Thursday, June 18, 2009

Maldivian IRC use diminishing....

Well...to tell the truth...I started using IRC in October 2002...

This blog post is my response and experience in using the IRC chat system...

During those days of late 2002 I started to chat for the first time...It was in IRC...The nick I used was nahyz and I was in #lock and #kotari most of the time...

In December 2002 I started to use MSN too...

From what I know the #kotari was created by a group of Maldivian students who were studying abroad...The channels' created date is 22 October 1997...Just about to be an year when internet came to Maldives through an ISP(it was October 1996 that internet service was started by Dhiraagu....however internet was accessible in Maldives even before that time by using a data fax modem and dialing to an overseas internet service provider...However the price of doing this would be soaring )....

One should note that IRC use in Maldives started to grow...

But now it is fading away and the only actively registered channels in IRC is #kotari , #atolls, and #maldives ( that is it has the cservice bot @X )...The channels #lock, #Udhares, #Beach, #Holhuahsi, #Nemo, #Finimaizaan, #balaabodu, #Thebalaabodu, #Triton and #Ekuverin are the only channes I visit occasionally....I created one channel called #Bitun in 2006 and it was registered by ibu but it existed for a short time...

IRC use is falling very rapidly in Maldives and in the whole world too...Chat systems like Mig33, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, E-Buddy, and ofcourse Skype is more famous now...Why?...Because IRC doesn't support extensions like video chat and voice chat...It lacks many features and cannot be considered as a Web 2.0 technology...

Well I was famed in IRC in late 2003 to early 2005...It reversed in 2006...Now I am seeing most of the channels in IRC empty...Maldivian channels especially....No more than 25 people are ever online at the same time in IRC...

It is sad that IRC use is diminishing...Not only in Maldives...Some analysts have estimated that IRC will not be an acceptable means of communication by the year 2020.... :(

Thursday, June 11, 2009

KK4rum...the untold stories...

It is now 4 years that Kk4rum vaporised…It was hacked…
This article is about my experience in using Kk4rum and other few forums that were in existence during those days of 2003 to 2005…
Of course the first forum I visited is lockforum ( also disbanded now )…Nobody told me about it and nobody introduced me to it…It was around April 2003 that I went to Icon Cyber and typed www.dhiraagu.com in the browser…It showed me lockforum and a few weeks later ,I registered in it…Funny it was…www.dhiraagu.com was redirected to lockforum…Those boys dot, Eifini, stallone, and aE are the few people I know from lockforum…They were gaining unfair publicity from redirecting www.dhiraagu.com domain into lockforum…One should know the local telcom company Dhiraagu web presence is http://www.dhiraagu.com.mv/ and the domain dhiraagu.com is owned by the boys of lockforum.
It was on 21 September 2003 ( the day after Male’ was routed by the mob ) that I saw www.kk4rum.net…I registered the same day in it..It was more…how shall I put it…heavy metal like that the other few forums…There was www.rattehin.com and www.bichoo.net all I was using…My username in these forums were guestworm but in kk4rum I used the ID ibilees ( I feel embarrassed now using that name and I regret it very much )…
The guys dhumaari and hot were moderating www.kk4rum.net….I saw dhumaari, Aishath, gorukaneli, RedDevils, and KidX in IRC channel kotari in 2003…They were all in kk4rum…I was in the Debates thread and my first topic was “Do girls or boys lie most?”…
It should be noted that all these forums were using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as the database and ASP as the scripting technology…Kk4rum got a bonus point as it had SMS facilities which all the other forums didn’t have…But this facility didn’t work most of the time…
In December 2003 I got famed in IRC after pin pointing lockforum’s unethical ways of redirecting www.dhiraagu.com to it…I wrote a topic in Kk4rum as such…This made Kk4rum especially famous in the channels of IRC like #lock ( which is run by the same team as lockforum) and in #kotari.
During 2004 my so called well whishing friends, now my enemies, started to make useless posts in Kk4rum…they hailed bichoo.net which was the most unpopular forum by members…The only notable feature, if any, bichoo.net had is that it had English and Dhivehi sections separately…My friends were talking none sense as SMS IRC bots ( which is a none existent term ) linked to bichoo, and that bichoo had SMS features which is not true…
In late 2004 there was many posts by me in Kk4rum and these so called friends of mine blow there identity in Kk4rum…I revealed there jealous ways and it back fired on them…
My volatile behavior is what I claim why Kk4rum got hacked at last…By a bunch of IT guys…Their blog still exists…no now extinct…hehehehehe…Visit http://kkforum.blogspot.com/ ( as I celebrate the fourth year of Kk4rum been disbanded…So do the thugs who hacked it…4 is the number…And late May comes the day in which time it was hacked…I am writing this article in midnight of or in other words…early morning of 7 June 2009…The given blog has been removed by the hackers who brought misery to Kk4rum…They are celebrating it !!!)…It is an imposing and boasty blog…Kk4rum was hacked incidentally but not from the genius of the hackers…They had a copy of the forum software which Kk4rum used and it was after studying its structure for days and days ( could be weeks ) that these guys found the loop holes and back door entries in to Kk4rum…
Well…I miss Kk4rum....I miss hot, dhumaari, faripary, Aishath, gorukaneli, RedDevils and KidX…Than the stars in kk4rum and also early users of kk4rum..
.
Lockforum was retired in 2005…It was a huge failure…
Now Maldivian IRC is going down and diminishing…But other forums come and go…
My active forum of any interest is now Maldivian soccer forum…I am registered there as my old IRC nick guestworm…I visit there occasionally…Click: http://msforum.activebb.net/
2003 to 2005…THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF Kk4rum…MARK ONE!!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
footnote: Today is 17 June 2009...Again the hackers blog has been uploaded...I am editing this post because of that...They sure wants to impress people...

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

A brief internet history....

These days we take the internet for granted. It is facilitates a cheap means of communication via e-mail and real time messaging. All this are taken now as part of our lives. We couldn’t imagine a world without the internet.


Welcome to the the history of the internet

The internet is in reality a world wide network of computers. The great grand parent of the internet is the ARPA network of the US Department of Defense which linked ARPA funded research institutions. This was the 1960s’. The maximum bandwidth rate ( which is the capacity of data transfer ) available was than the stunning 56kb/s.

The protocols which means the set of rules for computers to communicate with each other was TCP ( transmission control protocol ) and Internet Protocol. Other protocols such as FTP ( file transfer protocol ) appeared a little later.

The communication between the computers were through packet switched data which mean data is sent as packets.

In 1971 Intel Corporation introduced the microprocessor. Computer manufacturers’ began to use the Intel processor line up.

In 1981 IBM invented there personal computer based on Intel processors.
During these times companies like Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Cisco, and Compaq appeared. These companies are now giants in the IT industry. They all helped develop the internet.

The internet around these times were difficult to use and was available through protocols like TCP/IP,FTP,POP2, Telnet and so on.

Electronic mail ( e-mail ) was available during these times and cost about 50 cents per e-mail. This is much cheaper than post and courier service of sending letters to communicate.

In 1988 the IRC ( Internet Relay Chat ) was invented by Jarkko Oikarinen and this initiated easy to use real time chatting between individuals using small IRC client programs. IRC is also a protocol. Chatting IRC requires an IRC server and a resident program on the user machine called an IRC client. The worlds’ most famous IRC client is mIRC which was released by Khaled Mardam Bey in 1995.

In 1989 Tim Berners Lee created the worlds’ first web server, HTML ( hypertext markup language ) and a small command line browser. In 1991 the worlds first web site was online. In 1993 Marc Andreessen created Mosaic which was almost the worlds first graphical browser which means it has user interface and is just like a Windows program. The internet exploded in use due to this in 1993. Andreessen found Netscape in 1994 which released the Netscape Navigator browser to the world. In 1995 Microsoft released its own browser the Internet Explorer bundled with Windows 95.

In 1994 the worlds first search engine appeared. It was yahoo and was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo.

In 1995 Sun Microsystems released Java Technology to the world and the it added dynamic content ( animation, video, audio, and so on ) to the web pages.

In 1996 Sabeer Bhatia created the first web mail which is hotmail. Prior to this, e-mail ( electronic mail ) was based in ISP provided POP3 ( Post Office Protocol 3 ) and required a separate program ( like Outlook express ) to read e-mail. Hotmail is the oldest web mail and Microsoft bought hotmail for 400 million USD in 1997.

In 1997 HTML editors appeared. HTML is a markup language created by first Tim Berners Lee and its’ rules are set by World Wide Web Consortium which is an organization found by the afore mentioned in 1994. The first editors were Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Before this web pages had to be hand coded with HTML. This was a cumbersome task and productivity increased with the release of these editors.

In 1998 Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google which used a new methodology of internet search. Google expanded and is now the worlds’ largest internet company and one of the largest software companies.

In 2003 Myspace which is social networking web site appeared. It is now the worlds’ second most famous social networking web site. Prior to this other social utility sites like hi5 and tagged were in existence.

The same year, in 2003 the term Web 2.0 was mentioned by Eric Knorr.

Web 2.0 means a new way of using the internet in which the user is able to modify and interact what he or she is using. Facebook ( which was launched in 2006 ), Myspace, Blogger, Twitter, Amazon, and Ebay are all examples of Web 2.0 sites. Web 2.0 can be described as a conversation while Web 1.0 ( referred to as brochure web ) is a one way speech...In Web 2.0 users can modify, update and participate and create content of the web sites they visit

Today we can’t live without the internet. It has become a very important means of communication. We live in a world which has shrunk by using the internet.

Windows Live, Yahoo, Google and web browsers Firefox and Internet Explorer are used by us every day.