Slashdot Mirror
Human Clock (Complete with Hands!)
soulsteal writes: "Some people with too much time on their hands have decided to make a clock of, for, and by the people! Humanclock allows for anyone anywhere to set their time zone and view over 1100 pictures of people posing with one of the 1440 minutes available each day. On the geek side, their server is a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable running a port of Aache and PHP." Something seems extremely suspicious about that server ...
This harkens back to yesteryear. The FishCam, the internet enabled coffee maker, etc.
Reminds me of the good old days, when people had way too much time on their hands and creativity was rampant.
A nice break from the current spam infested and x10.com peddling (oops, I mean, "business friendly") Internet.
---------------------------------- Jump on it.. you know you want to.
Oh dear lord, some people have *no* sense of humour. This isn't a hoax. Hoaxes are, generally speaking, at least marginally believable. There is usually an attempt on the part of the hoaxers to actually convince others that what they are claiming is true. This, OTOH, is *obviously* a JOKE. I mean, come on... 4 gigs on a tape? The webserver powered on 4 "AA" batteries (double coupon day)? Heck, even tim knew it was a joke: "Something seems extremely suspicious about that server..."! OTOH, at least I can now see just how thick some Slashdotters are...
Spoken like an unmarried man.
-no broken link
Now that is a feat! > We hired a crack team of crafty crack monkeys > that were able to modify the Apache source code > and reduce it down to a 25k text file that runs > under the BASIC interpreter native to the Tandy > TRS-80 Model 100. Those were some smart monkeys. I would love to see that code.
It's dead jim!
Yegods, the poor thing never had a chance...
well at least we don't have to worry about it spreading the worm ;)
Uhm, are there really poop and puke commands in BASIC?
Ken
Ken
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:j7H61q2E32M:w ww.humanclock.com/+&hl=en
I don't believe this. For those of you who can't access the page because the poor TRS-80 couldn't handle it, these guys are leasing the rights to 4:20 am/pm! For the current bid price of $66, you can have your picture come up when it turns 4:20. See the auction at ebay
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
oh god, thinkgeek is going to pack it into corn syrup and add caffeine by the end of the week....
All I get is a picture of a guy holding up a sign that says 12:00, then he takes it away, then he holds it back up again, then he takes it away again, then he...
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
We are inspired by this human clock thing, and will implement a clone ourselves.
Look for martianclock.com, featuring pictures for all 24 hours and 37 minutes using photographs of live martians.
Unlike humanclock.com, and due to the long distances involved, we'll be using a cluster of Commodore 64 and Atari 800XL machines to handle the web server(s).
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
That's it... I want a humanclock slashbox :o)
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Well, it looks like it only took three weeks from putting the site up until it got Slashdotted. I've been building the site and taking pictures for the last two months. I haven't had time to write a FAQ for the site yet. But the reason the picture filenames are MD5 hashes is so you can't easily see other times. A lot of people want to just be able to clickity click their way through the entire set of pictures as if it were a p0rn site...and I didn't want that. If you want to see a certain time, you have to wait.
There are some interesting photos on the site. Jimi Hendrix's grave is at 8:15pm, Richard Buckner is at 8:14pm, and there is an entire hours worth of pictures from 1am - 2am that were taken at a Goth party in Pittsburgh. (thanks D33!)
Now I gotta go downtown and reboot the server... (on -> off -> on)
Imagine, playboy-esque models posing to the time of day, ticking along on your desktop...
It'd be almost like the Naked News
~ now you know
I wonder how a TRS-80 is going to handle the Slashdot effect...
Hoax. Right up there with the potato server.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Slashdot comment wrapping may break this URL:
& mo de_w=on&site=www.humanclock.com&submit=Examine
;)
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?mode_u=off
Besides, the webserver page claims all the data for the images is stored on a TDK cassette tape. They say "we estimate we can get 4gb on the tape before we have to turn it over".
Its a joke guys. A funny one, but a joke
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
From the site:
On Tuesday the server went down for about 12 hours because the AA batteries in it died and I had to go out and buy new ones.
And you think this thing can stand up to the usual slashdot-gangbang? Novel idea but you'd better invest in some real hardware if you're gonna put up Geeky cool content like this!
With names like Western Family, Realistic, Tandy and TDK; humanclock.com's middle-management attempts to cut every corner possible when it comes to industrial-strength webhosting. Many web hosting companies use expensive servers with complex software for their web operations. Our engineering staff rewrote the popular Apache webserver software to run on an 18 year-old portable computer with 32k of memory.
Humanclock.com runs on a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer, using a stripped-down version of the Apache webserver software (version 100-BASIC.12 beta). The graphic files are stored on magnetic tape accessed via a modified Radio Shack personal cassette player (CAT NO. 14-1215). The webserver is powered by a 6 volt TRS-80 AC Adaptor (CAT NO. 26-3804). We take our web hosting very seriously at humanclock.com, therefore we have installed 4 "AA" batteries in the webserver in case of power failure. Whereas some battery backup systems last for only 20 minutes and cost hundreds of dollars, our power backup solution lasts for 20 hours and costs $2.49, (due to it being double coupon Tuesday). In the case of power outage however, it takes our webserver about one second to come back online, something that would take a common UNIX/NT system over two minutes.
Apache software in action We hired a crack team of crafty crack monkeys that were able to modify the Apache source code and reduce it down to a 25k text file that runs under the BASIC interpreter native to the Tandy TRS-80 Model 100. Those were some smart monkeys. Our engineering department was able to rewire this ordinary personal cassette player (not to be confused with a "walkman"), to handle the vast storage needs that humanclock.com requires.
All I/O is performed through the headphone jack. The storage media consists of a single TDK type I cassette tape. The "Rigid-Construction cassette mechanism" gave our IT deparment an overwhelming sense that it was 65 cents well spent. We estimate that roughtly 4 gigabytes of data can be stored before we have to turn over the cassette and record over the side labeled "Kick ass Toto mix tape".
SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)