points are only indirectly related. Backups can actually make your data easier to steal and retrieve.

This article assumes you wish to use a network (such as the internet), share files on pendrives and that your PC might be physically accessible to others. If none of those apply, then your many of these steps may be redundant as your PC will already be quite secure.

  1. Choose an operating system based on its security and vulnerability (Linux has no known active viruses in the wild, OpenBSD is focused on security). Find out if it uses limited user accounts, file permissions and is regularly updated. Make sure you update your operating system with security updates and update your other software too.
  2. Choose a web browser based on its security and vulnerabilities because most malware will come through via your web browser. Disable scripts too (NoScript, Privoxy and Proxomitron can do this). Look at what independent computer security analysts (such as US-CERT) and crackers (similar to hackers) say.
  3. When setting up, use strong passwords in your user account, router account etc. Hackers may use dictionary attacks and brute force attacks.
  4. When downloading software (including antivirus software), get it from a trusted source (softpedia, download, snapfiles, tucows, fileplanet, betanews, sourceforge) or your repository if you are using Linux.
  5. Install good antivirus software (particularly if you use P2P). Antivirus software is designed to deal with modern malware including viruses, trojans, keyloggers, rootkits, and worms. Find out if your antivirus offers real-time scanning, on-access or on-demand. Also find out if it is heuristic. Avast and AVG are very good free editions. Choose one, download and install it and scan regularly. Keep your virus definitions up to date by updating regularly. Protect your computer from external networks using a good firewall and antivirus solution
  6. Download and install software to deal with spyware such as Spybot Search and Destroy, HijackThis or Ad-aware and scan regularly. I can't state this enough - you need to run a good anti spyware and anti malware program like Spybot if you search the web at all. Many websites out there exploit weaknesses and holes in the security of Microsoft Explorer and will place malicious code on your computer without you knowing about it until its too late!
  7. Download and install a firewall. Either ZoneAlarm or Comodo Firewall (Kerio, WinRoute or Linux comes with iptables). If you use a router, this gives an added layer of security by acting as a hardware firewall.
  8. Close all ports. Hackers use port scanning (Ubuntu Linux has all ports closed by default).
  9. Perform Penetration Testing. Start with ping, then run a simple nmap scan. Backtrack Linux will also be useful.
  10. Consider running intrusion detection software (HIDS) such as ossec, tripwire or rkhunter.
  11. Don't forget to think in terms of physical security (in case of theft/unauthorised access), like setting a BIOS password and preventing access to your machine or its removable devices (USB, CD drive etc.). Don't use an external hard drive or USB device for important data, these represent another vulnerability, as they are easier to steal/lose.

Encryption can be effective against theft. Encrypt at least your entire user account rather than just a few files. It can affect performance but can prove worth it. Truecrypt works on Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeOTFE works on Windows and Linux. In OS X (10.3 or later) System Preferences Security, click FileVault (this can take minutes to hours). In Linux Ubuntu (9.04 or later) installation Step 5 of 6 choose "Require my password to login and decrypt my home folder". This uses ecryptfs.

Article Source – WIKIHOW

 

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Disable UAC in Windows 7 easily

Post XP, User Account Control is the single most annoying thing devised by Microsoft, and ironically it steals the amount Windows 7 of control  from user inspite of giving back to it. You might want to disable it cuz it may get peskier to allow each application access to the system resources or to perform even simple actions. Here is how you can disable it easily with practically no sweat
But be warned -Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, but its less of a trouble to consider if you are keeping up with us :)
Disable UAC on Windows Vista
Go to Control Panel, and type in “UAC” into the search box,you’ll see a link for “Turn User Account Control (UAC) on or off”. Click on it.
Go to user accounts
On the next screen,just uncheck the box for “Use User Account Control (UAC)”, and then click OK button.
just turn the damned thing off
Restart your PC to see the effects,no more UAC prompts..YAY !!
Disable UAC on Windows 7
Looks like Microsoft learn with the failure of Windows Vista and made it quite easier to  to deal with UAC settings in Windows 7, and in fact you don’t have to completely disable UAC if you don’t want to. Just type UAC into the start menu or Control Panel search box.
Type UAC and reach to UAC settings
Now you can simply drag the slider up or down, depending on how often you want to be alerted.
Drag the slider
To disable it entirely, just drag it all the way down.
Voila.. you have done it :)

Cheers

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Crack iPhone passwords

Download, point and click “ yups..its that simple to crack an iPhone backup password, using a software which was Crack iPhone passwordsunveiled by Elcomsoft this Thursday.Elcomsoft is the same forensic team behind wireless password cracking and Quicken  password cracking  and many other applications. The Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker is a novel piece of software that uses wordlist based attacks to recover passwords for iPhones and iPod Touches by trying thousands of phrases per second. It is speculated that the final version will be able to perform dictionary based customized attacks too.

The basic logic behind the cracking lies in the use of iTunes application which allows users to make backup of iPod and iPhone that contain a wealth of potentially sensitive information, including call logs, address books, SMS archives, calendars, pictures and voice mail. Elcomsoft password Cracker cracks these backup files and doesn't requires the use of iTunes.

The software makes use of multi-core processors, extended CPU instructions and will run faster on certain types of graphics cards. It runs on the XP, Vista and 7 versions of Windows.

You can download the beta from here

 

Via – The register

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Nmap 5.20 released !!

Nmap 5.20 released !!

Nmap is of course of the most famous port scanners and hacking tools of all time, the last stable release was back in July 2009.For those that may not know, Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics.

Nmap 5.20 offers more than 150 significant improvements, including:

  • 30+ new Nmap Scripting Engine scripts
  • Enhanced performance and reduced memory consumption
  • Protocol-specific payloads for more effective UDP scanning
  • A completely rewritten traceroute engine
  • Massive OS and version detection DB updates (10,000+ signatures)

You can download Nmap 5.21 here (more options):

Or read more here.

 

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