Infamous "Hacker" Ankit Fadia revealed
forbesindia.com
forbesindia.com
At the end of the first page it still wasn't clear that the author was being sarcastic. Since most people would have clicked back by that point, the majority of readers will see the article as endorsing Ankit.
Suppose I'll go read the remainder now...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ankit_Fadia&ol...
Given wikipedias strict standards on living biographies and non notable people, never mind frauds, it is somewhat surprising to see the article as it is
There's added a Controversy[1] section
Hilarious!!
He seems to be converting this whole episode to his advantage and using it as a marketing opportunity.
All of his tweets seems to be sarcastic (not sure if it was supposed to be): https://twitter.com/ankit_fadia/
All respect to him, I bet I make 10 times less with 10 times the IT skills.
I was in first year of engineering when this guy (then in high school) walks in and gives a talk filled with such obvious bull and then gets a standing ovation from the faculty, most of whom weren't too knowledgeable either. I consider him a genius because of his ability to fool people, just like all the Indian godmen who have a great time cheating the Indian populace.
1. Many folks are really computer illiterate beyond internet surfing and basic computer usage. If you show them a few tricks- you create the same effect a magician has on kids. People get mesmerized.
2. You can really fool people by marketing campaigns. "Best selling author" , "Helps crack emails for intelligence agencies" etc kind of campaign forces people to ask "Why would so many people buy his books, unless he has something genuine to write" - Hence increasing the books sales in this cycle.
A relative of mine did a ethical hacking certification from this guy. He showed it to all other relatives like waving a flag out of pride. Nothing that I told convinced the audience as to why the certification wasn't even worth the paper it was printed on. It was all like they were asking me to shut up and stop spewing negativity about it. They were like "At least he learned something through the certification".
3. Job promises and resume decoration, If you tell some one your are a certified ethical hacker. Ordinary joe, who knows nothing of the topic will not only believe you but rather offer you job over say an actual ethical hacker.
4. We like degrees, certificates and titles next to our names.
And lastly we just love famous people. Even if all they do is nothing. Bollywood is full of such examples.
To me, it would be in the same vein as saying, "All respect to him, he kidnapped and murdered people, but he makes 10 times the amount I do and hasn't been caught. Genius!".
I admire him purely for the ability to self promote.
It is a different level, but dishonesty (particularly continuing and for the purposes of self enrichment) is still nothing to be proud of.
> I admire him purely for the ability to self promote.
He's not self promoting. He's promoting something that is not himself. Its fairly easy to make yourself look good and promote yourself by lying. Its much harder to do it in an honest way, someone who can genuinely self promote themselves based on their actual skills/achievements is someone to admire.
If we start appreciating charlatans for their marketing skills, we are going to be worse off in the long run.
and I am an Indian who was not fooled..
Schildt plays the same game, just on a subtler, smaller, more unassuming level.
The first level of being a C Guru is an intimate understanding of Your C Compiler on Your OS using Your Hardware. The second level is the self realisation that everything you thought you knew was wrong.
Poor old Herb positioned himself as an expert, wrote a book on that basis, angered the Gods who counter attacked with an annotated guide to what he got wrong and rubbed salt in by coining the term Bull Schildt.
Frankly he did a service by taking a bullet like that as there now exists a kind of Platonic dialogue in which you can read the C Standard, read what someone thought it meant, and then read a commentary on that.
Those C chaps can be a prickly bunch :/
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4316574 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4536439
So, here is the single page link: http://forbesindia.com/article/beyond-business/ankit-fadia-r...
there are comments going back over a decade http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/
Just look at his twitter feed, I'm not even sure if he thinks he's clever, doesn't understand sarcasm, or if he's just 'living with it'.
For starters, who is this about and why should I care?