Wizard searching: reversing the commercial web for fun and knowledge

Presented at REcon 2005, June 18, 2005, 2:30 p.m. (60 minutes)

Like a skilled native, the able seeker has become part of the web. He knows the smell of his forest: the foul smelling mud of the popups, the slime of a rotting commercial javascript. He knows the sounds of the web: the gentle rustling of the jpgs, the cries of the brightly colored mp3s that chase one another among the trees, singing as they go; the dark snuffling of the m4as, the different sounds and the rustling of the databases, the pathetic cry of the common user, a plaintive cooing that slides from one useless page down to the next until it dies away in a soft, sad, little moan. In fact, to all those who do not understand it, today's Internet looks like a dangerous, closed, hostile and boring commercial world. Yet if you stop and hear attentively, you may be able to hear the seekers, deep into the shadows, singing a lusty chorus of praise to this wonderful world of theirs -- a world that gives them everything they want. The web is the habitat of the seeker, and in return for his knowledge and skill it satisfies all his needs.


Presenters:

  • Fravia
    Fravia studied applied software entomology at the Savonlinna University and graduated with the paper "/How to reverse engineer, and eventually smash, software bugs/", published in the prestigious "students' essays" of the University of Helsinki. He later studied history of the early middle ages and rhetoric, in Berlin, under the teachings of one of the greatest university mentors Europe has had in the last century: Dr Frithjof Sielaff. www.fravia.com

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