Category: Critique

Why interfaces lie…

August 12th, 2010 · Jacob · Critique, Technology, Web 2 comments - Tags: , , , ,

New rule. “If you are a developer you cannot trust your designers”. If you happen to do both, Don’t trust yourself. Hold your thought on this one. Right now, I will deal with the title. “Why Interfaces lie”. Recently, I was browsing through some websites, most of them of significant importance. To name a few domains, governmental, state run companies, online services, real-time booking services and smaller user-base networks. I noticed one thing they had in common. ‘Weak Interfaces’. I noticed their online interfaces had loopholes that might still be unknown to the developer of the backend application.

Take an example. Google’s default search engine results number is probably set as 10 and documented the same in its early development stages.

Firebug handling of Google Search Results

I was able to bring the number to 1 result per page by simply modifying the value of the first option entry by firebug and blindly believing there was no validation for the lower bounds.
Updated Google Search

It is pretty sure from the interface Google doesn’t want a single result to be listed. Though this does not create any concern to integrity of the database, it clearly brings to light how weak the constraints set by the designer are.

SQL injection through input forms and Header injections to manipulate cookie information and authenticate websites are prevented to some levels now. However a large number of basic validations are not done just because the backend programmers believe the data received through interfaces are safe. The information relayed across these containers have least amount of respect for the limits set by designer. This works almost everywhere and the validation is often implicitly neglected. The interfaces today are very highly manipulative and unless a refined form of validation is applied to the process logic level some back-doors can create unexpected results.

I was able to a process an online recharge of 5 rupees when a certain telecom company’s basest recharge option was 55 rs. This is no fraudulent action. However it denotes the decreasing credibility of the bounds set by the designer and increasing amount of validation that needs to enforced at the business end. A much more substantial implication would be on the resources. The company let me process the recharge denomination through the online banking portal of a third-party organization and reverting it back when it finally detected the anomaly at an inner core level. Thus creating an alarming denial-of-service (DoS) scenario taking advantage of this hole. This signifies the importance of a refined way of treating interfaces.

Death Note: Review

August 18th, 2007 · Jacob · Critique Comments Off - Tags: , ,

aniyume.gif

“

  • The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

  • This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject’s face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.

  • If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the subject’s name, it will happen.

  • If the cause of death is not specified, the subject will simply die of a heart attack.

  • After writing the cause of death, the details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

“

Well…What can i say…You wont find the jittery glitzy action sequences of classics like Naruto or Bleach. Not even a single modish punch offered in the story. Its all about the style…absolute style in speech.

Usually, when i used to watch anime like Inuyasha, Bleach etc.I always could sense what was coming next…predictive to an extent but in Death Note. Man! I couldn’t keep up with the storyline. I was actually seeking my player to the previous section every now and then. The story is well etched into a very strong drama with elements of suspense and uncertainty of the main plot lingering almost in very second of meaningful conversational crossfire between ‘L’ and ‘Kira’.

Yagami Light, our central character is so surreal and an ideal student. No offense, but i don’t believe in a student who goes on scoring 100% in his University entrance exams (WTF!) after he is on a killing spree which takes up precious energy and almost the living hell out of a high schooler.[Later this kid is said to be a junior champion in tennis!] But then! Shinigamis’ and the Death Note itself isn’t real! [Silly me!]

Well there is no denying the fact i was very much engrossed in the anime much because turning a crime ridden society into a perfect ‘Utopia’ requires some good story line and emotionally inviolable characters like Light and L. Well now its the perfect time to introduce you to Death Note (awkwardly pronounced in Japan). The ultimate synonym for death. This useful gadget (contains no microchips and ICs in it and is not made in Germany!) is known for defining the inevitable death itself of a person with suitable extensions. By extensions, I mean the time, place and the way a person can be killed. Light uses a series of experiments on very immoral, perverted prisoners and criminals to test his limits with Death Note. Owned by a shinigami named Ryuk (quite funny, contrary to the normal Death God…looks more like a hollow from Bleach), the Death Note was accidentally dropped into the hands of Light.

One the other hand the mysterious and weird Mr ‘L‘ surprisingly a teenager with another 100% in everything.(Boy! I really hate university rank holders!). ‘L’ seems to have innumerable number of aliases for himself and at such a ‘tender age’ he is a known entity among the FBI (haha,another good one!) as he has solved for them, some serial murder case in America. With a faithful assistant (Servant??) named ‘watari‘, he is helping the investigation team to track down the the famous ‘Kira’.

Thats enough of story telling, but i am impressed how the director has transformed a slow, rather sloppy theme into a ‘nail biter’. With gutsy dialogues , strong characterization,effusive emotional pauses and the plausible look of ‘Death’ in Death Note, It sure is one good anime you don’t want to miss out. I will be back after some more episodes.Later! :-)

[

  • The author has seen only the first 10 episodes.

  • He likes watching anime.

  • This review is strictly a personal viewpoint.

  • The author hasn't seen the live action Movies of Death Note.Please donate

  • This review is in no way eligible to be an ideal critical appreciation (Its crap!I know)

  • Warning Spoilers!. lol now that you have read it this line doesn't really care, right?

]

Image Courtesy:Aniyume

Inspiration = Rip?

July 29th, 2007 · Jacob · Critique, Design, Writing 3 comments - Tags: , ,

At one glance , an innocuous word, ‘inspiration’ may seem to be related to the great paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci produced due the influence of Verrocchio, his teacher. Inspiration is usually associated with art and design.

In olden days, inspiration was thought to of a divine nature. The people believed it to be a gift of god. As time traveled across centuries of development, renaissance and revolution this inspiration found new meanings. Nowadays it is concerned with education,personality, paintings (abstract art too) and websites . Inspiration has found new galleries to showcase themselves in different mediums. They are umpteen inspirational personalities, masterpieces, materials and products available now(which makes me think that there is hardly anything divine in it anymore.)

I would like to center this post around ‘web inspiration’ a rather new term which has many possibilities of advancements and ramifications in different directions (and the way it gets corrupted by rippers and plagiarists). Before we get into this topic let me show you one of my works. A simple cover i did for my college magazine and the art that inspired me to do it(the one on the left is mine).

MomentThe Time

Well as you can see the better one is the original found from here .

 

First Question!.Is my art a rip of the other? The fact that I’m calling the other one ‘an original’ is itself an assertion of the fact that i borrowed a lot of ideas from ‘the time‘ by Nazan Dedeoglu. Borrowed? uh oh! I don’t know Nazan. Borrowing without his consent is stealing right? Assuming the above case to be true i rephrase my statement. I stole his art!. But then in my defense i have a sweet word which is manipulated by every known ripper artist in the world(i’m not one,in any way).

Inspiration .

 

Boy!Haven’t we always wondered what the difference between the words Inspiration and a Rip means.

 

Many websites have been on the lookout for Web rip off! On such site is pirated-sites.com.(check out their more believable Flickr account with screen shots) Obviously the hapless culprits tried to model upon the the original site,(starting from pure inspiration), slowly accumulating a lot of the parent website features and finally transforming into a truly fascinating rip of the former. Most of the websites under attack are from people in the same circle of involvement, say Web design studios. The best part is the style how the original creators write about their ripper counterparts! They go commenting from ‘shameless f**king @#$%@’ to ‘nice try buddy,better luck next time. While most of the counterfeits are dismissed off with a ‘disgraceful act’ tag, the clicks to the uri keep increasing dramatically, (increasing the link popularity dumbo!). The ripped sites are usually replaced with more impressive original creations in very short time.

 

Inspiration usually is accepted if it is about using the styles of the original artist in a different way with his/her flavor mixed in it to produce an completely different art.Whoosh!Thats all i can squeeze out of me. Besides it all depends on what the original artist thinks about his alleged rip off art.

 

FOOTNOTES:

1)My art was not used in any profitable venture or my college magazine( ,they rejected it because it was too complex a concept of time!) or was not sold to any enterprising group. Besides i still think it is an inspired art. Oops there we go again!…

Really,RMVB!

September 13th, 2006 · Jacob · Critique, Media, Writing Comments Off - Tags: , , ,

RMVB is one container format you never want to show your back.Infact if you do that you will be missing a lot of good things.Come on…I am not kidding.Well..I do not blame you guys for i too hated files with an .rm extension.But recently RealMedia has developed a spectacular format for variable bitrate streams..’Real Media Variable Bitrate’ or simply rmvb.Files in AVI format,(especially the ones encoded with DivX or XVid) were widely popular in 2001(still pretty famous..).I came across these RealMedia formats due to anime download sites.Actually it was Inuyasha(Ep. 11) that i downloaded first.The size of an 27 minute episode was 33 MB and the quality was decent.Back then there were times when i even felt that i was the only one using .rm files

Well what is really the fuss about rmvb format?.Nothing much..It is smaller in size compared to .mpg and .avi and can be used for storing media files.RMVB is a contrary to other formats(even .rm) because of its Bitrate settings.Variable bitrate varies output data per time segment.Unlike CBR(Constant Bitrate),VBR gives higher bitrate for complex sections in a media file and segments of less complex nature are given reduced bitrate.So the net result being,the file’s size reduced dramatically.

Size?..A 24 min ‘LOST’ episode in rmvb can have a size of 85 MB whereas an AVI version can have anything from 125-200 MB.(Above that it must have an uncompressed avi..you are nuts!)That’s definitely an advantage with rmvb right?.

The next Factor,

Quality..hmm..I have eyes and they tell me the quality is almost same to an .avi equivalent.Don’t believe me?.Screenshots please!!.Hey Mr.Forse has some for us.

Support for advanced content, such as chapters, subtitles, meta-tags, user-data,streaming media?.

A plain but sure yes.

Moving on..

Portability.Uh Oh..It seems like we have reached problems at last.If you have a computer system and a real player..Fine!.I once said about ‘rmvb’ to a friend.After a strong debate, he remarked.

But i am sure that my DVD player supports only DivX and not RealMedia..

True,RealMedia is not supported by players available now but this may soon be done.(I hope so.)Mp3 files too have such a problem.Some such files are now being encoded using VBR and these files are not found to compatible with other players.So listening to your car stereo,remember..it is ‘CBR encoded mp3′ (or even Average Bitrate).The encoders and the decoders have to be a little more complex if we have to hear VBR files.But sure technology is changing.We can emphatically hope for more advanced gadgets.

Now that i have blogged a lot i feel like downloading a movie.Let me search..hmm..Pirates of carribean:Dead Man’s Chest.Got it! 635 MB(DVD Rip.DivX).Woah!!That’s simpy too much…I got to add a nice extension to my search..hmm..Voila.374 MB!.Ya Guys it is none other that ‘.rmvb’

Ergo Proxy

September 8th, 2006 · Jacob · Critique, Media Comments Off - Tags: , , ,

A science fiction suspense anime TV series created by Geneon Entertainment and Manglobe that began broadcasting in Japan on 25.February 2006 Saturday 7:00pm on the WOWOW satellite channel. It is directed by Shukou Murase, with screenplay by Dai Sato et al.. Ergo Proxy features a fusion of 2D digital cell animation, 3D computer modeling, and special digital effects.

Wow!

Well thats what wikipedia has to say about Ergo Proxy.I saw a few episodes of this series(about 23 episodes are there.).To begin with,this series has one of most amazing animation details in recent times.Right from the start we get sweet old reminiscences of the Ghost in the Shell series.Both of these series fall into the same genre,cyberpunk.Artificial Intelligence,technically elevated robots and sophisticated computer networks are the basic fortification of these two anime series.The creators have tried to make Ergo Proxy as a carefully contrived,upscale alternative of Ghost in the Shell.Ergo Proxy was premiered in HDTV with 5.1 Digital sound.This series was one of the most anticipated series of 2006.

But the biggest challenge is how the writer has created a investigation procedure in a very believable fashion.I mean.. he is dealing with the future and that can be gestated only through imagination.The way he has sets the stage and the environment definitely
gets you a feeling that we are looking out to the future.The instruments,imperial computer networks with dazzling visual display technology has become a primary ingredient in a cyberpunk series.(Thanks to all those movies tagged under sci-fi).So does Ergo Proxy come out with its own version of such entities.

The characterization is also done with special emphasis on the story.The series revolves around Ril Mayer who is investigating about a virus called Cogito which affects a class of robots called Autoreivs.The robots have been conceived by the creators in a weird fashion quite contrary to the normal looks.But the uniqueness in design easily surpasses this minor glitch.The other but most important character,Proxy has a fantastical and monstrous built.

The theme or the story line is deep,dark and needs a instant,superfluous attention to the smallest of details.I am not sure whether this was done on purpose to make this series under the genre of the fast-paced science fiction with a vehemence on the story line.Although for a while you find it difficult to understand what it is really about,the story unfolds clearly in the later episodes.

Oh wait i have only seen 4 episodes..