Slashdot Mirror

"Classmate specs are better than XO. There is a bit of goods in XO hardware, but not all that much"

Depends on your definition of 'better'. I don't think the OLPC hardware should be underestimated. The Classmate may have a faster processor and more storage, but it also has a shorter battery life, no 'e-book' mode, no mesh network, isn't nearly as rugged or user serviceable, and costs more. Given that a 366MHz processor and 128MB RAM is a perfectly respectable combo as long as the software is tuned for it, flexibility and longevity ought to be a more significant factor than raw [on-paper] grunt.

There's a nice recent take-apart here:

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=218

Obviously a great deal of thought and design has gone into these beasties. If only my own (much-battered) machines were built like that...

Yeah, likewise, if I'm hiring electrical engineers and someone in Human Resources throws away a resume because it's from some guy named bunnie or some chick named ladyada, they can either clean out their desk by 5 PM or I'll have security do it for them.

Nicknames by themselves aren't career-limiting moves, and either of those two people would do OK if they listed their nicks on their resume pages.

Wired had a great photo gallery of factories and assembly lines in China.

And here is a write-up about someone from Chumby Industries visiting Shenzhen to get their production line up-to-date. It's more about the area than anything about the factory.

Well, unless you know something I don't, I partly disagree with one point on your #1: bricking. I thought you would be interested to see a related example of chip hacking, which can be applied to smart-cards using a PIC chip:

http://www.bunniestudios.com/wordpress/?page_id=40

Clearly those cards use different technology but -- caveat emptor! A PIC wasn't meant to be hacked either - with microscopic physical protection in place. The example was in DIP form but there is virtually nothing different from the guts of a DIP chip and QFN.

Also, given enough time, boredom or economic motivation anything is possible. I have seen hackers decrypt things that shouldn't be possible to decrypt...and I have seen them do this for me for $50.

Not that I have a better suggestion, but, I don't believe in being too assured- paranoia is a healthy component of my life. :)

the zune's been dismantled already and pictures posted at http://www.bunniestudios.com/wordpress/?p=131
so, since it's an arm processor from freescale and is thus a well known platform, how long till linux is made to run on it? can't be too long?
I'm particularly interested in the wifi protocol, so as to be able to capture songs squirted from zune on a non-zune device, and/or break into a zune and acquire all its contents without the zune being aware of it!

I'll wait till this thing is thoroughly 'hacked'......and someone take what may be decent hardware (just guessing here), and makes it useful with non MS and non-RIAA backed 'prisonware'......once opensource works on this, it may be worth getting.

The yellow dots printed by color lasers are printed out from firmware in the printer. OSS drivers would be useless. BUnnie has been trying to determine exactly where in his incredibly rare free time. http://www.bunniestudios.com/wordpress/?p=53

Are you sure? The printer does tell me pagecounts per cartridge and they are different, as well as page density for each cartridge. I have definitely seen it not decrease the colour counts on using black and white only. In fact right now it has black at 923 pages and CMY at 770. The amount remaining per cartridge is different (eg I have less C left than M or Y). Page densities are 6, 4, 5 and 5% respectively,

There is also a menu option where you can tell it to keep printing - no need to play tricks on the cartridges. There is a good explanation at http://www.bunniestudios.com/wordpress/?p=53#comme nt-977 - the main articile also shows the circuit board.

I forgot to link to Bunnie's printer disassembly [via]

The basic conclusion is that many of the watermarked printers share a Canon print engine -- he suspects it is this engine that is doing the watermarking. The US Government just had to convince the critical-equipment supplier to add the tracking - not all the printer companies. He also notes that the Tek Phaser printers don't have this because they were developed before the Canon engine. (Oh, how I longed for a phaser back in the day!)

here a guy opened up his HP printer and looked at the chips involved. It appears that all the printers with hidden codes use the Canon print engine board. Changing the pattern might be as easy as reflashing an eeprom.

For those interested in a quick summary, the docucolor example is the best place to look. (it has pictures!)

More information can be found on the EFF's printer-privacy webpage.

Also interesting is Andrew Bunnie's flat bed page scanner mod to use blue light instead of white. This made the yellow tracking dots easier to see, and the whole page could be seen at once to determine the pattern they made.